was to flow into the royal treasury from the perennial fountains of confiscation.  Who so fit to be the Tancred and the Pizarro of this bicolored expedition as the Duke of Alva, the man who had been devoted from his earliest childhood, and from his father’s grave, to hostility against unbelievers, and who had prophesied that treasure would flow in a stream, a yard deep, from the Netherlands as soon as the heretics began to meet with their deserts.  An army of chosen troops was forthwith collected, by taking the four legions, or terzios, of Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, and Lombardy, and filling their places in Italy by fresh levies.  About ten thousand picked and veteran soldiers were thus obtained, of which the Duke of Alva was appointed general-in-chief.

Ferdinando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, was now in his sixtieth year.  He was the most successful and experienced general of Spain, or of Europe.  No man had studied more deeply, or practised more constantly, the military science.  In the most important of all arts at that epoch he was the most consummate artist.  In the only honorable profession of the age, he was the most thorough and the most pedantic professor.  Since the days of Demetrius Poliorcetes, no man had besieged so many cities.  Since the days of Fabius Cunctator; no general had avoided so many battles, and no soldier, courageous as he was, ever attained to a more sublime indifference to calumny or depreciation.  Having proved in his boyhood, at Fontarabia, and in his maturity:  at Muhlberg, that he could exhibit heroism and headlong courage; when necessary, he could afford to look with contempt upon the witless gibes which his enemies had occasionally perpetrated at his expense.  Conscious of holding his armies in his hand, by the power of an unrivalled discipline, and the magic of a name illustrated by a hundred triumphs, he, could bear with patience and benevolence the murmurs of his soldiers when their battles were denied them.

He was born in 1508, of a family which boasted, imperial descent.  A Palaeologus, brother of a Byzantine emperor, had conquered the city of Toledo, and transmitted its appellation as a family name.  The father of Ferdinando, Don Garcia, had been slain on the isle of Gerbes, in battle with the Moors, when his son was but four years of age.  The child was brought up by his grandfather, Don Frederic, and trained from his tenderest infancy to arms.  Hatred to the infidel, and a determination to avenge his father’s blood; crying to him from a foreign grave, were the earliest of his instincts.  As a youth he was distinguished for his prowess.  His maiden sword was fleshed at Fontarabia, where, although but sixteen years of age, he was considered, by his constancy in hardship, by his brilliant and desperate courage, and by the example of military discipline which he afforded to the troops, to have contributed in no small degree to the success of the Spanish arms.