have done it. The
king was now in worse plight than ever. His army fell to pieces. His
cavaliers, cheated of their battle; and having neither food nor forage,
rode off by hundreds every day. "Our state is such," said Stafford; on
the 16th September, "and so far unexpected and wonderful, that I am
almost ashamed to write, because methinks everybody should think I dream.
Myself seeing of it methinketh that I dream. For, my lord, to see an army
such a one I think as I shall never see again--especially for horsemen
and gentlemen to take a mind to disband upon the taking of such a paltry
thing as Lagny, a town no better indeed than Rochester, it is a thing so
strange to me that seeing of it I can scarce believe it. They make their
excuses of their want, which I know indeed is great--for there were few
left with one penny in their purses--but yet that extremity could not be
such but that they might have tarried ten days or fifteen at the most
that the king desired of them. . . . From six thousand horse that we
were and above, we are come to two thousand and I do not see an end of
our leave-takers, for those be hourly.

"The most I can see we can make account of to tarry are the Viscount
Turenne's troops, and Monsieur de Chatillon's, and our Switzers, and
Lanaquenettes, which make very near five thousand. The first that went
away, though he sent word to the king an hour before he would tarry, was
the Count Soissons, by whose parting on a sudden and without leave-taking
we judge a discontentment."

The king's army seemed fading into air. Making virtue of necessity he
withdrew to St. Denis, and decided to disband his forces, reserving to
himself only a flying camp with which to harass the enemy as often as
opportunity should offer.

It must be confessed that the Bearnese had been thoroughly
out-generalled. "It was not God's will," said Stafford, who had been in
constant attendance upon Henry through the whole business; "we deserved
it not; for the king might as easily have had Paris as drunk, four or
five times. And at the last, if he had not committed those faults that
children would not have done, only with the desire to fight and give the
battle (which the other never meant), he had had it in the Duke of
Parma's eight as he took Lagny in ours." He had been foiled of the battle
on which he had set his heart, and, in which he felt confident of
overthrowing the great captain of the age, and trampling the League under
his feet