The Duke of Guise's humanity after the siege did him as much honour as his bravery during it. A large number of sick men remained in the Imperialist camp; the rearguard of the retreating army were in a pitiable state, and, unable to proceed, yielded themselves ready prisoners. The commander of a troop of Spanish cavalry, pursued by the Prince of la Roche-sur-Yon, who would fain have brought him to battle, suddenly faced about, exclaiming, "How should we have strength to defend ourselves, when you see we have not enough left to fly?" In the hospitals of Metz and Thionville, the sick and wounded Imperialists were carefully tended by order of Guise; non-combatant prisoners were sent back to the Duke of Alva, with the offer of covered boats to transport his exhausted soldiers; the bodies of the dead received suitable burial. The magnanimous general's courtesy and humanity bore their fruits. In the following campaign, when the town of Therouenne, in Picardy, was surprised by the Imperialists, the Germans and Flemings were putting inhabitants and garrison to the sword, without distinction of age or sex, when the Spanish officers, with a lively and grateful remembrance of the good treatment received from Guise and the French, united their voices and efforts to check the carnage. "Bonne guerre, compagnons," they cried; "souvenez-vous de la courtoisie de Metz!"
It was during the following campaign (1554) that there occurred the first marked manifestations of discord between the Duke of Guise and the Admiral de Coligny. In the combat of Renty, near St Omer, Coligny commanded the infantry, in his quality of colonel-general of that arm. Victory declared itself for the French; already many trophies had been taken, and heavy loss inflicted on the Imperialists, who were on the brink of a general rout, when Guise "feeling" says M. de Bouillé, "that he was not supported by the Constable de Montmorency – the retreat also, according to a report current at the time, having been sounded by the breath of envy– was unable to follow up his advantage, and could but maintain himself on the field, whilst the Imperialists, although defeated, succeeded in entering the besieged fort." The chief merit of this imperfect victory was attributed by the Constable to his nephew Coligny, who, on his part, was said to have asserted that, during the heat of the fight, Guise had not been in his right place. This led, upon the evening of the action, to a violent altercation, which would have ended with drawn swords but for the intervention of the King, in whose tent it occurred. He compelled them to embrace; but the reconciliation was only skin-deep, and from that day forwards a rancorous dislike was substituted for the close intimacy which had existed in their youth between these two great soldiers, and which had been carried to such a point that they "could not live without each other, wearing the same colours, and dressing in the same manner." Henceforward they were constant antagonists, the chiefs of two parties under whose banners nobles, soldiers, and courtiers ranged themselves, according to the dictates of their sympathies or interests. And soon their rivalry for fame and influence was inflamed and envenomed by the ardour of religious passions, and of combats for their respective creeds.
It is here impossible to trace, even in outline, the events that crowded the reign of Henry II., and in which the Duke, the Cardinal, and their brother d'Aumale played a most conspicuous part. It was a constant succession of battles and intrigues, for the most part terminating, in spite of formidable foes both in the field and at court, to the advantage of the Guises. And when, a few weeks after the battle of St Quintin, so disastrous to the French arms – where the Constable de Montmorency, who had boasted beforehand of victory, beheld his entire army slain or taken, and himself a prisoner – the Duke of Guise returned from Italy, "to save the state," as the King himself expressed it, he found himself at the utmost pinnacle of power a subject could possibly attain. On the very day of his arrival, Henry declared him lieutenant-general of the French armies, in and out of the kingdom; a temporary dignity, it is true, but one superior to that of Constable, and which usually was bestowed only in times of regency and minority. That nothing should be wanting to the exorbitant authority thus conferred upon the man to whom sovereign and nation alike were wont to turn in the day of danger and disaster, the King addressed to all the provincial authorities particular injunctions to obey the orders of the Duke of Guise as though they emanated from himself; and truly it was remarked, says Dauvigny in his Vies des Hommes Illustres, that never had monarch in France been obeyed more punctually and with greater zeal. The whole business of the country now rested upon the shoulders of Guise. But even whilst thus exalting him, Henry, conscious of his own weakness, and haunted, perhaps, by his father's dying injunction, was actually plotting how to lessen the power of his great subject, so soon as the period of peril should have passed, during which his services were indispensable. With strange infatuation, the feeble monarch expected to be able to clip at will the wings of that soaring influence, when victory over the foreigner and the liberation of the country should have