The young duke of Anjou, brother to the king, commanded the forces of the Catholics; and fought in 1569, a great battle at Jarnac with the Hugonots, where the prince of Conde was killed, and his army defeated.

This discomfiture, with the loss of so great a leader, reduced not the Hugonots to despair.
The admiral still supported the cause; and having placed at the head of the Protestants the prince of Navarre, then sixteen years of age, and the young prince of Conde, he encouraged the party rather to perish bravely in the field, than ignominiously by the hands of the executioner.

He collected such numbers, so determined to endure every extremity, that he was enabled to make head against the duke of Anjou; and being strengthened by a new reenforcement of Germans, he obliged that prince to retreat and to divide his forces.
Coligny then laid siege to Poietiers; and as the eyes of all France were fixed on this enterprise, the duke of Guise, emulous of the renown which his father had acquired by the defence of Metz, threw himself into the place, and so animated the garrison by his valor and conduct, that the admiral was obliged to raise the siege.

Such was the commencement of that unrivalled fame and grandeur afterwards attained by this duke of Guise.

The attachment which all the Catholics had borne to his father, was immediately transferred to the son; and men pleased themselves in comparing all the great and shining qualities which seemed, in a manner, hereditary in that family.