On the 17th, Guise, who had arrived in the camp some days earlier, accompanied by a great number of gentlemen from his government of Provence, came to see Bassompierre and persuade him to go and dine with Mayenne. Bassompierre, however, who had to attend a council of war which Praslin had summoned, excused himself and, at the same time, warned the duke to be on his guard against Mayenne, “who had no greater pleasure than to make the enemy fire on him or on those whom he took to view his works, and was burning his fingers in order to burn others.”
“To my great regret,” he continues, “my prophecy was in a certain fashion a true one, for, after dinner, as he [Mayenne] was showing them his works, a ball from an arquebus, which had first pierced M. de Schomberg’s hat, struck him in the eye and killed him.”
Mayenne had possessed amiable qualities, and had enjoyed in Paris a popularity which recalled that of the great Guises. The news of his death caused a riot in the capital, where an infuriated mob fell upon the Huguenots one day when they were returning from their temple at Charenton. The Huguenots were armed, and several persons were killed on both sides, while the temple was burned.
The King and the Constable had recourse to a singular expedient to avenge Mayenne and take the town. The famous Spanish Carmelite monk Domingo de Jesu Maria, who had marched at the head of the Imperial army on the day of the Battle of Prague, and to whom the devout attributed the victory, was passing through France on his way from Germany. Luynes sent for him to come to the camp, and asked him what he ought to do to reduce this heretic stronghold, upon which the monk assured him that if he caused four hundred cannon-shots to be fired into the town, the terrified inhabitants would undoubtedly surrender. The King thereupon sent for Bassompierre and ordered him to fire the four hundred shots, which were to deliver Montauban into his hands. “This I did,” says Bassompierre; “but the enemy did not surrender for all that.”
Matters continued to go badly with the besiegers, which is scarcely surprising, having regard to the gross ineptitude of the amateur warriors who commanded them. At Ville-Nouvelle, where alone any real progress had been made, a mine had been prepared which was intended to demolish the inner face of the advanced-work of which the Guards had carried the outer. On the day before it was to be fired, Ramsay, the officer in charge of the mine, came to the Maréchal de Chaulnes to inquire how he wished it to be charged. Chaulnes, who was entirely ignorant of such matters, turned to the officers about him for information; but he misunderstood what they said and ordered the charge to be made four times as large as that which they had suggested. The astonished engineer remonstrated, but was curtly told to carry out his orders. On the following day, however, Chaulnes appears to have discovered his mistake, and told Bassompierre to go and have the mine charged as he judged best. It was too late; for, just as he reached the entrance to the gallery, Ramsay came rushing out and shouted to him to run for his life, as he had ignited the fuse and feared that the explosion would be terrible.
“I needed no second bidding,” writes Bassompierre, “and ran back forty paces as fast as I could to get away. The mine exploded with a greater violence than I have ever seen, and all the entrenchment under which it was laid was carried into the air. It was a long time in descending, when it came pouring down into the trench upon us.”
Bassompierre, who had had the presence of mind to thrust his head and the upper portion of his body into an empty barrel which happened to be lying near him, was fortunate enough to escape injury, though he had considerable difficulty in extricating himself, as there were “more than a thousand pounds of earth upon his loins, his thighs and his feet.” When he at last succeeded, he found that the effect of the explosion had been most disastrous, more than thirty men having been killed by the falling débris, amongst them being the unfortunate engineer Ramsay. The mine had also demolished a great part of their own defences, and placed them in a most dangerous position.
The enemy did not fail to seize their advantage, and, having discharged a storm of grenades and fire-balls at them, sallied out and fell upon two companies of the Guards on the left of the line. Bassompierre, with a body of gentlemen-volunteers, hurried to their assistance, and the assailants were repulsed. But, as he was returning, he met Praslin, who begged him to go at once to their four-gun battery, which was being heavily attacked. As he approached the battery, he saw that it was on fire, and that while some of the fifty Swiss who guarded it were engaged in extinguishing the flames, the rest were defending themselves with their pikes and halberds against a large force of the enemy, who were evidently determined to capture the battery at all costs.
“I saw, for the first time in my life,” he says, “women in a fight, throwing stones against us with far more strength and animosity than I should have conceived possible, or handing them to the soldiers to throw.”
He arrived only just in time, for the Swiss, many of whom had already been killed or wounded, were being desperately hard-pressed, and in a few minutes the battery must have been taken. But he placed himself at their head with his volunteers, and led a charge which drove the enemy back a little distance. They continued, however, to assail them with missiles of every description, and a large stone striking Bassompierre in the face—let us hope it was not thrown by one of the ladies with whom he had been conversing so amiably a few days before!—brought him to the ground insensible. Some of the Swiss raised him up, and carried him out of the mêlée, when he soon came to himself and returned to the fight. Finally, Praslin came up with two companies and forced the enemy to retire.