“All horses must go to the Sophia,” he said. “She has accommodation for six chargers. The regimental baggage —”
He broke off short, for his eye had been caught by a singular jumble of apparatus lying in one of the carts.
“What is that, if you please?” he asked, curiosity overpowering him.
“That, sir,” said Pouzauges, “is a guillotine.”
“A guillotine?”
Hornblower had read much lately about this instrument. The Red Revolutionaries had set one up in Paris and kept it hard at work. The King of France, Louis XVI himself, had died under it. He did not expect to find one in the train of a counter-revolutionary army.
“Yes,” said Pouzauges, “we take it with us to France. It is in my mind to give those anarchists a taste of their own medicine.”
Hornblower did not have to make reply, fortunately, as a bellow from Bolton interrupted the conversation.
“What the hell’s all this delay for, Mr Hornblower? D’you want us to miss the tide?”
It was of course typical of life in any service that Hornblower should be reprimanded for the time wasted by the inefficiency of the French arrangements — that was the sort of thing he had already come to expect, and he had already learned that it was better to submit silently to reprimand than to offer excuses. He addressed himself again to the task of getting the French aboard their transports. It was a weary midshipman who at last reported himself to Bolton with his tally sheets and the news that the last Frenchman and horse and pieces of baggage were safely aboard, and he was greeted with the order to get his things together quickly and transfer them and himself to the Sophia, where his services as interpreter were still needed.
The convoy dropped quickly down Plymouth Sound, rounded the Eddystone, and headed down channel, with H.M.S. Indefatigable flying her distinguishing pennant, the two gun-brigs which had been ordered to assist in convoying the expedition, and the four transports — a small enough force, it seemed to Hornblower, with which to attempt the overthrow of the French republic. There were only eleven hundred infantry; the half battalion of the 43rd and the weak battalion of Frenchmen (if they could be called that, seeing that many of them were soldiers of fortune of all nations) and although Hornblower had enough sense not to try to judge the Frenchmen as they lay in rows in the dark and stinking ‘tweendecks in the agonies of seasickness he was puzzled that anyone could expect results from such a small force. His historical reading had told him of many small raids, in many wars, launched against the shores of France, and although he knew that they had once been described by an opposition statesman as ‘breaking windows with guineas’ he had been inclined to approve of them in principle, as bringing about a dissipation of the French strength — until now, when he found himself part of such an expedition.
So it was with relief that he heard from Pouzauges that the troops he had seen did not constitute the whole of the force to be employed — were indeed only a minor fraction of it. A little pale with seasickness, but manfully combating it, Pouzauges laid out a map on the cabin table and explained the plan.
“The Christian Army,” explained Ponzauges, “will land here, at Quiberon. They sailed from Portsmouth — these English names are hard to pronounce — the day before we left Plymouth. There are five thousand men under the Baron de Charette. They will march on Vannes and Rennes.”
“And what is your regiment to do?” asked Hornblower.
Pouzauges pointed to the map again.
“Here is the town of Muzillac,” he said. Twenty leagues from Quiberon. Here the main road from the south crosses the river Marais, where the tide ceases to flow. It is only a little river, as you see, but its banks are marshy, and the road passes it not only by a bridge but by a long causeway. The rebel armies are to the south, and on their northward march must come by Muzillac. We shall be there. We shall destroy the bridge and defend the crossing, delaying the rebels long enough to enable M. de Charette to raise all Brittany. He will soon have twenty thousand men in arms, the rebels will come back to their allegiance, and we shall march on Paris to restore His Most Christian Majesty to the throne.”