Александр Дюма
The Last Vendée
XV.
JAILER AND PRISONER ESCAPE TOGETHER
At daybreak on the 4th of June the tocsin sounded from all the bell-towers in the districts of Clisson, Montaigu, and Machecoul. The tocsin is the drum-call of the Vendéans. Formerly, that is to say in the days of the great war, when its harsh and sinister clang resounded through the land the whole population rose in a mass and ran to meet the enemy.
How many noble things those people must have done to enable us to forget, almost forget, that their enemy was-France!
Happily, – and this proves the immense progress we have made in the past forty years, – happily, we say, in 1832 the tocsin appeared to have lost its power. If a few peasants, answering its impious call, left their ploughs and seized the guns hidden in the hedges, the majority continued calmly along the furrows, and contented themselves by listening to the signal for revolt with that profoundly meditative air which suits so well with the Vendéan cast of countenance.
And yet, by ten o'clock that morning, a rather numerous body of insurgents had already fought an engagement with the regular army. Strongly intrenched in the village of Maisdon, this troop sustained a strong attack directed against it, and had only given way before superior numbers. It then effected its retreat in better order than was customary with the Vendéans even after a slight or momentary reverse.
The reason was, and we repeat it, that La Vendée was no longer fighting for the triumph of a great principle, but simply from a great devotion. If we are now making ourselves the historian of this war (after our usual fashion of writing history) it is because we hope to draw from the very facts we relate the satisfactory conclusion that civil war will soon be impossible in France.
Now, this devotion of which we speak was that of men of noble, elevated hearts, who felt themselves bound by their fathers' past, and who gave their honor, their fortunes, and their life in support of the old adage, Noblesse oblige. That is the reason why the retreat was made in good order. Those who executed it were no longer undisciplined peasants, but gentlemen; and each man fought not only from devotion but also from pride, – pride for himself, and, in a measure, for others.
The Whites were immediately attacked again at Château-Thébaud by a detachment of fresh troops sent by General Dermoncourt to pursue them. The royalists lost several men at the passage of the Maine, but having succeeded in putting that river between themselves and their pursuers, they were able to form a junction on the left bank with the Nantes men, whom we lately saw departing, full of enthusiasm, from the Jacquet mill, and who since then had been reinforced by the men from Légé and the division of the Marquis de Souday. This reinforcement brought the effective strength of this column, which was under Gaspard's command, to about eight hundred men.
The next morning it marched on Vieille-Vigne, hoping to disarm the National Guard at that point; but learning that the little town was occupied by a much superior force, to which would be added in a few hours the troops assembled at Aigrefeuille (where the general had collected a large body for the purpose of throwing them on any point in case of necessity), the Vendéan leader determined to attack the village of Chêne, intending to capture and occupy it.
The peasants were scattered through the neighborhood. Hidden among the wheat, which was already of a good height, they worried the Blues with incessant sharp-shooting, following the tactics of their fathers. The men of Nantes and the country gentlemen formed in column and prepared to carry the village by main force, attacking it along the chief street which runs from end to end of it.
At the end of that street ran a brook; but the bridge had been destroyed the night before, nothing remaining of it but a few disjointed timbers. The soldiers, withdrawn into the houses and ambushed behind the windows, protected with mattresses, poured a cross-fire down upon the Whites, which repulsed them twice and paralyzed their onset, until, electrified by the example of their leaders, the Vendéan soldiers flung themselves into the water, crossed the little river, met the Blues with the bayonet, hunted them from house to house, and drove them to the extremity of the village, where they found themselves face to face with a battalion of the 44th of the line which the general had just sent forward to support the little garrison of Chêne.
The sound of the firing reached the mill, which Petit-Pierre had not yet quitted. She was still in that room on the first floor where we have already seen her. Pale, with eager eyes, she walked up and down in the grasp of a feverish agitation she could not quell. From time to time she stopped on the threshold of the door, listening to the dull roll of the musketry which the breeze brought to her ears like the rumbling of distant thunder; then, she passed her hand across her forehead, which was bathed in sweat, stamped her feet in anger, and at last sat down in the chimney-corner opposite to the Marquis de Souday, who, though no less agitated, no less impatient than Petit-Pierre, only sighed from time to time in a dolorous way.
How came the Marquis de Souday, whom we have seen so impatient to begin all over again his early exploits in the great war, to be thus tied down to a merely expectant position? We must explain this to our readers.
The day of the engagement at Maisdon Petit-Pierre, in accordance with the promise she had given to her friends, made ready to join them and share in the fight itself. But the royalist chiefs were alarmed at the great responsibility her courage and ardor threw upon them. They felt that the dangers were too many under the still uncertain chances of this war, and they decided that until the whole army were assembled they could not allow Petit-Pierre to risk her life in some petty and obscure encounter.
Respectful representations were therefore made to her, all of which failed to change her strong determination. The Vendéan leaders then took counsel together and decided among themselves to keep her as it were a prisoner, and to appoint one of their own number to remain beside her, and prevent her, by force if necessary, from leaving her quarters.
In spite of the care the Marquis de Souday (who was of the council) took in voting and intriguing to throw the choice on one of his colleagues, he himself was selected; and that is why he was now, to his utter despair, compelled to stay in the Jacquet mill beside the miller's fire, instead of being at Chêne and under the fire of the Blues.
When the first sounds of the combat reached the mill Petit-Pierre endeavored to persuade the marquis to let her join her faithful Vendéans: but the old gentleman was not to be shaken; prayers, promises, threats, were all in vain against his strict fidelity to orders received. But Petit-Pierre could plainly see on his face the deep annoyance he felt; for the marquis, who was little of a courtier by nature, was unable to conceal it. Stopping short before him just as one of the sighs of impatience we have already mentioned escaped him, she said: -
"It seems to me, marquis, that you are not extraordinarily delighted with my companionship?"
"Oh!" exclaimed the marquis, endeavoring, but without success, to give a tone of shocked denial to his interjection.
"Yes," said Petit-Pierre, who had an object in persisting, "I think you are not at all pleased with the post of honor assigned to you."
"On the contrary, I accepted that post with the deepest gratitude; but-"
"Ah! there's a but? I knew it!" said Petit-Pierre, who seemed determined to fathom the old gentleman's mind on this point.
"Isn't there always a but in every earthly thing?" replied the marquis, evasively.
"What is yours?"
"Well, I regret not to be able, while showing myself worthy of the trust my comrades have laid upon me, I certainly do regret not being able to shed my blood on your behalf, as they are doing, no doubt, at this very moment."
Petit-Pierre sighed heavily.
"I have no doubt," she said, "that our friends are even now regretting your absence. Your experience and tried courage would certainly be of the utmost help to them."
The marquis swelled with pride.
"Yes, yes," he said; "I know they'll repent of it."
"I am sure of it. My dear marquis, will you let me tell you, with my hand on my conscience, the whole truth as I see it?"
"Oh, yes; I entreat you."
"Well, I think they distrusted you as much as they did me."
"Impossible!"
"Stop! you don't see what I mean. They said to themselves: 'A woman would hinder us in marching; we should have to think of her if we retreat. In any case we must devote to the security of her person a troop of soldiers we could better employ elsewhere.' They did not choose to believe that I have succeeded in conquering the weakness of my body, and that my courage is equal to the greatness of my task; if they think so of me, can you wonder if they think it of you?"
"Of me!" cried Monsieur de Souday, furious at the mere suggestion. "I have given proofs of courage all my life!"
"All the world knows that, my dear marquis; but perhaps, remembering your age, they may have thought that your bodily vigor, like mine, was no longer equal to the ardor of your spirit."
"Oh, that's too much!" cried the old soldier of former days in a tone of the deepest indignation. "Why! there hasn't been a day for the last fifteen years that I haven't been six or eight hours in the saddle, – sometimes ten, sometimes twelve! In spite of my white hairs I can stand fatigue as well as any man. See what I can do still!"
Seizing the stool on which he was sitting, he struck it with such violence against the stone chimney-piece that he shattered the stool to bits and made a deep gash in the mantel. Brandishing above his head the leg of the hapless stool which remained in his hand, he cried out: -
"How many of your young dandies, Maître Petit-Pierre, could do that?"
"I never doubted your powers, my dear marquis; and that is why I say those gentlemen have made a great mistake in treating you like an invalid."
"An invalid! I? God's death!" cried the marquis, more and more exasperated, and totally forgetting the presence of the person with whom he was speaking. "An invalid! I? Well, this very evening, I'll tell them I renounce these functions, which are those, not of a gentleman, but a jailer."
"That's right!" interjected Petit-Pierre.
"Functions, which for the last two hours," continued the marquis, striding up and down the room, "I have been sending to all the devils."
"Ah, ha!"
"And to-morrow, yes, I say to-morrow, I'll show them who's an invalid, that I will!"
"Alas!" said Petit-Pierre in a melancholy tone, "tomorrow may not belong to us, my poor marquis; you are wrong to count upon it."
"Why so?"
"You know very well the uprising is not as general as we hoped it might be. Who knows whether the shots we now hear may not be the last fired in defence of the white flag?"
"Hum!" growled the marquis, with the fury of a bulldog tugging at his chain.
Just then a call for help from the farther end of the orchard put an end to their talk. They both ran to the spot, and there saw Bertha, whom the marquis had stationed as an outside lookout, bringing in a wounded peasant, whom she had scarcely strength enough to support. Mary and Rosine had also rushed out at the cry. The peasant was a young gars from twenty to twenty-two years of age, with his shoulder shattered by a ball. Petit-Pierre ran up to him and placed him on a chair, where he fainted.
"For heaven's sake, retire," said the marquis to Petit-Pierre; "my daughters and I will dress the poor devil's wound."
"Pray, why should I retire?" said Petit-Pierre.
"Because the sight of that wound is not one that everybody can stand; I am afraid it is more than you have strength to bear."
"Then you are like all the rest; and you lead me to suppose that our friends were right in the judgment they formed on you as well as on me."
"I don't see that; how so?"
"You think, as they do, that I am wanting in courage." Then, as Mary and Bertha were beginning to examine the wound, "Let the poor fellow's wound alone," she continued, "I-and I alone, do you hear me? – will dress it."
Taking her scissors Petit-Pierre slit up the sleeve of the Vendéan's jacket, which was stuck to the arm by the dried blood, opened the wound, washed it, covered it with lint and deftly bandaged it. Just as she was finishing her work the wounded peasant opened his eyes and recovered his senses.
"What news?" asked the marquis, unable to restrain himself a moment longer.
"Alas!" said the man; "our gars, who were conquerors at first, are now repulsed."
Petit-Pierre, who did not blanch while attending to the wound, grew as white as the linen she was using for bandages; and putting in a last pin to hold it, she seized the marquis by the arm and drew him toward the door.
"Marquis," she said, "you, who saw the Blues in the great war, tell me, what was done when the nation was in danger?"
"Done?" cried the marquis. "Why, everybody ran to arms."
"Even the women?"
"Yes, the women; even the old men, even the children."
"Marquis, it may be that the white flag will fall to-day never to rise again. Why do you condemn me to making barren and impotent prayers and vows in its behalf?"
"But just reflect," said the marquis; "suppose a ball were to strike you."
"Oh! do you think my son's cause would be injured if my bloody and bullet-riddled clothing were carried on a pike in front of our battalions?"
"No, no!" cried the marquis, passionately. "I would curse my native soil if the stones themselves did not rise at such a sight."
"Then come with me and let us join our troops."
"But," replied the marquis, with less determination than he had previously shown against Petit-Pierre's entreaties, – as if the idea of being regarded as an invalid had shaken the firmness with which he executed his orders, – "but I promised you should not leave the mill."
"Well, I release you from that promise," said Petit-Pierre; "and I, who know your valor, order you to follow me. Come, marquis, we may still be in time to rally victory to our flag; if not, if we are too late, we can at least die with our friends."
So saying, Petit-Pierre darted through the courtyard and orchard, followed by Bertha and by the marquis, who thought it his duty to renew, from time to time, his remonstrances; although, in the depths of his heart, he was delighted with the turn affairs were taking.
Mary and Rosine remained behind to care for the wounded.
XVI.
THE BATTLEFIELD
The Jacquet mill was about three miles from the village of Chêne. Petit-Pierre, guided by the noise of the firing, did half the way running; and it was with great difficulty that the marquis stopped her as they neared the scene of action, and succeeded in inspiring her with some prudence, lest she should plunge head-foremost into the government troops.
On turning one of the flanks of the line of sharp-shooters, whose firing, as we have said, was her guide, Petit-Pierre, followed by her companions, came upon the rear of the Vendéan army, which had, in truth, lost all the ground we saw it gain in the morning, and was now driven back some distance beyond the village of Chêne. On catching sight of Petit-Pierre, as, with flying hair and gasping breath she came up the hill toward the main body of the Vendéans, the whole of the little army burst into a roar of enthusiasm.
Gaspard, who, together with his officers, was firing like a common soldier, turned round at the shout and saw Petit-Pierre, Bertha, and the Marquis de Souday. The latter, in the rapidity of their course, had lost his hat, and now appeared with his white hair flying in the wind. It was to him that Gaspard spoke first.
"Is this how the Marquis de Souday keeps his word?" he said in an irritated tone.
"Monsieur," replied the marquis, sharply, "it is not of a poor invalid like me that you ought to ask that question."
Petit-Pierre hastened to intervene. Her party was not strong enough to allow of dissensions among its leaders.
"Souday is bound, as you are, to obey me," she said; "I seldom claim the exercise of that right; but to-day I have thought proper to do so. I assume my place as generalissimo, and ask, how goes the day, lieutenant?"
Gaspard shook his head significantly.
"The Blues are in force," he said, "and my scouts report that reinforcements are reaching them."
"So much the better," cried Petit-Pierre; "they will be so many more to tell France how we died."
"You cannot mean that, Madame!"
"I am not Madame here; I am a soldier. Fight on, without regard to me; advance your line of skirmishers and double their fire."
"Yes; but first, to the rear!"
"To the rear! who?"
"You, in God's name!"
"Nonsense! to the front you mean."
Snatching Gaspard's sword, Petit-Pierre put her hat on the point of it as she sprang in the direction of the village crying out: -
"Those who love me, follow me!"
Gaspard vainly attempted to restrain her, and even caught her arm; but Petit-Pierre, light and agile, escaped him and continued her way toward the line of houses whence the soldiers, observing the renewed movement on the part of the Vendéans, were beginning a murderous fire.
Seeing the danger that Petit-Pierre was incurring, all the Vendéans rushed forward to make a rampart of their bodies, and the effect of such a rush was so sudden, so powerful, that in a few seconds they were over the brook and into the village, where they came face to face with the Blues. The clash was almost instantly followed by a terrible mêlée. Gaspard, his mind wholly occupied by one thing, the safety of Petit-Pierre, succeeded in reaching her and flinging her back among his men. So intent was he on saving the august life he felt that God himself had intrusted to him, that he gave no thought to his own safety, and did not see that a soldier posted at the corner of the first house was aiming at him.
It would have been all over with the Chouan leader if the marquis had not observed the threatened danger. Slipping along the wall of the house he threw up the muzzle of the weapon just as its owner fired it. The ball struck a chimney; the soldier turned furiously on the marquis, and tried to stab him with his bayonet, which the latter evaded by throwing back his body. The old gentleman was about to reply with a pistol-shot when a ball broke the weapon in his hand.
"So much the better!" he cried, drawing his sabre and dealing so terrible a blow that the soldier rolled at his feet like an ox felled by a club; "I prefer the white weapon." Then, brandishing his sabre he cried out: "There, General Gaspard, what do you think of your invalid now?"
Bertha had followed Petit-Pierre, her father and the Vendéans; but her thoughts were much less on the soldiers than on what was passing immediately about her. She looked for Michel, striving to distinguish him in the whirlwind of men and horses that passed beside her.
The government troops, surprised by the suddenness and vigor of the attack, retreated step by step; the National guard of Vieille-Vigne had retired altogether. The ground was heaped with dead. The result was that as the Blues no longer replied to the straggling fire of the gars posted in the vineyards and gardens around the village, Maître Jacques, who commanded the skirmishers, was able to assemble his men in a body. Putting himself at their head he led them through a by-way which skirted the gardens and fell upon the flank of the soldiers.
The latter, whose resistance was becoming by this time more resolute, sustained the attack valiantly, and forming in line across the main street of the village, presented a front to their new assailants. Soon a pause of hesitation appeared among the Vendéans, the Blues regained the advantage, and their column having, in its charge, passed the opening of the little by-way by which Maître-Jacques and his men had debouched, the latter with five or six of his "rabbits," among whom figured Aubin Courte-Joie and Trigaud-Vermin, found themselves cut off from the body of their comrades. Whereupon Maître Jacques, rallying his men about him, set his back to a wall to protect his rear, and sheltering beneath the scaffolding of a house which was just being built at the corner of the street, prepared to sell his life dearly.
Courte-Joie, armed with a small double-barrelled gun, fired incessantly on the soldiers; each of his balls was the death of a man. As for Trigaud, his hands being free, for the cripple was strapped to his shoulders by a girth, he man[oe]uvred with wonderful adroitness a scythe with its handle reversed, which served him as lance and sabre both.
Just as Trigaud, with a backward blow, brought down a gendarme whom Courte-Joie had only dismounted, great shouts of triumph burst from the government ranks, and Maître Jacques and his men beheld a woman in a riding-habit in the hands of the Blues, who seemed, even in the midst of the fight, to be transported with joy. It was Bertha, who, still preoccupied by her search for Michel, had imprudently advanced too far and was captured by the soldiers. They, being deceived by her dress, mistook her for the Duchesse de Berry; hence their joy.
Maître Jacques was misled like the rest. Anxious to repair the blunder he had made in the forest of Touvois, he made a sign to his men, and together they abandoned their defensive position, and rushing forward, thanks to a great swathe mown down by Trigaud's terrible scythe, they reached the prisoner, seized her, and placed her in their midst.
The soldiers, disappointed, renewed their efforts, and flung themselves on Maître Jacques and his men, who had promptly regained their shelter against the wall of the house; and the little group became a centre toward which converged the points of twenty-five bayonets, and a continuous fusillade from the circumference of the circle. Already two Vendéans were dead; Maître Jacques, struck by a ball which broke his wrist, was forced to drop his gun and take to his sabre, which he wielded with his left hand. Courte-Joie had exhausted his cartridges; and Trigaud's scythe was almost the only protection left to the four surviving Vendéans, – an efficacious protection hitherto, for it laid the assailants on the ground in such serried ranks that the soldiers no longer dared to approach the terrible mendicant.
But Trigaud, wishing to strike a direct blow at a horseman, missed his aim. The scythe struck a stone and flew into a thousand bits; the giant fell to his knees, so violent was the force of his impulsion; the girth which fastened Courte-Joie to his shoulders broke, and the cripple rolled into the midst of the fray.
A loud and joyous hurrah greeted this accident, which delivered the formidable giant into the hands of his enemies; and a National guard was in the act of raising his bayonet to stab the fallen cripple, when Bertha, taking a pistol from her belt, fired upon the man and brought him down upon the body of Courte-Joie.
Trigaud had risen with an agility scarcely to be expected of so enormous a bulk; his separation from Courte-Joie and the danger the latter was in increased his strength tenfold. Using the handle of his scythe, he disposed of one man and disabled another. With a single kick he sent to a distance of several feet the body of the man who had fallen upon his friend, and taking the latter in his arms, as a nurse lifts a child, he joined Bertha and Maître Jacques beneath the scaffolding.
While Courte-Joie lay on the pavement, his eyes, roving about him with the rapidity and acuteness of a man in peril of death, seeking on all sides for a chance of escape, fell on the scaffolding where they noticed a heap of stones collected by the masons for the construction of the wall.
"Get under shelter in the doorway," he said to Bertha, when, thanks to Trigaud, he found himself beside her; "perhaps I can return the service you have just done me. As for you, Trigaud, let the red-breeches come as near as they please."
In spite of Trigaud's thick brain he at once understood what his companion wanted of him; for, little as the sound was in harmony with the situation, he broke into a peal of laughter that resembled the braying of trumpets.
The soldiers, seeing the three disarmed men, and wishing, at any cost, to recapture the woman whom they still supposed to be the Duchesse de Berry, came nearer, calling out to the Vendéans to surrender. But, just as they stepped beneath the scaffolding, Trigaud, who had placed Courte-Joie near Bertha, sprang to one of the joists that supported the whole erection, seized it with both hands, shook it, and tore it from the ground. In an instant the planks tipped, and the stones piled upon them followed their incline and fell like hail, beyond Trigaud, upon eight or ten of the foremost soldiers.
At the same moment the Nantes men, led by Gaspard and the Marquis de Souday, making a desperate effort, firing, sabring, bayoneting hand to hand, had driven back the Blues, who now retreated to their line of battle in the open country, where their superiority in numbers and also in weapons would infallibly give them the victory.
The Vendéans, rash as the effort was, were about to risk an attack, when Maître Jacques, whom his men had rejoined, and who, in spite of his wound, still continued to fight, said a few words in Gaspard's ear. The latter immediately, and in spite of the commands and entreaties of Petit-Pierre, ordered a retreat and again took up the position he had occupied an hour earlier on the other side of the village.
Petit-Pierre was ready to tear her hair with anger, and urgently demanded explanations, which Gaspard did not give her until he had ordered a halt.
"We are now surrounded by five or six thousand men," he said, "and we ourselves are scarcely six hundred. The honor of the flag is safe, and that is all we can hope for."
"Are you certain of that?" asked Petit-Pierre.
"Look for yourself," he replied, taking her to a rise in the ground from which could be seen, converging on all sides toward the village of Chêne, dark masses topped with bayonets which sparkled in the rays of the setting sun. There, too, they heard the sound of drums and bugles approaching from all the points of the horizon.
"You see," continued Gaspard, "that in less than an hour we shall be completely surrounded, and no resource will then remain to these brave men-who, like myself, cannot away with Louis Philippe's prisons-but to get themselves killed upon the spot."
Petit-Pierre stood for some moments in gloomy silence; then, convinced of the truth of what the Vendéan leader told her, beholding the destruction of the hopes which a few moments earlier had seemed to her ardent mind so strong and dauntless, she felt her courage desert her, and she became, what she really was, a woman; she, who had so lately braved fire and sword with the nerve of a hero, sat down by the wayside and wept, disdaining to conceal the tears which furrowed her cheeks.
