Part 2

Let it be remembered, despite Carlyle’s random arrow at “simple people blown into flame and fury by theological and seignorial bellows,” that the nobles and the clergy, whatever may have been their desire, were too well informed to pit a forlorn corner of France against the united realm. Here, as in Paris, and for rival arguments exactly as apposite, the Revolution was a matter belonging to “the man on the street.” Against what they knew to be the spirit of rapine and injustice, the people, of themselves, arose. Their campaign had no intrigue, no pushing; it had absolute purity of intention. More perfectly than even the American civil war, this of La Vendée was fought on a moral principle, and on that solely, from the start. Every advantage possible was on the side of submission; the peasants would have been let alone and forgotten, presently had they been weaker, and wiser. Unable to foresee the majestic trend of events, not having in their own sore memories the germ of a verdict which was to reverse the world, they hit out, in the dark, against the local and the immediate wrong. Ignorant as they were, they were not ignorant of their jeopardized liberties. They opposed iniquitous laws for the sake of their own commune; their argument had premises impregnably sound. If they were mad, it must be added that they were right, too, in the fullest relative senses of earth and heaven. The titled gentry were compelled to join, in nearly every case, by their vehemence. D’Elbée, Bonchamp, Lescure, La Rochejaquelein, Charette, and many of the minor officers, were drawn from their very firesides, and urged into service. “You are no braver than we, but you know better how to manage,” so the frank fellows explained it to the lords. The priests, also, banished from their sad parishes for refusing the irregular oaths proposed by the Assembly, and cast adrift like the hill-side friars of Ireland, long held aloof from sanctioning the redress of arms. Nowhere, at any time, did they march nor combat with their flocks. When their bodies were found upon the field, it was manifest that they had been shot while ministering to the dying. Such, on this point, was the Vendean sensitiveness, and austere regard for the proprieties, that a young subdeacon discovered in the ranks was angrily and summarily dismissed. Not until the army was at Dol did the pastors ever attempt to “fanaticize” the soldiery by working upon their religious feeling as a means of reviving courage. Nor did the laymen ever waive towards them that which, in Turreau’s phrase, was their “blind and incurable attachment.” At a sign from some active Levite they actually disbanded during Holy Week of 1793. The Republican squadron, sent to quell the revolt, found the villages in dead quiet, and so returned north; but on Easter Monday the roads were alive again.

Well was the Bocage called, by the earliest of its very few English critics, “the last land of romance in Europe.” The quarrel espoused for conscience’ sake had a child-like disinterestedness. What the men endured we know; the rewards they meant to ask for their success were these: that religion should be established, free of state interference; that the Bocage itself should be known as La Vendée, with a distinct administration; that the King should make it a visit, and retain a corps of Vendeans in his guard; and that the white flag should float forever from every steeple, in memory of the war! It is clear that they had little to wish for, and that they had no greed. Nor did they fight for glory, the dearest motive of their race. “There is no glory in civil war,” said Bonchamp, in what was, for once, too ascetic a generality. But they were dedicated souls; they bore themselves gently, gayly, without boast or spite; and they long continued to honor the obligations laid on them by the purest cause that ever drew sword. Their blows were struck for the independence of their religion, and only incidentally for the monarchy then identified with it. From the chivalrous conversation between the Marquis of Lescure and General Quétineau, then his prisoner, we learn that even Lescure would have rushed to the common defence had the Austrian made good his threat to pollute the soil of France. They failed, we say; yet what they fought for they secured: the liberty of the Church, and the restoration (temporary, as things are in France) of the government of their allegiance. Louis XVIII. was unworthy of their devotion. He was mean enough afterwards to reduce the pension granted by Napoleon himself to Madame de Bonchamp; to suspect the immeasurable loyalty of Madame de Lescure; to refuse admission to the portraits of Stofflet and Cathelineau when opening his gallery of generals at Saint Cloud, because, forsooth, they were but plebeians. In a hundred ways, by delayed recognitions, by temporizing, by denials, and by cringing to alien opinion (things deprecated with energy by the Abbé Deniau in his valuable work), he broke the faith of a too faithful party. Yet the praise the western subjects hoped for from the little Dauphin of 1793 they won from this man. “I owe my crown to the Vendeans,” he said, with the family characteristic of gracious speech.

The peasants, therefore, driven to the wall, rebelled without forethought or plan; a desperate handful against the strength of new France. At remote points, with no concert whatever, hostilities began: on Sunday, March tenth, in Anjou, two days later in Lower Poitou; and months passed ere one knot of insurrectionists heard tidings of the other. With the populace at Maulevrier rose Stofflet, the swarthy game-keeper of the resident lord; Stofflet of the German accent, harsh and hard, big-nosed, unlettered, trusty, a keenly intelligent and masterful disciplinarian. But the noteworthiest leader was Jacques Cathelineau, “a painstaking, neighborly man,” wagoner, and vender of woollens. There had been a disturbance at Saint Florent over the drafting; the Government troops fired; the young recruits charged on their assailants and routed them, pillaging the municipality and burning the papers. Cathelineau of Pin-en-Mauges was kneading bread when he heard of it. “We must begin the war,” he murmured. His startled wife echoed his words, wailing: “Begin what war? Who will help you begin the war?” “God,” he answered quietly. Putting her aside, he wiped his arms, drew on his coat, and went out instantly to the market-place. That afternoon he attacked two Republican detachments and seized their ammunition, his small force augmenting on the march; in a few days it was one thousand strong, and carried Chollet. Cathelineau’s three brothers enlisted under his banner; in one short year all four were to be gathered into their stainless graves. He was called “the saint of Anjou,” and he deserved it; a man of truth, discretion, dignity, and sweetness, about whom the wounded crept to die.

Those born in the purple had all the “tenderness with great spirit” of Plato’s elect race. They had the delicacy and high-mindedness of the primitive gentleman. A pleasant instance of the odd and fine retention of amenities in the cannon’s mouth, occurred before Nantes, where Stofflet, explosive as usual, found occasion to challenge Bonchamp. “No, sir,” said Bonchamp, “God and the King only have the disposal of my life, and our cause would suffer too greviously were it to be deprived of yours.” Friendships throve among them. Lescure, La Rochejaquelein, and Beauvolliers were closely attached to one another, as were Marigny and Perault. Preferments went wholly by natural nerve, intelligence, and a vote of deserts. There was no scheme of promotion to benefit those of gentle blood; the army, formed of a sudden, formed into a genuine democracy. “They never talked ‘equality’ in La Vendée.” But its first generalissimo, acclaimed with universal homage and good-will, was the peasant Cathelineau. No long-descended knight floated his own banner; as the Prince of Talmont had to be reminded at Fougères, the _fleur-de-lys_ was sufficient for them all. Perfect confidence reigned. After the retaking of Châtillon, the young Dupérat, in company with three others, mischievously broke open the strong-box in Westermann’s carriage; there was presumptive evidence enough that they had taken money from it. A council ensued, and Dupérat, questioned by Lescure, denied that they had done so. His high character was known, and though the mystery was not cleared up, the proceedings were closed with an apology. Here, at Châtillon, pierced with twelve sabres, fell Beaurepaire, who had joined the “brigands” at eighteen. The Chevalier of Mondyon was a pretty lad of fourteen, a truant from his school. At the battle of Chantonnay the little fellow was placed next to a tall lieutenant, who, under the pretext of a wound, wished to withdraw. “I do not see that you are hurt, sir,” said the child; “and, as your departure would discourage the men, I will shoot you through the head if you stir.” And as he was quite capable of that Roman justice, the tall lieutenant stayed. De Langerie, two years Mondyon’s junior, had his pony killed under him in his first onset. Put at a safe and remote post, but without orders, he reappeared, during the hour, galloping back on a fresh horse to fight for the King. Duchaffault, at eleven, sent back to his mother, rode into the ranks again at Luçon, to die. Such were the boys of La Vendée.

The Chevalier François-Athenase de Charette was first to lead the rebels in the wild marsh-lands of Lower Poitou. He had been a ship’s lieutenant. Despite the known laxity of his private conduct, Charette was a power. In matters of sense and courage he was equal to the best of his extraordinary colleagues, all of whom he was destined to outlive. He was twenty-eight years old when he took command at Machecould. Charles-Melchior Artus, Marquis of Bonchamp, was enrolled at the solemn inauguration of the war. He had seen service in India, and was in his early prime: a scholar, an accomplished tactician, and a man greatly beloved, whose name is yet in benediction. La Ville-Baugé, placed by force among the Blues (so called from the color of their coats, which under the kings had been white), abandoned them, and joined the insurgents at Thouars. He was a youth of marked steadiness and patience, dear to Lescure and to Henri. Gigot d’Elbée, late of the Dauphin cavalry, was forty years of age, already white-haired, of small and compact build. Possessed of many virtues, he was not a striking nor engaging character; his conceit, fortunately, harmed neither himself nor others. It was he who read sermons to his men, who carried with him the images of his patron saints, and who, above all, talked so much and so well of the wisdom which directs us, that the roguish congregation in camp fastened on him the nickname of “_La Providence_.” For Lescure, as for Cathelineau, the peasants had a veneration. Unselfish, contained and cool, versed admirably in military science, Lescure at twenty-six was a bookish recluse, with a heart all kindness, and a bearing somewhat lofty and austere. Born in 1766, in 1791 he had married his first cousin, Victoire, daughter of the fine mettlesome old Marquis of Donnissan. To this timid girl, who heroically followed her husband through the Vendean crisis (and who herself, years after, was to play a second illustrious role as the wife of Louis de La Rochejaquelein), we are beholden for the _Mémoires_, naïve and precious, which supply nearly every main detail of the long struggle, which persuaded out of life the ignorance and prejudice of its traducers, and which serve as the worthiest monument ever raised to the loving army, Catholic and Royal.

In their curious dialect, the Vendeans had a verb, _s’égailler_, _s’éparpiller_, and they lived up to it. It meant scattering and sharp-shooting, every man for himself, in what we Americans might call the historic Lexington style. Each carried his cartridges in his pocket. If any complained of lack of powder, Henri had a pricking answer: “Well, my children, the Blues have plenty of it!” which reversed matters in five minutes. Bred in a hunting country, the King’s men were expert shots from boyhood. Farming weapons fixed on handles adorned the marching no-pay volunteers. Such guns as they had were put into the ablest hands; and wonderful musketeers they made, these hunters of Loroux and the Bocage. They crept behind walls and hedges, not firing, as did the troops of the line, at the height of a man, but aiming individually, and rarely missing, so that throughout an action their loss was but as one to five; they leaped garden terraces, and peered from the angles of strange little foot-paths, making sudden volleys and attacks, the chief usually foremost, the men eager and undrilled; or they ran forward by scores, fronting the hostile cannon, flinging themselves down at every explosion, and so creeping nearer and nearer, until they might grapple with the stupefied cannoneers hand to hand. This was their favorite strategy. More than one town was actually taken by savage wrestling and boxing, without a report of fire-arms at all. They lacked wagons, reserves, luggage; each carried his own rations. They travelled without a calendar, for that sanctioned by the Republic, and therefore, with Fabre d’Eglantine’s pretty fooleries of _Floréal_ and _Pluviose_, cashiered, was the only one extant in France.

They had thirty lively drums and no trumpets; when they wanted an inspiring noise they sang a hymn. Sentinels could not be trained; it seems incredible that they should have done for two years without pickets or patrols, except when the officers took turns at a necessary duty. But in this, as in other matters, the strong-minded rustics, who freely entered the ranks, reasoned, objected, fought shy, and were at once the solace and the despair of their commanders. A certain fatal independence was born in their blood. What chance, at any time and however valiant, has the army of momentary concurrence against the army of sworn obedience? Innocent of discipline, they were all but impossible to direct on an open plain. Every movement was a farce in tactics. A chief exercised his full authority according to the individual esteem in which he was held. This singular code, likely to be subversive of all authority elsewhere, was the only one which proud and willing Vendée could be brought to understand. “Such a general goes such a way,” the adjutant would call; “who goes with him?” And the tenants of his own seigneury, the guerilla vassals, would run with a shout after him, forming their lines by some convenient object--a house or a tree. Their Monsieur Henri had a formula borrowed unconsciously from the old war-cry of Gaston de Foix: “He who loves me follows me!” When he flashed down the front on his wonderful white horse, which the cheering peasants had christened the Fallowdeer, thinking nothing else could be so wild, so delicate, so amazingly swift, parish after parish rallied to him in a little cloud. The fashion of gathering in clans and bands, primitive as it was, had its advantages. Every one stood, in action, next another of his own estate or blood; and La Vendée was notoriously careful of its wounded and slain. Never were men more dependent on the nerve and sagacity of their leaders. A disabled officer dared not budge, or the crazy columns would give way. Lescure, unhorsed at Saumur, would have kept the troops ignorant of his hurt had not the boy Beauvolliers thrown himself upon him with a loud cry of lamentation and started a panic in the ranks. Charette being wounded long after at Dufour, his regiments dispersed like sheep. When Cathelineau of the shining brow fell in sight of his army, there was instant rout. At the recapture of Châtillon many a dissembler, sick and weak, rode forth in affected vigor, and so forced the splendid issue of the day.

The cavalry bestrode steeds of divers eccentricities, but at the tails of one and all figured the enemy’s derided tri-color cockade. Ropes were stirrups to these gallant paladins, and their sabres hung by packthreads. They had small leisure for the conventions of the toilet: their hair and beards looked like Orson’s. The officers wore woollen blouses and gaiters, having, like the others, the little red consecrated heart sewed on their coats; they lacked at first any distinguishing dress. Neither they nor the privates received a sou for services; if a man were in want he asked for a disbursement, and, until supplies failed, he got it. Funds flowed into the general reservoir from the pockets of the gentry, and from a source as obvious--the rights of confiscation. The main army averaged twenty thousand men; at a pinch it could be doubled. Sobriety reigned in the camps, though it was the one considerable virtue to which the good peasants, un-French in most matters, were not blindly addicted. Considering the prohibition against the presence of women, it is surprising to find here and there undetected in the van some spotless amazon like Jeanne Robin, or the revered Renée Bordereau, or Dame de La Rochefoucauld, a cavalry captain, shot upon the Breton coast. Piety was universal. The scythe-bearing soldiery, meeting a wayside cross half-way to the battery, would doff hats and kneel an instant, then charge like fiends on the foe. The parishes sent carts to the road-side, laden with provisions for the passing cohorts. The women, children, and old men knelt in the cornfields, while the din went on afar off, to beseech the Lord of Hosts. At Laval and Chollet, where the sieges closed perforce in one mad scrimmage in the dark, the Vendeans fired wherever they heard an oath, surer than ever the Cromwellians were before them, that in that direction they could bag none but legitimate game.

The peasants were so many big children; they had no adult comprehension of their momentous concerns, to which they gave themselves by spurts, with perfect disinterestedness, ardor, and zeal. After the first hint that the victory was theirs, they hastened to ring the church-bells, and make bonfires of the papers of the administration--proceedings which, according to Madame de Lescure, afforded them unfailing amusement. They went into action like a black whirlwind, with roundelays or litanies on their lips, and the continuous battle-cry: “The King for us, all the same!” They frolicked about the famous twelve-pounder they had named Marie-Jeanne; they kissed its ornate brazen rim; they buried its inscriptions of Richelieu’s era in flowers and ribbons; they lost it with mopings, and they recaptured it with salvos of joy. “Above all things, boys, we must get Marie-Jeanne back!” cried La Rochejaquelein on a certain occasion. “The best runner among you, that’s the man for her!” There was no reason whatever for such special devotion: it was pure fun on all sides. They were never under arms for more than a few consecutive days. The gathering together was a sensational sight. The church-bells clanged for a signal, the windmills gesticulated, horns were blown on the hills; and proprietor, farmer, peasant, with sticks and hunting-guns, came threading the hedges, and running in many a long dark line through the waving crops into the village market-place. The troops were repeatedly dispersing and rallying, giving their chiefs endless worry and chagrin. They fought, like Spenser’s angels, “all for love, and nothing for reward.” But they left the ranks when they chose; after a success, rather than after a defeat, they would scatter to their homes like so much thistle-down in the air, and it was hopeless to try to follow up an advantage gained. It was when difficulties were suspended that, in the wisdom of their villageous heads, they hurried off, one to his wife, and one to his farm, and one to his merchandise. No general was baffled and angered oftener by this freak than Henri. The valor of the Vendeans was incomparable, though one might borrow a musical metaphor and add that it swerved too easily from pitch. And it is noteworthy, as by a paradox, that whenever they wavered it was not, at least, through dread of any personal hardship. They were often ragged and hungry, but they did not play truant for that. They soon underwent horrible poverty and distress, and lacked food and clothes. The picked men of a company long marched in grotesque dominos out of sacked playhouses, in lawyers’ gowns, even in furniture-stuffs and draperies. The chivalric De Verteuil was found dead on the field equipped in two petticoats, one about his neck, the other about his waist: as noble armor, perhaps, as officer ever wore. Frequently, when ammunition was in abundance, the unaccountable army was overcome; and as often, without a carabine among six, it swept everything before it. Napoleon was the first to see--all the world sees now--how little was wanted to secure their ultimate triumph; how drill, a few kegs of powder, a few observant, able, cool heads where the exiles were congregated, and the prestige and authority of some royal name, might have built up again, it may be in justice, the ancient fabric surely in justice pulled down. They had no fair play. “Yet these same men, by bravery and enthusiasm, and by knowledge developed of short experience, conquered a part of France, obtained an honorable peace, and defended their cause with more glory and success than did the leagued allies.”

As we get away from the grim ethics of history the æsthetics of it take shape and color, and give us an abstract pleasure from the centres of thought and pain. There is an unspeakable attractiveness, despite all, in the image of these turbulent years--an almost Arabian beguilement, as of something which never need be true. The course of events is like a romantic drama, full of “points,” of poses, of electric surprises; the dialogue flows in alexandrines; the crises are settled in the nick of time. The talk is the rhetoric of hearts sincere, but French. The devoted Marquis of Donnissan breaks in upon two duelling swords: “‘What! the Lord Christ pardons his executioners, and a soldier of the Christian army tries to slay his comrade?’ At these words they drop their swords and embrace each other!” Or, after the terrible battle of Mans, and not long before her little daughter’s birth, Madame de Lescure, hemmed in the choked streets of the city, catches in despair at the hand of a gentle-faced young trooper pushing by: “Sir, have pity on a poor woman who cannot go on. Help me!” Whereupon the young trooper weeps some feverish tears: “What can I do? I am a woman also!” Or that charming impostor, the pseudo-bishop of Agra, stands up before the serried lines, and sheds upon them such prose as Matthew Arnold should praise forever: “_Race antique et fidèle des serviteurs de nos rois, pieux zélateurs du trône et de l’autel, enfants de la Vendée, marchez, combattez, triomphez! C’est Dieu qui vous l’ordonne._”