Our battle of Dreux, Montaigne says, is remarkable for extraordinary incidents, yet those who have no great kindness for Monsieur de Guise are willing to have him thought to blame. He made a halt with the forces he commanded while the Constable, general of the army, was racked through and through with the enemy's artillery, his battalion routed, and himself taken prisoner. Critics say he should have run the hazard of a flank charge rather than wait to fall upon the rear. Besides what the event demonstrated, anyone who will consider it without passion will confess that the aim, not of a captain only but of every private soldier, ought to regard the victory in general, and that no particular occurrence, however near his own interest, should divert him from that pursuit.
Philopoemen, meeting Machanidas, sent archers and slingers forward to begin the skirmish. They were routed and hotly pursued, and the enemy, pushing the fortune of their arms, passed by the battalion where Philopoemen stood. His soldiers were impatient to fall on. He did not think fit to stir from his post nor to present himself to relieve his men. He suffered those skirmishers to be cut in pieces before his face, then charged the enemy's foot when the horse had left them unprotected. They were Lacedaemonians, yet he took them in the nick, when, thinking themselves secure of the victory, they began to disorder their ranks. He finished that business with great facility and went after Machanidas. Which case, Montaigne says, is very like that of Monsieur de Guise.
In the battle Xenophon, who was present, calls the sharpest he had ever seen, Agesilaus waived fortune's offer to let the Boeotian battalions pass and then charge them in the rear. He judged that way an effect of conduct rather than valour, and to show his prowess charged them in the front. He was well beaten and well wounded for his pains, then forced to take the course he had first neglected: he opened his battalion to the torrent, and when they marched on in disorder like men out of danger, he struck them in the flank. Even then he could not force a general rout. They leisurely retreated, still facing about upon him, till they had retired to safety. Guise's halt looks, to those who dislike him, like a private betrayal. Agesilaus's honour still cannot finish the field.
Coming Up in Chapter 46
Whatever herbs are shuffled together in a dish, Montaigne says, the whole mass is swallowed up under one name of a sallet, and he will make the same hodge-podge of names. Every nation has names taken in no good sense: John, William, Benedict. At a feast in France, a hundred and ten knights named William sat at one table.
