“The King, who always had a rather good opinion of me, said to the Constable: ‘Take Bassompierre at his word and let him go; I will answer for him. Send the three brigadier-generals from Le Moustier to the camp of the Guards, and place him at Le Moustier. I am sure that he will do as he promises us, and we shall be the gainers.”
The Constable objected that the change would not be agreeable to either division, and declared that the Guards would not obey the orders of the brigadier-generals from Le Moustier. Finally, Luynes asked Bassompierre to go and reconnoitre the bastion. This he did, in company with the Italian engineer Gamorini and two other officers from his division, and reported that an attack would not present more than ordinary difficulty. Luynes thereupon proposed that it should be undertaken; but Marillac and his colleagues persisted in their objections, and assured him that Montauban would soon be theirs, without any need for such sacrifice of life as this attack must entail. And they succeeded in bringing him round to their opinion.
On the 9th, the Guards, after some fierce fighting, succeeded in getting a footing in the advanced-works of Ville-Nouvelle. In this attack a poor gentleman of Béarn, Henri de Peyrac, Seigneur de Tréville, who had served for four years as a private soldier, greatly distinguished himself; and Bassompierre brought his gallantry to the notice of the King, and recommended him for an ensigncy in the Regiment of Navarre. This Louis XIII granted him, and Bassompierre told Tréville that he must accompany him to Piquecos to thank his Majesty. Tréville, however, refused the commission offered him, saying that he did not wish to leave his regiment, and that he “intended to conduct himself so well in future that the King would feel obliged to give him one in the Guards.” This he not long afterwards obtained, and eventually rose to be captain of the company of Musketeers of the Guard and to be governor of the district of Foix.
A few days later, 1,200 of the Cévennes mountaineers succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the covering force and throwing themselves into Saint-Antonin, a town eight leagues north-east of Montauban, obviously with the intention of marching through the Forest of Gréseigne and reinforcing the beleaguered garrison. The folly of Luynes in refusing to listen to the advice of Lesdiguières to enclose the town within lines of circumvallation was now apparent to all. The Constable’s ineptitude, however, was already a by-word in the army; and “both he and his brother the Maréchal de Chaulnes showed such ignorance of the military art, that the King, who, at any rate, understood the rudiments, perceived it and made game of them.”
In consequence of this disconcerting move on the part of the enemy, it was necessary to send out a strong force of cavalry every night to guard the roads between the forest and Montauban, which Bassompierre and the other generals commanded in turn.
On the 13th, Mayenne delivered another assault on the outworks of Ville-Bourbon, with the same result as had attended his previous efforts. “This,” says Bassompierre, “put great heart into the enemy and disheartened his troops. As for him, he was beside himself with rage.”
A day or two later, there was a comic interlude in the siege, of which Bassompierre was the hero. We shall allow him to describe it in his own words:—
“It had been resolved some days before to break by cannon-shot the bridge of Montauban,[173] in order to stop the reinforcements which those in Montauban were sending to Ville-Bourbon. The Maréchal de Chaulnes, who was newly returned from Toulouse, where he had been lying ill, had charged me to bring a battery to bear upon the bridge. But, since it was a great way off and five hundred shots caused but little damage, which could easily be repaired with wood, I remonstrated against the little utility and great expense of this bombardment; and I was told not to persist in it. At the same time, two hundred women who were in the habit of washing linen and kitchen-utensils under or near this bridge, and who were incommoded by the cannon-shot, aware that I was in command in the quarter from which the firing came, and that I had always made war upon women in kindly fashion, sent me a drummer to beg me, on their part, not to incommode their washing. This request I granted them readily, since I had already received an order to that effect; and so pleased were they with me, that they demanded a truce in order to see me, and a great number of the principal women of the town came on to the top of the ramparts to look at me. And I, on that day alone, during the whole of the siege, dressed myself with care and adorned myself, so that I might go and talk with them.”
All this was very charming, but, a few days later, Bassompierre was to meet the women of Montauban in much less agreeable circumstances.