15,000 men at arms.
32,000 cavalrymen.
89,000 arquebusiers.
140,000 volunteers.
That is to say, 276,000 stout soldiers, all well equipped and provisioned for six months and four days. To which were to be added:—
11,200 cannon.
47,000 double cannon, etc.
The good old Giant felt very grateful; but he swore, nevertheless, a round oath that there was no need for him to accept so great an army. Where was he to put two hundred and seventy-six thousand soldiers? Where could he store away fifty-eight thousand cannon? If he could only be sure that his Gargantua would come home in time, why, he wouldn't care for any army at all!
"If my boy Gargantua should once get among that Picrochole gang, he would scatter them over the border quicker than they ever crossed it," he was saying to himself all the time.
Meanwhile, that rogue Picrochole was going on at such a rate with his pastime of cursing, killing, cutting, and slashing at men, and ravaging vineyards, and burning houses, that Grandgousier found that he had really to do something that would strike terror. So he sent another Royal Messenger to his friends the Princes, telling them that he would be satisfied, for the present, with
2,500 men-at-arms.
66,000 infantry.
26,000 arquebusiers.
22,000 pioneers.
6,000 light cavalry.
122,500 men, all to be well equipped and provisioned by his friends, as promised. He added, in a postscript, that all else he needed would be two hundred pieces of heavy artillery.
THE ADVANCE GUARD STARTS.