sorts of works along his lines, from Bouchain, on the Scheldt, which lay
here"--Lance stooped down at this and drew an imaginary line on the
floor, and George got off the bed, and taking the candle, sat down on
the floor, the better to understand--"along the Sanset, which runs this
way. Lord, Mr. Washington, I'll have to use the boot-jack to show you
about Bouchain and Arras."
"And here are the snuffers," eagerly added George, "for Arras; and here
is my pocket-rule and a piece of chalk."
Lance seized the chalk. "The very thing, sir!" And he drew a very fair
map upon the floor, George watching him with bright, intelligent eyes,
and afterwards taking the chalk, straightened up Lance's rude sketch.
[Illustration: "IT'S A PLEASURE TO SHOW A YOUNG GENTLEMAN LIKE YOU, SIR,
HOW IT WAS DONE."]
"That's right, sir," said Lance, getting down on the floor himself.
"It's a pleasure to show a young gentleman like you, sir, how it was
done, because you have the understanding of it, if I may make bold to
say so.
"Old Villars, then, being a monstrous sharp general, said to himself,
'Aha! I'll beat the long roll on Marlborough now,' and he had the
astonishing impudence to call his lines 'Marlborough's _ne plus ultra_,'
whatever that is; I don't know myself, but it is some sort of impudence
in French."
George laughed a little to himself at Lance's notion of the old Latin
phrase, but he was too much interested in the story to interrupt.
"Marshal Villars had near sixty thousand men, and such a gang of
ragamuffins, Mr. Washington, you never saw. But they'd rather fight than
eat; and let an old soldier tell you, sir, whenever you meet the French,
don't count on licking 'em because they are half starved and half naked;
I believe they fight better the worse off they are for victuals and
clothes. The Duke spent two or three weeks studying their works, and
when he got through with it he knew more about them than Marshal Villars
himself did. The summer had come, and the streams were no longer
swollen, and the Duke begun to lay his plans to trap old Villars. The
first thing he did was to have a lot of earth-works thrown up at the
place where he did not intend to break through the French lines. The
French, of course, got wind of this, and drew all their forces away from
Vitry, where the Duke really meant to break through and cross the
Sanset. All the Frenchmen were fooled, and Marshal Villars the worst of
all. So when, one bright morning in July, the French scouts reported
that Marlborough himself, with fifty squadrons of horse, was on the
march for the earth-works he had made where he did not mean to cross,
old Villars was cocksure he had him. The Duke with his fifty squadrons
marched a good day's march away from Vitry, the French scampering off in
his direction, and concentrating their troops just where the Duke wanted
them. Meanwhile every mother's son of us was in marching order--the
artillery ready, the pontoons ready, everybody and everything ready.
About mid-day, seeing the French had been fooled, the order was given to
march, and off we put for Vitry. As soon as we reached the river we laid
the pontoons, and were drawn up on the bank just waiting for the word to
cross. It was then late in the evening, but we had got news that the
Duke had turned around, and was making for us as fast as the horses of
his squadrons could lay their hoofs to the ground. About nine o'clock we
saw the dust of the advance-guard down the highway; we heard the
galloping of the horses long before. The instant the Duke appeared the
crossing begun, and by sunrise thirty thousand men had crossed, and had
joined General Hompesch's division of ten thousand between Oise and
Estrum; and now we were within Villars's lines without striking a blow.
'Twas one of the greatest marches that ever was, Mr. Washington--ten
leagues between nine in the evening and ten the next morning--thirty
thousand infantry, artillery, cavalry, miners, and sappers.
"Villars found out what was in the wind about midnight, and at two
o'clock in the morning he turned around, and the whole French army came
in pursuit of us; and if you will believe it, sir, they marched better
than we did, and by eleven o'clock in the morning the beggars were as
near Bouchain as we; for Bouchain was what we were after. 'Twas a strong
fortress, and the key to that part of France; and if we could get it we
could walk to the heart of France any day we liked.
"Old Villars wanted to bring us to fight, but the Duke was too wary for
him. He sat down before Bouchain, that had a large garrison of picked
men, commanded by the bravest officers in the French army, with stores,
guns, and ammunition in plenty. The Duke had to make a causeway over a
morass before he could get at 'em at all, and there was Villars behind
us, ready to cut us to pieces, and that stubborn fortress in front. It
was the hardest siege I ever knew, though it was not the longest. The
people at home were clamoring for the Duke to fight Villars instead of
taking Bouchain; but the Duke knew that if he could get the fortress he
would have the control of three great rivers--the Scheldt, the Meuse,
and the Lys--and then we could cut off any army the Grand Monarque could
send against us. 'Tis a deal harder, sir, to keep men's spirits up in a
siege than in a battle. The army would rather have been fighting Villars
any day; but there we were, laying trenches, mounting our guns, and
every day closing in on that town. The Duke was very anxious after a
while to know what the condition of the town was within the bastions,
and every young cornet and ensign in the army wanted to risk his skin by
sneaking in and finding out. But while the Duke was turning this over in
his mind it happened that the enemy sent us a flag of truce in regard to
an armistice. The Duke did not want an armistice, but he wanted mightily
to know how things were looking inside, so he agreed to send a flag of
truce back. The French, though, are not to be easily outwitted, and they
made it a condition that the officers sent with the flag be blindfolded.
Three officers went in; but they had their sashes tied around their
eyes, and the only thing they saw when they had been led blindfolded for
a half-mile through the town and into the citadel was a very handsome
room in which the commandant received them. They talked awhile, but did
not come to any terms; and then the commandant very politely invited
them to take some refreshment, and a regular feast was set out for
them--just to make them think that provisions were plenty--and the
French officers who dined with them ate scarcely anything. But they
looked gaunt and hollow-eyed enough, and I warrant they fell to as soon
as the English officers left. So, after all, Lord Fairfax was the one to
get in."
"Was anybody with him?" asked George.
"Well, sir--the fact is, sir--I was with him."
George jumped up off the floor, and seizing Lance's hand, wrung it hard
in his enthusiasm. Lance smiled one of his grim smiles.
"Young gentlemen are apt to think more of a little thing like that than
it's worth," was the old soldier's commentary on this, as George again
seated himself on the floor, and with eloquent and shining eyes besought
Lance to tell him of his entrance into the besieged fortress.
"It was about a week after that, when one night, as I was toasting a
piece of cheese on a ramrod over the fire, up comes quite a nice-looking
young woman and begins to jabber to me in French. She had on a red
petticoat and a blue bodice, like the peasant women in those parts wear,
and a shawl around her, and a cap on her head; but she did not look like
a peasant, but rather like a town milliner. She had a basket of eggs in
her hand, as the people sometimes brought us to sell, though, poor
things, they had very few eggs or chickens, or anything else. Now I
could speak the French lingo tolerably, for I had served so many years
where it was spoke, so we begun bargaining for the eggs, and she kept up
a terrible chattering. At last we agreed on two pistoles for the lot,
and I handed out the money, when suddenly she flew into a rage, threw
the money in my face, and, what was worse, began to pelt me with sticks
and stones, and even the eggs. That brought some of my comrades around,
and, to my surprise, she begun to talk in a queer sort of
French-English, saying I had cheated her, and a lot more stuff, and
stamping on the ground, demanded to be taken to an officer. Just then
two young officers happened to be passing, and they stopped to ask what
the row was about. The young woman then poured forth her story, and I
was in an ace of being put in the guard-house, when she whispered
something to one of them, and he started as if he had been shot. Then he
whispered it to the other one, and presently all three--the young woman
and the two officers--begun to laugh as if they would crack their sides.
This was not very pleasant for me, standing there like a post, with rage
in my heart; the more so, when one of the officers, laughing still, told
me it was all right, and I could go back to my cheese and ramrod, and
they went off in one direction in the darkness and the young woman in
another. They were hardly out of sight when back comes the young woman
again. As you may think, I never wanted to clap my eyes on her again;
but she slapped me on the shoulder and said, 'Lance, my man, don't you
know me?' and it was--it was--"
George was so eager at this point that he crawled on all fours up to
Lance and gazed breathlessly into his face.
"It was Lord Fairfax dressed up as a woman! And he says, when I had come
to myself a little, for I nearly dropped dead with surprise, 'If I can
fool my own men and my own brother officers, I ought to be able to fool
the Frenchmen into letting me into the town.' And sure enough, Mr.
Washington, that was exactly what he did."
Lance paused to get the full dramatic effect of this. It was not wasted
on his young listener, for George gave a gasp of astonishment that spoke
volumes, and his first words, when speech returned to him, were,
"Go on--go on quick!"
"Well, sir, Lord Fairfax told me that he had a scheme to get in the town
as a woman, and I was to go with him as his servant, because I could
speak the lingo; and on the frontier there they have so many accents
that they couldn't tell if you were a Dutchman or an Englishman or a
Russian or a Prussian; and, besides, my lord said, my French had a
High-Dutch twang that couldn't be excelled. He was a week thinking it
over and practising in his tent. Of course he didn't tell but one or two
persons what he was after; he meant it to be as secret as possible. So
when he would send for me to his tent at night every crack and cranny
would be stopped, and there would be just one or two young officers
putting the Earl through his paces, as it were. He was a slim, handsome
young man then, and when he got a woman's wig on, and a little rouge,
and was dressed in the latest fashion, with a great hoop--for he meant
to represent a lady, not a peasant woman--anybody would have taken him
for a pretty young lady. The hoop and the sack and all the fallals a
lady would wear were of real service to him, as he could wear his
uniform under them, and so, if he should be found out and arrested, he
would be entitled to be treated as a prisoner of war. If he had been
caught in the French lines without his uniform, he would have been
strung up in short order as a spy, according to the articles of war. I
kept my uniform on too, but that was a simple matter, as I was only
disguised by another suit of man's clothing put on over it.
"My lord had something else under his hoop besides his uniform--a good
rapier, with a Toledo blade; and his lace neck-handkerchief was fastened
with a jewelled dagger that was more than a toy. He was to be Madame
Geoffroy in search of her husband, who was supposed to be in the
garrison, and I was to be a great, stupid, faithful Alsacian servant,
and my name was to be Jacques; and my name is Peter, sir. I had no arms,
only a great stick; but there was a knob in that stick, and when I
pulled out that knob I had a sword.
"We used to practise of a night in the tent. My lord had merriment in
him then, and officers always like a lark; and it would have made you
laugh, Mr. Washington, to have seen my lord, all dressed up as a woman,
pretending to cry, and holding his handkerchief to his face while he
rehearsed the story he was making up to the two young officers. It was a
yarn all about the supposed Madame Geoffroy's travels in search of her
husband, and her delight when she heard he was one of the officers of
the Bouchain garrison; and of course she would be told by somebody that
there was no such officer in the garrison, and then she was to give a
screech and fall over, and I was to catch her and beg her to control
herself. Oh, it was as good as play-acting! Often, when I have thought
of that adventure, and have remembered how my lord looked then and how
he looks now--so serious and grave, and as if he never played a prank in
his life--I could hardly persuade myself it was the same man. Well, Mr.
Washington, after we had got it all straight, one dark August night we
ran the sentries--that is, we slipped past them in the dark. They
thought we were deserters, although why anybody should desert from our
camp, where we had both victuals and drink in plenty, to go to Bouchain,
where they had neither, nobody could make out. However, we heard the
shots cracking behind us as we managed to pick our way through the
morass, and truly, sir, I think we were in more danger of our lives
while crossing that morass in the dark between the English and French
lines than at any other time. It was terrible work, but we managed to
get to a solid piece of ground, covered with underbrush, where our
outfit was concealed. Luckily we had to conceal our clothes, for we were
covered with black mud, and we had a time scraping it off our hands and
faces. At last, though, after half an hour's hard work there in the
swamp, we were dressed. We then had to steal about a mile off, through
the undergrowth, to the right of the French lines. This would have been
easy enough for us except for my lord's toggery, but the little rents
and stains we got upon us gave the more color to the story we had to
tell of a long day's travel and many mishaps on the way.
"After a while, sir, we got out on the open highway, and then we took
breath and made for the French sentries. I tied a white handkerchief on
to my long stick, and we marched along until we got to the first
outpost; and when the sentry levelled his piece and asked us 'Who goes
there?' my lord advanced and said, in a woman's voice, 'A distressed
lady.' The night was dark, but the sentry could see it was a lady, and
then my lord said, 'I am Madame Geoffroy, the wife of a French officer,
and I desire you to bring the officer of the guard to me at once.' That
sounded straight enough, so the soldier took a little whistle from his
belt and whistled, and pretty quickly a smart young lieutenant stepped
up.
"The supposed Madame Geoffroy had then sunk upon the ground, pretending
to be almost fainting with fatigue. And after this, Mr. Washington, I
will make bold to call my lord Madame Geoffroy during the whole of this
adventure; for nobody thought he was anything but a woman, and sometimes
I had to rub my eyes and ask if I wasn't really named Jacques, and
Madame Geoffroy and her big hoop and her lost husband weren't real.
"The Frenchmen are monstrous polite, as you know, sir, and when the
lieutenant saw a lady sighing and moaning on the ground he took off his
hat and bowed low, and asked what he could do for her.
"'Let me see the commandant of the garrison for only one moment!' cried
Madame Geoffroy, clasping her hands. 'My husband--my poor, brave
husband! Oh, sir, have some pity on a distracted woman, who has
travelled nearly seven hundred leagues in search of her husband.'
"'Was your husband an officer in Marshal Villars's army, madame,' asked
the lieutenant, bowing again.
"'He was--and is, I hope,' said madame. 'He was one of the King's
Musketeers, but was taken prisoner at Oudenarde, and on being exchanged
he joined Montbrasin's regiment because it was on the frontier; and
since that day, a year ago, I have been unable to find any trace of him.
I have strong hopes he is living, for I have no proof that he is dead;
and knowing that Colonel Montbrasin is the commandant of the garrison of
Bouchain, I have made my way here, with incredible difficulty, even
through the English lines.' Now this was really a very clever speech,
for the King's Musketeers was a crack regiment, being the Grand
Monarque's own body-guard, and no man was admitted into it unless he was
of the best blood of France. So the lieutenant thought Madame Geoffroy
was a great lady.
"'Madame,' said he, 'it is not in my power to promise you an interview
with the commandant, but I will conduct you with pleasure to my superior
officer, who commands the main entrance to the town.'
"At that madame jumped up so sprightly and started to walk so fast that
I was afraid the lieutenant would suspect her. But that is just like the
French, Mr. Washington. One minute they are in the dolly dumps, so that
you would think they could not live, and the next they are capering
about and laughing and singing as if they never had the dolly dumps in
their lives. Off we set for the main gate. We walked along the
intrenchments, and I kept my eyes open, and in spite of the
half-darkness I saw a good many things that they would rather we hadn't
seen. Their works were in a bad way, and our siege-guns had done their
duty.
"Arrived at the gate-house, the young lieutenant asked for the officer
in command--Captain Saussier. So Captain Saussier came out, and madame
went through all her story again. The captain ogled her, and it was all
I could do to keep my countenance when I saw that the captain and the
lieutenant were trying to cut one another out. They made no bones at all
of taking her to see the commandant, particularly as she said she did
not wish to stay, except until daylight the next morning; for in a
besieged town they don't want any non-combatants to eat up the
provender. But although they were willing enough for her to go in, they
refused to let me. She made no objection to this, which surprised me;
but in a moment she fell into one of those fits we had rehearsed for the
commandant's benefit, when he should tell her, as we knew he would, that
he had never seen or heard of her husband. I came forward then with
smelling-salts, and presently she revived. That scared the officers a
little, for the bravest officer in the world would rather be out of the
way when a woman begins to cry and kick and scream. As soon as they led
her towards the gate she had another fit, and as good a fit as I ever
saw in my life, sir. Then I came running, of course, with the
smelling-salts. The captain evidently did not want her on his hands
entirely as long as she was in that condition, so he said
perhaps--ahem!--it might be better to take her servant along.
"'Oh, my good faithful Jacques!' cried she. 'It would be a great comfort
if I could have him with me in this trying time!' So they passed me in
the gates along with her.
"She never stopped chattering for a moment while she was walking through
the streets with the captain, telling a long rigmarole about her
travels; but she used her eyes as well as I used mine. The town was
horribly knocked to pieces--houses falling down, the streets encumbered
with rubbish, and several breaches made in the walls. They had managed
to repair the breaches after a fashion, for the French understand
fortifications better than we do; but there was no doubt, from what we
saw in that walk at nine o'clock at night, that the town and
fortifications had suffered terribly. And there were no women or
children to be seen, which showed that they had sent them all away; for
some will remain in a besieged town as long as there is anything to feed
them on.
"When we reached the citadel we noticed there were not near enough
cannon to defend it; so we knew that they had been forced to take the
guns to place on the ramparts. At last, after going through many long
passages and winding stairs, we were ushered into the commandant's
presence. He was a tall, soldierly-looking man, and he received madame
very politely. The captain told the story of her tremendous efforts to
get there and her trouble, madame all the time sighing and weeping. But
here came in a frightful thing, sir. There had been a Captain Geoffroy,
an officer in Marshal Villars's army, and I felt myself turning pale
when the commandant offered to let madame remain in the town twenty-four
hours, until he could find out something about this Geoffroy. But
madame's wit saved her.
"'Pray,' said she, clasping her hands, 'what was this M. Geoffroy like?"
"'Tall,' said the commandant, 'with a swarthy skin and black hair.'
"'Ah,' cried she, muffling her face in her handkerchief, 'it could not
have been my husband. He was short, and had light hair, and had lost a
part of his right ear in a duel; it disfigured him very much.'
"'Then, madame,' answered the commandant, 'I can give you no further
information, for that is the only Geoffroy in the army of whom I know
anything, and from your description he cannot be your husband. I will
make inquiries among my officers, but I can give you but little hope.'
"Madame sighed and groaned some more, and then said she would be ready
to depart in the morning at daylight, to begin her search over again.
The commandant offered her a room in the citadel, warning her that it
would be necessary for her to get out before daybreak, as the English
began their cannonading as soon as it was light enough to see the French
lines. Madame agreed tearfully to this, and the commandant offered her
some supper, smiling when he told her it was not exactly the kind of
fare he was used to offering ladies. But she declined--we had not the
heart to eat up anything from those poor devils. So she was shown to a
room, and I lay down at the door and pretended to sleep; but you may
depend upon it, sir, that neither one of us slept a wink. Towards
daylight the captain of the guard came to waken us, and told us it was
time to leave. The commandant was up to bid madame _adieu_, as they call
it in the French lingo; and after thanking him for his politeness,
madame was escorted to the gate, I following her, and thence as far as
the picket-line. And here, after the officer had left us, for the first
time we aroused suspicion. We were walking pretty fast, and something in
the supposed lady's gait made the sentry suspect us. There was another
soldier, not a sentry, with him, and this fellow called after us to
stop. We were near the entrance to the bog then, and we knew the way
across it, particularly as there was now daylight enough to see, so the
only notice we took of him was to walk a little faster. The soldier
followed us clear into the underbrush, when my lord--for so I will call
him now--deliberately dropped his hoop and petticoat, revealing a pair
of legs that evidently belonged to the British army, and a rapier, while
from the waist up he wore a woman's sack, and had a hood on his head.
The apparition dazed the soldier for a moment, when my lord made at him
with the rapier, and he turned and ran--giving the alarm, however. We
took to our heels and gained the causeway, when the French fired a
regular fusillade after us, although not a shot struck; and our own
people, seeing us running towards them, thought we were escaped
prisoners, and we got within our own lines without trouble. My lord had
some valuable information to give the Duke, and the adventure got out in
the army and made a hero of him. The French kept monstrous quiet about
it; you see, sir, we had taken the commandant himself in. My lord repaid
his politeness, though, by sending him a box of wine, which we knew he
needed for his sick; but the commandant was the most chagrined man in
the French army. They made a sortie soon after that, but it did them no
good, and within a week they surrendered. The Duke granted them all the
honors of war, and the garrison marched out with drums beating and
colors flying. They had made a gallant defence, and had not surrendered
until they were starving. That was the end of my serving with the great
Duke of Marlborough, for that was his last campaign. And soon after my
lord left the army. And I'll be leaving his service by the toe of his
boot if I don't go to him now, so good-night, sir, and excuse me if I
have kept you out of bed too long."
With this Lance disappeared.