Volume IV Part 4 (1/2)

One would not think of attempting to decide, touching this question of single combat, how far sincerity was on the side of Francis or of Charles. No doubt they were both brave; the former with more brilliancy than his rival, the latter, at need, with quite as much firmness. But in sending challenges one to the other, as they did on this occasion, they were obeying a dying-out code, and rather attempting to keep up chivalrous appearances than to put seriously in practice the precedents of their ancestors. It was no longer a time when the fate of a people could be placed in the hands of a few valiant warriors, such as the three Horatii and the three Curiatii, or the thirty Bretons and thirty English.

The era of great nations and great contests was beginning, and one is inclined to believe that Francis I. and Charles V. were themselves aware that their mutual challenges would not come to any personal encounter.

The war which continued between them in Italy was not much more serious or decisive; both sides were weary of it, and neither one nor the other of the two sovereigns espied any great chances of success. The French army was wasting itself, in the kingdom of Naples, upon petty, inconclusive engagements; its commander, Lautrec, died of the plague on the 15th of August, 1528; a desire for peace became day by day stronger; it was made, first of all, at Barcelona, on the 20th of June, 1529, between Charles V. and Pope Clement VII.; and then a conference was opened at Cambrai for the purpose of bringing it about between Charles V.

and Francis I. likewise. Two women, Francis I.'s mother and Charles V.'s aunt, Louise of Savoy and Margaret of Austria, had the real negotiation of it; they had both of them acquired the good sense and the moderation which come from experience of affairs and from difficulties in life; they did not seek to give one another mutual surprises and to play-off one another reciprocally; they resided in two contiguous houses, between which they had caused a communication to be made on the inside, and they conducted the negotiation with so much discretion, that the petty Italian princes who were interested in it did not know the results of it until peace was concluded on the 5th of August, 1529. Francis I. yielded on all the Italian and Flemish questions; and Charles V. gave up Burgundy, and restored to liberty the King of France's two sons, prisoners at Madrid, in consideration of a ransom put at two millions of crowns and of having the marriage completed between his sister Eleanor and Francis I.

King Henry VIII. complained that not much account had been made of him, either during the negotiations or in the treaty; but his discontent was short-lived, and he none the less came to the a.s.sistance of Francis I.

in the money-questions to which the treaty gave rise. Of the Italian states, Venice was most sacrificed in this accommodation between the kings. ”The city of Cambrai,” said the doge, Andrew Gritti, ”is the purgatory of the Venetians; it is the place where emperors and kings of France make the Republic expiate the sin of having ever entered into alliance with them.” Francis went to Bordeaux to meet his sons and his new wife. At Bordeaux, Cognac, Amboise, Blois, and Paris, galas, both at court and amongst the people, succeeded one another for six months; and Europe might consider itself at peace.

The peace of Cambrai was called the ladies' peace, in honor of the two princesses who had negotiated it. Though morally different and of very unequal worth, they both had minds of a rare order, and trained to recognize political necessities, and not to attempt any but possible successes. They did not long survive their work: Margaret of Austria died on the 1st of December, 1530, and Louise of Savoy on the 22d of September, 1531. All the great political actors seemed hurrying away from the stage, as if the drama were approaching its end. Pope Clement VII. died on the 26th of September, 1534. He was a man of sense and moderation; he tried to restore to Italy her independence, but he forgot that a moderate policy is, above all, that which requires most energy and perseverance. These two qualities he lacked totally; he oscillated from one camp to the other without ever having any real influence anywhere. A little before his death he made France a fatal present; for, on the 28th of October, 1533, he married his niece Catherine de' Medici to Francis I.'s second son, Prince Henry of Valois, who by the death of his elder brother, the Dauphin Francis, soon afterwards became heir to the throne.

The chancellor, Anthony Duprat, too, the most considerable up to that time amongst the advisers of Francis I., died on the 9th of July, 1535.

According to some historians, when he heard, in the preceding year, of Pope Clement VII.'s death, he had conceived a hope, being already Archbishop of Sens, and a cardinal, of succeeding him; and he spoke to the king about it. ”Such an election would cost too dear,” said Francis I.; ”the appet.i.te of cardinals is insatiable; I could not satisfy it.”

”Sir,” replied Duprat, ”France will not have to bear the expense; I will provide for it; there are four hundred thousand crowns ready for that purpose.” ”Where did you get all that money, pray?” asked Francis, turning his back upon him; and next day he caused a seizure to be made of a portion of the chancellor-cardinal's property. ”This, then,”

exclaimed Duprat, ”is the king's grat.i.tude towards the minister who has served him body and soul!” ”What has the cardinal to complain of?” said the king: ”I am only doing to him what he has so often advised me to do to others.” [_Trois Magestrats Francais du Seizieme Siecle,_ by Edouard Faye de Brys, 1844, pp. 77-79.] The last of the chancellor's biographers, the Marquis Duprat, one of his descendants, has disputed this story. [_Vie d'Antoine Duprat,_ 1857, p. 364.] However that may be, it is certain that Chancellor Duprat, at his death, left a very large fortune, which the king caused to be seized, and which he partly appropriated. We read in the contemporary _Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris_ [published by Ludovic Lalanne, 1854, p. 460], ”When the chancellor was at the point of death, the king sent M. de Bryon, Admiral of France, who had orders to have everything seized and all his property placed in the king's hands. . . . They found in his place at Nantouillet eight hundred thousand crowns, and all his gold and silver plate . . . and in his Hercules-house, close to the Augustins', at Paris, where he used to stay during his life-time, the sum of three hundred thousand livres, which were in coffers bound with iron, and which were carried off by the king for and to his own profit.” In the civil as well as in the military cla.s.s, for his government as well as for his armies, Francis I. had, at this time, to look out for new servants.

He did not find such as have deserved a place in history. After the deaths of Louise of Savoy, of Chancellor Duprat, of La Tremoille, of La Palice, and of all the great warriors who fell at the battle of Pavia, it was still one more friend of Francis I.'s boyhood, Anne de Montmorency, who remained, in council as well as army, the most considerable and the most devoted amongst his servants. In those days of war and discord, fraught with violence, there was no man who was more personally rough and violent than Montmorency. From 1521 to 1541, as often as circ.u.mstances became pressing, he showed himself ready for anything and capable of anything in defence of the crown and the re-establishment of order. ”Go hang me such a one,” he would say, according to Brantome. ”Tie you fellow to this tree; give yonder one the pike or arquebuse, and all before my eyes; cut me in pieces all those rascals who chose to hold such a clock-case as this against the king; burn me this village; set me everything a-blaze, for a quarter of a league all round.” In 1548, a violent outbreak took place at Bordeaux on account of the gabel or salt-tax; and the king's lieutenant was ma.s.sacred in it. Anne de Montmorency, whom the king had made constable in 1538, the fifth of his family invested with that dignity, repaired thither at once. ”Aware of his coming,” says Brantome, ”MM. de Bordeaux went two days' journey to meet him and carry him the keys of their city: 'Away, away,' said he, 'with your keys; I will have nothing to do with them; I have others which I am bringing with me, and which will make other sort of opening than yours (meaning his cannon); I will have you all hanged; I will teach you to rebel against your king, and kill his governor and lieutenant.' Which he did not fail to do,” adds Brantome, ”and inflicted exemplary punishment, but not so severe a.s.suredly as the case required.” The narrator, it will be seen, was not more merciful than the constable.

Nor was the constable less stern or less thorough in battles than in outbreaks. In 1562, at the battle of Dreux, he was aged and so ill that none expected to see him on horseback. ”But in the morning,” says Brantome, ”knowing that the enemy was getting ready, he, brimful of courage, gets out of bed, mounts his horse, and appears at the moment the march began; whereof I do remember me, for I saw him and heard him, when M. de Guise came forward to meet him to give him good day, and ask how he was. He, fully armed, save only his head, answered him, 'Right well, sir: this is the real medicine that hath cured me for the battle which is toward and a-preparing for the honor of G.o.d and our king.'” In spite of this indomitable aptness for rendering the king everywhere the most difficult, nay, the most pitiless services, the Constable de Montmorency none the less incurred, in 1541, the disfavor of Francis I.; private dissensions in the royal family, the intrigues of rivals at court, and the enmity of the king's mistress, the d.u.c.h.ess of Etampes, effaced the remembrance of all he had done and might still do. He did accept his disgrace; he retired first to Chantilly, and then to Ecouen; and there he waited for the dauphin, when he became King Henry II., to recall him to his side and restore to him the power which Francis I., on his very death-bed, had dissuaded his son from giving back. The ungratefulnesses of kings are sometimes as capricious as their favors.

The ladies' peace, concluded at Cambrai in 1529, lasted up to 1536; incessantly troubled, however, by far from pacific symptoms, proceedings, and preparations. In October, 1532, Francis I. had, at Calais, an interview with Henry VIII., at which they contracted a private alliance, and undertook ”to raise between them an army of eighty thousand men to resist the Turk, as true zealots for the good of Christendom.” The Turks, in fact, under their great sultan, Soliman II., were constantly threatening and invading Eastern Europe. Charles V., as Emperor of Germany, was far more exposed to their attacks and far more seriously disquieted by them than Francis I. and Henry VIII. were; but the peril that hung over him in the East urged him on at the same time to a further development of ambition and strength; in order to defend Eastern Europe against the Turks he required to be dominant in Western Europe; and in that very part of Europe a large portion of the population were disposed to wish for his success, for they required it for their own security.

”To read all that was spread abroad hither and thither,” says William du Bellay, ”it seemed that the said lord the emperor was born into this world to have fortune at his beck and call.” Two brothers, Mussulman pirates, known under the name of Barbarossa, had become masters, one of Algiers and the other of Tunis, and were destroying, in the Mediterranean, the commerce and navigation of Christian states. It was Charles V. who tackled them. In 1535 he took Tunis, set at liberty twenty thousand Christian slaves, and remained master of the regency.

At the news of this expedition, Francis I., who, in concert with Henry VIII., was but lately levying an army to ”offer resistance,” he said, ”to the Turk,” entered into negotiations with Soliman II., and concluded a friendly treaty with him against what was called the common enemy.

Francis had been for some time preparing to resume his projects of conquest in Italy; he had effected an interview at Ma.r.s.eilles, in October, 1533, with Pope Clement VII., who was almost at the point of death, and it was there that the marriage of Prince Henry of France with Catherine de' Medici was settled. Astonishment was expressed that the pope's niece had but a very moderate dowry. ”You don't see, then,” said Clement VII.'s amba.s.sador, ”that she brings France three jewels of great price, Genoa, Milan, and Naples?” When this language was reported at the court of Charles V., it caused great irritation there. In 1536 all these combustibles of war exploded; in the month of February, a French army entered Piedmont, and occupied Turin; and, in the month of July, Charles V. in person entered Provence at the head of fifty thousand men.

Anne de Montmorency having received orders to defend southern France, began by laying it waste in order that the enemy might not be able to live in it; officers had orders to go everywhere and ”break up the bake-houses and mills, burn the wheat and forage, pierce the wine-casks, and ruin the wells by throwing the wheat into them to spoil the water.”

In certain places the inhabitants resisted the soldiers charged with this duty; elsewhere, from patriotism, they themselves set fire to their corn-ricks and pierced their casks. Montmorency made up his mind to defend, on the whole coast of Provence, only Ma.r.s.eilles and Arles; he pulled down the ramparts of the other towns, which were left exposed to the enemy. For two months Charles V. prosecuted this campaign without a fight, marching through the whole of Provence an army which fatigue, shortness of provisions, sickness, and ambuscades were decimating ingloriously. At last he decided upon retreating. ”From Aix to Frejus, where the emperor at his arrival had pitched his camp, all the roads were strewn with the sick and the dead pell-mell, with harness, lances, pikes, arquebuses, and other armor of men and horses gathered in a heap. I say what I saw,” adds Martin du Bellay, ”considering the toil I had with my company in this pursuit.” At the village of Mery, near Frejus, some peasants had shut themselves up in a tower situated on the line of march; Charles V. ordered one of his captains to carry it by a.s.sault; from his splendid uniform the peasants, it is said, took this officer for the emperor himself, and directed their fire upon him; the officer, mortally wounded, was removed to Nice, where he died at the end of a few days. It was Garcilaso de la Vega, the prince of Spanish poesy, the Spanish Petrarch, according to his fellow-countrymen. The tower was taken, and Charles V. avenged his poet's death by hanging twenty-five of these patriot-peasants, being all that survived of the fifty who had maintained the defence.

On returning from his sorry expedition, Charles V. learned that those of his lieutenants whom he had charged with the conduct of a similar invasion in the north of France, in Picardy, had met with no greater success than he himself in Provence. Queen Mary of Hungary, his sister and deputy in the government of the Low Countries, advised a local truce; his other sister, Eleanor, the Queen of France, was of the same opinion; Francis I. adopted it; and the truce in the north was signed for a period of three months. Montmorency signed a similar one for Piedmont. It was agreed that negotiations for a peace should be opened at Locate in Roussillon, and that, to pursue them, Francis should go and take up his quarters at Montpellier, and Charles V. at Barcelona. Pope Paul III.

(Alexander Farnese), who, on the 13th of October, 1534, had succeeded Clement VII., came forward as mediator. He was a man of capacity, who had the gift of resolutely continuing a moderate course of policy, well calculated to gain time, but insufficient for the settlement of great and difficult questions. The two sovereigns refused to see one another officially; they did not like the idea of discussing together their mutual pretensions, and they were so different in character that, as Marguerite de Valois used to say, ”to bring them to accord, G.o.d would have had to re-make one in the other's image.” They would only consent to treat by agents; and on the 15th of June, 1538, they signed a truce for ten years, rather from weariness of a fruitless war than from any real desire of peace; they, both of them, wanted time to bring them unforeseen opportunities for getting out of their embarra.s.sments. But for all their refusal to take part in set negotiations, they were both desirous of being personally on good terms again, and to converse together without entering into any engagement. Charles V. being forced by contrary winds to touch at the Island of Sainte-Marie, made a proposal to Francis I.

for an interview at Aigues Mortes; Francis repaired thither on the 14th of July, 1538, and went, the very same day, in a small galley, to pay a visit to the emperor, who stepped eagerly forward, and held out a hand to him to help him on to the other vessel. Next day, the 15th of July, Charles V., embarking on board one of the king's frigates, went and returned the visit at Aigues-Mortes, where Francis, with his whole court, was awaiting him; after disembarkation at the port they embraced; and Queen Eleanor, glad to see them together, ”embraced them both,” says an eyewitness, ”a round the waist.” They entered the town amidst the roar of artillery and the cheers of the mult.i.tude, shouting, ”Hurrah! for the emperor and the king!” The dauphin, Henry, and his brother Charles, Duke of Orleans, arriving boot and spur from Provence, came up at this moment, shouting likewise, ”Hurrah! for the emperor and the king!” ”Charles V.

dropped on his knees,” says the narrator, and embraced the two young princes affectionately. They all repaired together to the house prepared for their reception, and, after dinner, the emperor, being tired, lay down to rest on a couch. Queen Eleanor, before long, went and tapped at his door, and sent word to the king that the emperor was awake. Francis, with the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Constable de Montmorency, soon arrived. On entering the chamber, he found the emperor still lying down and chatting with his sister the queen, who was seated beside him on a chair. At sight of the king Charles V. sprang from the couch and went towards him without any shoes on. ”Well, brother,” said the king, ”how do you feel? Have you rested well?” ”Yes,” said Charles; ”I had made such cheer that I was obliged to sleep it off.” ”I wish you,” said Francis, ”to have the same power in France as you have in Flanders and in Spain;” whereupon he gave him, as a mark of affection, a diamond valued at thirty thousand crowns, and having on the ring in which it was set this inscription: ”A token and proof of affection” (Dilectionis testis et exemplum). Charles put the ring on his finger; and, taking from his neck the collar of the order (the Golden Fleece) he was wearing, he put it upon the king's neck. Francis did the converse with his own collar.

Only seven of the attendants remained in the emperor's chamber; and there the two sovereigns conversed for an hour, after which they moved to the hall, where a splendid supper awaited them. After supper the queen went in person to see if the emperor's room was ready; she came back to tell him when it was, and Charles V. retired. Next morning, July 16, Francis went to see him again in his room; they heard ma.s.s together; Charles re-embarked the same day for Spain; Francis I. went and slept, on the 17th, at Nimes; and thus ended this friendly meeting, which left, if not the princ.i.p.al actors, at any rate the people all around, brimful of satisfaction, and feeling sure that the truce concluded in the previous month would really at last be peace. The people are easily deceived; and whenever they are pleased with appearances they readily take them for realities.

An unexpected event occurred to give this friendly meeting at Aigues-Mortes a value which otherwise it would probably never have attained. A year afterwards, in August, 1539, a violent insurrection burst out at Ghent. The fair deputy of the Low Countries had obtained from the estates of Flanders a gratuitous grant of twelve hundred thousand florins for the a.s.sistance of her brother the emperor, whom his unfortunate expedition in Provence had reduced to great straits for want of money; and the city of Ghent had been taxed, for its share, to the extent of four hundred thousand florins. The Ghentese pleaded their privilege of not being liable to be taxed without their own consent. To their plea Charles V. responded by citing the vote of the estates of Flanders and giving orders to have it obeyed. The Ghentese drove out the officers of the emperor, entered upon open rebellion, incited the other cities of Flanders, Ypres and Bruges amongst the rest, to join them, and, taking even more decisive action, sent a deputation to Francis I., as their own lord's suzerain, demanding his support, and offering to make him master of the Low Countries if he would be pleased to give them effectual a.s.sistance. The temptation was great; but whether it were from prudence or from feudal loyalty, or in consequence of the meeting at Aigues-Mortes, and of the prospects set before him by Charles of an arrangement touching Milaness, Francis rejected the offer of the Ghentese, and informed Charles V. of it. The emperor determined resolutely upon the course of going in person and putting down the Ghentese; but how to get to Ghent? The sea was not safe; the rebels had made themselves masters of all the ports on their coasts; the pa.s.sage by way of Germany was very slow work, and might be difficult by reason of ill-will on the part of the Protestant states which would have to be traversed. France was the only direct and quick route. Charles V. sent to ask Francis I. for a pa.s.sage, whilst thanking him for the loyalty with which he had rejected the offers of the Ghentese, and repeating to him the fair words that had been used as to Milaness. Francis announced to his council his intention of granting the emperor's request. Some of his councillors pressed him to annex some conditions, such, at the least, as a formal and written engagement instead of the vague and verbal promises at Aigues-Mortes. ”No,” said the king, with the impulsiveness of his nature, ”when you do a generous thing, you must do it completely and boldly.” On leaving the council he met his court-fool Triboulet, whom he found writing in his tablets, called Fools' Diary, the name of Charles V., ”A bigger fool than I,” said he, ”if he comes pa.s.sing through France.” ”What wilt thou say, if I let him pa.s.s?” said the king.

”I will rub out his name and put yours in its place.” Francis I. was not content with letting Charles V. pa.s.s; he sent his two sons, the dauphin and the Duke of Orleans, as far as Bayonne to meet him, went in person to receive him at Chatellerault, and gave him entertainments at Amboise, at Blois, at Chambord, at Orleans, and Fontainebleau, and lastly at Paris, which they entered together on the 1st of January, 1540. Orders had been sent everywhere to receive him ”as kings of France are received on their joyous accession.” ”The king gave his guest,” says Du Bellay, ”all the pleasures that can be invented, as royal hunts, tourneys, skirmishes, fights a-foot and a-horseback, and in all other sorts of pastimes.” Some petty incidents, of a less rea.s.suring kind, were intermingled with these entertainments. One day the Duke of Orleans, a young prince full of reckless gayety, jumped suddenly on to the crupper of the emperor's horse, and threw his arms round Charles, shouting, ”Your Imperial Majesty is my prisoner.” Charles set off at a gallop, without turning his head.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Duke of Orleans and Charles V.----128]

Another day the king's favorite, the d.u.c.h.ess of Etampes, was present with the two monarchs. ”Brother,” said Francis, ”you see yonder a fair dame who is of opinion that I should not let you out of Paris without your having revoked the treaty of Madrid.” ”Ah! well,” said Charles, ”if the opinion is a good one, it must be followed.” Such freedom of thought and speech is honorable to both sovereigns. Charles V., impressed with the wealth and cheerful industry that met his eye, said, according to Brantome, ”There is not in the world any greatness such as that of a King of France.” After having pa.s.sed a week at Paris he started for the Low Countries, halted at Chantilly, at the Constable de Montmorency's, who, as well as the king's two sons, the dauphin and the Duke of Orleans, was in attendance upon him, and did not separate from his escort of French royalty until he arrived at Valenciennes, the first town in his Flemish dominions. According to some historians there had been at Chantilly, amongst the two young princes and their servants, some idea of seizing the emperor and detaining him until he had consented to the concessions demanded of him; others merely say that the constable, before leaving him, was very urgent with him that he should enter into some positive engagement as to Milaness. ”No,” said Charles, ”I must not bind myself any more than I have done by my words as long as I am in your power; when I have chastised my rebellious subjects I will content your king.”

He did chastise, severely, his Flemish subjects, but he did not content the King of France. Francis I. was not willing to positively renounce his Italian conquests, and Charles V. was not willing to really give them up to him. Milaness was still, in Italy, the princ.i.p.al object of their mutual ambition. Navarre, in the south-east of France, and the Low Countries in the north, gave occasion for incessantly renewed disputes between them. The two sovereigns sought for combinations which would allow them to make, one to the other, the desired concessions, whilst still preserving pretexts for and chances of recovering them. Divers projects of marriage between their children or near relatives were advanced with that object, but nothing came of them; and, after two years and a half of abortive negotiations, another great war, the fourth, broke out between Francis I. and Charles V., for the same causes and with the same by-ends as ever. It lasted two years, from 1542 to 1544, with alternations of success and reverse on either side, and several diplomatic attempts to embroil in it the different European powers.

Francis I. concluded an alliance in 1543 with Sultan Soliman II., and, in concert with French vessels, the vessels of the pirate Barbarossa cruised about and made attacks upon the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean. An outcry was raised against such a scandal as this. ”Sir Amba.s.sador,” said Francis I. to Marino Giustiniano, amba.s.sador from Venice, ”I cannot deny that I eagerly desire to see the Turk very powerful and ready for war; not on his own account, for he is an infidel and all we are Christians, but in order to cripple the power of the emperor, to force him into great expense, and to give all other governments security against so great an enemy.” ”As for me,” says the contemporary Montluc in his Memoires, ”if I could summon all the spirits of h.e.l.l to break the head of my enemy who would fain break mine, I would do it with all my heart, G.o.d forgive me!”

On the other hand, on the 11th of February, 1543, Charles V. and Henry VIII., King of England, concluded an alliance against Francis I. and the Turks. The unsuccess which had attended the grand expedition conducted by Charles V. personally in 1541, with the view of attacking Barbarossa and the Mussulmans in Algiers itself, had opened his eyes to all the difficulty of such enterprises, and he wished to secure the co-operation of a great maritime power before engaging therein afresh. He at the same time convoked a German diet at Spires in order to make a strong demonstration against the alliance between Francis I. and the Turks, and to claim the support of Germany in the name of Christendom. Amba.s.sadors from the Duke of Savoy and the King of Denmark appeared in support of the propositions and demands of Charles V. The diet did not separate until it had voted twenty-four thousand foot and four thousand horse to be employed against France, and had forbidden Germans, under severe penalties, to take service with Francis I. In 1544 the war thus became almost European, and in the early days of April two armies were concentrated in Piedmont, near the little town of Ceresole, the Spanish twenty thousand strong and the French nineteen thousand; the former under the orders of the Marquis del Guasto, the latter under those of the Count d'Enghien; both ready to deliver a battle which was, according to one side, to preserve Europe from the despotic sway of a single master, and, according to the other, to protect Europe against a fresh invasion of Mussulmans.

Francis of Bourbon, Count d'Enghien, had received from the king a prohibition to give battle. He was believed to be weaker than the Marquis del Guasto, who showed eagerness to deliver it. Convinced that such a position was as demoralizing as it was disagreeable for him, the young Count d'Enghien sent a valiant and intelligent gentleman, Blaise de Montluc, who had already had experience in the great wars of the reign, to carry his representations to the king. Francis I. summoned the messenger to a meeting of the council, at which the dauphin, Henry, stood behind his father's chair. ”Montluc,” said the king, ”I wish you to return and report my deliberation and the opinion of my council to M.

d'Enghien, and to listen here to the difficulty that stands in the way of our being able to grant him leave to give battle, as he demands.” The Count de St. Pol spoke and set forth the reasons the king had for not desiring battle; and the end of them all was that there was a chance of losing, which would be a matter for regret beyond all comparison with the advantage to be gained from winning. ”I stamped with impatience to speak,” says Montluc, ”and would have broken in; but M. de St. Pol made me a sign with his hand, saying, 'Quiet! quiet!' which made me hold my tongue, and I saw that the king set on a-laughing. Then he told me that he wished me to say freely what I thought about it. 'I consider myself most happy, sir,' said I, 'for when you were dauphin, and before you were called to this great charge which G.o.d hath given you, you tried the fortune of war as much as any king that ever hath been in France, without sparing your own person any more than the meanest gentleman. Well, a soldier-king is the only one I can address.' The dauphin, who was facing me,” continued Montluc, ”made me a sign with his head, which caused me to think that he wished me to speak boldly. Then said I, 'Sir, I count that there will be forty-five hundred or forty-six hundred of us Gascons, all told; and all of us, captains and soldiers, will give you our names and the places whence we come, and will stake our heads that we will fight on the day of battle, if it should please you to grant it. It is a matter that we have been awaiting and desiring this long while, without much taking of counsel; be a.s.sured, sir, there are not more resolute soldiers than yonder. There are, besides, thirteen companies of Swiss, who will give you the same pledge as we who are your subjects; and we will hand in to you the names of them all for to be sent to their cantons in order that, if there be any who shall not do his duty, he may die. You have thus nine thousand men and more of whom you may be certain that they will fight to the last gasp of their lives. As for the Italians and Provencals, I will not answer to you for them; but perhaps they will all do as well as we, when they see us getting to work;' and then I raised my arm up, as if to strike, whereat the king smiled. Sir,' said I, 'I have heard from wise captains that it is not the great number that wins, but the stout heart; on a day of battle, a moiety doth not fight at all.

We desire no more; leave it to us.' The king, who had very favorably listened to me, and who took pleasure in seeing my impatience, turned his eyes towards M. de St. Pol, who said, 'Sir, would you change your opinion at the words of this madcap, who has no thought for the calamity it would be if we were to lose the battle? It is a matter too important to be left for settlement to the brains of a young Gascon.' I answered him, 'Sir, let me a.s.sure you that I am no braggart, nor so hare-brained as you consider me. All we have to do is not to go and attack the enemy in a stronghold, as we did at La Bicocca; but M. d'Enghien has too many good and veteran captains about him to commit such an error. The only question will be to find means of coming at them in open country, where there is neither hedge nor ditch to keep us from setting to work; and then, sir, you shall hear talk of the most furious fights that ever were.