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To maintain the name of Black Troopers, and to strike additional terror into their enemies, they usually rode on black chargers, and smeared with black ointment their arms and accoutrements, in which operation their hands and faces often had their share. In morals and in ferocity these Schwarzreiters emulated their pedestrian brethren the Lanzknechts.
The Constable de Montmorency had no confidence in these legions; he spoke of them contemptuously, and would much rather have increased the number of the foreign corps, regularly paid and kept up, Swiss or lanzknechts.
The German mercenaries; the lanzknechts and reiters, the pikemen and cavalry, who, at the command of the best paymaster, were the most formidable soldiers of the time. But the Spanish cavaliers were there, leading their native infantry; and there were the Burgundian lances. The army was commanded by Emanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, who had aspired to the hand of Elizabeth.
Quentin made more than human exertions to overtake the special object of his pursuit, who was still in his sight, striving, by voice and example, to renew the battle, and bravely supported by a chosen party of lanzknechts. Le Balafre and several of his comrades attached themselves to Quentin, much marvelling at the extraordinary gallantry displayed by so young a soldier.
He howled for his lanzknechts, his boots, helmet, great sword; he set off at once, and riding by forest ways, cut off the merchant in a day and a night. He ran him to earth in the small wooden inn of a small wooden village high up in the Carinthian Alps, Blomau by name, which lies in a forest clearing on the road to Gratz. King Richard was drinking sour beer in the kitchen, and not liking it.
My opinion is, that you, my lord, ought to send back to the emperor a reply of this sort: that you have had a meeting of your captains, who are quite determined to do his bidding, according to the charge they have from the king their master; but that to mix them up with the foot, who are of small estate, would be to make them of little account; the emperor has loads of counts, lords, and gentlemen of Germany; let him set them afoot along with the men-at-arms of France, who will gladly show them the road; and then his lanzknechts will follow, if they know that it will pay. When the good knight had thus spoken, his advice was found virtuous and reasonable.
A German captain, named Jacob, went and told Chevalier Bayard, with whom he had contracted a friendship, "that the emperor had sent orders to the captain of the lanzknechts that they were to withdraw incontinently on seeing his letter, and that they were not to fight the Spaniards: 'As for me, said he, 'I have taken oath to the King of France, and I have his pay; if I were to die a hundred thousand deaths, I would not do this wickedness of not fighting; but there must be haste. The good knight, who well knew the gentle heart of Captain Jacob, commended him marvellously, and said to him, by the mouth of his interpreter, 'My dear comrade and friend, never did your heart imagine wickedness.
Being attacked by the German lanzknechts of Bourbon and Freundsberg, the Swiss in the French service did not maintain their renown, and began to give way.
In the latter months of 1523, the stipulations of the treaty concluded at Montbrison on the 18th of July were put into execution by all the contracting parties; letters of exchange from Henry VIII. were sent to Bale for the German lanzknechts he was to pay; the lanzknechts crossed the Rhine on the 26th of August, and marched through Franche-Comte in spite of its neutrality; the English landed at Calais between the 23d and 30th of August, to co-operate with the Flemings; the Spaniards began the campaign, on the 6th of September, in the direction of the Pyrenees; and the Duke, of Bourbon on his side took all the necessary measures for forming a junction with his allies, and playing that part in the coalition which had been assigned to him.
"Five hundred years it was since in prince's camp had ever been seen such wealth as there was there; and never was a day but there filed off some three or four hundred lanzknechts who took away to Germany oxen and kine, beds, corn, silk for sewing, and other articles; in such sort that to the said country of Padua was damage done to the amount of two millions of crowns in movables and in houses and palaces burnt and destroyed."