Louise Imogen Guiney

“ No spectator of the little drama enacted within the Revolution can forget how dominant, distinct, unrepeated, this artful image of Henri burns itself in upon the memory. To wish him age and a competency were superstition. Mark how, even in her hasty finishing touches, Nature did not bungle with him. She rounds out her white ideal. She leaves us convinced that living a span, and dying in the hurly-burly, he best fulfilled himself. ”

“ It is not cold, commonplace war, waged for ambition and policy, nor for commercial advantage; it is a war deep-rooted in the soil and in the conscience of man; a war all for family and fatherland, in the antique impassioned way; a Homeric war, inspiring dread and admiration, pity and love.... Everything in it calls for the palette and the lyre.”—A Republican officer, quoted by Abbé Deniau, Histoire de la Guerre de la Vendée. ”

“ At the bridge of La Flèche, Henri, fording the stream with a small picked body of horsemen, overcame the garrison by an adroit move,93 and there was a flicker of great hope. But the peasants who began the war were weary, weary. Too truly the tide of disaster had set in.
In the city of Mans, at the end of the only road open, were food, warmth, and rest. The exiles ate, drank, and slept; slept, drank, and ate again. It seemed as if nothing could rouse them more. Marceau, Müller, Tilly, and Westermann’s light cavalry were closing on them. ”

“ The Marigny, who bore to his imminent misfortune the surname of an active Royalist, was so charmed with the spirited behavior of Richard Duplessis, made captive at the siege of Angers, that he sent him back under escort to his own lines. La Rochejaquelein, never to be outdone in a handsome service, instantly freed two dragoons, with their arms, thanking him, and offering him, in the future, an exchange of any two prisoners for his one. “This was the only Republican general,” adds Madame de Lescure, “who had been wont to show us any humanity: he was killed that very day.” ”

“ The central event of this period was the five days’ victory at Saumur. By Cathelineau’s order a Te Deum was sung in the church, the captured flags, rent with balls and black with smoke and blood, dipping to the chancel floor at every sound of the Holy Name. Such a spectacle put them all in an exalted mood. Henri was found at a window, meekly musing over their fortunes: he, the deliverer, who placed elsewhere the primal credit of the deliverance. The garrison here was left to his charge, much to his disrelish. “They make a veteran of me!” ”

“ Their Monsieur Henri had a formula borrowed unconsciously from the old war-cry of Gaston de Foix: “He who loves me follows me!” When he flashed down the front on his wonderful white horse, which the cheering peasants had christened the Fallowdeer, thinking nothing else could be so wild, so delicate, so amazingly41 swift, parish after parish rallied to him in a little cloud. The fashion of gathering in clans and bands, primitive as it was, had its advantages. Every one stood, in action, next another of his own estate or blood; and La Vendée was notoriously careful of its wounded and slain. ”

“ But they left the ranks when they chose; after a success, rather than after a defeat, they would scatter to their homes like so much thistle-down in the air, and it was hopeless to try to follow up an advantage gained. It was when difficulties were suspended that, in the wisdom of their villageous heads, they hurried off, one to his wife, and one to his farm, and one to his merchandise. No general was baffled and angered oftener by this freak than Henri. The valor of the Vendeans was incomparable, though one might borrow a musical metaphor and add that it swerved too easily from pitch. ”

“ But in La Vendée they had a breed of misgiving hearts. Marigny, indeed, mild and brotherly towards his own, was as a demon towards his foes; Charette, the very Charette who had put a stop to the cruelties of Souchu at the beginning,122 was, with D’Elbée, the first to sanction reprisals. But Cathelineau, Bonchamp, Lescure, La Rochejaquelein and priests innumerable stood then, and stand always, ranged on the side of Christ-like charity.
To any student of the great Revolution not much need be said of the unequal exchange of grim attentions. ”

“ It is small wonder that a species of folk-lore, in his own neighborhood, has, in three generations, grown up around him, which makes it a difficult thing to disentangle what is true of him from what might as well be true: for the French are not given, even in their gossip, to incongruities. Every rustic, who, having served under Henri, lived to startle a more prosaic world with his reminiscences, had anecdotes to tell of him really vital and precious ”

“ It is always the character of the man which vitalizes the event; what did or did not happen is, ultimately, of minor importance beside the spectacle of a strong soul. A background may be blurred for the sake of a single figure. I tried, therefore, to paint a portrait, willing to abide by the hard saying of Northcote: “If a portrait have force, it will do for history.” ”

“ They rise often, and repeat one another, preaching affirmation, and inclining us to allow that what Greece and Japan have had, England has, Alaska and the Congo shall have. Stress must be laid upon heroes: they are the universal premise. Like Emerson’s stars, they “light the world with their admonishing smile;” they warn us, if we will not adore, at least not to deny that they shine forever.
Among Henri de La Rochejacquelein’s peers there were those who would have been men of weight and of mark in any career. ”

“ It is difficult to account for the halo which gathers about such heads, and stays, to make of a sometime aimless intelligence a vision of extreme force and charm to the youth of his own land. Nor ought we try to account for it. Henri de La Rochejacquelein is one with whom statistics and theories have distant dealings. He is a fond incongruity, a compliment to human nature almost as great as it can bear. ”

“ The nonsense of her being Henri’s sweetheart probably owed its origin to the same singular Republican inventiveness which, long after the fight of Vrine which laid Jeanne Robin low, continued to call her Jeanne de Lescure and sister of her commander, who might have wished any sister of his, did such exist, to be as pure and as brave.
There are instances, in the long dealings of eternity with time, when a man is given whose life is an imagination not to be matched in the arts ”

“ The farther north the army strayed the more irksome became his position, for his steadfast conviction was against the expediency of trying to reach Granville at all. When, after the affair of Château-Gontier, a unique opportunity arose to retrace the march and re-establish headquarters in the Bocage, it went hard indeed with Henri that none would listen to him. Again, at Laval, he would have pushed through Kléber’s disorganized forces, towards the safe though smoking labyrinths at home; but, misled by some vague encouraging rumor, the majority clamored to push on. ”

“ Exhausted, and with a heart like lead within him, the commander-in-chief spurred to the side of the widowed Marchioness of Lescure, who, seated on horseback, hung at the outskirts of the forces. (Madame de Bonchamp, under the same affectionate protection of La Rochejaquelein and D’Autichamp, had been ordered, with her two little ones, to withdraw) . She took his hand solemnly. “I thought you were dead, Henri,” she sighed—and her sequence of speech was worthy both of him and of her, “for we are beaten.” ”

“ It proved to be an ugly and dangerous wound; it deprived him, during the month of September, of his share of three signal victories won by “the devils in sabots” under Bonchamp at Torfou, Montaigu, and Saint Fulgent. Not long after, before Laval, his arm limp and swollen in a sling, Henri was attacked on a lonely road by a powerful foot-soldier. He seized the fellow by the collar with his left hand, and so managed his horse with his legs that his struggling assailant was unable to draw upon him. A dozen Vendeans ran up, eager to kill the man who menaced their general. ”

“ He must have apprehended, even at the still college where, long after, the radical Republican, Père Lacordaire, set his bust to smile down upon the bent heads of the study hall, what strange transatlantic winds were already blowing over France. He looked forward always to a campaign, to spurs and sabres, and some mighty Jericho to assail. Courage he had as a birthright; the splendid animal nonchalance5 in face of danger, and, later, in a measure almost as ample, the fortitude of soul which “endures and is patient.” ”

“ As we get away from the grim ethics of history the æsthetics of it take shape and color, and give us an abstract pleasure from the centres of thought and pain. There is an unspeakable attractiveness, despite all, in the image of these turbulent years—an almost Arabian beguilement, as of something which never need be true. ”

“ Never were men more dependent on the nerve and sagacity of their leaders. A disabled officer dared not budge, or the crazy columns would give way. Lescure, unhorsed at Saumur, would have kept the troops ignorant of his hurt had not the boy Beauvolliers thrown himself upon him with a loud cry of lamentation and started a panic in the ranks. Charette being wounded long after at Dufour, his regiments dispersed like sheep. When Cathelineau of the shining brow fell in sight of his army, there was instant rout. ”

“ Bonchamp, on whose persuasion the fatal move was undertaken, on whose prudence the others relied, known to be dying; Lescure, who had been wounded at La Tremblaye in the midst of his squadrons, dying also; the bewildered, groaning multitude77 dropping, like the pallid passengers of the Styx, into the river-boats, and struggling from island to island;—what a spectacle! The great tears of anger and sorrow stood thick in Henri’s eyes. When a march could be formed, the foot-soldiery, with the cannon, were placed at the head, and the cavalry and picked men brought up the rear. ”

“ And Madame de La Rochejaquelein recalled, for the amusement of another generation, her own amusement at Bressuire in 1793,121 when the rueful masters of the situation complained to her that they had no money to buy tobacco, it never having occurred to them to seize it in the shops! It is clear that persons who so scrupled to appropriate the goods the gods provided, were not destined easily to become experts in wanton slaughter, which relieved no need of their honest stomachs. ”

“ Desolation yet more complete, a desolation known to wolves and carrion-crows, was to fall upon La Vendée.99 After twenty-four hours, traversing several parishes and meeting no sign of life, Henri and his companions found a lately-deserted barn, and threw themselves on the straw. The farmer stole in from the thicket to tell them that the Blues were on the trail. “We may be murdered, but we must sleep,” was the response. They were incapable of resistance. The Blues, probably sent out from Chollet by the tireless Poché-Durocher, came promptly. ”

“ D’Elbée, Bonchamp, Lescure, La Rochejaquelein, Charette, and many of the minor officers, were drawn from their very firesides, and urged into service. “You are no braver than we, but you know better how to manage,” so the frank fellows explained it to the lords. The priests, also, banished from their sad parishes for refusing the irregular oaths proposed by the Assembly, and cast adrift like the hill-side friars of Ireland, long held aloof from sanctioning the redress of arms. Nowhere, at any time, did they march nor combat with their flocks. ”

“ He is less flesh and blood than a magnificent quibble for all the philosophies of the cold schools. He represents, in the economy of things, the waste which is thrift, the daring which is prudence, the folly which is wisdom ineffable. ”

“ Cathelineau, with his thirty-six kinsmen, Bonchamp and Lescure, gloriously perished while yet hope was high; D’Elbée, in a sick-chair in his own garden, laden with abuse, and bearing himself gallantly, was shot at Noirmoutiers; Mondyon and other faithful youths “died into life” at Angers, bound in couples like dogs; Stofflet paid the wages of his exceeding loyalty in the same rocky town; Bernard de Marigny was cut off in his prime by the acquiescence of Stofflet, who was under an evil influence, and by the orders of Charette, to the bitter sorrow, afterwards, of the former ”

“ Charles-Melchior Artus, Marquis of Bonchamp, was enrolled at the solemn inauguration of the war. He had seen service in India, and was in his early prime: a scholar, an accomplished tactician, and a man greatly beloved, whose name is yet in benediction. La Ville-Baugé, placed by force among the Blues (so called from the color of their35 coats, which under the kings had been white) , abandoned them, and joined the insurgents at Thouars. He was a youth of marked steadiness and patience, dear to Lescure and to Henri. ”

“ What people in the modern world so sweetly rival the holy race of whom it is said in the Pharsalia that they hurried on their own extermination, and, brimming with life, spilled it as a libation to the gods? ”

“ But they were dedicated souls; they bore themselves gently, gayly, without boast or spite; and they long continued to honor the obligations laid on them by the purest cause that ever drew sword. Their blows were struck for the independence of their religion, and only incidentally for the monarchy then identified with it. From the chivalrous conversation between the Marquis of Lescure27 and General Quétineau, then his prisoner, we learn that even Lescure would have rushed to the common defence had the Austrian made good his threat to pollute the soil of France. ”