"I was serving in the field," answered Montmorency, "before the Prince of Conde came into the world; I have good hopes of still giving him lessons in the art of war for some years to come." The valor of the constable and his comrades in arms could not save them from the consequences of their stubborn recklessness and their numerical inferiority; the battalions of Gascon infantry closed their ranks, with pikes to the front, and made an heroic resistance, but all in vain, against repeated charges of the Spanish cavalry: and the defeat was total.

More than three thousand men were killed; the number of prisoners amounted to double; and the constable, left upon the field with his thigh shattered by a cannon-ball, fell into the hands of the Spaniards, as was also the case with the Dukes of Longueville and Montpensier, La Rochefoucauld, D'Aubigne, &c.

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The Duke of Enghien, Viscount de Turenne, and a multitude of others, many great names amidst a host of obscure, fell in the fight.