The Whites and the Blues

by Alexandre Dumas

Cadoudal and his forty horsemen discarded their horses, which were now useless, and, rifle in hand, were about to join in the struggle, when Mademoiselle de Fargas, who was watching the sanguinary drama with all the ardor of her lion-like nature, suddenly heard the gallop of a horse coming along the road from Vitré, and, turning, she recognized the man with whom she had travelled.

When he saw that Georges and his companions were about to join in the fray, he attracted their attention by shouting: "Stop! Wait for me!"

And no sooner had he joined them, amid cries of welcome, than he leaped from his horse, tossed the bridle to a Chouan to hold, and threw himself upon Cadoudal's neck. Then he selected a rifle, filled his pockets with cartridges, and followed by twenty men, Cadoudal taking the others, he darted into the thicket which lined the left bank of the road, while the general disappeared on the right side.

The redoubled fusillade announced the arrival of these reinforcements for the Whites.

Mademoiselle de Fargas was too much absorbed in watching what was passing before her to pay much attention to Monsieur d'Argentan's conduct. She understood simply that the pretended tax-gatherer of Dinan was in reality a disguised royalist—which fact explained why he was bringing money from Paris to Brittany, instead of sending it from Brittany to Paris.

The heroic efforts of this little band of five hundred men would furnish material for an epic poem.

Their courage was all the greater as they were, as we have said, fighting against an invisible danger, calling to it, defying it, and shrieking with rage because it would not rise up before them. Nothing could make the Chouans change their deadly tactics. Death flew whistling by, and the Blues simply saw the smoke and heard the report. A man would throw up his hands and fall back in the saddle, and the frightened riderless animal would dash wildly into the thicket and gallop madly on until an invisible hand checked him, and tied his bridle to the branch of a tree.

Here and there in the fields some one of these horses could be seen rearing and tugging at his bridle, trying to escape from the strange master who had just made him prisoner. The butchery lasted an hour. At the end of that time, they heard the drums beating the charge. It was the infantry coming to the assistance of the cavalry.

Colonel Hulot commanded in person. His first care, with the infallible glance of a veteran, had been to get an accurate idea of the ground, and to open an exit for the unfortunates who were confined in this sort of a tunnel into which the Chouans had converted the road.

He had the horses unharnessed from the gun-carriages, the artillery being useless for the sort of combat upon which they were about to engage. The horses were then attached to the fallen trees, which they dragged from their transverse position across the road, thus opening a means of retreat for the stricken cavalry. Then he sent five hundred men to charge along the road, with levelled bayonets, just as if the enemy had been in sight. He ordered the most expert of his sharpshooters to return shot for shot—in other words, whenever a puff of smoke appeared they were to fire straight at it, since it denoted that a man was lying in ambush at that spot. This was almost the only way to reply to the fusillade of the Whites, who almost invariably shot from cover, and rarely showed themselves save at the moment of taking aim. Habit, and, above all, necessity, had made many of the Republican soldiers exceedingly skilful at this quick exchange of shots.