CAVALIER PERSONATING THE LIEUTENANT OF THE COUNT BROGLIO.
When he found the order referred to, he resolved to pretend that he was the commander of the detachment which he had just destroyed. Dressing himself in the dead officer's clothes, he ordered his men to put on the clothing of the other dead royalists. Then he took six of his best men, with their own Camisard uniforms on, and bound them with ropes, to represent prisoners. One of them had been wounded in the arm, and his bloody sleeve helped the stratagem. Putting these six men at the head of his troop, with a guard of their disguised comrades over them, he marched toward the castle. There he declared himself to be Count Broglio's lieutenant, and said that he had met a company of the Barbets, or Camisards, and had defeated them, taking six prisoners; that he was afraid to keep these prisoners in the village overnight lest their friends should rescue them; and that he wished to lodge them in the castle for safety. When the Governor of the castle heard this story, and saw the order of Count Broglio, he was completely imposed upon. He ordered the prisoners to be brought into the castle, and invited Cavalier to be his guest there for the night. Taking two of his officers with him, Cavalier went into the castle to sup with the Governor. During supper several of his soldiers, who were encamped just outside, went into the castle upon pretense of getting wine or bread, and at a signal from Cavalier they overpowered the sentinels, and threw the gates open. The rest of the troop rushed in at once, and before the garrison could seize their arms, the boy commander was master of the fortress.
Failing to overcome him by force or strategy, Cavalier's foes fell back upon the hope of starving him during the winter. But in indulging this hope they forgot that the crown and glory of his work in the field had been his wonderful fertility of resource. He knew quite as well as they did that he must live all winter in the woods, so he gave his whole mind to the question of how to do it.
He began during the harvest to make his preparations. He explored all the caves in the mountains, and selected the best ones for use as store-houses, taking care to have them in all parts of the mountains, so that if cut off from one he could draw upon another. In these caves he stored quantities of grain and other provisions, and whenever he needed meal, some of his men, who were millers, would carry grain to some lonely country mill and grind it.
To prevent this, the King's officers ordered that all the country mills should be rendered unfit for use, but before this could be done, Cavalier directed some of his men, who were skilled machinists, to disable two or three of the mills by carrying away the important parts of their machinery and storing them in his caves. Then, when he wanted meal, his machinists had only to replace the machinery in some disabled mill, and remove it again after his millers had done the necessary grinding. His bakers made use of farmers' ovens to bake bread in, and when the King's soldiers, hearing of this, destroyed the ovens, Cavalier sent his masons—for he had all sorts of craftsmen in his ranks—to rebuild them.
Having two powder-makers with him, he collected salt-petre, burned willow twigs for charcoal, and made all the powder he needed, in his caves. For bullets he melted down the leaden weights of windows, and when this source of supply failed, he melted down pewter vessels and used pewter bullets—a fact which gave rise to the belief that he used poisoned balls. Finally, in a dyer's establishment, he had the good luck to find two great leaden kettles, weighing more than seven hundred quintals, which, he says, "I caused immediately to be carried into the magazines with as much diligence and care as if they had been silver."
Chiefly by Cavalier's energy and military skill, the war was kept up against fearful odds for years, and finally the young soldier succeeded in making a treaty of peace in which perfect liberty of conscience and worship—which was all they had been fighting for—was guaranteed to the Protestants of the Cevennes. His friends rejected this treaty, however, and Cavalier soon afterward went to Holland, where he was given command of a regiment in the English service. His career in arms was a brilliant one—so brilliant that the British made him a General, and Governor of the island of Jersey; but he nowhere showed greater genius or manifested higher soldierly qualities than during the time when he was the Boy Commander of the Camisards.