'We are betrayed!' cried Guillot, rushing bare-headed to his side.
'By whom?'
'The miller of the Garden!' replied Guillot, passionately.
And so it was; ere the Camisard outposts had been able to give the alarm, they were cut to pieces, and only Cavalier and a few of his men were able to sally from the tower before it was invested on all sides. Guillot and others were shut up in it! Furious were the efforts made by Cavalier—efforts urged by filial love and despair—to drive back the soldiers and relieve those in the tower, from the windows and every cranny of which its slender garrison poured a deadly fire for eight hours, till their ammunition was expended, and then the edifice was set on fire; 290 perished in it, says history, 100 Camisards lay dead outside, and around it were 1,200 of the King's troops killed or wounded!
Compelled to retire some distance, yet fighting every inch of the way, Cavalier beheld, with horror, the tower sheeted with fire. His soul died within him as he thought of his brother, the boyish and gentle Guillot, and all who were perishing there, and he strove to fight his way back just as day was breaking, and by the light of it he could see, apart from all the hurly-burly of the strife, a remarkable combat proceeding, and on the very verge of a cliff close by.
It was a boy—a boy, sword in hand—Guillot, fighting with a young officer of the Regiment of Champagne. His cap was off—his white camisa was stained by blood and dirt and scorched with fire. Borne back by bayonets, Cavalier could only look on in agony, as he saw his brother driven step by step to the very verge of the dreadful cliff behind him, and of which he was unaware. Unyielding, though retreating, Guillot kept parrying thrusts and warding cuts with consummate skill, till a cry escaped him, and he vanished!
A groan from the breast of Cavalier echoed that cry; a mist came over his sight, yet he continued to fight, like a blind man, to cover the retreat of the wreck of his followers, by whom wild justice was soon after done on the treacherous miller. He was seized, condemned to death, and led out to execution in front of the insurgents, who, according to their wont, knelt around him, while offering up prayers for his soul. His parting embrace was refused by his two sons, who served under Cavalier, and who looked on unmoved by the terrible death he had to die.
That his brother Guillot might perish in battle, or by torture in the hands of the enemy, Cavalier had always dreaded; but the catastrophe by which he lost him was altogether unconceived: and the fortunes of the conflict led him far from the vicinity of La Tour de Bellot, thus he could neither search for the remains of Guillot, nor bestow funeral rites upon them.
For months the war went on. The bright valour and cool judgment of Cavalier, 'the Boy-General,' for such he was, exalted him still more above all other leaders of the Camisards, and especially so when he succeeded in utterly defeating a considerable body of the royal troops at Martinarque, under the Sieur de Montrevel, who commanded them.
The 6th of April, 1704, saw Cavalier again betrayed by one he trusted. At the head of 900 foot and 300 horse, all well equipped, he entered the Vaunage, or Valley of Noyes, so called from a little town of that name, in the fertile district westward of Nismes, intending to waylay the Marechal de Montrevel, who was on the way to Montpellier, but was himself lured into a dreadful ambuscade, and surrounded on all sides by the royal troops, including a great body of King James's-Irish, who had recently fought at the battle of the Boyne.