Эжен Сю
The Pocket Bible; or, Christian the Printer: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century
"Thanks to the darkness, the whistling wind, and our silent footsteps, we approached within an arquebus shot of the vessel's hull without being noticed by the royalists. Your mother, marching among the front ranks between Theresa and myself, and often, like ourselves, sinking up to her knees in water or mud, steadfastly refused to be relieved of the weight of the bundle of kindlings that she carried. We were a short distance from the vessel, the lights of which guided us from afar through the mist, when the soldier on watch took alarm, and called out: 'Who goes there!' 'Fire! Fire' answered your mother. It was the signal agreed upon. We covered on a run the short distance that separated us from the hull, and rapidly heaped up along its flanks the kindling wood and straw that we brought with us. The soldier fired upon us at haphazard in the dark, and called his companions to arms. They hastened upon the bridge with the cannoniers, but unable to take aim upon us at so short a distance, and from above down, they left the cannons alone and sent us through the darkness a shower of arquebus shots that struck several of us. The bullets whistled. One of them carried off my bonnet. Your mother, sister and myself were close together, but we could not see one another on account of the darkness. 'Cornelia, are you wounded?' they asked. 'No! and you?' 'We neither!' answered your mother; and again she called out: 'Firm, my daughters! Fire!' Thereupon she and the Bombarde, who had just lighted a link dipped in sulphur set fire to the first bundles of wood and straw. Their example was followed simultaneously at a score of different places, despite fresh arquebus discharges from the royalists. In a minute thick clouds of smoke enveloped the hull. The flaming combustibles cast their reflection upon the puddles of water on the sandbanks, and beyond them upon the two towers of the port. We could see as clearly as by day. The royalists, however, blinded with the smoke which the wind blew upon them, together with wide sheets of flame, could no longer see to fire upon us. Thus protected, we threw three relays of combustibles upon the flames along the flanks of the accursed hull, which was so saturated with salt water and coated with ooze that, despite the heat, it could only be made to sweat by the flames. When our combustibles were exhausted, we were compelled, in order to effect a safe retreat, to profit by the last clouds of smoke that, concealing us from the enemy's eyes, prevented them from aiming upon us. We returned to the city carrying the dead bodies of five of our troop. Among these was Marie Caron, the worthy wife of our neighbor the mercer. She was shot stone dead by a bullet in the left temple. Her son, a lad of thirteen, had his arm broken. We also helped back a number of women and girls of our band who were more or less seriously wounded. There were fifteen of these. Our only sorrow was to have failed in carrying our enterprise to a successful end."81
Such, sons of Joel, was the intrepidity and courage of the Rochelois women during the siege of the city. Do they not approve themselves worthy daughters of the Gallic women of the old heroic times?
FEBRUARY 12, 1573. – The brother of Charles IX, the Duke of Anjou, arrived yesterday at the royal camp to assume the supreme command of the army. He is accompanied by his two cousins, Henry of Bearn and Condé. The two apostates, after seeing their co-religionists and best friends slaughtered under their very eyes on St. Bartholomew's night, gave the kiss of peace and forgetfulness to Charles IX, and now follow his army to the siege of La Rochelle. These degenerate sons of Joan of Albert, and of Condé have come to battle beside the butchers of their families. Among the other seigneurs and captains in the suite of the Duke of Anjou are the Duke of Montpensier, the Dauphin Prince of Auvergne, the Dukes of Guise and Aumale, the Dukes of Longueville and Bouillon, the Marquis of Mayenne, the Duke of Nevers, Anthony and Claude of Bauffremont, René of Voyer, Viscount of Paulmy, the Duke of Uzes, the Bastard of Angouleme, Marshal Cossé, the Count of Retz, and many other illustrious seigneurs. Among the most noted captains is old Marshal Montluc, a tiger with a human face. The presence of the experienced general, with whom age has not softened his proverbial ferocity, sufficiently announces that, if La Rochelle should fall into the power of the enemy, we shall be put to the sword, to the very last one of us.
FEBRUARY 14, 1573. – The brave Francis of Lanoüe joined us at La Rochelle, thanks to a curious agreement with Charles IX. The revolt of the Low Countries, so ardently wished for by Coligny, miscarried through the treachery of the French court, whose anxiety to please the Pope and Philip II was so thoroughly attested by the massacres of St. Bartholomew's night, that all expectation of seeing it give serious support to a republican insurrection in one of the provinces of the Spanish monarchy had to be abandoned. Lanoüe, deceived by the same hopes that deceived the Admiral, whom the lying promises of Catherine De Medici and her son had kept in Paris, went to Mons in order to concert measures with the chiefs of the proposed uprising; made an unsuccessful effort to call the people to arms; was taken prisoner, and thus escaped St. Bartholomew's night by the merest accident. Every day more alarmed at the indomitable attitude of the Huguenots, and aware of the influence Lanoüe enjoyed among them, Charles IX demanded his liberation at the hands of Philip II, obtained it, summoned the Huguenot leader to the Louvre, and said to him: "I place confidence in your word. Go to La Rochelle. Induce the Protestants to surrender and submit. Should they refuse, I want you to promise me that you will return, and surrender yourself to me at discretion." "I consent," was Lanoüe's answer; "I shall go to La Rochelle. Should it appear to me, in all conscience, that the resistance of the Huguenots is hopeless, I shall do all in my power to induce them to capitulate. But should it appear to me that the chances are favorable to them, I shall induce them to persevere, shall tender them my services. If they decline my offer I shall return and surrender myself to you." Such is the confidence that an upright man inspires even in hardened criminals, that Charles IX accepted Lanoüe's word. Lanoüe sent ahead a courier to the Mayor of La Rochelle to inform him of his compact with the King and request admittance to the city. The City Council assembled. Some of the members severely condemned Lanoüe for lowering himself to the point of dealing with Charles IX; others, a considerable majority, realized the value of Lanoüe's assistance, and favored the acceptance of his services. He was introduced into the city. His patriotic words brought all dissidents over to his side. He inspected the defensive works of the place, and being convinced that it could repel the royalist attack, was invested with the supreme command of the troops, under the surveillance of the aldermen.
FEBRUARY 23, 1573. – The presence of Lanoüe among us already bears magnificent fruit. He introduces discipline among our troops. No longer are the murderous skirmishes tolerated in which so many of our men ran foolhardily to death. He curbs the ardor of the hotheads; drills the volunteers in the handling of their arms and in the precision of military evolutions, and he substitutes the tactics of prudence for the rashness of blind bravery and unthinking enthusiasm that have been the bane of the Protestant arms.
MARCH 27, 1573. – Faithful to his word, Lanoüe yesterday left La Rochelle and returned to the camp of Charles IX where he surrendered himself a prisoner. From the moment that he took command, our sallies caused great damage to the enemy, but also cost us dearly. We were not able to repair our losses, seeing that our communications by land are cut off, while the enemy is constantly receiving strong reinforcements. We now number only 4,500 men able to carry arms. The enemy, on the other hand, has to-day 28,000 men in line, and sixty cannon. The siege is conducted with consummate skill by Scipio Vergano, the identical engineer who fortified La Rochelle. The traitor knows the strong and the weak points of the place. Accordingly he has concentrated all the attacking forces of the Catholics upon the Bastion of the Evangelium. Their batteries keep up an incessant fire upon that side of our city. Finally we begin to lack for munitions of war. The works raised by the enemy at the mouth of the bay render difficult the entrance of the ships upon which we depend for provisions. Both powder and grain are running low. Captain Mirant's flotilla sailed to England for munitions of war, and to Brittany for food. The vessels are daily expected. If unfavorable winds should delay their return, or if they fail to run the gauntlet of the enemy's outer harbor fortifications, a fearful dirth will soon set in. Having considered the grave difficulties of our situation, Lanoüe was of the opinion that we could not long resist the pressure of forces five or six times stronger than our own. He endeavored to induce the City Council to parliamentarize with the Duke of Anjou, with the end in view of obtaining an honorable capitulation and favorable terms of peace, adding that he, Lanoüe had pledged his word as a man to encourage and aid the Rochelois to resistance so long as he believed resistance to be effective; but that, so soon as he considered resistance futile, he would urge the besieged to capitulate, promising, should his advice not be accepted, to surrender himself a prisoner to the King. After a solemn session, under the presidency of Mayor James Henry, who, worn out and almost dying with fatigue and in consequence of his wounds, but steeled by his republican energy, administered his office, the City Council declared by a large majority that the Rochelois would resist the Catholics to the death. Lanoüe thereupon left the city.
Oh, sons of Joel! Fail not to admire the resolute posture of the Mayor, aldermen and heads of the civic military forces of La Rochelle! Those generous citizens did not take up arms out of ambition, or cupidity, as was the case with the majority of the captains in the army of Charles IX – faithless mercenaries; swordsmen, who sell their skins and kill as a trade by which to live; fighters by profession; men to whom war, for whatever cause, whether just or otherwise, holy or unhallowed, is a lucrative pursuit. No; the Rochelois fought in defense of their freedom, their rights, their hearths. Only the consciousness that the struggle is in behalf of the most sacred of causes can beget prodigies of heroism. All honor to those brave men! Shame and execration upon professional men of war.
The above fragments on the siege of La Rochelle, written by me, Antonicq Lebrenn, take us down to the middle of the month of May, 1573, when the following events occurred.
CHAPTER X.
THE LAMBKINS' DANCE
The City Hall of La Rochelle, an edifice that was almost wholly re-built nearly a century ago, in the year 1486, is one of the most beautiful monuments that patriotism and the love for one's city can boast. Catholic faith has raised up as high as the clouds the spired cathedrals where the priests, Oh, Christ! exalt the assassination of the Huguenots, and preach the extermination of heretics. The cult of the communal franchises has reared City Halls, the cradles of our liberties, the civic sanctuaries, where, upon the banner of the commune, oath is taken to die for freedom – as did the communiers, at whose side our ancestor Fergan the Quarryman fought in the days of Louis the Lusty.82 The municipal monument that we, Rochelois, are so justly proud of, consists of a vast central building, flanked by two pavilions with pointed roofs. Its principal facade – ornamented with twenty-seven lofty arches, the triple entablature of which disappears under garlands of leaves and fruits chiseled in the stone – is surmounted by a crenelated terrace festooned with thick wreaths of acanthus leaves. From the top of each of the two pavilions a belfry of marvelous architectural beauty pierces the air. The one to the left presents to the wondering eye the sight of a gilt iron cage, that is no less admirably constructed than its dome, carved on the outside as delicately as a piece of lace-work, and held up by three stone figures of colossal stature. One must renounce the task of describing the profusion of crockets that jut out from the walls, and represent sphinxes and chimeras executed with boldness and grace. One must renounce the task of describing the stone festoons that embellish the edifice from its base to its pinnacles, or the infinite wreaths of fruit or flowers that clamber up the ogive moldings, doors and windows, that weave their lintels together, wind themselves around the pillars and columns, and finally crown the capitals. The aspect is that of a mass of verdure – flowers and leaves in bud and full bloom – suddenly petrified by some magic power. This imperfect description can only impart a partial idea of the material beauty of the City Hall of La Rochelle. But the edifice had, if the word may be used, a soul, a breath, a voice! It was the daring soul, the powerful breath, the patriotic voice of the Commune that seemed to animate the mass of stone of which the antique edifice was built. There, especially since the war, and as life centers in the heart, centered the pulsations of the city. All energy started there and rushed back thither. It was there that the sovereign power of the urban republic, represented by the Mayor and aldermen whom the citizens elected, had its seat.83 Assembled night and day at the City Hall in sufficient number to meet all emergencies, the valiant ediles never left the hall of the council but to mount the ramparts, or join in sallies against the enemy's redoubts. Not infrequently theirs was also the task of calming, controlling or even suppressing popular tumults, engendered by the sufferings of these days. Such was the complex and arduous task reserved for Morrisson, the successor of James Henry, who died in consequence of his wounds and overexertion. Glorify the Commune, sons of Joel, and its heroic defenders.
Well, on that day, towards the middle of May, 1573, a tumultuous mob, made up exclusively of women and children – the able-bodied men were on the ramparts, or taking a few hours' rest – invaded the square of the City Hall of La Rochelle, crying with the heartrending fury that hunger inspires: "Bread!" "Bread!" No less haggard, no less pinched with hunger than their children, a considerable number of these women, having combatted beside the men of La Rochelle in repelling the royalist attacks, had heads bandaged in blood-stained handkerchiefs, or carried their arms in slings. Several children, of ten or twelve years of age, also bore the marks of wounds received in battle whither they accompanied their mothers. The mob, embittered and exhausted by the trials and all manner of privations that resulted from the long siege, saw with terror the approach of famine. Since the day before the baker shops had been closed for want of flour. The supply of food was nearly exhausted. The wretched crowd clamored aloud for bread; they also clamored for Morrisson, the new Mayor, and head of the commune.
Morrisson appeared at the portico of the City Hall and stepped towards the mob. He was at once beloved, feared and respected. Still at the age of vigorous manhood, he wore an iron corselet and arm-pieces, while a heavy sword hung from his side. He jumped upon one of the stone balustrades placed at either side of the door, motioned for silence, and addressed the crowd in a sonorous, firm and yet paternal voice:
"My children! The Council is in session. I have no time to lose in speechmaking. Delegate to me one from among you. Let her inform me what it is that you want. I shall answer."
The Bombarde, acclaimed with one voice as the delegate of her companions, pushed her way forward and approached the Mayor: "Mayor, we are hungry, and want bread! The bakers have neither corn nor flour. The butchers' stalls are closed. Two days ago only a few handfuls of beans and peas were distributed. Since then nothing more has come. Before the siege most of us lived off our fisheries, and we asked help from nobody. To-day every fisherman's boat that ventures out of port is sunk under the cannon balls of the royalist redoubts. What are we to do? We cannot remain without food; we are hungry; we want bread for our children and ourselves!"
"Yes!" echoed the Rochelois women with loud cries. "Bread! Bread! Morrisson, we must have bread!"
After this explosion of outcries and complaints, silence was restored, and the Mayor resumed in a moved voice:
"Poor dear women! You want bread, and how do you expect me to give you any? There is not a single grain of wheat in the city granary. But we are hourly expecting Captain Mirant's brigantines. They bring from England a cargo of powder, and from Brittany a cargo of wheat. They are anchored only eight leagues from here, near the coast, at the port of Redon. They cannot, in the absence of a favorable wind, run into La Rochelle. The chances are a hundred to one that the adverse wind, which has been blowing all these days, will change. It may change almost at any moment. It may be changing now. If it does, the city will again be supplied for several months. For the present, there is left to us a precious resource, so far neglected – the clams and oysters. We must turn our hands to that. You understand me?"
"Mayor! Do you know that it is now as dangerous to go out for clams as to march upon a battery?" answered the Bombarde. "To go out for clams is to run into the jaws of death!"
"I know it – and if the brigantines of Captain Mirant do not run into port to-day, my wife and two daughters will go out with you to-night, at one in the morning, when the tide will be low, and dig for clams," was Morrisson's stoic reply.
"It will be done! Count upon us, Mayor!" replied the Bombarde. "If the brigantines of Captain Mirant do not arrive before night, we shall put up with hunger until night – and then we shall go out and dig for clams. Those of us who will be killed on the banks will no longer need anything. That is agreed upon, in God's name!"
As the Bombarde was uttering these last words, the detonations of several discharges of artillery that shattered the window panes in the City Hall announced the enemy was about to renew the cannonade which it had suspended in the morning. Almost at the same instant the sonorous sound of clarion blasts was heard drawing nearer and nearer, and presently a large number of women of all conditions, marching at the heels of a pastor on a white horse, ahead of which marched the clarion-blower, turned into Caille Square.
"To the ramparts, my sisters! To the ramparts!" shouted the pastor with martial exaltation. "The Lord of Hosts will steel your arms! Your husbands, your fathers, your brothers and your sons are battling for the triumph of liberty. Come to their help! To the ramparts! To the ramparts! The enemy is about to storm the Bastion of the Evangelium! Long live the Commune!"
"To the ramparts, my brave women! And to-night, after clams on the banks, as perilous an expedition as battle itself!" cried Morrisson, while the Bombarde and her companions, joining the other crowd of Rochelois women, repeated in chorus the following psalm, led by the pastor:
"O, Lord do guide these feeble women,
With souls ablaze, inflamed as strong men!
Break our foes like Oreb!
Break them like proud Zeeb!
Throw down those wicked kings and princes,
Who in their fury, and their ire,
Laugh at our tears and distress dire,
Who devastate our glad provinces!
Who are as a torrent wildly boiling,
A tempest, wildly rushing, rolling,
A hurricane, impetuous driven,
The tops of haughty mountains lashes,
A hellish flame that turns to ashes,
The rooks by lightning struck and riven!
"May, Oh, Lord! the storm of Thy wrath
Strew Thy foes away from our path!
May, Oh, Lord! Thy thunders and fire,
Smite Thy foes! Oh, smite with Thy ire!"
The Bastion of the Evangelium, upon which the enemy had long been concentrating all their forces, formed a sharply protruding angle. Its flanks were not sufficiently protected by other works of defense. Accordingly, by directing against the left flank of the bastion the fire of their principal batteries, the enemy had opened a breach in the rampart by the repeated pounding of their shots. At the place where the breach was effected, the upper part of the earthworks, to a width of about fifty feet, crumbled down into the moat, filling it up so fully as to render an assault practicable. Thanks to this mass of debris which answered the purpose of a bridge, the assailants could cross the fosse on a run, could scale the last steps of the last wall already laid in ruins, and could enter the city, provided they could bear down the defenders who stood in the breach. From the top of the bastion the eye swept the plain far and wide. A cannon-shot off, the long line of the enemy's trenches could be seen, stretching from the suburb of St. Eloi on the edge of the salt marshes, to the suburb of Colombier. That line bounded the field from end to end; it intercepted the roads to Limoges and Nantes at the crossings of which the batteries were erected which broke a breach through the bastion. The whole stretch between the trenches of the besiegers and the fortifications of the city – one time covered with trees and houses – now lay bare, exposed, devastated, and deeply furrowed by the projectiles. Beyond the desert waste, lay the enemy's entrenchments – earthworks strengthened with gabions and trunks of trees, and here and there crenelated with the embrasures for their batteries. Behind that line of earthworks, the tops of the officers' tents, surmounted with bannerets and floating pennants, could be seen. Finally, on the extreme horizon rose the undulating and woody hills. The breach once made, the Catholics suspended their fire in order to open it again shortly before marching to the assault. It was in answer to the thunder of the cannonade, which announced an imminent and decisive attack, that the old pastor crossed the square of the City Hall at the head of his bevy of Rochelois women, recruited the Bombarde and her companions, and wended his course to the Bastion of the Evangelium. At that place about one-half of the defenders of La Rochelle were gathered, ready for a stubborn conflict. The other troops, distributed in other places, were to be on the alert to repel other attacks. The Council of defense foresaw that the enemy, while hurling one column against the breach, would undoubtedly attempt a simultaneous assault upon other places; consequently women were commissioned to close up the breach as best they might with logs of wood and other material. Colonel Plouernel, upon whom the defense of the bastion that day devolved, and Captain Gargouillaud, in charge of the artillery, gave their last orders. The bourgeois cannoniers were pointing their pieces in advance upon the open and absolutely exposed ground which the royalists had to cross when they sallied from their trenches in order to reach the opposite side of the fosse where the breach was effected. The breach was wide; nevertheless, before they could reach the parapet, the besiegers would have to clamber over a heap of debris ten or eleven feet high, on the top of which a redoubtable engine of defense was mounted, and placed in charge of the women of La Rochelle. This engine of war, an invention of Master Barbot the boilermaker, received the name of the censer. It consisted of a huge copper basin, holding a ton, suspended from iron chains at the end of a long beam that revolved upon an axis, and was so adjusted to a post firmly set in the ground, that by means of a slight motion imparted to the beam, the huge caldron would empty upon the heads of the assailants the deadly fluid that it was filled with, to wit, a mixture of boiling tar, sulphur and oil. A number of Rochelois women, Theresa Rennepont and Cornelia my betrothed among them, were busy either keeping up the fire under the copper basin, or pouring into it the oil, tar and sulphur from little kegs that lay near at hand. With her sleeves rolled back above her elbows, and leaving her strong white arms exposed, Cornelia stirred the steaming mixture with an iron rod supplied with a wooden handle. Master Barbot – his head covered with an iron morion, his chest protected with a brigandine, and his cutlass and dagger by his side – leaned upon the barrel of his arquebus and smiled complacently upon his invention. From time to time he would address the women and girls at work.
"Courage, my brave girl!" he said to Cornelia. "Mix up the oil well with the tar and sulphur. Make the mixture thick, soft, and toothsome, like those omelettes made of eggs, flour and cheese that you are so skilled in dishing up, and which your good father and myself relish so much! But the devil take those dainty thoughts! In these days of dearth one may deem himself happy if he but have a handful of beans. By the way of famine and of your father – the heavy clouds that are rising yonder in the south almost always announce a change of wind. Mayhap we shall see this very day the brigantines of Captain Mirant, loaded with wheat and powder, sailing before the wind into port, every inch of sail spread to the breeze, and successfully running the gauntlet of the royalist guns. Long live the Commune!"
"May God hear you, Master Barbot! I would then embrace my father this very day, and the threatened famine would be at end," answered Cornelia without interrupting her work of stirring the mixture, into which Theresa Rennepont just emptied a bucketful of sulphur – on account of which Master Barbot called out to her:
"No more sulphur, my dear Theresa. The tar and oil must predominate in the infernal broth. The sulphur is thrown in only to improve the taste by pleasing the eye with the pretty bluish flame, that gambols on the surface of the incandescent fluid. Now, my little girls, turn the beam just a little to one side in order to remove the basin from the fire without cooling off the broth. We shall swing it back over the fire the instant the Catholics run to the assault – then we shall dish up the broth to them, hot and nice."
While these Rochelois women were thus engaged in preparing the censer, others rolled enormous blocks of stone – the debris of the bastion that was shattered by the enemy's cannonade – and placed them in such positions over the breach that a child's finger could hurl them down upon the assaulting column. Others rolled barrels of sand, which after having served for protection to the arquebusiers on the ramparts, were likewise to be rolled down the steep declivity which the enemy had to climb. Finally, a large number of women were busy preparing stretchers for the wounded. These women worked under the direction of Marcienne, Odelin's widow. Theresa and Cornelia, left for a moment at leisure from their work on the censer, came over to the widow, and were presently joined by Louis Rennepont and Antonicq.
"Mother," said Antonicq, tenderly addressing Marcienne, "when I left the house this morning at dawn you were asleep; I could not tell you good-bye – embrace me!"
Marcienne understood what her son meant. A murderous assault was about to be engaged. Perhaps they were not to meet again alive. She took Antonicq in her arms, and pressing him to her breast she said in a moved yet firm voice: "Blessings upon you, my son, who never caused me any grief! If, like your father, you should die in battle against the papists, you will have acted like an upright man to the very end. Should I succumb, you will carry with you my last blessing. And you also, Cornelia," added Marcienne, "I bless you, my child. I shall die happy in the knowledge that Antonicq found in you a heart worthy of his own in virtue and bravery. You have been the best of daughters to your parents – you will likewise be a tender wife to your husband."
Odelin's widow was giving expression to these sentiments when Louis Rennepont, after exchanging in a low voice a few words with his wife Theresa, words such as the solemnity of the occasion prompted, cried out aloud: "Look yonder! there, under us – among the debris of the breach – is not that the Franc-Taupin? Your uncle seems to be emerging from underground. He must be preparing some trick of his trade."
"It is he, indeed!" exclaimed Antonicq, no less surprised than his brother-in-law. "And there is my apprentice Serpentin also – who is following the Franc-Taupin out of the hole."
These words drew the attention of Cornelia, Theresa and Odelin's widow. They looked down the steep slope formed by the ruins of that portion of the bastion that the enemy had demolished. The Franc-Taupin had emerged from a narrow and deep excavation, dug under the ruins. A lad of thirteen or fourteen years followed him. They covered up the opening that had given them egress. After doing so, Serpentin, the apprentice of the armorer Antonicq, went down upon his knees, and moving backward on all fours, uncoiled, under the directions of the Franc-Taupin, a long thin fuse, the other end of which was deep down the excavation which they had just covered. Still moving towards the parapet, Serpentin continued to uncoil the fuse, and, upon orders from the Franc-Taupin, stopped at about twenty paces from the wall and sat down on a stone.
"Halloa, uncle!" cried Antonicq, leaning over the edge of one of the embrasures. "Here we are; come and join us."
Hearing his nephew's voice, the Franc-Taupin raised his head, made him a sign to wait, and after giving Serpentin some further directions, the aged soldier clambered over the ruins with remarkable agility for a man of his years, and walked over to where Antonicq stood waiting for him.
