. And thither, to defend
the integrity of that portion of France, which, in Spanish hands, was a
perpetual menace to her realm, her crown, even to her life, Queen
Elizabeth had sent some three thousand Englishmen, under commanders well
known to France and the Netherlands. There was black Norris again dealing
death among the Spaniards and renewing his perpetual squabbles with Sir
Roger Williams. There was that doughty Welshman himself, truculent and
caustic as ever--and as ready with sword or pen, foremost in every mad
adventure or every forlorn hope, criticising with sharpest tongue the
blunders and shortcomings of friend and foe, and devoting the last drop
in his veins with chivalrous devotion to his Queen. "The world cannot
deny," said he, "that any carcase living ventured himself freer and
oftener for his prince, state, and friends than I did mine. There is no
more to be had of a poor beast than his skin, and for want of other means
I never respected mine in the least respect towards my sovereign's
service, or country." And so passing his life in the saddle and under
fire, yet finding leisure to collect the materials for, and to complete
the execution of, one of the most valuable and attractive histories of
the age, the bold Welshman again and again appears, wearing the same
humorous but truculent aspect that belonged to him when he was wont to
run up and down in a great morion and feathers on Flemish battlefields, a
mark for the Spanish sharpshooters.

There, too, under the banner of the Bearnese, that other historian of
those sanguinary times, who had fought on almost every battle-field where
tyranny and liberty had sought to smite each other dead, on French or
Flemish soil, and who had prepared his famous political and military
discourses in a foul dungeon swarming with toads and rats and other
villainous reptiles to which the worse than infernal tyranny of Philip
II. had consigned him for seven years long as a prisoner of war--the
brave and good La Noue, with the iron arm, hero of a hundred combats, was
fighting his last fight. At the siege of Lamballe in Brittany, he had
taken off his calque and climbed a ladder to examine the breach effected
by the batteries. An arquebus shot from the town grazed his forehead,
and, without inflicting a severe wound, stunned him so much that he lost
his balance and fell head foremost towards the ground; his leg, which had
been wounded at the midnight assault upon Paris, where he