SO MEMOIKS OF THE DUKE OF SAINT-SIMON.

Princes showed themselves everywhere, and in places the most

exposed, displaying much valour and coolness, encouraging the

men, praising the officers, asking the principal officers what

•was to be done, and telling M. de Yendome what they thought.

The inequality of the ground that the enemies found in ad-

1 vancing, after having driven in our right, enabled our men to

; rally and to resist. But this resistance was of short duration.

* Every one had been engaged in hand-to-hand combats; every

I one was worn out with lassitude and despair of success, and a

% confusion so general and so unheard-of. The household troops

i owed their escape to the mistake of one of the enemy's officers,

\ -who earned an order to the red coats, thinking them his own

I men. He was taken, and seeing that he was about to share

| the peril with our troops, warned them that they were going

^ to "be surrounded. They retired in some disorder, and so

avoided this.

J The disorder increased, however, every moment. Nobody

recognised his troop. All were pell-mell,—cavalry, infantry,,
; dragoons; not a battalion, not a squadron together, and all in

confusion, one upon the other.

Night came. We had lost much ground, one-half of the

f( army had not finished arriving. In this sad situation the

Princes consulted with IT. de Vendome as to what was to be
! . done. He, furious at being so terribly out of his reckoning,,

affronted everybody. Monseigneur le Due de Bourgogne
; -wished to speak; but Vendome, intoxicated with choler and

t authority, closed his mouth, by saying to him in an imperious

I voice before everybody, " That he came to the army only on

I condition of obeying him." These enormous words, pro-

f nounced at a moment in which everybody felt so terribly the

I weight of the obedience rendered to his idleness and obstinacy,.

f made everybody tremble with indignation. The young Prince

r ' to whom they were addressed, hesitated, mastered himself, and

; kept silence. Vendome went on declaring that the battle was not

I lost—that it could be recommenced the next morning, when

f the rest of the army had arrived, and so on. No one of con-

\\ sequence cared to reply.