The Man-at-Arms; or, Henry De Cerons. Volumes I and II

by G. P. R. James

Stripped of his armour, and even of the buff coat which he had worn underneath, with his shirt and person dabbled with blood and dirt, was the body of the unfortunate Prince de Condé cast across an ass, with the head hanging down on one side and the feet on the other. His hair, which was long and very beautiful, fell in glossy curls towards the ground; but, from the point of the locks near the face, the blood, still streaming from his death-wound, dropped slowly as they bore him along upon the dusty ground, and made a small pool when the body stopped before the feet of the Duke of Anjou's horse. However much he might be changed since I had seen him, I knew the body at once, by the lace and the violet-coloured ribands which tied the sleeves of his shirt, which I had remarked particularly while he was putting on his casque at the moment that the horse had kicked him.

"Are you sure that is he?" said the Duke of Anjou. "Lift up his head, Magnac; one cannot see his face."

The Baron de Magnac twined his fingers in his hair and lifted up his face, exposing the ghastly wound from which he died, and which had so terribly disfigured him, that, what with blood and dirt, and the black smoke of the pistol, his features could hardly be recognised by any one. When I thought of that same countenance, as I had seen it but a few weeks before, smiling with gay and kindly feelings as he laid the blade of knighthood on my shoulder, and compared it with the dark, mutilated object before me, I myself could scarcely have told that it was the same, had it not been for the other marks I have mentioned.

"Some one bring water from the stream," cried the Duke of Anjou. "We must wash his face and see."

The water was soon brought in a morion; and, when the blood and dirt were washed away, there was no difficulty in recognising the features of the unfortunate prince.

"Get a sheet from some of the farmhouses," cried the Duke of Anjou, "and carry the body on to Jarnac. You have told the truth, sir," he added, turning to me. "Now get you gone. Do with him as I bade you. Put him with the Scotchman, and bring him up this night."

Thus saying, he rode on himself, and I was conducted to the rear, where a surgeon dressed my wounds, and, finding my right arm broken, set it as best he might. They then led me for about two miles on the road to Jarnac, when they brought me to a farmhouse, where they placed me in a small room with several other prisoners, among whom I found La Noue and the Prince de Soubise, but not Stuart.

All, as well might be supposed, were deeply depressed, but that did not prevent a great deal of conversation from taking place; and there were fewer lamentations over our defeat itself than over the negligence of those who had occasioned it, by suffering the enemy to pass the river. La Loue, whose turn it had been to guard the bridge of Chateauneuf, was very much blamed; and certain it is, that, even if the enemy had forced the passage, the delay which that would have occasioned might have given us a chance of victory; for it was afterward ascertained that not one sixth part of the Protestant cavalry, and not one tenth of the Protestant infantry, arrived within a league of the field of battle till the whole was over. The truth is, that not above four thousand men were ever, at one time, engaged upon our part.

The discussion of these events had been going on for some time before I was brought in, and I soon found that the worst news of the whole, the death of the Prince de Condé, was still unknown among the leaders taken. When I told them the fact, however, I could scarcely get them to believe it, so horrible and improbable seemed the action that Montesquieu had committed. If I had told them that he had fallen by some chance blow or shot in fair fight, they would have given me credit at once; but I found them even more incredulous than the Catholics had been; and Soubise insisted that I must have made a mistake in the person, for Argence would never have suffered Montesquieu to kill a prince of the blood royal in his hands.

About four o'clock the rest of the prisoners were removed and marched on towards Jarnac, but I was ordered to remain, and I continued in the room of the farm for about a quarter of an hour, suffering intense torture from the wound in my right arm, and giving myself up, in solitude, to every sad and gloomy thought and expectation that it was possible for imagination to conjure up.