"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. His capital just ready to sink exhausted into his hands had
been wrested from his grasp, and was alive with new hope and new
defiance. The League was triumphant, his own army scattering to the four
winds. Even a man of high courage and sagacity might have been in
despair. Yet never were the magnificent hopefulness, the wise audacity
of Henry more signally manifested than now when he seemed most blundering
and most forlorn. His hardy nature ever met disaster with so cheerful a