La Vendee Part 48

"Perhaps it is, perhaps it is. Perhaps I shouldn't have left it; but I was driven away by little jealousies. Even great men have their failings. But they certainly made some queer selections when they chose the twelve captains at Saumur. There's not one of them left with the army now but M. Henri, and what's he but a boy?"

"He has done a man's work at any rate!"

"He's brave, there's no denying that. He's very brave, but what then; there's that impudent puppy of a valet of his, Chapeau; he's brave too: at least they say so. But what's bravery? Can they lead an army? is there anything of the General about them? Can they beat the blues?

"Didn't he manage to beat the blues at Amaillou and at Coron, and at Durbelliere? Faith, I think he has done nothing but beat them these three months."

"There's nothing of the General in him, I tell you. Haven't I seen him in battle now; he's quite at home at a charge, I grant you; and he's not bad in a breach; but Lord bless you, he can't command troops."

The landlord and his servant were still standing at the door of the inn, when the party for whom they were waiting made its appearance in the square of the town. It consisted of a waggon, in which the wounded man was lying, of three or four men on horseback, among whom were Henri Larochejaquelin and the little Chevalier, and a crowd of men on foot, soldiers of the Vendean army, who had not left the side of their General since he had fallen at Cholet.

During the latter part of his journey, de Lescure had been sensible, and had suffered dreadfully both in mind and body. He had never felt so confident of success as Henri and others had done, and had carried on the war more from a sense of duty than from a hope of restoring the power of the crown. He now gave way to that despondency which so often accompanies bodily suffering. He felt certain that his own dissolution was near, and on that subject his only anxiety was that he might see his wife before he died. He had, since the power of speech had been restored to him, more than once a.s.serted that the cause of the royalists was desperate, and had, by doing so, greatly added to the difficulties by which Henri was now surrounded. He did not, however, despair; nothing could make him despondent, or rob him of that elastic courage which, in spite of all the sufferings he had endured, gave him a strange feeling of delight in the war which he was waging.

An immense concourse of people gathered round the waggon, as de Lescure was lifted from it and carried up to the bedroom, which had been prepared for him; and they showed their grief at his sufferings, and their admiration of his character as a soldier, by tears and prayers for his recovery. The extreme popularity of M. de Lescure through the whole war, and the love which was felt for him by all the peasants concerned in it, proved their just appreciation of real merit; for he had not those qualities which most tend to ingratiate an officer with his men.

He could not unbend among them, and talk to them familiarly of their prowess, and of the good cause, as Henri did. He had the manners of an austere, sombre man; and though always most anxious for the security and good treatment of the prisoners, had more than once severely punished men among his own followers for some breach of discipline. He had, on one occasion, threatened to leave the army entirely if he was not obeyed with the same exactness, as though he actually bore the King's commission; and the general feeling that he would most certainly keep his word, and that the army could not succeed without him, had greatly tended to repress any inclination towards mutiny.

"G.o.d bless him, and preserve him, and restore him to us all!" said a woman who had pushed her way through the crowd, so as to catch a glance at his pale wasted face, one side of which was swathed in bandages, which greatly added to the ghastliness of his appearance. "We have lost our husbands, and our sons, and our sweethearts; but what matters, we do not begrudge them to our King. The life of Monseigneur is more precious than them all. La Vendee cannot afford to lose her great General."

De Lescure heard and understood, but could not acknowledge, the sympathy of the people; but Henri, as he tenderly raised his cousin's head, and bore him in his arms from the waggon, spoke a word or two to the crowd which satisfied them; and Arthur Mondyon remained among them a while to tell them how bravely their countrymen had fought at Cholet, against numbers more than double their own, before they would consent to own themselves beaten.

There was an immense deal for Henri Larochejaquelin to do. In the first place he had to collect together the fragments of the disbanded army; to separate the men who were armed from those who had lost their arms, and to divide the comparatively speaking small number of the former, into such bands or regiments as would make them serviceable in case of need.

De Lescure was unable to give him any actual a.s.sistance in his work; but his thoughtful brain, reflecting on all the difficulties of Henri's situation, conceived how much they would be increased by the want of any absolute t.i.tle to authority; he therefore determined, ill as he was, to invest him with the command-in-chief of the shattered army.

Early on the morning after their arrival he begged that all such men as had acted as chief officers among the Vendeans, and who were now in St.

Florent, would form themselves into a council in his room, and that it might be proclaimed to the army that they were about to nominate a General-in-Chief. The council was not so numerously attended as that which on a former occasion was held at Saumur. As Peter Berrier had said, most of those who then sat around that council table were now dead, or were, at any rate, hors-de-combat. Only four of the number were now present. De Lescure was lying on his bed, and was a spectacle dreadful to look upon. The hair had been all cut from his head. His face was not only pale, but livid. The greater portion of it had been enveloped in bandages, which he had partly removed with his own hand, that his mouth might be free, so that he could use his weak voice to address his comrades, perhaps for the last time. He uttered neither complaint or groan, but the compressed lips, careworn cheeks, and sunken eyes, gave too certain signs of the agony which he suffered. Henri was there, but he knew the proposal which his cousin was about to make, and he felt, not only that he was unequal to the heavy task which was about to be put on his shoulders, but also that there were still some among their number who were superior to him in skill, rank, and age, and who were to be excluded from the dangerous dignity by the partial admiration which was felt for himself He sat apart in a corner of the room, with his face buried in his handkerchief; his manly heart was overcome; and while de Lescure named him as the only person possessed of sufficient nerve and authority to give the Vendeans a chance of an escape from utter ruin, he was shedding tears like a child.

D'Autachamps and the Prince de Talmont were there also; men, who throughout the war had lent every energy to its furtherance. At another time, and under other circ.u.mstances, they might have expressed indignation at being called on to serve under a man so much their junior; but de Lescure's position checked, not only the expression of any such feeling, but the feeling itself. They could not differ from a man who had lost so much in the cause, and was now sealing his devotion with his life. There were five or six others in the room; officers who were now well known in the army, whose courage history has not forgotten to record, but whose names are unnecessary to our tale.

"Gentlemen," said de Lescure to them, as soon as he saw them seated round his bed, and had contrived to get himself so propped up with pillows as to be able to address them, "you all know why I have wished to see you here; you all know the paramount importance of that duty which requires us to provide, as far as may be possible, for the security of the unfortunate peasants who have followed us with such courage, who have shown so much generous loyalty, so much true patriotism. Our first step must be to name some one whom we can all obey. We all know that the army cannot act in unison without one absolute Commander. He who was lately our Commander has fallen in the performance of his duty. Our dear friend Bonchamps is no more. Had I escaped from that awful battle unwounded, it is not improbable that you might have chosen me to undertake the now unenviable duty of guiding a broken army. You will not accuse a dying man of vanity in saying so; but, gentlemen, you all see that such a chance is now impossible. My wound is mortal. A few days, perhaps a few hours, and I shall be removed from this anxious, painful, all but hopeless conflict, in which you, my friends, must still engage; in which some of you will probably fall. I cannot suffer with you future reverses, or lead you to future triumphs; but, if you will allow me, I will use my last breath in naming to you one, whom, I believe, every peasant in La Vendee, and every gentleman engaged in the cause, will follow, if it be necessary, to death. Henri Larochejaquelin is the only man whom all the peasants, all the soldiers, all the officers, know intimately; and the last duty I can perform in the service of my King is to implore you to put him at the head of your troops. He is young, and you will a.s.sist his youth with your counsel.

He is diffident of himself, and you will encourage him with your a.s.surance and obedience; but he is brave, he is beloved, he is trusted; and above all, he possesses that innate apt.i.tude for war, that power of infusing courage into the timid and lending strength to the weak, which is the gift of G.o.d alone, and without which no General can command an army."

Henri had promised his cousin that he would neither interrupt him, or raise any objection to the proposition about to be made. He kept his word as long as de Lescure was speaking, but when he had finished he could not restrain himself from expressing his own sense of his unfitness for the duties they were calling on him to perform. He came forward, and leaning against the head of the wounded man's bed, put his hand upon his shoulder, and speaking almost in a whisper, like a young girl pleading for delay before her lover, he said, "Charles, you forget, I am but one-and-twenty."

No one, however, seconded his objection. No other voice was raised to counteract the wishes of the man who had suffered so much in the cause, and who, had he been spared, would have been at once chosen to guide their future movements.

"With this exception," said the Prince de Talmont; "your case we know is doubtful, but should you recover, should you again be able to come among us before the war be over, Larochejaquelin shall then give place to you."

"There is little chance of that, Prince," said de Lescure, smiling sadly; "but should it occur, there will be no quarrel between me and Henri. I will serve with him as his aide-de-camp."

Henri Larochejaquelin now found himself General-in-Chief of the Vendean army. As he himself had said, he was but one-and-twenty, and yet never was greater energy, firmness, and moral courage required from a General, than was required from him at this moment. Eighty thousand people were on that day told to look to him as the man who was to save them from famine and from the enemy's sword, to protect their lives and the lives of all whom they loved, and eventually to turn their present utter misery and despair into victory and triumph.

Eighty thousand people were there collected in and around St. Florent, men, women, and children; the old and infirm, the maimed and sick, the mutilated and the dying. Poor wretches who had gotten themselves dragged thither from the hospitals, in which they feared to remain, were lying in every ditch, and under every wall, filling the air with their groans.

Everything was in confusion; no staff existed competent to arrange their affairs, and to husband the poor means at their disposal. Food was wasted by some, while hundreds were starving. Some houses in the town were nearly empty, while others were crowded almost to suffocation.

There was very much to be done, yet every one was idle.

The great work to be accomplished was to transport the Vendean mult.i.tude over to the other side of the Loire. It had been at first feared by some that the men of Brittany would be unwilling to receive the beaten royalist army, flying from the b.l.o.o.d.y vengeance of the republicans, but their neighbours did not prove so unhospitable. A thousand welcomes were sent over to them, and many a happy messenger of good tidings came, a.s.suring Henri that the people of Poitou should find arms, food, clothing, and shelter on the other side of the water.

Henri sat himself to work in earnest. His first difficulty was to get vessels or rafts sufficient to carry the people over. All he could obtain was seven or eight little boats, each capable of holding about six persons, besides the two men who rowed. Timber there was none of size sufficient to make a raft; and though he sent messengers for leagues, both up and down the river, he could not get a barge. He put the small boats to work, but the pa.s.sage of the river was so tedious that it seemed to him that it would be impossible for him to take over all those who crowded on the banks. The river is broad at St. Florent, and between the marshes which lie on the southern side and the northern bank there is a long island. Between St. Florent and the island the water is broad and the stream slow, but between the island and the other sh.o.r.e the narrow river runs rapidly. Henri at first contented himself with sending the women and children, together with the sick and aged, into the island, thinking that there they would be at any rate for a time safe from the blues, and that some effort might probably be made from the other sh.o.r.e to convey them across the narrow pa.s.sage.

Gradually, however, the island became full, and he was obliged to send his boats round to take the people from thence to the main land.

All day the work continued, and when the dark night came on, the boats did not for a moment cease to ply. Immediately after sunset, the rain began to fall in torrents, and as the anxious wretches did not like to leave the close vicinity of the river, which they had spent the whole day in struggling to attain, thousands of them remained there wet and s.h.i.+vering until the morning. Mothers during the darkness were parted from their children, and wives from their husbands. Those who, worn out with fatigue and weakness, were forced to lie down upon the ground, were trodden upon by others, who pressed on, to reach the river. Some were pushed into the water and screamed aloud that they were about to drown, and when the dawn of the morning came, misery, wretchedness, and fear were to be seen on every face.

During the whole day and night, Henri was either on the bank, or pa.s.sing between it and the town. He had, early in the day, stripped himself of his coat, and when the evening came, he could not find it. Wet through, in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves, this young generalissimo pa.s.sed the first night of his command, guarding the entrance into his little vessels; prohibiting more than eight from embarking at a time; striving to his uttermost that none but the weak and aged should be taken over; solacing the sufferings of those near him; bidding the wretched not to despair, and pointing to the opposite sh.o.r.e as the land of hope, where they would soon again find plenty, comfort, and triumph.

He was still at the same duty on the following morning, reckoning up, with something like despair, the small number of those who had as yet pa.s.sed over, and the mult.i.tude who were yet to pa.s.s, when the young Chevalier came down to him with the news that Madame de Lescure, and her sister-in-law were in St. Florent. Even the work, on which he was so intent, could not keep him from those respecting whom he was so anxious, and he hurried into town for an hour or two, leaving the Chevalier in his place.

CHAPTER VI.

THE Pa.s.sAGE OF THE LOIRE.

M. de Lescure had been two days in St. Florent, when his wife and sister arrived there on horseback, attended by Chapeau. None of the party had ever been in the town before, but it was not long before they were recognized, and the two ladies soon found themselves standing in the inn yard. Madame de Lescure had as yet asked no question about her husband; indeed she had not had opportunity to do so, for she had been hurried through a dense throng of people, none of whom she knew, and when she was lifted from her horse by a strange hand, she had no idea that the window immediately above her head looked from the room in which her husband lay. Chapeau, however, with considerate tact, did not lose a moment in finding the aubergiste, and learning from him enough to enable him to whisper a word of comfort to her.

"He is here, Madame," said he, standing close behind her, "in the room above there. He is somewhat better than he has been, and as strong in his mind as ever. He has been most anxious for your arrival," and then he led the way into the hotel, pus.h.i.+ng aside the crowd to the right and to the left; and within five minutes from the time of their entering the town, the two ladies found themselves on the stairs immediately outside the chamber in which was lying the object of all their present anxiety.

For the last four days and four nights, it had been the first and only desire of Madame de Lescure to be with her husband; and now that she was so near him she dreaded to open the door. "Who is with him?" said she, speaking in a whisper, and trembling from head to foot, so that she could hardly stand.

"The little Chevalier is with him always," said the aubergiste, who had followed them up the stairs: "he never leaves him, now that M. Henri is obliged to be away."

"Hadn't I better go in, perhaps," said Chapeau, "and send the Chevalier out? I can tell M. de Lescure that Madame is here; it might be too much for Monsieur to see her all at once."

Without waiting for an answer, Chapeau knocked at the door and went in, while the two ladies sat down on the nearest step, dreading almost to breathe in their intense anxiety; in a few seconds Arthur Mondyon came out, and taking a hand of each of his two friends, pressed them to his lips.

"He knows you are here," said he to Madame de Lescure, "and you are to go into him alone. Marie and I will go down stairs until he sends for us. Be tranquil as you can, while you are with him; you will find him as calm as ever."

She rose, and entered the room on tiptoe, as Chapeau left it; her face was as pale as marble, and her heart beat so violently that she felt that she would hardly be able to reach the chair at the bed-side. De Lescure was lying on a decent but very humble bed, at the farthest end of a large room, in which there were three or four other bedsteads, and an enormous number of common deal chairs and tables piled one a-top of another. He was propped up in the bed on pillows, and as he turned his eyes towards the door, the full light of the sun shone upon his face, and gave an especial ghastliness to its pallor.

Madame de Lescure tried to control herself; but in such moments the feelings of the heart overcome the reason, and the motions of the body are governed by pa.s.sion alone. In an instant her face was on his bosom, and her arms were locked closely round his body.

"Victorine--my own Victorine," said he, "my greatest grief is over now.

I feared that we were not to meet again, and that thought alone was almost too much for my courage."

She was for a time unable to articulate a word. He felt her warm tears as she convulsively pressed her cheek against his breast; he felt the violent throbs of her loving heart, and allowed her a few minutes before he asked her to speak to him. She had thrown off the hat which she had worn before entering the room, and he now gently smoothed her ruffled hair with his hand, and collected together the loose tresses which had escaped down her neck.

"Look up, love," he said; "I haven't seen your face yet, or heard your voice. Come, Victorine, you were not used to be so weak. We must all string our nerves now, dearest: we must all be brave now. We used to praise you for your courage; now is the time for you to show it."

"Oh, Charles! oh, my poor stricken love!" and then she raised her face and gazed into his, till the tears made her eyes so dim that she could hardly see him. "I knew it would come at last," she said; "I knew this fearful blow would come at last. Oh, that we had gone when others went!

at any rate I should not have lived to see you thus."

"Do no say that, Victorine; do not speak so--do not allow yourself to think so--or you will rob both of us of our dearest comfort. No, my love; were it to do again, I again would stand by the throne, and you again would counsel me to do so. A doubt on that point would be calamity, indeed; but, thank G.o.d, there is no doubt."

"But the misery to see you thus--torn, and mangled, and tortured. And for what? What good have we done with our hot patriotism? Is the King nearer his throne? Are the murders of the Republic less frequent?"

"I fear you are selfish now, love. Did we not know, when we first took up our arms, that many happy wives would be widowed--that numberless children would be made fatherless--that hundreds of mothers would have to weep for their sons. We must not ourselves complain of that fate, to which we have knowingly, and thoughtfully, consigned so many others."

Madame de. Lescure had no answer to make to her husband's remonstrance.