A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795 Part 30

But it was not only by its principles that Nantes had signalized itself; at every period of the war, it had contributed largely both in men and money, and its riches and commerce still rendered it one of the most important towns of the republic.--What has been its reward?--Barbarous envoys from the Convention, sent expressly to level the aristocracy of wealth, to crush its mercantile spirit, and decimate its inhabitants.*--

* When Nantes was reduced almost to a state of famine by the destruction of commerce, and the supplies drawn for the maintenance of the armies, Commissioners were sent to Paris, to solicit a supply of provisions. They applied to Carrier, as being best acquainted with their distress, and were answered in this language:--_"Demandez, pour Nantes! je solliciterai qu'on porte le fer et la flamme dans cette abominable ville. Vous etes tous des coquins, des contre- revolutionnaires, des brigands, des scelerats, je ferai nommer une commission par la Convention Nationale.--J'irai moi meme a la tete de cette commission.--Scelerats, je serai rouler les tetes dans Nantes--je regenererai Nantes."_--"Is it for Nantes that you pet.i.tion? I'll exert my influence to have fire and sword carried into that abominable city. You are all scoundrels, counter- revolutionists, thieves, miscreants.--I'll have a commission appointed by the Convention, and go myself at the head of it.-- Villains, I'll set your heads a rolling about Nantes--I'll regenerate Nantes."

Report of the Commission of Twenty-one, on the conduct of Carrier.

--Terrible lesson for those discontented and mistaken people, who, enriched by commerce, are not content with freedom and independence, but seek for visionary benefits, by becoming the partizans of innovation, or the tools of faction!*

* The disasters of Nantes ought not to be lost to the republicans of Birmingham, Manchester, and other great commercial towns, where "men fall out they know not why;" and where their increasing wealth and prosperity are the best eulogiums on the const.i.tution they attempt to undermine.

I have hitherto said little of La Vendee; but the fate of Nantes is so nearly connected with it, that I shall make it the subject of my next letter.

[No Date or Place Given.]

It appears, that the greater part of the inhabitants of Poitou, Anjou, and the Southern divisions of Brittany, now distinguished by the general appellation of the people of La Vendee, (though they include those of several other departments,) never either comprehended or adopted the principles of the French revolution. Many different causes contributed to increase their original aversion from the new system, and to give their resistance that consistency, which has since become so formidable.

A partiality for their ancient customs, an attachment to their n.o.blesse, and a deference for their Priests, are said to characterize the brave and simple natives of La Vendee. Hence republican writers, with self-complacent decision, always treat this war as the effect of ignorance, slavery, and superst.i.tion.

The modern reformist, who calls the labourer from the plough, and the artizan from the loom, to make them statesmen or philosophers, and who has invaded the abodes of contented industry with the rights of man, that our fields may be cultivated, and our garments wove, by metaphysicians, will readily a.s.sent to this opinion.--Yet a more enlightened and liberal philosophy may be tempted to examine how far the Vendeans have really merited the contempt and persecution of which they have been the objects.

By the confession of the republicans themselves, they are religious, hospitable, and frugal, humane and merciful towards their enemies, and easily persuaded to whatever is just and reasonable.

I do not pretend to combat the narrow prejudices of those who suppose the worth or happiness of mankind compatible but with one set of opinions; and who, confounding the advent.i.tious with the essential, appreciate only book learning: but surely, qualities which imply a knowledge of what is due both to G.o.d and man, and information sufficient to yield to what is right or rational, are not descriptive of barbarians; or at least, we may say with Phyrrhus, "there is nothing barbarous in their discipline."*

*"The husbandmen of this country are in general men of simple manners, naturally well inclined, or at least not addicted to serious vices." Lequinio, Guerre de La Vendee.

Dubois de Crance, speaking of the inhabitants of La Vendee, says, "They are the most hospitable people I ever saw, and always disposed to listen to what is just and reasonable, if proffered with mildness and humanity."

"This unpolished people, whom, however, it is much less difficult to persuade than to fight." Lequinio, G. de La V.

"They affected towards our prisoners a deceitful humanity, neglecting no means to draw them over to their own party, and often sending them back to us with only a simple prohibition to bear arms against the King or religion."

Report of Richard and Choudieu.

The ignorant Vendeans then could give lessons of policy and humanity, which the "enlightened" republicans were not capable of profiting by.

--Their adherence to their ancient inst.i.tutions, and attachment to their Gentry and Clergy, when the former were abolished and the latter proscribed, might warrant a presumption that they were happy under the one, and kindly treated by the other: for though individuals may sometimes persevere in affections or habits from which they derive neither felicity nor advantage, whole bodies of men can scarcely be supposed eager to risk their lives in defence of privileges that have oppressed them, or of a religion from which they draw no consolation.

But whatever the cause, the new doctrines, both civil and religious, were received in La Vendee with a disgust, which was not only expressed by murmurs, but occasionally by little revolts, by disobedience to the const.i.tutional authorities, and a rejection of the const.i.tutional clergy.

Some time previous to the deposition of the King, Commissioners were sent to suppress these disorders; and though I doubt not but all possible means were taken to conciliate, I can easily believe, that neither the King nor his Ministers might be desirous of subduing by force a people who erred only from piety or loyalty. What effect this system of indulgence might have produced cannot now be decided; because the subsequent overthrow of the monarchy, and the ma.s.sacre or banishment of the priests, must have totally alienated their minds, and precluded all hope of reconcilement.--Disaffection, therefore, continued to increase, and the Brissotines are suspected of having rather fostered than repressed these intestine commotions,* for the same purpose which induced them to provoke the war with England, and to extend that of the Continent.

* Le Brun, one of the Brissotin Ministers, concealed the progress of this war for six months before he thought fit to report it to the Convention.

--It is impossible to a.s.sign a good motive to any act of this literary intriguer.

--Perhaps, while they determined to establish their faction by "braving all Europe," they might think it equally politic to perplex and overawe Paris by a near and dangerous enemy, which would render their continuance in power necessary, or whom they might join, if expelled from it.*

* This last reason might afterwards have given way to their apprehensions, and the Brissotins have preferred the creation of new civil wars, to a confidence in the royalists. These men, who condemned the King for a supposed intention of defending an authority transmitted to him through whole ages, and recently sanctioned by the voice of the people, did not scruple to excite a civil war in defence of their six months' sovereignty over a republic, proclaimed by a ferocious comedian, and certainly without the a.s.sent of the nation. Had the ill-fated Monarch dared thus to trifle with the lives of his subjects, he might have saved France and himself from ruin.

When men gratify their ambition by means so sanguinary and atrocious as those resorted to by the Brissotines, we are authorized in concluding they will not be more scrupulous in the use or preservation of power, than they were in attaining it; and we can have no doubt but that the fomenting or suppressing the progress of civil discord, was, with them, a mere question of expediency.

The decree which took place in March, 1793, for raising three hundred thousand men in the departments, changed the partial insurrections of La Vendee to an open and connected rebellion; and every where the young people refused going, and joined in preference the standard of revolt.

In the beginning of the summer, the brigands* (as they were called) grew so numerous, that the government, now in the hands of Robespierre and his party, began to take serious measures to combat them.

* Robbers--_banditti_--The name was first given, probably, to the insurgents of La Vendee, in order to insinuate a belief that the disorders were but of a slight and predatory nature.

--One body of troops were dispatched after another, who were all successively defeated, and every where fled before the royalists.

It is not unusual in political concerns to attribute to deep-laid plans and abstruse combinations, effects which are the natural result of private pa.s.sions and isolated interests. Robespierre is said to have promoted both the destruction of the republican armies and those of La Vendee, in order to reduce the national population. That he was capable of imagining such a project is probable--yet we need not, in tracing the conduct of the war, look farther than to the character of the agents who were, almost necessarily, employed in it. Nearly every officer qualified for the command of an army, had either emigrated, or was on service at the frontiers; and the task of reducing by violence a people who resisted only because they deemed themselves injured, and who, even in the estimation of the republicans, could only be mistaken, was naturally avoided by all men who were not mere adventurers. It might likewise be the policy of the government to prefer the services of those, who, having neither reputation nor property, would be more dependent, and whom, whether they became dangerous by their successes or defeats, it would be easy to sacrifice.

Either, then, from necessity or choice, the republican armies in La Vendee were conducted by dissolute and rapacious wretches, at all times more eager to pillage than fight, and who were engaged in securing their plunder, when they should have been in pursuit of the enemy. On every occasion they seemed to retreat, that their ill success might afford them a pretext for declaring that the next town or village was confederated with the insurgents, and for delivering it up, in consequence, to murder and rapine. Such of the soldiers as could fill their pocket-books with a.s.signats, left their less successful companions, and retired as invalids to the hospitals: the battalions of Paris (and particularly "the conquerors of the Bastille") had such ardour for pillage, that every person possessed of property was, in their sense, an aristocrat, whom it was lawful to despoil.*

* _"Le pillage a ete porte a son comble--les militaires au lieu de songer a ce qu'ils avoient a faire, n'ont pense qu'a remplir leurs sacs, et a voir se perpetuer une guerre aussi avantageuse a leur interet--beaucoup de simples soldats ont acquis cinquante mille francs et plus; on en a vu couverts de bijoux, et faisant dans tous les genres des depenses d'une produgaloite, monstreuse."

Lequinio, Guerre de la Vendee._

"The most unbridled pillage prevailed--officers, instead of attending to their duty, thought only of filling their portmanteaus, and of the means to perpetuate a war they found so profitable.--Many private soldiers made fifty thousand livres, and they have been seen loaded with trinkets, and exercising the most abominable prodigalities of every kind."

Lequinio, War of La Vendee.

"The conquerors of the Bastille had unluckily a most unbridled ardour for pillage--one would have supposed they had come for the express purpose of plunder, rather than fighting. The stage coaches for Paris were entirely loaded with their booty."

Report of Benaben, Commissioner of the Department of Maine and Loire.

--The carriages of the army were entirely appropriated to the conveyance of their booty; till, at last, the administrators of some departments were under the necessity of forbidding such inc.u.mbrances: but the officers, with whom restrictions of this sort were unavailing, put all the horses and waggons of the country in requisition for similar purposes, while they relaxed themselves from the serious business of the war, (which indeed was nearly confined to burning, plundering, and ma.s.sacring the defenceless inhabitants,) by a numerous retinue of mistresses and musicians.

It is not surprizing that generals and troops of this description were constantly defeated; and their reiterated disasters might probably have first suggested the idea of totally exterminating a people it was found so difficult to subdue, and so impracticable to conciliate.--On the first of October 1793, Barrere, after inveighing against the excessive population of La Vendee, which he termed "frightful," proposed to the Convention to proclaim by a decree, that the war of La Vendee "should be terminated" by the twentieth of the same month. The Convention, with barbarous folly, obeyed; and the enlightened Parisians, accustomed to think with contempt on the ignorance of the Vendeans, believed that a war, which had baffled the efforts of government for so many months, was to end on a precise day--which Barrere had fixed with as much a.s.surance as though he had only been ordering a fete.

But the Convention and the government understood this decree in a very different sense from the good people of Paris. The war was, indeed, to be ended; not by the usual mode of combating armies, but by a total extinction of all the inhabitants of the country, both innocent and guilty--and Merlin de Thionville, with other members, so perfectly comprehended this detestable project, that they already began to devise schemes for repeopling La Vendee, when its miserable natives should be destroyed.*

* It is for the credit of humanity to believe, that the decree was not understood according to its real intention; but the nation has to choose between the imputation of cruelty, stupidity, or slavery-- for they either approved the sense of the decree, believed what was not possible, or were obliged to put on an appearance of both, in spite of their senses and their feelings. A proclamation, in consequence, to the army, is more explicit--"All the brigands of La Vendee must be exterminated before the end of October."

From this time, the representatives on mission, commissaries of war, officers, soldiers, and agents of every kind, vied with each other in the most abominable outrages. Carrier superintended the fusillades and noyades at Nantes, while Lequinio dispatched with his own hands a part of the prisoners taken at La Fontenay, and projected the destruction of the rest.--After the evacuation of Mans by the insurgents, women were brought by twenties and thirties, and shot before the house where the deputies Tureau and Bourbotte had taken up their residence; and it appears to have been considered as a compliment to these republican Molochs, to surround their habitation with mountains of the dead. A compliment of the like nature was paid to the representative Prieur de la Marne,* by a volunteer, who having learned that his own brother was taken amongst the enemy, requested, by way of recommending himself to notice, a formal permission to be his executioner.--The Roman stoicism of Prieur accepted the implied homage, and granted the request!!

* This representative, who was also a member of the Committee of Public Welfare, was not only the Brutus, but the Antony of La Vendee; for we learn from the report of Benaben, that his stern virtues were accompanied, through the whole of his mission in this afflicted country, by a cortege of thirty strolling fiddlers!

Fourteen hundred prisoners, who had surrendered at Savenay, among whom were many women and children, were shot, by order of the deputy Francastel, who, together with Hentz, Richard, Choudieu, Carpentier, and others of their colleagues, set an example of rapine and cruelty, but too zealously imitated by their subordinate agents. In some places, the inhabitants, without distinction of age or s.e.x, were put indiscriminately to the sword; in others, they were forced to carry the pillage collected from their own dwellings, which, after being thus stripped, were consigned to the flames.*

* "This conflagration accomplished, they had no sooner arrived in the midst of our army, than the volunteers, in imitation of their commanders, seized what little they had preserved, and ma.s.sacred them.--But this is not all: a whole munic.i.p.ality, in their scarfs of office, were sacrificed; and at a little village, inhabited by about fifty good patriots, who had been uniform in their resistance of the insurgents, news is brought that their brother soldiers are coming to a.s.sist them, and to revenge the wrongs they have suffered. A friendly repast is provided, the military arrive, embrace their ill-fated hosts, and devour what they have provided; which is no sooner done, than they drive all these poor people into the churchyard, and stab them one after another."

Report of Faure, Vice-President of a Military Commission at Fontenay.

--The heads of the prisoners served occasionally as marks for the officers to shoot at for trifling wagers, and the soldiers, who imitated these heinous examples, used to conduct whole hundreds to the place of execution, singing _"allons enfans de la patrie."_*

* Woe to those who were unable to walk, for, under pretext that carriages could not be found to convey them, they were shot without hesitation!--Benaben.

The insurgents had lost Cholet, Chatillon, Mortagne, &c. Yet, far from being vanquished by the day appointed, they had crossed the Loire in great force, and, having traversed Brittany, were preparing to make an attack on Granville. But this did not prevent Barrere from announcing to the convention, that La Vendee was no more, and the galleries echoed with applauses, when they were told that the highways were impa.s.sable, from the numbers of the dead, and that a considerable part of France was one vast cemetery. This intelligence also tranquillized the paternal solicitude of the legislature, and, for many months, while the system of depopulation was pursued with the most barbarous fury, it was not permissible even to suspect that the war was yet unextinguished.

It is only since the trial of the Nantais, that the state of La Vendee has again become a subject of discussion: truth has now forced its way, and we learn, that, whatever may be the strength of these unhappy people, their minds, embittered by suffering, and animated by revenge, are still less than ever disposed to submit to the republican government. The design of total extirpation, once so much insisted on, is at present said to be relinquished, and a plan of instruction and conversion is to be subst.i.tuted for bayonets and conflagrations. The revolted countries are to be enlightened by the doctrines of liberty, fanaticism is to be exposed, and a love of the republic to succeed the prejudices in favour of Kings and n.o.bles.--To promote these objects, is, undoubtedly, the real interest of the Convention; but a moralist, who observes through another medium, may compare with regret and indignation the instructors with the people they are to illumine, and the advantages of philosophy over ignorance.

Lequinio, one of the most determined reformers of the barbarism of La Vendee, proposes two methods: the first is, a general ma.s.sacre of all the natives--and the only objection it seems susceptible of in his opinion is, their numbers; but as he thinks on this account it may be attended with difficulty, he is for establishing a sort of perpetual mission of Representatives, who, by the influence of good living and a company of fiddlers and singers, are to restore the whole country to peace.*--

*"The only difficulty that presents itself is, to determine whether recourse shall be had to the alternative of indulgence, or if it will not be more advantageous to persist in the plan of total destruction.