Don John himself was in his fortified camp at Bouge, within a league of Namur, but the here was consuming with mental and with bodily fever.

He was, as it were, besieged.

He was left entirely without funds, while his royal brother obstinately refused compliance with his earnest demands to be recalled, and coldly neglected his importunities for pecuniary assistance.
Compelled to carry on a war against an armed rebellion with such gold only as could be extracted from loyal swords; stung to the heart by the suspicion of which he felt himself the object at home, and by the hatred with which he was regarded in the provinces; outraged in his inmost feelings by the murder of Escovedo; foiled, outwitted, reduced to a political nullity by the masterly tactics of the "odious heretic of heretics" to whom he had originally offered his patronage and the royal forgiveness, the high-spirited soldier was an object to excite the tenderness even of religious and political opponents.

Wearied with the turmoil of camps without battle and of cabinets without counsel, he sighed for repose, even if it could be found only in a cloister or the grave.

"I rejoice to see by your letter," he wrote, pathetically, to John Andrew Doria, at Genoa, "that your life is flowing on with such calmness, while the world around me is so tumultuously agitated.