La Vendée | Page 9

that they were ready for immediate action, if their services
should be requisite. In fact, the colonel of the detachment well knew
the feeling in the place with reference to the levies of the conscription.
He was sure, from the fact of not a single man having attended at the
barracks, as directed, that there existed some general determination to
resist the demands of the Convention, and he had consequently closely
watched the proceedings of the corporal.
"Take your answer, Mr Corporal," said Cathelineau: "had Peter Berrier
intended to have joined you. he would not have troubled you to come
across the square to fetch him. In one word, he will not go with you; if
as you say, you intend to drag him across the market-place, you will
find that you have enough to do. Peter Berrier has many friends in St.
Florent."
The corporal again looked round, and he saw that the men under arms
now stretched from the front of the barracks, nearly into the square; but
he also saw that the inhabitants of the town were standing clustering at
all the doors, and that men were crowding towards the square from the
different inlets. Four or five of the more respectable inhabitants had

also joined the group in the gateway, from the hands of one of whom
the postillion quietly took a stout ash stick. The corporal, however, was
not a coward, and he saw that, if he intended to return with Peter
Berrier, he should not delay his work with any further parley, so he
took his pistol from his belt and cocked it, and, stepping quite close to
Berrier, said,
"Come men--forward, and bring him off; one man to each shoulder,"
and he himself seized hold of the breast of Peter's coat with his left
hand and pulled him forward a step or two.
Peter was a little afraid of the pistol, but still he resisted manfully: from
the corporal's position, Cathelineau was unable to reach with his stick
the arm which had laid hold of Berrier, but it descended heavily on the
first soldier, who came to the corporal's assistance. The blow fell
directly across the man's wrist, and his arm dropt powerless to his side.
The corporal immediately released his hold of Peter's coat, and turning
on Cathelineau raised his pistol and fired; the shot missed the postillion,
but it struck M. Debedin, the keeper of the auberge, and wounded him
severely in the jaw. He was taken at once into the house, and the report
was instantaneously spread through the town, that M. Debedin had
been shot dead by the soldiery.
The ash stick of the postillion was again raised, and this time the
corporal's head was the sufferer; the man's shako protected his skull,
which, if uncovered, would have probably been fractured; but he was
half-stunned, at any rate stupified by the blow, and was pulled about
and pushed from one to another by the crowd who had now collected in
the archway, without making any further attempt to carry off his
prisoner.
The other soldier, when he saw his two comrades struck, fired his pistol
also, and wounded some other person in the crowd. He then attempted
to make his escape back towards the barracks, but he was tripped up
violently as he attempted to run, and fell on his face on the pavement.
The unfortunate trio were finally made prisoners of; they were
disarmed, their hands bound together, and then left under a strong
guard in the cow-house attached to the auberge.

This skirmish, in which Berrier was so successfully rescued, occurred
with greater rapidity than it has been recounted; for, as soon as the
colonel heard the first shot fired, he ordered his men to advance in a
trot across the square. It took some little time for him to give his orders
to the lieutenants, and for the lieutenants to put the men into motion;
but within five minutes from the time that the first shot was fired, about
forty men had been commanded to halt in front of the hotel; they all
had their muskets in their hands and their bayonets fixed, and as soon
as they halted a portion of them were wheeled round, so that the whole
body formed a square. By this time, however, the corporal and the two
soldiers were out of sight, and so was also Peter Berrier, for
Cathelineau considered that now as the man had withstood the first
shock, and had resolutely and manfully refused to comply with the
order of the Convention, it was better that he should be out of the way,
and that the brunt of the battle should be borne by his friends. Peter was
consequently placed in the cow-house with the captives, and had the