Marguerite as ruler of the Low Countries], wrote the Florentine minister to Lorenzo de’ Medici, “asks for nought but war against the Most Christian king; she thinks of nought but keeping up and fanning the kindled fire, and she has all the game in her hands, for the King of England and the emperor have full confidence in her, and she does with them just as she pleases.”  This was all that was gained during the year of Julius II.’s death by Louis XII.’s attempts to break up or weaken the coalition against France; and these feeble diplomatic advantages were soon nullified by the unsuccess of the French expedition in Milaness.  Louis de la Tremoille had once more entered it with a strong army; but he was on bad terms with his principal lieutenant, John James Trivulzio, over whom he had not the authority wielded by the young and brilliant Gaston de Foix; the French were close to Novara, the siege of which they were about to commence; they heard that a body of Swiss was advancing to enter the place; La Tremoille shifted his position to oppose them, and on the 5th of June, 1513, he told all his captains in the evening that “they might go to their sleeping-quarters and make good cheer, for the Swiss were not yet ready to fight, not having all their men assembled;” but early next morning the Swiss attacked the French camp.  “La Tremoille had hardly time to rise, and, with half his armor on, mount his horse; the Swiss outposts and those of the French were already at work pell-mell over against his quarters.”  The battle was hot and bravely contested on both sides; but the Swiss by a vigorous effort got possession of the French artillery, and turned it against the infantry of the lanzknechts, which was driven in and broken.  The French army abandoned the siege of Novara, and put itself in retreat, first of all on Verceil, a town of Piedmont, and then on France itself.  “And I do assure you,” says Fleuranges, an eye-witness and partaker in the battle, “that there was great need of it; of the men-at-arms there were but few lost, or of the French foot; which turned out a marvellous good thing for the king and the kingdom, for they found him very much embroiled with the English and other nations.”  War between, France and England had recommenced at sea in 1512:  two squadrons, one French, of twenty sail, and the other English, of more than forty, met on the 10th of August somewhere off the island of Ushant; a brave Breton, Admiral Herve Primoguet, aboard of “the great ship of the Queen of France,” named the Cordeliere, commanded the French squadron, and Sir Thomas Knyvet, a young sailor “of more bravery than experience,” according to the historians of his own country, commanded, on board of a vessel named the Regent, the English squadron.  The two admirals’ vessels engaged in a deadly duel; but the French admiral, finding himself surrounded by superior forces, threw his grappling-irons on to the English vessel, and, rather than surrender, set fire to the two admirals’ ships, which blew up at the same time, together with their crews of two thousand men.