Quiberon.
But indeed do not these long-flowing hair-queues of a _Jeunesse
Dorée_ in semi-military costume betoken, unconsciously, another
still more important tendency? The Republic, abhorrent of her
Guillotine, loves her Army.
And with cause. For, surely, if good fighting be a kind of
honour, as it is, in its season; and be with the vulgar of men,
even the chief kind of honour, then here is good fighting, in
good season, if there ever was. These Sons of the Republic, they
rose, in mad wrath, to deliver her from Slavery and Cimmeria. And
have they not done it? Through Maritime Alps, through gorges of
Pyrenees, through Low Countries, Northward along the
Rhine-valley, far is Cimmeria hurled back from the sacred
Motherland. Fierce as fire, they have carried her Tricolor over
the faces of all her enemies;—over scarped heights, over
cannon-batteries; down, as with the Vengeur, into the dead deep
sea. She has “Eleven hundred thousand fighters on foot,” this
Republic: “At one particular moment she had,” or supposed she
had, “seventeen hundred thousand.”[764] Like a ring of lightning,
they, volleying and _ça-ira_-ing, begirdle her from shore to
shore. Cimmerian Coalition of Despots recoils; smitten with
astonishment, and strange pangs.
Such a fire is in these Gaelic Republican men; high-blazing;
which no Coalition can withstand! Not scutcheons, with four
degrees of nobility; but _ci-devant_ Sergeants, who have had to
clutch Generalship out of the cannon’s throat, a Pichegru, a
Jourdan, a Hoche, lead them on. They have bread, they have iron;
“with bread and iron you can get to China.”—See Pichegru’s
soldiers, this hard winter, in their looped and windowed
destitution, in their “straw-rope shoes and cloaks of bass-mat,”
how they overrun Holland, like a demon-host, the ice having
bridged all waters; and rush shouting from victory to victory!
Ships in the Texel are taken by huzzars on horseback: fled is
York; fled is the Stadtholder, glad to escape to England, and
leave Holland to fraternise.[765] Such a Gaelic fire, we say,
blazes in this People, like the conflagration of grass and
dry-jungle; which no mortal can withstand—for the moment.
And even so it will blaze and run, scorching all things; and,
from Cadiz to Archangel, mad Sansculottism, drilled now into
Soldiership, led on by some “armed Soldier of Democracy” (say,
that Monosyllabic Artillery-Officer), will set its foot cruelly
on the necks of its enemies; and its shouting and their shrieking
shall fill the world!—Rash Coalised Kings, such a fire have ye
kindled; yourselves fireless, _your_ fighters animated only by
drill-serjeants, messroom moralities, and the drummer’s cat!
However, it is begun, and will not end: not for a matter of
twenty years. So long, this Gaelic fire, through its successive
changes of colour and character, will blaze over the face of
Europe, and afflict the scorch all men:—till it provoke all men;
till it kindle another kind of fire, the Teutonic kind, namely;
and be swallowed up, so to speak, in a day! For there is a fire
comparable to the burning of dry-jungle and grass; most sudden,
high-blazing: and another fire which we liken to the burning of
coal, or even of anthracite coal; difficult to kindle, but then
which nothing will put out. The ready Gaelic fire, we can remark
further, and remark not in Pichegrus only, but in innumerable
Voltaires, Racines, Laplaces, no less; for a man, whether he
fight, or sing, or think, will remain the same unity of a man,—is
admirable for roasting eggs, in every conceivable sense. The
Teutonic anthracite again, as we see in Luthers, Leibnitzes,
Shakespeares, is preferable for smelting metals. How happy is our
Europe that has both kinds!—
But be this as it may, the Republic is clearly triumphing. In the
spring of the year Mentz Town again sees itself besieged; will
again change master: did not Merlin the Thionviller, “with wild
beard and look,” say it was not for the last time they saw him
there? The Elector of Mentz circulates among his brother
Potentates this pertinent query, Were it not advisable to treat
of Peace? Yes! answers many an Elector from the bottom of his
heart. But, on the other hand, Austria hesitates; finally
refuses, being subsidied by Pitt. As to Pitt, whoever hesitate,
he, suspending his Habeas-corpus, suspending his Cash-payments,
stands inflexible,—spite of foreign reverses; spite of domestic
obstacles, of Scotch National Conventions and English Friends of
the People, whom he is obliged to arraign, to hang, or even to
see acquitted with jubilee: a lean inflexible man. The Majesty of
Spain, as we predicted, makes Peace; also the Majesty of Prussia:
and there is a Treaty of Bâle.[766] Treaty with black Anarchists
and Regicides! Alas, what help? You cannot hang this Anarchy; it
is like to hang you: you must needs treat with it.
Likewise, General Hoche has even succeeded in pacificating La
Vendée. Rogue Rossignol and his “Infernal Columns” have vanished:
by firmness and justice, by sagacity and industry, General Hoche
has done it. Taking “Movable Columns,” not infernal; girdling-in
the Country; pardoning the submissive, cutting down the
resistive, limb after limb of the Revolt is brought under. La
Rochejacquelin, last of our Nobles, fell in battle; Stofflet
himself makes terms; Georges-Cadoudal is back to Brittany, among
his Chouans: the frightful gangrene of La Vendée seems veritably
extirpated. It has cost, as they reckon in round numbers, the
lives of a Hundred Thousand fellow-mortals; with noyadings,
conflagratings by infernal column, which defy arithmetic. This is
the La Vendée War.[767]
Nay in few months, it does burst up once more, but once
only:—blown upon by Pitt, by our Ci-devant Puisaye of Calvados,
and others. In the month of July 1795, English Ships will ride in
Quiberon roads. There will be debarkation of chivalrous
Ci-devants, of volunteer Prisoners-of-war—eager to desert; of
fire-arms, Proclamations, clothes-chests, Royalists and specie.
Whereupon also, on the Republican side, there will be rapid
stand-to-arms; with ambuscade marchings by Quiberon beach, at
midnight; storming of Fort Penthievre; war-thunder mingling with
the roar of the nightly main; and such a morning light as has
seldom dawned; debarkation hurled back into its boats, or into
the devouring billows, with wreck and wail;—in one word, a
Ci-devant Puisaye as totally ineffectual here as he was in
Calvados, when he rode from Vernon Castle without boots.[768]
Again, therefore, it has cost the lives of many a brave man.
Among whom the whole world laments the brave Son of Sombreuil.
Ill-fated family! The father and younger son went to the
guillotine; the heroic daughter languishes, reduced to want,
hides her woes from History: the elder son perishes here; shot by
military tribunal as an Emigrant; Hoche himself cannot save him.
If all wars, civil and other, are misunderstandings, what a thing
must right-understanding be!