Ninety-Three

When the clarion answered this second call, the man who stood on the top of the tower spoke, and these were his words: —

"Be it known to all ye who hear me, I am Gouge-le-Bruant, surnamed Brise-Bleu because I have killed many of your people, and also surnamed the Imânus because I mean to kill many more; in the attack at Granville, while my finger rested on the barrel of my gun, it was chopped off by a sabre-stroke; at Laval you guillotined my father, my mother, and my eighteen-year-old sister Jacqueline. And now you know me.

"I speak to you in the name of my master, Monseigneur le Marquis Gauvain de Lantenac, Vicomte de Fontenay, Breton Prince, and owner of the Seven Forests.

"It is well for you to learn that before shutting himself up in this tower, where you hold him blockaded, Monsieur le Marquis distributed the command among six chiefs, his lieutenants. To Delière he assigned the country between the woods of Brest and Erneé; to Treton, that which lies between the Roë and Laval; to Jacquet, called Taillefer, the border of the Haut-Maine; to Gaulier, called Grand-Pierre, Château-Gontier; to Lecomte, Craon; to Monsieur Dubois-Guy, Fougères; and to Monsieur de Rochambeau, all Mayenne; so that the capture of this fortress by no means ends the war for you, and even were Monsieur le Marquis to die, the Vendée of God and the king will still live.

"I say this for your information. Monseigneur is here beside me; I am but his mouthpiece. Silence, besiegers!

"It will be well for you to consider my words.

"Remember that the war you are waging against us is unjust; we are men living in our own land and fighting honestly. Submissive to the will of God, we are as simple and upright as the grass beneath the dew. It is the Republic who has attacked us: she comes to trouble us in our fields; she has burned our houses and our harvests and destroyed our farms, and our women and children have been forced to run barefoot in the woods while the hedge-sparrow was still singing.

"You who are down there listening to me, – you have pursued us through the forest and surrounded us in this tower; you have killed or scattered our allies; you have cannon, and you have added to your division the garrisons and the posts of Mortain, Barenton, Teilleul, Landivy, Evran, Tinténiac, and Vitré, – which gives you four thousand five hundred men with which to attack us.

"We, who are nineteen for the defence, are supplied with provisions and munitions.

"You have succeeded in undermining and blowing up a part of our rock and wall, thus making a breach at the foot of the tower, through which you can enter, although it is not open, while the tower stands strong and upright, forming an arch above it.

"Now you are preparing for the assault.

"And we – first of all, Monseigneur le Marquis, who is a Breton prince and the secular prior of the Abbey of Sainte-Marie de Lantenac, where a daily Mass was instituted by Queen Jeanne, and the other defenders of this tower, who are: Monsieur l'Abbé Turmeau, whose military name is Grand-Francoeur; my comrades, Guinoiseau, captain of the Camp-Vert; Chante-en-Hiver, captain of the camp of Avoine; Musette, captain of the camp Fourmis; and myself, a peasant, born in the town of Daon, through which runs the brook Moriandre, – we have one thing to tell you.

"Listen, now, ye men at the foot of this tower!

"We hold three prisoners, – the same children who were adopted by one of your battalions, and they are yours. We offer to give them back to you on one condition, – that we be allowed to go free.

"If you refuse, – listen to this. There are but two points of attack, – either the breach or the bridge, according as you advance from the fortress or the plateau. There are three stories in the building on the bridge; in the lower one I, the Imânus, who speak to you, have placed six casks of tar and one hundred bundles of dry heather; there is straw in the upper, and there are books and papers in the middle story; the iron door communicating with the tower is closed, and monseigneur carries the key on his person; I have made a hole under the door, through which is passed a sulphur slow-match; one end of it is in a cask of tar, and the other within reach of my hand, inside the tower; I can set it on fire whenever I choose. If you refuse to let us go free, the children will be placed on the second floor of the bridge, between the story where the sulphur-match ends in the barrel and the one which is filled with straw, and the iron door will be closed on them. If you attack us by way of the bridge, you will be the ones to set the building on fire; if by the breach, it will be left to us; and if you attack us from both sides at once, we shall both be kindling the fire at the same instant; at all events, the three children will perish.

"It rests with you, now, either to accept or refuse.

"If you accept, we depart; if you refuse, the children die.

"I have finished,"

And the man who had been speaking from the top of the tower was silent.

"We refuse!" cried a voice from below, in tones abrupt and severe. Another voice, quite as firm, although less harsh, added, —

"We give you twenty-four hours to surrender at discretion."

A silence ensued, and then the same voice continued, —

"If to-morrow at this hour you have not surrendered, we begin the assault."

"And give no quarter," resumed the first speaker; and then a voice from the top of the tower made reply to the savage one. Between two battlements a tall figure, in which, by the light of the stars, one might have recognized the awe-inspiring form of the Marquis de Lantenac, leaned forward; his glance, piercing the shadows, seemed searching for some one.

"Ah, it is thou, priest!" he cried.

"Yes, it is I, traitor!" replied the harsh voice from below.

XI

TERRIBLE AS THE ANTIQUE

This implacable voice was in truth the voice of Cimourdain; the younger and less imperative one was that of Gauvain.

The Marquis de Lantenac had not been mistaken in his recognition of the Abbé Cimourdain.

In this district, ensanguined by civil war, Cimourdain, as we have said, had in a few weeks become famous. No man had won a more baleful notoriety. Men would say: "Marat in Paris, Châlier at Lyons, Cimourdain in the Vendée." All the veneration which the Abbé Cimourdain had formerly enjoyed was now turned to his dishonor. This is what a priest who unfrocks himself may fairly expect.

Cimourdain excited a feeling of horror. The austere are unfortunate, inasmuch as their own acts seem to condemn them. Could their consciences be revealed, men might perhaps absolve them. A Lycurgus misunderstood may seem like a Tiberius. However, the fact remains that these two men – the Marquis de Lantenac and the Abbé Cimourdain – were equally matched in regard to the hatred they inspired. The maledictions hurled at Cimourdain by the Royalists were counterbalanced by the execrations which the Republicans heaped upon Lantenac. Each of those men seemed a monster in the eyes of the opposite camp. In fact, by a singular coincidence it chanced that while Prieur de la Marne at Granville had set a price on the head of Lantenac, Charette at Noirmoutier had likewise set one on that of Cimourdain.

We may observe that these two men – the Marquis and the priest – represented in a certain degree one and the same man. The bronze mask of civil war has a double profile, one of which looks towards the past, the other towards the future. Lantenac wore the former, Cimourdain the latter; only the bitter sneer of Lantenac was shrouded in darkness, whereas on Cimourdain's fatal brow might be discerned a glimmer of the dawn.

Meanwhile the besieged Tourgue was enjoying a respite.

Thanks to the intervention of Gauvain, they had agreed upon a sort of truce for twenty-four hours.

The Imânus had indeed been well informed. In consequence of Cimourdain's requisitions Gauvain was now in command of four thousand five hundred men, national guards as well as troops of the line, with which he surrounded Lantenac in the Tourgue, and could, moreover, bring to bear against the fortress a masked battery of six cannon, planted on the edge of the forest towards the tower, together with an open battery of six on the plateau towards the bridge. He had succeeded in springing the mine, and a breach had been made at the foot of the tower.

Thus on the expiration of the twenty-four hours' truce, the struggle would begin again under the following conditions: —

On the plateau and in the forest were four thousand five hundred men against nineteen in the tower.

History may find the names of the nineteen besieged in the placards posted against outlaws. We may possibly come across them.

It would have pleased Cimourdain had Gauvain consented to accept the rank of adjutant-general, in order to command these four thousand five hundred men, which was practically an army. But the latter refused, saying: "We will consider that matter after Lantenac is taken; I have won no promotion as yet."

These important commands, held by officers of subordinate rank, were, moreover, in accordance with Republican customs. Bonaparte, later on, while as yet only a colonel of artillery, was at the same time commander-in-chief of the army of Italy.

It was a strange fate for the Tour-Gauvain to be attacked by one Gauvain, while defended by another member of the same family. Hence a certain reluctance in the attack, but none in the defence; for M. de Lantenac was a man who spared nothing. Accustomed as he had been to live at Versailles, he had no feeling of regard for the Tourgue, which he scarcely knew. He had sought refuge there, simply because he had no other resource; but he would have destroyed it without a scruple. Gauvain felt more respect for it.

The bridge was the weak point of the fortress, but in the library above it were the family records. Now, if the assault began there, the burning of the bridge would be inevitable, and it seemed to Gauvain that to burn the records would be like attacking his ancestors. The Tourgue was the ancestral manor of the Gauvain family; from this tower started all their fiefs of Brittany, as those of France from the tower of the Louvre. It was the centre round which clustered the family associations of the Gauvains. He himself was born there; and now, led by the tortuous chances of fate, the grown man had come to attack the venerable walls that had protected his childhood.

Was it an impious act to lay this dwelling in ashes? Perhaps his own cradle was stored away in some corner of the granary over the library. Certain trains of thought assume the nature of emotions. Before the old family mansion Gauvain felt himself deeply moved, and it was in consequence of this feeling that he had spared the bridge. Contenting himself with making it impossible for the enemy to sally forth or attempt an escape at this point of egress, he held the bridge in check by a battery, and chose the opposite side for the attack. Hence the mining and sapping at the foot of the tower.

Cimourdain had allowed him to take his own course, meanwhile reproaching himself; for these Gothic antiquities were odious to his severe soul, and he was no more indulgent towards buildings than towards human beings. Sparing a castle was the first step in the direction of mercy; and he knew that mercy was Gauvain's weak point. Cimourdain, as we are aware, kept watch over him, and arrested his progress down this slope, so fatal in his eyes. And yet even he – and he acknowledged it to himself with a sort of indignation – had been unable to see the Tourgue again without a secret emotion: he was affected by the sight of that schoolroom containing the first books in which he had taught Gauvain to read. He had been the curé of the neighboring village Parigné; had occupied an upper room in the castle on the bridge; it was in the library that he held little Gauvain between his knees, and taught him the alphabet; within these four old walls he had seen his beloved pupil, the child of his soul, growing up to manhood, and watched the development of his mind. Was he about to burn and destroy this library, this castle, these walls, wherein he had so often blessed the child? He had spared them, but it had not been done without compunction.

He had allowed Gauvain to begin the siege from the opposite point. The tower might have been called the savage side of the Tourgue, and the library its civilized side. Cimourdain had allowed Gauvain to make the breach only in the former.

This ancient castle in the midst of the Revolution had, after all, only resumed its feudal customs, in being at the same time attacked and defended by a Gauvain. The history of the Middle Ages is but a record of wars between kinsmen. Étéocles and Polynices are Gothic as well as Grecian; and Hamlet but repeats in Elsinore what Orestes did in Argos.

XII

THE RESCUE PLANNED

The entire night was spent by both parties in preparations. As soon as the gloomy parley to which we lately listened was over, Gauvain's first act was to summon his lieutenant.

Guéchamp, with whom we must become acquainted, was a man of the secondary order, honest, brave, commonplace, a better soldier than commander, strictly intelligent up to the point when it becomes a duty not to understand, never moved to tenderness, proof against corruption in whatsoever shape it might present itself, – whether in the form of bribery, that taints the conscience, or in that of pity, that corrupts justice. As the eyes of a horse are shaded by his blinders, so were his heart and soul protected by the two screens of discipline and the order of command, and he walked straight ahead in the space they allowed him to see. His course was direct, but his path was narrow.

A man to be depended on, withal, – stern in command, exact in obedience.

Gauvain spoke in rapid tones, —

"We need a ladder, Guéchamp."

"We have none, commander."

"One must be found."

"For scaling?"

"No; for rescue."

After a moments reflection, Guéchamp replied, —

"I understand. But to serve your purpose a very long one is needed."

"The length of three stories."

"Yes, commander, that's about the height."

"It ought to be longer than that, for we must be sure of success."

"Certainly."

"How is it that you have no ladder?"

"Commander, you did not think it best to besiege the Tourgue from the plateau; you were satisfied to blockade it on that side; you planned the attack by way of the tower, and not from the bridge. So we gave our attention to the mine, and thought no more about the scaling. That is why we have no ladder."

"Have one made at once."

"A ladder of the length of three stories cannot be made at once."

"Then fasten several short ones together."

"But we must first get our ladders."

"Find them."

"There are none to be found. All through the country the peasants destroy ladders, just as they break up the carts and cut the bridges."

"True, they intend to paralyze the Republic."

"They mean that we shall neither transport baggage, cross a river, nor scale a wall."

"But I must have a ladder, in spite of all that."

"I was thinking, commander, that at Javené, near Fougères, there is a large carpenter's shop. We might get one there."

"There is not a moment to lose."

"When do you want the ladder?"

"By this time to-morrow, at the latest."

"I will send a messenger at full speed to Javené to carry the order for a requisition. A post of cavalry stationed there will furnish an escort. The ladder may be here to-morrow before sunset."

"Very well; that will answer," said Gauvain; "only be quick about it. Go!"

Ten minutes later, Guéchamp returned, and said to Gauvain, —

"The messenger has started for Javené."

Gauvain ascended the plateau, and for a long time stood gazing intently on the bridge-castle across the ravine. The gable of the castle, with no other opening than the low entrance closed by the raised drawbridge, faced the escarpment of the ravine. In order to reach the plateau at the foot of the bridge one roust climb down the face of the ravine, which might be accomplished by clinging to the bushes. But once in the moat, the assailants would be exposed to a shower of missiles from the three stories. Gauvain became convinced that at this stage of the siege the proper way to attack was through the breach of the tower.

He took every precaution to render flight impossible; he perfected the strict blockade of the Tourgue. Drawing the meshes of his battalions more and more closely, so that nothing could pass between them, Gauvain and Cimourdain divided the investment of the fortress between them, – the former reserving for himself the forest side, and leaving the plateau to Cimourdain. It was agreed that while Gauvain, aided by Guéchamp, should conduct the assault through the mine, Cimourdain, with all the matches of the upper battery lighted, should watch the bridge and the ravine.

XIII

WHAT THE MARQUIS IS DOING

While all these preparations for the attack were going on outside, they were also making ready for resistance inside the tower.

A tower may be entered by a mine as a cask is bored by an auger; hence a tower is sometimes called a douve,16 and it was the fate of the Tourgue to have its walls pierced by a bung-hole.

The powerful boring of two or three hundred-weight of powder had driven a hole through the mighty wall from one side to the other. Beginning at the foot of the tower, it had made a breach in the thickest part of the wall, in a sort of shapeless arch in the lower story of the fortress, and in order to make this hole more practicable for assault from without, the besiegers had enlarged it by cannon-shot.

The ground-floor where this breach had penetrated was a large, empty hall of a circular form, with a pillar in the centre, supporting the keystone of the vaulted ceiling. The hall, which was the largest in the keep, was no less than forty feet in diameter. Each story of the tower had a similar room, only on a smaller scale, with guards to the embrasures of the loop-holes. The hall on the ground-floor had neither embrasures, ventilators, nor dormer windows. There was about as much air and light in it as in a tomb.

The door of the oubliettes, the greater part of which was iron, was in the lower hall. Another door opened on a staircase leading to the upper rooms. All the staircases were built in the wall itself.

It was to the lower hall that the besieged had gained access by the breach they had made; but even after gaining possession of it, the tower would still remain to be taken.

One could scarcely breathe in this lower hall, and formerly no one could remain in it twenty-four hours without suffocating; but now, thanks to the breach, one could exist there.

For this reason the besieged had not closed the breach. Besides, what purpose would it have served? The guns would have reopened it.

They had fastened an iron torch-holder into the wall, wherein they set a torch, and that lighted the lower floor.

But how were they to defend themselves?

To stop up the hole would have been easy enough, but useless. A retirade would be more effective. A retirade is an intrenchment with a retreating angle, – a kind of barricade composed of rafters, by means of which the fire may be concentrated on the assailants, and which while leaving the breach open from without closes it from within. There was no lack of materials, and they proceeded to construct a barricade of this description with clefts for the passage of gun-barrels. The corner of the retirade was supported by the middle pillar, the two wings touching the walls on either side. Having completed this they placed fugades in safe places.

The Marquis directed everything. Inspirer, commander, guide, and master, – a terrible spirit!

Lantenac was one of those soldiers of the eighteenth century who save cities at the age of eighty. He resembled the Count d'Alberg, who, when almost a centenarian, drove the King of Poland from Riga.

"Courage, friends!" he said; "in 1713, at the beginning of this century, Charles XII., shut up in a house at Bender, with three hundred Swedes, held his own against twenty thousand Turks."

They barricaded the two lower stories, fortified the chambers, converted the alcoves into battlements, supported the doors with beams driven in by a mallet, thus forming buttresses; but the spiral staircase connecting the different stories they were obliged to leave free, since if they blockaded it against the besieger, their own passage would be obstructed. Thus a fortification always has its weak point.

The Marquis, indefatigable, vigorous as a young man, set example for the others by putting his own hands to the work, raising beams and carrying stones; he gave his orders, helped, fraternized, and laughed with this savage band, yet always remaining their lord and master, haughty even while familiar, elegant although fierce.

He allowed no one to contradict him. Once he said: "If half of you were to revolt, I would have you shot by the other half, and still defend the place with the rest."

This is the sort of thing for which men worship a commander.

XIV

WHAT THE IMÂNUS IS DOING

While the Marquis occupied himself with the breach and tower, the Imânus attended to the bridge. At the beginning of the siege the escape-ladder suspended crosswise below the windows of the second story had been removed by order of the Marquis and placed by the Imânus in the library. Probably this was the very ladder whose place Gauvain wished to supply. The windows of the entresol on the first story, called the guard-room, were defended by a triple bracing of iron bars set in the stones, so that one could neither come nor go that way.

The library windows, which were high, had no bars.

The Imânus was accompanied by three men as resolute and daring as himself. These men were Hoisnard, called Branche-d'Or, and the two brothers Pique-en-Bois. Taking with him a dark-lantern, he opened the iron door, and made a careful inspection of the three stories of the bridge-castle. Hoisnard Branche-d'Or, whose brother had been killed by the Republicans, was as implacable as the Imânus. The latter investigated the upper story, filled with hay and straw, as well as the lower one, into which he had several pots-à-feu brought, which he placed near the tar-barrels; he ordered bundles of dry heather to be so arranged that they would touch the tar-casks, after which he made sure that the sulphur-match, one end of which was on the bridge and the other in the tower, was in good working order. Over the floor, under the casks and the bundles, he poured a pool of tar into which he dipped the end of the sulphur-match; then he ordered his men to bring into the library, between the ground-floor and the attic, with tar beneath and straw overhead, three cradles containing René-Jean, Gros-Alain, and Georgette, who were all sound asleep. The cradles were brought in very gently, that the children might not be roused.

They were simple little village cribs, something like an osier basket, which when placed on the floor were low enough for a child to climb in and out without help. Beside each cradle the Imânus ordered them to place a porringer of soup, together with a wooden spoon. The escape-ladder, taken off its hooks, was laid on the floor against the wall, and the three cradles were placed end to end along the opposite wall, facing the ladder; then, thinking that a current of air might be useful, he flung wide open the six windows of the library. It was a warm and clear summer night.

He sent the brothers Pique-en-Bois to open the windows in the stories above and below. On the eastern façade of the building he had observed a large ivy, old and withered, about the color of tinder, which entirely covered one side of the bridge, framing the windows of the three stories, and thought that this ivy would do no harm. After bestowing a last glance on everything, the Imânus and his men left the châtelet and returned into the keep. Double locking the heavy iron door, he examined attentively this immense and awe-inspiring lock, nodded approvingly at the sulphur-match, passed through the hole he had drilled, which was henceforth the only channel of communication between the tower and the bridge. This match, starting from the round room, passed beneath the iron door and entered under the arch, coiled snake-like over the spiral stairs, crept across the floor of the corridor below, and ended in the pool of tar under the dry heath. The Imânus had calculated that it would take a quarter of an hour from the time this sulphur-match was lighted from the interior of the tower, to set on fire the pool of tar under the library. Having completed and reviewed all these preparations, he carried the key of the iron door to the Marquis de Lantenac, who put it in his pocket.