Nevertheless, the club did not lose heart. Its activity during the winter and spring of 1792 is proved by a copious correspondence, and many reports of sessions, presided over with praiseworthy care and regularity by the sometime magistrate of Rennes. These strenuous functions, however, did not prevent him from fulfilling his civil duties. We find him mounting guard, like others, at the guard-house of the headquarters of his section,[62] and attending the meetings of that section where he is a member of the Civil Committee.
Another winter, that of 1792, goes by, and alarming symptoms in the spring of ’93 seem to indicate that the year is not to end tranquilly. In Paris political life is the only life; the effervescence grows and grows. The difficulty of provisioning the capital, the dearness of food, and the consequent great distress, bring about a state of instability and demoralization which is bound to express itself in action, and which will break out on the slightest pretext. Moreover, the people, already indignant, are exasperated by the flight of so many nobles from the kingdom—a flight which serves to reinforce the émigré contingent.
Cormier perceives the gravity of the situation. Two alternatives present themselves to him—either to leave Paris and the country and join those who are working at the frontiers for the restoration of the Monarchy, or to win over the Western Department, in which, however, revolt is already brewing. If this breaks out it will be a most formidable insurrection. The second plan will have the advantage of taking him to the neighbourhood of Rennes, where he still has interests; and, after a period of waiting, he can, according to the course of events, either place his abilities at the service of the Royalist cause, or retire definitely from active life.
And there is nothing to keep him in Paris. The members of the Massiac Club are the objects of daily-increasing suspicion on the part of the “patriots.” These “aristocrats” have got themselves detested for their obstinate self-defence, for their tenacious hold upon their properties, and for their continued struggle for the maintenance of slavery. If things go on as they are doing now, in a few months the club will be so universally attacked that its only course will be to close its doors. In these circumstances Cormier does not hesitate. He will leave his wife at Paris; she is a sensible woman, full of resource—she will know how to take care of the house in the Rue Basse-du-Rempart, and, supported by her younger son, she may in the future be of the greatest assistance to the party.
Desirous of completing their elder son’s education, the Cormiers had sent him, a year before this, to Hamburg; he there spent six months with a worthy citizen of the Place Schaarmarkt;[63] and then left, to go to the little town of Itzehoë, in Holstein, where he continued his studies.
So everything seemed to confirm Cormier in his intention. On June 25, 1792, he begged his colleague, M. de Grandchamp, to represent him as President—“for a fortnight;” and, by way of excuse, he pointed out that it was the first time he had been away for four years. We then lose sight of him for some days, and when we next encounter him, he is settled, from the end of July onwards, in Brittany, at Gaël, near Montfort. It would be difficult to account for this sojourn in a remote locality if we did not recollect that the sometime Crown Prosecutor had inherited several estates from his father in that neighbourhood; and where could he have found a safer or more tranquil retreat than in one of these, during that troublous period which followed June 20, when the proclamation of the “Country in Danger” disturbed the whole of France, and drums were beating in all the towns and countrysides—when, in a word, the Tenth of August was at hand? Just before that bloody dawn, there arrived at Madame Cormier’s house an official-looking personage, escorted by a quartermaster of the National Gendarmerie. She had been anticipating something of the kind for so long that she knew at once what her visitors wanted. In reply to her questions, the stranger, who was no other than a Commissary of the Place Vendôme section, displayed a warrant for arrest from the Surveillance Committee of the National Assembly, issued in due form against the President of the Colonial Club. “He had not expected any such visit, and was away from home, at Calais,” answered “the lady his wife;” and that being so, the Commissary, to make up for it, had to request that he might be taken to M. Cormier’s room, and, once there, proceeded to make a thorough search in every corner of it. When he had made a clean sweep of all the papers he found, tied them up in bundles, and deposited them in two band-boxes, he took it into his head to move away the fire-screen. In the grate a heap of blackened paper was still smoking. He had been too late for that, also.
Cormier had clearly been happily inspired to get off in time. Although he could not exactly have been accused of conspiring against the public safety, still the mere fact of his position makes it doubtful that, once arrested, he would have escaped the “Septemberers,” who in a few weeks’ time were to commence the chapter of their exploits.
He judged it prudent not to leave his retreat at Gaël before the spring of 1793. At Paris, the tempest still raged, most assuredly not calmed by the King’s death; in the provinces—added to other causes, such as the general rising and the application of the Civil Constitution to the clergy—the execution of “Louis Capet” led to an outbreak of “Chouannerie:” it was at that very moment, indeed, that the Insurrection in La Vendée exploded, captained by those brilliant chiefs, Stofflet, Cathelineau, Bonchamp, and Larochejaquelein. At the news of their rapid successes, Cormier, called on by them, quitted Gaël; and if we are to believe the certificates “of presence” given by the Vendean generals, it was he who directed the correspondence of the Royalist Army during the early operations.[64] The former President of the Massiac Club was very much in his element among such active and varied functions, requiring a systematic brain. His pen never rests; his letters, addresses, orders, teem in the insurgent districts, and yet his name remains unknown; one scarcely comes across it even in the abundant publications devoted to the history of Chouannerie. The defeat of Mans in December, 1793, when a part of the Catholic and Royal Army was routed, did not cool Cormier’s zeal. The theatre of war was altered, that was all. He went nearer to Rennes, and “worked” in the districts of Fougères and of Rennes. If we believe the aforementioned certificates, he did not desist from his labours during the months and years that followed. Both before and after the pacification of La Mabilais, Cormier, according to them, had continued to live in the revolted departments, fighting in the ranks of the Chouans. But we must not confide too much in these testimonials, which were for the most part written and produced for a certain very definite purpose—that of clearing the subject of them from a charge of emigration. By proving his share in the operations of the Vendean Army, he proved also his presence in France. Now, the famous “lists of the émigrés” contained the name of “Cormier, father and son.” So the necessity is evident for our magistrate to insist in any and every fashion upon the part which he had taken in the rising at La Vendée, even if this insistence were in absolute opposition to the truth.
By a lucky chance there is other testimony to be had (and that of undoubted authenticity), which enables us to get at the truth of the matter. It consists of Cormier’s own letters, written at that time. While he, some years later, maintained that he had never quitted French soil, we know for certain that, at the beginning of 1794, perhaps soon after the Queen’s death, he landed in England, and, instantly joining the restless throng around the Princes, was soon playing a prominent part in its midst.
We meet him with de Puisaye, with the Bishop of Arras, with Dutheil, hovering around the English Ministers and associating himself with the leaders of the émigrés in trying to induce England to agree to an effective, that is to say, an armed, intervention.