Page:The Works of Honoré de Balzac Volume 29.djvu/62

34 officers a step or two in advance, awaited the onset of the Chouans with composure.

Silence prevailed again, but it was only for a moment. Then three hundred Chouans, dressed exactly like the requisitionaries, issued from the woods to the right. They came on in no order, uttering fearful cries, and occupied the width of the road before the little battalion of Blues. The commandant divided his troops into two equal parts, each part presenting a front of ten men to the enemy. Between these divisions, and in the centre, he placed himself at the head of his band of twelve hastily equipped conscripts. The little army was protected by two wings of twenty-five men each, under the command of Gérard and Merle. These officers were to take the Chouans adroitly in flank, and to prevent them from scattering about the country—s'égailler they call the movement in the patois of this district, when every peasant would take up his position where he could shoot at the Blues without exposing himself, and the Republican troops were utterly at a loss to know where to have their enemies.

These arrangements, made with the rapidity demanded by the circumstances, seemed to infuse the commandant's self-reliance into the men, and all advanced upon the Chouans in silence. At the end of the few seconds needed for the two bodies of men to approach each other, there was a sudden discharge at close quarters which scattered death through either rank; but in a moment the Republican wings had wheeled and taken the Chouans in flank. These latter had no means of opposing them, and the hot, pertinacious fire of their enemies spread death and disorder in their midst. This manœuvre nearly redressed the balance of the numbers on either side; but the courage and firmness of the Chouan character was equal to all tests. They did not give way; their losses did not shake them; they closed their ranks and tried to surround the little, dark, compact lines of Blues, who appeared in the narrow space they occupied like a queen bee in the midst of a swarm.

Then they engaged in one of those horrible struggles at