Still another eminent chieftain in the king’s service disappeared at this time—­one who, although unscrupulous and mischievous enough in his day, was however not stained by any suspicion of crimes like these.  Count Charles Mansfeld, tired of governing his decrepit parent Peter Ernest, who, since the appointment of Fuentes, had lost all further chance of governing the Netherlands, had now left Philip’s service and gone to the Turkish wars.  For Amurath III., who had died in the early days of the year, had been succeeded by a sultan as warlike as himself.  Mahomet III., having strangled his nineteen brothers on his accession, handsomely buried them in cypress coffins by the side of their father, and having subsequently sacked and drowned ten infant princes posthumously born to Amurath, was at leisure to carry the war through Transylvania and Hungary, up to the gates of Vienna, with renewed energy.  The Turk, who could enforce the strenuous rules of despotism by which all secundogenitures and collateral claimants in the Ottoman family were thus provided for, was a foe to be dealt with seriously.  The power of the Moslems at that day was a full match for the holy Roman Empire.  The days were far distant when the grim Turk’s head was to become a mockery and a show; and when a pagan empire, born of carnage and barbarism, was to be kept alive in Europe when it was ready to die, by the collective efforts of Christian princes.  Charles Mansfeld had been received with great enthusiasm at the court of Rudolph, where he was created a prince of the Empire, and appointed to the chief command of the Imperial armies under the Archduke Matthias.  But his warfare was over.  At the siege of Gran he was stricken with sickness and removed to Comorn, where he lingered some weeks.  There, on the 24th August, as he lay half-dozing on his couch, he was told that the siege was at last successful; upon which he called for a goblet of wine, drained it eagerly, and then lay resting his head on his hand, like one absorbed in thought.  When they came to arouse him from his reverie they found that he was dead.  His father still remained superfluous in the Netherlands, hating and hated by Fuentes; but no longer able to give that governor so much annoyance as during his son’s life-time the two had been able to create for Alexander Farnese.  The octogenarian was past work and past mischief now; but there was one older soldier than he still left upon the stage, the grandest veteran in Philip’s service, and now the last survivor, except the decrepit Peter Ernest, of the grim commanders of Alva’s school.  Christopher Mondragon—­that miracle of human endurance, who had been an old man when the great duke arrived in the Netherlands—­was still governor of Antwerp citadel, and men were to speak of him yet once more before he passed from the stage.