the young Agrippa’s adventures

We don’t usually have lives as interesting as those of the early modern period. Bruno’s itinerary speaks for itself. But I find Agrippa’s interesting too.

He was recruited into espionage at a young age. And he handled it quite discreetly– he seems never to have mentioned this job in any of his correspondence or papers, and it is known solely from the documents of others.

He went to Paris to study, but this was actually for the purpose of international espionage. He also did quite a lot of spying in Spain.

In the latter capacity, he was sent to help crush a peasants’ rebellion in Catalonia. To do this it was necessary to capture an installation known as the Black Fort. He succeeded in leading its capture. But an even angrier mob of peasants plotted to recapture it and massacre all of the occupants.

Agrippa was tipped off about this plan. He only had two choices: remain in the fort and endure a siege, or attack the peasants pre-emptively. Both seemed impossible. And that is why he decided to retreat with his forces to a nearby crumbling tower on a mountaintop (I’m not making this up).

During the night, Agrippa and his soldiers left the Black Fort secretly, walking across a pond on stepping-stones, and finally reaching the crumbling tower.

The peasants approached the Black Fort the next morning to assault it, and were enraged to find the occupants gone. “Where is the German?!”, they demanded. Before long they learned that he had retreated to the crumbling tower. Knowing the difficulty of attacking the place, they laid siege to it, and it was only a matter of time before Agrippa and his men would starve to death.

Their only hope was to be evacuated by boat from behind the tower across a lake. But this required sending a message out to a sympathetic nobleman to request the assistance of his boats, and there was no way to send a message.

Agrippa’s strategem in this situation was remarkable. He disguised one of his messenger boys as a leper, putting false wounds all over his face using various substances, and had him walk out pretending to beg for alms. The message to the nobleman was concealed in the hollow of his walking-stick.

The boy managed to get out, the boats were sent, and Agrippa and his forces left the crumbling tower by water.