I. AN AMBUSCADE

Early in the year VIII., at the beginning of Vendemiaire, or, to conform

to our own calendar, towards the close of September, 1799, a hundred or

so of peasants and a large number of citizens, who had left Fougeres in

the morning on their way to Mayenne, were going up the little mountain

of La Pelerine, half-way between Fougeres and Ernee, a small town where

travellers along that road are in the habit of resting. This company,

divided into groups that were more or less numerous, presented a

collection of such fantastic costumes and a mixture of individuals

belonging to so many and diverse localities and professions that it will

be well to describe their characteristic differences, in order to give

to this history the vivid local coloring to which so much value is

attached in these days,--though some critics do assert that it injures

the representation of sentiments.

Many of the peasants, in fact the greater number, were barefooted, and

wore no other garments than a large goatskin, which covered them from

the neck to the knees, and trousers of white and very coarse linen, the

ill-woven texture of which betrayed the slovenly industrial habits of

the region. The straight locks of their long hair mingling with those

of the goatskin hid their faces, which were bent on the ground, so

completely that the garment might have been thought their own skin,

and they themselves mistaken at first sight for a species of the animal

which served them as clothing. But through this tangle of hair their

eyes were presently seen to shine like dew-drops in a thicket, and their

glances, full of human intelligence, caused fear rather than pleasure to

those who met them. Their heads were covered with a dirty head-gear of

red flannel, not unlike the Phrygian cap which the Republic had lately

adopted as an emblem of liberty. Each man carried over his shoulder a

heavy stick of knotted oak, at the end of which hung a linen bag with

little in it. Some wore, over the red cap, a coarse felt hat, with a

broad brim adorned by a sort of woollen chenille of many colors which

was fastened round it. Others were clothed entirely in the coarse linen

of which the trousers and wallets of all were made, and showed nothing

that was distinctive of the new order of civilization. Their long

hair fell upon the collar of a round jacket with square pockets, which

reached to the hips only, a garment peculiar to the peasantry of western

France. Beneath this jacket, which was worn open, a waistcoat of the

same linen with large buttons was visible. Some of the company marched

in wooden shoes; others, by way of economy, carried them in their hand.

This costume, soiled by long usage, blackened with sweat and dust, and

less original than that of the other men, had the historic merit of

serving as a transition between the goatskins and the brilliant, almost

sumptuous, dress of a few individuals dispersed here and there among the

groups, where they shone like flowers. In fact, the blue linen trousers

of these last, and their red or yellow waistcoats, adorned with two

parallel rows of brass buttons and not unlike breast-plates, stood out

as vividly among the white linen and shaggy skins of their companions as

the corn-flowers and poppies in a wheat-field. Some of them wore wooden

shoes, which the peasants of Brittany make for themselves; but the

greater number had heavy hobnailed boots, and coats of coarse cloth cut

in the fashion of the old regime, the shape of which the peasants have

religiously retained even to the present day. The collars of their

shirts were held together by buttons in the shape of hearts or anchors.

The wallets of these men seemed to be better than those of their

companions, and several of them added to their marching outfit a flask,

probably full of brandy, slung round their necks by a bit of twine. A

few burgesses were to be seen in the midst of these semi-savages, as if

to show the extremes of civilization in this region. Wearing round hats,

or flapping brims or caps, high-topped boots, or shoes and gaiters, they

exhibited as many and as remarkable differences in their costume as the

peasants themselves. About a dozen of them wore the republican jacket

known by the name of “la carmagnole.” Others, well-to-do mechanics, no

doubt, were clothed from head to foot in one color. Those who had most

pretension to their dress wore swallow-tail coats or surtouts of blue

or green cloth, more or less defaced. These last, evidently characters,

marched in boots of various kinds, swinging heavy canes with the air and

manner of those who take heart under misfortune. A few heads carefully

powdered, and some queues tolerably well braided showed the sort of

care which a beginning of education or prosperity inspires. A casual

spectator observing these men, all surprised to find themselves in one

another’s company, would have thought them the inhabitants of a village

driven out by a conflagration. But the period and the region in which

they were gave an altogether different interest to this body of men.

Any one initiated into the secrets of the civil discords which were then

agitating the whole of France could easily have distinguished the few

individuals on whose fidelity the Republic might count among these

groups, almost entirely made up of men who four years earlier were at

war with her.

One other and rather noticeable sign left no doubt upon the opinions

which divided the detachment. The Republicans alone marched with an air

of gaiety. As to the other individuals of the troop, if their clothes

showed marked differences, their faces at least and their attitudes wore

a uniform expression of ill-fortune. Citizens and peasantry, their faces

all bore the imprint of deepest melancholy; their silence had something

sullen in it; they all seemed crushed under the yoke of a single

thought, terrible no doubt but carefully concealed, for their faces were

impenetrable, the slowness of their gait alone betraying their inward

communings. From time to time a few of them, noticeable for the rosaries

hanging from their necks (dangerous as it was to carry that sign of a

religion which was suppressed, rather than abolished) shook their long

hair and raised their heads defiantly. They covertly examined the woods,

and paths, and masses of rock which flanked the road, after the manner

of a dog with his nose to the wind trying to scent his game; and then,

hearing nothing but the monotonous tramp of the silent company, they

lowered their heads once more with the old expression of despair, like

criminals on their way to the galleys to live or die.

The march of this column upon Mayenne, the heterogeneous elements

of which it was composed, and the divers sentiments which evidently

pervaded it, will explain the presence of another troop which formed the

head of the detachment. About a hundred and fifty soldiers, with arms

and baggage, marched in the advance, commanded by the _chief of a

half-brigade_. We may mention here, for the benefit of those who did

not witness the drama of the Revolution, that this title was made to

supersede that of colonel, proscribed by patriots as too aristocratic.

These soldiers belonged to a demi-brigade of infantry quartered at

Mayenne. During these troublous times the inhabitants of the west of

France called all the soldiers of the Republic “Blues.” This nickname

came originally from their blue and red uniforms, the memory of which is

still so fresh as to render a description superfluous. A detachment of

the Blues was therefore on this occasion escorting a body of recruits,

or rather conscripts, all displeased at being taken to Mayenne where

military discipline was about to force upon them the uniformity of

thought, clothing, and gait which they now lacked entirely.

This column was a contingent slowly and with difficulty raised in the

district of Fougeres, from which it was due under the levy ordered by

the executive Directory of the Republic on the preceding 10th Messidor.

The government had asked for a hundred million of francs and a hundred

thousand men as immediate reinforcements for the armies then fighting

the Austrians in Italy, the Prussians in Germany, and menaced in

Switzerland by the Russians, in whom Suwarow had inspired hopes of the

conquest of France. The departments of the West, known under the name

of La Vendee, Brittany, and a portion of Lower Normandy, which had

been tranquil for the last three years (thanks to the action of General

Hoche), after a struggle lasting nearly four, seemed to have seized this

new occasion of danger to the nation to break out again. In presence of

such aggressions the Republic recovered its pristine energy. It provided

in the first place for the defence of the threatened departments by

giving the responsibility to the loyal and patriotic portion of the

inhabitants. In fact, the government in Paris, having neither troops nor

money to send to the interior, evaded the difficulty by a parliamentary

gasconade. Not being able to send material aid to the faithful citizens

of the insurgent departments, it gave them its “confidence.” Possibly

the government hoped that this measure, by arming the insurgents against

each other, would stifle the insurrection at its birth. This ordinance,

the cause of future fatal reprisals, was thus worded: “Independent

companies of troops shall be organized in the Western departments.” This

impolitic step drove the West as a body into so hostile an attitude that

the Directory despaired of immediately subduing it. Consequently, it

asked the Assemblies to pass certain special measures relating to the

independent companies authorized by the ordinance. In response to this

request a new law had been promulgated a few days before this history

begins, organizing into regular legions the various weak and

scattered companies. These legions were to bear the names of the

departments,--Sarthe, Orne, Mayenne, Ille-et-Vilaine, Morbihan,

Loire-Inferieure, and Maine-et-Loire. “These legions,” said the law,

“will be specially employed to fight the Chouans, and cannot, under any

pretence, be sent to the frontier.”

The foregoing irksome details will explain both the weakness of the

Directory and the movement of this troop of men under escort of the

Blues. It may not be superfluous to add that these finely patriotic

Directorial decrees had no realization beyond their insertion among the

statutes. No longer restrained, as formerly, by great moral ideas, by

patriotism, nor by terror, which enforced their execution, these later

decrees of the Republic created millions and drafted soldiers without

the slightest benefit accruing to its exchequer or its armies. The

mainspring of the Revolution was worn-out by clumsy handling, and the

application of the laws took the impress of circumstances instead of

controlling them.

The departments of Mayenne and Ille-et-Vilaine were at this time under

the command of an old officer who, judging on the spot of the measures

that were most opportune to take, was anxious to wring from Brittany

every one of her contingents, more especially that of Fougeres, which

was known to be a hot-bed of “Chouannerie.” He hoped by this means to

weaken its strength in these formidable districts. This devoted soldier

made use of the illusory provisions of the new law to declare that he

would equip and arm at once all recruits, and he announced that he

held at their disposal the one month’s advanced pay promised by the

government to these exceptional levies. Though Brittany had hitherto

refused all kinds of military service under the Republic, the levies

were made under the new law on the faith of its promises, and with such

promptness that even the commander was startled. But he was one of those

wary old watch-dogs who are hard to catch napping. He no sooner saw the

contingents arriving one after the other than he suspected some secret

motive for such prompt action. Possibly he was right in ascribing it

to the fact of getting arms. At any rate, no sooner were the Fougeres

recruits obtained than, without delaying for laggards, he took

immediate steps to fall back towards Alencon, so as to be near a loyal

neighborhood,--though the growing disaffection along the route made

the success of this measure problematical. This old officer, who, under

instruction of his superiors, kept secret the disasters of our armies in

Italy and Germany and the disturbing news from La Vendee, was attempting

on the morning when this history begins, to make a forced march on

Mayenne, where he was resolved to execute the law according to his own

good pleasure, and fill the half-empty companies of his own brigade

with his Breton conscripts. The word “conscript” which later became

so celebrated, had just now for the first time taken the place in the

government decrees of the word _requisitionnaire_ hitherto applied to

all Republican recruits.

Before leaving Fougeres the chief secretly issued to his own men ample

supplies of ammunition and sufficient rations of bread for the whole

detachment, so as to conceal from the conscripts the length of the march

before them. He intended not to stop at Ernee (the last stage

before Mayenne), where the men of the contingent might find a way of

communicating with the Chouans who were no doubt hanging on his flanks.

The dead silence which reigned among the recruits, surprised at the

manoeuvring of the old republican, and their lagging march up the

mountain excited to the very utmost the distrust and watchfulness of the

chief--whose name was Hulot. All the striking points in the foregoing

description had been to him matters of the keenest interest; he marched

in silence, surrounded by five young officers, each of whom respected

the evident preoccupation of their leader. But just as Hulot reached the

summit of La Pelerine he turned his head, as if by instinct, to inspect

the anxious faces of the recruits, and suddenly broke silence. The slow

advance of the Bretons had put a distance of three or four hundred feet

between themselves and their escort. Hulot’s face contorted after a

fashion peculiar to himself.

“What the devil are those dandies up to?” he exclaimed in a sonorous

voice. “Creeping instead of marching, I call it.”

At his first words the officers who accompanied him turned

spasmodically, as if startled out of sleep by a sudden noise. The

sergeants and corporals followed their example, and the whole company

paused in its march without receiving the wished for “Halt!” Though the

officers cast a first look at the detachment, which was creeping like an

elongated tortoise up the mountain of La Pelerine, these young men,

all dragged, like many others, from important studies to defend their

country, and in whom war had not yet smothered the sentiment of art,

were so much struck by the scene which lay spread before their eyes that

they made no answer to their chief’s remark, the real significance of

which was unknown to them. Though they had come from Fougeres, where the

scene which now presented itself to their eyes is also visible (but with

certain differences caused by the change of perspective), they could not

resist pausing to admire it again, like those dilettanti who enjoy all

music the more when familiar with its construction.

From the summit of La Pelerine the traveller’s eye can range over the

great valley of Couesnon, at one of the farthest points of which, along

the horizon, lay the town of Fougeres. From here the officers could see,

to its full extent, the basin of this intervale, as remarkable for the

fertility of its soil as for the variety of its aspects. Mountains of

gneiss and slate rose on all sides, like an ampitheatre, hiding their

ruddy flanks behind forests of oak, and forming on their declivities

other and lesser valleys full of dewy freshness. These rocky heights

made a vast enclosure, circular in form, in the centre of which a meadow

lay softly stretched, like the lawn of an English garden. A number

of evergreen hedges, defining irregular pieces of property which were

planted with trees, gave to this carpet of verdure a character of its

own, and one that is somewhat unusual among the landscapes of France; it

held the teeming secrets of many beauties in its various contrasts,

the effects of which were fine enough to arrest the eye of the most

indifferent spectator.

At this particular moment the scene was brightened by the fleeting glow

with which Nature delights at times in heightening the beauty of her

imperishable creations. While the detachment was crossing the valley,

the rising sun had slowly scattered the fleecy mists which float above

the meadows of a September morning. As the soldiers turned to look back,

an invisible hand seemed to lift from the landscape the last of these

veils--a delicate vapor, like a diaphanous gauze through which the glow

of precious jewels excites our curiosity. Not a cloud could be seen on

the wide horizon to mark by its silvery whiteness that the vast blue

arch was the firmament; it seemed, on the contrary, a dais of silk,

held up by the summits of the mountains and placed in the atmosphere, to

protect that beautiful assemblage of fields and meadows and groves and

brooks.

The group of young officers paused to examine a scene so filled with

natural beauties. The eyes of some roved among the copses, which the

sterner tints of autumn were already enriching with their russet tones,

contrasting the more with the emerald-green of the meadows in which

they grew; others took note of a different contrast, made by the ruddy

fields, where the buckwheat had been cut and tied in sheaves (like

stands of arms around a bivouac), adjoining other fields of rich

ploughed land, from which the rye was already harvested. Here and there

were dark slate roofs above which puffs of white smoke were rising. The

glittering silver threads of the winding brooks caught the eye, here and

there, by one of those optic lures which render the soul--one knows not

how or why--perplexed and dreamy. The fragrant freshness of the autumn

breeze, the stronger odors of the forest, rose like a waft of incense to

the admirers of this beautiful region, who noticed with delight its

rare wild-flowers, its vigorous vegetation, and its verdure, worthy of

England, the very word being common to the two languages. A few cattle

gave life to the scene, already so dramatic. The birds sang, filling the

valley with a sweet, vague melody that quivered in the air. If a quiet

imagination will picture to itself these rich fluctuations of light

and shade, the vaporous outline of the mountains, the mysterious

perspectives which were seen where the trees gave an opening, or

the streamlets ran, or some coquettish little glade fled away in the

distance; if memory will color, as it were, this sketch, as fleeting as

the moment when it was taken, the persons for whom such pictures are

not without charm will have an imperfect image of the magic scene which

delighted the still impressionable souls of the young officers.

Thinking that the poor recruits must be leaving, with regret, their own

country and their beloved customs, to die, perhaps, in foreign lands,

they involuntarily excused a tardiness their feelings comprehended.

Then, with the generosity natural to soldiers, they disguised their

indulgence under an apparent desire to examine into the military

position of the land. But Hulot, whom we shall henceforth call the

commandant, to avoid giving him the inharmonious title of “chief of a

half-brigade” was one of those soldiers who, in critical moments,

cannot be caught by the charms of a landscape, were they even those of

a terrestrial paradise. He shook his head with an impatient gesture and

contracted the thick, black eyebrows which gave so stern an expression

to his face.

“Why the devil don’t they come up?” he said, for the second time, in a

hoarse voice, roughened by the toils of war.

“You ask why?” replied a voice.

Hearing these words, which seemed to issue from a horn, such as the

peasants of the western valleys use to call their flocks, the commandant

turned sharply round, as if pricked by a sword, and beheld, close behind

him, a personage even more fantastic in appearance than any of those who

were now being escorted to Mayenne to serve the Republic. This unknown

man, short and thick-set in figure and broad-shouldered, had a head like

a bull, to which, in fact, he bore more than one resemblance. His nose

seemed shorter than it was, on account of the thick nostrils. His full

lips, drawn from the teeth which were white as snow, his large and

round black eyes with their shaggy brows, his hanging ears and tawny

hair,--seemed to belong far less to our fine Caucasian race than to

a breed of herbivorous animals. The total absence of all the usual

characteristics of the social man made that bare head still more

remarkable. The face, bronzed by the sun (its angular outlines

presenting a sort of vague likeness to the granite which forms the

soil of the region), was the only visible portion of the body of this

singular being. From the neck down he was wrapped in a “sarrau” or

smock, a sort of russet linen blouse, coarser in texture than that of

the trousers of the less fortunate conscripts. This “sarrau,” in which

an antiquary would have recognized the “saye,” or the “sayon” of the

Gauls, ended at his middle, where it was fastened to two leggings of

goatskin by slivers, or thongs of wood, roughly cut,--some of them still

covered with their peel or bark. These hides of the nanny-goat (to give

them the name by which they were known to the peasantry) covered his

legs and thighs, and masked all appearance of human shape. Enormous

sabots hid his feet. His long and shining hair fell straight, like the

goat’s hair, on either side of his face, being parted in the centre like

the hair of certain statues of the Middle-Ages which are still to

be seen in our cathedrals. In place of the knotty stick which the

conscripts carried over their shoulders, this man held against his

breast as though it were a musket, a heavy whip, the lash of which was

closely braided and seemed to be twice as long as that of an ordinary

whip. The sudden apparition of this strange being seemed easily

explained. At first sight some of the officers took him for a recruit or

conscript (the words were used indiscriminately) who had outstripped the

column. But the commandant himself was singularly surprised by the

man’s presence; he showed no alarm, but his face grew thoughtful.

After looking the intruder well over, he repeated, mechanically, as if

preoccupied with anxious thought: “Yes, why don’t they come on? do you

know, you?”

“Because,” said the gloomy apparition, with an accent which proved his

difficulty in speaking French, “there Maine begins” (pointing with his

huge, rough hand towards Ernee), “and Bretagne ends.”

Then he struck the ground sharply with the handle of his heavy

whip close to the commandant’s feet. The impression produced on the

spectators by the laconic harangue of the stranger was like that of

a tom-tom in the midst of tender music. But the word “harangue” is

insufficient to reproduce the hatred, the desires of vengeance expressed

by the haughty gesture of the hand, the brevity of the speech, and

the look of sullen and cool-blooded energy on the countenance of the

speaker. The coarseness and roughness of the man,--chopped out, as it

seemed by an axe, with his rough bark still left on him,--and the stupid

ignorance of his features, made him seem, for the moment, like some

half-savage demigod. He stood stock-still in a prophetic attitude, as

though he were the Genius of Brittany rising from a slumber of three

years, to renew a war in which victory could only be followed by twofold

mourning.

“A pretty fellow this!” thought Hulot; “he looks to me like the emissary

of men who mean to argue with their muskets.”

Having growled these words between his teeth, the commandant cast

his eyes in turn from the man to the valley, from the valley to the

detachment, from the detachment to the steep acclivities on the right of

the road, the ridges of which were covered with the broom and gorse of

Brittany; then he suddenly turned them full on the stranger, whom he

subjected to a mute interrogation, which he ended at last by roughly

demanding, “Where do you come from?”

His eager, piercing eye strove to detect the secrets of that

impenetrable face, which never changed from the vacant, torpid

expression in which a peasant when doing nothing wraps himself.

“From the country of the Gars,” replied the man, without showing any

uneasiness.

“Your name?”

“Marche-a-Terre.”

“Why do you call yourself by your Chouan name in defiance of the law?”

Marche-a-Terre, to use the name he gave to himself, looked at the

commandant with so genuine an air of stupidity that the soldier believed

the man had not understood him.

“Do you belong to the recruits from Fougeres?”

To this inquiry Marche-a-Terre replied by the bucolic “I don’t know,”

the hopeless imbecility of which puts an end to all inquiry. He seated

himself by the roadside, drew from his smock a few pieces of thin, black

buckwheat-bread,--a national delicacy, the dismal delights of which none

but a Breton can understand,--and began to eat with stolid indifference.

There seemed such a total absence of all human intelligence about the

man that the officers compared him in turn to the cattle browsing in

the valley pastures, to the savages of America, or the aboriginal

inhabitants of the Cape of Good Hope. Deceived by his behavior, the

commandant himself was about to turn a deaf ear to his own misgivings,

when, casting a last prudence glance on the man whom he had taken for

the herald of an approaching carnage, he suddenly noticed that the

hair, the smock, and the goatskin leggings of the stranger were full of

thorns, scraps of leaves, and bits of trees and bushes, as though this

Chouan had lately made his way for a long distance through thickets and

underbrush. Hulot looked significantly at his adjutant Gerard who stood

beside him, pressed his hand firmly, and said in a low voice: “We came

for wool, but we shall go back sheared.”

The officers looked at each other silently in astonishment.

It is necessary here to make a digression, or the fears of the

commandant will not be intelligible to those stay-at-home persons who

are in the habit of doubting everything because they have seen nothing,

and who might therefore deny the existence of Marche-a-Terre and the

peasantry of the West, whose conduct, in the times we are speaking of,

was often sublime.

The word “gars” pronounced “ga” is a relic of the Celtic language. It

has passed from low Breton into French, and the word in our present

speech has more ancient associations than any other. The “gais” was the

principal weapon of the Gauls; “gaisde” meant armed; “gais” courage;

“gas,” force. The word has an analogy with the Latin word “vir” man,

the root of “virtus” strength, courage. The present dissertation is

excusable as of national interest; besides, it may help to restore the

use of such words as: “gars, garcon, garconette, garce, garcette,”

now discarded from our speech as unseemly; whereas their origin is so

warlike that we shall use them from time to time in the course of this

history. “She is a famous ‘garce’!” was a compliment little understood

by Madame de Stael when it was paid to her in a little village of La

Vendee, where she spent a few days of her exile.

Brittany is the region in all France where the manners and customs

of the Gauls have left their strongest imprint. That portion of the

province where, even to our own times, the savage life and superstitious

ideas of our rude ancestors still continue--if we may use the

word--rampant, is called “the country of the Gars.” When a canton (or

district) is inhabited by a number of half-savages like the one who has

just appeared upon the scene, the inhabitants call them “the Gars of

such or such a parish.” This classic name is a reward for the fidelity

with which they struggle to preserve the traditions of the language and

manners of their Gaelic ancestors; their lives show to this day many

remarkable and deeply embedded vestiges of the beliefs and superstitious

practices of those ancient times. Feudal customs are still maintained.

Antiquaries find Druidic monuments still standing. The genius of modern

civilization shrinks from forcing its way through those impenetrable

primordial forests. An unheard-of ferociousness, a brutal obstinacy, but

also a regard for the sanctity of an oath; a complete ignoring of our

laws, our customs, our dress, our modern coins, our language, but withal

a patriarchal simplicity and virtues that are heroic,--unite in keeping

the inhabitants of this region more impoverished as to all intellectual

knowledge than the Redskins, but also as proud, as crafty, and as

enduring as they. The position which Brittany occupies in the centre of

Europe makes it more interesting to observe than Canada. Surrounded by

light whose beneficent warmth never reaches it, this region is like a

frozen coal left black in the middle of a glowing fire. The efforts made

by several noble minds to win this glorious part of France, so rich in

neglected treasures, to social life and to prosperity have all, even

when sustained by government, come to nought against the inflexibility

of a population given over to the habits of immemorial routine. This

unfortunate condition is partly accounted for by the nature of the land,

broken by ravines, mountain torrents, lakes, and marshes, and bristling

with hedges or earth-works which make a sort of citadel of every field;

without roads, without canals, and at the mercy of prejudices which

scorn our modern agriculture. These will further be shown with all their

dangers in our present history.

The picturesque lay of the land and the superstitions of the inhabitants

prevent the formation of communities and the benefits arising from the

exchange and comparison of ideas. There are no villages. The rickety

buildings which the people call homes are sparsely scattered through the

wilderness. Each family lives as in a desert. The only meetings among

them are on Sundays and feast-days in the parish church. These silent

assemblies, under the eye of the rector (the only ruler of these rough

minds) last some hours. After listening to the awful words of the priest

they return to their noisome hovels for another week; they leave them

only to work, they return to them only to sleep. No one ever visits

them, unless it is the rector. Consequently, it was the voice of

the priesthood which roused Brittany against the Republic, and sent

thousands of men, five years before this history begins, to the support

of the first Chouannerie. The brothers Cottereau, whose name was given

to that first uprising, were bold smugglers, plying their perilous trade

between Laval and Fougeres. The insurrections of Brittany had nothing

fine or noble about them; and it may be truly said that if La Vendee

turned its brigandage into a great war, Brittany turned war into a

brigandage. The proscription of princes, the destruction of religion,

far from inspiring great sacrifices, were to the Chouans pretexts for

mere pillage; and the events of this intestine warfare had all the

savage moroseness of their own natures. When the real defenders of the

monarchy came to recruit men among these ignorant and violent people

they vainly tried to give, for the honor of the white flag, some

grandeur to the enterprises which had hitherto rendered the brigands

odious; the Chouans remain in history as a memorable example of the

danger of uprousing the uncivilized masses of the nation.

The sketch here made of a Breton valley and of the Breton men in the

detachment of recruits, more especially that of the “gars” who so

suddenly appeared on the summit of Mont Pelerine, gives a brief

but faithful picture of the province and its inhabitants. A trained

imagination can by the help of these details obtain some idea of

the theatre of the war and of the men who were its instruments. The

flowering hedges of the beautiful valleys concealed the combatants. Each

field was a fortress, every tree an ambush; the hollow trunk of each

old willow hid a stratagem. The place for a fight was everywhere.

Sharpshooters were lurking at every turn for the Blues, whom laughing

young girls, unmindful of their perfidy, attracted within range,--for

had they not made pilgrimages with their fathers and their brothers,

imploring to be taught wiles, and receiving absolution from their

wayside Virgin of rotten wood? Religion, or rather the fetichism of

these ignorant creatures, absolved such murders of remorse.

Thus, when the struggle had once begun, every part of the country was

dangerous,--in fact, all things were full of peril, sound as well as

silence, attraction as well as fear, the family hearth or the open

country. Treachery was everywhere, but it was treachery from conviction.

The people were savages serving God and the King after the fashion of

Red Indians. To make this sketch of the struggle exact and true at all

points, the historian must add that the moment Hoche had signed his

peace the whole country subsided into smiles and friendliness. Families

who were rending each other to pieces over night, were supping together

without danger the next day.

The very moment that Commandant Hulot became aware of the secret

treachery betrayed by the hairy skins of Marche-a-Terre, he was

convinced that this peace, due to the genius of Hoche, the stability of

which he had always doubted, was at an end. The civil war, he felt,

was about to be renewed,--doubtless more terrible than ever after a

cessation of three years. The Revolution, mitigated by the events of the

9th Thermidor, would doubtless return to the old terrors which had made

it odious to sound minds. English gold would, as formerly, assist in the

national discords. The Republic, abandoned by young Bonaparte who had

seemed to be its tutelary genius, was no longer in a condition to resist

its enemies from without and from within,--the worst and most cruel

of whom were the last to appear. The Civil War, already threatened

by various partial uprisings, would assume a new and far more serious

aspect if the Chouans were now to attack so strong an escort. Such

were the reflections that filled the mind of the commander (though less

succinctly formulated) as soon as he perceived, in the condition of

Marche-a-Terre’s clothing, the signs of an ambush carefully planned.

The silence which followed the prophetic remark of the commandant to

Gerard gave Hulot time to recover his self-possession. The old soldier

had been shaken. He could not hinder his brow from clouding as he felt

himself surrounded by the horrors of a warfare the atrocities of which

would have shamed even cannibals. Captain Merle and the adjutant Gerard

could not explain to themselves the evident dread on the face of their

leader as he looked at Marche-a-Terre eating his bread by the side of

the road. But Hulot’s face soon cleared; he began to rejoice in the

opportunity to fight for the Republic, and he joyously vowed to escape

being the dupe of the Chouans, and to fathom the wily and impenetrable

being whom they had done him the honor to employ against him.

Before taking any resolution he set himself to study the position in

which it was evident the enemy intended to surprise him. Observing that

the road where the column had halted was about to pass through a sort of

gorge, short to be sure, but flanked with woods from which several paths

appeared to issue, he frowned heavily, and said to his two friends, in a

low voice of some emotion:--

“We’re in a devil of a wasp’s-nest.”

“What do you fear?” asked Gerard.

“Fear? Yes, that’s it, _fear_,” returned the commandant. “I have always

had a fear of being shot like a dog at the edge of a wood, without a

chance of crying out ‘Who goes there?’”

“Pooh!” said Merle, laughing, “‘Who goes there’ is all humbug.”

“Are we in any real danger?” asked Gerard, as much surprised by Hulot’s

coolness as he was by his evident alarm.

“Hush!” said the commandant, in a low voice. “We are in the jaws of the

wolf; it is as dark as a pocket; and we must get some light. Luckily,

we’ve got the upper end of the slope!”

So saying, he moved, with his two officers, in a way to surround

Marche-a-Terre, who rose quickly, pretending to think himself in the

way.

“Stay where you are, vagabond!” said Hulot, keeping his eye on the

apparently indifferent face of the Breton, and giving him a push which

threw him back on the place where he had been sitting.

“Friends,” continued Hulot, in a low voice, speaking to the two

officers. “It is time I should tell you that it is all up with the

army in Paris. The Directory, in consequence of a disturbance in

the Assembly, has made another clean sweep of our affairs. Those

pentarchs,--puppets, I call them,--those directors have just lost a good

blade; Bernadotte has abandoned them.”

“Who will take his place?” asked Gerard, eagerly.

“Milet-Mureau, an old blockhead. A pretty time to choose to let fools

sail the ship! English rockets from all the headlands, and those cursed

Chouan cockchafers in the air! You may rely upon it that some one behind

those puppets pulled the wire when they saw we were getting the worst of

it.”

“How getting the worst of it?”

“Our armies are beaten at all points,” replied Hulot, sinking his voice

still lower. “The Chouans have intercepted two couriers; I only received

my despatches and last orders by a private messenger sent by Bernadotte

just as he was leaving the ministry. Luckily, friends have written me

confidentially about this crisis. Fouche has discovered that the tyrant

Louis XVIII. has been advised by traitors in Paris to send a leader to

his followers in La Vendee. It is thought that Barras is betraying

the Republic. At any rate, Pitt and the princes have sent a man, a

_ci-devant_, vigorous, daring, full of talent, who intends, by uniting

the Chouans with the Vendeans, to pluck the cap of liberty from the head

of the Republic. The fellow has lately landed in the Morbihan; I was the

first to hear of it, and I sent the news to those knaves in Paris. ‘The

Gars’ is the name he goes by. All those beasts,” he added, pointing

to Marche-a-Terre, “stick on names which would give a stomach-ache to

honest patriots if they bore them. The Gars is now in this district.

The presence of that fellow”--and again he signed to Marche-a-Terre--“as

good as tells me he is on our back. But they can’t teach an old monkey

to make faces; and you’ve got to help me to get my birds safe into

their cage, and as quick as a flash too. A pretty fool I should be if I

allowed that _ci-devant_, who dares to come from London with his British

gold, to trap me like a crow!”

On learning these secret circumstances, and being well aware that their

leader was never unnecessarily alarmed, the two officers saw the dangers

of the position. Gerard was about to ask some questions on the political

state of Paris, some details of which Hulot had evidently passed over in

silence, but a sign from his commander stopped him, and once more drew

the eyes of all three to the Chouan. Marche-a-Terre gave no sign of

disturbance at being watched. The curiosity of the two officers,

who were new to this species of warfare, was greatly excited by this

beginning of an affair which seemed to have an almost romantic interest,

and they began to joke about it. But Hulot stopped them at once.

“God’s thunder!” he cried. “Don’t smoke upon the powder-cask; wasting

courage for nothing is like carrying water in a basket. Gerard,” he

added, in the ear of his adjutant, “get nearer, by degrees, to that

fellow, and watch him; at the first suspicious action put your sword

through him. As for me, I must take measures to carry on the ball if our

unseen adversaries choose to open it.”

The Chouan paid no attention to the movements of the young officer, and

continued to play with his whip, and fling out the lash of it as though

he were fishing in the ditch.

Meantime the commandant was saying to Merle, in a low voice: “Give ten

picked men to a sergeant, and post them yourself above us on the summit

of this slope, just where the path widens to a ledge; there you ought to

see the whole length of the route to Ernee. Choose a position where the

road is not flanked by woods, and where the sergeant can overlook

the country. Take Clef-des-Coeurs; he is very intelligent. This is no

laughing matter; I wouldn’t give a farthing for our skins if we don’t

turn the odds in our favor at once.”

While Merle was executing this order with a rapidity of which he fully

understood the importance, the commandant waved his right hand to

enforce silence on the soldiers, who were standing at ease, and laughing

and joking around him. With another gesture he ordered them to take up

arms. When quiet was restored he turned his eyes from one end of the

road to the other, listened with anxious attention as though he hoped

to detect some stifled sound, some echo of weapons, or steps which might

give warning of the expected attack. His black eye seemed to pierce the

woods to an extraordinary depth. Perceiving no indications of danger, he

next consulted, like a savage, the ground at his feet, to discover, if

possible, the trail of the invisible enemies whose daring was well known

to him. Desperate at seeing and hearing nothing to justify his fears, he

turned aside from the road and ascended, not without difficulty, one or

two hillocks. The other officers and the soldiers, observing the anxiety

of a leader in whom they trusted and whose worth was known to them,

knew that his extreme watchfulness meant danger; but not suspecting its

imminence, they merely stood still and held their breaths by instinct.

Like dogs endeavoring to guess the intentions of a huntsman, whose

orders are incomprehensible to them though they faithfully obey him, the

soldiers gazed in turn at the valley, at the woods by the roadside, at

the stern face of their leader, endeavoring to read their fate. They

questioned each other with their eyes, and more than one smile ran from

lip to lip.

When Hulot returned to his men with an anxious look, Beau-Pied, a young

sergeant who passed for the wit of his company, remarked in a low voice:

“Where the deuce have we poked ourselves that an old trooper like Hulot

should pull such a gloomy face? He’s as solemn as a council of war.”

Hulot gave the speaker a stern look, silence being ordered in the ranks.

In the hush that ensued, the lagging steps of the conscripts on the

creaking sand of the road produced a recurrent sound which added a sort

of vague emotion to the general excitement. This indefinable feeling

can be understood only by those who have felt their hearts beat in

the silence of the night from a painful expectation heightened by some

noise, the monotonous recurrence of which seems to distil terror into

their minds, drop by drop.

The thought of the commandant, as he returned to his men, was: “Can I

be mistaken?” He glanced, with a concentrated anger which flashed like

lightning from his eyes, at the stolid, immovable Chouan; a look of

savage irony which he fancied he detected in the man’s eyes, warned him

not to relax in his precautions. Just then Captain Merle, having obeyed

Hulot’s orders, returned to his side.

“We did well, captain,” said the commandant, “to put the few men whose

patriotism we can count upon among those conscripts at the rear. Take

a dozen more of our own bravest fellows, with sub-lieutenant Lebrun at

their head, and make a rear-guard of them; they’ll support the patriots

who are there already, and help to shove on that flock of birds and

close up the distance between us. I’ll wait for you.”

The captain disappeared. The commander’s eye singled out four men on

whose intelligence and quickness he knew he might rely, and he beckoned

to them, silently, with the well-known friendly gesture of moving the

right forefinger rapidly and repeatedly toward the nose. They came to

him.

“You served with me under Hoche,” he said, “when we brought to reason

those brigands who call themselves ‘Chasseurs du Roi’; you know how they

hid themselves to swoop down on the Blues.”

At this commendation of their intelligence the four soldiers nodded

with significant grins. Their heroically martial faces wore that look

of careless resignation to fate which evidenced the fact that since the

struggle had begun between France and Europe, the ideas of the private

soldiers had never passed beyond the cartridge-boxes on their backs or

the bayonets in front of them. With their lips drawn together like a

purse when the strings are tightened, they looked at their commander

attentively with inquiring eyes.

“You know,” continued Hulot, who possessed the art of speaking

picturesquely as soldier to soldiers, “that it won’t do for old hares

like us to be caught napping by the Chouans,--of whom there are plenty

all round us, or my name’s not Hulot. You four are to march in advance

and beat up both sides of this road. The detachment will hang fire here.

Keep your eyes about you; don’t get picked off; and bring me news of

what you find--quick!”

So saying he waved his hand towards the suspected heights along the

road. The four men, by way of thanks raised the backs of their hands to

their battered old three-cornered hats, discolored by rain and ragged

with age, and bent their bodies double. One of them, named Larose, a

corporal well-known to Hulot, remarked as he clicked his musket: “We’ll

play ‘em a tune on the clarinet, commander.”

They started, two to right and two to left of the road; and it was not

without some excitement that their comrades watched them disappear. The

commandant himself feared that he had sent them to their deaths, and an

involuntary shudder seized him as he saw the last of them. Officers and

soldiers listened to the gradually lessening sound of their footsteps,

with feelings all the more acute because they were carefully hidden.

There are occasions when the risk of four lives causes more excitement

and alarm than all the slain at Jemmapes. The faces of those trained to

war have such various and fugitive expressions that a painter who has to

describe them is forced to appeal to the recollections of soldiers and

to leave civilians to imagine these dramatic figures; for scenes so rich

in detail cannot be rendered in writing, except at interminable length.

Just as the bayonets of the four men were finally lost to sight, Captain

Merle returned, having executed the commandant’s orders with rapidity.

Hulot, with two or three sharp commands, put his troop in line of battle

and ordered it to return to the summit of La Pelerine where his little

advanced-guard were stationed; walking last himself and looking backward

to note any changes that might occur in a scene which Nature had made

so lovely, and man so terrible. As he reached the spot where he had left

the Chouan, Marche-a-Terre, who had seen with apparent indifference

the various movements of the commander, but who was now watching with

extraordinary intelligence the two soldiers in the woods to the

right, suddenly gave the shrill and piercing cry of the _chouette_, or

screech-owl. The three famous smugglers already mentioned were in the

habit of using the various intonations of this cry to warn each other

of danger or of any event that might concern them. From this came the

nickname of “Chuin” which means _chouette_ or owl in the dialect of that

region. This corrupted word came finally to mean the whole body of those

who, in the first uprising, imitated the tactics and the signals of the

smugglers.

When Hulot heard that suspicious sound he stopped short and examined the

man intently; then he feigned to be taken in by his stupid air, wishing

to keep him by him as a barometer which might indicate the movements of

the enemy. He therefore checked Gerard, whose hand was on his sword to

despatch him; but he placed two soldiers beside the man he now felt to

be a spy, and ordered them in a loud, clear voice to shoot him at the

next sound he made. In spite of his imminent danger Marche-a-Terre

showed not the slightest emotion. The commandant, who was studying him,

took note of this apparent insensibility, and remarked to Gerard: “That

fool is not so clever as he means to be! It is far from easy to read the

face of a Chouan, but the fellow betrays himself by his anxiety to show

his nerve. Ha! ha! if he had only pretended fear I should have taken him

for a stupid brute. He and I might have made a pair! I came very near

falling into the trap. Yes, we shall undoubtedly be attacked; but let

‘em come; I’m all ready now.”

As he said these words in a low voice, rubbing his hands with an air

of satisfaction, he looked at the Chouan with a jeering eye. Then he

crossed his arms on his breast and stood in the road with his favorite

officers beside him awaiting the result of his arrangements. Certain

that a fight was at hand, he looked at his men composedly.

“There’ll be a row,” said Beau-Pied to his comrades in a low voice.

“See, the commandant is rubbing his hands.”

In critical situations like that in which the detachment and its

commander were now placed, life is so clearly at stake that men of nerve

make it a point of honor to show coolness and self-possession. These

are the moments in which to judge men’s souls. The commandant, better

informed of the danger than his two officers, took pride in showing his

tranquillity. With his eyes moving from Marche-a-Terre to the road and

thence to the woods he stood expecting, not without dread, a general

volley from the Chouans, whom he believed to be hidden like brigands all

around him; but his face remained impassible. Knowing that the eyes of

the soldiers were turned upon him, he wrinkled his brown cheeks pitted

with the small-pox, screwed his upper lip, and winked his right eye, a

grimace always taken for a smile by his men; then he tapped Gerard

on the shoulder and said: “Now that things are quiet tell me what you

wanted to say just now.”

“I wanted to ask what this new crisis means, commandant?” was the reply.

“It is not new,” said Hulot. “All Europe is against us, and this time

she has got the whip hand. While those Directors are fighting together

like horses in a stable without any oats, and letting the government go

to bits, the armies are left without supplies or reinforcements. We are

getting the worst of it in Italy; we’ve evacuated Mantua after a series

of disasters on the Trebia, and Joubert has just lost a battle at

Novi. I only hope Massena may be able to hold the Swiss passes against

Suwarow. We’re done for on the Rhine. The Directory have sent Moreau.

The question is, Can he defend the frontier? I hope he may, but the

Coalition will end by invading us, and the only general able to save the

nation is, unluckily, down in that devilish Egypt; and how is he ever to

get back, with England mistress of the Mediterranean?”

“Bonaparte’s absence doesn’t trouble me, commandant,” said the young

adjutant Gerard, whose intelligent mind had been developed by a fine

education. “I am certain the Revolution cannot be brought to naught.

Ha! we soldiers have a double mission,--not merely to defend French

territory, but to preserve the national soul, the generous principles

of liberty, independence, and rights of human reason awakened by our

Assemblies and gaining strength, as I believe, from day to day. France

is like a traveller bearing a light: he protects it with one hand, and

defends himself with the other. If your news is true, we have never the

last ten years been so surrounded with people trying to blow it out.

Principles and nation are in danger of perishing together.”

“Alas, yes,” said Hulot, sighing. “Those clowns of Directors have

managed to quarrel with all the men who could sail the ship. Bernadotte,

Carnot, all of them, even Talleyrand, have deserted us. There’s not a

single good patriot left, except friend Fouche, who holds ‘em through

the police. There’s a man for you! It was he who warned me of a coming

insurrection; and here we are, sure enough, caught in a trap.”

“If the army doesn’t take things in hand and manage the government,”

said Gerard, “those lawyers in Paris will put us back just where we

were before the Revolution. A parcel of ninnies! what do they know about

governing?”

“I’m always afraid they’ll treat with the Bourbons,” said Hulot.

“Thunder! if they did _that_ a pretty pass we should be in, we

soldiers!”

“No, no, commandant, it won’t come to that,” said Gerard. “The army, as

you say, will raise its voice, and--provided it doesn’t choose its words

from Pichegru’s vocabulary--I am persuaded we have not hacked ourselves

to pieces for the last ten years merely to manure the flax and let

others spin the thread.”

“Well,” interposed Captain Merle, “what we have to do now is to act as

good patriots and prevent the Chouans from communicating with La Vendee;

for, if they once come to an understanding and England gets her finger

into the pie, I wouldn’t answer for the cap of the Republic, one and

invisible.”

As he spoke the cry of an owl, heard at a distance, interrupted the

conversation. Again the commander examined Marche-a-Terre, whose

impassible face still gave no sign. The conscripts, their ranks closed

up by an officer, now stood like a herd of cattle in the road, about

a hundred feet distant from the escort, which was drawn up in line

of battle. Behind them stood the rear-guard of soldiers and patriots,

picked men, commanded by Lieutenant Lebrun. Hulot cast his eyes over

this arrangement of his forces and looked again at the picket of men

posted in advance upon the road. Satisfied with what he saw he was

about to give the order to march, when the tricolor cockades of the two

soldiers he had sent to beat the woods to the left caught his eye; he

waited therefore till the two others, who had gone to the right, should

reappear.

“Perhaps the ball will open over there,” he said to his officers,

pointing to the woods from which the two men did not emerge.

While the first two made their report Hulot’s attention was distracted

momentarily from Marche-a-Terre. The Chouan at once sent his owl’s-cry

to an apparently vast distance, and before the men who guarded him could

raise their muskets and take aim he had struck them a blow with his whip

which felled them, and rushed away. A terrible discharge of fire-arms

from the woods just above the place where the Chouan had been sitting

brought down six or eight soldiers. Marche-a-Terre, at whom several men

had fired without touching him, vanished into the woods after climbing

the slope with the agility of a wild-cat; as he did so his sabots

rolled into the ditch and his feet were seen to be shod with the thick,

hobnailed boots always worn by the Chouans.

At the first cries uttered by the Chouans, the conscripts sprang into

the woods to the right like a flock of birds taking flight at the

approach of a man.

“Fire on those scoundrels!” cried Hulot.

The company fired, but the conscripts knew well how to shelter

themselves behind trees, and before the soldiers could reload they were

out of sight.

“What’s the use of _decreeing_ levies in the departments?” said Hulot.

“It is only such idiots as the Directory who would expect any good of

a draft in this region. The Assembly had much better stop voting more

shoes and money and ammunition, and see that we get what belongs to us.”

At this moment the two skirmishers sent out on the right were seen

returning with evident difficulty. The one that was least wounded

supported his comrade, whose blood was moistening the earth. The two

poor fellows were half-way down the slope when Marche-a-Terre showed

his ugly face, and took so true an aim that both Blues fell together and

rolled heavily into the ditch. The Chouan’s monstrous head was no sooner

seen than thirty muzzles were levelled at him, but, like a figure in a

pantomime, he disappeared in a second among the tufts of gorse.

These events, which have taken so many words to tell, happened

instantaneously, and in another moment the rear-guard of patriots and

soldiers had joined the main body of the escort.

“Forward!” cried Hulot.

The company moved quickly to the higher and more open ground on which

the picket guard was already stationed. There, the commander formed his

troop once more into line of battle; but, as the Chouans made no further

hostile demonstrations, he began to think that the deliverance of the

conscripts might have been the sole object of the ambuscade.

“Their cries,” he said to his two friends, “prove that they are not

numerous. We’ll advance at a quick step, and possibly we may be able to

reach Ernee without getting them on our backs.”

These words were overheard by one of the patriot conscripts, who stepped

from the ranks, and said respectfully:--

“General, I have already fought the Chouans; may I be allowed a word?”

“A lawyer,” whispered Hulot to Merle. “They always want to harangue.

Argue away,” he said to the young man.

“General, the Chouans have no doubt brought arms for those escaped

recruits. Now, if we try to outmarch them, they will catch us in the

woods and shoot every one of us before we can get to Ernee. We must

argue, as you call it, with cartridges. During the skirmish, which will

last more time than you think for, some of us ought to go back and fetch

the National Guard and the militia from Fougeres.”

“Then you think there are a good many Chouans?”

“Judge for yourself, citizen commander.”

He led Hulot to a place where the sand had been stirred as with a rake;

then he took him to the opening of a wood-path, where the leaves were

scattered and trampled into the earth,--unmistakable signs of the

passage of a large body of men.

“Those were the ‘gars’ from Vitre,” said the man, who came himself from

Fougeres; “they are on their way to Lower Normandy.”

“What is your name?” asked Hulot.

“Gudin, commander.”

“Well, then, Gudin, I make you a corporal. You seem to me trustworthy.

Select a man to send to Fougeres; but stay yourself with me. In the

first place, however, take two or three of your comrades and bring

in the muskets and ammunition of the poor fellows those brigands have

rolled into the ditch. These Bretons,” added Hulot to Gerard, “will make

famous infantry if they take to rations.”

Gudin’s emissary started on a run to Fougeres by a wood-road to the

left; the soldiers looked to their arms, and awaited an attack; the

commandant passed along their line, smiling to them, and then placed

himself with his officers, a little in front of it. Silence fell once

more, but it was of short duration. Three hundred or more Chouans, their

clothing identical with that of the late recruits, burst from the woods

to the right with actual howls and planted themselves, without any

semblance of order, on the road directly in front of the feeble

detachment of the Blues. The commandant thereupon ranged his soldiers in

two equal parts, each with a front of ten men. Between them, he placed

the twelve recruits, to whom he hastily gave arms, putting himself

at their head. This little centre was protected by the two wings, of

twenty-five men each, which manoeuvred on either side of the road under

the orders of Merle and Gerard; their object being to catch the Chouans

on the flank and prevent them from posting themselves as sharp-shooters

among the trees, where they could pick off the Blues without risk to

themselves; for in these wars the Republican troops never knew where to

look for an enemy.

These arrangements, hastily made, gave confidence to the soldiers, and

they advanced in silence upon the Chouans. At the end of a few seconds

each side fired, with the loss of several men. At this moment the two

wings of the Republicans, to whom the Chouans had nothing to oppose,

came upon their flanks, and, with a close, quick volley, sent death

and disorder among the enemy. This manoeuvre very nearly equalized the

numerical strength of the two parties. But the Chouan nature was so

intrepid, their will so firm, that they did not give way; their losses

scarcely staggered them; they simply closed up and attempted to surround

the dark and well-formed little party of the Blues, which covered so

little ground that it looked from a distance like a queen-bee surrounded

by the swarm.

The Chouans might have carried the day at this moment if the two wings

commanded by Merle and Gerard had not succeeded in getting in two

volleys which took them diagonally on their rear. The Blues of the two

wings ought to have remained in position and continued to pick off in

this way their terrible enemies; but excited by the danger of their

little main body, then completely surrounded by the Chouans, they flung

themselves headlong into the road with fixed bayonets and made the

battle even for a few moments. Both sides fought with a stubbornness

intensified by the cruelty and fury of the partisan spirit which made

this war exceptional. Each man, observant of danger, was silent. The

scene was gloomy and cold as death itself. Nothing was heard through the

clash of arms and the grinding of the sand under foot but the moans and

exclamations of those who fell, either dead or badly wounded. The twelve

loyal recruits in the republican main body protected the commandant (who

was guiding his men and giving orders) with such courage that more than

once several soldiers called out “Bravo, conscripts!”

Hulot, imperturbable and with an eye to everything, presently remarked

among the Chouans a man who, like himself, was evidently surrounded by

picked men, and was therefore, no doubt, the leader of the attacking

party. He was eager to see this man distinctly, and he made many efforts

to distinguish his features, but in vain; they were hidden by the red

caps and broad-brimmed hats of those about him. Hulot did, however,

see Marche-a-Terre beside this leader, repeating his orders in a

hoarse voice, his own carbine, meanwhile, being far from inactive. The

commandant grew impatient at being thus baffled. Waving his sword, he

urged on the recruits and charged the centre of the Chouans with such

fury that he broke through their line and came close to their chief,

whose face, however, was still hidden by a broad-brimmed felt hat with a

white cockade. But the invisible leader, surprised at so bold an attack,

retreated a step or two and raised his hat abruptly, thus enabling Hulot

to get a hasty idea of his appearance.

He was young,--Hulot thought him to be about twenty-five; he wore a

hunting-jacket of green cloth, and a white belt containing pistols. His

heavy shoes were hobnailed like those of the Chouans; leather leggings

came to his knees covering the ends of his breeches of very coarse

drilling, and completing a costume which showed off a slender and

well-poised figure of medium height. Furious that the Blues should thus

have approached him, he pulled his hat again over his face and sprang

towards them. But he was instantly surrounded by Marche-a-Terre and

several Chouans. Hulot thought he perceived between the heads which

clustered about this young leader, a broad red ribbon worn across his

chest. The eyes of the commandant, caught by this royal decoration (then

almost forgotten by republicans), turned quickly to the young man’s

face, which, however, he soon lost sight of under the necessity of

controlling and protecting his own little troop. Though he had barely

time to notice a pair of brilliant eyes (the color of which escaped

him), fair hair and delicate features bronzed by the sun, he was much

struck by the dazzling whiteness of the neck, relieved by a black cravat

carelessly knotted. The fiery attitude of the young leader proved him

to be a soldier of the stamp of those who bring a certain conventional

poesy into battle. His well-gloved hand waved above his head a sword

which gleamed in the sunlight. His whole person gave an impression both

of elegance and strength. An air of passionate self-devotion, enhanced

by the charms of youth and distinguished manners, made this _emigre_ a

graceful image of the French _noblesse_. He presented a strong contrast

to Hulot, who, ten feet distant from him, was quite as vivid an image of

the vigorous Republic for which the old soldier was fighting; his stern

face, his well-worn blue uniform with its shabby red facings and its

blackened epaulettes hanging back of his shoulders, being visible signs

of its needs and character.

The graceful attitude and expression of the young man were not lost

on the commandant, who exclaimed as he pressed towards him: “Come on,

opera-dancer, come on, and let me crush you!”

The royalist leader, provoked by his momentary disadvantage, advanced

with an angry movement, but at the same moment the men who were about

him rushed forward and flung themselves with fury on the Blues. Suddenly

a soft, clear voice was heard above the din of battle saying: “Here died

Saint-Lescure! Shall we not avenge him?”

At the magic words the efforts of the Chouans became terrible, and the

soldiers of the Republic had great difficulty in maintaining themselves

without breaking their little line of battle.

“If he wasn’t a young man,” thought Hulot, as he retreated step by step,

“we shouldn’t have been attacked in this way. Who ever heard of the

Chouans fighting an open battle? Well, all the better! they won’t shoot

us off like dogs along the road.” Then, raising his voice till it

echoed through the woods, he exclaimed, “Come on, my men! Shall we let

ourselves be _fooled_ by those brigands?”

The word here given is but a feeble equivalent of the one the brave

commandant used; but every veteran can substitute the real one, which

was far more soldierly in character.

“Gerard! Merle!” added Hulot, “call in your men, form them into a

battalion, take the rear, fire upon those dogs, and let’s make an end of

this!”

The order was difficult to obey, for the young chief, hearing Hulot’s

voice, cried out: “By Saint Anne of Auray, don’t let them get away!

Spread out, spread out, my lads!” and each of the two wings of the Blues

was followed by Chouans who were fully as obstinate and far superior in

numbers. The Republicans were surrounded on all sides by the Goatskins

uttering their savage cries, which were more like howls.

“Hold your tongues, gentlemen,” cried Beau-Pied; “we can’t hear

ourselves be killed.”

This jest revived the courage of the Blues. Instead of fighting only at

one point, the Republicans spread themselves to three different points

on the table-land of La Pelerine, and the rattle of musketry woke all

the echoes of the valleys, hitherto so peaceful beneath it. Victory

might have remained doubtful for many hours, or the fight might have

come to an end for want of combatants, for Blues and Chouans were

equally brave and obstinate. Each side was growing more and more

incensed, when the sound of a drum in the distance told that the body of

men must be crossing the valley of Couesnon.

“There’s the National Guard of Fougeres!” cried Gudin, in a loud voice;

“my man has brought them.”

The words reached the ears of the young leader of the Chouans and

his ferocious aide-de-camp, and the royalists made a hasty retrograde

movement, checked, however, by a brutal shout from Marche-a-Terre. After

two or three orders given by the leader in a low voice, and transmitted

by Marche-a-Terre in the Breton dialect, the Chouans made good their

retreat with a cleverness which disconcerted the Republicans and even

the commandant. At the first word of command they formed in line,

presenting a good front, behind which the wounded retreated, and the

others reloaded their guns. Then, suddenly, with the agility already

shown by Marche-a-Terre, the wounded were taken over the brow of the

eminence to the right of the road, while half the others followed them

slowly to occupy the summit, where nothing could be seen of them by the

Blues but their bold heads. There they made a rampart of the trees and

pointed the muzzles of their guns on the Republicans, who were rapidly

reformed under reiterated orders from Hulot and turned to face the

remainder of the Chouans, who were still before them in the road. The

latter retreated slowly, disputing the ground and wheeling so as to

bring themselves under cover of their comrades’ fire. When they reached

the broad ditch which bordered the road, they scaled the high bank

on the other side, braving the fire of the Republicans, which was

sufficiently well-directed to fill the ditch with dead bodies. The

Chouans already on the summit answered with a fire that was no less

deadly. At that moment the National Guard of Fougeres reached the scene

of action at a quick step, and its mere presence put an end to the

affair. The Guard and some of the soldiers crossed the road and began to

enter the woods, but the commandant called to them in his martial voice,

“Do you want to be annihilated over there?”

The victory remained to the Republicans, though not without heavy loss.

All the battered old hats were hung on the points of the bayonets and

the muskets held aloft, while the soldiers shouted with one voice: “Vive

la Republique!” Even the wounded, sitting by the roadside, shared in the

general enthusiasm; and Hulot, pressing Gerard’s hand, exclaimed:--

“Ha, ha! those are what I call _veterans_!”

Merle was directed to bury the dead in a ravine; while another party of

men attended to the removal of the wounded. The carts and horses of

the neighborhood were put into requisition, and the suffering men were

carefully laid on the clothing of the dead. Before the little column

started, the National Guard of Fougeres turned over to Hulot a Chouan,

dangerously wounded, whom they had captured at the foot of the slope up

which his comrades had escaped, and where he had fallen from weakness.

“Thanks for your help, citizens,” said the commandant. “God’s thunder!

if it hadn’t been for you, we should have had a pretty bad quarter of an

hour. Take care of yourselves; the war has begun. Adieu, friends.” Then,

turning to the prisoner, he asked, “What’s the name of your general?”

“The Gars.”

“Who? Marche-a-Terre?”

“No, the Gars.”

“Where does the Gars come from?”

To this question the prisoner, whose face was convulsed with suffering,

made no reply; he took out his beads and began to say his prayers.

“The Gars is no doubt that young _ci-devant_ with the black

cravat,--sent by the tyrant and his allies Pitt and Coburg.”

At that words the Chouan raised his head proudly and said: “Sent by God

and the king!” He uttered the words with an energy which exhausted his

strength. The commandant saw the difficulty of questioning a dying man,

whose countenance expressed his gloomy fanaticism, and he turned

away his head with a frown. Two soldiers, friends of those whom

Marche-a-Terre had so brutally killed with the butt of his whip, stepped

back a pace or two, took aim at the Chouan, whose fixed eyes did not

blink at the muzzles of their guns, fired at short range, and brought

him down. When they approached the dead body to strip it, the dying man

found strength to cry out loudly, “Vive le roi!”

“Yes, yes, you canting hypocrite,” cried Clef-des-Coeurs; “go and make

your report to that Virgin of yours. Didn’t he shout in our faces, ‘Vive

le roi!’ when we thought him cooked?”

“Here are his papers, commandant,” said Beau-Pied.

“Ho! ho!” cried Clef-des-Coeurs. “Come, all of you, and see this minion

of the good God with colors on his stomach!”

Hulot and several soldiers came round the body, now entirely naked, and

saw upon its breast a blue tattooing in the form of a swollen heart.

It was the sign of initiation into the brotherhood of the Sacred Heart.

Above this sign were the words, “Marie Lambrequin,” no doubt the man’s

name.

“Look at that, Clef-des-Coeurs,” said Beau-Pied; “it would take you a

hundred years to find out what that accoutrement is good for.”

“What should I know about the Pope’s uniform?” replied Clef-des-Coeurs,

scornfully.

“You worthless bog-trotter, you’ll never learn anything,” retorted

Beau-Pied. “Don’t you see that they’ve promised that poor fool that

he shall live again, and he has painted his gizzard in order to find

himself?”

At this sally--which was not without some foundation--even Hulot joined

in the general hilarity. At this moment Merle returned, and the

burial of the dead being completed and the wounded placed more or less

comfortably in two carts, the rest of the late escort formed into two

lines round the improvised ambulances, and descended the slope of the

mountain towards Maine, where the beautiful valley of La Pelerine, a

rival to that of Couesnon lay before it.

Hulot with his two officers followed the troop slowly, hoping to get

safely to Ernee where the wounded could be cared for. The fight we have

just described, which was almost forgotten in the midst of the greater

events which were soon to occur, was called by the name of the mountain

on which it took place. It obtained some notice at the West, where the

inhabitants, observant of this second uprising, noticed on this occasion

a great change in the manner in which the Chouans now made war. In

earlier days they would never have attacked so large a detachment.

According to Hulot the young royalist whom he had seen was undoubtedly

the Gars, the new general sent to France by the princes, who, following

the example of the other royalist chiefs, concealed his real name

and title under one of those pseudonyms called “noms de guerre.” This

circumstance made the commandant quite as uneasy after his melancholy

victory as he had been before it while expecting the attack. He turned

several times to consider the table-land of La Pelerine which he

was leaving behind him, across which he could still hear faintly at

intervals the drums of the National Guard descending into the valley of

Couesnon at the same time that the Blues were descending into that of La

Pelerine.

“Can either of you,” he said to his two friends, “guess the motives of

that attack of the Chouans? To them, fighting is a matter of business,

and I can’t see what they expected to gain by this attack. They have

lost at least a hundred men, and we”--he added, screwing up his right

cheek and winking by way of a smile, “have lost only sixty. God’s

thunder! I don’t understand that sort of speculation. The scoundrels

needn’t have attacked us; we might just as well have been allowed to

pass like letters through the post--No, I don’t see what good it has

done them to bullet-hole our men,” he added, with a sad shake of his

head toward the carts. “Perhaps they only intended to say good-day to

us.”

“But they carried off our recruits, commander,” said Merle.

“The recruits could have skipped like frogs into the woods at any time,

and we should never have gone after them, especially if those fellows

had fired a single volley,” returned Hulot. “No, no, there’s something

behind all this.” Again he turned and looked at La Pelerine. “See!” he

cried; “see there!”

Though they were now at a long distance from the fatal plateau, they

could easily distinguish Marche-a-Terre and several Chouans who were

again occupying it.

“Double-quick, march!” cried Hulot to his men, “open your compasses and

trot the steeds faster than that! Are your legs frozen?”

These words drove the little troop into a rapid motion.

“There’s a mystery, and it’s hard to make out,” continued Hulot,

speaking to his friends. “God grant it isn’t explained by muskets at

Ernee. I’m very much afraid that we shall find the road to Mayenne cut

off by the king’s men.”

* * * * *

The strategical problem which troubled the commandant was causing quite

as much uneasiness to the persons whom he had just seen on the summit

of Mont Pelerine. As soon as the drums of the National Guard were out

of hearing and Marche-a-Terre had seen the Blues at the foot of the

declivity, he gave the owl’s cry joyously, and the Chouans reappeared,

but their numbers were less. Some were no doubt busy in taking care of

the wounded in the little village of La Pelerine, situated on the side

of the mountain which looks toward the valley of Couesnon. Two or

three chiefs of what were called the “Chasseurs du Roi” clustered about

Marche-a-Terre. A few feet apart sat the young noble called The Gars, on

a granite rock, absorbed in thoughts excited by the difficulties of his

enterprise, which now began to show themselves. Marche-a-Terre screened

his forehead with his hand from the rays of the sun, and looked gloomily

at the road by which the Blues were crossing the valley of La Pelerine.

His small black eyes could see what was happening on the hill-slopes on

the other side of the valley.

“The Blues will intercept the messenger,” said the angry voice of one of

the leaders who stood near him.

“By Saint Anne of Auray!” exclaimed another. “Why did you make us fight?

Was it to save your own skin from the Blues?”

Marche-a-Terre darted a venomous look at his questioner and struck the

ground with his heavy carbine.

“Am I your leader?” he asked. Then after a pause he added, pointing to

the remains of Hulot’s detachment, “If you had all fought as I did, not

one of those Blues would have escaped, and the coach could have got here

safely.”

“They’d never have thought of escorting it or holding it back if we had

let them go by without a fight. No, you wanted to save your precious

skin and get out of their hands--He has bled us for the sake of his own

snout,” continued the orator, “and made us lose twenty thousand francs

in good coin.”

“Snout yourself!” cried Marche-a-Terre, retreating three steps and

aiming at his aggressor. “It isn’t that you hate the Blues, but you love

the gold. Die without confession and be damned, for you haven’t taken

the sacrament for a year.”

This insult so incensed the Chouan that he turned pale and a low growl

came from his chest as he aimed in turn at Marche-a-Terre. The young

chief sprang between them and struck their weapons from their hands with

the barrel of his own carbine; then he demanded an explanation of the

dispute, for the conversation had been carried on in the Breton dialect,

an idiom with which he was not familiar.

“Monsieur le marquis,” said Marche-a-Terre, as he ended his account of

the quarrel, “it is all the more unreasonable in them to find fault with

me because I have left Pille-Miche behind me; he’ll know how to save the

coach for us.”

“What!” exclaimed the young man, angrily, “are you waiting here, all

of you, to pillage that coach?--a parcel of cowards who couldn’t win a

victory in the first fight to which I led you! But why should you win if

that’s your object? The defenders of God and the king are thieves,

are they? By Saint Anne of Auray! I’d have you know, we are making war

against the Republic, and not robbing travellers. Those who are guilty

in future of such shameful actions shall not receive absolution, nor any

of the favors reserved for the faithful servants of the king.”

A murmur came from the group of Chouans, and it was easy to see that the

authority of the new chief was about to be disputed. The young man, on

whom this effect of his words was by no means lost, was thinking of the

best means of maintaining the dignity of his command, when the trot of a

horse was heard in the vicinity. All heads turned in the direction

from which the sound came. A lady appeared, sitting astride of a little

Breton horse, which she put at a gallop as soon as she saw the young

leader, so as to reach the group of Chouans as quickly as possible.

“What is the matter?” she said, looking first at the Chouans and then at

their chief.

“Could you believe it, madame? they are waiting to rob the diligence

from Mayenne to Fougeres when we have just had a skirmish, in order to

release the conscripts of Fougeres, which has cost us a great many men

without defeating the Blues.”

“Well, where’s the harm of that?” asked the young lady, to whom the

natural shrewdness of a woman explained the whole scene. “You have lost

men, but there’s no lack of others; the coach is bringing gold, and

there’s always a lack of that. We bury men, who go to heaven, and we

take money, which goes into the pockets of heroes. I don’t see the

difficulty.”

The Chouans approved of her speech by unanimous smiles.

“Do you see nothing in all that to make you blush?” said the young man,

in a low voice. “Are you in such need of money that you must pillage on

the high-road?”

“I am so eager for it, marquis, that I should put my heart in pawn if it

were not already captured,” she said, smiling coquettishly. “But where

did you get the strange idea that you could manage Chouans without

letting them rob a few Blues here and there? Don’t you know the saying,

‘Thieving as an owl’?--and that’s a Chouan. Besides,” she said, raising

her voice to be heard by the men, “it is just; haven’t the Blues seized

the property of the Church, and our own?”

Another murmur, very different from the growl with which the Chouans had

answered their leader, greeted these words. The young man’s face grew

darker; he took the young lady aside and said in the annoyed tone of a

well-bred man, “Will those gentlemen be at La Vivetiere on the appointed

day?”

“Yes,” she replied, “all of them, the Claimant, Grand-Jacques, and

perhaps Ferdinand.”

“Then allow me to return there. I cannot sanction such robbery. Yes,

madame, I call it robbery. There may be honor in being robbed, but--”

“Well, well,” she said, interrupting him, “then I shall have your share

of the booty, and I am much obliged to you for giving it up to me; the

extra sum will be extremely useful, for my mother has delayed sending me

money, so that I am almost destitute.”

“Adieu!” cried the marquis.

He turned away, but the lady ran after him.

“Why won’t you stay with me?” she said, giving him the look,

half-despotic, half-caressing, with which women who have a right to a

man’s respect let him know their wishes.

“You are going to pillage that coach?”

“Pillage? what a word!” she said. “Let me explain to you--”

“Explain nothing,” he said, taking her hand and kissing it with the

superficial gallantry of a courtier. “Listen to me,” he added after a

short pause: “if I were to stay here while they capture that diligence

our people would kill me, for I should certainly--”

“Not kill them,” she said quickly, “for they would bind your hands,

with all the respect that is due to your rank; then, having levied the

necessary contribution for their equipment, subsistence, and munitions

from our enemies, they would unbind you and obey you blindly.”

“And you wish me to command such men under such circumstances? If my

life is necessary to the cause which I defend allow me at any rate to

save the honor of my position. If I withdraw now I can ignore this base

act. I will return, in order to escort you.”

So saying, he rapidly disappeared. The young lady listened to his

receding steps with evident displeasure. When the sound on the dried

leaves ceased, she stood for a moment as if confounded, then she

hastily returned to the Chouans. With a gesture of contempt she said

to Marche-a-Terre, who helped her to dismount, “That young man wants to

make regular war on the Republic! Ah, well! he’ll get over that in a few

days. How he treated me!” she thought, presently.

She seated herself on the rock where the marquis had been sitting, and

silently awaited the arrival of the coach. It was one of the phenomena

of the times, and not the least of them, that this young and noble lady

should be flung by violent partisanship into the struggle of monarchies

against the spirit of the age, and be driven by the strength of her

feelings into actions of which it may almost be said she was not

conscious. In this she resembled others of her time who were led away by

an enthusiasm which was often productive of noble deeds. Like her, many

women played heroic or blameworthy parts in the fierce struggle. The

royalist cause had no emissaries so devoted and so active as these

women; but none of the heroines on that side paid for mistaken devotion

or for actions forbidden to their sex, with a greater expiation than did

this lady when, seated on that wayside rock, she was forced to admire

the young leader’s noble disdain and loyalty to principle. Insensibly

she dropped into reverie. Bitter memories made her long for the

innocence of her early years, and regret that she had escaped being

a victim of the Revolution whose victorious march could no longer be

arrested by feeble hands.

The coach, which, as we now see, had much to do with the attack of the

Chouans, had started from the little town of Ernee a few moments before

the skirmishing began. Nothing pictures a region so well as the state

of its social material. From this point of view the coach deserves a

mention. The Revolution itself was powerless to destroy it; in fact, it

still rolls to this present day. When Turgot bought up the privileges

of a company, obtained under Louis XIV., for the exclusive right of

transporting travellers from one part of the kingdom to another, and

instituted the lines of coaches called the “turgotines,” all the old

vehicles of the former company flocked into the provinces. One of

these shabby coaches was now plying between Mayenne and Fougeres. A few

objectors called it the “turgotine,” partly to mimic Paris and partly

to deride a minister who attempted innovations. This turgotine was

a wretched cabriolet on two high wheels, in the depths of which two

persons, if rather fat, could with difficulty have stowed themselves.

The narrow quarters of this rickety machine not admitting of any

crowding, and the box which formed the seat being kept exclusively for

the postal service, the travellers who had any baggage were forced to

keep it between their legs, already tortured by being squeezed into a

sort of little box in shape like a bellows. The original color of coach

and running-gear was an insoluble enigma. Two leather curtains, very

difficult to adjust in spite of their long service, were supposed to

protect the occupants from cold and rain. The driver, perched on a

plank seat like those of the worst Parisian “coucous,” shared in the

conversation by reason of his position between his victims, biped and

quadruped. The equipage presented various fantastic resemblances to

decrepit old men who have gone through a goodly number of catarrhs and

apoplexies and whom death respects; it moaned as it rolled, and

squeaked spasmodically. Like a traveller overtaken by sleep, it rocked

alternately forward and back, as though it tried to resist the violent

action of two little Breton horses which dragged it along a road

which was more than rough. This monument of a past era contained three

travellers, who, on leaving Ernee, where they had changed horses,

continued a conversation begun with the driver before reaching the

little town.

“What makes you think the Chouans are hereabouts?” said the coachman.

“The Ernee people tell me that Commandant Hulot has not yet started from

Fougeres.”

“Ho, ho, friend driver!” said the youngest of the travellers, “you risk

nothing but your own carcass! If you had a thousand francs about you,

as I have, and were known to be a good patriot, you wouldn’t take it so

easy.”

“You are pretty free with your tongue, any way,” said the driver,

shaking his head.

“Count your lambs, and the wolf will eat them,” remarked another of the

travellers.

This man, who was dressed in black, seemed to be about forty years old,

and was, probably, the rector of some parish in the neighborhood.

His chin rested on a double fold of flesh, and his florid complexion

indicated a priest. Though short and fat, he displayed some agility when

required to get in or out of the vehicle.

“Perhaps you are both Chouans!” cried the man of the thousand francs,

whose ample goatskin, covering trousers of good cloth and a clean

waistcoat, bespoke a rich farmer. “By the soul of Saint Robespierre! I

swear you shall be roughly handled.”

He turned his gray eyes from the driver to his fellow-travellers and

showed them a pistol in his belt.

“Bretons are not afraid of that,” said the rector, disdainfully.

“Besides, do we look like men who want your money?”

Every time the word “money” was mentioned the driver was silent, and the

rector had wit enough to doubt whether the patriot had any at all, and

to suspect that the driver was carrying a good deal.

“Are you well laden, Coupiau?” he asked.

“Oh, no, Monsieur Gudin,” replied the coachman. “I’m carrying next to

nothing.”

The priest watched the faces of the patriot and Coupiau as the latter

made this answer, and both were imperturbable.

“So much the better for you,” remarked the patriot. “I can now take

measures to save my property in case of danger.”

Such despotic assumption nettled Coupiau, who answered gruffly: “I am

the master of my own carriage, and so long as I drive you--”

“Are you a patriot, or are you a Chouan?” said the other, sharply

interrupting him.

“Neither the one nor the other,” replied Coupiau. “I’m a postilion, and,

what is more, a Breton,--consequently, I fear neither Blues nor nobles.”

“Noble thieves!” cried the patriot, ironically.

“They only take back what was stolen from them,” said the rector,

vehemently.

The two men looked at each other in the whites of their eyes, if we

may use a phrase so colloquial. Sitting back in the vehicle was a third

traveller who took no part in the discussion, and preserved a deep

silence. The driver and the patriot and even Gudin paid no attention

to this mute individual; he was, in truth, one of those uncomfortable,

unsocial travellers who are found sometimes in a stage-coach, like a

patient calf that is being carried, bound, to the nearest market. Such

travellers begin by filling their legal space, and end by sleeping,

without the smallest respect for their fellow-beings, on a neighbor’s

shoulder. The patriot, Gudin, and the driver had let him alone, thinking

him asleep, after discovering that it was useless to talk to a man whose

stolid face betrayed an existence spent in measuring yards of linen, and

an intellect employed in selling them at a good percentage above cost.

This fat little man, doubled-up in his corner, opened his porcelain-blue

eyes every now and then, and looked at each speaker with a sort of

terror. He appeared to be afraid of his fellow-travellers and to care

very little about the Chouans. When he looked at the driver, however,

they seemed to be a pair of free-masons. Just then the first volley

of musketry was heard on La Pelerine. Coupiau, frightened, stopped the

coach.

“Oh! oh!” said the priest, as if he had some means of judging, “it is a

serious engagement; there are many men.”

“The trouble for us, Monsieur Gudin,” cried Coupiau, “is to know which

side will win.”

The faces of all became unanimously anxious.

“Let us put up the coach at that inn which I see over there,” said the

patriot; “we can hide it till we know the result of the fight.”

The advice seemed so good that Coupiau followed it. The patriot helped

him to conceal the coach behind a wood-pile; the abbe seized the

occasion to pull Coupiau aside and say to him, in a low voice: “Has he

really any money?”

“Hey, Monsieur Gudin, if it gets into the pockets of your Reverence,

they won’t be weighed down with it.”

When the Blues marched by, after the encounter on La Pelerine, they were

in such haste to reach Ernee that they passed the little inn without

halting. At the sound of their hasty march, Gudin and the innkeeper,

stirred by curiosity, went to the gate of the courtyard to watch them.

Suddenly, the fat ecclesiastic rushed to a soldier who was lagging in

the rear.

“Gudin!” he cried, “you wrong-headed fellow, have you joined the Blues?

My lad, you are surely not in earnest?”

“Yes, uncle,” answered the corporal. “I’ve sworn to defend France.”

“Unhappy boy! you’ll lose your soul,” said the uncle, trying to rouse

his nephew to the religious sentiments which are so powerful in the

Breton breast.

“Uncle,” said the young man, “if the king had placed himself at the head

of his armies, I don’t say but what--”

“Fool! who is talking to you about the king? Does your republic give

abbeys? No, it has upset everything. How do you expect to get on in

life? Stay with us; sooner or later we shall triumph and you’ll be

counsellor to some parliament.”

“Parliaments!” said young Gudin, in a mocking tone. “Good-bye, uncle.”

“You sha’n’t have a penny at my death,” cried his uncle, in a rage.

“I’ll disinherit you.”

“Thank you, uncle,” said the Republican, as they parted.

The fumes of the cider which the patriot copiously bestowed on Coupiau

during the passage of the little troop had somewhat dimmed the driver’s

perceptions, but he roused himself joyously when the innkeeper, having

questioned the soldiers, came back to the inn and announced that the

Blues were victorious. He at once brought out the coach and before long

it was wending its way across the valley.

When the Blues reached an acclivity on the road from which the plateau

of La Pelerine could again be seen in the distance, Hulot turned

round to discover if the Chouans were still occupying it, and the sun,

glinting on the muzzles of the guns, showed them to him, each like a

dazzling spot. Giving a last glance to the valley of La Pelerine before

turning into that of Ernee, he thought he saw Coupiau’s vehicle on the

road he had just traversed.

“Isn’t that the Mayenne coach?” he said to his two officers.

They looked at the venerable turgotine, and easily recognized it.

“But,” said Hulot, “how did we fail to meet it?”

Merle and Gerard looked at each other in silence.

“Another enigma!” cried the commandant. “But I begin to see the meaning

of it all.”

At the same moment Marche-a-Terre, who also knew the turgotine, called

his comrades’ attention to it, and the general shout of joy which they

sent up roused the young lady from her reflections. She advanced a

little distance and saw the coach, which was beginning the ascent of

La Pelerine with fatal rapidity. The luckless vehicle soon reached the

plateau. The Chouans, who had meantime hidden themselves, swooped on

their prey with hungry celerity. The silent traveller slipped to the

floor of the carriage, bundling himself up into the semblance of a bale.

“Well done!” cried Coupiau from his wooden perch, pointing to the man in

the goatskin; “you must have scented this patriot who has lots of gold

in his pouch--”

The Chouans greeted these words with roars of laughter, crying out:

“Pille-Miche! hey, Pille-Miche! Pille-Miche!”

Amid the laughter, to which Pille-Miche responded like an echo, Coupiau

came down from his seat quite crestfallen. When the famous Cibot,

otherwise called Pille-Miche, helped his neighbor to get out of the

coach, a respectful murmur was heard among the Chouans.

“It is the Abbe Gudin!” cried several voices. At this respected name

every hat was off, and the men knelt down before the priest as they

asked his blessing, which he gave solemnly.

“Pille-Miche here could trick Saint Peter and steal the keys of

Paradise,” said the rector, slapping that worthy on the shoulder. “If it

hadn’t been for him, the Blues would have intercepted us.”

Then, noticing the lady, the abbe went to speak to her apart.

Marche-a-Terre, who had meantime briskly opened the boot of the

cabriolet, held up to his comrades, with savage joy, a bag, the shape of

which betrayed its contents to be rolls of coin. It did not take long

to divide the booty. Each Chouan received his share, so carefully

apportioned that the division was made without the slightest dispute.

Then Marche-a-Terre went to the lady and the priest, and offered them

each about six thousand francs.

“Can I conscientiously accept this money, Monsieur Gudin?” said the

lady, feeling a need of justification.

“Why not, madame? In former days the Church approved of the confiscation

of the property of Protestants, and there’s far more reason for

confiscating that of these revolutionists, who deny God, destroy

chapels, and persecute religion.”

The abbe then joined example to precept by accepting, without the

slightest scruple, the novel sort of tithe which Marche-a-Terre offered

to him. “Besides,” he added, “I can now devote all I possess to the

service of God and the king; for my nephew has joined the Blues, and I

disinherit him.”

Coupiau was bemoaning himself and declaring that he was ruined.

“Join us,” said Marche-a-Terre, “and you shall have your share.”

“They’ll say I let the coach be robbed on purpose if I return without

signs of violence.”

“Oh, is that all?” exclaimed Marche-a-Terre.

He gave a signal and a shower of bullets riddled the turgotine. At this

unexpected volley the old vehicle gave forth such a lamentable cry

that the Chouans, superstitious by nature, recoiled in terror; but

Marche-a-Terre caught sight of the pallid face of the silent traveller

rising from the floor of the coach.

“You’ve got another fowl in your coop,” he said in a low voice to

Coupiau.

“Yes,” said the driver; “but I make it a condition of my joining you

that I be allowed to take that worthy man safe and sound to Fougeres.

I’m pledged to it in the name of Saint Anne of Auray.”

“Who is he?” asked Pille-Miche.

“That I can’t tell you,” replied Coupiau.

“Let him alone!” said Marche-a-Terre, shoving Pille-Miche with his

elbow; “he has vowed by Saint Anne of Auray, and he must keep his word.”

“Very good,” said Pille-Miche, addressing Coupiau; “but mind you don’t

go down the mountain too fast; we shall overtake you,--a good reason

why; I want to see the cut of your traveller, and give him his

passport.”

Just then the gallop of a horse coming rapidly up the slopes of La

Pelerine was heard, and the young chief presently reappeared. The lady

hastened to conceal the bag of plunder which she held in her hand.

“You can keep that money without any scruple,” said the young man,

touching the arm which the lady had put behind her. “Here is a letter

for you which I have just found among mine which were waiting for me at

La Vivetiere; it is from your mother.” Then, looking at the Chouans who

were disappearing into the woods, and at the turgotine which was now on

its way to the valley of Couesnon, he added: “After all my haste I see I

am too late. God grant I am deceived in my suspicions!”

“It was my poor mother’s money!” cried the lady, after opening her

letter, the first lines of which drew forth her exclamation.

A smothered laugh came from the woods, and the young man himself

could not help smiling as he saw the lady holding in her hand the bag

containing her share in the pillage of her own money. She herself began

to laugh.

“Well, well, marquis, God be praised! this time, at least, you can’t

blame me,” she said, smiling.

“Levity in everything! even your remorse!” said the young man.

She colored and looked at the marquis with so genuine a contrition that

he was softened. The abbe politely returned to her, with an equivocal

manner, the sum he had received; then he followed the young leader who

took the by-way through which he had come. Before following them the

lady made a sign to Marche-a-Terre, who came to her.

“Advance towards Mortagne,” she said to him in a low voice. “I know that

the Blues are constantly sending large sums of money in coin to Alencon

to pay for their supplies of war. If I allow you and your comrades to

keep what you captured to-day it is only on condition that you repay it

later. But be careful that the Gars knows nothing of the object of the

expedition; he would certainly oppose it; in case of ill-luck, I will

pacify him.”

“Madame,” said the marquis, after she had rejoined him and had mounted

his horse _en croupe_, giving her own to the abbe, “my friends in Paris

write me to be very careful of what we do; the Republic, they say, is

preparing to fight us with spies and treachery.”

“It wouldn’t be a bad plan,” she replied; “they have clever ideas, those

fellows. I could take part in that sort of war and find foes.”

“I don’t doubt it!” cried the marquis. “Pichegru advises me to be

cautious and watchful in my friendships and relations of every kind.

The Republic does me the honor to think me more dangerous than all the

Vendeans put together, and counts on certain of my weaknesses to lay

hands upon me.”

“Surely you will not distrust me?” she said, striking his heart with the

hand by which she held to him.

“Are you a traitor, madame?” he said, bending towards her his forehead,

which she kissed.

“In that case,” said the abbe, referring to the news, “Fouche’s police

will be more dangerous for us than their battalions of recruits and

counter-Chouans.”

“Yes, true enough, father,” replied the marquis.

“Ah! ah!” cried the lady. “Fouche means to send women against you, does

he? I shall be ready for them,” she added in a deeper tone of voice and

after a slight pause.

* * * * *

At a distance of three or four gunshots from the plateau, now abandoned,

a little scene was taking place which was not uncommon in those days

on the high-roads. After leaving the little village of La Pelerine,

Pille-Miche and Marche-a-Terre again stopped the turgotine at a dip in

the road. Coupiau got off his seat after making a faint resistance. The

silent traveller, extracted from his hiding place by the two Chouans,

found himself on his knees in a furze bush.

“Who are you?” asked Marche-a-Terre in a threatening voice.

The traveller kept silence until Pille-Miche put the question again and

enforced it with the butt end of his gun.

“I am Jacques Pinaud,” he replied, with a glance at Coupiau; “a poor

linen-draper.”

Coupiau made a sign in the negative, not considering it an infraction

of his promise to Saint Anne. The sign enlightened Pille-Miche, who

took aim at the luckless traveller, while Marche-a-Terre laid before him

categorically a terrible ultimatum.

“You are too fat to be poor. If you make me ask you your name again,

here’s my friend Pille-Miche, who will obtain the gratitude and

good-will of your heirs in a second. Who are you?” he added, after a

pause.

“I am d’Orgemont, of Fougeres.”

“Ah! ah!” cried the two Chouans.

“I didn’t tell your name, Monsieur d’Orgemont,” said Coupiau. “The Holy

Virgin is my witness that I did my best to protect you.”

“Inasmuch as you are Monsieur d’Orgemont, of Fougeres,” said

Marche-a-Terre, with an air of ironical respect, “we shall let you go in

peace. Only, as you are neither a good Chouan nor a true Blue (thought

it was you who bought the property of the Abbey de Juvigny), you

will pay us three hundred crowns of six francs each for your ransom.

Neutrality is worth that, at least.”

“Three hundred crowns of six francs each!” chorussed the luckless

banker, Pille-Miche, and Coupiau, in three different tones.

“Alas, my good friend,” continued d’Orgemont, “I’m a ruined man. The

last forced loan of that devilish Republic for a hundred millions sucked

me dry, taxed as I was already.”

“How much did your Republic get out of you?”

“A thousand crowns, my dear man,” replied the banker, with a piteous

air, hoping for a reduction.

“If your Republic gets forced loans out of you for such big sums as that

you must see that you would do better with us; our government would cost

you less. Three hundred crowns, do you call that dear for your skin?”

“Where am I to get them?”

“Out of your strong-box,” said Pille-Miche; “and mind that the money is

forthcoming, or we’ll singe you still.”

“How am I to pay it to you?” asked d’Orgemont.

“Your country-house at Fougeres is not far from Gibarry’s farm where my

cousin Galope-Chopine, otherwise called Cibot, lives. You can pay the

money to him,” said Pille-Miche.

“That’s not business-like,” said d’Orgemont.

“What do we care for that?” said Marche-a-Terre. “But mind you remember

that if that money is not paid to Galope-Chopine within two weeks we

shall pay you a little visit which will cure your gout. As for

you, Coupiau,” added Marche-a-Terre, “your name in future is to be

Mene-a-Bien.”

So saying, the two Chouans departed. The traveller returned to the

vehicle, which, thanks to Coupiau’s whip, now made rapid progress to

Fougeres.

“If you’d only been armed,” said Coupiau, “we might have made some

defence.”

“Idiot!” cried d’Orgemont, pointing to his heavy shoes. “I have ten

thousand francs in those soles; do you think I would be such a fool as

to fight with that sum about me?”

Mene-a-Bien scratched his ear and looked behind him, but his new

comrades were out of sight.

Hulot and his command stopped at Ernee long enough to place the wounded

in the hospital of the little town, and then, without further hindrance,

they reached Mayenne. There the commandant cleared up his doubts as

to the action of the Chouans, for on the following day the news of the

pillage of the turgotine was received.

A few days later the government despatched to Mayenne so strong a force

of “patriotic conscripts,” that Hulot was able to fill the ranks of his

brigade. Disquieting rumors began to circulate about the insurrection. A

rising had taken place at all the points where, during the late war, the

Chouans and Bretons had made their chief centres of insurrection. The

little town of Saint-James, between Pontorson and Fougeres was occupied

by them, apparently for the purpose of making it for the time being a

headquarters of operations and supplies. From there they were able to

communicate with Normandy and the Morbihan without risk. Their subaltern

leaders roamed the three provinces, roused all the partisans of

monarchy, and gave consistence and unity to their plans. These

proceedings coincided with what was going on in La Vendee, where the

same intrigues, under the influence of four famous leaders (the Abbe

Vernal, the Comte de Fontaine, De Chatillon, and Suzannet), were

agitating the country. The Chevalier de Valois, the Marquis d’Esgrignon,

and the Troisvilles were, it was said, corresponding with these leaders

in the department of the Orne. The chief of the great plan of operations

which was thus developing slowly but in formidable proportions was

really “the Gars,”--a name given by the Chouans to the Marquis de

Montauran on his arrival from England. The information sent to Hulot by

the War department proved correct in all particulars. The marquis

gained after a time sufficient ascendancy over the Chouans to make them

understand the true object of the war, and to persuade them that the

excesses of which they were guilty brought disgrace upon the cause they

had adopted. The daring nature, the nerve, coolness, and capacity

of this young nobleman awakened the hopes of all the enemies of the

Republic, and suited so thoroughly the grave and even solemn enthusiasm

of those regions that even the least zealous partisans of the king

did their part in preparing a decisive blow in behalf of the defeated

monarchy.

Hulot received no answer to the questions and the frequent reports which

he addressed to the government in Paris.

But the news of the almost magical return of General Bonaparte and the

events of the 18th Brumaire were soon current in the air. The military

commanders of the West understood then the silence of the ministers.

Nevertheless, they were only the more impatient to be released from

the responsibility that weighed upon them; and they were in every way

desirous of knowing what measures the new government was likely to take.

When it was known to these soldiers that General Bonaparte was appointed

First Consul of the Republic their joy was great; they saw, for the

first time, one of their own profession called to the management of the

nation. France, which had made an idol of this young hero, quivered with

hope. The vigor and energy of the nation revived. Paris, weary of its

long gloom, gave itself up to fetes and pleasures of which it had been

so long deprived. The first acts of the Consulate did not diminish any

hopes, and Liberty felt no alarm. The First Consul issued a proclamation

to the inhabitants of the West. The eloquent allocutions addressed to

the masses which Bonaparte had, as it were, invented, produced effects

in those days of patriotism and miracle that were absolutely startling.

His voice echoed through the world like the voice of a prophet, for none

of his proclamations had, as yet, been belied by defeat.