La Vendee by Anthony Trollope

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The republicans were amazed at the impetuosity of their enemies, and at
last fled before them; when once these newly-levied troops were turned,
their officers found it impossible to recover them; it was then sauve
qui peut, and the devil take the hindmost. The passage from the camp
towards the town was still open; no attack having been made from that
quarter; and through the wooden gate, which had been erected there, the
valiant Marseillaise rushed out as quick as their legs could carry them;
the officers of the Vendeans offered quarter to all who would throw down
their arms, and many of them did so, but most of them attempted to gain
the town; they knew that if once they could cross the bridge at Fouchard
they would be within the protection afforded by the castle guns--but not
one of them reached the bridge.

M. d'Elbee had found that he could not himself take the position which
had been pointed out to him, as, had he done so, his men would have been
cut to pieces by the cannons from the castle, but he effectually
prevented any one else from doing so; not thirty men from the whole
encampment got into the town of Saumur, and those who did so, made their
way through the river Thoue.

The success of the Vendeans, as far as it went, was most complete; they
recovered their baggage and their cannons--above all, their favourite
'Marie Jeanne;' they took more prisoners than they knew how to keep;
they armed themselves again, and again acquired unmeasured confidence
in their own invincibility; they wanted immediately to be led out to
attack the walls of Saumur, but Cathelineau and de Lescure knew that
this would be running into useless danger. They had now once more plenty
of ammunition; they had artillery, and were in a position to bombard the
town; they would at any rate make a breech in the walls before they
attempted to enter the streets; it was therefore decided that they would
that evening remain where they were, and commence the attack on the
citadel itself with daylight on the following morning.

"It grieved me to think," said Jacques Chapeau, as he pulled the huge
baskets down from the carts, from which the republicans had not yet had
time to move them, "it grieved my very heart to think, M. Henri, that
this good wine from the cellars of Durbelliere should have gone down
republican throats; the thoughts of it lay heavy on my heart last night,
so that I could not sleep. Thank heaven, I am spared that disgrace."

It was with the utmost difficulty that Cathelineau and de Lescure were
able to get sentries to remain at the necessary positions during the
night; the peasants had gained the battle, and were determined to enjoy
themselves that evening; they would be ready they said to fight again,
when the sun rose the next morning. The officers themselves had to act
as sentinels; and after having been the first during the day to rush
into every danger, and after having led the attack and the pursuit, and
having then arranged the operations for the morrow, they had to remain
on the watch during the night, lest the camp should be sacrificed by an
attack from the republican forces, stationed at Bournan, or in the
town--such is the lot of those who take upon themselves the management
of men, without any power to ensure obedience to their orders.

VOLUME II

CHAPTER I

SAUMUR

In the next three days the Vendeans bombarded the town, and during that
time fired against it everything they could cram into their cannons, in
the shape of warlike missiles; and they did not do so in vain, for the
walls, in portions, began to give way and to crumble into the moat,
which ran round the town, and communicated with the river Loire on each
side of it. The town is built on the Loire, and between the Loire and
the Thoue. After passing over the latter river at the bridge of
Fouchard, the road in a few yards came to the draw-bridge over the moat;
and from the close vicinity of the two rivers, no difficulty was found
in keeping the moat supplied with water in the driest weather. About a
mile below the town, the Thoue runs into the Loire.

Cathelineau found the men very impatient during the bombardment; they
did not now dream of going home till the work was over, and Saumur
taken; but they were very anxious to make a dash at the walls of the
town; they could not understand why they should not clamber into the
citadel, as they had done, over the green sods into the camp at Varin.
On the fourth morning they were destined to have their wish. A temporary
bridge over the Thoue had been made near Varin, over which a great
portion of the cannon had been taken to a point near the Loire, from
which the royalists had been able to do great damage to the walls; they
had succeeded in making a complete breach of some yards, through which
an easy entrance might be made, were it not for the moat; much of the
rubbish from the walls had fallen into it, so as considerably to lessen
the breadth; but there was still about twenty feet of water to be
passed, and it was impossible, under the immediate guns of the castle,
to contrive anything in the shape of a bridge.

Notwithstanding the difficulties of the place, it was decided that
Larochejaquelin should take two hundred of his men and endeavour to make
his way through the water, and while he was doing this, de Lescure was
to force his passage over the bridge at Fouchard, and if possible, carry
the gate of the town; in doing this he would pass under the heights of
Bournan, and to this point M. d'Elbee was to accompany him with the
great bulk of the army, so as to secure his flank from any attack from
the republican force, which still retained their position there, and
which had hitherto kept up an intercourse with the town across the
bridge of Fouchard.

At five o'clock the greater portion of the army left the camp with
d'Elbee and de Lescure. When they came within two furlongs of the
bridge, the army separated, the chief body remaining with M. d'Elbee and
the remainder going on with M. de Lescure towards the town.. The road
turns a little before it reaches the bridge over the Thoue, and up to
this point, the Vendeans, in their progress, were tolerably protected
from the guns of the town; but immediately they turned upon the bridge,
they became exposed to a tremendous fire. The men at once perceived this
and hesitated to cross the river; two of the foremost of their men fell
as they put their feet upon the bridge.

De Lescure had marched from the camp at the head of his men. Father
Jerome was on his right hand, and Stofflet and Adolphe Denot at his
left. Henri had asked his friend to accompany him in the attack which
he was to make near the river, but Adolphe had excused himself, alleging
that he had a great dislike to the water, and that he would in
preference accompany Charles de Lescure. Henri had not thought much
about it, and certainly had imputed no blame to his friend, as there
would be full as much scope for gallantry with his cousin as with
himself. When de Lescure saw that his men hesitated, he said, "Come my
men, forward with 'Marie Jeanne,' we will soon pick their locks for
them," and rushed on the bridge alone; seeing that no one followed him
he returned, and said to Denot:

"We must shew them an example, Adolphe; we will run to the other side
of the bridge and return; after that, they will follow us."

De Lescure did not in the least doubt the courage of his friend, and
again ran on to the bridge. Stofflet and Father Jerome immediately
followed him, but Adolphe Denot did not stir. He was armed with a heavy
sabre, and when de Lescure spoke to him, he raised his arm as though
attempting to follow him, but the effort was too much for him, his whole
body shook, his face turned crimson, and he remained standing where he
was. As soon as de Lescure found that Adolphe did not follow him, he
immediately came back, and taking him by the arm, shook him slightly,
and whispered in his ear:

"Adolphe, what ails you? remember yourself, this is not the time to be
asleep," but still Denot did not follow him; he again raised his arm,
he put out his foot to spring forward, but he found he could not do it;
he slunk back, and leant against the wall at the corner of the bridge,
as though he were fainting.

De Lescure could not wait a moment longer. He would have risked anything
but his own reputation to save that of his friend; but his brave
companions were still on the bridge, and there he returned for the third
time; his cap was shot away, his boot was cut, his clothes were pierced
in different places, but still he was not himself wounded.

"See, my friends," said he aloud to the men behind him, "the blues do
not know how to fire," and he pointed to his shoulder, from which, as
he spoke, a ball had cut the epaulette.

He then crossed completely over the bridge, together with Stofflet and
the priest; the people with one tremendous rush followed him, and
Adolphe Denot was carried along with the crowd.

As soon as they found themselves immediately beneath the walls of the
town, they were not exposed to so murderous a fire as they had been on
the bridge itself, but still the work was hot enough. 'Marie Jeanne' had
been carried across with them, and was soon brought into play; they had
still enough ammunition left to enable their favourite to show her
puissance in battering against the chief gates of Saumur. The men made
various attempts to get into the town, but they were not successful,
though the gates were shattered to pieces, and the passage was almost
free; the republican troops within were too strong, and their firing too
hot. At last the blues made a sortie from the town, and drove the
Vendeans back towards the bridge; M. de Lescure still kept his place in
the front, and was endeavouring to encourage his men to recover their
position, when a ball struck his arm and broke it, and he fell with his
knee upon the ground. As soon as the peasants saw him fall, and found
that he was wounded, they wanted to take him in their arms, and carry
him at once back across the bridge, but he would not allow them.

"What ails you, friends?" said he; "did you never never see a man
stumble before? Come, the passage is free; now at length we will quench
our thirst in Saumur," and taking his sword in his left hand, he again
attempted to make good his ground.

M. d'Elbee had seen the Vendeans retreating back towards the bridge, and
knowing that victory with them must be now or never (for it would have
been impossible to have induced the peasants to remain longer from their
homes, had they been repulsed), he determined to quit his post and to
second de Lescure at the bridge. The firing from the town had ceased,
for the republicans and royalists were so mixed together, that the men
on the walls would have been as likely to kill their friends as their
enemies; and as the first company, fatigued, discouraged and
overpowered, were beginning to give way, d'Elbee, with about two
thousand men, pushed across the bridge, and the whole mass of the
contending forces, blues and Vendeans together, were hurried back
through the gateway into the town; and de Lescure, as he entered it,
found that it was already in the hands of his own party--the white flag
was at that moment rising above the tricolour on the ramparts.

Adolphe Denot was one of the first of the Vendeans who entered the town
through the gate. This shewed no great merit in him, for, as has been
said, the men who had made the first attack, and the republicans who
opposed it, were carried into the town by the impulse of the men behind
them; but still he had endeavoured to do what he could to efface the
ineffable disgrace which he felt must now attach to him in the opinion
of M. de Lescure. As they were making their way up the principal street,
still striking down the republicans wherever they continued to make
resistance, but more often giving quarter, and promising protection, de
Lescure with a pistol held by the barrel in his left hand, and with his
right arm hastily tied up in the red handkerchief taken from a peasant's
neck, said to the man who was next to him, but whom he did not at the
moment perceive to be Denot:

"Look at Larochejaquelin, the gallant fellow; look at the red scarf on
the castle wall. I could swear to him among a thousand."

"Yes," said Adolphe, unwilling not to reply when spoken to, and yet
ashamed to speak to de Lescure, "yes, that is Henri. I wish I were with
him."

"Oh, that is you, is it?" said de Lescure, just turning to look at him,
and then hurrying away. But before he had moved on five paces, he
returned, and putting his pistol into his girdle, gave Adolphe his left
hand, and whispered to him:

"No one shall ever hear of it, Adolphe," said he, "and I will forget it.
Think of your Saviour in such moments, Adolphe, and your heart will not
fail you again."

The tears came into Denot's eyes as de Lescure left him. He felt that
he must be despised; he felt grateful for the promise which had been
given him, and yet he felt a kind of hatred for the man to whom he had
afforded an opportunity of forgiving him. He felt that he never could
like de Lescure again, never be happy in his company; he knew that de
Lescure would religiously keep his word, that he would never mention to
human being that horrid passage at the bridge; but he knew also that it
could never be forgotten. Adolphe Denot was not absolutely a coward; he
had not bragged that he would do anything which he knew it was contrary
to his nature to do, when he told Agatha that he would be the first to
place the white flag on the citadel of Saumur: he felt then all the
aspirations of a brave man; he felt a desire even to hurry into the
thick of the battle; but he had not the assured, sustained courage to
support him in the moment of extreme danger. As de Lescure said, his
heart failed him.

We must now return to Henri Larochejaquelin. He had taken with him two
hundred of the best men from the parishes of St. Aubin, St. Laud and
Echanbroignes; four or five officers accompanied him, among whom was a
young lad, just fourteen years of age; his name was Arthur Mondyon, and
he was a cadet from a noble family in Poitou; in the army he had at
first been always called Le Petit Chevalier. His family had all
emigrated, and he had been left at school in Paris; but on the breaking
out of the wars he had run away from school, had forged himself a false
passport into La Vendee, and declared his determination of fighting for
his King. De Lescure had tried much to persuade him to stay at Clisson,
but in vain; he had afterwards been attached to a garrison that was kept
in the town of Chatillon, as he would then be in comparative safety; but
the little Chevalier had a will of his own; he would not remain within
walls while fighting was going on, and he had insisted on accompanying
Larochejaquelin to Saumur. He was now installed as Henri's aide-de-camp.

Jacques Chapeau also accompanied the party who were to make their way
into the town through the water. The men were all armed with muskets and
bayonets, but their muskets were not loaded, nor did they carry any
powder with them; it would have been useless in the attack they were
about to make, and was much wanted elsewhere.

Henri was at his post about the time at which de Lescure was preparing
to cross the bridge at Fouchard. It was an awful looking place at which
ha had to make his entrance there was certainly a considerable breach
in the wall, and the fragments of it had fallen into the fosse, so as
to lessen its width; but, nevertheless, there was full twenty feet of
running water to cross, which had more the appearance of a branch of the
river Loire, than of a moat round a town.

Henri saw that his men looked a little alarmed at what they had to go
through; he had a light straw hat on his head, and taking it off, he
threw it into the water, a little above the point he had to pass, and
as the running water carried it down he said:

"Whoever gives me that on the other side will be my friend for life."
And as he spoke he himself leapt into the water, and swam across.

Jacques made a plunge for the hat: had it been in the middle of the
Loire he would have gone after it under similar circumstances, though
he couldn't swim a stroke; he did not go near the hat however, but went
head over heels into the water; the impetus carried him through, and he
was the second to scramble upon the broken mortar on the other side. The
Chevalier was more active; he leapt in and seized the hat as it was
going down the stream, and swimming like a young duck, brought it back
to its owner.

"Ah! Chevalier," said Henri, reproaching him playfully, and helping him
up out of the water, "you have robbed some poor fellow of a chance; you,
you know, cannot be more my friend, than you already are."

The men quickly followed: they all got a ducking; some few lost their
arms, one or two were slightly wounded by their comrades, but none of
them were drowned. Henri soon made his way over the ruins into the town,
and carried everything before him. The greater part of the garrison of
the town were endeavouring to repulse the attack made by de Lescure;
others had retired into the castle, in which the republican General
thought that he might still hold out against the Vendeans. Many were
already escaping out of the town by the bridge over the Loire, and
throwing down their arms, were hurrying along the road to Tours.

It was in this manner, and almost without opposition, that
Larochejaquelin found himself, together with his brave followers, in the
middle of Saumur; their own success astonished them; hardly a shot was
fired at them in their passage; they went through the town without
losing a man; the republican soldiers whom they did see threw down their
arms and fled; the very sight of the Vendeans in the centre of the town
overwhelmed them with panic. The appearance of Henri's troop was very
singular; every man wore round his neck and round his waist a red cotton
handkerchief; this costume had been adopted to preserve Larochejaquelin
from the especial danger of being made the butt of republican marksmen.
There was now no especial mouchoir rouge among them. They certainly had
a frightful appearance, as they hurried through the streets with their
bayonets fixed, dripping with mud and water, and conspicuous with their
red necks and red waists; at least so thought the republicans, for they
offered very little opposition to them.

Henri had just time to see that his friends had entered the town by the
gate on the Doue road, but he did not wait to speak to them. The
republican soldiers were escaping from the town in the opposite
direction, and he could not resist the temptation of following them. He
was at the head of his men, just passing over the Loire by a wooden
bridge, called the bridge of the Green Cross, and having possessed
himself of a sword in his passage through the town, was making good use
of it, when a dragoon turned suddenly round, and fired a pistol almost
in his face: near as the man was to him, in his hurry he missed him, and
the bullet merely grazed Henri's cheek, without even raising the skin.
"Ah, bungler," said Henri, raising his sword, "you are no good for
either King or nation," and he struck the unfortunate man dead at his
feet.

Not only the soldiers, but the inhabitants of the town were escaping by
hundreds over the bridge, and Henri saw that if he pursued them farther,
he must, sooner or later, find himself surrounded and overpowered by
numbers; he returned, therefore, and destroyed the bridge, so as to
prevent the return of the soldiers who had fled in their first panic,
and also to prevent any more of the inhabitants from leaving their
homes.

"God has certainly fought on our side today," said he to one of his
Mends: "with barely two hundred men, all dripping like drowned rats, we
have made our way, almost without opposition, through the town, and
thousands of soldiers are even yet flying before us."

"Ah! M. Henri," said the little Chevalier, "it is a great honour to
fight for one's King; one fears nothing then: a single royalist should
always drive before him ten republicans."

Henri now returned and joined de Lescure, who was in possession of the
town, though the citadel was still in the hands of General Quetineau,
who held the command of the garrison. It was not till the cousins had
embraced each other, that Henri saw that de Lescure was wounded.

"Yes," said de Lescure, "I have at length acquired the privilege of
shedding my blood in the cause; but it is only a broken arm; Victorine
will have a little trouble with me when I return to Clisson."

"And Adolphe, my brave Adolphe, you are wounded, too?" said Henri.

Denot muttered something, and turned away; he did not dare to look his
friends in the face.

"He envies me my honour," said de Lescure; "but it might have been his
chance as well as mine, for he was not two feet from me when I was
wounded." This was true, for de Lescure had been struck after Denot had
crossed the bridge with the other men.

A flag of truce was now sent out by General Quetineau to the royalists,
with a proposal that he would give up the castle, and lay down his arms,
on being allowed to march out with all his men, and take the road to
Angers; but this proposition was not acceded to.

"No!" said de Lescure to the General's messenger: "tell M. Quetineau
that the Vendeans cannot accede to those terms--we cannot allow his
soldiers to march to Angers, and to return within a week to inflict new
cruelties on our poor peasants. M. Quetineau must surrender without any
terms: the practices of our army must be his only guarantee, that his
men will not be massacred in cold blood, as the unfortunate royalists
are massacred when they fall into the hands of the republicans."

The republicans were not in a condition to insist upon anything; as M.
de Lescure had said, the practices of the Vendeans were a guarantee that
no blood would be unnecessarily shed, and relying on this assurance
alone, M. Quetineau surrendered the castle and gave up his sword. De
Lescure took possession of it till he should be able to hand it over to
his General, and the Vendeans found themselves complete masters of
Saumur.

There was, however, still a very strong detachment of republican troops
on the heights of Bournan, who were watched on one side by Foret and his
detachment, and on the other by a portion of M. d'Elbee's army. These
men had done some execution, as they covered with their cannon a portion
of the road over which the Vendeans had passed, but they had taken no
active part whatever in the engagement. What made this the more
singular, was that the garrison at Bournan was composed of the very best
soldiers of the French republican army. They were under the command of
General Coustard, who kept his position during the whole attack,
inactive and unmolested; had he attacked M. d'Elbee's army in the rear,
when that officer advanced to support de Lescure's division, the
Vendeans would probably have been destroyed between the two republican
armies. Whether the two Generals of the Convention misunderstood each
other, or whether the soldiers at Bournan were unwilling to rout the
royalists, it is impossible to say; but they remained at Bournan till
the night, and then leaving their post during the darkness, made good
their retreat to Angers.

As soon as the white flag was seen on the walls of Saumur, Cathelineau
left the position which he had held, and entered the town. It was
greatly in opposition to his own wishes that he had been induced to
remain at a distance from the absolute attack, and now he felt almost
ashamed of himself as the officers and men crowded round him to
congratulate him on the victory which he had gained.

"No, M. de Lescure," he said, as that officer tendered him General
Quetineau's sword, "no, I will never take it from him who has won it
with so much constancy and valour. I must own I envy you your good
fortune, but I will not rob you of the fruits of your exertions."

"But Cathelineau," said the other, "you are our General, the customs of
war require--"

"The customs of war are all changed," replied Cathelineau, "when such
as you and M. de Larochejaquelin make yourselves second to a poor
postillion; at any rate," he added, pressing between his own, the left
hand of M. de Lescure, which still held the sword, "if I am to be the
commander, I must be obeyed. M. de Lescure will not set a bad example
when I tell him to keep General Quetineau's sword."

"And you, General Quetineau," said Cathelineau, "what are your
wishes--your own personal wishes I mean? I have not forgotten that you
alone of the republican leaders have shewn mercy to the poor royalists,
when they were in your power; you at any rate shall not say that the
Vendean brigands do not know how to requite kind services." Cathelineau
alluded to the name which the republicans had given to the royalists at
the commencement of the war.

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