iage 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 ambassador, "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 Marseilles 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 assault; 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