evening of their decision, and was
invited to make, as soon as he heard two cannon-shots, a sortie which
would place the French army between two fires. Pescara, according to his
custom, mustered the Spaniards; and, "My lads," said he, "fortune has
brought you to such extremity that on the soil of Italy you have for your
own only that which is under your feet. All the emperor's might could
not procure for you to-morrow morning one morsel of bread. We know not
where to get it, save in the Frenchman's camp, which is before your eyes.
There they have abundance of everything, bread, meat, trout and carp from
the Lake of Garda. And so, my lads, if you are set upon having anything
to eat tomorrow, march we down on the Frenchmen's camp." Freundsberg
spoke in the same style to the German lanzknechts. And both were
responded to with cheers. Eloquence is mighty powerful when it speaks in
the name of necessity.

The two armies were of pretty equal strength: they had each from twenty
to five and twenty thousand infantry, French, Germans, Spaniards,
lanzknechts, and Swiss. Francis I. had the advantage in artillery and in
heavy cavalry, called at that time the gendarmerie, that is to say, the
corps of men-at-arms in heavy armor with their servants; but his troops
were inferior in effectives to the Imperialists, and Charles V.'s two
generals, Bourbon and Pescara, were, as men of war, far superior to
Francis I. and his favorite Bonnivet. In the night between the 23d and
24th of February they opened a breach of forty or fifty fathoms in the
wall around the park of Mirabello, where the French camp was situated; a
corps immediately passed through it, marching on Pavia to re-enforce the
garrison, and the main body of the imperial army entered the park to
offer the French battle on that ground. The king at once set his army in
motion; and his well-posted artillery mowed down the corps of Germans and
Spaniards who had entered the park. "You could see nothing," says a
witness of the battle, "but heads and arms flying about." The action
seemed to be going ill for the Imperialists; Pescara urged the Duke of
Bourbon and Lannoy, the Viceroy of Naples, to make haste and come up;
Lannoy made the sign of the cross, and said to his men, "There is no hope
but in God; follow me and do every one as I do." Francis I., on his
side, advanced with the pick of his men-at-arms, burst on the
advance-guard of the enemy, broke it, killed with his own