The Chevalier, Dominique de Gourgues, was a Gascon gentleman, born at Mont de Marsan, in the County of Cominges. His family was one of considerable distinction. It had always been devotedly attached to the Catholic religion, nor had he ever for a moment faltered in the same faith. His career had been a remarkable one, signalized by great valor, and the most extreme vicissitudes of fortune. He had served in the armies of France during the long and capricious struggles in Italy, which had been the chief arena for conflict in the reigns of Charles the Eighth, of Louis XII., of Francis the First, and down to the present period. Here he had associated, under the command of Brissac and others, with that valiant brother Gascon, Blaize de Montluc, who, in his commentaries, would probably have told us much about the prowess of Gourgues, if he had not been so greatly occupied with the narrative of his own.[24] But the forbearance of Montluc has not deprived us of all the testimony which belongs to the fame of the chevalier. Of all the subaltern officers of his time, no one achieved a more brilliant reputation. Among the Gascons, confessedly distinguished above all others by their reckless daring, and headlong eagerness after glory in battle, the courage of Gourgues was such as raised him to the rank of a hero of romance. His youthful eyes had opened upon the latest fields of that race of heroes of whom Bayard was the superior and perhaps the last. He was one of the Sampsons of that wondrous band, whose wars, according to Trivulcio--one not the least remarkable among them,--were those of the giants;--the Swiss, in the fullest vigor of their martial fame, and at the height of their insolence;--the Spaniards, with Hernan de Cordova, the great captain, at their head, and crowning the career of Charles V. with a power and a lustre which his own merits did not deserve;--the Italians, under the sway of, and deriving their spirit from, the fierce martial pontiff, Julius II., and the French, boasting of a cavalry, headed by Bayard, La Palisse and others, worthy of such associates, and such as the armies of Europe had never beheld before. Montluc, who had been trained in part in the same house with Bayard, and Boiteres, who, as a page of the knight _sans peur et sans reproche_, makes a famous figure in the chronicles of _le loyal serviteur_, being among the leaders whom the Chevalier de Gourgues followed into battle. He partook of their spirit, and proved himself worthy to sustain the declining honors of chivalry. But his fortunes were as adverse as his merits were distinguished. With thirty men, near Sienna, in Tuscany, he sustained, for a long time, the shock of a large division of the Spanish army. He saw, at length, every man of his command fall around him, and was made a prisoner. The captive of the Spaniard, in that day, when the emperor of the country and his favorite generals showed themselves