Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/163

1552.] produced a return of civility to England. Stukeley's stories, as we have seen, were denied or explained away. The complaints of the merchants were disposed of peaceably by commissioners, and the efforts and the anxieties of the Court of Paris were directed wholly towards Metz, where Charles in person, with the Duke of Alva and 45,000 men, had sat down to wrench his conquest from the Duke of Guise. A winter siege was an enterprise at which the Emperor in his better days would have hesitated; but since the flight from Innspruck he had been observed to be unequal to himself; and illness and bad fortune had made him obstinate. On the 24th of November the siege was opened. The Spaniards pushed their trenches towards the walls; the French pushed trenches forwards from the walls to meet them; and the works were so close, that besiegers and besieged were in shot of each other's hand-guns.' The batteries played incessantly on the city, and breaches were opened; but fresh walls rose behind the ruins; midnight sallies carried off the Imperial guns; fever and dysentery wasted the Imperial troops. In December there came a frost harder than any living man remembered, and the gout came back to Charles, so violently, that Morryson 'supposed the Emperor should not much longer need any ambassador; there were few that could better digest Fortune's foul play than he; yet good-nature might be provoked too far.' The Spaniards might shiver to death in their tents, but Metz could not