at the like juncture, he spurs his horse forward, leaps the ditch which was across the road, rides over the musketeers, and, the mishap of finding himself alone causing him to feel more indignation than fear, he makes up his mind to signalize by his resistance a death which he cannot avoid.”  Only a few gentlemen had followed him, amongst others an old officer named Count de Rieux, who had promised to die at his feet and he kept his word.  In vain had Montmorency called to him his men-at-arms and the regiment of Ventadour; the rest of the cavalry did not budge.  Count de Moret had been killed; terror was everywhere taking possession of the men.  The duke was engaged with the king’s light horse; he had just received two bullets in his mouth.  His horse, “a small barb, extremely swift,” came down with him and he fell wounded in seventeen places, alone, without a single squire to help him.  A sergeant of a company of the guards saw him fall, and carried him into the road; some soldiers who were present burst out crying; they seemed to be lamenting their general’s rather than their prisoner’s misfortune.  Montmorency alone remained as if insensible to the blows of adversity, and testified by the grandeur of his courage that in him it had its seat in a place higher than the heart.” [Journal du Duc de Montmorency (Archives curieuses de l’Histoire de France), t. iv.]

[Illustration:  Henry, Duke of Montmorency, at Castelnaudary——­199]

Whilst the army of the Duke of Orleans was retiring, carrying off their dead, nearly all of the highest rank, the king’s men were bearing away Montnmorency, mortally wounded, to Castelnaudary.  His wife, Mary Felicia des Ursins, daughter of the Duke of Bracciano, being ill in bed at Beziers, sent him a doctor, together with her equerry, to learn the truth about her husband’s condition.  “Thou’lt tell my wife,” said the duke, “the number and greatness of the wounds thou hast seen, and thou’lt assure her that it which I have caused her spirit is incomparably more painful, to me than all the others.”  On passing through the faubourgs of the town, the duke desired that his litter should be opened, “and the serenity that shone through the pallor of his visage moved the feelings of all present, and forced tears from the stoutest and the most stolid.” [Journal du Due de Montmorency (Archives curieuses de l’Histoire de France), t. iv.]

The Duke of Orleans did not lack the courage of the soldier; he would fain have rescued Montmorency and sought to rally his forces; but the troops of Languedoc would obey none but the governor; the foreigners mutinied, and the king’s brother had no longer an army.  “Next day, when it was too late,” says Richelieu, “Monsieur sent a trumpeter to demand battle of Marshal Schomberg, who replied that he would not give it, but that, if he met him, he would try to defend himself against him.”  Monsieur considered himself absolved from seeking the combat,