admirals' vessels
engaged in a deadly duel; but the French admiral, finding himself
surrounded by superior forces, threw his grappling-irons on to the
English vessel, and, rather than surrender, set fire to the two admirals'
ships, which blew up at the same time, together with their crews of two
thousand men.

The sight of heroism and death has a powerful effect upon men, and
sometimes suspends their quarrels. The English squadron went out again
to sea, and the French went back to Brest. Next year the struggle
recommenced, but on land, and with nothing so striking. An English army
started from Calais, and went and blockaded, on the 17th of June, 1513,
the fortress of Therouanne in Artois. It was a fortnight afterwards
before Henry VIII. himself quitted Calais, where festivities and
tournaments had detained him too long for what he had in hand, and set
out on the march with twelve thousand foot to go and join his army before
Therouanne. He met on his road, near Thournehem, a body of twelve
hundred French men-at-arms with their followers a-horseback, and in the
midst of them Bayard. Sire de Piennes, governor of Picardy, was in
command of them. "My lord," said Bayard to him, "let us charge them: no
harm can come of it to us, or very little; if, at the first charge, we
make an opening in them, they are broken; if they repulse us, we shall
still get away; they are on foot and we a-horseback;" and "nearly all the
French were of this opinion," continues the chronicler; but Sire de
Piennes said, Gentlemen, I have orders, on my life, from the king our
master, to risk nothing, but only hold his country. Do as you please;
for my part I shall not consent thereto.' Thus was this matter stayed;
and the King of England passed with his band under the noses of the
French." Henry VIII. arrived quietly with his army before Therouanne,
the garrison of which defended itself valiantly, though short of
provisions. Louis XII. sent orders to Sire de Piennes to revictual
Therouanne "at any price." The French men-at-arms, to the number of
fourteen hundred lances, at whose head marched La Palisse, Bayard, the
Duke de Longueville, grandson of the great Dunois, and Sire de Piennes
himself, set out on the 16th of August to go and make, from the direction
of Guinegate, a sham attack upon the English camp, whilst eight hundred
Albanian light cavalry were to burst, from another direction, upon the
enemies' lines, cut their way through at a