“FOR WANT OF A NAIL …”

“My good man, I am beside myself that if only I had had six cannons and enough ammunition to fire two thousand rounds, this town was ours,” wrote the duke of Guise to Gonnor, later Marshal Cossé, from Orléans on February 7, 1563. After pausing for rest and reorganization after the battle of Dreux, the royal army under his leadership had marched against Orléans and in a swift attack seized the faubourg of Le Portereau, and the Tournelles, the twin towers guarding the bridge which passed over the Loire to the heavily defended island of Les Mottes and thence into the city itself. But despite this initial success the attack was stillborn, for the army's heavy artillery train was missing, mired in a primitive road network made impassable by heavy winter rains. Guise's army would have to wait several weeks before receiving enough of the thirty-odd heavy guns and munitions it would eventually deploy in its preparations for a final assault on the city. But in the meantime the duke himself, mortally wounded by an assassin, would be removed from the scene, leaving the queen mother in a position to negotiate an end to the war and the peaceful surrender of Orléans.