hat the Republicans, still massed together,
had lost double that number. Wounded men dragged themselves across the
open space, meeting, rearing their bodies like mangled snakes, to fight,
the Republicans with their bayonets, and the Chouans with their knives.
Those of the wounded Chouans who were too far off to fight their wounded
enemies hand to hand, reloaded their guns, and, struggling to their
knees, fired and fell again.

On either side the struggle was pitiless, incessant, furious; civil
war--that is war without mercy or compassion--waved its torch above the
battlefield.

Cadoudal rode his horse around these living breastworks, firing at
twenty paces, sometimes his pistols, sometimes a musket, which he
discharged, cast aside, and picked up again reloaded. At each discharge
a man fell. The third time he made this round General Hatry honored him
with a fusillade. He disappeared in the flame and smoke, and Roland
saw him go down, he and his horse, as if annihilated. Ten or a dozen
Republicans sprang from the ranks and met as many Chouans; the struggle
was terrible, hand to hand, body to body, but the Chouans, with their
knives, were sure of the advantage.

Suddenly Cadoudal appeared, erect, a pistol in each hand; it was the
death of two men; two men fell. Then through the gap left by these ten
or twelve he flung himself forward with thirty men. He had picked up an
army musket, and, using it like a club, he brought down a man with each
blow. He broke his way through the battalion, and reappeared at the
other side. Then, like a boar which returns upon the huntsman he has
ripped up and trampled, he rushed back through the gaping wound and
widened it. From that moment all was over.

General Hatry rallied a score of men, and, with bayonets down, they
fell upon the circle that enveloped them. He marched at the head of his
soldiers on foot; his horse had been killed. Ten men had fallen before
the circle was broken, but at last he was beyond it. The Chouans wanted
to pursue them, but Cadoudal, in a voice of thunder, called them back.

"You should not have allowed him to pass," he cried, "but having passed
he is free to retreat."

The Chouans obeyed with the religious faith they placed in the words of
their chief.

"And now," said Cadoudal, "cease firing; no more dead; make prisoners."

The Chouans drew together and surrounded the heaps of dead, and the few
living men, more or less wounded, who lay among the dead.