The Pocket Bible; or, Christian the Printer: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century

"I had remained below. There I witnessed an even more execrable scene. Only a minute or two after the murderers had rushed upstairs, the Duke of Guise stepped closer to the facade of the house and called out impatiently in a ringing voice: 'Well, Besmes! Is it done?' Thereupon a casement was thrown open on the first floor; the equerry appeared at the window holding his bloody sword in his hand, and answered: 'Yes, monseigneur! It is done! He is dead!' 'Then throw the corpse down to us that we may see it!' commanded Henry of Guise. Besmes vanished, and reappeared dragging, with the aid of Captain Cosseins, the corpse of Admiral Coligny; the two raised it – meseems I still behold the grey head of the venerable old man, pale and limp, as the body was pushed out of the window, with his lifeless arms swinging in space. Besmes and the captain made a final effort; the corpse was precipitated upon the pavement, where it rolled down at the feet of the Duke of Guise. Coligny was clad only in the morning gown that he had hurriedly put on. Thus half-naked and still warm he was hurled out of the window. The venerable head rebounded upon the cobblestones and reddened them with blood. The victim had fallen on his face. The Duke of Guise stooped down, and, aided by the Bastard of Angouleme, turned the corpse over on its back, wiped with his sash the blood that covered the Admiral's august visage, contemplated it for a moment with ferocious glee, and then kicked the white head with the tip of his boot, crying: 'At last! Dead at last – thoroughly dead!' The Duke then turned to his henchmen: 'Comrades, let us proceed with our work! The Pope wills it! the King so orders it!' Almost fainting with sickening horror and unable to move, I witnessed this cannibal scene – it was only the prelude for another and still more horrifying one. The Dukes of Guise and of Aumale and the Bastard of Angouleme departed with their soldiers from Monsieur Coligny's courtyard. Almost immediately the same was invaded by a band of men, women and children in rags. They were a troop hideous to look upon, as they brandished their sticks, butcher knives and iron bars, under the leadership of a Cordelier monk who held a jagged cutlass in one hand and a crucifix in the other, yelling at the top of his voice: 'God and the King!' The howlings of the mob kept time to the monk's yells. Two men with hang-dog looks carried torches before the monk. The moment that he recognized the corpse of our martyr, the Cordelier emitted a screech of infernal glee, threw himself upon the lifeless body of the Admiral, squatted down upon its chest, sawed at the neck with his cutlass, severed the head from the trunk, seized it by its grey locks, and held it up to the mob, crying in a resonant, though cracked voice: 'This is the share of the Holy Father! I shall send him Coligny's head to Rome!'⁷⁷– That monk," added Louis Rennepont in a tremulous voice, and answering a cry of execration that leaped from the hearts of his listeners, "that monk, O shame and O misfortune! – that monk was the assassin of Odelin! Oh, may God have pity upon us!"

"Fra Hervé!" exclaimed all the members of the Lebrenn family in chorus. A silence of terror and horror reigned in the armorer's hall.

"I wish to come quickly to an end with these monstrosities," proceeded Louis Rennepont, catching his voice. "After the tiger come the jackals, after the ferocious beasts the unclean ones. Hardly had Fra Hervé severed the Admiral's head from his trunk, amid the hideous acclamations of the ragged crew, when they fell upon the corpse. Its feet and hands were cut off. The entrails were torn out of the abdomen and were struggled for by the human jackals. The sacrilegious mutilations seemed to go beyond the boundaries of the horrible, and yet the limit was not reached. Women, veritable furies, pounced upon the bleeding limbs, and – but I dare say no more before mother, or before Cornelia, nor before you, my wife. The stentorian voice of Fra Hervé finally silenced the tumult and quelled the anthropophagous orgie. 'Brothers!' he cried, 'to the Pope I shall send the head of this Huguenot carrion, but let us carry the stripped carcass to the gibbet of Montfaucon! It is there that should be exposed the remains of the villain who has infested France with his heresy, and lacerated the bosom of our holy mother the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church!' 'To Montfaucon with the Huguenot carrion!' howled the ferocious band. A procession was improvised. Fra Hervé sheathed his cutlass, planted the Admiral's head on the point of a pike, and raised the trophy in one hand. In the other he waved aloft his crucifix, and, lighted by his two torch-bearers, headed the procession. The now shapeless remnants of the corpse were tied to a rope, a team of cut-throats harnessed to it, and the bloody lump was dragged through the gutters. The procession marched to the cry of 'To Montfaucon with the Huguenot carrion! God and the King!' At that moment, and despite the terror that held me rooted to the ground, my inn-keeper's last suggestions occurred to me. Montfaucon was situated outside of the walls of Paris. No doubt some city gate would be opened to the Cordelier's band. I joined it, in the hope of escaping from Paris. We left the courtyard of Monsieur Coligny's house. It was now broad day. Before proceeding to Montfaucon, Fra Hervé wished to exhibit his bloody trophy to the eyes of Charles IX and his mother. We directed our course to the Louvre. Other scenes of carnage were taking place there. The Protestant seigneurs and officers who came in the suite of the Princes of Bearn and Condé to participate in the wedding festivities of the King's sister, were lodged at the palace. Relying upon the royal hospitality, they were taken by surprise while asleep, dragged half naked to the courtyard, and there either brained or stabbed to death. Among others whom I recognized at a distance were Morge, Pardillan, St. Martin, besides the brave veterans Piles, Baudine and Puy-Vaud. They struggled in their shirts against the soldiers who beat them down with their halberds, and then stripped the corpses of their last shreds of clothing. The moanings, the imprecations of the victims, the streams of steaming blood through which we tramped, and that often reached our ankles, made my head reel. The butchers laid the corpses out in rows in front of the facade of the Louvre. The bodies were yet warm; many a bloody limb still seemed to palpitate; the corpses lay stripped naked, upon their backs. I counted over four hundred. Suddenly there appeared Catherine De Medici accompanied by her maids of honor and other ladies of the court. She mounted a terrace from which a full sight of the carnage could be had. They came – "

Louis Rennepont stopped short. He hid his face in his hands. "Alas! I have to inform you of something still more horrible than anything I have yet said! The furies who profaned the corpse of Coligny were beings, who, depraved by misery and ignorance, and besotted by a brutish paganism, yielded obedience to fanatic promptings. But Catherine De Medici and the women of her suite were brought up in the splendors of court life, and yet they came to mock and insult the bodies of the dead. And would you believe it – " but again Louis Rennepont found it impossible to proceed. "No!" he cried; "I shall not soil your ears with the nameless infamies of those worse than harpies.⁷⁸ While Catherine De Medici, her maids of honor and a bevy of court ladies were amusing themselves on the terrace, Fra Hervé, still carrying Coligny's head on the point of the pike, addressed to the Queen a few words that I did not hear, my attention being at that moment diverted by the appearance of Charles IX at the balcony of one of the windows of the Louvre. The King held a long arquebus in his hand; a page carried another of identical shape and stood behind his master ready to pass it over to him. Suddenly I saw the King lower the arm, take aim, blow upon the fuse on the cock, approach it to the pan – and the shot departed. Charles IX raised his arquebus, looked into the distance, and started to laugh – pleased as a hunter who has brought down his game. The monster with a human face was firing upon the Huguenots who were fleeing from the butchery in the St. Germain quarter, and were attempting to escape death by swimming across the Seine.

"After haranguing Catherine De Medici, Fra Hervé resumed his march to Montfaucon at the head of his band, dragging behind them the now shapeless remains of the Admiral. I had to cross Paris almost from one end to the other in the wake of Fra Hervé's procession. In the course of the march my eyes encountered fresh horrors. We ran across Marshal Tavannes, the commander of the royal army at the battle of Roche-la-Belle. At the head of a regiment of the guards he was urging his men and the mobs to massacre, shouting to them: 'Kill! Bleed them! Bleed them! A bleeding is good in August as well as in May!' And his men did the bleeding. They bled so well that the gutters ran no longer water but blood. The smoldering hatreds of neighbors against neighbors were now given a loose to, under the pretext of religious fervor. Among a thousand atrocities that I witnessed on that frightful day, I shall mention but one, because it exceeds any other that I have yet mentioned. When I first arrived in Paris, and despite the apprehensions that were uppermost on my mind, I often went to the lectures of the illustrious scientist Remus. The man's renown, he being one of the most celebrated professors at the University, besides enjoying the reputation of a foremost philanthropist of these days, attracted me. I found students, grown-up men and even greyheads crowding around his chair. Well, holding close to Fra Hervé's band, I passed by the house of Remus, which the cut-throats had invaded. A large concourse of people blocked our way, and interrupted our march for awhile. The mob clamored aloud for the life of the celebrated scientist. The most frantic in their cries for the murder were a bunch of pupils, between fourteen and fifteen years of age, whom two monks – a Carmelite and a Dominican – had in lead. The assassins finally pushed Remus, half naked, out of his house. The unhappy man, already wounded in many places, and blinded by the blood that streamed down his face, staggered like a drunken man, and held his hands before him. I see him yet – he falls to the ground, they despatch him, and thereupon the pupils, boys yet, throw themselves upon the corpse of the scientist, rip his bowels open, tear out the steaming entrails, turn the body around, raise the bloody shirt that barely covered it, and thrash the corpse with its own intestines amid roars of laughter, while they shout: 'Remus has whipped enough of us, it is now our turn to whip him.'

"Fra Hervé's band again resumed its march. It arrived at one of the city gates that leads to the gibbet of Montfaucon. As I had hoped, the gate was thrown open before the Cordelier. I slackened my pace, fell to the rear of the procession, and, at the first practicable turn on the road, I jumped aside and blotted myself out of sight in a wheat field. The tall stalks concealed me completely. I waited till Fra Hervé's band was a safe distance away. I crept to the road that encircles the ramparts and towards sunset I arrived, worn out with fatigue, at an inn where I spent the night, giving myself out for a good Catholic. Early in the morning I started for Etampes. They had just finished the carnage when I arrived! It was still going on in Orleans when I passed that city. At Blois, at Angers, at Poitiers – the same massacres of our brothers. Thus, after long years of hypocrisy and craftiness, the pact of the triumvirate inspired by Francis of Guise, the butcher of Vassy, was finally carried out. Oh, my friends! Not for nothing did Catherine De Medici say to the Jesuit Lefevre: 'Induce the Holy Father and Philip II to be patient; let us lull the reformers with a false sense of safety; I shall hatch the bloody egg that the Guise laid – on one day, at the same hour, the Huguenots will be exterminated in France.' The Italian woman kept her promise. The shell of the egg, nursed in her bosom, has broken, and the extermination has leaped out full armed."

Odelin's widow rose to her feet pale and stately. She raised one of her venerable hands to heaven, and with a gesture of malediction she uttered these words, solemnly, amidst the profound silence of her family:

"Be they eternally accursed of God and man, who, from this day or in the centuries to come, do not repudiate the Church of Rome, that infamous Church, the only Church that has ever given birth to such misdeeds!"

"By my sister's death!" cried the Franc-Taupin. "Shall the voice of Estienne of La Boetie be hearkened to at last? Shall we at last see all leagued against one? the oppressed, the artisans, the plebs, finally annihilate the oppressor and crush royalty?"

Hardly had the Franc-Taupin finished speaking when James Henry, the Mayor of La Rochelle, entered precipitately, and addressing Louis Rennepont, said: "My friend, the few words dropped by you to some of the people whom you met on your arrival, have flown from mouth to mouth and thrown the city into a state of alarm! Is it true that Monsieur Coligny has been assassinated?"

"Monsieur Coligny has been assassinated! All the Protestant leaders are murdered!" answered Louis Rennepont. "All the Protestants of Paris were massacred on St. Bartholomew's night! At Etampes, at Orleans, at Blois, at Tours, at Poitiers, the work of extermination is still in progress. It was expected to steep in blood the rest of France as well. It is a fact!"

"To arms! And may the Lord protect us!" shouted James Henry vigorously. "Let us make ready for a desperate defense. La Rochelle is now the only safe city left to the Huguenots. Charles IX will not be long in laying siege to us. I shall order the belfry to ring. The City Council shall be in session within an hour. It shall proclaim La Rochelle in a state of danger. To arms! War to the knife against the King and his Catholics, against the assassins of our brothers! To arms!"

CHAPTER IX.
THE SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE

For the first time in their lives did Charles IX, his mother and her priests discover that there was a limit to endurance. The crime so long elaborated, so skilfully planned, and carried out with incredible audacity, so far from annihilating the Reformation gave it fresh life, steeled its nerves, and rendered it unconquerable. Hardly had two months elapsed since the massacres of St. Bartholomew, when, not Huguenots only, but a considerable portion of the Catholic party itself, in open revolt at the cruel excesses of the court, the fanaticism of the papacy and the subjection of France to the exactions of Philip II, took up arms, and made common cause with the Huguenots in order to bring about the triumph not only of the religious but of a political reformation also. The new adversaries of Charles IX and his mother took the name of the "Politicals." Alarmed at the renewed and more threatening attitude of the now so unexpectedly reinforced Huguenots, the King endeavored once more to beguile them with false promises. He doubled and twisted, sought to deal and compromise. It was too late. A fourth religious war broke out. Several provinces federated together upon a republican plan. La Rochelle became the fortified center of the Protestants. Against that city Charles IX concentrated and directed all his forces in the course of the last month of the year 1572 – less than six months after St. Bartholomew's night.

La Rochelle, situated at the further extremity of a wide and safe bay, presented the aspect of an elongated trapezium, the wide side of which was about three thousand feet in length, while the narrow one was only twelve hundred feet, and faced the sea. The city extended from north-east to southwest, and stretched between the salt marshes of Rompsai, Maubec and Tasdon, on the east, and those of the New Gate, on the west. These marshes, then partly dried or turned into meadows, were intersected by a large number of canals the locks of which enabled the land to be readily inundated, and presented an impassable barrier to any hostile force. The entrance of the port was at the Center of the sea frontage, and at the further end of the bay. It was defended by the two large towers of Chaine and St. Nicholas, both built of brick, equipped with cannon, and also used for powder magazines. To the right and left of the two towers, and leaving between them the narrow port entrance, extended a wall made of cut stone which at high tide was washed by the waves. The wall reached, to the east, the St. Nicholas Gate, and, to the west, the Lantern Gate, at the summit of which was a beacon to guide the sailors by night. From that side the city was unapproachable by an armed force except along a narrow tongue of land which joined the suburb of Tasdon with the St. Nicholas Gate. Furthermore, besides the water-filled fosse, Scipio Vergano, a skilful Italian engineer, employed by us, the Rochelois, had raised an additional protection to this gate by a sort of double counter-guard made of earth, and flanking the entrance of the port. The eastern front which extended from the St. Nicholas Gate to the Congues Gate, was along its whole extent but a poor wall, flanked by two round towers. It was one of the weak sides of our city. The western front ran in a straight line from the Lantern Tower to the bastion that we called the Bastion of the Evangelium. This portion of the fortifications consisted of a wall flanked by a large number of small and closely built towers, with occasional terraces. In the middle of this long line of defenses, which the large number of canals rendered almost unapproachable, Scipio Vergano cut the New Gate, flanked with a solid bastion. Finally the north front extended from the Bastion of the Evangelium to the Congues Gate, a distance of nearly two thousand five hundred feet. The left extremity of that vast and very vulnerable front was defended by the Bastion of the Evangelium, which was itself protected by a terrace of earth. In the center and the highest spot of the line rose the demi-bastion of the Old Fountain. True enough, it commanded the whole plain, but both the slightness of its projection and the insufficiency of its flanks unfitted it for real purposes of defense. This bastion covered the ramparts but imperfectly.

Such, Oh, sons of Joel, was the aspect of the fortifications of La Rochelle, the bulwark of the Reformation and of freedom, the holy city against which Charles IX was about to hurl his Catholic hordes and the most powerful army ever commanded by his generals.

I, Antonicq Lebrenn, kept a sort of diary of the siege of La Rochelle, and of the defense made by its inhabitants, among whom our own family combated gloriously.

SEPTEMBER 1, 1572. – Informed of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and foreseeing that the Huguenots would once more take up arms, the Rochelois placed their city in a state of defense. James Henry, the Mayor, took an accurate census of the inhabitants. The serviceable part was divided into eight companies, exclusive of the Colonel, the name given to the ninth, in which the Mayor and aldermen, all anxious to share the perils of the other citizens, are enrolled. The respective captains elected over these bodies are: James David, Louis Gargouillaud, Peter Portier, John Colin, Charles Chalemont, Marie Mari, Mathurin the elder, and Bonneaud. These are all made members of the Council of the Commune. The aldermen and other Councilmen who command no company, are charged with inspecting the posts, and shall be on guard, day and night, in the ranks of the Colonel. Besides these, six other companies are formed of volunteer foot-soldiers, each a hundred and twenty men strong. The chiefs of these are: Dessarts, Montalembert, La Riviere, De Lys, Bretin, called the Norman, and Virolet. All these captains, men well known for their bravery, took a glorious part in the last civil wars. The magistrates are engaged in increasing the food supply of the city, so long as the sea is still open to them. Captain Mirant, the father of Cornelia, my betrothed, is charged with the command of a foraging flotilla. He is to go for wheat to the coast of Brittany, and for ammunitions to England. The daring sailor will know how to elude the royalist corsairs, or to give them battle. Cornelia is to accompany her father on the voyage, and will combat like a true Gallic woman. We bade each other good-bye this morning.

SEPTEMBER 5, 1572. – Yesterday there arrived at La Rochelle Colonel Plouernel, who is now head and heir of that powerful house by the death of Count Neroweg of Plouernel and his son Viscount Odet, both killed at the battle of Roche-la-Belle in the encounter with my father and myself. The colonel left his wife and children with his father-in-law at the manor of Mezlean, situated near the sacred stones of Karnak – a fief which includes among its dependencies a house, a large garden and several fields that once belonged to our ancestor Joel before the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar.

SEPTEMBER 9, 1572. – During the last few days a large number of fugitives who escaped the massacre of St. Bartholomew arrived at La Rochelle. There are to-day in our city fifty noblemen of the neighborhood, together with their families, besides sixty ministers of the Reformed religion. Over fifteen hundred soldiers, who deserted the royal army with arms and baggage, have come over to us.

OCTOBER 30, 1572. – Mayor James Henry and the City Council, who are charged with watching over the safety of the city, display marvelous activity. A military council has been established with Colonel Plouernel and my uncle the Franc-Taupin as members. My uncle is an expert in matters appertaining to siege work, and especially in mining and counter-mining. The military council is strengthening the fortifications, and throwing up fresh ones. New batteries have been set up at all the weak points that might invite an attack between the Congues Gate and the Bastion of the Evangelium. A redoubt is being raised on Notre Dame Church, and upon one of its remaining towers two large cannons, capable of sweeping the surrounding fields far and wide, are being raised and mounted. Other engines of bombardment are mounted upon the platforms of all the belfries that are strong enough to support the weight and shock of artillery. The towers of Aix, of St. Catherine, of Verdiere and of Crique are all armed in this way. Noticing that certain portions of the moat between the Congues Gate and the Evangelium Bastion are poorly flanked, the Franc-Taupin proposed the construction of what he calls taupinieres, that is, casemates, the protected embrasures of which are on a level with the ground, and can open an almost subterranean, and therefore destructive fire upon the enemy. The casemates are being constructed. Men, women and children labor at the fortifications with inexpressible enthusiasm.

NOVEMBER 3, 1572. – A heroic decision was taken yesterday. It recalls the decision that our ancestors Albinik the sailor and his wife Meroë saw put into execution when the Bretons, to the end of famishing the army of Julius Caesar, reduced to ashes their rich and fertile fields, turning the same into a desert that extended from Nantes to Vannes!⁷⁹ Yesterday, by order of the Mayor of La Rochelle, all the houses of the suburb of St. Eloi, and of the quarters of Salines, Volliers and Patere, were torn down or burned by their owners. No place is to be left to the enemy under shelter of which they can approach the city, and render the investment more dangerous to us.

NOVEMBER 8, 1572. – Monsieur Biron has received considerable reinforcements and advance supplies of siege material with which to invest our city. He set up his camp before the city with headquarters at St. André. Colonel Strozzi, one of the ablest officers of the Catholic army, occupies Puy-Liboreau; Colonel St. Martin occupies Gord with twelve hundred men under him; Colonel Goas is encamped at Rompsai with six companies of artillery; and Monsieur Du Guast, a minion of the Duke of Anjou, the brother of King Charles IX, is at Aytre with two regiments of veterans. We prepared for these dispositions of the enemy. The inhabitants of Aytre left only ruins for Du Guast to house in.

DECEMBER 8, 1572. – The enemy's army is steadily receiving reinforcements, and extending its lines. The land blockade is tightening. Every day there are bloody skirmishes between us and the royalists. They lose heavily at this game. Relying upon their numbers, they venture far into the network of our defenses. These are cut up by moats and protected by walls, where, amid the labyrinth of hardly distinguishable paths across the salt marshes, we find many available places to hide in ambush, and our arquebusiers easily decimate the Catholics. When, surprised, they seek to pursue us, they are swallowed up in the depths of the turf-pits the surface of which is covered by a greenish weed that they have not learned to distinguish from the grass of the prairie. It has so far been a war of ambuscades, similar to the patriotic resistance that the Armoricans offered on their moors, their marshes and their forests, against the soldiers of the son of Charlemagne, in the days of our ancestor Vortigern.⁸⁰

DECEMBER 13, 1572. – Yesterday was fought a stubborn encounter at the Font suburb where, led from rich springs, there pours into a reservoir the water that an aqueduct takes into the city. The Catholics took possession of the place for the purpose of turning off the water and depriving La Rochelle of it. They succeeded. My uncle, the Franc-Taupin, and his friend Barbot, the boilermaker of the isle of Rhe, proposed to enter the aqueduct, which had been allowed to run dry, and in that way to arrive under the camp of the enemy's troops at Font, and then blow them up with a mine. Unfortunately their proposition was not favored. An open attack was preferred. It cost us many men, and Font remained in the hands of the Catholics. The canals have been cut. But the village fountains and wells furnish us with enough water.

JANUARY 7, 1573. – In order still more to tighten the land blockade, the enemy has erected two forts at the entrance of the bay, on the roadstead in front of the inside port, thereby compelling our vessels to run the gauntlet of those batteries in order to reach the city.

JANUARY 12, 1573. – Our friend Master Barbot, the boilermaker, achieved day before yesterday a deed, unmatched, I think, in the annals of military exploits. Not far from the counterscarp of the Evangelium Bastion, stands a mill which we call Brande, and where Captain Normand placed a small advanced day guard. At night they returned to the city, leaving at the mill their arms and only one sentinel. Evening before last, Colonel Strozzi, profiting by the moonlight, marched at the head of a strong detachment, supported by two light pieces of artillery, to the attack of the mill, where Master Barbot was alone on guard. Barbot decided to remain firmly at his post, which he did, discharging one after the other upon the assailants the arquebuses which were left loaded on the gunrack of the post. Our friend made simultaneously a great noise, counterfeiting a variety of voices, with the view of causing the enemy to believe that the mill was strongly defended. On hearing the rattle of the arquebus shots, Captain Normand ran to the parapet of the bastion, and shouted to Master Barbot to hold out and that reinforcements were hurrying to his support! The road was circuitous and therefore rather long. As a consequence, before our men could reach the bastion of the mill, which lay on the other side of the moat, and despite all his intrepidity, Master Barbot found himself on the point of yielding. His ammunition had run out. He parleyed, and demanded quarter for himself and his pretended garrison. Colonel Strozzi granted quarter to our friend, who, stepping out, revealed the fact that his garrison consisted of himself alone. Furious at the discovery, Strozzi was about to hang Master Barbot, when Captain Normand's men arrived at the double quick, routed the royalists and snatched our intrepid boilermaker from their clutches.

JANUARY 15, 1573. – God be blessed! My mother, my sister Theresa Rennepont, Cornelia, my betrothed, and several other brave Rochelois women had a narrow escape last night. The brigantines of Captain Mirant, charged with the duty of provisioning La Rochelle with munitions of war and grain, frequently set sail for the shores of Brittany or for Dover, and re-entered our port with their cargoes of supplies. To the end of blocking these excursions, or rendering them too perilous to be frequently attempted, the royalists brought from the port of Brouage the hull of a large dismantled vessel. They filled the same with sand, and sank it at the entrance of the bay that leads to our port. The water in that spot being shallow, the sunken hull was thus turned into a species of half-submerged pontoon, and was mounted with a number of artillery pieces which, jointly with those on the redoubts raised by the enemy on the opposite sides of the bay, could cross their fires upon any of our ships that either left or entered the roadstead. Yesterday the City Council decided that during the night, at low tide, the vessel, left dry upon the sand banks by the outflowing sea, was to be set on fire. The audacious stroke – audacious because those who were commissioned to execute it had to leave the city by the Two Mills Gate, and were forced to heap up the combustibles around the hull under the fire of the soldiers on guard – the audacious expedition did not otherwise require military skill. It only required stout hearts; it devolved upon the Rochelois women, at their unanimous and pressing demand. "The blood and lives of the men, already numerically inferior to the besiegers, should," said they, "be preserved for battle." The brave women assembled, about three hundred strong, together with a goodly number of children of about twelve years who insisted upon accompanying their mothers. The troop consisted of bourgeois women, noble ladies, female servants, and wives of artisans, fishermen and merchants. Among these, and foremost among them – I mention it proudly – were my mother, my sister Theresa, and Cornelia Mirant, recently returned from one of her father's foraging expeditions to Brittany. At about three in the morning they started from the city, carrying bundles of dry kindling wood and packages of hay. A strong wind was blowing. Deep darkness favored their march under the guidance of a fisherman's wife who bore the nickname of the Bombarde, by reason of her having extinguished one of the enemy's projectiles. Due to her often dragging for oysters and clams, which abounded on our coasts, the Bombarde was acquainted with the safe passages between the rocks and the quicksands that strewed the bay. She led the Rochelois women through the darkness. The following is Cornelia's own and thrilling account of the affair: