His fiery way divide.”
He must have blazed or burst. And he had exterior warrant. It was of the first importance that the generals should have the confidence of their curiously critical liegemen; and that confidence was to be won in nowise but by the display of pluck, the argument of example. Lescure and Bonchamp, whom none will accuse of recklessness, pursued, on calculation, the same and the only course of constant self-exposure; for to such cruel tests did the foolish philosophers of La Vendée put their worthiest. Can anything be more marvellous than that an army so handicapped by whim and ignorance should have withstood attack at all? One by one its governors and guides were mown like weeds, who, had they been enrolled in other ranks, would have been warded from the remote approach of personal peril.
The only legitimate stricture on Henri’s behavior is that he did not compel obedience off the field. It became necessary even for him, who was so secure in the affections of his volunteers, and who had so much influence over them, to shed something besides persuasion on the difficult crowd in his charge. He made no endeavor to employ Stofflet’s verbal whips and goads, which never failed to accomplish their object; sternness was not natural to him, and it was an art which he somehow disdained to acquire. The fault, beyond doubt, was the outcome of his extreme youth, and of his habit, even in Paris (and what an orgy of a Paris it was then!), of mingling as little as possible with the social world, the sole school for the development of the defensive faculties. Such a lack, in such a character, was predestined to be righted with advancing years. While the reproach existed it was fully confessed, and it colored all his judgments upon himself: it was entirely just that he should have deprecated, as he did, the major responsibilities urged upon him in the October of 1793. Almost the last words of Louis de Lescure to his cousin were to assure him that if he, Lescure, lived, his chief care would be to help La Rochejaquelein overcome this ill-placed timidity, which belied the true masterfulness within him, and which made it impossible to curb factional intrigue.
It is to be observed, that throughout the campaign in Brittany, no blunder has ever been imputed to Henri. He guessed at a science to which others had made the painful approximation of study. His own vision was so clear, so free of prejudice, that he saw at once what was to be done. His sagacity, when things were left in his own hands, was simply amazing: for we do not expect sagacity from dare-devils. But he had a mistaken humility which forbade him to apply his great force of will, when the question arose of overruling age and numbers. His fear that he should not know how to silence those who opposed him proved but too accurate. Cathelineau’s death closed the first of the three periods of the war, as his own death closed the second; and up to the hour when “the honest and the perfect man” of Pin-en-Mauges gave back his great spirit, there was no rivalry nor internal strife in his camp. But by the time “the son of Monsieur de La Rochejaquelein” stood up to direct the graybeards of his staff, the general concord about him was by several degrees less angelic. The farther north the army strayed the more irksome became his position, for his steadfast conviction was against the expediency of trying to reach Granville at all. When, after the affair of Château-Gontier, a unique opportunity arose to retrace the march and re-establish headquarters in the Bocage, it went hard indeed with Henri that none would listen to him. Again, at Laval, he would have pushed through Kléber’s disorganized forces, towards the safe though smoking labyrinths at home; but, misled by some vague encouraging rumor, the majority clamored to push on. Throughout this unhappy time, when his light heart was sickening with rebuffs and delays, there came to him a growing prudence and calm. He learned to cover a rout, to reap the full fruit of a victory. Many of the elder subofficers who watched him were touched and comforted, during the hot fourteen hours at Château-Gontier, where he forbore his old impetuous charges, but rode close to his column, clearing up the confusion, hindering the bravest from advancing alone, and holding the disciplined musketeers together; so as to remind more than one of the tradition of Condé, in his invincible youth, at Rocroy.
HE blue sea-horizon showed no sign of an English sail, though the firing was heard at Jersey; there were tidings neither from “le roi Georges” nor from the absent princes of France. When the insurgents, driven forth from Granville by flame and sword, started to return, they found the country which they had just conquered reoccupied by their enemies. They had to contest their way back to the Loire-barrier, as if they were breaking virgin ground. At Avranches there was a mutiny, caused by a rather ridiculous suspicion of treason in Talmont and the ambitious Abbé Bernier. At Pontorson, where the streets had been choked with dead for many days, the army routed the Blues; Forêt, the first brand in the burning at Saint Florent, fell there; no quarter was given nor taken. A tremendous battle followed at Dol. Talmont sustained the siege with superb courage. Not a few of the fighting corps were sinking already from homesickness, exhaustion, and hunger. While there was a single squad to stand by him, Henri fought like a lion; and then, alone and seemingly numb with despair, he turned about, with folded arms, and faced the battery. It was owing wholly to the exhortations of Abbé Doussin of Sainte-Marie-de-Rhé, and to the resolution of the women, that the troops rallied nobly and wrested three successive victories from their foes. Yet again would Henri have struck out as far as Rennes, thence in a straight line south; and yet again he was forced to see the acceptance of a crazy project, whereby the roundabout route of October was to be retraced inch by inch. “You deny me in conference; you abandon me on the field!” he could well say, with something like wrath flushing his young cheek. The highways were one horrible open grave; the winter weather was cruelly cold; desertions set in; famine and pestilence came upon them. At Angers, Henri would fain have quickened the lagging spirits of his old comrades; the guns having made a small breach in the town-walls, he, with Forestier of Pommeraie-sur-Loire, who was never far from his side, and two others, flung themselves into it. Not a soul rallied to their defence. A miserable huddled mass, the army fell back on Baugé, and now, unable to seize a permanent advantage, ran hither and thither, ever away from the Loire. At the bridge of La Flèche, Henri, fording the stream with a small picked body of horsemen, overcame the garrison by an adroit move, and there was a flicker of great hope. But the peasants who began the war were weary, weary. Too truly the tide of disaster had set in.
In the city of Mans, at the end of the only road open, were food, warmth, and rest. The exiles ate, drank, and slept; slept, drank, and ate again. It seemed as if nothing could rouse them more. Marceau, Müller, Tilly, and Westermann’s light cavalry were closing on them. Prostrate and drunken, the Royalist survivors lay inert as stones. But Henri’s frantic energy (“he was like a madman,” says Madame de La Rochejaquelein) once more assembled a desperate handful, under himself, Marigny, Forestier, and the Breton, Georges Cadoudal. A bitter and awful fight it was—a scene of din and smoke and blind tumult, surging about the bloody gates by moonlight. Twice Westermann wavered and charged again. Two-thirds of the forlorn remnant of the journeying army laid down their lives. In the deserted town thousands of old men, women, and children were slaughtered, amid jeers and fury and the patter of grape-shot. Exhausted, and with a heart like lead within him, the commander-in-chief spurred to the side of the widowed Marchioness of Lescure, who, seated on horseback, hung at the outskirts of the forces. (Madame de Bonchamp, under the same affectionate protection of La Rochejaquelein and D’Autichamp, had been ordered, with her two little ones, to withdraw). She took his hand solemnly. “I thought you were dead, Henri,” she sighed—and her sequence of speech was worthy both of him and of her, “for we are beaten.” “Indeed, I wish I were dead,” he answered. He knew that La Vendée had had its death-blow before him.
So ended the march into Brittany. No coward Bourbon appeared to lead and comfort his believers; the emigrant aristocracy, “effeminated by a long peace,” and scattered among the European capitals, shrunk from reviving their own fainting cause; the imperfect overtures with Pitt and Dundas, until too late, were of no avail. The Vendeans were forty leagues from home, famished, diseased, betrayed, burdened with a host of the useless and the weak; and let it be written that in this plight they took twelve cities, won seven battles, destroyed more than twenty thousand Republicans, and captured one hundred cannon. It is a wonderful two months’ record: a failure such as bemeans most conquests. And while Maine and the Breton country were overrun, when there were so many to nurse and shelter, so many mouths to feed, it is to be noted that no pillage was legalized. La Vendée paid its last penny for what it took, and when that was spent issued notes in the King’s name, payable at a four-and-a-half per cent. interest at the Restoration.