his cavalry, only one-fifth part
were provided with lances, the rest having swords and pistols. The greater
number had no defensive armor; and not a horse was furnished with the
leathern _barbe_ with which the knight continued, as in the middle ages,
to cover his steed's breast and sides. The constable had wisely chosen a
moment when the prince had weakened himself by detaching D'Andelot, with
five hundred horse and eight hundred arquebusiers, to seize Poissy and
intercept the Count of Aremberg.[457] In the face of such a disparity of
numbers and equipment, the Huguenots exhibited signal intrepidity.[458]
With Coligny thrown forward on the right, in front of the village of Saint
Ouen, and Genlis on the left, near Aubervilliers, they opened the attack
upon the overwhelming numbers of the enemy, who descended from higher
ground to meet them. Marshal de Montmorency, the constable's eldest son,
commanding a part of the royal army, alone was successful, and had the
valor of his troops been imitated by the rest, the defeat of the Huguenots
would have been decisive; but the "Parisian regiment," despite its gilded
armor,[459] yielded at the first shock of battle and fled in confusion to
the walls of Paris. Their cowardice uncovered the position of the
constable, and the cavalry of the Prince penetrated to the spot where the
old warrior was still fighting hand to hand, with a vigor scarcely
inferior to that which he had displayed more than fifty years earlier, in
the first Italian campaign of Francis the First.[460] A Scottish
gentleman, according to the most probable account--for the true history of
the affair is involved in unusual obscurity--Robert Stuart by name, rode
up to Montmorency and demanded his surrender. But the constable, maddened
at the suggestion of a fourth captivity,[461] for all reply struck Stuart
on the mouth, with the hilt of his sword, so violent a blow that he broke
three of his teeth. At that very moment he received, whether from Stuart
or from another of the Scottish gentlemen is uncertain,[462] a pistol-shot
that entered his shoulder and inflicted a mortal wound. At a few paces
from him, Conde, with his horse killed under him, nearly fell into the
hands of the enemy. At last, however, his partisans succeeded in rescuing
him, and, while he retired slowly to Saint Denis, the dying constable was
carried to Paris, whither the Roman Catholic army returned at
evening.[463]

[Sidenote: Character of Anne de Mo