The defile of Glen-Clan is the only practicable passage across the last links of the Black Mountains—a mountain chain that constitutes a veritable girdle of granite as a natural protection to the heart of Brittany. The defile of Glen-Clan is so narrow that a wagon can barely thread it; it is so steep that six yoke of oxen are barely able to drag a wagon up its craggy incline, from the top of which a stone of considerable size would roll rapidly down to the bottom of the pass—a pass cut, like the bed of a mountain torrent, at the feet of immense rocks that rise on either side perpendicular over a hundred feet in the air.
A distant rumbling noise, confused at first, and becoming more and more distinct as it draws nearer and nearer, disturbs one day, shortly after the angry departure of Abbot Witchaire from Brittany, the otherwise profound silence of the solitude. By little and little the dull tramp of cavalry is distinguished; presently also the clanking of iron arms upon iron armor, and finally the rythmic tread of large troops of foot soldiers, the lumbering of wagon wheels jolting upon the stony ground, the neighing of horses and the bellowing of yoke-oxen. All these various sounds draw nearer, grow louder, and are finally blended into one steady roar. They announce the approach of an army corps of considerable proportions.Suddenly the mournful and prolonged cry of a night bird is heard from the crest of the rocks that overhang the defile. Other similar, but more distant cries answer the first signal, like an echo that loses itself in the distance. Silence ensues thereupon—except for the tumultuous din of the advancing army corps. A small troop appears at the entrance of the tortuous passage; a monk on horseback guides the scouting party. At the monk's side rides a warrior of tall stature, clad in rich armor. His white buckler, on which three eagle's talons are designed, hangs to one side from the pommel of his saddle, while an iron mace dangles from the other. Behind the Frankish chief ride several cavalrymen accompanied by about a score of Saxon archers, distinguishable by their long quivers.
"Hugh," says the chief of the warriors to one of his men, "take with you two horsemen, and let five or six archers precede you to make certain that there is no ambush to fear. At the slightest sign of an attack fall back upon us and give the alarm. I do not wish to entangle the gross of my troop in this defile without the necessary precautions."
Hugh obeys his chief. The little vanguard quickens its step and soon disappears beyond one of the windings of the pass.
"Neroweg, the measure is wise," observes the monk. "One could not advance with too much precaution into this accursed country of Brittany, where I have lived long enough to know that it is extremely dangerous."
"At the end of this defile, I am told, we enter upon even ground."
"Yes, but before that we shall have to cross the marsh of Peulven and the forest of Cardik; we then arrive at the vastmoor of Kennor, the rendezvous of the two other armed bodies of Louis the Pious, who are marching to that point across the river Vilaine and over the defile of Mount Orock, as we are to penetrate through this one. Morvan will be attacked from three sides, and will not be able to resist our forces."
"I marvel that so important a pass as this is not defended."
"I furnished you the reason when I delivered to you Morvan's plan of campaign, that was forwarded to me by Kervor, a pious Catholic who came over to the Frankish side and submitted to the authority of our King. He is the chief of the southern tribes whose territory we have just crossed."
"I loved to see those people so docile to the priests; they furnished us with supplies, and at your voice knelt down as we passed."
"At the time of the other wars you would have dropped fully one-half of your troops in this region so cut up with bogs, hedges and woods. The change between now and then is great. The Catholic faith penetrates little by little these people, formerly so intractable. We have preached to them submission to Louis the Pious, and menaced them with the fires of hell if they attempted to resist your arms."
"Indeed, more than one of the troopers of the old bands who fought here at the time of Charles the Great, have told me they could no longer recognize the Bretons, who, in their days, were almost invincible. But for all your explanations, monk, I cannot understand how this pass comes to be abandoned."
"And yet nothing is simpler. According to his plan of campaign, Morvan counted with the resistance of the tribes that we have just crossed. In one day, without drawing your sword, you have cleared a track that would otherwise havecost you three days' hard fighting, and a fourth of your troops. Morvan, never apprehending your early arrival at the defile of Glen-Clan, will not think of having it occupied until this evening, or to-morrow. He has not enough forces at his disposal to place them where they would lie idle while he himself is being attacked from two other sides by as many army corps."
"To that argument I have nothing to say, my father in Christ, you know the country better than I. If this war succeeds, I shall have my share of the conquered territory; and, according to the promise of Louis the Pious, I shall become a powerful seigneur in Brittany, as my elder brother, Gonthran, is in Auvergne."
"And you will not forget to endow the Church."
"I shall not be ungrateful to the priests, good father. I shall employ a part of the booty in building a chapel to St. Martin, for whom our family has ever entertained a particular devotion. Could you, who are well acquainted with the customs of the Bretons, tell me what corners they hide their money in? It is claimed that they remove all their treasures when they are forced to flee from their houses, and that they bury them in inaccessible hiding places. Is that so?"
"When we shall have arrived in the heart of the country, I shall acquaint you with the means to discover those treasures, which are, almost always, concealed at the foot of certain druid stones, for which these pagans preserve an idolatrous reverence."
"But where shall we find those stones? By what signs are they to be recognized?"
"That is my secret, Neroweg. It will becomeoursafter we shall have reached the heart of the country."
Thus conversing, the monk and the Frankish chief slowly ascend the craggy slope of the defile. From time to time, some of the horsemen, or foot soldiers, detached as scouts, ride back to acquaint Neroweg with their observations. Finally, Hugh himself returns and informs his master that there is nothing to cause any apprehension on the score of an ambuscade. Completely reassured by these reports, and by the explanations of the monk, Neroweg gives the order for the advance of his troops, the footmen first, the horsemen next, then the baggage, and last of all a rear corps of foot soldiers.
The army corps breaks up and enters the pass that is so narrow as to allow a passage to only four men abreast. The long and winding column of men covered with iron, crowded together, and moving slowly, presents a strange spectacle from the top of the rocks that dominate the narrow route. It might be taken for some gigantic serpent with iron scales, deploying its sinuous folds in a ravine cut between two walls of granite. The misgivings of the Franks, somewhat alarmed when they first began threading their way through a passage so propitious to an ambush, are presently removed and make place for unquestioning confidence. Already the vanguard that precedes Neroweg and the monk is drawing near the issue of the defile, while at the other end the baggage wagons, drawn by oxen, begin to set themselves in motion followed by the rear guard that consists of Thuringian horsemen and Saxon archers. The last wagons and the rear guard have barely entered the defile, when suddenly the lugubrious cry of the night bird, resembling that which had greeted the first arrival of the Frankish army, resounds again, and is echoed from peak to peak, along the whole lengthof the overtopping rocks. Immediately thereupon, pushed by invisible arms, several enormous boulders detach themselves from the surrounding rocks that an instant before seemed a solid part of themselves, roll and bound with the rattle of thunder from the top of the crest down to the foot of the mountain, and fall crashing upon the wagons, crushing a large number of soldiers to death, mutilating many more and disabling the train. In their paroxysms of death, or rendered furious by their wounds, the oxen crowd upon or roll over one another, and throw the rear guard of the Franks into such frightful disorder that it is wholly unable to make another step in advance; it is cut off from the gross of the troops by the lumber in its way; it is reduced to utter impotence. All along the rest of the length of the defile of Glen-Clan the Franks are in similar plight. All along the line, fragments of rocks roll down from the overtopping crests, crushing and decimating the compact mass of soldiers below. The gigantic serpent of iron is mutilated, cut into bleeding sections; it writhes convulsively at the bottom of the ravine, while from the summits on either side, now crowned with a swarm of Bretons, who kept themselves until then concealed, a hailstorm of arrows, boar-spears and stones rains down upon the bewildered, panic-stricken and impotent Frankish cohorts, caught and hemmed in between the two granite walls, from whose tops our men deal prompt and unavoidable death to their invaders. Vortigern is in command of these resolute and watchful Bretons. His bow in one hand, his quiver by his side, not one of his bolts misses its mark.
The butchery is frightful! The carnage superb! The Gallic war-songs and cries of triumph from above answer the imprecations of the Franks from below. A frightful butchery!
A superb carnage! It lasts as long as our men have a stone to throw, a bolt or a spear to hurl at the foe. His own, and the munitions of his companions being exhausted, Vortigern cries down from the summit of the rocks to the frantic Franks below, accompanying the cry with a gesture of defiance:
"We will thus defend our soil, inch by inch; every step you take will be marked by your blood or our own; all our tribes are not like those of Kervor!"
Saying this, Vortigern struck up the martial song of his ancestor Schanvoch:
Vast is the marsh of Peulven. To the east and the south its shape is like a bay. From that side its edges are bordered by the skirts of the dense forest of Cardik. To the north and west, it waters the gentle slopes of the hills that succeed upon the last spurs of the Black Mountains, whose tops, empurpled by the rays of the westering sun, rise in the distant horizon. A jetty, or tongue of land that runs into the edge of the forest, traverses the marsh through its whole length. Silence is profound in this desert place. The stagnant waters reflect the inflamed tints of the ruddy twilight. From time to time flocks of curlews, herons and other aquatic birds, rise from amidst the reeds that cover the marsh in spots, hover about and fly upward, emitting their plaintive cries. Several Frankish horsemen appear from the side of the mountain. They climb the hill, reach its top, and rein in their horses. They sweep the marsh with their eyes, examine it for a moment, then turn their horses' heads and ride back to join Neroweg and the monk, whose forces, decimated shortly before in the defile of Glen-Clan, have been subsequently harassed without let on their further march by little Breton bands, who, placed in ambush behind hedges, or in ditches covered with dry wood, unexpectedly fell upon either the vanguard or the rear guard of the Franks, and,after bloody encounters, again vanished in that region so interspersed with obstacles of all sorts, impracticable for cavalry, and with which the Frankish foot soldiers are so utterly unfamiliar that they ventured not to separate themselves from the main column, ever fearing to fall into some fresh ambush. On horseback behind the monk, Neroweg stands on the summit of a hill not far behind the one that the scouts have just ascended. He awaits their return in order to continue his march. The vanguard has halted at a little distance from the chief. Further away rest the bulk of his troops. A small detachment of the rear guard was ordered to take its stand about a league further back in order to guard the baggage, the wagons and the wounded of the sorely harassed army.
The lines on the face of the Frankish chief denote deep concern. He says to the monk:
"What a war! What a war! I have fought against the Northmans, when they attacked our fortified camps at the confluence of the Somme and the Seine. Those accursed pirates are terrible foes. They are as dashing in attack as they are cautious in retreat, and they ever find a safe shelter in the light craft in which they come over the seas of the North as far south as Gaul. But by St. Martin! these accursed Bretons are fuller of the devil, and harder to get at than even the pirates! They were a source of trouble to Charles the great Emperor; they have become the desolation of his son!" And Neroweg repeats dejectedly: "What a war! What a war!"
The monk turns upon his saddle, and stretching out his hand in the direction traversed by the Frankish troop, says to Neroweg:
"Look toward the west!"
Turning his eyes in the direction indicated by the priest, the Frankish chief notices behind him tall columns of ruddy smoke rising at intervals from the hills that the army has left behind it. "Look yonder! Everywhere a conflagration marks our passage. The burgs and villages, abandoned by the fleeing inhabitants, have, at my orders, been delivered to the flames. The Bretons have not, like the Northman pirates, the resource of vessels on which to flee with their booty back to the ocean. We are driving the fleeing population before us. The two other army corps of Louis the Pious are, from their side, following similar tactics. Accordingly, we and they will meet to-morrow morning at the village of Lokfern. There we will find, driven back and heaped together, the populations that have been attacked from the south, the east and the north during these last days. There, surrounded by a circle of iron, they will be either annihilated or reduced to slavery! Ah! This time without fail, Brittany, never before overcome, will be subjected to the Catholic Church and to the power of the Franks. What if your soldiers have been decimated in the struggle for the triumph of the faith and royalty! The troops that you still have, will, when joined to the other army corps, suffice to exterminate the Bretons!"
"Monk," answers Neroweg impatiently, "your words do not console me for the death of so many brave Frankish warriors whose bones have been left to bleach in the defile of Glen-Clan and on the hills of this accursed country!"
"Rather envy their fate. They have died for religion; they are now in paradise, in the midst of a chorus of seraphim."
Neroweg shrugs his shoulders with an air of incredulity, and after a moment of silence proceeds: "You promised topoint out to me where these pagans conceal their treasures."
"On the other side of the marsh of Peulven which we are now to traverse, lies a vast forest in which a large number of druid stones are found. Have the earth removed at their foot, and you will find large sums of money in silver and gold, and many precious articles that have been hidden there since the beginning of the war."
"When will we arrive at that forest?"
"This evening before nightfall."
"I do not wish to risk my troops in that forest, and fall into another ambush like the one of the defile!" cries Neroweg. "The day is drawing to its close. We shall encamp to-night in the midst of the bare hills where we now are, and where no surprise is to be feared."
"Here are your scouts back," observes the monk to the Frankish chief. "Interrogate them before you make up your mind definitely."
"Neroweg," reports one of the riders who had scouted to the edge of the marsh, "as far as the eye reaches, nothing is seen on the marsh; there is no sign of any men; there is not a boat in sight. On the shores there is not a single hut, and there is no evidence of any entrenchment."
Impatient to judge by himself of the nature of the field, the Frankish chief, followed by the monk, immediately rides forward and reaches the top of the hill shortly before occupied by the scouts. From the eminence Neroweg beholds a vast expanse of marshy ground in whose numerous pools of stagnant water the last rays of the sinking sun are mirrored. The jetty, covered with sward and lined with a thick fringe of reeds, reaches clear to the other side, and is lost on the edge of the forest. "There is not the slightest fear of an ambushin crossing this solitude," says Neroweg with visible mental relief. "The march across can only take up half an hour, at the most."
"We have about an hour more of daylight left us," observes the monk. "The forest you see yonder is called the forest of Cardik. It stretches far away to the right and left of the marsh, seeing that, towards the west, it reaches the borders of the Armorican Sea. But that portion of the forest that faces the jetty is at the utmost a quarter of a league long. We could easily put it behind us before night, and we would then be on the moor of Kennor, an immense plain where you could encamp in absolute security. To-morrow at daybreak if it should please you, we can ride back into the forest and rummage at the foot of the druid stones for the treasures hidden there by the Bretons. Glory to your arms, and may the booty be large!"
After a few minutes of hesitation, Neroweg, tempted by cupidity, sends a man of his escort to give to his troops the order to march and traverse the jetty, a narrow walk of about three feet wide, perfectly even, covered with thin grass, and lying in plain view from one end to the other. Neroweg feels easy in mind. Nevertheless, remembering the rocks of Glen-Clan, he prudently orders several horsemen to precede the troops by about a hundred paces. Marching behind their chief, Neroweg's troops begin to defile along the jetty, which soon is covered with soldiers from end to end. Massed from the foot to the top of the hill, behind the advancing column, are the last detachments of Neroweg's army. They break ranks as fast as it is their turn to enter upon the passage.
Suddenly, from the midst of the clumps of reeds that rise at irregular intervals along the length of the tongue of land,the cry of night-birds goes up—cries identical with those that had resounded from the summits of Glen-Clan. Upon the signal, the muffled sounds of rapid hatchet strokes are heard. They teem to be the answer given to the cries of the night-birds. Instantly the seemingly solid walk sinks at scores of places under the feet of the marching soldiers. Woe is those who happen to find themselves over these hidden traps, that are constructed of wooden beams and strong chains concealed under a layer of sward! The scheme, devised by Vortigern, proves successful. The movable bridges can, at will, either support the weight of the troops that march over them, or tip over under their tread, by the dexterous knocking from under the loose boards the wooden pegs that are their only support.
Plunged in the water up to their necks, Vortigern and a large number of stout-hearted men of his tribe have held themselves motionless, mute and invisible in the center of the clumps of reeds that border the jetty near each of the traps. When the jetty is entirely covered with Frankish soldiers, the hatchets are, at a signal, plied with energy; the pegs drop out; and the passage is suddenly cut up by scores of gaps twenty feet wide. Pell-mell foot soldiers, cavalrymen and their horses tumble to the bottom of these suddenly opened ditches, and are received thereupon by the sharp points of piles providently sunk at the bottom.
At the sight of these death-dealing traps, suddenly gaping before them at their feet, and at the sound of the wild cries and imprecations uttered by the wounded and by those who are being pushed forward into the abysses by the crowding ranks behind, a tremendous disorder, followed by a panic, spreads among the Franks. Fearing the path to be everywhere undermined, the soldiers crowd back and forward uponone another in a frenzy of despair. The frightened horses rear, tumble down, or rush furiously into the marsh where they vanish together with their riders. The confusion and rout being at its height, the Bretons rise from their places of concealment among the reeds, and hurl promiscuously a shower of bolts upon the confused heaps of soldiers, now rendered insane with fear, and in their panic either trampling upon one another, or themselves being trampled upon by their uncontrollable steeds. Other war-crys respond from a distance to the war-cries struck up by Vortigern and his men. A troop of Bretons issues from the forest and ranks itself in battle array at the border of the marsh ready to dispute the passage if the Franks dare to attempt it The sight of these fresh foes carries the panic of Neroweg's troops to its acme. Instead of marching onward towards the edge of the forest, the front rank faces about, anxious only to join the body of the army that still finds itself massed at the entrance of the fatal causeway. The rush is effected with such fury that the deep trenches are speedily filled with the bodies of a mass of wounded, dead and dying warriors. The heaped-up corpses soon serve as a bridge to the fleeing Franks, whose rear the Breton bolts assail unpityingly. At the spectacle of the routed Franks, Vortigern and his braves strike up anew the war song with which they had assailed the ears of the distracted Franks at the defile of Glen-Clan:
"What a war! What a war!" exclaim the warriors of Louis the Pious, leaving at every step some of their companions behind among the rocks and the marshes of Armorica. "Every hedge of the fields, every ditch in the valleys conceals a Breton of steady eye and hand. The stone of the sling, the arrow of the bow whiz everywhere through the air, nor miss their aim. The pits of the precipices, and the bottoms of the stagnant waters swallow up the bodies of our soldiers. If we penetrate into the forests, the danger redoubles. Every copse, the branches of every tree, conceal an enemy!"
Neroweg, having barely escaped with his life from the disaster of the marsh of Peulven, spends the night upon the hill with the remaining fragment of his army. At early dawn the next morning he orders the trumpets and clarions to call his men to their ranks. At the head of his warriors he again steps upon the narrow jetty of the marsh. He is determined to force his way into the forest of Cardik. Footmen and horses again trample over the heaped-up corpses in the wide trenches. No ambush now retards the passage of the Franks. By sunrise the last detachments have crossed the marsh, and all the forces still at the command of Neroweg are deployed along the skirts of the forest that is now serving asa retreat to the Gauls of Armorica, and where they have taken their next stand.
The primeval forest extends, towards the west, as far as the steep banks of a river that runs into the sea, and towards the east, up to a chain of precipitous hills. Furious at the defeat he suffered on the previous evening, the Frankish chief is hardly able to restrain his ardor. Always accompanied by the monk, he advances into the forest. The oaks, the elms, the ash trees, the birch trees, raise their gigantic trunks and interlace their spreading branches. Between these trunks, all is underwood, bramble and briar. Only one narrow and tortuous path presents itself to Neroweg's sight. He enters it. Daylight barely penetrates the walk through the dense vault of verdure, shaped overhead by the foliage of the stately trees. Thickets of holly seven or eight feet high fringe the way. Their prickly leaves render them impenetrable.
Unable to wander off either to the right or to the left, the soldiers are compelled to follow the defile of verdure. Laboring under the shock of their recent disasters, they march with mistrust through the somber forest of Cardik, speaking only in undertones, and from time to time interrogating with uneasy looks the leafy branches of the trees, or the thicket that borders the route. For a while nothing justifies the apprehensions of the Frankish cohorts. The silence of the forest is disturbed only by the rhythmic and muffled sound of their steps, and the clank of their arms. But even the silence itself nourishes the vague fears of the Franks. The defile of Glen-Clan and the marsh of Peulven also were silent! More than one-half of the rest of the army now left to Neroweg has entered the forest, when, reaching one of the turns of the winding path, the Frankish chief, who marches at the headof his horsemen accompanied by the monk, suddenly stops short. The path has vanished. Gigantic oaks and elms, a hundred feet tall and from fifteen to twenty feet in circumference, and bearing the evidence of having only freshly fallen under the axe of the woodman, lie heaped upon each other and so tangled in their fall across the route that their enormous branches and colossal trunks present an impassible barrier to the cavalry. Only foot soldiers might possibly scale the obstruction, and cut their way across with hatchets.
"Oh! What a war!" cries out Neroweg, clenching his fists. "After the defile, the marsh! After the marsh, the forest! I shall have barely one-third of my forces left by the time I join the other chiefs! Accursed Bretons, may the fires of hell consume you!"
"Yes, these heathens will burn! They shall burn until the last day of judgment!" responds the monk with deep vexation. "Courage, Neroweg! Courage! This last obstacle being overcome, we shall arrive at the moor of Kennor. There we shall join the other two army corps of Louis the Pious, and we shall all jointly penetrate into the valley of Lokfern, where we will exterminate these accursed Bretons to the last man."
"Have you seen me falter in courage? By the great St. Martin, it looks as if you were in league with the enemy, judging by the route you have guided us on! Already have you twice led us into an ambush, you miserable priest!"
"Have I not braved all the dangers at your side?" observes the priest, holding up his left arm, that is wound in a bloodstained bandage. "Was I not myself wounded last evening when we attempted to cross the marsh of Peulven? Can you question my courage or fidelity?"
"How are we to find another route? The one barred is theonly one, you told me, that crosses this forest, otherwise impracticable to an army."
The monk looks around; he reflects; but no answer proceeds from his lips. A prey to discouragement and increasing terror, the soldiers begin to grumble, when suddenly three quickly succeeding cries of the night-bird pierce the air. Immediately the Breton slingers and archers, ambushed behind the breast-work of fallen trees, assail the Franks with a volley of stones and arrows. Enormous oak branches, previously prepared, detach themselves from the tops of their trunks, and come down crashing upon the heads of the soldiers, killing or mutilating them. Anew, panic seizes the Franks; a fresh carnage decimates them. Cavalrymen thrown from their horses, foot soldiers trampled under the hoofs of the frightened steeds, all blinded, their flesh torn as in their fright they precipitate themselves into the thick of the prickly holly hedges—such is this day's spectacle presented to the delighted Breton eyes by the invading army of Neroweg. What an inspiring spectacle to the Armorican Gauls! The air is filled with the moans of the dying, the imprecations of the wounded, the threats hurled at the monk, now roundly charged with treason.
The carnage and the panic are at their height when, climbing to the top of the breast-work of trees whence he can gain a full view of the distracted foe, Vortigern appears before the Franks and calls out to them defiantly:
"Now you may try to cross the forest. Our quivers are empty. We shall retreat to replenish them and shall be ready to meet you in the valley of Lokfern."
Vortigern has barely uttered these words when his eyes catch sight of the chief of the Franks, who, having descendedfrom his horse, holds up against the stones and bolts of his assailants, his white buckler, on which three eagle's talons are seen painted. At the sight of the device of his own stock's ancestral foe, Vortigern places his last arrow upon the string of his bow.
"The descendant of Joel sends this to the descendant of the Nerowegs."
The arrow whizzes. It grazes the lower border of the Frank's buckler, and penetrates his knee just above the jointure.
Neroweg falls upon the other knee, points out the Gaul to several archers in his vicinity, and cries:
"Take aim at that bandit! Kill him!"
The Saxon arrows fly through the air; two strike, and quiver where they strike, in the upturned branches of the tree on which Vortigern has mounted; the third enters his left arm.
The descendant of Joel quickly draws out the sharp-edged iron, throws it back at the Franks with a defiant gesture, and disappears behind the twisted branches of the improvised barricade.
Three times the cry of the night bird is again heard in the forest, and the Bretons disperse along paths known only to them, again singing as they go, the ancient war-song, the sound of whose refrain is gradually lost in the distance:
About four leagues in width and three in length—such is the expanse of the moor of Kennor. It constitutes a vast plateau that slopes to the north toward the valley of Lokfern, and is bounded on the west by a wide river that pours its waters into the Sea of Armorica only a little distance away. The forest of Cardik and the last spurs of the mountain chain of Men-Brez border on the moor. The moor is covered throughout its extent by heather two or three feet high and almost burned out by the scorching sun of the dog-days. Level as a lake, the immense barren and desert plain presents a desolate aspect. A violent east wind causes the tall heather, now of the color of dead leaves, to undulate like a peaceful sheet of water. Above, the sky is of a bright blue on this sultry and windy day. An August sun inundates with its blinding light the desert expanse of heather, whose silence is disturbed only by the sharp chirp of the grasshopper, or the low moan of the gale.
Presently a new element enters upon the scene. Skirting the bank of the river, a black and confused mass heaves into sight, stretches out its length, and moves toward the centre of the plain. It is the one of the three army corps led in person by Louis the Pious against the Breton Gauls. Long before its appearance, other troops, formed in compact cohorts, havebeen descending on the east the last slopes of Men-Brez. They, likewise, are advancing toward the plain—the place agreed upon for the junction of the three armies that had invaded Armorica, burning and ravaging the country upon their passage, and driving the population back towards the valley of Lokfern. The only division absent from the rendezvous is the contingent captained by Neroweg, which, since morning, has been struggling in the forest of Cardik. Finally it has issued in disorder from the woods, and re-formed its ranks. After incalculable labor, hewing, axe in hand, a passage through the thickets, leaving their cavalry behind, and forced to retreat upon their steps back to the marsh of Peulven, the troops of Neroweg at last succeed in crossing the forest. These troops now number barely one-half their original strength. They are reduced, not only by the losses sustained in the passage of the defile of Glen-Clan, of the marsh of Peulven, and the forest of Cardik, but also by the defection of large numbers of men, who, being more and more terror stricken by the resistance that they encountered, refused to listen to the orders of their chief, and followed the cavalry in its retreat. Neroweg's greatly reduced contingent now also appears in sight from the opposite side. The three army corps have descried one another. Their march converges towards the centre of the plain. The distance between them becomes so small that they are able to see one another's armor, casques and lances, glistening in the sun. The division of Louis the Pious, having been the first to descend into the plain over the hills of Men-Brez, halts, in order to wait for the other divisions. The troops under Louis the Pious himself are no less demoralized and reduced in numbers than the division under Neroweg. They have undergone similar vicissitudes duringtheir long march, having had to cut their way across a seemingly endless series of ambushes. The sight of their companions arriving from the opposite side revives their courage. Henceforth they expect to fight in the open. As far as the eye can reach, the vast plain that they now have entered upon lies fully exposed to view. It can conceal no trap. The last struggle is now at hand, and with it the close of the war. The Bretons, crowded together just beyond in the valley of Lokfern, are to be crushed by a combined armed force that is still three times stronger than theirs.
The vanguards of the three converging divisions are about to join when suddenly, from the east, whence a dry and steady gale is blowing, little puffs of smoke, at first almost imperceptible, are seen to rise at irregular distances from one another. The puffs of smoke are going up from the extreme eastern edge of the moor; they spread; they mingle with one another over an area more than two leagues in length; by little and little they present the aspect of one continuous belt of blackish smoke rising high and spreading into the air, and from time to time breaking out into lambent flames.
The fire has been kindled at a hundred different spots by the Breton Gauls with the dry heather of the moor. Driven by the violent gale the girdle of flame soon embraces the horizon from the east to the south, from the slopes of Men-Brez to the skirt of the forest. It advances with rapid strides like the waves of the incoming tide lashed by a furious wind. Terrified at the sight of the burning waves that are rushing upon them from the right with the swiftness of a hurricane, the Frankish ranks waver for a moment. To their left, runs a deep river; behind them, rises the forest of Cardik; before them the plateau slopes towards the valley of Lokfern. Himselfrunning for life towards the valley, Louis the Pious thereby gives to his troops the signal to flee. They follow their king tumultuously, anxious only to leave the moor behind them before the flames, that now invade the plateau from end to end, entirely cut off their retreat. Impatient to escape the danger, the cavalry breaks ranks, follows the example set by the king, traverses the cohorts of the infantry, throws them down, and rides rough-shod over them. The disorder, the tumult, the terror are at their height. The soldiers struggle with the horsemen and with one another. The fiery wave advances steadily; it advances faster than it can be run away from. The swiftest steed cannot cope with it. The all-embracing sheet of fire reaches first the soldiers whom the cavalry has thrown down and left wounded behind; it speedily envelopes the bulk of the army. In an instant the distracted cohorts are seen up to their waists in the midst of the flames.
By the valor of our fathers, it is the hell of the damned in this world! Frightful! torture! Excruciating pain! A cheering sight for the eyes of a Breton Gaul, harassed by invaders, to behold his merciless assailers in. Frankish horsemen cased in iron and fallen from their steeds, roast within their red-hot armor like tortoises in their shell. The footmen jump and leap to withdraw their nether extremities from the embrace of the caressing flames. But the flames never leave them; the flames gain the lead. Their feet and legs are grilled, refuse their support, and the men drop into the furnace emitting cries of despair. The horses fare no better despite their breathless gallop; they feel their flanks and buttocks devoured by the flames; they become savage. They are seized with a vertigo; they rear, plunge and fall over upon their riders. Horses and riders roll down into the brasier at their feet. Thehorses neigh piteously, the riders moan or utter curses. An immense concert of imprecations, of fierce cries of pain and rage rises heavenward with the flames of the magnificent hecatomb of Frankish warriors!
Oh! Beautiful to the eye is the moor of Kennor, still ruddy and smoking an hour after it is set on fire and consumed to the very root of its heather! Splendid brasier three leagues wide, strewn with thousands of Frankish bodies, shapeless, charred. Warm quarry above which already flocks of carrion-crows from the forest of Cardik are hovering! Glory to you, Bretons! More than a third of the Frankish army met death on the moor of Kennor.
"What a war! What a war!" also exclaims Louis the Pious.
Aye, a merciless war; a holy war; a thrice holy war, waged by a people in defence of their freedom, their homes, their fields, their hearths; Oh, ancient land of the Gauls! Oh, old Armorica, sacred mother! Everything turns into a weapon in the hands of your rugged children against their barbarous invaders! Rocks, precipices, marshes, woods, moors on fire! Oh, Brittany, betrayed by those of your own children who succumbed to the wiles of the Catholic priests, stabbed at your heart by the sword of the Frankish kings, and pouring out the generous heart blood of your children, perchance, after all, you will feel the yoke of the conquerer on your neck! But the bones of your enemies, crushed, burned and drowned in the struggle, will tell to our descendants the tale of a resistance that Armorica offered to her casqued and mitred invaders!
Decimated by the conflagration of the moor of Kennor, the Frankish army flees in disorder in the direction of the valley of Lokfern, that lies slightly below the vast plateau on which an hour before the three Frankish divisions have joined, confident that their trials are ended. Escaped from the disaster of the conflagration and carried onward by the impetuosity of their steeds, a portion of the Frankish cavalry that follows Louis the Pious in his precipitate flight, arrives at the confines of the plateau. Driven by a terror that left them no thought but to outstrip one another, the fleeing riders seem to give no heed to the sight that unfolds before them. At the foot of the slope that they are about to descend, stands the numerous Breton cavalry, drawn up in battle array, under the command of Morvan and Vortigern. It is only a cavalry of rustics, yet intrepid, veterans in warfare, perfectly mounted. Carried by the headlong course of their horses beyond the edge of the plateau and down the slope to the valley, the Franks rush in confused order upon the Breton cavalry that is drawn up as if to bar their passage; they rush onward, either unable to restrain their still frightened steeds, or conceiving a vague hope of crushing the opposing Bretons under the irresistible violence of their impetuous descent. The Breton cavalry, however, instead of waiting for the Franks, quickly parts in two corps, one commanded by Morvan, the other by Vortigern.One corps seems to flee to the right, the other to the left. The space from the foot of the hill to the river Scoer being thus left free by the sudden and rapid manœuvre of the Gauls, most of the Frankish horsemen find themselves hardly able to rein in their horses in time to escape falling into the water. A moment of disorder follows. It is turned to advantage by Morvan and Vortigern. The Frankish riders being dispersed and engaged with their steeds, Vortigern and Morvan turn about and fall upon them. They take the foe upon the flanks, right and left; charge upon them with fury; make havoc among them. Most of them are sabred to death, or have their heads beaten in with axes, others are driven into the river. During the fierce melee, the remnant of the infantry of Louis the Pious, still fleeing from the furnace of the moor of Kennor, arrives upon the spot in disorder. Trained in the trade of massacre, they promptly reform their ranks and pour down upon the Breton cavalry. At first victorious, these are finally crushed, overwhelmed by vastly superior numbers. On the other side of the river the rustic Gallic infantry still continue to hold their ground—husbandmen, woo-men and shepherds armed with pikes, scythes and axes, and many of them supplied with bows and slings. Behind this mass of warriors, and within an enclosure defended by barricades of heaped up trunks of trees and ditches, are assembled the women and children of the combatants. All their families have fled distracted before the invaders, carrying their valuables in their flight, and now await with indescribable agony the issue of this last battle.
Weep! Weep, Brittany! and yet be proud of your glory! Your sons, crushed down by numbers, resisted to their last breath; all have fallen wounded or dead in defence of their freedom!
The river is fordable for infantry at only one place. The monk who accompanies Neroweg points out the passage to the troops of Louis the Pious. They cross it immediately after the annihilation of the cavalry of Morvan. The Armoricans who are drawn up on the opposite bank of the Scoer heroically defend the ground inch by inch, man to man, ever falling back toward the fortified enclosure that is the last refuge of our families. Marching over heaps of corpses, the soldiery of Louis the Pious finally assail the fortified enclosure, all its defenders having been killed or wounded. The enclosure is taken. According to their custom, the Franks slaughter the children, put the women and maids to the torture of infamous treatment, and lead them away captive to the interior of Gaul. Ermond the Black, a monk and familiar of Louis the Pious in this impious war, wrote its account in Latin verse. The death of Morvan is narrated in the poem as follows:
Thus Brittany, once lost to the Franks, is placed anew under their sway.
Vortigern, the grandson of Amael, wrote this account of the war of the Franks against Brittany. Left for dead on the banks of the Scoer, he did not recover his senses until a day and a night had passed after the defeat of the Bretons. Some Christian druids, led to the spot by Caswallan, who had escaped the massacre, came to the field of battle to gather the wounded who might still be alive. Vortigern was of the number. From them he learned that his sister Noblede, the wife of Morvan, together with other women and young girls who took refuge in the fortified enclosure, had stabbed themselves to death in order to escape being outraged by the Franks and led into slavery. After Abbot Witchaire left the house of Morvan on his return trip to announce to Louis the Pious the refusal of the Armorican Gauls to pay the tribute demanded from them, Vortigern returned with his wife and children to Karnak in order to gather in the crops from his fields. The harvest being in, he left his family at the house of his parents, and returned to Morvan in order to join the latter's forces, and oppose the army of Louis the Pious. Immediately after his wounds were healed, Vortigern returned to Karnak, where he rejoined his wife and children. The Franks had not dared push their invasion beyond the valley of Lokfern. They contented themselves with leaving Armorica devastated and stripped of her bravest defenders. Yet is she not subdued. She but waits the moment to revolt anew.
Vortigern joined this narrative to the other narratives of his family, and he accompanied his own account with the two Carlovingian coins, the gift of Thetralde, one of the daughters of Charles the Great. These relics of the family of Joel now consist of Hena's little gold sickle, Guilhern's little brass bell, Sylvest's iron collar, Genevieve's silver cross, Shanvoch's casque's lark, Ronan the Vagre's poniard's hilt and his branding needle, Bonaik's abbatial crosier and Vortigern's Carlovingian coins, together with the narratives that accompany them.
Myself, Rosneven, the oldest son of Vortigern, who make this entry at the foot of my father's narrative, can only record here my father's death on the fifth day of February of 889. These have been sad years for Brittany, and also for our own family in particular. Our special sorrows proceed from the estrangement of my younger brothers, one of whom left Gaul and sailed to the country of the Northman pirates. I lack both the spirit and the will to recite these lamentable events. Perhaps my youngest brother Gomer, gifted with more energy, ability and perseverance than myself, may some day undertake the task.
THE END.