Виктор Мари Гюго
Ninety-Three
IV
THEIR LIFE UNDER GROUND
The men, wearied of living in these beasts' lairs, would sometimes venture to come out by night and dance on the neighboring moor; or else they said prayers, by way of killing time. "Jean Chouan made us say our beads from morning till night," says Bourdoiseau.
It was almost impossible, when the season arrived, to prevent the men of Bas-Maine from going to the Fête de la Gerbe. They clung to their own ideas. Tranche-Montagne says that Denys disguised himself as a woman, to go to the play at Laval; after which he returned to his den.
All at once they would rush out in search of death, changing one tomb for another.
Sometimes they would lift the cover of their grave and listen for any chance sounds of battle in the distance, following it with their ears, guided by the steady fire of the Republicans and the intermittent shots of the Royalists. When the platoon-firing suddenly ceased, they knew that the Royalists had lost the day; but if the scattering shots continued, receding into the distance, it was a sign that the victory was theirs. The Whites always pursued; the Blues never did so, because the country was against them.
These underground belligerents were wonderfully well-informed. Nothing could be more rapid or more mysterious than their means of communication. The bridges and wagons had all been destroyed, yet they found means to keep one another informed of all that went on, and to send timely warning. Messenger-stations of danger were established from forest to forest, from village to village, from hut to hut, from bush to bush.
A stupid-looking peasant might be seen passing along; he carried despatches in his hollow staff.
Furnished by Boétidoux, a former constituent, with the modern Republican passport, in which a blank space is left for the name, bundles of which were in the possession of that traitor, they were enabled to travel from one end of Brittany to the other.
It was impossible to take them by surprise. Puysaye9 states that "secrets confided to upwards of four thousand individuals have been religiously kept."
It seemed as though this quadrilateral, closed on the south by the line from Sables to Thouars, on the east by that from Thouars to Saumur as well as by the river of Thoué, on the north by the Loire, and on the west by the ocean, possessed a system of nerves in common, and that no single part of the ground could stir without shaking the whole. In the twinkling of an eye, they learned in Luçon what was going on in Noirmoutier, and the camp of La Loué knew what was passing in the camp La Croix-Morineau. It was as if the birds had carried the news. On the 7th Messidor, in the year III., Hoche wrote: "One might have supposed they had telegraphs."
They formed clans, as in Scotland, and each parish had its own captain. My father fought in this war, and I know whereof I am speaking.
V
THEIR LIFE IN WARFARE
Many of them had nothing but pikes; but good hunting-rifles were plentiful, and no marksmen were more expert than the poachers of the Bocage and the smugglers of Loroux. They were eccentric, terrible, and intrepid fighters. The proclamation of a decree to levy three hundred thousand men was the signal for ringing the tocsin in six hundred villages. The flames burst forth in all directions at once. Poitou and the Anjou revolted on the same day. Let us remark that the first rumbling was heard on the 8th of July, 1792, a month previous to the 10th of August, on the moor of Kerbader. Alain Redeler, whose name is now forgotten, was the forerunner of La Rochejaquelein and Jean Chouan. The Royalists forced all able-bodied men to march, under penalty of death. They confiscated harnesses, wagons, and provisions. Sapinaud at once assembled three thousand soldiers, Cathelineau ten thousand, Stofflet twenty thousand, and Charette took possession of Noirmoutier. The Viscount de Scépeaux roused the Haut-Anjou, the Chevalier de Dieuzie the Entre-Vilaine-et-Loire, Tristan l'Hermite the Bas-Maine, the barber Gaston the city of Guéménée, and the Abbé Bernier all the others.
It required but little to excite the masses. A great black cat was placed in the tabernacle of a priest who had taken the civil oath, – a "priest-juror," as he was called, – whence it suddenly leaped forth in the middle of the Mass. "It's the Devil!" cried the peasants, and a whole district rose in revolt. Sometimes flames would be seen issuing from the confessionals. For assailing the Blues and crossing the ravines, they had sticks fifteen feet long, called the "ferte," – a weapon of defence, which was likewise available for flight. In the very heat of the conflict, when the peasants were attacking the Republican squares, if they chanced to see on the battlefield a cross or a chapel, all fell on their knees and said their prayers under the fire of the enemy; and after finishing the rosary, those who had not been killed rushed upon the enemy. Alas! what giants were these! They loaded their muskets on the run; that was their special talent. They could be made to believe anything. Their priests showed them other priests whose necks had been reddened by a tightly drawn cord, saying to them: "These are the guillotined come to life again." They had their fits of chivalrous emotion; they paid military honors to Fesque, a Republican standard-bearer, who had allowed himself to be sabred without once losing hold of his banner. These peasants were at times derisive; they called the married Republican priests "sans-calottes devenus sans-culottes."10 At first they stood in awe of the cannon; but after a while they dashed upon them with no other weapons than their sticks, and captured several. The first one they took was a fine bronze cannon, which they baptized "le Missionnaire;" another gun, dating from the times of the Catholic wars, and which had Richelieu's arms and an image of the Virgin engraved upon it, they named Marie-Jeanne. When they lost Fontenay, they lost Marie-Jeanne, around which six hundred peasants fell fighting with unflinching courage.
Later, they recaptured Fontenay in order to recover Marie-Jeanne, which they brought back under the fleur-de-lis flag, covering it with flowers, and making the women who passed by kiss it. But two cannon were insufficient. It was Stofflet who had captured Marie-Jeanne; Cathelineau, envying him, left Pin-en-Mange, attacked Jallais, and took possession of a third one. Forest fell on Saint-Florent and captured a fourth. Two other commanders, Chouppes and Saint-Paul, were still more successful. They manufactured imitation-cannon from the trunks of trees, using manikins for gunners; and with this artillery, over which they made merry, they forced the Blues to retreat to Mareuil. At that time they were in the height of their glory. Later, when Chalbos defeated La Marsonnière, the peasants left behind them on the dishonored battlefield two cannon, bearing the arms of England. At that time the French princes were paid by England, who, as Nantiat writes on the 10th of May, 1794, "remitted funds to Monseigneur because Mr. Pitt was told that it was the proper thing to do." Mellinet, in a report of the 31st of March, says: "The cry of the rebels is,'Long live the English!'" The peasants tarried for purposes of pillage, for these devotees were thieves. Savages have their vices, and it is to these that civilization appeals. Puysaye says: "Several times I have saved the town of Plélan from pillage." And again he says that he refrained from entering Montfort: "I made a circuit in order to avoid the sacking of the houses of the Jacobins."11 They pillaged Cholet; they sacked Chalans; passing by Granville, they robbed Ville-Dieu. They called the country-people who joined the Blues the "Jacobin herd," and exterminated them more fiercely than they did their other foes. They enjoyed carnage like soldiers, and revelled in massacre like brigands. To shoot the patauds was their delight. They called it breaking their fast.
At Fontenay one of their priests, named Barbotin, killed an old man with a blow from his sabre. At Saint-Germain-sur-Ille 12 one of their captains, a nobleman, shot the solicitor of the Commune, and took his watch. At Machecoul for the space of five weeks they made a practice of slaughtering the Republicans at the rate of thirty a day. Each string of thirty they called a rosary. Behind this row of men there was a trench prepared, into which the men fell back as they were shot; and when, as sometimes happened, a man was still alive, he was buried as if he were dead. Such acts have been witnessed in our own times. Joubert, president of the district, had his wrists sawed off. They had handcuffs for the Blues made expressly to cut the flesh. They slaughtered them in the public squares, sounding the halloo. Charette, who signed himself, "Fraternity, Chevalier Charette," and who, like Marat, wore a handkerchief knotted around his brows, burned the city of Pornic, with the inhabitants in their dwellings.
Meanwhile Carrier was frightful. Terror answered unto terror. The Breton rebel looked very much like the Greek insurgent, clad as he was in a short jacket, with a gun slung across his shoulders, leggings, wide trousers of a material not unlike fustian. The lads resembled a Greek klepht. Henri de la Rochejaquelein went into this war at the age of twenty-one, armed with a pair of pistols and a stick. There were one hundred and fifty-four divisions in the Vendean army. They laid regular sieges. The city of Bressuire was invested by them for three days. On a Good Friday ten thousand peasants bombarded the city of des Sables with red-hot cannon-balls. They succeeded in destroying in one day the fourteen Republican cantonments from Montigné to Courbeveilles. On the high wall at Thouars the following astonishing dialogue was heard between La Rochejaquelein and a lad: "Fellow!" "Here I am." – "Lend me your shoulders to climb up on." "Take them." – "Give me your gun." "Here it is." And La Rochejaquelein leaped into the city, and thus without the aid of scaling-ladders they captured the very towers once besieged by Duguesclin. They valued a cartridge far beyond a gold louis. They burst into tears whenever they lost sight of their village belfry. To run away seemed to them the simplest affair in the world. At such times their leaders would exclaim, "Throw away your sabots, but keep your guns!" When munitions failed, they said their beads, and proceeded to take the powder from the caissons of the Republican artillery; and afterwards d'Elbée demanded powder from the English. On the approach of the enemy they concealed their wounded in the tall grain, or among the brakes, and came back for them after the engagement was over. They wore no uniform, and their clothing was falling to pieces. Noblemen as well as peasants wore any rags that came to hand. Roger Mouliniers was arrayed in a turban and dolman taken from the ward-robe of the Théâtre de La Flèche; the Chevalier de Beauvilliers had a barrister's gown, and a lady's bonnet over a woollen cap. All wore the white belt and scarf. The different grades were indicated by a knot. Stofflet wore a red knot, La Rochejaquelein a black one. Wimpfen, a semi-Girondist, and who moreover had never been out of Normandy, wore the armlets of the Carabots of Caen.
They had women in their ranks, – Madame de Lescure, who afterwards became Madame de la Rochejaquelein; Thérèse de Mollien, mistress of La Rouarie, she who burned the list of parishes; Madame de la Rochefoucauld, young and beautiful, who sabre in hand rallied the peasants at the foot of the Tower of the Château Puy-Rousseau; and Antoinette Adams, styled the Chevalier Adams, so brave that when captured she was shot standing, out of respect for her courage. This epic period was a cruel one. Men behaved like maniacs. Madame de Lescure deliberately walked her horse over the Republicans who lay disabled on the battle-ground. She said they were dead, but very possibly they may have been only wounded. There was occasionally a traitor among the men, but never among the women. It is true, Mademoiselle Fleury of the French Theatre forsook La Rouarie for Marat; but that was for love's sake. The commanders were often as ignorant as the soldiers. M. de Sapinaud could not spell correctly; he wrote, "Nous orions de notre cauté."
The leaders hated one another. The captains of the Marais cried, "Down with the Mountaineers!" Their cavalry was few in numbers, and difficult to form. Puysaye writes: "A man who would cheerfully give me his two sons grows cool when I ask for one of his horses." Poles, pitchforks, scythes, muskets, old and new, poacher's knives, spits, iron-pointed cud-gels studded with nails, – such were their weapons. Some carried a cross made of two human bones. They rushed to the attack with shouts, springing up at once from all quarters, – from woods, hills, underbrush, and hollow roads, – ranging themselves in a circle, killing, exterminating, striking terror, and then disappearing. Whenever they passed a Republican town they cut down the liberty-pole, set it on fire, and forming in a circle, danced around it. All their activity was displayed by night. The rule of the Vendean is to be always unexpected. They would march fifteen leagues in utter silence, without so much as stirring a blade of grass. At night, their chiefs having determined in a council of war at what point the Republican posts were to be surprised the next day, they loaded their muskets, mumbled their prayers, and taking off their sabots, filed through the woods in long columns, barefoot across the heather and moss, noiseless, without uttering a sound or drawing a breath, like a procession of cats in the darkness.
VI
THE SOUL OF THE EARTH PASSES INTO MAN
The number of the rebels in the Vendée, including men, women, and children, cannot be estimated at less than five hundred thousand. Tuffin de la Rouarie states the sum total of the combatants to have been half a million.
The federalists helped them, and the Vendée had the Gironde on its side also. Lozère sent thirty thousand men into the Bocage. Eight departments formed a coalition: five in Brittany, three in Normandy. Évreux, who fraternized with Caen, was represented in the rebellion by Chaumont, its mayor, and Gardembas, a man of note. Buzot, Gorsas, and Barbaroux at Caen, Brissot at Moulins, Chassan at Lyons, Rabaut-Saint-Étienne at Nismes, Meillan and Duchâtel in Brittany, all fanned the flames of the furnace. There were two Vendées, – the great army fighting in the forests, and the smaller one carrying on the war in the bushes. And this marks the difference between Charette and Jean Chouan. The little Vendée was simple-minded and true; the great Vendée was corrupt. The little Vendée was the better of the two. The rank of Marquis, lieutenant-general of the king's armies, was bestowed upon Charette, and he received the grand cross of Saint-Louis. Jean Chouan remained Jean Chouan. Charette resembles a bandit, Jean Chouan is more like a paladin of old.
As to those magnanimous chiefs, Bonchamps, Lescure, La Rochejaquelein, they were mistaken; the great Catholic army was an insane attempt, upon whose heels disaster was sure to follow; imagine a crowd of peasants storming Paris, a coalition of villages besieging the Pantheon, a chorus of Christmas hymns and prayers striving to drown the Marseillaise, a cohort of rustics rushing upon a legion of enlightened minds. Mans and Savenay chastised this folly. The Vendée could not cross the Loire; that was a stride beyond its power. Civil war can make no conquests. Crossing the Rhine confirms the power of Cæsar and adds to that of Napoleon; crossing the Loire kills La Rochejaquelein. The genuine Vendée is the Vendée at home: there it is more than invulnerable; it is unconquerable. At home the Vendée is smuggler, laborer, soldier, shepherd, poacher, sharpshooter, goat-herd, bell-ringer, peasant, spy, assassin, sacristan, and wild beast.
La Rochejaquelein is only an Achilles, while Jean Chouan is a Proteus.
The Vendée failed. Other revolts have been successful, that in Switzerland for instance. The difference between mountain insurgents like the Swiss and forest insurgents like the Vendean, exists in the fact that almost invariably, owing to some fatal influence of his surroundings, the former fights for an ideal, while the latter fights for a prejudice. The one soars, the other crawls. The one fights for humanity, the other for solitude; the one demands liberty, the other isolation; the one defends the commune, the other the parish. "The Commons! The Commons!" cried the heroes of Morat. The one has to do with precipices, the other with quagmires; the one is the man of torrents and foaming streams, the other of stagnant pools whence fever rises; one has the blue sky above his head, the other a thicket; one is on the mountain-top, the other among the shadows.
An education that is gained upon the heights is quite a different affair from that of the shallows.
A mountain is a fortress; a forest is an ambush; the former inspires courage, the latter teaches trickery. The ancients placed their gods upon a pinnacle, and their satyrs within copses. The satyr is a savage, half man, half beast. Free countries have their Apennines, Alps, Pyrenees, an Olympus. Parnassus is a mountain. Mont Blanc was the gigantic auxiliary of William Tell. Looking beyond and above those titanic contests between human intellect and the darkness of night, which form the subjects of the poems of India, one sees Himalaya towering overhead. Greece, Spain, Italy, Helvetia have the mountains for their inspiration. Cimmeria, whether it be Germany or Brittany, has but the woods. The forest tends to barbarism.
The formation of the soil influences man in many of his actions. It is more of an accomplice than one might imagine. When we consider certain wild scenery, we feel tempted to exonerate man and accuse Nature; we are conscious of an occult provocation on the part of Nature; the desert has sometimes an unwholesome influence upon the conscience, especially on one that is not enlightened. A conscience may be gigantic, – take for example Socrates or the Christ; it may be dwarf-like, in which case we find Atreus and Judas. A narrow conscience soon displays the attributes of the reptile; it delights to haunt the dim forests, it is attracted by the brambles, the thorns, the marshes underneath the branches, and absorbs the evil influences of the place. Optical illusions, mysterious mirages, the terrors of the hour and the place, inspire a man with that sort of half-religious, half-animal fear which in every-day life begets superstition, and in times of wild excitements degenerates into brutality. Hallucination holds the torch that lights the path to murder. A vertigo seizes the brigand. Nature, marvellous as she is, holds a double meaning that dazzles great minds and blinds the savage soul. When man is ignorant, and the desert is alive with visions, the gloom of solitude is added to the blindness of the intelligence; hence the abyss that sometimes yawns in the human soul. There are certain rocks, ravines, copses, weird spaces between the trees, revealing the blackness of the night, that incite man to mad and cruel deeds. One might say that the evil fiend possesses such spots. What tragic scenes has not the gloomy hill between Baignon and Plélan beheld!
Wide horizons tend to enlarge the mind; limited horizons, on the contrary, circumscribe it; hence men naturally kind-hearted, such, for instance, as Jean Chouan, grow narrow-minded.
It is the hatred of narrow minds for liberal ideas that fetters the march of progress. The Vendean war, a quarrel between the local and the universal idea, the contest of peasant and patriot, may be summed up in two words, – the village community and the fatherland.
VII
THE VENDÉE HAS RUINED BRITTANY
Brittany is an old rebel. In all her revolts in the past two thousand years she has had the right on her side until now; in her last rebellion she was wrong. And yet, after all, whether she was fighting against revolution or against monarchy, against the acting representative or against the ruling dukes and peers, against the financial resource of the assignats or the oppression of the salt-tax, – whoever might be fighting, whether it were Nicolas Rapin, François de La Noue, Captain Pluviaut, and The Lady of La Garnache, or Stofflet, Coquereau, and Lechandelier de Pierreville, and whether they were fighting under M. de Rohan against the king, or under M. de La Rochejaquelein for the king, it was practically the same war, that of local government against centralization.
These ancient provinces might be compared with a pond; stagnant water is not inclined to flow; the wind, instead of rousing it to life, simply irritates it. France ended at Finistère; that was the limit of the space granted to man, and there the forward march of generations ceased. "Pause!" cries the ocean to the land, and barbarism to civilization. Whenever it feels the influence of any excitement in Paris, whatever may be the occasion thereof, monarchy or republic, despotism or liberty, it is an innovation, and Brittany bristles with alarm, and says, "Let us alone! What do you want of us?" The Marais seizes its pitchfork, and the Bocage grasps its musket. All our attempts at reform in matters of education and legislation, our philosophical systems, our men of genius, our triumphs, fail before the Houroux; the tocsin of Bazouges holds the French Revolution in awe; the moor of Faou defies the stormy assemblies on our public squares; and the belfry of Haut-des-Près declares war against the Tower of the Louvre. Terrible blindness!
The Vendean insurrection was a melancholy misunderstanding.
An affray on a gigantic scale, wrangling among Titans, a colossal rebellion, fated to bequeath but one word to history, The Vendée, – a glorious though melancholy word, devoting itself to death for the absent, sacrificing itself to egotism, squandering its dauntless courage, offering itself in the cause of cowards, with neither foresight nor strategy, without tactics, plan, or aim, following no leader, accepting no responsibility, showing how powerless the human will may become, uniting the spirit of chivalry with the deeds of the savage, absurdity at its height, darkness screening itself from the light, ignorance offering a determined resistance to truth, justice, right, reason, and deliverance, the terror of eight years, the devastation of fourteen departments, the ravages in the fields, the destruction of crops, the burning of villages, the ruin of cities, the massacre of women and children, the torch applied to the thatch, the sword plunged into the heart, the terror of civilization, the hope of Mr. Pitt, – such was this war, an unreasoning attempt at parricide.
On the whole, the Vendée has served the cause of progress by showing the necessity of scattering the ancient shadows of Brittany by discharging into its thickets all the arrows of enlightenment Catastrophes have a gloomy way of settling affairs.
