“No longer exist, general. Three-fourths are dead, the rest prisoners.”
“And you are safe and sound?”
“Don’t speak of it, general. I do verily believe I have a compact with the devil.”
That same evening Cadoudal, as he said, left Paris for England. On receiving the news that the Breton leader was in London, Louis XVIII. wrote him the following letter:
I have learned with the greatest satisfaction, general, that
you have at last escaped from the bands of the tyrant who
misconceived you so far as to offer you service under him. I
deplore the unhappy circumstances which obliged you to treat
with him; but I did not feel the slightest uneasiness; the
heart of my faithful Bretons, and yours in particular, are
too well known to me. To-day you are free, you are near my
brother, all my hopes revive. I need not say more to such a
Frenchman as you.
LOUIS.
To this letter were added a lieutenant-general’s commission and the grand cordon of Saint-Louis.
CHAPTER LI. THE ARMY OF THE RESERVES
The First Consul had reached the point he desired. The Companions of Jehu were destroyed and the Vendée was pacificated.
When demanding peace from England he had hoped for war. He understood very well that, born of war, he could exist only by war. He seemed to foresee that a poet would arise and call him “The Giant of War.”