The same year the Comte de Montgommery was at the battle of Dreux, where he performed prodigies of valor.
It was he, they said, who wounded with a pistol-ball the Constable de Montmorency, who commanded in chief, and would have made an end of him if the Prince de Porcien had not sheltered the constable and received him as a prisoner.
Every one knows that a month after this battle, where Le Balafré had wrested victory from the constable's unskilful hands, the noble Duc de Guise was treacherously murdered before Orléans by the fanatic Poltrot.
Montmorency, relieved of a rival, but also deprived of his ally, was less fortunate at the battle of St. Denis in 1567 than at that of Dreux.
The Scotchman Robert Stuart called upon him to surrender. He replied by striking him across the face with the flat of his sword, whereupon some one fired a pistol at him (the constable); the ball pierced his side, and he fell, mortally wounded.
Through the stream of blood which obscured his sight he thought that he recognized the features of Gabriel.
The constable breathed his last the following day.
Although he had now no direct personal foes, the Comte de Montgommery did not lessen the force of his blows. He seemed invincible and immortal.
When Catherine de Médicis asked who had compelled Béarn to submit to the King of Navarre, and had caused the Prince of Béarn to be recognized as general-in-chief of the Huguenots, the answer was—Montgommery.
When, on the day following the massacre of St. Bartholomew (1572), the queen-mother, in her thirst for vengeance, inquired, not as to those who had perished, but as to those who had escaped, the first name mentioned was—Montgommery.