[205] "Par ce moyen, un chacun de nous trainera son licol, jusques a ce que les dessusdits le serrent a leur appetit." Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 126. The details of the conferences, with the articles offered on either side, are given at great length, pp. 121-136. [206] "The queene mother and hyr councelours," wrote Throkmorton to Elizabeth, four or five days later (Dec. 13, 1562), "have at the length once agayne showed, howe sincerely they meane in their treatyes. For when their force out of Gascoigne together with two thousand five hundred Spainardes were arrived, and when they had well trenched and fortefyed the faulxbourges and places of advantage of Paris; espienge, that the prince coulde remayne no longer with his campe before Paris for lack of victuaill and fourrage, having abused him sufficiently with this treaty eight or ten dayes: the sayd queene mother ... refused utterly the condicions before accorded." Forbes, State Papers, ii. 226. It is not strange that the ambassador, after the meagre results of the past five weeks, "could not hope of any great good to be done, until he saw it;" although he was confident that "if matters were handled stoutly and roundly, without delay," the prince might constrain his enemies to accord him favorable conditions. [207] Mem. de Castelnau, liv. iv., c. iv. [208] Five thousand, according to the Duke d'Aumale (Les Princes de Conde, i. 190). [209] "Quatre-vingtz salades ... lesquels sembloient estre _quatre-vingtz saettes_ du ciel!" Explanation of plan of battle sent by Guise to the king, reprinted in Mem. de Conde, iv. 687. [210] "Etant chose certaine qu'il n'entra de cinquante ans en France des plus couards hommes que ceux-la, bien qu'ils eussent la plus belle apparence du monde." Hist. eccles. ii. 144. [211] It ought perhaps, in justice to the reiters, to be noticed that Coligny attributes their failure not to cowardice, as in the case of both the French and the German infantry, but to their not understanding orders, and to the occasional absence of an interpreter. [212] La Noue in his commentaries (Ed. Mich., c. x., p. 605 seq.) makes some interesting observations on the singular incidents of the battle of Dreux. The author of the Histoire eccles., ii. 140, and De Thou, iii. 367, criticise both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant generals. They find the former to blame for not waiting to engage the Huguenots until they had reached the rougher country they were approaching, where the superiority of Conde in cavalry would have been of little avail. They censure the latter for leaving his own infantry unprotected, and for attacking the enemy's infantry instead of his cavalry. If this had been routed, the other would have made no further resistance. [213] He had, according to Beza's letter to Calvin, Dec. 27th (Baum, ii. Appendix, 202), lost only one hundred and fifty of his horsemen; or, according to the Histoire eccles. (ii. 146), only twenty-seven.