Work proceeded without interruption during the next three days, and considerable progress was made; but, during the night of August 26-27, the enemy sallied out again, their attack on this occasion being directed against a sunken road, which the Royal troops were fortifying, with the intention of placing a battery there. They were again repulsed, but not before they had succeeded in over-turning the gabions which had been placed there. Some of these they carried off with them, but abandoned between the road and the fortifications, well within musket-shot of the latter.
“The following night,” writes Bassompierre, “one of the Swiss named Jacques told us that, if I were willing to give him a crown, he would bring back the gabions which the enemy had removed from the road; and what astonished us the more, was that this man brought back the gabions on his back, so strong and robust was he. The enemy fired two hundred arquebus-shots at him, without wounding him. After he had brought back six, the captains of the Guards begged me not to permit so brave a man to risk his life again for the one that still remained. But he told them that he wished to bring it back to complete his bargain; and this he did.”
On the 27th, Lesdiguières and Saint-Géran attacked the counterscarp of the bastion of Le Moustier, and carried it after a desperate struggle of more than three hours. This success, which cost the besiegers some 600 casualties, was not followed up, chiefly owing to the opposition of Marillac, who was of opinion that, if they descended into the fosse to attack the bastion, they would find themselves exposed to a murderous flanking-fire from masked batteries.
On the 29th, the Guards’ trenches had been sufficiently advanced to allow of a battery of eight guns being established, and Schomberg, who was acting as Grand Master of the Artillery, came to inspect it. Bassompierre warned him that the park of powder was too near the battery for safety, and that, with a high wind blowing in its direction, the sparks from the cannon might be carried to the powder. The Sieur de Lesine, the officer in charge of the munitions, however, protested that there was no danger, and Schomberg did not order their removal.
They continued to push forward their trenches, and on the 31st Bassompierre, “to reconnoitre how far they had advanced, came to the head of the trench and advanced eight or ten paces from it.” He got back again in safety, the enemy not having had time to train their muskets upon him. But when, shortly afterwards, his friend, the Comte de Fiesque, attempted to do the same, they were ready for him, and he received a musket-ball in the abdomen, from which he died two days later. “He was a great loss to us,” writes Bassompierre, “and more particularly to me, for he was greatly attached to me. He was a brave noble, an honourable man and an excellent friend.”
By the evening of that day they had got another battery of four guns into position, and on the following morning a furious bombardment of the enemy’s advanced works began, Schomberg and Praslin superintending the work of the larger battery and Bassompierre of the smaller.
“They both made a fine noise,” writes Bassompierre; “but, after firing for an hour or more, what I had predicted two days before happened: the sparks from the cannon were carried into the park of powder and fired five tons of it, with the loss of Lesine and forty men.”
In the course of the afternoon, a similar disaster occurred in Mayenne’s camp before Ville-Bourbon, amongst the killed being that prince’s uncle the Marquis de Villars and a son of the Comte de Riberac, a young man of great promise. Worse misfortunes, however, were in store for Mayenne’s division.
In the night of September 2-3, the Lorraine prince advanced to the assault of a crescent-shaped outwork which had been constructed by La Force, and was defended by his sons and other Huguenot nobles and some of the best soldiers in the garrison. The attack failed; but on the following afternoon the attempt was renewed. After a furious hand-to-hand conflict, Mayenne was again repulsed, with heavy loss. On that day died the gallant Marquis de Thémines, eldest son of the marshal, La Frette, the governor of Chartres, “who yielded to no man of his time in courage and ambition,” and more than fifty Catholic gentlemen. The siege of Montauban, so lightly undertaken by Luynes, seemed likely to cost France dear.
On September 4, the King and the Constable called a council of war to discuss the advisability of endeavouring to carry the bastion of Le Moustier by assault. Bassompierre strongly urged that the attempt should be made, and was supported by Lesdiguières; but the other generals opposed it, and Marillac declared that to descend into the fosse meant certain death. Luynes asked Bassompierre to step into his cabinet, where the King presently joined them. Louis XIII informed them that Marillac and the others had said to him that it was easy for M. de Bassompierre to advocate this hazardous undertaking, as all the danger would be left to them, and he would have no share in it; and had accused him of wishing to expose them to butchery. Bassompierre, in high indignation, thereupon declared that, if the King would give him leave, he himself would lead the assault on the bastion, and pledged his word that, if he did not fall, “in three weeks he would have three cannon in position there against the town.”