Thence we went and burned several villages; and the barns were all full of grain, to my very great regret. We came as far as Tournahan, where there was a large tower, whither the enemy withdrew, but we found the place empty: our men sacked it, and blew up the tower with a mine of gunpowder, which turned it upside down. After that, the camp was dispersed, and I returned to Paris. And the day after Chateau le Comte was taken, M. de Vendosme sent a gentleman under orders to the King, to report to him all that had happened, and among other things he told the King I had done very good work dressing the wounded, and had showed him eighteen bullets that I had taken out of their bodies, and there were many more that I had not been able to find or take out; and he spoke more good of me than there was by half. Then the King said he would take me into his service, and commanded M. de Goguier, his first physician, to write me down in the King's service as one of his surgeons-in-ordinary, and I was to meet him at Rheims within ten or twelve days: which I did. And the King did me the honour to command me to live near him, and he would be a good friend to me. Then I thanked him most humbly for the honour he was pleased to do me, in appointing me to serve him.
THE JOURNEY TO METZ. 1552
The Emperor having besieged Metz with more than an hundred and twenty thousand men, and in the hardest time of winter,—it is still fresh in the minds of all—and there were five or six thousand men in the town, and among them seven princes; MM. le Duc de Guise, the King's Lieutenant, d'Enghien, de Conde, de la Montpensier, de la Roche-sur-Yon, de Nemours, and many other gentlemen, with a number of veteran captains and officers: who often sallied out against the enemy (as I shall tell hereafter), not without heavy loss on both sides. Our wounded died almost all, and it was thought the drugs wherewith they were dressed had been poisoned. Wherefore M. de Guise, and MM. the princes, went so far as to beg the King that if it were possible I should be sent to them with a supply of drugs, and they believed their drugs were poisoned, seeing that few of their wounded escaped. My belief is that there was no poison; but the severe cutlass and arquebus wounds, and the extreme cold, were the cause why so many died. The King wrote to M. the Marshal de Saint Andre, who was his Lieutenant at Verdun, to find means to get me into Metz, whatever way was possible. MM. the Marshal de Saint Andre, and the Marshal de Vielleville, won over an Italian captain, who promised to get me into the place, which he did (and for this he had fifteen hundred crowns). The King having heard the promise that the Italian captain had made, sent for me, and commanded me to take of his apothecary, named Daigne, so many and such drugs as I should think necessary for the wounded within the town; which I did, as much as a post-horse could carry. The King gave me messages to M. de Guise, and to the princes and the captains that were in Metz.
When I came to Verdun, some days after, M. the Marshal de Saint Andre got horses for me and for my man, and for the Italian captain, who spoke excellent German, Spanish, and Walloon, beside his own mother-tongue. When we were within eight or ten leagues of Metz, we began to go by night only; and when we came near the enemy's camp I saw, more than a league and a half off, fires lighted all round the town, as if the whole earth were burning; and I believed we could never pass through these fires without being discovered, and therefore hanged and strangled, or cut in pieces, or made to pay a great ransom. To speak truth, I could well and gladly have wished myself back in Paris, for the great danger that I foresaw. God guided our business so well, that we entered into the town at midnight, thanks to a signal the captain had with another captain of the company of M. de Guise; to whom I went, and found him in bed, and he received me with high favour, being right glad at my coming.
I gave him my message as the King had commanded me, and told him I had a little letter for him, and the next day I would not fail to deliver it. Then he ordered me a good lodging, and that I should be well treated, and said I must not fail next morning to be upon the breach, where I should find all the princes and seigneurs, and many captains. Which I did, and they received me with great joy, and did me the honour to embrace me, and tell me I was welcome; adding they would no more be afraid of dying, if they should happen to be wounded.
M. le Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon was the first who entertained me, and inquired what they were saying at the Court concerning the town of Metz. I told him all that I chose to tell. Forthwith he begged me to go and see one of his gentlemen named M. de Magnane, now Chevalier of the Order of the King, and Lieutenant of His Majesty's Guards, who had his leg broken by a cannon-shot. I found him in bed, his leg bent and crooked, without any dressing on it, because a gentleman promised to cure him, having his name and his girdle, with certain words (and the poor patient was weeping and crying out with pain, not sleeping day or night for four days past). Then I laughed at such cheating and false promises; and I reduced and dressed his leg so skilfully that he was without pain, and slept all the night, and afterward, thanks be to God, he was healed, and is still living now, in the King's service. The Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon sent me a cask of wine, bigger than a pipe of Anjou, to my lodging, and told me when it was drunk, he would send me another; that was how he treated me, most generously.
After this, M, de Guise gave me a list of certain captains and seigneurs, and bade me tell them what the King had charged me to say; which I did, and this was to commend him to them, and give them his thanks for the duty they had done and were doing in holding his town of Metz, and that he would remember it. I was more than eight days acquitting myself of this charge, because they were many. First, to all the princes; then to others, as the Duke Horace, the Count de Martigues, and his brother M. de Bauge, the Seigneurs de Montmorency and d'Anville, now Marshal of France, M. de la Chapelle aux Ursins, Bonnivet, Carouge, now Governor of Rouen, the Vidasme de Chartres, the Count de Lude, M. de Biron, now Marshal of France, M. de Randan, la Rochefoucaut, Bordaille, d' Estres the younger, M. de Saint Jehan en pauphine, and many others whom it would take too long to name; and also to many captains, who had all done their duty well for the defence of their lives and of the town. Afterward I asked M. de Guise what it pleased him I should do with the drugs I had brought with me; he bade me distribute them to the surgeons and apothecaries, and principally to the poor wounded soldiers, who were in great numbers in the Hospital. Which I did, and can truly say I could not so much as go and see all the wounded, who kept sending for me to visit and dress them.
All the seigneurs within the town asked me to give special care, above all the rest; to M. de Pienne, who had been wounded, while on the breach, by a stone shot from a cannon, on the temple, with fracture and depression of the bone. They told me that so soon as he received the blow, he fell to the ground as dead, and cast forth blood by the mouth, nose, and ears, with great vomiting, and was fourteen days without being able to speak or reason; also he had tremors of a spasmodic nature, and all his face was swelled and livid, He was trepanned at the side of the temporal muscle, over the frontal bone. I dressed him, with other surgeons, and God healed him; and to-day he is still living, thank God.
The Emperor attacked the town with forty double cannons, and the powder was not spared day or night. So soon as M. de Guise saw the artillery set and pointed to make a breach, he had the nearest houses pulled down and made into ramparts, and the beams and joists were put end to end, and between them faggots, earth, beds, and wool-packs; then they put above them other beams and joists as before. And there was plenty of wood from the houses in the suburbs; which had been razed to the ground, for fear the enemy should get under cover of them, and make use of the wood; it did very well for repairing the breach. Everybody was hard at work carrying earth to repair it, day and night; MM. the princes, the seigneurs, and captains, lieutenants, ensigns, were all carrying the basket, to set an example to the soldiers and citizens to do the like, which they did; even the ladies and girls, and those who had not baskets, made use of cauldrons, panniers, sacks, sheets, and all such things to carry the earth; so that the enemy had no sooner broken down the wall than they found behind it a yet stronger rampart. The wall having fallen, our men cried out at those outside, "Fox, fox, fox," and they vented a thousand insults against one another. M. de Guise forbade any man on pain of death to speak with those outside, for fear there should be some traitor who would betray what was being done within the town. After this order, our men tied live cats to the ends of their pikes, and put them over the wall and cried with the cats, "Miaut, Miaut."
Truly the Imperials were much enraged, having been so long making a breach, at great loss, which was eighty paces wide, that fifty men of their front rank should enter in, only to find a rampart stronger than the wall. They threw themselves upon the poor cats, and shot them with arquebuses as men shoot at the popinjay.