The Reign of George III. - (Continued.) page 10

Meantime, the republican general, Quetineau, had seized the marquis de Lescure and some others of the insurgent chiefs at Clisson, and put them in prison at Bressuire. La Roche-Jaquelein mustered the peasants from the neighbourhood of his estate near Châtillon, marched to their rescue, and effected it. The leaders, Lescure, Jaquelein, Bonchamps, Cathelinau, and Stofflet, now united their forces, amounting to about thirty thousand men, and marched on Thouars, where Quetineau had posted himself. They speedily compelled his surrender, destroyed the tree of liberty, and burnt the official papers of the administration, towards which the Vendean peasantry always evinced a bitter hatred. The republican troops and civil authorities at this defeat raised the wildest cries of alarm. They sent to all the departments round for help, and dispatched letters to the convention, describing the country in general insurrection, and no republican life safe. The convention issued some terrible decrees against the Vendeans, recalled Berruyer, the commander-in- chief of the department, and sent Biron in his place. But Biron found it no easy matter to make head in such a country, and against such a population. The country called the Bocage, or woody district, constitutes more than three- fourths of Vendee. It is a country of low hills and narrow valleys, intersected by perpetual streams and thick hedgerows. All the peasants were admirable marksmen, for there were no game laws in La Vendée, and every one carried a gun at pleasure, and joined in the sports of the gentry. Accordingly, the Vendeans formed ambushes in the narrow woody passes, and, hemming in the republican troops, poured down upon them the most deadly fire from their concealed positions. In the open fields they attacked them from behind the thick hedges, and when driven from one hedge by overwhelming numbers, retired to another. Between the Bocage and the sea lay the Marais - or, as its name indicates, a district of marshes - intersected by dykes and canals. In such a country, the republican troops, for a time, suffered the most terrible losses. La Roche-Jaquelein drove the republican generals Sandos and Chalbos out of Fontenay into Niort, capturing all their artillery and ammunition. Charette, about the same time, defeated the republican general, Boulard, and Constant and Berthier were driven with severe loss from Saumur to Angers. The Vendeans next marched on Nantes, thirty thousand strong, Cathelinau commanding this force on the right bank of the Loire, and Charette coming up with another army, and posting himself opposite the town on the left bank. He forced his way over the bridge into the town, whilst Cathelinau was attacking it on the other side. The united attack continued fiercely for eighteen hours, for the republicans had great force there. Cathelinau, however, was killed as he led on his troops; and his followers, panic- stricken by his loss, carried him away, and retreated in confusion towards the Bocage. They were pursued by Westermann, who burned the châteaux and villages, laid waste the country, and massacred man, woman, and child as he advanced. But he was soon stopped by the nature of the country and the fury of the peasantry, excited by his barbarity. They waylaid him, defeated him, and now, inspired by fury at his cruelties, showed no quarter to his troops, but cut to pieces all but about three hundred horse, with which Westermann managed to escape. These conflicts took place in June. The Vendeans gave the republicans another terrific defeat soon after near Vihiers, where Santerre, the brewer, was in the battle, whom the peasants made desperate efforts to capture. He managed, however, to make his escape by the speed of his horse, and was only too glad to reach Paris again. By the end of July La Vendée was cleared of the troops of the convention, and in the hands of its own people.

But the Convention determined to bear the Vendeans down by numbers. Vast armies were collected on all their frontiers, which advanced steadily and simultaneously upon them. Amongst these republicans were twenty thousand regular troops, who had capitulated to the king of Prussia at Mayence, and who had engaged not to serve again, but were marched directly here. A hundred thousand volunteers, national guards, and other armed men, swelled this invading host. Amongst these were several detachments known as the "infernal columns," from their unsparing barbarity, murdering all before them, even children at the breasts. The Vendeans were thus gradually pressed back towards the centre of their country, with their families, their flocks, and herds, the republicans destroying the country by fire as they advanced. Yet they did not do this with impunity. The Vendeans defeated them repeatedly with great slaughter, followed by massacres as savage as their own; for, independent of the brutality of the republican forces, the Vendeans found many amongst them whom they had before liberated on their oath not to fight against them again. They now gave no quarter. They defeated Kléber twice, and also Beysser, capturing his baggage and artillery. Their general, Lescure, however, was killed, and, attacking Kléber a third time at Chollet, Bonchamps and D'Elbée suffered the same fate. Most of their other leaders were severely wounded. Kléber here triumphed over them by his weight of artillery, and they now fled to the Loire. Amongst a number of royalist nobles who had joined them from the army of the prince of Condé on the Rhine, was prince de Talmont, a Breton noble, formerly of vast property in Brittany, and now of much influence there. He advised them, for the present, to abandon their country, and take refuge amongst his countrymen, the Bretons. The whole of the miserable and miscellaneous population, nearly a hundred thousand in number, crowded to the edge of the Loire, impatient, from terror and despair, to cross. Old men, children, and women were mingled with half-armed soldiery, caravans, crowded baggage-wagons, and teams of oxen. Behind were the smoke of burning villages, and the thunder of the hostile artillery; before, was the broad Loire, divided by a low, long island, also crowded with fugitives. There were only twenty boats to carry over all this multitude, and such was the terror and confusion of the scene, that the marchioness La Roche-Jaquelein, who was amongst them with an infant of nine months old, declared that it looked like the day of judgment. Lescure, mortally wounded, but not yet dead, was borne along in a carriage till he died; his wife having an infant in her arms screaming for food, till the nurse was compelled to go amongst the burning villages to seek a drop of milk for it. La Roche-Jaquelein had the command of the Vendeans at this trying moment; but the enemy, not having good information of their situation, did not come up till the whole miserable and famished multitude was over.

On their way to Laval, they were attacked both by Westermann and Lechelle; but being now joined by nearly seven thousand Bretons, they beat both those generals; and Lechelle, from mortification and terror of the guillotine now the certain punisher of defeated generals - died.

The Vendeans for a time, aided by the Bretons, appeared victorious. They had two courses open before them: one, to retire into the farthest part of Bretagne, where there was I a population strongly inspired by their own sentiments, I having a country hilly and easy of defence, with the advantage of being open to the coast, and the assistance of the English; the other, to advance into Normandy, where they might open up communication with the English through the port of Cherbourg. They took the latter route, though their commander, La Roche-Jaquelein, was strongly opposed to it. Stofflet commanded under Jaquelein. The army marched on in great confusion, having the women and children and the wagons in the centre. They were extremely ill-informed of the condition of the towns which they approached. They might have taken Rennes and St. Malo, which would have greatly encouraged the Bretons; but they were informed that the republican troops were overpowering there. They did not approach Cherbourg from the same cause, being told that it was well defended on the land side; they therefore proceeded by Dol and Avranches to Granville, where they arrived on the 14th of November. This place would have given them open communication with the English, and, at the worst, an easy escape to the Channel Islands; but they failed in their attempts to take it; and, great suspicion now having seized the people, that their officers only wanted to get into a seaport to desert them and escape to England, they one and all protested that they would return to the Loire. In vain did La Roche-Jaquelein demonstrate to them the fatality of such a proceeding, and how much better it would be to make themselves strong in Normandy and Brittany for the present; only about a thousand men remained with him; the rest retraced their long and weary way towards the Loire, though the republicans had now accumulated very numerous forces to bar their way. Fighting every now and then on the road, and seeing their wives and children daily drop from hunger and fatigue, they returned through Dol and Port Orson to Angers. There, they were repulsed by the republicans. They then retreated to Mons, where they again were attacked and defeated, many of their women, who had concealed themselves in the houses, being dragged out and shot down by whole platoons. At Ancenis, Stofflet managed to cross the Loire; but the republicans got between him and his army, which, wedged in at Savenay, between the Loire, the Vilain, and the sea, were attacked by Kléber and Westermann, and, after maintaining a desperate fight against overwhelming numbers and a terrible artillery, were literally, with the exception of a few hundreds who effected their escape, cut to pieces, and the women and children all massacred by the merciless jacobins. Such was the miserable fate of this brave but ill-informed body of fugitives. Kléber and Westermann announced, in triumphant letters to the convention, that La Vendée was not merely quieted - it was no more! Time showed that there was yet life, and much sturdy life, in that gallant but unhappy country.

But whilst this sad host of Vendeans had been thus in process of extermination, those at home had been perishing, if possible, in a still more horrible manner. In the early part of October arrived in Nantes, Carrier, the commissioner of the convention, to purge that city in the same style as Collot D'Herbois had purged Lyons; as Tallien was purging Bourdeaux; Frèron and Barras, Toulon; Maignet, Orange, in Vaucluse; and Lebon, Arras, St. Pol, and many other places in the north. Perhaps, of these monsters, Carrier is the most monstrous. After wading through the unexampled horrors of »this revolution, we stand appalled at the insatiate frenzy of destruction which distinguished this man, who had been a petty lawyer in some small town of Auvergne. On arriving, he commenced a rapid murder of those who had favoured the Girondists. He established the guillotine in permanence, and seemed to have no idea but of cutting off all the heads that he could. He declared that they would turn all France into a graveyard, but they would regenerate it according to their notions. He then commenced decapitating the Vendean prisoners, who had surrendered on condition of pardon; and when the magistrates reminded him of this, he called them fools, bade them mind their own business, or he would send them all to the guillotine. One day, as the authorities came to consult him about provisions he told them he had no time to attend to their fooleries, and the first blackguard who talked to him of provisions, should lose his head! The municipality were terrified at him.

The unfortunates who had escaped the massacres of Mons and Savenay were now coming in daily in crowds. He thrust them all into the prisons of Nantes, till he had ten thousand there. He then commenced dispatching them daily by shooting and guillotining, but he found this process too slow, and their unburied bodies began to infect the air of the town; he therefore adopted a new plan. Recollecting the noyades, or drownings, of the fourteenth century, he had boats prepared with movable bottoms, so that the victims could be dropped through without admitting water enough to sink the vessel. He first tried the experiment by night on ninety priests, who were told that they were going on board to convey them to some other place. The experiment succeeded so well, that Carrier, on the 14th of December, drowned a hundred and thirty-eight more persons in the same manner. Pleased with this expeditious way of getting rid of his victims, he now sent them on board the fatal vessels in the day-time. If, aware of their destiny, they refused to go, they were driven on board at the point of the bayonet, and then driven into the water in the same manner, whilst soldiers stood ready in boats to shoot or kill with the sword any that attempted to swim away. Carrier did not trouble himself to try the prisoners, but sent them to the guillotine or the death-boats in batches. The executioner, after remonstrating in vain against the numbers sent to him to execute, died in two or three days of horror at his own deeds. French mirth and obscenity were not omitted in these horrors. Men and women were stripped naked, tied together, and thrown into the water. In one night above three hundred infants were thus drowned; in another night three hundred young women, who had nothing whatever to do with politics, but were chiefly what are termed unfortunate women, were drowned. On another occasion, five hundred children of both sexes, the eldest not fourteen years of age, were taken out to be shot. The shortness of their stature caused the soldiers to shoot over their heads. The little victims then ran and clasped the knees of their executioners, praying for mercy, but they prayed in vain. Such diabolic savagery exceeds anything ever imagined of devils.

Carrier, exulting in his unexampled cruelty, wrote to the convention an account of his slaughters, adding, " What a revolutionary river this Loire is!" and the convention commended his zeal. But nature was preparing her revenge. The dead bodies began to float; the river was covered with them, and the same process of putridity which he hoped to avoid by these drownings, renewed itself. Vessels heaving their anchors occasionally raised boats which had been sunk full of people. The birds of prey flocked to the river to gorge themselves on human flesh. Pestilence, added to dearth, again swept the city. Still Carrier threatened with death any one who dared to intercede for any of the victims. Fortunately, this monster of monsters was superseded in the succeeding January, but not before he had dispatched by musketry, drowning, famine, and disease, fifteen thousand people; but the total number of victims of the reign of terror in Nantes was thirty thousand!