This meeting has remained celebrated in history far more for its royal pomp, and for the personal incidents which were connected with it, than for its political results.  It was called The Field of Cloth of Gold; and the courtiers who attended the two sovereigns felt bound to almost rival them in sumptuousness, “insomuch,” says the contemporary Martin du Bellay, “that many bore thither their mills, their forests, and their meadows on their backs.”  Henry viii. had employed eleven hundred workmen, the most skilful of Flanders and Holland, in building a quadrangular palace of wood, one hundred and twenty-eight feet long every way; on one side of the entrance-gate was a fountain, covered with gilding, and surmounted by a statue of Bacchus, round which there flowed through subterranean pipes all sorts of wines, and which bore in letters of gold the inscription, “Make good cheer, who will;” and on the other side a column, supported by four lions, was surmounted by a statue of Cupid armed with bow and arrows.  Opposite the palace was erected a huge figure of a savage wearing the arms of his race, with this inscription, chosen by Henry viii.:  “He whom I back wins.”  The frontage was covered outside with canvas painted to represent freestone; and the inside was hung with rich tapestries.  Francis I., emulous of equalling his royal neighbor in magnificence, had ordered to be erected close to Ardres an immense tent, upheld in the middle by a colossal pole firmly fixed in the ground and with pegs and cordage all around it.  Outside, the tent, in the shape of a dome, was covered with cloth of gold; and, inside, it represented a sphere with a ground of blue velvet and studded with stars, like the firmament.  At each angle of the large tent there was a small one equally richly decorated.  But before the two sovereigns exchanged visits, in the midst of all these magnificent preparations, there arose a violent hurricane, which tore up the pegs and split the cordage of the French tent, scattered them over the ground, and forced Francis I. to take up his quarters in an old castle near Ardres.  When the two kings’ two chief councillors, Cardinal Wolsey on one side and Admiral Bonnivet on the other, had regulated the formalities, on the 7th of June, 1520, Francis I. and Henry viii. set out on their way, at the same hour and the same pace, for their meeting in the valley of Ardres, where a tent had been prepared for them.  As they drew near, some slight anxiety was manifested by the escort of the King of England, amongst whom a belief prevailed that that of the King of France was more numerous; but it was soon perceived to be nothing of the sort.  The two kings, mounted upon fine horses and superbly dressed, advanced towards one another; and Henry viii.’s horse stumbled, which his servants did not like.  The two kings saluted each other with easy grace, exchanged embraces without getting off their horses, dismounted, and proceeded arm-in-arm to the tent where