This put our generals upon considering again whether they should march
to the relief of Casale, but the chimera of the Germans put them by,
and so they took up quarters in Piedmont. They took several small
places from the Duke of Savoy, making advantage of the consternation
the duke's subjects were in on the death of their prince, and spread
themselves from the seaside to the banks of the Po. But here an enemy
did that for them which the Savoyards could not, for the plague got
into their quarters and destroyed abundance of people, both of the
army and of the country.
I thought then it was time for me to be gone, for I had no manner of
courage for that risk; and I think verily I was more afraid of being
taken sick in a strange country than ever I was of being killed in
battle. Upon this resolution I procured a pass to go for Genoa, and
accordingly began my journey, but was arrested at Villa Franca by a
slow lingering fever, which held me about five days, and then turned
to a burning malignancy, and at last to the plague. My friend, the
captain, never left me night nor day; and though for four days more I
knew nobody, nor was capable of so much as thinking of myself, yet it
pleased God that the distemper gathered in my neck, swelled and broke.
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