CH. XVII.—How the Duke of Orleans and his Army were delivered upon Terms of Accommodation from the dire Misery they suffered during their being besieged in Novara; and of the Arrival of the Swiss that came to the Relief of the King and the said Duke of Orleans.—1495. The Marshal de Gié went into the town of Novara, with other commissioners deputed by the Duke of Milan, and dismissed the Duke of Orleans, and some few of his attendants, to their very great satisfaction. Those who were in the place were so pressed with hunger and sickness, that the marshal was forced to leave his nephew Monsieur de Romefort[450] as an hostage, promising they should all be at liberty to depart within three days. You have heard how the Bailiff of Dijon had been sent into Switzerland to raise five thousand men in all the cantons; but when the Duke of Orleans marched out of Novara they were not arrived; and it was well they were not, for had they joined our army, certainly (at least in my judgment) we should have fought a battle; but if we had been sure that their number would be far greater than we expected, we could not have stayed till their arrival, by reason of the extreme famine in the town, where two thousand people were already dead, some with hunger, some with disease, and the rest were so lean and meagre they looked more like dead than living people; and, truly, I believe never men endured more misery (unless, perhaps, at the siege of Jerusalem). All which had been prevented, if they had been so prudent as to have brought in all the corn and provisions about the town upon their first coming into it: had they acted so wisely they had never plunged themselves into those exigencies, for the enemy would have been obliged to have abandoned the siege, and to have marched shamefully off.