ting to cross the Loire,
where such good provision has been made to obstruct him."[690]

[Sidenote: They overcome all obstacles and join Coligny.]

[Sidenote: Death of Deux Ponts.]

Charles had not exaggerated the difficulties of the undertaking; but Deux
Ponts, under the blessing of Heaven, surmounted them all. The discord
between Aumale and Nemours rendered weak and useless an army that might,
in the hands of a single skilful general, have checked or annihilated
him.[691] Mouy and his French comrades were good guides. The Loire was
reached, while Aumale and Nemours followed at a respectful distance.
Guerchy, an officer lately belonging to Coligny's army, discovered a ford
by which a part of the Germans crossed. The main body laid siege to the
town of La Charite, which was soon reduced (on the twentieth of May), the
Huguenots thus gaining a bridge and stronghold that proved of great
utility for their future operations. Six days after the king had
demonstrated the impossibility of the enterprise, Deux Ponts was on the
western side of the Loire.[692] Meantime, Coligny and La Rochefoucauld
were advancing to meet him with the elite of their army and with all the
artillery they had. On approaching Limoges on the Vienne, they learned
that the Germans had crossed the river and were but two leagues distant.
Coligny at once took horse, and rode to their encampment, in order to
greet and congratulate their leader. He was too late. The general, who had
conducted an army five hundred miles through a hostile country, was in the
last agonies of death, and on the next day (the eleventh of June) fell a
victim to a fever from which he had for some time been suffering. "It is a
thing that ought for all time to be remarked as a singular and special act
of God," said a bulletin sent by the Queen of Navarre to Queen Elizabeth,
"that He permitted this prince to traverse so great an extent of country,
with a great train of artillery, infantry, and baggage, and in full view
of a large army; and to pass so many rivers, and through so many difficult
and dangerous places, of such kind that it is not in the memory of man
that an army has passed through any similar ones, and by which a single
wagon could not be driven without great trouble, so that it appears a
dream to those who have not seen it; and that being out of danger, and
having arrived at the place where he longed to be, in order to assist the
churches of this realm, God should have bee