Book III Chapter 5 The Marquis of Carabas by Rafael Sabatini
GROUCHY'S DIVISION
The secession, whilst lamentable enough to Tinténiac, proved less than he had feared. For this he had to thank Cadoudal and his Morbihannais. Amounting to almost half the Chouan total, they were not only loyal in themselves, but stout advocates of loyalty among the others. In the end it was found that rather fewer than four thousand men had marched away with Constant, leaving Tinténiac with between six and seven thousand men.
Grimly, with Quentin and the three Chouan chiefs, but otherwise without a single member of his staff, the little Chevalier had stood at the side of the avenue to watch that mutinous departure.
Guillemot, whose contingent had suffered most heavily in defection, having vainly exhausted himself in seeking to stem the desertion, was now venting his impotent anger in a steady flow of imprecation.
At the last Constant had returned to the Chevalier for a final conciliatory word. That mention of a platoon had helped him to digest Tinténiac's threat. Having digested it he was shaken in his assurance of what must be the military view of his action.
He drew rein, and leaned over from the saddle, whilst the departing men swung briskly past without formation.
"When I return to-morrow, Tinténiac, you will condone what I do."
The Chevalier returned him no answer beyond the stab of his stern eyes. Cadoudal, however, was less restrained, and he addressed that man of birth in the second person singular, as if the better to mark his contempt for him.
"If thou'lt make the mistake of returning at all, thou'lt see the sort of condonation we shall have for thee."
Constant ignored him, and made another attempt with Tinténiac. "Besides these lads, I shall bring back the Vendeans. Think of the great strength we shall then be in. If you will wait for me until noon, that will leave plenty of time for the march to Plouharnel."
"And that's the species of fool you are," said St. Regent. "If only these animals realized it, not one of them would follow you a yard."
And then Tinténiac was moved to add: "All that I can promise you is that if you come back alive I'll bring you before a court martial and have you shot for this."
On that the rage simmering in Guillemot boiled over suddenly. "Why wait? You damned, muddling, mutinous animal, this'll put an end to your buffooneries."
He pulled a pistol from his belt, levelled it, and pulled the trigger. It would have ended the adventure there and then for Constant had not Quentin, acting upon impulse, caught Guillemot's arm and flung it upwards, so that the pistol was discharged into the air.
The report checked the flow of Chouans abreast of them. From those who perceived what had happened, there was a sudden threatening movement, averted and quelled, however, by Constant, who moved his horse so as to make a screen for Tinténiac's group, whilst with voice and gesture he urged the indignant Chouans away and on.
When that was done he looked down at Quentin, who with Cadoudal was still restraining the fierce Guillemot. His expression was one of frowning wonder.
"I am in your debt for that, Monsieur de Morlaix. Do me the justice to perceive that it's a debt I have not sought to incur."
Quentin answered neither by word nor look, and at last Constant went off, riding slowly along the flank of the defiling column.
When the last of them had passed into the cloud of dust their marching raised in the avenue, Tinténiac sent off the three Chouan leaders to prepare their men for departure.
"I'll delay no longer. Better had I listened to you, Quentin, and not come. The place is unlucky to us. Still, though reduced in numbers by this piece of treachery, we should be in sufficient force to do our part. Anyway, we must attempt it, and there must be no more delays. We march as soon as the men have eaten. See to it."
They went up to the terrace and there the fluttering courtly throng closed about them, to plague them with questions as to what exactly had happened.
"A mutiny," he answered shortly. "Led by an imbecile I was fool enough to appoint only yesterday to my staff."
Madame de Bellanger stood before him, the Vicomte towering dark and haughtily protective at her side. "But, Chevalier," she cried, "he has gone to rescue the Vendeans. Can you blame him for that?"
"I can, Madame. I do." Abandoning ceremony, he swung aside, and raised his voice. "Messieurs, we march in an hour. I have to request you to be ready."
Madame was horrified. "In an hour! That will scarcely leave you time to dine."
The Vicomte supported her protest. "Why this, Chevalier? What need for such sudden haste? We have time to spare."
With nerves strained to breaking-point, Tinténiac was curt. "Those are my orders." And he stalked on.
Quentin was following when Bellanger caught him without ceremony by the arm. "What ails him? Are you responsible for this?"
"He does not like the air of Coëtlegon," said Quentin dryly. "It is not proving healthy."
"Oh, Marquis!" cried Madame, a lovely appealing figure of distress. "I have neglected nothing the times permit, so as to make your sojourn pleasant."
"On the contrary, Madame. You supplied too much. We did not come for pleasure. We came to incorporate a body of men which does not arrive."
"Mon Dieu! And you blame me, I hear, for this misfortune. Appearances can terribly mislead us."
"Make it clear to him," said the Vicomte. "It may moderate his offensive assumptions."
"That is so unjust," she complained. "This man who came from Josselin--Michel--because he was once a groom here, you assume that he is still in my service. You forget the times in which we live, and the constant changes they bring."
"I hope you are answered, sir," said the Vicomte, looking down his nose.
"So foolish to suppose me to act with some dark, selfish motive. And not only foolish. Monstrous. Almost I could laugh."
Quentin was non-committal. "All this, Madame, ceases to be of consequence, since we march at once."
"It is to slight my hospitality."
"The harsh necessity imposed by duty."
He bowed in leave-taking. But Bellanger had not yet done with him.
"Hardly a gracious amende for your ungenerous opinions, sir."
"I trust that the sequel will put me to shame," he evaded, and so, at last, took himself off.
On the doorstep he came upon Germaine, her aunt in agitation at her side.
"They tell me," said Madame de Chesnières, "that my son has gone to the rescue of Monsieur de Charette, and, what is even worse, that his gallantry has earned him nothing but the reproof of your commander. That is a strange attitude in a Christian gentleman."
He murmured the platitude of a soldier's first duty being obedience, and with a glance for Germaine, in which he sought to express all that her aunt's presence rendered unutterable, he escaped.
He found Tinténiac beset by a clamorous staff. In his desire for instant departure he was yet again being baulked by Madame de Bellanger's too bounteous hospitality. Reluctantly he was yielding to the insistence of his officers that it would be a climax of ungraciousness, and a gratuitous one, not to stay at least for the dinner which had been prepared. Having yielded, he was to discover delays in coming to table.
When at long last, some three hours after Constant's departure, they sat down, a gay, frivolous company, the Chevalier was in a fume of exasperation at the insouciance of his émigrés.
Whilst within doors they banqueted unhurried, outside, the Chouans having consumed their bread and onions and some odd scraps left over from last night, waited impatiently to be gone.
Suddenly the laughter and chatter about the long table in the dining-hall was silenced by a shattering volley of musketry from the park.
As men and women questioned their neighbours with dilating eyes of alarm in faces suddenly blenched, a second volley roared a sequel to the first, to be followed by an uproar near at hand, above which rang the cry: "To arms! To arms! The Blues!"
From one of the tall windows which he had reached almost at a bound, with a crowd of diners pressing behind him, Quentin saw a heavy veil of smoke rising along the belt of trees across the valley, a mile or more away. Nearer, in the middle distance, in the meadowlands, there was a stir and scurry of clamorous red-coated Chouans caught unawares in the open. Under the direction of leaders made frantic by surprise, the several companies were falling back out of range, forming ranks and looking to their weapons, so as to meet this onslaught of an assailant as yet invisible. In their exposed position they were vulnerable to an enemy who attacked from cover. It was a reversal of the order with which these warriors were familiar, and they found it little to their liking.
The firing continued: heavy rolling volleys from the edge of the timber, answered by ragged bursts from groups of Chouans who had been caught within range; and who had dropped prone, according to those tactics which d'Hervilly had so contemptuously described as proper to Hurons, but without which they would now have been mown down in swaths.
Quentin heard Tinténiac's voice behind him, shrill and compelling.
"To your posts, gentlemen! We are attacked."
The men melted from the group that pinned him where he stood, whereupon with scant ceremony he thrust himself free of the women who remained.
In the middle of the room, where all was now confused movement, he confronted Bellanger, who was buckling on his sword. The Vicomte's expression was unpleasantly sneering.
"Ah! Monsieur de Oracle! Not a Republican soldier, you said, this side of Auray."
"I said some other things that it were better to remember."
"And with the same authority."
"Or the lack of it," cried the Vicomtesse, standing tense and white just beyond her husband, a hand repressing the agitation of her breast.
"So I pray, Madame," he answered, as he sped on.
Near the door he came upon Germaine. She stood detached from a cluster of huddled, panic-stricken ladies. She was pale, but singularly calm. Their eyes met, and her lips parted in a little smile of wistful greeting. He drew close.
"Courage, Germaine. They cannot be in sufficient force to break through."
"That is not what I fear," she told him, with a touch of pride. "God guard you, Quentin."
He would have lingered, but, outside, the voice of Tinténiac was summoning them. "Monsieur de Bellanger! Gentlemen of the Loyal Émigrant! To your posts!"
He bore her hand to his lips, and was gone, almost swept out by the sudden rush of émigrés who answered the Chevalier's call.
Sharp orders received them on the terrace and sent them off to their men, who were already mustering their ranks. To Bellanger, as second in command, fell the first directions.
"Vicomte, you will post your company yonder on the right, so as to be on the flank of the Blues when they debouch from the wood."
"If they debouch, sir."
"Away! Monsieur de La Marche, you will instruct St. Regent to form a left wing with his division. Monsieur de La Houssaye, be good enough to find Cadoudal. Order him with Guillemot to compose the centre. And let word go forward commanding those advanced men to fall back. They are getting themselves killed to no purpose. We must draw the Blues on out of cover. Hasten, sir."
Bellanger's rich, sonorous voice came up to them from below, raised in command, and presently there was a rolling of drums, and the company of the Loyal Émigrant was marching to take up its station as steadily as if on parade, a spectacle to have satisfied the fastidious eyes of Monsieur d'Hervilly.
Volley was succeeding volley from the woods, and the veil of smoke steadily deepening until that distant belt of trees grew dim. In the short grass of the middle distance, red bundles lay still, to tell of the execution done.
From the summit of the terrace steps Tinténiac watched and waited, impatient until at last he saw that his order had gone forward.
The rash, futile, crawling advance of the foremost Chouans had been stemmed, and they were beginning to fall back, still wriggling along the ground.
Cadoudal arrived at speed and breathless. He had thrown off his coat, and the wet shirt clung to his sweating torso. But his spirit was as cool as his body was overheated.
"A lad of the district has just come in, who tells me that this is a division under Grouchy, some three thousand strong."
"Grouchy! Then what has become of the Vendeans? It was Grouchy who pinned them at Josselin. My God! Has he destroyed them?"
"Impossible. He comes from Vannes. He was on his way to join Hoche, and turned back, having winded us here. Thousand devils! That explains things, I think."
"It should finally dispose of your faith in those Vendeans," said Quentin. "You'll begin to believe that we've been fooled?"
Tinténiac stared at him white-faced. "By God!" he said through his teeth. "Ah, but we'll have the truth of it when this is over. Do you suppose that fool Chesnières will have got too far to hear the firing?"
Cadoudal shook his massive head. "Bah! He's been gone these four hours. He'll be a dozen miles away, more than half-way to Josselin."
Quentin pointed. "Look."
Through the distant smoke that hung like a curtain upon the summer air, a long line of horsemen was emerging. It advanced, and halted clear in view. A second line followed it, and after that another, and yet another. "Grouchy's Dragoons," said Cadoudal. "Guillemot is getting his bayonets ready for them."
They could see Guillemot's men deploying into double lines at well-spaced intervals.
"Let us go," said Tinténiac.
They went at a run to place themselves at the head of the body forming the centre, and composed mainly of Cadoudal's Morbihannais, at present held in reserve.
Before they reached their posts they had heard a bugle sounding the charge, and presently came the drumming of hooves, muffled at first, but gradually swelling in volume, as three hundred horsemen, sabres flashing in the sunlight, charged down upon the Chouan lines.
Could d'Hervilly have seen them then it might have changed his views of their fighting qualities. Steady as veterans they waited, holding their fire until Guillemot judged the dragoons within range. Then from the foremost double line a volley of two hundred muskets smote the Blues. Falling men and stumbling horses disordered for a moment the rhythm of that charge. Before it was recovered, the Chouans who had fired flung themselves prone upon the turf, and over them, from the next lines, a second volley, deadlier than the first, now that the range was shorter, renewed increasingly the cavalry's confusion. Then like those ahead of them, these Chouans too lay prone, to allow yet a third fire to blast the Republicans, whereafter, instantly, all were on their feet, the three lines closed up, the front rank knelt, and bayonets bristled to receive so much of the remaining cavalry as might charge home.
But shattered to less than a third of its strength, the meadow strewn with men and horses, the air filled with the screams of beasts in agony and the lamentations of maimed men, what was left of the dragoons scattered widely and went off to re-form out of range.
That retreat, however, revealed a dense column of Blue infantry to the deployment of which the cavalry had served as a screen.
At Tinténiac's orders, Guillemot's men, falling back to right and left to reload, opened their ranks to give passage to Cadoudal's division, sent forward to engage this main body of the enemy.
That engagement, begun in murderous fire from both sides, developed into a bitter mêlée with cold steel, a wild, fierce confusion, in which all strategic order was lost to both. If the Chouans suffered heavily at first from the Republican fire, they took a terrible revenge at close quarters with the bayonet. Steadily, but ever more quickly as their resistance weakened, the Blues were pressed back, until at last, towards sunset, being taken on one flank by the Loyal Émigrant, and on the other by St. Regent's division, they broke and ran, so as to extricate themselves from the closing grip of those pincers.
To cover the retreat and enable his infantry to restore itself to order, the Marquis de Grouchy, on a white horse, at the head of the remainder of his dragoons, charged down upon the flank of the pursuers, sabring fiercely; and actually with scarcely the loss of a man, he held them in check long enough to permit his foot to re-form.
When, the task accomplished, Grouchy rode his dragoons out of the press, the Chouans, themselves a disordered mob by now, were confronted with a line of Blues that firm once more met them with a fire that tore gaps in their too solid ranks, and then steadily retreated to new positions.
The Chouans of the centre, now entirely out of control, a furious horde maddened by blood-lust, incapable of concerted action, obeyed no attempt to restore them to order, but merely hurled themselves in rage against that steady blue wall that received them with fire and steel.
Their overwhelming numbers, however, far greater no doubt than Grouchy had reckoned or been informed, made it impossible to snatch from them the victory which was already won from an enemy whose only aim now was to retire in as good order as possible. Yet by such wild tactics as the Chouans were now pursuing that victory might be too dearly bought.
To make an end Tinténiac led St. Regent's division, which had been out of this phase of the engagement, away towards the wood, and then down on to the Republican right flank, so as to turn it.
Grouchy, perceiving the aim of the manœuvre, and fearing that it might be copied by the Loyal Émigrant on his other flank, formed his foot hastily into three sides of a square backed by the timber into which he proposed to retire.
A heavy discharge of musketry from St. Regent's men having thrown that right wing into disorder, Tinténiac, sword in hand, his coat torn, his face blackened, led in person a charge upon it before it could recover.
Quentin went with him, brandishing a musket which he had snatched up to replace his broken sword.
So impetuous proved the charge that it opened a gap in the face of the Blue square. The Chouans poured in, hacking and stabbing, and in a moment the Republican formation crumpled and broke up into fleeing groups intent only upon gaining the sanctuary of the trees. And now down upon them from the centre, like a torrent that has broken its dam, came Cadoudal's Morbihannais.
It was the end. The rout of Grouchy's division, which had taken the field some three thousand strong, with all the pride and confidence of regular soldiers, engaging a disorderly rabble, was complete. It remained only for the Republican commander to save what he could from the wreckage of his force. His survivors fled demoralized for cover, like panic-stricken conies, with that pursuing horde yelling upon their heels.
Tinténiac laughed in his hilarious excitement as he still led the men of St. Regent who had followed him. Laughing he spoke to Quentin, who trotted beside him.
"That renegade Grouchy will have a fine account to render to his sansculotte masters for this day's work," he jested, and on that jest he checked, spun half-round, and crumpled into Quentin's arms.
On the very edge of the wood a fleeing Blue, almost one of the last of them, had turned and knelt and fired almost at random upon the pursuers, and the bullet had found Tinténiac's gallant breast.
The sansculotte paid for it with his life; for before he could regain his feet a Chouan was upon him and a Chouan bayonet had transfixed him.
Gently Quentin lowered Tinténiac to the ground. He went down upon one knee, supporting the body against the other. A ring of Chouans formed almost at once about them, and broke presently into lamentations when it was perceived who was the stricken man.
Quentin's hand was busy upon Tinténiac's breast. It came away drenched in blood.
The Chevalier looked up at him, his eyes momentarily puzzled and vacuous. Then the smile with which he had charmed so many, broke upon the livid, powder-grimed face.
"I think this is the end of Monsieur de Tinténiac," he said, and spoke lightly as if amused. "A great moment, Quentin, and a victory won. I may depart with a calm mind."
Quentin with a strangling sensation, knowing him sped, could answer nothing.
The ring about them opened. Bellanger and La Marche stood over them in the gathering dusk.
"Ah, morbleu! Quel malheur! This is to pay too dearly for victory. Is the wound grave?"
Again Tinténiac smiled. "Not grave. No. Just mortal. So that the King lives, what matter who dies?" The smile passed. "You are in command now, Bellanger. On your life and honour see that you are punctual at Plouharnel."
Bellanger bowed his head in silence, and in that moment was thrust aside almost roughly by a new arrival. It was Cadoudal, grimed and tattered from the fight. He fell on his knees beside the dying man.
"Chevalier! My Chevalier! Mon petit!" There was agony in his voice. "You're not badly hurt. The good God could not permit that."
"Ah, Georges!" It was a murmur of welcome. A feeble, wavering hand sought the Chouan's. Cadoudal grasped it eagerly, and bore it to his lips. "My brave, great-hearted Georges, we'll hunt the Blues no more together. But you . . ."
He had made an effort to raise himself. The blood choked him. For a moment he struggled, coughing; then his head lolled sideways, and came to rest against Quentin's shoulder.
Cadoudal, on his knees, fell to weeping aloud with the passionate abandon of a child.