The Black Moon (38 page)

`I
don't mind;' said Drake, It has taken me away from
what I left behind.'

The landing took place in the first light of a blurred and showery dawn.

About three thousand French, who had spent most of the night in the little boats dozing and huddling against the chill wind,, went ashore near Carnac. By now their coming was not unexpected and they were greeted by volleys of musket fire from a detachment of Republican soldiers who had been hurried there during the night.
A few, Royalists fell, but d'H
ervilly ordered one of his best regiments to land in a cove behind the enemy and climb the rocks to take them in the rear. This they did with the greatest el
an,
many soldiers not waiting for the boats to ground but leaping into the sea and swimming ashore. After barely an hour's fighting the Republicans, who were outnumbered ten to one, dropped
their arms and fled back along
a road which led to a town called Auray. The Royalists marched into Carnac in triumph as the sun rose through the misty clouds. Crowds of peasants swarmed around them shouting 'Vive le Roil' and
waving
flags. When d'Hervilly arrived lie was mobbed. Now that they were actually ashore, now that a Royalist army was in their midst, people really did begin to come in from the neighbouring villages, rapturous with joy. 'It looked as if de Puisaye after all had been right. De Puisaye was certain he had been right.

He landed himself at ten o'clock along with most of his staff, and was greeted as a liberating angel. De Sombreuil had been with his regiment since dawn, but Ross was now permitted to land, along with de Maresi and a, half dozen British naval officers.

It
was a wild scene, for the peasants were bringing out their wine and food to feast their saviours. Many of the less disciplined French soldiers had got no further than the beach, where they had thrown down their arms and sat on boxes surrounded by exultant Chouans, drinking wine out of litre jars and accepting cheese and cake and anything else the grateful villagers offered. them. Others were
roistering in the little town.
It was, thought
Ross, the perfect situation for
a counter-attack.

Fortunately others thought the same. While the Comte de Puisaye was being, received at the
M
airie as if he were Louis XVI returned to life, d'Hervilly was issuing orders for detachments of his best regiments to probe, into the countryside for signs of the enemy. He led a, company of grenadiers himself, Sombre" another. Ross would have liked
to accompany them, and was not at all at home among all the rejoicing.

He walked down again to the beach and watched the supplies being ferried in. In his enthusiasm de Puisaye had ordered that they should be brought ashore and distributed to the Chouans, who were hungry for arms; but no one was totally in command of the operation and no one had received any orders as to how the
distribution should take place.
As a result it became a free-for-all. Great boxes were unloaded on the beach and
broken open. Some were full of
muskets, some of shot, some of clothing, some of medical supplies. An attempt was made by a trio of Chouan officers to keep the distribution orderly, but soon the peasants, with their rooted dislike of waiting in turn for anything, were crowding round seizing at things almost before they were unpacked. In many cases Ross saw women going away with Engl
ish muskets, others laden with
new uniforms issued for troops of the line. Sometimes quarrels broke out and the French fought among themselves. He saw six Chouans dragging away a light cannon, wrenching it up through the soft sand. He saw a man with six muskets, unable to carry them, almost on his knees.

At an early stage he had tried to interfere but had been snarled at for his pains.

Lieutenant McArthur, one of the British officers, said: 'Ye can do naught with them. We must leave them be.'

`Someone must tell de Puisaye before it is too late.'

`Could he stop them, d'ye think?'

`At least he could stop the supplies leaving the ships.'

They went back together and after a st
ruggle were able to force their
way into the presence of the General. But all were now bein
g carried along on the crest of
a wave. D'Hervilly had sent word that an important fort on their right flank, Fort St Michel, had surrendered without a shot, that he was leaving a company of fifty Chouans in charge and was pressing on further south. De Sombreuil had sent back news that a village called Plouarnel had fallen and that the fleeing Republicans had left behind great supplies of food and ammunition. The whole country was rising, as had been predicted. What did it matter if the supplies be
ing ferried ashore were not all
distributed as equa
lly as they should be? Soon
there would be plenty
'for
all.
’

The
day passed and nig
ht fell. All the commanders of the advance detachments had
returned, and at a conference in the
mairie
they showed their dispositions. In spite of the chaos of the day
these were as wise as a
good general could have wished. Roughly the liberators now occupied an amphitheatre with the beach as a stage. The arc stretched about five miles from tip to tip and bulged about five miles inland. The army was well placed to resist attack and yet still had its back to the sea where its immediate provisions lay and its line of retreat. The Republicans had fought here and there but the resistance had not been prolonged or fanatical. Always they had given way.

`Who commands the Republican army in this area?' Ross asked de Sombreuil before they separated for the night.

De Sombreuil grimaced. 'Lazare Hoche.'

`I do not know the name.'

`You will, I fear, unless we are able to scotch it soon.'

`An able man?'

'Perhaps the best
they have. But he is yet young
about my age
-
twenty-six or twenty-seven. Cunning, fierce, wise. We shall see.'

`What are the plans for tomorrow?'

`None yet. Talk, of a certainty. Dissension, of a certainty. Quarrels - possibly.'

`Should we not firs
t take Quiberon? We need a port.
Are there not more supplies to reach us from England?'

`Oh, yes. But Fort Penthi
è
vre which guards the neck of the peninsula, it will not be easy to reduce. The peninsula there is scarce a mile wide and is overlooked by the guns of the fort on all sides. There is no cover for attacking troops, and to take it will cost many lives. As for the rest, already you see there is much suspicion, dislike among the commanders. Who knows what will be happening? At least it begins well. We shall see.'

So day came and it was as de Sombreuil had predicted. Argument dissension and quarrels. The aristocratic French distrusted the troops they were expected to rely on to guard
their flanks; they saw the Chouans as a rabble of
unreliable peasants who' would
fly at the first shot. The Chouans saw these arrogant supercilious noblemen as fops and dandies who were given preference in eve
rything, and returned contempt
with contempt.
Here and there quarrels broke
out where a Fr
enchman of noble birth had been
heard mimicking the accents and manners of the people they were expected to associate with.

Meanwhile supplies continued to be ferried ashore and to be distributed to all who came for them. A man had not even to declare his l
oyalist sympathies to be issued
with a musket and a supply of shot. By the third day the whole of the 80,000 muskets had been landed and distributed.

Yet the enemy scarcely moved and had been seen to evacuate several important positions without a fight. It was very hopeful. A division of the Chouans attacked and captured the valuable town of Auray seven miles inland. It had a good' river and could be considered a port for small vessels, though it would. not take warships or transports. A detachment of grenad
iers advanced beyond it to cut
communications with Vannes, a centre of much greater importance. Landevan and Mindon fell.

De Puisaye was again all for advancing, without much thought to the military strategy involved. Although he had been the leader of the Chouans for some time before he went to London, his ideas of warfare were vague and heroic. But d 'Hervilly's ideas were as limited as de Puisaye's were expansive. He totally disbelieved that if he advanced on Vannes it would fall. He saw only
his own army, deficient
in horses, cannon and all the heavy armament necessary for meeting a Republican army if it caught him and brought him to battle.

At last it was decided to attack Fort Penthi
è
vre. Ross discovered that de Sombreuil had not exaggerated its formidable defensive situation; yet this seemed the position that must be secured before anything else was attempted. The plan was that the English would support a landing made on the tip of the peninsula by some of the best of the French regiments, the Hector and the Loyal Emigrants, under de Puisaye himself, while the fleet came in and bombarded the fort at close quarters. At the same time d'Hervilly yeas to lead the attack from the land side, with the Royal Louis and the Dudresnay regiments. Both attacks were to he supported by large numbers of Chouans. It began at dawn, but
to everyone's surprise the
resistance 'was half-hearted, and almost immediately the
commandant of the fort offered to parley. D'
Hervilly, at considerable risk,
went into the fort alone to negotiate, and after long hours of bargaining persuaded the commandant to surrender. It was a great triumph. By this capitulation the whole of the Quiberon peninsula fell into Royalist hands. Even d'Hervilly, greeted now, as a hero, permitted himself the luxury of a smile.

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 gas 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 Penthi
èvre, 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 th
em 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 fo
llowed 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 Penthievre 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