MEMOIRS OF COUNT GRAMMONT, VOLUME 4.

By Anthony Hamilton

EDITED, WITH NOTES, BY SIR WALTER SCOTT




CHAPTER EIGHTH.

FUNNY ADVENTURE OF THE CHAPLAIN POUSSATIN--THE STORY OF
THE SIEGE OF LERIDA--MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE OF YORK, AND
OTHER DETAILS ABOUT THE ENGLISH COURT.


"Sir," said the Chevalier de Grammont, "the Prince de Conde besieged
Lerida: the place in itself was nothing; but Don Gregorio Brice who
defended it, was something. He was one of those Spaniards of the old
stamp, as valiant as the Cid, as proud as all the Guzmans put together,
and more gallant than all the Abencerrages of Granada: he suffered us to
make our first approaches to the place without the least molestation.
The Marshal de Grammont, whose maxim it was, that a governor who at first
makes a great blustering, and burns his suburbs in order to make a noble
defence, generally makes a very bad one, looked upon Gregorio de Brice's
politeness as no good omen for us; but the prince, covered with glory,
and elated with the campaigns of Rocroy, Norlinguen, and Fribourg, to
insult both the place and the governor, ordered the trenches to be
mounted at noon-day by his own regiment, at the head of which marched
four-and-twenty fiddlers, as if it had been to a wedding.