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tion more remarkable than any which Spain had known since Columbus stepped ashore at Palos, with his red men from the New World. Landing on the evening of the twenty-eighth of September, 1556,' the emperor was received by Pedro Manrique, bishop of Salamanca, and Durango, an alcalde of the court, who were in waiting there by order of the infanta Juana, regent of Spain. He was joined on the following morning by the two queens. The arrival of the royal party seemed to take the bishop and the town by surprise, for few preparations had as yet been made for its reception. The admiral Carvajal instantly despatched his brother Alonso to court with the intelligence, which he delivered at Valladolid on the first of October.

The princess-regent, the infanta Juana, had already issued instructions to the primate, prelates, and chapters of Spain to cause prayers to be said in their respective cathedrals for the prosperity of her father's voyage. She had also given orders to colonel Luis Quixada, the emperor's chamberlain, who had preceded him to Spain, to prepare a residence for the emperor at Valladolid. These arrangements completed, Quixada had returned to his country house at Villagarcia, six leagues to the north-west of Valladolid, whither a courier was now sent with a command for him to repair with all speed to the coast. The active chamberlain was in the saddle by two in the morning of the second of October, and making the best of his way, on his own horses, to Burgos, he there took post, and accomplished the entire

1 De Thou (Hist. sui Temp., lib. xvii.) says, that Charles on landing knelt down and kissed the earth, ejaculating, I salute thee, O common mother! Naked came I forth from the womb to receive the treasures of the earth, and naked am I about to return to the bosom of the universal mother.' Had the emperor really done or spoken so, it is most unlikely that his secretary would have failed to mention it in his letters-none of which contain any hint that can justify the tale.

distance (fifty-six leagues, or about two hundred and ten English miles,) in three days, dismounting on the night of the fourth at Laredo.

The presence of the stout old soldier was much wanted. Half of the emperor's people were ill; Monsieur de La Chaulx and Monsieur d'Aubremont had tertian and quartan fevers; seven or eight of the meaner attendants were dead; yet there were no doctors to give any assistance. There was even a difficulty in finding a priest to say mass, the staff of physicians and chaplains which had been ordered down from Valladolid not having yet been heard of. But for the well-stored larder of the bishop of Salamanca, there would have been short commons at the royal table. When the secretary, Martin Gaztelu, wrote to complain of these things, there was no courier at hand to carry the letter. The weather was wet and tempestuous, and of a fleet of ships, laden with wool, which the royal squadron had met at sea, some had returned dismasted to port, and others had gone to the bottom.' The Flemings were loud in their discontent, and very ill-disposed to penetrate any further into a country so hungry and inhospitable. The alcalde who was charged with the preparations for the journey, was at his wit's end, though hardly beyond the beginning of his work. The emperor himself was ill, and out of humour with the badness of the arrangements; but he was cheered by the sight of his trusty Quixada, and welcomed him with much kindness.

The loss of the vessel of Francis Cachopin, with eighty men, and a cargo worth 80,000 ducats, is particularly mentioned by Gaztelu, in his letter to Juan Vazquez de Molina, dated 6th of October. This storm seems to be the sole foundation for Sandoval's story (Hist. de Carlos V., Lib. xxxii. c. 39, 2 vol. Pamplona: 1634, ii. p. 820, and repeated by Strada, De Bello Belgico, 2 tom. sm. 8vo. Antv. 1640, i., p. 10) that the emperor's ship went down a few hours after he had quitted her. No trace of such an accident is to be found in the Gonzalez MS.

From the moment that the old campaigner took the command, matters began to wear a more hopeful aspect. The day after his arrival was spent in vigorous preparation; and in the morning of the sixth of October, a messenger came from Valladolid with a seasonable supply of provisions. That morning, while Gaztelu penned a somewhat desponding account of the backwardness of things in general, Quixada wrote a cheerful announcement that they were to begin their march that day at noon, after his majesty had dined-a promise which he managed to fulfil.

The emperor, in spite of the discomforts of his sojourn at Laredo, is said to have left to the town some marks of his favour. The parish church of the Assumption of the Virgin-a fine temple of the thirteenth century, grievously marred by the embellishments of the eighteenth-was happy in the possession of a holy image, Our Lady of the Magian kings, full of miraculous power, and of benevolence to sailors. Two lecterns of bronze, in the shape of eagles with expanded wings, and an altar-ternary of silver, which still adorn her shrine, are prized as proofs that Charles the Fifth enjoyed and valued her protection.1

The feeble state of the emperor's health required that he should travel by easy stages. His first day's march, along the rocky shore of the gulf, and up the right bank of the Ason, was hardly three leagues. The halting place was Ampuero, a village, hung on the wooded side of Moncerrago. Next day, about four leagues were accomplished, on a road which still kept along the sylvan valley of the Ason-a mountain stream, renowned. for its salmon, and for the grand cataract in which it

I Madoz: Diccionario geografico estadistico historico de España, 17 vols. roy. 8vo. Madrid: 1850, art. Laredo, a work of the greatest value and importance.

leaps from its source high up in the sierra. La Nestosa, a hamlet in a fertile hill-embosomed plain, was the second day's bourne. The third journey, of four leagues, was on the ridge of Tornos, to Aguera, a village buried among the wildest mountains of the great sierra which divides the woods and pastures of Biscay from the brown plains of Old Castille. On the fourth day, a march of five leagues across the southern spurs of the same range, brought the travellers to Medina de Pomar, a small town on a rising ground in a wide and windswept plain. Here the emperor paused a day to repose.

He had performed the journey with tolerable ease, in a horse-litter, which he exchanged, when the road was rugged or very steep, for a chair carried by men. Two of these chairs, and three litters, in case of accident in the wild highland march, formed his travelling equipment. By the side of the litter rode Luis Quixada; or, in case the chamberlain, who was also marshal and quarter-master, was needed elsewhere, his place was taken by La Chaulx, an old and faithful servant, who, thirty years before, had had the honour of appearing as the emperor's marriage-proxy at the court of Portugal. The rest of the attendants followed on horseback, and the cavalcade was preceded by the alcalde Durango, and five alguazils, with their wands of officea vanguard which Quixada said made the party look like a convoy of prisoners. These alguazils, and the general shabbiness of the regiment under his command, were matters of great concern to the colonel; but his remonstrances met with no sympathy from the emperor, who said the tipstaves did very well for him, and

1 His long and interesting account of his proceedings there, is in the Correspondenz des Kaisers Karl V., von Dr. Karl Lanz, i. p. 169. The name is usually spelt by Sandoval and other Spaniards Laxao.

that he did not mean for the future to have any guards attached to his household.

serves.

On the road, between Ampuero and La Nestosa, they met Don Enrique de Guzman, coming from court, charged with a large stock of provisions and ample supply of conThese latter dainties the emperor immediately desired to taste, and finding their quality good, he gave orders that they were to be kept sacred for his peculiar eating. Guzman was accompanied by Don Pedro Pimentel, gentleman of the chamber to the young prince, Don Carlos, bearing letters of compliment from his master, who desired that the emperor would indicate to his ambassador, as he called Pimentel, the place on the road where he was to meet him. Without settling this point, Quixada wrote, by the emperor's orders, to court, commanding a regular supply of melons to be sent for the imperial table, and some portable glass windows to be got ready for use on the journey beyond Valladolid, as the nights were already becoming chilly. He asked also for the dimensions of the apartments prepared at Valladolid for the queens, that he might send forward fitting tapestry for their decoration; and he begged that the measurements might be taken with great exactness, as their majesties, especially the queen of Hungary, could not bear the slightest mistake in the execution of their behests. The royal dowagers had brought with them from Flanders a profusion of fine tapestry of all kinds, much of which still adorns the walls of the Spanish palaces. They did not travel in company with their brother, but kept one day's march in the rear, as it would have been difficult to lodge their combined followers. The management of their journey, and the selection of their quarters, rested with the all-provident Quixada; who had found time to

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