THERMOPYLÆ
“Ah, not in vain, although in vain.
. . . . . .
The hours ebb fast of this one day
When blood may yet be nobly shed.”
—A. H. CLOUGH, _Peschiera_.
It was not yet dawn. In the darkness of the Bois des Amourettes (the
name held a horrible irony), huddled together for warmth, wet to the
skin with the frozen rain, worn out with hunger and with the long
retreat from Normandy, all that the terrible catastrophe at Le Mans
had left of the Vendean host waited for the dawn and death. Eighty
thousand souls, men, women, and children, they had crossed the Loire
sixty-five days ago; a bare six thousand now remained to die in this
corner of Brittany, hemmed in between two rivers and the sea.
To-morrow, which they should never see, was Christmas Eve. Yesterday
morning, with the Republicans on their heels, they had marched into
the little town of Savenay; last night they had taken up their stand
on the rising ground above it, and all through the hours of darkness,
like birds of prey, the legions of the Republic had gathered, twenty
thousand strong, under great names, Marceau, Tilly, Westermann,
Kléber, to exterminate the forlorn remnant of a once victorious foe.
And they, too, waited for the dawn. . . .
In the extreme eastern corner of the wood, at the very end of the
Vendean lines, near a miserable fire, which the rain had half
extinguished, a young man was sitting against a tree with the head of
another on his knees. The prostrate man was wrapped in what appeared
to be part of the hangings of a bed, flowered brown and yellow; he who
was sitting up wore what had once been the brilliant uniform of a
_garde-du-corps_, tattered now and faded beyond all recognition. A
blood-stained and very dirty rag was tied round his forehead, and his
hair fell unkempt about his shoulders; he looked pinched with cold and
fatigue, but his eyes were steady. It was Louis de Saint-Ermay. Round
the two, clad, some of them, in the most fantastic garments, some
merely in their rags, lay all that remained of the three hundred and
fifty odd men who, nine months before, had called on the Marquis de
Château-Foix to lead them to victory. There were just thirteen.
As he sat there waiting in the fine cold rain, warm only where the
weight of the wounded man and a little of his covering lay across his
knees, there swept before the Vicomte all the issues of the past four
months. Since Gilbert had died in his arms, what a rosary of disasters
had been theirs to tell! It had been a chaplet of desperate fighting,
the ebb and flow of a bitter tide, a contest fought and refought over
every foot of Vendean soil; but the beads, as they slipped in memory
through the fingers, spoke only of the gradual quenching of the light
of victory, of the appearance of disunion, of their double defeat at
La Tremblay and at Cholet in mid-October, with Bonchamps and Lescure
mortally wounded, and, as its consequence, the thrice fatal decision
to leave their own province and to press on northwards of the Loire.
Then that never-to-be-forgotten crossing of the wide river, with the
smoke of their burning villages behind them, Bonchamps’ death on the
further bank, and Lescure’s, horribly protracted, on the march through
Maine. And the march itself, a slow serpent of a column miles in
length, hampered with old and wounded, with children and women, the
exodus of an entire people, with a young man of one-and-twenty for its
leader. Then, when Normandy was reached at last, the abortive attack
on the port of Granville, unsuccoured by the aid from England for
which they had hoped; and after that, the agonising retreat, marked
by combats at every halting-place, with forces dwindling day by day,
till the final overthrow at Le Mans, with its whirlwind of slaughter.
. . . And as if that were not enough, for those who survived it the
scenes on the bank of the Loire, when the remnant attempted to recross
the river to die in Vendée and found it impossible for want of boats,
when, by a cruel mistake, Stofflet and La Rochejaquelein traversed it
with a handful of followers, only to fall, probably, into the hands of
the enemy on the other side. Then, their general separated from them
for ever and their last hope of safety vanished, the influx of the
courage of despair which bade most of them turn to bay and die here,
sword in hand.
And from these red visions Louis’ thoughts went still further
backwards. Centuries ago he had led a pleasant and irresponsible life
in Paris, agreeably gilded by danger and intrigue, but not shot
through, like this existence, in every hour, every minute, at every
footstep with the need for endurance. Centuries ago he and Gilbert had
stood with an Englishman at the parting of the ways at Candé; how
well—though distantly—he had remembered it the other day, when they
marched through the place. And the peasant whom centuries ago he had
watched talking at midnight with Gilbert and La Rouërie he had seen
since, riding into Laval to join them, his Chouans behind him. These
memories, woven of threads which seemed to be torn from different
existences, were confusing, phantasmagoric. How far away seemed even
that amazing night when Gilbert had given up to him his claim, when he
had welcomed with joy the call to arms, before he had learnt what that
call was to mean.
But Gilbert’s weight in his hold, his head on his breast, his own
kisses, the look on his face when he lay dead, those things were
always near. It was partly for them, for all that made Gilbert’s
memory dear and sacred to him, that he had followed to this bitter end
the failing fortunes of the cause, instead of throwing down a sword
grown blunted, and turning, as he might have done at Granville, to
find safety—and something more—across the sea. He had never really
contemplated that alternative, but he had thought to himself once or
twice that, if there were such a thing as a meeting beyond the grave,
Gilbert would approve him. And in that case the moment of approbation
was very near now.
Louis was not disturbed at the prospect; he had faced it too often.
And amid the wreck of everything that makes a man’s life, of family
ties, of high and warlike hopes, of love itself, he had retained a
kind of serenity—a gift not always to be found in conjunction with a
brilliant and reckless courage such as his, and proportionately the
more valuable in the hour of disaster. Yet Gilbert was dead; M. des
Graves was gone—killed or taken at Le Mans, he knew not which—he
should never see Lucienne now. She would be making holly wreaths in
England to-day. . . .
He shivered suddenly, and gently removing the head of his wounded
follower from his knee, replaced the coverlet over him, and, getting
to his feet, began to pace up and down to keep warm. The doglike eyes
of Toussaint Lelièvre followed him from the ground as he went. Here
and there a head was raised to look at him. But not all were sleeping
or pretending to sleep. Many were on their knees; and under a tree two
young men, finishing a long conversation, gave each other the kiss of
farewell.
It grew a little lighter. Louis beat his arms about him and tried to
whistle an air, but his lips were too stiff. Like everybody else, he
was wet to the bone, for his uniform was more than threadbare, and he
had no cloak. But only two things mattered now: this nerve-trying
waiting for a death to which one was resigned—and Lucienne. . . . He
thrust a hand beneath his coat and felt her miniature on his breast.
Into whose possession would it fall . . . afterwards? “But I shan’t be
worth stripping,” he thought to himself, looking down at his rags. At
the last he would kiss it; that was the only farewell he could make.
Presently out of the cold gloom came riding a dim form. “Is that you,
M. de Saint-Ermay?”
Louis drew himself up and saluted. Bernard de Marigny leant his tall
figure from the saddle. “How many men have you left, Monsieur?”
“Fourteen,” replied the Vicomte; “and one wounded.”
Marigny made a gesture. “Not enough! We are going to attack directly
it is light. Since they are three to one it is better than waiting for
them. If you had had fifty men I would have given you the forlorn
hope. As it is you must stay here. I shall place a couple of guns in
this corner of the wood, with your men and those of M. des Nouhes. You
will not be able to hold it long, but remain as long as possible, and
then—save the guns if you can.”
“Very good, mon général,” replied Louis tranquilly, though he was
conscious of a surprisingly keen pang of disappointment. “Who will
lead the forlorn hope then?”
“La Roche-Saint-André, probably.”
“Lucky devil!” observed Louis. “He will have a chance to get warm.”
Marigny turned his horse. “We shall all be equally cold to-night,” he
said significantly. “Good-bye, Saint-Ermay.” He wrung Louis’ hand and
rode back.
And as the light filtered a little more rapidly through the leafless
tree, drawing on to the fatal dawn, the wood began to stir. Some even
made shift to relight the dead fires and to cook their last meal.
Louis’ outward preparation for death consisted in tearing a strip of
shabby silver lace from his sleeve and tying back his hair with it.
Marigny’s two cannons came up, and with them a score of Des Nouhes’
men from Les Aubiers, La Rochejaquelein’s country. Louis shook hands
with their commander, who wore a woman’s petticoat pinned about his
breast, and sabots. Then he went towards his own little contingent.
“My children,” he said, “we have come to our last fight. Let us show
the Angevins here that we are as much men as they, and die as Monsieur
le Marquis would have had us. For myself, I give you my word of honour
that I will stay by the guns as long as there is ammunition left.”
He went round to shake hands with the little group, but they all
demanded permission to embrace him, and Toussaint Lelièvre clung to
him passionately, whispering hoarse and broken words: “If only I could
die for you, M. Louis! . . .”
“Eh, mon ami,” said Saint-Ermay, disengaging himself, “we have all got
to die some time, and this, apparently, is the hour. The only thing
that matters is the manner of our dying.”
The young Vendean looked at him with his eyes full of tears. “If you
fall,” he said almost fiercely, “I will save you. . . .”
And from the hillside came through the dawn the first sudden rattle of
musketry.
* * * * * *
Louis wiped the sweat from his forehead with his frayed scarlet cuff,
and leant a moment breathless against the gun which he had been
helping to drag nearer to the edge of the copse. He had no cause to
complain of cold now. “How many more rounds?” he asked.
Panting, begrimed, blood-stained, the four men at the gun looked at
him. “Three,” said the eldest solemnly, and the voice of Toussaint
Lelièvre added sharply: “Monsieur le Vicomte, you are wounded!”
Louis shrugged his shoulders, and glanced down carelessly at the gash
above his knee, whence the blood was coursing unheeded into his high
boot. “Three? Carefully then, mes enfants. . . .”
In front, between them and Savenay, could be seen a blue and white
mass, advancing slowly but steadily, and firing as it came. A little
behind it, to the left, almost motionless, was visible a body of
horsemen—the hussars of Westermann, the man who knew no pity. The gun
roared. Louis looked a moment longer through the twigs, and then,
catching up a musket, knelt down again on the dead leaves and went on
firing.
The leaden sky, the cold rain, the position of the gun on the edge of
a wood, all seemed a replica of three hours ago. Yet all was changed.
The day was lost, and the wood was not the same. When first the
Vendeans attacked with the fury of despair, they had driven in the
outposts of the château of Touchelais, but afterwards they had been
slowly forced back on to the Bois des Amourettes, where Marigny’s
battery had checked for a time Marceau’s onset. In their corner of the
wood Louis’ men and Des Nouhes’ Angevins, ravaged by the grape-shot,
fell, re-formed, fell faster. At last it was impossible to hold the
wood any longer. Even then they saved the guns.
And then they were down in Savenay, and Savenay was a nightmare—a
repetition of the unspeakable carnage of Le Mans. By every inlet
flooded through the united columns of Marceau and Kléber, Tilly and
Canuel. And first Louis was in the square by the church, always with
the guns, holding a street full of hussars in check. Then, in some
inexplicable fashion, a torrent of fugitives tore both him and Des
Nouhes away from their men, and they were flung to the other side of
the square, right under the hoofs of a squadron of dragoons who came
like a whirlwind out of another street. Des Nouhes was sabred at
Saint-Ermay’s side, and in a doorway Louis saw a boy of fourteen,
Armand de Beaurepaire, cut to pieces with the Comte, his grandfather,
because he would not surrender. But death would none of him—only a
dragoon slashed at him as he struggled to rise. After that he had
tried to work his way back across the tossing square to the guns,
inwardly thanking God that, at least, the women and children were
gone—he could not bear to see that again. . . . He caught sight of a
fresh stream of fugitives. Half of them were women. From the sleeve of
one of them, quite young, and by her face of gentle birth, protruded a
dripping stump. . . . And a red fury banished his frozen calm. At the
tail of the press was Marigny, on horseback, in his hand the white
standard Madame de Lescure had once embroidered for him. Louis had
wrestled through to him, had caught at his bridle and cried in a
breaking voice that there were still women in the town, and Marigny,
death in his face, had replied that he was trying to get them out by
the Guérande road. . . . And not long after that, profiting by the
diversion caused by Fleuriot and Donnissan, who, disdaining to fly,
had opened a passage back into Savenay with the bayonet, they had
succeeded in getting the two guns out of the shambles, along the road.
More nightmare scenes. . . .
Then, with but one gun, he was here in the wood of Blanche-Couronne,
with Marigny, four times that day repulsed by the death he sought, and
old Donnissan, and Fleuriot, and a few score more, holding it in a
last desperate effort to protect the rout, to postpone, if only for
half an hour, the ultimate slaughter. But five minutes more would see
the end. . . .
Less, perhaps. There was a stir along the border of the wood to his
right, wild voices, men scrambling to the saddle, running. And Louis’
musket snapped uselessly—the cartridges were too wet. He threw it down
and drew his sword.
Marigny galloped past. “Save yourself, Saint-Ermay!” he cried. “Make
for the marshes!”
Louis shook his head. He would not leave his men, and the gun.
Besides, what was the use? He had no fancy for being slaughtered in a
ditch; he preferred to die standing, and in the open.
The gun by him spoke for the last time, and almost immediately
Toussaint Lelièvre pitched forward on his face.
And suddenly Louis, who, all through the war, in his maddest exploits
had never been touched by a bullet, knew that he should not die by a
bullet now, and was glad. The grenadiers had ceased to advance. In
front of them, racing madly towards the slope, came on the cavalry
they had screened. Westermann’s hussars were coming to clear out the
wood; the pounding of their nearing hoofs on the wet grass was like
the beat of the last pulses of life. The three men at the guns were on
their knees, reciting their acts of contrition, calm, as if they had
been in church. Only a little sob broke from one, the youngest. Louis
turned towards them, brought his sword to the salute, and, walking
very coolly to a tree a few yards away, set his back against it and
waited.
There was just here a little hedge for a boundary to the copse. Would
their horses take it well . . . as Saladin would have done? . . . Yes;
in a moment they were over it gallantly, their red, fur-edged pelisses
flying. They seemed in an enormous hurry. A couple of them, striking
right and left, despatched in an instant the three men by the gun.
Then the line swept on. And Louis straightened himself as he saw death
riding at him—a big man on a roan horse, something restive. Under his
high red and black headgear his fair, stupid face glistened with
exertion; his doubled tresses of plaited hair hung to his shoulders.
As he passed Louis he cut savagely at him. Louis sprang a little to
one side, the roan swerved, and Saint-Ermay parried the stroke, though
not entirely, for the point of the sabre bit into his collarbone. The
force of the blow sent him back for a second against the tree-trunk,
and another hussar was on him, young, dark, smiling sardonically.
Leaning from the saddle, this man made as though to cut, then,
suddenly stooping, thrust instead.
“Take that, brigand!” he cried, his smile widening.
The long, heavy blade, with the momentum of the horse behind it, went
leaping treacherously under the Vicomte’s raised guard, and drove
through the tarnished silver facings full into his breast.
Louis was conscious of a spasm of rending pain, of a conviction that
he was pinned to the tree behind him (which was momentarily true), of
the horseman’s laugh as he wrenched out his sword and rode on . . .
then of a noisy, rushing red mist and a sensation of falling.
For all that he stood swaying for an instant by the tree, with his
mouth full of blood, and but one unreasoning thought in his mind—to
get back to the gun to die. And observing him to be still on his feet,
though visibly not long to remain there, another hussar, looking over
his shoulder, wheeled his horse with the intention of giving him the
coup de grâce. Louis did not see him. He could indeed see nothing now,
but with his head thrown back in agony, and both hands pressed to his
breast, whence the blood poured hot through his fingers, he took a
couple of blind paces forward in the direction where he imagined the
gun to be. Then he staggered, flung out his hands, and fell.
The hussar, whose arm was already raised to strike, glanced carelessly
down at him and did not trouble to dismount. “He has his affair
already, parbleu,” he muttered, and, swinging his sabre till it
whistled through the air, rode after his comrades.
Louis made one or two convulsive movements, and then, with a long
shuddering sigh, lay still, his arms spread wide and the rain falling
on his upturned face.
* * * * * *
A peasant began to crawl very slowly forward from the little heap by
the gun. A red foam hung on his lips, and as he dragged himself along
he left a dark track on the damp leaves. Twice in his difficult
progression he sank down, gasping, but in the end he reached the body
which he sought, and peered into its ashen face. As he bent over it
his own blood mingled with the stream which still soaked through
Louis’ ragged blue and scarlet, and which, joining with the trickle
creeping slowly from beneath him, was forming a little pool at his
side. With shaking hands the wounded man tried to unfasten the
Vicomte’s uniform; he got it open a little way at the throat, and then
the uselessness of his action seemed to overcome him, and, groaning,
he looked wildly round for something to staunch the steady red rivulet
within. His eyes fell on the white scarf which encircled his young
leader’s body; but it was worn under the sword-belt, and Toussaint
Lelièvre, with but a few seconds to live himself, knew that he could
not unfasten the clasp and unwind the scarf in time. . . . He carried
his hands to the sash round his own waist, and, coughing, crouched
on his heels, fumbled with the end. He got it unfastened . . . but
it was a long woollen strip wound round many times. . . . In a
supreme gesture of despair and farewell he tore his rosary from his
buttonhole, and, with heaven knows what vague idea of its efficacy,
tried to put it into Saint-Ermay’s slack, out-flung hand—the last and
only office in his power. Even that he could scarcely do. The chaplet
dropped waveringly into Louis’ palm, and Toussaint Lelièvre fell dead
across him.