asked permission to march against the rebels. A decree ordered the forming of twenty-four companies of pioneers to burn the hedges and fences of the Bocage. An unprecedented crisis. The war only ceased in one direction to begin again in another. "No mercy! no prisoners!" was the cry of both parties. History was full of a terrible darkness.
In this month of August, la Tourgue was besieged.
One evening, as the stars were beginning to shine, in the quiet of a dog-day twilight, when not a leaf trembled in the forest, not a blade of grass stirred on the moor, through the silence of the approaching darkness, the sound of a horn was heard. The sound of this horn came from the top of the tower.
This horn was answered by a trumpet, which sounded from below.
At the top of the tower there was an armed man; below, in the darkness, there was a camp.
A swarm of black figures could be made out in the dim light around the Tour-Gauvain. This swarm was a bivouac. Fires were beginning to be lighted under the trees in the forest and in the heather on the plateau, piercing the darkness here and there with bright points of light, as if the earth wished to shine with stars as well as the sky, Gloomy stars,—those of war! The bivouac, in the direction of the plateau, reached as far as the plains, and in the direction of the forest, it extended into the thicket. La Tourgue was blockaded.
The extent of the besieger's bivouac indicated a numerous force.
The camp was situated close to the fortress, and on the side of the tower, reached to the rock, and on the side of the bridge, to the edge of the ravine.
There was a second blast from the horn, followed by a second blowing of the trumpet.
This horn questioned, and the trumpet gave answer.
The horn was the tower asking the camp, "Can we speak to you?" And the trumpet replied, "Yes."
At this period, as the Vendéans were not considered warriors by the Convention, and as a decree had forbidden the exchange of flags of truce with "these brigands," they supplied, as best they could, the means of communication which the right of nations authorizes in ordinary warfare,
