At the first shock it seemed as if the Huguenots would win, and they cried in exaltation, “Victory, victory! The Evangel has won the victory and has vanquished the mass of the popes. Down with the Papists!”[1364] The admiral began the fray by charging Anjou’s center with 2,000 reiters and such French gendarmes as he had, but was himself attacked on the flank by the duke of Aumale and Villars so furiously that he was compelled to fall back. The Protestant infantry which had followed the horse into the battle, was thus left unsustained, and when the duke of Guise’s light horse charged, the lansquenets broke in flight, abandoning the artillery. In the midst of the melée various companies of reiters, seeing the battle lost, ran to their baggage, seized their most valuable effects, and decamped in haste. Mansfeldt’s reiters alone fought well; the others were of slight service. Matters were little better with the hirelings of the King. Many of the leaders on both sides were injured in the course of the battle; Guise in the hand and foot, Bassompierre, a German captain destined to become a very prominent man at court, in both arms; Anjou was borne to the ground off his horse but escaped injury; Coligny was hurt in the face by a pistol-ball. Among the Catholic dead was Montbrun, captain of the Swiss guard. He was haughty and cruel, and a despot with his men, but it is to his credit that he sought to prevent the soldiery from abusing the peasantry.[1365] The most of the Huguenot dead were the German reiters and lansquenets, many of whom were killed by their Catholic compatriots or the Swiss, who distinguished themselves by their ferocity.[1366] The fight endured for four hours, from 11 until 3 o’clock, at the end of which time the forces of Anjou overthrew the admiral, routed both his horse and foot, and captured his artillery and baggage. But for the good fortune that some of Coligny’s horse intercepted a treasurer of the King coming out of Limousin with 30,000 francs, the distribution of which among his reiters quieted their murmurs, Coligny might have been all but deserted by the German horse.[1367] As it was, he was able to fall back on Niort and thence make his retreat to the far south.[1368]