Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/897

 50,000 strong. The army of Lorraine under Duke Bernhard and Louis de Nogaret, Cardinal de La Valette (d. 1639), placed itself at Epinal to prevent any junction between Prince Thomas and the army of Gallas. But Gaston of Orleans, the king’s lieutenant at Compiègne, was no more enterprising as a defender of the country than he had been as a rebel and conspirator, and the army itself was only half mobile owing to its rawness and its “trained-band” character, and the Spaniards and Bavarians retired unmolested to oppose Frederick Henry in the Low Countries. They left a garrison in the little fortress of Corbie, which Monsieur’s army recaptured in November. The gallantry of the defenders, which bore heavily on the townspeople, was alloyed with a singular trait of professionalism. The time had come for the Cardinal Infante to distribute his forces in winter quarters, and the garrison of Corbie, it is said, surrendered in good time in order not to be omitted in the allotment of comfortable billets in Belgium.

