Such was the brilliant victory of Saint Quentin, worthy to be placed in the same list with the world-renowned combats of Creqy and Agincourt.  Like those battles, also, it derives its main interest from the personal character of the leader, while it seems to have been hallowed by the tender emotions which sprang from his subsequent fate.  The victory was but a happy move in a winning game.  The players were kings, and the people were stakes—­not parties.  It was a chivalrous display in a war which was waged without honorable purpose, and in which no single lofty sentiment was involved.  The Flemish frontier was, however, saved for the time from the misery which was now to be inflicted upon the French border.  This was sufficient to cause the victory to be hailed as rapturously by the people as by the troops.  From that day forth the name of the brave Hollander was like the sound of a trumpet to the army.  “Egmont and Saint Quentin” rang through every mouth to the furthest extremity of Philip’s realms.  A deadly blow was struck to the very heart of France.  The fruits of all the victories of Francis and Henry withered.  The battle, with others which were to follow it, won by the same hand, were soon to compel the signature of the most disastrous treaty which had ever disgraced the history of France.

The fame and power of the Constable faded—­his misfortunes and captivity fell like a blight upon the ancient glory of the house of Montmorency—­ his enemies destroyed his influence and his popularity—­while the degradation of the kingdom was simultaneous with the downfall of his illustrious name.  On the other hand, the exultation of Philip was as keen as his cold and stony nature would permit.  The magnificent palace-convent of the Escurial, dedicated to the saint on whose festival the battle had been fought, and built in the shape of the gridiron, on which that martyr had suffered, was soon afterwards erected in pious commemoration of the event.  Such was the celebration of the victory.  The reward reserved for the victor was to be recorded on a later page of history.

The coldness and caution, not to say the pusillanimity of Philip, prevented him from seizing the golden fruits of his triumph.  Ferdinand Gonzaga wished the blow to be followed up by an immediate march upon Paris.—­Such was also the feeling of all the distinguished soldiers of the age.  It was unquestionably the opinion, and would have been the deed, of Charles, had he been on the field of Saint Quentin, crippled as he was, in the place of his son.  He could not conceal his rage and mortification when he found that Paris had not fallen, and is said to have refused to read the despatches which recorded that the event had not been consummated.  There was certainly little of the conqueror in Philip’s nature; nothing which would have led him to violate the safest principles of strategy.  He was not the man to follow up enthusiastically the blow which