ppointed in the course of that night. The place of this conference was
to be between the two armies.

The king passed the night in great uneasiness. All day the weather had
threatened to turn to rain, and we have already said how rapidly the
Taro could swell; the river, fordable to-day, might from tomorrow
onwards prove an insurmountable obstacle; and possibly the delay had
only been asked for with a view to putting the French army in a worse
position. As a fact the night had scarcely come when a terrible storm
arose, and so long as darkness lasted, great rumblings were heard in the
Apennines, and the sky was brilliant with lightning. At break of day,
however, it seemed to be getting a little calmer, though the Taro, only
a streamlet the day before, had become a torrent by this time, and was
rapidly rising. So at six in the morning, the king, ready armed and on
horseback, summoned Commines and bade him make his way to the rendezvous
that the Venetian 'proveditori' had assigned. But scarcely had he
contrived to give the order when loud cries were heard coming from the
extreme right of the French army. The Stradiotes, under cover of the
wood stretching between the two camps, had surprised an outpost, and
first cutting the soldiers' throats, were carrying off their heads in
their usual way at the saddle-bow. A detachment of cavalry was sent in
pursuit; but, like wild animals, they had retreated to their lair in the
woods, and there disappeared.

This unexpected engagement, in all probability arranged beforehand by
the Spanish and German envoys, produced on the whole army the effect
of a spark applied to a train of gunpowder. Commines and the Venetian
'proveditori' each tried in vain to arrest the combat an either side.
Light troops, eager for a skirmish, and, in the usual fashion of those
days, prompted only by that personal courage which led them on to
danger, had already come to blows, rushing down into the plain as though
it were an amphitheatre where they might make a fine display of arms.
Far a moment the young king, drawn on by example, was an the point of
forgetting the responsibility of a general in his zeal as a soldier; but
this first impulse was checked by Marechal de Gie, Messire Claude de la
Chatre de Guise, and M. de la Trimauille, who persuaded Charles to adopt
the wiser plan, and to cross the Taro without seeking a battle,--at the
same time without trying to avoid it, should the enemy cross the river
from