Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/536

516 thither by their own desire for adventure. Never was the uncertainty of war more signally exemplified. Ferdinand had the advantage of a good cause. He had numbers, courage, confidence on his side. The European, in fair battle, man to man, was more than a natch for the Asiatic; yet the campaign was a complete and ruinous failure. He attacked Pesth; but the German troops were beaten back in the assault, and suffered, though but slightly, in a series of insignificant skirmishes. They were disheartened, not by defeat, but by the absence of success, and by a consciousness of Ferdinand's bad generalship. They became disorganized, they broke in pieces, scattered, and retreated in a panic.

The success of his confederate enabled Francis to endure more composedly his own disappointment. He had done little that summer, he said, for want of funds, and want of preparation; when the next year came, with the help of the Turkish fleet, he would carry the world before him. Every day his relations with England were becoming more inimical; but he was in his reckless mood, defiant and indifferent. 'He would give his daughter to be strumpet to a bordel,' he said, 'to be sure of the encounter with the Emperor;' as to Henry, it was enough that he was secure of Beton, and a Scottish army had but to cross the border to arouse a fresh Pilgrimage of Grace.