Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/377

Rh P. 44: Ipolita Fioramonti, married to Luigi di Malaspina, of the Padua branch; she was general of the Duke of Milan's armies. (Litta, Malaspina di Pavia, t. VIII., tav. xx.)


 * Famous fortified city and seaport on the Atlantic coast of France; 800 miles S. W. of Paris, capital of the modern Department of Charente-Inférieure.

P. 45: The interview between François de La Noue, surnamed Bras-de-Fer (iron arm), and the representatives of Monsieur, François, Duke d'Alencon, took place February 21, 1573. The scene that Brantôme describes happened Sunday, February 22.

P. 46: What Brantôme advances here is to be found in Jacques de Bourbon's La grande et merveilleuse oppugnation de la noble cite de Rhodes, 1527.

P. 46: The siege took place in 1536.


 * August 14, 1536. Count de Nassau besieged Péronne at the head of 60,000 men; the population defended itself with the uttermost energy. Marie Fouré, according to some, was the principal heroine of this famous siege; according to others, all the honor should go to Mme. Catherine de Foix. (Cf. Pièces et documents relatifs au siege de Peronne, en 1536. Paris, 1864.)


 * The siege of Sancerre began January 3, 1573; but the rôle of the women was more pacific than at Péronne; they nursed the wounded and fed the combatants. The energetic Joanneau governed the city. (Poupard, Histoire de Sancerre, 1777.)


 * Vitré was besieged by the Duke de Mercœuer in 1589. This passage of Brantôme's is quoted in the Histoire de Vitré by Louis Dubois (1839, pp. 87-88).

P. 47: Péronne, a small fortified town of N. W. France, on the Somme and in the Department of same name. It was bombarded by the Prussians in 1870, and the fine belfry of the XlVth Century destroyed. Its siege by the Comte de Nassau was in 1536.

P. 47: Sancerre, a small town on the left bank of the Loire, modern Department of the Cher, 27 miles from Bourges. The Huguenots of Sancerre endured two terrible sieges in 1569 and 1573.