14 March in military history: Battle of Ivry, 1590

14 March 1590 · 436 years ago

A king without his capital

Henry of Navarre became king of France in 1589 as Henry IV, a Protestant whom the Catholic League refused to accept. In 1590 the Duke of Parma, governing the Spanish Netherlands, sent the League's commander, the Duke of Mayenne, some 1,200 to 1,300 Walloon lances under the Count of Egmont.¹

Henry laid siege to Dreux on 28 February 1590. When Mayenne came to relieve the town, the king did not wait for him in his siege lines but marched out to meet him by way of Nonancourt.²

How many men fought

Henry's own letter on the battle and the historian J.-H. Mariéjol both give the king about 2,000 horse and 8,000 foot, and the League about 12,000 foot. For the League cavalry the figures run from 4,000 in Henry's letter, which relied on what prisoners said, to 8,000 in Mariéjol.³

The battle and the white plume

Both armies were drawn up for battle between ten and eleven in the morning. The royal artillery opened with nine rounds. In the cavalry fight that followed, the Count of Egmont was killed by a pistol shot. The League cavalry then fled and left its infantry on the field. The Swiss in League service laid down their arms and were spared, but the landsknechts and the French foot were cut down.⁴

The official relation of the battle, the Discours véritable, describes Henry as easy to pick out "par un grand panache blanc qu'il avoit à son accoutrement de tête", by a great white plume on his headgear (our translation). The words that made the plume famous, "si vos cornettes vous manquent, ralliez-vous à mon panache blanc", if your cornets fail you, rally to my white plume (our translation), are given to the king by Agrippa d'Aubigné in his history and are repeated by Mariéjol. The historian Paul Mironneau finds the plume in several texts of the time and writes that d'Aubigné's version finally prevailed.⁵

Counting the losses

The League lost several thousand men in the battle and the rout, and many horsemen drowned crossing the Eure at Ivry. Mayenne's white cornet was taken. Among the League dead was La Chastaigneraye. The royal side lost about twenty gentlemen. Henry pursued the fugitives almost to the gates of Mantes, where Mayenne had taken refuge, and spent the night at Rosny.⁶

From Ivry to Paris

The victory did not open Paris. Henry lingered some fifteen days at Mantes, and invested Paris only at the beginning of May. When the Duke of Parma marched to the relief of the city, Henry lifted the siege to go out against him. The king returned to Catholicism in 1593, was crowned at Chartres on 27 February 1594 and entered Paris the next month. Other battles of French history are collected in our article on the greatest battles of France.⁷

Admiral Byng on the quarterdeck, 1757

A court martial found that Admiral John Byng had not done his utmost against the French at Minorca in 1756 and, as the Articles of War required, sentenced him to death, while strongly recommending him to mercy. The plea failed. Our account of the Battle of Minorca tells the action itself.⁸

Byng was shot on 14 March 1757 on the quarterdeck of the Monarch (Monarque) in Portsmouth harbor. He handed over a paper in which he wrote that he expected to be seen as a victim meant to divert "the indignation and resentment of an injured and deluded people" from the proper objects. He knelt on a cushion, tied one handkerchief over his eyes and dropped another as the signal, and six marines fired a volley. In Candide, Voltaire has a bystander explain that in England "il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres", it is good to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others (our translation).⁹