The Chouans

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The Chouans

By

Honore de Balzac


Translated by

Katharine Prescott Wormeley




DEDICATION

To Monsieur Theodore Dablin, Merchant.

To my first friend, my first work.

De Balzac.




THE CHOUANS



I

AN AMBUSCADE

Early in the year VIII., at the beginning of Vendemiaire, or, to
conform to our own calendar, towards the close of September, 1799, a
hundred or so of peasants and a large number of citizens, who had left
Fougeres in the morning on their way to Mayenne, were going up the
little mountain of La Pelerine, half-way between Fougeres and Ernee, a
small town where travellers along that road are in the habit of
resting. This company, divided into groups that were more or less
numerous, presented a collection of such fantastic costumes and a
mixture of individuals belonging to so many and diverse localities and
professions that it will be well to describe their characteristic
differences, in order to give to this history the vivid local coloring
to which so much value is attached in these days,--though some critics
do assert that it injures the representation of sentiments.

Many of the peasants, in fact the greater number, were barefooted, and
wore no other garments than a large goatskin, which covered them from
the neck to the knees, and trousers of white and very coarse linen,
the ill-woven texture of which betrayed the slovenly industrial habits
of the region. The straight locks of their long hair mingling with
those of the goatskin hid their faces, which were bent on the ground,
so completely that the garment might have been thought their own skin,
and they themselves mistaken at first sight for a species of the
animal which served them as clothing. But through this tangle of hair
their eyes were presently seen to shine like dew-drops in a thicket,
and their glances, full of human intelligence, caused fear rather than
pleasure to those who met them. Their heads were covered with a dirty
head-gear of red flannel, not unlike the Phrygian cap which the
Republic had lately adopted as an emblem of liberty. Each man carried
over his shoulder a heavy stick of knotted oak, at the end of which
hung a linen bag with little in it. Some wore, over the red cap, a
coarse felt hat, with a broad brim adorned by a sort of woollen
chenille of many colors which was fastened round it. Others were
clothed entirely in the coarse linen of which the trousers and wallets
of all were made, and showed nothing that was distinctive of the new
order of civilization. Their long hair fell upon the collar of a round
jacket with square pockets, which reached to the hips only, a garment
peculiar to the peasantry of western France. Beneath this jacket,
which was worn open, a waistcoat of the same linen with large buttons
was visible. Some of the company marched in wooden shoes; others, by
way of economy, carried them in their hand. This costume, soiled by
long usage, blackened with sweat and dust, and less original than that
of the other men, had the historic merit of serving as a transition
between the goatskins and the brilliant, almost sumptuous, dress of a
few individuals dispersed here and there among the groups, where they
shone like flowers. In fact, the blue linen trousers of these last,
and their red or yellow waistcoats, adorned with two parallel rows of
brass buttons and not unlike breast-plates, stood out as vividly
among the white linen and shaggy skins of their companions as the
corn-flowers and poppies in a wheat-field. Some of them wore wooden
shoes, which the peasants of Brittany make for themselves; but the
greater number had heavy hobnailed boots, and coats of coarse cloth cut
in the fashion of the old regime, the shape of which the peasants have
religiously retained even to the present day. The collars of their
shirts were held together by buttons in the shape of hearts or
anchors. The wallets of these men seemed to be better than those of
their companions, and several of them added to their marching outfit a
flask, probably full of brandy, slung round their necks by a bit
of twine. A few burgesses were to be seen in the midst of these
semi-savages, as if to show the extremes of civilization in this
region. Wearing round hats, or flapping brims or caps, high-topped
boots, or shoes and gaiters, they exhibited as many and as remarkable
differences in their costume as the peasants themselves. About a dozen
of them wore the republican jacket known by the name of "la
carmagnole." Others, well-to-do mechanics, no doubt, were clothed from
head to foot in one color. Those who had most pretension to their
dress wore swallow-tail coats or surtouts of blue or green cloth, more
or less defaced. These last, evidently characters, marched in boots of
various kinds, swinging heavy canes with the air and manner of those
who take heart under misfortune. A few heads carefully powdered, and
some queues tolerably well braided showed the sort of care which a
beginning of education or prosperity inspires. A casual spectator
observing these men, all surprised to find themselves in one another's
company, would have thought them the inhabitants of a village driven
out by a conflagration. But the period and the region in which they
were gave an altogether different interest to this body of men. Any
one initiated into the secrets of the civil discords which were then
agitating the whole of France could easily have distinguished the few
individuals on whose fidelity the Republic might count among these
groups, almost entirely made up of men who four years earlier were at
war with her.

One other and rather noticeable sign left no doubt upon the opinions
which divided the detachment. The Republicans alone marched with an
air of gaiety. As to the other individuals of the troop, if their
clothes showed marked differences, their faces at least and their
attitudes wore a uniform expression of ill-fortune. Citizens and
peasantry, their faces all bore the imprint of deepest melancholy;
their silence had something sullen in it; they all seemed crushed
under the yoke of a single thought, terrible no doubt but carefully
concealed, for their faces were impenetrable, the slowness of their
gait alone betraying their inward communings. From time to time a few
of them, noticeable for the rosaries hanging from their necks
(dangerous as it was to carry that sign of a religion which was
suppressed, rather than abolished) shook their long hair and raised
their heads defiantly. They covertly examined the woods, and paths,
and masses of rock which flanked the road, after the manner of a dog
with his nose to the wind trying to scent his game; and then, hearing
nothing but the monotonous tramp of the silent company, they lowered
their heads once more with the old expression of despair, like
criminals on their way to the galleys to live or die.

The march of this column upon Mayenne, the heterogeneous elements of
which it was composed, and the divers sentiments which evidently
pervaded it, will explain the presence of another troop which formed
the head of the detachment. About a hundred and fifty soldiers, with
arms and baggage, marched in the advance, commanded by the /chief of a
half-brigade/. We may mention here, for the benefit of those who did
not witness the drama of the Revolution, that this title was made to
supersede that of colonel, proscribed by patriots as too aristocratic.
These soldiers belonged to a demi-brigade of infantry quartered at
Mayenne. During these troublous times the inhabitants of the west of
France called all the soldiers of the Republic "Blues." This nickname
came originally from their blue and red uniforms, the memory of which
is still so fresh as to render a description superfluous. A detachment
of the Blues was therefore on this occasion escorting a body of
recruits, or rather conscripts, all displeased at being taken to
Mayenne where military discipline was about to force upon them the
uniformity of thought, clothing, and gait which they now lacked
entirely.

This column was a contingent slowly and with difficulty raised in the
district of Fougeres, from which it was due under the levy ordered by
the executive Directory of the Republic on the preceding 10th
Messidor. The government had asked for a hundred million of francs and
a hundred thousand men as immediate reinforcements for the armies then
fighting the Austrians in Italy, the Prussians in Germany, and menaced
in Switzerland by the Russians, in whom Suwarow had inspired hopes of
the conquest of France. The departments of the West, known under the
name of La Vendee, Brittany, and a portion of Lower Normandy, which
had been tranquil for the last three years (thanks to the action of
General Hoche), after a struggle lasting nearly four, seemed to have
seized this new occasion of danger to the nation to break out again.
In presence of such aggressions the Republic recovered its pristine
energy. It provided in the first place for the defence of the
threatened departments by giving the responsibility to the loyal and
patriotic portion of the inhabitants. In fact, the government in
Paris, having neither troops nor money to send to the interior, evaded
the difficulty by a parliamentary gasconade. Not being able to send
material aid to the faithful citizens of the insurgent departments, it
gave them its "confidence." Possibly the government hoped that this
measure, by arming the insurgents against each other, would stifle the
insurrection at its birth. This ordinance, the cause of future fatal
reprisals, was thus worded: "Independent companies of troops shall be
organized in the Western departments." This impolitic step drove the
West as a body into so hostile an attitude that the Directory
despaired of immediately subduing it. Consequently, it asked the
Assemblies to pass certain special measures relating to the
independent companies authorized by the ordinance. In response to this
request a new law had been promulgated a few days before this history
begins, organizing into regular legions the various weak and scattered
companies. These legions were to bear the names of the departments,
--Sarthe, Orne, Mayenne, Ille-et-Vilaine, Morbihan, Loire-Inferieure,
and Maine-et-Loire. "These legions," said the law, "will be specially
employed to fight the Chouans, and cannot, under any pretence, be sent
to the frontier."

The foregoing irksome details will explain both the weakness of the
Directory and the movement of this troop of men under escort of the
Blues. It may not be superfluous to add that these finely patriotic
Directorial decrees had no realization beyond their insertion among
the statutes. No longer restrained, as formerly, by great moral ideas,
by patriotism, nor by terror, which enforced their execution, these
later decrees of the Republic created millions and drafted soldiers
without the slightest benefit accruing to its exchequer or its armies.
The mainspring of the Revolution was worn-out by clumsy handling, and
the application of the laws took the impress of circumstances instead
of controlling them.

The departments of Mayenne and Ille-et-Vilaine were at this time under
the command of an old officer who, judging on the spot of the measures
that were most opportune to take, was anxious to wring from Brittany
every one of her contingents, more especially that of Fougeres, which
was known to be a hot-bed of "Chouannerie." He hoped by this means to
weaken its strength in these formidable districts. This devoted
soldier made use of the illusory provisions of the new law to declare
that he would equip and arm at once all recruits, and he announced
that he held at their disposal the one month's advanced pay promised
by the government to these exceptional levies. Though Brittany had
hitherto refused all kinds of military service under the Republic, the
levies were made under the new law on the faith of its promises, and
with such promptness that even the commander was startled. But he was
one of those wary old watch-dogs who are hard to catch napping. He no
sooner saw the contingents arriving one after the other than he
suspected some secret motive for such prompt action. Possibly he was
right in ascribing it to the fact of getting arms. At any rate, no
sooner were the Fougeres recruits obtained than, without delaying for
laggards, he took immediate steps to fall back towards Alencon, so as
to be near a loyal neighborhood,--though the growing disaffection
along the route made the success of this measure problematical. This
old officer, who, under instruction of his superiors, kept secret the
disasters of our armies in Italy and Germany and the disturbing news
from La Vendee, was attempting on the morning when this history
begins, to make a forced march on Mayenne, where he was resolved to
execute the law according to his own good pleasure, and fill the
half-empty companies of his own brigade with his Breton conscripts.
The word "conscript" which later became so celebrated, had just now
for the first time taken the place in the government decrees of the
word /requisitionnaire/ hitherto applied to all Republican recruits.

Before leaving Fougeres the chief secretly issued to his own men ample
supplies of ammunition and sufficient rations of bread for the whole
detachment, so as to conceal from the conscripts the length of the
march before them. He intended not to stop at Ernee (the last stage
before Mayenne), where the men of the contingent might find a way of
communicating with the Chouans who were no doubt hanging on his
flanks. The dead silence which reigned among the recruits, surprised
at the manoeuvring of the old republican, and their lagging march up
the mountain excited to the very utmost the distrust and watchfulness
of the chief--whose name was Hulot. All the striking points in the
foregoing description had been to him matters of the keenest interest;
he marched in silence, surrounded by five young officers, each of whom
respected the evident preoccupation of their leader. But just as Hulot
reached the summit of La Pelerine he turned his head, as if by
instinct, to inspect the anxious faces of the recruits, and suddenly
broke silence. The slow advance of the Bretons had put a distance of
three or four hundred feet between themselves and their escort.
Hulot's face contorted after a fashion peculiar to himself.

"What the devil are those dandies up to?" he exclaimed in a sonorous
voice. "Creeping instead of marching, I call it."

At his first words the officers who accompanied him turned
spasmodically, as if startled out of sleep by a sudden noise. The
sergeants and corporals followed their example, and the whole company
paused in its march without receiving the wished for "Halt!" Though
the officers cast a first look at the detachment, which was creeping
like an elongated tortoise up the mountain of La Pelerine, these young
men, all dragged, like many others, from important studies to defend
their country, and in whom war had not yet smothered the sentiment of
art, were so much struck by the scene which lay spread before their
eyes that they made no answer to their chief's remark, the real
significance of which was unknown to them. Though they had come from
Fougeres, where the scene which now presented itself to their eyes is
also visible (but with certain differences caused by the change of
perspective), they could not resist pausing to admire it again, like
those dilettanti who enjoy all music the more when familiar with its
construction.

From the summit of La Pelerine the traveller's eye can range over the
great valley of Couesnon, at one of the farthest points of which,
along the horizon, lay the town of Fougeres. From here the officers
could see, to its full extent, the basin of this intervale, as
remarkable for the fertility of its soil as for the variety of its
aspects. Mountains of gneiss and slate rose on all sides, like an
ampitheatre, hiding their ruddy flanks behind forests of oak, and
forming on their declivities other and lesser valleys full of dewy
freshness. These rocky heights made a vast enclosure, circular in
form, in the centre of which a meadow lay softly stretched, like the
lawn of an English garden. A number of evergreen hedges, defining
irregular pieces of property which were planted with trees, gave to
this carpet of verdure a character of its own, and one that is
somewhat unusual among the landscapes of France; it held the teeming
secrets of many beauties in its various contrasts, the effects of
which were fine enough to arrest the eye of the most indifferent
spectator.

At this particular moment the scene was brightened by the fleeting
glow with which Nature delights at times in heightening the beauty of
her imperishable creations. While the detachment was crossing the
valley, the rising sun had slowly scattered the fleecy mists which
float above the meadows of a September morning. As the soldiers turned
to look back, an invisible hand seemed to lift from the landscape the
last of these veils--a delicate vapor, like a diaphanous gauze through
which the glow of precious jewels excites our curiosity. Not a cloud
could be seen on the wide horizon to mark by its silvery whiteness
that the vast blue arch was the firmament; it seemed, on the contrary,
a dais of silk, held up by the summits of the mountains and placed in
the atmosphere, to protect that beautiful assemblage of fields and
meadows and groves and brooks.

The group of young officers paused to examine a scene so filled with
natural beauties. The eyes of some roved among the copses, which the
sterner tints of autumn were already enriching with their russet
tones, contrasting the more with the emerald-green of the meadows in
which they grew; others took note of a different contrast, made by the
ruddy fields, where the buckwheat had been cut and tied in sheaves
(like stands of arms around a bivouac), adjoining other fields of rich
ploughed land, from which the rye was already harvested. Here and
there were dark slate roofs above which puffs of white smoke were
rising. The glittering silver threads of the winding brooks caught the
eye, here and there, by one of those optic lures which render the soul
--one knows not how or why--perplexed and dreamy. The fragrant
freshness of the autumn breeze, the stronger odors of the forest, rose
like a waft of incense to the admirers of this beautiful region, who
noticed with delight its rare wild-flowers, its vigorous vegetation,
and its verdure, worthy of England, the very word being common to the
two languages. A few cattle gave life to the scene, already so
dramatic. The birds sang, filling the valley with a sweet, vague
melody that quivered in the air. If a quiet imagination will picture
to itself these rich fluctuations of light and shade, the vaporous
outline of the mountains, the mysterious perspectives which were seen
where the trees gave an opening, or the streamlets ran, or some
coquettish little glade fled away in the distance; if memory will
color, as it were, this sketch, as fleeting as the moment when it was
taken, the persons for whom such pictures are not without charm will
have an imperfect image of the magic scene which delighted the still
impressionable souls of the young officers.

Thinking that the poor recruits must be leaving, with regret, their
own country and their beloved customs, to die, perhaps, in foreign
lands, they involuntarily excused a tardiness their feelings
comprehended. Then, with the generosity natural to soldiers, they
disguised their indulgence under an apparent desire to examine into
the military position of the land. But Hulot, whom we shall henceforth
call the commandant, to avoid giving him the inharmonious title of
"chief of a half-brigade" was one of those soldiers who, in critical
moments, cannot be caught by the charms of a landscape, were they even
those of a terrestrial paradise. He shook his head with an impatient
gesture and contracted the thick, black eyebrows which gave so stern
an expression to his face.

"Why the devil don't they come up?" he said, for the second time, in a
hoarse voice, roughened by the toils of war.

"You ask why?" replied a voice.

Hearing these words, which seemed to issue from a horn, such as the
peasants of the western valleys use to call their flocks, the
commandant turned sharply round, as if pricked by a sword, and beheld,
close behind him, a personage even more fantastic in appearance than
any of those who were now being escorted to Mayenne to serve the
Republic. This unknown man, short and thick-set in figure and
broad-shouldered, had a head like a bull, to which, in fact, he bore
more than one resemblance. His nose seemed shorter than it was, on
account of the thick nostrils. His full lips, drawn from the teeth
which were white as snow, his large and round black eyes with their
shaggy brows, his hanging ears and tawny hair,--seemed to belong far
less to our fine Caucasian race than to a breed of herbivorous animals.
The total absence of all the usual characteristics of the social man
made that bare head still more remarkable. The face, bronzed by the sun
(its angular outlines presenting a sort of vague likeness to the granite
which forms the soil of the region), was the only visible portion of
the body of this singular being. From the neck down he was wrapped in
a "sarrau" or smock, a sort of russet linen blouse, coarser in texture
than that of the trousers of the less fortunate conscripts. This
"sarrau," in which an antiquary would have recognized the "saye," or
the "sayon" of the Gauls, ended at his middle, where it was fastened
to two leggings of goatskin by slivers, or thongs of wood, roughly
cut,--some of them still covered with their peel or bark. These hides
of the nanny-goat (to give them the name by which they were known to
the peasantry) covered his legs and thighs, and masked all appearance
of human shape. Enormous sabots hid his feet. His long and shining
hair fell straight, like the goat's hair, on either side of his face,
being parted in the centre like the hair of certain statues of the
Middle-Ages which are still to be seen in our cathedrals. In place of
the knotty stick which the conscripts carried over their shoulders,
this man held against his breast as though it were a musket, a heavy
whip, the lash of which was closely braided and seemed to be twice as
long as that of an ordinary whip. The sudden apparition of this
strange being seemed easily explained. At first sight some of the
officers took him for a recruit or conscript (the words were used
indiscriminately) who had outstripped the column. But the commandant
himself was singularly surprised by the man's presence; he showed no
alarm, but his face grew thoughtful. After looking the intruder well
over, he repeated, mechanically, as if preoccupied with anxious
thought: "Yes, why don't they come on? do you know, you?"

"Because," said the gloomy apparition, with an accent which proved his
difficulty in speaking French, "there Maine begins" (pointing with his
huge, rough hand towards Ernee), "and Bretagne ends."

Then he struck the ground sharply with the handle of his heavy whip
close to the commandant's feet. The impression produced on the
spectators by the laconic harangue of the stranger was like that of a
tom-tom in the midst of tender music. But the word "harangue" is
insufficient to reproduce the hatred, the desires of vengeance
expressed by the haughty gesture of the hand, the brevity of the
speech, and the look of sullen and cool-blooded energy on the
countenance of the speaker. The coarseness and roughness of the man,
--chopped out, as it seemed by an axe, with his rough bark still left
on him,--and the stupid ignorance of his features, made him seem, for
the moment, like some half-savage demigod. He stood stock-still in a
prophetic attitude, as though he were the Genius of Brittany rising
from a slumber of three years, to renew a war in which victory could
only be followed by twofold mourning.

"A pretty fellow this!" thought Hulot; "he looks to me like the
emissary of men who mean to argue with their muskets."

Having growled these words between his teeth, the commandant cast his
eyes in turn from the man to the valley, from the valley to the
detachment, from the detachment to the steep acclivities on the right
of the road, the ridges of which were covered with the broom and gorse
of Brittany; then he suddenly turned them full on the stranger, whom
he subjected to a mute interrogation, which he ended at last by
roughly demanding, "Where do you come from?"

His eager, piercing eye strove to detect the secrets of that
impenetrable face, which never changed from the vacant, torpid
expression in which a peasant when doing nothing wraps himself.

"From the country of the Gars," replied the man, without showing any
uneasiness.