Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader · Chapter 122=139.= Character of Alva
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Ferdinando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, was now in his sixtieth year. He was the most successful and experienced general of Spain, or of Europe. No man had studied more deeply, or practiced more constantly, the military science. In the most important of all arts at that epoch he was the most consummate artist. In the only honorable profession of the age he was the most thorough and the most pedantic professor. Having proved in his boyhood at Fontarabia, and in his maturity at Mühlberg, that he could exhibit heroism and headlong courage when necessary, he could afford to look with contempt upon the witless gibes which his enemies had occasionally perpetrated at his expense…. "Recollect," said he to Don John of Austria, "that the first foes with whom one has to contend are one's own troops—with their clamors for an engagement at this moment, and their murmurs about results at another; with their 'I thought that the battle should be fought,' or, 'It was my opinion that the occasion ought not to be lost.'"
On the whole, the Duke of Alva was inferior to no general of his age. As a disciplinarian, he was foremost in Spain, perhaps in Europe. A spendthrift of time, he was an economist of blood; and this was, perhaps, in the eye of humanity, his principal virtue…. Such were his qualities as a military commander. As a statesman, he had neither experience nor talent. As a man, his character was simple. He did not combine a great variety of vices; but those which he had were colossal, and he possessed no virtues. He was neither lustful nor intemperate; but his professed eulogists admitted his enormous avarice, while the world has agreed that such an amount of stealth and ferocity, of patient vindictiveness and universal blood-thirstiness, were never found in a savage beast of the forest, and but rarely in a human bosom.
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From "The History of the United Netherlands."