Note 81 — LIFE OF BUSBECQ.

Busbecq’s letters to Maximilian appear to have altogether escaped the notice of historians and biographers. They are printed only in one rare book, Howaert’s second edition of Busbecq’s letters from France, 1632. In the same edition are to be found five more letters to Rodolph, written during the wars of the League. It seems impossible to suppose that Motley knew of them, for they contain some of those striking details which the historian of the Netherlands would certainly have appropriated—for example, the chain shot, the musket balls joined together with copper wire, and the fences of rope, with which Parma prepared to encounter the cavalry of Henry of Navarre.