The central event of this period was the five days’ victory at Saumur. By Cathelineau’s order a _Te Deum_ was sung in the church, the captured flags, rent with balls and black with smoke and blood, dipping to the chancel floor at every sound of the Holy Name. Such a spectacle put them all in an exalted mood. Henri was found at a window, meekly musing over their fortunes: he, the deliverer, who placed elsewhere the primal credit of the deliverance. The garrison here was left to his charge, much to his disrelish. “They make a veteran of me!” he said, ruefully, for the affairs he loved were going on outside. The inaction of the time told on his men, quite as discerning as himself, and far less dutiful; despite the fifteen sous a day which, as the first Vendean bribe, were offered them to remain, they perceived that there was nothing more to fear, and slipped away to their homes. Soon but nine were left, and with them Henri departed gloomily, carrying his cannon, and at Thouars, since not a cannoneer came back to relieve him, burying it in the river. Luçon, too, was lost. Having got astray during the action, he arrived but in time to cover the retreat. At Martigné, where D’Elbée was in command, and again at Vihiers, while Henri was off recruiting, his name had to be cited constantly to encourage the soldiers, though he was absent from the field. He stood in a valley path, giving orders, during an obstinate fight at Martigné-Briand. A ball struck his right hand, shattering the thumb and glancing to the elbow. He did not stir, nor even drop his pistol. “See if my elbow bleeds much,” he said to his companion. “No, M’sieu Henri.” “Then it is only a broken thumb,” he replied, and went on directing the troops. It proved to be an ugly and dangerous wound; it deprived him, during the month of September, of his share of three signal victories won by “the devils in sabots” under Bonchamp at Torfou, Montaigu, and Saint Fulgent. Not long after, before Laval, his arm limp and swollen in a sling, Henri was attacked on a lonely road by a powerful foot-soldier. He seized the fellow by the collar with his left hand, and so managed his horse with his legs that his struggling assailant was unable to draw upon him. A dozen Vendeans ran up, eager to kill the man who menaced their general. He forbade it, as he was sure to do. But he checkmated his Goliath with his tongue. “Go back to the Republicans,” he told him; “say that you were alone with the chief of the brigands, who had but one arm to use and no weapons, and that you could not get the better of him.”