em to prepare to march on the following night, the
twenty-sixth of August, against a neighboring city, the name of which he
did not disclose. It was a wealthy place, he said, but he was most
anxious that no violence should be offered to the inhabitants, in either
their persons or property. The soldiers should be forbidden even to
enter the dwellings; but he promised that the loss of booty should be
compensated by increase of pay. The men were to go lightly armed,
without baggage, and with their shirts over their mail, affording the
best means of recognizing one another in the dark.

The night was obscure, but unfortunately a driving storm of rain set in,
which did such damage to the roads as greatly to impede the march, and
the dawn was nigh at hand when the troops reached the place of
destination. To their great surprise, they then understood that the
object of attack was Rome itself.

Alva halted at a short distance from the city, in a meadow, and sent
forward a small party to reconnoitre the capital, which seemed to
slumber in quiet. But, on a nearer approach, the Spaniards saw a great
light, as if occasioned by a multitude of torches, that seemed glancing
to and fro within the walls, inferring some great stir among the
inhabitants of that quarter. Soon after this, a few horsemen were seen
to issue from one of the gates, and ride off in the direction of the
French camp at Tivoli. The duke, on receiving the report, was satisfied
that the Romans had, in some way or other, got notice of his design;
that the horsemen had gone to give the alarm to the French in Tivoli;
and that he should soon find himself between two enemies. Not relishing
this critical position, he at once abandoned his design, and made a
rapid countermarch on the place he had left the preceding evening.

In his conjectures the duke was partly in the right and partly in the
wrong. The lights which were seen glancing within the town were owing to
the watchfulness of Caraffa, who, from some apprehensions of an attack,
in consequence of information he had received of preparations in the
Spanish camp, was patrolling this quarter before daybreak to see that
all was safe; but the horsemen who left the gates at that early hour in
the direction of the French camp were far from thinking that hostile
battalions lay within gunshot of their walls.[171]

Such is the account we have of this strange affair. Some historians
assert that it was not the duke's design to