The Duke of Montemarciano, nephew of Gregory xiv., had brought two thousand Swiss, furnished by the pontiff to the cause of the League, and the Duke of Lorraine had sent his kinsmen, the Counts Chaligny and Vaudemont, with a force of seven hundred lancers and cuirassiers.

The town of Fere was assigned in pledge to Farnese to hold as a convenient:  mustering-place and station in proximity to his own borders, and, as usual, the chief command over the united armies was placed in his hands.  These arrangements concluded, the allies moved slowly forward much in the same order as in the previous year.  The young Duke of Guise, who had just made his escape from the prison of Tours, where he had been held in durance since the famous assassination of his father and uncle, and had now come to join his uncle Mayenne, led the vanguard.  Ranuccio, son of the duke, rode also in the advance, while two experienced commanders, Vitry and De la Chatre, as well as the famous Marquis del Vasto, formerly general of cavalry in the Netherlands, who had been transferred to Italy but was now serving in the League’s army as a volunteer, were associated with the young princes.  Parma, Mayenne, and Montemarciano rode in the battalia, the rear being under command of the Duke of Aumale and the Count Chaligny.  Wings of cavalry protected the long trains of wagons which were arranged on each flank of the invading army.  The march was very slow, a Farnese’s uniform practice to guard himself scrupulously against any possibility of surprise and to entrench himself thoroughly at nightfall.

By the middle of February they reached the vicinity of Aumale in Picardy.  Meantime Henry, on the news of the advance of the relieving army, had again the same problem to solve that had been presented to him before Paris in the summer of 1590.  Should he continue in the trenches, pressing more and more closely the city already reduced to great straits?  Should he take the open field against the invaders and once more attempt to crush the League and its most redoubtable commander in a general engagement?  Biron strenuously advised the continuance of the siege.  Turenne, now, through his recent marriage with the heiress, called Duc de Bouillon, great head of the Huguenot party in France, counselled as warmly the open attack.  Henry, hesitating more than was customary with him, at last decided on a middle course.  The resolution did not seem a very wise one, but the king, who had been so signally out-generalled in the preceding campaign by the great Italian, was anxious to avoid his former errors, and might perhaps fall into as great ones by attempting two inconsistent lines of action.  Leaving Biron in command of the infantry and a portion of the horse to continue the siege, he took the field himself with the greater part of the cavalry, intending to intercept and harass the enemy and to prevent his manifest purpose of throwing reinforcements and supplies into the invested city.