The movements of Francis at this crisis become important in view of the possibility of the publication in any form of the Verrazzano letter at Lyons, at the last mentioned date, or of the possession of a copy of it there as claimed by Carli in his letter.  The army of the emperor, under Pescara and Bourbon, crossed the Alps and entered Provence early in July, and before the date of the Verrazzano letter. [Footnote:  Letter of Bourbon.  Dyer’s Europe, 442.] The intention to do so was known by Francis some time previously.  He wrote on the 28th of June from Amboise, near Tours, to the Provencaux that he would march immediately to their relief; [Footnote:  Sismondi, xvi. 216, 217.] and on the 2d of July he announced in a letter to his parliament:  “I am going to Lyons to prevent the enemy from entering the kingdom, and I can assure you that Charles de Bourbon is not yet in France.” [Footnote:  Gaillard, Histoire de Francois Premier, tom.  III, 172 (Paris, 1769).] He had left his residence at Blois and his capital, and was thus actually engaged in collecting his forces together, on the 8th of July, when the Verrazzano letter is dated.  He did not reach Lyons until after the 4th of August, as is correctly stated in the Carli letter. [Footnote:  Letter of Moncada in Doc. ined. para la Hist. de Espana. tom.  XXIV, 403, and Letters of Pace to Wolsey in State Papers of the reign of Henry VIII, vol.  Iv, Part I, 589, 606.]

The author of the Carli letter, whether the person he pretends to have been or not, asserts that news of the arrival of Verrazzano at Dieppe on his return from his voyage of discovery had reached Lyons, and that the navigator himself was expected soon to be in that city for the purpose of conferring with its merchants on the subject of the new countries which he had discovered, and had described in a letter to the king, a copy of which letter was enclosed.  He thus explicitly declares not only that news of the discovery had reached Lyons, but that the letter to the king was known to the merchants at that place, and that a copy of it was then actually in his possession and sent with his own.  The result of the expedition was, therefore, notorious, and the letter had attained general publicity at Lyons, without the presence there of either Francis or Verrazzano.

This statement must be false.  Granting that such a letter, as is ascribed to Verrazzano, had been written, it was impossible that this obscure young man at Lyons, hundreds of miles from Dieppe, Paris and Blois, away from the king and court and from Verrazzano, not only at a great distance from them all, but at the point to which the king was hastening, and had not reached, on his way to the scene of war in the southern portion of his kingdom, could have come into the possession of this document in less than a month after it purports to have been written for the king in a port far in the north, on the coast of Normandy.  It obviously could not have been delivered to him personally by