“I do not trouble myself about the weather or the roads; I am not afraid of those of the Religion, and, as for the passage of the river, which, you say, will take my army twelve days, I have a means of having it accomplished in eight. For I shall send Bassompierre here to conduct it, who has already raised me an army, with which I have just defeated a powerful party, in half the time that I had expected.” “I confess,” observes Bassompierre, “that I felt my heart elated by such praise and by the good opinion that the King entertained of me; and I replied that he might rest assured that the hope that he had conceived of my diligence would not be vain, and that he would shortly have news that would gratify him.” In those days, when the engineers were not yet organised as a distinct branch of the army, and the difficulties of transport were very great, pontoons were seldom carried, unless before the campaign opened it was certain that they would be required; and the army which Bassompierre had undertaken to pass across the Garonne was unprovided with any. Consequently, he had either to wait until a sufficient number could be constructed, which would, of course, entail a considerable delay, or to obtain the best substitutes he could in the towns and villages along the Garonne, and trust that his fortunate star would be in the ascendant during the passage of the river to avert any disaster. He chose the latter alternative, and having established himself at Langon, on the left bank of the Garonne, sent parties of soldiers along both banks to collect every boat of suitable size which they could find. “I caused two boats to be joined into one,” he says, “and laid platforms over them, on which, on October 10, I placed two pieces of artillery, and had two others joined together without platforms, on which I placed the gun-carriages; and in four journeys I passed all the artillery across. And, by the expenditure of a great deal of money, I so contrived matters that in the course of the following day the munitions and provisions were passed across, and the whole army likewise; and we advanced to a town a league beyond the river, where we halted for the night.” A two days’ march brought the army to Saint-Justin d’Armagnac, on the borders of the Grandes Landes and Armagnac. Here Bassompierre received a despatch from Louis XIII, who had left Preignac on the 10th and was now at Roquefort, in which the King expressed himself “extremely pleased with his diligence, by which he had reduced the twelve days allowed by M. de Mayenne for the passage of the Garonne to twenty-four hours.” His Majesty ordered him to send him the Regiment of Champagne and some other troops, which he intended to place in garrison in Béarn, but not to enter the country with the rest of the army, since he feared it would be impossible to provision it.