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 massacred 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 assuredly 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 God 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 Duchess of Etampes, effaced the
remembrance of all he had done and might still do. He did accept his
disgrace; he ret