My Memoirs, Vol. III, 1826 to 1830

by Alexandre Dumas

We have forgotten to mention that there were specimens of all kinds of humanity in the convoy, including six or eight Councillors of State, whom Napoleon was sending ready-made to his brother! So a doctor was easily found. The doctor attended to the child and, luckily, the shock had been worse than the actual blow; the wound was therefore more terrifying to look at than dangerous and, although the mark of the cut can even to-day be plainly seen, where Hugo parts his hair, by the next day the child had forgotten all about it; and like Kléber after the capture of Alexandria, he was ready to take part in besieging a fresh town.

So far, nothing serious had disturbed the march of the caravan. Occasionally, a bullet from a hidden guerillero would bury itself in the thickness of the panels of one of the carriages, or break the glass of a door; and Colonel Montfort would send a score of hussars to search among the undergrowth from whence the stray shot had come; but it was easy enough in that part of the country through which the travellers were then passing for the culprit to slip down the sides of a ravine or gain a mountain gorge and put himself beyond reach.

One night, however, they had a genuine alarm, and expected this time that they were really face to face with a formidable enemy. They had traversed nearly two-thirds of their way and had reached the small town of Valverde, a collection of sombre-looking houses with high walls and no windows, looking like a nest of fortresses of the time of Louis XIII. As usual, the escort had set up its camp at the entrance to the town, sentinels had been posted in all directions and the travellers and officers had received their billeting papers for the houses of the principal inhabitants. Madame Hugo, as usual, lodged with the Alcade. As he left her, the Duc de Cotadilla said—

"Be on your guard, madame; we are in the heart of the insurrection, and your host has not only a very bad reputation but also a very evil-looking face."

Madame Hugo could only judge of the face, and her opinion thereon entirely coincided with that of the Duc de Cotadilla. Moreover, the inside of the house accorded with the appearance of the town and with her host: doors were barred with iron and lined with sheet-lead; there were severe-looking vestibules as dark as the passages in a convent, huge bare-walled rooms with only the earth for flooring on the ground floor and bricks on the first floor; and the furniture was composed of wooden benches and leather arm-chairs. When Madame Hugo had seen over the whole house to select the rooms that suited her best, she decided on an immense low room on the ground floor, lighted by a branch of pinewood burning in an iron hand which was attached to the wall; she drew ont her bed from the immense portmanteau which enclosed it during the day, and put the children to sleep on a dozen sheepskins, placed M. du Saillant in a recess adjoining the large room and, when night fell, awaited what might happen. The outlook was not a cheerful one; the events that might be expected were terrible to contemplate, for the Spanish had been steadily gaining a reputation for ferocity since the beginning of the war; and the tortures they invented for the wretched Frenchmen who fell into their hands were unmentionably horrible. Among primitive peoples, who are wholly savage, like the Turks, for instance, you know what to expect; it will be one of their three methods of torture and execution—chopping off heads, strangulation or impalement; and the imagination of the executioners does not exceed those three ways of killing. But with a civilised people like the Spanish, who had their Charles V., Philip II. and the Inquisition, it is another matter: the miserable man under sentence of death may be roasted over a slow fire, sawed between two planks, put on the rack, hung by the feet; or have his entrails unravelled like a skein of cotton; or his body slashed in slices like a sixteenth-century doublet; or his eyes put out, his nose, his tongue or his hands cut off. Spanish executioners are men of resource! Besides, if they had exhausted their own imagination, there remained the resources of the Inquisition, for it should be borne in mind that the men who fought against us were Catholics first and foremost, priests and saints!

In spite of reflections like these, dispiriting enough to a mother who is answerable to her husband for the safety of herself and their three children, Madame Hugo began to fall asleep, envying the tranquillity of Colonel du Saillant, who had been asleep a long time in the recess they had discovered adjoining this low room, when, suddenly, the cry "To arms!" and the noise of sharp firing roused her. She had gone to bed with very few clothes off, especially after the warning she had received, and she was up in an instant. The fusillade went on continuously, though somewhat irregularly directed, and the cries "To arms!" redoubled. In the midst of these cries, someone knocked on the outside shutters of the large low room, loud enough to be heard, but meant evidently to be reassuring. Madame Hugo opened the shutter. It was Colonel Montfort, who had knocked on the shutters with the hilt of his sword.

"It is I, madame," he said, "Colonel Montfort, who have the honour to address you. The enemy has attacked us, but we have taken measures to give it a warm reception, therefore be tranquil. In any case, please barricade yourself in here, and only open to the Duc de Cotadilla or to myself."

Madame Hugo thanked Colonel Montfort for his attentive care; M. du Saillant went out to him, and she shut the door fast behind him, barricaded it, with every available precaution, and waited further developments. The firing continued for some time, and even occasionally seemed to increase; finally it decreased and gradually died out. Which had been victorious? French or Spaniards? She did not know as yet, but she had good hopes that the French had won, and soon there came a fresh rapping on the shutters, and, amidst shouts of laughter, which Madame Hugo recognised as coming from the Duc de Cotadilla, Colonel Montfort and her husband's aide-de-camp, she was asked to open the great door. This done, the three officers entered.

A trumpeter of the hussars had discovered, just outside the town, a bit of meadow where he thought that his horse, to which he was greatly attached, could find a little fresh grass when the sentinels had been placed, he had picketed his horse in this tiny oasis. A peasant had noticed and wondered at this confidence and, when night fell, he had slipped from bush to bush, in order to steal the horse; the animal had allowed him to approach until he felt the picket detached, when, with a violent shake, he freed himself from his thief, and rushed off neighing and rearing back to the French camp. The sentinel advanced shouting, "Who goes there?" And the horse, of course, went past him without replying. The sentinel fired and fell back on the first outpost, crying, "To arms!" The first outpost fired and cried, "To arms!" and then the soldiers in their turn had run to their piled and loaded muskets, fired and shouted, "To arms!" Hence the alarm, the firing, the fearful tumult, which for an hour had filled the little town of Valverde with fire, smoke and noise.