he was in
possession of Metz, Toul, Verdun, and Pont-a-Mousson, the keys for France
into Germany, and at the head of an army under young commanders who were
enterprising without being blindly rash.

Charles V. also had to know what necessity was, and to submit to it,
without renouncing the totality of his designs. On the 2d of August,
1552, he signed at Passau, with the Protestant princes, the celebrated
treaty known under the name of "treaty of public peace," which referred
the great questions of German pacification to a general diet to be
assembled in six months, and declared that, pending definitive
conciliation, the two religions should be on an equal footing in the
empire, that is, that the princes and free towns should have the supreme
regulation of religious matters amongst themselves. Charles V. thus
recovered full liberty of action in his relations with France, and could
no longer think of anything but how to recover the important towns he had
lost in Lorraine. Henry II., on the other hand, who was asked by his
Protestant allies on what conditions he would accept the peace of Passau,
replied that at no price would he dispossess himself of the
Three-Bishoprics of Lorraine, and that he would for his part continue the
contest he had undertaken for the liberation of Germany. The siege of
Metz then became the great question of the day: Charles V. made all his
preparations to conduct it on an immense scale, and Henry II.
immediately ordered Francis de Guise to go and defend his new conquest at
all hazards.

[Illustration: DIANA DE POITIERS----243]

Ambition which is really great accepts with joy great perils fraught with
great opportunities. Guise wrote to Henry II.'s favorite, Diana de
Poitiers, Duchess of Valentinois, to thank her for having helped to
obtain for him this favor, which was about to bring him "to the emperor's
very beard." He set out at once, first of all to Toul, where the plague
prevailed, and where he wished to hurry on the repair of the ramparts.
Money was wanting to pay the working-corps; and he himself advanced the
necessary sum. On arriving at Metz on the 17th of August, 1552, he found
there only twelve companies of infantry, new levies; and every evening he
drilled them himself in front of his quarters. A host of volunteers,
great lords, simple gentlemen, and rich and brave burgesses, soon came to
him, "eager to aid him in repelling the greatest and most powerful effort
ever made by