the Count de
Soissons, he remarked, with a smile, "To you I shall say nothing but
that you are of the house of Bourbon, and, please God, I will show you
this day that I am your elder."

The battle almost immediately ensued. Like all fierce fights, it was
for a time but a delirious scene of horror, confusion, and carnage.
But the Protestants, with sinewy arms, hewed down their effeminate
foes, and with infantry and cavalry swept to and fro resistlessly over
the plain. The white plume of Henry of Navarre was ever seen waving in
the tumultuous throng wherever the battle was waged the fiercest.

There was a singular blending of the facetious with the horrible in
this sanguinary scene. Before the battle, the Protestant preachers, in
earnest sermons, had compared Henry with David at the head of the
Lord's chosen people. In the midst of the bloody fray, when the field
was covered with the dying and the dead, Henry grappled one of the
standard-bearers of the enemy. At the moment, humorously reminded of
the flattering comparison of the preachers, he shouted, with waggery
which even the excitement of the battle could not repress,

"Surrender, you uncircumcised Philistine."

In the course of one hour three thousand of the Leaguers were
weltering in blood upon the plain, Joyeuse himself, their leader,
being among the dead. The defeat of the Catholics was so entire that
not more than one fourth of their number escaped from the field of
Coutras.

The victors were immediately assembled upon the bloody field, and,
after prayers and thanksgiving, they sung, with exultant lips,

"The Lord appears my helper now,
Nor is my faith afraid
What all the sons of earth can do,
Since Heaven affords its aid."

Henry was very magnanimous in the hour of victory. When some one asked
what terms he should now demand, after so great a discomfiture of his
foes, he replied, "_The same as before the battle_."

In reading the records of these times, one is surprised to see how
mirth, festivity, and magnificence are blended with blood, misery, and
despair. War was desolating France with woes which to thousands of
families must have made existence a curse, and yet amid these scenes
we catch many glimpses of merriment and gayety. At one time we see
Henry III. weeping and groaning upon his bed in utter wretchedness,
and again he appears before us reveling with his dissolute companions
in the wildest carousals. While Henry of Na