thless of trophies. Eleven old guns, partly broken, and a small
quantity of ammunition, were all the spoils of war found in the city
after its surrender.

The Marquis Spinola went to Spain. On passing through Paris he was
received with immense enthusiasm by Henry IV., whose friendship for the
States, and whose desperate designs against the house of Austria, did not
prevent him from warmly congratulating the great Spanish general on his
victory. It was a victory, said Henry, which he could himself have never
achieved, and, in recognition of so great a triumph, he presented Spinola
with a beautiful Thracian horse, valued at twelve hundred ducats.
Arriving in Spain, the conqueror found himself at once the object of the
open applause and the scarcely concealed hatred of the courtiers and
politicians. He ardently desired to receive as his guerdon the rank of
grandee of Spain. He met with a refusal. To keep his hat on his head in
presence of the sovereign was the highest possible reward. Should that be
bestowed upon him now, urged Lerma, what possible recompense could be
imagined for the great services which all felt confident that he was
about to render in the future? He must continue to remove his hat in the
monarch's company. Meantime, if he wished the title of prince, with
considerable revenues attached to his principality, this was at his
disposal. It must be confessed that in a monarchy where the sentiment of
honour was supposed to be the foundation of the whole structure there is
something chivalrous and stimulating to the imagination in this
preference by the great general of a shadowy but rare distinction to more
substantial acquisitions. Nevertheless, as the grandeeship was refused,
it is not recorded that he was displeased with the principality. Meantime
there was a very busy intrigue to deprive him of the command-in-chief of
the Catholic forces in Flanders, and one so nearly successful that Mexia,
governor of Antwerp citadel, was actually appointed in Spinola's stead.
It was only after long and anxious conferences at Valladolid with the
king and the Duke of Lerma, and after repeated statements in letters from
the archdukes that all their hopes of victory depended on retaining the
Genoese commander-in-chief, that the matter was finally arranged. Mexia
received an annual pension of eight thousand ducats, and to Spinola was
assigned five hundred ducats monthly, as commander-in-chief under the
archduke, with an equal s