"I was wont once upon a time to be followed to battle," Charles V.would say, "but I see that I have no longer men about me; I must bid farewell to the empire, and go and shut myself up in some monastery; before three years are over I shall turn Cordelier." Whilst Metz was still holding out, the fortress of Toul was summoned by the Imperialists to open its gates; but the commandant replied, "When the town of Metz has been taken, when I have had the honor of being besieged in due form by the emperor, and when I have made as long a defence as the Duke of Guise has, such a summons may be addressed to me, and I will consider what I am to do." On the 26th of December, 1552, the sixty-fifth day since the arrival of the imperial army and the forty-fifth since the batteries had opened fire, Charles V.resolved to raise the siege.

"I see very well," said he, "that fortune resembles women; she prefers a young king to an old emperor." His army filed off by night, in silence, leaving behind its munitions and its tents just as they stood, "driven away, almost, by the chastisement of Heaven," says the contemporary chronicler Rabutin, "with but two shots by way of signal." The ditty of the soldier just quoted ends thus:-- "At last, so stout was her defence, From Metz they moved their guns away; And, with the laugh at their expense, A-tramping went their whole array.
And at their tail the noble Lord Of Guise sent forth a goodly throng Of cavalry, with lance and sword, To teach them how to tramp along." Guise was far from expecting so sudden and decisive a result.

"Sing me no more flattering strains in your letters about the emperor's dislodgment hence," he wrote on the 24th of December to his brother the Cardinal of Lorraine; "take it for certain that unless we be very much mistaken in him, he will not, as long as he has life, brook the shame of departing hence until he has seen it all out." Irritated, and, perhaps, still more shocked, at so heavy a blow to his power and his renown, Charles V.looked everywhere for a chance of taking his revenge.

He flattered himself that he had found it in Therouanne, a fortress of importance at that time between Flanders and Artois, which had always been a dependency of the kingdom of France, and served as a rampart against the repeated incursions of the English, the masters of Calais.

Charles knew that it was ill supplied with troops and munitions of war; and the court of Henry II., intoxicated with the deliverance of Metz, spoke disdainfully of the emperor, and paid no heed to anything but balls, festivities, and tournaments in honor of the marriage between Diana d'Angouleme, the king's natural daughter, and Horatio Farnese, Duke of Castro.