clumsy ambush to bring on a general engagement in the open field, and he
was not to be drawn out of his trenches into a trap by such a shallow
device. A French captain, who by command of Henry had purposely allowed
himself to be taken, informed his captors that the skirmishers were in
reality supported by a heavy force of infantry. This suggestion of the
ready Bearnese confirmed the doubts of Alexander. Meantime the
skirmishing steeplechase went on before his eyes. The king dashing down
a hill received an arquebus shot in his side, but still rode for his
life. Lavardin and Givry came to the rescue, but a panic seized their
followers as the rumour flew that the king was mortally wounded--was
already dead--so that they hardly brought a sufficient force to beat back
the Leaguers. Givry's horse was soon killed under him, and his own thigh
crushed; Lavardin was himself dangerously wounded. The king was more
hard pressed than ever, men were falling on every side of him, when four
hundred French dragoons--as a kind of musketeers who rode on hacks to the
scene of action but did their work on foot, were called at that day--now
dismounted and threw themselves between Henry and his pursuers. Nearly
every man of them laid down his life, but they saved the king's. Their
vigorous hand to hand fighting kept off the assailants until Nevers and
Longueville received the king at the gates of Aumale with a force before
which the Leaguers were fain to retreat as rapidly as they had come.

In this remarkable skirmish of Aumale the opposite qualities of Alexander
and of Henry were signally illustrated. The king, by his constitutional
temerity, by his almost puerile love of confronting danger for the
danger's sake, was on the verge of sacrificing himself with all the hopes
of his house and of the nobler portion of his people for an absolute
nothing; while the duke, out of his superabundant caution, peremptorily
refused to stretch out his hand and seize the person of his great enemy
when directly within his, grasp. Dead or alive, the Bearnese was