Thus armed, the combatants repair to their respective encampments; refreshments are served out to them under tents, and this time the solids are washed down with wine from the best cellars of the town. At the bugle-call they emerge from their encampments and form in line of battle; then, preceded by their military bands and with banners unfurled, they slowly gain the side of the bridge they have sworn to defend. The banners were attached outside the parapets. On each side plans of attack and defence had been prepared, and so carefully elaborated as to elicit the admiration of a most competent judge in military matters, namely, the General of Division Duchesne. He had made the campaigns of Italy, Holland, and Egypt, and considered them (the plans) samples of strategical skill, from the manner in which the forces were disposed for an engagement in which everything depended on physical strength.
Meanwhile the two parties had been pressing against the barrier for some minutes. Three struck from the cathedral clock; at the same time the air rings with the firing of the cannon, the signal so impatiently waited for. The obstacle dividing the two contingents is lifted, and the attack commences with a tenacity of which none but an eyewitness can conceive an approximate idea. All kinds of cries fall upon the ear. To the majority of the spectators the interest of the whole is heightened by the promptings of greed, of pride, and even of love. Each sign of success is greeted with deafening applause. The bravery of the combatants rises into frenzy, and the hand-to-hand struggle becomes a real battle with its fury and its alternating incidents.
While the two troops assail each other with equal fury, each side flings long ropes with iron crooks attached to them into their adversaries’ ranks. The crook catches a leg, a man is down, and he is dragged away captive. It is simply a modification of the lasso practised by the Tartars on the Yedissen steppes: the running knot is thrown around the necks of the wild horses and they are checked in their stampede.
The half-hour after three had struck, and the two contingents, pressed tightly against each other, seemed so many athletes who, unable to make their opponents budge, spend their strength in protracted efforts. Not an inch of ground had been gained; another ten minutes, and Victory herself, in her indecisive mood, would have claimed, as in days of old, her share of the glory.
The two masses were so tightly wedged against each other as to make fighting impossible. They were simply like the waves of two meeting streams. In order to give further weight to the men, each leader ordered his band of musicians to advance, which movement again only equalised the power of resistance. On the two banks a mournful silence followed the joyous acclamations of the previous half-hour; the general deadlock left little or no hope of a decisive result. At last two champions of the hindmost ranks of Sainte-Marie hit upon a most audacious movement. In spite of the weight of their armour, they climb on to the shoulders of their comrades, and for a few moments remain erect on the flooring of brass and steel; in other words, the large helmets so closely serried as to leave little or no space between them. Advancing carefully from helmet to helmet, they reach the first rows of their own contingent. From the height of that living fortress, as from the height of a war-chariot, they shower tremendous blows with their clubs on the heads of their adversaries. The latter, though protected by the metal covering their skulls, finally reel and fall down. The breach is made, a thousand cries of victory from the side of Sainte-Marie are heard, and its mass advances. In a short time it has over-stepped its own line of demarcation, and the banner of St. Anthony is carried away by the two aerial champions.
The leader of the opposite forces in vain attempts a defence similar to the attack. Some St. Anthony champions also climb on to their fellows’ shoulders. There is positively a second combat on the heads of the combatants, without, however, detracting in the slightest from the fury of the onslaught of those who are on terra firma. It was indeed something marvellous to see those two stages of warriors dealing each other blows and using all the combined resources of strength. The struggle was both violent and intense; at one moment it seemed that the banner of St. Anthony was going to be recovered. One of the champions of Sainte-Marie, the nearest to the parapet, took his club in both hands, and with a swing brought it down on the head of the adversary facing him. The latter reels, loses his balance, and drops into the Arno. Frenzied clamour from both sides rends the air. The army of the Holy Virgin redoubles its efforts and stands like a rock on the ground it has gained. Joshua was not there to stop the sun in its course. The third quarter of the hour has struck, the cannon gives the signal and the barrier is lowered. The army of the Holy Virgin remains the victor; the honour of the day belongs incontestably to it.
Immediately the victorious quarter rang with joy and inspiriting blasts of trumpets, while a mournful silence and a feeling of disgrace fell upon that of the vanquished. It is a true saying that men derive the energy of their feelings from the sky under which they were born. Hence, while the champions of the Holy Virgin were loaded with caresses, praise, and gifts, carried in triumph and enthusiastically welcomed by their families, those of St. Anthony silently regained their domiciles, where sarcasm and reproaches awaited them, and where they perhaps deemed themselves fortunate if, for balm to their wounds, they did not get additional blows from their own flesh and blood.
At night the victorious quarter was agog with balls, concerts, music, the tooting of horns, the whole of it only ceasing with morn. On the bank opposite everything remained pitch dark. The quarter conveyed the impression of being inhabited by ghosts.
Nothing, I fancy, can be compared to that scene. For more than a century, Europe had not witnessed a similar spectacle, where everything, arms as well as wounds, was altogether serious. And he who had not seen a real battle might have well believed that he was witnessing one by going back in his imagination to an epoch when cannon was not as yet the last argument of kings.