Flower o' the lily: A romance of old Cambray

by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

IV

Don Miguel de Salvado leads the attack this time. The breach now looks like a gate which leads straight into the heart of the city, where pillage and looting are to be the reward of the conquerors; and the booty will be rich with the precious belongings of a pack of overfed bourgeois.

That open gate for the moment seems undefended. It is encumbered with fallen masonry, and beyond this appear piles of rubbish, overturned wagons, furniture, débris of all sorts, evidently abandoned by the wretched inhabitants when they fled from their homes. Of Gilles de Crohin and his burghers there is for the moment no sign.

Don Miguel has with him half a company of musketeers, the finest known in Europe, and a company of lancers who have been known to clear an entire city of rebels by their irresistible onrush.

'No falling back, remember!' he commands. 'The first who gives ground is a dead man!'

Up the lancers run on the slippery ground, clinging to the wet earth with naked feet, to the coarse grass and loose stones with their knees. The musketeers remain on the hither side of the moat, three deep in a long battle array; the front lying flat upon the ground, the second kneeling, the third standing, with their muskets levelled against the first enemy who dares to show his face. The pikemen have reached the breach. There is silence on the other side. The officer laughs lustily.

'I told you 'twas but a rabble playing with firearms!'

The words are hardly out of his mouth when a terrific volley of musketry shakes the fast crumbling wall to its foundation. It comes from somewhere behind all those débris—and not only from there, but from some other unknown point, with death-like precision and cold deliberation. The Spanish officer is hit in the face; twelve pikemen throw up their arms and come rolling down on the wet ground.

'What is this hell let loose?' cries the officer savagely, ere he too, blinded with the flow of blood down his face, beats a hasty retreat.

Quick! a messenger to His Highness the Duke of Parma! The breach is so wide now that twenty men could walk easily through it. The enemy is not in sight—and yet, from somewhere unseen, death-dealing musketry frustrates every assault.

'Return to the charge!' is the Duke of Parma's curt command, and sends one of his ablest officers to lead a fresh charge. He himself organizes a diversion, crosses the small rivulet, which flows into the Schelde at the foot of Cantimpré, and trains his artillery upon a vulnerable piece of wall, between the bastion and the river bank. He has the finest culverines known in Europe at this time, made on a new pattern lately invented in England; his cannon balls are the most powerful ever used in warfare, and some of his musketeers know how to discharge ten shots in a quarter of an hour—an accomplishment never excelled even by the French.

So, while one of his ablest officers is in charge of the attacking party on the breach, His Highness himself directs a new set of operations. Once more the roar of artillery and of musketry rend the air with their portentous sound. The Duke of Parma's picked men attack the last bastion of Cantimpré, whilst from the roads of Arras, of Sailly and Bapaume, the whole of the Spanish infantry rush like a mighty wave to the charge.

Pikemen and halberdiers, archers and lancers, once more to the assault! Are ye indeed cowards, that a pack of Flemish rabble can hold you at bay till you sink back exhausted and beaten? Up, Bracamonte and Ribeiras! Messar, with your musketeers! Salvado, with your bow-men! Up, ye mighty Spanish armies, who have seen the world at your feet! With Farnese himself to lead you, the hero of an hundred sieges, the queller of an hundred rebellions; are ye dolts and fools that you cannot crush a handful of undisciplined rabble?

And in close masses, shoulder to shoulder, they come!—exhausted, but still obstinate, and with the hope of all the rich booty to lure them on. Down the declivity of the moat—no longer deep, now that it is filled with dead! And up again to below the walls! The setting sun is behind them and gleams on their breastplates and their bonnets, and gilds the edges of the battlements with lines of flame.

And, up on the crumbling battlements, the defenders of Cambray—the clerks and shopkeepers and churls—hear the tramp of many feet, feel the earth quivering beneath this thunder of a last mighty assault. Sturdy, undaunted hands grip lance and pike tighter still, and intrepid hearts wait for this final charge, as they have waited for others to-day, and will go on waiting till the last of them has stilled its beating.

And Gilles de Crohin in their midst, invincible and cool, scours the battlements and the breach, the bastions and the ramparts—always there where he is needed most, where spirits want reviving or courage needs the impetus of praise. He knows as well as they do that gunpowder is running short, that arrows are few and thousands of weapons broken with usage: he knows, better than they do, that if de Balagny's troop tarries much longer all this heroic resistance will have been in vain.

So he keeps his own indomitable little army on the leash, husbanding precious lives and no less precious ammunition; keeping them back, well away from the parapets, lest the sight of the enemy down below lead them on to squander both. Thus, of all that goes on beneath the walls, of the nature of the attack or the chances of a surprise, the stout defenders can see nothing. Only Gilles, whilst scouring the lines, can see; for he has crawled on his hands and knees to the outermost edge of the crumbling parapet and has gazed down upon the Duke of Parma's hordes.