to trial for the supposed embezzlement. M. | vention issued the barbarous decree, that the de L., however, having declared that one of whole country, which still continued its rethem had given him his word of honour that sistance, should be desolated; that the whole the box was empty when they opened it, the inhabitants should be exterminated, without whole council declared themselves satisfied, distinction of age or sex; the habitations conand acquitted the young men by acclamation. sumed with fire, and the trees cut down with In the course of the summer of 1793, various the axe. Six armies, amounting in all to near sanguinary actions were fought with various two hundred thousand men, were charged success; but the most remarkable event was with the execution of these atrocious orders; the arrival of M. Tinteniac, with despatches and began, in September 1793, to obey them from the English government, about the mid- with a detestable fidelity. A multitude of dle of July. This intrepid messenger had sanguinary conflicts ensued; and the insurcome alone through all Brittany and Anjou, gents succeeded in repulsing this desolating carrying his despatches in his pistols as wad-invasion at almost all the points of attack. ding, and incessantly in danger from the republican armies and magistrates. The despatches, Madame de L. informs us, showed an incredible ignorance on the part of the English government of the actual posture of affairs. They were answered, however, with gratitude and clearness. A debarkation was strongly recommended near Sables or Paimbœuf, but by no means at L'Orient, Rochefort, or Rochelle; and it was particularly entreated, that the troops should consist chiefly of emigrant Frenchmen, and that a Prince of the House of Bourbon should, if possible, place himself at their head. Madame de L., who wrote a small and very neat hand, was employed to write out these despatches, which were placed in the pistols of M. Tinteniac, who immediately proceeded on his adventurous mission. He reached England, it seems, and was frequently employed thereafter in undertakings of the same nature. He headed a considerable party of Bretons, in endeavouring to support the unfortunate descent at Quiberon; and, disdaining to submit, even after the failure of that ill-concerted expedition, fell bravely with arms in his hands. After his departure, the insurgents were repulsed at Lucon, and obtained some advan-up to the enemy even than you." Early in tages at Chantonnay. But finding the republican armies daily increasing in numbers, skill, and discipline, they found it necessary to act chiefly on the defensive; and, for this purpose, divided the country into several districts, in each of which they stationed that part of the army which had been recruited within it, and the general who was most beloved and confided in by the inhabitants. In this way, M. Lescure came to be stationed in the heart of his own estates: and was not a little touched to find almost all his peasants, who had bled and suffered by his side for so long a time without pay, come to make offer of the rents that were due for the possessions to which they were but just returned. He told them, it was not for his rents that he had taken up arms; and that while they were exposed to the calamities of war, they were well entitled to be freed of that burden. Various lads of thirteen, and several hale grandsires of seventy, came at this period, and insisted upon being allowed to share the dangers and glories

Among the slain in one of these engagements, the republicans found the body of a young woman, which Madame de L. informs us gave occasion to a number of idle reports; many giving out that it was she herself, or a sister of M. de L. (who had no sister), or a new Joan of Arc, who had kept up the spirit of the peasantry by her enthusiastic predictions. The truth was, that it was the body of an innocent peasant girl, who had always lived a remarkably quiet and pious life, till recently before this action, when she had been seized with an irresistible desire to take a part in the conflict. She had discovered herself some time before to Madame de L.; and begged from her a shift of a peculiar fabric. The night before the battle, she also revealed her secret to M. de L.;-asked him to give her a pair of shoes-and promised to behave herself in such a manner in the morrow's fight, that he should never think of parting with her. Accordingly, she kept near his person through the whole of the battle, and conducted herself with the most heroic bravery. Two or three times, in the very heat of the fight, she said to him, "No, mon, General, you shall not get before me-I shall always be closer

of their kinsmen.

From this time, downwards, the picture of the war is shaded with deeper horrors; and the operations of the insurgents acquire a character of greater desperation. The Con

the day, she was hurt pretty seriously in the hand, but held it up laughing to her general, and said, "It is nothing at all." In the end of the battle she was surrounded in a charge, and fell fighting like a desperado. There were about ten other women, who took up arms, Madame de L. says, in this cause;two sisters, under fifteen-and a tall beauty, who wore the dress of an officer. The priests attended the soldiers in the field, and rallied and exhorted them; but took no part in the combat, nor ever excited them to any acts of inhumanity. There were many boys of the most tender age among the combatants,some scarcely more than nine or ten years of age.

M. Piron gained a decided victory over the most numerous army of the republic; but their ranks being recruited by the whole garrison of Mentz, which had been liberated on parole, presented again a most formidable front to the insurgents. A great battle was fought in the middle of September at Chollet, where the government army was completely broken, and would have been finally routed, but for the skill and firmness of the cele brated Kleber who commanded it, and successfully maintained a position which covered

and tumultuary parties, with tidings of evil omen. Nobody had the courage to tell this unfortunate woman the calamity that had befallen her, though the priest awakened a vague alarm by solemn encomiums on the piety of M. de L., and the necessity of resignation to the will of Heaven. Next night she found him at Cherdron, scarcely able to move or to articulate, but suffering more from the idea of her having fallen into the hands of the enemy, than from his own disasters.

its retreat. In the middle of the battle one of the peasants took a flageolet from his pocket, and, in derision, began to play ça ira, as he advanced against the enemy. A cannon-ball struck off his horse's head, and brought him to the ground; but he drew his leg from the dead animal, and marched forward on foot, without discontinuing his music. One other picture of detail will give an idea of the extraordinary sort of warfare in which the country was then engaged. Westermann was beat out of Chatillon, and pursued to The last great battle was fought near Cholsome distance; but finding that the insurgent let, when the insurgents, after a furious and forces were withdrawn, he bethought himself sanguinary resistance, were at last borne down of recovering the place by a coup de main. by the multitude of their opponents, and He mounted an hundred grenadiers behind driven down into the low country on the banks an hundred picked hussars, and sent them at of the Loire. M. de Bonchamp, who had midnight into the city. The peasants, as always held out the policy of crossing this usual, had no outposts, and were scattered river, and the advantages to be derived from about the streets, overcome with fatigue and uniting themselves to the royalists of Brittany, brandy. However, they made a stout and was mortally wounded in this battle; but his bloody resistance. One active fellow received counsels still influenced their proceedings in twelve sabre wounds on the same spot; an- this emergency; and not only the whole deother, after killing a hussar, took up his bris and wreck of the army, but a great prowounded brother in his arms, placed him on portion of the men and women and children the horse, and sent him out of the city of the country, flying in constemation from then returned to the combat; killed another the burnings and butchery of the government hussar, and mounted himself on the prize. forces, flocked down in agony and despair to The republicans, irritated at the resistance the banks of this great river. On gaining the they experienced, butchered all that came heights of St. Florent, one of the most mouracross them in that night of confusion! All ful, and at the same time most magnificent order or discipline was lost in the darkness; spectacles, burst upon the eye. Those heights and they hacked and fired at each other, or form a vast semicircle; at the bottom of which wrestled and fell, man to man, as they chanced a broad bare plain extends to the edge of the to meet, and often without being able to dis- water. Near an hundred thousand unhappy tinguish friend from foe.-An eminent leader souls now blackened over that dreary expanse, of the insurrection was trampled under foot-old men, infants, and women mingled with by a party of the republicans, who rushed past him to massacre the whole family where he lodged, who were all zealous republicans. The town was set on fire in fifty places,-and was at last evacuated by both parties, in mutual fear and ignorance of the force to which they were opposed. When the day dawned, however, it was finally reoccupied by the insurgents.

After some more successes, the insurgent chiefs found their armies sorely reduced, and their enemies perpetually increasing in force and numbers. M. de la Charette, upon some misunderstanding, withdrew his corps; and all who looked beyond the present moment, could not fail to perceive, that disasters of the most fatal nature were almost inevitably approaching. A dreadful disaster, at all events, now fell on their fair historian. M. de L. in rallying a party of his men near Tremblaye, was struck with a musket ball on the eyebrow, and instantly fell senseless to the ground. He was not dead, however; and was with difficulty borne through the rout which was the immediate consequence of his fall. His wife, entirely ignorant of what had happened, was forced to move along with the retreating army; and in a miserable little village was called, at midnight, from her bed of straw, to hear mass performed to the soldiers by whom she was surrounded. The solemn ceremony was interrupted by the approaching thunder of artillery, and the perpetual arrival of fugitive

the half-armed soldiery, caravans, crowded baggage waggons and teams of oxen, all full of despair, impatience, anxiety, and terror.Behind, were the smokes of their burning villages, and the thunder of the hostile artillery-before, the broad stream of the Loire, divided by a long low island, also covered with the fugitives-twenty frail barks plying in the stream-and, on the far banks, the disorderly movements of those who had effected the passage, and were waiting there to be rejoined by their companions. Such, Madame de L. assures us, was the tumult and terrror of the scene, and so awful the recollections it inspired, that it can never be effaced from the memory of any of those who beheld it; and that many of its awe-struck spectators have concurred in stating that it brought forcibly to their imaginations the unspeakable terrors of the great day of Judgment! Through this dismayed and bewildered multitude, the disconsolate family of their gallant general made their way silently to the shore ;-M. de L. stretched, almost insensible, on a wretched litter, his wife, three months gone with child, walking by his side,-and, behind her, her faithful nurse, with her helpless and astonished infant in her arms. When they arrived on the beach, they with difficulty got a crazy boat to carry them to the island; but the aged monk who steered it would not venture to cross the larger branch of the stream,-and the poor wounded man was obliged to submit

to the agony of another removal. At length, they were landed on the opposite bank; where wretchedness and desolation appeared still more conspicuous. Thousands of helpless wretches were lying on the grassy shore, or roaming about in search of the friends from whom they had been divided. There was a general complaint of cold and hunger; and nobody in a condition to give any directions, or administer any relief. M. de L. suffered excruciating pain from the piercing air which blew upon his feverish frame;-the poor infant screamed for food, and the helpless mother was left to minister to both;-while her at tendant went among the burnt and ruined villages, to seek a drop of milk for the baby. At length they got again in motion for the adjoining village of Varades,-M. de L., borne in a sort of chair upon the pikes of his soldiers, with his wife and the maid-servant walking before him, and supporting his legs, wrapped up in their cloaks. With great difficulty they procured a little room, in a cottage swarming with soldiers,-most of them famishing for want of food, and yet still so mindful of the rights of their neighbours, that they would not take a few potatoes from the garden of the cottage, till Madame de L. had obtained leave of the proprietor.

order to the detachment.-The alarm turned out to be a false one.

At Laval they halted for several days; and he was so much recruited by the repose, that he was able to get for half an hour on horseback, and seemed to be fairly in the way of recovery; when his excessive zeal, and anxiety for the good behaviour of the troops, tempted him to premature exertions, from the consequences of which he never afterwards recovered. The troops being all collected and refreshed at Laval, it was resolved to turn upon their pursuers, and give battle to the advancing army of the republic. The conflict was sanguinary; but ended most decidedly in favour of the Vendeans. The first encounter was in the night,-and was characterized with more than the usual confusion of night attacks. The two armies crossed each other in so extraordinary a manner, that the artillery of each was supplied, for a part of the battle, from the caissons of the enemy; and one of the Vendean leaders, after exposing himself to great hazard in helping a brother officer, as he took him to be, out of a ditch, discovered, by the next flash of the cannon, that he was an enemy-and immediately cut him down. After daybreak, the battle became more orderly, and ended in a complete victory. This was the last grand crisis of the insurrection. The way to La Vendée was once more open; and the fugitives had it in their power to return triumphant to their fastnesses and their homes, after rousing Brittany by the example of their valour and success. M. de L. and Henri both inclined to this course; but other counsels prevailed. Some were for marching on to Nantes-others for proceeding to Rennes-and some, more sanguine than the rest, for pushing directly for Paris. Time was irretrievably lost in these deliberations; and the republicans had leisure to rally, and bring up their reinforcements, before any thing was definitively settled.

M. de Bonchamp died as they were taking him out of the boat; and it became necessary to elect another commander. M. de L. roused himself to recommend Henri de Larochejaquelein; and he was immediately appointed. When the election was announced to him, M. de L. desired to see and congratulate his valiant cousin. He was already weeping over him in a dark corner of the room; and now came to express his hopes that he should soon be superseded by his recovery. "No," said M. de L., "that I believe is out of the question: But even if I were to recover, I should never take the place you have now obtained, and should be proud to serve as your aid-de-camp."- The day after, In the meantime, M. de L. became visibly they advanced towards Rennes. M. de L. worse; and one morning, when his wife alone could find no other conveyance than a bag- was in the room, he called her to him, and gage-waggon; at every jolt of which he told her that he felt his death was at hand; suffered such anguish, as to draw forth the-that his only regret was for leaving her most piercing shrieks even from his manly in the midst of such a war, with a helpless bosom. After some time, an old chaise was child, and in a state of pregnancy. For himdiscovered a piece of artillery was thrown self, he added, he died happy, and with away to supply it with horses, and the humble reliance on the Divine mercy ;-but wounded general was laid in it,-his head her sorrow he could not bear to think ofbeing supported in the lap of Agatha, his and he entreated her pardon for any neglect mother's faithful waiting-woman, and now or unkindness he might ever have shown her. the only attendant of his wife and infant. He added many other expressions of tenderIn three painful days they reached Laval;-ness and consolation; and seeing her overMadame de L. frequently suffering from absolute want, and sometimes getting nothing to eat the whole day, but one or two sour apples. M. de L. was nearly insensible during the whole journey. He was roused but once, when there was a report that a party of the enemy were in sight. He then called for his musket, and attempted to get out of the carriage; addressed exhortations and reproaches to the troops that were flying around him, and would not rest till an officer in whom he had confidence came up and restored some

whelmed with anguish at the despairing tone in which he spoke, concluded by saying, that he might perhaps be mistaken in his prognosis;-and hoped still to live for her. Next day they were under the necessity of moving forward; and, on the journey, he learned accidentally from one of the officers, the dreadful details of the Queen's execution, which his wife had been at great pains to keep from his knowledge. This intelligence seemed to bring back his fever though he still spoke of living to avenge her-"If I do

was.

live," he said, "it shall now be for vengeance | march had carried her ahead; but the faithonly-no more mercy from me!"-That ful Agatha, fearful lest her appearance might evening, Madame de L., entirely overcome alarm her mistress in the midst of the jourwith anxiety and fatigue, had fallen into a ney, had remained alone with the dead body deep sleep on a mat before his bed:-And for all the rest of the day! Fatigue, grief, soon after, his condition became altogether and anguish of mind, now threatened Madame desperate. He was now speechless, and de L. with consequences which it seems alnearly insensible;-the sacraments were ad- together miraculous that she should have ministered, and various applications made escaped. She was seized with violent pains, without awaking the unhappy sleeper by his and was threatened with a miscarriage in a side. Soon after midnight, however, she room which served as a common passage to started up, and instantly became aware of the crowded and miserable lodging she had the full extent of her misery. To fill up procured. It was thought necessary to bleed its measure, it was announced in the course her-and, after some difficulty, a surgeon of the morning, that they must immediately was procured. She can never forget, she resume their march with the last division of says, the formidable apparition of this warlike the army. The thing appeared altogether phlebotomist. A figure six feet high, with impossible; Madame de L. declared she ferocious whiskers, a great sabre at his side, would rather die by the hands of the re- and four huge pistols in his belt, stalked up publicans, than permit her husband to be with a fierce and careless air to her bed-side; moved in the condition in which he then and when she said she was timid about the When she recollected, however, that operation, answered harshly, "So am not I— these barbarous enemies had of late not only I have killed three hundred men and upwards butchered the wounded that fell into their in the field in my time-one of them only this power, but mutilated and insulted their re- morning-I think then I may venture to mains, she submitted to the alternative, and bleed a woman-Come, come, let us see your prepared for this miserable journey with a arm." She was bled accordingly-and, conheart bursting with anguish. The dying man trary to all expectation, was pretty well again was roused only to heavy moanings by the in the morning. She insisted for a long time pain of lifting him into the carriage,-where in carrying the body of her husband in the his faithful Agatha again supported his head, carriage along with her;-but her father. and a surgeon watched all the changes in after indulging her for a few days, contrived his condition. Madame de L. was placed to fall behind with this precious deposit, and on horseback; and, surrounded by her father informed her when he came up again, that it and mother, and a number of officers, went had been found necessary to bury it privately forward, scarcely conscious of any thing that in a spot which he would not specify. was passing only that sometimes, in the bitterness of her heart, when she saw the dead bodies of the republican soldiers on the road, she made her horse trample upon them, as if in vengeance for the slaughter of her husband. In the course of little more than an hour, she thought she heard some little stir in the carriage, and insisted on stopping to inquire into the cause. The officers, however, crowded around her; and then her father came up and said that M. de L. was in the same state as before, but that he suffered dreadfully from the cold, and would be very much distressed if the door was again to be opened. Obliged to be satisfied with this answer, she went on in sullen and gloomy silence for some hours longer in a dark and rainy day of November. It was night when they reached the town of Fougeres; and, when lifted from her horse at the gate, she was unable either to stand or walk-she was carried into a wretched house, crowded with troops of all descriptions, where she waited two hours in agony till she heard that the carriage with M. de L. was come up. She was left alone for a dreadful moment with her mother; and then M. de Beauvolliers came in, bathed in tears,-and taking both her hands, told her she must now think only of saving the child she carried within her! Her husband had expired when she heard the noise in the carriage, soon after their setting out-and the surgeon had acordingly left it as soon as the order of the

This abstract has grown to such a bulk that we find we cannot afford to continue it on the same scale. Nor is this very necessary; for though there is more than a third part of the book, of which we have given no accountand that, to those who have a taste for tales of sorrow, the most interesting portion of itwe believe that most readers will think they have had enough of La Vendée; and that all will now be in a condition to judge of the degree of interest or amusement which the work is likely to afford them. We shall add, however, a brief sketch of the rest of its contents.-After a series of murderous battles, to which the mutual refusal of quarter gave an exasperation unknown in any other history, and which left the field so cumbered with dead bodies that Madame de L. assures us that it was dreadful to feel the lifting of the wheels, and the cracking of the bones, as her heavy carriage passed over them,-the wreck of the Vendeans succeeded in reaching Angers upon the Loire, and trusted to a furious assault upon that place for the means of repassing the river, and regaining their beloved country. The garrison, however, proved stronger and more resolute than they had expected. Their own gay and enthusiastic courage had sunk under a long course of suffering and disaster; and, after losing a great number of men before the walls, they were obliged to turn back in confusion, they did not well know whither, but farther and farther from the land to which all their hopes

herd the sheep or cattle of her faithful and compassionate host, along with his rawboned daughter.

In this situation they remained till late in the following spring;—and it would be endless to enumerate the hairbreadth 'scapes and unparalleled sufferings to which they were every day exposed-reduced frequently to live upon alms, and forced every two or three days to shift their quarters, in the middle of the night, from one royalist cabin to another. Such was the long-continued and vindictive rigour of the republican party, that the most eager and unrelaxing search was made for fugitives of all descriptions; and every adherent of the insurgent faction who fell into their hands was barbarously murdered, without the least regard to age, sex, or individual innocence! While skulking about in this state of peril and desolation, they had glimpses and occasional rencounters with some of their former companions, whom similar misfortunes had driven upon similar schemes of concealment. In particular, they twice saw the daring and unsubduable M. de Marigny, who had wandered over the whole country from Angers to Nantes; and notwithstanding his gigantic form and remarkable features, had contrived so to disguise himself as to elude all detection or pursuit. He could counterfeit all ages and dialects, and speak in perfection the patois of every village. He now appeared before them in the character of an itinerant dealer in poultry; and retired unsuspected by all but themselves. In this wretched condition, the term of Madame de L.'s confinement drew on; and, after a thousand frights and disasters, she was delivered of two daughters, without any other assistance than that of her mother. One of the infants had its wrist dislocated; and so subdued was the poor mother's mind to the level of her fallen fortunes, that she had now no other anxiety, than that she might recover strength enough to carry it herself to the waters of Bareges, which she fancied might be of service to it ;-but the poor baby died within a fortnight after it was born.

and wishes were directed. In the tumult of this retreat, Madame de L. lost sight of her venerable aunt, who had hitherto been the mild and patient companion of their wanderings; and learned afterwards that she had fallen into the hands of the enemy, and, at the age of eighty, been publicly executed at Rennes, for the crime of rebellion! At Fougeres, at Laval, at Dol, and Savenay, the dwindled force of the insurgents had to sustain new attacks from their indefatigable pursuers, in which the officers and most of the soldiery gave still more extraordinary proofs, than any we have yet recorded, of undaunted valour, and constancy worthy of better fortune. The weather was now, in the latter end of November, extremely cold and rainy; the roads almost impassable; and provisions very scarce. Often, after a march of ten hours, Madame de L. has been obliged to fish for a few cold potatoes in the bottom of a dirty cauldron, filled with greasy water, and polluted by the hands of half the army. Her child sickened from its teething, and insufficient nourishment; and every day she witnessed the death of some of those gallant leaders whom the spring had seen assembled in her halls in all the flush of youthful confidence and glory. After many a weary march, and desperate struggle, about ten thousand sad survivors got again to the banks of that fatal Loire, which now seemed to divide them from hope and protection. Henri, who had arranged the whole operation with consummate judgment, found the shores on both sides free of the enemy:-But all the boats had been removed; and, after leaving orders to construct rafts with all possible despatch, he himself, with a few attendants, ventured over in a little wherry, which he had brought with him on a cart, to make arrangements for covering their landing. But they never saw the daring Henri again! The vigilant enemy came down upon them at this critical moment -intercepted his return-and, stationing several armed vessels in the stream, rendered the passage of the army altogether impossible. They fell back in despair upon Savenay; and there the brave and indefatigable Marigny Towards the end of 1794, their lot was told Madame de L. that all was now over- somewhat softened by the compassionate that it was altogether impossible to resist the kindness of a Madame Dumoutiers, who offerattack that would be made next day-and ed them an asylum in her house; in which, advised her to seek her safety in flight and though still liable to the searches of the blooddisguise, without the loss of an instant. She hounds of the municipality, they had more set out accordingly, with her mother, in a assistance in eluding them, and less misery gloomy day of December, under the conduct to endure in the intervals. The whole hisof a drunken peasant; and, after being out tory of their escapes would make the advenmost of the night, at length obtained shelter tures of Caleb Williams appear a cold_and in a dirty farm house, from which, in the barren chronicle; but we have room only to course of the day, she had the misery of see-mention, that after the death of Robespierre, ing her unfortunate countrymen scattered over the whole open country, chased and butchered without mercy by the republicans, who now took a final vengeance for all the losses they had sustained. She had long been clothed in shreds and patches, and needed no disguise to conceal her quality. She was sometimes hidden in the mill, when the troopers came to search for fugitives in her lonely retreat; --and oftener sent, in the midst of winter, to

there was a great abatement in the rigour of pursuit; and that a general amnesty was speedily proclaimed, for all who had been concerned in the insurrection. After several inward struggles with pride and principle, Madame de L. was prevailed on to repair to Nantes, to avail herself of this amnesty ;-but, first of all, she rode in to reconnoitre, and consult with some friends of her hostess; and proceeded boldly through the hostile city, in