We marched on to Saluzzo, and the next day the Duke of Savoy presented
himself in battalia on the other side of a small river, giving us a
fair challenge to pass and engage him. We always said in our camp that
the orders were to fight the Duke of Savoy wherever we met him; but
though he braved us in our view we did not care to engage him, but we
brought Saluzzo to surrender upon articles, which the duke could not
relieve without attacking our camp, which he did not care to do.
The next morning we had news of the surrender of Mantua to the
Imperial army. We heard of it first from the Duke of Savoy's cannon,
which he fired by way of rejoicing, and which seemed to make him
amends for the loss of Saluzzo.
As this was a mortification to the French, so it quite damped the
success of the campaign, for the Duke de Montmorency imagining that
the Imperial general would send immediate assistance to the Marquis
Spinola, who besieged Casale, they called frequent councils of war
what course to take, and at last resolved to halt in Piedmont. A few
days after their resolutions were changed again by the news of the
death of the Duke of Savoy, Charles Emanuel, who died, as some say,
agitated with the extremes of joy and grief.
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