The Year after the Armada, and Other Historical Studies. Martin A. S. Hume

Sir Pero Negro died of the sweating sickness in one of the crowded lanes of old London city. Juan de Haro was killed by the English for attempted desertion with his company to the French enemy before Boulogne; others fell in the Flemish wars, and only the rash and boastful "Captain Julian" lived to become Alba's trusted henchman, and to hand his name down to the execration of generations of Flemings as one of the prime movers of the "Spanish Fury" in Antwerp. So great was the fame of his ferocity that the panic mongers, who were for ever sending to Elizabeth and Cecil intelligence of the dreadful vengeance which was to fall upon England at the hands of King Philip, could invent nothing more terror-striking than their constantly repeated dread that Julian Romero was to swoop down upon the coast and serve English Protestants in the same way as he had treated those of the Netherlands. He had, indeed, as will be shown in his own words at various periods of his life—now for the first time brought together—all the vices and virtues of his class and time. Vain and boastful, bigoted and cruel, he was nevertheless true to his salt, faithful, brave, and steadfast; of that stern, self-sacrificing stuff by which alone empires may be won or despotism defended. He was born at Huelamo, in the province of Cuenca, of very humble folk, for even when he was in high command and on terms of close intimacy with nobles and ministers, he was never given the nobiliary address of Don, which was enjoyed by the most remote and out-at-elbows representative of the hidalgo class. He was not much of a scholar either, for his signature which exists at Simancas is the only part of his letters in his own hand, and is painfully traced in great bold straight lines, like a row of halberds.

      In the winter of 1534 every village in Spain resounded with the drum-beat of the recruiters, who were seeking soldiers for the Emperor's great expedition against the Moors, which was to start from Barcelona in the spring. Spanish hearts were all aflame with wondrous stories of fortune and adventure. The excitement, the freedom, the idleness, and the possible gains of a soldier's life had seized upon the imagination of Spanish youth; and the turbulent spirit of war-like adventure in far countries was, for the next century at least, to be the dominant note of the national character. Julian must have been a mere boy, but he joined the standard, so he wrote forty years afterwards, at Christmas, 1534, as a foot-soldier, and, with a pike on his shoulder, started on his life of adventure. There was no one to record the doings and sufferings of the humble man-at-arms in those stirring days, and beyond the fact that he drifted from Spain to Tunis, from Tunis to Italy, and thence to Flanders and France, always in the midst of the fighting in the Emperor's wars, nothing is known for the next ten years of Julian Romero's service. In the beginning of 1544 Henry VIII. had arranged to enter into alliance with the Emperor to jointly attack the King of France, and the probability is that if they had together marched upon Paris promptly, they would have had France at their mercy. But other counsels prevailed, and, whilst Charles operated in Picardy and French Flanders, Henry sent the Duke of Norfolk and his brilliant son, Surrey, with an army of 15,000 men, to besiege Montreuil. The King's brother-in-law, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, at the same time with a large force "sat down before" Boulogne, and, on the 14th of July, great Harry himself landed at his good town of Calais to take the supreme command of his army before Boulogne. He was accompanied by a brilliant train of courtiers and soldiers, and took with him as his chief military adviser a great Spanish noble, Beltran de la Cueva, third Duke of Alburquerque, whose important share in the reduction of the town has been almost entirely ignored by English historians. Besides the 200 Spanish soldiers who followed the Duke, there were already three Spanish captains in Henry's service, each with a company of his countrymen, to the aggregate number of about 260 men, all of them seasoned veterans in the Continental wars; and these, together with the less experienced English levies, succeeded in capturing the town of Boulogne on the 15th of September. It appears that a breach had been made in the walls three weeks before, and the Spaniards begged Henry to let them take the place by assault. He told them that he would rather waste 10,000 pounds of powder than that a single one of his Spaniards should be sacrificed, "whereupon they blushed for mere shame." But as usual Henry had his own way, and the town surrendered; "the Frenchmen," says Wriothesley, "departing out of the towne with as much goodes as they might carye, both men and women, besyde that the waggons caryed; and the King his Majestie entered the said towne the 18th September with greate tryumphe, and the 20th day a solempne procession was kept with Te Deum songe for the Victory of the King his Majestie and many fyers made in the citye and in every part of the realme. The last day of September the King his Majestie landed at Dover at midnight." The reason for Henry's hurried return was his desire to retain all the credit for his victory without waiting for the probable reverse. Charles V. had come to terms with the French, and when he had sent word to his English ally that he was negotiating, Henry arrogantly said that the Emperor might make peace if he pleased, but he, Henry, would suit himself in the matter. But when he found the whole French army turned against him he hurriedly raised the siege of Montreuil, put all his forces into Boulogne under Lord Grey, and got back to England as fast as he could, whilst his laurels were yet green. All through the next year the French siege of Boulogne went on, the three companies of Spanish mercenaries, steady old soldiers as they were, being the mainstay of the defence. They complained bitterly of the raw Englishmen's habit of killing the prisoners instead of holding them to ransom, and on one occasion were near mutiny because their prisoners were murdered. "How now," said Captain Salablanca to Lord Grey, "do you think we are in the King's service for the wretched four ducats a month we earn? Not so my lord; we serve with the hope of taking prisoners and getting ransom. Your men have even now killed a gentleman of mine for whom I should have got at least five or six thousand crowns ransom." Whatever their object may have been in serving the schismatic king, Henry thought very highly of them, and when in the year 1545 he was about to send Warwick to attack the Scots, an opportunity occurred for him to engage some more, he gladly seized it. Charles V. had disbanded a large proportion of his army after the peace of Crespi was concluded, and had embarked them for Spain with orders that, under pain of death, they were to take service with no other sovereign. A ship with 800 or 1,000 of these disbanded soldiers on their way home anchored in the Downs, and the warriors being, we are told, "already tired of the sea," they sent an offer of their services to the King of England. The captain of the vessel, however, would not wait for the answer to reach them, but on his putting into Plymouth the whole of them landed and entered the English service. They were promptly sent off to Warwick's army in Scotland under an experienced old soldier of their number called Pedro Gamboa, who was made colonel, with power to create his own captains. Julian Romero landed with this force in some subordinate capacity, but on his arrival in Scotland received his first English commission as captain, from Gamboa. This was in the summer of 1545, and when the winter came the troops were put into quarters, whilst Gamboa and his newly fledged captains came to London to air their finery at Henry's Court. The King made much of them, and in the early spring of 1546, a temporary peace having been patched up with Scotland, ordered them to take their companies to the French coast between Calais and Boulogne, where the English were erecting a fort. Whilst Gamboa, Julian Romero, and the other new captains, had been ruffling at Court, receiving grants and attentions from the King, the three or four old Spanish commanders with their companies, who had been long in Henry's service, had been enduring hard fare and rough service, and obtaining but little loot at Boulogne; so that on the arrival in France of the new men, straight from Court favour, a very bitter feeling was shown towards them. One of the old captains, Cristobal Mora, deserted bodily with his men to the enemy, and another one, Juan de Haro, was killed in attempting to do so. It may therefore well be supposed that when peace was made in June, 1546, and the compatriots met again on neutral ground, there was a good deal of thumb-biting and recrimination. Mora was flouted in the streets by his fellow-countrymen for having disgraced the mercenary creed by deserting his paymaster before the enemy; whilst he retorted by accusing Gamboa and his friends of disobeying their natural sovereign the Emperor in taking service under an excommunicated heretic. Events came to a head at last by the deserting captain, Cristobal de Mora, sending a challenge from Montreuil to Colonel Gamboa in Calais in July. Either for some reason of disparity of age or rank between the two, or else out of mere hot-headed combativeness on the part of Julian Romero, the latter accepted the challenge for his chief, and has left upon record an extremely minute description of the fight. Sir Henry Knyvett went off to obtain the King of England's permission, which was gladly given, and "a thousand broad angels sent to Julian to put himself in order withal." The King of France ordered the erection of lists at Montreuil, where the wage of battle should be decided, and when