On 3 October 1569, near Moncontour in the north of Poitou, the royal army of King Charles IX, led in name by his brother Henry, Duke of Anjou, routed the Huguenot army of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny. It was one of the great Catholic victories of the French Wars of Religion. Coligny was wounded, his German infantry was cut to pieces by the king's Swiss, and the Protestant cause seemed broken. Yet within a year Coligny had raised a new army and won a peace that gave the Huguenots freedom of conscience and four fortified towns.
A war of religion
France had been fighting itself over religion since 1562, when the massacre of a Huguenot congregation at Vassy set off an uprising, and two earlier compromise peaces had not held. The third war began in 1568. Both sides looked abroad for help: German Protestant princes sent troops to the Huguenots, while the Catholic crown had the backing of Philip II of Spain and the pope.1
The year 1569 went badly for the Protestants from the start. On 13 March, at Jarnac, Anjou's army beat the Huguenots, and their leader Louis, Prince of Condé, was killed; the Musée protestant writes that he had fallen and broken his leg and was killed by one of Anjou's officers as he tried to surrender. Coligny now led the Huguenot cause alone. Rickard writes that, against Coligny's advice, the Protestants besieged Poitiers from 27 July to 7 September, and when Anjou threatened Châtellerault Coligny had to give up the siege. As the two armies maneuvered, they converged on the River Dive near Moncontour.2 › Battle of Jarnac, 1569
The battle
The size of the armies depends on whom one reads. The historian John Rickard gives the Huguenots about 6,000 horse and 12,000 to 14,000 foot, against 7,000 to 8,000 horse and 16,000 to 18,000 foot on the royal side. The Musée protestant in Paris gives the royal army, with its Swiss mercenaries, as 70,000 men against 16,000 Huguenots. Both agree that the Protestants were heavily outnumbered. Rickard adds that while the Duke of Anjou held the command, the real direction of the royal army probably lay with the veteran Marshal Gaspard de Tavannes.3
According to Rickard, the day began badly for Coligny before a shot was fired: on the morning of 3 October his German troops mutinied over their pay, and by the time order was restored the royal army was upon him. The battle opened with a clash of the advance guards. Coligny charged the royal German cavalry and is said to have killed its commander, the Rhinegrave, but was then wounded and had to leave the field to have the wound treated.4
The decisive blow fell on the Huguenot infantry. The Protestants' German horsemen, the reiters, attacked the king's Swiss pikemen, failed, and fled. The Swiss then turned on the abandoned German landsknechts, and Rickard writes that they killed about 3,800 of the 4,000. The engraving above, published a year after the battle, shows that moment: royal cavalry and the Swiss closing in on the landsknecht square. After some four hours the Huguenot army broke. Rickard puts the Huguenot losses at about 8,000 men, nearly half of them the slaughtered landsknechts. The Musée protestant calls it a most bitter defeat for the Huguenots.5
A victory thrown away
Rickard credits Louis of Nassau and the German commander Wolrad of Mansfeld with leading the survivors away to safety at Niort. Anjou did not pursue. Instead he spent from 10 October to 3 December besieging Saint-Jean-d'Angély, and Rickard judges that the delay hurt the royal cause as badly as the siege of Poitiers had hurt the Huguenots.6
Coligny used the time well. Britannica notes that he rallied an army in southern France and advanced as far as the upper Seine valley. The Musée protestant adds that in June 1570 the Protestant army won at Arnay-le-Duc and that, with the road to Paris seemingly open, Catherine de' Medici sought a ceasefire. The Peace of Saint-Germain was signed on 8 August 1570. According to the Musée protestant, it gave the Huguenots freedom of conscience and, for two years, four fortified towns: La Rochelle, Cognac, La Charité-sur-Loire and Montauban. Britannica calls the peace very advantageous to the Huguenot cause.7 › Battle of Saint-Martin-de-Ré, 1622
It did not last. Two years later Coligny was murdered in the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day, and the wars began again.8
Also on this day
- 1861: Battle of Greenbrier River. In western Virginia, Union troops under Joseph Reynolds attacked the Confederate position at Camp Bartow on the Greenbrier River in the Civil War.
