made that warrior so valuable
to his king. The type was rapidly disappearing, and most fortunately for
humanity, if half the stories told of him by grave chroniclers,
accustomed to discriminate between history and gossip, are to be
believed. He had committed more than one cool homicide. Although not
rejoicing in the same patronymic as his Spanish colleague of Friesland,
he too was ready on occasion to perform hangman's work. When
sergeant-major in Flanders, he had himself volunteered--so ran the
chronicle--to do execution on a poor wretch found guilty of professing
the faith of Calvin; and, with his own hands, had prepared a fire of
straw, tied his victim to the stake, and burned him to cinders. Another
Netherlander for the name crime of heresy had been condemned to be torn
to death by horses. No one could be found to carry out the sentence. The
soldiers under La Motte's command broke into mutiny rather than permit
themselves to be used for such foul purposes; but the ardent young
sergeant-major came forward, tied the culprit by the arms and legs to two
horses, and himself whipped them to their work till it was duly
accomplished. Was it strange that in Philip's reign such energy should be
rewarded by wealth, rank, and honour? Was not such a labourer in the
vineyard worthy of his hire?

Still another eminent chieftain in the king's service disappeared at this
time--one who, although unscrupulous and mischievous enough in his day,
was however not stained by any suspicion of crimes like these. Count
Charles Mansfeld, tired of governing his decrepit parent Peter Ernest,
who, since the appointment of Fuentes, had lost all further chance of
governing the Netherlands, had now left Philip's service and gone to the
Turkish wars. For Amurath III., who had died in the early days of the
year, had been succeeded by a sultan as warlike as himself. Mahomet III.,
having strangled his nineteen brothers on his accession, handsomely
buried them in cypress coffins by the side of their father, and having
subsequently sacked and drowned ten infant princes posthumously born to
Amurath, was at leisure to carry the war through Transylvania and
Hungary, up to the gates of Vienna, with renewed energy. The Turk, who
could enforce the strenuous rules of despotism by which all
secundogenitures and collateral claimants in the Ottoman family were thus
provided for, was a foe to be dealt with seriously. The power of the
Moslems at that day was a full