The Chouans

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"Your name?"

"Marche-a-Terre."

"Why do you call yourself by your Chouan name in defiance of the law?"

Marche-a-Terre, to use the name he gave to himself, looked at the
commandant with so genuine an air of stupidity that the soldier
believed the man had not understood him.

"Do you belong to the recruits from Fougeres?"

To this inquiry Marche-a-Terre replied by the bucolic "I don't know,"
the hopeless imbecility of which puts an end to all inquiry. He seated
himself by the roadside, drew from his smock a few pieces of thin,
black buckwheat-bread,--a national delicacy, the dismal delights of
which none but a Breton can understand,--and began to eat with stolid
indifference. There seemed such a total absence of all human
intelligence about the man that the officers compared him in turn to
the cattle browsing in the valley pastures, to the savages of America,
or the aboriginal inhabitants of the Cape of Good Hope. Deceived by
his behavior, the commandant himself was about to turn a deaf ear to
his own misgivings, when, casting a last prudence glance on the man
whom he had taken for the herald of an approaching carnage, he
suddenly noticed that the hair, the smock, and the goatskin leggings
of the stranger were full of thorns, scraps of leaves, and bits of
trees and bushes, as though this Chouan had lately made his way for a
long distance through thickets and underbrush. Hulot looked
significantly at his adjutant Gerard who stood beside him, pressed his
hand firmly, and said in a low voice: "We came for wool, but we shall
go back sheared."

The officers looked at each other silently in astonishment.

It is necessary here to make a digression, or the fears of the
commandant will not be intelligible to those stay-at-home persons who
are in the habit of doubting everything because they have seen
nothing, and who might therefore deny the existence of Marche-a-Terre
and the peasantry of the West, whose conduct, in the times we are
speaking of, was often sublime.

The word "gars" pronounced "ga" is a relic of the Celtic language. It
has passed from low Breton into French, and the word in our present
speech has more ancient associations than any other. The "gais" was
the principal weapon of the Gauls; "gaisde" meant armed; "gais"
courage; "gas," force. The word has an analogy with the Latin word
"vir" man, the root of "virtus" strength, courage. The present
dissertation is excusable as of national interest; besides, it may
help to restore the use of such words as: "gars, garcon, garconette,
garce, garcette," now discarded from our speech as unseemly; whereas
their origin is so warlike that we shall use them from time to time in
the course of this history. "She is a famous 'garce'!" was a
compliment little understood by Madame de Stael when it was paid to
her in a little village of La Vendee, where she spent a few days of
her exile.

Brittany is the region in all France where the manners and customs of
the Gauls have left their strongest imprint. That portion of the
province where, even to our own times, the savage life and
superstitious ideas of our rude ancestors still continue--if we may
use the word--rampant, is called "the country of the Gars." When a
canton (or district) is inhabited by a number of half-savages like the
one who has just appeared upon the scene, the inhabitants call them
"the Gars of such or such a parish." This classic name is a reward for
the fidelity with which they struggle to preserve the traditions of
the language and manners of their Gaelic ancestors; their lives show
to this day many remarkable and deeply embedded vestiges of the
beliefs and superstitious practices of those ancient times. Feudal
customs are still maintained. Antiquaries find Druidic monuments still
standing. The genius of modern civilization shrinks from forcing its
way through those impenetrable primordial forests. An unheard-of
ferociousness, a brutal obstinacy, but also a regard for the sanctity
of an oath; a complete ignoring of our laws, our customs, our dress,
our modern coins, our language, but withal a patriarchal simplicity
and virtues that are heroic,--unite in keeping the inhabitants of this
region more impoverished as to all intellectual knowledge than the
Redskins, but also as proud, as crafty, and as enduring as they. The
position which Brittany occupies in the centre of Europe makes it more
interesting to observe than Canada. Surrounded by light whose
beneficent warmth never reaches it, this region is like a frozen coal
left black in the middle of a glowing fire. The efforts made by
several noble minds to win this glorious part of France, so rich in
neglected treasures, to social life and to prosperity have all, even
when sustained by government, come to nought against the inflexibility
of a population given over to the habits of immemorial routine. This
unfortunate condition is partly accounted for by the nature of the
land, broken by ravines, mountain torrents, lakes, and marshes, and
bristling with hedges or earth-works which make a sort of citadel of
every field; without roads, without canals, and at the mercy of
prejudices which scorn our modern agriculture. These will further be
shown with all their dangers in our present history.

The picturesque lay of the land and the superstitions of the
inhabitants prevent the formation of communities and the benefits
arising from the exchange and comparison of ideas. There are no
villages. The rickety buildings which the people call homes are
sparsely scattered through the wilderness. Each family lives as in a
desert. The only meetings among them are on Sundays and feast-days in
the parish church. These silent assemblies, under the eye of the
rector (the only ruler of these rough minds) last some hours. After
listening to the awful words of the priest they return to their
noisome hovels for another week; they leave them only to work, they
return to them only to sleep. No one ever visits them, unless it is
the rector. Consequently, it was the voice of the priesthood which
roused Brittany against the Republic, and sent thousands of men, five
years before this history begins, to the support of the first
Chouannerie. The brothers Cottereau, whose name was given to that
first uprising, were bold smugglers, plying their perilous trade
between Laval and Fougeres. The insurrections of Brittany had nothing
fine or noble about them; and it may be truly said that if La Vendee
turned its brigandage into a great war, Brittany turned war into a
brigandage. The proscription of princes, the destruction of religion,
far from inspiring great sacrifices, were to the Chouans pretexts for
mere pillage; and the events of this intestine warfare had all the
savage moroseness of their own natures. When the real defenders of the
monarchy came to recruit men among these ignorant and violent people
they vainly tried to give, for the honor of the white flag, some
grandeur to the enterprises which had hitherto rendered the brigands
odious; the Chouans remain in history as a memorable example of the
danger of uprousing the uncivilized masses of the nation.

The sketch here made of a Breton valley and of the Breton men in the
detachment of recruits, more especially that of the "gars" who so
suddenly appeared on the summit of Mont Pelerine, gives a brief but
faithful picture of the province and its inhabitants. A trained
imagination can by the help of these details obtain some idea of the
theatre of the war and of the men who were its instruments. The
flowering hedges of the beautiful valleys concealed the combatants.
Each field was a fortress, every tree an ambush; the hollow trunk of
each old willow hid a stratagem. The place for a fight was everywhere.
Sharpshooters were lurking at every turn for the Blues, whom laughing
young girls, unmindful of their perfidy, attracted within range,--for
had they not made pilgrimages with their fathers and their brothers,
imploring to be taught wiles, and receiving absolution from their
wayside Virgin of rotten wood? Religion, or rather the fetichism of
these ignorant creatures, absolved such murders of remorse.

Thus, when the struggle had once begun, every part of the country was
dangerous,--in fact, all things were full of peril, sound as well as
silence, attraction as well as fear, the family hearth or the open
country. Treachery was everywhere, but it was treachery from
conviction. The people were savages serving God and the King after the
fashion of Red Indians. To make this sketch of the struggle exact and
true at all points, the historian must add that the moment Hoche had
signed his peace the whole country subsided into smiles and
friendliness. Families who were rending each other to pieces over
night, were supping together without danger the next day.

The very moment that Commandant Hulot became aware of the secret
treachery betrayed by the hairy skins of Marche-a-Terre, he was
convinced that this peace, due to the genius of Hoche, the stability
of which he had always doubted, was at an end. The civil war, he felt,
was about to be renewed,--doubtless more terrible than ever after a
cessation of three years. The Revolution, mitigated by the events of
the 9th Thermidor, would doubtless return to the old terrors which had
made it odious to sound minds. English gold would, as formerly, assist
in the national discords. The Republic, abandoned by young Bonaparte
who had seemed to be its tutelary genius, was no longer in a condition
to resist its enemies from without and from within,--the worst and
most cruel of whom were the last to appear. The Civil War, already
threatened by various partial uprisings, would assume a new and far
more serious aspect if the Chouans were now to attack so strong an
escort. Such were the reflections that filled the mind of the
commander (though less succinctly formulated) as soon as he perceived,
in the condition of Marche-a-Terre's clothing, the signs of an ambush
carefully planned.

The silence which followed the prophetic remark of the commandant to
Gerard gave Hulot time to recover his self-possession. The old soldier
had been shaken. He could not hinder his brow from clouding as he felt
himself surrounded by the horrors of a warfare the atrocities of which
would have shamed even cannibals. Captain Merle and the adjutant
Gerard could not explain to themselves the evident dread on the face
of their leader as he looked at Marche-a-Terre eating his bread by the
side of the road. But Hulot's face soon cleared; he began to rejoice
in the opportunity to fight for the Republic, and he joyously vowed to
escape being the dupe of the Chouans, and to fathom the wily and
impenetrable being whom they had done him the honor to employ against
him.

Before taking any resolution he set himself to study the position in
which it was evident the enemy intended to surprise him. Observing
that the road where the column had halted was about to pass through a
sort of gorge, short to be sure, but flanked with woods from which
several paths appeared to issue, he frowned heavily, and said to his
two friends, in a low voice of some emotion:--

"We're in a devil of a wasp's-nest."

"What do you fear?" asked Gerard.

"Fear? Yes, that's it, /fear/," returned the commandant. "I have
always had a fear of being shot like a dog at the edge of a wood,
without a chance of crying out 'Who goes there?'"

"Pooh!" said Merle, laughing, "'Who goes there' is all humbug."

"Are we in any real danger?" asked Gerard, as much surprised by
Hulot's coolness as he was by his evident alarm.

"Hush!" said the commandant, in a low voice. "We are in the jaws of
the wolf; it is as dark as a pocket; and we must get some light.
Luckily, we've got the upper end of the slope!"

So saying, he moved, with his two officers, in a way to surround
Marche-a-Terre, who rose quickly, pretending to think himself in the
way.

"Stay where you are, vagabond!" said Hulot, keeping his eye on the
apparently indifferent face of the Breton, and giving him a push which
threw him back on the place where he had been sitting.

"Friends," continued Hulot, in a low voice, speaking to the two
officers. "It is time I should tell you that it is all up with the
army in Paris. The Directory, in consequence of a disturbance in the
Assembly, has made another clean sweep of our affairs. Those
pentarchs,--puppets, I call them,--those directors have just lost a
good blade; Bernadotte has abandoned them."

"Who will take his place?" asked Gerard, eagerly.

"Milet-Mureau, an old blockhead. A pretty time to choose to let fools
sail the ship! English rockets from all the headlands, and those
cursed Chouan cockchafers in the air! You may rely upon it that some
one behind those puppets pulled the wire when they saw we were getting
the worst of it."

"How getting the worst of it?"

"Our armies are beaten at all points," replied Hulot, sinking his
voice still lower. "The Chouans have intercepted two couriers; I only
received my despatches and last orders by a private messenger sent by
Bernadotte just as he was leaving the ministry. Luckily, friends have
written me confidentially about this crisis. Fouche has discovered
that the tyrant Louis XVIII. has been advised by traitors in Paris to
send a leader to his followers in La Vendee. It is thought that Barras
is betraying the Republic. At any rate, Pitt and the princes have sent
a man, a /ci-devant/, vigorous, daring, full of talent, who intends,
by uniting the Chouans with the Vendeans, to pluck the cap of liberty
from the head of the Republic. The fellow has lately landed in the
Morbihan; I was the first to hear of it, and I sent the news to those
knaves in Paris. 'The Gars' is the name he goes by. All those beasts,"
he added, pointing to Marche-a-Terre, "stick on names which would give
a stomach-ache to honest patriots if they bore them. The Gars is now
in this district. The presence of that fellow"--and again he signed to
Marche-a-Terre--"as good as tells me he is on our back. But they can't
teach an old monkey to make faces; and you've got to help me to get my
birds safe into their cage, and as quick as a flash too. A pretty fool
I should be if I allowed that /ci-devant/, who dares to come from
London with his British gold, to trap me like a crow!"

On learning these secret circumstances, and being well aware that
their leader was never unnecessarily alarmed, the two officers saw the
dangers of the position. Gerard was about to ask some questions on the
political state of Paris, some details of which Hulot had evidently
passed over in silence, but a sign from his commander stopped him, and
once more drew the eyes of all three to the Chouan. Marche-a-Terre
gave no sign of disturbance at being watched. The curiosity of the two
officers, who were new to this species of warfare, was greatly excited
by this beginning of an affair which seemed to have an almost romantic
interest, and they began to joke about it. But Hulot stopped them at
once.

"God's thunder!" he cried. "Don't smoke upon the powder-cask; wasting
courage for nothing is like carrying water in a basket. Gerard," he
added, in the ear of his adjutant, "get nearer, by degrees, to that
fellow, and watch him; at the first suspicious action put your sword
through him. As for me, I must take measures to carry on the ball if
our unseen adversaries choose to open it."

The Chouan paid no attention to the movements of the young officer,
and continued to play with his whip, and fling out the lash of it as
though he were fishing in the ditch.

Meantime the commandant was saying to Merle, in a low voice: "Give ten
picked men to a sergeant, and post them yourself above us on the
summit of this slope, just where the path widens to a ledge; there you
ought to see the whole length of the route to Ernee. Choose a position
where the road is not flanked by woods, and where the sergeant can
overlook the country. Take Clef-des-Coeurs; he is very intelligent.
This is no laughing matter; I wouldn't give a farthing for our skins
if we don't turn the odds in our favor at once."

While Merle was executing this order with a rapidity of which he fully
understood the importance, the commandant waved his right hand to
enforce silence on the soldiers, who were standing at ease, and
laughing and joking around him. With another gesture he ordered them
to take up arms. When quiet was restored he turned his eyes from one
end of the road to the other, listened with anxious attention as
though he hoped to detect some stifled sound, some echo of weapons, or
steps which might give warning of the expected attack. His black eye
seemed to pierce the woods to an extraordinary depth. Perceiving no
indications of danger, he next consulted, like a savage, the ground at
his feet, to discover, if possible, the trail of the invisible enemies
whose daring was well known to him. Desperate at seeing and hearing
nothing to justify his fears, he turned aside from the road and
ascended, not without difficulty, one or two hillocks. The other
officers and the soldiers, observing the anxiety of a leader in whom
they trusted and whose worth was known to them, knew that his extreme
watchfulness meant danger; but not suspecting its imminence, they
merely stood still and held their breaths by instinct. Like dogs
endeavoring to guess the intentions of a huntsman, whose orders are
incomprehensible to them though they faithfully obey him, the soldiers
gazed in turn at the valley, at the woods by the roadside, at the
stern face of their leader, endeavoring to read their fate. They
questioned each other with their eyes, and more than one smile ran
from lip to lip.

When Hulot returned to his men with an anxious look, Beau-Pied, a
young sergeant who passed for the wit of his company, remarked in a
low voice: "Where the deuce have we poked ourselves that an old
trooper like Hulot should pull such a gloomy face? He's as solemn as a
council of war."

Hulot gave the speaker a stern look, silence being ordered in the
ranks. In the hush that ensued, the lagging steps of the conscripts on
the creaking sand of the road produced a recurrent sound which added a
sort of vague emotion to the general excitement. This indefinable
feeling can be understood only by those who have felt their hearts
beat in the silence of the night from a painful expectation heightened
by some noise, the monotonous recurrence of which seems to distil
terror into their minds, drop by drop.

The thought of the commandant, as he returned to his men, was: "Can I
be mistaken?" He glanced, with a concentrated anger which flashed like
lightning from his eyes, at the stolid, immovable Chouan; a look of
savage irony which he fancied he detected in the man's eyes, warned
him not to relax in his precautions. Just then Captain Merle, having
obeyed Hulot's orders, returned to his side.

"We did well, captain," said the commandant, "to put the few men whose
patriotism we can count upon among those conscripts at the rear. Take
a dozen more of our own bravest fellows, with sub-lieutenant Lebrun at
their head, and make a rear-guard of them; they'll support the
patriots who are there already, and help to shove on that flock of
birds and close up the distance between us. I'll wait for you."

The captain disappeared. The commander's eye singled out four men on
whose intelligence and quickness he knew he might rely, and he
beckoned to them, silently, with the well-known friendly gesture of
moving the right forefinger rapidly and repeatedly toward the nose.
They came to him.

"You served with me under Hoche," he said, "when we brought to reason
those brigands who call themselves 'Chasseurs du Roi'; you know how
they hid themselves to swoop down on the Blues."

At this commendation of their intelligence the four soldiers nodded
with significant grins. Their heroically martial faces wore that look
of careless resignation to fate which evidenced the fact that since
the struggle had begun between France and Europe, the ideas of the
private soldiers had never passed beyond the cartridge-boxes on their
backs or the bayonets in front of them. With their lips drawn together
like a purse when the strings are tightened, they looked at their
commander attentively with inquiring eyes.

"You know," continued Hulot, who possessed the art of speaking
picturesquely as soldier to soldiers, "that it won't do for old hares
like us to be caught napping by the Chouans,--of whom there are plenty
all round us, or my name's not Hulot. You four are to march in advance
and beat up both sides of this road. The detachment will hang fire
here. Keep your eyes about you; don't get picked off; and bring me
news of what you find--quick!"

So saying he waved his hand towards the suspected heights along the
road. The four men, by way of thanks raised the backs of their hands
to their battered old three-cornered hats, discolored by rain and
ragged with age, and bent their bodies double. One of them, named
Larose, a corporal well-known to Hulot, remarked as he clicked his
musket: "We'll play 'em a tune on the clarinet, commander."

They started, two to right and two to left of the road; and it was not
without some excitement that their comrades watched them disappear.
The commandant himself feared that he had sent them to their deaths,
and an involuntary shudder seized him as he saw the last of them.
Officers and soldiers listened to the gradually lessening sound of
their footsteps, with feelings all the more acute because they were
carefully hidden. There are occasions when the risk of four lives
causes more excitement and alarm than all the slain at Jemmapes. The
faces of those trained to war have such various and fugitive
expressions that a painter who has to describe them is forced to
appeal to the recollections of soldiers and to leave civilians to
imagine these dramatic figures; for scenes so rich in detail cannot be
rendered in writing, except at interminable length.

Just as the bayonets of the four men were finally lost to sight,
Captain Merle returned, having executed the commandant's orders with
rapidity. Hulot, with two or three sharp commands, put his troop in
line of battle and ordered it to return to the summit of La Pelerine
where his little advanced-guard were stationed; walking last himself
and looking backward to note any changes that might occur in a scene
which Nature had made so lovely, and man so terrible. As he reached
the spot where he had left the Chouan, Marche-a-Terre, who had seen
with apparent indifference the various movements of the commander, but
who was now watching with extraordinary intelligence the two soldiers
in the woods to the right, suddenly gave the shrill and piercing cry
of the /chouette/, or screech-owl. The three famous smugglers already
mentioned were in the habit of using the various intonations of this
cry to warn each other of danger or of any event that might concern
them. From this came the nickname of "Chuin" which means /chouette/ or
owl in the dialect of that region. This corrupted word came finally to
mean the whole body of those who, in the first uprising, imitated the
tactics and the signals of the smugglers.

When Hulot heard that suspicious sound he stopped short and examined
the man intently; then he feigned to be taken in by his stupid air,
wishing to keep him by him as a barometer which might indicate the
movements of the enemy. He therefore checked Gerard, whose hand was on
his sword to despatch him; but he placed two soldiers beside the man
he now felt to be a spy, and ordered them in a loud, clear voice to
shoot him at the next sound he made. In spite of his imminent danger
Marche-a-Terre showed not the slightest emotion. The commandant, who
was studying him, took note of this apparent insensibility, and
remarked to Gerard: "That fool is not so clever as he means to be! It
is far from easy to read the face of a Chouan, but the fellow betrays
himself by his anxiety to show his nerve. Ha! ha! if he had only
pretended fear I should have taken him for a stupid brute. He and I
might have made a pair! I came very near falling into the trap. Yes,
we shall undoubtedly be attacked; but let 'em come; I'm all ready
now."

As he said these words in a low voice, rubbing his hands with an air
of satisfaction, he looked at the Chouan with a jeering eye. Then he
crossed his arms on his breast and stood in the road with his favorite
officers beside him awaiting the result of his arrangements. Certain
that a fight was at hand, he looked at his men composedly.

"There'll be a row," said Beau-Pied to his comrades in a low voice.
"See, the commandant is rubbing his hands."

In critical situations like that in which the detachment and its
commander were now placed, life is so clearly at stake that men of
nerve make it a point of honor to show coolness and self-possession.
These are the moments in which to judge men's souls. The commandant,
better informed of the danger than his two officers, took pride in
showing his tranquillity. With his eyes moving from Marche-a-Terre to
the road and thence to the woods he stood expecting, not without
dread, a general volley from the Chouans, whom he believed to be
hidden like brigands all around him; but his face remained impassible.
Knowing that the eyes of the soldiers were turned upon him, he
wrinkled his brown cheeks pitted with the small-pox, screwed his upper
lip, and winked his right eye, a grimace always taken for a smile by
his men; then he tapped Gerard on the shoulder and said: "Now that
things are quiet tell me what you wanted to say just now."