Nothing could withstand the tremendous impetus of that manoeuvre.  The Irish Brigade was scattered before it, as chaff before the wind.  The Prince of Ballybunion had barely time to run Odillon Barrot through the body, when he too was borne away in the swift rout.  They scattered tumultuously, and fled for twenty miles without stopping.  The Princes of Donegal and Connemara were taken prisoners; but though they offered to give bills at three months, and for a hundred thousand pounds, for their ransom, the offer was refused, and they were sent to the rear; when the Duke of Nemours, hearing they were Irish Generals, and that they had been robbed of their ready money by his troops, who had taken them prisoners, caused a comfortable breakfast to be supplied to them, and lent them each a sum of money.  How generous are men in success!—­the Prince of Orleans was charmed with the conduct of his National Guards, and thought his victory secure.  He despatched a courier to Paris with the brief words, “We met the enemy before Tours.  The National Guard has done its duty.  The troops of the pretender are routed.  Vive le Roi!” The note, you may be sure, appeared in the Journal des Debats, and the editor, who only that morning had called Henri V. “a great prince, an august exile,” denominated him instantly a murderer, slave, thief, cut-throat, pickpocket, and burglar.

CHAPTER VI.

The English under Jenkins.

But the Prince had not calculated that there was a line of British infantry behind the routed Irish Brigade.  Borne on with the hurry of the melee, flushed with triumph, puffing and blowing with running, and forgetting, in the intoxication of victory, the trifling bayonet-pricks which had impelled them to the charge, the conquering National Guardsmen found themselves suddenly in presence of Jenkins’s Foot.

They halted all in a huddle, like a flock of sheep.

“Up, foot, and at them!” were the memorable words of the Duke Jenkins, as, waving his baton, he pointed towards the enemy, and with a tremendous shout the stalwart sons of England rushed on!—­Down went plume and cocked-hat, down went corporal and captain, down went grocer and tailor, under the long staves of the indomitable English Footmen.  “A Jenkins! a Jenkins!” roared the Duke, planting a blow which broke the aquiline nose of Major Arago, the celebrated astronomer.  “St. George for Mayfair!” shouted his followers, strewing the plain with carcasses.  Not a man of the Guard escaped; they fell like grass before the mower.

“They are gallant troops, those yellow-plushed Anglais,” said the Duke of Nemours, surveying them with his opera-glass. “’Tis a pity they will all be cut up in half an hour.  Concombre! take your dragoons, and do it!” “Remember Waterloo, boys!” said Colonel Concombre, twirling his moustache, and a thousand sabres flashed in the sun, and the gallant hussars prepared to attack the Englishmen.