There were at La Fere some gentlemen charged to find the dead body of M. de Bois-Dauphin the elder, who had been killed in the battle; they asked me to go with them to the camp, to pick him out, if we could, among the dead; but it was not possible to recognize him, the bodies being all far gone in corruption, and their faces changed. We saw more than half a league round us the earth all covered with the dead; and hardly stopped there, because of the stench of the dead men and their horses; and so many blue and green flies rose from them, bred of the moisture of the bodies and the heat of the sun, that when they were up in the air they hid the sun. It was wonderful to hear them buzzing; and where they settled, there they infected the air, and brought the plague with them. Mon petit maistre, I wish you had been there with me, to experience the smells, and make report thereof to them that were not there.
I was very weary of the place; I prayed M. le Marechal to let me leave it, and feared I should be ill there; for the wounded men stank past all bearing, and they died nearly all, in spite of everything we did. He got surgeons to finish the treatment of them, and sent me away with his good favour. He wrote to the King of the diligence I had shown toward the poor wounded. Then I returned to Paris, where I found many more gentlemen, who had been wounded and gone thither after the battle.
THE JOURNEY TO THE CAMP AT AMIENS. 1558
The King sent me to Dourlan, under conduct of Captain Gouast; with fifty men-at-arms, for fear I should be taken by the enemy; and seeing we were always in alarms on the way, I made my man let down, and made him the master; for I got on his horse, which carried my valise, and could go well if we had to make our escape, and I took his cloak and hat and gave him my mount, which was a good little mare; he being in front, you would have taken him for the master and me for the servant The garrison inside Dourlan, when they saw us, thought we were the enemy, and fired their cannon at us. Captain Gouast, my conductor, made signs to them with his hat that we were not the enemy; at last they ceased firing, and we entered Dourlan, to our great relief.
Five or six days before this, a sortie had been made from Dourlan; wherein many captains and brave soldiers had been killed or wounded: and among the wounded was Captain Saint Aubin, vaillant comme l' espce, a great friend of M. de Guise: for whose sake chiefly the King had sent me there. Who, being attacked with a quartan fever, yet left his bed to command the greater part of his company. A Spaniard, seeing him in command, perceived he was a captain, and shot him through the neck with an arquebus. Captain Saint Aubin thought himself killed; and by this fright I protest to God he lost his quartan fever, and was forever free of it. I dressed him, with Antoine Portail, surgeon-in-ordinary of the King; and many other soldiers. Some died, others got off with the loss of an arm or a leg or an eye, and said they had got off cheap, to be alive at all. Then, the enemy having broken up their camp, I returned to Paris.
I say nothing here of mon petit maistre, who was more comfortable in his house than I at the wars.
THE JOURNEY TO BOURGES. 1562
The King with his camp was but a short time at Bourges, till those within the walls should surrender; and they came out with their goods saved. I know nothing worth remembering, but that a boy of the King's kitchen, having come near the walls of the town before the agreement had been signed, cried with a loud voice, "Huguenot, Huguenot, shoot here, shoot here," having his arm thrown up and his hand spread out; a soldier shot his hand right through with a bullet. When he was thus shot, he came to find me to dress him. And the Constable seeing the boy in tears, with his hand all bloody, asked who had wounded him: then a gentleman who had seen him shot said it served him right, because he kept calling "Huguenot, hit here, aim here." And then the Constable said, this Huguenot was a good shot and a good fellow, for most likely if he had chosen to fire at the boy's head, he would have hit it even more easily than his hand. I dressed the kitchen boy, who was very ill. He recovered, but with no power in his hand: and from that time his comrades called him "Huguenot": he is still living now.
THE JOURNEY TO ROUEN. 1562
Now, as for the capture of Rouen, they killed many of our men both before and at the attack: and the very next day after we had entered the town, I trepanned eight or nine of our men, who had been wounded with stones as they were on the breach. The air was so malignant, that many died, even of quite small wounds, so that some thought the bullets had been poisoned; and those within the town said the like of us; for though they had within the town all that was needful, yet all the same they died like those outside.