of his being one of four apostolic vicars appointed by the Pope for the whole of France, and of his having been secretly consecrated by a conclave of the nonjuring bishops held at St Germain. The story was feasible enough, and no one discredited it. Nothing could exceed the joy of the devout peasants on being told that their cause was now blessed by the presence and countenance of no less a man than the holy Abbé Folleville, Bishop of Agra.

After staying about a week at Thouars, the royalists, greatly reduced in numbers, set out for Fontenay, passing through Parthenay and Chataigneraie. Reaching Fontenay on the 16th of May, they made a brisk attack; but were eventually, owing to the smallness of their force, repulsed with the loss of almost all their artillery, Marie Jeanne included. This defeat, the priests impressed upon them, was nothing else than a divine judgment for certain excesses committed at Chataigneraie, on their march to Fontenay. Giving the army already assembled a day or two's rest, Cathelineau left it at Fontenay, scouring the Bocage in person, everywhere shewing his broad calm forehead, rousing the downcast peasants. In nine days he was back with fresh forces; and, urged on by an enthusiasm half-martial half-religious, the royalists again attacked Fontenay without cannon, without ammunition, without everything by the help of which towns are usually taken, confiding in the Bishop of Agra's blessing and their own desperate hand-grapple. Fontenay was taken; and, what delighted the peasants more, Marie Jeanne, the best beloved of their cannon, was their own again, torn by the valour of young Forêt from the hands of the retreating enemy as they were dragging it away to Niort. The prisoners taken at Fontenay had their heads shaven, in order that they might be known again, and were then dismissed; and this plan of treating the prisoners became general.

While resting at Fontenay after the battle, and deliberating what should be their next route, the generals were struck with the necessity, now that they were actually wresting the Bocage out of the hands of the Revolution, of establishing some kind of government, to reside permanently in a central locality, administer the affairs of the whole district, and also provide supplies for the army; while the generals, relieved in this way of all civil care, should be marching from place to place, storming towns, and fighting the enemy. Accordingly, a body of eighteen or nineteen persons was appointed to sit at Chatillon, and administer affairs under the title of the Superior Council. Of this council the Bishop of Agra was president; there were many advocates among the members: but the master-intellect in it, and the man who, by the force of his overbearing energy, carried everything his own way, was an ecclesiastic, the Abbé Bernier, a bold, griping, ambitious, essentially bad and selfish man, with a deep scheming brain, a commanding person, a ready eloquent pen, and a fine sounding voice.

In these arrangements the generals spent some time, the peasants as usual dispersing themselves through the Bocage. Meanwhile the Convention, roused to the absolute necessity of doing something decisive, and dissatisfied with the bad management of Berruyer, sent down, to supersede him in the command, Biron, a brave unfortunate man, who dishonourably served a Revolution he disagreed with, and died on the scaffold declaring himself a royalist. Biron's subordinates were Santerre the brewer, and Westermann, whose abilities and inhumanity did so much for the Revolution which guillotined him. Fresh troops were also sent into La Vendée. They were already occupying strong positions in the north of Poitou. The most important of these was Saumur, a considerable town on the Loire. The royalists therefore determined to march north again and attack this town. After some fighting by the way, they arrived at Saumur on the 9th of June, spent the night in pious exercises, and next morning commenced the attack in three parties. Lescure, fighting at the head of one, was wounded, his men fled, and the rout of that division would have been complete but for a lucky accident. Two wagons had been overturned on a bridge, and this checked the pursuit, and gave the fugitives time to rally. At the head of another division, La Rochejaquelein and Cathelineau attacked a body of republicans encamped outside the town. The ditch was crossed, and Henri, flinging his hat with its feather inside the fortifications, cried out: Who will go and fetch it?' and then sprang in himself, followed by Cathelineau and a number more. Evening put an end to the conflict, which it was resolved to renew in the morning; but so great had been the loss sustained by the Blues, that they evacuated the town in the night-time, leaving the besiegers a great many prisoners, plenty of ammunition, eighty cannon, and some thousand muskets. Remaining a day or two at Saumur, the insurgents were joined by several individuals already distinguished, or who afterwards became so; among others, by the Prince de Talmont, a young and noble emigrant, who had hitherto been leading a dissolute life in England, but had now resolved to give himself up to great actions. Here also the generals came to the important resolution of appointing some one of their number commander-in-chief. But which of them all should it be?-the simple, peasant-like, God-fearing Cathelineau, with his broad forehead, large heart, and fiery utterance; the swarthy, iron-visaged Stofflet; the gentle, unassuming Bonchamp, with his powerful inventive faculty and great military experience; the somewhat consequential and pedantic, but really devout and well-meaning D'Elbée; the grave, silent, thinking Lescure, so recollective and so resolute; or the odd-opinioned, outspoken, chivalrous, high-souled young Henri? Lescure, whose character it befitted to make the proposal, named Cathelineau, and Cathelineau was unanimously appointed general-in-chief of the royalist army of Louis XVII.

Alas! the noble peasant-commander had not long to live. The republicans, after the loss of Saumur, had vacated all the surrounding district, and concentrated their strength in Nantes, a large town also situated on the Loire, but some fifty or sixty miles west of Saumur, and not far from the sea-coast. The royalist generals deliberated what should be their next step; there was a keen debate, Stofflet almost quarrelling with Bonchamp for proposing a plan which required delay; but at last, most of the generals siding with Stofflet, it was resolved to besiege Nantes. This town being in the province of the Bretons, they hoped, by taking it, to draw into the insurrection the whole of that hardy population. Accordingly, leaving Lescure wounded at La Boulaye, and Larochejaquelein, much against his will, in Saumur with a garrison, the royalist army set out for Nantes along the northern bank of the Loire, sweeping its route clear of the few straggling republicans that were left, and picking up recruits as it went on. Still, as this line of march did not lie through the Bocage, and as the peasants had a strong repugnance to fighting far away from home, Cathelineau reached Nantes with a force much smaller than usual. To make up for this, however, Charette, who had been carrying on an independent set of military operations in the district bordering on the sea, was prevailed upon by the representations of Lescure to join his forces with those of Cathelineau, and co-operate with him at least in the present siege. The idea of trying to bring about a permanent coalition between the royalist army of Haut-Poitou under Cathelineau, and that of Bas-Poitou under Charette-a coalition which Napoleon emphatically declares might have crushed the Republic-originated either with Bonchamp or with Larochejaquelein. The siege of Nantes, however, was almost the only case in which the two armies really co-operated. On the evening of the 28th of June, the republican sentinels of Nantes saw far off in the horizon the bivouac-fires of the approaching royalist army, and heard their horns blowing like the lowing of bulls. The commanders, Beysser and Canclaux, prepared for the attack of the morning. The fight was long and bloody: the royalists had penetrated the suburbs; the Blues were giving way; they were flying; when, unluckily, the Prince de Talmont turned two cannon upon a path of exit from the town, into which the fugitives were crowding, and which Cathelineau had purposely left open. Beysser saw this mistake, rallied his troops, who now began to fight with the courage of despair. Cathelineau, who had already had two horses killed under him, gathered a few faithful men of his native village round him for a last decisive effort: making all of them the sign of the cross after their leader, they dashed themselves impetuously against this single obstacle between them and a great victory. The shock was irresistible. Cathelineau was fighting in the crowded street at this moment a gun was seen pointed from a window; it was fired: Cathelineau fell, wounded in the breast. It ran from

rank to rank: 'Cathelineau is wounded-is dead!' The royalists lost all courage; Beysser rallied, and drove them out of the town; their retreat being made less disastrous, however, by the exertions of Charette. The attack on Nantes had ended fatally for the royalists. They had lost a great number of men, and some of their best officers; but all their other losses were felt as nothing compared with that blow which, in the first moment of their grief, seemed to reduce them to utter helplessness, and to make their cause hardly worth defending any more. The good Cathelineau was mortally wounded, and had not long to live. The army broke up dispirited, crossing the Loire in parties, and carrying the sad news, like a desolation, to all the firesides in the woodlands of La Vendée.

Larochejaquelein had a perplexing duty to perform at Saumur. Cruelly deserted by his followers, he found it necessary to abandon the place, and proceed to Chatillon, where a consultation on the general state of affairs was necessary. The republican army under Westermann was burning and slaying in the Bocage-the castle of Clisson, among other places, being destroyed; and to arrest this inroad was the first object of the Vendéan chiefs. On the 8th of July an engagement between the two parties took place. Westermann's army was almost annihilated, and, exasperated by his cruelties, the royalists inflicted a terrible retaliation on their prisoners. Westermann himself escaped with difficulty. Shortly afterwards he appeared at the bar of the Convention to answer a charge of treachery, founded on the fact of his defeat; and it was only by a piece of singular good-fortune that the honest but iron-hearted soldier was reinstated in his command. An attempt was made by Biron to retrieve Westermann's defeat, by sending a strong force under Santerre to make a similar inroad into another part of the Bocage. An engagement ensued at Vihiers, which effectually cleared the interior of the Bocage of republican troops, and the latter end of the month of July was spent by the wearied Vendéans in the comparative tranquillity of their usual occupations.

Unfortunately, all the successes of the Vendéans ended in nothing. The war had lasted a considerable time; there had been much fighting; several decided victories had been gained over the armies of the republic; the insurrection had forced itself upon the attention of the powers directing the Revolution, till it became a great subject of interest in Paris; but all this without any sign of its being a whit nearer its immediate object-namely, the shutting out of the Revolution from La Vendée; much less of its being nearer the great object which had grown out of the other, and come to occupy the foreground of the whole movement-the extinction of the republic, and the restoration of royalty in France. This was felt by the Vendéan leaders, and they henceforward resolved on a more specific aim : but they possessed little power to carry their schemes into execution; and the division into two armies, one under Cathelineau, and another

under Charette, was a fatal error. It was afterwards remarked by Bonaparte, that if these two armies had united, and gone straight to Paris, a counter-revolution would in all likelihood have been the result. One of the plans of the Vendéans was to combine their scattered forces, and they began by appointing D'Elbée as commander-in-chief, in room of the unfortunate Cathelineau, who had died of his wounds. Another plan was, to open up a communication with foreign powers, especially England; procure, if possible, the landing of an English army on the west coast, join forces with it, and, thus strengthened, give battle to the armies of the republic.

While the council was deliberating on these determinate modes of action, government became still more alarmed at the progress of the insurrection. It had now lasted five months, and the Convention perceived that if it lasted much longer, it would attract the eyes of Europe, and become a royalist vortex in the heart of the Revolution. The finishing of the war in La Vendée, therefore, seemed no longer like the mere healing of a local eruption; it became equivalent to cutting out a cancer. 'It is with La Vendée,' says Barère, in his report of the 2d of August, 'that the aristocrats, the federalists, the department men, and the section men hold correspondence. It is with La Vendée that the culpable designs of Marseille are connected, the disgraceful venality of Toulon, the movements of Ardèche, the troubles of Lozère, the conspiracies of Eure and Calvados, the hopes of Sarthe and Mayenne, the bad spirit of Angers, and the sluggish agitations of ancient Bretagne. Destroy La Vendée, and Valenciennes and Condé will no longer be in the hands of the Austrian. Destroy La Vendée, and the English will no longer occupy Dunkirk. Destroy La Vendée, and the Rhine will be freed of the Prussians. Destroy La Vendée, and Spain will see itself torn to pieces, conquered by the forces of the south, joined to the victorious soldiery of Mortagne and Cholet. Destroy La Vendée, and Lyon will resist no more, Toulon will rise against the Spaniards and the English, and the spirit of Marseille will rise to the level of the Republican Revolution. In fine, every blow which you aim at La Vendée will resound through the rebel towns, the federalist departments, and the invaded frontiers.'

These sonorous and sanguinary sayings were followed up by decided actions. The ill-starred Biron had been already recalled, and Beysser appointed to succeed him. Combustibles of all kinds were ordered to be sent into La Vendée for burning the plantations, the underwood, and the broom. The forests were to be levelled, the crops cut down, the cattle seized, and the goods of the insurgents confiscated wholesale.

While the Convention was meditating this project of devastation, the royalist generals were looking eagerly in the direction of England, the refuge of so many royalists. What are they thinking of us and our struggle in England? was the feeling. Alas! England hardly