Guise, and everywhere saying, “If I cannot keep you from fear, I will keep you from harm.” “My God,” he had exclaimed, as he started from Fontainebleau, “how dear Thou sellest me my kingdom!” The people recovered courage and confidence; they rose in a body; forty thousand armed militiamen defiled, it is said, before the king. The army arrived by forced marches, and took post between Paris and Chateau-Thierry. [Illustration: Claude de Lorraine, Duke of Guise----130] Charles V. was not rash; he fell back to Crespy in Laonness, some few leagues from his Low Countries. Negotiations were opened; and Francis I., fearing least Henry VIII., being master of Boulogne, should come and join Charles V., ordered his negotiator, Admiral d’Annebaut, to accept the emperor’s offers, “for fear lest he should rise higher in his demands when he knew that Boulogne was in the hands of the King of England.” The demands were hard, but a little less so than those made in 1540; Charles V. yielded on some special points, being possessed beyond everything with the desire of securing Francis I.’s co-operation in the two great contests he was maintaining, against the Turks in eastern Europe and against the Protestants in Germany. Francis I. conceded everything in respect of the European policy in order to retain his rights over Milaness and to recover the French towns on the Somme. Peace was signed at Crespy on the 18th of September, 1544; and it was considered so bad an one that the dauphin thought himself bound to protest, first of all secretly before notaries and afterwards at Fontainebleau, on the 12th of December, in the presence of three princes of the royal house. This feeling was so general that several great bodies, amongst others the Parliament of Toulouse (on the 22d of January, 1545), followed the dauphin’s example.