Nothing in the record suggests that Henry entertained for a moment the idea of escape. Rather, he gave his captains the impression that this was just the place he would have chosen for a battle. Probably the decision was automatic; Henry knew that he owed his leadership of the Huguenot party less to his place in the succession and his somewhat ungracefully reassumed Protestantism than to his willingness to risk his life in the fore-front of every skirmish, and to bear himself in these long partisan campaigns less like a prince and a general than like an industrious captain of irregular light horse.

Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish A…, loc. 347