Book III Chapter 1 The Marquis of Carabas by Rafael Sabatini
D'HERVILLY'S COMMAND
For a full month Quentin abode at la Noué, whilst Cadoudal, restored to vigour, assumed in Brittany and Normandy the task abandoned by Cormatin, and in the discharge of it grew daily in authority among the Royalists.
It was a month of much activity on both sides. There were surprise attacks upon townships held by the Blues and raids upon their convoys, and there were counter-raids and massacres by Republicans more or less at bay in that hostile country-side. It was in the course of one of these that Boishardi met his death, on the very eve of his intended marriage.
Meanwhile in England the tireless, indomitable Puisaye, generously supported by Pitt and Wyndham, prepared the expedition that was to set the West in movement that was to sweep like a tidal wave across France and overwhelm the gutterlings that dominated her.
At his summons French émigrés from the depths of Germany and bands of old soldiers who had emigrated with their officers in '92 or who had deserted Dumouriez in '93 hastened to reinforce the French regiments recruited in England: the Royal Louis, of four hundred gunners, who had escaped from Toulon; the Royal Marine, of five hundred émigrés under the Comte de Hector, composed almost entirely of former naval officers; the Loyal Émigrant, raised by the Duc de la Châtre, seven hundred strong; the regiment of the Marquis du Dresnoy, of the same strength; the regiment of the Comte d'Hervilly, of twelve hundred Breton conscripts, who had come to England as prisoners of war, and a hundred volunteers. In all they made up four brigades. To these were to be added five regiments assembling in Holland under Sombreuil, and some eight thousand British troops that Pitt had undertaken to add to the lavish war material he was providing.
Monsieur d'Artois displayed in his letters a quivering eagerness to lead them, and his presence alone should be worth an army corps. The Prince, a visible, tangible incarnation of the ideal for which they fought, should rally every able-bodied man of the West to the banner of Throne and Altar.
At Portsmouth a fleet under Sir John Warren was rapidly fitting out, and the supply ships were loading the material, which comprised twenty-four thousand muskets, clothing and footgear for sixty thousand men and a vast store of food and ammunition.
Puisaye might flatter himself that all this was the miracle wrought by his energy, vision, intelligence and persuasive powers. His satisfaction, however, was darkened by the jealousies and intrigues that seldom fail to poison any Gallic enterprise. At every step these came to create obstacles for him and to add to the difficulties inseparable from so Herculean a labour as his.
The vain and pompous d'Hervilly perceived here his chance to magnify himself. Endowed with few talents save the talent of intrigue, and endowed with this one to excess, he so shrewdly exercised it as to obtain, despite the fact that he held only a colonel's rank, the chief command of the actual émigré contingent.
In view of the support he had won, the four generals commanding the four brigades made no protest beyond relinquishing their commands, since it was impossible that they should serve under a man of inferior rank. Of those nobles who had raised the other regiments, La Châtre, Dresnoy and Hector adopted the same course for the same reason. Nor did it end there. Every colonel in the service retired rather than submit to one whose rank was not superior to his own, with the result that the regiments were left under the command of lieutenant-colonels, who were not of the same authority over either officers or men.
If Puisaye did not interfere it was because he realized that interference must lead to a trial of strength between himself and d'Hervilly; and whilst he could not doubt that he must prevail, yet he perceived that a worse state of things might result, such was the influence d'Hervilly had won by his intriguing over the nobles who filled the lesser ranks. He imposed himself by assertiveness and obstinacy, which were mistaken for strength of mind, and by a veiled jactancy that conveyed an impression of high military gifts acquired in the war of American Independence, in which he had served as an aide-de-camp to the Comte d'Estaing.
Had not Puisaye underrated the man's assertiveness, he would now have perceived a greater matter for alarm in the continued absence of Monsieur d'Artois.
"It is in the field of honour," the Prince had written to Puisaye, "that I hope soon to be able to give you in person the proofs of my esteem and confidence."
Puisaye cared less about these proofs than about the actual presence of the Prince, so passionately awaited by the devout and simple Chouans. Yet ready as they were to set out for that field of honour of His Highness's letters, Monsieur d'Artois continued abroad. He would not, however, go the length of delaying the expedition. So it weighed anchor, a fleet of close upon a hundred sail, and steered for Brittany.
A French fleet, which disputed its passage, was put to flight alter the capture of three of its ships, and driven into the harbour of Lorient, where it was blockaded.
On the evening of the 25th June the British ships sailed into the Bay of Quiberon, and then the real trouble began. With immediate assumptions of paramount authority, d'Hervilly refused to disembark until the 27th, by when his constant use of the telescope had assured him that no enemy was in sight to dispute the landing.
Wondering how long he would be able to maintain a contemptuous patience with this creature of routine, this martinet of the parade-ground, Puisaye allowed him to have his way, but only because the delay was giving the Bretons time to come to meet them.
When at last the expedition landed on the shore of the great bay, at the foot of the mournful dunes and tumuli of Carnac, the sands were black with the Chouans who had hastened thither as soon as the news had reached them that the sails were in sight. Fifteen thousand of them waited to greet the émigré regiments. They had not travelled furtively, as was their habit, gliding invisibly through herbage, stealing through woodland and by ravines, taking advantage of the concealment offered by every fold of the ground; they had marched boldly and openly by the highways in their thousands, conceiving that the time of skulking was at an end.
They came dashing waist-deep into the water, to drag the boats ashore: they harnessed themselves to the guns when these were landed, so as to haul them up the beach. On the sands of Quiberon they leapt and danced in joy about the arriving émigrés, with mighty shouts of, "Vive le Roi," "Vive la Religion!" and "Vive le Comte Joseph!" which was the extent of the French that many of them knew. They were like great shaggy dogs capering in welcome, and as dogs from the outset were they scornfully regarded by the émigrés to whom they came to supply the necessary strength. Their very friendliness and the familiarities that sprang from it served only to arouse in the gentlemen from England all the old arrogance of caste.
Their transports were momentarily quelled by reverence when the Bishop of Dol, in his mitre and carrying the pastoral crook, set foot ashore followed by forty attendant priests. In sudden awe the wild peasant horde knelt on the sands with bowed heads to receive the episcopal blessing.
After the landing of the men came the landing of the stores. First the fine muskets and the ammunition, which were at once distributed and went to swell the enthusiasm of the Chouans. So as to express it they lost no time in biting cartridges, and the sounds of firing were added to the hilarious din.
With a frown at the root of his great nose d'Hervilly surveyed that peasant multitude. Men who appeared to be without notion of military formations, who had no uniforms beyond the white cockade and the chaplet through the buttonhole, could not be soldiers in his eyes.
"Are these your troops, Monsieur de Puisaye?"
Puisaye quietly smiled. "A small sample of them, a mere vanguard."
"I shall not know what to do with them."
"I shall have the satisfaction of showing you."
He took ten thousand of them to form three army corps, the commands of which he gave to Tinténiac, Vauban and Boisberthelot, gentlemen who had led and were trusted by them, and sent them forward at once to seize and hold Auray in the east and Landévan in the west, thus placing the Royalist Army within a quadrilateral as a beginning.
Because relieved to be rid of two-thirds of that savage horde, d'Hervilly raised no objections. But on the morrow the brewing storm broke at last between them.
Some further contingents arrived, brought in by Cadoudal, with whom came St. Regent and Quentin, all of them very cordially received by Puisaye in the kitchen of the farm-house at Carnac where he had taken up his quarters.
For Quentin he had a welcome of particular warmth. Retaining his grip of the young man's hand, he placed his left on his shoulder, and the keen eyes were softened by affection.
"By your action at La Prevalaye you saved my credit. It is beyond thanks, beyond anything I had the right to expect from you."
"God's thunder!" swore Cadoudal, "I envied him a performance that should have been mine. But I lacked the wit. All I could think of was to march out, slamming the door after me."
"And it was done," Puisaye continued, patting the shoulder under his hand, "at great danger and discomfort, as I gather. That was brave." His deep-set eyes glowed. "I shall hope before long to hear the King thank you in person."
Quentin laughed a little, to dissemble his embarrassment. "I was the bearer of your orders to the Baron de Cormatin. I could hardly stand silent when I saw him frustrating them."
There he was relieved by the abrupt arrival of d'Hervilly, with four of his officers in attendance. The Colonel clanked into the kitchen with his swaggering gait, an incarnation of importance.
"Ah, Monsieur le Comte, I have to complain of these undisciplined savages of yours. They seem to be without any sense of respect for their betters, or, indeed, sense of any kind. I warn you that unless you can control them we shall have trouble. My gentlemen are not disposed to suffer the insolences of these animals."
Cadoudal took a step forward, his face flushed, his great bulk seeming to swell. He flung out a huge hand. "God's thunder! Who may this be?" he demanded in a roar.
Puisaye, a figure of elegant authority in his gold-laced coat of madder red, the grey in his queued reddish hair giving it the appearance of being lightly powdered, standing a half-head taller than the long-bodied d'Hervilly, dominated the little gathering by his suave urbanity. He made the presentation.
"The Colonel Comte d'Hervilly, who commands the émigré contingent," was his short announcement on the one hand. On the other he was deliberately more elaborate. "This is the Marquis de Chavaray, in whom you discover an old acquaintance. He leaves us all in his debt by his exposure of the treachery of Cormatin. And these are Georges Cadoudal and Pierre St. Regent, two of the great heroes of Brittany, who have carried the white cockade victoriously into a hundred encounters."
D'Hervilly stared in surprise at his sometime fencing-master, and paused to exchange civilities with him. Then his glance swept on, and in his cold, hard eyes there was only contempt for the portly, frowning Cadoudal, in his grey coat and baggy breeches, and the grinning St. Regent, with his mobile, wide-mouthed, comedian face and his ridiculous hussar jacket. His nod was scarcely perceptible.
"Messieurs!" was all that he could find to say to them, and with that he swung again to Puisaye. "I am to request you to take order so that I may not again have to complain of your Chouans."
Still Puisaye ignored an arrogance that amused St. Regent and enraged Cadoudal. He answered quietly: "As we shall be going forward almost at once, these trifles need no longer preoccupy you. I was coming to inform you, Colonel, that we march to-morrow at dawn."
D'Hervilly's glance was haughty. "What you suggest is quite impossible."
"It must be made possible. And I do not suggest it. I command it. You will be good enough to see that all are ready."
The haughtiness became more marked. "To march whither, if you please?"
"Forward. To Ploermel. That is our first objective." He turned aside to the long kitchen table on which a large-scale map was spread. "I will show you . . ."
"A moment, Monsieur le Comte. A moment! You cannot be proposing that we leave the coast before the arrival of the further forces under Sombreuil, which the transports have returned to Plymouth to embark."
For a moment Puisaye's urbanity was ruffled. But he was content to vent his impatience in a sigh. He looked over his shoulder at the Colonel. "You must allow me to be the judge of that."
"I cannot."
Puisaye wheeled round. "You cannot? Name of a name! I begin not to understand you. God give me patience! I should not need to tell you that speed is here of paramount importance. A swift, bold advance, to take the Army of the West by surprise before it can concentrate, and to stimulate the general rising that is to yield us the army with which to march on Paris."
Coldly, his lip curling, d'Hervilly shook his head. "You do not persuade me, Monsieur."
"Good God!" said Cadoudal.
Puisaye was smiling again. "The events will do that by the time we reach Ploermel. By then our fifteen thousand Chouans will have become not less than fifty thousand, and will, more likely, be a hundred thousand. These numbers will be more than doubled by the men from Normandy and Anjou before we reach Laval, where we shall be joined by the Maine contingent."
D'Hervilly shrugged ill-humouredly. "Your Chouans, from what I have seen of them, inspire me with little confidence; with none unless they are leavened by seasoned troops, such as we await."
Puisaye's patience began to ooze away. "My Colonel, I do not admit your competence to judge the fighting qualities of the Chouans, of whom you have no experience."
"I have experience to know soldiers when I see them. But we will not argue. I should regard it as a folly to go forward until the second expedition arrives. And I know what I am saying. Military prudence, of which I also know something, dictates that we remain here in touch with the sea so as to ensure their landing."
"Shall we ensure it any the less if all Brittany is in our possession? And I promise you that it will be by the time Sombreuil arrives."
"Unless," Quentin ventured to put in, "you delay in seizing it." Disregarding d'Hervilly's glance, which was such as he might turn upon an impertinent lackey, Quentin prodded Cadoudal. "Why don't you tell them what you know?"
"About Hoche? Faith, listening to Monsieur upon the art of war takes my breath away. He knows it all. Still, here's the situation: Hoche is at Vannes with not more than five hundred men, the remainder of his Army of the West being scattered about Brittany. Your landing and the rising have taken the patauds by surprise, and I don't suppose Hoche has enjoyed much sleep since he heard of it. He'll be haunted by the nightmare of his scattered detachments, expecting them to be cut to pieces before he can concentrate them again. But he is losing no time, and his recalled troops are already hastening to Vannes. By to-night he should have a couple of thousand men, by the end of the week if we do nothing to prevent it he will have thirteen or fourteen thousand, and his couriers are on the way to Paris at the gallop, with demands for reinforcements to meet the emergency. It will put such a panic into Messieurs the Sansculottes that within ten days Hoche will have received every musket and every sabre they can muster."
D'Hervilly considered him for a moment in silence, his glance veiled and sullen. "What," he demanded at last, "is the source of your information?"
Quentin looked at Puisaye in frank amazement. "He asks for sources!"
"Oh, a meticulous gentleman," sneered Puisaye.
"Our Lady of Auray!" Cadoudal was gasping. "Is it possible, sir, that what I have told you does not leap to the eye? How else does this military experience of yours tell you that Hoche would be acting?"
"And that," said Puisaye, "is just why it is of such importance to move swiftly; at a bound make ourselves masters of Britanny and rally its loyal sons to us before a Republican concentration can either hinder or discourage it."
D'Hervilly's face was set. He would waste no breath on their pertness. "I say again, Monsieur, that I am not persuaded."
Puisaye shrugged. "To the devil with persuasion, then. You have my orders. Let that suffice."
"I am not to take your orders."
"Monsieur!" Puisaye was suddenly stern and formidable. "I do not think I understand."
"You understand, I suppose, that your authority is confined to your Chouans. The command of this expedition has been entrusted to me."
"By whom?"
"By the British Cabinet."
Puisaye had need of a moment in which to master himself before replying. "If that were so, which I take leave to assert it is not, it cannot override my commission from the King. It should not be necessary to say this, and I resent that you compel me to say it. It is within your knowledge that His Majesty, whilst still Regent, appointed me General-in-Chief of the Royal and Catholic Army."
"Why do you stop there?" snapped d'Hervilly. "Complete the title so as to remove misunderstanding: General-in-Chief of the Royal and Catholic Army of Brittany. Of Brittany. The army I have landed does not come within that narrow designation. Your command, as I have said, is confined to your Bretons, to your Chouans. You . . ."
"Listen, sir. I hold in addition the office of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, and I shall continue to hold it until Monsieur d'Artois arrives to assume it, himself."
"I have no knowledge of that. All that I know, all that concerns me, is that, as my commission proves, I have been placed in command of this expedition by the British Government which organized it, and I will permit no other to dictate courses of action in an enterprise of which the responsibility is mine. Do I make myself clear?"
"Clear! A thousand devils! Can rubbish be clear? The organization was mine; the inspiration was mine; the preparation of the soil was mine; the persuasion of the British Government to support us was mine. Are you drunk? Is it likely that the command of the expedition could be entrusted to another?"
"If that other were of military experience and ability to warrant it."
"Good God!" muttered Cadoudal again.
"And you possess them? God save us! Acquired, I suppose, in America, as an aide-de-camp. That warrants your authority over a man who has commanded an army in the field, who has created the army that is now to be led! You want to laugh, Monsieur le Comte. Your commission may be vaguely worded. It must be or you would not dare to take this tone. But you must be entirely crazy if you suppose that your command extends beyond the émigré contingent from England."
Purple with anger, the veins in d'Hervilly's forehead stood in bold relief. "I find you singularly offensive, sir. And singularly foolish. The émigré contingent, as you call it, is the army. Your untrained, undrilled, undisciplined Chouans are merely auxiliaries."
Cadoudal exploded into angry laughter. "An army of four thousand men! You'll storm Paris with it? Name of a name!"
D'Hervilly ignored him. "I waste no more words, sir. The army does not move from Quiberon until Sombreuil arrives with his reinforcements."
"You'll be in Hell by then if you remain," said Cadoudal. "Hoche will see to that."
At last d'Hervilly condescended to notice him. "I am not to be spoken to in that manner," he rasped. "Monsieur de Puisaye, I have to require that you instruct your followers." He swung on his heel, beckoning the members of his staff. "Come, Messieurs." And he clanked out with tremendous dignity.
The four who remained looked at one another. Puisaye laughed, wry-mouthed. "And now?"
Cadoudal bounded forward. "Do you ask? Arrest that Polichinelle. Let a court martial deal with him."
Puisaye stared at him as if he did not understand. All the swagger and flamboyance seemed to have perished in him. He was a man suddenly bowed under a load of weariness. He dropped heavily, into a chair. "The consequences," he said. "I should split the camp into two parties. The émigrés--and the weight of authority is with them--will range themselves, almost to a man, on the side of that intriguer. They don't love me. They mistrust me as one who is not a pure. In the States General I voted with the Constitutionalists; I once commanded a Republican army. D'Hervilly will have worked upon all that." He rested his head on his hand, his countenance dark with trouble. "If we fall to quarrelling among ourselves, there's an end to the expedition, a ruin to all that I've worked for."
"There's an end to it, anyway, if this Colonel is left in command," said St. Regent, and Cadoudal swore agreement with him.
Puisaye sighed wearily. "Almost it was to have been foreseen. From the beginning this man has been a source of trouble, a problem with which I should long since have grappled had I not believed that Monsieur d'Artois would embark with us and solve it for me by taking the supreme command."
"You must grapple with it now," swore Cadoudal.
"We're in a deadlock."
"Never! If you can't have him shot without provoking mutiny, if he insists that the émigrés are not to march with us, we'll march without them. To delay would be fatal."
"Don't I perceive it? But we promised the Bretons a Prince of the Blood. They look for him as for a messiah. He has not come. But at least we have these martial émigrés, these nobles, these officers of the King's army and navy, to lend a glamour to our advance and rally the peasants in their thousands. If we march without them, who will believe in this army of saviours from overseas? Our peasants will not quit their fields. Do you suppose that I should have laboured and schemed these months in England if I had not perceived all this?" He rose, and stamped tempestuously across the stone floor, in momentary surrender to his feelings. "Ah, God of God! To have the fruits of all my labours, of all my striving, jeopardized by the vanity of this crass popinjay!" He broke off, and looking at Quentin, before whom he had halted, he laughed as if in self-mockery. "I have never yet failed to dominate fortune by insistence and tenacity of purpose. But now it seems that fortune takes her revenge."
Cadoudal had nothing more to contribute to the discussion. He sat down to curse d'Hervilly with fluent ferocity. St. Regent swore that for his part he had never set great store by these pimps and dancing-masters of the Court. Quentin, in silence, watched Puisaye, pervaded by a deep sympathy for him and a dull anger against those incompetents who were frustrating him in the very moment of his triumph.
He was pacing to and fro, in thought, his hands behind him, his fine head bowed, his chin on his neckcloth.
"A deadlock it is," he said at last. "Argument is futile. Force, still worse. The English must resolve it."
"The English?"
"This expedition is theirs, and the British Cabinet must remove d'Hervilly's misconception on the score of the command. Mr. Pitt shall amend the Colonel's commission, so that it leaves him no room for presumptuous doubts."
"But the time this will take!" Cadoudal protested in dismay. "When instant, swift action is demanded."
"I know. I know. But there is nothing else to be done. We must hope for the best; hope that delay in taking the field will not too ruinously prejudice us. I will write to Mr. Pitt at once. Sir John Warren shall dispatch a cutter with my letter. In ten days--a fortnight at most--we shall have the answer."
"A fortnight!" Cadoudal showed a face of horror. "And what will Hoche be doing in that fortnight?"
"All that Monsieur d'Hervilly is making possible. You should see that I cannot help it."