, covering up his face, he awaited
death the poor soul knew only too well the perfidious character of the
Duke of Anjou, the hatred with which he was hunting him down, and the
sanguinary orders he would give. The guards had gone by when their
captain, Montesquion, learned the name of this prisoner. 'Slay, slay,
mordioux!' he shouted; then suddenly wheeling his horse round, he returns
at a gallop, and with a pistol-shot, fired from behind, shatters the
hero's skull." [_Histoire des Princes de Conde,_ by M. le Duc d'Aumale,
t. ii. pp. 65-72.]

The death of Conde gave to the battle of Jarnac an importance not its
own. A popular ditty of the day called that prince "the great enemy of
the mass." "His end," says the Duke of Aumale, "was celebrated by the
Catholics as a deliverance; a solemn Te Deum was chanted at court and in
all the churches of France. The flags taken were sent to Rome, where
Pope Pius IV. went with them in state to St. Peter's. As for the Duke of
Anjou, he showed his joy and his baseness together by the ignoble
treatment he caused to be inflicted upon the remains of his vanquished
relative, a prince of the blood who had fallen sword in hand. At the
first rumor of Conde's death, the Duke of Montpensier's secretary,
Coustureau, had been despatched from headquarters with Baron de Magnac to
learn the truth of the matter. 'We found him there,' he relates, 'laid
upon an ass; the said sir baron took him by the hair of the head for to
lift up his face, which he had turned towards the ground, and asked me if
I recognized him. But as he had lost an eye from his head, he was
mightily disfigured; and I could say no more than it was certainly his
figure and his hair, and further than that I was unable to speak.'
Meanwhile," continues the Duke of Aumale, "the accounts of those present
removed all doubt; and the corpse, thus thrown across an ass, with arms
and legs dangling, was carried to Jarnac, where the Duke of Anjou lodged
on the evening of the battle. There the body of Conde was taken down
amidst the sobs of some Protestant prisoners, who kissed, as they wept,
the remains of their gallant chief. This touching spectacle did not stop
the coarse ribaldry of the Duke of Anjou and his favorites; and for two
days the prince's remains were left in a ground-floor room, there exposed
to the injurious action of the air and, to the gross insults of the
courtiers. The Duke of Anjou at last consented to give up the