fresh in
the memory of all. They received no mercy at the King's hands.

Gathering his available forces together, and strengthened by the
accession of old Marshal Biron, who had been compelled, much against his
will, to remain a passive spectator while others fought, Henry pursued
the remnants of the army of the League many a mile to Mantes and the
banks of the Seine. If their defeat by a greatly inferior force had been
little to the credit of either the generals or the troops of the League,
their precipitate flight was still less decorous. The much-vaunted
Flemish lancers distinguished themselves, it was said, by not pausing
until they found safety beyond the borders of France; and Mayenne, never
renowned for courage, emulated or surpassed them in the eagerness he
displayed, on reaching the little town from which the battle took its
name, to put as many leagues as possible between himself and his
pursuers. "The enemy thus ran away," says the Englishman William Lyly,
who was an eye-witness of the battle; "Mayenne to Ivry, where the
Walloons and reiters followed so fast that there standing, hasting to
draw breath, and not able to speak, he was constrained to draw his sword
to strike the flyers to make place for his own flight."

The battle had been a short one. Between ten and eleven o'clock the
first attack was made; in less than an hour the army of the League was
routed. It had been a glorious action for the King and his old
Huguenots, and not less for the loyal Roman Catholics who clung to him.
None seemed discontented but old Marshal Biron, who, when he met the
King coming out of the fray with battered armor and blunted sword, could
not help contrasting the opportunity his Majesty had enjoyed to
distinguish himself with his own enforced inactivity, and exclaimed,
"Sire, this is not right! You have to-day done what Biron ought to have
done, and he has done what the King should have done." But even Biron
was unable to deny that the success of the royal arms surpassed all
expectation, and deserved to rank among the wonders of history. The
preponderance of the enemy in numbers had been great. There was no
question that the impetuous attacks of their cavalry upon the left wing
of the King were for a time almost successful. The official accounts
might conveniently be silent upon the point, but the truth could not be
disguised that at the moment Henry plunged into battle a part of his
line was grievously shaken, a part was