The men quickly followed:  they all got a ducking; some few lost their arms, one or two were slightly wounded by their comrades, but none of them were drowned.  Henri soon made his way over the ruins into the town, and carried everything before him.  The greater part of the garrison of the town were endeavouring to repulse the attack made by de Lescure; others had retired into the castle, in which the republican General thought that he might still hold out against the Vendeans.  Many were already escaping out of the town by the bridge over the Loire, and throwing down their arms, were hurrying along the road to Tours.

It was in this manner, and almost without opposition, that Larochejaquelin found himself, together with his brave followers, in the middle of Saumur; their own success astonished them; hardly a shot was fired at them in their passage; they went through the town without losing a man; the republican soldiers whom they did see threw down their arms and fled; the very sight of the Vendeans in the centre of the town overwhelmed them with panic.  The appearance of Henri’s troop was very singular; every man wore round his neck and round his waist a red cotton handkerchief; this costume had been adopted to preserve Larochejaquelin from the especial danger of being made the butt of republican marksmen.  There was now no especial mouchoir rouge among them.  They certainly had a frightful appearance, as they hurried through the streets with their bayonets fixed, dripping with mud and water, and conspicuous with their red necks and red waists; at least so thought the republicans, for they offered very little opposition to them.

Henri had just time to see that his friends had entered the town by the gate on the Doue road, but he did not wait to speak to them.  The republican soldiers were escaping from the town in the opposite direction, and he could not resist the temptation of following them.  He was at the head of his men, just passing over the Loire by a wooden bridge, called the bridge of the Green Cross, and having possessed himself of a sword in his passage through the town, was making good use of it, when a dragoon turned suddenly round, and fired a pistol almost in his face:  near as the man was to him, in his hurry he missed him, and the bullet merely grazed Henri’s cheek, without even raising the skin.  “Ah, bungler,” said Henri, raising his sword, “you are no good for either King or nation,” and he struck the unfortunate man dead at his feet.

Not only the soldiers, but the inhabitants of the town were escaping by hundreds over the bridge, and Henri saw that if he pursued them farther, he must, sooner or later, find himself surrounded and overpowered by numbers; he returned, therefore, and destroyed the bridge, so as to prevent the return of the soldiers who had fled in their first panic, and also to prevent any more of the inhabitants from leaving their homes.

“God has certainly fought on our side today,” said he to one of his Mends:  “with barely two hundred men, all dripping like drowned rats, we have made our way, almost without opposition, through the town, and thousands of soldiers are even yet flying before us.”