Book III Chapter 2 The Marquis of Carabas by Rafael Sabatini
THE RAT-TRAP
Monsieur de Puisaye waited upon d'Hervilly, to inform him of the letter he had written.
"I tell you this so that you, too, may write if you so wish, Colonel." He seemed to stress the title.
"I shall certainly take the opportunity to let Mr. Pitt know that I have occasion to complain of you, and on what grounds." D'Hervilly was white with passion and perhaps with fear of a humbling loss of the authority he usurped.
Puisaye bowed coldly, and withdrew; and they did not meet again until two days later, when Puisaye sought him with a message from Auray. Vauban sent word that Hoche had assembled thirteen thousand men at Vannes, and was about to march on Auray, which could not be held unless Vauban were supported.
The Loyal Émigrant Regiment, in red coats, white breeches and three-cornered hats, was parading on the sands for inspection by d'Hervilly when Puisaye came up with him and penetrated the group of white-plumed officers.
"You perceive the first fruits of our inactivity. Thirteen thousand men, who in their scattered detachments might easily have been suppressed, are now concentrated into an army."
D'Hervilly's curt answer ignored the criticism. "You must recall your Chouans."
"Unless we can support them."
"I have said that they must be recalled. You force me to repeat myself."
"In that case we must also recall Tinténiac from Landévan. For Vauban's withdrawal will leave his flank exposed."
"Of course." D'Hervilly was contemptuous. "You merely state the obvious."
"Let me continue to do so," said Puisaye dryly. He pointed across the dunes to Fort Penthièvre, the massive stronghold that bestrode the narrowest part of the Isthmus of Quiberon, on their right. The Republicans had renamed it Fort Sansculotte. "Once we have withdrawn our outposts from Auray and Landévan, we shall not only have Hoche before us here, but when that happens our flank will be threatened by that fortress. The position becomes untenable."
There was a stir and mutter in the group of officers as the peril was realized. The blood darkened d'Hervilly's countenance. Too hastily he answered: "At need we can re-embark."
Puisaye laughed, to annoy him further. "That will be encouraging to our Breton friends. And after that? You will return to England, I suppose."
"Monsieur de Puisaye, I begin to find you insufferable." The man swelled with rage. "Let us hear, pray, how you would deal with the situation."
"There is only one way to deal with it. The fort must be taken."
"Really! Really! It would be difficult to better the incompetence of that suggestion." He was smiling now, conceiving that he was about to expose Puisaye's military incompetence. "And how, pray, does one take a fort without siege artillery? Or perhaps you are not aware that I have none."
"I am not."
"How?"
Puisaye turned, again to point, this time to the tall British ships riding at anchor in the bay. "There it is. Sir John Warren's guns will provide all the bombardment the sansculottes will need.
"Ah!" Meditatively d'Hervilly stroked his chin, so as to cover his confusion. "It is a thought," he admitted, after a moment.
"Not one to exhaust the intellect."
"So I perceive. Yet artillery alone will hardly accomplish it. Storm troops will be needed, and I should be reluctant to expose my regiments to the fire of men behind stone walls."
"Cadoudal's Chouans will undertake that part."
"In that case," d'Hervilly condescended cavalierly, "I am prepared to adopt the plan."
There was no time to lose. Puisaye directed the attempt for the following morning.
Sir John's ships pounded Penthièvre with a hot continuous fire, under cover of which Cadoudal led three thousand of his Morbihannais to the assault.
From the heights, amid the grim megaliths of Carnac, d'Hervilly with his staff observed the action, and what he beheld disgusted him. The Chouans prone on the ground, wriggling forward on their bellies, in open formation, outraged his every sense of military propriety.
"What tactics are these?" He addressed his question to the Universe. "Observe me those savages. Thus have I seen the Hurons on the Savannahs. I can almost imagine that I am back in America."
A voice came to startle him: "How regrettable that you are not."
Doubting his ears, he swung about, and beheld a young man in a riding-coat of green, who had come to stand on the edge of the group of officers.
"Monsieur de Morlaix! What is your regiment, sir?"
The terrible voice and the terrible glances of the staff left the young man unperturbed.
"I have none. I am in civil life."
"Then, what are you doing here?"
"Observing those very gallant fellows, admiring their tactics, and wondering that their virtues should be unperceived by a soldier."
"Monsieur, you are an impertinent."
"Monsieur, you are not civil."
One of his officers laid a restraining hand upon d'Hervilly's arm. He aimed at creating a diversion, and chance supplied him with the means. "Look, my Colonel! The fort is striking its colours. The tricolour is coming down."
A burst of cheering came up to them from the Chouans below.
At this decisive effect of the British bombardment and in the excitement of the moment, d'Hervilly allowed himself to be drawn forward and down the slope.
That night, however, he stormed into the farm-house quarters whence Puisaye was preparing to transfer himself.
"So, Monsieur! We have reached the point at which you send a spadassin, a bully swordsman, to provoke me to a quarrel, to insult me."
Puisaye straightened himself from the dispatch-box over which he had been bending.
"What's this?" His voice was sharp. "Of whom do you speak?"
"Of your master-at-arms, Morlaix, who calls himself Marquis de Chavaray. You'll not deny responsibility for his outrageous conduct."
"I will not trouble to do so. No. I will content myself with observing that I am not only well able, but even accustomed to conducting my own quarrels. If you do not know that of me, faith, you know even less than I supposed."
Passion seemed to deafen the Colonel. "I desire you to understand that it is only because it might provoke a mutiny of your savages that I refrain from ordering your arrest and dealing with you as you deserve."
Puisaye stared at him for a long moment in dumb surprise. When at last he found his voice again, it was only to say: "Go to the devil."
"Monsieur le Comte, I will not tolerate this offensiveness."
"You have your remedy."
D'Hervilly choked. "You are fortunate, sir, that my duty to my King rises above my duty to myself. But I warn you that if there is more of this, even that may not prevail with me. And in any event, this is not the last you will hear of the matter. You are warned." He stalked out.
Puisaye went in quest of Quentin.
"What have you been doing to d'Hervilly?"
Quentin told him.
"The fool has the effrontery to suggest that I sent you to put a quarrel upon him." He was still white with anger. "One day, when this business is over, I really think I shall have to give myself the trouble of killing Monsieur d'Hervilly. Pray remember that it is a satisfaction I promise myself."
"I will bear it in mind. I have no wish to be taken for a bully swordsman."
Puisaye took him by the shoulders. "Child, there's no need to be resentful. I was not reproving you. How could I when it was so generous of you to espouse my quarrel?"
"Not generous. Inevitable. The man is an offence. Nor was I espousing your quarrel. I was making one of my own; for the pleasure of it; provoked by the creature's meanness."
"Ah!" Puisaye smiled wistfully. "Well, well! Better so." He turned away. "Yet I was so foolish as to hope it was the other way."
"But why?"
"Why? Who knows? Perhaps because I am a lonely man, never lonelier than here and now, with all my plans in jeopardy, my command usurped, my authority undermined among these gentlemen whom I brought here. It warmed me a little to believe that I had won a friend to take up my quarrel for me." He laughed. "That is all. Think no more of it."
"But I shall, sir." Quentin was touched by that glimpse of a heart under the hard glitter. Puisaye's flamboyant exterior was suddenly revealed to him as a panoply of stoical gallantry. "Your belief was not so wide of the truth when I come to think of it. It was certainly d'Hervilly's cavalier conduct towards you that influenced mine."
There was an amazing softening of Puisaye's proud, hard glance. "You're a good lad, Quentin. You've a heart. You deserve well."
"If there is anything in which I can serve you . . ."
"I need an aide-de-camp whom I can trust. Tinténiac and Vauban have their commands, and among the rest there's scarcely a man in whom I could venture to place confidence."
"I am not a soldier, sir."
"Nor yet a fool. You've proved your quality. You offer just what I most need."
Thus simply the link was forged that drew these two men closer, on the threshold of a period that was to test Puisaye's fortitude more heavily than any other in all his chequered life.
Trouble began on the day after Fort Penthièvre was occupied by the regiment that still called itself of Dresnoy, although Dresnoy himself had refused to embark with it rather than serve under d'Hervilly.
From early morning along the narrow isthmus known as the Falaise, that links the Peninsula of Quiberon with the mainland, the retreating hordes from Auray began to stream. They were made up not only of Tinténiac's Chouans, but of all the peasants of the district, the fugitives, amounting to some thirty thousand men, women, children, old men and priests; and they brought with them their possessions, so as to save them from pillage and destruction: their herds of bullocks, sheep and goats, their carts laden with household goods, their provender, and even the sacred vessels from their churches. It was nothing less than a stampede before the army of the Republic, known to be advancing upon Auray, which the withdrawal of the Chouans had rendered defenceless.
To these fugitives were added by noon those from the other outpost, of Landévan, in similar terror of the vengeance that might be wrought upon them for having harboured that vanguard of the Royal Army.
From the ramparts of Penthièvre, in which he had taken up his quarters, Puisaye, pallid and dull-eyed, his jauntiness all shed, observed this ceaseless stream of peasants in flight before an army which the ineptitude of d'Hervilly had permitted Hoche to assemble. To him it was a spectacle that heralded ruin. There was little hope that the opportunity so crassly missed would recur, or that they could revive in the peasantry the enthusiasm which must now be fainting from disillusion.
Once across the Falaise, the arriving hordes spread themselves through the peninsula, some five miles in length by two across, with its half-dozen villages and the township of Quiberon towards its southernmost end. Nor was there a welcome for them such as might have lightened their distress. The gentlemen from England had quartered themselves upon the villages and hamlets, occupying every house, and refusing to be crowded by these savages, whose presence seemed to offend their very nostrils. They must find what accommodation they could in barns or stables, whilst the great mass of them were left to encamp under the open sky. Fortunately the July heat made this exposure tolerable.
That brutal refusal to yield quarters to ailing women and delicate infants, and the haughty undisguised contempt of the émigré nobles for these unhappy peasants, was quick to breed bad blood between the Chouans and those whom a week ago they had welcomed as their saviours. Brawls were frequent, and it might have come to a pitched battle, but for the efforts in which Puisaye spent his despairing energies. With him laboured loyally to the same end, if with the same heavy heart, his lieutenants, Tinténiac, Vauban, Boisberthelot and Quentin, as well as the Chouan leaders, Cadoudal, St. Regent, Guillemot and Jean Rohu; but of all of them none worked more ardently or savagely for the preservation of order than Quentin.
His repute had spread through the ranks of the émigrés, among whom there were several who, like Bellanger--now a captain in the Loyal Émigrant--and d'Hervilly, had frequented his Bruton Street academy. Then, too, it was known that he had killed Boisgelin, that magician of the sword, and that he had smashed the conference at La Prevalaye. At once feared as a swordsman and respected for the stout monarchism of which it was accounted that he had given proof, his interventions were never ineffective; and he seemed ever at hand to intervene. That he should make enemies and excite rancours was inevitable; but their open manifestations were rare, and he had learnt the trick of a cold, hard glance that could quell them.
Once only was he startled, and that was when the Vicomte de Bellanger, whom he had reproved for insolence towards a Chouan, ventured to address him as the Marquis de Carabas, the odious by-name bestowed upon him by Constant de Chesnières. Only two other men had ever used it to him hitherto, and by using it had disclosed themselves for Constant's agents.
Viperishly he corrected Bellanger. "Chavaray, sir. Chavaray. That is my name. If you should again forget it, you shall be taught to spell it, letter by letter. And you will not enjoy the lesson."
He swung on his heel, and was gone before the gaping Vicomte could commit a further rashness.
He went fuming back to Penthièvre, into Puisaye's quarters, to intrude upon an altercation that drove all personal grievances from his mind.
D'Hervilly, who had also moved into the fort and established his headquarters there, was the centre of the debate. Puisaye's other three lieutenants were present, besides the émigré officers d'Allegre and Garrec.
Tinténiac was talking, his voice loud and emphatic, his slight figure quivering with vehemence. The burden of his news was that Hoche, moving upon Auray the moment he had word of the Chouan retreat, would pause there only until joined from Laval by Humbert, who had assembled another five thousand men. "Once the junction is effected, an army twenty thousand strong will be upon us, and not another man in Brittany will rise to join the Royal Standard."
Vauban, a brisk, vigorous fellow, took up the argument. "The error of our retreat from a position in which we should have been supported becomes apparent. Where Monsieur de Puisaye's bold plan would by now have placed us in possession of Brittany, we find ourselves all but trapped here, in a position of great danger."
"Unless," added d'Allegre, "prompt action is taken."
D'Hervilly, as Quentin could read in his dismayed countenance, had been brought to realize the danger, and was impressed. He had shed his habitual aggressiveness. Almost he seemed to excuse himself for the errors he now perceived. He had been reluctant, he explained, to lose touch with the sea before the arrival of Sombreuil's contingent.
"We'll be pushed into it now if we remain," was Boisberthelot's blunt retort.
Puisaye, who had had more than his fill of arguments with d'Hervilly, remained silent and aloof. D'Hervilly addressed him. "You express no views," he complained.
The Count awakened into sarcasm. "Is it possible that they are sought? Is it possible that they are needed?" He shrugged. "The situation should be plain even to you. The choice is between being thrust into the sea, as you have heard, and doing now the difficult thing that would have been so easy a week ago. March to meet Hoche before he can make his junction with Humbert."
When d'Hervilly had expressed at length his resentment of Puisaye's tone and manner, he made the only possible decision, and on the morrow led forth the regiments of the Royal Louis and the Loyal Émigrant.
They marched with drums beating and white banners fluttering, to form the spearhead centre of an army of which ten thousand Chouans under Tinténiac and Vauban were to compose the ponderous wings. But before Plouharnel was reached, d'Hervilly had word that the junction of Hoche and Humbert was effected, and incontinently, to the rage of the Chouans, he ordered a retreat without having burnt a cartridge.
Puisaye, with Cadoual and Boisberthelot, was marshalling the reserves, that were to follow in support, when he beheld, from the heights of Carnac, the return of the émigré regiments, still marching with that admirable military precision which was a source of pride to their fatuous commander. It was a source of horror to Puisaye, and of frenzy to Cadoudal.
"Why," roared the Chouan, "was not that monster swallowed by the sea before he landed at Quiberon to ruin us? Name of God! Is he a poltroon as well as a fool?"
Vauban was to come in later, raging: "What is this man? A coward or a traitor?" And he demanded angrily that d'Hervilly be brought to trial for high treason.
When at last d'Hervilly himself arrived, it was seen that at least his arrogance had been diminished.
"We were too late," he informed them.
Puisaye lashed him with his scorn.
"Too late for what? It is never too late to die; and there was always death had you failed. It still remains."
Stung by the rebuke, d'Hervilly recovered his spirit, and with it all his obstinacy. It was idle, he asserted, to advise him to go forth again; to urge that in the pass to which things were come, nothing remained but to try immediate conclusions with Hoche. There might be little advantage in numbers on the Republican side; but he did not choose to take their word that this would be more than counter-balanced by the fighting qualities of the Chouans. He was not impressed by their Chouans, a rabble of brigands without military sense.
In a measure, as he proceeded, he recovered all his old arrogance. Yesterday's debate was entirely forgotten. He insisted now that he had always been right to remain in touch with the sea, so as to await the further troops from England before going forward. He regretted the moment of weakness in which he had yielded against his better judgment to persuasion. But that should not occur again. He knew what he was doing. He was not to be taught the military art by dilettante soldiers. He would fortify himself at Penthièvre and there await the Republicans.
He did so, and as a result, less than a week later Hoche was able to write to the Convention: "The Anglo-Émigré-Chouans are shut up like rats in a trap, in the Peninsula of Quiberon."
It was no exaggeration. He had set up his batteries so as to be screened by the dunes from the guns of the British Fleet. Then, by an enfilading fire, he had driven the Royalists from their entrenchments at Ste. Barbe, at the mainland extremity of the isthmus. Thereafter he had, himself, occupied and fortified those trenches, which, stretching right across the isthmus, definitely closed the trap in which the Royalists were held.
Only when that operation was complete did d'Hervilly realize the threat with which they were now faced, although he may not yet have understood that it was a threat of ruin beyond redemption. It was left for Puisaye to enlighten him, and this in the unsparing terms which his frantic, heart-broken chagrin dictated.
The Chouans, fully disillusioned by now on the score of these nobles whom they had hailed as liberators and in whom they had discovered only incompetence and a wounding arrogance, were beginning to desert. They were slipping away by sea in their hundreds, to land at unguarded points of the coast and make their way back to their native districts, whence their report of what was doing would sweep over the country-side, to quell what Royalist ardour lingered, and send back to the cultivation of their fields those thousands who had been standing ready to rise in arms.
Puisaye was a changed man in those days of his despair, his assurance broken by a fortnight of sterile strife with the usurper of his command. His urbanity had fallen from him, and because he realized the invisible mischief as plainly as the mischief that was visible, he brought d'Hervilly with rude violence also to realize it.
"We are stuck here on a rock in a rising sea," he declared. "That is where your vaunted military perspicacity has placed us. A small matter, by God, compared with the perfection with which your regiments deploy upon the parade ground. You're a born commander, my Colonel--for a box of leaden soldiers."
D'Hervilly received his reproaches and his sarcasms in alternating humility and insolence. High words flew between them, and once in the heat of exchanged insults Puisaye's hand went to his sword. But it fell away again.
"That can wait," he said. "There's something else to do at the moment; or, rather, to undo."
In the bitterness of his resentments d'Hervilly might have pushed his usurped authority to the length of ordering Puisaye's arrest. But he had the sense to perceive that in this he was in a stalemate. Such an act would exhaust the patience of the Chouans, who, perceiving where lay the blame, had abated nothing in their reverence of the Comte Joseph. The result, in the present temper, might well be the massacre of every émigré on Quiberon. Moreover, d'Hervilly could no longer count even upon an unquestioning émigré support. His incompetence was being laid bare to them by the events, and their perilous, besieged position was beginning to be assigned to it. Commonly now the members of his staff, whom he brought to support him in the councils that invariably ended in stormy altercations, were found to be in agreement with his opponents. The only man who remained unwavering, even in haughty defiance of reason, in loyalty to his chief, was the Vicomte de Bellanger.
Soon yet another peril began to make itself manifest. Overcrowded as Quiberon was, victuals began to run short.
D'Hervilly held a council in the orderly room of the fort, and with a half-dozen nobles upon whose support he could count, received Puisaye, whom he had bidden to it, and those whom Puisaye brought with him unbidden: the Comte de Contades, his chief of staff, Cadoudal as chief of the Chouans of Morbihan and the Chevalier de Tinténiac. Quentin came too, as Puisaye's aide-de-camp, in a British red coat that was now the Royalist uniform.
D'Hervilly received them seated at his writing-table, his officers grouped about him. He looked askance upon Puisaye's following, but offered no comment, and went straight to business.
He touched upon the gravity of a situation in which supplies of food were failing, and fatuously invited them once again to approve his foresight in keeping touch with the sea, since by means of the British ships it should be possible to feed the Peninsula. He would thank Monsieur de Puisaye, and Monsieur Cadoudal, too, since he was present, to reassure the peasantry on Quiberon, and to employ their influence to see that calm was preserved.
Puisaye, grey-faced and worn, blear-eyed from sleeplessness, laughed savagely. "Thirty thousand Chouan combatants, thirty thousand refugees, and some thirty thousand native inhabitants, besides the émigré regiments. A hundred thousand mouths in all to be fed by the foraging of foreign sailors along a coast not only hostile but bare. I suppose, sir, that you make the suggestion seriously. That is why I laugh."
It was but the beginning of another tempest.
Cadoudal, like a raging bull, advanced to the table's edge. "The fact is, Messieurs, that starvation is about to complete the work of General Hoche's other ally, Monsieur le Colonel here." He glared into the yellow face of d'Hervilly. "By God, sir, the Republic should raise a monument to you for the way you've served and saved it."
Coming from a peasant, this was rather more than d'Hervilly's gentlemen could stomach, whilst d'Hervilly himself seemed to freeze where he sat. His glance went beyond Cadoudal.
"Monsieur de Puisaye, must I ask you to protect me from such insolences as this, or must I protect myself?"
"Protection!" Cadoudal raged. "Who will protect us from you? Who will repair the mess your blundering pompous stupidity has got us into? Who will . . ."
"Quiet, Georges!" Puisaye admonished him, his hand upon that massive shoulder. "Abuse will not serve."
"This isn't abuse. It's the nasty truth," Cadoudal retorted. "My lads are at the end of their patience. They begin to ask me if they have come here to get themselves slaughtered for the satisfaction of a puppet-master. They may not march in step; they may not possess the secret of formations and all the other barrack-square trumpery that make the soldier in the eyes of Monsieur le Colonel; but, as God lives, they know something of fighting, which is what they came for, not to be penned up like sheep to await the butcher. Fighting seems the last thing in the design of Monsieur le Colonel."
D'Hervilly leaned forward, silencing by a gesture the indignation of those who were his friends. His voice shook with the passion he suppressed.
"I do not dispute with you, Cadoudal. I do not even explain myself; for I owe no explanation to anybody."
"That we shall see before all's done," Cadoudal threatened.
D'Hervilly went stiffly on. "I merely express in passing my deep resentment of a tone taken by a man in your position to a man in mine."
Cadoudal laughed savagely.
"Let us come to what matters. Since those of you who know this Brittany and its resources are persuaded that there can be no hope of victualling, it remains only to cut our way out." He reared his head in proud audacity. He became declamatory. "We will deliver battle to this General Hoche."
He seemed to pause there for applause. Instead all that the assertion brought him was another laugh of bitterness from Puisaye. D'Hervilly smote the table with his fist.
"Monsieur le Comte!" he thundered, in passionate protest.
"You must forgive me. I have a sense of irony. It is provoked when I hear you now proposing to do something that has become impossible after so obstinately refusing to do it whilst it was not only possible, but easy."
"Voila!" said Cadoudal. "Now you have it, my Colonel."
But d'Hervilly's dignity did not permit him to heed the Chouan. "Do you say that it is impossible, Monsieur le Comte?"
"Utterly. To attempt it now would be to fling your men to death against the wall of iron which by your . . . Enfin, which you, have permitted Hoche to build. Your last chance was at Plouharnel, when you decided wrongly that it was too late. Now when it really is too late, you propose to do it. In the position which he has fortified at Ste. Barbe, Hoche could hold you with half the men he has concentrated there."
Bellanger came superciliously to the aid of his chief. "That is an opinion, Monsieur le Comte."
"An opinion," sneered Vauban, "with which every man of sense must agree."
"I fear so," Contades sighed.
Again d'Hervilly smote the table. Anger had robbed him of reason. "Always am I opposed," he complained. "It has been so ever since I set foot upon this cursed shore. How is a commander to conduct matters against constant opposition?"
"That won't serve," Puisaye answered him contemptuously. "Until now you have always had your own way. And that is just what has landed us in this quagmire."
"Are you afraid, Monsieur de Puisaye?" cried d'Hervilly, so blindly on his defence that he cared not what weapons he employed.
"Afraid? Of what? Of death? What else can I welcome now that all my labours have been wasted, all my plans wrecked by your folly? Death, at least, would spare me the shame of facing those who trusted to my word and my promises."
"Would it not be better," said Contades mildly, "to leave recriminations? We have to recognize that we are in desperate straits, and . . ."
"And how we came into them," Cadoudal interrupted.
"That will not help us to get out," said Bellanger. He went on to tell them at pompous length that this was the problem to which they should address their minds, and ended by inviting Monsieur de Puisaye to tell them frankly what course he would advise.
Puisaye looked as if the question dumbfounded him. Then he took a deep breath. "If, being in command, as the King and the British Government believe me to be, I could by folly and lack of foresight have placed the Royal Army in this trap, then here is what I should do."
He advanced to the table and the large-scale map that was spread upon it. D'Hervilly who had ground his teeth at the first of those words, stifled his retort in a desperate hope inspired by the sudden brisk change in Puisaye.
With rough impatience the Count pulled the map about to suit his ends. "Approach, messieurs. You, too, Georges, and you others." His glance, which seemed now to smoulder, held d'Hervilly as if to dominate him. "One definite chance remains to repair the harm, to smash Hoche, and to extricate ourselves. But only one. And it will be the last. If adopted it should make possible again my original plan. It should revive the enthusiasm and stimulate once more the general rising that will enable us to march on Paris. Be warned, however, that should it fail, we are doomed. But, then, doomed we certainly are unless we have recourse to it. And there is no reason why it should fail if each performs his part without falter or waver."
He lowered his glance to the map, and set himself to expound. "See. Here is Penthièvre. Here the fortifications of Ste. Barbe with Hoche's Army of Cherbourg, thirteen thousand strong. We muster in all some twenty thousand men. Now, if we had twice that number, we could not hope to carry that position by a frontal attack; yet the men we possess would be more than enough to deal with Hoche if we could place him between two fires. This we can do. It is in our power to place him like a nut between the two limbs of a nutcracker, and so crush him."
Dramatically he paused there, and looked at them. D'Hervilly in a fever of impatience cried out: "Yes. Yes. But how to place him so?"
"Thus, let ten thousand men, the émigré regulars and five thousand Chouans, who will have to bear the brunt of the fighting, engage him in front, whilst another ten thousand, brought round to Plouharnel, descend simultaneously upon his rear."
D'Hervilly glared impatiently. "You talk as if we enjoyed freedom of movement. How do we place a detachment at Plouharnel?"
"You but say the same thing in different words," cried Bellanger. "The problem, Monsieur le Comte, is how to get to Plouharnel."
Cadoudal laughed. "Puppies will be yelping."
"By God, sir!" roared Bellanger, his chin thrust out. "I take impertinences from no man. I'll . . ."
D'Hervilly's fist came down with a bang. "Hold your tongues! Monsieur de Puisaye, if you please."
"There is no problem," said Puisaye. "To leave Quiberon offers no difficulty. Men are leaving us every night by sea. We have no lack of luggers, and at need there are Sir John's sloops. We can convey our men to the coves of Poldu, and put them ashore there. Thence, through a country where every man is their friend, and without fear of interference by the Blues, since Hoche has brought every soldier in Brittany to Ste. Barbe, they can make their way to Plouharnel."
The intention and the means became clear, and for once, at last, a proposal of Puisaye's encountered no opposition. This was not only because d'Hervilly had been schooled and subdued by the events, but because the plan would rid him of the greater part of those Chouan auxiliaries whose barbarous ways were a perpetual offence to his fastidiousness, and would relieve by some ten thousand mouths a peninsula that otherwise must soon know the straits of hunger.