he had expressly refused to enter the League, saying to Villars, who pressed him to do so, "I am a Frenchman, and you yourself will find out that the Spaniard is the real head of the League." He had organized at Dieppe four companies of burgess-guards, consisting of Catholics and Protestants, and he assembled about him, to consider the affairs of the town, a small council, in which Protestants had the majority.

As soon as he knew, on the 26th of August, that the king was approaching Dieppe, he went with the principal inhabitants to meet him, and presented to him the keys of the place, saying, "I come to salute my lord and hand over to him the government of this city." "Ventre-saint-gris!" answered Henry IV., "I know nobody more worthy of it than you are!" The Dieppese overflowed with felicitations.

"No fuss, my lads," said Henry: "all I want is your affections, good bread, good wine, and good hospitable faces." When he entered the town, "he was received," says a contemporary chronicler, "with loud cheers by the people; and what was curious, but exhilarating, was to see the king surrounded by close upon six thousand armed men, himself having but a few officers at his left hand." He received at Dieppe assurance of the fidelity of La Verune, governor of Caen, whither, in 1589, according to Henry III.'s order, that portion of the Parliament of Normandy which would not submit to the yoke of the League at Rouen, had removed.

Caen having set the example, St.Lo, Coutances, and Carentan likewise sent deputies to Dieppe to recognize the authority of Henry IV.

But Henry had no idea of shutting himself up inside Dieppe: after having carefully inspected the castle, citadel, harbor, fortifications, and outskirts of the town, he left there five hundred men in garrison, supported by twelve or fifteen hundred well-armed burgesses, and went and established himself personally in the old castle of Arques, standing, since the eleventh century, upon a barren hill; below, in the burgh of Arques, he sent Biron into cantonments with his regiment of Swiss and the companies of French infantry; and he lost no time in having large fosses dug ahead of the burgh, in front of all the approaches, enclosing within an extensive line of circumvallation both burgh and castle.