Some pieces of artillery, however, now opened upon them, and before they reached Essigny, the whole army was completely annihilated.

The defeat was absolute.

Half the French troops actually engaged in the enterprise, lost their lives upon the field.

The remainder of the army was captured or utterly disorganized.

When Nevers reviewed, at Laon, the wreck of the Constable's whole force, he found some thirteen hundred French and three hundred German cavalry, with four companies of French infantry remaining out of fifteen, and four thousand German foot remaining of twelve thousand.