"Monsieur Henri": A Foot-Note to French History

This ebook is dedicated to Emmy friend, colleague, mentor, role model, who fell off the planet far too soon.
De La Rochejaquelein
“MONSIEUR HENRI” A FOOT-NOTE TO FRENCH HISTORY BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS PRINTERS & PUBLISHERS MDCCCXCII
Copyright, 1892, by Harper & Brothers.
All rights reserved.
TO MADAME MARIE-ANGE BONDROIT R.S.C.J.
When you were first an exile, and at Elmhurst, I was a child. Six studious years we had together, many games, a tiff or two, much silent love. It is because I do not forget any of them, and because it may stand as a little token of an honorable and lifelong debt, that to you, my dear old friend, without asking your leave, I dedicate this book.
“I have looked narrowly into this war of La Vendée, full as it is of scenes and faces; I have thought of it by day, and dreamed of it by night. 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 .
“And mark you, undemonstrative men would have spoiled the situation. The finest action is the better for a piece of purple.”—Robert Louis Stevenson, in The English Admirals .
O little concerning the French provincial struggle of the eighteenth century has found an echo in our language, that the British Museum and the Bodleian Library have not three original references between them to add to the local archives (most of them, alas! still confused and uncatalogued), of the Bibliothèque Nationale. Madame de La Rochejaquelein’s beautiful Mémoires still serve as the basis for whatever may be said on the subject; and where I have differed from her by a hair, it has not been without reluctance, and the comparison of many oracles.