Early on the following morning we began our march for Pons; and that city was besieged in form, the garrison expressing its determination to hold out to the last extremity. They kept their word in the town; the place was taken by assault; and for the first time I beheld the most awful scene that war, always terrible, can display. Death, and destruction, and cold-blooded massacre surrounded me on every side; but, terrible as it all was, I had the satisfaction of contributing, in some degree, to the cessation of the evil. One or two of the officers joined with me; and we endeavoured, as far as possible, to shelter even the officers and soldiers that surrendered. This attempt was nearly vain, however; but it prepared the way for more successful efforts when the pillage of houses commenced. To prevent plunder was impossible, I found; but to stop massacre was less difficult, and most of my soldiers were beginning to listen to the repeated commands that they received, and form into some order, when, suddenly, a girl rushed from one of the houses, pursued by a trooper whom I had engaged at Barbazieux, and who had shown himself somewhat slack in the combat and eager in the pillage. Both the girl and the man heard clearly the orders I was in the very act of repeating, to abstain from outrage, and, rushing forward, she clung to my knees. The man darted on after her, swearing that he would have his lawful prey; that the town was taken by assault, and nobody should stop him. There was a large body of soldiers coming up at the time under Monsieur de Boucard, and I knew that at that moment example was everything. The man had the insolence to seize the woman by the shoulder at my very feet; but my heavy double-edged sword was naked in my hand at the instant, and his foul fingers had scarcely touched her when his spirit went to its dark account. "Rightly done, rightly done, Monsieur de Cerons!" cried Boucard, turning partly towards his men and partly towards me. "The same punishment for any one who commits such excesses." The greater part of the town's people were saved, but four hundred of the soldiery were massacred in cold blood; and I grieve to say, that four hundred more were afterward slain when the citadel was taken. There was every reason to believe that the castle had capitulated; but, by some mistake, the assailants got in at once, and put to death every soul they met with. I was not in the town at the moment that this latter act took place, having been ordered to follow the Admiral de Coligny with all speed towards Chauvigny, whither he had marched some days before in pursuit of the Duke of Montpensier. I was ordered to bear to him tidings of the fall of Pons; and a company of foot soldiers was added to my band, so that we might afford at once a small re-enforcement to his division of the army, and give him notice that those he had left behind would soon be prepared to support him.