CHAPTER IX.
It is needless for me to pause upon all the movements that subsequently took place. They have met with historians more competent to treat of military details than myself; nor would my own personal narrative for several weeks, nay, for months, present many matters of interest. No sooner had Angoulême capitulated and order been restored in the town, than Monsieur de Blaye found means easily to procure the money for his ransom, and paid me the sum of four thousand crowns, which was certainly far more than I had ever possessed before in my life. In the arrangements which had been made between myself and Moric Endem, and which he communicated to the men as we engaged them, the ransom of prisoners, it may be remembered, had been held apart as belonging to the actual captors. Nevertheless, I determined to endeavour, as far as possible, to attach the men to me by liberality, and to show that I could recompense good service, in order that, if necessity required it, I might be the more fully justified in punishing bad conduct.
I accordingly called the men together as soon as I had received the ransom of my prisoner; and explaining to them what I was about to do, and the reason why, I divided the money into two equal portions, and, having reserved one for myself, I again divided the other half into two, whereof I bestowed one upon my good lieutenant, Moric Endem, to whom I owed so much, and distributed the residue among the men who accompanied me to the breach. The others, who had chosen to wait till they saw me tried, looked a little foolish and mortified upon the occasion, but acknowledged it was all just; and, to give them some consolation, I bestowed ten crowns a man upon them out of my own stock, only requiring that each two should provide themselves with a small tent, and each five with a baggage-horse, and a boy to ride it.
After this was done, my next thought was to redeem the dagger which I had left in the hands of the Jew; but the matter was somewhat difficult to be arranged; for how was I to obtain the weapon without going myself to Bordeaux, or without sending some one in whom I could fully trust? I thought of Andriot, of whose honesty I felt as certain as of my own; but then he was by far too illiterate and simple in his nature to deal with so shrewd a personage as the Jew; and the specimen which I had had of good Solomon Ahar's proceedings was not very well calculated to increase my confidence in his probity. Although the weapon might be considered as a mere gewgaw, yet I clung to the thought of regaining it as speedily as possible with feelings which some people will easily enter into. It seemed as if it were my inheritance; it was the only thing I possessed of my father's; it was the tie between me and past years. I meditated over this for some time, without coming to any satisfactory conclusion; and at length remembering that there were many other things to think of, I proceeded to the bedside of young Martin Vern, to prepare him for removal on the following day.
Since the extraction of the ball he had been daily recovering strength. The great quantity of blood he had lost had in all probability been the cause that no great fever had ensued; and he had been able to lie and talk to me at various times during the preceding day without any apparent inconvenience. I now found him still better; and he heard that the siege of Angoulême was over, and that we were preparing to make a retrograde movement, to attack the small town of Pons, with apparent pleasure. He expressed himself perfectly willing and able to be moved; but only desired to find a messenger to bear intelligence of his state to his uncle, and to tell him in what direction we were likely to proceed.
I instantly caught at the opportunity of communicating with the Jew through Martin Vern; and, after consulting with the young man upon the subject, and telling him the whole facts, the matter was very easily arranged. Andriot was sent back to Bordeaux with a mere verbal message concerning the movements of the army, but with a letter from me to the merchant, which told him of his nephew's improved health, and of my own wishes with regard to the Jew, and also enclosed both the receipt which the worthy Solomon had given me, and the requisite sum for redeeming the dagger.
Andriot by this time had nearly enough of military service, and was not at all sorry to lay aside the cuirass and helmet. He did not even affect to conceal that such was the case; but, at the same time, begged that I would let him return and join me in the capacity of a servant as before.
Early on the following morning we began our march for Pons; and that city was besieged in form, the garrison expressing its determination to hold out to the last extremity. They kept their word in the town; the place was taken by assault; and for the first time I beheld the most awful scene that war, always terrible, can display. Death, and destruction, and cold-blooded massacre surrounded me on every side; but, terrible as it all was, I had the satisfaction of contributing, in some degree, to the cessation of the evil. One or two of the officers joined with me; and we endeavoured, as far as possible, to shelter even the officers and soldiers that surrendered.
This attempt was nearly vain, however; but it prepared the way for more successful efforts when the pillage of houses commenced. To prevent plunder was impossible, I found; but to stop massacre was less difficult, and most of my soldiers were beginning to listen to the repeated commands that they received, and form into some order, when, suddenly, a girl rushed from one of the houses, pursued by a trooper whom I had engaged at Barbazieux, and who had shown himself somewhat slack in the combat and eager in the pillage.
Both the girl and the man heard clearly the orders I was in the very act of repeating, to abstain from outrage, and, rushing forward, she clung to my knees. The man darted on after her, swearing that he would have his lawful prey; that the town was taken by assault, and nobody should stop him. There was a large body of soldiers coming up at the time under Monsieur de Boucard, and I knew that at that moment example was everything. The man had the insolence to seize the woman by the shoulder at my very feet; but my heavy double-edged sword was naked in my hand at the instant, and his foul fingers had scarcely touched her when his spirit went to its dark account.
"Rightly done, rightly done, Monsieur de Cerons!" cried Boucard, turning partly towards his men and partly towards me. "The same punishment for any one who commits such excesses."
The greater part of the town's people were saved, but four hundred of the soldiery were massacred in cold blood; and I grieve to say, that four hundred more were afterward slain when the citadel was taken. There was every reason to believe that the castle had capitulated; but, by some mistake, the assailants got in at once, and put to death every soul they met with. I was not in the town at the moment that this latter act took place, having been ordered to follow the Admiral de Coligny with all speed towards Chauvigny, whither he had marched some days before in pursuit of the Duke of Montpensier. I was ordered to bear to him tidings of the fall of Pons; and a company of foot soldiers was added to my band, so that we might afford at once a small re-enforcement to his division of the army, and give him notice that those he had left behind would soon be prepared to support him.
Various movements on the part of both the Catholic and Protestant armies followed during the greater part of the winter and the early spring of the ensuing year. The Duke of Montpensier collected his forces in the neighbourhood of Chatelherault; and tidings spread abroad that the Duke of Anjou, the king's brother, was coming down with a great force, to put himself at the head of the Catholic armies. Various disasters also befell different detachments of Protestant soldiers making their way up from distant parts of the country, to join the main body under the admiral and the Prince de Condé. The Protestant leaders, however, did not suffer themselves to be daunted, and still acted upon the offensive, harassing the enemy in continual skirmishes, and prepared even to risk the event of a general battle.
In all these proceedings I had my share. I knew that all and everything depended upon my own exertions and my own success; and, daily becoming more and more habituated to the life I led, I suffered no opportunity to pass of attacking any detached body of the enemy. When I thought myself not strong enough to attempt any of the small fortified towns or castles, soon found plenty of leaders who were willing to aid me for a share of the plunder which was likely to be taken. Thus I was scarcely ever out of the saddle; rarely two days at a time without crossing my sword with an enemy; and never suffering myself, by any ambition, to be led into the great mistake of increasing the numbers of my band, it became rather a privilege than otherwise to obtain admission into it.
Such exertions were not without their reward; for, though in the course of the campaign I did not meet with any other such rich prize as Monsieur de Blaye had proved, yet many a prisoner of less importance was taken--several by my own hand; while a large quantity of booty was obtained, especially after the gay and luxurious soldiery of the Duke of Anjou began to arrive in the country.
On one occasion we took an immense quantity of baggage, belonging to two or three noblemen of the court, in a village which they had fortified for their own defence, so that the amount of fifteen thousand crowns in money alone was divided between our troop and a band of foot who had joined us in the enterprise. We had been told that the Duke of Joyeuse himself was in the village; but if he was so, he made his escape with the other nobles before we forced our way in. Had I been able to capture him, indeed, I might have thought myself deserving of the name which I had by this time acquired in the army, of the "Fortunate Monsieur de Cerons." I was indeed, in many respects, extremely fortunate; for I had escaped without any wounds that deserved the name, except the pistol-shot in the arm which I received at Angoulême; and in the month of February I had in my own private store an accumulation of nearly six thousand crowns.
Not twelve months before I should have considered that fortune as quite sufficient for all my wants and wishes through life; but my feelings had changed; I desired more, far more. What was it that was at my heart? Was it avarice? Oh, no! What was it, then? I cannot tell. There was a hope, and an expectation, and a looking forward into the future, that made me greedy without greediness, and aspiring without ambition.
I must now return to speak for a moment of one whom I have not noticed for some time. The progress of young Martin Vern was slow but steady; and at the end of about a month or six weeks he was enabled to sit up and walk about the camp. In a week more he could ride out with me on horseback, when with no particular enterprising view I went forth to reconnoitre the enemy or examine the country around. From his uncle he had received no intelligence up to that period at which the Protestant army was marching upon Saumur, being completely master of the country between the Loire and the Charente. But a terrible storm was gathering to the east, where the army of the Duke of Anjou was daily increasing in strength, and moving rapidly towards us. A degree of ferocity, too, was beginning to animate both parties. The Count de Lude attacked the town of Mirabeau; received its surrender upon capitulation, and yet ordered the greater part of the garrison to be put to the sword in cold blood. The wrath and indignation of the Protestants now exceeded all bounds, especially as La Borde and his brother, who were among the first victims at Mirabeau, were universally loved and admired in the army. No one felt their death more bitterly than the Admiral de Coligny; and, swearing by all he held sacred that he would avenge them, he refused all terms of capitulation to the town of St. Florent, which he was then besieging, but gave the garrison notice to defend themselves to the last, as beyond all doubt he would put every man to the sword.
I was myself, at the time, marching forward with a large body of troops towards Loudun; but I heard shortly afterward that the admiral had too terribly kept his word. We came in presence of the enemy in the neighbourhood of Loudun; and on the assembling of the whole Protestant force, it was found that we were not much inferior in number to our antagonists. But the weather had now become extremely severe; and the Duke of Anjou not judging it prudent to risk a general battle at that moment, retired, leaving us to take a little repose in winter-quarters.
Some days before he retreated, however, I was at length rejoined by the good youth Andriot, who bore a letter from Martin Vern, announcing that he would speedily join us in our quarters. Andriot himself had much to tell; for he had been at the Chateau de Blancford, and had borne tidings of all my proceedings, as far as he knew them, to those in whom he believed I was interested at my ancient home. He repeated to me all the kind things that the boys had said; all the affectionate words of old La Tour; and he told me how Louise's eyes had sparkled when she saw him; how she had made him repeat over and over again everything that related to me; and how she had wept to hear of my good success, which the youth declared he could not understand at all, though I understood it right well. He had taken care, he said, as far as possible, to keep out of the way of the baron; but he was caught the second day of his visit, and made his escape as fast as he could, to avoid being beaten out with stirrup-leathers, which my worthy cousin threatened highly.
The letter of Martin Vern gave but little intelligence of anything but his own approach, and we looked anxiously for his arrival during three or four days; at the end of which time, as I was sitting with his nephew in my quarters at the little village of Troismoutiers, the good merchant made his appearance, accompanied by a much more imposing train of followers than he had displayed when I last saw him. His first attention was of course given to his nephew; but, after embraces and congratulations, he turned to me to speak on my affairs, and told me that he had succeeded in one part of his mission, but had been unsuccessful in another. The dagger, he said, he had not been able to redeem, having found that my friend Monsieur Stuart had already redeemed it when he heard how fortunate I had been in the army, with the purpose of carrying it to me direct. This intelligence mortified me a good deal; but the worthy merchant had consolation for me.
"I have seen your fair cousin," he said, "and a beautiful creature she is. Not knowing whether there was anything private in your letter or not, I delivered it to her as she passed through the room where the baron kept me waiting; and the tidings that you gave her must have moved her much, for she first turned so pale that I thought she would have fainted, and then grew red again, and pressed your letter to her lips, and thanked me a thousand times for bearing it. As she ran away to read it, and I did not see her when I went back again to the chateau, I feared that I should have no answer to give you; but the servant who brought me, two days after, some bonds for the money that your cousin wanted, gave me also this letter for you, and I think it is in a woman's writing."
The moment I saw it I knew Louise's hand; and, approaching the sconce, I tore it open and read--oh, how my heart beat! oh, how nearly were my eyes overflowing as I read the sweet, the dear, the tender, the affectionate words with which she greeted me.
"Dearest, dearest Henry!" it began, "how can I ever thank you for the comfort, for the consolation, for the joy that your letter has given me! the only consolation, the only joy that I have had since you left me! I will not upbraid you for leaving me without bidding me adieu; for to fly was all that you could do, and to go without farewell saved me, perhaps, a long and bitter pang, even though it denied me a sad and painful pleasure. The news of your success, from your own hand, is indeed gratifying; but farther accounts of your success have now reached me, and I trust in Heaven that they may be true.
"Oh, Henry! can I doubt anything that is told me of you, which represents you as braver, and nobler, and more generous than any one else? Perhaps it is all very foolish to think in this way; but you have been my companion from my childhood; the kindest, the dearest, the best of brothers to me! the one that I have loved the most on all the earth since my poor mother's death. How, then, can I think sufficiently of you? how can I think at all of any one else with hope and comfort than of you? My two poor brothers, Charles and Albert, are suffering under the same dark and cheerless fate as myself; and when we steal up to sit together in the room that once was yours, we talk of you and of all your kindness, and of the days that are gone by for ever; and we mingle our tears together when we think that we may never see him again whom we all loved so dearly. They indeed vow that, when they are able, they will fly to join you at the army, and fight under your sword. But what is to become of me?
"But I will not make you sad, Henry, with my sadness; nor will I dwell upon all that is terrible to me, and painful in this house at this moment. From the little that you saw, you may conceive the rest; and nothing is too terrible to be true. Perhaps, if you were to write to my father, it might do good; for, though he is very much exasperated against you, and will not even hear your name mentioned from any of us, yet when I have heard other people praise you, and mention some high deed you have done, my father's eyes have looked bright, and I have the thought he seemed somewhat proud that you should be his near relation. Of his plans or his purposes at present I can give you no account. He is evidently wretched here; and I have heard some words spoken in regard to a journey to the capital if a truce or peace were to take place, or if a safeguard could be obtained from the court. When I see him so unhappy, I would fain console him, but he will not be consoled; and the moment I attempt to do it, the expression of his face changes from melancholy to anger.
"You tell me to think of you, and that you think of me constantly. Oh, dear Henry! if you could see my thoughts, you could never fancy that you were forgotten even for a moment by
"Louise de Blancford."
The worthy merchant had not been long with us before he was summoned to the presence of the Prince de Condé, to whom his arrival had been notified; and I was not allowed mere than a few minutes alone to dream over the letter of Louise, when an officer from the admiral warned me to have everything prepared to march before daybreak on the following morning, for the purpose of attacking the Catholic army in its retreat.
When morning came the admiral himself led the avant garde, while the Prince of Condé followed at the head of the rest of the forces; and I, with my own troop and another small troop which was placed under my command for the purpose, was ordered to man[oe]uvre on the prince's right, for the purpose of deceiving the enemy into the belief that we were marching in three divisions. The task was allotted to me, because it was well known that I had thoroughly reconnoitred the whole country on that side during the three or four preceding days. The issue of the attempt would have been more fortunate, however, had they attached me to the admiral's division; for we were at that time in a part of the country filled with Catholics, and I have not the slightest doubt that both the generals were purposely deceived by their guides. Of the admiral we saw nothing for a long time after his departure; and the Prince de Condé, beginning his march about half an hour before daybreak, was led straight on to the enemy's camp, instead of approaching it on the north, as he had intended.
About eight o'clock in the morning, both he and I perceived the position of the Duke of Anjou, strongly intrenched and flanked by a stream, but not the slightest appearance of the admiral on any side; and, from the whole aspect of the scene, the strongest proof that Coligny had not even approached the enemy's camp. Notwithstanding the great inferiority of numbers, however, the prince determined to commence the attack, seeing clearly that the admiral had been misled, and hoping that the sound of the cannon would bring him up to the field of battle. The order was then given for the skirmishers to advance; and, according to the directions I had received, I made the greatest possible display of my forces on the right, occupying the attention and diverting the efforts of a part of the Duke of Anjou's army.
The troops that the Prince de Condé had thrown forward were met by the cavalry of Souline, Monsalis, and La Vallette, and driven back for some way at the point of the sword; but the famous Count de Montgomery and several other distinguished officers caused the cannon to be brought forward upon the height, and opened a sharp fire upon the duke's encampment. Each party was animated by the same courage and spirit; the troops on both sides were fighting under the eyes of their most celebrated leaders; and the advantages of the day remained so completely balanced, that if the admiral had come up in time, the camp of the duke must have been forced, and his army in all probability annihilated.
In the mean time, Martigue, at the head of three cornets of horse, had come out to reconnoitre my strength; but it luckily so happened that the small body of men which had been placed under my command in addition to my own troop, consisted principally of horse arquebusiers, and I contrived, by thinly lining the hedges with these soldiers dismounted, while I filled up the gaps with my cavalry, to make my force appear much larger than it really was. Martigue, who was an old and experienced soldier, at first seemed to entertain great suspicions of what was really the case, and advanced up the hill with a resolute face, as if he had been determined to dislodge me.
Although I had no chance in contending with him, I determined not to give way till I was forced; and, suffering him calmly to come completely within shot, I ordered the arquebusiers to fire and then spring upon their horses. This was done through the hedges with considerable effect, several of the shots telling in the midst of Martigue's own troop, and producing great confusion, while what seemed to them a body of fresh cavalry appeared behind the hedges, and decided their retreat. The shortness of the daylight at that period of the year favoured not a little the Duke of Anjou; for, or the arrival of the admiral, who had been led several miles out of his way, the day was found to be too near the close for any farther advantage to be gained.
Not a few difficulties and dangers, however, presented themselves to the Protestant army when it contemplated a retreat, and the prince determined to stop upon the ground he had occupied. Just as it was turning dark, this resolution was notified to me by an officer, who brought me also high praises from the prince, not for having fought well, but for having avoided fighting. His orders now were to retreat a little from the ground I occupied, to do my best to cover my right flank, and to send him instant notice in case of attack, making what head against the enemy I could, in order to give him time for preparation. He would have sent me more men, he said, but the position that both he and the admiral occupied was so hazardous that he could not spare any.
My retreat was easily effected; but, as I came down the hill, I was somewhat alarmed and surprised by seeing a large body of men moving up in the dusk across one of the wide open fields of that part of the country. In the dim twilight I could not distinguish anything farther than that there must be two or three thousand men, with what seemed to be artillery; and I was upon the point of sending off intelligence of the fact to the Prince de Condé, when the sound of some bells, such as they hang round the necks of the draught oxen, caught my ear, and made me comprehend at once what sort of apparition this was. It proved that a rascally guide, who had accompanied the attendants, camp followers, and others who were bringing up the baggage, had misled this important body also, and was guiding it direct into the midst of the Duke of Anjou's men. An immense booty it certainly would have been to the Catholics had I not fortunately met the mass of rabble horseboys, suttlers, bad men, bad women, and baggage wagons that were thus trooping on into the hands of the enemy. Approaching cautiously, that I might be quite sure I was right, I called out as soon as I had ascertained the fact, and commanded this great procession to halt. At the very first word, the guide, it seems, would have fled; but the leader of the party, who was a man of execution and an old soldier, had entertained suspicions for some time that all was not right, and, on the man's attempt to spur away, shot him through the head. As soon as some explanations had taken place between myself and the rest, a stratagem struck me, which I instantly proceeded to put in practice.
All the men who had just come up were very willing to put themselves under my command; and, returning up the hill till I came within sight of the lights of the enemy's camp, I formed an encampment there, defending it as well as I could with carts and wagons. I then collected together all the most likely varlets that I could find, put my own men in command over them, and arming them to the best of my power, prepared to defend that post in case of need, making sure that, for an hour or two at least, I could completely cover the right of the Prince de Condé. I despatched a messenger to him, however, to tell him what had occurred, and to say that, if he thought fit, when he and the admiral fired their cannon at nine o'clock, as was very customary, I would do the same, as there was an old dismounted culverine in one of the baggage-wagons, which would the more completely serve to impose upon the enemy.
On his return the messenger told me the prince laughed heartily; and, entering into the spirit of the thing at once, bade me follow out my plan according to my own proposal. It took some time, indeed, to get out the culverine, to place it in such a position that it could be fired without danger, and to draw out a nail which had been driven into the touchhole. This was all accomplished, however, before the hour appointed; and no sooner was the gun fired from the quarters of the Prince de Condé, than the admiral on one hill and I on the other shot off our ordnance, doubtless much to the surprise, and somewhat to the consternation, of the camp below.
Indeed, our position formed a scene altogether not a little striking and beautiful; and somewhat imposing and majestic it must have appeared to the enemy, who could see it all at once. I had gone forth to fire the culverine myself, fancying that, what between its antiquity and the quantity of powder with which it had been crammed, in order to make the report the louder, it might do what it did not, and burst under the operation. I then gazed, with feelings near akin to awe, along the range of the camp, and the immense numbers of fires lighted all along the lines to keep the people warm, blazing lightly over a great extent of the opposite hill, and sweeping quite down across the mouth of the valley where the Prince de Condé's division remained, till the illumination was taken up again by the people who were with me on those heights. There, too, at about the distance of three quarters of a mile, were the fires and lights of various kinds in the camp of the Duke of Anjou, while between that globe of flame and the semicircle of fire that surrounded it on our side, there remained a dark black ring, on which the struggle of the morning had been carried on, and in which nothing was now to be seen but a single lantern, or a torch wandering here and there, and seeking for the wounded or the dead.
As I stood and gazed, the murmur of merriment which was kept up by the varlets and the people of the little encampment behind me was carried away by the wind, which blew strong from the northeast, and borne upon its wings from the camp of the admiral came suddenly one of the Protestant psalms, sung by several thousands of voices at once, and sweeping mournfully but sweetly through the dark and solemn night. If I joined not in the melody, I joined at least in the prayer that it conveyed on high; and I was listening still with no small delight, when the youth Andriot plucked me by the sleeve, and told me that there was somebody who wished to speak with me in the encampment.
There was a meaning look in the youth's face--a mixture of joy and archness which I did not at all understand; but I followed without farther question to a tent which had been prepared for me, and towards which he now led the way. There were lights within, and a good number of people standing round it; and in drawing back the flap of the tent, I saw a table laid out with a very splendid supper, which, as I afterward found, had been prepared for the Prince de Condé, and who, probably, that night went without. But that which surprised me much more (for I was well aware that the whole provisions of the army were with my part of the encampment) was to see a respectable-looking elderly lady with her back towards me, and an old man with white hair bending down to point out to her something in a book upon the table. The little noise I made in entering did not disturb them; but my first step in the tent caused the old man to raise his head, and, to my inexpressible astonishment, I beheld good old Monsieur La Tour; while the old lady, turning round, displayed to my sight the well-known features of her who had been the faithful attendant of the former Baroness de Blancford and her daughter for several years.