But Henry did not wait for the attack.  He had changed his plan, and, for once in his life, substituted extreme caution for his constitutional temerity.  Neither awaiting the assault upon his entrenchments nor seeking his enemy in the open field, he ordered the whole camp to be broken up, and on the 20th of April raised the siege.

Farnese marched into Rouen, where the Leaguers were received with tumultuous joy, and this city, most important for the purposes of the League and for Philip’s ulterior designs, was thus wrested from the grasp just closing upon it.  Henry’s main army now concentrated itself in the neighbourhood of Dieppe, but the cavalry under his immediate superintendence continued to harass the Leaguers.  It was now determined to lay siege to Caudebec, on the right bank of the Seine, three leagues below Rouen; the possession of this place by the enemy being a constant. danger and difficulty to Rouen, whose supplies by the Seine were thus cut off.

Alexander, as usual, superintended the planting of the batteries against the place.  He had been suffering during the whole campaign with those dropsical ailments which were making life a torture to him; yet his indomitable spirit rose superior to his physical disorders, and he wrought all day long on foot or on horseback, when he seemed only fit to be placed on his bed as a rapid passage to his grave.  On this occasion, in company with the Italian engineer Properzio, he had been for some time examining with critical nicety the preliminaries, for the siege, when it was suddenly observed by those around him that he was growing pale.  It then appeared that he had received a musket-ball between the wrist and the elbow, and had been bleeding profusely; but had not indicated by a word or the movement of a muscle that he had been wounded, so intent was he upon carrying out the immediate task to which he had set himself.  It was indispensable, however, that he should now take to his couch.  The wound was not trifling, and to one in his damaged and dropsical condition it was dangerous.  Fever set in, with symptoms of gangrene, and it became necessary to entrust the command of the League to Mayenne.  But it was hardly concealed from Parma that the duke was playing a double game.  Prince Ranuccio, according to his father’s express wish, was placed provisionally at the head of the Flemish forces.  This was conceded; however, with much heart-burning, and with consequences easily to be imagined.

Meantime Caudebec fell at once.  Henry did nothing to relieve it, and the place could offer but slight resistance to the force arrayed against it.  The bulk of the king’s army was in the neighbourhood of Dieppe, where they had been recently strengthened by twenty companies of Netherlanders and Scotchmen brought by Count Philip Nassau.  The League’s headquarters were in the village of Yvetot, capital of the realm of the whimsical little potentate so long renowned under that name.