"D'Andelot, the Admiral's brother, succeeded in escaping across the marshes. Being thus master of St. Quentin, Philip II, after having attempted to put a stop to the carnage and plunder, expelled from the town, which was half in ashes, the inhabitants who had survived, and the small adjacent fortresses of Ham and Catalet did not hesitate long before surrendering. Five years later, in 1557, after the battle and capture of St. Quentin, France was in a fit of stupor; Paris believed the enemy to be already beneath her walls; many of the burgesses were packing up and flying--some to Orleans, some to Bourges, some still further." * And now once more history repeats itself in the sacking and burning of this quaint town, in the retreat of the invader of 1914-5 after three years of agony endured by its people. "God makes no account of centuries, and a great deal is required before the most certain and most salutary truths get their place and their rights in the minds and communities of men," says Guizot, quaintly, and thus dismisses the record of Henry II: "On the 29th of June, 1559, a brilliant tournament was celebrated in lists erected at the end of the street of Saint Antoine, almost at the foot of the Bastile. Henry II, the Queen, and the whole court had been present at it for three days." * Guizot's "Histoire de France." Vol. Ill, p. 204. "The entertainment was drawing to a close. The King, who had run several tilts 'like a sturdy and skillful Cavalier,' wished to break yet another lance, and bade the Count de Montgomery, captain of the guards, to run against him. Montgomery excused himself; but the King insisted. The tilt took place. The two jousters, on meeting, broke their lances skilfully; but Montgomery forgot to drop at once, according to usage, the fragment remaining in his hand; he unintentionally struck the King's helmet and raised the visor, and a splinter of wood entered Henry's eye; he fell forward upon his horse's neck." All the appliances of art were useless; the brain had been pierced. Henry II languished for eleven days and expired on the tenth of July, 1559, aged forty years and some months. "An insignificant man and a reign without splendor, though fraught with facts pregnant of grave consequences," concludes the historian. The fame of Henry Martin, noted as an historian, who died in 1883, was commemorated by a bronze statue "such as the chimes and the great bell of the Collegiate erected before the Lycée," a rather handsome building in the Rue du Palais de Justice. Before leaving St. Quentin in April, 1917, the invaders shipped this statue to Germany, it is announced in the German press, and melted it up at the gun works with other scrap metal, "such as the chimes and the great bell of the Collegiate Church of St. Quentin."