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“Jesus, my God,” he cried, “I am dead!”

He took his sword by the handle, kissed its cross-hilt as an act of devotion, and repeated the Miserere,–“Have pity on me, O God, according to Thy great mercy!”

In a moment more he grew deathly pale and grasped the pommel of the saddle to keep him from falling, remaining thus until one of his followers helped him to dismount, and placed him at the foot of a tree.

The French were repulsed, leaving the wounded knight within the lines of the enemy. Word of Bayard’s plight was quickly brought to Bourbon, who came up with a face filled with sympathetic feeling.

“Bayard, my good friend, I am sore distressed at your mishap,” he said. “There is nothing for it but patience. Give not way to melancholy. I will send in quest of the best surgeons in this country, and, by God’s help, you will soon be healed.”

Bayard looked up at him with dying eyes, full of pity and reproach.

“My lord, I thank you,” he said, “but pity is not for me, who die like a true man, serving my king; pity is for you, who bear arms against your prince, your country, and your oath.”

Bourbon made no answer. He turned and withdrew, doubtless stung to the soul by the reproachful words of the noblest and honestest man of that age. His own conscience must have added a double sting to Bayard’s words. Such is the bitterest reward of treason; it dares not look integrity in the face.

Bayard lived for two or three hours afterwards, surrounded by his friends, who would not leave him, though he bade them do so to escape falling into the enemy’s hands. They had nothing to fear. Both armies mourned the loss of the good knight, with equal grief. Five days after his death, on May 5, 1524, Beaurain wrote to Charles V.,–

“Sir, albeit Sir Bayard was your enemy’s servant, yet was it pity of his death, for he was a gentle knight, well beloved of every one, and one that lived as good a life as ever any man of his condition. And, in truth, he fully showed it by his end, for it was the most beautiful that I ever heard tell of.”

So passed away a man who lived fully up to the principles of chivalry, and whose honesty, modesty, sympathy, and valor have given him undying fame. His name survives as an example of what chivalry might have been had man been as Christian in nature as in name, but of what it rarely was, except in theory.

The next picture we shall draw belongs to the date of February 24, 1525. Francis I. had for months been besieging Pavia. Bourbon came to its relief. A battle followed, which at first seemed to favor the French, but which Bourbon’s skill soon turned in favor of the Imperialists. Seeing his ranks breaking on all sides, Francis, inspired by fury and despair, desperately charged the enemy with such knights and men-at-arms as he could get to follow him. The conflict was fierce and fatal. Around the king fell his ablest warriors,–Marshal de Foix, Francis of Lorraine, Bussy d’Amboise, La Tremoille, and many others. At sight of this terrible slaughter, Admiral Bonnivet, under the king the leader of the French host, exclaimed, in accents of despair, “I can never survive this fearful havoc.” Raising the visor of his helmet, he rushed desperately forward where a tempest of balls was sweeping the field, and in a moment fell beside his slain comrades.

Francis fought on amid the heaps of dead and dying, his soul filled with the battle rage, his heart burning with fury and desperation. He was wounded in face, arms, and legs, yet still his heavy sword swept right and left, still men fell before his vigorous blows. His horse, mortally wounded, sank under him, dragging him down. In an instant he was up again, laying about him shrewdly. Two Spaniards who pressed him closely fell before the sweep of that great blade. Alone among his foes he fought on, a crowd of hostile soldiers around him. Who he was they knew not, but his size, strength, and courage, the golden lilies which studded his coat of mail, the plume of costly feathers which waved from his helmet, told them that this must be one of the greatest men in the French array.