constraint." It will easily be conceived that such an emancipation insured Guise the suffrages of the fair and influential class who benefited by it. From his first arrival at the French court he seems to have made it his study to win universal favour; and he was so promptly successful that, at the end of a very few months, he had conquered the goodwill of both nobility and army. He took pains to study and adapt his conduct to the character of all with whom he came in contact, thus laying the foundation of the long popularity which he and his successors enjoyed in France. But courtly pleasures and diversions were quickly to be succeeded by the sterner business of war. At his death, Louis XII. had left all things prepared for an Italian campaign; and Francis, eager to signalise his accession by the recovery of the Milanese, moved southwards in the month of August 1515, at the head of the finest troops that had yet crossed the boundary line between France and Italy. His army consisted of fifteen thousand excellent cavalry, twenty-two thousand lansquenets, fourteen thousand French and Gascon infantry, besides pioneers and a numerous artillery. The Constable of Bourbon led the van, the Duke of Alençon commanded the rear; Francis himself headed the main body, accompanied by Duke Anthony of Lorraine, (eldest brother of Guise,) with Bayard for his lieutenant, and by the Duke of Gueldres, captain-general of the lansquenets, whose lieutenant was the Count de Guise. If the army was good, none, assuredly, ever reckoned greater warriors amongst its leaders. Guise, during the passage of the Alps--accomplished by extraordinary labour, and which completely surprised the enemy--made himself remarkable by his constancy and activity, by the wisdom of his counsels, and by his generosity to the soldiers, thus further augmenting the affection they already bore him. Bayard and other illustrious officers formed his habitual society; and in him they found the most cordial and affable of comrades, as well as the most zealous advocate of their interests with the king. Devoted to his sovereign, Guise, when Francis somewhat over-hastily promised the Swiss an exorbitant sum of money as the price of the Milanese, nobly offered to contribute to it to the extent of all he possessed. The treaty, however, was broken by the Swiss. Steel, not gold, was to settle the dispute; and the plains of Marignano already trembled at the approach of the hostile armies. At the age of eighteen, Guise found himself general-in-chief of twenty thousand men. The Duke of Gueldres, having been recalled to his dominions by an invasion of the Brabanters, transferred his command to his young lieutenant, at the unanimous entreaty of the lansquenets, and in preference to all the French princes there present. In the quickly ensuing battle, Guise showed himself worthy of his high post. In the course of the combat, when the Swiss, with lowered pikes and in stern silence,