The Gascon cadets’ last stand during the Siege of Arras is the battle’s final, devastating measure of the company’s courage: hungry, cut off, and facing an assault on their redoubt, the cadets fight until the enemy’s volley kills them. Christian de Neuvillette has already fallen, and Cyrano de Bergerac gives the doomed men a name and an identity in the instant their resistance is crushed.

A besieged and starving force

The cadets’ last stand takes place under conditions of military and physical deprivation. Carbon de Castel-Jaloux calls it disgraceful that French troops should be starving while conducting a siege. Le Bret describes the reversal that has trapped the besiegers themselves: while they besiege Arras, the Cardinal Infante of Spain has surrounded and besieged them. The French position is therefore not simply an army advancing against a fortified town; it has become a force caught in a tightening enclosure.

The supply situation is precarious. Count de Guiche reports that the previous evening the Marshal made a final, secret effort to bring provisions to the camp. He took a substantial body of troops with him, leaving half the army absent. That absence makes the remaining force especially vulnerable if the Spanish learn how depleted the camp has become. The attempt to secure food has thus created a tactical danger: a necessary effort to sustain the besiegers has weakened their numbers at the very moment they need to hold their position.

Hunger remains visible even when the scene briefly turns from military news to hospitality. Roxane says that the camp air has made her famished and calls for pasties, cold fricassee, and old wines. Her meal request underlines the scarcity surrounding the cadets: food is not an incidental comfort in this siege, but a pressing need for the people trapped within it. Count de Guiche also points out that he has only one cannon left, already moved into a corner where the men can use it if necessary. The weapon is a reserve for an emergency, not evidence of plentiful military resources.

The assault on the redoubt

The fighting reaches its decisive point when a cadet appears on the crest, driven backward but still resisting. He cries that the enemy is climbing the redoubt, then falls dead. His brief warning marks the collapse of the defensive boundary: the attackers are no longer a distant threat but are gaining the position the cadets have been holding.

The rampart is immediately covered by a formidable line of enemies, and the standards of the Imperialists rise over it. Cyrano calls for a salute before giving the order to fire. The exchange is brutally swift. A deadly answering volley follows, and the cadets fall on every side. The sequence leaves little space between the defenders’ last organized action and their destruction: the warning from the crest, the appearance of the enemy across the rampart, the command to fire, and the answering shot form a rapid progression from resistance to massacre.

The scene also records the cost of the battle before the final volley against the cadets. Roxane sees Christian de Neuvillette lying on the ground, wrapped in his cloak, and cries out to him. Le Bret tells Cyrano that Christian was struck by the enemy’s first shot. The cannon reports, clash of arms, clamor, and drums continue around Roxane as she throws herself down beside him. His death gives the larger defeat an intimate center: the cadets’ stand is not an abstract military episode but part of the same battle that has taken the man she loves.

Cyrano names the fallen

An officer among the Spanish ranks asks who these men are, since they rush upon death. Cyrano answers by reciting their identity: “The bold Cadets of Gascony,” and those of Carbon de Castel-Jaloux. He remains erect amid the bullets, turning the question into a public naming of the defenders. The line does not suggest that the cadets can be saved; it insists that their courage and allegiance be recognized as they are being killed.

Cyrano’s recitation is cut off by the battle. The words continue only in fragments before his voice is drowned out, and the act ends with the curtain. The staging makes the limits of speech part of the event: Cyrano can name the company, but he cannot make the battle stop or keep the men alive. Their collective identity is preserved in a moment when the armed assault is erasing them as a fighting force.

Consequence and dramatic significance

The last stand converts the siege’s earlier shortages and tactical dangers into immediate loss. The effort to bring provisions has drawn away half the army; the camp has been hungry, the force has been encircled, and the remaining cannon is kept for need. When the enemy reaches the redoubt, the cadets’ bravery cannot undo those material disadvantages. The scene places their defiance alongside the concrete conditions that constrain it, rather than presenting courage as a substitute for food, reinforcements, or weapons.

Christian’s death and the cadets’ fall also close the battle’s human and military possibilities together. Roxane is left beside Christian as the fighting continues; the cadets disappear under the answering volley; Cyrano’s final act in the scene is to identify them as Gascon defenders before his voice is lost. The stand therefore ends not in a reversal of the siege but in a stark contrast between the men’s steadfastness and their defeat. The name Cyrano gives them survives the moment in which their position does not.