hat France will let the Duke of Savoy
be ruined. It is against every reason of State." Yet there were few to
help Charles Emmanuel in this Montferrat war, which was destined to drag
feebly on, with certain interludes of negotiations, for two years longer.
The already notorious condottiere Ernest Mansfeld, natural son of old
prince Peter Ernest, who played so long and so high a part in command of
the Spanish armies in the Netherlands, had, to be sure, taken service
under the Duke. Thenceforth he was to be a leader and a master in that
wild business of plunder, burning, blackmailing, and murder, which was
opening upon Europe, and was to afford occupation for many thousands of
adventurers of high and low degree.

Mansfeld, reckless and profligate, had already changed his banner more
than once. Commanding a company under Leopold in the duchies, he had been
captured by the forces of the Union, and, after waiting in vain to be
ransomed by the Archduke, had gone secretly over to the enemy. Thus
recovering his liberty, he had enlisted a regiment under Leopold's name
to fight the Union, and had then, according to contract, transferred
himself and most of his adventurers to the flag of the Union. The
military operations fading away in the duchies without being succeeded by
permanent peace, the Count, as he was called, with no particular claim to
such title, had accepted a thousand florins a year as retainer from the
Union and had found occupation under Charles Emmanuel. Here the Spanish
soldier of a year or two before found much satisfaction and some profit
in fighting Spanish soldiers. He was destined to reappear in the
Netherlands, in France, in Bohemia, in many places where there were
villages to be burned, churches to be plundered, cities to be sacked,
nuns and other women to be outraged, dangerous political intrigues to be
managed. A man in the prime of his age, fair-haired, prematurely
wrinkled, battered, and hideous of visage, with a hare-lip and a
humpback; slovenly of dress, and always wearing an old grey hat without a
band to it; audacious, cruel, crafty, and licentious--such was Ernest
Mansfeld, whom some of his contemporaries spoke of as Ulysses Germanicus,
others as the new Attila, all as a scourge to the human race. The
cockneys of Paris called him "Machefer," and nurses long kept children
quiet by threatening them with that word. He was now enrolled on the
Protestant side, although at the moment serving Savoy agains