CHAPTER VII

A warning to Parisian sportsmen--Clisson--The château of M. Lemot--My guide--The Vendean column--The battle of Torfou--Two omitted names--Piffanges--Tibulle and the Loire--Gilles de Laval--His edifying death--Means taken to engrave a remembrance on the minds of children

The day after my arrival at la Jarrie I dressed in my shooting outfit, and, with gun on shoulder and game bag on back, I set off for Clisson. Two hours later I arrived there with my thighs torn by furze, my hands bleeding from briars, without having killed even a single lark.

Here a word of warning, in passing, to Parisians who should imagine that la Vendée is still a country abounding in game, and who should make the journey of a hundred and twenty leagues under that belief: I have shot there for a month, and have not raised fifteen partridges! On the other hand, vipers swarm there; one comes across them at every step, and every sportsman ought to carry a flask of alkali in his pocket.

To return to Clisson, which I was in so great a hurry to see that I left my excellent hosts to visit it the day after my arrival. Well, Clisson, which people had praised so highly to me, would have been an extremely pretty town in Greece or Italy, but in France and in la Vendée it was not: there is something incompatible between the misty skies of the west and the flat roofs of the east, between the pretty Italian factories and our dirty French countrysides. The château de Clisson itself, thanks to the care of M. Lemot, the celebrated sculptor, is so well preserved that one is tempted to be angry with its owner for not having allowed a single spider's web to crawl over its walls. It reminded one of an old man made up on shaving days, with false teeth and false hair and rouged. M. Lemot spent enormous sums to produce a picturesque effect, and only made an anomaly; and this anomaly was illustrated all the more forcibly by the presence of the tricolour flag floating over the eleventh-century ruin: the mayor would not allow it to be placed on the clock tower. The park is like every other park in existence--like Ermenonville or Mortefontaine: a river, rocks, grottoes, statues and temples to the Muses, to Apollo and to Diana. Instead of all these, imagine on both sides of the valley cottages grouped where the temples stand, some seeming to be climbing up the hillside and others descending it, dotted here and there according to the fancy or convenience of their owners; the river flowing at the bottom of the ravine, and, on the top of the hill, the castle: an old ruin rent by cracks, surrounded by stones which time has caused to roll down like dead leaves round the trunk of an oak tree. Add to this its old memories of Olivier de Clisson and its modern memories of the Chouans and the Blues; the vault which was used as a dungeon by the Barons, and the well that forms a tomb for four hundred Vendeans--and, if you possess a romantic turn of mind, you will have food for centuries of contemplation.

M. Lemot had done all he could to try and organise a National Guard at Clisson; he had already found ten volunteers, who were drilled in secret by the quarter-master and the gendarmerie. This quarter-master was an excellent fellow; though, for all that, he was extremely anxious to arrest me: telling the Liberals that I looked like a Chouan, and the Chouans that I looked like a Liberal; the consequence thereof being that the town would have been very pleased to see me marched off to gaol. I had my choice of a safeguard in my passport, which was perfectly correct, and in the letter from General La Fayette. I decided upon the passport, and I believe I was rightly inspired in my decision. I returned that same night to la Jarrie, although they did not expect me till next day and reproached me terribly for my imprudence; they could not get over their surprise that I had not rested during the journey. It was settled in council that I was to risk no more excursions without my guide, who had asked for a few days to go and visit his children and to spread abroad in the neighbouring villages the story of his adventure, which was to serve as a safeguard for me. He reappeared at the time arranged and put himself at my disposal, making himself answerable for everything. We took the road to Torfou. My man had made himself smart when he was to be condemned to penal servitude; for the type of his face and the style of his dress were those of a town dweller, which had not struck me before; but he adopted the costume of the countryside while acting as my guide. I now for the first time examined him with some attention. He had preserved the primitive type of the peasantry of the second race: from his narrow forehead, his serious face and his hair cut round, he looked like a peasant of the time of Charles le Gros. He scarcely opened his mouth, except it was to point out some topographical point on the right or left hand--

"It was here that the Blues were defeated!"

I don't think he had undertaken too much in promising me his protection, for, although he had been pardoned by King Louis-Philippe, the good man was a Chouan to the finger-tips. Moreover, in his eyes, it was I who had pardoned him and not the king at all.

A quarter of a league from Torfou, in the middle of a space made by four cross-roads, rose a stone column, twenty feet in height, almost after the pattern of that in the place Vendôme. M. de la Bretèche had it erected at his own expense at the time of the Restoration. Four names in bronze letters, enclosed in a crown of the same metal, were inscribed on it, each name facing one of the four roads, of which this pillar forms the meeting-place: the names are those of Charette, d'Elbée, Bonchamp and Lescure. I asked my guide for an explanation.

"Ah!" he said, in his own language, interspersed with old words which seemed to have come back to him as he stepped on the ground immortalised by these old memories, "because it was here that Kléber and his _thirty-five thousand Mayençais_ were beaten by the Chouans."[1]

Then he burst out laughing, and, putting both hands close together, imitated the cry of the screech-owl.

I stood on the very spot where the famous battle of Torfou had taken place.

Then memories as befitted the son of a Republican came crowding upon me, and it was now my turn to relate and the peasant's to listen.

"Oh! yes!" I said to myself, looking at the inscription carved on the column, "'19 September 1793.' Yes, that's it."

Then I turned my eyes on the surrounding villages of Torfou, Buffière, Tiffanges and Roussay.

"Yes," I went on, "all that was in flames and formed a ring of fire on the horizon when Kléber arrived with the vanguard of the army of Mayence, and shouted to his three thousand men the command, 'Halt! To battle!' For, besides the noise of the conflagration, another loud sound like the trampling down of leaves and breaking of branches was heard ever coming nearer without anything being seen on the roads which converged to the centre of the forest. By this forest, which the Vendeans knew well, they drew slowly nearer and nearer; sometimes they were obliged to crawl, sometimes to cut a passage through with their swords, yet their line pressed closer and closer together and each minute lessened the distance which separated them from their enemies. Finally, they reached so near the outskirts of the wood that they could see the army, restless but resolute, within gunshot and could each pick out his own man before firing.... Suddenly, musketry-firing soared aloud in a radius of three quarters of a league, died down, then rose again, before anyone could tell either against whom, or how, they could best defend themselves. The Vendeans seized the opportunity this moment of disorder gave and rushed down the roads to charge the Blues. Three thousand men were attacked from four different sides by more than thirty thousand, who knew the geography of the country and were fighting for their hearths and their faith! Each one of the leaders whose name is inscribed on that column made his appearance by the road towards which his name now points. Directly our soldiers could distinguish the enemy, their courage returned. 'Come on, my brave fellows!' Kléber shouted, flinging himself at their head; 'let us give these beggars some lead and steel to digest!' He charged haphazard down one of these four roads, met Lescure's army corps, broke it up like glass and, whilst the latter was trying on foot, gun in hand, to rally the inhabitants of Aubiers, Courlé and Échauboignes, he rushed to his rearguard, which had followed up his action, and which was surrounded by the three corps led by Ellbeé, Bonchamp and Charette. The artillery had just arrived: fifteen pieces in position made holes at the rate of six rounds a minute in the masses, which soon closed up again; three charges of Vendean cavalry hurled themselves one after the other upon the brazen muzzles and disappeared. This lasted two hours, Kléber pushing Lescure before him, who always rallied his men again. Kléber himself, pressed hard by the three other Vendean leaders, valiantly carried on his retreat, until a fifth army of ten thousand men, led by Donniss and la Rochejaquelein, came and threw themselves on his flanks, firing point-blank, killing at every blow, and at last dealt confusion in the Republican ranks. The head of the army, still commanded by Kléber, reached la Sèvre; the heroic general captured the bridge, crossed it and, calling a quarter-master named Schewardin, cried out, 'Stop here and be killed with two hundred men.' 'Yes, general!' was Schewardin's reply. He picked his men, kept his word and saved the army!"

"Oh! yes, that was how it happened," my Chouan answered, "for I was there.... I was not quite fifteen then.... Look, monsieur," he went on, taking off his hat and lifting his hair to show me a scar that furrowed his forehead, "I got that here"--he struck the ground with his foot.--"Here! ... It was one of the general's aides-de-camp who struck me, quite a young fellow, almost as young as I was; but, before falling, I had time to thrust my bayonet in his body and to fire at the same moment.... When I came to my senses he was dead ... we had fallen on top of one another ... and all round us, for a radius of a league, lay Blues and Vendeans, so that you did not know where to place your foot for fear of stepping on them. They were buried where they had fallen, and that is why the trees here are so vigorous and the grass so green."

I turned towards the column: nothing on it made mention of Kléber's courage and Schewardin's devotion, nothing but just those four Vendean names. I forgot where I was, for this one-sidedness made the blood rise to my face.

"I do not know what it is prevents me from putting a bullet into the middle of that column, and signing it Schewardin and Kléber!" I said aloud, talking to myself without imparting to my man the reflections that led to this monologue.

I felt my guide put a trembling hand on my shoulder, and I turned round; he was very pale.

"For the Lord's sake, monsieur," he said, "don't do that; I have vowed to bring you through safe and sound, and if you were to commit any folly like that, I could no longer answer for you.... Do you know that those four men are our gods, and every Vendean peasant says his prayers here, as at the stations of the Virgin which you see at the entrance of our villages? Do not do that; or beware of the hedgerows!"

We reached Tiffanges without saying another word.

Tiffanges is an ancient Roman station. During Cæsar's wars with the Gauls, he sent Crassus, his lieutenant, there with the Seventh Legion; from thence Crassus proceeded to Theowald, the Doué of our day, where he pitched his camp. _Crassus adolescens cum legione septimâ, proximus mare Oceanum in Andibus hiemârat_.[2] This region of the Gauls was never wholly subdued by the Romans; the Pict kings always fought for their liberty there. Augustus had hardly ascended the throne before le Bocage uttered a fresh war-cry. Agrippa went there immediately, believed he had subjugated the inhabitants and returned to Rome. Again they rose in revolt. Messala succeeded him, and took Tibullus with him, who in his capacity of poet claims for himself a portion of the honours of the campaign--

"Non sine me est tibi partus honos: Tarbella Pyrene Testis, et Oceani littora Santonici; Testis Arar, Rhodanusque celer, magnusque Garumna, Carnuti et flavi, coerula lympha, Liger!"

--as much as to say, "You did not win this honour without me. Witness Tarbella the Pyrenean, and the coasts of the Santonic Ocean (Saintonge); remember also the Arar (the Saône) and the rapid Rhône and wide Garonne, and the Loire, the blue waters of the fair Carnute."

Possibly, too, Tibullus followed Messala in the same way that Boileau followed Louis XIV.; as to the Loire, if it was blue in the time of Augustus, it has changed its colour singularly since that day! Tiffanges is, indeed, a place full of memories of Cæsar, Adrian, Clovis and the Visigoths; near the Roman tomb springs the Frankish cradle, as can be clearly traced through the history of twenty long centuries. The château, the ruins of which we visited, seems to be an eleventh-century erection continued during the twelfth, and only finished at the end of the thirteenth century. The famous Gilles de Laval, Marshal of Raiz, who was known in the country under the name of _Barbe-Bleue_, inhabited this castle, and by his way of living gave rise to a multitude of popular traditions that are still quite fresh in the neighbouring villages. In short, as there is justice in heaven, and a man who pillaged twenty churches, ravished fifty maidens and gained riches must always end badly, to acquit Providence you ought to know that this Gilles de Laval was burnt in the meadow of Bièce, first being beheaded at the solicitation of his family, which had great influence with the sire de l'Hospital, who granted him this favour; but, previously, the condemned man made a speech, at the conclusion of which, says history, nothing could be heard but the sobbing of women. History also tells (but as it is history, you need not pin faith to it) that the fathers and mothers of high rank who heard Gilles de Laval's last words fasted three days to win Divine forgiveness for him, which, doubtless, he obtained, since his confessor was one of the cleverest of the time. That done, these same parents inflicted a whipping on their children, on the place of execution, to fix in their memories the recollection of the punishment that overtook the great criminal! History omits to tell us if the children of the sixteenth century were as fond of executions as those of the nineteenth.

[1] The army corp which had evacuated Mayence and which was ordered to la Vendée was really only composed of ten thousand four hundred men.

[2] Cæsar's _Commentaries_, I. iii. § 7.