assistance of the
Parisians, harangued the Parliament and Hotel de Ville vehemently on the
conspiracy of the Constable de Bourbon, and succeeded so well in
reassuring them that companies of the city militia eagerly joined his
troops, and the foreigners, in dread of finding themselves hemmed in,
judged it prudent to fall back, leaving Picardy in a state of equal
irritation and devastation. In the south, Lautrec, after having made
head for three days and three nights against the attacks of a Spanish
army which had crossed the Pyrenees under the orders of the Constable of
Castille, forced it to raise the siege and beat a retreat. Everywhere,
in the provinces as well as at the court, the feudal nobility, chieftains
and simple gentlemen, remained faithful to the king; the magistrates and
the people supported the military; it was the whole nation that rose
against the great lord, who, for his own purposes, was making alliance
with foreigners against the king and the country.

In respect of Italy, Francis I. was less wise and less successful. Not
only did he persist in the stereotyped madness of the conquest of
Milaness and the kingdom of Naples, but abandoning for the moment the
prosecution of it in person, he intrusted it to his favorite, Admiral
Bonnivet, a brave soldier, alternately rash and backward, presumptuous
and irresolute, who had already lost credit by the mistakes he had
committed and the reverses he had experienced in that arena. At the very
juncture when Francis I. confided this difficult charge to Bonnivet, the
Constable de Bourbon, having at last got out of France, crossed Germany,
repaired to Italy, and halted at Mantua, Piacenza, and Genoa; and, whilst
waiting for a reply from Charles V., whom he had informed of his arrival,
he associated with the leaders of the imperial armies, lived amongst the
troops, inoculated them with his own ardor as well as warlike views, and
by his natural superiority regained, amongst the European coalition, the
consideration and authority which had been somewhat diminished by his
ill-success in his own country and his flight from it. Charles V. was
some time about sending an answer; for, in his eyes also, Bourbon had
fallen somewhat. "Was it prudent," says the historian of Bourbon
himself, "to trust a prince who, though born near the throne, had
betrayed his own blood and forsworn his own country? Charles V. might no
doubt have insured his fidelity, had he given him in mar