The joy was so much the greater in that it was accompanied by great surprise: save a few members of the king’s council, nobody expected this conquest. “I certainly thought that you must be occupied in preparing for some great exploit, and that you wished to wait until you could apprise me of the execution rather than the design,” wrote Marshal de Brissac to the Duke of Guise, on the 22d of January, from Italy. Foreigners were not less surprised than the French themselves; they had supposed that France would remain for a long while under the effects of the reverse experienced at Saint-Quentin. “The loss of Calais,” said Pope Paul IV., “will be the only dowry that the Queen of England will obtain from her marriage with Philip. For France such a conquest is preferable to that of half the kingdom of England.” When Mary Tudor, already seriously ill, heard the news, she exclaimed from her deathbed, on the 20th of January, “If my heart is opened, there will be found graven upon it the word Calais.” And when the Grand Prior of France, on repairing to the court of his sister, Mary of Lorraine, in Scotland, went to visit Queen Elizabeth, who had succeeded Mary Tudor, she, after she had made him dance several times with her, said to him, “My dear prior, I like you very much, but not your brother, who robbed me of my town of Calais.” Guise was one of those who knew that it is as necessary to follow up a success accomplished as to proceed noiselessly in the execution of a sudden success. When he was master of Calais he moved rapidly upon the neighboring fortresses of Guines and Ham; and he had them in his power within a few days, notwithstanding a resistance more stout than he had encountered at Calais. During the same time the Duke of Nevers, encouraged by such examples, also took the field again, and gained possession, in Champagne and the neighborhood, of the strong castles of Herbemont, Jamoigne, Chigny, Rossignol, and Villemont. Guise had no idea of contenting himself with his successes in the west of France; his ambition carried him into the east also, to the environs of Metz, the scene of his earliest glory. He heard that Vieilleville, who had become governor of Metz, was setting about the reduction of Thionville, “the best picture of a fortress I ever saw,” says Montluc. “I have heard,” wrote Guise to Vieilleville, “that you have a fine enterprise on hand; I pray you do not commence the execution of it, in any fashion whatever, until I be with you: having given a good account of Calais and Guines, as lieutenant-general of his Majesty in this realm, I should be very vexed if there should be done therein anything of honor and importance without my presence.” He arrived before Thionville on the 4th of June, 1558. Vieilleville and his officers were much put out at his interference. “The duke might surely have dispensed with coming,” said D’Estrees, chief officer of artillery; “it will be easy for him to swallow what is all