They then debated on the all-important question of what should be their next movement, and on this subject there was much difference of opinion. Bonchamps was again asked to speak first, and he advised that they should at once proceed to Paris.
“We can do nothing,” said he, “while the present Convention sits in Paris; it has but one head, but it has ten thousand bloody hands. There can be no peace, no rest in France, while Danton, Robespierre and Barrère are omnipotent. Let us at once start for Paris: Brittany will join us, and parts of Normandy; the Southerns will follow us; the men of Bordeaux and of the Gironde: have not their own orators, the leaders of the Revolution, been murdered in their seats, because they were not willing that all France should become one Golgotha? Lyons, even, and Marseilles, are now sick of the monsters who have crawled forth from the haunts of the Jacobins to depopulate the country, and annihilate humanity. There is now but a small faction, even in Paris, to whom the restoration of order would not be acceptable. The intensity of their cruelty is the only strength of the governing faction; the extent of their abominations alone makes them terrible. Hundreds will fly from one Indian snake, so potent is its venom, so sure to inflict death: but let one brave man set his heel upon its head, and the noxious animal is destroyed for ever: so it is with the party who now rules the Convention. Now that we have with us the all-powerful prestige of victory, let us march at once to Paris; hundreds will join us on the way, and what force can at the moment be collected to stop us? Let us proceed at once to Paris, and proclaim at the door of the Convention, in the gardens of the Tuilleries, in the Place Louis Quinze, where our sainted monarch so nobly shed his blood, that France again submits herself to her King.”
“Would that we could!” said de Lescure; “would that the spirit of revolution was yet sufficiently quenched in France to allow us to follow your advice; but there is much, very much to be done before a royalist army can march from La Vendée to Paris; unthought of sufferings to be endured, the blood of thousands to be sacrificed, before France will own that she has been wrong in the experiment she has made. We must fight our battles by inches, and be satisfied, if, when dying, we can think that we have left to our children a probability of final victory. Normandy and the Gironde may be unwilling to submit to the Jacobin leaders, but they are as yet as warmly attached to the Republic as Paris itself. And, Bonchamps, you little know the dispositions and character of the men, who at our bidding have left their homes and come to Saumur, if you think that at our bidding they will march to Paris; they are even now burning to return home, to recount to their wives and children what they have done.
“Not half the number that came to Saumur would leave the town with us on the road to Paris; and before we could reach Tours, the army would have melted away from us like snow from a mountain top, when the sun begins to shine. It is here, in our own locality, that we should endeavour to extend our influence. In Southern Brittany the people, I believe, are with us, but the towns are full of the troops of the Republic. Let us drive them out of Angers, Ancenis, and Nantes, as we have driven them from Saumur. Let us force them from the banks of the Loire, and become masters of the coast of Southern Brittany. Then we may expect men and money from England. Then we may fairly hope for such foreign aid as may enable us to face the Republic; but at present, if we march to Paris, we march to certain destruction.”
“M. de Lescure is right,” said Stofflet, “our men would not go far from their homes; we must remember that they are not paid, nor have we the means of paying them; if we had English gold, we might perhaps make our way to Paris.”
“Our men are not so mercenary, Stofflet,” said Bonchamps, “I do not think they have shewn any great desire for plunder.”
“No,” said Stofflet, “but they must live; if they are to have neither pay nor plunder, how are they to get to Paris?”
“I agree with you, Bonchamps,” said Henri, “come what, come may, I would make a dash at Paris; we shall be cut to pieces here, while we are waiting for English aid; some of the men would follow us—most of them I believe; where we meet with friends, they will give us provisions; where we find enemies, we will take them, and pay the owners in republican assignats; they would get no other payment in the market-towns. I am sorry to disagree with you, Charles, but my voice is for Paris.”
“And mine also, certainly,” said Adolphe, “let our career be short, at any rate let it be glorious; let us march to Paris and strike terror into the tyrants of the Convention.”
“It is difficult to strike terror into tyrants,” said de Lescure quickly, “when the number of their supporters is ten times greater than that of their opponents.”