rapid in their
evolutions from long practice, hardy and enduring, proud of their
leader's success, and confident from past victories, formidable by their
licentiousness, but still more so by their discipline; let loose with
all the passions of a warmer climate upon a rich and peaceful country,
and inexorable towards an enemy whom the church had cursed. Their
fanatical and sanguinary spirit, their thirst for glory and innate
courage was aided by a rude sensuality, the instrument by which the
Spanish general firmly and surely ruled his otherwise intractable
troops. With a prudent indulgence he allowed riot and voluptuousness
to reign throughout the camp. Under his tacit connivance Italian
courtezans followed the standards; even in the march across the
Apennines, where the high price of the necessaries of life compelled him
to reduce his force to the smallest possible number, he preferred to
have a few regiments less rather than to leave behind these instruments
of voluptuousness.

[The bacchanalian procession of this army contrasted strangely
enough with the gloomy seriousness and pretended sanctity of his
aim. The number of these women was so great that to restrain the
disorders and quarrelling among themselves they hit upon the
expedient of establishing a discipline of their own. They ranged
themselves under particular flags, marched in ranks and sections,
and in admirable military order, after each battalion, and classed
themselves with strict etiquette according to their rank and pay.]

But industriously as Alva strove to relax the morals of his soldiers,
he enforced the more rigidly a strict military discipline, which was
interrupted only by a victory or rendered less severe by a battle.
For all this he had, he said, the authority of the Athenian General
Iphicrates, who awarded the prize of valor to the pleasure-loving and
rapacious soldier. The more irksome the restraint by which the passions
of the soldiers were kept in check, the greater must have been the
vehemence with which they broke forth at the sole outlet which was left
open to them.

The duke divided his infantry, which was about nine thousand strong, and
chiefly Spaniards, into four brigades, and gave the command of them to
four Spanish officers. Alphonso of Ulloa led the Neapolitan brigade of
nine companies, amounting to three thousand two hundred and thirty men;
Sancho of Lodogno commanded the Milan brigade, three thousand tw