About noon
These now approached , in many a joyous group , to congratulate the victors . Close to the parties which they formed for the dance , the song , or the tale , upon the yet bloody field , the countrymen , summoned in for the purpose , were opening large trenches for depositing the dead -- leeches were seen tending the wounded -- priests and monks confessing those in extremity -- soldiers transporting from the field the bodies of the more honoured among the slain -- peasants mourning over their trampled crops and plundered habitations -- and widows and orphans searching for the bodies of husbands and parents , amid the promiscuous carnage of two combats . Thus wo mingled her wildest notes with those of jubilee and bacchanal triumph , and the plain of the Garde Doloureuse formed a singular parallel to the varied maze of human life , where joy and grief are so strangely mixed , and where the confines of mirth and pleasure often border on those of sorrow and of death . About noon these various noises were at once silenced , and the attention alike of those who rejoiced or grieved was arrested by the loud and mournful sound of six trumpets , which , uplifting and uniting their thrilling tones in a wild and melancholy death-note , apprised all , that the obsequies of the valiant Raymond Berenger were about to commence . From a tent , which had been hastily pitched for the immediate reception of the body , twelve black monks , the inhabitants of a neighbouring convent , began to file out in pairs , headed by their abbot , who bore a large cross , and thundered forth the sublime notes of the Catholic _ Miserere me , Domine _ . Then came a chosen body of men-at-arms , trailing their lances , with their points reversed and pointed to the earth ; and after them the body of the valiant Berenger , wrapped in his own knightly banner , which , regained from the hands of the Welsh , now served its noble owner instead of a funeral pall . The most gallant Knights of the Constable 's household -LRB- for , like other great nobles of that period , he had formed it upon a scale which approached to that of royalty -RRB- walked as mourners and supporters of the corpse , which was borne upon lances ; and the Constable of Chester himself , alone and fully armed , excepting the head , followed as chief mourner .