And La Vireville heard him say to Contades, his handsome young face contracted with pain, "Puisaye told me to remain here, and Puisaye himself has embarked!" For some time Fortuné had been asking himself what had become of the general-in-chief, and yet the answer, now that it had come, seemed incredible. But it was confirmed by the lieutenant-colonel of the régiment de Rohan, when he came up with his men, who had been ordered to hold the little battery at Port d'Orange, and could not, because the battery consisted merely of one small cannon without ammunition or even a gun-carriage. La Vireville began to see why Puisaye, a moral if not a physical coward, had fled from a situation which he was incompetent to control, and disasters of his own making which it was too late to repair. There was no time to do more than to curse this extraordinary defection. The mist was breaking before the full daylight, and turning once more to rain, as the Comte de Sombreuil took command, disposing his little force in line, from the régiment de Rohan on the extreme right, the side of the sea, to du Dresnay (de Flavigny's regiment) on the left, by the windmill. He threw out, too, a company of the newcomers in advance, and posted two regiments of them in the rear. But some of these just-landed corps had not more than three cartridges to a man; one of the rearguard regiments, in fact, had none at all until its neighbour shared with it. And they were not the only bodies either who had to share their ammunition. Cartridges there were in plenty for all, but their distribution had not been finished before the surprise of the fort. . . . La Vireville, in the ranks of that veteran corps, Loyal-Emigrant, learnt this fact with a sort of resignation. And what were they waiting for now? he asked himself. With the brave and disciplined troops at Sombreuil's command he might well have attacked Humbert's cautiously advancing column with the bayonet. When he at last ordered the advance it was too late, for hardly had the émigrés begun to go forward when an officer, arriving in haste from the left wing, announced that the soldiers of du Dresnay and d'Hervilly, after killing some of their officers, had gone over to the enemy. The Republicans were in possession of the windmill height, and indeed their guns were already beginning a murderous cannonade from that eminence. The Royalists had therefore no choice but to beat a retreat. Word spread that Sombreuil intended to retire to the Fort Neuf, on the shore south-east of Port Haliguen, and there surrender upon terms. When La Vireville heard this he made a grimace, for he happened to know what the 'fort' was like.