THE BATTLE
Cadoudal exchanged a few words with his comrades, and four of them, who were not mounted and who acted as officers to carry his orders into the underbrush and heather, glided away immediately, and passing between the thorn bushes, reached the foot of two sturdy oaks, whose broad branches and thick foliage made a rampart against the sun. These two oaks stood at the two ends of the avenue which the road coming from the town to the crossroad formed.
When they reached this spot, they paused, ready to execute some manœuvre, which no one who did not know the general's plan of battle could have divined.
Diane's carriage was drawn into the crossroad, and she herself was stationed on a little knoll some thirty paces from the road, among a cluster of trees, where she could see without being seen.
The chasseurs and hussars advanced cautiously at a foot-pace. An advance-guard of ten men preceded them, and, like the rest of the troop, marched with the greatest caution. When the last man had left the town, a shot was heard, and a man in the rear-guard fell. This was a signal. The two crests of the ravine which formed the road blazed forth fire. The Blues sought in vain for the enemy who had attacked them. They saw the fire and the smoke, and they felt the bullets, but they could distinguish neither the weapon nor the man who carried it. Confusion seized upon them once they felt themselves the prey of an invisible foe. Each one sought, not to escape death, but to give death for death. Some retraced their steps, others forced their horses to climb the slope; but no sooner did a man's head rise above the crest of the slope than he was shot at close quarters and fell back, overturning his horse with him like the Amazons in Rubens' "Battle of Thermodon."
Others again, and they were the more numerous, pushed forward, hoping to pass the ambush and thus escape the net which had trapped them. But Cadoudal, when he saw this movement, for which he had apparently been waiting, set spurs to his horse, and galloped out, followed by his forty men, to meet them. They fought along the road for about two hundred yards.
Those who attempted to turn back found the way barred by Chouans, who discharged their pieces in their faces and forced them to return. Finally those who pushed forward came in contact with Cadoudal and his men. But after a few moments the latter appeared to give way and fled.
The Blues at once started in pursuit. But scarcely had the last Chouan passed the two great oaks which were guarded by the four men than they began to push with all their strength, and the two giants, which had been previously separated from their roots with an axe, bent toward each other and fell with crashing branches and a tremendous noise upon the road, which they thus closed by an impassable barrier. The Blues were following the Whites so closely that two of their number, together with their horses, were crushed by the falling trees.
The same manœuvre took place at the other end of the road. Two trees dislodged from their bases fell across the road, and their interlacing branches formed a barrier like that which had just closed up the other end of the road. Thus men and horses were caught as in a huge arena, and each Chouan could choose his man, aim at discretion, and bring him down without fail.