When the Good Knight had heard all the herald had to say, he asked no man's advice, but replied with a smile: "My friend, I am surprised at these gracious messages from your masters, whom I do not know. Herald, you will return and say to them that as the King has done me the honour to trust me, I hope with God's help to keep this frontier town so long that your captains will be more tired of besieging it than I shall to be besieged...." Then the herald was well feasted and sent away. He bore to the camp the Good Knight's reply, which was by no means pleasant to my lords, and there was present a captain who had seen service under Bayard in Italy. He assured the company that so long as the Good Knight was alive they would never enter into Mézières; that when cowards fought under him they became brave men, and that all his company would die with him at the breach before the enemy set foot in the town ... and that his mere presence was of more value than two thousand men.... This was not pleasant to hear, and the Emperor's captains made a furious attack with their artillery on the ramparts, which continued during four days. The Good Knight noticed that special damage was done to the walls from the camp of Count Sickingen, and considered by what means he could be induced to go back the other side of the river. So he wrote a letter to the lord Robert de la Marck, who was at Sedan, in which he hinted at a rumour he had heard that the Count might be persuaded to become an ally of the King of France. Bayard added that he desired nothing more, but Sickingen must lose no time, for his camp would soon be hemmed in by the approaching Swiss and by a sortie well timed from the town. This information was to be kept quite private.... The letter was written giving other particulars, and was then given to a peasant with a crown and the order to take it at once to Sedan from the Captain Bayard. The good man set off with it, but, as Bayard had foreseen, he had not gone far before he was taken and gave up the letter to save his life. This message greatly troubled Count Sickingen, who was already suspicious of the other general, and was not slow to imagine that he had been betrayed and left in the post of danger. The more he thought of it the more his rage increased, and at last he gave orders to sound the retreat and cross the river, to the dismay and indignation of Count Nassau, who saw that this was practically raising the siege. Angry messages passed between the two generals, until at length they were on the point of actual fighting.