ad only his own company of horse in
the right wing, which was under Marshal Saint Andre. The prince's army was
decidedly inferior in numbers; for, although he had four thousand
horse,[208] his infantry barely amounted to seven thousand or eight
thousand men, and he had only five pieces of artillery. Yet the first
movements of the Huguenots were brilliant and effective. Conde, with a
body of French horse, fell upon the battalion of Swiss pikes. It was a
furious onset, long remembered as one of the most magnificent cavalry
charges of the age.[209] Nothing could stand before it. The solid phalanx
was pierced through and through, and the German reiters, pouring into the
way opened by the French, rode to and fro, making havoc of the brave but
defenceless mountaineers. They even penetrated to the rear, and plundered
the camp of the enemy, carrying off the plate from Guise's tent. Meanwhile
Coligny was even more successful than the prince. With a part of the
Huguenot right he attacked and scattered the troops surrounding his
uncle, the constable. In the melee Montmorency himself, while fighting
with his usual courage, had his jaw fractured by a pistol-shot, and was
taken prisoner. But now the tide turned. The Swiss, never for a moment
dreaming of retreat or surrender, had promptly recovered from their
confusion and closed their ranks. The German infantry, or lansquenets,
were brought up to the attack, but first hesitated, and then broke before
the terrible array of pikes. D'Andelot, ill with fever, had thus far been
forced to remain a mere spectator of the contest. But now, seeing the
soldiers whom he had been at such pains to bring to the scene of action in
ignominious retreat, he threw himself on his horse and labored with
desperation to rally them. His pains were thrown away. The lansquenets
continued their course, and D'Andelot, who scarcely escaped falling into
the enemy's hands, probably concurred in the verdict pronounced on them by
a contemporary historian, that no more cowardly troops had entered the
country in fifty years.[210] It was at this moment that the Duke of Guise,
who had with difficulty held his impatient horse in reserve on the Roman
Catholic right, gave the signal to his company to follow him, and fell
upon the French infantry of the Huguenots, imprudently left unprotected by
cavalry at some distance in the rear. The move was skilfully planned and
well executed. The infantry were routed. Conde, coming to the