The Pocket Bible or Christian the Printer Part 53

Death, I defy thee! What have I to fear?

G.o.d's my support with His infinite might!

Have I not from Him my t.i.tle quite clear?

"When the malignants did fire on me, When they expected to tear out my heart, Have I not seen them all thrown down by Thee, Scattered, and smitten, and struck by Thy dart?

"Come, let a whole camp surround me on all sides, Never my heart will be shaken with fright!

Close by my side, Oh! the Lord ever strides, Need I to fear of a foe any blight?"

The battle raged with fury. Colonel Plouernel's apprehensions were realized. Despite prodigies of intrepidity, his column, as it waded through the stream in serried and compact ranks, was received in front and from the two flanks by a terrific cross-fire of arquebuses and artillery. Three-fourths of the volunteers fell under the torrent of lead, even before reaching the middle of the stream. Wondering at the length of this vanguard attack, the successful execution of which he considered certain by entrusting it to Colonel Plouernel. Admiral Coligny suddenly saw Antonicq Lebrenn riding back at top speed with his thigh pierced by a bullet. Informed by Antonicq of the reason of the disastrous result of the encounter, the Admiral promptly ordered Colonels Bueil and Piles to proceed at their swiftest with their respective regiments to the jetty, and take the road entrenchment from the flank. Soubise, La Rochefoucauld and Saragosse received and, with their wonted skill, executed another set of orders. Within shortly battle was engaged all along the line, changing the aspect of the conflict. The Huguenots' artillery responded to and silenced the fire from the opposite side. Attacked in front, from the right and the left, the royalists were dislodged from their entrenchments near the lake.

They retired behind the palisaded ground, from which they kept up a murderous fire. But the palisade was broken through. First the infantry, then the cavalry of the Protestants rushed through the breaches. A stubborn melee ensued, and was at its height when the m.u.f.fled rumbling of distant thunder, immediately followed by heavy rain-drops from the blackening sky overhead, announced the approach of the storm that Coligny had that morning predicted.[72]

I, Antonicq Lebrenn, who write this account, am overcome with grief in completing it. Its close revives sad memories.

After I informed Admiral Coligny of the check sustained by the column of Colonel Plouernel, the kindhearted old man insisted that his own surgeon dress my wound. Though painful, the wound did not prevent me from keeping in the saddle. After being attended by the surgeon, I hastened back to the thick of the battle. A large body of cavalry, commanded by Marshal Tavannes, with the Duke of Anjou, brother of Charles IX, and young Henry of Guise at his side, covered the right wing of the royalist camp. Against that armed body of heavy and light troopers Admiral Coligny hurled twenty squadrons of hors.e.m.e.n under the command of Prince Franz of Gerolstein. It was at that moment that I rejoined the battle.

The thunder claps, now succeeding one another with increasing frequency and vehemence, drowned the roar of the artillery. The storm was soon to break out in all its fury. The Protestant cavalry was advancing at a gallop three ranks deep upon the Catholic hors.e.m.e.n. Sword in hand, Franz of Gerolstein led, a few paces in advance of his troopers. The Prince was accompanied by his knights and pages. Among the latter was Anna Bell. The das.h.i.+ng sight soon disappeared from before my eyes in the cloud of pistol smoke, and the dust raised by the horses, as the two opposing ma.s.ses of riders met each other, pistol in hand and exchanged fire. Suddenly I heard my father's voice calling to me:

"G.o.d sends you, my son! Come and fight by my side."

"Father," I said to him drawing up my horse beside his own, he being on the right wing of our army and at the end of a line composed of Rochelois volunteer hors.e.m.e.n who followed upon the heels of the charging contingent of the Prince of Gerolstein, "did you have time to see my sister again after you left me last night?"

"Alas, no; but I found a letter that she left behind, and--"

My father could proceed no further. Two regiments of mounted arquebusiers under the command of Count Neroweg of Plouernel, the colonel's brother, made a charge upon us with the object of isolating us from the German troopers. The manoeuvre succeeded. The impetuosity of the charge threw our ranks into disorder. The enemy broke through them.

We could no longer fight in line. A general melee ensued. It was a combat of man to man. Despite the disorder I managed to remain at my father's side. Fate drove us, him and me, face to face with Count Neroweg of Plouernel, at whose side rode his son Odet, a lad of sixteen years, and a great favorite with the Duke of Anjou. I heard the Count cry to him:

"Courage, my boy! Strike hard, and kill as many of the enemy as you can!

Prove yourself worthy of the house of Neroweg!"

Almost immediately thereupon I saw the Count rise in his stirrups. His sword was on the point of striking my father when the latter crushed the shoulder of Neroweg with a pistol shot fired at close range. The Count dropped his sword and uttered a piercing cry. His son raised his light arquebus and took aim at my father, just then engaged in replacing his pistol in its holster. Instantly, driven by two digs of my spurs, my horse bounded forward, striking the steed of Odet of Plouernel breast against breast; at the very moment that Odet discharged his arquebus upon my father, I struck the lad so furious a blow with my saber that his casque and skull were cleaved in two. Odet stretched out his arms, and dropped backward bleeding upon the crupper of his horse. In the meantime, my own steed, wounded in the loins by a severe cut, collapsed.

In falling, the heavy animal rolled over me, pressing with its full weight upon my wounded thigh. Pain deprived me of the strength to extricate myself. Several combatants trampled me under foot. My corselet was torn open under the iron hoofs of the horses. My morion was knocked in and flattened; pressed by its walls my skull felt as if cramped by a vise. My eyes began to swim; I was about to faint, but a frightful vision so stirred my soul at that moment that I seemed to revive. The melee left in its wake upon the field of carnage the dead, the dying, and the wounded among whom I lay. The spectacle I saw took place not far from my right. A few paces from me, my father, unhorsed by the arquebus of young Odet of Plouernel, raised himself livid, and sank again in a sitting posture, carrying his hands to his cuira.s.s which a bullet had perforated. That same instant the diabolical cry smote my ears:

"Kill all! Kill all!"

And then, in the midst of the roll of thunder overhead, and across the surrounding sheen of lightning flashes, there appeared before my eyes--Fra Herve, mounted upon a small black horse with long flowing mane, clad in his brown frock rolled up to his knees, and exposing his fleshless legs, naked like his feet which were strapped in spurred sandals wherewith he kicked his horse's flank and urged it onward. A fresh bandage covered his recent wound and girded his hairless skull.

His hollow eyes sparkled with savage fury. Armed with a long cutla.s.s that dripped blood he continued to cry:

"Kill all! Kill all!"

The monk led to carnage a band of gallows-birds, the sc.u.m and refuse of the Catholic army, whose duty it was to despatch the wounded with iron maces, axes and knives. Herve recognized his brother Odelin, who, with one hand upon his wound and the other on the ground, was essaying to rise to his feet. An expression of satanic hatred lighted the face of the Cordelier. He jumped down from his horse, and emitted a roar of ferocious triumph. My father gave himself up for lost. Nevertheless he made an attempt to soften the heart of his executioner, saying:

"Herve, brother! I have a wife and children. Last night I saved your life!"

"Lord!" cried the priest, gasping for breath and raising his fiery eyes and blood-stained cutla.s.s to the thundering and lightning-lighted heaven above. "G.o.d of Vengeance! G.o.d of the Catholics! Receive as a holocaust the blood of Cain!"

And Fra Herve precipitated himself upon his brother, threw him down, squatted upon his chest, seized his hair with one hand and with the other brandished the cutla.s.s. Odelin uttered a cry of horror, closed his eyes and offered his throat. The fratricide was accomplished. Fra Herve rose bespattered with his brother's blood, kicked the corpse with his foot, and jumped back upon his horse yelling:

"Kill all! Slaughter all the wounded!"

My senses, until then held in suspense by the very terror of the frightful spectacle, now abandoned me. I completely lost consciousness.

The carnage continued.

When I recovered from my swoon, I was lying on the straw in our smithy and lodging at St. Yrieix. The Franc-Taupin and Colonel Plouernel sat beside my couch. From them I learned the issue of the battle of Roche-la-Belle. It was disastrous to the royalists; they were roundly routed. The violent thunder storm, followed by a deluge of rain, did not allow Admiral Coligny to pursue the retreating Catholic army. The victorious Protestants re-entered St. Yrieix. The Franc-Taupin and his Avengers of Israel, happening to pa.s.s by the spot where I lay motionless under my horse, not far from my father's corpse, with his throat cut by Fra Herve, recognized me and laid me upon a wagon used for transporting the munitions of the artillery. The field of battle was ours. With the help of his companions, the Franc-Taupin piously dug a grave in which they buried my father.

Later I learned from the Prince of Gerolstein the sad fate that overtook my sister, and I also found the letter which she wrote to my father. The unfortunate girl, imagining herself despised and forsaken by us, decided, she wrote, to die, and bade us her heartrending adieus.

Desirous that my father and his co-religionists be apprized of the dark and b.l.o.o.d.y schemes of Catherine De Medici, Anna Bell reported in her letter the secret conversation which the Queen had with Father Lefevre on the subject of the reformers--a conversation that she overheard at the Abbey of St. Severin. After having thus attested her attachment to us to the very end, she obtained the consent of the Prince's page she had spoken with, to don the clothes and ride the horse of the lad who was killed at the skirmish of that morning. She looked forward to meeting death beside Franz of Gerolstein. Alas! Her wish was realized.

She joined the Prince. As much surprised as alarmed at the girl's purpose, he vainly entreated her to withdraw until after the shock between the two mounted forces. Neither Anna Bell nor Franz of Gerolstein was wounded at the first encounter. But shortly after, as the German hors.e.m.e.n were re-crossing the stream in pursuit of the enemy's cavalry, my sister was struck in the breast by a stray bullet from the fleeing enemy, and fell from her horse into the river, where she was drowned, without Franz, who was carried along by the impetus of his troopers' charge, being able to return in time to save her.

Finally, informed by my account concerning the double encounter of his brother, Count Neroweg, and Odet his son, with my father and myself, Colonel Plouernel learned later that both had perished in the fight, leaving him the head of the house, and sole heir of its vast domains.

Victorious at Roche-la-Belle, the Protestants were destined to suffer a serious defeat in September of the same year. The royal and Protestant armies met in Poitou, near the town of Montcontour. Coligny, much the inferior in numbers, manoeuvred his forces with his customary skill, and entrenched himself behind the River Dive. Sheltered by that almost impregnable position, he wished to wait for the reinforcements promised by Montgomery, who was in almost complete possession of Gascony. But, as had happened so many times before, to the misfortune of the cause, and despite all his firmness, Coligny saw himself constrained to yield to the headlong impatience of his army, the greater part of which consisted of volunteers. The campaign had lasted a long time. Captains and soldiers had left their families, their property, their farms, their fields and their homes to fly to the defense of their religion. They were anxious to return to their hearths. Accordingly, hoping by means of a victory to be able once more to impose peace upon Charles IX and reconquer the free exercise of their religion, they were loud in their demand for battle. Coligny yielded. On September 3, 1569, he delivered battle to an army almost twice the size of his own. Despite the prodigies of bravery displayed by the Huguenots, and although the royalists sustained heavy losses, victory remained with the Catholics.

Nevertheless, after Montcontour, as after Jarnac, so far from allowing himself to be disheartened by a reverse that he had foreseen and that he had vainly sought to avoid, Coligny executed so threatening a retreat that the Catholic army dared not pursue him. On the very night after the defeat, the Protestant chieftains, a.s.sembled at Parthenay, despatched couriers to Scotland, Germany and Switzerland appealing to their co-religionists for support; collected the shattered fragments of their armies; threw strong garrisons into Niort, St. Jean-d'Angely, Saintes and La Roch.e.l.le; crossed the Charente; marched into Gascony to join Montgomery, who was the master of that province; and Coligny renewed hostilities with success, choosing as the basis of his operations the Rivers Tarn and Garonne. Armed bands of intrepid Protestants hara.s.sed and tired out the royal forces. Charles IX and his mother took the Huguenots for annihilated after the defeats of Jarnac and Montcontour.

It was otherwise. The defeated men reappeared more determined, more numerous, more zealous in the defense of their rights. Catherine De Medici, more and more convinced that peace, and not war, offered the sole means to put an end to the Huguenots, turned her thoughts more resolutely than ever before to the execution of the infernal project that Francis of Guise conceived at the time of the triumvirate, and which she confided to the Jesuit Lefevre. She caused overtures to be made to Coligny looking to a new treaty of peace. The royal advances were met. The Admiral, together with several other Protestant chiefs, deputed as the plenipotentiaries of the Huguenots, held long conferences with the envoys of Charles IX, and finally, on August 10, 1570, a new edict, the most favorable yet granted to the Protestants, was signed at St. Germain.

The doc.u.ment provided in substance:

The memory of all past events is blotted out by both parties.

Freedom of conscience is implicitly granted throughout the kingdom.

None is henceforth to be constrained to commit any act forbidden by his conscience in religious matters. No distinction exists between Catholics and Protestants in the matter of admission to the colleges, Universities, hospitals, asylums, or any other inst.i.tution of learning or of public charity. None shall be prosecuted for past actions. Coligny and all other Protestant chiefs are declared good and loyal subjects. Protestants are qualified to hold all royal, seigniorial or munic.i.p.al offices. All decrees rendered against the Huguenots shall be stricken from the judicial records. Finally, and in order to guarantee the execution of the said edict, Charles IX places, as pledges for the term of two years, the cities of La Roch.e.l.le, Cognac, Montauban, and La Charite, in the hands of the Princes of Navarre, of Conde and of twenty other Protestant Princes, the said towns to be places of _refuge_ for all those who might not yet venture to return to their own homes.[73]

Alas! those who, in the language of the edict, _might not yet venture to return to their own homes_, despite the peace being signed, promulgated and sworn to, justly suspected some new trap concealed under the lying peace. Antonicq Lebrenn did not take his leave of Admiral Coligny and Monsieur Lanoue until after the close of the war. They were informed by him of the revelations contained in Anna Bell's letter to her father Odelin, the letter wherein the maid of honor of Catherine De Medici reported the conversation which she overheard between the infamous Queen and the Jesuit Lefevre, in the course of which the Queen disclosed to the Jesuit her project of lulling the suspicions of the Huguenots with the false appearance of a peace, to the end of taking them by surprise, unarmed and confiding, and exterminating them on one day throughout the kingdom. The project seemed so monstrous to Coligny that he looked upon it as only a chimera of delirious wickedness, and held it for impracticable, if only on the ground of there not being murderers enough to execute the butchery.

The Admiral deceived himself. There never is a lack of murderers in the Catholic party. These rise by the thousand at the voice of the Roman priests. All priests are potential murderers with a patent from their faith.

CHAPTER VII.

"CONTRE-UN."[74]

Towards the end of the month of August in the year 1572, the Lebrenn family was gathered one evening in the large hall that served for storeroom to the arms turned out by the establishment of Antonicq Lebrenn, who continued his father's trade at La Roch.e.l.le. The room had the appearance of an a.r.s.enal. On the shelves along the walls lay arms of all sorts in profusion--swords, daggers, sabers, cutla.s.ses, pikes, halberds, battle maces and axes; further off, long and short-barreled arquebuses, pistols and some firearms of a novel fas.h.i.+on. These were light and easy to handle, an invention of the celebrated Gaspard of Milan, who gave them the name of "muskets;" finally, there was a large display of casques, morions, cuira.s.ses, corselets, brigandines, armlets, s.h.i.+elds and bucklers, some of the latter made of iron, others of wood inlaid with sheets of steel. The workshop, with its furnaces, anvils and other utensils, was situated behind the storeroom, where, on this day the Lebrenn family, six in number, were congregated--Marcienne, Odelin's widow; Antonicq, her son; Theresa, his sister, married three years before to Louis Rennepont, the nephew of Brother St. Ernest-Martyr; Josephin, the Franc-Taupin; Captain Mirant, Marcienne's brother; his daughter Cornelia, the betrothed of Antonicq; and finally John Barbot, a boilermaker, the widower of Jacqueline Barbot, who was the G.o.d-mother of Anna Bell, and who died two years previously. In the a.s.semblage were also the two artisans of the establishment, Bois-Guillaume and Roland, besides a fifteen-year-old apprentice whom they nicknamed "Serpentin."

Although it was the hour for rest, these different personages were not idle. Marcienne, Odelin's widow, spun at her wheel. Clad in black, she had made up her mind to remain in mourning for the rest of her life in memory of the tragic deaths of her husband and her daughter, Anna Bell.

The widow's p.r.o.nounced features, the cast of her face at once serious, firm and kind, preserved the primitive type of the women of the _Santones_, a race which, according to what historians tell us, preserved itself pure from times immemorial, almost without admixture with foreign strains since the olden days of Gaul. Theresa, Marcienne's eldest daughter, was busy sewing, and from time to time cast a glance of maternal solicitude upon her child, who lay asleep in a cradle that off and on she rocked with her foot. Theresa expected with increasing anxiety the return of her husband, Louis Rennepont, who, several weeks before, left for Paris, whither he was deputed by the Rochelois, owing to the vague yet increasing apprehensions entertained by the Protestants, due to the circ.u.mstance that Coligny, together with almost all the Protestant leaders, was drawn to Paris on the occasion of the marriage of Henry of Bearn to the King's sister Marguerite. Theresa's headgear was the time-honored and common one of the women of the region--a high, white and pointed coif, adjusted to the coil of her tresses. Her robe, made of grey bolting-cloth, was slashed with a red front-piece, that partly covered her white and starched chemisette. From the belt of her ap.r.o.n hung two long silver chains, at the lower end of which were attached her penknife, scissors, a pin-cus.h.i.+on, some keys, and other utensils inseparable from a good housekeeper. Near Theresa Rennepont and behind her, Cornelia Mirant, her cousin, the betrothed of Antonicq, was ironing some household linen. The face of Cornelia also preserved in all their purity the characteristics of a Santone woman of the heroic days of Gaul. A luxurious head of light chestnut hair with a golden glint, twisted into strands and wound into a thick-topknot on her head; a white and ruddy skin; a small forehead; light eyebrows of a shade less brilliant than her hair and penciled in an almost straight line above her orange-brown, flas.h.i.+ng and resolute eyes; a straight nose, prolonged in almost a straight line from the forehead, as seen in the lofty statues of antiquity; a pair of fleshy and cherry-red lips; a p.r.o.nounced chin;--these features imparted to Cornelia's face a strikingly lofty stamp. The girl's tall stature, her flexible neck, her well rounded shoulders, her white and strong arms, the gentle contour of her bosom, recalled the n.o.ble proportions of the Greek Pallas Athene.

With this virile appearance, Cornelia united the sportiveness, and the sweet and coy charms of a maid. Dressed Rochelois fas.h.i.+on like her cousin, Theresa, she had, in order to be at greater ease, rolled up the sleeves of her robe, and the strong muscles of her arms, which were white as marble, rose and fell with every impression of the hot iron upon the linen that she was smoothing. Ever and anon, however, the iron remained inactive for a moment. At such moments Cornelia raised her head to listen more attentively to the reading with which Antonicq was entertaining the a.s.sembled family; and her eyes would then bend upon him, not with any furtive tenderness, but, on the contrary, endeavoring to meet his own gaze with the serene confidence of a betrothed bride.

Cornelia's father, Captain Mirant, one of the most intrepid seamen of La Roch.e.l.le, a man still in the full strength of his years, was engaged at sketching some defenses that he deemed requisite to the safety of the port. Near the captain sat his chum, John Barbot, the boilermaker of the isle of Rhe. His wife, Anna Bell's G.o.d-mother, had died of grief. She never could pardon herself for the loss of her G.o.d-child; after long years of weeping over what she deemed her own negligence, the poor woman sank into her grave. Not wis.h.i.+ng to sit idly by, John Barbot was furbis.h.i.+ng a steel corselet with as much care as he would have done one of the magnificent copper basins with artistic relievos, or one of his tinplated iron sheets, which, set up in his boilermaker's shop, shone with the glitter of gold or silver. A man of exceptional courage, above all of great self-possession in the hour of danger, Barbot had taken part in the late religious wars. Among other scars he wore one inflicted by a saber cut, dealt so furiously that, after cropping the boilermaker's left ear, it plowed through his cheek and carried away the tip of his nose. Despite the mutilation, John Barbot's face preserved an expression of unalterable good nature. The Franc-Taupin polished the barrel of an arquebus just taken, tarnished and defaced, from the forge.

The old leader of the Avengers of Israel, the man to whom circ.u.mstances had imparted an implacable ferocity towards papists, still always carried, hanging from a string fastened to the b.u.t.tonhole of his coat, the little piece of wood on which, by means of notches, he kept tally of the Catholic priests whom he killed in reprisal for the death of his sister and the torture of Hena. The notches had now reached the number of twenty-four. The implacable avenger was seated on the other side of the cradle of Theresa's child, and shared the mother's duties of lightly rocking it. Whenever the child woke up, the Franc-Taupin would drop the barrel of the arquebus on his knees and smile to the baby--at least as hard as the Franc-Taupin could smile. He lived on a small pension granted to him by the munic.i.p.ality of La Roch.e.l.le, in reward for the long years of service that he rendered in the capacity of sergeant of the city archers. Josephin transferred to Antonicq, to Antonicq's sister and to their mother the devoted attachment of which he gave so many signal proofs to Christian Lebrenn and his wife Bridget, to their daughter Hena and their son Odelin. Finally, the two artisans employed in the shop, Bois-Guillaume and Roland, as well as Serpentin the apprentice, occupied themselves with something or other connected with their trade, more for the sake of keeping their hands busy than for actual work, while they listened to Antonicq, who was reading aloud.

Antonicq read the _Contre-Un_, a work written by Estienne of La Boetie,[75] who died about nine years before. Never yet did reason, human dignity, the sense of justice, the holy love for freedom, the whole-souled horror for tyranny, speak a language more eloquent and more warm from the heart than the language spoken in that immortal book. It was a cry of execration, an anathema against oppression. The avenging cry, leaping from the indignant soul of a great citizen, caused all n.o.ble hearts to vibrate responsively. Those pages, every word of which breathes ardent conviction, steeled the faith of all the honorable people, who finally at the end of their patience with the monstrous crimes that royalty, the accomplice or tool of the Church of Rome, was still soiled with in this century, were seriously considering, the same as the Low Countries were doing, the advisability of following the example of the Swiss cantons, which federated themselves in a Republic.

The work of Estienne of La Boetie, by calling upon all the oppressed to resistance _Against-One_ who oppresses them, laid bare to them, with terse and pitiless logic, the despicable causes of their _Voluntary Servitude_, the original t.i.tle of that admirable work.

Antonicq Lebrenn continued to read the _Contre-Un_ amid the profound silence maintained by the a.s.sembled family:

"There are three species of tyrants, I speak of wicked princes: The first have the kingdom by popular election; the second by force of arms; the third by inheritance. Those who acquired it by the right of war deport themselves as on conquered territory; those who are born kings are usually no better; nourished in the blood of tyranny, they take in the tyrant's nature with their milk, and look upon their people as hereditary serfs. He, to whom the people conferred the State, should (it would seem) be more endurable, and so would he be, I hold, if, seeing himself raised above all others and flattered by the undefinable thing called grandeur, he did not generally bend his energies to preserve the power that the people loaned him, and to transmit the same to his own children.

"Accordingly, to speak truthfully, I do perceive that there is some difference between these different tyrants. But if one is to choose, the difference ceases. The act of reigning remains virtually the same--the elective ones govern as if they had bulls to tame; the conquering ones look upon their people as their prey; hereditary kings see in their subjects natural slaves.