CHAPTER XI.

CAPTURE OF CORNELIA.

The victory of the Rochelois was a bloody one, and dearly did we pay for it. We numbered over eleven hundred of our people killed or disabled, men and women. Cornelia Mirant received a wound upon the neck; the Bombarde perished in the breach. Marcienne, Odelin's widow, was struck by a bullet and killed near the rampart as she was bringing aid to a wounded soldier; Antonicq's arm was run through by a pike; Colonel Plouernel was carried to his house in a nearly dying condition with two arquebus shots in his chest. Louis Rennepont, his wife Theresa, Master Barbot, the Franc-Taupin and Serpentin, his assistant in mining, came safe and sound out of the engagement. The Rochelois gathered in the dead and wounded. The Lebrenn family carried to their house the corpse of Odelin's widow. A sad funeral march! But, alas, in these distressful times the exigencies of the public weal have precedence over the holiest of sorrows. One enjoys leisure to weep over his dead only after having avenged them. The triumph of a day does not remove the apprehensions for the morrow. The royalist assault, so valiantly repelled by the people of La Rochelle, might be renewed the very next day, due to the large reserve forces of the Catholic army, only a small portion of which took part in the attack upon the Bastion of the Evangelium. The City Council urged all the remaining able-bodied citizens to proceed without delay to repair the breach, seeing that the moon, then at her full, would light them at their work during the whole night. Fresh defenses were to be immediately raised upon the side of the assaulted bastion. Then, also, famine was staring the city in the face. Precautions were needed against that emergency. Captain Mirant's ships, which were to revictual the city and replenish its magazines of war, still failed to be descried at sea, notwithstanding a strong wind rose from the southwest towards sunset. The last bags of beans were distributed among the combatants, whose exhaustion demanded immediate attention after the day's conflict. The supply barely sufficed to allay the pangs of hunger. Consequently, in order to insure food for the next day, the women and children were summoned by the aldermen to be at the Two Mills Gate by one o'clock in the morning, the hour of low tide, and favorable for the digging of clams. The gathering of these mollusks offered a precious resource to the besieged, but it was as perilous as battle itself. The Bayhead redoubt, raised by the royalists at the extremity of the tongue of land that ran deep into the offing, could sweep with its cannon the beach on which the clams were to be dug. Towards one in the morning the City Hall bell rang the summons. Upon hearing the agreed-upon signal, the Rochelois women of all conditions issued forth with those of their children who were considered strong enough to join the expedition. Each was equipped with a basket. They met at the Two Mills Gate where they found the wife and two daughters of Morrisson the Mayor. They set the example of public spirit. Accordingly, while the male population of La Rochelle was busily engaged in repairing the breach, the women and children sallied forth from the city in search of provisions for all. Although smarting from her wound, and despite the protests of Antonicq, Cornelia Mirant determined to share with Theresa Rennepont the risks of the nocturnal expedition after clams. She joined the troop of women and children.

About four or five hundred Rochelois women issued forth from the Two Mills Gate, situated near the Lantern Tower, in search of clams to feed the population. They were soon upon the beach. Bounded on the right by a ledge of rocks, the beach extended to the left as far as the roadstead in front of the inner port of La Rochelle, a roadstead narrowed towards its entrance by two tongues of land, each of which was armed with a hostile redoubt. The Bayhead redoubt could at once cover with its fire the narrow entrance of the bay, and sweep the full length and breadth of the beach upon which the Rochelois women now scattered and were actively engaged in picking up at the foot of the rocks, aided by the light of the moon, the mollusks that they came in search of. At the start the Bayhead redoubt gave them no trouble, although the enemy's attention must undoubtedly have been attracted by the large number of white head-covers and scarlet skirts, the time-honored costume of the Rochelois women. Already the baskets were handsomely filling with clams--the "celestial manna" as Mayor Morrisson called them--when suddenly a bright flash of light threw its reflection upon the small puddles of water on the beach, a detonation was heard, and a light cloud of smoke rose above the redoubt. A shiver ran over the clam-digging Rochelois women, and profound silence took the place of their previous chatter.

"The royalists have seen us!" said Theresa Rennepont to Cornelia. "They have begun firing upon us."

"No!" cried Cornelia with mixed joy and alarm as she looked in the direction of the battery. "The enemy is firing upon my father's brigantines! There they are! There they are, at last! God be praised! If they enter port, La Rochelle is saved from famine! Do you see them, Theresa? Do you see, yonder, their white sails glistening in the moonlight? The ships are drawing near. They come laden with victory to us!"

And the young maid, moved with a joy that overcame her alarm, raised her beautiful face to heaven, and in a voice quivering with enthusiasm exclaimed: "Oh, Lord! Guard my father's life! Grant victory to the sacred cause of freedom!"

All thought of the clams was instantly dropped. The women pressed close to the water's edge; with eyes fixed upon the ships, they awaited anxiously the issue of the combat upon which depended the victualing of their city. It was a solemn moment; an imposing spectacle. The further extremities of the two tongues of land that enclosed the outer bay and left but a narrow entrance to the port, threw their black profiles upon the waves, silvered by the moon. The four brigantines were sailing in single file before the wind with a full spread of canvas, towards the dangerous passage which they had to enter under the cross fire of the enemy's redoubts. A rapid and frightful cannonade followed upon the first shot which had startled the women. Already the first one of the four vessels had entered the passage, when, despite the firmness of her nature, Cornelia emitted a cry of distress and said in consternation to Theresa:

"Look, the mast of the forward brigantine is down! It must have been struck by a ball! Good God, my father is lost if he should be on that vessel--dismantled--unable to move--exposed to the fire of the enemy!"

"All is lost! Alas, all is lost!"

"The brigantines are returning to the open sea!"

"Captain Mirant flees without giving battle! without answering the enemy's fire! without giving back a single shot!"

"Come, let us return to our clams--henceforth the only resource of La Rochelle! Let us continue picking up clams!"

"No! My father is not fleeing from battle," answered Cornelia. "By sailing back he means to tow the dismantled ship out of harm's way. No, Captain Mirant is not fleeing from battle! Do you not see that his vessels are now lying to? They are not sailing away!"

The words of Cornelia, who was long familiar with nautical manoeuvres, thanks to the many voyages she made on board her father's vessels, revived the hopes of the Rochelois women. Their eyes returned with renewed anxiety to the entrance of the port. But, alas, as they did so, none perceived that soldiers of the royal army were coming out of the Bayhead redoubt, and, screened by the shadows cast by the rocks that were strewn to the right of the beach, were silently creeping nearer behind the massive blocks.

"What did I tell you?" Cornelia proceeded to explain. "The brigantines are sailing back again into the passage. The forward one, with the dismantled vessel in tow, is opening fire upon the royalist redoubt. No! Captain Mirant's cannons have not lost their speech!"

And so it was. The brigantine that had the dismantled vessel in tow sailed intrepidly into the passage, returning the enemy's fire from both broadsides. The enemy's redoubts, especially the Bayhead, being the better equipped, replied to the brigantine. Suddenly, however, a cry of terror escaped from all breasts. The brigantine that led was enveloped in a thick smoke which here and there was reddened by the ruddy glow of flames.

The agony of the women of La Rochelle redoubled. Their attention, held captive by the spectacle in the bay, prevented their noticing the Catholic soldiers, who, in increasing numbers, were approaching, hidden behind the last rocks of the ledge. Suddenly the echoes around the rocks repeated, like the reverberations of thunder, the roar of a tremendous explosion. The dismantled vessel, which carried a full load of powder, was blown into the air after being set on fire, not by the enemy, but by Captain Mirant himself; and, as it blew up, it partly dismantled the Bayhead redoubt. The manoeuvre was successful. Not only was the redoubt crippled, but a large number of the soldiers and cannoniers who manned it perished under the ruins of their own batteries. So soon as the intrepid mariner saw one of his vessels disabled from proceeding on its voyage, he had taken her in tow; veered about with the end in view of withdrawing his flotilla from the enemy's fire long enough to enable him to perfect his newly conceived strategy; heaped inflammable materials upon the disabled ship; left the powder in her hold; transferred the sailors to his own bottom; veered again; sailed under full canvas before the wind straight into the passage; and leading in tow the floating incendiary machine which he had just improvised, set it on fire, and cut the cable just before arriving in front of the redoubt, convinced, by his intimate acquaintance with the currents along the coast, that they would drive ashore and against the redoubt the floating firebrand loaded with powder, which, when exploding, would shake the royalist battery to pieces. It happened as Captain Mirant calculated. Once the redoubt was in ruins, Captain Mirant had nothing to fear except from the inferior battery raised on the opposite tongue of land. The bold mariner now proceeded on his course followed by his remaining vessels, deliberately answering the inoffensive shots from the opposite side. Finally, with only the perforation of some of their sails, and a few bullets lodged in their sides, the three vessels steered straight towards the entrance of the interior port of La Rochelle, which they were to save from famine, and re-supply with munitions of war.

"God be praised! The city is saved! May my father have come off safe and sound from the combat!" cried Cornelia, while the other Rochelois women loudly acclaimed with shouts of joy and hope the brilliant triumph of the captain.

The last of the three brigantines had just entered the port when the rattle of arquebus shots resounded from behind the rocks which bordered the beach to the right of where the Rochelois women were assembled. It rained bullets. Women and children, mortally wounded, dropped dead around Theresa and Cornelia. The unexpected attack of the royalist soldiers in ambush threw the unfortunate women into a panic. They had come wholly unarmed, bent upon gathering clams along the beach, and not looking for danger except from the batteries of Bayhead. It happened that a part of that garrison consisted of troops of the guard of the Duke of Anjou, under the command of the Marquis of Montbar, one of the Prince's favorites, and the most noted debauchee of the whole royalist army. So soon as he perceived the Rochelois women spread along the beach, the Marquis set his soldiers in motion, ordered them to slide out of the redoubt, and to creep noiselessly, under cover of the rocks and of the shadows that they projected, with the object in view of massacring a large number of the heroic women, whose intrepidity the royalists had more than once tasted to their sorrow, and of seizing several of them for the orgies of the Duke of Anjou's tent. Accordingly, after unmasking his ambuscade by the first round of arquebus shots, the Marquis of Montbar rushed with his soldiers upon the startled and panic-stricken women, crying: "Kill all the old ones! Take the handsomest and youngest prisoners! God's blood! You can easily distinguish the pretty girls from the old and ugly! The moon is bright!"

The scene that followed was frightful to behold. Many of the "old" ones were ruthlessly butchered, as ordered by the Catholic captain. Others, having escaped the fire of the arquebuses and the ensuing carnage, finding themselves unarmed, and unable to resist the soldiers, sought safety in flight in the direction of the Two Mills Gate. Still others stood their ground and defended themselves with the energy of despair against the guards who sought to seize them. Among the latter was Cornelia, who, in the turmoil, was separated from Theresa Rennepont as both sought to reach the city. The Marquis of Montbar, happening to be near where Cornelia was struggling in the hands of several soldiers, and struck by the beauty of the girl, called out to his men: "Take care you do not hurt her--keep her alive! God's blood, she is a royal morsel! I reserve her for Monseigneur the Duke of Anjou."

Cornelia, whose wound was re-opened in her struggle with the soldiers, felt herself losing strength and consciousness through loss of blood. She fell in a faint at the feet of Montbar. By his orders two of his guards raised her by her feet and shoulders, and carried her away like a corpse. Several other Rochelois women, who were likewise carried off captive to the Bayhead redoubt, now lying in ruins through Captain Mirant's manoeuvre, were that night victims of the brutality of both captains and soldiers. Finally many others succeeded in reaching the Two Mills Gate at the moment that a company of Protestants, attracted by the sound of arquebus shots, sallied from the city and were hastening to the beach. Alas, it was too late! Already the inrushing tide was submerging the dead and the dying victims of the royalist ambush. Already the water reached the foot of the rocks and intercepted the progress of the Rochelois. They could not pursue the enemy who, among other prisoners, carried away the inanimate body of Captain Mirant's daughter at the very hour that the daring mariner weighed anchor in the port of La Rochelle amidst the acclamations of the inhabitants.