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T
HE autumn of 1793, when the red flag was floating at the altar of the Fatherland, when the tombs at Saint Denis were rifled of their kingly dust, and some hearts were yet aching for the fallen Gironde,—this memorable autumn was marked in the west by thechocon the heights about Chollet, and the tragedy of the passage of the Loire. During the first attack D’Elbée and Lescure were borne helpless from the field. The ensuing night a council of war was held, Stofflet and Henri begging for leave to defend the town, and Bonchamp persistently pleading for an expedition across the river, in the hope of obtaining succorand new strength from the Bretons, and of opening a northern seaport to the expected co-operation of England. While the debate was yet seething, the second clash came, and Bonchamp was struck down. It was a terrific battle: forty thousand peasants against forty-five thousand tried and trained soldiers of the line. “They fought like tigers,” brave Kléber wrote to the Convention, “but our lions beat them.” Before daybreak on the seventeenth of October, without any order of advance, and against the impassioned efforts of Henri and other generals, panic set in, and the air was rent with a league of cries. Then began the mad rush for the Loire, and an exodus comparable to nothing human but that of the Tartar tribes. The manœuvre, suggested but a little while before as a safeguard, was adopted in complete despair, and the retreat deteriorated into a migration. Countless families emptiedthemselves into the rebel camp; a horde of poor creatures, including the entire population of Chollet and the near boroughs, flew to the common centre; women, babes, the aged, the sick, the fearful, hung darkening over the army, like summer insects over a pool. Once it had started, nothing could hold back the onward pressure of such numbers. Four thousand men were detached under Talmont and sent to clear the banks at Saint Florent. A whole people, their homes burning behind them, thrown upon pauperism, inevitable separation, and the rigors of the coming winter, the Republican hosts advancing from all sides to exterminate them; 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 multitudedropping, 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. Between them were the fifty thousand drags, stumbling along in a lunacy of terror, and in a muffled roar bewailing their bitter fate, and calling on Heaven for mercy. The habit of their enemies was invariably to attack the van or the rear:—a mistake which, more than anything else, prorogued the inevitable end.
Cathelineau, the first, and, next to Charette, the ablest commander-in-chief of the Vendeans, having been mortally wounded before the gates of Nantes, D’Elbée, by his skilful policy at Châtillon, had himself appointed to the succession.It was the work of an obstinate cabal; Bonchamp, by every claim, deserved the election. But after the passage of the Loire, D’Elbée, in the confusion, was not to be found. Lescure, besought, in his bed, to take matters into his own hands, immediately proposed that the officer best-beloved by all divisions of the army, and best-known to them, Henri de La Rochejaquelein, should be nominated to the vacant generalship. “As for me, should I recover,” added Lescure, “you know I cannot quarrel with Henri. I shall be his aide-de-camp.” The little senate met at Laval. Henri, never willing to push himself forward, dissented hotly. As advocate against his own claims, he made his longest speech. He represented that he had neither age nor experience, that he was merely a fighter, that he had too little practical wisdom, that he was untenacious of his opinions, that he shouldnever learn how to silence those who opposed him: in vain. After the ensuing vote he was found hidden in a corner, and cried like the child he was, on Lescure’s breast, for the unsought honor thrust upon him. He was to have no further guardianship and support from that dearest of his friends. On the road between Ernée and Fougères Lescure died, not before a mighty pang was added to his passing by an oral account of the execution of the Queen. In the room where his body lay Henri said to his widow, “Could my life restore him to you, oh, you might take it!”
The Royalists nearly sank under this second calamity, for Bonchamp, too, had but lately died, on the eighteenth of October. (“The news of these two,” cried lively Barrère in the Convention, “is better than any victory!”) His remains, which, like Lescure’s, were carried for a brief time under the colors, were temporarilyburied at Varades. His only son, Hermenée, became Henri’s special care. In all his trouble and preoccupation he was pathetically kind to the child, and had him sleep with him every night. By day Hermenée rode with Henri on the same saddle, or trotted in the rear-guard, beating his toy-drum, haranguing the soldiers with pretty ardor, and remembering each lovingly by name. The poor little fellow, weakened by his hardships, succumbed to the small-pox, in his mother’s arms, at Saint Herbelon, before the year was over.
The wretched throng were exiled, as completely as they would have been had they crossed the Pyrenees. Seven months of intense activity, seven months of successful fight, even while they were surrounded like sheep in a pen, had resulted only in this: that no single general, at his allotted post, had been able to beat back the Revolution from La Vendée;that the restoration of the monarchy, the remoter and greater object, was more visionary and hypothetical than ever. They hurried northward feverishly, pursued always by an immense force, subject to continuous cold rains, obliged to leave at every stopping-place the wounded and the sick, the women and babes, to mark their trail and to perish by massacre. Kléber had his keen eye upon Henri: “I do not believe he can hold out long, away from his own country.” But Henri proceeded to defeat the garrison at Château-Gontier, to crush L’Echelle’s division at Entrammes, and to score a double triumph at Laval. It was at Château-Gontier that the venerable Monsieur de Royrand, who had sustained the war in Lower Poitou from the very beginning, breathed his last. His regiments ceased firing, and mourned aloud. Henri hurried into the midst of them, his owntears flowing. “Come, come!” he cried; “we will weep and pray for the dear friend to-morrow. Let us avenge him to-day!” Then he swooped like an eagle on the troops of the state, with Royrand’s orphans at his heels.