Tempore et Loco: Heroic Rhetoric of Spinola’s Fortune, from Military Entrepreneur to Spanish Grandee

A few weeks after the recapture of the city of Ostend, the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia wrote to the duke of Lerma that Ambrogio Spinola seemed to have been sent by divine providence as a remedy for all the problems they had been suffering in that war and that the soldiers would do more for him than for anyone else. He enjoyed the appreciation and esteem of all the nations making up the Army of Flanders, including local soldiers from the Low Countries, and his principal motivation was to carve out his own reputation and fame: All he intends to