WEDNESDAY, 10th.
1212 London Bridge was nearly consumed by a fire, which broke out at both ends at the same time. In this conflagration near 3000 persons perished, the sides of the bridge being occupied by rows of houses, there was, consequently, no escape for the unfortunate inhabitants, thus hemmed in by the fire on two sides, and the water behind.
1472 The Town of Beauvais saved from falling into the hands of the Burgundians by the courage and zeal of the women, who, when the garrison, exhausted by a long resistance, were on the point of giving way, came to their assistance, led by one Jeanne de Hachette. This heroine herself threw down from the walls the Burgundian officer, who was about to plant his standard on them. Louis XI. made an honourable marriage for her, and commanded that the event should be annually commemorated by a procession, in which the females should walk first; a custom which prevails to this day.
1559 Henry II. of France died of a wound in the eye, received in a tournament from the Count de Montgomery. In his last moments the monarch commanded that the unfortunate, but innocent, cause of his death should not be molested; but, fifteen years after, he was arraigned for the fact, and sacrificed to the revengeful feelings of Catherine de Medicis.
THURSDAY, 11th.
1708 The Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene obtained a great victory over the French at Audenard, or Oudenarde, on the Scheldt.
FRIDAY, 12th.
1536 Death of Erasmus.—He was one of the most learned men of the extraordinary age in which he flourished. Equally courted by the Sovereigns of France and England, and by the Popes of the House of Medici, he could never be induced to abandon the learned pursuits in which he delighted, for the employments or benefices so profusely offered to him. The cotemporary of Luther, it has been said of him, that there was not an error which Luther sought to reform that Erasmus had not made the subject either of severe censure or keen satire; yet, restrained by the natural timidity of his temper, by his love of peace, and hoping that mild measures would produce a gradual amelioration of the vices he so loudly censured, he chose rather to assume the character of a mediator between Luther and the Church of Rome, than openly to join the party of the reformers. He died at Basle, in the sixty-ninth year of his age, and was interred in the Cathedral of that town.
SATURDAY, 13th.
1771 Captain Cook, in the Endeavour, returned to Portsmouth, having sailed round the world.