John of Austria
or DON JOHN, a Spanish soldier; the natural son of the Emperor Charles V.; born in Ratisbon, Bavaria, Feb. 24, 1547. He was brought up in such ignorance of his birth that, till summoned by Philip II., his brother, to Spain to whom Charles had revealed the fact on his death bed-and there acknowledged as the emperor's son, he had been in total darkness as to who his parents were. His first most illustrious triumph was a victory over the Turkish galleys in the Gulf of Lepanto, in which the Ottomans lost 30,000 men; he next invaded Tunis, and in 1576 was sent by Philip as governor of the Low Countries, then in open revolt, under command of the Prince of Orange and the Archduke Matthias; here, in a succession of splendid victories, he so reduced his antagonists, that the country must soon have submitted and returned to its allegiance, had he not been, unfortunately for the duration of the Spanish rule, suddenly carried off by poison, near Namur, Belgium, Oct. 1, 1578.