[Illustration:  Bayard’s Farewell——­358]

Bayard had good reason for being in such a hurry to rejoin his comrades-in-arms, and not miss the battle he foresaw.  All were as full of it as he was.  After the capture of Brescia, Gaston de Foix passed seven or eight days more there, whilst Bayard was confined by his wound to his bed.  “The prince went, once at least, every day to see the good knight, the which he comforted as best he might, and often said to him, ’Hey!  Sir Bayard, my friend, think about getting cured, for well I know that we shall have to give the Spaniards battle between this and a month; and, if so it should be, I had rather have lost all I am worth than not have you there, so great confidence have I in you.’  ’Believe me, my lord,’ answered Bayard, ’that if so it is that there is to be a battle, I would, as well for the service of the king my master as for love of you and for mine own honor, which is before everything, rather have myself carried thither in a litter than not be there at all.’  The Duke of Nemours made him a load of presents according to his power, and one day sent him five hundred crowns, the which the good knight gave to the two archers who had staid with him when he was wounded.”

Louis XII. was as impatient to have the battle delivered as Bayard was to be in it.  He wrote, time after time, to his nephew Gaston that the moment was critical, that Emperor Maximilian harbored a design of recalling the five thousand lanzknechts he had sent as auxiliaries to the French army, and that they must be made use of whilst they were still to be had; that, on the other hand, Henry VIII., King of England, was preparing for an invasion of France, and so was Ferdinand, King of Spain, in the south:  a victory in the field was indispensable to baffle all these hostile plans.  It was Louis XII.’s mania to direct, from Paris or from Lyons, the war which he was making at a distance, and to regulate its movements as well as its expenses.  The Florentine ambassador, Pandolfini, was struck with the perilousness of this mania; and Cardinal d’Amboise was no longer by to oppose it.  Gaston de Foix asked for nothing better than to act with vigor.  He set out to march on Ravenna, in hopes that by laying siege to this important place he would force a battle upon the Spanish army, which sought to avoid it.  There was a current rumor in Italy that this army, much reduced in numbers and cooled in ardor, would not hold its own against the French if it encountered them.  Some weeks previously, after the siege of Bologna had been raised_ by the Spaniards, there were distributed about at Rome little bits of paper having on them, “If anybody knows where the Spanish army happens to be, let him inform the sacristan of peace; he shall receive as reward a lump of cheese.”  Gaston de Foix arrived on the 8th of April, 1512, before Ravenna.  He there learned that, on the 9th of March, the ambassador of France had been sent away from London by Henry VIII.