For
whatsoeuer battell dooth chance to be offered, to make full account
[Sidenote: The good lucke in a capteine.]
of victorie, resteth not so much in the assurance of the
souldiers, as in the good lucke and felicitie of the capteine
generall.
"That same ringleader of the vngratious faction, what ment he to
depart from that shore which he possessed? Why did he forsake both his
nauie and the hauen? But that (most inuincible emperour) he stood
in feare of your comming, whose sailes he beheld readie to approch
towards him, how soeuer the matter should fall out, he chose rather to
trie his fortune with your capteins, than to abide the present force
of your highnes. Ah mad man! that vnderstood not, that whither so euer
he fled, the power of your diuine maiestie to be present in all places
where your countenance & banners are had in reuerence. But he fleeing
from your presence, fell into the hands of your people, of you was he
ouercome, of your armies was he oppressed.
"To be short, he was brought into such feare, and as it were still
looking behind him, for doubt of your comming after him, that as one
out of his wits and amazed, he wist not what to doo, he hasted forward
to his death, so that he neither set his men in order of battell, nor
marshalled such power as he had about him, but onlie with the old
authors of that conspiracie, and the hired bands of the barbarous
nations, as one forgetfull of so great preparation which he had made,
ran headlong forwards to his destruction, insomuch (noble emperour)
your felicitie yeeldeth this good hap to the common wealth, that the
victorie being atchiued in the behalfe of the Romane empire, there
almost died not one Romane: for as I heare, all those fields and
hills lay couered with none but onelie with the bodies of most wicked
enimies, the same being of the barbarous nations, or at the leastwise
apparelled in the counterfet shapes of barbarous garments, glistering
with their long yellow haires, but now with gashes of wounds and bloud
all deformed, and lieng in sundrie manners, as the pangs of death
occasioned by their wounds had caused them to stretch foorth or draw
in their maimed lims and mangled parts of their dieng bodies.
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