fantry, seated at the foot of a tree, into which he had ordered an old soldier to climb, in order to have a better view of the enemy's manoeuvres. The Count of Roye sent to conjure him to reconnoitre in person the German column that was advancing. "I shall remain where I am,” said Turenne, "unless something important occur," and he sent off reënforcements to M. de Roye; the latter repeated his entreaties; the Marshal asked for his horse, and, at a hand gallop, reached the right of the army, along a hollow, in order to be under cover from two small pieces of cannon which kept up an incessant fire. "I don't at all want to be killed to-day," he kept saying. He perceived M. de St. Hilaire, the father, coming to meet him, and asked him what column it was on account of which 2 he had been sent for. "My father was pointing it out to him," writes young St. Hilaire, "when, unhappily, the two little pieces fired: a ball, passing over the quarters of my father's horse, carried away his left arm and the horse's neck, and struck M. de Turenne in the left side; he still went forward about twenty paces on his horse's neck, and fell dead. I ran to my father, who was down, and raised him up. No need to weep for me,' he said; 'it is the death of that great man; you may, perhaps, lose your father, but neither your country nor you will ever have a general like that again. O poor army, what is to become of you?' Tears fell from his eyes; then, suddenly recovering himself, Go, my son, and leave me,' he said; 'with me it will be as God pleases; time presses; go and do your duty"" ("Mémoires du Marquis de St. Hilaire," t. i, p. 205). They threw a cloak over the corpse 3 of the great General, and bore it away. "The soldiers raised a cry that was heard two leagues off," writes Madame de Sévigné; "no consideration could restrain them; they roared to be led to battle, they wanted to avenge the death of their father; with him they had feared nothing, but they would show how to avenge him, let it be left to them; they were frantic-let them be led to battle." Montecuculli had for a moment halted. 66 To-day a man has fallen who did honor to man," said he, as he uncovered respectfully. He threw himself, however, on the rear-guard of the French army, which was falling back upon Elsass, and recrossed the Rhine at Altenheim. The death of Turenne was equivalent to a defeat. The Emperor Napoleon said of Turenne, "He is the 4 only general whom experience ever made more daring." He had been fighting for forty years, and his fame was still increasing, without effort or ostentation on his part. "M. de Turenne, from his youth up, possessed all good qualities," wrote Cardinal de Retz, who knew him well, "and the great he acquired full early. He lacked none but those that he did not think about. He possessed nearly all virtues as it were by nature; he never possessed the glitter of any. He was believed to be more fitted for the head of an army than of a party, and so I think, because he was not naturally enterprising; but, however, who knows? He always had in everything, just as in his speech, certain obscurities, which were never cleared up save by circumstances, but never save to his glory.” He had said, when he set out, to this same Cardinal de Retz, then in retirement at Commercy, "Sir, I am no talker (diseur), but I beg you to believe that, if it were not for this business in which perhaps I may be required, I would go into retirement as you have gone, and I give you my word that, if I come back, I, like you, will put some space between life and death." God did not leave him time. 5 He summoned suddenly to him this noble, grand, and simple soul. "I see that cannon loaded with all eternity," says Madame de Sévigné; "I see all that leads M. de Turenne thither, and I see therein nothing gloomy for him. What does he lack? He dies in the meridian of his fame. Sometimes, by living on, the star pales. It is safer to cut to the quick, especially in the case of heroes whose actions are all so watched. M. de Turenne did not feel death count you that for nothing?" Turenne was sixty-four; he had become a convert to Catholicism in 1668, seriously and sincerely, as he did everything. For him Bossuet had written his exposition of faith. Heroic souls are rare, and those that are heroic and modest are rarer still; that was the distinctive feature of M. de Turenne. "When a man boasts that he has never made mistakes in war, he convinces me that he has not been long at it," he would say. At his death, France considered herself lost. 1 SAILING OF THE NORMAN FLEET FOR THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 66 An interesting account of the assembling of the forces that constituted the Norman army will be found in Thierry's "Norman Conquest of England." DIVES was the place of assemblage appointed for fleet and army. William repaired thither about the end of August, 1066. But for several weeks contrary winds prevented him from putting to sea; some vessels which made the attempt perished in the tempest; and some of the volunteer adventurers got disgusted, and deserted. William maintained strict discipline among this multitude, forbidding plunder so strictly that "the cattle fed in the fields in full security." The soldiers grew tired of wait ing in idleness and often in sickness. "Yon is a madman,” said they, "who is minded to possess himself of another's land; God is against the design, and so refuses us a wind." About the 20th of September the weather changed. The fleet got ready, but could only go and anchor at St. Valery, at the mouth of the Somme. There it was necessary to wait several more days; impatience and disquietude were redoubled; "and there appeared in the heavens a star with a tail, a certain sign of great things to come." William had the shrine of St. Valery 2 brought out and paraded about, being more impatient in his soul than anybody, but ever confident in his will and his good fortune. There was brought to him a spy whom Harold had sent to watch the forces and plans of the enemy; and William dismissed him, saying: "Harold hath no need to take any care or be at any charges to know how we be, and what we be doing; he shall see for himself, and shall feel before the end of the year." At last, on the 27th of September, 1066, the sun rose on a calm sea and with a favorable wind; and toward evening the fleet set out. The Mora, the vessel on which William was, and which had been given to him by his wife Matilda, led the way; and a figure in gilded bronze, some say in gold, representing their youngest son, William, had been placed on the prow, with the face toward England. Being a better sailer than the others, this ship was soon a long way ahead; and William had a mariner sent to the top of the mainmast to see if the fleet were following. "I see naught but sea and sky," said the mariner. William had the ship brought to; and, the second time, the mariner said, "I see four ships." Before long he cried, "I see a forest of masts and sails." On the 29th of September, St. Micha-3 el's day, the expedition arrived off the coast of England, at Pevensey, near Hastings, and "when the tide had 4 ebbed, and the ships remained aground on the strand," says the chronicle, the landing was effected without obstacle; not a Saxon soldier appeared on the coast. William was the last to leave his ship; and on setting foot on the sand he made a false step and fell. "Bad sign!" was muttered around him; "God have us in his keeping!" "What say you, lords?" cried William; "by the glory of God, I have grasped this land with my hands; all that there is of it is ours!" With what forces William undertook the conquest of England, how many ships composed his fleet, and how many men were aboard the ships, are questions impossible to be decided with any precision, as we have frequently before had occasion to remark, amid the exaggerations and disagreements of chroniclers. Robert Wace reports, in his "Romance of Rou," that he had heard from his father, one of William's servants on this expedition, that the fleet numbered six hundred and ninety-six vessels, but he had found in divers writings that there were more than three thousand. M. Augustin Thierry, after his learned researches, says, in his history of the "Conquest of England by the Normans," that "four hundred vessels of four sails, and more than a thousand transport-ships, moved out into the open sea, to the sound of trumpets and of a great cry of joy raised by sixty thou5 sand throats." It is probable that the estimate of the fleet is pretty accurate, and that of the army exaggerated. We saw in 1830 what efforts and pains it required, amid the power and intelligent ability of modern civilization, to transport from France to Algeria thirty-seven thousand men aboard three squadrons, comprising six hundred and seventy-five ships of all sorts. Granted that in the eleventh century there was more hap-hazard than in the nineteenth, and that there was less care for human life on |