Henry, having appointed the queen regent during his absence, passed over to Calais with thirty thousand men, accompanied by the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, Fitzalan earl of Arundel, Vere earl of Oxford, the earl of Surrey, Paulet Lord St. John, Lord Ferrers of Chartley, Lord Mountjoy, Lord Grey of Wilton, Sir Anthony Brown, Sir Francis Bryan, and the most flourishing nobility and gentry of his kingdom. The English army was soon joined by the count de Buren, admiral of Flanders, with ten thousand foot and four thousand horse; and the whole composed an army which nothing on that frontier was able to resist. The chief force of the French armies was drawn to the side of Champagne, in order to oppose the imperialists. The emperor, with an army of near sixty thousand men, had taken the field much earlier than Henry; and not to lose time while he waited for the arrival of his confederate, he sat down before Luxembourg, which was surrendered to him: he thence proceeded to Commercy, on the Meuse, which he took: Ligny met with the same fate: he next laid siege to St. Disier, on the Marne, which, though a weak place, made a brave resistance under the count of Sancerre, the governor, and the siege was protracted beyond expectation. The emperor was employed before this town at the time the English forces were assembled in Picardy. Henry either tempted by the defenceless condition of the French frontier, or thinking that the emperor had first broken his engagement by forming sieges, or, perhaps, foreseeing at last the dangerous consequences of entirely subduing the French power, instead of marching forward to Paris, sat down before Montreuil and Boulogne. The duke of Norfolk commanded the army before Montreuil; the king himself that before Boulogne. Vervin was governor of the latter place, and under him Philip Corse, a brave old soldier, who encouraged the garrison to defend themselves to the last extremity against the English. He was killed during the course of the siege, and the town was immediately surrendered to Henry by the cowardice of Vervin, who was afterwards beheaded for this dishonorable capitulation.