La Vendée

by Anthony Trollope

“Do I not give you my life?” said Denot. “What other surety can I give, or can you require? What am I, or what are the royalists to gain by my proving false?”

“You say truly,” answered Westerman; “you give us your life as a surety for your good faith to us. You may be assured that we will exact the penalty, if we have the slightest suspicion of foul play.”

Denot made no answer, and he was questioned no further. The party soon after broke up, and the young deserter was handed over to the care of one of Santerre’s sub-officers, with injunctions that he should be well and civilly treated, but that he should not be allowed to go abroad by himself; in fact, he was to be regarded as a prisoner.

“Do not be disheartened,” said Santerre to him. “You can understand that under the circumstances, such precautions must be necessary. The day after tomorrow we start on our march, and you shall ride close to myself. When Clisson and Durbellière are in ashes, you shall be free to take your own course; in the meantime, no indignity shall be offered to you.”

On the day named by Santerre, the whole republican army started from Angers, and commenced their march towards the Bocage. They proceeded on their route for several days without finding any enemy to contend with. They kept on the northern shore of the Loire till they reached Saumur, where they remained a couple of days, and employed themselves in punishing the inhabitants in whose houses the leaders of the Vendeans had been entertained. It was in vain that these poor men pleaded that they had not even opened their doors to the royalists till after the republican General had capitulated; that they had given nothing which they had been able to refuse, and, in fact, that they had only sold their goods and let their rooms to the Vendeans, when they could not possibly have declined to do so. Their arguments were of no avail; they were thrown into prison as criminals, and left for trial by the revolutionary tribunal.

Although Saumur had so lately been besieged and taken by the royalists, there was hardly a vestige of the conquerors left in it. Their attempt to place a garrison in the town had proved entirely a failure; the peasants who had undertaken the work had left the place by scores at a time, and before a fortnight was over, the commandant found himself with about twenty-five men, and consequently he marched back into La Vendée after his army. The town was perfectly tranquil when the republicans entered it, but the citizens were afflicted and out of spirits; their shops were closed, and their goods hidden; the bakers had no bread, the butchers no meat, and the grocers had neither oil nor sugar. They knew well what it was to sell their merchandise to the troops of the Convention, and to be paid for them by the government in assignats.

Many of those who had formed the former garrison of Saumur, were now with the army; men whom Chapeau and his assistants had shaven, men still bald, and smarting from the indignity to which they had been subjected. They wreaked their vengeance on the scene of their disgrace, and on all those who had in any way lent, or were suspected to have lent, their aid to its consummation. The furniture of the Town-hall was broken in pieces; the barbers’ shops were ransacked, and their razors, brushes, and basins scattered through the street; nor was this the worst; one poor wretch was recognized who had himself wielded a razor on the occasion; he was dragged from his little shop by those on whom he had operated, and was swung up by his neck from a lamp-iron in the sight of his wife and children, who had followed his persecutors through the street. The poor woman pleaded on her knees for the life of her husband, as a wife can plead for the life of him whom she loves better than the whole world. She offered all her little wealth and her prayers; she supplicated them with tears and with blessings; she seized hold of the knees of the wretch who held the rope, and implored him by his remembrance of his father, by his regard for his own wife, his love for his own children, to spare to her the father of her infants; but she asked in vain; the man, feeling that his legs were encumbered, spurned the woman from him with his foot, and kept his hand tight upon the lamp-rope till the dying convulsions of the poor barber had ceased.

No notice was taken by the republican Generals of this murder; at any rate no punishment followed it; the next morning the army resumed its march, and left the town hated, cursed, feared, and yet obeyed. The people were now royalists in their hearts, but they did not dare to express their feelings even in whispers to each other, so frightful to them was the vengeance of the Republic. There was much policy in the fearful cruelty of the Jacobins; it was the only means by which they could have retained their power for a month.

The republicans marched on from Saumur to Montreuil, and from Montreuil to Thouars, and still found no one in arms to oppose them. Here they separated; a small party, headed by Santerre and Denot, penetrated at once from Thouars into the Bocage, and made for the château of Durbellière. It was believed that both de Lescure and Larochejaquelin were there, and Santerre expected that by hurrying across the country with a small force, he would be able to take them both and burn the château, and afterwards rejoin Westerman at Chatillon. Barrère, whose duties were not strictly those of a soldier, had not accompanied the army beyond Saumur. Westerman and the main body of the army still continued southward till they reached Parthenay, from which place it was his intention to proceed through the revolted district, burning every village; utterly destroying the towns which had not proved themselves devoted to the Republic, and slaughtering the peasants, their wives, and children wherever he could find them.

The Vendeans had not yet sufficiently matured their plans to enable them to encounter successfully the republican army. The death of Cathelineau had had a great effect upon the peasants: those who were with him had returned home in sorrow and despair, and this feeling was general, even among those who had not been at Nantes. De Lescure and Henri, however, had not despaired; after having seen the body of his General consigned to the dust, Henri had returned to Clisson, and he and his cousin were again busy in raising recruits, or rather in collecting their men, when they heard that Westerman, with an enormous army, was marching into Parthenay, and that it was his intention to proceed from thence into the Bocage, by way of Amaillou and Bressuire.