"Forward, my children, forward! Long live the Republic!"
"Long live the Republic!" shouted back the cavalrymen, flashing their swords in the air as they thundered past Hoche. "Our comrades have retaken Toulon—we shall free Landau!"
"Soldiers," called Hoche, "show yourselves worthy of your past victories. The Republic counts on the Army of the Rhine and Moselle! To victory or death!"
The battle was on. General Ferino's artillery mowed down the Austrian cavalry, Wurmser's first line. Profiting by their disorder, gathering up his squadrons and hurling them with himself at their head upon the enemy, Ferino overthrew the forces which opposed him, and carried his mounted sabers right into the infantry squares of the second line. Then Hoche flung his attacking column upon Wurmser's center, while that general's left wing fell under the fire of several batteries of flying artillery. One of these batteries, consisting of six four-pounders, had taken position on an eminence where lay a solitary farmhouse. From this hillock it was possible to rake the Austrian's left flank from the rear. A squadron of the Third Hussars and two companies of the Seventh Battalion, Paris Volunteers, were detached to act as guard to this artillery. The captain of the battery, on reconnoitering his position, found that the farmhouse and its buildings occupied nearly the center of a mound about three hundred paces in diameter. Toward the enemy the hill presented a rapid rise of some thirty feet, while on the side of the republican army it was nearly level with the plain occupied by the reserves. A thicket of trees and live brush extended to the right and a little to the rear of the battery's position. The inhabitants of the place had fled with the opening of the engagement, carrying with them their cattle and all their more valuable belongings. One by one the iron spit-fires arrived to take their position in the battery, the first to appear being Carmagnole, the sweetheart of quartermaster Duchemin. This piece, by the almost grotesque cut of its furniture, presented a curious example of the oddity of artillery carriages in those days.
The team drew up with a half-turn, Duchemin and his eight assistants leaped to the ground, and confided their horses to the two artillerymen charged with their care. The pin which coupled the piece proper to the caisson was removed, and there she stood in position on her two wheels, some distance ahead of the caisson, in which the cartridges were kept. The drivers hurried their horses under shelter of the farmhouse, some fifty paces away. Soon the six spit-fires were in position. The commanders of the squadron of hussars and the two companies of volunteers also took what advantage they could of the lay of the land to protect their men from the fire which an Austrian battery might at any moment be expected to open upon the republican guns. One of the Paris Volunteers' companies was masked in the brush of the little wood just mentioned, in position to fire from under cover in case the enemy should attempt to seize the battery. The other company entrenched itself behind the stone wall which enclosed the courtyard of the farm, and behind the buildings which already acted as cover to the artillery horses.
By the chances of war there were thus reunited among the defenders of the battery Oliver and Victoria, John Lebrenn and Castillon, and finally the young Parisian recruit Duresnel, who also was a member of Captain Martin's company.
"Well, comrade," said Captain Martin to him, "how goes it? Your heart is still whole? Keep up your courage, all will go well."
"So far, captain, things are not going badly. But we must wait for the end—or rather for the beginning, for we haven't begun to fight yet."
"It seems it is going to be warm!" volunteered Castillon. "By my pipe, what a cannonade! That must be comrade Duchemin making his Carmagnole spit! Let me see if I can get a glimpse of him over the wall."
Stretching himself on tiptoe, Castillon raised himself sufficiently to cast his eye above the wall, upon the group of cannon, now half enveloped in the smoke of their first volleys. Duchemin, kneeling on the ground after conning the hostile battery through his pocket-glass, was training his piece, already roughly aimed by a brigadier, while his assistants on either side, armed with their ramrods, sponges and levers, stood ready for action. One of them held the match, waiting for the order to light the fuse. The other five pieces, ranged parallel to Carmagnole, were likewise surrounded by their attendants and being sighted by their under-officers. The captain of artillery and his lieutenants, on horseback, superintended the manoeuvring. In the distance the Austrian lines and the advancing columns of the French were lost almost completely in the smoke and smother of the now general cannonade. Nevertheless, the watchers on the hill soon perceived a large mass of opposing infantry so cut up and thrown into disorder by the relentless and accurate fire of the battery, that the Austrian general was moving up four howitzers and four six-pounders, with the intention of crippling the republican artillery. Seeing with his glass the first howitzer advance to the left from the enemy's battery, Duchemin at once carefully re-trained his Carmagnole, shook his fist in the howitzer's direction, and growled under his heavy moustache, alluding to the short and stocky build of those pieces: