The Page of the Duke of Savoy
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O - O a a n) N2 IT‘, x> " ' . , r-, — a N) N) ''^i®=®“:B®?30-000'' CP V * ~ x n .C1 a - P - r* the library of the UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL g endowed by the DIALECTIC AND PHILANTHROPIC i SOCIETIES PQ.2227 H .P 1513 1891* t. UNIVERSITY AT CHAPEL . < This book is due at the LOUIS R. WILSON LIBRARY on the last date stamped under “Date Due.” If not on hold it may be renewed by bringing it to the library. DATE DATE RET. RET. DUE DUE QCi A JL 0 j y 4 4 *41 . ; " '.**•*< v JUI y s *o ►I > -J A 4QAA 15 ?M -v L c » i 2 . HISTORICAL ROMANCES. THE PAGE OF THE DUKE OF SAVOY. VOL. II. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill https://archive.org/details/pageofdukeofsavo02duma n»' H B THE DUKE OF SAVOY. .. /2 BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. If. LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO. BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, & CO. 1891. University 1’kess: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S.A. CONTENTS. PART II. Continued. Chapter Page 1. On the Double Advantage of Speaking the Picardy Dialect . 1 II. The Battle of St. Lawrence’s Day . 26 III. How the Admiral got the News of the Battle . 43 IV. The Assault. 54 V. A Pugitive. 66 rfrf VI. Two Fugitives. /o VII. Adventurer and Captain. 82 VIII. Waiting. 92 IX. The Parisians. 101 X. In the Spanish Camp. 112 XI. In which Yvonnet gathers all the Infor¬ mation he desires. 123 XII. God protects France. 133 PART III. 2.» I. A Remembrance and a Promise.139 c # o II. The Ambassador of their Majesties the Kings a of France and Spain .... 150 i S43 D -pax V. 2- VI CONTENTS. Chapter Page III. In the Queen’s Apartments.159 IY. In the Apartments of the Favorite . 167 Y. Where, after the Vanquished has been TREATED AS VlCTOR, THE VlCTOR IS TREATED AS THOUGH VANQUISHED.178 YI. The Pedler.187 VII. The Wedding Dresses and Ornaments . 197 VIII. What passed at the Chateau des Touh- NELLES AND IN THE STREETS OF PARIS DUR¬ ING THE EARLY DaYS OF JUNE, 1559 . 208 IX. News from Scotland.216 X. The Jousts of the Rue St. Antoine . 225 XI. The Challenge.235 XII. A Fight with Sharpened Steel .... 241 XIII. The Prediction.253 XIV. The Deathbed. 267 XV. Florentine Policy.279 XVI. A King of France has but iiis Word . 291 XVII. In which the Treaty is executed . 301 XVIII. The Seventeenth of November. .... 312 XIX. The Dead know all Things.321 XX. The Route from San Remo to Albenga . 330 Epilogue.339 THE PAGE OF THE DUKE OF SAVOY. -♦- PART II. Continued. CHAPTER I. ON THE DOUBLE ADVANTAGE OF SPEAKING THE PICARDY DIALECT. Up to the present we have directed our attention solely to those within the beleaguered town ; it is now time for us to visit the tents of its besiegers. While Coligny and his staff were making a tour of the walls, for the purpose of seeing to the means of defence of the town, another group of men, equally important, were reconnoitring its outer defences, in order to discover the best means of attack. This group consisted of Emmanuel Philibert, Count Egmont, Count Horn, Count Schwarzbourg, Count Mansfeld, and Dukes Eric and Ernest of Brunswick. Following the staff was another group of officers, among whom, careful of naught except the life and honor of his well-beloved Emmanuel, rode our old friend Scianca- Ferro. By the express orders of Emmanuel, Leona had re¬ mained, with the rest of the ducal household, at Cambrai. As the result of his reconnoissance, Emmanuel had come to the conclusion that St. Quentin, defended by VOL. II. — 1 2 THE DUKE’S PAGE. crumbling walls, and with a weakened garrison and insuf¬ ficient artillery, could not hold out more than five or six days ; a message to this effect had been sent by him to Philip II., whom prudence had detained at Cambrai. Moreover, six or seven leagues, at the most, separated the two towns ; and if Emmanuel had chosen the royal palace for Leona’s residence, the reason is obvious : the necessity of communicating orally with Philip being likely to bring from time to time the generalissimo of the Span¬ ish army to Cambrai, the latter had counted on the fact that each of these journeys which he would have to make thither would be an opportunity of seeing Leona For her part, Leona had consented to this separation first and before all because in this life of devotion, of love, and of renunciation which she had chosen, a wish of Emmanuel’s had become for her a command ; next, be¬ cause this distance of six or seven leagues, although it meant of course absence, was no real ground of separa¬ tion, since at the least cause of disquiet the young girl — with that freedom of action which ignorance of her sex on the part of every one, except Scianca-Ferro, had left her — would be able, in an hour and a half at the least, to be in the camp of Emmanuel Philibert. In addition to this, since the beginning of the cam¬ paign, Emmanuel, whatever joy the resumption of hos¬ tilities had caused him, — a resumption to which he had by the attempts made on Metz and Bordeaux at least con¬ tributed as much as the admiral by his attempt on Blois, — since the beginning of the campaign, we say, Emmanuel Philibert seemed, morally at least, to have aged ten years. A young commander of scarcely thirty-one, he found him¬ self at the head of an army charged with the invasion of France, having under him the veteran generals of Charles V., and playing for his own fortune behind the fortune of ON THE ADVANTAGE OF SPEAKING PICARD. 3 Spain. In truth, on the result of the campaign just begun was to depend his future, not only as a great genera], but even as a sovereign prince ; it was Piedmont which he hoped to reconquer in defeating Prance. Emmanuel Philibert, even though he were commander-in-chief of the Spanish armies, was nevertheless only a kind of royal condottiere: a man is really of weight in the balance of Pate only when he has the right on his own account to cause men to be slain. Nevertheless, be had no reason to complain ; Philip II. — yielding, at least in this, to the advice which his father, Charles V., had given him at the time of his abdication — had granted, as regarded peace and war, full power to the Duke of Savoy, and had placed under his command all that long list of princes and cap¬ tains whom we have named in pointing out the positions which each of them occupied round St. Quentin. All these thoughts, then, among which that of the re¬ sponsibility weighing on him was not the least, rendered Emmanuel Philibert as grave and full of care as an old man. He perfectly well understood that on the success of the siege of St. Quentin depended the success of the whole campaign. St. Quentin once taken, between this town and Paris there were but thirty leagues to cross, and Ham, La Fere, and Soissons to capture ; only, St. Quentin must be taken without delay, in order that Prance should not have time to raise one of those armies which seem to rise as though from the earth, in virtue of we know not what enchantment, and which as by a miracle offer their breasts, a wall of flesh, in place of the stone walls which the enemy has destroyed. Thus we have seen with what persistent rapidity Emmanuel Phili¬ bert had pressed on the siege-works, and how close a watch he had established around the town. The duke’s first idea had been that the weak side of St. 4 THE DUKE’S PAGE. Quentin was the Porte cl’Isle, and that it would he on this side that, on the least imprudence on the part of the besieged, he should capture the place. In consequence, leaving all the other generals to encamp before the wall of Keinicourt, which in a regular approach would he the most effective point of attack, he had pitched his tent on the opposite side, between a mill, which was situated on a little hill, and the river Somme. From this eminence he was able to watch the river — over which he had caused a bridge to he thrown — and all the vast tract of country stretching from the Somme as far as the old Vermand road, — a tract which was to he occupied by the English brigade as soon as it should have effected a junction with the Hispano-Flemish army. We have seen how an attempt to carry the faubourg by a sudden attack had been repulsed. Then Emmanuel Philibert had resolved to risk an escalade. This esca¬ lade was to take place during the night of the 7th and 8th of August. Why did Emmanuel Philibert choose this night of the 7th and 8th of August rather than any other for the execution of this attempt 1 This we are about to relate. On the morning of the 6th, at the time when he was listening to the reports brought by the various chiefs of patrol, a peasant of the village of Savy who wished to speak with Emmanuel had been ushered into his tent.