Эжен Сю
The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic
CHAPTER XXVIII
SERVING AND MIS-SERVING
Jesuit Morlet and his god-son, little Rodin, had been taken in due course before the Provost, and the reverend fellow was now awaiting the hour of his execution, which was set for sun-up. The cord which bound his arms was fastened to a post of the cart-shed that served as shelter for the Grand Provost's mounted police; at the foot of the post the Jesuit lay huddled. Too case-hardened not to face death with a certain degree of calm, he said to his god-son:
"I have no chance of escaping death. I shall be shot at break of day. Here ends my career."
"You will soon be with the angels," dryly responded little Rodin, who now seemed strangely to have recovered both speech and hearing.
"Poor little one! My beloved son, you are, are you not, very sad at my approaching death?"
"You are an elect of the Lord, predestined to glory, and you will sit at His right side through eternity. Hosannah in excelsis! On the contrary, I rejoice in your martyrdom."
"So young, and already devoid of affection!" muttered the Jesuit to himself. "Are you not grieved at the idea of being left behind and forsaken by my death?"
"The Lord God will watch over His servant, as He watches over the birds of the air. He provides for all."
"Listen, dear child; when God has called me to Him, go you to Rome, to the General of the Order. God will perform the rest."
"I shall go to Rome; your recommendations will be precisely followed, dear god-father; I shall serve the holy cause of God."
As little Rodin concluded these words, a courier came up and said to the cavalryman on picket duty before the Jesuit and his god-son: "Comrade, can you show me to the quarters of Citizen General Donadieu? I have a message for him."
"You haven't far to go. Pass through the shed, turn to the right, and you will see another cavalry picket before the door of a house. There is where General Donadieu is quartered," replied the sentry, while the courier vanished in the direction indicated.
"Good god-father, General Donadieu is attached to this army! Good news for us!"
"But, dear god-son, how will the presence of this general serve us any?"
"Good god-father," replied young Rodin in a whisper, "if you wish it, you need not go to-day to visit the angels of the Lord. Think and decide whether you would rather go. I am here to obey you."
With a nod the Jesuit approved the advice of his god-son, and beckoning to the cavalryman, who approached them, he said: "Hey, sentry! Is it indeed decided that I be shot at daybreak?"
"In the shake of a lamb's tail. You won't have long to wait."
"Well, well! Since it must be so, I have decided to make revelations – very important ones."
"I shall call the brigadier and he will take you before the Provost."
"No, no. It is to a general that I wish to make my revelations. Let your chiefs know without delay."
"You hear that, brigadier!" commented the sentry to an under-officer who had come up. "The old rascal calls for a general to make revelations to!"
"I'll go see the Provost about it," said the brigadier. The few moments he was gone the Jesuit utilized to confer in whispers with his god-son. The brigadier quickly returned, went up to the post to which the reverend was tethered, and said to him:
"Off to General Donadieu. But look out for yourself if your confidences are a sham!" And seeing that little Rodin made ready to follow the prisoner, the soldier added: "Has this brat also revelations to make? Has he got anything to do with you?"
"The child will attest, by his tender candor, the sincerity of my communications, and will complete them in case of gaps in my memory."
General Donadieu, commandant of a brigade of light cavalry in the Army of the Rhine and Moselle, had just finished reading the order he had received, when one of his aides-de-camp informed him that a spy, condemned to be shot at sunrise, asked for an audience to give him information of the utmost importance, but requested that the interview have no other witness than the child who would accompany him.
"I do not accept the scoundrel's proposal," replied the General to his aide-de-camp. "His condition is compromising. Send him in, and stay here yourself."
Accompanied by his god-son, the Jesuit appeared. Both were calm. The General looked the spy over from head to foot, and said to him sharply:
"You pretend to have important matters to disclose to me, which, you say, concern the army? I shall listen to you. But be brief. Do not abuse my patience."
"When we are alone," replied the Jesuit, glancing at the aide-de-camp. "Our interview must be in secret."
"My aide is my second self. He may hear all. Speak, then. Speak at once, or go to the devil!"
"I shall speak, then, General, since you command it. The day after the battle of Watignies a cavalry colonel in the republican army was taken prisoner. He was marched to headquarters – "
"Wait a moment!" cried General Donadieu, visibly troubled at these opening words of the Jesuit's. "You hope to obtain a suspension of sentence as the price of your revelations?"
"More than that. I must be set at liberty."
"I can grant you neither delay nor liberation without the authority of the Representatives of the people. Captain, find Citizen St. Just at once, and ask him whether I may suspend the execution of this man if his revelations seem worthy of it."
"At your orders, General," replied the aide, as he left the room.
The General, at last overcoming the uneasiness which the Jesuit's first words caused him, now resumed, haughtily:
"As you were saying, the day after the battle of Watignies a cavalry colonel – "
"General Donadieu," came imperiously from the Jesuit, "your moments are numbered. If, before your aide returns, you have not contrived a way to set me at liberty, you are lost. Think it over. A prisoner at the battle of Watignies, you were conducted by the Count of Plouernel before Monseigneur the Prince of Condé, who received you most flatteringly. You admitted to him that it was with regret that you served in an army so lacking in military pride as to submit to the yoke of the Representatives of the people. You added – still speaking, be it remembered, to the Prince of Condé – these words, literally: 'Monseigneur, my dignity as an officer is so outraged by subjection to the tyranny of these bourgeois pro-consuls, that, without the slightest scruple of conscience, I would offer you my sword and serve on your side.'"
"Ah, indeed? So I said that to the Prince of Condé, did I? And perhaps you have proofs of what you say?"
"The proofs are inscribed in a certain register kept in the Prince's staff headquarters. In that register are kept the names of all the officers in the republican army on whom, in case of need, the royalist party thinks it can call. The fact which concerns you was related to me by the Count of Plouernel, former colonel in the French Guards, who was present at your interview with Monseigneur the Prince of Condé; which interview was continued by his Most Serene Highness in these words: 'My dear colonel, remain in the republican army. You will there be able to serve the cause of our rightful King most efficaciously by spurring your regiment to rebel at the proper moment in the name of military honor, against these miserable bourgeois pro-consuls. Be sure, my dear colonel, that the day the good cause triumphs you will be rewarded as you deserve. Until then, keep snug behind your republican mask.' So," continued the Jesuit, "you have so well worn your mask that after being returned to the army in the exchange of prisoners, you were first promoted to the rank of Brigadier General, then to Division General – "
"Enough, stop," cut in Donadieu in a sardonic tone of complete reassurance. "What now is your project? You intend to make your disclosures to others besides me, if I do not at once enable you to escape?"
"Aye, General, that is my intention."
"There is only one obstacle – "
"And that is, General? Have the goodness to make it known to me. We will find a way around it."
"Eh!" replied Donadieu, moving towards the door, "It is that I shall call the mounted patrolman who brought you hither, order him to shoot you on the spot, and your secret dies with you. The solution is swift and simple."
"And St. Just, to whom you have just applied for permission to remit my sentence? You have forgotten that detail."
"I shall tell St. Just that your revelations were rubbish, and I let the execution take its course. St. Just is not the man to reproach me for hastening the death of a counter-revolutionist. So, then," continued General Donadieu, taking another step toward the door, "you will be shot at once. Our conversation in over."
"And me?" piped up little Rodin, who had so far kept himself motionless and silent in a dark corner of the room. "And me? They won't shoot me, I'm very sure. I am hardly eleven. So then, if you send my good god-father to the angels, I shall tell everyone what I have just seen and heard."
"Whence it follows, General," chimed in the reverend, "that you have no other safe course than to shut your eyes to our flight, and if you are wise, accompany us, and carry the plan of to-morrow's battle to the Austrian headquarters with you."
"This low window opens on the ground," volunteered Rodin, examining the casing. "We will be able to clear out through it, General, before your aide-de-camp comes back. The rest – God will care for."
"The light will help us to avoid your picket lines, among whom we fell last night," added the prelate, in turn approaching the window, whence he beheld the first grey streaks of dawn. Then to Donadieu, who stood paralyzed with fear, he added: "Come, General, loose me of my bonds. I must have this place far behind me when your aide returns."
"What shall I do?" stammered the bewildered General. "My aide will return with St. Just's orders. The prisoners' escape will be the end of me – I shall be suspected of having assisted in it – and suspicion is death!"
"Good god-father," cried Rodin, who had been ferreting around the room and had just opened a door leading into a neighboring apartment, "listen, the General does not wish to fly with us – he will let us escape. He will say to his aide-de-camp that while he was in the next room a minute or two, we profited by his momentary absence to cut the cords on your wrists and to vanish by yonder window."
"What presence of mind!" exclaimed the Jesuit; and, turning to the General, "My god-son is right. There is nothing else left for you to do. You will be accused of negligence; that is grave. But you will at least have a chance of averting suspicion."
"All the more, seeing that if the General had had the intention of letting us escape he would not have sent his aide to St. Just for orders," judicially added Rodin. "You have every chance not to be molested because of our escape, General. But if you have my god-father shot, I shall denounce you to St. Just."
This reasoning commanded prompt action. General Donadieu chose of the two evils the lesser. Hurriedly whipping off the prelate's bonds he said: "Fly, quick. You will find a clump of trees a hundred paces off, within our picket line. Hide there; and lie close till you hear the cannon, which will announce to you the battle is on. Then you will have nothing more to fear. Now go!" cried the General, flinging open the window, "Go, quickly!"
"I shall not prove an ingrate," promised the Jesuit as he passed towards the opening the other had made for him. "When I see the Prince of Condé, I shall report to him that he may always count on you."
The prelate's god-son slipped like a serpent through the window, and was gone. The Jesuit followed suit.
"Ah, well," said General Donadieu to himself. "If St. Just suspects me, over I go to the enemy. We soldiers know how to serve or mis-serve according as our interests or safety demand. If I carry the plans of the battle to the Austrians, I shall at least have saved my life and general's commission. Devil take the Republic!"
CHAPTER XXIX
BATTLE OF THE LINES OF WEISSENBURG
Towards eight o'clock on the morning of the 6th Nivose, year II (December 26, 1793), under cover of a thick fog, St. Just and Hoche began their advance. The two leaders walked their horses side by side, close behind a squad of cavalrymen detailed as scouts. A short distance to the rear of the Representative of the people and the Commander-in-chief followed a group of aides-de-camp and artillery officers.
Gradually, in the teeth of a stiff north wind, the fog began again to lift. The gallop of an approaching horse was heard, and one of Hoche's aides loomed out of the thinning haze, made straight for his commander-in-chief, and said, as he reined in his mount:
"Citizen General, our scouts just encountered a party of Uhlans. We charged them and reached the enemy's advance guard near enough to make out a considerable body of cavalry."
The north wind continued to blow, clearing away the mists, and soon, from the rising ground where they had taken their station, St. Just, Hoche, and their staff were able to sweep with their eye the field of the approaching battle. Before them, from northwest to southeast at the extreme edge of the horizon, stretched the regular outline of the "Lines" or entrenchments of Weissenburg, parallel to the course of the Lauter, a rapid river which served as moat to these fortified works. To the right, the now leafless fastnesses of the forest of Bienvalt, which also bordered on the Lauter over which the remnants of the fog still hung, reached away till they lost themselves in the distance toward Lauterburg, a town situated in one of the bends of the Rhine, now the headquarters of the army of Condé.
With his glass Hoche examined the position of the Austrian army, and said to St. Just:
"The Austrian general, as I foresaw, surprised by our march which has taken from him the offensive, has changed his plan of battle by making his infantry fall back half way upon the plateau of Geisberg. We must haste to profit by the hesitation into which this discreet retreat will have thrown the enemy." Then, addressing one of the artillery officers, Hoche added: "Citizen, order General Ferino to push out with the cavalry and flying artillery of his division. His cannoniers are to open fire upon the enemy's squadrons, and when they weaken, he is to send in his cavalry."
The officer left at a gallop to convey the order to Ferino, who commanded the advance guard. The republican army was drawn up in three columns, the cavalry on the right, the infantry in the center, and the artillery on the left, with the reserves, the supplies and the ambulances in second line. Suddenly a distant booming, deep and prolonged, resounded on the left, in the direction of Nothweiller, and Hoche exclaimed:
"The cannon! The cannon! Gonvion St. Cyr has followed my orders! He is pouring out of the valley of the Lauter and attacking Brunswick's position. There are the Prussians engaged. They will hardly bring aid to the Austrians now! If Desaix has carried out his movement as well, and attacked Condé's body at Lauterburg, the Austrian army is thrown on its own resources. The Lines of Weissenburg are ours, and we shall raise the siege of Landau!"
At that moment General Ferino, in response to Hoche's orders, advanced at a rapid trot at the head of his cavalry and artillery. Beside the General rode Lebas, the Representative of the people on mission to the armies. Recognizing the importance of this first charge for the success of the day, he desired to assist Hoche, and to march in the front rank.
"On, my brave Ferino," called Hoche to the General as he swept by. "First shatter the Austrian cavalry with your cannon, and then – a taste of your saber for them!"
"Count on me, General. I'll send the white-cloaks to drink in the Lauter, whether they are thirsty or not," replied Ferino; and waving his sword he turned towards his cohorts and gave the cry:
"Forward, my children, forward! Long live the Republic!"
"Long live the Republic!" shouted back the cavalrymen, flashing their swords in the air as they thundered past Hoche. "Our comrades have retaken Toulon – we shall free Landau!"
"Soldiers," called Hoche, "show yourselves worthy of your past victories. The Republic counts on the Army of the Rhine and Moselle! To victory or death!"
The battle was on. General Ferino's artillery mowed down the Austrian cavalry, Wurmser's first line. Profiting by their disorder, gathering up his squadrons and hurling them with himself at their head upon the enemy, Ferino overthrew the forces which opposed him, and carried his mounted sabers right into the infantry squares of the second line. Then Hoche flung his attacking column upon Wurmser's center, while that general's left wing fell under the fire of several batteries of flying artillery. One of these batteries, consisting of six four-pounders, had taken position on an eminence where lay a solitary farmhouse. From this hillock it was possible to rake the Austrian's left flank from the rear. A squadron of the Third Hussars and two companies of the Seventh Battalion, Paris Volunteers, were detached to act as guard to this artillery. The captain of the battery, on reconnoitering his position, found that the farmhouse and its buildings occupied nearly the center of a mound about three hundred paces in diameter. Toward the enemy the hill presented a rapid rise of some thirty feet, while on the side of the republican army it was nearly level with the plain occupied by the reserves. A thicket of trees and live brush extended to the right and a little to the rear of the battery's position. The inhabitants of the place had fled with the opening of the engagement, carrying with them their cattle and all their more valuable belongings. One by one the iron spit-fires arrived to take their position in the battery, the first to appear being Carmagnole, the sweetheart of quartermaster Duchemin. This piece, by the almost grotesque cut of its furniture, presented a curious example of the oddity of artillery carriages in those days.
The team drew up with a half-turn, Duchemin and his eight assistants leaped to the ground, and confided their horses to the two artillerymen charged with their care. The pin which coupled the piece proper to the caisson was removed, and there she stood in position on her two wheels, some distance ahead of the caisson, in which the cartridges were kept. The drivers hurried their horses under shelter of the farmhouse, some fifty paces away. Soon the six spit-fires were in position. The commanders of the squadron of hussars and the two companies of volunteers also took what advantage they could of the lay of the land to protect their men from the fire which an Austrian battery might at any moment be expected to open upon the republican guns. One of the Paris Volunteers' companies was masked in the brush of the little wood just mentioned, in position to fire from under cover in case the enemy should attempt to seize the battery. The other company entrenched itself behind the stone wall which enclosed the courtyard of the farm, and behind the buildings which already acted as cover to the artillery horses.
By the chances of war there were thus reunited among the defenders of the battery Oliver and Victoria, John Lebrenn and Castillon, and finally the young Parisian recruit Duresnel, who also was a member of Captain Martin's company.
"Well, comrade," said Captain Martin to him, "how goes it? Your heart is still whole? Keep up your courage, all will go well."
"So far, captain, things are not going badly. But we must wait for the end – or rather for the beginning, for we haven't begun to fight yet."
"It seems it is going to be warm!" volunteered Castillon. "By my pipe, what a cannonade! That must be comrade Duchemin making his Carmagnole spit! Let me see if I can get a glimpse of him over the wall."
Stretching himself on tiptoe, Castillon raised himself sufficiently to cast his eye above the wall, upon the group of cannon, now half enveloped in the smoke of their first volleys. Duchemin, kneeling on the ground after conning the hostile battery through his pocket-glass, was training his piece, already roughly aimed by a brigadier, while his assistants on either side, armed with their ramrods, sponges and levers, stood ready for action. One of them held the match, waiting for the order to light the fuse. The other five pieces, ranged parallel to Carmagnole, were likewise surrounded by their attendants and being sighted by their under-officers. The captain of artillery and his lieutenants, on horseback, superintended the manoeuvring. In the distance the Austrian lines and the advancing columns of the French were lost almost completely in the smoke and smother of the now general cannonade. Nevertheless, the watchers on the hill soon perceived a large mass of opposing infantry so cut up and thrown into disorder by the relentless and accurate fire of the battery, that the Austrian general was moving up four howitzers and four six-pounders, with the intention of crippling the republican artillery. Seeing with his glass the first howitzer advance to the left from the enemy's battery, Duchemin at once carefully re-trained his Carmagnole, shook his fist in the howitzer's direction, and growled under his heavy moustache, alluding to the short and stocky build of those pieces:
"Ah, it is you who would presume to silence my Carmagnole, stump-nose! I'll show you that you were never cast to clip my sweetheart's words!"
Just then, in response to a sign from the captain, the trumpeter of the battery sounded the signal to "Fire!"
"Come, my cadet," cried Duchemin to the soldier with the burning match, "the soup is ready – all we need is to serve it! Light her! light her! Let her go!"
The cannonier touched off the fuse with his match, and Carmagnole's discharge rang out several seconds ahead of the general volley of the battery. Gazing again through his field-glass to watch the effect of his shell, Duchemin cried out: "There she is! The stump-nose is knocked off one wheel, and two of her flunkies are keeled over. Long live the Republic!"
In fact, Carmagnole's ball had crushed one of the wheels of the howitzer and knocked down two of the Austrian artillerists an instant before the hostile battery had gotten in its first shot. But almost immediately the enemy's guns were crowned with several little clouds of white smoke, lighted up with streaks of flame. A prolonged roar reached the Frenchmen, and Duchemin exclaimed, turning towards the stone wall where the volunteer infantrymen were entrenched:
"Citizens, look out for the shells!"
Hardly had Duchemin sounded the warning when the rain of iron was upon them; the balls screamed, the shells rebounded and burst. The commander of the little republican battery was cut in two by a flying shell; horse and rider went down mangled before the shot. Another shell burst between two cannon, killing one of their crew and wounding two others so severely that they fell and with difficulty dragged themselves to the ambulance sheltered behind the farmhouse.
"Cannoniers! Load at will! Aim for the howitzers!" cried the first lieutenant, assuming command. The trumpet repeated the order through its metal throat. The artillerymen vied with one another in haste to charge their pieces. Then cries of "Fire! Fire!" rang out from the farmhouse, which suddenly became enveloped in thick black smoke. A shell exploding in a hay loft had set the blaze.
"In one way that little bonfire isn't bad," said Castillon, "for it is deuced cold. But too much is too much, and now we're going to roast." And catching sight of the volunteer Duresnel, pale, propping himself up with his gun, his lips working as though he would talk, though no sound proceeded from them, Castillon continued: "Well, neighbor, here we are, 'wo'd of honor;' but what the devil do you see back there to make your eyes pop out so?" So saying, Castillon followed Duresnel's fixed and frightened stare, and what he saw made him pull the young volunteer toward him, with the words: "Come, comrade, do not look that way. You haven't got the hang of the thing yet. That is the fortune of war."
"My heaven," stammered Duresnel, as he followed Castillon's advice. "My heaven, it is horrible! Poor victims!"
A ball, rebounding on the inner face of the stone wall, had struck the lines of volunteers sheltered there, killing and maiming all in its path. The dead and wounded weltered in blood. Captain Martin, struck by the spent ball near the end of its course, had been knocked down, but only bruised on the shoulder. Soon recovering from the shock, he lent his aid to the soldiers of his company, John Lebrenn among them, to help or carry the wounded to the surgeons' post in the rear. These at once gave their care to the cannoniers and to some hussars of the Third, among whom a shell had also wrought its havoc.
Undaunted by these disasters, the republican artillery continued to work marvels. At last the opposing commander, fearing lest his right wing be annihilated, sent word to the regiment of the Gerolstein Cuirassiers to storm the battery. Up to this time masked behind a hill, this regiment of heavy reserve cavalry had taken no part in the conflict. They were part of the contingent put by the principality of Gerolstein at the service of the Germanic Confederation, and were commanded by the Grand Duke himself. This prince was the father of Franz of Gerolstein, whom he held immured in a state dungeon. In spite of his sixty-and-odd years, the old Grand Duke preserved the freshness and buoyancy of youth; to his natural bravery he now added the incentive of hatred for the Revolution. The Count of Plouernel, having made good his second escape from Paris, and now for some time married to the daughter of the Prince of Holtzern, was second in command. The horsemen of this troop wore a cuirass and helmet of steel, over a livery in the Grand Duke's colors – bright blue with orange facings – with heavy boots, and white wool trousers. In short, the regiment was one of the best equipped and finest in the allied army. The rank and file, lusty fellows in the prime of life, warlike, well drilled, well clad, well fed and well paid, pampered up, in short, like a troop of the chosen, were typical 'soldiers of monarchy.' Disciplined by their officers with the cane, after the German fashion, they were the instrument of their master's will, ready to saber father, mother, brother or fellow-citizen, or to march upon the enemy, with equal indifference, killing merely because some one said "Kill!" or falling in the onslaught because some one said "Forward!" On the right of the regiment rode the Grand Duke, a robust man, tall of frame, and hard and proud of feature. His face was half concealed under the visor of his helmet, which was surmounted with a rich plume of heron feathers. The gentlemen and officers of his household rode somewhat apart from him, while he himself held the following conversation with the Count of Plouernel, who now bore the uniform of a colonel of cuirassiers:
"Count, I saw the Prince of Condé yesterday on his way through Weissenburg to take up quarters at Lauterburg. 'The Republic,' he said to me, 'is no longer betrayed by its generals. Our goose is cooked!' The Prince's observation was sound; I look forward to a series of reverses to our arms. In case I am killed in to-day's battle, do not forget the promise you have given me. Go to my son Franz, in the prison where he lies; tell him that my last thoughts were curses upon him. Then," the Grand Duke added, with a sinister air, "see that justice takes its course with him. My highest court has judged and condemned my unworthy son; he is convicted of a revolutionary plot against the safety of my states, and against my person. He has incurred the penalty of death – the sentence is to be executed with the briefest possible delay. My nephew Otto, whose cousin you married, is to inherit my grand-ducal crown. All the bequests, minutely set forth in my testament, are to be fully carried out."
"Drive away these dark thoughts, monseigneur," replied the Count. "You will reign a long time yet, and decide all these matters for yourself."
The word to advance was given, and the Gerolstein regiment, the Grand Duke at its head, set out at a round trot. The ground shook under the hoofs of its eight hundred horses; the rattle of its sabers, muskets and breastplates made a formidable din. Two hundred rods away rose the hillock on whose brow scowled the republican battery that now menaced every foot of the plain the cuirassiers were advancing over. Unable to outflank the battery, owing to its being protected to the right by the little wood and to the left by the semi-demolished farm buildings, the Grand Duke could see nothing for it but to charge right into the muzzles of the cannon which he hoped to capture, little thinking that they were supported by both infantry and cavalry so cunningly disposed that he was prevented from detecting them.
"The republican position is too strong, monseigneur, to be attacked in front," said the Count of Plouernel, "and yet it would be difficult to try to turn its flank."
"I am resolved to take it in front," replied the Grand Duke. "I rely on the courage of my cuirassiers. Here we are within short range of their cannon, and those fellows do not fire."
"They await our closer approach, that their discharge may be the more deadly."
"Then let us close up the distance, and start the action," exclaimed the Grand Duke.
The trumpets sounded the charge. Formed in a narrow column, to offer less front to the republican fire, the troop trotted rapidly forward. Then, at two hundred paces from the hill, they spread out into two lines, and, at the Grand Duke's command, spurred their steeds to a gallop. In this order, and uttering loud huzzahs, they reached the foot of the hill. Here their impetuous advance was checked by the steep rise they had to surmount in order to reach the summit and the guns. They discharged their muskets at the cannoniers of the battery, whose pieces, pointed straight down the hill, and till this minute dumb, now spoke out with a fearful volley of shot and shell. The Paris Volunteers, placed as sharpshooters in the fringes of the woody thicket, rained upon their assailants a storm of bullets which mingled with the fire of the other company cloaked in the courtyard of the farmhouse. The rain of lead and iron being especially trained on the steeds of the first advancing line, these fell or stumbled, rolled over on their riders, and threw the second line into such disorder that in spite of its momentum it was forced to waver and flee. The Grand Duke ordered a retreat on the gallop, in order to reform his ranks out of range.
