“Our lives,” said he, “are at stake upon this game, and all we wish is to lose them honorably.”  He begged the King to send a special envoy to France, with remonstrances on the subject of Alencon, and another to the Pope to ask for the Duke’s excommunication.  He protested that he would give his blood rather than occasion so much annoyance to the King, but that he felt it his duty to tell the naked truth.  The pest was ravaging his little army.  Twelve hundred were now in hospital, besides those nursed in private houses, and he had no means or money to remedy the evil.  Moreover, the enemy, seeing that they were not opposed in the open field, had cut off the passage into Liege by the Meuse, and had advanced to Nivelles and Chimay for the sake of communications with France, by the same river.

Ten days after these pathetic passages had been written, the writer was dead.  Since the assassination of Escovedo, a consuming melancholy had settled upon his spirits, and a burning fever came, in the month of September, to destroy his physical strength.  The house where he lay was a hovel, the only chamber of which had been long used as a pigeon-house.  This wretched garret was cleansed, as well as it could be of its filth, and hung with tapestry emblazoned with armorial bearings.  In that dovecot the hero of Lepanto was destined to expire.  During the last few, days of his illness, he was delirious.  Tossing upon his uneasy couch, he again arranged in imagination, the combinations of great battles, again shouted his orders to rushing squadrons, and listened with brightening eye to the trumpet of victory.  Reason returned, however, before the hour of death, and permitted him, the opportunity to make the dispositions rendered necessary by his condition.  He appointed his nephew, Alexander of Parma, who had been watching assiduously over his deathbed, to succeed him, provisionally, in the command of the army and in his other dignities, received the last sacraments with composure, and tranquilly breathed his last upon the first day of October, the month which, since the battle of Lepanto, he had always considered a festive and a fortunate one.

It was inevitable that suspicion of poison should be at once excited by his decease.  Those suspicions have been never set at rest, and never proved.  Two Englishmen, Ratcliff and Gray by name, had been arrested and executed on a charge of having been employed by Secretary Walsingham to assassinate the Governor.  The charge was doubtless an infamous falsehood; but had Philip, who was suspected of being the real criminal, really compassed the death of his brother, it was none the less probable that an innocent victim or two would be executed, to save appearances.  Now that time has unveiled to us many mysteries, now that we have learned from Philip’s own lips and those of his accomplices the exact manner in which Montigny and Escovedo were put to death, the world will hardly be very charitable with regard to other imputations.  It was vehemently suspected that Don John had been murdered by the command of Philip; but no such fact was ever proved.