32 AMBROISE PARfe 



Now we had certain prisoners, who had been made 



secretly to understand our last determination and despera- 

 tion; these prisoners M. de Guise sent away on parole, who 

 being come to their camp, lost no time in saying what we 

 had told them; which restrained the great and vehement 

 desire of the enemy, so that they were no longer eager to 

 enter the town to cut our throats and enrich themselves 

 with the spoils. The Emperor, having heard the decision 

 of this great warrior, M. de Guise, put water in his wine, 

 and restrained his fury; saying that he could not enter 

 the town save with vast butchery and carnage, and shed- 

 ding of much blood, both of those defending and of those 

 attacking, and they would be all dead together, and in the 

 end he would get nothing but ashes; and afterward men 

 might say it was a like destruction to that of the town of 

 Jerusalem, made of old time by Titus and Vespasian. 



The Emperor thus having heard our last resolve, and 

 seeing how little he had gained by his attack, sappings, and 

 mines, and the great plague that was through all his camp, 

 and the adverse time of the year, and the want of victuals 

 and of money, and how his soldiers were disbanding 

 themselves and going off in great companies, decided at last 

 to raise the siege and go away, with the cavalry of his 

 vanguard, and the greater part of the artillery and engines 

 of war. The Marquis of Brandebourg was the last to 

 budge from his place; he had with him some troops o 

 Spaniards and Bohemians, and his German regiments, and 

 there he stopped for a day and a half, to the great regret of 

 M. de Guise, who brought four pieces of artillery out 

 of the town, which he fired on him this side and that, to 

 hurry him off: and off he went, sure enough, and all his men 

 with him. 



When he was a quarter of a league from Metz, he was 

 seized with a panic lest our cavalry should fall upon his tail ; 

 so he set fire to his store of powder, and left behind him 

 some pieces of artillery, and a quantity of baggage, which he 

 could not take along with him, because their vanguard and 

 their great cannons had broken and torn up the roads. Our 

 cavalry were longing with all their hearts to issue from 

 the town and attack him behind; but M. de Guise would 





