Doullens has belonged to many masters: to the Huguenots during the wars of religion, then to their enemies, afterwards to the Spaniards, who took it when Henry the Fourth was yet unsettled on his throne. It was in 1595, and the surprise of Amiens, which took place two years after, was accomplished by the governor of Doullens' love for a fair widow. The governor was the famous Captain Hernand Teillo, and the lady the Dame de Monchy, who was rich as well as noble and beautiful. "I was born at Amiens," she replied proudly, when he besought her to accept his hand: "I will espouse no man unless we obey the same royal master; either abandon the King of Spain and become French as I am, or take Amiens and make me a Spanish subject."
Adopting this last alternative, and having sworn to succeed, the Spaniard Hernand Teillo marched with his troops towards Amiens; before day broke a strong detachment lay concealed behind hedges near the town, the chapel of St. Montain and la Madelaine were occupied, and the cavalry concealed in a valley; at dawn, Hernand Teillo having made choice of sixteen soldiers and four officers on whose resolution he could rely, disguised the former as peasants and market women, and sent them by different paths to the gate of Amiens, carrying on their backs market baskets of walnuts and apples; the four officers, disguised in like manner, walked beside a heavy cart laden with wood covered over with straw; one acting as waggoner. The movement of troops, however secretly made, could not be entirely concealed, and some peasants not counterfeits apprized the governor of Amiens of what was passing; it was said he had been bought over, at all events he treated it as an idle report. At six o'clock, the gates of the town being opened, the sixteen soldiers, preceded by their officers and waggon, boldly presented themselves for admission at the gate called Montre Écu; arrived under the entrance arch, the waggon stopped, and the waggoner silently cut the traces that the portcullis might be arrested in its fall; at the same moment, one of the pretended peasants undid, as if by mistake, the cord which fastened the mouth of a sack of walnuts, and its contents were scattered on the pavement. The guard was composed of wretched mechanics (for Amiens, in her pride, had refused a royal garrison); they abandoned their post to seize on the prize, and the Spaniards, drawing their arms from beneath their clothes, in the course of a few moments had massacred their unresisting enemies, and gained possession of the guard house. The sentinel placed on the gate heard the cries of the wounded, and cut the ropes which upheld the portcullis, but the waggon was exactly beneath, and the portcullis fell on it and fixed it there, leaving the way open to the foe. The citizens roused, came in numbers to repulse the Spaniards who poured in, and to a body of Irishmen under his command Hernand Teillo owed in a great measure his success. In their gallant defence of the town, perished numbers of its inhabitants: the Comte de St. Pol, governor of the province, failed to imitate their noble example; for he fled, as soon as from the tower of the royal chateau he inhabited he recognised the red scarfs of the Spaniards. The townsmen were disarmed the same day; the sack of Amiens permitted for eight more; and these past, the already ruined citizens reduced to starvation by the exaction of heavy sums of money. Married to the Lady of Monchy, Hernand Teillo was rewarded for his success: and Henry the Fourth of France, after a night passed at a ball, had just lain down to rest when the courier arrived with news of the surprise of Amiens. Sully was summoned to his bedside, and Henry, grasping his hand in strong emotion, said, "I have played the part of king of France long enough; I must return to that of king of Navarre."