Lantenac was also a military leader, but a more accomplished one,—more cautious, and at the same time more daring. The veritable old hero is cooler than a younger man, because he is farther removed from the heyday of life, and more daring from the consciousness that he is nearer death. What has he to lose? So slight a matter. This explains the bold and yet scientific manoeuvres of Lantenac. Yet on the whole, in this obstinate wrestling-match between the old and the young, Gauvain almost always had the advantage, and he owed this rather to chance than to anything in himself. Every sort of good-fortune, even though it may be terrible, falls to the lot of youth. Victory has something feminine in its nature.
Lantenac was exasperated with Gauvain; first, because his nephew had defeated him, and second, because he was his nephew. What possessed him to be Jacobin?—a Gauvain! Unruly youngster that he was. His heir,—for the Marquis had no children,—a great-nephew, almost a grandchild! "Ah!" cried this quasi grandfather, "if he falls into my hands, I will kill him like a dog."
The Republic, moreover, had good reason to feel uneasy about this Marquis de Lantenac. He had no sooner landed than its terror began. The mere utterance of his name was like a powder-train spread through the Vendean insurrection, of which he straightway became the centre. In a revolt of this kind, where each one is jealous of his neighbor, where each has his bush or his ravine, if a superior leader appears, the separate chiefs who have been on a level will rally round him and submit themselves to his authority. Nearly all the forest captains had joined Lantenac, and whether near or remote, they all obeyed him. Only Gavard, who had been the first to join him, had departed. And why was this? Because he had enjoyed the confidence of the Republic and been in a position of authority. Gavard had held all the secrets and had adopted the old-fashioned system of civil war, which Lantenac had come to change and replace. A successor can hardly agree with a man of that stamp. The shoe of La Rouarie was not a fit for Lantenac, and so Gavard had gone to join Bonchamp.
Lantenac belonged to the military school of Frederic II.; he understood the art of warfare, which consists of combining the greater with the lesser; he favored neither the great Catholic and Royal army, that "mass of confusion" destined to be crushed, nor the guerilla troops scattered through the thickets and hedges, useful to harass, but powerless to crush. There is either no end to guerilla warfare, or else it comes to an unfortunate one: it begins by attacking the Republic and ends by robbing a diligence. Lantenac did not propose to carry on the Breton war altogether in the open country like La Rochejaquelein, nor yet in the forest like Chouan. He neither approved of the Vendée nor of the Chouannerie; he believed in real warfare; he was willing to use the peasant, but he wished to support him by the soldier. He required bands for strategy and regiments for tactics. The village armies so easily disbanded he considered excellent for an attack, an ambush, or a surprise, but he felt that they lacked solidity; they were like water in his hands; he sought a solid foundation for this unstable and diffusive warfare; to the savage army of the forest he proposed to add regular troops as a sort of pivot about which to manoeuvre the peasants. Had this scheme, deep-laid and terrible as it was, proved successful, the Vendée would never have been conquered.
But where could regular troops be found? Where look for soldiers? Where seek for regiments, and find a ready-made army? In England. Hence Lantenac's determination that the English should effect a landing. Thus do parties compromise with their consciences. He quite lost sight of the red coat, eclipsed as it was by the white cockade. Lantenac had but one idea,—first to seize upon some point on the coast, and then to deliver it into the hands of Pitt. It was with this object that, seeing Dol unprotected, he had thrown himself upon it, knowing that once in possession of Dol, he could readily gain Mont-Dol, and by means of the latter gain a footing on the coast.
The spot was well chosen. From Mont-Dol the cannon would sweep Fresnois on one side; and Saint-Brelade, on the other, would keep the fleet of Cancale at a distance, and leave the whole beach, from Raz-sur-Couesnon to Saint-Mêloir-des-Ondes, open to an attack.
In order to insure success, Lantenac had brought with him six thousand of the most active men in the regiment at his disposal, together with all his artillery,—ten sixteen-pound culverins, one demi-culverin, and one four-pounder. He proposed to establish a strong battery on Mont-Dol, on the principle that a thousand shots fired from ten cannon do more execution than fifteen hundred fired from five cannon.
With six thousand men, he felt sure of success. In the direction of Avranches they had nothing to fear but Gauvain with his fifteen hundred men. Towards Dina there was Léchelle, to be sure, with twenty-five thousand; but he was twenty leagues away. In regard to the latter, Lantenac felt quite safe, the distance offsetting the numbers; and as for Gauvain though he was quite near, his force was very small. WE may here remark that Léchelle was a fool, who afterwards allowed his twenty-five thousand men to be slaughtered on the moors of Croix-Bataille,—a mistake for which he strove to atone by suicide.
So Lantenac felt quite safe. His entrance into Dol had been sudden and stern. The Marquis de Lantenac enjoyed a hard reputation; and knowing him to be merciless, the terrified inhabitants shut themselves up in their houses without attempting resistance, and the six thousand Vendeans installed themselves in the city after the disorderly fashion of a band of rustics. It was almost like a market-ground; in default of quartermasters, they chose their own quarters, camping at haphazard, cooking, in the open air, dispersing hither and yonder through the churches, dropping their muskets to take up their rosaries. Lantenac, accompanied by a few artillery officers, proceeded without delay to reconnoitre Mont-Dol, leaving Gouge-le-Bruant, whom he had appointed field-sergeant, in command. This Gouge-le-Bruant has left but an indistinct trace in history. He had two nicknames,-Brise-Bleu in token of his massacre of the patriots, and Imânus, because there was something indescribably horrible about him. Imânus is derived from immanis, and old Low-Norman word, which expresses a superhuman degree of ugliness, almost godlike in its terror,—a demon, a satyr, an ogre. An old manuscript says, "With my own eyes I beheld Imânus." To-day the old people in Brittany no longer know who Gouge-le-Bruant was, nor what Brise-Bleu means; but they have a vague idea of the Imânus, whose name is interwoven with all the local superstitions. He still is spoken of in Trémorel and Plumaugat,—the two villages where Gouge-le-Bruant has left the impress of his ill-omened footstep. In the Vendée, where all the inhabitants were savages, Gouge-le-Bruant was the barbarian. He was a sort of Cacique tattooed all over with crucifixes and fleurs-de-lis. Upon his face was the hideous, almost supernatural glow of a soul unlike that of any other human being. He was as brave in battle as Satan himself, and atrociously cruel when the battle was over. His heart, full of mysterious determinations, now urged him to acts of devotion, now to deeds of wildest fury. Did he use his reason? Yes, after a serpentine fashion. Heroism was his starting-point, murder his goal. It was impossible to conceive how his resolutions, often grand in their very monstrosity, could have entered his mind. He was capable of any horror, when least expected. His ferocity was on a scale of epic grandeur.
Hence his peculiar surname, Imânus.