s, the cries of which
seemed to show derision of the enemy."

The siege went on for a month longer without making any more impression;
and the imperial troops kicked against any fresh assaults. "I was wont
once upon a time to be followed to battle," Charles V. would say, "but I
see that I have no longer men about me; I must bid farewell to the
empire, and go and shut myself up in some monastery; before three years
are over I shall turn Cordelier." Whilst Metz was still holding out, the
fortress of Toul was summoned by the Imperialists to open its gates; but
the commandant replied, "When the town of Metz has been taken, when I
have had the honor of being besieged in due form by the emperor, and when
I have made as long a defence as the Duke of Guise has, such a summons
may be addressed to me, and I will consider what I am to do." On the
26th of December, 1552, the sixty-fifth day since the arrival of the
imperial army and the forty-fifth since the batteries had opened fire,
Charles V. resolved to raise the siege. "I see very well," said he,
"that fortune resembles women; she prefers a young king to an old
emperor." His army filed off by night, in silence, leaving behind its
munitions and its tents just as they stood, "driven away, almost, by the
chastisement of Heaven," says the contemporary chronicler Rabutin, "with
but two shots by way of signal." The ditty of the soldier just quoted
ends thus:--

"At last, so stout was her defence,
From Metz they moved their guns away;
And, with the laugh at their expense,
A-tramping went their whole array.
And at their tail the noble Lord
Of Guise sent forth a goodly throng
Of cavalry, with lance and sword,
To teach them how to tramp along."

Guise was far from expecting so sudden and decisive a result. "Sing me
no more flattering strains in your letters about the emperor's
dislodgment hence," he wrote on the 24th of December to his brother the
Cardinal of Lorraine; "take it for certain that unless we be very much
mistaken in him, he will not, as long as he has life, brook the shame of
departing hence until he has seen it all out."

Irritated, and, perhaps, still more shocked, at so heavy a blow to his
power and his renown, Charles V. looked everywhere for a chance of taking
his revenge. He flattered himself that he had found it in Therouanne,
a fortress of importance at that time between Flanders and Artois, which
had always been a dependency of the kingdom of France