to take the constitutional oath and protest against any thing which it might contain contrary to the Apostolical and Romish religion. Lescure was believed to be a man wholly devoted to religion and study; for this reason he was unmolested, and Clisson became an asylum for many persons who stood in need of one at this time. Of these, the two most important were Marigny, who still continued to share their fortunes, and Henri de la Roche Jaquelein, the most distinguished of a family to which the Bourbons can never be too grateful. Roche Jaquelein was the cousin and friend of Lescure. The marchioness describes him as a young man simple in his manners, timid in deportment, laconic and unaffected in speech: he had lived little in the world, and was but twenty years old. His countenance, she says, was rather English than French, and a portrait in M. Alphouse de Beauchamp's work confirms this. Notwithstanding an air of timidity, his eyes were quick and animated, and it was not long before events fixed in his features the fierce and ardent expression which denoted his heroic character. He was an officer in the King's Constitutional Guards, and with his friend, Charles d'Autichamp, bad escaped, as if by miracle, from the Tuileries on the 10th of August. With equal good fortune they effected their escape also from the capital, which was at that time one wide prison for the royalists. The Abbess of St. Auxonne, sister to the Duc de Civrac, and aunt to Victorine's mother, was another of the refugees at Clisson; the greater number of its inhabitants were women and aged persons; the servants were very numerous, and almost all thoroughly devoted to their masters. Only the maître d'hotel, and the valet who had been Madame de Lescure's surgeon, were warm revolutionists; but they had been faithful servants, and there was no reason to think that their political principles had divested them of old attachments, duty, and humanity.

At the end of October, Victorine was delivered of a daughter, the unhappy offspring of a most ill-timed and ill-starred union. Under other circumstances she would have nursed the infant herself. But Woe unto them that are with child and to them that give suck in those days! The signs of the times were not then to be mistaken; sooner or later she knew that the storm must break, and she held herself ready to follow Lescure wherever his fate might call him, whether to prison, or to the field. He and Roche Jaquelein had hoped that some timely effort would be made in behalf of the King, or at least that a coup-de-main would be attempted for his rescue, holding themselves ready for any summons. This hope was frustrated; but he foresaw that the Vendeans would be driven into insurrection, and he was determined to cast his fortunes into the same scale. He took no measures to accelerate this event, and made no combinations to ensure

its success; but he knew that it must take place, and eagerly desired it. The revolutionary writers insist that the war in La Vendée was the result of plans long existing, and ably concerted; but upon this subject the testimony of the marchioness would be decisive, even if it stood alone-it is, however, confirmed by the best and most unprejudiced writers.

General Turreau says, il faut être bien ignorant ou de bien mauvaise foi, pour assigner une cause éventuelle et instantanée à la révolle du Bas Poitou. General Turreau was the faithful servant of the Convention in its bloodiest days, and the faithful servant of Buonaparte after his return from Elba: he hated the old government, and he hated the Bourbons whatever government they might establish; but he never objected to the wildest excesses of revolutionary madness, nor to the heaviest yoke of imperial despotism. General Turreau therefore may be sincere in disbelieving that a sense of religion and loyalty could instantaneously rouse a brave and simple people to arms, because, never having felt either the one sentiment or the other, he is utterly ignorant of their nature and their strength. He supposes a conspiracy of the emigrants, the nobles, and the priests, fomented by foreign powers. M. Bourniseaux, with more knowledge of the circumstances and the people, with more truth, with sounder philosophy, and with a better heart, ascribes the moving impulse to its real source. To expect, he says, that the nobles and clergy, insulted, injured, outraged and plundered as they were by the Revolution, should have embraced the Revolution, would be to know little of the human heart, c'eut été demander à la philosophie un miracle, et l'on sait que la philosophie n'en fit jamais. But he declares, that in the insurrection of La Vendée the priests and nobles were, for the most part, forced to make common cause with the insurgents; that, with very few exceptions, they did not come forward voluutarily to take the lead; that having taken arms they exerted themselves strenuously; but that when terms of pacification were proposed, they were the first to submit, and the peasantry were the last. That the peasants should thus have acted, he says, may well astonish posterity; for they derived nothing but benefit from the revolution, which delivered them from the payment of tithes, and from the feudal grievances. Thus, however, it was: in jacobinical phrase, they were not ripe for the revolution; which is, being interpreted, they loved their king and their God, their morals were uncorrupt, their piety was sincere and fervent, their sense of duty towards God and man unshaken. Hitherto what tumults had broken out had been partial, and provoked merely by local vexations, chiefly respecting the priests; but when the Convention called for a conscription of 300,000 men, a measure which would have forced

their sons to fight for a cause which they abhorred, one feeling of indignation rose through the whole country, and the insurrection through all La Vendée broke forth simultaneously and without concert or plan. The same principle which made them take arms made them look to their own gentry for leaders; the opportunity was favourable; nor can it now be doubted, that if the Bourbon princes and the allied powers had known how to profit by the numerous opportunities offered them in these western provinces, the monarchy might long since have been restored.

The 10th of March, 1793, was the day appointed for drawing the conscription at St. Florent in Anjou, upon the banks of the Loire. The young men assembled with a determination not to submit to it; after exhorting them in vain, the republican commander brought out a piece of cannon to intimidate them, and fired upon them; they got possession of the gun, routed the gendarmes, burnt the papers, and after passing the rest of the day in rejoicing, returned to grow sober, and contemplate upon the vengeance which would follow them. One of the most respectable peasants in this part of the country was a wool-dealer of the village of Pin en Mauges, by name Jaques Cathelineau. As soon as this man heard what had past, he saw what the consequence would be, and took the noble resolution of standing up for his king and country,-facing the evils which were not to be avoided, and doing his duty manfully in arms, secure of the approbation of his own heart whatever might be the event. His wife entreated him not to form this perilous resolution, but this was no time for such humanities; leaving his work, he called the villagers about him, described the punishment that would be inflicted upon the whole district, and urged them to take arms. About twenty young men promised to follow wherever he would lead; he was greatly beloved and respected in his neighbourhood, being a man of quiet manners, great piety, and strong natural talents. They rang the tocsin in the village of Poitevinière; their number soon amounted to about an hundred, and they determined to attack a party of about eighty republicans, who were posted at Jallars with a piece of cannon. On the way they gathered more force; they carried the post, took some horses and prisoners, and got possession of the gun, which they named le Missionaire. Encouraged by this success, which also increased their numbers, they attacked 200 republicans the .same day, at Chemillé, with three pieces of artillery, and they met with the same success. At the same time, a young man, by name Foret, in the same part of the country, killed a gendarme who sought to arrest him, ran to the church, rang the toscin, and raised a second body of insurgents. A third was raised in like manner by Stofflet, a man who had served sixteen years as a soldier, and was

at

On

at that time gamekeeper to the Marquis de Maulevrier. the 16th of March both these troops joined Cathelineau; they marched that very day upon Chollet, the most important town in that part of the country, garrisoned by five hundred soldiers. These also fell into their power, and they found there arms, ammunition, and money. Easter was at hand; and the insurgents, thinking they had done enough to make themselves feared, thought they might keep the holidays as usual; they dispersed every man to his own house; and a republican column from Augers traversed the country without meeting with the slightest resistance, and also without committing the slightest act of violence;-a moderation which M. de la Roche Jaquelein ascribes to fear.

When the holidays were over, the insurgents appeared again; suc-. cess had given them confidence in their strength; and looking forward with hope of some important results from the devoted spirit of loyalty which they felt in themselves, and which they well knew pervaded the country, they called for the gentry of the country to lead them on. The man who was most respected in their immediate neighbourhood, was M. Gigot d'Elbée-in his youth he had served in the Saxon army, afterwards as a lieutenant in the Regiment Dauphin-Cavalerie, from which he retired in disgust (if General Turreau may be believed) because he was refused a company. At this time he was about forty years of age, and resided in the commune of St. Martin de Beaupreau, upon an estate which produced an income of from 3 to 4000 livres. M. Alphonse de Beauchamp, who, when plagiarism fails him, makes as little scruple of supplying the want of knowledge by invention as he does of appropriating to himself the labours of others, pretends that D'Elbee was deeply involved in a plan which the Marquis de la Rouarie had concerted for raising an insurrection in Bretagne; that he had set on foot the movement of Anjou; and was only now called upon to direct measures openly, which he had hitherto guided in secret. M. le Bouvier-Desmortiers, the biographer of Charette, derides this imagination, and demonstrates its absurdity. This author knew D'Elbée intimately, and affirms that, like most of the nobles and gentry, he was compelled to take the field by the peasants. D'Eĺbée was a man of domestic habits, scrupulous religion, and moral life; fondly attached to his wife, who is extolled both for her virtue and personal accomplishments, and whose love and fidelity were attested by her heroic death. She was in child-bed when the insurgents called upon her husband to come forward in the cause of their God and their king. D'Elbée. would not, of his own choice, have taken this perilous post, for he was unmolested and happy, and at that time might have -hoped to remain so; but when no choice was left him, he made

a virtue

a virtue of necessity-a wide field was open to his ambition-and be derived also from his thorough devotion to the cause in which he was engaged, and from the satisfaction of performing his duty to the utmost, a more animating support than the most aspiring hopes of mere earthly ambition could have ministered.

M. Artus de Bonchamp dwelt in the same canton with M. D'Elbée, and joined the insurgents at the same time and in the same manner. His military talents were great; and in the history of these dreadful times few Frenchmen have left a more unsullied reputation, or a more honourable name. While these events took place in Anjou, a more general commotion arose in Bas Poitou, from the same predisposing causes and the same immediate occasion. Scarcely a parish from Fontenay to Nantes submitted to the conscription. A barber, by name Gaston, took the command of a party of insurgents, slew a republican officer, put on his uniform, got possession of Challans, then marched against St. Gervais, and was killed. This man disappeared so soon from the stage, that his name and existence were scarcely known in La Vendée; but by one of those odd chances whereby temporary celebrity is sometimes acquired, this Gaston became famous throughout Erance and Europe. We well remember the figure he made in the English newspapers; Carra denounced him as Generalissimo of the Vendeans, and a member of the Convention who happened to be of the same name, was called upon from the tribune to answer if he were not the brother of the chief of the rebels. The name happened to be distinguished in French history, and to this, no doubt, was owing, in great part, the general reputation of a man who perished as soon as he was heard of. A more conspicuous personage soon appeared upon the same theatre. François Athanase Charette de la Conterie, of a noble and ancient Breton family, was at this time in his 30th year, and had been six years a lieutenant in the navy his body was feeble, his habits effeminate and frivolous: but the moral picture of a French hero can only fitly be given in the words of a French biographer. We translate the passage; because it ought not to be presumed in this country that every person can read a language which it is scarcely possible to read without contracting some pollution, so extensively and radically is its whole literature depraved.

'Having arrived at that amiable but dangerous age,'-(says M. Le Bouvier-Desmortiers; and be it remembered that this writer is an ancient Magistrate, a Member of the Paris Society of Sciences, Letters and Arts, of the Philosophic and Galvanic Societies, and of the Rouen Academy of Sciences, Fine Literature and Arts,)—' Having arrived,' says this Ancient Magistrate,' at that amiable but dangerous age, when existence