of Teutschland) from the troubled sea of German things, by aid of
Moritz now KUR-SACHSEN, and of Albert; and would not throw them in
again, according to bargain, when Peace, the PEACE OF PASSAU came.
How Kaiser Karl determined to have them back before the year
ended, cost what it might; and Henry II. to keep them, cost what
it might. How Guise defended, with all the Chivalry of France;
and Kaiser Karl besieged, [19th October, 1552, and onwards.] with
an Army of 100,000 men, under Duke Alba for chief captain.
Siege protracted into midwinter; and the "sound of his cannon
heard at Strasburg," which is eighty miles off, "in the winter
nights." [Kohler, Reichs-Historie, p. 453;--
and more especially Munzbelustigungen
(Nurnberg, 1729-1750), ix. 121-129. The Year of this Volume, and
of the Number in question, is 1737; the MUNZE or Medal "recreated
upon" in of Henri II.]

It had depended upon Albert, who hung in the distance with an army
of his own, whether the Siege could even begin; but he joined the
Kaiser, being reconciled again; and the trenches opened. By the
valor of Guise and his Chivalry,--still more perhaps by the iron
frosts and by the sleety rains of Winter, and the hungers and the
hardships of a hundred thousand men, digging vainly at the
ice-bound earth, or trampling it when sleety into seas of mud, and
themselves sinking in it, of dysentery, famine, toil and despair,
as they cannonaded day and night,--Metz could not be taken.
"Impossible!" said the Generals with one voice, after trying it
for a couple of months. "Try it one other ten days," said the
Kaiser with a gloomy fixity; "let us all die, or else do it!"
They tried, with double desperation, another ten days; cannon
booming through the winter midnight far and wide, four score miles