He was without friends, without power to know his friends, if he had them.

In his hatred to the Reformation, he had allowed himself to be made the enemy of the only man who could be his friend, or the friend of France.

Allied with his mortal foe, whose armies were strengthened by contingents from Parma's forces, and paid for by Spanish gold, he was forced to a mock triumph over the foreign mercenaries who came to save his crown, and to submit to the defeat of the flower of his chivalry, by the only man who could rescue France from ruin, and whom France could look up to with respect.
For, on the 20th October, Henry of Navarre had at last gained a victory.
After twenty-seven years of perpetual defeat, during which they had been growing stronger and stronger, the Protestants had met the picked troops of Henry III., under the Due de Joyeuse, near the burgh of Contras.

His cousins Conde and Soissons each commanded a wing in the army of the Warnese.

"You are both of my family," said Henry, before the engagement, "and the Lord so help me, but I will show you that I am the eldest born." And during that bloody day the white plume was ever tossing where the battle, was fiercest.