CHAPTER XXVII

LA VIREVILLE BREAKS HIS SWORD

(1)

The hour when their last defence should fail them was nearer even than any of the Royalists had imagined. All next day, and the next, while Sombreuil's contingent--the émigrés with the black cockade, the regiments who had fought side by side with the British in the Netherlands campaign of 1794-95, and had endured with them the terrible retreat of that winter--were being disembarked on to a shore which was all too likely to be their grave, the garrison of Fort Penthièvre was leaking away to the enemy. And on the night of the twentieth, a dark night of rain and tempest, three hundred of Hoche's grenadiers, led by one of these deserters, came creeping, knee-deep in water, round the base of the fort on the side of the 'mer sauvage,' and men of d'Hervilly's own regiment helped them over the parapet. . . .

* * * * *

At half-past one on the morning of the twenty-first of July the sound of a cannon, indistinctly heard amid the howling of the wind, came to the ears of the wounded Le Goffic, where he lay wakeful on his couch of seaweed in the lantern-light. He put out a feverish hand and touched his leader, stretched out in sleep beside him.

La Vireville started up instantly. "What is it, my boy? Do you need anything?"

"I heard a cannon-shot, Monsieur Augustin," replied the young man in his weak voice. "It must have been from the fort, I think."

"Then it is being attacked--or, more probably, surprised," said Fortuné, reaching for his pistols. Almost at the same moment Grain d'Orge, a lantern in his hand, appeared in the doorway.

"The Blues have got the upper part of the fort, Monsieur Augustin," he shouted. "They are killing everybody inside----"

"Get the men ready--those that are able-bodied," said La Vireville, snatching up his sword. "I will be with you in an instant."

"There is such a cursed wind!" grumbled the Chouan, disappearing with his lantern.

La Vireville knelt down by Le Goffic. "Good-bye, Charles! If the worst come to the worst, and if I do not return, there are plenty of slightly wounded men here in St. Pierre who can take you off to the English squadron. I have seen to that already."

The young man looked up at his leader with undimmed affection and trust shining out of his sunken eyes, and put his hot hands over La Vireville's right, that held the sheathed sword.

"If you do not come back, I would rather have died with you, Monsieur le Chevalier! Let me fasten on your sword for you . . . you cannot do it with your arm thus."

The feeble fingers fumbled with the buckle, but Fortuné, guessing what the rendering of that last service meant to his young lieutenant, waited patiently till they had accomplished their task. Then he stooped down and kissed him, French fashion, on both cheeks.

* * * * *

Outside was darkness, confusion, and violent wind. But his men were marshalling. Already Vauban's Chouans, in disorder and with recriminations, were setting out up the peninsula towards the scene of the fresh disaster.

"Are all here who should be?" shouted Fortuné in Grain d'Orge's ear.

The old Chouan held a half-cocked pistol in his other hand. He nodded. "All but Yannik. He said he would not go, so I----" He lifted the pistol.

La Vireville nodded. "Give me the lantern." And with it he went forward to the little ranks, now pitifully depleted. "Mes gars," he cried, holding the lantern high, and running his eyes over the rows of familiar faces, "this is our last chance. We must help retake the fort. If it is not retaken, all is finished. But listen now. If I think that to fight any further is useless I shall give the word--Every man for himself." And he explained, as he had explained to Grain d'Orge, his reason for this course. "Do you understand, mes enfants, and will you follow me till I give that word?"

He was not sure that they would. But they had known and trusted and somewhat feared him long before their recent unforgettable experiences of artillery outside Auray and at Ste. Barbe. They shouted back their acquiescence.

"And then," yelled Grain d'Orge, putting in his word, "if M. Augustin is pleased with you, he will come back to us at Kerdronan, and we can go on again with _that_ kind of fighting----"

"I wish to God that I had never brought them away from Kerdronan," thought La Vireville, as he turned away and put himself at their head.

(2)

They never reached the fort. The way towards it was blocked with the fruit of past mistakes, with masses of fugitives--mainly the dispossessed Bretons of the mainland, that unpropitious flotsam which the events of July the sixth had swept on to the peninsula--pouring away from the scene of calamity. The difficulty of struggling with a handful of men through this flood, all setting in the opposite direction, was enormous. It was almost impossible to keep together. However, they fought their way on, their heads down, buffeted by the wind and by the bodies of the fugitives, physically and morally disheartened, till at last the light of the wet, cheerless dawn was strong enough to show, in the distance, the grey bulk of Fort Penthièvre, looking doubly massive and formidable now that it was no longer in their hands. For, as La Vireville realised with a pang no less keen because it was anticipated, the golden lilies floated there no more. In their stead, flaring defiantly out in the wind and rain over counterscarp and glacis, was the red, white, and blue of the Republic.

"Halt!" cried La Vireville, and remained a moment staring at that significant sight. Then he called for Grain d'Orge.

"Mon vieux, the moment has come," he said sadly. "I give the word to disband. It is not right to sacrifice the rest of the men uselessly. Remember what I told you about the mainland. Try to get them all taken off in the boats of the English squadron, which will be possible if the wind goes down."

"But you, Monsieur Augustin, what will you do?" asked the old Chouan, seizing him by the hand. His eyes were glistening in most unfamiliar fashion, while with his other hand he fumbled inside his embroidered vest, finally drawing out thence a long, reddish-brown, hairy object, somewhat shrivelled, and tufted at the end.

"Take this, Monsieur le Chevalier," he urged, pressing it into his leader's hand. "It will certainly bring you back safe to Kerdronan. The wise woman gave it to me."

"No, no, mon gars," said La Vireville, rather touched, but not altogether taken with the appearance of the gift. "Keep it to ensure your own safety. But . . . what the devil is it?"

"A cow's tail that has been offered to St. Herbot at his chapel in Finistère," replied the Breton. "You will not take it, Monsieur Augustin? It has great virtue."

But La Vireville was firm in his refusal, and Grain d'Orge, replacing his talisman, moved off to convey his orders to the already melting band of Chouans. He came back, however, in a moment or two to repeat his question.

"What will you do, Monsieur Augustin?"

"For the present," replied his leader composedly, "I am going to offer my sword to anyone here who will accept it."

(3)

And that was why the Chevalier de la Vireville found himself, half an hour later, under the command of the Comte de Contades, trying, with Loyal-Emigrant and the remnants of d'Hervilly's regiment, to stem the steady advance of Hoche's forces, that outnumbered the Royalists by three to one. But everything was against them. The little eminence on which they fell back might well have been defended had not the Blues already got possession of the park of artillery at Portivy, which, owing to lack of horses, had not been removed in time. So they fell back once more, in good order, not a man of them attempting to join the throngs at Port d'Orange, where the sick and wounded, and some of the regimental colours, were, despite the tempest, being embarked on the boats of the English flotilla.

It was now about four o'clock in the morning, and the rain had returned to mist. It was in this mist that, still retiring before the relentless pressure of the Blues, the two regiments came to the knoll by the hamlet of St. Julien, where the troops of the second division were quartered under their commander, the young Comte de Sombreuil, the brother of the heroine of the 'glass of blood.' Here, on his horse at their head, a gallant figure in his hussar's dolman of chamois colour faced with red, his high shako looped about with cords and decorated with the black cockade, was Sombreuil himself.

And La Vireville heard him say to Contades, his handsome young face contracted with pain, "Puisaye told me to remain here, and Puisaye himself has embarked!"

For some time Fortuné had been asking himself what had become of the general-in-chief, and yet the answer, now that it had come, seemed incredible. But it was confirmed by the lieutenant-colonel of the régiment de Rohan, when he came up with his men, who had been ordered to hold the little battery at Port d'Orange, and could not, because the battery consisted merely of one small cannon without ammunition or even a gun-carriage. La Vireville began to see why Puisaye, a moral if not a physical coward, had fled from a situation which he was incompetent to control, and disasters of his own making which it was too late to repair.

There was no time to do more than to curse this extraordinary defection. The mist was breaking before the full daylight, and turning once more to rain, as the Comte de Sombreuil took command, disposing his little force in line, from the régiment de Rohan on the extreme right, the side of the sea, to du Dresnay (de Flavigny's regiment) on the left, by the windmill. He threw out, too, a company of the newcomers in advance, and posted two regiments of them in the rear. But some of these just-landed corps had not more than three cartridges to a man; one of the rearguard regiments, in fact, had none at all until its neighbour shared with it. And they were not the only bodies either who had to share their ammunition. Cartridges there were in plenty for all, but their distribution had not been finished before the surprise of the fort. . . .

La Vireville, in the ranks of that veteran corps, Loyal-Emigrant, learnt this fact with a sort of resignation. And what were they waiting for now? he asked himself. With the brave and disciplined troops at Sombreuil's command he might well have attacked Humbert's cautiously advancing column with the bayonet. When he at last ordered the advance it was too late, for hardly had the émigrés begun to go forward when an officer, arriving in haste from the left wing, announced that the soldiers of du Dresnay and d'Hervilly, after killing some of their officers, had gone over to the enemy. The Republicans were in possession of the windmill height, and indeed their guns were already beginning a murderous cannonade from that eminence. The Royalists had therefore no choice but to beat a retreat. Word spread that Sombreuil intended to retire to the Fort Neuf, on the shore south-east of Port Haliguen, and there surrender upon terms. When La Vireville heard this he made a grimace, for he happened to know what the 'fort' was like.

So they began their last withdrawal, still slowly and in good order, but forced all the time by the lack of cartridges to go through the bitter farce of taking aim without firing; and were thus driven gradually down to the extremity of the peninsula and the sea. The shore was covered with fugitives, mostly peasants and Chouans, running towards the Fort Neuf or trying desperately to get a place in the overcrowded boats of the English squadron, which, despite the high sea that was running, had been hard at work, but were now being obliged to abandon their efforts. And it was now that La Vireville, sword in hand--for he could not use a musket--came suddenly on an officer lying, wrapped about in a cloak, in a little dip in the sandhills. Two soldiers stood near him, looking down at him. Fortuné had no time to wonder who it was, for he saw at once the drawn features of René de Flavigny.

He stopped and knelt down by him among the coarse grass and the sea-pinks. On the scarlet of the English tunic, with its black facings, no blood was visible, but the grey of the Marquis's face was evidence enough of what had happened. His eyes were closed, and La Vireville half thought him unconscious.

"Where are you hit, René?" he asked quietly.

De Flavigny opened his eyes. "Shot in the back," he said in a faint voice. "But . . . it would be of no account . . . if only . . . O my God! It was my own men!" He raised a trembling hand and put it over his eyes. "O my God!" he said again.

"You must be got off to the English fleet without delay," said La Vireville with decision, though his heart sank. "How did you come here?"

"We carried him, mon officier," replied one of the soldiers, coming forward and saluting, and La Vireville saw that he was a sergeant of du Dresnay. "We will try to get him into a boat--but it will be very difficult. They are nearly all gone back to the ships."

"For God's sake do your best, however!" urged the Chouan.

"It is useless, Fortuné," whispered de Flavigny. "You see I was right. Remember your promise. . . . Kiss me . . . and kiss Anne for me." And, as La Vireville bent and kissed him, he relapsed into unconsciousness.

There was not a moment to lose. Already the little group was isolated between the retiring Royalists and the oncoming Republicans. La Vireville hastily thrust some money into the soldiers' hands, saw them raise their insensible burden, picked up his sword, and ran back to the retreating ranks.

(4)

And by the crumbling, four-foot walls of the little fort--a veritable children's citadel of sand--with its one rusty cannon that pointed seawards, amid the roar of the waves, the cries of the drowning, and the persistent booming of the guns of the English corvette, the _Lark_ (which, by firing steadily on the stretch of beach and sandhills between the defeated and the conquerors, was retarding rather than averting the inevitable), the last words were written on the fatal page of Quiberon.

First of all, from the grenadiers drawn up behind their artillery among the dunes, where the corvette's fire could not touch them, came Rouget de Lisle, his scarcely three-years-old immortality upon him, to parley with Sombreuil. When he went back, Hoche, for the first time, showed himself, and Sombreuil rode out of the fort to meet him.

From just within the low wall La Vireville watched the interview of the two young soldiers, the victor and the vanquished. No one of either force was near enough to hear what they said to each other. But reiterated shouts came from the Republican ranks: "Lay down your arms, comrades!" "Surrender, and you shall be safe!" The rain, falling, falling, seemed a fit pall for the broken hopes that were going down in night, the melancholy cry of the gulls that wheeled overhead a fit requiem. The golden lilies were in the dust, and all was vain--ardour and sacrifice and devotion--as vain as the fury and despair that saw them wither, watered though they were with the best blood of France.

Sombreuil came back from his brief interview. It went instantly through the lines of waiting Royalists that he had bargained with Hoche for their lives--for all their lives except his own--at the price of capitulation. And indeed he was heard to say to those who pressed round him, "My friends, save yourselves, or else surrender!"

But there was no possibility of saving themselves now. The English ships, having done all they could, had withdrawn into the middle of the bay; not a boat was visible. Only the corvette still continued her stubborn fire. . . . And suddenly the unfortunate young leader realised that the last door was closed, for La Vireville saw him, in a paroxysm of despair, strike spurs into his horse and try to force him over the rocks into the sea--not the only man there to prefer the Roman ending. But the animal, rearing violently, refused the leap, and in a moment or two his rider had regained his self-command, had dismounted, and was attempting, with his handkerchief, to signal the _Lark_ to cease firing.

Evidently the signal was not seen, for the corvette's guns still thundered away at the beach, and Hoche, coming up with the two 'representatives of the people,' Tallien and Blad, in their plumed head-dresses, seemed to be expostulating with Sombreuil on the point.

"He says that if a man of his is killed----" reported a youth near enough to hear, and left the sentence significantly unfinished.

"A lieutenant of the régiment de la Marine is going to swim off to the corvette."

"Then he will be drowned for certain," muttered La Vireville, turning and looking at that wild sea which must have put an end to René's last faint chance of escape.

(But he was wrong about the swimmer, for Gesril du Papeu not only accomplished his mission, but swam back again--to another kind of death.)

And soon to those in the little fort, when the thud and reverberation of the _Lark's_ cannon had ceased, came insistently that sound which in all this desperate business had never been absent from their ears--the great voice of the sea, counting out the hours that were left, till those ears should be deaf to tide and wind for ever. So, after all the hours of tension (for it was now nearly one o'clock in the afternoon), the supreme moment of humiliation and disaster came at last. Charles de Sombreuil slowly detached his sabre, half-drew the blade from its sheath, kissed it reverently, and gave it into Tallien's hands, and Tallien put it into those of Rouget de Lisle. Then the soldiers surrounded the young hussar, and he was lost to sight. The expedition to Quiberon was over.

And as the grenadiers in their blue and white came pouring into the enclosure of the fort, La Vireville (like not a few others) broke his sword under his heel and flung it over the wall into the sea.