eeps through Guyenne.]

Coligny's army was chiefly composed of cavalry; of infantry he had but
three thousand men.[753] The young Princes of Navarre and of Conde, whom
he wished to accustom to the fatigues of the march and of the
battle-field, while endearing them to the Huguenots by their participation
in the same perils with the meanest private soldier, were his companions,
and had commands of their own. He had left La Rochefoucauld in La Rochelle
to protect the city and the Queen of Navarre. The admiral's course was
first directed to Montauban, that city which has been the stronghold of
Protestantism in southern France down to the present time. But the
difficulties of the way, and, particularly, the improbability of finding
easy means of crossing so near their mouths the successive rivers, which,
rising in the mountainous region of Auvergne and the Cevennes, all flow
westward and empty into the Garonne, or its wide estuary, the Gironde,
compelled Coligny to make a considerable deflection to the left. He
effected the passage of the Dordogne at Argentat, a little above the spot
where Montbrun had sustained his recent check, and, after making a feint
of throwing himself into Auvergne, crossed the Lot below Cadenac, and
reached Montauban in safety.[754] The Count of Montgomery, returning from
his victorious campaign in Bearn, had been ordered to be in readiness in
this city. But learning that, by an unaccountable delay, he was still in
Condom, south of the Garonne, Coligny marched westward to Aiguillon, at
the confluence of the Lot and the Garonne. Near this place he constructed,
with great trouble, a substantial bridge across the Garonne, with the
intention of transporting his army to the left bank, and ravaging the
country far down in the direction of Bordeaux. This bold movement was
prevented by Blaise de Montluc, who, adopting the suggestion of another,
and appropriating the credit due to the sagacity of this nameless genius,
detached one of the numerous floating windmills that were moored in the
Garonne, and having loaded it with stones, sent it down with the current
against Coligny's bridge. Not only were the chains that bound the
structure broken, but the very boats on which it rested were carried away
as far as to Bordeaux itself. It was with great difficulty that the
admiral brought back to the right bank the division of his army that had
already crossed, and with it the troops of Count Montgomery.[755]

The uni