by the Prince of Condo, and by the Duke of Montpensier, by nearly all the great lords and valiant warriors of France; they soon saw that Saint-Quentin was in a deplorable state of defence; the fortifications were old and badly kept up; soldiers, munitions of war, and victuals were all equally deficient.  Coligny did not hesitate, however he threw himself into the place on the 2d of August, during the night, with a small corps of seven hundred men and Saint-Remy, a skilful engineer, who had already distinguished himself in the defence of Metz; the admiral packed off the useless mouths, repaired the walls at the points principally threatened, and reanimated the failing courage of the inhabitants.  The constable and his army came within hail of the place; and D’Andelot, Coligny’s brother, managed with great difficulty to get four hundred and fifty men into it.  On the 10th of August the battle was begun between the two armies.  The constable affected to despise the Duke of Savoy’s youth.  “I will soon show him,” said he, “a move of an old soldier.”  The French army, very inferior in numbers, was for a moment on the point of being surrounded.  The Prince of Conde sent the constable warning.  “I was serving in the field,” answered Montmorency, “before the Prince of Conde came into the world; I have good hopes of still giving him lessons in the art of war for some years to come.”  The valor of the constable and his comrades in arms could not save them from the consequences of their stubborn recklessness and their numerical inferiority; the battalions of Gascon infantry closed their ranks, with pikes to the front, and made an heroic resistance, but all in vain, against repeated charges of the Spanish cavalry:  and the defeat was total.  More than three thousand men were killed; the number of prisoners amounted to double; and the constable, left upon the field with his thigh shattered by a cannon-ball, fell into the hands of the Spaniards, as was also the case with the Dukes of Longueville and Montpensier, La Rochefoucauld, D’Aubigne, &c. . . .  The Duke of Enghien, Viscount de Turenne, and a multitude of others, many great names amidst a host of obscure, fell in the fight.  The Duke of Nevers and the Prince of Conde, sword in hand, reached La Fere with the remnants of their army.  Coligny remained alone in Saint-Quentin with those who survived of his little garrison, and a hundred and twenty arquebusiers whom the Duke of Nevers threw into the place at a loss of three times as many.  Coligny held out for a fortnight longer, behind walls that were in ruins and were assailed by a victorious army.  At length, on the 27th of August, the enemy entered Saint-Quentin by shoals.  “The admiral, who was still going about the streets with a few men to make head against them, found himself hemmed in on all sides, and did all he could to fall into the hands of a Spaniard, preferring rather to await on the spot the common fate than to incur by flight any shame and reproach.