by J.B. Hickock

Created on: September 22, 2011

Chapter III: The Battleof Coutras

I am Jacque-Henri Retierre, and I am dead.

 I am returned now to tell my tale. So I pray you; lend a sympathetic ear, and understand this: I am a Huguenot, and I am a gentleman; every word I tell you is true.

 As my readers are doubtless aware, after I fled Paris, at the height of the massacre on Saint Bartholomew's day, I swore I would return and wreak my vengeance on he who had murdered my beloved wife.

 A man unfamiliar with the history of the period might be surprised that by the summer of 1587 I had not yet returned. But real life is nothing like the pretty romances you have read. The hero is as often shot down with a musket as the villain is beaten in fair combat, and for every bold knight who saves his love from the Saracen, there are a thousands more, gracious ladies and peasant maids both, who are carried off into chattel slavery with no-one to even think of rescue.

 And so it was with me: I fought in desperate battles and petty skirmishes; from the siege of La Rochelle by the Duc d'Anjou, to the fall of La Charite to the siezure of Cahors- I could fill pages and pages with the conflicts, great and small, but none of it had brought me one mile nearer Paris and the fulfillment of my oath, so I shall write now of the first step on my journey to gain my vengeance.

 In the summer of 1587, I was then a captain in the service of Henry, the prince of Conde at the great city of La Rochelle, with many of my people, when we heard that the royal favorite, Anne, Duc de Joyeuse, had taken the field with a powerful royal army.

 Henry Bourbon, King of Navarre and our more-or-less acknowledged leader, resolved not to fight the impulsive duke and his powerful host, but to elude them; he gathered all the troops that could be spared from the defense of La Rochelle and the lesser towns of Poitou and Saintonge and prepared to slip across the front of the royal army to the Dordogne and lead the reckless duke through the tumble of hills and valleys that ran southwards to Pau and the loyal principality of Bearn. We could find reinforcements there, and the security of a dozen loyal hilltop fortresses, and there make life very difficult for the duke indeed.

 As I said, we did not mean to fight the duke, but to elude him: and we did that all summer, meanwhile helping the Catholic army to disintegration by constant harassment; merchants and burghers, young nobles, artisans and farmers; years of bitter war

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