the peasant officers often offered to with-, from calculation than from character. Durdraw from the table of the staff when she ing the greater part of the war his right arm appeared there, saying they were not enti- was useless from a wound. In this conditled to sit at the table with a gentlewoman. tion he was attacked alone in a hollow way This shows that the prejudices of birth re- by a foot-soldier. Henri seized him by the mained, and were simply kept under by collar with his left hand, and managed his patriotic motives. The modesty of their horse so well with his legs, that the man expectations in case of success is an- could not hurt him. The peasants came up, other proof of the pure and disinterested and wanted to kill the soldier: he would character of their loyalty. They meant not suffer it. Return to the Republicans,' to ask that the name of La Vendée, given said he to the man, tell them you were by chance, should be preserved, and a pro- alone with the chief of the Brigands who vince under a distinct administration be has only one hand and no weapon, and that formed of the Bocage; that the king would you could not kill him.' His pithy address honour their country with a visit; that a body to his followers is well known: 'Si j'avance, of Vendeans should form part of his guard; suivez-moi : si je recule, tuez-moi: si jo and that the white flag might always be tombe, vengez-moi.' He was killed toseen flying on the steeple of each parish. wards the termination of the struggle (1794) by one of two grenadiers whom he had interposed to save. The words, 'You shall have your lives,' were hardly out of his lips, when one of them shot him through the head. He was then only twenty-one years and a few months old. The chiefs were equally moderate. Henri de Larochejaquelein said, If we establish the king upon the throne he will grant me a regiment of hussars.' Another of this young nobleman's sayings is highly characteristic: when accused of inattention at the councils of war, he exclaimed,' Why The author of the Memoirs was not was I made a general? My only wish is to married to Louis de Larochejaquelein, the be a hussar, that I may have the pleasure of brother of Henri, until 1802. During the fighting.' Yet he made an excellent com- most eventful period of her life she was the mander; and his dislike to councils of war wife of the Marquis de Lescure, whose appears to have been as well grounded as qualities, though less dazzling, are perhaps Lord Clive's, who says he never called but better entitled to the meed of sound, sober, one, and gained the battle (Plassy) by act- reasoning admiration than his friend's. It ing contrary to their advice. His fondness was no love of excitement, no youthful for fighting was the only drawback, for he enthusiasm, no high-wrought spirit of loy rushed to the fray as if he were summoned alty in the narrow meaning of the term, to a banquet, and gave his whole soul and that animated and urged him on, but a spirit to the charge. In an attack on the stern, uncompromising sense of duty, to Republican camp, seeing his men recoil, he which every personal consideration was as flung his hat into the entrenchment, and nought. We have already given a specicalling out, Who will go and fetch it?' men of his intrepidity, and it is one jumped in first, and was instantly followed amongst a hundred; yet he detested fightby numbers. Red handkerchiefs, the ma- ing, and congratulated himself that, though nufacture of the country, formed a conspi- constantly in action and often engaged cuous part of his costume: he wore one hand to hand, he had never shed blood; round his head, one round his neck, and se- and the battle was hardly over before he veral round his waist as belts. At Fonte- was seen exerting all his energies to save. nay the word amongst the Blues (the Re- The true force and genuine beauty of his publicans) was 'Aim at the red handker- character came out when he was dying of chief;' and the other officers entreated him a wound from a musket-ball, which entered not to make himself a mark for their mus- his face near the eye and came out behind ketry; but obstinate as Nelson in this par- the ear. He lingered for several weeks, ticular, he refused; and, as the only means compelled to follow the movements of his of diminishing his danger, they adopted the friends, sometimes in rude litters, but red handkerchief themselves. The pictur- oftener in rough carts and carriages, whose esque costume and reckless daring of Mu- every jolt was agony. Yet, with the finger rat are said to have produced such an im- of death upon him, fevered with pain, and pression on the Cossacks during the Russian only able to lift his head at intervals, he campaign, that they opened their ranks to insisted upon attending the council to enlet him pass, and the bravest seldom ven- force a measure which he deemed essential tured to cross swords with him. Henri de to the cause, and was as ready as ever to Larochejaquelein inspired much of the set an example to the troops. same feeling, and seized every fitting occa sion to heighten it, though probably less To justify their treatment of the women, the Republicans declared that they were to be found in great numbers in the Vendean, which remains still to be written.' At the ranks-a bad excuse, if the fact had been same time we do not wonder that historians so; but Madame de Larochejaquelein as- have hitherto meddled but little with it; serts that there were not above ten or for the authorities are utterly irreconcilatwelve regularly enrolled female comba- ble; and it is no easy matter to arrive at a tan ts. Several boys of rank did duty as just or satisfactory estimate of a character aides-de-camp or officers. The Chevalier whom one party insists on ranking with de Mondyon, a lad of fourteen, was sta- heroes, and the other on stigmatizing as a tioned near a tall officer who complained of coward or a brigand. For example, Puibeing wounded, and was about to retire saye, whom Mr. Alison terms the soul of 'I don't see that,' said de Mondyon: the insurrection, is described by French 'your retiring will discourage the men; writers of repute as a mere intriguer, and, if you stir a step, I will shoot you wholly destitute of honour or couragethrough the head.' The remonstrance a Breton Lovat at the best-encouraged proved effectual. The two young Maignans by the English for the express purpose of de l'Ecorce used to go to every battle with defeating the grand object of the insurtheir governor, M. Biré. rection, and simply converting it into "a festering sore in the vitals of the country." George Cadoudal, erroneously enumerated by Mr. Alison among the nobles, is another hero of Chouannerie, well qualified to puzzle writers pretending to impartiality. He has been denounced as an assassin for his participation in the plot which immediately preceded the murder of the Duke d'Enghien; but he himself maintained to the last that his voice had been invariably for open war, and that his plan was to attack the First Consul's guard of thirty with an equal number of his followers, and decide the quarrel by a fair fight. The very name of Chouan is a mystery; and the etymologists have hitherto hit on nothing better than Chat-huant (owl,) which the insurgents were supposed to resemble, from their practice of moving principally by night. The seat of the Chouan war was Brittany, a province rich enough already in romantic associations of all sorts, as we very recently had occasion to point out. The war is thus brought into immediate connection with that in La Vendée by the last and perhaps best of the general historians of the period 'Meanwhile the severities of the Republicans in prosecuting the peasants of Brittany who sheltered the fugitive Vendeans, kindled a new and terrible warfare in that extensive province, which, under the name of the Chouan war, long consumed the vitals and paralyzed the forces of the Republic. The nobles of that district, Puisaye, Bourmont, George Cadoudal, and others, commenced a guerilla warfare with murderous effect; and soon, on a space of 1200 square leagues, 30,000 men were in arms in detached parties of two or three thousand each. Brittany, intersect ed by wooded ridges, abounding with hardy smugglers, ardently devoted to the royalist cause, and containing a population of 2,500,000 souls, afforded far greater resources for the royalist cause than the desolated La Vendée, which never contained a third of that number of inhabitants. Puisaye was the soul of the insurrection. Proscribed by the Convention, with a price set upon his head, wandering from château to château, from cottage to cottage, he became acquainted with the spirit of the Bretons, their inextinguishable hatred of the Convention, and conceived the bold design of hoisting the royal standard again amidst its secluded fastnesses. His indefatigable activity, energetic character, and commanding eloquence, eminently qualified this intrepid chief to become the leader of a party, and soon brought all the other Breton nobles to range themselves under his standard.'—Alison, vol. ii., p. 525. His fa Whether these difficulties will eventually appal M. Rio may be doubted; but we are quite sure that it will be no easy matter to find another equally qualified, by cast of mind, habits, education, and experience, for supplying a complete history of Chouannerie. His grandfather perished on the scaffold, a martyr to loyalty. ther died of sufferings and privations in the cause. He himself, as we shall presently see, was induced, whilst yet a boy, to engage in an armed insurrection, for the Purpose of re-seating the hereditary line of monarchs on the throne. When the struggle was suspended by the restoration, he applied to the study of history with such effect, that within a few years he delivered General Hoche, who commanded on the a course of lectures which attracted the atrevolutionary side during a great part of tention of the leading politicians of the the struggle, called it a war of giants; and capital. The reputation thus acquired was M. Capefigue recommends it as a fit sub-not suffered to fall away; and during the ject for a noble and poetical history, Villèle ministry we find him refusing, by turns, a censorship and the place of tutor to the Duc de Bordeaux. His unwillingness to co-operate in any measure of hos * See our article of last year on the Breton Minstrelsy. In the work before us, which may be regarded as a sample of the forthcoming one, M. Rio confines himself almost exclusively to the spring of the year 1815; and we think it best to follow his example, after briefly referring to the circumstances under which the events he commemorates took place. tility towards the press conciliated the es- | economists, and calculators, produce such teem of Chateaubriand, who makes him men as that of faith and loyalty? the subject of a laudatory note in one of his pamphlets. The only species of advancement which he could be persuaded to accept was the post of private secretary to M. de la Ferronaye, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and afterwards ambassador at Rome. When the Revolution of July took place, this statesman retired; and M. Rio devoted the next five years to the composition of a work, published in 1836, entitled ' De l' Art Chrétien,' in which the poetry of painting is treated with the taste, feeling, and unaffected enthusiasm of a genuine connoisseur. The principal object is to distinguish the schools of art in which the spirit of Christianity forms the pervading sentiment, from those in which nothing more than simple force, grace, truth, or beauty, is attempted or expressed. The author's obvious preference for the former has brought upon him a host of adversaries, who protest plausibly enough against a theory which would assign a secondary rank to the finest productions of Paganism; whilst an influential party as confidently maintain that the highest effects are only to be produced by men, like Raphael or Michael Angelo, whose minds are refined and elevated by the sublime revelations of Christianity. Right or wrong, the book has produced a very remarkable effect on the Continent. The predominance of the religious feeling is remarkable, not merely in M. Rio's writings, but in all the leading actions of his life. It was this which induced him, on his return from Rome, to form an intimate friendship with the celebrated Abbé Lamennais, in whom he saw, or thought he saw, a new and pure apostle of Catholicism. We need hardly say that he has found out his error, and no longer regards the Abbé as a fitting object of faith or a proper instrument for the propagation of any form of Christianity. It will not lessen the reader's interest to add that M. Rio has married into an old Welsh family, and has made considerable preparations for a comprehensive treatise on Welsh antiquities. We hope, however, that he will not give up the project of becoming the historian of the Chouans, for which, looking to his past life, he seems especially destined. It is not merely a new chapter of the romance of history that is wanted, but a just tribute to principles which are daily loosening their formerly all-powerful, and, in our opinion, beneficial hold upon mankind. Shades of Bayard, Sydney, Montrose, Lochiel, Larochejaquelein! when will the age of sophists, After a struggle of several years the revolutionary government was obliged to make terms with the Chouans, the essential condition being the toleration of their ancient priesthood. As soon as the amnesty was declared, these revered exiles returned in great numbers, but they were found unequal to the spiritual wants of the population, and steps were immediately taken to breed up a class of assistants and successors. The college of Vannes, re-opened in 1804, was one of the seminaries most effective for this purpose; and the favourite topics amongst the students were the oppressions and insults to which their pastors, including the fathers, brothers, and other near relations of most of them, had been exposed. Amongst the first who enrolled their names, after the re-opening of the college, were twelve Chouan chiefs, whose boyish studies had been suspended by the struggle, and who now returned to finish their education. Four of them were already known to fame, provincial fame at all events; and the admiration they inspired, with the warlike feats they related, excited feelings by no means congenial to the sedulous cultivation of theology. Napoleon, whose great mistake through life was never to make allowances for what he called prejudices, and the best part of mankind, principles, kept the smothered flame alive by his intolerance. His illtreatment of the Pope and his famous catechism, in particular, went far to prepare the way for a revolt: and his Spanish war was regarded with the most uncompromising abhorrence throughout Brittany. When the recusant Breton clergy had been expelled from their parishes, they had been received with the warmest hospitality by their brethren in Spain, and it was consequently deemed little short of sacrilege to make war against a country so eminent for faith and charity. Who could answer to a Christian conscript that he would not be sent on some scandalous expedition like that of the ditch of Vincennes or the Quirinal hill? Would he have the courage to mount to the assault of a Spanish town, at The scene of a night outrage on the Pope, the risk of carrying fire and sword into The manner in which his own mother those hospitable houses which had so long received the news of the intended expedisheltered the fathers of Brittany? No, tion affords the strongest proof of the exbetter far were desertion and a savage life tent to which natural feeling may be subin the darkest forests; better the ruin of dued by circumstances. She had seen her families, and the constant presence of gar- husband die a lingering death from injuries risons on the domestic hearth; better death received in the cause to which her son was by the carbine of the gendarmes, or by ex-now about to devote himself: she had felt haustion, or even by the steel of the guillo-a sabre pressed by turns on the child she tine, when taken with a weapon of any sort bore in her arms and the one she carried in in the hand.' Such was the universal cry her bosom: she divines at a glance the obamongst the rural population; and so fre-ject of the interview, and sees in her mind's quent were desertions, that there were soon eye all, and more than all, the impending fewer recruits in the imperial barracks than danger, whilst the lost father's image flits in the woods. Resistance became the rule, before her like a dream. Yet no passionand obedience the exception. The colle- ate entreaty, no weak womanly remongians not merely partook, they anticipated strance breaks from her. Oh, my God!' the feeling of their countrymen; but no she exclaims in a tone of mingled sadness favourable opportunity for a demonstration and resignation, it is true, then, that the presented itself till 1814, during the hun- most painful sacrifice still remained for me dred days, when they broke into open re- to make.' volt, formed themselves into a regular bat 6 Many years after this crisis,' says M. Rio, talion, named a leader, and took the field. the son who had made her so wretched was The exploits of this chosen band form the relating in the presence of a mother tortured by subject of M. Rio's publication-quorum another kind of maternal agony, the tribulations pars magna fui-for he was one of them; through which his own had passed, and this reand nothing can be more affecting or spirit-lation was listened to not only with a religious attention, but with unequivocal signs of a prostirring than their adventures. A set of found sympathy, which added a charm the more boys engaged, not in the barring out of a to the melancholy expression of the look veiled pedagogue, but the exclusion of an emper- by an unalterable melancholy. The halo of or-defying, not birchen rods, but bayonets happiness shone no longer round that head, -enduring the worst extremities of hunger though still resplendent with youth and beauty. and fatigue without a murmur, mounting But the resources of the heart and the imaginato the assault of a fortified town with the tion, although habitually turned back upon themselves, could still revive at need when a congegallantry of a forlorn-hope, and covering a nial chord was touched. This was precisely retreat like veterans. When we remember the effect which the story of the Breton mother the defeat of Lord John Russell's friend, produced, if not by the similarity of the sufferMr. Frost, by Captain Gray and Sirings, at least by the identity of the sentiment Thomas Phillips, or see a London mob re- which had rendered them so trying for both.'coiling before a handful of life-guards, we p. 162. are puzzled to account for the exploits of We have here the history of the beautithe Parisian populace during the three ful little poem with which Mrs. Norton has days;' and a visit to Eton or Harrow would enriched M. Rio's work, and we must pause certainly enhance our wonder at the boy- to make an extract:— patriots of Vannes. But all classes of 'It might not be!-his spirit In wheresoe'er he wanders Through the cold world dark and wild, Of some pure sainted martyr The sepulchre of Woe: carried into effect with a degree of energy and perseverance which will be read with mingled admiration and astonishment. The entire number of students amounted to six hundred; but nearly half were necessarily excluded from the enterprise on account of their extreme youth, despite of their animated and oft-repeated protest from Corneille :— 'Je suis jeune, il est vrai, mais aux âmes bien nées La valeur n'attend pas le nombre des années.' About three hundred and fifty were eventually declared fit for service, and to supply these with arms and ammunition was the first point. After clubbing the pocketmoney of the entire establishment, and mortgaging or selling every article of personal property they could spare, they could only form a fund wofully disproportioned They then are our companions, Who pray eternally.'-p. 175. to the purpose; and then came the difficulty of investing it without exciting suspicion. Madame de Stäcl says that nothing is They succeeded in buying a few muskets more irritating than the resistance of the and fowling-pieces, but the greater number weak; and this is the only mode of account- were obliged to rest satisfied with pocket ing for the useless indignities heaped on the pistols. The arms obtained, they were igcollegians. An attempt to make them do norant of the most effective mode of using homage to the imperial eagle nearly caused them, and were, moreover, unwilling to join an outbreak; but the crowning tyranny, the confederate army in the guise of an the drop which made the cup overflow, was awkward squad. But on what pretence an outrage perpetrated on a comrade, who, could they apply for so much as a single after being cruelly beaten and kicked by drill-serjeant, and how long would their the gendarmes, was expelled the college, proceedings be tolerated by the governor, and compelled to enlist as a soldier, for un-if they turned the college-yard into a paconsciously wearing a few white flowers in his cap: rade? At length an expedient was hit upon. There was a Gascon officer in the garrison who had made no secret of his 'A stranger who mixed with the groups of disgust at the insults heaped upon them. scholars on the evening of the day when Leman-Secure of his sympathy, one of their com ach had to endure such ill treatment would have stood astounded at all he saw and heard; all mittee repaired to him with a complaint of those beardless faces, pale with anger rather than broken health and failing constitution, for with alarm, the peasants turning up their long which the regular exercise of the musket hair under their wide-brimmed hats, as if to pre- and sabre had been prescribed. The goodpare for a struggle-those whose hearts were natured officer readily fell into the trap, most swollen with indignation giving vent to it and gave up an hour every morning to before an audience who replied sometimes by teaching him. Every evening the young expressive gestures, and sometimes by tears, which rage as well as pity for their comrade recruit became the teacher in his turn; the wrung from them; and during all this time the scene, a cellar or garret; the class, a dozen women of the lower class, ever watchful and de- of his comrades, armed with sticks, with voted sentinels, keeping an eye on every window which they made ready, presented, chargwhich opened above our heads, in the fear thated, and indeed did everything but fire and some spy might gather up our words, which, in fact, were bold and uncompromising; for we spoke of nothing less than an armed insurrection, and we spoke of it with the full and firm anticipation of the consequences which might fall upon our heads.' From this time an armed insurrection was resolved upon, and the resolution was stand at ease, until their instructor had got hoarse with calling to them: forgetting, as M. Rio suggests, that what they might learn in this manner would be utterly useless in the kind of warfare in which they were most likely to be engaged. Next came the grand question, Where were they to plant their standard? In what di |