One of the most interesting things about this fighting is the presence of a numerous body of Englishmen who had joined Biron and Henry of Navarre, under the Earl of Essex. Their Queen had offered a special prize for the first man who should make a successful shot at the defenders of the town; but they do not seem to have distinguished themselves particularly, and at last a hundred of them (chiefly squires) were killed. A hardy specimen of the race, however, is mentioned by Valdory, who evidently kept his eyes open for good work, whether of friend or foe. This Englishman, after receiving four wounds from a cutlass on the head, "pretended to be dead, allowed himself to be stripped by our soldiers, and dragged naked to the ramparts." While he lay there, desirous to make quite sure of their man, the Rouen sentinels (who must have been mariners from Dieppe) dropped a small cannon ball on his stomach, "but he did not seem to feel it," and continued obstinately to remain alive. However, when the Sieur de Canonville took him prisoner and bound up his wounds, with the object, apparently, of getting a ransom from his friends, he seems to have determined that no foreigner should make money out of him, and died. [Illustration: SIR CHRISTOPHER LYTCOT, HIGH SHERIFF OF BERKSHIRE, KNIGHTED BY HENRI IV. AT THE SIEGE OF ROUEN IN 1591. FROM THE BRASS UPON HIS TOMB IN WEST HANNEY CHURCH, NEAR WANTAGE, BERKSHIRE] In the Church of West Hanney, near Wantage, in Berkshire, is the tomb of one of these Englishmen who fought for Henry of Navarre before the walls of Rouen, and it will be an appropriate ending to this chapter of the dead if I close it with his epitaph:-- "Beneath this stone lyeth enterred the corps of Sir Christopher Lytcot, Knight, twice high sheriff of the county of Berk (Husband of two wives both in the sayd countye the former Jane Essex widdowe of Thomas Essex of Beckett House Eq. the later Catherine Young widdowe of Willm Younge of Bastledon Eq) Knighted in the campe before Roane the xvi of Novemb 1591 by the hands of the French Kinge Henry the Fourth of yt name and King of Navarre. Who after his travailes in Germany Italy and Fraunce and the execution of justice unto the glory of God and the good of his country ended his pilgrimage at Bastledon ye xxv of April 1599." [Illustration: DES TODES WAPPENSCHILD] [Illustration: VIEW OF ROUEN, DRAWN BY JACQUES LELIEUR IN 1525] CHAPTER XIII _Life_ "Les gens de Rouen sont honnetes, Grans entrepreneurs d'edifices De theatres et artifices Es entrees des grans seigneurs, Roy prelatz et aultres greigneurs."