The death of Maréchal Biron, and the fact that Henri was devoting quite as much attention to his 'belle hôtesse' at Damery, the fair Présidente Anne du Puy, as he was to the siege, encouraged St. Paul, who commanded at Reims for the League, to despatch a strong body of Walloon pikemen and musketeers to the relief of the beleaguered town. They approached by the hollow road leading from the Faubourg des Ponts Neufs to the slope of the Vignes des Capinets, and passing between the vineyards Dure Epine and Gouttes d'Or. Attacked by the Royalists, they drew up in good order in the latter spot, and prepared to defend themselves with all the stubborn valour of their race, their dense array of pikes bristling amongst the bright green leaves--for it was the close of summer, and the vines were in all the glory of their luxuriant foliage. Vainly for a long time the Royalists assailed them. Attack after attack was repulsed, till the 'golden drops' were turned to drops of gore; and it was not until the white plume of King Henri came dashing on in the forefront of his choicest cavalry that the Walloons were finally broken and routed, after inflicting upon their assailants a far greater loss than they themselves sustained. The vineyard thus baptised in blood was thenceforward known as the Vigne des Sièges.[438]
Though data may be lacking to connect the 'bon Roi Henri' directly with the wine of Epernay, there can be no doubt that the sovereign whose triple talent for drinking, fighting, and love-making has been handed down to us in song[439] found a fair opportunity of exercising all three of these attributes during the siege. Of fighting, as we have seen, he had plenty, and, Anacreon-like, he seems to have blended love and wine together.[440] He who, when a new-born babe, had his lips wetted in the old castle of Pau by stout Antoine de Bourbon with a cup of the generous wine of the South, and who gloried in the title of the Sieur d'Ay, was not likely to neglect the nectar vintaged on the slopes around Epernay. And probably the recollection of the raven-haired, black-eyed, bronze-skinned Bernais peasant-girls, whom tradition vows he used to woo when in the first flush of youthful manhood beneath the trellised vines of Jurançon and Gan, served by contrast to heighten the fairer charms of the blonde Anne du Puy, in whose honour he is reported to have sung: