The 'Scots Brigade,' and other tales

by James Grant

THE STORY OF THE CID RODRIGO OF BIVAR.

It is in old Castile, and on the banks of the rapid Ebro, that our story opens, during the wonderful era of the Cid Campeador, when in Spain there were about twenty kings, some of whom were Christians, but more were Mohammedans; and in the land were many independent warlike lords, who roved about on horseback, completely armed, with trains of knights, offering their services to princes and princesses who were at war.

This custom, says Voltaire, had already spread over Europe, but nowhere to such an extent as in Spain; the Christian knights were dubbed as such, with many solemn ceremonies, 'and watched their arms before the altar of the Virgin Mary; but the Moslem paladins were content with simply girding on a scimitar. This was the origin of knights-errant and of such numbers of single combats.'

What with twenty kings all warring among themselves; lawless robbers in the Sierras to fight; Jews to capture, torture, and mulct; knights-errant besetting the highways and bridges with shield uplifted to meet all comers; Moors on every hand to slay without mercy, but more particularly at Seville, Granada, and Valencia, and the still more abhorred Morabathans, the restless spirits who wished to be up and doing, for good or for evil, amid the din of kettledrums and cymbals, the glitter of lances and banners and so forth, must have had plenty of work cut out for them in the sunny Spain of those days, long ere Cervantes had laughed her 'chivalry away.'

Near the right bank of the Ebro, about ten miles from Burgos, at the base of the Montanos de Santander, stood the Convent of Miraflores; and though many times repaired and renewed, it stands there still: but it was in the zenith of its fame when one day in the June of that year, while Sancho, the ambitious King of Castile, was preparing to besiege Zamora, an armed knight reined up his horse on its most sequestered side, where one solitary window overlooked the river and all the groves of olive and myrtle that grew thereby.

Though we write of a period so remote, strange to say the window is there still in the old wall, against which the Moors have more than once hurled their strength in vain, and it projects like a carved stone cage of three pointed arches, supported by the head and wings of a time-worn and gigantic figure of grotesque design; and thereat was a fair young face, that grew bright with joy when the young knight drew near.

The latter was a typical Spaniard, vigorous, tall, and well developed in figure; black haired, with eyes full of fire; dark, well-defined eyebrows, and features sharp and grave. Save that he wore a species of Moorish basinet, bright as silver, with a tippet of mail; he was clothed in chain armour to the tips of his fingers and the soles of his feet, for the land teemed with fighting and peril, and no man ventured abroad save completely equipped. His spurs were goads without rowels, and a cross-hilted sword hung in his glittering belt.

The girl who welcomed his approach was not a religieuse, for young ladies were boarded in convents then as now; but her costume declared her to be of rank, as it was of shiny, golden-yellow silk, trimmed with black of the same material, tightly sleeved to the wrist; and she wore her thick, dark hair plaited in several divisions, after the old Gothic custom that lingered still in Spain.

Her complexion was fair and bright; her features delicate and harmonious; she was bewitching rather than beautiful—quite enough so to be the heroine even of a romance! and the Madre Abadesa of Miraflores, who had very special instructions given her regarding the care of this young lady, had accorded her the secluded apartment with the projecting window—a circumstance which led to the young knight discovering and making her acquaintance, a fact that would have filled the good lady with intense dismay—for by flirting their falcons, the young pair had come to a flirtation, and rather more, between themselves.

In those days he who bore the hawk on his left wrist in the most graceful way, was deemed the most accomplished cavalier; and to please ladies, it was the fashion to play flirty tricks with the pinions of their hawks. Thus, more than once, when passing, had the strange knight's hawk flown upward to the full length of its silken jess to flirt with the merlin on the hand of the lady, and hence it came to pass that the owners met as we find them. In those days people seem to have fallen in love more suddenly and desperately than they do in our railway times, and their love seemed always to delight in struggling with difficulties.

There was much of the Romeo and Juliet passionate tenderness in the suddenly-developed regard of these two, but we cannot suppose that the lovers of those days spoke more 'on stilts' than those of the present time. The old story that was first told in Eden will have ever the tender trivialities and endearing epithets, so we shall imagine all these said, and come to prose at once.

'Your name, señor mio—dear love rather—in all your visits you have never yet told it to me?' she said softly.

'I have to win it yet,' he replied.

'Where?' she asked.

'Where does a hidalgo win his name save in battle against the Moorish curs? When so won, you shall know it. But yours, sweet lady?'

'May not, must not, be told to one who conceals his own.'

'But I must call you something, Estrella mia,' said he tenderly.

'Then your "star" be it,' said she, laughing and kissing her hand to him, 'and my love and my prayers go with you to battle.'

'Nay, I go not to battle just now.'

'Whither then, and armed thus?'

'To fulfil a vow of vengeance on a craven who smote my aged father on the beard with his mailed hand.'

'Is it not better to forgive?'

'Some things, perhaps, but not a deed like that! Ay de mi, is it not hard for you to be shut up in this solitary place, dependent on yourself for all joy and amusement?'

'Nay, señor mio, I am content; and is not contentment joy? I shall never be happier than I am, till I rejoin my dear old father.'

'Where?' asked the knight.

'To tell that would be to disclose myself.'

'Tie a ribbon to my lance-head, thou dear one, and I shall dip it in the blood of him I have vowed to slay.'

She did so, saying in the spirit of the age:

'Rival, if you can, the Cid Rodrigo, who has been known to meet ten knights in arms, and unhorse them all; who, with his sword, slew that giant Moor, the Caliph of Cordova, and released six Christian maidens.'

The knight laughed lightly.

'Dios guarde à ustéd, mi querida!' he exclaimed, gathering up his reins, and spurring his horse—the Babieca of so many ballads and romances—for sooth to say, he was the identical Cid Rodrigo of whom she spoke; and waving a farewell to 'the sweet face at the window,' he rode off with lance and helmet flashing in the sun, and she watched him till he disappeared in the direction of Miranda—watched him departing on his deadly mission with less anxiety, perhaps, than a girl of the present day would see her lover start by express train.

The Convent of Miraflores, with its garden and vineyard, formed a kind of oasis in the long sweeping plain at the foot of the rugged Sierra; shy bustards stalked about there in the loneliness amid the silent scenery, for silent it is in Spain, where there are no singing birds. A train of mules crossing the waste, where the wild mignonette grows still in sheets of green; a solitary horseman in mail, with lance-head glittering in the sun, or a friar jogging along on a mule, alone were seen from time to time from the convent windows.

Gentle and soft in disposition, the fair pensionaria had a deal of pent-up tenderness at her disposal. Hitherto it had been bestowed upon pet birds and flowers, mingled with many prayers in chapel and much musing and reverie at the projecting window, where she would sit for hours in that non-literary age, when there were no books, no Berlin wool-work, and no pianos, gazing at the sparkling stars of the summer night or at the morning sun, as he tipped the transparent foliage of the myrtle groves and lit up the current of the Ebro; till a day came when she was roused and excited by finding a gallant hawk, hooded and plumed, flirting with the merlin on her wrist, and saw its owner, the young mailed horseman, below the window regarding her with pleasure and admiration; and as he had some trouble in luring back his bird, a secret acquaintance, that ripened into love, began between these two. The girl—for she was but a girl, and very young too—loved with all her newly-awakened woman's heart and with a wild yearning, very different, perhaps, from that of a young woman of the present day, for her life was one of intense seclusion, and he rapidly became (like Romeo) 'the god of her idolatry' in the unreasoning enthusiasm of those days of romance and chivalry.

How little could she dream that her lover was the Cid Rodrigo of Bivar, with the fame of whose exploits all Spain resounded now!

He was born at Burgos, where his father, Don Diego Lainez, was a powerful noble, and his mother was Donna Teresa, 'daughter of the Conde Don Nuno Alvarez,' as the inscription on her tomb bears now in the church of San Pedro de Cordova, near Burgos.

In the year our story opens, the aged Don Diego had been grossly insulted by the haughty and powerful Count of Gormaz, better known as Don Lozano Gomez, who dared, with his iron gauntlet, to smite him on the face in presence of Sancho the King and his Court. Mingled fury and deep dejection filled the heart of the old man at this unparalleled affront; he refused food; sleep left his eyelids, and hourly he brooded on his dire disgrace, till his son Rodrigo vowed to avenge him. Before the miraculous crucifix which is still in the Cathedral of Burgos, and which tradition avers to have been fashioned by St. Nicodemus, he had sworn to do this—and so strongly were the minds of men constituted in those days, that even as he registered the evil vow, his heart was filled by a glow of reverence and adoration—and then he rode forth in search of their enemy, for these were not times like our own, when young fellows affect to be so much 'used up' in all the joys and sorrows of the world that nothing excites them.

Quitting the vicinity of the Convent of Miraflores, he took the way to Miranda del Ebro, and had not ridden many miles when he saw an armed knight approaching, attended by four esquires, or men-at-arms, and a sense of fierce joy filled the soul of the Cid on recognising, by the blazoning of his surcoat, the very man of whom he was in search, Don Lozano, the Conde de Gormaz, delivered over to him, as he believed, specially by the hand of Heaven! Goldsmith tells us that 'it is easier to conceive than describe the complicated sensations which are felt from the pain of a recent injury and the pleasure of approaching vengeance;' and some such mingled emotion there was in the heart of the knight.

Reining up his horse in the centre of the narrow and dusty road, Rodrigo cried:

'Don Lozano—craven dog, who smote my father, defend yourself!'

'Begone, rash youth, lest I have you disarmed and scourged!' replied Lozano, lowering his lance however, as he knew that he who barred the way would not stand on trifles. 'We are five to one.'

'Villain, come on! on my side are right and nobility—worth a hundred comrades!' cried Rodrigo; and meeting at full speed with a dreadful shock, the splinters of their lances flew twenty feet into the air. Rodrigo then drew his sword, the famous Tisona, and almost ere Lozano's blade had left its sheath, he was hewn down from his saddle and bleeding in the dust, while his armed attendants in terror took to flight. Rodrigo then tore the surcoat from the dying Count, as a token of his victory—Mariana the historian, we think, adds that he cut off his head—and then rode leisurely homeward to Burgos; for if a little homicide by way of duello was thought little of here when George III. was King, it was a matter of decidedly less consequence in Spain in the days of the Cid.

At the head of three hundred mounted hidalgos, 'all wearing gold and silken raiment, with perfumed gloves, and caps of gorgeous colours,' Don Diego, now, as he thought, redeemed from disgrace, rode forth to meet the King and kiss his hand, while Rodrigo repaired to the Convent of Miraflores, with the blood-stained ribbon streaming from his casque, but the face was not at the window now. Thrice he came thither and watched and waited for it in vain, and believing that the Mother Abbess had discovered his love-affair, he returned with a heavy heart to Burgos, to take counsel of the King Sancho, though some say it was of this latter's father, King Ferdinand.

But soon tidings came to the Court of Castile that a beautiful lady, who had been foully wronged, was coming hither attended by a numerous train, to seek justice at the hands of the King. All the young knights were ready to embrace her cause, whatever it might be; but all, including the famous Bellido Dolfos, withdrew in favour of Rodrigo, who first demanded to make it his own; and yet he thought, 'God wot, why should I champion her, when my own and only love is the Recluse of Miraflores?' And then the sweet face at the window came before him in memory with all the soft brightness of an opium-eater's dream.

Clad in black, with a gauze veil over her dark dishevelled tresses, her eyes streaming with tears, the lady fell on her knees before the King, exclaiming, as the Spanish ballad has it:

'Justice, King! I am for justice—
Vengeance on a traitor knight!
Grant it me! So shall thy children
Thrive and prove thy soul's delight.'

Her voice found a painful echo in the heart of Rodrigo, who was filled with sudden horror.

'Estrella mia!' he exclaimed, as she threw up her veil; 'can such sorrow be? Are you Ximena Gomez?'

'And you—you—the slayer of my hapless father! O mi padre murio!' she cried in a piercing voice, as they both made this terrible discovery. Filial affection had been a ruling passion in the gentle mind of Ximena, who now experienced a dreadful shock on finding that it was by the hand of her lover, her father had perished. And great too was the grief and dismay of the young Cid at a catastrophe—a revelation so unexpected. A blight fell upon the hearts of both. Lozano had no son to avenge his death. He left only the helpless and weeping Ximena, whom the King raised up, and who now ceased to demand on Rodrigo the punishment she had craved before, and returned to Miraflores, vowing that she would take the veil, while Rodrigo, accompanied by his comrades, Bellido Dolfos, Pedro Bermudez, and Martin Pelaez, Ordono, and others, plunged at once into a series of warlike exploits and expeditions, seeking to appease thereby the memory of the sorrow that had fallen upon them all. 'Of all the knights, the Cid distinguished himself most against the Mussulmans,' says Voltaire briefly. 'Many of them ranged themselves under his banner, and altogether, with their squires and horsemen in armour, composed an army covered with iron and mounted on the finest horses in the country. The Cid conquered more than one Moorish king, and having at last fortified himself in the city of Alcazar, formed there a little sovereignty.'

Spanish history makes the conquered kings five in number, and states that he caused them to pay tribute after he set them at liberty, 'wherefore they served him faithfully, and called him their Cid, or Lord.' It also records that Ximena did not take the veil at Miraflores, but, curiously enough, exhibited another strange sample of the manners of the age by petitioning the King 'either to execute Rodrigo for killing her father, or give him to her for a husband. The King chose the latter, and Rodrigo joyfully received Ximena and took her to his mother, who kept her as her own child, and they were betrothed; but Rodrigo promised to gain many more battles against the Moors before he would claim her as his wife.' And so, while the Cid was winning five provinces, and gaining glory too, with the edge of Tisona among the infidels—of whom he slew an incredible number, till a saying of his is a Spanish proverb to this day, 'The more Moors the more gain'—Ximena spent her time in fear and hope among her favourite flowers and love-birds at the house of Donna Teresa, in Burgos (Coronico de los Moros, etc.).

And even after their marriage it was his boast, 'God wot! oftener is Tisona than Ximena by my side.'

After the siege of Zamora, during which King Sancho was slain—treacherously, it is averred, by Don Bellido Dolfos—the Cid, as the former was repairing to Burgos, gave him a special message to Ximena:

'Tell her that I am coming; and, as an earnest thereof, give her this ring, which I took from the hand of the Caliph of Cordova.'

Don Billido, who in his heart cherished a secret and treacherous love for the betrothed of his friend, took the ring, and, saying emphatically, 'Rodrigo, amigo mio, haya cuenta sobre mi' (i.e., 'My friend, rely on me'), rode gaily home to Burgos.

Bellido has been described as a man with a fierce hooked nose, a black beard, and slightly treacherous eyes, that, if such are the true index of the soul, might have revealed his natural character.

He gave the ring to Ximena, and told her that the Cid awaited her at Miraflores. She was surprised at this, but, never doubting the comrade of her intended husband, attended by two ladies, she set out for Miraflores, closely veiled. They rode white palfreys, with velvet caparisons embroidered with gold, and having silken bridles covered with little bells. Bellido and some ruffians, on whom he could rely, formed their escort; but they never reached Miraflores.

In due time the Cid Rodrigo came to Burgos with his heart full of Ximena, his old love for her mingling with gratitude that she had forgiven him for the terrible wrong he had done her, and already he seemed to see her winning smile and her soft and lustrous eyes, that looked so truthfully under the long, dark lashes that fringed them.

'Madre mia, where is Ximena?' he exclaimed, as he alighted from his horse.

'At Miraflores, whither you sent for her,' was the reply.

'I sent no such message—there is some mistake.'

'Or treachery,' said Donna Teresa; 'my mind misgives me, or I distrust Don Bellido.'

'Can he have decoyed her away!' exclaimed the Cid, with alarm and rage in his voice and eye.

But the old lady knew not what to think, and began to weep bitterly; and still more did she weep when sure tidings came that in revenge for repelling his addresses, the double traitor Bellido Dolfos had betrayed Ximena into the hands of Hiaja, the savage Caliph of Toledo.

Rodrigo was beside himself with sorrow and dismay; but bethought him at once of his sword, and prevailed upon his new master, Alphonso VI., King of Old Castile, to besiege the city of Toledo, offering him all his knights for that enterprise.

The report of this siege, and the cause thereof—a Christian lady of rare beauty and high rank, more than all, the betrothed of the Cid, being a captive in the hands of the odious Hiaja—brought many knights and princes from distant lands, particularly Raymond, Count of Toulouse, and two princes of the royal blood of France, of the branch of Burgundy.

Their armies covered all the fertile plain amid which Toledo stands, on a steep hill, round the base of which flows the Tagus. In some places the spears of the infantry—whose massed columns seemed like a sea of glittering steel—stood thick as upright corn; in others were the squadrons of barbed horse, the knights and men-at-arms, all clothed in chain armour, bright as winter frost or polished silver, their many-coloured plumes, their square banners, and swallow-tailed pennons streaming out upon the wind.

High overall, with its towers and the minarets of its mosques, rose the then infidel city of Toledo, the upper part of which was then, as now, girt by Roman, and the lower part by Moorish walls. History tells us that when Alphonso VI. had been a fugitive under the persecution of his brother and predecessor, Sancho, he had found an asylum at the Court of the Caliph of Toledo, who treated him with hospitality and princely distinction; and now more than one Moorish warrior rode forth from the city to reproach Alphonso with ingratitude to his benefactor, and many a terrible and remarkable combat was fought under the walls of Toledo, among the defenders of which was Don Bellido Dolfos, who had renounced his faith and adopted the turban.

In the combats before the city, the Cid was daily occupied, and many a Moorish warrior, horse and man, rolled in the dust beneath his lance or battle-axe; and his followers were enriched by the spoil, the rare weapons, the costly garments and jewels, that his hand won.

At last there came a day—the anniversary of the victory won by Mohammed at Bedr, between Mecca and Medina—when the Moors made a dreadful sortie from Toledo, led by the renegade, Bellido Dolfos; and closing in on every hand, the Christians met them with equal ardour and fury.

The hand-to-hand fighting was terrible, and the Christian knights, led by the Cid, the Count of Toulouse, and others, dashed their horses through and through the living tide of Moors that surged around them. Gorgeous as a field of flowers, with their many-coloured turbans and flowing garments, seemed the Moors as they kept shoulder to shoulder, guarding their heads with round shields covered with glittering bosses, their sharp scimitars flashing in the sun, their shouts rolling like thunder between the Tagus and the walls of Toledo, as they fought with demoniac strength and ferocity, but fought in vain. High over all the throng towered the Cid upon Babieca, its mailed flanks stuck full of arrows and even broken lances.

'Santiágo y cerra España!' he shouted ever and anon—the old war-cry of Spain—and he hewed on all sides with Tisona, till his sword-arm grew weary, and the last who bit the dust beneath it was the traitor Don Bellido, after whose fall the Moors were driven headlong into Toledo.

The siege lasted a year, during which Ximena and her two attendants occupied a noble chamber in the palace of the Caliph. Its ceiling was adorned with arabesques and fretwork, brilliant with gold and delicate pencilling. In its centre was an alabaster fountain of perfumed water, and round it were cages of gold and silver wire, full of singing birds; and there daily the three ladies offered up their prayers on their knees for the success of the Christian arms, and for their own release.

After a year and a day Toledo capitulated, and Ximena was restored to the Cid, to whom all New Castile submitted, and who took possession of it in the name of Alphonso VI.; and Madrid, then a small village, one day to become the capital of Spain, was for the first time in the hands of the Christians, and Hiaja was the last Caliph of Toledo.

To narrate all the heroic deeds performed by the Cid after his marriage would require the space of a very large volume indeed. The great dominions he acquired for his royal master the latter increased by espousing Zaid, a daughter of the Moorish King of Andalusia, after which Rodrigo, at the head of his knights, subdued the whole of Valentia. No sovereign prince in Spain was more powerful than he; but he contented himself with the title of Cid, and never assumed that of King, though he might easily have done so. No warrior in Spain did more evil to the Moors, yet he occasionally joined the Beni Huds of Zaragossa against the Counts of Barcelona, whom he conquered twice. While he never failed in his word to a Christian, he mercilessly despoiled the Jews, from two of whom he raised money for war, by depositing with them two chests which were alleged to be full of plate, but which contained only stones and sand.

His two daughters became queens of Aragon and Navarre.

Five years after the conquest of Valentia, worn out by incessant warfare, he fell ill, and was abed when tidings were brought to him that Bucar, the Moor, whom he had expelled from that kingdom, was advancing to regain it with a mighty army of horse and foot; but Tisona lay idly in the scabbard now. For seven days preceding his death, the Cid would taste nothing but a little myrrh and balsam; and on the day he departed he took a solemn farewell of Ximena, his kinsmen, and all his knights, whom he requested to carefully bury his old war-horse Babieca, 'to the end that no dogs might eat the flesh of him whose hoofs had trodden down so much dog's-flesh of the Moors.' He bequeathed a coffer of silver to the two Jews, and desired that his body should be borne to San Pedro de Cardena, and laid beside that of his mother.

He died in the year 1097; but he who had been the terror of the Moors for so many years when in life, was still fated to strike terror to them in death, even while all the host of King Bucar were rejoicing that he had passed away. At midnight, twelve days after that event, the Christians prepared to abandon the city of Valentia—'Valentia of the Cid,' as it is called to this day. His body, which had been placed, we are told, 'in a sitting posture, and left to stiffen between two boards,' was placed on the back of Babieca, upright in the saddle, with the feet tied in the stirrups. To all appearance he was completely armed; a light shield of parchment, painted with his device, was hung on his left arm; the terrible Tisona was fixed bare and upright in his sword-hand. Geronymo, Bishop of Valentia, led Babieca by the rein; Pedro Bermudez, with the banner of the Cid upraised, led the van with 400 knights; then came the Cid's body, with Ximena and her ladies, guarded by 600 men, and when day broke, though the Moors were terrified to find that the Cid was there in his saddle again, a battle ensued, and King Bucar was defeated; but Valentia was lost, and the sorrowing warriors of Rodrigo continued their retreat to Old Castile and beyond the Ebro.

At Olmedo they were met by his daughters, with all the knights of Aragon, clad in black cloaks, with hoods rent, and their shields reversed at their saddle bows; and with every religious and military solemnity incident to the time, they laid him in his grave at San Pedro de Cardena, and two years afterwards Gil Diaz, one of his most faithful followers, buried Babieca before the gate of the church there. In the course of seven centuries and a half the remains of the famous Cid Rodrigo have been removed several times, the last occasion being by the French, in 1809, to the Espolen, or public promenade of Burgos; but in 1826 they were restored to San Pedro, where the tomb and effigies of himself and Ximena now remain in a small but noble chapel. In that chapel lie the bones of Alvar Fanez Minaya, whom he was wont to call his 'right arm;' of Pedro Bermudez, Ordono, Martin Pelaez, the Asturian, and many more of his captains and valiant friends.

His statue, as 'the dread and terror of the Moorish curs,' has a prominent place in the quaint gateway of Santa Maria, erected by Charles V. at Burgos. In the time of Cervantes the saddle of Babieca was preserved in the Royal Armoury at Madrid, and Southey avers that he had personally seen and handled Tisona, now an heirloom in the family of the Marquis de Falces. On one side of the blade is graven, 'I am Tisona, made in the year 1002;' on the other is the legend, 'AVE MARIA GRATIA PLENA DOMINUS TUUM.'

THE BOY-GENERAL.

THE STORY OF JEAN CAVALIER.

THE BOY-GENERAL.
THE STORY OF JEAN CAVALIER.

'Guillot—you here! Why have you left the mountain of St. Julian?'

'To be with you, brother Jean—to fight for the Cevennes.'

'With a beardless face and a feeble hand!'

'I have about as much beard as you, mon frère; and if my hand be feeble, it has brought down many a wolf in Mialet and the Gevaudan,' replied Guillot, slapping the butt of his carbine emphatically.

The speakers were young Guillot Cavalier and his elder brother Jean, who was then, at the age of seventeen years, actually a general and second in command of the Camisard army, the Insurgent Protestants of Languedoc; who fought many a battle with Villars and De Montrevel, the best leaders of the age; who, with Roland, led the great revolt in 1703; and who in his twentieth year became a full colonel in the English army!

Both were very handsome lads, and both wore the white tunic (in Languedocian, camisa) to distinguish themselves from their enemies, and hence their well-known name of Camisards. Both were well armed, with swords, silver-mounted pistols, and short carbines; but the elder wore over his shoulder the scarf of a French general, and in his white velvet cap the wing of an eagle. Strong—and tender as strong—was the bond of affection between these two lads, who had both been born in the village of Ribaute, among the pastoral mountains north of the Valley of Garden; and though Jean was ready to face any peril and to 'do all that may become a man' for the cause in which he had been so suddenly made a leader, and in which he had already won such high distinction, his heart sank at the contemplation of Guillot—a delicate boy, and their mother's chief care—encountering the risks of that most savage and rancorous Civil War which now devastated Languedoc.

Jean, as a very little boy, had been bred a shepherd, and was afterwards apprenticed to a baker at Anduze; and it was from the employ of the latter that, with a carbine in his hand, he went forth to become a Camisard, 'and soon proved himself to be,' as history tells us, 'a most able general, as well as a powerful prophet and preacher.'

'Return, Guillot—return,' he is said to have urged again; 'our poor mother cannot spare us both.'

'La Bonne Madelon is the mother we must serve just now, and I will not quit your camp,' replied Guillot, whose eyes lit up, as he referred to one of those wild, half-frenzied, and wholly enthusiastic prophetesses, or female preachers, who thronged the camps of the Camisards, attended their councils, and followed them into battle.

'Then be it so,' said Jean Cavalier resignedly; adding, 'I have good news for you and all the faithful, Guillot. The Queen of Great Britain—the good Queen Anne—is sending a fleet to our aid.'

'Of what use will it be to us among the mountains?' asked Guillot, laughing.

'It brings us troops, Guillot—troops, who will help us to beat those of Montrevel,' replied Jean, referring to the expedition consisting of thirty-five British and twelve Dutch ships of the line, which was to sail on the 1st of July, 1703, from St. Helens, to the assistance of the Cevennois, and to the arrival of this expedition off the coast the elder Cavalier looked confidently forward to repulsing the column of De Montrevel, while Roland was fighting the King's troops elsewhere. And now to explain briefly what brought all these affairs about.

In the 'Histoire des Pasteurs du Désert,' and other annals, we are told the terrible story of that Civil War in which 30,000 Cevennois perished in battle or on the scaffold, between November, 1702, and December, 1704. Well fitted for desultory warfare are the mountains of Cevennes, with their rocky labyrinth of deep gorges and dark defiles, which a mere handful of bold peasantry were able to hold against the best troops of Louis XIV., and where, to this hour, the population is almost entirely Protestant, inhabiting some six hundred villages, which are all but inaccessible.

The white-shirted Camisards had these steep ridges to encamp on; gorges for ambuscades; forests to rally in; paths trodden only by the wolf or the fox to retreat by; and caverns which became their arsenals and fortresses. Army after army came to annihilate these peasants as heretics, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, but only to be destroyed or hurled in ruin and defeat into the valleys; but the miseries of the war, the slaughter of women and children, the burning and pillaging were fearful, and spread from thence to the ocean on the south, and the Rhone on the east, among the hundred churches of Dauphine. With much sublime piety and heroic valour the armed peasantry, as in the similar case of the Scottish Covenanters, combined a great amount of psalm-singing and the strongest religious fervour, bordering at times upon fanaticism, and prophets and prophetesses, like La Bonne Madelon, roused a wildness of enthusiasm never seen in France since the days of Joan of Arc. 'The spirit of resistance began to show itself, drawn forth by the recital of their wrongs, the denunciation of their tyrants, and the assurance of support from heaven; conventicles were held, in spite of the terrors of prison, torture, and the soldiery, and in the open air among the rocks and caverns.'

Roland and Cavalier levied their troops from the different parishes, each of which furnished its quota of armed men and money, and fresh heroes to fill up the vacancies in the ranks. Many believed themselves to be sword or bullet proof, while 'the seizures, tortures, executions by breaking on the wheel and burning alive (the common modes of punishing a Camisard), led to reprisals on their part—to the slaying of priests and the sacking and burning of Catholic churches.' But in the spirit of outrage, the French troops were far surpassed by the guerilla bands, called Florentins, in the pay of the Grand Monarque.

Jean Cavalier thought of these things keenly now, as he gazed on the soft boyish face of his brother Guillot, when posting his column of Camisards in ambush one morning, ere dawn, to give a hot welcome to the royal forces under the Sieur de Montrevel, an officer high in repute for great valour, but merciless in his severity.

The sound of the drums had died away, but the sheeny bayonets glistened in the sun, and the white Bourbon colours of the regiments, with their golden fleur-de-lys, were waving in the wind, as the column of royal troops began to penetrate a defile that was clothed with the olive, the vine, and the fig-tree. The church and hamlet there had perished by fire; the place was desolate; not a human being was visible, and without halting, the troops pushed on, with an advanced guard to 'feel the way,' in front, till they reached a portion of the defile where the impending rocks were higher, the way narrower, and the trailing vines had given place to the dense, dark, and woody luxuriance of forest trees. The flower of the column was composed of one of the four battalions of the ancient regiment of Champagne, raised so far back as the reign of Henry II.

'Halt!' cried the officer of the advanced guard, whose quick eye had detected the bright flash of steel amid the green branches. In another moment, a combination of fearful sounds burst like a storm upon the silent air, while the soldiers halted, panting with the exertion of climbing the long and steep ascent. An enormous fragment of rock, dislodged from above, crashed with the sound of thunder into the defile below, a mass that must have annihilated the entire advanced guard, had the officer not halted it in time. Other masses of rock and rubbish came thundering down, barring all advance, while more than a thousand voices made the defile re-echo with the shouts of fierce exultation, mingled with a religious hymn.

On the fallen rock in front there was suddenly seen a female, 'the Good Madelon,' kneeling in an attitude of frenzied supplication, her arms thrown wildly up, her hands clasped, her black hair floating loose, her drapery streaming on the wind, and by her side stood Cavalier. As yet no shots had been fired.

'Voilà! 'Tis the rebel Cavalier!' cried De Montrevel, almost leaping in his saddle with exultation; and his sharp words of command followed fast.

A volley was poured in front and on both flanks, and from these three points it was closely responded to; and then the soldiers, who were in great force, began, at the bayonet's point, to push up the woody sides of the defile, firing as they went and driving the peasantry before them; and meanwhile the prophetess—she of the supposed charmed life, La Bonne Madelon, remained on her knees immovable, absorbed in prayer, half seen, half hidden, amid the eddying smoke. Guillot strove to lead her aside, but in vain; and when a bullet grazed his cheek, he rushed away to join his brother, who, like him, strongly believed in the power of immunity from death possessed by Madelon, and was now busy in the act of concentrating and directing the operations of his scattered followers.

It is said that when the prophetess, whose eyes had in them the gleam of insanity, felt the bullets whiz about her, a sense of danger came with the sound, and that she opened her eyes and glanced about her, as if seeking to escape, but she was grasped by four soldiers of the line; and that when the Camisards beheld her feeble hands bound with cords, while her head sunk on her breast, and she was dragged away, they became for a time panic-stricken, and though they hovered on the precipice above the corpse-strewn defile, they ceased to fire, and gazed on her conveyance to the rear in a species of stupid wonder.

'She can save herself,' Cavalier is reported to have said, so perfect was his belief, as a credulous mountaineer, in her divine mission; 'we cannot rescue her now, but,' he added, lifting his cap and looking upward, 'some miracle from heaven will.'

But no miracle was wrought, and with his solitary prisoner the Sieur de Montrevel marched down, somewhat triumphantly, to the nearest town, the white houses of which could be seen a league or two distant from the mountains. That night Guillot, with a chosen party, stole from them, and entered the silent street, from which all the inhabitants had fled, hoping to find some trace of the Good Madelon, perhaps in the public prison, from which they might see a way to free her.

But Montrevel and his men had departed, leaving in the market-place a fearful object, which greeted the eyes of Guillot and his followers when daybreak came in. Suspended by the neck from a gibbet in the centre of the place hung the body of their prophetess in its well-known drapery, and literally full of bullets, as the departing Florentins had made a target of it. She had been a beautiful woman, whose husband and children had been cruelly destroyed before her, and sorrow had doubtless turned her brain.

Accustomed though they had become to atrocities, the Camisards gazed at each other in horror at this spectacle, and then bore away her body for interment, sadly, slowly, and reverentially, and from the side of her grave went up the united vow for vengeance!

The fleet of Sir Cloudesley Shovel failed to land either succour or allies, and returning to England, says Schomberg, in his 'Naval Chronology,' was off the Isle of Wight on the 16th of November; so the Camisards now had no hopes but in their own hearts and hands.

Intent on avenging the barbarous death of the Good Madelon, Jean Cavalier, with 1,500 Camisards, took post near La Tour de Bellot, a deserted sheep-farm and watch-tower to the westward of Alais, from whence he meant to issue and attack De Montrevel, who was, he believed, ignorant of his vicinity, and who, keeping somewhat careless guard, was encamped not far off among the mountains. In the afternoon the Camisards were plentifully supplied with food by a wealthy miller on the Garden, whom they believed to be true to their cause. By nightfall, Cavalier had reconnoitred all the country; and as the sun set, dark clouds gathered fast, and premature twilight shrouded the valleys. Through them the wind howled, foreboding a storm, and Cavalier laughed with stern joy, when telling his followers that their attack would be veiled by the war of the elements.

He had laid out his plans with wisdom, and alone, and a little apart from his troops, was waiting the time to give them the signal to move, when from all points around the Tour de Bellot burst forth a half-random storm of musketry, and the boom of cannon announced that the King's troops were upon him!

'We are betrayed!' cried Guillot, rushing bare-headed to his side.

'By whom?'

'The miller of the Garden!' replied Guillot, passionately.

And so it was; ere the Camisard outposts had been able to give the alarm, they were cut to pieces, and only Cavalier and a few of his men were able to sally from the tower before it was invested on all sides. Guillot and others were shut up in it! Furious were the efforts made by Cavalier—efforts urged by filial love and despair—to drive back the soldiers and relieve those in the tower, from the windows and every cranny of which its slender garrison poured a deadly fire for eight hours, till their ammunition was expended, and then the edifice was set on fire; 290 perished in it, says history, 100 Camisards lay dead outside, and around it were 1,200 of the King's troops killed or wounded!

Compelled to retire some distance, yet fighting every inch of the way, Cavalier beheld, with horror, the tower sheeted with fire. His soul died within him as he thought of his brother, the boyish and gentle Guillot, and all who were perishing there, and he strove to fight his way back just as day was breaking, and by the light of it he could see, apart from all the hurly-burly of the strife, a remarkable combat proceeding, and on the very verge of a cliff close by.

It was a boy—a boy, sword in hand—Guillot, fighting with a young officer of the Regiment of Champagne. His cap was off—his white camisa was stained by blood and dirt and scorched with fire. Borne back by bayonets, Cavalier could only look on in agony, as he saw his brother driven step by step to the very verge of the dreadful cliff behind him, and of which he was unaware. Unyielding, though retreating, Guillot kept parrying thrusts and warding cuts with consummate skill, till a cry escaped him, and he vanished!

A groan from the breast of Cavalier echoed that cry; a mist came over his sight, yet he continued to fight, like a blind man, to cover the retreat of the wreck of his followers, by whom wild justice was soon after done on the treacherous miller. He was seized, condemned to death, and led out to execution in front of the insurgents, who, according to their wont, knelt around him, while offering up prayers for his soul. His parting embrace was refused by his two sons, who served under Cavalier, and who looked on unmoved by the terrible death he had to die.

That his brother Guillot might perish in battle, or by torture in the hands of the enemy, Cavalier had always dreaded; but the catastrophe by which he lost him was altogether unconceived: and the fortunes of the conflict led him far from the vicinity of La Tour de Bellot, thus he could neither search for the remains of Guillot, nor bestow funeral rites upon them.

For months the war went on. The bright valour and cool judgment of Cavalier, 'the Boy-General,' for such he was, exalted him still more above all other leaders of the Camisards, and especially so when he succeeded in utterly defeating a considerable body of the royal troops at Martinarque, under the Sieur de Montrevel, who commanded them.

The 6th of April, 1704, saw Cavalier again betrayed by one he trusted. At the head of 900 foot and 300 horse, all well equipped, he entered the Vaunage, or Valley of Noyes, so called from a little town of that name, in the fertile district westward of Nismes, intending to waylay the Marechal de Montrevel, who was on the way to Montpellier, but was himself lured into a dreadful ambuscade, and surrounded on all sides by the royal troops, including a great body of King James's-Irish, who had recently fought at the battle of the Boyne.

On all sides burst forth from amid the shelter of trees and hedgerows the withering fire of musketry, the boom of the cannon, and the hissing showers of grape.

Undismayed by the sudden scene of carnage, and by numbers six times exceeding his own, Cavalier, perceiving a design of the enemy to completely cut him off, 'wheeled his column rapidly round under the hottest fire, and in the face of a charge of bayonets drew off his men, retreating in echelon—a masterly manœuvre of the baker's boy, which drew forth the admiration of the Marechal Duc de Villars.'

Eventually, however, his retreat was cut off, the royal troops occupied every height, every avenue and pass that remained, and nothing was left for him now but to cut his way out at all hazards, or die! He was not long in choosing. 'Throwing aside his magnificent uniform and white plume, he put on a common dress,' we are told, and ordering his comrades to close their ranks, made a headlong dash at the enemy.

'Notre Dame de frappe morte!' was the shout of the regiments of Champagne and Normandy, as they brought their bayonets to the charge; but Cavalier broke through the first line. In the attack on the second, he was singled out when discovered, and a soldier seized the bridle of his horse, but had his hand hewn off by a young Camisard wearing a scarlet scarf over his white camisa. He was next grasped by a dragoon, whom he pistolled; but now, beyond appeared another line and a whole squadron of dragoons barring his way to the Pont de Rosni—the only issue. Panic-struck, his fugitive horsemen poured madly down upon it sword in hand, forgetful for a time of their leader, who was in the rear, and who would probably have been cut off but for the young Camisard in the red scarf—his brother—his brother Guillot (of whose escape anon), who suddenly appeared upon the ground—'his brother, a boy ten (?) years old,' says the French account, 'who drew his horse across the bridge, and with a pistol presented to the fugitives, summoned them to defend their chief and not abandon him.'

Cavalier, with the remainder of his force, escaped into the forest of Cannes. This battle extended over all the ground from the mill of Langlode to the town of Noyes. Of one thousand dead who lay on the field, one half were Camisards. During the whole of the conflict one of their prophets, named Daniel Gui, stood on the summit of a rock, amid six female enthusiasts, three of whom were afterwards shot, invoking the God of Battles to favour their cause.

The miraculous restoration of his brother—for such it was deemed—alone was a palliation to the heart of Cavalier for the deep mortification of his defeat; and yet it had come about simply enough. Recent rains had formed a deep basin of water under the cliff from which he fell, in a place where jagged rocks alone had been visible shortly before. Sinking, he rose to the surface, struggled to the bank, faint and wounded, and had found shelter, till well and whole, in a shepherd's hut, till he could join his brother in the Valley of the Noyes, and now tender indeed was their meeting and the mutual embrace they gave each other.

But brief time had they for mutual explanations, as ere long the report of musketry began to wake the echoes of the forest, and Daniel Gui came rushing in with tidings that the Sieur de Lalande was putting to the sword the entire inhabitants of the village of Euzet. Entering it suddenly, he had found a bullock newly-skinned, and bales of hams, bread, and sausages made up for the men of Cavalier, whom he at once traced and attacked with vigour, and defeated with the loss of 170 men. Final vengeance now fell on the unhappy villagers of Euzet, which, together with a cavern close by, was found to be full of the wounded, ammunition, medicine, and stores of Cavalier's forces. This sealed the fate of the former; and every human being lying there was slaughtered, including the helpless creatures in the cavern. Such was the awful system on which this war was carried on.

Cavalier's commissariat was supplied by requisitions upon districts, irrespective of their faith, and when not given with goodwill, he was compelled to write thus to the chief magistrate of the place:

'MM.,—Vous ne manquerez point de nous préparer demain le diner, son peine d'être assiégé et mis à feu et à sang!—CAVALIER.'

But it was while he was still struggling manfully and bravely to maintain a desperate cause against the whole force of the French army that the crushing intelligence came to him of the fall of his compatriot, Roland Laporte. This was on the 13th of August, 1704, at Castelnau, near the Ners, a river which in winter rolls down from the mountains in a mighty flood.

His presence there would seem to have been betrayed to the Duc de Villars. At midnight, when he and his companions were fast asleep, the sentinel on the tower-head suddenly heard amid the stillness of the hour the distant noise of horses approaching at a furious gallop, and gave the alarm just as a column of cavalry was entering the town.

Half-clad and half-armed, the Camisards rushed to the stables, and mounting their horses bare-backed, rode off without saddles, bits, or spurs; thus they were soon after taken in a deep hollow way, and compelled to halt and dismount. Planting his back against an aged olive tree, Roland made a desperate resistance, to every summons of 'Rendez vous! bas les armes coquin!' replying by a blow of his sword, or shots from his pistols, a row of which he carried in his girdle. He slew several dragoons, ere one by a musket-shot brought him down, by a mortal wound, on which his comrades threw themselves above his body, and were seized and bound.

On the 16th of August his body was dragged at the tail of a cart into Nismes and burnt, while five of his companions were broken alive on the wheel around his funeral pyre. Many Camisards perished thus here, the most memorable executions being those of Catenat and Ravenel, who were burned alive, almost within sight of the battle-field on which they had defeated the Comte de Broglie.

Jean Cavalier found himself almost alone now, yet his spirit did not quail.

Marshal Villars had now come to the conclusion that the warfare seemed likely to become interminable; that it was possible to harass the hardy mountaineers of the Cevennes, but not to conquer them. So resolute was the spirit of the Camisards, so impregnable their hilly fortresses, that all hope of ending the war so long as one was left alive, was relinquished by this able officer; and we are told that in the heart of Cavalier, who beheld the sufferings of the peasantry from incessant toil and famine, there rose a great longing for peace, if it were possible with safety and honour; and on ascertaining that 10,000 of the Huguenots were ready to lay down their arms and submit to the king, he consented to hold an amicable parley with any officer the latter might send.

Cavalier's first interview was with Lalande, who was sent by Marshal Villars. 'Lalande surveyed the worn garments and pale cheeks of the young hero, whose deeds had reached the ears and troubled the mind of Louis XIV., in the midst of his mighty foreign wars; he looked upon the bodyguard of the rebel chief, and saw there, too, signs of poverty and extreme physical suffering, and believed that he knew how to treat with men in such a condition.'

He proffered a large sum in gold, not a coin of which Cavalier would touch, though he allowed his followers to accept it for their starving wives and children; and he made preliminary arrangements with Lalande for a final interview with the Marechal Duc de Villars.

It was in the summer of 1704 that the latter, the renowned antagonist of Marlborough, entered the garden of the Recollets, at St. Cesaire, near Nismes, the site of which is now occupied by a theatre, to discuss peace and war with 'the Boy-General,' Jean Cavalier, who, resolved to produce all the effect he could, appeared on this occasion magnificently mounted, with a richly-laced coat, and a hat plumed with white feathers. Cavalier's young face looked sad, we are told, and the tone of his voice was melancholy, 'and Villars looked on him with a deep admiration and sympathy.'

On this occasion Cavalier's bodyguard was a mounted force of Camisards in white tunics.

The result of this memorable conference was, that the insurgents laid down their arms on the assurances of justice and tolerance in religion to the persecuted Protestants of the Cevennes, and flattering promises of reward and rank in the army of France to Jean Cavalier; but neither one nor the other was destined to be kept or fulfilled, and the Place de Boucarini, at Nismes, was soon deluged with the blood of all who fell into the hands of the Government. The Camisards now repudiated the treaty made by Cavalier, and, finding himself reviled by many of these on the one hand, and neglected by the Court on the other he became an exile, and entered the army of Queen Anne at the head of a regiment entirely formed of Huguenots.

As a colonel, in his twentieth year, he fought in the British Army in Spain at the Battle of Almanza, under the Earl of Peterborough, and there, in the defeat, his battalion of Camisards was almost cut to pieces by the victorious French, and there young Guillot, its major, died sword in hand.

Of the after life of Cavalier we can trace little. It is only known that by the British Government he was made Governor of the Isle of Jersey, and died at Chelsea in the May of 1740.

It has been more than once asserted that he died in the Hospital a pensioner, which is a mistake the records there distinctly prove.

In the year before his death, on the 2nd of July, he and his countryman, Colonel Balthazar Rivas de Foisac, were appointed Major-Generals in the British Army.

THE

BUGLE-BOY OF BADAJOZ.