well known. "Your Majesty, I was too much occupied that evening with
what was taking place on the earth beneath, to pay much heed to the
evolutions of the heavenly bodies." Spared as he had been by his good
fortune from taking any part in the Algerine expedition, or in witnessing
the ignominious retreat from Innspruck, he was obliged to submit to the
intercalation of the disastrous siege of Metz in the long history of his
successes. Doing the duty of a field-marshal and a sentinel, supporting
his army by his firmness and his discipline when nothing else could have
supported them, he was at last enabled, after half the hundred thousand
men with whom Charles had begun the siege had been sacrificed, to induce
his imperial master to raise the siege before the remaining fifty
thousand had been frozen or starved to death.

The culminating career of Alva seemed to have closed in the mist which
gathered around the setting star of the empire. Having accompanied
Philip to England in 1554, on his matrimonial-expedition, he was destined
in the following years, as viceroy and generalissimo of Italy, to be
placed in a series of false positions. A great captain engaged in a
little war, the champion of the cross in arms against the successor of
St. Peter, he had extricated himself, at last, with his usual adroitness,
but with very little glory. To him had been allotted the mortification,
to another the triumph. The lustre of his own name seemed to sink in the
ocean while that of a hated rival, with new spangled ore, suddenly
"flamed in the forehead of the morning sky." While he had been paltering
with a dotard, whom he was forbidden to crush, Egmont had struck down the
chosen troops of France, and conquered her most illustrious commanders.
Here was the unpardonable crime which could only be expiated by the blood
of the victor. Unfortunately for his rival, the time was now approaching
when the long-deferred revenge was to be satisfied.