The Chouans by Honoré de Balzac (open ebook txt) 📕

“If the army doesn’t take things in hand and manage the government,” said Gerard, “those lawyers in Paris will put us back just where we were before the Revolution. A parcel of ninnies! what do they know about governing?”

“I’m always afraid they’ll treat with the Bourbons,” said Hulot. “Thunder! if they did that a pretty pass we should be in, we soldiers!”

“No, no, commandant, it won’t come to that,” said Gerard. “The army, as you say, will raise its voice, and—provided it doesn’t choose its words from Pichegru’s vocabulary—I am persuaded we have not hacked ourselves to pieces for the last ten years merely to manure the flax and let others spin the thread.”

“Well,” interposed Captain Merle, “what we have to do now is to act as good patriots and prevent the Chouans from communicating with La Vendee; for, if they once come to an understanding and England gets her finger into the pie, I wouldn’t answer for the cap of the Republic, one and invisible.”

As he spoke the cry of an owl, heard at a distance, interrupted the conversation. Again the commander examined Marche-a-Terre, whose impassible face still gave no sign. The conscripts, their ranks closed up by an officer, now stood like a herd of cattle in the road, about a hundred feet distant from the escort, which was drawn up in line of battle. Behind them stood the rear-guard of soldiers and patriots, picked men, commanded by Lieutenant Lebrun. Hulot cast his eyes over this arrangement of his forces and looked again at the picket of men posted in advance upon the road. Satisfied with what he saw he was about to give the order to march, when the tricolor cockades of the two soldiers he had sent to beat the woods to the left caught his eye; he waited therefore till the two others, who had gone to the right, should reappear.

“Perhaps the ball will open over there,” he said to his officers, pointing to the woods from which the two men did not emerge.

While the first two made their report Hulot’s attention was distracted momentarily from Marche-a-Terre. The Chouan at once sent his owl’s-cry to an apparently vast distance, and before the men who guarded him could raise their muskets and take aim he had struck them a blow with his whip which felled them, and rushed away. A terrible discharge of fire-arms from the woods just above the place where the Chouan had been sitting brought down six or eight soldiers. Marche-a-Terre, at whom several men had fired without touching him, vanished into the woods after climbing the slope with the agility of a wild-cat; as he did so his sabots rolled into the ditch and his feet were seen to be shod with the thick, hobnailed boots always worn by the Chouans.

At the first cries uttered by the Chouans, the conscripts sprang into the woods to the right like a flock of birds taking flight at the approach of a man.

“Fire on those scoundrels!” cried Hulot.

The company fired, but the conscripts knew well how to shelter themselves behind trees, and before the soldiers could reload they were out of sight.

“What’s the use of decreeing levies in the departments?” said Hulot. “It is only such idiots as the Directory who would expect any good of a draft in this region. The Assembly had much better stop voting more shoes and money and ammunition, and see that we get what belongs to us.”

At this moment the two skirmishers sent out on the right were seen returning with evident difficulty. The one that was least wounded supported his comrade, whose blood was moistening the earth. The two poor fellows were half-way down the slope when Marche-a-Terre showed his ugly face, and took so true an aim that both Blues fell together and rolled heavily into the ditch. The Chouan’s monstrous head was no sooner seen than thirty muzzles were levelled at him, but, like a figure in a pantomime, he disappeared in a second among the tufts of gorse. These events, which have taken so many words to tell, happened instantaneously, and in another moment the rear-guard of patriots and soldiers had joined the main body of the escort.

“Forward!” cried Hulot.

The company moved quickly to the higher and more open ground on which the picket guard was already stationed. There, the commander formed his troop once more into line of battle; but, as the Chouans made no further hostile demonstrations, he began to think that the deliverance of the conscripts might have been the sole object of the ambuscade.

“Their cries,” he said to his two friends, “prove that they are not numerous. We’ll advance at a quick step, and possibly we may be able to reach Ernee without getting them on our backs.”

These words were overheard by one of the patriot conscripts, who stepped from the ranks, and said respectfully:—

“General, I have already fought the Chouans; may I be allowed a word?”

“A lawyer,” whispered Hulot to Merle. “They always want to harangue. Argue away,” he said to the young man.

“General, the Chouans have no doubt brought arms for those escaped recruits. Now, if we try to outmarch them, they will catch us in the woods and shoot every one of us before we can get to Ernee. We must argue, as you call it, with cartridges. During the skirmish, which will last more time than you think for, some of us ought to go back and fetch the National Guard and the militia from Fougeres.”

“Then you think there are a good many Chouans?”

“Judge for yourself, citizen commander.”

He led Hulot to a place where the sand had been stirred as with a rake; then he took him to the opening of a wood-path, where the leaves were scattered and trampled into the earth,—unmistakable signs of the passage of a large body of men.

“Those were the ‘gars’ from Vitre,” said the man, who came himself from Fougeres; “they are on their way to Lower Normandy.”

“What is your name?” asked Hulot.

“Gudin, commander.”

“Well, then, Gudin, I make you a corporal. You seem to me trustworthy. Select a man to send to Fougeres; but stay yourself with me. In the first place, however, take two or three of your comrades and bring in the muskets and ammunition of the poor fellows those brigands have rolled into the ditch. These Bretons,” added Hulot to Gerard, “will make famous infantry if they take to rations.”

Gudin’s emissary started on a run to Fougeres by a wood-road to the left; the soldiers looked to their arms, and awaited an attack; the commandant passed along their line, smiling to them, and then placed himself with his officers, a little in front of it. Silence fell once more, but it was of short duration. Three hundred or more Chouans, their clothing identical with that of the late recruits, burst from the woods to the right with actual howls and planted themselves, without any semblance of order, on the road directly in front of the feeble detachment of the Blues. The commandant thereupon ranged his soldiers in two equal parts, each with a front of ten men. Between them, he placed the twelve recruits, to whom he