It was the cue of Mary’s foes to represent Bothwell as an ungainly, stupid, cowardly, vicious monster: because, he being such a man, what a wretch must the Queen be who could love him! ‘Which love, whoever saw not, and yet hath seen him, will perhaps think it incredible.... But yet here there want no causes, for there was in them both a likeness, if not of beauty or outward things, nor of virtues, yet of most extream vices.’[9] Buchanan had often celebrated, down to December 1566, Mary’s extreme virtues. To be sure his poem, recited shortly before Darnley’s death, may have been written almost as early as James’s birth, in readiness for the feast at his baptism, and before Mary’s intrigue with Bothwell could have begun. In any case, to prove Bothwell’s cowardice, some ally of Buchanan’s cites his behaviour at Carberry Hill, where he wishes us to believe that Bothwell showed the white feather of Mary’s ‘pretty venereous pidgeon.’ As a witness, he cites du Croc, the French Ambassador, an aged and sagacious man. To du Croc he has appealed, to du Croc he shall go. That Ambassador writes: ‘He’ (Bothwell) ‘told me that there must be no more parley, for he saw that the enemy was approaching, and had already crossed the burn. He said that, if I wished to resemble the man who tried to arrange a treaty between the forces of Scipio and Hannibal, their armies being ready to join in battle, like the two now before us, and who failed, and, wishing to remain neutral, took a point of vantage, and beheld the best sport that ever he saw in his life, why then I should act like that man, and would greatly enjoy the spectacle of a good fight.’ Bothwell’s memory was inaccurate, or du Croc has misreported his anecdote, but he was certainly both cool and classical on an exciting occasion. Du Croc declined the invitation; he was not present when Bothwell refused to fight a champion of the Lords, but he goes on: ‘I am obliged to say that I saw a great leader, speaking with great confidence, and leading his forces boldly, gaily, and skilfully.... I admired him, for he saw that his foes were resolute, he could not be sure of the loyalty of half of his own men, and yet he was quite unmoved.’[10] Bothwell, then, was neither dolt, lout, nor coward, as Buchanan’s ally wishes us to believe, for the purpose of disparaging the taste of a Queen, Buchanan’s pupil, whose praises he had so often sung.