The Casque's Lark; or, Victoria, the Mother of the Camps

by Eugène Sue

"By my father's sword! Can I have been mistaken as to the barbarians' plans? Do you perceive their movement?"

"Yes," I said, "instead of following their vanguard into the defile, the Frankish army has halted; it is forming into numerous separate columns of attack, and these are marching towards the plateau! Malediction! They are resorting to the skilful manoeuvre that you feared. Oh, we have taught the barbarians the art of war!"

Victorin did not reply. He seemed to be counting the enemy's columns of attack. Thereupon he galloped back to our main army and cried:

"My boys! It is not now in the defile that we are to await these barbarians—we shall have to fight them in the open field. Fall upon them from the height of the plateau that they are seeking to climb—drive their hordes into the Rhine! They are three to our one—so much the better! This evening, when we shall be back in camp, our mother, Victoria, will say to us: 'Children, you were brave!'"

At these words, Rolla, the druid bard, improvised the following war song, which he struck up with a powerful, resonant voice:

"This morning we say:—

‘How many are there of these barbarous hordes,

Who thievishly aspire to rob us of land.

Of homes, of wives, and of sunshine?

Yes, how many are there of these Franks?’

"This evening we'll say:—

‘Make answer, thou sod, red drenched

In the blood of the stranger;

Make answer, ye deep-rolling waves of the Rhine;

Make answer, ye crows that flutter for carrion,

Make answer—make answer!

How many were they,

These robbers of land, of homes, of wives and of sunshine?

Aye, how many were there,

Of these blood-thirsty, ravenous Franks?’"

And the several detachments of our troops ran up the plateau at the double quick to the refrain of the chant that flew from mouth to mouth until it reached the rearmost ranks.

Our army was promptly deployed on the crest of the plateau that dominated the vast plain whose edge was bordered by the curve of the Rhine in the distant horizon. Instead of awaiting the attack from that advantageous position, Victorin wished, by sheer audacity, to terrify the enemy. Despite our numerical inferiority, he issued the orders to pounce down upon the Franks from the crest of our elevated position. At the same moment, the enemy's column, which, deceived by the feigned retreat of our cohorts, had allowed itself to be lured into the defile, was being hurled back into the plain by the Gallic troops which confronted them. Our whole army thereupon reassumed the offensive, and not unlike an avalanche our full forces poured down from the summit of the plateau. The battle began; it was engaged all along the line.

I promised Victoria not to leave the side of her son. Nevertheless, such was the impetuosity with which, from the very start of the action, he dashed upon the enemy at the head of a legion of cavalry, that the flux and reflux of the melee at first separated me from him. We were at the time engaged hand to hand with a picked, well mounted and well armed body of Franks. Their soldiers wore neither casque nor cuirass; but their double jackets of hides covered with long hair and their iron-lined fur caps, were the equivalent of our own armor. These Franks fought with fury, often with stupid ferocity. I saw several allow themselves to be killed like animals while, at the hottest of the battle, they madly sought to hack off the head of some fallen Gaul with their axes in order to make to themselves a trophy of the gory spoils. I was defending myself against two of these horsemen, and my hands were full; a third barbarian, a warrior who had been unhorsed and disarmed, clinched my leg and sought to pull me off the saddle, and as he found his efforts vain bit me with such rage in the ankle that his teeth cut through the leather of my gaiter and penetrated to the very bone. Without neglecting my two mounted adversaries, I found time to deal a blow with my mace upon this third Frank's skull. Freed from him, I was vainly endeavoring to discover and join Victorin, when I descried Neroweg, the Terrible Eagle, only a few paces from me, in the melee which his gigantic stature overtowered. At the sight of that man, there thronged to my mind the recollection of the outrageous insults heaped upon me only the day before, which I had only partly avenged by smiting him over the head with a firebrand; my blood, already warm with the ardor of the fray, now seethed. Over and above the anger that Neroweg inspired in me by reason of his cowardly insults of the previous day, I experienced for the man an unexplainable, mysterious, profound hatred. It was as if I saw in him the incarnation of that thievish and ferocious race that sought to subjugate us. It was to me, strange and unaccountable as it may seem, as if I abhorred Neroweg by reason of the future as much as of the present; as if that hatred was to perpetuate itself not only between our two races of Franks and Gauls, but also between our families, individually. What shall I say to you, my child! I even forgot the promise I made to my foster-sister of watching over her son. Instead of any longer striving to find and join Victorin, I now only strove to draw close to Neroweg. I was bent upon having that Frank's life—he alone, among so many other enemies, incited in me personally the thirst for blood. I happened at the time to find myself surrounded by several horsemen of the legion at the head of which Victorin had just charged the Frankish army with such impetuosity. Our troops were steadily pushing forward at that point, the enemy was being crowded towards the Rhine. Two of the soldiers in front of me fell under the heavy francisque of the Terrible Eagle. I now saw him across that human breach.

Clad in a Gallic armor, the spoils of one of our captains who was killed at one of the previous battles, Neroweg wore a casque of gilded bronze, the visor of which partly covered his face, tattooed in blue and scarlet. His long copper colored beard reached down to the iron corselet that he had donned over his jacket of hides. Thick fleeces of sheep, held fast by criss-crossing strips of cloth, covered his legs from the thighs down to the feet. He rode a savage stallion from the forests of Germany, whose pale yellow coat was spotted with black. The tufts of the animal's thick mane fell below his square chest; his long tail, that streamed in the wind, lashed his sinewy haunches when he reared impatient under the restraint of his bit and silver-wrought reins, also the proceeds of some Gallic spoils. A wooden buckler ribbed with iron and roughly painted in yellow and red stripes, the colors of Neroweg's banner, covered the left arm of the Terrible Eagle. In his right hand he wielded his heavy francisque that now dripped blood. From his belt hung a sort of large butcher's knife with a wooden handle, together with a magnificent Roman sword with a hilt of chased gold, doubtlessly the fruit of some raid. Neroweg emitted a roar of rage as he recognized me. Rising in his stirrups he cried out: