Still, a strange thing happened. Of four hundred shots, fired into a dense crowd of fifteen hundred men, only three had hit the mark.
More humane than their chief, nearly all the soldiers had fired in the air.
But the duke had not time to investigate this strange occurrence now. He leaped into the saddle, and placing himself at the head of about five hundred men, cavalry and infantry, he started in pursuit of the fugitives.
The peasants had the advantage of their pursuers by about twenty minutes.
Poor simple creatures!
They might easily have made their escape. They had only to disperse, to scatter; but, unfortunately, the thought never once occurred to the majority of them. A few ran across the fields and gained their homes in safety; the others, frantic and despairing, overcome by the strange vertigo that seizes the bravest in moments of panic, fled like a flock of frightened sheep.
Fear lent them wings, for did they not hear each moment shots fired at the laggards?
But there was one man, who, at each of these detonations, received, as it were, his death-wound—this man was Lacheneur.
He had reached the Croix d’Arcy just as the firing at Montaignac began. He listened and waited. No discharge of musketry replied to the first fusillade. There might have been butchery, but combat, no.
Lacheneur understood it all; and he wished that every ball had pierced his own heart.