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.
Adolphe Denot was one of the first of the Vendeans who entered the town through the gate.

This shewed no great merit in him, for, as has been said, the men who had made the first attack, and the republicans who opposed it, were carried into the town by the impulse of the men behind them; but still he had endeavoured to do what he could to efface the ineffable disgrace which he felt must now attach to him in the opinion of M.de Lescure.

As they were making their way up the principal street, still striking down the republicans wherever they continued to make resistance, but more often giving quarter, and promising protection, de Lescure with a pistol held by the barrel in his left hand, and with his right arm hastily tied up in the red handkerchief taken from a peasant's neck, said to the man who was next to him, but whom he did not at the moment perceive to be Denot: "Look at Larochejaquelin, the gallant fellow; look at the red scarf on the castle wall.

I could swear to him among a thousand." "Yes," said Adolphe, unwilling not to reply when spoken to, and yet ashamed to speak to de Lescure, "yes, that is Henri.

I wish I were with him." "Oh, that is you, is it ?" said de Lescure, just turning to look at him, and then hurrying away.