Oh! traveller flee, beware;
At this hour the shades of night
Brood o'er the solemn gloom.
Traveller, haste, oh! haste;
Leave this abode of doom.”
It was in the forest of La Hunaudaye that the Chouans of the Côtes du Nord were secretly exercised and drilled by their chief, La Rouërie, under the name of Gosselin, who died of horror on hearing of the execution of thirteen of his confederates betrayed by the physician Chaftal. Gosselin was succeeded by the "Cid" of the Chouan chiefs, Boishardy, called the "Sorcier," who, after his interview with General Humbert, was betrayed and shot by the "Bleus." For twelve years was Brittany cut off from France by this Chouan war, an insurrection even more formidable than that of La Vendée. The peninsular position of Brittany, its vast extent of coasts, its forests, its mountains, its people, speaking a strange language, entirely under the subjection of the priests, rendered it peculiarly adapted to carry on a war against the republicans; a war, the whole object of which was to upset all order, by preventing the citizens from accepting office under the republic, by punishing those who acquired national property, by stopping couriers and all public conveyances, destroying bridges, breaking up roads, assassinating public officers, and executing horrible punishments on those who sent provisions into the towns.
The castle of La Hunaudaye was destroyed by order of the Commune of Lamballe, in 1793, that it might not serve as a retreat for the Chouans.
We arrived very wet at Lamballe, a town most picturesquely situated on the declivity of a granite cliff, surmounted by a handsome church, rising from the very edge of the rocks. It formed part of the territory of the Duke of Penthièvre, whose heiress, Jeanne la Boiteuse, married Charles of Blois, the competitor with John de Montfort[7] for the dukedom [pg 068] of Brittany. More tenacious of her rights than her husband, Jeanne would never listen to any compromise. After the treaty of Bretigny, the kings of England and France proposed a division of the duchy between the two rivals; but, intimidated by his wife, Charles dared not consent; and again, before the battle of Auray, when a division was agreed upon, subject to the acceptance of the Countess, Jeanne exclaimed, "My husband makes too cheap a bargain of what is not his own." And she wrote to Charles, "Do what you please. I am a woman, and cannot do more; but I had rather lose my life, or two if I had them, before I would consent to so reproachable an act, to the shame of my family" (des miens). Later she said to him, "Preserve me your heart, but preserve me also my duchy, and, happen what may, act so that the sovereignty remains to me entire." Her pride and obstinacy cost her husband his life. The name of Lamballe is associated with the memory of the unfortunate Princesse de Savoie de Carignan, the sad victim of revolutionary fury. On the death of her husband, the Prince de Lamballe, the vast estates of the Penthièvre family passed to his sister, the wife of Philippe Egalité, and from her descended to Louis Philippe, King of the French.
17. Section of Lanleff Church.