Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/274

130 TROUBLES IN CASTILE AND ARAGON. I'ART I. Second French in- vasion (if Roussillon. 147 1. Vec. 5. off with their own government, as their couriers were stopped and their despatches intercepted, so that John knew as little of his envoys or their proceed- ings, as if they had been in Siberia or Japan. In the mean time, formidable preparations were mak- ing in the south of France for a descent on Roussil- lon ; and when the ambassadors, after a fruitless attempt at negotiation, which fevaporated in mutual crimination and recrimination, set out on their re- turn to Aragon, they were twice detained, at Lyons and Montpelier, from an extreme solicitude, as the French government expressed it, to ascertain the safest route through a country intersected by hostile armies ; and all this, notwithstanding their repeated protestations against this obliging disposition, which held them prisoners, in opposition to their own will and the law of nations. The prince who descended to such petty trickery passed for the wisest of his time.^^ In the mean while, the Seigneur du Lude had invaded Roussillon at the head of nine hundred French lances and ten thousand infantry, supported by a powerful train of artillery, while a fleet of Gen- oese transports, laden with supplies, accompanied the army along the coast. Elna surrendered after a sturdy resistance ; the governor and some of the prin- cipal prisoners were shamefully beheaded as traitors ; and the French then proceeded to invest Per- pignan. The king of Aragon was so much impover- 24 Giiillanl, Rivalite, lom. iii. — Chroniciue Scandaleuse,ed. P©- pp. 207 -'37G. — Duclos, Hist, de titot, torn. xiii. pp. 443, 444. Louis XI., lom. ii. pp. 113, 115.