Although the lance had not penetrated the prince’s armour, which happened to be intact at the spot where he had been struck, he was badly bruised and shaken and scarcely able to stand. However, he embraced and pardoned the prisoner who had adopted this highly disagreeable mode of surrender, and was then carried to the King of Navarre’s quarters.
The victory of Coutras although so complete, had no important results. D’Aubigné accuses the King of Navarre of having sacrificed his duty to love—to his eagerness to lay at the feet of his mistress, the Comtesse de Gramont (la belle Corisande), the standards which he had captured. But his inaction was more probably due to the fact that it was impossible for him to keep his army together, so eager were the soldiers to return to their homes with their booty. Anyway, he made no attempt to join the Germans, who were defeated by the Duc de Guise at Vimory, near Orléans, and again at Anneau, and driven across the frontier, with terrible loss.
Condé, who had in vain endeavoured to persuade his cousin to continue the operations, decided to lead the contingents of Poitou and Saintonge against Saumur, but so many of his men deserted that he was compelled to abandon this enterprise. He was, besides, far too unwell for further service, for, since his encounter with Saint-Luc, he had been suffering from severe pains in the side; and on reaching Saintes, these were complicated by an attack of fever. The princess rejoined him there,[118] and early in January, 1588 he was sufficiently recovered to return to Saint-Jean-d’Angely. Shortly afterwards, the pains in the side returned; but, passionately devoted as he was to all martial exercises, he no sooner felt better than he was in the saddle again; and on Thursday, 3 March, spent some hours in tilting at the ring, on which occasion he rode a restive horse, which reared repeatedly.[119]
About an hour after supper that evening, the prince was seized with violent pains in the stomach, followed by repeated vomiting. He was attended by his chief surgeon, Nicolas Poget, and a physician named Bonaventure de Médicis, “who aided the movements of nature. The malady notwithstanding continued all night ... and so great was his difficulty in breathing that he was unable to stay in his bed, and was compelled to sit in a chair.
“Whereupon, on the morrow, Maîtres Louis Bontemps and Jean Pallet, also doctors of medicine, were called into consultation; and they all of them succoured his Excellency with all diligence and fidelity, by all the means that they judged suitable, according to the symptoms of the malady. But on the Saturday, the fifth day of the month, and the second of the malady, at three o’clock in the afternoon, all things took a turn for the worse, and an entire suffocation of all the faculties supervened, in which he rendered his soul to God half an hour afterwards.”[120]
“I was one of those,” writes Fiefbrun, “who were chosen to report this piteous calamity to Madame his wife, whom I found descending the steps of her hôtel to come and visit him in his little lodging, where she expected to find him alive, since she had as yet no idea that he was so near his last day. As soon as she caught sight of me, she suspected her misfortune, and pressing me to tell her in a few words, she fell down in a swoon, and was carried immediately to her bed, where she broke forth into the most terrible lamentations, accompanied by so many sobs and sighs that they could not be imagined save by those who saw and heard them. They were so violent that I am often astonished that they did not occasion a miscarriage.”[121]
In view of what we are about to relate, Fiefbrun’s account of the manner in which the Princesse de Condé received the news of her husband’s death is of extreme importance.
The rapidity of the malady, and the fact that decomposition set in within two hours after death, “gave cause to the doctors and surgeons to suspect that there had been some extraordinary and violent cause.” By order of the prince’s council, two other surgeons were called in, and an autopsy performed. This served to confirm their suspicions. “We have found,” runs their report, “all the stomach, particularly towards the right part, black, burned, gangreened, and ulcerated, which, in our opinion, can only have been caused by a quantity of burning, ulcerating, and caustic poison, which poison has left evident traces of its passage in the esophagus. The liver, in the part adjoining the aforesaid channel, was altered and burned, and all the rest of the organ livid, as were also the lungs. There was not a single part of his Excellency’s body which was not very sound and very healthy, if the violent poison had not destroyed and corrupted the parts mentioned.”[122]
Meanwhile, orders had been given that all the late prince’s servants were to be placed under arrest, and a courier had been despatched to the King of Navarre, who was at Nérac. Under date 10 March, 1588, we find Henri writing to the Comtesse de Gramont as follows:
“To finish describing myself, there has happened to me one of the greatest calamities that I could possibly fear, which is the sudden death of Monsieur le Prince. I mourn for him as he ought to have been to me, not as he was. I am assured of being the only target at which the perfidies of the Mass are aimed. They have poisoned him, the traitors!