Chapter XL: 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.”