d the
place could offer but slight resistance to the force arrayed against it.
The bulk of the king's army was in the neighbourhood of Dieppe, where
they had been recently strengthened by twenty companies of Netherlanders
and Scotchmen brought by Count Philip Nassau. The League's headquarters
were in the village of Yvetot, capital of the realm of the whimsical
little potentate so long renowned under that name.

The king, in pursuance of the plan he had marked out for himself,
restrained his skirmishing more than was his wont. Nevertheless he lay
close to Yvetot. His cavalry, swelling and falling as usual like an
Alpine torrent, had now filled up its old channels again, for once more
the mountain chivalry had poured themselves around their king. With ten
thousand horsemen he was now pressing the Leaguers, from time to time,
very hard, and on one occasion the skirmishing became so close and so
lively that a general engagement seemed imminent. Young Ranuccio had a
horse shot under him, and his father--suffering as he was--had himself
dragged out of bed and brought on a litter into the field, where he was
set on horseback, trampling on wounds and disease, and, as it were, on
death itself, that he might by his own unsurpassed keenness of eye and
quickness of resource protect the army which had been entrusted to his
care. The action continued all day; young Bentivoglio, nephew of the
famous cardinal, historian and diplomatist, receiving a bad wound in the
leg, as he fought gallantly at the side of Ranuccio. Carlo Coloma also
distinguished himself in the engagement. Night separated the combatants
before either side had gained a manifest advantage, and on the morrow it
seemed for the interest of neither to resume the struggle.

The field where this campaign was to be fought was a narrow peninsula
enclosed between the sea and the rivers Seine and Dieppe. In this
peninsula, called the Land of Caux, it was Henry's intention to shut up
his enemy. Farnese had finished the work that he had been sent to do, and
was anxious, as Henry was aware, to return to the Netherlands. Rouen was
relieved, Caudebec had fallen. There was not food or forage enough in the
little peninsula to feed both the city and the whole army of the League.
Shut up in this narrow area, Alexander must starve or surrender. His only
egress was into Picardy and so home to Artois, through the base of the
isosceles triangle between the two rivers and on the borders of Pi