! if
you please, one at a time.' And two secretaries, one of ours and one of
theirs, wrote down the articles agreed upon, and before we took leave,
read them aloud, the one in Italian, the other in French, to see if
there was anything that could be altered or shortened."

Beatrice was present at all the deliberations, and surprised the other
commissioners by her cleverness and quickness, and the ready tact she
invariably showed. The duke was now sincerely anxious for peace, and
only cared to recover Novara, and to see the French safely out of his
dominions, where the presence of Louis of Orleans could not fail to
prove a disturbing element. Both he and Commines directed all their
efforts to bring matters to a favourable conclusion, but the other
commissioners made difficulties, and the Venetian, Spanish, and German
ambassadors would decide nothing without consulting their separate
governments. The evacuation of Novara, however, was unanimously agreed
upon, and on the 26th of September, Orleans and his garrison marched out
with the honours of war, and were escorted by Messer Galeaz and the
Marquis of Mantua to the French outposts. More than two thousand men had
already died of sickness and starvation. Almost all their horses had
been eaten, and the survivors were in a miserable plight. Many perished
by the roadside, and Commines found fifty troopers in a fainting
condition in a garden at Cameriano, and saved their lives by feeding
them with soup. Even then one man died on the spot, and four others
never reached the camp. Three hundred more died at Vercelli, some of
sickness, others from over-eating themselves after the prolonged
starvation which they had endured, and the dung-hills of the town were
strewn with dead corpses. Yet still Orleans, who, as Commines remarks,
had caused all this mischief, was eager for war, and entreated the king
to make no terms with Signor Lodovico. He had a strong supporter in the
Milanese captain, Jean Jacques Trivulzio, who had entered the French
king's service after Alfonso's flight from Naples, and had never
forgotten his old griefs against Lodovico and his son-in-law. And on the
selfsame day that Novara was evacuated, the bailiff of Dijon arrived at
Vercelli with ten or twelve thousand more Swiss mercenaries, bringing up
the whole number to upwards of twenty thousand. So large a body had
never been assembled before, and the presence of these rude
mountaineers, greedy for spoil and ready