THE FIGHT AT THE BRIDGE
“To carry our faith like a blossom that’s thrust
In a sword-hilt for token;
To close up our ranks, when a comrade bites dust,
And march on, unbroken.”
“Monsieur d’Charette a dit à ceux d’Monfort,
Monsieur d’Charette a dit à ceux d’Monfort
‘Frappez fort ;
Le drapeau blanc défend contre la mort !’”
—_Monsieur d’ Charette_.
At half an hour after noon next day Louis-Henri-François de Marcé,
with forty-eight years of service and two thousand five hundred men
behind him, marched out of Chantonnay in the direction of Saint
Fulgent, with the intention of completing his victory of the previous
Sunday. At three o’clock he passed the river Lay on the pont du
Gravereau, which had been cut by the peasants and subsequently
repaired by his orders, after which he proceeded to repair a second
bridge at the mill of La Rivière, a league further on.
While his troops were thus occupied there appeared over the high
and wooded ground in front of him a large body of armed men. The
Republican general would have taken them for insurgents, had not the
commissary of the Convention who accompanied him distinctly heard
borne towards him on the breeze the surge of the Marseillaise, that
sound dear to every good patriot, as he remarked to the veteran. It
stamped them, he asserted, as the National Guard from Nantes, and De
Marcé went on with his bridge-mending. On all sides, except to his
rear, the heights surrounded him: it was an ill position to defend,
but at the moment he was not thinking of defence.
Yet it was not the true Marseillaise which was being sung on the
heights; it was the Marseillaise Vendéenne, whose words, wedded indeed
to the same famous air, expressed far other sentiments. With their
rosaries round their necks the peasants were chanting lustily in their
patois.
“O sainte Vierge Marie
Condis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs :
Contre ine sequelle annemie
Combats avec tes zélateurs ! . . .”
And after they had sung they turned and were swallowed up in the woods
whence they had appeared. Masked by these woods, they were going to
turn De Marcé’s position down below.
Yet it was seven o’clock of the March evening before this fact burst
upon the Republicans. Then, with the first hidden and deadly fire from
the lower woods, a whole column of National Guards posted on their
left flank deserted their posts. De Marcé, taken by surprise, withdrew
the bulk of his forces to the farther bridge at Gravereau, leaving,
however, a strong detachment on the bridge nearer to the Royalists,
and throwing out a column on his other flank.
About twenty minutes after the first fusillade Gilbert found himself
with his little troop where the woods joined the water meadows, a
little to the left of the nearer bridge, still lined with grenadiers
and emitting a constant though ill-directed fire. He had discarded his
horse, preferring to be as his men were, and fancying that they
followed him better unmounted. But Louis, combining as he did the
function of aide-de-camp with that of second in command, could not be
deprived of his, and, a little way along the rank of kneeling men he
stood, bridle in hand, directing their fire. The woods, black behind
them in the fading light, prevented the Vendeans from being picked out
by the Blues on the bridge, who were, moreover, firing much too high.
Hardly a man had been hit. Yet it was slow and trying work, and the
Royalists were very short of muskets. If only they could carry the
bridge! But Gilbert could not attempt it on his own responsibility,
and Royrand was on the other side of the river, two meadows’ width
away. He would have to send some one across the danger zone, and Louis
was the only person to send—Louis who had in him as it was far too
much of the lust of danger, and whom he hesitated to send . . . for
other reasons.
Yet, after all, he had no right to indulge private considerations. He
summoned his cousin. “Ride as hard as you can,” he said, “to M. de
Royrand, and ask him whether we shall not try to carry the bridge from
here. Tell him that we are very short of ammunition and muskets but
have plenty of scythes and pikes, and that our position is good for
such an attempt. The Blues, as any one can see, are demoralised
already.”
“Excellent!” commented Louis, and he sprang with alacrity to the
saddle. “You may trust me to persuade him! And as I come back I will
wave my handkerchief if he consents.”
“Don’t go right across the open like that!” shouted Gilbert after him,
but it was too late, and with his teeth caught on his under lip the
Marquis watched the slight, reckless figure dash untouched through the
fusillade which immediately opened on him from the bridge, splash
through the shallow stream and disappear.
It seemed a long time before he saw his cousin, bare-headed now,
galloping wildly towards them over the meadow. The white signal flew
from his hand, and Gilbert could hear his laugh as he pulled Saladin
on to his haunches at a few yards distance and waited for them.
“Come on, men!” The excitement gained the ranks, and with the Marquis,
sword in hand, at their head, they burst out of shelter and ran across
the meadow.
“Dismount—you’ll be hit!” cried Gilbert, as he came abreast of the
Vicomte; but Saladin, fresh from his gallop, and maddened by the
racing feet behind him, was hard to hold, and Louis paid no heed. On
they went, and the Blues on the bridge, seeing this advancing wave
with its tip of steel, began to pull themselves together and to
concentrate their aim. A peasant or two fell, and Gilbert could not
but wonder whether, though his men were following well enough, there
might not be a catastrophe when they came face to face with the
levelled muskets. If so, then these were his last few minutes on
earth. Not that that mattered.
But at last they began to breast the rise to the bridge, and showed no
sign of slackening. The Marquis looked round, encouraging them as he
ran; Louis, holding in his horse with bridle hand alone, pointed them
on with his sword. Now they were nearly abreast of the idle mill
wheel. Gilbert glanced round for the last time; the front rank was on
his heels, shouting wildly. At that moment, too, he realised that
Louis, glad of the excuse perhaps, had let his fretting horse carry
him still further in advance. And then the catastrophe came—but not as
Gilbert had pictured it. For suddenly, without warning, as Louis
turned back in the saddle, Saladin went down beneath him like a stone,
pitching him, finished horseman as he was, clean into the road.
Neither horse nor man rose again, and in a moment, when the smoke of
the instantly succeeding volley had cleared, Château-Foix saw his
cousin lying on his face, motionless, between the ranks of friends and
foes. And the men behind were stopping.
A lightning pang tore at Gilbert’s heart. “Good God! come on!” he
shouted desperately. “Will you let him be killed before your eyes?”
A roar answered him, and in that moment he knew that he was followed
indeed. On they poured, over the dying horse, over his rider’s body—no
time to see if he were alive or dead—and hurled themselves on the
bayonets. . . . Five minutes of the hottest hand-to-hand fighting
ensued—a whirling vision of fierce, convulsed faces, of straining
bodies, of red steel, then of a sudden swaying movement as the
soldiers gave before the terrible scythe-blades and the scarcely less
terrible pitchforks, and fled along the road, mingled with their
exultant pursuers. The bridge was won.
At the further end the Marquis paused a moment, sword in hand and
panting, to look back. The light had not failed so utterly but that he
could distinguish, among the human wreckage on the bridge, the bulk of
the dead horse and a little group beside it. A second’s hesitation
and he ran back. Louis was lying senseless in the arms of Laurent
Robineau, while another man dashed on him the river water from his
hat.
“Only stunned, Monsieur le Marquis, praise the saints,” said the
latter, looking up; and Gilbert, drawing a long breath, waited for no
more but ran on after his men.
But the fight was practically over, for with every moment it turned
more and more to rout. Royrand and Sapinaud had driven in the right
flank; at the second bridge the double mass of fugitives swept back
the defenders with it. In vain De Marcé and Boulard tried to rally
them; panic had gripped them, and all night long they streamed through
the affrighted villages, till at daybreak even Saint Hermand, seven
leagues away, woke to the clatter of the flying cavalry.
But the end of the fight had no concern for Louis, though the
treatment to which he was subjected was not long in rousing him.
Indeed, as he put up an instinctive hand to ward off the fresh
avalanche which was impending, he muttered something about death by
drowning. After a little he was able to get with assistance to his
feet, and dizzily to survey the scene of slaughter at the farther end
of the bridge. Then his eyes fell on his own dead horse, and the
satisfaction died out of his face.
“My poor Saladin!” he said brokenly, and kneeling down kissed the star
on his forehead.
Soon afterwards, not knowing in the least how he had got there, he
found himself lying by the river, almost underneath the bridge, and
here he went to sleep for another indeterminate period. After this he
had a hazy sensation of being carried a long way, in the midst of a
great many people, on something rather uncomfortable. Oddly enough,
when he found himself laid upon the bed in his and Gilbert’s little
room at L’Oie, his brain became instantaneously and miraculously
clear, so that he immediately announced his intention of following
Gilbert and the other chiefs to the Four Roads. He was only induced to
abandon this idea by the threats of the surgeon whom the Marquis had
sent to him, and by the fact that during the altercation his head
began to ache consumedly.
He therefore yielded the point, submitted to having wet cloths wound
about his head, and even to being consigned to solitude and darkness.
But shortly after the surgeon had taken his departure he rose from his
couch, struck a light, and throwing open the casement established
himself on the window-seat in the cool night air.
He had sat there some time, the incidents of the fight running madly
through his throbbing head, when he heard a light and springing step
that he did not know coming up the stairs. With a little knock the
door opened, and into the light of the single candle came some one
tall and slim and very young, at whom Louis stared for a moment in
amazement.
“Good Heavens! what are you doing here?” he exclaimed, getting slowly
to his feet.
It was the youth whom he had pointed out to his cousin in the
Tuileries as Henri de la Rochejaquelein.
“Mon Dieu, that I had been earlier!” cried the newcomer, on fire, as
he grasped the Vicomte’s hand. “Ah, my dear Saint-Ermay, how I envy
you that!” He pointed to the wet bandage, and there was no doubt of
his sincerity.
“Indeed you need not!” retorted Louis, laughing. “It covers the most
confounded headache that you can imagine, gained by nothing more
heroic than falling off a horse on to a very stony bridge.”
“Oh, I know all about you,” said La Rochejaquelein. “At least sit down
again.”
“But tell me,” said Louis, obeying, “where you have come from, and
what on earth you are doing here?”
“I have come from Clisson, my cousin De Lescure’s château near
Bressuire, you know. There they all are not knowing what to do;
but I—— My God! I couldn’t keep away when I heard of your victory
on the 15th. So I came to ask M. de Sapinaud to take me as his
aide-de-camp—or as anything he pleased.”
“A la bonne heure!” observed Saint-Ermay warmly. “You can have my
place—my poor horse is dead.”
“Yes, but M. de Sapinaud won’t have me,” returned the young man with a
smile. “He says—it is very absurd—that I am more fit to command than
to be commanded. And I would rather a thousand times fight in the
ranks—just for the pleasure of it.”
“Yes, it is hard lines to be a general _malgré soi_,” said Louis
jestingly. “But old Sapinaud, I begin to think, knows what he is
doing. And what, by the way, are they all about now at the Cross
Roads?”
“M. de Sapinaud,” said La Rochejaquelein, leaning against the table,
“has prevailed on the rest to elect, not himself, but M. de Royrand
general-in-chief; he is general of division, while MM. de Vaugirard
and Baudry d’Asson have been chosen as commandants, and your cousin
as major-general—I forget the names of the others. And they have
resolved, I understand, to make this position their headquarters,
and to organise the surrounding district. But I am tiring you,
Saint-Ermay, and I must get back. I only rode over from the Four
Roads to see how you were. It is high time I started.”
“Where are you going?”
“To Saint-Aubin-de-Baubigné, to rouse my father’s tenantry at La
Durbellière, if I can.” He was silent for a moment, his eyes kindling.
“I shall say to them, I think, what one of my ancestors said to his
retainers in the time of the wars of the League: ‘If I go forward,
follow me; if I draw back, kill me; if I die, avenge me!’”
“If you look at them like that, Henri,” said Saint-Ermay, “there is
not much doubt about their following you. Well, good luck! May we meet
again!”
They clasped hands, and La Rochejaquelein was gone, taking out of
the room with him an extraordinary impression of youth and ardour.
But though he well remembered that evening afterwards, Louis could
not guess at the time that the newly-formed army of the centre,
self-effacing as it was always to be, had that night given back to
the future _grande armée_ its name of highest romance and its most
brilliant sword.
The Vicomte returned to the window-seat. The hamlet, usually so early
abed, was not much disturbed even to-night by victory. Snatches of
song came out of the darkness and a little laughter. And as he sat
there with his bandaged head leaning against the casement, Louis’
thoughts went over the seas. But four days of fighting seemed to have
set between him and Lucienne a gulf far wider than the Channel. When
he had ridden homeward from the Etoile de Vendée, and when his
stupefaction had a little cleared, one thought had possessed his mind,
that now he could go to Lucienne at once. . . . Almost before he had
had time to taste the full rapture of this idea the stone at the
window had chased the vision. And what of Lucienne’s kisses now? Again
honour held them apart; how could he turn his back on Gilbert now,
withdraw from the opening struggle? But honour no longer forbade him
to think of her, to write to her. He could not at times believe in the
reality of his happiness. At odd moments he contemplated Gilbert with
profound amazement, not unmixed with wistfulness. If only he would
drop a little of his frigid bearing! Even so he was aware that their
relations were not what they had been a day or two ago. Perhaps in
time. . . .
He had fallen into so deep a slumber that he never heard the door
open, and woke only to the sound of his own name. In front of him
stood the Marquis and M. des Graves, looking at him attentively.
“Ah, you are back, Gilbert,” he observed sleepily. “Father! you here!”
“I might say the same to you,” retorted the priest with mock
sternness. “Why are you not in your bed?”
Louis got up and took hold of his arm. Gilbert had turned away and was
lighting another candle. No one would have guessed that he had been
chafing the whole evening to return and see how his cousin fared.
“I will not be scolded,” said the Vicomte. “What are you doing here,
mon père?”
“He is going to be with us henceforward as our chaplain,” said
Gilbert. “Get into bed, Louis, at once.”
“I am going,” said M. des Graves, smiling at the pleasure in Louis’
eyes. “I have no influence with this disobedient boy.”
The individual in question went arm-in-arm with him to the door, and
out to the top of the stairs. Once outside the room the priest took
his hand. “Louis, I hope you have not forgotten to thank God for your
preservation. Good-night, my child.”
“I have not yet thanked Gilbert,” said Louis to himself. “I do not
care—I shall do it. I suppose he does not exactly regret his action.”
The Marquis, when he re-entered the room, was unfastening his sword.
“You must take the bed to-night, of course, Louis,” he said, without
looking up. “And for God’s sake be quick about it.”
Saint-Ermay looked at him as with bent head he fumbled at his side.
The fingers of his left hand were still swathed in bandages.
“Let me unfasten that for you,” he said. “You will do your hand an
injury.” And before his cousin could object he was kneeling beside
him. He had the sword detached in an instant, and, handing it up to
him, said softly: “I owe you my life.”
“On the contrary,” said the Marquis coolly, “I think that we owe you
the bridge, for if the men had not had to save you I doubt whether
they would have followed me over it.” He turned away and laid his
sword on the table.
“Well, of all the extraordinary and perverted logic——” began Louis,
laughing.
Château-Foix sat down and began to pull off his boots. “It is a fact,”
he said. “And then what of the man at Pézé?”
The Vicomte flushed scarlet. “Oh, were you only paying off a debt?” he
asked in a suddenly hardened voice.
Gilbert finished the struggle with his boots before he answered. “No,”
he said, “that debt is not yet paid. _I_ did not save you, Louis; it
was the men. We must have tried to carry the bridge anyhow. . . . But
you acknowledge then, at last, that I did incur a debt at Pézé?”
“I would rather not talk about what happened at Pézé,” returned Louis.
He was now very pale. “Good-night.”
How, after the poignant emotion of the bridge, could he torture Louis
now that he was given back to him? Gilbert suddenly held out his hand.
“You gave me a most horrible fright this evening. . . . Now get to
bed. I do not want another.”