the battle
cadoudal exchanged a few words with his comrades, and four of them, who were not mounted and who acted as officers to carry his orders into the underbrush and heather, glided away immediately, and passing between the thorn bushes, reached the foot of two sturdy oaks, whose broad branches and thick foliage made a rampart against the sun. these two oaks stood at the two ends of the avenue which the road coming from the town to the crossroad formed.
when they reached this spot, they paused, ready to execute some man?uvre, which no one who did not know the general's plan of battle could have divined.
diane's carriage was drawn into the crossroad, and she herself was stationed on a little knoll some thirty paces from the road, among a cluster of trees, where she could see without being seen.
the chasseurs and hussars advanced cautiously at a foot-pace. an advance-guard of ten men preceded them, and,[pg 498] like the rest of the troop, marched with the greatest caution. when the last man had left the town, a shot was heard, and a man in the rear-guard fell. this was a signal. the two crests of the ravine which formed the road blazed forth fire. the blues sought in vain for the enemy who had attacked them. they saw the fire and the smoke, and they felt the bullets, but they could distinguish neither the weapon nor the man who carried it. confusion seized upon them once they felt themselves the prey of an invisible foe. each one sought, not to escape death, but to give death for death. some retraced their steps, others forced their horses to climb the slope; but no sooner did a man's head rise above the crest of the slope than he was shot at close quarters and fell back, overturning his horse with him like the amazons in rubens' "battle of thermodon."
others again, and they were the more numerous, pushed forward, hoping to pass the ambush and thus escape the net which had trapped them. but cadoudal, when he saw this movement, for which he had apparently been waiting, set spurs to his horse, and galloped out, followed by his forty men, to meet them. they fought along the road for about two hundred yards.
those who attempted to turn back found the way barred by chouans, who discharged their pieces in their faces and forced them to return. finally those who pushed forward came in contact with cadoudal and his men. but after a few moments the latter appeared to give way and fled.
the blues at once started in pursuit. but scarcely had the last chouan passed the two great oaks which were guarded by the four men than they began to push with all their strength, and the two giants, which had been previously separated from their roots with an axe, bent toward each other and fell with crashing branches and a tremendous noise upon the road, which they thus closed by an impassable barrier. the blues were following the whites so closely that two of their number, together with their horses, were crushed by the falling trees.
[pg 499]
the same man?uvre took place at the other end of the road. two trees dislodged from their bases fell across the road, and their interlacing branches formed a barrier like that which had just closed up the other end of the road. thus men and horses were caught as in a huge arena, and each chouan could choose his man, aim at discretion, and bring him down without fail.
cadoudal and his forty horsemen discarded their horses, which were now useless, and, rifle in hand, were about to join in the struggle, when mademoiselle de fargas, who was watching the sanguinary drama with all the ardor of her lion-like nature, suddenly heard the gallop of a horse coming along the road from vitré, and, turning, she recognized the man with whom she had travelled.
when he saw that georges and his companions were about to join in the fray, he attracted their attention by shouting: "stop! wait for me!"
and no sooner had he joined them, amid cries of welcome, than he leaped from his horse, tossed the bridle to a chouan to hold, and threw himself upon cadoudal's neck. then he selected a rifle, filled his pockets with cartridges, and followed by twenty men, cadoudal taking the others, he darted into the thicket which lined the left bank of the road, while the general disappeared on the right side.
the redoubled fusillade announced the arrival of these reinforcements for the whites.
mademoiselle de fargas was too much absorbed in watching what was passing before her to pay much attention to monsieur d'argentan's conduct. she understood simply that the pretended tax-gatherer of dinan was in reality a disguised royalist—which fact explained why he was bringing money from paris to brittany, instead of sending it from brittany to paris.
the heroic efforts of this little band of five hundred men would furnish material for an epic poem.
their courage was all the greater as they were, as we have said, fighting against an invisible danger, calling to[pg 500] it, defying it, and shrieking with rage because it would not rise up before them. nothing could make the chouans change their deadly tactics. death flew whistling by, and the blues simply saw the smoke and heard the report. a man would throw up his hands and fall back in the saddle, and the frightened riderless animal would dash wildly into the thicket and gallop madly on until an invisible hand checked him, and tied his bridle to the branch of a tree.
here and there in the fields some one of these horses could be seen rearing and tugging at his bridle, trying to escape from the strange master who had just made him prisoner. the butchery lasted an hour. at the end of that time, they heard the drums beating the charge. it was the infantry coming to the assistance of the cavalry.
colonel hulot commanded in person. his first care, with the infallible glance of a veteran, had been to get an accurate idea of the ground, and to open an exit for the unfortunates who were confined in this sort of a tunnel into which the chouans had converted the road.
he had the horses unharnessed from the gun-carriages, the artillery being useless for the sort of combat upon which they were about to engage. the horses were then attached to the fallen trees, which they dragged from their transverse position across the road, thus opening a means of retreat for the stricken cavalry. then he sent five hundred men to charge along the road, with levelled bayonets, just as if the enemy had been in sight. he ordered the most expert of his sharpshooters to return shot for shot—in other words, whenever a puff of smoke appeared they were to fire straight at it, since it denoted that a man was lying in ambush at that spot. this was almost the only way to reply to the fusillade of the whites, who almost invariably shot from cover, and rarely showed themselves save at the moment of taking aim. habit, and, above all, necessity, had made many of the republican soldiers exceedingly skilful at this quick exchange of shots.
sometimes the men upon whom they retaliated were[pg 501] killed outright. sometimes when they fired by guesswork, they were only wounded. in that case they would not move. their shots were forgotten in the turmoil, and the soldiers frequently passed very near them without discovering them. the chouans were noted for their marvellous courage in stifling groans which their insufferable agony would have elicited from any other soldier.
the fight lasted until the first shades of night were falling. diane, who did not lose a single incident, fumed with impatience at not being able to take part in it. she would have liked to don male attire, arm herself with a gun, and rush upon the republicans, whom she hated. but her costume, and, above all, the lack of a weapon, rendered her helpless.
about seven o'clock colonel hulot ordered the retreat to be sounded. in this kind of warfare day was dangerous, but night was more than dangerous, it was fatal.
the sounds of the trumpets and the drums, announcing the retreat, redoubled the ardor of the chouans. thus to abandon the field of battle and return to the town was an avowal on the part of the republicans that they were beaten.
shots accompanied them to the very gates of la guerche, leaving three or four hundred dead on the field, ignorant of the losses which the chouans had sustained, and without a single prisoner—to the intense chagrin of fran?ois goulin, who had succeeded in getting his instrument inside the town, and who had taken it to the other end of the town in order to be near the scene of battle.
all his efforts were now useless, and fran?ois goulin took up his lodgings in a house where he need not lose sight of his precious machine.
since they had left paris, neither officer nor soldier had chosen to lodge in the house of the commissioner extraordinary. he had been given a guard of twelve men, and that was all. four men guarded the guillotine.
