On the 27th, Lesdiguières and Saint-Géran attacked the counterscarp of the bastion of Le Moustier, and carried it after a desperate struggle of more than three hours. This success, which cost the besiegers some 600 casualties, was not followed up, chiefly owing to the opposition of Marillac, who was of opinion that, if they descended into the fosse to attack the bastion, they would find themselves exposed to a murderous flanking-fire from masked batteries.

On the 29th, the Guards’ trenches had been sufficiently advanced to allow of a battery of eight guns being established, and Schomberg, who was acting as Grand Master of the Artillery, came to inspect it. Bassompierre warned him that the park of powder was too near the battery for safety, and that, with a high wind blowing in its direction, the sparks from the cannon might be carried to the powder. The Sieur de Lesine, the officer in charge of the munitions, however, protested that there was no danger, and Schomberg did not order their removal.

They continued to push forward their trenches, and on the 31st Bassompierre, “to reconnoitre how far they had advanced, came to the head of the trench and advanced eight or ten paces from it.” He got back again in safety, the enemy not having had time to train their muskets upon him. But when, shortly afterwards, his friend, the Comte de Fiesque, attempted to do the same, they were ready for him, and he received a musket-ball in the abdomen, from which he died two days later. “He was a great loss to us,” writes Bassompierre, “and more particularly to me, for he was greatly attached to me. He was a brave noble, an honourable man and an excellent friend.”

By the evening of that day they had got another battery of four guns into position, and on the following morning a furious bombardment of the enemy’s advanced works began, Schomberg and Praslin superintending the work of the larger battery and Bassompierre of the smaller.

In the course of the afternoon, a similar disaster occurred in Mayenne’s camp before Ville-Bourbon, amongst the killed being that prince’s uncle the Marquis de Villars and a son of the Comte de Riberac, a young man of great promise. Worse misfortunes, however, were in store for Mayenne’s division.

In the night of September 2-3, the Lorraine prince advanced to the assault of a crescent-shaped outwork which had been constructed by La Force, and was defended by his sons and other Huguenot nobles and some of the best soldiers in the garrison. The attack failed; but on the following afternoon the attempt was renewed. After a furious hand-to-hand conflict, Mayenne was again repulsed, with heavy loss. On that day died the gallant Marquis de Thémines, eldest son of the marshal, La Frette, the governor of Chartres, “who yielded to no man of his time in courage and ambition,” and more than fifty Catholic gentlemen. The siege of Montauban, so lightly undertaken by Luynes, seemed likely to cost France dear.

On September 4, the King and the Constable called a council of war to discuss the advisability of endeavouring to carry the bastion of Le Moustier by assault. Bassompierre strongly urged that the attempt should be made, and was supported by Lesdiguières; but the other generals opposed it, and Marillac declared that to descend into the fosse meant certain death. Luynes asked Bassompierre to step into his cabinet, where the King presently joined them. Louis XIII informed them that Marillac and the others had said to him that it was easy for M. de Bassompierre to advocate this hazardous undertaking, as all the danger would be left to them, and he would have no share in it; and had accused him of wishing to expose them to butchery. Bassompierre, in high indignation, thereupon declared that, if the King would give him leave, he himself would lead the assault on the bastion, and pledged his word that, if he did not fall, “in three weeks he would have three cannon in position there against the town.”

The Constable objected that the change would not be agreeable to either division, and declared that the Guards would not obey the orders of the brigadier-generals from Le Moustier. Finally, Luynes asked Bassompierre to go and reconnoitre the bastion. This he did, in company with the Italian engineer Gamorini and two other officers from his division, and reported that an attack would not present more than ordinary difficulty. Luynes thereupon proposed that it should be undertaken; but Marillac and his colleagues persisted in their objections, and assured him that Montauban would soon be theirs, without any need for such sacrifice of life as this attack must entail. And they succeeded in bringing him round to their opinion.

On the 9th, the Guards, after some fierce fighting, succeeded in getting a footing in the advanced-works of Ville-Nouvelle. In this attack a poor gentleman of Béarn, Henri de Peyrac, Seigneur de Tréville, who had served for four years as a private soldier, greatly distinguished himself; and Bassompierre brought his gallantry to the notice of the King, and recommended him for an ensigncy in the Regiment of Navarre. This Louis XIII granted him, and Bassompierre told Tréville that he must accompany him to Piquecos to thank his Majesty. Tréville, however, refused the commission offered him, saying that he did not wish to leave his regiment, and that he “intended to conduct himself so well in future that the King would feel obliged to give him one in the Guards.” This he not long afterwards obtained, and eventually rose to be captain of the company of Musketeers of the Guard and to be governor of the district of Foix.

A few days later, 1,200 of the Cévennes mountaineers succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the covering force and throwing themselves into Saint-Antonin, a town eight leagues north-east of Montauban, obviously with the intention of marching through the Forest of Gréseigne and reinforcing the beleaguered garrison. The folly of Luynes in refusing to listen to the advice of Lesdiguières to enclose the town within lines of circumvallation was now apparent to all. The Constable’s ineptitude, however, was already a by-word in the army; and “both he and his brother the Maréchal de Chaulnes showed such ignorance of the military art, that the King, who, at any rate, understood the rudiments, perceived it and made game of them.”

In consequence of this disconcerting move on the part of the enemy, it was necessary to send out a strong force of cavalry every night to guard the roads between the forest and Montauban, which Bassompierre and the other generals commanded in turn.

On the 13th, Mayenne delivered another assault on the outworks of Ville-Bourbon, with the same result as had attended his previous efforts. “This,” says Bassompierre, “put great heart into the enemy and disheartened his troops. As for him, he was beside himself with rage.”

A day or two later, there was a comic interlude in the siege, of which Bassompierre was the hero. We shall allow him to describe it in his own words:—

All this was very charming, but, a few days later, Bassompierre was to meet the women of Montauban in much less agreeable circumstances.

On the 17th, Guise, who had arrived in the camp some days earlier, accompanied by a great number of gentlemen from his government of Provence, came to see Bassompierre and persuade him to go and dine with Mayenne. Bassompierre, however, who had to attend a council of war which Praslin had summoned, excused himself and, at the same time, warned the duke to be on his guard against Mayenne, “who had no greater pleasure than to make the enemy fire on him or on those whom he took to view his works, and was burning his fingers in order to burn others.”

Mayenne had possessed amiable qualities, and had enjoyed in Paris a popularity which recalled that of the great Guises. The news of his death caused a riot in the capital, where an infuriated mob fell upon the Huguenots one day when they were returning from their temple at Charenton. The Huguenots were armed, and several persons were killed on both sides, while the temple was burned.

The King and the Constable had recourse to a singular expedient to avenge Mayenne and take the town. The famous Spanish Carmelite monk Domingo de Jesu Maria, who had marched at the head of the Imperial army on the day of the Battle of Prague, and to whom the devout attributed the victory, was passing through France on his way from Germany. Luynes sent for him to come to the camp, and asked him what he ought to do to reduce this heretic stronghold, upon which the monk assured him that if he caused four hundred cannon-shots to be fired into the town, the terrified inhabitants would undoubtedly surrender. The King thereupon sent for Bassompierre and ordered him to fire the four hundred shots, which were to deliver Montauban into his hands. “This I did,” says Bassompierre; “but the enemy did not surrender for all that.”

Matters continued to go badly with the besiegers, which is scarcely surprising, having regard to the gross ineptitude of the amateur warriors who commanded them. At Ville-Nouvelle, where alone any real progress had been made, a mine had been prepared which was intended to demolish the inner face of the advanced-work of which the Guards had carried the outer. On the day before it was to be fired, Ramsay, the officer in charge of the mine, came to the Maréchal de Chaulnes to inquire how he wished it to be charged. Chaulnes, who was entirely ignorant of such matters, turned to the officers about him for information; but he misunderstood what they said and ordered the charge to be made four times as large as that which they had suggested. The astonished engineer remonstrated, but was curtly told to carry out his orders. On the following day, however, Chaulnes appears to have discovered his mistake, and told Bassompierre to go and have the mine charged as he judged best. It was too late; for, just as he reached the entrance to the gallery, Ramsay came rushing out and shouted to him to run for his life, as he had ignited the fuse and feared that the explosion would be terrible.

Bassompierre, who had had the presence of mind to thrust his head and the upper portion of his body into an empty barrel which happened to be lying near him, was fortunate enough to escape injury, though he had considerable difficulty in extricating himself, as there were “more than a thousand pounds of earth upon his loins, his thighs and his feet.” When he at last succeeded, he found that the effect of the explosion had been most disastrous, more than thirty men having been killed by the falling débris, amongst them being the unfortunate engineer Ramsay. The mine had also demolished a great part of their own defences, and placed them in a most dangerous position.

The enemy did not fail to seize their advantage, and, having discharged a storm of grenades and fire-balls at them, sallied out and fell upon two companies of the Guards on the left of the line. Bassompierre, with a body of gentlemen-volunteers, hurried to their assistance, and the assailants were repulsed. But, as he was returning, he met Praslin, who begged him to go at once to their four-gun battery, which was being heavily attacked. As he approached the battery, he saw that it was on fire, and that while some of the fifty Swiss who guarded it were engaged in extinguishing the flames, the rest were defending themselves with their pikes and halberds against a large force of the enemy, who were evidently determined to capture the battery at all costs.

He arrived only just in time, for the Swiss, many of whom had already been killed or wounded, were being desperately hard-pressed, and in a few minutes the battery must have been taken. But he placed himself at their head with his volunteers, and led a charge which drove the enemy back a little distance. They continued, however, to assail them with missiles of every description, and a large stone striking Bassompierre in the face—let us hope it was not thrown by one of the ladies with whom he had been conversing so amiably a few days before!—brought him to the ground insensible. Some of the Swiss raised him up, and carried him out of the mêlée, when he soon came to himself and returned to the fight. Finally, Praslin came up with two companies and forced the enemy to retire.

Their troubles, however, were not yet over, for meantime the enemy had made a sally in another quarter. Bassompierre and his noblesse again went to the rescue, and taking the assailants in the rear, obliged them to retreat, leaving several prisoners behind them.[174]

Bassompierre was certainly a person of extraordinary energy, for after this strenuous day he volunteered to take command of the force which was detached each evening to watch for the approach of the enemy’s reinforcements from Saint-Antonin, in place of Praslin, who was suffering from the effects of a slight wound, and spent the whole night in the saddle.

The alarm proved to be a false one; but in the night of September 26-27, just as Bassompierre was looking forward to the enjoyment of the first night’s rest he had had for more than a week, his equerry Le Manny came in with the news that the reinforcements from Saint-Antonin were approaching. There could be no doubt about the matter this time; the officer who had arrived with the news had seen them marching through the forest.

Bassompierre awoke the Duc de Retz and Créquy’s son Canaples, who slept in his room, and told them that the enemy were at hand; “but they thought he was playing a jest on them, as they had been up ten successive nights watching and waiting.” And they positively refused to accompany him. Leaving them, he went into a gallery near his room, where some thirty gentlemen slept, but could only persuade two of them to go with him. “The cry of ‘Wolf!’ had been raised so often without any justification that they vowed they would answer it no more.” But the wolf from the Cévennes was really coming this time, and a very fierce wolf he proved to be.

Hurriedly getting together some 1,200 men, of whom 200 were Swiss, Bassompierre marched away and took up his position in a sunken road intersecting the plain of Ramiers, which lies between the Forest of Gréseigne and Montauban, where it had been decided to await the enemy. Learning that they were approaching in three bodies, he detached the Baron d’Estissac with 400 men to his right; the Comte d’Ayen, who was in command of the cavalry that night, was already in position on his left.

It was a very dark night, and when presently the forms of men began to loom out of the blackness ahead, he was uncertain whether they were the enemy or a party of the Royal troops. But he shouted, “Vive le Roi!” and the answering cry of “Vive Rohan!” settled the question.

His position was protected by a barricade, but the agile mountaineers quickly swarmed over it and jumped down into the road, where a furious struggle began. So intense was the darkness there that it was often impossible to tell friend from foe, and not a few must have died by the weapons of their comrades. Bassompierre, lunging with a halberd at one of the enemy, stumbled and fell; the Huguenot, killed by the Swiss, fell on top of him, as did two other men who had shared his fate; and he was pinned down and unable to rise. At length, Le Manny and one of his servants, hearing his cries for help, came and extricated him; but scarcely was he on his feet again, than he narrowly escaped being run through the body by a Swiss, who mistook him for an enemy. The mêlée continued for some time, but at length numbers prevailed, and practically all the brave mountaineers were either killed or made prisoners. The dead had not died in vain, however, for, though their comrades on the right had been routed by d’Ayen, those on the left, to the number of some 600 men, had contrived in the darkness to elude d’Estissac, and throw themselves into Montauban.

Among the prisoners taken by Bassompierre[177] was the Sieur de Beaufort, the commander of the Cévennais. He was treated as a prisoner of war and imprisoned in the Bastille, from which he was released on the conclusion of peace. His humble comrades, however, were less fortunate, and those who recovered from their wounds were sent to the galleys.

 
 
END OF VOL. I.


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