THE BATTLE OF THE RHINE.
The young general was not long in rejoining the vanguard. After a
hurried conference with the officers, the troops took their posts of
battle. Three cohorts of infantry, each one thousand strong, received
orders to march through the defile into the open plain, engage the
vanguard of the Franks, and draw the bulk of the enemy's army into the
dangerous passage. Victorin, several officers and myself stood grouped
upon one of the highest bluffs that dominated the field on which the
scrimmage was to take place. From where we stood we had a complete view
of the immense Frankish army. Massed in a compact body, the bulk of
their forces was still far away. A swarm of horsemen rode in advance and
extended beyond the two wings. Our three cohorts had barely emerged from
the pass into the plain when the Frankish horsemen rushed like a swarm
of hornets towards them from all sides and sought to envelop them.
Intent only upon taking the lead of one another, these horsemen gave the
rein to their mounts, and tumultuously, without any order whatever,
galloped towards our troops. When the former had drawn near enough, the
latter formed themselves into a wedge in order to sustain the first
shock of the cavalry; they were thereupon to feign a retreat back into
the defile. The Frankish horsemen emitted such loud yells that, despite
the considerable distance that separated us from the plain and the
elevation of the plateau, their savage cries reached us like a muffled
roar pierced from time to time by the distant notes of their wind
instruments. As ordered, our soldiers did not yield to the first
impetuous attack. In an instant we could see through the thick cloud of
dust, raised by the Frankish horse, only a confused mass, in the midst
of which our soldiers could be distinguished by their brilliant armor.
Presently our troops began to operate their retreat towards the defile,
yielding the ground before them foot by foot to the swarm of Frankish
assailants, who received every moment fresh accessions from the cavalry
of their vanguard, while their main body began to move at a quickened
step.
"By heaven!" cried Victorin, his fiery eyes fixed upon the field, "our
brave Firmian who commands those three cohorts seems to have forgotten
in his ardor for the fray that he was steadily to fall back into the
defile so as to draw the enemy in after him. Firmian is no longer
retreating; he has stopped and does not budge back an inch--he will
cause his troops to be uselessly sacrificed--"
And addressing one of the officers:
"Ride quick to Ruper, and order him to proceed with his three veteran
cohorts to the support of Firmian's retreat. Ruper is to order the
retreat to be made rapidly. The bulk of the Frankish army is now only a
hundred bow-shots from the entrance of the defile."
The officer departed at a gallop. Obedient to the orders that he
carried, the three veteran cohorts speedily emerged from the defile at
the double quick; they hastened to join and sustain Firmian's troops; a
little later the feigned retreat was effected in good order. Seeing the
Gauls yield, the Franks set up a shout of savage joy, and charged
impetuously upon our cohorts. The Frankish vanguard was soon close to
the mouth of the defile. Suddenly Victorin grew pale. Anxiety was
depicted on his face as he cried:
"By my father's sword! Can I have been mistaken as to the barbarians'
plans? Do you perceive their movement?"
"Yes," I said, "instead of following their vanguard into the defile, the
Frankish army has halted; it is forming into numerous separate columns
of attack, and these are marching towards the plateau! Malediction! They
are resorting to the skilful manoeuvre that you feared. Oh, we have
taught the barbarians the art of war!"
Victorin did not reply. He seemed to be counting the enemy's columns of
attack. Thereupon he galloped back to our main army and cried:
"My boys! It is not now in the defile that we are to await these
barbarians--we shall have to fight them in the open field. Fall upon
them from the height of the plateau that they are seeking to
climb--drive their hordes into the Rhine! They are three to our one--so
much the better! This evening, when we shall be back in camp, our
mother, Victoria, will say to us: 'Children, you were brave!'"
At these words, Rolla, the druid bard, improvised the following war
song, which he struck up with a powerful, resonant voice:
"This morning we say:--
'How many are there of these barbarous hordes,
Who thievishly aspire to rob us of land.
Of homes, of wives, and of sunshine?
Yes, how many are there of these Franks?'
"This evening we'll say:--
'Make answer, thou sod, red drenched
In the blood of the stranger;
Make answer, ye deep-rolling waves of the Rhine;
Make answer, ye crows that flutter for carrion,
Make answer--make answer!
How many were they,
These robbers of land, of homes, of wives and of sunshine?
Aye, how many were there,
Of these blood-thirsty, ravenous Franks?'"
And the several detachments of our troops ran up the plateau at the
double quick to the refrain of the chant that flew from mouth to mouth
until it reached the rearmost ranks.
Our army was promptly deployed on the crest of the plateau that
dominated the vast plain whose edge was bordered by the curve of the
Rhine in the distant horizon. Instead of awaiting the attack from that
advantageous position, Victorin wished, by sheer audacity, to terrify
the enemy. Despite our numerical inferiority, he issued the orders to
pounce down upon the Franks from the crest of our elevated position. At
the same moment, the enemy's column, which, deceived by the feigned
retreat of our cohorts, had allowed itself to be lured into the defile,
was being hurled back into the plain by the Gallic troops which
confronted them. Our whole army thereupon reassumed the offensive, and
not unlike an avalanche our full forces poured down from the summit of
the plateau. The battle began; it was engaged all along the line.
I promised Victoria not to leave the side of her son. Nevertheless, such
was the impetuosity with which, from the very start of the action, he
dashed upon the enemy at the head of a legion of cavalry, that the flux
and reflux of the melee at first separated me from him. We were at the
time engaged hand to hand with a picked, well mounted and well armed
body of Franks. Their soldiers wore neither casque nor cuirass; but
their double jackets of hides covered with long hair and their
iron-lined fur caps, were the equivalent of our own armor. These Franks
fought with fury, often with stupid ferocity. I saw several allow
themselves to be killed like animals while, at the hottest of the
battle, they madly sought to hack off the head of some fallen Gaul with
their axes in order to make to themselves a trophy of the gory spoils. I
was defending myself against two of these horsemen, and my hands were
full; a third barbarian, a warrior who had been unhorsed and disarmed,
clinched my leg and sought to pull me off the saddle, and as he found
his efforts vain bit me with such rage in the ankle that his teeth cut
through the leather of my gaiter and penetrated to the very bone.
Without neglecting my two mounted adversaries, I found time to deal a
blow with my mace upon this third Frank's skull. Freed from him, I was
vainly endeavoring to discover and join Victorin, when I descried
Neroweg, the Terrible Eagle, only a few paces from me, in the melee
which his gigantic stature overtowered. At the sight of that man, there
thronged to my mind the recollection of the outrageous insults heaped
upon me only the day before, which I had only partly avenged by smiting
him over the head with a firebrand; my blood, already warm with the
ardor of the fray, now seethed. Over and above the anger that Neroweg
inspired in me by reason of his cowardly insults of the previous day, I
experienced for the man an unexplainable, mysterious, profound hatred.
It was as if I saw in him the incarnation of that thievish and ferocious
race that sought to subjugate us. It was to me, strange and
unaccountable as it may seem, as if I abhorred Neroweg by reason of the
future as much as of the present; as if that hatred was to perpetuate
itself not only between our two races of Franks and Gauls, but also
between our families, individually. What shall I say to you, my child! I
even forgot the promise I made to my foster-sister of watching over her
son. Instead of any longer striving to find and join Victorin, I now
only strove to draw close to Neroweg. I was bent upon having that
Frank's life--he alone, among so many other enemies, incited in me
personally the thirst for blood. I happened at the time to find myself
surrounded by several horsemen of the legion at the head of which
Victorin had just charged the Frankish army with such impetuosity. Our
troops were steadily pushing forward at that point, the enemy was being
crowded towards the Rhine. Two of the soldiers in front of me fell under
the heavy francisque of the Terrible Eagle. I now saw him across that
human breach.
Clad in a Gallic armor, the spoils of one of our captains who was killed
at one of the previous battles, Neroweg wore a casque of gilded bronze,
the visor of which partly covered his face, tattooed in blue and
scarlet. His long copper colored beard reached down to the iron corselet
that he had donned over his jacket of hides. Thick fleeces of sheep,
held fast by criss-crossing strips of cloth, covered his legs from the
thighs down to the feet. He rode a savage stallion from the forests of
Germany, whose pale yellow coat was spotted with black. The tufts of the
animal's thick mane fell below his square chest; his long tail, that
streamed in the wind, lashed his sinewy haunches when he reared
impatient under the restraint of his bit and silver-wrought reins, also
the proceeds of some Gallic spoils. A wooden buckler ribbed with iron
and roughly painted in yellow and red stripes, the colors of Neroweg's
banner, covered the left arm of the Terrible Eagle. In his right hand he
wielded his heavy francisque that now dripped blood. From his belt hung
a sort of large butcher's knife with a wooden handle, together with a
magnificent Roman sword with a hilt of chased gold, doubtlessly the
fruit of some raid. Neroweg emitted a roar of rage as he recognized me.
Rising in his stirrups he cried out:
"The man of the bay horse!"
Thereupon, striking the flank of his courser with the flat of his axe,
he caused the animal to clear with an enormous leap both the bodies and
mounts of the fallen horsemen who lay between us. The leap was so
violent that when his horse touched ground again, the animal's head and
chest struck the head and chest of my own mount. At the heavy shock the
two animals were thrown upon their haunches and both fell over. Dazed at
first by my fall, I quickly disengaged myself, took my stand firmly upon
my feet and drew my sword, my mace having slipped from my hands with my
fall. On his part, having had to disentangle himself from under his
horse, as I was forced to do, Neroweg also rose to his feet and
precipitated himself upon me. The chin-band of his casque had snapped
with his fall, his head was bare, his thick red hair, tied over his
head, floated behind him like the mane of a horse.
"Ha! This time, you Gallic dog," he cried out as he ground his teeth and
aimed at me with his axe a furious blow that I parried, "this time I
shall have your life and your skin!"
"And I, Frankish wolf, I shall once more put my mark on your face,
whether dead or alive, so that the devil will recognize you!"
For a long time we fought with maddening fury, all the while exchanging
insults that redoubled our rage.
"Dog!" cried Neroweg. "You carried off my sister!"
"I took her from your infamous love! In the bestiality of your unclean
race it couples like animals--brother with sister!"
"Dare you insult my race, you bastard dog! Half Roman, half Gallic! My
race will subjugate yours, vile revolted slaves! We shall clap the yoke
back upon your necks--and we shall take possession of your goods, your
lands, and your wives!"
"Just look yonder at your routed army, Oh, great king! Just take a look
at your packs of Frankish wolves, as cowardly as they are
ferocious--just look at them, fleeing from the fangs of the Gallic
dogs!"
It was in the midst of such torrents of invectives that we fought with
heightening rage without either being able to wound the other. Many a
furiously aimed blow had glided harmlessly down our cuirasses; we seemed
to manage our swords with equal dexterity. Suddenly and despite all the
maddened rage of our duel, a strange spectacle drew away our attention
for an instant. After our horses had rolled to the ground under the
shock that they both received, they also rose to their feet.
Immediately, as is usually the case with stallions, they rushed at each
other neighing wildly, and with flashing eyes sought to tear each other
to pieces. My brave Tom-Bras had raised himself on his haunches, and,
holding the other steed by the neck between his teeth, was frantically
battering his belly with his hoofs. Nettled at seeing his horse at the
mercy of mine, Neroweg cried out without either he or I intermitting our
battle:
"Folg! Will you allow that Gallic swine to vanquish you? Defend yourself
with your hoofs and teeth! Tear him to pieces!"
"Steady, Tom-Bras!" I cried out in turn. "Disfigure and kill that horse,
as I shall disfigure and kill his master."
I had hardly uttered these words when the Frank's sword penetrated my
thigh between skin and flesh, and it did so at the very moment when I
dealt him a blow over the head that would have been mortal but for the
backward move that Neroweg made in withdrawing his sword from my thigh.
My weapon thus missed its full aim, but struck him over the eye, and, by
a singular accident, plowed his face on the side opposite the one which
already bore my mark.
"I told you so! Dead or living the other side of your face would be also
marked by me!" I cried at the moment when Neroweg, whose eye was put out
by my blow and whose face was bathed in blood, precipitated himself upon
me, roaring with pain and rage like an infuriated lion. Having calmly
made up my mind to kill the man, I did not allow myself to be carried
away with elation, but met his wrathful onset by throwing myself on the
defensive, and watched for the opportunity to deal him a certain and
mortal wound.
We were thus engaged when Neroweg's stallion rolled to the ground under
the feet of Tom-Bras, whose rage seemed to increase with his success.
The animal almost fell upon us. Half a foot nearer, and we would both
have been thrown off our feet.
At the same instant, a legion of our reserve cavalry, the muffled sound
of whose approaching tramp had struck my oars shortly before, hove in
sight. In the impetuosity of its headlong dash, the heavily armed
cavalry legion rode rough-shod and trampled over everything that lay in
its path. The legion was three ranks deep, and approached with the
swiftness of a gale. Both Neroweg and myself were doomed to be crushed
to dust; the legion's line of battle was two hundred paces long; even if
I had time to leap upon my horse, it would have been next to impossible
to get in time out of the way of that long line of cavalry by
endeavoring to ride, however swiftly, beyond the reach of either of its
wings. Escape seemed impossible from the threatened shock. Nevertheless,
I undertook it, despite my chagrin at not having been allowed time to
despatch the Frankish king--so inveterate was my hatred of him! I took
quick advantage of the accident, that, due to the fall of Neroweg's
horse, interrupted our battle a second before, and I leaped upon the
back of Tom-Bras that was near me. It required a rude handling of the
reins and of the flat of my sword before I could cause my courser to
desist from his infuriated assault upon the other stallion that he held
under and kicked and bit unmercifully. Finally I succeeded. The long
line of cavalry reaching far to my right and left was now only a few
paces from me. I rushed ahead of it, adding with my voice and my spurs
to the speed of Tom-Bras's rapid gallop; I rode on, keeping well in the
lead of the legion, and from time to time casting a look behind to see
the Frankish king, and what became of him. With his visage streaming
blood he sought distractedly to run after me and wildly brandished his
sword. Suddenly I saw him vanish in the cloud of dust raised by the
rapid gallop of the legion of cavalry.
"Hesus hearkened to my prayer!" I cried out. "Neroweg must be dead. The
legion has trampled over his body."
Thanks to Tom-Bras's exceptional swiftness, I was soon far enough in
advance of the cavalry line that followed me to think of imparting to my
course a direction that enabled me to take my place to the right of the
legion's line. I immediately addressed one of the officers, inquiring
after Victorin and the turn of the battle. He answered:
"Victorin is fighting like a hero. A rider who brought to our reserve
the orders to advance said to us that never before did the general
reveal such consummate skill in his manoeuvres. Being more than twice
our numbers, and above all displaying unwonted military skill, the
Franks fought stubbornly. All the indications are that the day is ours,
but it shall have been paid for dearly. Thousands of Gauls will have
bitten the dust."
The officer's report was correct. Victorin again fought with a soldier's
intrepidity and the consummate skill of an experienced general. I found
him, his heart overflowing with joy, in the midst of the melee.
Miraculously enough, he had received only a slight wound. His reserve
forces, skilfully managed by him, decided the fate of the battle. The
routed Franks, rolled back three leagues with our triumphant forces
pressing close upon their heels, were being crowded towards the Rhine
despite the stubbornness of their retreat. After enormous losses a
portion of their hordes were hurled headlong into the river, others
succeeded in regaining their rafts in disorder, and in towing them with
their barks from the shore. But at that moment the flotilla of a hundred
and sixty large vessels fell upon the fleeing Franks on the river. Upon
orders from Victorin, the flotilla had sped forward, doubled a tongue
of land behind which it had kept itself concealed until then, and came
into action. After a number of volleys of arrows that threw the Franks
on the rafts into utter demoralization, our barks boarded the rafts from
all sides. The episode that took place on the floating battlefield was
the last, but not the least bloody of that day. The barks that towed the
Frankish rafts were sunk under the blows of battle axes; the small
number of Franks who survived this supreme struggle gave themselves over
to the mercy of the river; clinging to some of the planks that were
loosened from their rafts, they were carried helplessly down stream.
Although cruelly decimated, still our army thrilled with the ardor of
the fray as, massed along the bluffs of the river, it witnessed the
enemy's disastrous rout, upon which the rays of the westering sun shed
their parting light. At that sublime moment, the soldiers struck up in
chorus the heroic chant of the bard to the words and melody of which
they had stepped to battle in the morning:
"This morning we say:--
'How many are there of these barbarous hordes,
Who thievishly aspire to rob us of land,
Of homes, of wives, and of sunshine?
Yea, how many are there of these Franks?'
"This evening we'll say:--
'Make answer, thou sod, red drenched
In the blood of the stranger;
Make answer, ye deep-rolling waves of the Rhine;
Make answer, ye crows that flutter for carrion,
Make answer--make answer!
How many were they,
These robbers of land, of homes, of wives and of sunshine?
Aye, how many were there,
Of these blood-thirsty, ravenous Franks?'"
The last strophes of the refrain were falling from the lips of our
soldiers when, from the other side of the river--which was so wide at
that place that the opposite bank could hardly be distinguished, veiled
moreover, as it was by the rising evening haze--I noticed a gleam that,
rapidly gaining in brightness and extent, soon spanned the horizon like
the reflection of a gigantic conflagration.
Victorin immediately cried:
"Our brave Marion has carried out his plans at the head of his picked
men and the allied tribes on the other side of the Rhine. He marched
with them upon the camp of the Franks. The last reserve force of the
barbarians must have been cut to pieces, and their huts and wagons given
over to the flames! By Hesus! Rid at last of the neighborhood of those
savage marauders, Gaul will now enjoy the sweets of a friendly peace!
Oh, my mother! Your prayers have been heard!"
Victorin had just uttered these words with a face beaming with bliss,
when I saw a considerable body of our soldiers belonging to different
cavalry and infantry corps of the army marching slowly towards him. All
of these soldiers were old men. Douarnek marched at their head. When the
body had drawn near, Douarnek advanced alone a few steps and said in a
grave and firm voice:
"Listen, Victorin! Each legion of cavalry, each cohort of infantry,
chose its oldest soldier. They are the comrades who accompany me yonder.
Like myself, they have known you from the day of your birth; like myself
they have seen you as a baby in the arms of Victoria, the Mother of the
Camps, the august mother of the soldiers. We long have loved you out of
love both for her and yourself. We acclaimed you our general and one of
the two Chiefs of Gaul. We, veterans in war, have loved you as our son
while we obeyed you as our father. And then came the day when, ever
obeying you as our general and a Chief of Gaul, our love for you was
less--"
"And why did your love for me decline?" Victorin interrupted, struck by
the solemn tone of the old soldier. "Why, pray, did your love for me
decline?"
"Because we respected you less. But if you have faults, we also have
ours; to-day's battle proves it to us. We have come to make the
admission to you."
"Let us hear it," replied Victorin affectionately; "let us hear what are
my faults and which are yours!"
"Your faults, Victorin, are these--you love too much, much more than is
meet, both wine and pretty girls!"
"By all the sweethearts that you have had, my old Douarnek, by all the
cups that you have emptied and that you will still empty, why such words
on the evening of a battle that we have won?" merrily answered Victorin,
who was slowly returning to his natural weakness, now no longer held
under by concern for the battle. "In truth! There was no need for you
and your comrades to put yourselves to the trouble of reproaching me
with my peccadillos. Speak up frankly, are these reproaches that are
usual from soldier to soldier?"
"From soldier to soldier, no, Victorin!" resumed Douarnek with severity,
"but from soldier to general, yes! We freely chose you our chief; we
must speak freely to you! The more we have loved you, you, young man,
the more we have honored you, all the more are we entitled to say to
you: Keep yourself at the height of your mission!"
"I endeavor to, brave Douarnek, by fighting at my best, by leading our
legions in the hottest of the fray."
"All is not said when one has done his duty in battle. You are not a
captain only, you are also a Chief of Gaul!"
"Be it so! But why, in the name of all the devils, do you imagine, my
brave Douarnek, that as a general and a Chief of Gaul I should be less
sensitive than a soldier to the splendor of two beautiful black or blue
eyes, or to the bouquet of good old white or red wine?"
"The man chosen by free men should, even in matters that appertain to
his private life, observe wise moderation if he wishes to be beloved,
obeyed and respected. Have you observed such moderation? No! And
accordingly, having seen you swallow a pea, we have believed you capable
of gulping down an ox. It is in that that we did wrong!"
"What! My boys!" the young general replied smiling. "Did you really
think I had such a maw as to be able to swallow a whole ox?"
"We often saw you in your cups--we knew you to be a runner after girls.
We were told that on one occasion, being intoxicated, you violated a
woman, a tavern-keeper's wife on one of the isles of the Rhine, who
thereupon killed herself in despair. We believed the story. Were we
perhaps mistaken in that?"
"Malediction!" cried Victorin indignantly and with grief depicted on his
face. "And you believed such a thing of my mother's son!"
"Yes," answered the veteran, "yes--in that lay the wrong that we did. So
that we each did wrong--you and we. We have come to notify you that we
are ready to forget the past, and that our hearts remain loyal to you.
We wish you, in turn, to forgive us, so that we may love you and you us
as in the past. Is it agreed, Victorin?"
"Yes," answered Victorin, deeply moved by the veteran's loyal and
touching words; "it is agreed."
"Your hand!" replied Douarnek, "in the name of our comrades."
"Here it is," said the young general, stooping down over his horse's
neck in order cordially to clasp the veteran's hand. "I thank you for
your frankness, my children. I shall be to you as you are to me for the
glory and peace of Gaul. Without you I can do nothing; although it is
the general who carries the triumphal chaplet, it is the soldier's
bravery that weaves it, and imparts to it the purple of his own blood!"
"It is, then, agreed, Victorin," Douarnek replied with moistening eyes.
"Our blood belongs to you, to the last drop--and to our beloved Gaul--to
your glory!"
"And to my mother who made me what I am," interrupted Victorin with
increasing emotion; "and to my mother our respect, our love, our
devotion, my children!"
"Long live the Mother of the Camps!" cried Douarnek in a resonant voice.
"Long live Victorin, her glorious son!"
Douarnek's companions, the rest of the soldiers and officers, in short,
all of us present at this scene joined in the cheers of Douarnek:
"Long live the Mother of the Camps! Long live Victorin, her glorious
son!"
The whole army thereupon set itself in march back to the camp while,
under the protection of a legion that was ordered to watch our
prisoners, the medical druids and their aides remained on the field of
battle to gather the dead, and tend the wounded, both Frank and Gallic.
It was a superb summer's night, that in which the army struck the road
to Mayence. As it marched, the banks of the Rhine re-echoed to the chant
of the bard:
"This morning we say:--
'How many are there of these barbarous hordes,
Who thievishly aspire to rob us of land,
Of homes, of wires and of sunshine?
Yes, how many are there of these Franks?'
"This evening we'll say:--
'Make answer, thou sod, red drenched
In the blood of the stranger;
Make answer, ye deep-rolling waves of the Rhine;
Make answer, ye crows that flutter for carrion,
Make answer--make answer!
How many were they,
These robbers of land, of homes, of wives and of sunshine?
Aye, how many were there,
Of these blood-thirsty, ravenous Franks?'"