showed as much affection as it was in his rugged nature to feel
for any one. To Ferdinand was given the command of the cavalry, composed
chiefly of Italians.[940]

Having reviewed his forces, the duke formed them into three divisions.
This he did in order to provide the more easily for their subsistence on
his long and toilsome journey. The divisions were to be separated from
one another by a day's march; so that each would take up at night the
same quarters which had been occupied by the preceding division on the
night before. Alva himself led the van.[941]

He dispensed with artillery, not willing to embarrass his movements in
his passage across the mountains. But he employed what was then a
novelty in war. Each company of foot was flanked by a body of soldiers,
carrying heavy muskets with rests attached to them. This sort of
fire-arms, from their cumbrous nature, had hitherto been used only in
the defence of fortresses. But with these portable rests, they were
found efficient for field service, and as such came into general use
after this period.[942] Their introduction by Alva may be regarded,
therefore, as an event of some importance in the history of military
art.

The route that Alva proposed to take was that over Mount Cenis, the
same, according to tradition, by which Hannibal crossed the great
barrier some eighteen centuries before.[943] If less formidable than in
the days of the Carthaginian, it was far from being the practicable
route so easily traversed, whether by trooper or tourist, at the present
day. Steep rocky heights, shaggy with forests, where the snows of winter
still lingered in the midst of June; fathomless ravines, choked up with
the _debris_ washed down by the mountain torrent; paths scarcely worn by
the hunter and his game, affording a precarious footing on the edge of
giddy precipices; long and intricate defiles, where a handful of men
might hold an army at bay, and from the surrounding heights roll down
ruin on their heads;--these were the obstacles which Alva and his
followers had to encounter, as they threaded their toilsome way through
a country where the natives bore no friendly disposition to the
Spaniards.

Their route lay at no great distance from Geneva, that stronghold of the
Reformers; and Pius the Fifth would have persuaded the duke to turn from
his course, and exterminate this "nest of devils and
apostates,"[944]--as the Christian father was pleased to term them. The
people