The queen and her son found rough accommodation in a small village, the rest bivouacked round it.
At midnight three hundred cavalry and two hundred footmen started across the hills, so as to come down upon Bergerac and seize the bridge across the Dordogne; then at daylight the rest of the force marched.

On reaching the river they found that the bridge had been seized without resistance.

Three hundred gentlemen and their retainers, of the province of Perigord, had assembled within half a mile of the other side of the bridge, and had joined the party as they came down.

A Catholic force of two hundred men, in the town, had been taken by surprise and captured, for the most part in their beds.
The queen had issued most stringent orders that there was to be no unnecessary bloodshed; and the Catholic soldiers, having been stripped of their arms and armour, which were divided among those of the Huguenots who were ill provided, were allowed to depart unharmed the next morning, some fifteen gentlemen being retained as prisoners.

Three hundred more Huguenots rode into Bergerac in the course of the day.
The footmen marched forward in the afternoon, and were directed to stop at a village, twelve miles on.