In the disastrous battle of Chollet, when the superior numbers of the Republicans spread such confusion through the Chouan ranks, Mademoiselle de la Rochefoucault rallied her troops three times successively, and charged the foe. Repulsed a fourth time, she ascended a slight eminence, and addressed seven hundred of her followers in a speech well calculated to rouse their sinking energies. Once more she led them against the foe. This time they returned without her!
But the most famous heroine of this war was Renée Bordereau, commonly called Langevin, known as the "Military Heroine of La Vendée," who afterwards wrote and published her autobiography. She was born in June, 1770, at the village of Soulaine, near Angers, of poor, but honest parents. When the insurrection of 1793 broke out, the Republican troops ravaged and massacred without mercy throughout La Vendée. It chanced that forty-two of Renée's relatives fell victims, successively, to this fury. At last the barbarous murder of her father before her eyes so transported Renée with rage and a thirst for revenge that she devoted herself thenceforth to the royal cause.
She bought a light musket with double sights, and learned privately to load, fire, and aim at a mark. She also practised the military drill; and when she considered herself sufficiently expert, she procured a suit of masculine clothes, and joined a corps commanded by M. Cœur-de-Roi—whose name, by the way, was only a nom de guerre. She enrolled under the name of Hyacinthe, that of her brother, but her comrades soon gave her the soubriquet of Langevin, a name she never lost.
During a war of six years, the heroine was engaged in over two hundred battles and skirmishes. She usually fought on horseback, but sometimes, to be nearer the foe, she combated on foot. She always solicited to be placed in the most dangerous posts, and never quitted the field till compelled by her wounds, or the toils and fatigues of the battle. Although no one at this time suspected her sex, she was conspicuous all through the country for her bravery. All the Royalists strove to emulate her deeds of valour, but none could ever equal her daring. She had entered on the war with a firm determination to conquer or die, and her resolution never flagged. Her only ambition, her sole passion, was to drive the Republicans from France, and restore the legitimate Church and King.
When Napoleon had subdued La Vendée, he was so afraid of the brave Langevin that he excepted her from the general amnesty, and set the price of forty million francs on her head. She was betrayed into the hands of her enemies; and the Emperor threw her into a loathsome dungeon, weighting her limbs with iron chains lest she should escape. She remained in the prison of Angers for three years, and in that of Mount St. Michael for two, and was fed on nothing save the coarsest bread, and rainwater which she collected for herself in a basin. Her piety and fortitude, however, never forsook her during these cruel hardships. She was at last set free on the Restoration of that King for whom she had fought so bravely and endured such privations.
The sex of Renée had become known by an accident before her imprisonment; so it was no surprise, at least to her comrades, when her autobiography appeared, to learn that she was a woman. In 1816, she was presented to Louis XVIII.; but what recompense if any, was awarded, her memoirs do not say. She was still living in 1818.
Madame Dufief, a native of Nantes, was another heroine of this war; and, in reward she received at the Restoration the Ribbon of the Order of St. Louis.