While John III., during his reign, was the wretched instrument of Catholicism for the accomplishment of its atrocious designs, his grandson, Sebastian, who in 1557, at the age of three years succeeded to the throne, was educated, by the express injunction of his father's will, by the Jesuists, and consequently was moulded to the same purposes, and reduced to the same flexible subserviency. Inclined to extravagance by temper and disposition, and educated by bigotry and craft, his ambition became singularly whimsical; his devotion to the pope absolute; and his thirst indomitable and unquenchable to engage in some enterprise in which he might shed the blood of infidels and heretics. When he arrived at majority, in order to express his devotion to the pope, he assumed the title of "Most Obedient King." At the age of twenty years his restless fanaticism led him to undertake an expedition against the unoffending infidels of Tangiers; and suddenly falling on the astonished inhabitants, gained an easy victory over them. The success of his forces against these defenceless mountaineers led him to imagine that his arms were invincible. Muley Mohammed having conspired against his uncle Muley Moloch, the governor of Morocco, Sebastian conceived that by aiding the conspirators with his personal valor and military forces, he might acquire some distinction for his name, and some advantages for the church. The dictates of prudence and sound policy, the protestations of his ablest counsellors, and the munificent offer of Muley Moloch to purchase his neutrality by the cession of five fortified places on the coast of Africa, were feeble remonstrances to a mind like that of Sebastian's, in which fanaticism had supplanted principle, and despotism humanity. To popularize the hazardous undertaking, the papal machinery began to work industriously in its favor. Collecting an army of twenty-one thousand three hundred men, comprised of Portuguese, Germans, Spaniards, Frenchmen and Italians, and a fleet of one hundred vessels, he sailed for Africa, and landed with safety at the port of Alzira. Although the number and skilful disposition of the Moorish troops left little doubt of their triumph; although Sebastian's provisions were nearly exhausted; although Muley Moloch, more concerned for the safety of the misguided fanatic than from any apprehension of the success of his arms, again attempted to negotiate a peace; although some of the Portuguese commanders advised a retreat, and all of those of the conspirators a retreat to the coast, yet so confident was Sebastian of the interposition of divine providence in aiding him to butcher the infidels, that he even refused to defer the engagement until the afternoon, in order that he might have the darkness of the night to cover a retreat, should such a measure become inevitable. Sebastian fought with distinguished bravery, yet his desperate fanaticism was equalled, if not surpassed, by the heroic