The Defeat of the Spanish Armada by Garrett Mattingly

Author:Garrett Mattingly [Mattingly, Garrett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446467688
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2000-07-06T04:00:00+00:00

Spanish galleons.

XVIII

THE DAY OF THE BARRICADES: I

PARIS, MAY 12TH, 1588 AND BEFORE

AT FIVE O’CLOCK on the morning of Thursday, May 12th, from his bedroom on the corner of the Rue des Poullies, Don Bernardino de Mendoza heard the tramp of many armed men coming down the Rue Saint-Honoré. Even to the ambassador’s purblind eyes there was no mistaking these burly figures, looking in their padded doublets and voluminous pantaloons even bigger than they were. They were the King’s Swiss, the regiments from Lagny. They filled the Rue Saint-Honoré from side to side and for most of its length, marching as they might have marched entering a captured city, colours uncased, pikes and halberds at the ready, the slow matches of the arquebusiers and musketmen alight. Behind them the regiments of the French Guard were coming through the Porte Saint-Honoré, and the early sun was beginning to glint on morions and pike-heads, gold lace and gun barrels. Mendoza watched the column hold on past the narrow streets that led to the Louvre and angle left towards the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents. As they did so there came the rolling thunder of twenty tambours and the shrill squealing of a score of fifes. From the direction of the gate the music of the French Guard took up the defiant rhythm.

It looked as if the King of France were going to make one last try to be master in his own capital. Mendoza was not altogether surprised. Yesterday had been full of rumours – and the special measures of the evening, the strengthening of the garrisons at the Bastille and the Châtelet, the comings and goings at the Hôtel de Ville, the mustering of the city’s militia from the more reliable quarters, and the patrols under loyal Parisian officials posted to guard for the night the principal squares and gates and bridges, all looked as if something unusual was afoot.

If Mendoza was not much surprised he must have been a little uneasy. The coup d’état now impending had been planned for three years and more. It was the mine whose perfectly timed explosion would at the very least paralyse the French monarchy on the eve of the Spanish invasion of England as Parma had demanded, and might do much more, even to blowing the ruins of France into the grasp of the King of Spain. In the past fortnight the Sixteen, the secret revolutionary committee of the League in Paris, had shown their hand openly as never before. That had been unavoidable. And it was necessary that the head of the League, Henry of Guise, and some scores of its minor chieftains and captains should now be in Paris, even though a grave risk was involved. The Parisian Leaguers did not expect to seize power without a fight, and had anticipated that the King might have to be prodded into some rash act of violence which would incite a popular uprising. But the massed column of Swiss swinging down the Rue Saint-Honoré while evidently promising violence scarcely suggested rashness.

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