perienced warriors, La Tremoille and Chabannes, exert
themselves to divert him from such a campaign, for which he was not
prepared; in vain did his mother herself write to him, begging him to
wait and see her, for that she had important matters to impart to him.
He answered by sending her the ordinance which conferred upon her the
regency during his absence; and, at the end of October, 1524, he had
crossed the Alps, anxious to go and risk in Milaness the stake he had
just won in Provence against Charles V.

Arriving speedily in front of Milan, he there found the imperial army
which had retired before him; there was a fight in one of the outskirts;
but Bourbon recognized the impossibility of maintaining a siege in a town
of which the fortifications were in ruins, and with disheartened troops.
On the line of march which they had pursued, from Lodi to Milan, there
was nothing to be seen but cuirasses, arquebuses tossed hither and
thither, dead horses, and men dying of fatigue and scarcely able to drag
themselves along. Bourbon evacuated Milan, and, taking a resolution as
bold as it was singular, abruptly abandoned, so far as he was personally
concerned, that defeated and disorganized army, to go and seek for and
reorganize another at a distance. Being informed that Charles III., Duke
of Savoy, hitherto favorable to France, was secretly inclining towards
the emperor, he went to Turin, made a great impression by his confidence
and his grand spirit in the midst of misfortune upon both the duke and
his wife, Beatrix of Portugal, and obtained from them not only a
flattering reception, but a secret gift of their money and their jewelry;
and, equipped with these resources, he passed into Germany to recruit
soldiers there. The lanzknechts, who had formerly served under him in
France, rushed to him in shoals; he had received from nature the gifts
most calculated to gain the hearts of campaigners: kind, accessible,
affable and even familiar with the common soldier, he entered into the
details of his wants and alleviated them. His famous bravery, his
frankness, and his generosity gained over those adventurers who were
weary of remaining idle; their affection consoled Bourbon and stood him
in stead of all: his army became his family and his camp his country.
Proscribed and condemned in France, without any position secured to him
in the dominions of Charles V., envied and crossed by that prince's
generals, he had found full need of