Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/453

1536.] summer heats, while his army melted away from him with famine and disease. Da Leyva, his ablest commander, and thirty thousand veterans, miserably perished. He escaped only from being driven into the sea by a retreat; and crept back into Italy with the broken remnant of his forces, baffled and humiliated in the only European war into which no fault of his own had plunged him.

Of the feelings with which these events were regarded by Henry, we have little evidence. No positive results followed from the first interchange of messages; but Charles so far endured the tone in which his advances had been received, that fresh communications of moderate friendliness were interchanged through Sir Gregory Cassalis at the beginning of the summer. In July, Henry offered his services as a mediator with the Court of France both to the Emperor and to the Queen Regent of the Netherlands. At the same time English engineers were in the French camp in Provence, perhaps as professional students of the art of war, perhaps as volunteers indirectly countenanced by the Government. The quarrel, in reality, admitted of no