There was not much time to lose in manœuvring, for the day was drawing to a close. Condé charged furiously upon the advancing enemy, sweeping every thing before him, so much to the admiration of the spectators that they loudly applauded the gallant Huguenots. “If my master had only 6000 horsemen like those white-coats[397] yonder,” exclaimed the sultan’s envoy, who had been watching the fight from the city walls, “he would soon be master of the world.” But the Huguenots were so outnumbered that they were gradually hemmed in by the larger masses of the enemy, and compelled to retreat. The approach of night saved them from farther disaster. The battle was fatal to the constable, who seems to have fallen a victim to private malice. In the heat of a charge, when wounded and separated from his troops, he saw one Robert Stuart ride up to him and present a pistol. The constable, expecting to be made a prisoner, called out: “You do not know me!” “It is just because I do know you,” replied the Scotchman, “that I give you this.” And he fired,[398] the ball shattering Montmorency’s shoulder and throwing him to the ground, not however before he had broken Stuart’s jaw with the fragment of the sword he still grasped in his warlike hand. His death was like his life. When a priest approached to administer religious consolation, he smilingly begged to be left in peace, “for it would be a shameful thing,” he added, “to have known how to live fourscore years, and not know how to die one short quarter of an hour.” The queen-mother went to visit him before his death, and, as she bent over his bed to console him, he advised her to make peace as soon as possible, adding that “the shortest follies are the best.”[399] Marshal Vieilleville was of the same opinion. “It was not your majesty that gained the battle,” said he to the king, “much less the Prince of Condé!” “Who then gained it?” asked Charles. “The King of Spain,” answered Vieilleville; “for on both sides valiant captains and brave soldiers have fallen, enough to conquer Flanders and the Low Countries.” The united loss was nearly six hundred. The death of the constable was a serious blow to the Moderate party, although he did not actually belong to them. He had learned wisdom as he advanced in life, showing himself one of those rare men--rare at all times, but especially so in the sixteenth century--who could accommodate themselves to altered circumstances. His deep loyalty to the crown made him suspicious of the Lorraine faction; and his relationship to Condé and the Chatillons tempered the zeal of his orthodoxy. He saw clearly that no one would gain by the war, except the enemies of France. Languet adds that, taught by experience, Montmorency had learned that the Huguenots could not be crushed without the ruin of the kingdom; and he labored strenuously to carry out the Pacification of Amboise to the great disgust of the pope and Philip of Spain.[400]