The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-Hermine in the Age of Napoleon. Alexandre Dumas

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СКАЧАТЬ from two wounds, he marched on foot with his twenty men. Ten of them fell before they could break the Chouan circle, but Harty made it through to the other side.

      Ready though the Chouans were to pursue him, Cadoudal in a thunderous voice called out: “You should not have let him pass, but since he’s already through, let him withdraw freely.” The Chouans obeyed their leader as if his words were sacred.

      “And now,” Cadoudal cried, “let the firing cease! No more killing! Only prisoners!”

      And with that, everything was over.

      In that horrible war both sides shot their prisoners: the Blues because they considered the Chouans and the Vendeans to be brigands; the Whites because they didn’t know what to do with the Republicans they captured.

      The Republicans tossed aside their guns to avoid handing them over to their enemy. When the Chouans approached them, they opened their cartridge pouches to show that they had spent their last ammunition.

      Cadoudal started his march over to Roland.

      During the final stages of the battle, the young man had remained seated; with his eyes fixed on the struggle, his hair wet with sweat, his breathing pained and heavy, he had waited. When he saw that fortune had turned against the Republicans and him, he had put his hands to his head and dropped facedown to the ground.

      Roland seemed not to hear Cadoudal’s footsteps when he walked up to him. Then slowly the young officer raised his head; tears were coursing down both cheeks.

      “General,” said Roland. “Dispose of me as you will. I am your prisoner.”

      “Well,” laughed Cadoudal, “we cannot make a prisoner of the First Consul’s ambassador, but we can ask him to do us a service.”

      “What service? Just give the order.”

      “I don’t have enough ambulances for the wounded. I don’t have enough prisons for the prisoners. Take it upon yourself to lead the Republican soldiers, both the prisoners and the wounded, back to Vannes.”

      “What are you saying, General?” Roland exclaimed.

      “I put them in your care. I regret that your horse is dead. I am sorry too that my own horse was killed, but Branche-d’Or’s horse is still available. Please accept it.”

      Cadoudal saw that the young man was reluctant. “In exchange, do I not still have the horse you left in Muzillac?” George said.

      Roland understood that he had no choice but to match the noble character of the person he was dealing with.

      “Will I see you again, General?” he asked, getting to his feet.

      “I doubt it, monsieur. My operations call me to the Port-Louis coast, and your duty calls you back to the Luxemburg Palace.” (At that time, Bonaparte was still living there.)

      “What shall I tell the First Consul, General?”

      “Tell him what you saw, and tell him especially that I consider myself greatly honored that he has promised to see me.”

      “And given what I have seen, monsieur, I doubt that you will ever need me,” said Roland. “But in any case, remember that you have a friend close to General Bonaparte.” He extended his hand to Cadoudal.

      The Royalist leader took his hand with the same candor and confidence he had shown before the battle. “Good-bye, Monsieur de Montrevel,” he said. “I’m sure there’s no need for me to remind you to do justice to General Harty? A defeat of that kind is as glorious as a victory.”

      Branche-d’Or’s horse had meanwhile been brought to the colonel. He leaped into the saddle. Taking one last look around the battlefield, Roland heaved a great sigh. With a final good-bye to Cadoudal he then started off at a gallop across the fields toward the Vannes highway, where he would await the cart with the prisoners and the wounded that he had been charged with taking back to General Harty.

      Each man had received ten pounds on Cadoudal’s orders. Roland could not help but think that Cadoudal was being generous with the Directory’s money, sent to the West by Morgan and his unfortunate companions. And Morgan’s companions had paid for that money with their heads.

      The next day, Roland was in Vannes. In Nantes, he took the stagecoach to Paris and arrived two days later.

      As soon as Bonaparte learned that he was back, he summoned Roland to his study.

      “Well, then,” Bonaparte asked when he appeared, “what about this Cadoudal? Was he worth the trouble you put yourself through?”

      “General,” Roland answered, “if Cadoudal is willing to come over to our side for one million, give him two, and don’t sell him to anyone else even for four.”

      Colorful as the answer was, it was not sufficient for Bonaparte. So Roland had to recount in detail his meeting with Cadoudal in Muzillac, their night march under the singular protection of the Chouans, and finally the combat, in which, after prodigious feats of courage, General Harty had yielded to the Royalists.

      Bonaparte was jealous of such men. Often he had spoken with Roland about Cadoudal, in the hope that some defeat would encourage the Breton leader to abandon the Royalist party. But soon Bonaparte was crossing the Alps and concentrating not on civil war but on foreign wars. He had crossed the Saint-Bernard pass on the 20th and 21st of May and the Tessino River at Turbigo on the 31st. On June 2nd he entered Milan. After conferring with General Desaix, who was just back from Egypt, he spent the night of the 11th in Montebello. On the 12th, Bonaparte had set his army in position on the Scrivia and finally, on June 14, 1800, he had waged the Battle of Marengo. There, tired of life, Bonaparte’s aide-de-camp Roland had been killed in the explosion he himself had ignited when he set fire to a munitions wagon.

      Bonaparte no longer had anyone to talk to about Cadoudal. Still, he thought often about the Breton brigand. Then, early in February 1801, the First Consul received a letter from Brune containing this letter from Cadoudal:

      General,

      If I had to fight only the 35,000 men you currently have in the Morbihan, I would not hesitate to continue the campaign as I have done for more than a year, and by a series of lightning-quick movements, I would destroy them to the last man. But others would immediately replace them, and prolonging the war would only result in the greatest of disasters.

      Please set the date for a meeting, giving your word of honor. I shall come to see you without fear, alone or with others. I shall negotiate for me and for my men, and I shall be tough for them alone.

      George Cadoudal

      Beneath Cadoudal’s signature, Bonaparte wrote: “Set a meeting promptly. Agree to all his conditions, provided that George and his men lay down their arms. Insist that he come see me in Paris, and give him a safe-conduct. I want to see this man close-up and form my own judgment of him.” And in his own hand he addressed the letter “To General Brune, Commander-in-Chief of the Western Army.”

      As it happened, General Brune was camped on the same road between Muzillac and Vannes where the Battle of the One Hundred had taken place two years before. There General Harty had been defeated, and there Cadoudal now appeared before General Brune. Brune extended his hand and led Cadoudal, along with his aides-de-camp Sol de Grisolles and Pierre Guillemot, across a trench СКАЧАТЬ