Won By the Sword : a tale of the Thirty Years' War by G. A. Henty (summer beach reads .txt) 📗

made his way out by the side where the watch was most likely to be careless, as anyone leaving or entering the town there would have to swim the river. The feat shows that he has not only abundance of courage of the very highest order, but that he has a head to plan and leaves nothing to chance. You will see, gentlemen, that if this young officer lives he is likely to gain the highest rank and position. Already I have every reason to congratulate myself upon having, almost as it were by chance, taken him under my protection.”

The winter passed quietly, but as soon as spring set in and the roads were sufficiently good for the passage of wagons, d'Harcourt prepared to attempt to raise the siege of Casale, before which Leganez with twenty thousand men had intrenched himself. The roads were still, however, far too heavy for cannon, and as the garrison were becoming hardly pressed he left his guns behind him and started at the end of April with seven thousand foot and three thousand horse. The position occupied by the Spaniards was a strong one, and their general did not for a moment think that the French, with a force half the strength of his own, would venture to attack him. D'Harcourt, however, resolved upon doing so. He divided his force into three parts; two of these were composed of French soldiers, the third comprised the forces of the Duchess of Savoy. The attack was successful on all sides—although d'Harcourt for a time could make no way, and Turenne was repulsed three times before he entered the intrenchments—the Spaniards were completely defeated, and lost their guns, ammunition, and baggage, three thousand killed, two thousand prisoners, and great numbers were drowned in endeavouring to cross the river.

A council of war was held, and Turenne's advice that Turin should be besieged was after much debate accepted, although it seemed a desperate enterprise for an army of ten thousand men to besiege a town garrisoned by twelve thousand, while the Spaniards, after recovering from their defeat and drawing men from their various garrisons, could march to relieve the town with eighteen thousand men. No time was lost in carrying Turenne's advice into effect. The army marched upon Turin, seized the positions round the town, threw up lines facing the city to prevent sorties being made by the enemy, and surrounded themselves by similar lines to enable them to resist attack by the Spaniards, who were not long in approaching them. Thus there were now four bodies of combatants—the garrison of the citadel, which was surrounded and besieged by that of the town; the town was besieged by Turenne, and he himself was surrounded by the Spaniards. Each relied rather upon starving the others out than upon storming their positions, but Leganez managed to send a messenger into Turin telling Prince Thomas that he intended to attack the French and calling upon him to fall upon them with his troops at the same time.

In pursuance of this design he retired some distance up the Po, and proceeded to cross the river at Moncalieri. D'Harcourt despatched Turenne to oppose the passage, but before he could arrive there some five thousand men had crossed the bridge. Without hesitating a moment, although his force was a much smaller one than that of the Spaniards, Turenne attacked them at once, carried the intrenchments they had begun to throw up, killed a large number, and drove the rest into the river, where hundreds were drowned. Then he set fire to the bridge, which was of wood, and intrenched himself on the banks of the river, occupied all the fords higher up, and completely checked any advance of the Spaniards in that direction. He was, however, wounded in the shoulder, and was obliged to leave the army and to be carried to Pinerolo. While he was away Leganez attacked the French line from without, and Prince Thomas from within, and the former succeeded in passing twelve hundred horse and one thousand foot into the town.

The French were now closely beleaguered, and began to suffer severely from famine. In the meantime fresh troops had arrived from France, and although not yet recovered from his wounds, Turenne took the command, and escorted a great convoy of provisions into the camp in spite of the enemy's efforts to prevent him. The townspeople were suffering even more severely. Sorties were made in great force, but were always repulsed, as were the attacks made by Leganez, and on the 17th of September the garrison surrendered, being allowed to march out with their arms. The Count d'Harcourt returned to France, and Turenne again assumed the command of the army for the winter.

Hector conducted himself to the satisfaction of his general throughout the campaign, but was severely wounded in the last sortie made by the besieged, having been thrown down in a charge of Prince Thomas's cavalry and trampled upon by the horses, and being taken up for dead when the enemy fell back.

Directly he heard the news Turenne sent his surgeon to examine him. He reported that he still breathed, but that several of his ribs and his left arm were broken. He mended but slowly, and Turenne, a month after the surrender of the town, came in one day to see him, and said, “The surgeon tells me that it will be some months before you are fit for service again, and that you will need a period of perfect rest to recover your health. There is a convoy of invalids returning to France tomorrow, and I think it were best that you should accompany them. There is no rest to be obtained here, and I know that you will be fretting at being unable to ride, and at your forced inactivity. I shall give orders that you are conveyed in a horse litter to Sedan, where my brother, the Duc de Bouillon, will gladly entertain you for my sake, and you must remain there until entirely restored to strength.

“I do not think that there will be much doing on this side of the Alps in the next campaign. Unhappily France has troubles of her own, and will find it difficult to spare more troops in this direction, and without reinforcements we can but act on the defensive. Though we may capture a few towns, there is small chance of any great operations. Indeed, methinks that it is by no means unlikely that Prince Thomas, seeing that his effort to rule Savoy in place of his sister-in-law, the duchess, is likely to end in discredit and loss to himself, will before long open negotiations with her. Therefore you will be losing nothing by going. It is to the duchess that I shall commend you rather than to my brother, who is unfortunately occupied by public matters, and is at present almost at war with Richelieu.

“He is a man of noble impulses, generous in the extreme, and the soul of honour, but he knows not how to conceal his feelings; and in these days no man, even the most powerful, can venture to rail in public against one who has offended him, when that man happens to be the cardinal. I love my brother dearly, but I have mixed myself up in no way with his affairs. I am an officer of the king, and as such I stand aloof from all parties in the state. The cardinal is his minister; doubtless he has his faults, but he is the greatest man in France, and the wisest. He lives and works for the country. It may be true that he is ambitious for himself, but the glory of France is his chief care. It is for that purpose that we have entered upon this war, for he sees that if Germany becomes united under an emperor who is by blood a Spaniard, France must eventually be crushed, and Spain become absolutely predominant in Europe. If he is opposed, Richelieu strikes hard, because he deems those who oppose him as not only his own enemies but as enemies of France.