s
of Spanish as of Huguenot interference in her schemes, felt himself
compelled politely to decline; especially as the very briefest term within
which Alva professed himself ready to move was a full month and a half.
For seven or eight days the duke persisted in refusing the Spanish troops
that were requested,[455] and in insisting upon his own offer--precious
time which, had it been husbanded, might have changed the face of the
impending battle before the walls of Paris. When, at length, pressed by
the envoy for a definite answer or for leave to return, the duke offered
to give him, in about three weeks' time, a body of four or five thousand
German lansquenets--troops that would have been quite useless to Charles,
who already had at his disposition as many pikemen as he needed, in the
six thousand Swiss. All that Castelnau was finally able to bring home was
an auxiliary force of about seventeen hundred horse, under Count Aremberg.
Even now, however, the officer in command was bound by instructions which
prevented him from taking the direct road to the beleaguered capital of
France, and compelled him to pass westward by Beauvais and Poissy.[456]

[Sidenote: Battle of Saint Denis, Nov. 10, 1567.]

[Sidenote: The constable is mortally wounded.]

The impatience of the Parisians, who for more than a month had been
inactive spectators, while their city was besieged by an insignificant
force and they were deprived of the greater part of their ordinary
supplies of food, could scarcely be restrained. They were the more anxious
for battle since they had received encouragement by the recapture of a few
points of some military importance along the course of the lower Seine.
Unable to resist the pressure any longer, Constable Anne de Montmorency
led out his army to give battle to the Huguenots on the tenth of November,
1567. Rarely has such an engagement been willingly entered into, where the
disproportion between the contending parties was so considerable. The
constable's army consisted of sixteen thousand foot soldiers (of whom six
thousand were Swiss, and the remainder in part troops levied in the city
of Paris) and three thousand horse, and was provided with eighteen pieces
of artillery. To meet this force, Conde had barely fifteen hundred hastily
mounted and imperfectly equipped gentlemen, and twelve hundred foot
soldiers, gathered from various quarters and scarcely formed as yet into
companies. He had not a single cannon. Of