The Man-at-Arms; or, Henry De Cerons. Volumes I and IIJames, G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford)
General
The Man-at-Arms; or, Henry De Cerons. Volumes I and II
James, G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford)
Huguenots -- Fiction
"Get a sheet from some of the farmhouses," cried the Duke of Anjou,
"and carry the body on to Jarnac. You have told the truth, sir," he
added, turning to me. "Now get you gone. Do with him as I bade you.
Put him with the Scotchman, and bring him up this night."
Thus saying, he rode on himself, and I was conducted to the rear,
where a surgeon dressed my wounds, and, finding my right arm broken,
set it as best he might. They then led me for about two miles on the
road to Jarnac, when they brought me to a farmhouse, where they placed
me in a small room with several other prisoners, among whom I found La
Noue and the Prince de Soubise, but not Stuart.
All, as well might be supposed, were deeply depressed, but that did
not prevent a great deal of conversation from taking place; and there
were fewer lamentations over our defeat itself than over the
negligence of those who had occasioned it, by suffering the enemy to
pass the river. La Loue, whose turn it had been to guard the bridge of
Chateauneuf, was very much blamed; and certain it is, that, even if
the enemy had forced the passage, the delay which that would have
occasioned might have given us a chance of victory; for it was
afterward ascertained that not one sixth part of the Protestant
cavalry, and not one tenth of the Protestant infantry, arrived within
a league of the field of battle till the whole was over. The truth is,
that not above four thousand men were ever, at one time, engaged upon
our part.
The discussion of these events had been going on for some time before
I was brought in, and I soon found that the worst news of the whole,
the death of the Prince de Condé, was still unknown among the leaders
taken. When I told them the fact, however, I could scarcely get them
to believe it, so horrible and improbable seemed the action that
Montesquieu had committed. If I had told them that he had fallen by
some chance blow or shot in fair fight, they would have given me
credit at once; but I found them even more incredulous than the
Catholics had been; and Soubise insisted that I must have made a
mistake in the person, for Argence would never have suffered
Montesquieu to kill a prince of the blood royal in his hands.
About four o'clock the rest of the prisoners were removed and marched
on towards Jarnac, but I was ordered to remain, and I continued in the
room of the farm for about a quarter of an hour, suffering intense
torture from the wound in my right arm, and giving myself up, in
solitude, to every sad and gloomy thought and expectation that it was
possible for imagination to conjure up.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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