The Duc de Nevers made a despairing effort to restore the battle at the head of five hundred dragoons; but the "black devils," as the Frenchmen called the "Schwartzreiters," cut them to pieces, and the Duc barely escaped at the head of a mere handful of men to La Fère, and with him was the Prince of Condé. For a time the French infantry presented a bold front; the Gascons, the flower of the army, threw themselves into squares, and the fierce cavalry rode round their solid masses, bristling with steel, unable to find an entrance. At this moment the Duke of Savoy, with his artillery, came on the field of action, and their deadly fire sealed the fate of the foe. Yet the noble chivalry of France refused to be thus scattered and beaten; they gathered together in groups, fighting desperately to the last—brave souls to whom death was preferable to surrender! Many men threw down their arms on that field of blood, many fled helplessly before the remorseless reiters, the strong overturning the weak and trampling down the wounded. Blood flowed like water, death was on every side, and above all other sounds were the wild neighing of the war-horses and the fierce curses of their riders. The fight and the pursuit of the fugitives had lasted four hours; the shades of evening were falling as the victors returned to the field to take up their quarters for the night and to secure their unhappy prisoners, for whom heavy ransoms would have to be paid to their captors. France had not suffered such a defeat since Agincourt; the bravest and noblest of her sons had fallen on that field of blood! Montmorency was a prisoner. A shot from a schwartzreiter had fractured his thigh as he was throwing himself into the hottest part of the battle, determined to perish. Covered with mire and blood, unrecognizable in the fierce mêlée, he would have died where he fell, at the hands of the fierce foe. But over his fallen body stood three gallant swordsmen, whose determined attitude warned all men off. And as the fiery stream of battle flowed onwards, they lifted up the fallen Constable tenderly, and bore him to a place of safety. Yet were they not to do this deed of mercy unmolested. A swarthy reiter followed them, observing that the fallen man was of high rank. "I claim this man as my prisoner, and I hold to ransom; mine was the shot that brought him down," said he fiercely. "Make your claim good to King Philip, we shall not resist it; the ransom may be yours, but at present the body is ours," answered De Fynes boldly. And De Montmorency lived to pay so great a ransom (10,000 ducats), that his captor was able to buy a fortress on the Rhine and a title of nobility! But the Constable's fame as a soldier was lost for ever, and the evening of his days was spent in obscurity.