A larger examination of contemporary documents, especially of the queen's own correspondence, justifies the inference, that, with all the infirmities of a temper soured by disease, and by the difficulties of her position, she possessed many of the good qualities of her illustrious progenitors, Katharine of Aragon and Isabella of Castile; the same conjugal tenderness and devotion, the same courage in times of danger, the same earnest desire, misguided as she was, to do her duty,--and, unfortunately, the same bigotry. It was, indeed, most unfortunate, in Mary's case, as in that of the Catholic queen, that this bigotry, from their position as independent sovereigns, should have been attended with such fatal consequences as have left an indelible blot on the history of their reigns.[190] On his return to Brussels, Philip busied himself with preparations for the campaign. He employed the remittances from Spain to subsidize a large body of German mercenaries. Germany was the country which furnished, at this time, more soldiers of fortune than any other; men who served indifferently under the banner that would pay them best. They were not exclusively made up of infantry, like the Swiss, but, besides pikemen,--_lanzknechts_,--they maintained a stout array of cavalry, _reiters_, as they were called,--"riders,"--who, together with the cuirass and other defensive armor, carried pistols, probably of rude workmanship, but which made them formidable from the weapon being little known in that day. They were, indeed, the most dreaded troops of their time. The men-at-arms, encumbered with their unwieldy lances, were drawn up in line, and required an open plain to manœuvre to advantage, being easily discomposed by obstacles; and once broken, they could hardly rally. But the _reiters_, each with five or six pistols in his belt, were formed into columns of considerable depth, the size of their weapons allowing them to go through all the evolutions of light cavalry, in which they were perfectly drilled. Philip's cavalry was further strengthened by a fine corps of Burgundian lances, and by a great number of nobles and cavaliers from Spain, who had come to gather laurels in the fields of France, under the eye of their young sovereign. The flower of his infantry, too, was drawn from Spain; men who, independently of the indifference to danger, and wonderful endurance, which made the Spanish soldier inferior to none of the time, were animated by that loyalty to the cause which foreign mercenaries could not feel. In addition to these, the king expected, and soon after received, a reinforcement of eight thousand English under the earl of Pembroke. They might well fight bravely on the soil where the arms of England had won two of the most memorable victories in her history.