There was a panic.  The whole royal cavalry wavered, the supporting infantry recoiled, the day seemed lost before the battle was well begun.  Yells of “Victory!  Victory! up with the Holy League, down with the heretic Bearnese,” resounded through the Catholic squadrons.  The king and Marshal Biron, who were near each other, were furious with rage, but already doubtful of the result.  They exerted themselves to rally the troops under their immediate command, and to reform the shattered ranks.

The German riders and French lancers under Brunswick and Bassompierre had, however, not done their work as thoroughly as Egmont had done.  The ground was so miry and soft that in the brief space which separated the hostile lines they had not power to urge their horses to full speed.  Throwing away their useless lances, they came on at a feeble canter, sword in hand, and were unable to make a very vigorous impression on the more heavily armed troopers opposed to them.  Meeting with a firm resistance to their career, they wheeled, faltered a little and fell a short distance back.  Many of the riders being of the reformed religion, refused moreover to fire upon the Huguenots, and discharged their carbines in the air.

The king, whose glance on the battle-field was like inspiration, saw the blot and charged upon them in person with his whole battalia of cavalry.  The veteran Biron followed hard upon the snow-white plume.  The scene was changed, victory succeeded to impending defeat, and the enemy was routed.  The riders and cuirassiers, broken into a struggling heap of confusion, strewed the ground with their dead bodies, or carried dismay into the ranks of the infantry as they strove to escape.  Brunswick went down in the melee, mortally wounded as it was believed.  Egmont renewing the charge at the head of his victorious Belgian troopers, fell dead with a musket-ball through his heart.  The shattered German and Walloon cavalry, now pricked forward by the lances of their companions, under the passionate commands of Mayenne and Aumale, now fading back before the furious charges of the Huguenots, were completely overthrown and cut to pieces.

Seven times did Henry of Navarre in person lead his troopers to the charge; but suddenly, in the midst of the din of battle and the cheers of victory, a message of despair went from lip to lip throughout the royal lines.  The king had disappeared.  He was killed, and the hopes of Protestantism and of France were fallen for ever with him.  The white standard of his battalia had been seen floating wildly and purposelessly over the field; for his bannerman, Pot de Rhodes, a young noble of Dauphiny, wounded mortally in the head, with blood streaming over his face and blinding his sight, was utterly unable to control his horse, who gallopped hither and thither at his own caprice, misleading many troopers who followed in his erratic career.  A cavalier, armed in proof, and wearing the famous snow-white plume, after a hand-to-hand