their companions in arms, taunted them with their slowness. The,
impetuous Egmont, burning to eclipse the fame of his ill-fated father at
Gravelines and St. Quintin in the same holy cause, urged on the battle
with unseemly haste, loudly proclaiming that if the French were faint-
hearted he would himself give a good account of the Navarrese prince
without any assistance from them.

A cannon-shot away, the grim puritan nobles who had come forth from their
mountain fastnesses to do battle for king and law and for the rights of
conscience against the Holy League--men seasoned in a hundred battle-
fields, clad all in iron, with no dainty ornaments nor holiday luxury of
warfare--knelt on the ground, smiting their mailed breasts with iron
hands, invoking blessings on themselves and curses and confusion on their
enemies in the coming conflict, and chanting a stern psalm of homage to
the God of battles and of wrath. And Henry of France and Navarre,
descendant of Lewis the Holy and of Hugh the Great, beloved chief of the
Calvinist cavaliers, knelt among his heretic brethren, and prayed and
chanted with them. But not the staunchest Huguenot of them all, not
Duplessis, nor D'Aubigne, nor De la Noue with the iron arm, was more
devoted on that day to crown and country than were such papist supporters
of the rightful heir as had sworn to conquer the insolent foreigner on
the soil of France or die.

When this brief prelude was over, Henry made an address to his soldiers,
but its language has not been preserved. It is known, however, that he
wore that day his famous snow-white plume, and that he ordered his
soldiers, should his banner go down in the conflict, to follow wherever
and as long as that plume should be seen waving on any part of the field.
He had taken a position by which his troops had the sun and wind in their
backs, so that the smoke rolled toward the enemy and the light shone in