No Surrender! A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee, G. A. Henty [top 10 ebook reader txt] 📗

Half an hour passed, then the head of the column was seen descending the road. It opened out as it came, forming into a thick line of skirmishers, some two hundred yards wide. Moving along, Leigh spread the musketeers to a similar length of front. At first, the enemy were half hidden by the wood at the other side of the slope; but as they issued from this, some twenty yards from the stream, a scattered fire broke out from the defenders.

The Blues replied with a general discharge at their invisible foes, but these were crouching behind the stumps or trunks of the felled trees, and the fire was ineffectual. Leigh's own band were lying in a little hollow, twenty yards behind the abattis; their pistols would have been useless, until the enemy won their way up to the trees, and until then they were to remain as a first reserve.

Exposed as they were to the steady fire of the peasants, the assailants suffered heavily and, at the edge of the stream, paused irresolutely. It was some fifteen yards wide, but they were ignorant of the depth, and hesitated to enter it; urged, however, by the shouts of their officers, who set the example by at once entering the stream, and by seeing that the water did not rise above their shoulders, the men followed. But as they gained the opposite bank, they fell fast. At so short a distance, every shot of the peasants told; and it was some time before a sufficient number had crossed to make an assault against the wall of foliage in their front.

Fresh troops were constantly arriving from behind and, encouraged by this, they at last rushed forward. As they did so, Leigh called up his own band; and these, crawling forward through the tangle as far as they could, opened fire on the enemy, as they strove to push their way through the obstacle.

For a quarter of an hour the fight went on. Then the assailants, having with great loss succeeded in passing over or pulling aside the brushwood, began to pour through. The moment they did so, Leigh's horn sounded; and at once the defenders rushed up the hill, pursued by the Blues, with exulting shouts. But few shots were fired, for the assailants had emptied their muskets before striving to pass through the obstacle.

Leigh and his men had run but a hundred yards into the wood when they met the main body of the peasants, rushing down at full speed. Turning at once, his party joined them, and fell upon the advancing enemy. Taken wholly by surprise, when they believed that victory was won, the two or three hundred men who had passed the abattis were swept before the crowd of peasants like chaff. The latter, pressing close upon their heels, followed them through the gaps that had been made.

The panic of the fugitives spread at once to those who had crossed the river, and were clustered round the openings, jostling in their eagerness to get through and join, as they believed, in the slaughter of those who had caused them such heavy loss; and all fled together. The peasants were at their heels, making deadly use of their pitchforks, axes, and knives, and drove the survivors headlong into the river. The horn again sounded and, in accordance with the strict orders that they had received, they ran back again to their shelter; a few dropping from the scattered fire that the troops on the other side of the stream opened against them, as soon as the fugitives had cleared away from their front.

Scarcely had the peasants gained the shelter when six pieces of cannon, that had been placed on the opposite slope while the fight was going on, opened against them.

Leigh at once ordered the main body back to their former position, scattering his hundred men with guns along the whole line of abattis, whence they again opened fire on the troops on the opposite side of the river. These replied with volleys of musketry; but the defenders, stationed as they were five or six yards apart, and sheltering behind the trees, suffered but little either from the artillery or musketry fire; while men dropped fast in the ranks of the Blues.

The cannon were principally directed against the trees blocking the road. Gradually these were torn to pieces and, after an hour's firing, were so far destroyed that a passage through them was comparatively easy. Then the enemy again began to cross the stream.

As soon as they commenced to do so, Leigh called up the men with muskets from each flank, and sent word to the main body to descend the hill again, as the cannonade would cease as soon as the attack began. Three times the assault was made and repulsed, the peasants fighting with a fury that the Blues, already disheartened with their heavy losses, could not withstand. As they fell back for the third time, Leigh thought that enough had been done, and ordered the peasants at once to make through the woods, and to proceed by-lanes and byways to join Cathelineau; who, he doubted not, would by this time have gathered a considerable force at Chemille.

By the time that the Blues were ready to advance again, this time in overwhelming force, the peasants were well away. The wounded, as fast as they fell, had been carried off to distant villages; and when the enemy advanced they found, to their surprise, that their foes had disappeared, and that only some thirty dead bodies remained on the scene of battle.

Their own loss had exceeded three hundred, a large proportion of whom were regular soldiers; and the National Guards, and the new levies, were profoundly depressed at the result of the action.

"If," they said to themselves, "what must have been but a comparatively small number of peasants have caused this loss, what will it be when we meet Cathelineau's main body?"

There was no thought of pursuit. A regiment was thrown out in skirmishing order, and advanced through the wood, the rest following in column along the road. General Berruyer had joined General Menou the evening before, with the force from Saumur and, as they moved forward, the two generals rode together.

"This is a much more serious business than I had expected," Berruyer said. "I certainly imagined that, with such forces as we have gathered round La Vendee, the campaign would be little more than a military promenade. I see, however, that I was entirely mistaken. These men have, today, shown themselves capable of taking advantage of the wild character of their country; and as to their courage, there can be no question, whatever. If this is a fair sample of the resistance that we have to expect, throughout the whole country, we shall need at least fifty thousand men to subdue them."

"Fully that," Menou said, shortly. "There is no doubt that we blame the National Guards, who were so easily routed by the peasants on the tenth of March, more severely than they deserve. I rode forward to encourage the men, at their last attack. I never saw soldiers fight with such fury as did these peasants. They threw themselves on the troops like tigers, in many cases wresting their arms from them and braining them with their own muskets. Even our best soldiers seemed cowed, by the fierceness with which they were attacked; and as for the men of the new levies, they were worse than useless, and their efforts to force their way to the rear blocked the way of the reinforcements; who were trying, though I must own not very vigorously, to get to the front.

"The peasants were well led, too, and acting on an excellent plan of defence. They must have been sheltered altogether from our fire, for among the dead I did not see one who had been killed by a cannonball. The country must possess hundreds of points, equally well adapted for defence; and if these are as well and obstinately held as this has been, it will take even more than fifty thousand men to suppress the insurrection."

"The Convention is going to work the wrong way," Berruyer said. "The commissioners have orders to hang every peasant found in arms, and every suspect; that is to say, virtually every one in La Vendee. It would have been infinitely better for them to have issued a general amnesty; to acknowledge that they themselves have made a mistake; that the cures of Poitou and Brittany should be excepted from the general law, and allowed to continue their work in their respective parishes without interruption; and that for a year, at least, this part of France should be exempt from conscription. Why, if this campaign goes on, a far larger force will be employed here than the number of troops which the district was called upon to contribute, to say nothing of the enormous expense and loss of men.

"It is a hideous business altogether, to my mind. I would give all I possess to be recalled, and sent to fight on the frontier."

Two hours after the fight, Leigh with his band, of whom none had been killed, although several had received wounds more or less serious, arrived at Chemille. They had been preceded by many of the peasants, who had already carried the news of the fight, and that the column from Thouars had been delayed for three hours, and had suffered very heavy losses.

"It was all owing, Monsieur Cathelineau," the head of one of the peasant bands said, "to the officer you sent to command us. He was splendid. It was to him that everything was due. He was cutting down the bridge when we came up, and it was by his orders that we felled the trees, and blocked the road, and made a sort of hedge that took them so long to get through. We should have been greatly damaged by the fire of their guns and muskets; but he kept us all lying down, out of reach, till we were wanted, while the men with the guns defended the line of fallen trees. When we were wanted, he called us up by blowing a cow horn, and then we drove the Blues back into the stream, and returned to our shelter until we were wanted again.

"We did not lose more than thirty men, altogether; while more than ten times that number of the Blues have fallen. We thought at first that you had chosen rather a strange leader for us; but as always you were right, for if you had been there, yourself, things could not have gone better."

"But I sent no one as your commander," Cathelineau said in surprise.

"He had a paper that he read out, saying that he was acting on your orders. As I cannot read, I cannot say that it was written down as he read it; but if you did not send him, God must have done so."

"It is strange, Bonchamp," Cathelineau said to that officer, "for I certainly did not send anyone. I never thought of defending the passage of that stream. However, whoever it is who has commanded has done us great service, for that three hours which have been gained will make all the difference. They cannot arrive, now, until after dark, and will not attack before morning; and by that time, our force will have doubled."

"Here comes our officer, monsieur!" the peasant exclaimed; as Leigh, with his party, came down the street, loudly cheered by the peasants who had fought under him.

"Why, it is Jean Martin's young brother-in-law!" Monsieur Bonchamp exclaimed and, raising his voice, he called to Jean, who was talking to a group of other officers near.

Jean ran up.

"Monsieur Martin, it is your young Englishman who has held Berruyer in check, for three hours; see how the peasants are cheering him!"

Cathelineau advanced to meet Leigh, who halted his band and saluted the general. The latter stepped forward, and returned the salute by lifting his hat.

"Monsieur Stansfield," he said, "I salute you, as the saviour of our position here. Had Berruyer arrived this afternoon, we must have retired; for we are not yet in sufficient force to withstand his attack. Tomorrow we shall, I hope, be strong enough to beat him. I have been wondering who this officer could be who, with but three or four hundred men, held the principal force of our foes, led by their commander-in-chief, in check for three hours; and, as I hear, killed three hundred of his best troops, with a loss of but thirty of ours. I ought to have thought of you, when they said that you read them an order, saying that you were acting in my name."

"It was great presumption on my part, general," Leigh said, "and I know that I had no right to use it for such a purpose; but I felt how important it was that you should have time to prepare for defence,