Cazieres, commandant of the old bands
of Spanish infantry, when up came the Duke of Savoy, who ordered the said
Cazieres to take the admiral to his tent." [_Commentaire de Francois de
Rabutin sur les Guerres entre Henri II., roi de France, et Charles Quint,
empereur,_ t. ii. p. 95, in the _Petitot collection_.] D'Andelot, the
admiral's brother, succeeded in escaping across the marshes. Being thus
master of Saint-Quentin, Philip II., after having attempted to put a stop
to carnage and plunder, expelled from the town, which was half in ashes,
the inhabitants who had survived; and the small adjacent fortresses, Ham
and Catelet, were not long before they surrendered.

Philip, with anxious modesty, sent information of his victory to his
father, Charles, who had been in retirement since February 21, 1556, at
the monastery of Yuste. "As I did not happen to be there myself," he
said at the end of his letter, "about which I am heavy at heart as to
what your Majesty will possibly think, I can only tell you from hearsay
what took place." We have not the reply of Charles V. to his son; but
his close confidant, Quejada, wrote, "The emperor felt at this news one
of the greatest thrills of satisfaction he has ever had; but, to tell you
the truth, I perceive by his manner that he cannot reconcile himself to
the thought that his son was not there; and with good reason." After
that Saint-Quentin had surrendered, the Duke of Savoy wanted to march
forward and strike affrighted France to the very heart; and the aged
emperor was of his mind. "Is the king my son at Paris?" he said, when he
heard of his victory. Philip had thought differently about it instead of
hurling his army on Paris, he had moved it back to Saint-Quentin, and
kept it for the reduction of places in the neighborhood. "The
Spaniards," says Rabutin, "might have accomplished our total
extermination, and taken from us all hope of setting ourselves up again.
. . . But the Supreme Ruler, the God of victories, pulled them up
quite short." An unlooked-for personage, Queen Catherine de' Medici,
then for the first time entered actively upon the scene. We borrow the
very words of the Venetian ambassadors who lived within her sphere. The
first, Lorenzo Contarini, wrote in 1552, "The queen is younger than the
king, but only thirteen days; she is not pretty, but she is possessed of
extraordinary wisdom and prudence; no doubt of her being fit to govern;
nevertheless she is