rts and
gun-boats, and with such rapidity, that--according to his enthusiastic
historiographer--each tree seemed by magic to metamorphose itself into a
vessel at the word of command. Shipbuilders, pilots, and seamen, were
brought from the Baltic, from Hamburgh, from Genoa. The whole surface of
the obedient Netherlands, whence wholesome industry had long been
banished, was now the scene of a prodigious baleful activity. Portable
bridges for fording the rivers of England, stockades for entrenchments,
rafts and oars, were provided in vast numbers, and Alexander dug canals
and widened natural streams to facilitate his operations. These wretched
Provinces, crippled, impoverished, languishing for peace, were forced to
contribute out of their poverty, and to find strength even in their
exhaustion, to furnish the machinery for destroying their own countrymen,
and for hurling to perdition their most healthful neighbour.

And this approaching destruction of England--now generally believed
in--was like the sound of a trumpet throughout Catholic Europe. Scions of
royal houses, grandees of azure blood, the bastard of Philip II., the
bastard of Savoy, the bastard of Medici, the Margrave of Burghaut, the
Archduke Charles, nephew of the Emperor, the Princes of Ascoli and of
Melfi, the Prince of Morocco, and others of illustrious name, with many a
noble English traitor, like Paget, and Westmoreland, and Stanley, all
hurried to the camp of Farnese, as to some famous tournament, in which it
was a disgrace to chivalry if their names were not enrolled. The roads
were trampled with levies of fresh troops from Spain, Naples, Corsica,
the States of the Church, the Milanese, Germany, Burgundy.

Blas Capizucca was sent in person to conduct reinforcements from the
north of Italy. The famous Terzio of Naples, under Carlos Pinelo, arrived
3500 strong--the most splendid regiment ever known in the history of war.
Every man had an engraved corslet and musket-barrel, and there were many
who wore gilded armour, while their waving plumes and festive caparisons
made them look like holiday-makers, rather than real campaigners, in the
eyes of the inhabitants of the various cities through which their road
led them to Flanders. By the end of April the Duke of Parma saw himself
at the head of 60,000 men, at a monthly expense of 454,315 crowns or
dollars. Yet so rapid was the progress of disease--incident to northern
climates--among those southern soldiers, tha