Larochejaquelein, the brother of Henri, until 1802. During the most eventful period of her life she was the wife of the Marquis de Lescure, whose qualities, though less dazzling, are perhaps better entitled to the meed of sound, sober, reasoning admiration than his friend's. It was no love of excitement, no youthful enthusiasm, no high-wrought spirit of loyalty in the narrow meaning of the term, that animated and urged him on, but a stern, uncompromising sense of duty, to which every personal consideration was as nought. We have already given a specimen of his intrepidity, and it is one amongst a hundred; yet he detested fighting, and congratulated himself that, though constantly in action and often engaged hand to hand, he had never shed blood; and the battle was hardly over before he was seen exerting all his energies to save. The true force and genuine beauty of his character came out when he was dying of a wound from a musket-ball, which entered his face near the eye and came out behind the ear. He lingered for several weeks, compelled to follow the movements of his friends, sometimes in rude litters, but oftener in rough carts and carriages, whose every jolt was agony. Yet, with the finger of death upon him, fevered with pain, and only able to lift his head at intervals, he insisted upon attending the council to enforce a measure which he deemed essential to the cause, and was as ready as ever to set an example to the troops.

To justify their treatment of the women, the Republicans declared that they were to be found in great numbers in the Vendean ranks-a bad excuse, if the fact had been so; but Madame de Larochejaquelein asserts that there were not above ten or twelve regularly enrolled female combatants. Several boys of rank did duty as aid-de-camps or officers. The Chevalier de Mondyon, a lad of fourteen, was stationed near a tall officer who complained of being wounded, and was about to retire. 'I don't see that,' said de Mondyon: your retiring will discourage the men; and, if you stir a step, I will shoot you through the head.' The remonstrance proved effectual. The two young Maignans de l'Ecorce used to go to every battle with their governor, M. Biré.

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

* See our article of last year on the Breton Minstrelsy.

and

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, intersected 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.

General Hoche, who commanded on the revolutionary side during a great part of the struggle, called it a war of giants; and M. Capefigue recommends it as a fit subject for a noble and poetical history, which remains still to be written.' At the same time we do not wonder that historians have hitherto meddled but little with it; for the authorities are utterly irreconcilable; and it is no easy matter to arrive at a just or satisfactory estimate of a character whom one party insists on ranking with heroes, and the other on stigmatising as a coward or a brigand. For example, Puisaye, whom Mr. Alison terms the soul of the insurrection, is described by French writers of repute as a mere intriguer, wholly destitute of honour or courage-a Breton Lovat at the bestencouraged by the English for the express purpose of defeating the grand object of the insurrection, 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.

Whether

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. His father 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 a course of lectures which attracted the attention of the leading politicians of the capital. The reputation thus acquired was not suffered to fall away; and during the 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 hostility towards the press conciliated the esteem of Chateaubriand, who makes him 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

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, economists, and calculators produce such men as that of faith and loyalty?

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.

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 allowance for what he called prejudices, and the best part of mankind, principles, kept the smothered flame alive by his intolerance. His ill-treatment 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

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 risk of carrying fire and sword into those hospitable houses which had so long sheltered the fathers of Brittany? No, better far were desertion and a savage life in the darkest forests; better the ruin of families, and the constant presence of garrisons on the domestic hearth; better death by the carbine of the gendarmes, or by exhaustion, or even by the steel of the guillotine, when taken with a weapon of any sort in the hand.' Such was the universal cry amongst the rural population; and so frequent were desertions, that there were soon fewer recruits in the imperial barracks than in the woods. Resistance became the rule, and obedience the exception. The collegians not merely partook, they anticipated the feeling of their countrymen; but no favourable opportunity for a demonstration presented itself till 1814, during the hundred days, when they broke into open revolt, formed themselves into a regular battalion, named a leader, and took the field. The exploits of this chosen band form the subject of M. Rio's publication-quorum pars magna fui-for he was one of them; and nothing can be more affecting or spirit-stirring than their adventures. A set of boys engaged, not in the barring-out of a pedagogue, but the exclusion of an emperor-defying, not birchen rods, but bayonets—enduring the worst extremities of hunger and fatigue without a murmur, mounting to the assault of a fortified town with the gallantry of a forlorn-hope, and covering a retreat like veterans. When we remember the defeat of Lord John Russell's friend, Mr. Frost, by Captain Gray and Sir Thomas Phillips, or see a London mob recoiling before a handful of life-guards, we are puzzled to account for the exploits of the Parisian populace during the three days;' and a visit to Eton or Harrow would certainly enhance our wonder at the boy-patriots of Vannes. But all classes of Frenchmen are or were familiarised to the use of arms from infancy; and perhaps there was hardly one amongst this band of students whose feelings had not been seared and deadened to the ordinary run of youthful associations by some fatal remembrance, whose infant imagin ation had not been kindled by some fearful vow, who had not a father bleeding on the scaffold, a mother insulted by a brutal soldiery, or a brother perishing amidst the snows of Russia, *The scene of a night outrage on the Pope.

VOL. LXX. NO. CXXXIX.