Great was the exultation at court when the news of this brilliant success arrived,[430] and the nominal conqueror, Henry of Anjou, was extolled in language that would have been extravagant if applied to a Marlborough or Napoleon. He fought well, and had a horse killed under him; but Charles was not far wrong when he asked whether Tavannes and Biron were not the real heroes of the day? A solemn _Te Deum_ was chanted for the victory at Jarnac, and the captured standards, twelve in number, were sent to Rome as a present to the pope. Pius V., who in earlier days had exercised the office of inquisitor-general in Lombardy with fanatical severity, wrote to congratulate the king on the victory, bidding him “be deaf to every prayer, to trample upon every tie of blood and affection, and to extirpate heresy down to its smallest fibres (_etiam radicum fibras funditus evellere_).” He pointed to the example of Saul slaying the Amalekites, and condemned every feeling of clemency as a temptation of Satan.[431] This was the same pope who, having sent military aid to the French Catholics, blamed their commander “for not obeying his orders to slay instantly every heretic that fell into his hands:”[432] and yet he would complain with all sincerity that “but for the support of prayer, the cares of the papacy would be more than he could endure.” Contemporary writers tell us that “he performed his religious duties most devoutly, frequently with tears;” and always rose from his knees with the conviction that his prayers had been heard. Such are the contradictions in the human heart! When the news of the victory reached Provins, there was the usual holiday: the shops were closed, the houses decorated, and a general procession of clergy and laity, bearing relics and banners, marched through the crowded streets to the Jacobin’s convent to hear the Lent preacher. He was an apt pupil of the foul-mouthed Father Ivole. With thundering voice, and animated gestures, he declared the prince’s death to be a divine judgment, and described him as “the chief of robbers, murderers, thieves, rebels, Huguenots, and heretics in France; a prince degenerated from the virtues and religion of his ancestors, a man foresworn, guilty of treason against God and the king, a profaner of temples, a breaker of images, a destroyer of altars, a contemner of the sacraments, a disturber of the peace, a betrayer of his country, and a renegade Frenchman,” with many other flowers of monkish rhetoric, which the chronicler Haton forbears to quote.