Ambroise Paré (1510–90). Journeys in Diverse Places.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
The Journey to the Camp at Amines. 1558
T
Five or six days before this, a sortie had been made from Dourlan; wherein many captains and brave soldiers had been killed or wounded: and among the wounded was Captain Saint Aubin, vaillant comme l’espée, a great friend of M. de Guise: for whose sake chiefly the King had sent me there. Who, being attacked with a quartan fever, yet left his bed to command the greater part of his company. A Spaniard, seeing him in command, perceived he was a captain, and shot him through the neck with an arquebus. Captain Saint Aubin thought himself killed: and by this fright I protest to God he lost his quartan fever, and was forever free of it. I dressed him, with Antoine Portail, surgeon-in-ordinary of the King; and many other soldiers. Some died, others got off with the loss of an arm or a leg or an eye, and said they had got off cheap, to be alive at all. Then, the enemy having broken up their camp, I returned to Paris.
I say nothing here of mon petit maistre, who was more comfortable in his house than I at the wars.