asked for with a view to putting the French army in a worse position. As
a fact the night had scarcely come when a terrible storm arose, and so
long as darkness lasted, great rumblings were heard in the Apennines, and
the sky was brilliant with lightning. At break of day, however, it
seemed to be getting a little calmer, though the Taro, only a streamlet
the day before, had become a torrent by this time, and was rapidly
rising. So at six in the morning, the king, ready armed and on
horseback, summoned Commines and bade him make his way to the rendezvous
that the Venetian 'proveditori' had assigned. But scarcely had he
contrived to give the order when loud cries were heard coming from the
extreme right of the French army. The Stradiotes, under cover of the
wood stretching between the two camps, had surprised an outpost, and
first cutting the soldiers' throats, were carrying off their heads in
their usual way at the saddle-bow. A detachment of cavalry was sent in
pursuit; but, like wild animals, they had retreated to their lair in the
woods, and there disappeared.

This unexpected engagement, in all probability arranged beforehand by the
Spanish and German envoys, produced on the whole army the effect of a
spark applied to a train of gunpowder. Commines and the Venetian
'proveditori' each tried in vain to arrest the combat an either side.
Light troops, eager for a skirmish, and, in the usual fashion of those
days, prompted only by that personal courage which led them on to danger,
had already come to blows, rushing down into the plain as though it were
an amphitheatre where they might make a fine display of arms. Far a
moment the young king, drawn on by example, was an the point of
forgetting the responsibility of a general in his zeal as a soldier; but
this first impulse was checked by Marechal de Gie, Messire Claude de la
Chatre de Guise, and M. de la Trimauille, who persuaded Charles to adopt
the wiser plan, and to cross the Taro without seeking a battle,--at the