voyage. Yet he did not
decline the hospitalities offered by the Genoese nobles, who vied with
the senate in showing the Spanish commander every testimony of respect.
At Asti he was waited on by Albuquerque, the Milanese viceroy, and by
ambassadors from different Italian provinces, eager to pay homage to the
military representative of the Spanish monarch. But the gout under which
Alva labored was now aggravated by an attack of tertian ague, and for a
week or more he was confined to his bed.

Meanwhile the troops had assembled at the appointed rendezvous; and the
duke, as soon as he had got the better of his disorder, made haste to
review them. They amounted in all to about ten thousand men, of whom
less than thirteen hundred were cavalry. But though small in amount, it
was a picked body of troops, such as was hardly to be matched in Europe.
The infantry, in particular, were mostly Spaniards,--veterans who had
been accustomed to victory under the banner of Charles the Fifth, and
many of them trained to war under the eye of Alva himself. He preferred
such a body, compact and well disciplined as it was, to one which,
unwieldy from its size, would have been less fitted for a rapid march
across the mountains.[938]

[Sidenote: HIS REMARKABLE MARCH.]

Besides those of the common file, there were many gentlemen and
cavaliers of note, who, weary of repose, came as volunteers to gather
fresh laurels under so renowned a chief as the duke of Alva. Among these
was Vitelli, marquis of Cetona, a Florentine soldier of high repute in
his profession, but who, though now embarked in what might be called a
war of religion, was held so indifferent to religion of any kind, that a
whimsical epitaph on the sceptic denies him the possession of a
soul.[939] Another of these volunteers was Mondragone, a veteran of
Charles the Fifth, whose character for chivalrous exploit was unstained
by those deeds of cruelty and rapine which were so often the reproach of
the cavalier of the sixteenth century. The duties of the commissariat,
particularly difficult in a campaign like the present, were intrusted to
an experienced Spanish officer named Ibarra. To the duke of Savoy Alva
was indebted for an eminent engineer named Paciotti, whose services
proved of great importance in the construction of fortresses in the
Netherlands. Alva had also brought with him his two sons, Frederic and
Ferdinand de Toledo,--the latter an illegitimate child, for whom the
father