Memoirs of a Cavalier<br />A Military Journal of the Wars in Germany, and the Wars in England.<br /> by Daniel Defoe (best romantic books to read TXT) 📕

Our regiment was one of the first that was broke, and being all in confusion, with the Duke of Savoy's men at our heels, away we ran into the wood. Never was there so much disorder among a parcel of runaways as when we came to this wood; it was so exceeding bushy and thick at the bottom there was no entering it, and a volley of small shot from a regiment of Savoy's dragoons poured in upon us at our breaking into the wood made terrible work among our horses.

For my part I was got into the wood, but was forced to quit my horse, and by that means, with a great deal of difficulty, got a little farther in, where there was a little open place, and being quite spent with labouring among the bushes I sat down resolving to take my fate there, let it be what it would, for I was not able to go any farther. I had twenty or thirty more in the same condition come to me in less than half-an-hour, and here we waited very securely the success of the battle, which was as before.

It was no small relief to those with me to hear the Savoyards were beaten, for otherwise they had all been lost; as for me, I confess, I was glad as it was because of the danger, but otherwise I cared not much which had the better, for I designed no service among them.

One kindness it did me, that I began to consider what I had to do here, and as I could give but a very slender account of myself for what it was I run all these risks, so I resolved they should fight it among themselves, for I would come among them no more.

The captain with whom, as I noted above, I had contracted some acquaintance in this regiment, was killed in this action, and the French had really a great blow here, though they took care to conceal it all they could; and I cannot, without smiling, read some of the histories and memoirs of this action, which they are not ashamed to call a victory.

We marched on to Saluzzo, and the next day the Duke of Savoy presented himself in battalia on the other side of a small river, giving us a fair challenge to pass and engage him. We always said in our camp that the orders were to fight the Duke of Savoy wherever we met him; but though he braved us in our view we did not care to engage him, but we brought Saluzzo to surrender upon articles, which the duke could not relieve without attacking our camp, which he did not care to do.

The next morning we had news of the surrender of Mantua to the Imperial army. We heard of it first from the Duke of Savoy's cannon, which he fired by way of rejoicing, and which seemed to make him amends for the loss of Saluzzo.

As this was a mortification to the French, so it quite damped the success of the campaign, for the Duke de Montmorency imagining that the Imperial general would send immediate assistance to the Marquis Spinola, who besieged Casale, they called frequent councils of war what course to take, and at last resolved to halt in Piedmont. A few days after their resolutions were changed again by the news of the death of the Duke of Savoy, Charles Emanuel, who died, as some say, agitated with the extremes of joy and grief.

This put our generals upon considering again whether they should march to the relief of Casale, but the chimera of the Germans put them by, and so they took up quarters in Piedmont. They took several small places from the Duke of Savoy, making advantage of the consternation the duke's subjects were in on the death of their prince, and spread themselves from the seaside to the banks of the Po. But here an enemy did that for them which the Savoyards could not, for the plague got into their quarters and destroyed abundance of people, both of the army and of the country.

I thought then it was time for me to be gone, for I had no manner of courage for that risk; and I think verily I was more afraid of being taken sick in a strange country than ever I was of being killed in battle. Upon this resolution I procured a pass to go for Genoa, and accordingly began my journey, but was arrested at Villa Franca by a slow lingering fever, which held me about five days, and then turned to a burning malignancy, and at last to the plague. My friend, the captain, never left me night nor day; and though for four days more I knew nobody, nor was capable of so much as thinking of myself, yet it pleased God that the distemper gathered in my neck, swelled and broke. During the swelling I was raging mad with the violence of pain, which being so near my head swelled that also in proportion, that my eyes were swelled up, and for the twenty-four hours my tongue and mouth; then, as my servant told me, all the physicians gave me over, as past all remedy, but by the good providence of God the swelling broke.

The prodigious collection of matter which this swelling discharged gave me immediate relief, and I became sensible in less than an hour's time; and in two hours or thereabouts fell into a little slumber which recovered my spirits and sensibly revived me. Here I lay by it till the middle of September. My captain fell sick after me, but recovered quickly. His man had the plague, and died in two days; my man held it out well.

About the middle of September we heard of a truce concluded between all parties, and being unwilling to winter at Villa Franca, I got passes, and though we were both but weak, we began to travel in litters for Milan.

And here I experienced the truth of an old English proverb, that standers-by see more than the gamesters.

The French, Savoyards, and Spaniards made this peace or truce all for separate and several grounds, and every one were mistaken.

The French yielded to it because they had given over the relief of Casale, and were very much afraid it would fall into the hands of the Marquis Spinola. The Savoyards yielded to it because they were afraid the French would winter in Piedmont; the Spaniards yielded to it because the Duke of Savoy being dead, and the Count de Colalto, the Imperial general, giving no assistance, and his army weakened by sickness and the fatigues of the siege, he foresaw he should never take the town, and wanted but to come off with honour.

The French were mistaken, because really Spinola was so weak that had they marched on into Montferrat the Spaniards must have raised the siege; the Duke of Savoy was mistaken, because the plague had so weakened the French that they durst not have stayed to winter in Piedmont; and Spinola was mistaken, for though he was very slow, if he had stayed before the town one fortnight longer, Thoiras the governor must have surrendered, being brought to the last extremity.

Of all these mistakes the French had the advantage, for Casale, was relieved, the army had time to be recruited, and the French had the best of it by an early campaign.

I passed through Montferrat in my way to Milan just as the truce was declared, and saw the miserable remains of the Spanish army, who by sickness, fatigue, hard duty, the sallies of the garrison and such like consequences, were reduced to less than 2000 men, and of them above 1000 lay wounded and sick in the camp.

Here were several regiments which I saw drawn out to their arms that could not make up above seventy or eighty men, officers and all, and those half starved with hunger, almost naked, and in a lamentable condition. From thence I went into the town, and there things were still in a worse condition, the houses beaten down, the walls and works ruined, the garrison, by continual duty, reduced from 4500 men to less than 800, without clothes, money, or provisions, the brave governor weak with continual fatigue, and the whole face of things in a miserable case.

The French generals had just sent them 30,000 crowns for present supply, which heartened them a little, but had not the truce been made as it was, they must have surrendered upon what terms the Spaniards had pleased to make them.

Never were two armies in such fear of one another with so little cause; the Spaniards afraid of the French whom the plague had devoured, and the French afraid of the Spaniards whom the siege had almost ruined.

The grief of this mistake, together with the sense of his master, the Spaniards, leaving him without supplies to complete the siege of Casale, so affected the Marquis Spinola, that he died for grief, and in him fell the last of that rare breed of Low Country soldiers, who gave the world so great and just a character of the Spanish infantry, as the best soldiers of the world; a character which we see them so very much degenerated from since, that they hardly deserve the name of soldiers.

I tarried at Milan the rest of the winter, both for the recovery of my health, and also for supplies from England.

Here it was I first heard the name of Gustavus Adolphus, the king of Sweden, who now began his war with the emperor; and while the king of France was at Lyons, the league with Sweden was made, in which the French contributed 1,200,000 crowns in money, and 600,000 per annum to the attempt of Gustavus Adolphus. About this time he landed in Pomerania, took the towns of Stettin and Stralsund, and from thence proceeded in that prodigious manner of which I shall have occasion to be very particular in the prosecution of these Memoirs.

I had indeed no thoughts of seeing that king or his armies. I had been so roughly handled already, that I had given over the thoughts of appearing among the fighting people, and resolved in the spring to pursue my journey to Venice, and so for the rest of Italy. Yet I cannot deny that as every Gazette gave us some accounts of the conquests and victories of this glorious prince, it prepossessed my thoughts with secret wishes of seeing him, but these were so young and unsettled, that I drew no resolutions from them for a long while after.

About the middle of January I left Milan and came to Genoa, from thence by sea to Leghorn, then to Naples, Rome, and Venice, but saw nothing in Italy that gave me any diversion.

As for what is modern, I saw nothing but lewdness, private murders, stabbing men at the corner of a street, or in the dark, hiring of bravos, and the like. These were to me the modern excellencies of Italy; and I had no gust to antiquities.

'Twas pleasant indeed when I was at Rome to say here stood the Capitol, there the Colossus of Nero, here was the Amphitheatre of Titus, there the Aqueduct of——, here the Forum, there the Catacombs, here the Temple of Venus, there of Jupiter, here the Pantheon, and the like; but I never designed to write a book. As much as was useful I kept in my head, and for the rest, I left it to others.

I observed the people degenerated from the ancient glorious inhabitants, who were generous, brave, and the most valiant of all nations, to a vicious baseness of soul, barbarous, treacherous, jealous and revengeful, lewd and cowardly, intolerably proud and haughty, bigoted to blind, incoherent devotion, and the grossest of idolatry.

Indeed, I think the unsuitableness of the people made the place unpleasant to me, for there is so little in a country to recommend it when the people disgrace it, that no beauties of the creation can make up for the want of those excellencies which suitable society procure the defect of. This made Italy a very unpleasant country to me; the people were the foil to the place, all manner of hateful vices reigning in their general way of living.

I confess I was not very religious myself, and being come abroad into the world young enough, might easily have been drawn into evils that had recommended themselves with any tolerable agreeableness to nature and common manners; but when wickedness