But thereafter followed further inactivity, confusion, and divided councils. Even the commissariat broke down.
Soldiers at a distance of a few miles from headquarters sent messages complaining that they received no rations until six o’clock in the evening. There was no organization to deal with the simplest administrative problems, and apparently there had been little attempt to create any. No one looked even a few days ahead.
Ross was growing impatient. Privately he thought d’Hervilly’s caution in wishing to wait for more heavy guns from England before facing a battle was justifiable in a purely military sense, since once or twice already in small skirmishes the untrained Bretons had shown themselves unreliable. But so far as any advance on Quimper was concerned, he could see it being a matter of weeks at the best. There had been no universal rising in the countryside, no momentum of revolt. If they had to fight their way forward league by league, who knew what time it would take? Already he had been from home nearly three weeks, and he had written to Demelza by yesterday’s pinnace. But he was doing no personal good here. He was not even allowed to fight. And so far his Cornish following had only been allowed ashore twice.
And then came news that General Hoche was at last moving. Here and there the lines of the tenuous perimeter first set up by the Loyalists were being dented by sharp Republican attacks. An army of Chouans between two and three thousand strong was routed by a counter thrust from Hoche’s centre; then Auray, so recently captured, fell again; the defenders threw away their arms and fled without a fight. An aristocrat called de Vauban had been commanding them, and at length he rallied them and brought them to a halt, but they could not be persuaded to counter-attack, and he sent back messages of scathing contempt. An infective suspicion pervaded the army. Already on at least two occasions Bartholomew Tregirls’s predictions had been fulfilled – soldiers fighting for the King had abruptly changed sides and declared themselves loyal followers of the Republic.
Then, three days later, at one of the stormiest council meetings of all, d’Hervilly announced his decision to withdraw all his best troops from the perimeter defences and to concentrate them within the fifteen or so square miles of the Quiberon peninsula. The outer defences were to be manned by the Chouan irregulars, officered by a few aristocrats such as de Vauban and de Maresi. As a piece of military logic it was again unassailable. Protected on three sides by a British-patrolled sea and on the fourth by Fort Penthièvre, these regular forces were now in a position of great defensive strength. But Ross felt that as a piece of political strategy it would be disastrous. To the thousands of waverers in the province it was notice that they should stay quiet and not raise a Loyalist hand until the struggle proceeded further.
Very quickly it was seen that to the inhabitants of villages such as Carnac, who had greeted the invaders as saviours and had given them all possible aid, it looked like a notice of abandonment and desertion. They had little faith in the irregulars holding out for long against Hoche’s seasoned troops, and once these villages were recaptured they would suffer merciless Republican reprisals. So hundreds clamoured and wept as the liberating Loyalists’ army sullenly assembled to move out, and crowds followed the army carrying their belongings and dragging their children towards La Falaise where the first new defences were about to be set up.
Ross had spent most of the day on the Energetic and knew nothing of this, but, landing on the beach near Penthièvre with Bone and Ellery in the evening, he saw the troop movements and heard the laments of the people who followed behind, so he hurried to ask what was amiss. Then he spent a couple of hours walking round the peninsula, as he had come ashore for a purpose. After the fort had fallen many of the ordinary soldiers had been billeted in hamlets along the tongue of land; but these were mainly Chouans, the crack regiments, once the fort fell, being deployed elsewhere. Now the good regiments were being brought in and the Chouans were expected to move out to make way for them. Everywhere were arguments, quarrels, orders and counter-orders, bitter disarray. Even the soldiers near headquarters had not eaten anything since dawn.
After a while the three Englishmen went back to the fort and Ross made an attempt to find someone in authority. But the nearest he got was to enter the large officers’ room in the fort and to see the bulky figure of the Comte de Puisaye surrounded by a crowd of protesting Chouans. Any hope Ross had of having a word with him was remote indeed, so he returned to Bone and Ellery and said:
‘There is nothing we can do tonight. Let us go back. We shall be safer aboard.’
So through the starless July evening, with the tramp of feet, the rumble of wheels, the chatter of excited French in their ears. Ross did not so much fear for his own safety in this mêlée – at worst he could make himself understood in French and he had the authority of manner to carry it off – but Bone and Ellery who could not speak a word might find themselves attacked as spies; for every man suspected his neighbour.
They had almost reached their boat when a solitary horseman came past them. Even in the dark his figure was hard to mistake and Ross called:
‘De Sombreuil!’
The horse was reined in.
‘Who is that? Oh . . . it is you, Poldark. What are you doing away from your little ship?’
‘I brought two of my friends to stretch their legs. Have you five minutes?’
‘An hour if you wish it – for all the good I do here or elsewhere. Decisions are made. Or do they just grow? It is becoming a cauchemar.’
Ross said to Bone: ‘Take Ellery to the boat. I will join you in a few minutes.’
De Sombreuil had slid off his horse, was patting its nervous nose. Even though it was only a farm horse it had become infected with the general unrest.
‘What effect is this going to have, Charles?’ Ross said, pointing at the bobbing lights, the moving columns.
The Frenchman shrugged. ‘Oh, I know, I know. Who decides it? Not I. Sometimes I am of the councils, sometimes not. In fact I was away when d’Hervilly forced this decision. Of course we have a battle ahead – of course this I know: the enemy is not far away. By this withdrawing we have established a strong position. Who then moves the first? . . . But it is not all just decided by the battle.’
They stood there for a while unspeaking.
‘Charles.’
‘Yes, my friend?’
‘I am of no value to you here – you know that?’
‘Of great value to share a meal, a glass of wine.’
‘Yes, yes, but you know that I am hamstrung because I am no part of the regular English force and because we English have to tread a tightrope lest we appear to be invading France.’
‘If you were you would not be my friend.’
‘This was understood when I chose to come. But you know my primary purpose in coming. It cannot now be achieved in the foreseeable future.’
‘Well . . . the battle is yet to be fought. If we had Hoche on our side I should feel the happier.’
‘But – forgive me – although the landing may yet succeed, it cannot succeed as we first thought it might. Do you remember de Maresi at Killewarren rolling up the carpet? So he said the Royalist army would roll across France.’
‘Louis is always the one for the gesture splendid.’
‘So . . .’ Ross took the Frenchman’s arm. ‘How far shall I be abdicating from such high ambitions by leaving you all here and attempting to achieve my purpose in another way?’
‘No, Ross. That is not so. The high ambition was ours, not yours. That I accept, and much else also. I would like you beside me in my regiment in the coming battle; but that not being possible you must consider yourself free to go home.’
‘Not home.’
‘Not home?’
‘Not home.’
‘Ah . . . I see.’
There was a crack of a cannon somewhere in the distance towards Sainte Barbe but nothing followed it.
‘For this,’ said Ross, ‘I shall need a boat.’
‘You have many.�
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‘A French boat. A fishing boat. A ketch, a small lugger.’
‘Well . . . they are not absent from this coast.’
‘I cannot requisition one. But you could.’
De Sombreuil’s spurs clinked. ‘On what grounds? I should not be happy to do this. Feeling between ourselves and these uneducated peasants is high enough already.’
‘Then I may not have one?’
‘My friend, I cannot tell you to have one. But I cannot tell you not to have one, can I? In Quiberon, in all these villages, at every quay you will see such boats. There is great confusion at this time. Someone will miss it, of course, but if you are very careful, who will know where it has gone?’
‘Well . . . thank you, if I should not be acting against the spirit of our entente . . .’
‘I do not think so. I do not think so. But it will not be easy. Spy out your ground and let it be at night.’
They walked a few paces and de Sombreuil put his hand on the saddle.
‘Also, in this enterprise that you undertake, also have a care. It is not an easy matter that you contemplate.’
‘Perhaps it is impossible. I cannot know until I see for myself. In the meantime, my friend . . . If I should not see you again.’
‘Again? Ever again?’ De Sombreuil laughed. ‘In one year or two, you shall come to my château in Limousin where we shall drink better wine than anything you have tasted here! My vineyards, though small, are among the best in France.’
‘I did not mean ever again,’ Ross said. ‘But in this adventure only.’
‘Well, yes. Well, yes. But of course it may be ever again. This will be a bitter struggle which lies ahead . . . Do you know, it is very strange to lose one’s family – slaughtered by these sansculottes – and also to lose one’s country, one’s estates, one’s ancestral home. One becomes – isolated from life, and rather careless of it.’
‘Do not be careless of it,’ Ross said, ‘for it is all we have.’
‘It is all we have, but in order to tolerate it it must be worth the having. This expedition will decide for me whether it is worth the having . . .’
‘And Mlle de la Blache?’
‘Ah, yes. As soon as this is over we shall marry. When I can take her back to my home and raise a new family in peace . . .’
It is what I have been doing, thought Ross; but all the same I have left it.
‘If you are able to see Mlle de la Blache before I – and that would seem a probability – may I ask it that you should give her this small ring? It was my mother’s. I found it in a purse just before I left. It is not valuable.’
Ross accepted the ring, fumbled for his purse, dropped it in.
‘With my love,’ said de Sombreuil.
‘With your love.’
‘It is a bauble,’ said de Sombreuil. ‘I did not know I had kept it.’
‘I cannot promise delivery.’
‘Who can? You or I? We shall see . . . When are you leaving?’
‘Oh, not before tomorrow or the day after. As you say, there are many boats. But also many owners. In any event, if before I leave a battle is joined I shall not go but will wait for the outcome.’
De Sombreuil showed his teeth in the dark. ‘No battle will be joined – either tomorrow or the day after, not while d’Hervilly commands. We shall stand and glare at each other, we and the bleus, for several more days yet, each waiting for the other to make the fatal move.’
Ross waited his two more days. During this time the Republicans, well appraised of their opponents’ withdrawal, quickly occupied Carnac and the other villages, the defending Chouans retreating into the peninsula or escaping by boat, to be picked up by the English. Women and children were with them, bearing with them whatever of their possessions they could carry. It was not a heartening sight. The Republicans in fact came to within musket shot of Fort Penthièvre, and then retreated, like a wave that is temporarily spent. They took up positions on the heights of Sainte Barbe and lit fires all along the coast.
So the two forces glowered at each other. The Comte d’Hervilly at last produced a plan of attack. Spies told him that the opposing army was roughly double in numbers to his own, but, unknown to Hoche, an army of Chouans was in being at the Republicans’ back. D’Hervilly believed that if the two armies attacked Hoche simultaneously they could win a resounding victory. It was certainly a possibility, but no one knew when it would be attempted. Ross could wait no longer. The time for him to leave was ripe. So he literally stole away.
It was a typical Breton fishing boat, a two-masted lugger, very similar to a Cornish boat of the same kind. About forty-five feet in length, with a beam of fourteen, it carried a sail area of probably 1,300 square feet and it would handle well in the ordinary rough winds of the coastal areas for which it had been designed. One could not see it being sensitive to the light airs of a summer night.
Fortunately the night they took it there was a stiff westerly breeze. Tregirls had spotted it two nights previously, and for two nights they studied it. The fishermen had been out as usual with the tides, but this boat had not been used. Tregirls had spent a half day in the village and had discovered that three weeks ago the owner had died and that they were waiting for his brother in Vannes to come and claim it.
It was not easy slipping down in the dark. There were so many soldiers about, so many billeted in the cottages that the tiny harbour never really slept as it would at normal times. Yet the lack of absolute quiet had its own advantages. If seen they were less likely to be challenged. And who exactly was to know what orders or counter-orders had been issued by the high command?
So they moved across the cobbles from one shadow to the next. A dog or two barked and a half-dozen drunks lay like dead on the quay. Then Tregirls was aboard, then Drake, then the others, and finally Ross. No one so far had cried thief. But there were anxious moments yet while the Sarzeau was detached from its fellows and quietly pulled and poled towards the harbour mouth. The last corner of the stone jetty loomed over them, then they hoisted one sail and then a second. Still no shouts. As the boat answered her helm Ross began to breathe again.
Of the eight who sailed in the Sarzeau that night as the sky misted and cleared and misted again, with light cloud, five knew how to sail a boat: Ross, Tregirls, Bone, Ellery and Nanfan; and this was their type of boat. They had been aboard similar craft on and off through the years since they were children. They carried food enough for about ten days, fishermen’s jerseys and a number of the brightly coloured Breton neckerchiefs, so that they would pass at a distance for what they were supposed to be. They also carried three pistols, four muskets and a number of knives.
The wind dropped at dawn and did not get up again with the sun, so they drowsed away part of the day moving slowly towards Groix and the Iles de Glénan. There was no hurry. They could do little before dusk. Ross spent an hour with Tholly looking over a map of the area round Quimper and then he took out the ground-plan of the convent which the Dutch ex-prisoner had drawn for him while at Falmouth. It was a considerable building, or rather series of buildings, situated in extensive grounds.
Ross had not ever quite envisaged this sort of enterprise when they left England. At the worst he had thought that the Royalist landing would create such confusion in the province that by the time he reached Quimper the prisoners might already be beginning to free themselves. Instead the Royalists were shut up in a peninsula fifty miles away and on the defensive. The best he could now hope for was that any Republican troops in the vicinity of Quimper were likely to have been drawn south to help Hoche contain the invasion. But whether the guards at the prison would be lax or on the alert and what degree of surveillance was exercised he had no notion. The Dutchman had given him a good idea of the number and dispositions of the guards. But they would all be armed, and he wondered if he were leading these seven cheerful Cornishmen to their deaths. The one advantage – or one of the very few – was that the prison guards would all be conditioned to look for
trouble coming from within – not from outside. If there were such a camp at Truro, Ross thought, no guards there would ever expect Frenchmen to appear from the outside and attack them. The analogy was good, for Quimper was on a river ten or eleven miles from the sea.
Ross was a man of action but also a man of introspection. That part of his character which made him so constantly critical of authority also worked against himself. The same faculty which questioned the rightness of the law and the lawmakers was sharp to keep his own actions under a similar scrutiny. It was a combination of character which acted both as a saving grace and as a hair shirt. So today was not as pleasant for him as for the others, who laughed and joked among themselves, happy to be on the move after so much inactivity.
He watched them and listened to them – even Drake sometimes joining in – and doubted his own decision, on which so much hung. Impatience – a sense of timing – a sense of futility – had moved him to leave the Quiberon expedition while its fate was undecided. For all the brave front that the Royalists put on, there had come to be a smack of failure about the invasion, a feeling of impending doom. All his earlier doubts, submerged in the common enthusiasm, had surfaced as the enthusiasm waned. He did not any longer believe that even de Sombreuil and de Maresi felt it would succeed. They stayed on because they were on French soil, and because they were committed to the Royalist cause and because they were brave men.
The Black Moon Page 38