LITMIR.BIZ

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afford of the manners of the time may have an interest for the student of history.

      The tourney was held in a spacious square, inclosed for the purpose, in front of the great palace of Brussels. Four knights were prepared to maintain the field against all comers, and jewels of price were to be awarded as the prize of the victors. The four challengers were Count Mansfeldt, Count Hoorne, Count Aremberg, and the Sieur de Hubermont; among the judges was the duke of Alva; and in the list of the successful antagonists we find the names of Prince Philip of Spain, Emanuel Philibert, duke of Savoy, and Count Egmont. These are names famous in history. It is curious to observe how the men who were soon to be at a deadly feud with one another were thus sportively met to celebrate the pastimes of chivalry.

      The day was an auspicious one, and the lists were crowded with the burghers of Brussels, and the people of the surrounding country. The galleries which encompassed the area were graced with the rank and beauty of the capital. A canopy, embroidered with the imperial arms in crimson and gold, indicated the place occupied by Charles the Fifth and his sisters, the regent of the Netherlands, and the dowager queen of France.

      For several hours the field was gallantly maintained by the four challengers against every knight who was ambitious to prove his prowess in the presence of so illustrious an assembly. At length the trumpets sounded, and announced the entrance of four cavaliers, whose brilliant train of followers intimated them to be persons of high degree. The four knights were Prince Philip, the duke of Savoy, Count Egmont, and Juan Manriquez de Lara, major-domo of the emperor. They were clothed in complete mail, over which they wore surcoats of violet-colored velvet, while the caparisons of their horses were of cloth of gold.

      Philip ran the first course. His antagonist was the Count Mansfeldt, a Flemish captain of great renown. At the appointed signal, the two knights spurred against each other, and met in the centre of the lists with a shock that shivered their lances to the very grasp. Both knights reeled in their saddles, but neither lost his seat. The arena resounded with the plaudits of the spectators, not the less hearty that one of the combatants was the heir apparent.

      The other cavaliers then tilted, with various success. A general tournament followed, in which every knight eager to break a lance on this fair occasion took part; and many a feat of arms was performed, doubtless long remembered by the citizens of Brussels. At the end of the seventh hour a flourish of trumpets announced the conclusion of the contest, and the assembly broke up in admirable order, the knights retiring to change their heavy panoplies for the lighter vestments of the ball-room. A banquet was prepared by the municipality, in a style of magnificence worthy of their royal guests. The emperor and his sisters honored it with their presence, and witnessed the distribution of the prizes. Among these, a brilliant ruby, the prize awarded for the lança de las damas—the "ladies' lance," in the language of chivalry—was assigned by the loyal judges to Prince Philip of Spain.

      Dancing succeeded to the banquet; and the high-bred courtesy of the prince was as much commended in the ball-room as his prowess had been in the lists. Maskers mingled with the dancers in Oriental costume, some in the Turkish, others in the Albanian fashion. The merry revels were not prolonged beyond the hour of midnight, when the company broke up, loudly commending, as they withdrew, the good cheer afforded them by the hospitable burghers of Brussels.[32]

      PUBLIC FESTIVITIES.

      Philip won the prize on another occasion, when he tilted against a valiant knight, named Quiñones. He was not so fortunate in an encounter with the son of his old preceptor, Zuñiga, in which he was struck with such force on the head, that, after being carried some distance by his horse, he fell senseless from the saddle. The alarm was great, but the accident passed away without serious consequences.[33]

      There were those who denied him skill in the management of his lance. Marillac, the French ambassador at the imperial court, speaking of a tourney given by Philip in honor of the princess of Lorraine, at Augsburg, says he never saw worse lance-playing in his life. At another time he remarks, that the Spanish prince could not even hit his antagonist.[34] It must have been a very palpable hit to be noticed by a Frenchman. The French regarded the Spaniards of that day in much the same manner as they regarded the English at an earlier period, or as they have continued to regard them at a later. The long rivalry of the French and Spanish monarchs had infused into the breasts of their subjects such feelings of mutual aversion, that the opinions of either nation in reference to the other, in the sixteenth century, must be received with the greatest distrust.

      But, whatever may have been Philip's success in these chivalrous displays, it is quite certain they were not to his taste. He took part in them only to conform to his father's wishes, and to the humor of the age. Though in his youth he sometimes hunted, he was neither fond of field-sports nor of the athletic exercises of chivalry. His constitution was far from robust. He sought to invigorate it less by exercise than by diet. He confined himself almost wholly to meat, as the most nutritious food, abstaining even from fish; as well as from fruit.[35] Besides his indisposition to active exercises, he had no relish for the gaudy spectacles so fashionable in that romantic age. The part he had played in the pageants, during his long tour, had not been of his own seeking. Though ceremonious, and exacting deference from all who approached him, he was not fond of the pomp and parade of a court life. He preferred to pass his hours in the privacy of his own apartment, where he took pleasure in the conversation of a few whom he honored with his regard. It was with difficulty that the emperor could induce him to leave his retirement and present himself in the audience-chamber, or accompany him on visits of ceremony.[36]

      These reserved and quiet tastes of Philip by no means recommended him to the Flemings, accustomed as they were to the pomp and profuse magnificence of the Burgundian court. Their free and social tempers were chilled by his austere demeanor. They contrasted it with the affable deportment of his father, who could so well conform to the customs of the different nations under his sceptre, and who seemed perfectly to comprehend their characters—the astute policy of the Italian, the home-bred simplicity of the German, and the Castilian propriety and point of honor.[37] With the latter only of these had Philip anything in common. He was in everything a Spaniard. He talked of nothing, seemed to think of nothing, but Spain.[38] The Netherlands were to him a foreign land, with which he had little sympathy. His counsellors and companions were wholly Spanish. The people of Flanders felt, that, under his sway, little favor was to be shown to them; and they looked forward to the time when all the offices of trust in their own country would be given to Castilians, in the same manner as those of Castile, in the early days of Charles the Fifth, had been given to Flemings.[39]

      Yet the emperor seemed so little aware of his son's unpopularity, that he was at this very time making arrangements for securing to him the imperial crown. He had summoned a meeting of the electors and great lords of the empire, to be held at Augsburg, in August, 1550. There he proposed to secure Philip's election as king of the Romans, so soon as he had obtained his brother Ferdinand's surrender of that dignity. But Charles did not show, in all this, his usual knowledge of human nature. The lust of power on his son's account—ineffectual for happiness as he had found the possession of it in his own case—seems to have entirely blinded him.

      He repaired with Philip to Augsburg, where they were met by Ferdinand and the members of the German diet. But it was in vain that Charles solicited his brother to waive his claim to the imperial succession in favor of his nephew. Neither solicitations nor arguments, backed by the entreaties, even the tears, it is said, of their common sister, the Regent Mary, could move Ferdinand to forego the splendid inheritance. Charles was not more successful when he changed his ground, and urged his brother to acquiesce in Philip's election as his successor in the dignity of king of the Romans; or, at least, in his being associated in that dignity—a thing unprecedented—with his cousin Maximilian, Ferdinand's son, who, it was understood, was destined by the electors to succeed his father.

      This young prince, who meanwhile had been summoned to Augsburg, was as little disposed as Ferdinand had been to accede to the proposals of his too grasping father-in-law; though he courteously alleged, as the ground of his refusal, that he had no right to interfere with the decision of the electors. He might safely rest his cause on their decision. They had no desire to perpetuate the imperial sceptre in the line of Castilian monarchs. They had suffered enough from the despotic temper of Charles the Fifth; and

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