Five minutes later, the great guns on both sides discharged their volleys again, with but a single report, like two tempests in fierce combat with each other, like two peals of thunder coming at the same instant.
As it was perfectly calm, and a dense smoke hung over the battle-field, besiegers and besieged soon disappeared in a cloud, which was rent from time to time by the vivid flash of the artillery.
From time to time men could be seen coming out from the cloud in the rear of the royal army, dragging themselves along with difficulty, and leaving a bloody track behind them, until they fell exhausted.
The number of wounded rapidly increased, and the roar of the musketry and artillery continued. The royal artillery, however, were firing irregularly and at random; for amid the dense smoke the gunners could not distinguish friends from foes. The gunners in the fort on the other hand had none but foes in front of them, and their fire was more constant and more deadly than ever.
At last the royal artillery ceased firing altogether; it was evident that the assault had begun in good earnest, and that a hand-to-hand combat was in progress.
There was a moment of keenest anxiety on the part of the spectators, during which the smoke, the firing having greatly slackened, rose slowly into the air. The royal army was then seen to be falling back in disorder, leaving heaps of dead at the foot of the ramparts. A sort of breach had been made; a few palisades were torn away, leaving an opening; but that opening bristled with men and pikes and muskets, and amid those men, covered with blood, and yet as calm and cool as if he were a disinterested spectator of the tragedy in which he was playing so terrible a part, stood Richon, holding in his hand an axe all notched by the blows he had struck with it.
Some invisible power seemed to protect him, for he was constantly in the thickest of the firing, always in the front rank, always standing erect and with uncovered head, and yet no bullet had struck him, no pike had touched him; he was as invulnerable as he was impassive.
Thrice Maréchal de La Meilleraie in person led the royal troops to the assault; thrice the royal troops were beaten back before the eyes of the king and queen.
Great tears rolled silently down the pale cheeks of the boy king; Anne of Austria wrung her hands and muttered:—
"Oh! that man! that man! If he ever falls into my hands I will make a terrible example of him!"