Guise was too greedy and too careless of details to leave anyone with the impression that he served either the Church or Spain for any but his own ends. Spain probably regretted him more than Rome, but mercenaries are always expendable. He had been employed for a diversion on one flank of a vast operation, and when the main attack had failed he had been left for the moment exposed and without adequate support. In a way he was as much a casualty of the Armada as Hugo de Moncada or Alonso de Leiva; but whereas those captains had died in the performance of their duty Guise, so Mendoza implied, had chiefly his own rashness to thank.

Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish A…, loc. 870