in it. He wrote, time after time, to his nephew Gaston that the
moment was critical, that Emperor Maximilian harbored a design of
recalling the five thousand lanzknechts he had sent as auxiliaries to the
French army, and that they must be made use of whilst they were still to
be had; that, on the other hand, Henry VIII., King of England, was
preparing for an invasion of France, and so was Ferdinand, King of Spain,
in the south: a victory in the field was indispensable to baffle all
these hostile plans. It was Louis XII.'s mania to direct, from Paris or
from Lyons, the war which he was making at a distance, and to regulate
its movements as well as its expenses. The Florentine ambassador,
Pandolfini, was struck with the perilousness of this mania; and Cardinal
d'Amboise was no longer by to oppose it. Gaston de Foix asked for
nothing better than to act with vigor. He set out to march on Ravenna,
in hopes that by laying siege to this important place he would force a
battle upon the Spanish army, which sought to avoid it. There was a
current rumor in Italy that this army, much reduced in numbers and cooled
in ardor, would not hold its own against the French if it encountered
them. Some weeks previously, after the siege of Bologna had been raised_
by the Spaniards, there were distributed about at Rome little bits of
paper having on them, "If anybody knows where the Spanish army happens to
be, let him inform the sacristan of peace; he shall receive as reward a
lump of cheese." Gaston de Foix arrived on the 8th of April, 1512,
before Ravenna. He there learned that, on the 9th of March, the
ambassador of France had been sent away from London by Henry VIII.
Another hint came to him from his own camp. A German captain, named
Jacob, went and told Chevalier Bayard, with whom he had contracted a
friendship, "that the emperor had sent orders to the captain of the
lanzknechts that they were to withdraw incontinently on seeing his
letter, and that they were not to fight the Spaniards: 'As for me,' said
he, 'I have taken oath to the King of France, and I have his pay; if I
were to die a hundred thousand deaths, I would not do this wickedness of
not fighting; but there must be haste.' The good knight, who well knew
the gentle heart of Captain Jacob, commended him marvellously, and said
to him, by the mouth of his interpreter, 'My dear comrade and friend,
never did your heart imagine wickedness. Here is my lord of Nemours, who
ha