[CHAPTER VIII]
Le Bocage—Its deep lanes and hedges—The Chouan tactics—Vendean horses and riders—Vendean politics—The Marquis de la Bretèche and his farmers—The means I suggested to prevent a fresh Chouannerie—The tottering stone—I leave la Jarrie—Adieux to my guide
I have of course put on one side as well as I could, until now, particulars relating to statistics and the topography of the country; but one must come to it eventually. On the outskirts of Tiffanges, la Vendée is first seen with its undulating country, which proved so disastrous to us in the Chouan War.
Let me be permitted to reproduce here a part of the report which I submitted to General La Fayette on my return to Paris, which report, as will be seen later, was also submitted to the inspection of King Louis-Philippe:—
"... In the first place, the word Vendée, politically speaking, comprises a much larger area of ground than it does topographically. And this was because the name of a single department christened a war which was really spread over four departments. So, under the collective name of Vendée the departments of Maine-et-Loire, Morbihan, Deux-Sèvres and la Vendée were all included. No other part of France at all resembles la Vendée; it is a country quite unique. But few main roads pass through it. I will speak further of them in due course. The other means of communication—and, consequently, those of commerce—consist of lanes of between four and five feet in width, edged on either side by steep banks, crowned by a quickset hedge trimmed to the height of a man, and at every twenty yards stand oak trees whose interlacing branches form an arbour over the road. Hedges bounding private fields intersect them at right angles here and there, thus forming enclosed spaces which hardly ever consist of more than one or two acres, always of an oblong shape. Each of these hedges has only one opening, called échalier, which is sometimes a kind of gate like those which enclose sheep-folds; more frequently it is made out of wood from the hedges themselves, and, set in the hedge, it does not look any different from the hedges themselves to the eye of a stranger, especially in winter. The native of the country will make straight for this hurdle, which he knows, but other persons have generally to go along all four sides of the fields before they can discover the way out. These hedges thoroughly explain the tactics employed in the Vendean War: to shoot accurately without being seen; to fly when the shot has been fired through the opening without the risk of being hit. Besides, with the exception of la Rochejaquelein's fine harangue: 'If I advance, follow; if I retreat, kill me; if I die, avenge me!' the leaders hardly ever uttered any other words before battle than the simpler and indeed clearer ones to the peasantry: 'Egayez-vous, mes gars!' which meant, 'Make yourselves scarce, my lads!' Then each copse would conceal a man with his gun—before, behind, on each side of the advancing army; the hedges would blaze forth, bullets whistle past one another and soldiers fall before they had time to discover from what side the storm of fire was coming! Finally, tired of seeing their dead lying in heaps at the bottom of these defiles, the Blues would rush off in each direction, climb the bank, scale the hedges and, losing half of their men in the process, would arrive at the top, only to see a sudden cessation of the firing: everything had disappeared as by magic, and nothing could be seen, far or near, but a country as prettily mapped out as an English garden, and here and there a sharp-pointed slate-roofed tower, piercing the misty western skies, or the red roof of a farmhouse standing out against a green background of oaks, beeches and walnut trees. These lanes or, properly speaking, defiles, which at first sight appear only to have been hollowed out by the hoofs of oxen, are natural staircases formed by the inequalities of the ground, over which only the little horses of the country can walk surefooted. We must say a little about these horses and the manner of driving them. In summer the lanes are picturesque enough, but in winter they are impracticable, as the slightest rainfall turns each of them into the bed of a torrent, and then, for nearly four months of the year, communication is established by foot and across country. But let us return to the horses. The cleverest riding-master in Franconi's would find himself at a disadvantage, I believe, if he were perched up on one of the huge Breton saddles, which rise out of the middle of the animal's back like a dromedary's hump. And as to the animal himself, the rider might imagine he could guide him by the help of bridle and knees; but he would very quickly find out that the legs of the Vendean rider are only used for preserving his balance, and that the bridle is of no use except to pull his mount up short by reining him in hard with both hands. After a little practice, however, he would learn to assist himself with the cudgel, and this it is which takes the place in Breton horsemanship of the use of one's knees and the bridle. In order to turn the horse to the right you must hit him over the left ear with the cudgel, and vice versâ; and in this manner, which simplifies the art of the Larives and the Pelliers enormously, one guides the animal by roads that would turn a Basque dizzy!
"This picture, however, of the lanes and riders who frequent them, is beginning to change in the departments of la Vendée and of the Loire-Inférieure, where Bonaparte had roads cut; but it is still correct as regards the department of Deux-Sèvres and especially the southern half of the department of Maine-et-Loire.
"It is in these latter portions of the country, therefore, that the Vendean politicians took shelter. There, the opposition to any form of Liberal government is energetic and flagrant. Happily, as if in defiance, civilisation has surrounded them with a girdle of Liberal townships, which starts from Bourbon Vendée, crosses Chollet, Saumur and Angers, reappears at Nantes and even runs over into la Vendée itself, at Clisson, which is a sort of forlorn outpost from whence alarm could be given in case of a rising. A single road passes through this country at one corner, in the shape of a Y; the tail standing for the route from Chollet to Trémentines, and the two forks, those from Trémentines to Angers and Saumur—this latter road is not even a posting route. La Vendée, then, consists nowadays of a single department, without exit for attack or flight.
"Four very distinct classes of individuals are active in the midst of this political furnace: the nobles or gros, the clergy, the bourgeoisie and the peasantry or leasehold farmers.
"The nobility is entirely opposed to any form of constitutional system; its influence is practically evil with the bourgeoisie, but it has immense influence over the tenant farmers who are nearly all in its pay. For instance, here is a case in point: the Marquis of la Bretèche alone possesses one hundred and four farmsteads; suppose each farm contains merely three men capable of handling a gun, one word from him will bring into action three hundred and twelve armed peasants!
"The clergy share the opinions of the nobles and have a greater influence still through their pulpits and the confessional.
"The bourgeoisie are, therefore, the interior of the triangle formed by the nobility, which lays down its laws, the clergy who preach them and the people who accept them.
"So the proportion of Liberals in this department (I am referring to the interior) is scarcely one to fifteen: the tricolour flag is nowhere to be seen, in spite of the formal order of the prefect; and the priests will not chant the Domine salvum except under special command of the bishop.
"The pole to which the white flag was affixed still exists, and by its very nakedness acts as a protest against the tricolour flag; but the priests recommend from their pulpits that Louis-Philippe should be prayed for, as he must inevitably be assassinated. So the agitation goes on incessantly. It is upheld by meetings of from forty to fifty nobles, which take place once or twice a week, either at Lavoirs, or at Herbiers, or at Combouros. The means they make use of for exciting the people is the withholding of newspapers, which are only brought by specially appointed agents, the post only passing through Beaupréau, Chemillé and Chollet. Among the towns and villages which make no kind of secret of their hopes of another insurrection must be reckoned, first and foremost, those of Beaupréau, Montfaucon, Chemillé, Saint-Macaire, le May and Trémentines. The heart of the Royalist revolution is centred at Montfaucon; were it extinguished throughout the whole of France, the pulse of civil war would still beat here. A revolution would infallibly break out if the dauphin or Madame appeared among the people, or even on a day when war should be declared between France and any foreign power, specially if that power were to be England, and if, for the third time, it were to pour men and arms along the coast, which is only from ten to eleven leagues' distance from the department of Maine-et-Loire, where it is an easy matter to smuggle men and weapons in through the opening between Clisson and Chollet.
"The following seem to us to be the best means of preventing an insurrection:—
"I. To make roads. Generally people only see in a road formed right across an impracticable country facility offered for the extension of commerce. The Government, if of liberal views, sees it as a political means to its own end; civilisation follows commerce, and liberty civilisation. Relations with other departments will deprive the one to be feared of its primitive wildness; reliable information will quickly spread and false reports be as quickly disproved; post-offices will be opened in all the chief towns of the district; the gendarmerie will be established in regular and active service; then, finally, troops will, in case of need, be marched all over the district in an impressive manner. The roads to be made in the department of Maine-et-Loire should run from Palet to Montfaucon, passing through Saint-Crespin. At Montfaucon the road should branch off into two, one going to Beaupréau by la Renaudiére, Villedieu and la Chapelle-au-Genêt; the other should proceed as far as Romagne, where it should rejoin the one from Chollet via la Jarrie and Roussay. The commerce that would spring up along these roads would be in Anjou wines, Bretagne cattle and the linens of Chollet. At the present time it can only be carried on by means of ox waggons which do not overturn, but which, by reason of the bad roads, have to be drawn by a team of eight or ten beasts for a single carriage very slightly loaded; or else goods are carried on the backs of men. These roads should be made by the workmen of the country itself, so as to distribute money among the poor classes; for the peasants know the places where the best road metal can be obtained; also because the nobles, whose positive intention it is to oppose the opening of such roads, would easily rouse the peasantry againt strange workmen, who would draw pay that the natives would regard as their own legitimate due; because, finally, the peasants chosen to make these roads would themselves oppose any attempts on the part of the nobility to prevent their execution.
"2. To transfer into villages across the Loire ten or twelve priests, raising their stipends some hundred francs or so to prevent them posing as martyrs—especially those from Tiffanges, Montauban, Torfou and Saint-Crespin. To send into the parishes in their place priests whom the Government can safely trust. These priests would have nothing to fear; their sacred office would protect them from the peasants, who might detest them as men, but would respect their cassocks.
"3. A large proportion of the nobles who meet together to discuss the means for renewing civil war enjoy very considerable pensions, which the Government continues paying them; nothing would be easier than to catch them in the very act, and then the Government could justifiably cease paying these pensions, and divide the money in equal proportions between the old Vendean and Republican soldiers, whose mutual hatred would gradually die down as quarter days succeeded one another.
"In this way, there would in the future be no possibility of fresh Vendean risings, since on the slightest outbreak the Government would only have to stretch out its arm and to scatter troops along the main roads to separate gatherings.
"If people think that these men, enlightened in their views since 1792, have reached the point of never rising again under the influence of fanaticism and superstition, they are strangely mistaken; even those that Bonaparte's conscription drew from their homes and took away out into the world have gradually lost their temporary enlightenment since they returned to their hearths again and resumed their primitive ignorance. I will cite one instance of this. I went shooting with a fine old soldier who had served a dozen years under Napoleon. On the slope of a hill near la Jarrie a stone was standing a dozen feet high that was in the shape of an inverted cone, touching the mountain by one of its upper edges and at its base, which was as narrow as the crown of a hat, resting on a large boulder of rock; although this stone weighed from seven and a half to ten tons, it was so perfectly balanced that a man could easily shake it with his hand. I thought it was a Druidical monument, but, not trusting to the false teaching of educated men, which so often is upset by the rude simplicity of peasants, I called to my companion and asked him what this stone was and who had put it there.
"'The devil!' he replied, with a conviction which did not seem to fear the faintest denial on my side.
"'The devil, did you say?' I repeated, in astonishment.
"'Yes,' he replied.
"'But what did he do it for?'
"'You see from here the stream of la Maine ... over there down in the bottom of the valley?'
"'Perfectly.'
"'Well, then, you can make out a spot where one could cross it on stepping-stones which rise to the surface of the water were it not that just in the middle of these stones there is a gap.'
"'Yes.'
"'Well! that gap ought to be refilled by the rock we are now leaning against.'
"'It is certainly hewn in such a way as to fit in exactly and to dissipate the effect of want of continuity caused by its absence.'
"'I do not follow what you mean,' replied the peasant; 'but this is how it came about. The devil was building a bridge on which to cross over the river in order to steal the farmers' cows; he had finished it all but this one stone, which he was carrying on his shoulder, forgetting that the day he was going to finish his work was a Sunday, when, all of a sudden, he caught sight of the procession from Roussay, which also saw him. Whereat the priest made the sign of the cross, and very soon Satan's strength began to go from him; he was obliged to put the stone down here and for ever, just where we are, as he never will be able to raise it again. That is why the bridge is broken and why this stone shakes.'
"As this explanation was as good as any other, I was obliged to be contented with it, since had I given him my own version, it would probably have sounded as absurd to him as his did to me."
At the end of six weeks, thanks to my guide, who accompanied me all over, I knew the country as well as, and perhaps even a good deal better than, one of its own inhabitants, both la Vendée of the past and la Vendée of the future. I said good-bye to Madame Villenave and her daughter, kissed little Élisa on her forehead and set off to Nantes. The company of my Vendean was unnecessary farther than Clisson, and I parted with him after trying to make him accept some reward for the services he had rendered me; but he obstinately refused, saying that, no matter what he had done or might still be able to do for me, he should be eternally my debtor. We embraced and I took my departure, but he stood where I left him, waving to me whenever I turned round. I lost sight of him round a corner, and all was ended between us. I do not know whether he is alive or dead, whether he has forgotten me or still keeps at the bottom of his heart that precious stone called gratitude, or whether he has cast it so far away from him that he will never be able to find it again. I reached Nantes an hour and a half after I left him.