On the morning of the 25th of November the weather, hitherto fine, suddenly changed. About nine a fine snow fell, and was soon after followed by a deluge of rain, accompanied by squalls. During the night of the 15th, the men on guard in the trenches were up to their knees in water; it was impossible to work. The rain continued regular and heavy during the whole of the 16th. Rincourt took advantage of this disagreeable state of the weather. The bridge which had been thrown across the river by the Imperialists, below the stone bridge, consisted of a floor six feet wide, laid partly on trestles, partly on boats collected in the valley and linked together. This was a clumsy contrivance, for the water on beginning to rise lifted the boats proportionately so that it was extremely difficult to maintain the connexion between the floor resting on the boats and that laid on the trestles. Accordingly in spite of the rain the besiegers worked all day on the 16th to prevent the rupture of this bridge. The governor who passed all that day in examining the environs, had perceived from the top of the platform of the cavalier the precarious condition of the besieger's bridge, and at night he had some large trunks of trees thrown over the parapet of the stone bridge, which struck against the boats and trestles and impeded the current, which kept on rising. At midnight twenty of these trunks had accumulated against the boats, and the river continuing to rise, the bridge was carried away. A light appearing for an instant at a certain point of the valley of Abonne apprised Rincourt of the destruction of the bridge. The signal was given by one of the spies.
Secure, therefore, against being cut off on his right by the Imperialists, the governor sent out three hundred militiamen and three companies of soldiers, kept under arms after supper, by the western gate, next to the castle; and another three hundred of the militia, and two companies by the eastern gate. This second troop was commissioned to make for the causeway of the pool, attack the enemy's post established beyond the embankment, outflank it on his right and pursue it hotly along the rivulet. Rincourt commanded the foremost troop of six hundred men. He descended the slope of the bridge, crossed the rivulet by means of planks and trestles which he had ready prepared behind the cavalier, and attacked the post of three hundred men established at two hundred yards below the stone bridge. Finding themselves attacked by a body much more numerous than themselves, they quitted the bivouacs in all haste, and set off along the left bank of the rivulet to join the second post (consisting) of three hundred men established between them and the dam, as the bridge was broken. This was just what Rincourt anticipated. At the same time, in an opposite direction the post at the pool embankment was in flight, pursued by the second troop of the besieged,—depending on getting the support of the post at the rivulet and that of the bridge, since they were outflanked on their right. These two posts—that of the bridge and that of the embankment—retreating as fast as the nature of the ground permitted in an inverse direction, to the post at the rivulet, the latter supposed it was an attack, and fired several arquebusades at the two troops of these outposts. They recognised each other with difficulty, and these eight hundred men thus collected, saw themselves attacked on two sides by Rincourt and the second troop of the besieged. The combat did not last long, in consequence of the confusion into which they were thrown as much as through the numerical inferiority. Few resisted, many sought the marshes, and two or three hundred laid down their arms and begged for quarter. Of those who had betaken themselves right and left to the marshes, about a hundred managed to reach the camp in the morning, the others were killed by the peasants.
Forcia, informed in the middle of the night of the attack on his south-eastern posts, got a thousand men under arms. But the weather continued as bad as ever; the captains obeyed with a very ill grace; they had lost all confidence, and it was not until daylight that Galas's lieutenant was able to go down into the valley. His three posts were taken, and he found from two to three hundred men dead or wounded on the banks of the rivulet.
Rincourt had quietly gone up again into the town with his two troops and his prisoners by the castle gate, about three o'clock in the morning. He had not lost more than fifty men, killed, wounded, or strayed. Forcia returned to the camp about ten o'clock in the morning. But from the top of the donjon, at the first glimmering of daylight, the governor had seen the troop of Imperialists defiling in the direction of the posts that had been taken. Without an instant's delay, placing himself at the head of four companies of foot soldiers, fresh and ready for the struggle, and of his three hundred horsemen, and after having fired several volleys on the besieger's works, he courageously sallied forth by the ravelin and rushed impetuously upon the trenches. The enemy, taken by surprise, without a commander, and out of heart, fled, and Rincourt succeeded in spiking the guns of the two foremost places d'armes, spiking and throwing down the mortars along the slopes, breaking the gun-carriages, overthrowing the gabionades, and taking a quantity of workmen's tools.
When Forcia returned, it was to learn this fresh disaster. His captains murmured loudly. He called them cowards and ignoramuses, and they retorted sharply, and abuse was lavished on both sides. Happily for Forcia a messenger came from Galas that evening enjoining him to raise the siege of Roche-Pont and to fall back upon the Saône without an hour's delay.
Saint-Jean-de-Losne had held out and had suffered no damage; the Imperialists, surprised by the inundations, and fearing to be cut off by the French army, determined on returning home.
If that French army had been led by a Rantzau and a Rincourt, not a German would have repassed the frontier; but the Duke of Weimar and the Cardinal de la Valette, who might have destroyed the invaders, were by no means energetic in the pursuit. The Imperialists, however, lost in this expedition, by which they hoped to gain the most brilliant advantages, all their baggage, a good part of their artillery, and a third of their force.
FOOTNOTES:
[21] Bombs, invented by the Dutch in the beginning of the seventeenth century, were already used in sieges.