still in his coffers; and all the cream of the courtiers are with him.  Will you let yourselves go down before this handsome dancing-master and his minions?  No, they are ours; I see it by your eagerness to fight.  Still we must all of us understand that the event is in the hands of God.  Pray we Him to aid us.  This deed will be the greatest that we ever did; the glory will be to God, the service to our sovereign lord the king, the honor to ourselves, and the benefit to the state.’  Henry uncovers; the clergymen Chandieu and Damours intone the army’s prayer, and the men-at-arms repeat in chorus the twenty-fourth versicle of the hundred and eighteenth Psalm:  ’This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.’  As they were hastening each to his post, the king detains his cousins a moment.  ‘Gentlemen,’ he shouts, ’I have just one thing to say:  remember that you are of the house of Bourbon; and, as God liveth, I will let you see that I am your senior.’  ‘And we will show you some good juniors,’ answered Conde.”

Before midday the battle was won and the royalist army routed, but not without having made a valiant stand.  During the action, D’Epinay Saint-Luc, one of the bravest royalist soldiers, met the Duke of Joyeuse already wounded.  “What’s to be done?” he asked.  “Die,” answered Joyeuse; and a few moments afterwards, as he was moving away some paces to the rear in order to get near to his artillery, says D’Aubigne, he was surrounded by several Huguenots, who recognized him.  “There are a hundred-thousand crowns to be gained,” he shouted; but rage was more powerful than cupidity, and one of them shattered his skull with a pistol-shot.  “His body was taken to the king’s quarters:  there it lay, in the evening, upon a table in the very room where the conqueror’s supper had been prepared:  but the King of Navarre ordered all who were in the chamber to go out, had his supper things removed else-whither, and, with every mark of respect, committed the remains of the vanquished to the care of Viscount de Turenne, his near relative.  Henry showed a simple and modest joy at his splendid triumph.  It was five and twenty years since the civil war commenced, and he was the first Protestant general who had won a pitched battle; he had to regret only twenty-five killed, whereas the enemy had lost more than three thousand, and had abandoned to him their cannon, together with twenty-nine flags or standards.  The victory was so much the more glorious in that it was gained over an army superior in numbers and almost equal in quality.  It was owing to the king’s valor, decision, vigilance, quick eye, comprehension of tactics, and that creative instinct which he brought into application in politics as well as in war, and which was destined to render him so happily inspired in the beautiful defensive actions of Arques, at the affair of Ivry, and on so many other occasions.” [Histoire des Princes de Conde, &c., by M. le Due D’Aumale, t. ii. pp. 164-177.]