De Lescure could not wait a moment longer.  He would have risked anything but his own reputation to save that of his friend; but his brave companions were still on the bridge, and there he returned for the third time; his cap was shot away, his boot was cut, his clothes were pierced in different places, but still he was not himself wounded.

“See, my friends,” said he aloud to the men behind him, “the blues do not know how to fire,” and he pointed to his shoulder, from which, as he spoke, a ball had cut the epaulette.

He then crossed completely over the bridge, together with Stofflet and the priest; the people with one tremendous rush followed him, and Adolphe Denot was carried along with the crowd.

As soon as they found themselves immediately beneath the walls of the town, they were not exposed to so murderous a fire as they had been on the bridge itself, but still the work was hot enough.  ‘Marie Jeanne’ had been carried across with them, and was soon brought into play; they had still enough ammunition left to enable their favourite to show her puissance in battering against the chief gates of Saumur.  The men made various attempts to get into the town, but they were not successful, though the gates were shattered to pieces, and the passage was almost free; the republican troops within were too strong, and their firing too hot.  At last the blues made a sortie from the town, and drove the Vendeans back towards the bridge; M. de Lescure still kept his place in the front, and was endeavouring to encourage his men to recover their position, when a ball struck his arm and broke it, and he fell with his knee upon the ground.  As soon as the peasants saw him fall, and found that he was wounded, they wanted to take him in their arms, and carry him at once back across the bridge, but he would not allow them.

“What ails you, friends?” said he; “did you never never see a man stumble before?  Come, the passage is free; now at length we will quench our thirst in Saumur,” and taking his sword in his left hand, he again attempted to make good his ground.

M. d’Elbee had seen the Vendeans retreating back towards the bridge, and knowing that victory with them must be now or never (for it would have been impossible to have induced the peasants to remain longer from their homes, had they been repulsed), he determined to quit his post and to second de Lescure at the bridge.  The firing from the town had ceased, for the republicans and royalists were so mixed together, that the men on the walls would have been as likely to kill their friends as their enemies; and as the first company, fatigued, discouraged and overpowered, were beginning to give way, d’Elbee, with about two thousand men, pushed across the bridge, and the whole mass of the contending forces, blues and Vendeans together, were hurried back through the gateway into the town; and de Lescure, as he entered it, found that it was already in the hands of his own party—­the white flag was at that moment rising above the tricolour on the ramparts.