such a declaration; he is my prisoner. Why has
he taken no notice of what I said to his ambassador immediately after his
refusal to execute the treaty of Madrid?" Charles V. now repeated, in
the very terms addressed to the French ambassador, the communication to
which he alluded: "The king your master acted like a Bastard and a
scoundrel in not keeping his word that he gave me touching the treaty of
Madrid; if he likes to say to the contrary, I will maintain it against
him with my body to his." When these words were reported to Francis I.,
he summoned, on the 27th of March, 1528, the princes of the blood, the
cardinals, the prelates, the grandees of the kingdom, and the ministers
from foreign courts, and, after having given a vivid account of his
relations with Charles V., "I am not the prisoner of Charles," he said:
"I have not given him my word; we have never met with arms in our hands."
He then handed his herald, Guyenne, a cartel written with his own hand,
and ending with these words addressed to Charles V.: "We give you to
understand that, if you have intended or do intend to charge us with
anything that a gentleman loving his honor ought not to do, we say that
you have lied in your throat, and that, as often as you say so, you will
lie. Wherefore for the future write us nothing at all; but appoint us
the time and place of meeting, and we will bring our sword for you to
cross; protesting that the shame of any delay in fighting shall be yours,
seeing that, when it comes to an encounter, there is an end of all
writing." Charles V. did not receive Francis I.'s challenge till the 8th
of June; when he, in his turn, consulted the grandees of his kingdom,
amongst others the Duke of Infantado, one of the most considerable in
rank and character, who answered him in writing: "The jurisdiction of
arms extends exclusively to obscure and foggy matters in which the
ordinary rules of justice are at a discount; but, when one can appeal to
oaths and authentic acts, I do not think that it is allowable to come to
blows before having previously tried the ordinary ways of justice. . .
It seems to me that this law of honor applies to princes, however great
they may be, as well as to knights. It would be truly strange, my lord,
that a debt so serious, so universally recognized, as that contracted by
the King of France, should be discharged by means of a personal
challenge." Charles V. thereupon sent off his herald, Burgundy, with