Thus far on our side the war was not begun; but the Marshal de Gié sent the king word that he had passed the mountains, and that having sent out a party of forty horse to reconnoitre the enemy, they had been charged by the Estradiots, and one of them (called Lebeuf) being slain, the Estradiots cut off his head, put it upon the top of a lance, carried it to their proveditor, and demanded a ducat. These Estradiots are of the same nature with the Genetaires[414]; they are horse and foot, and habited like Turks, only they wear no turbans upon their heads. They are hardy people, and lie abroad all the year round with their horses; they were all Greeks, from the places which the Venetians possess in those parts, some of them from Naples and Romagna and the Morea, others from Albania and Durazzo. Their horses are all Turkish, and very good; the Venetians employ them often in their wars, and put great confidence in them. I saw them all upon their first landing at Venice, and they mustered in the island where the abbey of St. Nicholas is built, and their number was near fifteen hundred; they are stout, active fellows, and will plague an army terribly when they once undertake it. These Estradiots, as I said before, having beaten our party, pursued them to the marshal’s quarters, where the Swiss were posted, of whom they killed three or four, and carried away their heads according to their custom. For the Venetians, having been at war against the Turks formerly, in the time of Mahomet, the present Turk’s father, Sultan Mahomet would not suffer his soldiers to give quarter, but allowed them a ducat for every head, and the Venetians did the same. My opinion is they did it on purpose to terrify us, and indeed so they did; but the Estradiots themselves were no less affrighted with our artillery; for a shot from a falconet having killed one of their horses, they retired with great precipitation; but in their retreat they took one of our Swiss captains, who had gotten on horseback to watch their retreat, and, being unarmed, was run through the body with a lance. This captain was a wise man, and they carried him before the Marquis of Mantua (who was captain-general for the Venetians) and his uncle, the Lord Rodolph of Mantua, and the Count di Cajazzo, who commanded for the Duke of Milan, and who knew him extremely well. The enemy’s army had taken the field (at least all of them that were joined, for some were still to come up) about eight days before, but lay still in expectation of their confederates; so that the king might have gone back into France without any impediment in the world, had he not squandered away his time to no purpose by the way, as you have heard; but God had ordered it otherwise. CH. VIII.—How the Marshal de Gié withdrew with his Army to the Mountains, and waited until the King came up to him.—1495.