wide: "I rejoice," he said, "that the enemy have at last overthrown this barrier, more useful to them than to you. You have so often visited them in their camp, that it is only just they should have an opportunity of reconnoitring the town upon whose capture they so boastfully reckoned." Charles ordered the assault; but when his troops saw the French crowning the breach, with Guise at their head, they recoiled as if already attacked, and neither entreaties nor threats could move them forward. "How is it," the Emperor had exclaimed with a great oath, when he saw the gaping breach, "that they do not enter? It is so large and level with the ditch; _vertu de Dieu!_ what means this?" He had himself conveyed in a litter to the foremost ranks, to animate the soldiers by his presence. When he beheld their retreat, he mournfully desired to be carried back to his quarters. "Formerly," he said, "I was followed to the fight, but I see that I have now no men around me; I must bid adieu to empire and immure myself in a monastery; before three years are over, I will turn Franciscan." Finally, on the 26th December, provisions running short, and his army weakened one-third by sickness and the sword, Charles, with a sad heart, raised the siege, uttering, in the bitterness of his shame and disappointment, the well-known words, "I plainly see that Fortune, like a true woman, prefers a young king to an old emperor." The imperial camp and artillery crossed the Moselle, and in the night the Duke of Alva evacuated his position, leaving behind a quantity of stores and tents. Guise, who had expressed, that very evening, in a letter to his brother the Cardinal, his conviction that the Emperor would never endure the shame of abandoning the siege, was greatly astonished in the morning to find that the enemy had decamped. His skill and constancy had triumphed, and France was saved from invasion. When he reappeared at court, the King embraced him with transport, and called him his brother. "You have vanquished me as well as the Emperor," said Henry, "by the obligations you have laid me under."