guards, and within a league lay their whole army, which was more numerous than ours, and ready to engage us. However, Monsieur de St. André managed his affairs so prudently, and with so much secrecy, that in ten hours’ time he took the town (which I have seen) by assault[487] and in it there were thirty or forty Spanish gentlemen of good quality slain, and among them the son of the Archbishop of St. James’s[488], besides three or four hundred more. They did not suppose we should have been masters of it so soon, because they knew not the goodness of our cannon, which certainly are the finest and best in Europe. No other but this action happened between these two kings, and this was much to the dishonour of the King of Castile, who had such a numerous army in the field. But when God Almighty is pleased to chastise a nation for its sins, He begins with such small and supportable afflictions; for the King and Queen of Castile were visited afterwards with greater afflictions, and so were we too. The King and Queen of Castile acted very imprudently, and were ill-advised to forswear themselves to our master, especially after he had been so friendly as to restore Roussillon, which had cost his father so much to fortify and defend, and which had been mortgaged to him for 300,000 crowns; all which was remitted to hinder him from disturbing our king in his intended conquest of Naples. Besides which, they renewed the ancient alliances with not only king and king, kingdom and kingdom, but the individual subjects on both sides were mutually bound; and they promised not to interrupt us in our conquest, nor to marry any of their daughters with the houses of either Naples, England, or Flanders; which offer came first from themselves, and was made by one Friar John de Mauleon, on the part of the Queen of Castile. Yet as soon as they saw the war begun, and the king at Rome, they sent their ambassadors to all the neighbouring states to make an alliance against our king; and particularly to Venice, where I was resident at that time; and there the league (which I have spoken of so much) was made between the Pope, the King of the Romans, the Signory of Venice, the Spaniards, and the Duke of Milan; and immediately they began to act offensively against our king, and to declare that their former obligation had become void, and they were no longer bound to observe it, especially that article about the marriage of their daughters (of whom they had four, and but one son), though they first made that offer of themselves, as you have already heard.