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HESE were the days of what the peasants called “the reign of Monsieur Henri.” Power and the opportunity of dictatorship, which prove the ruin of much excellence, seemed to awaken in him only fresh virtues. So sound was his temperament, that the less unhampered he became the more intelligently he was able to serve his cause; and his manner of serving, as we know, was not to draw charts in his tent. Incapable of turning his little finger to benefit himself, he was a perennial benefit to all around him. His glad irrepressible gusto leavened the spirits of thousands. Providence, he liked to think, took care of him while he was needed.Now that he had a community depending upon him, as if he were a patriarch of old, his conduct came to be more and more temperate. For his habitual rashness, criminal under other conditions, he ought not at any time to be blamed. A verse from the most masculine ode in English literature might be borrowed to describe La Rochejaquelein, who,
——“like the three-fork’d lightning firstBreaking the clouds where it was nurst,Did thorough his own sideHis fiery way divide.”
——“like the three-fork’d lightning firstBreaking the clouds where it was nurst,Did thorough his own sideHis fiery way divide.”
——“like the three-fork’d lightning firstBreaking the clouds where it was nurst,Did thorough his own sideHis fiery way divide.”
——“like the three-fork’d lightning first
Breaking the clouds where it was nurst,
Did thorough his own side
His fiery way divide.”
He must have blazed or burst. And he had exterior warrant. It was of the first importance that the generals should have the confidence of their curiously critical liegemen; and that confidence was to be won in nowise but by the display of pluck, the argument of example. Lescure and Bonchamp, whom none will accuse of recklessness, pursued, on calculation,the same and the only course of constant self-exposure; for to such cruel tests did the foolish philosophers of La Vendée put their worthiest. Can anything be more marvellous than that an army so handicapped by whim and ignorance should have withstood attack at all? One by one its governors and guides were mown like weeds, who, had they been enrolled in other ranks, would have been warded from the remote approach of personal peril.
The only legitimate stricture on Henri’s behavior is that he did not compel obedience off the field. It became necessary even for him, who was so secure in the affections of his volunteers, and who had so much influence over them, to shed something besides persuasion on the difficult crowd in his charge. He made no endeavor to employ Stofflet’s verbal whips and goads, which never failed to accomplish their object; sternnesswas not natural to him, and it was an art which he somehow disdained to acquire. The fault, beyond doubt, was the outcome of his extreme youth, and of his habit, even in Paris (and what an orgy of a Paris it was then!), of mingling as little as possible with the social world, the sole school for the development of the defensive faculties. Such a lack, in such a character, was predestined to be righted with advancing years. While the reproach existed it was fully confessed, and it colored all his judgments upon himself: it was entirely just that he should have deprecated, as he did, the major responsibilities urged upon him in the October of 1793. Almost the last words of Louis de Lescure to his cousin were to assure him that if he, Lescure, lived, his chief care would be to help La Rochejaquelein overcome this ill-placed timidity, which belied the true masterfulness within him, and whichmade it impossible to curb factional intrigue.
It is to be observed, that throughout the campaign in Brittany, no blunder has ever been imputed to Henri. He guessed at a science to which others had made the painful approximation of study. His own vision was so clear, so free of prejudice, that he saw at once what was to be done. His sagacity, when things were left in his own hands, was simply amazing: for we do not expect sagacity from dare-devils. But he had a mistaken humility which forbade him to apply his great force of will, when the question arose of overruling age and numbers. His fear that he should not know how to silence those who opposed him proved but too accurate. Cathelineau’s death closed the first of the three periods of the war, as his own death closed the second; and up to the hour when “the honest and the perfect man”of Pin-en-Mauges gave back his great spirit, there was no rivalry nor internal strife in his camp. But by the time “the son of Monsieur de La Rochejaquelein” stood up to direct the graybeards of his staff, the general concord about him was by several degrees less angelic. 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. Throughout this unhappy time, when his lightheart was sickening with rebuffs and delays, there came to him a growing prudence and calm. He learned to cover a rout, to reap the full fruit of a victory. Many of the elder subofficers who watched him were touched and comforted, during the hot fourteen hours at Château-Gontier, where he forbore his old impetuous charges, but rode close to his column, clearing up the confusion, hindering the bravest from advancing alone, and holding the disciplined musketeers together; so as to remind more than one of the tradition of Condé, in his invincible youth, at Rocroy.