History of the United Netherlands, 1590-99 — CompleteMotley, John Lothrop
History
History of the United Netherlands, 1590-99 — Complete
Motley, John Lothrop
Netherlands -- History -- Eighty Years' War, 1568-1648
mark for the Spanish sharpshooters.
There, too, under the banner of the Bearnese, that other historian of
those sanguinary times, who had fought on almost every battle-field where
tyranny and liberty had sought to smite each other dead, on French or
Flemish soil, and who had prepared his famous political and military
discourses in a foul dungeon swarming with toads and rats and other
villainous reptiles to which the worse than infernal tyranny of Philip
II. had consigned him for seven years long as a prisoner of war--the
brave and good La Noue, with the iron arm, hero of a hundred combats, was
fighting his last fight. At the siege of Lamballe in Brittany, he had
taken off his calque and climbed a ladder to examine the breach effected
by the batteries. An arquebus shot from the town grazed his forehead,
and, without inflicting a severe wound, stunned him so much that he lost
his balance and fell head foremost towards the ground; his leg, which had
been wounded at the midnight assault upon Paris, where he stood at the
side of King Henry, caught in the ladder and held him suspended. His head
was severely bruised, and the contusions and shock to his war-worn frame
were so great that he died after lingering eighteen days.
His son de Teligny; who in his turn had just been exchanged and released
from the prison where he had lain since his capture before Antwerp, had
hastened with joy to join his father in the camp, but came to close his
eyes. The veteran caused the chapter in Job on the resurrection of the
body to be read to him on his death-bed, and died expressing his firm
faith in a hereafter. Thus passed away, at the age of sixty, on the 4th
August, 1591, one of the most heroic spirits of France. Prudence,
courage, experience, military knowledge both theoretic and practical,
made him one of the first captains of the age, and he was not more
distinguished for his valour than for the purity of his life, and the
moderation, temperance, and justice of his character. The Prince of
Dombes, in despair at his death, raised the siege of Lamballe.
There was yet another chronicler, fighting among the Spaniards, now in
Brittany, now in Normandy, and now in Flanders, and doing his work as
thoroughly with his sword as afterwards with his pen, Don Carlos Coloma,
captain of cavalry, afterwards financier, envoy, and historian. For it
was thus that those writers prepared themselves for their work. They were
all actors in the great epic, the episodes of which they have preserved.
They lived and fought, and wrought and suffered and wrote. Rude in
tongue; aflame with passion, twisted all awry by prejudice, violent in
love and hate, they have left us narratives which are at least full of
colour and thrilling with life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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