pared, and the sun divided for the respective combatants by their seconds, they rushed to the encounter, wounding each other by every possible means with battle-axe, sword, and poniard. After the battle had lasted for several hours, there remained in the field eight Spaniards on horseback and one on foot, whilst of the nine French cavaliers remaining, only two continued mounted. The Spaniards now resolved to attack the French in a body; but the latter, entrenching themselves as it were behind their dead horses, and arming themselves with the lances scattered about the field, presented an impenetrable front to the Spaniards. The Count of Orotava alone, furiously spurring his horse, forced him to leap over the mimic trench, and vigorously defended himself for a while, alone as he was in the very midst of the French. length it was proposed, as by common consent, to make it a drawn battle, and that both parties should withdraw from the field with honor; there being no prospect of bringing the battle to any other conclusion. But Don Diego would by no means agree to this; for it was not thus they had pledged themselves to Gonzalo Fernandez. He insisted that they should fight it out; and when his sword broke in his hand, and other arms failed him, he betook himself to hurling upon the French cavaliers huge masses of rock from the field;-not, certainly, that he had ever read Homer, or bethought him of the similar feats which Greek and

At

Latin verse ascribes to heroes of antiquity. But the opinion of the others, supported by Prospero Colonna, their padrino, prevailed; and the French cavaliers agreeing that they had erred in claiming any superiority over the Spaniards, the combat was determined. An d is a curious fact that the Great Captain was greatly enraged at the result of this combat, and threatened to punish the Spaniards for not having obliged their opponents to surrender; and when Don Diego very honorably endeavored to excuse his companions, pleading that the French had been compelled to confess the Spaniards were as good knights as themselves, Gonzalo Fernandez cut short the conversation by passionately exclaiming,But it was for better, it was for better than them that I sent you to the lists.' Thus it was, in those days, that the ablest commanders nourished among their officers a chivalrous love of honor, and contempt of danger and death, which they contrived to reconcile with prudence and address in long campaigns, and which contributed so greatly to the success of the Spanish arms in Europe and America.

The Count of Orotava exhibited this union of qualities, and was a trusted and brilliant coadjutor of the Great Captain in the subsequent series of victories, which annexed the kingdom of Naples to the crown of Aragon. He partook largely of the honors and possessions, which Gonzalo showered upon the chief captains of the Spanish army in

Italy. When, however, the Great Captain, having grown too powerful to be longer confided in by the jealous Ferdinand, returned to Spain, Don Diego left him to serve under Prospero Colonna, and thus gave occasion to Gonzalo to regard him as an enemy. During this period it was that, one day in the King's apartments, the conversation falling upon the Great Captain, when two of the gentlemen present, knowing how agreeable it was to the King, cast reproaches on the loyalty of Gonzalo,— Don Diego, raising his voice, exclaimed: 'Whoever dares to deny that the Great Captain is the truest of the King's vassals and the most meritorious, underlies the challenge of Diego Garcia.' With that he flung his glove on the table with so much force as to sound through the hall, in defiance as it were of the King; and as no man ventured to take it up or make reply, Ferdinand himself, half ashamed of his own suspicions, and respecting the manly and hearty spirit of Don Diego, who he well knew was no dependant or private partisan of Gonzalo, rose and restored the glove to its owner, observing to the astonished courtiers that the Conde de Orotava, he believed, did no more than justice to the Great Captain.

Don Diego continued for some time to distinguish himself among the Spanish nobles serving in Italy, when suddenly he resigned all his commissions, and disappeared entirely from the public eye. Various contradictory rumors prevailed in regard to 13*

VOL. I.

this singular step,-all men vainly seeking to understand for what reason he should resolve, thus in the prime of life, and with every object of ambition fully accessible before him, to turn his back upon every thing which the world deems to be most desirable. Some affirmed that, filled with melancholy by the mournful termination of a liaison he had formed at Milan, his mistress dying of a contagious malady contracted while nursing him during a dangerous illness, he had abandoned the world, and shut himself up in the Cartuja of Porta-Celi, near Valencia. Others averred that he left the army in consequence of a quarrel with the Viceroy Cardona on the evening of the battle of Ravenna, wherein the French, after gaining a splendid victory, lost all by losing Gaston de Foix, who fell in attempting to break the retreat of the Spanish infantry; and that Cardona having refused the liberty of a French officer to the solicitations of Don Diego, who had been every where first in the battle and last in the retreat, Don Diego challenged Cardona to single combat, and extorted his object at the point of the sword; whereupon he had been compelled to leave Italy, and had since been seen fighting against the Spaniards at the head of the victorious Araucos of Chile, in the New World. Still darkness and mystery hung over his fate; and several years elapsed ere it began to be more confidently reported, that the Conde de Orotava had been recognized in the dress of a hunter among

the recesses of the Alpujarras, by an old comrade of his Neapolitan compaigns, who had occasion to conduct a convoy across the mountains. Whether he was there only casually, or whether he resided there, and if so, what were his occupations in that wild region, no man could say. It was inhabited chiefly by half-converted Moriscoes; and lay contiguous to a favorite haunt of contrabandistas and robbers, the terror of the kingdom of Granada.

At length, as unexpectedly as he had disappeared from the bustling scenes of life, Don Diego presented himself before the Emperor, at Burgos, demanding to be employed in the approaching operations in the Milanese under the veteran Prospero Colonna. Don Diego was some ten years older, than when last he was familiar with the Spanish court; but he had lost little of the freshness of his youth, and possessed, indeed, that native gentility of manner, and that dignified and manly beauty of person, occasionally to be met with in the world, on which time leaves hardly a trace of his presence. His established reputation for brilliant courage, lofty generosity of character, experience in war, and intimate knowledge of the theatre of operations in Italy, assured to him a distinguished command in the army and the full confidence of the Emperor. Don Diego immediately repaired to Italy, and was actively engaged in the military movements of the time, for the three or four most active years of the war. In the great battle of