"On the 10th of August the battle was begun between the two armies. The Constable affected to despise the Duke of Savoy's youth: 'I will soon show him,' said he, 'a move of an old soldier.' "The French army, being very inferior in numbers, was for a moment on the point of being surrounded. The Prince of Condë sent the Constable warning. 'I was serving in the field,' answered Montmorency, 'before the Prince of Condé came into the world; I have good hopes of still giving him lessons in the art of war for some years to come.' "The valor of the Constable and his comrades-in-arms could not save them from the consequences of their stubborn recklessness, and their numerical inferiority; the battalions of Gascon infantry closed their ranks, with pikes to the front, and made a heroic resistance, but all in vain, against repeated charges of the Spanish cavalry; and the defeat was total. "More than 3,000 men were killed; the number of prisoners amounted to double this figure; and the Constable, left upon the field with his thigh shattered by a cannon ball, fell into the hands of the Spaniards, as was also the case with the Dukes of Longueville and Montpensier, la Rochefoucauld, d'Aubigné, etc.... The Duke of Enghien, Viscount de Turenne and a multitude of others, many great names amidst a host of obscure, fell in the fight. The Duke of Nevers and the Prince of Condé, sword in hand, reached La Fère with the remnants of their army. Coligny remained alone at St. Quentin with those who survived of his little garrison, and a hundred and twenty arquebusiers whom the Duke of Nevers threw into the place at a loss of three times as many. Coligny held out for a fortnight longer, behind walls that were in ruins and were assailed by a victorious army. At length, on the 27th of August, the enemy entered St. Quentin in shoals. "The Admiral, who was still going about the streets with a few men to make head against them, found himself hemmed in on all sides, and did what he could to fall into the hands of a Spaniard, preferring rather to await on the spot the common fate than to incur by flight any shame or reproach. They took him prisoner, after having set him to rest a while at the foot of the ramparts, and took him away to their camp, where as he entered, he met Captain Alonzo de Cazieres, commandant of the old bands of Spanish infantry; when up came the Duke of Savoy, who ordered the said Cazieres to take the Admiral to his tent." * * Commentaire de François de Rabutin sur les Guerres entre Henri II., roi de France, et Charles Quint, empereur. Vol. I, p. 95, in the Petitot Collection.