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01 
 
 Le 
 
LAZARE HOCHE 
 
 GENERAL IN COMMAND 
 
 I 
 
 OF THE ARMIES OF THE MOSELLE, OF ITALY ; 
 OF THE COASTS OF CHERBOURG, OF BREST AND OF 
 
 THE OCEAN ; 
 
 OF SAMBRE-ET-MEUSE AND OF THE RHINE ; 
 
 UNDER THE CONVENTION AND THE DIRECTORY, 
 
 1793—1797- 
 
 BY 
 
 EMILE DE BONNECHOSE 
 
 TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH, WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES ON THE GRAMMATICAL 
 
 CONSTRUCTION AND PECULIARITIES IN PRONUNCIATION 
 
 OF THE FRENCH TEXT, 
 
 BY EMILE FERNET, 
 
 Lecturer on the Ftench Language and Literature in University College, Toronto. 
 
 TORONTO : 
 WILLING & WILLIAMSON, 
 
 188L 
 
tl 
 
 Entered accordirif? to Act of FarliaiDerit, in the year 1881, in the office of 
 the Minister of Agriculture, at Ottawa, by 
 
 WILLING & WILLIAMSON, TORONTO. 
 
 
 pr 
 
 an| 
 
 bi] 
 
 thl 
 
 hi 
 
 hii 
 
biog-e.^a.:fh: 
 
 OF 
 
 ice of 
 
 LAZARE HOCHE. 
 
 FIRST PART 
 
 I. 
 
 EARLY DAYS. HOCIIE IN THE FREXCH GUARDS. 
 
 Lazare Hociie was borii^ at Versailles on the 24tli of 
 June, in the year 1768. "^ His father, an old soldier, filled 
 the humble position of kennel-keeper^ in the hunting depart- 
 ment of the King ; his mother died two years after his 
 birth. His aunt, a greengrocer at Versailles, suburb of 
 Montreuil, took'* a fancy to the child, and bestowed some 
 care on his primary education. Young Hoche soon became 
 prominent'' in the exercises and the sports of the school 
 among the children of his age, and he gained by his amia- 
 bility and his aptness the affections of his maternal uncle, 
 the Abbe Merliere, cure at St. Germain -en- Lay e. The 
 latter gave him''' a few lessons ; he added the rudiments of 
 Latin to the first instruction received at school, and made 
 him a choir boy in his church. 
 
 ^ Naquit, from nattre. 
 '^ Note the spelling of mil here. 
 ^ Qarcle-chenil, I silent. 
 '^ Prit, irom prendre, lit. took. 
 
 ^ Sefit remarquer. Fairehetore inf., meaning to cause. 
 ^ Remark the position of the pron. in this case. 
 1 
 
2 
 
 LAZARE IIOCHE. 
 
 l! 
 
 ,'J 
 
 Lazar63 Hoche was fifteen' when he obtained a super- 
 numerary position in the Royal stables ; l)ut a soldier ))y 
 instinct, he had an active and enterprising mind. A book 
 of travels awoke in him the taste for adventures and dis- 
 tant enterprises ; he wished to enlist at the age of sixteen 
 in the colonial troops, but he was deceived^ })y a recruiting 
 sergeant ; and wlien^ he wao under the impression he had 
 enlisted in a regiment bound for the East Indies, he found 
 himself,'* contrary to his will, incorporated in the French^ 
 Guards. 
 
 Intelligent and skilful, one month sufficed for young 
 Hoche to pass from the manual to the field exercises. He 
 made quite as rapid progress in the esteem of his chiefs and 
 of his comrades ; he already captivated all hearts by his 
 kind, upright and benevolent disposition, whilst he also 
 attracted all eyes by his lofty and conmianding figure, by 
 the regularity of his features, still further enhanced by a 
 noble and martial appearance; and he had scarcely been a 
 year in the service when the grenadiers of his regiment, 
 garrisoned in Paris, expressed a desire to have him as 
 their comrade. Their request was granted, and Hoche 
 took his position in their midst. ^ It was in the year 
 1785, and even then was''' felt on all sides the approach 
 of the great political and social movement which cul- 
 minated in the French Revolution, and of which the first, 
 the best, and the most lasting results, perhaps, were the 
 total destruction of privileges and the overthrowing of 
 
 7m 
 
 .•U 
 
 --'t 
 
 m 
 
 ^ Note well the difference of idiom ; to be instead of to have. 
 
 3 Tromper, to deceive, but sc tromptr, to be mistaken. 
 
 3 Lorsque and quand are synonymous, but never ask a question 
 with lorsque. 
 
 ^ Se trouver has sometimes the meaning of to happen, to be, ac- 
 cording to context. 
 
 ^ Note the position of adjectives of nation. 
 
 ® Observe the great difference between parmi and entre. Parmi 
 eux, but entre les bras. 
 
 "^ Von; I for the sake of euphony. The origin of this I, according 
 to Brachet, is that on formerly was parsed as a noun. The indefinite 
 active form must be used in French instead of the passive. 
 
EARLY DAYS. 
 
 super- 
 ier by 
 L l)ook 
 id dis- 
 ixteeu 
 ^uiting 
 he had 
 found 
 rench^ 
 
 young 
 ;. He 
 if s and 
 by his 
 le also 
 lire, by 
 )d by a 
 been a 
 jiment, 
 lim as 
 Hoche 
 e year 
 proach 
 ;h cul- 
 le first, 
 re the 
 dng of 
 
 e. 
 
 ][iie3tion 
 ) be, ac- 
 
 Parmi 
 
 icord ing 
 idefimto 
 
 ^- 
 
 I 
 
 n 
 
 J 
 
 % 
 
 the obstacles which obscurity of birth or want of fortune 
 opposed' to personal merit. Though of humble extrac- 
 tion, but worthy of rising to the highest ranks by his 
 int(illigence and his great heart, Hoche hailed with en- 
 thusiasm the approach of a revolution which promised to 
 give a free field for the production of talent and genius. 
 He deplored his want of education ; he knew the assistance 
 and the strength wliich it gives'^ to personal (jualities, and 
 he was in a position to understand how the culture of the 
 intellect facilitates the progress of man in the moral order, 
 and what charms it spreads over all his existence. He was 
 consequently^ eager for knowledge, but he needed books ; 
 his slender pay scarcely furnished what was strictly neces- 
 sary for his material requirements. The means which his 
 soldier's pittance^ did not furnish him he found in a custom 
 tolerated in the chosen corps to which he belonged. The 
 regiment of the French Guards, incorporated in 156.3, being 
 for two centuries the king's guard, was considered as the 
 crack regiment of France. It enjoyed several privileges, 
 only received Frenchmen in its ranks, and had its quarters 
 in Paris? The soldiers had the permission to increase their 
 pay by carrying on several trades in the city, and the 
 intimate and daily intercourse which they thus kept up 
 with the inhabitants^ contributed in a powerful manner to 
 bring them over at the outset of the Revolution to the 
 popular cause. Hoche, more than any other, showed him- 
 self ingenious in multiplying the means of employing his 
 leisure moments usefully ; in winter he embroidered forag- 
 
 ^ Remark that the nominative in a sentence often comes after the 
 verb. 
 
 ^ Note well the great diflference in meaning of the following : 
 porter, apiwrter, 7'emporter, rejjorter, rapporter and mener, amener, 
 ramener, remmener. 
 
 3 Done ; c silent here, but at the beginning or end of a sentence 
 the c is sounded as a k. The exact meaning of done in this sentence 
 •cannct be rendered in English. 
 
 4 Solde, regular pay ; picule, savings. 
 
 5 All names of cities require the preposition a. 
 
 ^ Habitants. Note well that the h is quite silent. 
 
LAZAHK norm:. 
 
 if 
 
 ing caps and vests ; in summer he went al)out in the out- 
 skirts ' of Paris, obtaiiiin*^ lunployment from the gardeners, 
 drawing water, watering and digging for them. With tlie 
 money thus obtained he purchased books ; but it was dith- 
 cult for him to introduce much variety in his acquisitions. 
 The histories of the republics of Greece and Rome ; the 
 words and the actions of their grc^at men, quoted- tlA(m at 
 every turn^ in the writings of the day, and many works 
 of current controv(}rsy, filled with excited expressions con- 
 sequent on the times, fell into iiis hands. They increased his 
 knowledge, but sometimes in a way more unwholesome than 
 profitable, and further increased his enthusiasm for all nev/ 
 theories and for the revolutionary cause. However, a laud- 
 able and)ition, seconded* by a firm will, by the spirit of 
 order and of work, and by a deep sense of duty, stimulated 
 his ardour ; but he had not yet acquired*"' a sufficient con- 
 trol over himself. Violent and irritable, his anger never- 
 theless often arose out of upright and generous feelings, 
 wiiich later^' having been better regulated, became virtues, 
 and it was especially when he thought he was defending 
 the interests of justice and humanity that he allowed him- 
 self to be drawn beyond all limits. Hoche hated delation 
 and perfidy. For these causes a coiporal of his regiment 
 had made himself hated by liis comrades, and he was at the 
 same time feared by alF on account of his great skill in 
 fencing. Hoche challenged him to fight ^ a duel, received a 
 sabre cut which split his forehead, and he in his turn thrust 
 liis sword to the hilt through his opponent's body. 
 
 ^ Note well the difference in meaning between the following : 
 P'lija, patrie, campagne. 
 
 '^ Cites : masculine plural, because preceded by nouns of different 
 genders. 
 
 ^ A propos corresponds to the Eng. expression, By the by. 
 
 ■* ISeconcUe ; the c as (j. 
 
 ^ Acquis from acquerir. 
 
 ^ Note well the difference between iard and en retard. It is late 
 U est tard (iini) ; you are late, vous etes en retard. 
 
 '' TouH ; sound the s slightly in this case. 
 
 ^ To convey the complete sense it is sometimes requisite to add or 
 leave out a word. 
 
 i 
 
 m 
 
 ■^ 
 
 •1 
 
 
IN TJIK OUARDS. 
 
 t Oil anotlicr occasion, oik^ of liis bravest comrades as well 
 
 l> as his friend having been killed in a popular bi-avvl, Hoche, 
 ^^ thirsting to avenge' him, ran to the house of thi^ murderer, 
 and not finding him, ransacked it. Th(^ affair grew to b(» a 
 serious one : Hoche, brought to trial and condemned to a 
 severe imprisonment, was ke})t in a cell for three months, 
 depi'ived of air and light, and fed on bread and water, 
 without change of clothes. He was set at lil)erty, his 
 cloth(;s in rags, infested with vermin, attenuated, half 
 deadr He, later, disdained to take an easy vengeance of 
 the one whose exaggerated report had ])rovoked so cruel a 
 cliastisement, and he showed himself as prompt in forget- 
 ting his own injuries as in avenging those of oth(?rs. ^ 
 
 These infractions on discipline contribut(^d without doubt, 
 as much as his extreme youth, in rendering his promotion 
 at first slow and difficult. He had already been five years 
 in the service when the eventful year of 1789 dawned, and 
 he was as yet but a simple grenadier in the French Guards. 
 Some months later he was made a corporal. Already he 
 was remarked on all hands by his military gait and martial 
 bearing, which the scar across his forehead still enhanced. 
 As he was marching past in a review at the head of his 
 squad, a woman of high rank, fixing her gaze on him, ex- 
 claimed : "What a handsome general that man would make !" 
 Events were destined to make a prophetic word of a thought- 
 less expression, and that which would have appeared quite 
 improbable and even impossible when uttered, soon became 
 a reality, which was a striking proof, among other extra- 
 ordinary signs, of a deep revolution in old established cus- 
 toms, and of a complete social renovation. 
 
 
 
 m 
 
 ate 
 
 ^ Vender : note well the preserving in verbs in ger of e before a or o. 
 
 ^ Demi-mort ; domi, invariable when preceding, and variable as to 
 gender when following, a noun. It takes the mark of the plural 
 when used as a substantive, le^ demies. 
 
 3 Adtrw, always preceded by a preposition, and can only be used 
 for others in a general sense. 
 
 1 or 
 
6 
 
 LAZARK nOClIE. 
 
 TI. 
 
 CAUSES AND PRELUDES OP THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. - 
 BASTILLE.' — MEMORABLE DAYS IN OCTOBER. 
 
 -THE 
 
 III ord(T to appreciate at this epoch, and in the sequel, 
 the character and conduct of Hoche at the beginning of the 
 Revolution, we must set forth briefly, but with precision, 
 the principal object of this great crisis which so entirely 
 transformed French society, and the results of which were 
 felt in the most remote countries in'-* Europe. Its pro- 
 moters wished to bring al)Out the reform of innumerable 
 abuses consequent^ on the feudal ngirne^ of the absolute 
 power of the Crown, and of the unequal distribution of 
 public oflices."* They demanded civil equality, and the par- 
 ticipation of all in the levying of taxes and in the compiling 
 of laws. These results were desired by the most enlightened 
 portion of the nobility, Vv the majority of the clergy, and 
 especially by the citizens'* and the working classes. These 
 things, however, could not be obtained without coming in 
 contact with numerous prejudices, without interfering with 
 a number of interests, nor without the violent uprooting of 
 inveterate habits and secular usages, which the King, his 
 family, his court, and a large number of privileged people,*^ 
 considered as vested rights, and as the only guarantee pos- 
 sible for the maintenance of a wise and settled government. 
 
 On the other hand, a number of celebrated writings, read 
 
 ■' The burdensome and vexatious imposts of the villain tax and 
 statute labour only oppressed the commoners and the plebeians. 
 
 ^ The Bastille; state prison founded in 1374, in the reign of 
 Charles V., and destroyed in 1789. 
 
 2 After a superlative trans, in by de. 
 
 ^ JVe'5, from nattrc, to be born. 
 
 "* Bourgeois — Bourgeoisie. These words have no exact equivalent in 
 English, and they are therefore frequently used in English. For- 
 eign words introduced in a language should, if possible, be pro- 
 nounced according to the rules of the language to which they 
 belong. 
 
 ^ Privileged people means here nobles, and all favored by the 
 King. 
 
 -I 
 
-THK 
 
 I 
 
 H 
 
 '% 
 
 THE FRENCH REVOH'TION. 7 
 
 with avidity, had caused thi^ new principles of political and 
 social regeneration to sink far into the hearts of th(i masses. 
 These publications, whilst addressing themselves to public 
 reason and generous sentiments, had also awakened danger- 
 ous instincts, blind and violent passions, still further excited 
 by the remembrance jf long sufFc^rings, and which the light 
 of experience could neither direct nor restrain. Hearing 
 i'very day these attacks against th(^ laws thtui in force, against 
 the established privileges and authorities, and liberty, rights 
 and powers being demanded for all, it was impossible that 
 the multitude should not soon be inclined to confound its 
 "'rights with its desires, liberty with license, horror of oppres- 
 sion with hatred ' for all disciplim;, and it was to be fore- 
 seen"^ that great perils and numberless difficulties would 
 arise from so complex a situation. Deeds by fr^r surpassed 
 all these forebodings. 
 
 Exaggerated pretensions, imprudent acts, and culpable 
 excesses, provoked a violent reaction on the part of the 
 Court. The National and Constituent^ Assembly, composed 
 of the deputies of all the different elements, and convened 
 in May, 1789, had been gradually led to seize upon almost 
 all powers ; after having done a great deal to meet the 
 wishes of the country, and to cope with* the requirements 
 of the situation, it adopted several rash and fatal resolu- 
 tions, and required all its acts to be accepted and sanctioned 
 by the Crown. The King, Louis XVI., was the first to give 
 the example of wise reforms ; his aspirations were pure, his 
 heart upright and kind ; but he was wanting in knowledge ; 
 he was weak, irresolute, and easily gave way to contrary 
 impulse. After having made many concessious which he 
 
 ^ fiaine ; h fully sounded. 
 
 '^ Privoir ; note well the fut. and cond. of this verb. 
 
 3 UAssemhUe NaHonalc et Constituante ; the assembly to carry 
 out a political constitution. Constituante is sometimes used subs. : 
 La (Jonstituaute de 1789, de 1S48. Macaulay calls it the Co istituent 
 Assembly. 
 
 ^ Sometimes the difference in construction between English and 
 French requires the insertion of a word not in the text. 
 
 i 
 

 8 
 
 LAZARE HOCHE. 
 
 I 
 
 judged opportune and compatible with his dignity, he grew 
 frightened at new exigencies which appeared to him opposed 
 to his duty as king and he tried to struggle against the 
 violence of the revolutionary torrent. He listened to the 
 resentments and complaints of the members of his family, ' 
 of the courtiers and of the privileged ones unceremoniously 
 deprived of their rights ; and belie\ing he saw France as 
 well as his throne in peril, he had recourse to military force 
 to defend the remnants of a power undermined beyond its 
 foundation. Regiments were summoned to Paris and Ver- 
 sailles. The bourgeoisie and the ringleaders of the National 
 Assembly appealed to popular passions, and to the threat of ^ 
 bayonets they opposed the insurrection of the multitude. 
 The great questions which agitated all minds departed then 
 from all peaceful debates, to be given up to tyranny, to 
 blind and brutal force. From this arose great excesses, 
 odious crimes, civil war and all its horrors. 
 
 The lirst trial which the multitude made of its strength 
 was the attack on the Bastille, a redoubtable fortress, situ- 
 ated at the extremity of the Faubourg- St. Antoine. There 
 were confined, on a simple royal order or arbitrary warrant, 
 most of those whom the King or his ministers judged fit to 
 arrest and keep as captives, thus depriving them of the 
 justice of the common tribunals legally instituted. The 
 Bastille for this cause was regarded, and justly so, as the 
 monument of a barbarous age, as the citadel of despotism. 
 Paris, in the first days of July, 1789, had been the scene of 
 bloody strifes between the people and the soldiery ; the 
 people demanded arms, pillaged the arsenal of the Invalides,^ 
 forged pikes", and on the morning'' of the 14th an immense, 
 popular colum.n ran — urged on by the cry of : " To the Bas- 
 tille !" '' To the Bastille !" — to attack that fortress, occupied 
 by a feeble garrison of Swiss soldiers and pensioners. 
 
 ^ Famillfi, two U liquid. 
 2 Note that the g is silent. 
 
 ^ Iitvalidcs. A building constructed by Louis XIV. for old soldiers. 
 '* Note well the difference between matin.' ^ and matin; matin, 
 the first hours of the day ; matinee, the whole morning. 
 
 i 
 
THE BASTILLE. 
 
 9 
 
 grew 
 )posed 
 st tlie 
 to the 
 iiily, ^ 
 iously 
 jice as 
 
 force 
 nd its 
 I Yer- 
 tional 
 eat of ^ 
 itude. 
 I then 
 ly, to 
 esses, 
 
 ength 
 , situ- 
 There 
 rrant, 
 fit to 
 f the 
 The 
 s the 
 ►tism. 
 ne of 
 ; the 
 des,^ 
 :ense, 
 ! Bas- 
 ipied 
 
 ■m 
 
 fliers. 
 lafin. 
 
 The attack would have failed if three hundred ' French 
 Guards had not seconded'^ it. They rushed forward with 
 cannons, and marched at the head of the columns. The 
 Bastille was taken, and bloodshed disgraced the popular 
 victory. Only a part of the French Guards had been in- 
 duced to join the insurrection of the multitude. Hoche 
 was among those who remained faithful co their colours. 
 Stationed in the Rue Verte with a few recruits, constituting 
 the depob of his battalion, he closed the iron gate of his 
 quarters, did his utmost to prevent its being forced, and 
 <lefended the cannons entrusted to liis care against the as- 
 saults of the frenzied populace. 
 
 The French Guards were disbanded after the fall of the 
 Bastille, and divided amongst the paid companies of the 
 National Guard to serve under General La Fayette. Hoche 
 entered into that service, and he was sergeant-major of one 
 of these companies at the time of the sinister events, pro- 
 voked by the arrival of new regiments summoned to Ver- 
 sailles at the beginning of October, 1789. A fete had been 
 given to the officers of these troops by their comrades in 
 the large theatre of the chateau. The King and the Queen, 
 with the young Dauphin in her arms, appeared in the 
 midst of this noisy gathering ; the sight of thorn excited 
 great enthusiasm. White cockades were distributed, and 
 it was asserted that the tri-color and popular emblems had 
 been trampled under foot. The report of this banquet 
 spread all over Paris, and produced the greatest excitement ; 
 the arrival of the regiments, their hostile attitude, the fear 
 of the intrigues of the Court, and above all, scarcity of 
 provisions, cavsed a dangerous uprising. An abandoned 
 woman, Theroigne de Mericourt, gave the signal on the 
 5th of October, in going through the streets beating a 
 drum. A number of women followed her, asking for bread, 
 and yelling at the top of their voices. Around these soon 
 
 '' '^ T ro in cents ; cent, multiplied by a niiinber, take? the maik of 
 the plural, though it does not when multiplied })y one number and 
 followed by another. 
 
 '^ Sc'condee; note agreement after V. 
 
10 
 
 LAZARE HOCHE. 
 
 I! 
 
 gathered a furious multitude. It was towards Versailles 
 that this disorderly crowd directed its march, and a maa 
 named Maillard, an old pettifogging attorney, offered to be 
 their leader. Kept at bay by La Fayette for several hours, 
 they started at last, and spread terror in Versailles. 
 
 A first engagement had taken place between the body 
 guards and this lawless crowd, when La Fayette appeared 
 at the head of the National Parisian Guard to oppose 
 them ; his presence re-established order, and on the ap- 
 proach of night calm was secured. Whilst all were plunged 
 in sleep a few of the rabble found one of the gates of the 
 chateau opened ; they entered, calling their comrades ; the 
 alarm was given, and an encounter took place between 
 them and the body guards^ on duty, several of whom were 
 killed whilst they heroically defended their position, shout- 
 ing, " Save the Queen !" Marie Antoinette, warned of the 
 danger, rushed from her bed and took refuge near the 
 King. La Fayette flew to their assistance ; he, together 
 with his officers and a few of the grenadiers of the paid 
 National Guard, made their way in the invaded royal resi- 
 dence. Sergeant-Major Hoche was among them ; he assisted 
 in repelling the invaders ; his conduct was commented on 
 and praised by the general. Hoche had nevertheless, as 
 we have noticed, warmly embraced the principles of a revo- 
 lution which suppressed privileges and removed the obstacles 
 which interfered with merit ; but his common sense, which 
 favoured order and discipline, was opposed to anarchy and 
 popular fury ; his great sympathy for the cause of civil 
 equality and liberty had neither deprived him of his up- 
 rightness, respect, nor pity, anr^ he considered the violation 
 of the royal abode by the populace, as a dastardly act. 
 Hoche, besides, had a deeply rooted sentimer t of honour 
 and duty. He bore in mind on the Gth of October, as on 
 the 14th of July, that the true duty of the soldier was to 
 oppose an insurrection and not to be in its midst, and that 
 
 ■I 
 
 ^ Garde du corps, a meml jf of the royal body guard ; corps de 
 tjarde, guard-house. 
 
PROGRESS OF THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 11 
 
 I 
 
 if, in extreme cases, he can break his sword in twain, he is 
 always forbidden to turn it against those who have in- 
 trusted him with it for their protection. 
 
 III. 
 
 PROGRESS OF THE REVOLUTION. — FIRST DEFEATS AND VIC- 
 TORIES. HOCHE IN THE ARMY OF THE ARDENNES. 
 
 Louis XVI. and his family had been conducted to Paris 
 between the pikes of the multitude who had invaded their 
 palace at Versailles on the 5th and 6th ^ of October ; he 
 lived ^ in the palace of the Tuileries, more a prisoner than a 
 king, under the strict surveillayice of the Parisian National 
 Guard, forced to sanction a series of measures in opposition 
 to his conscience, and the Revolution followed its course. 
 A social as well as a political revolution, it threatened,^ in 
 Europe as well as in France, all interests connected with 
 the old feudal constitution of society. The French princes 
 and the refugees scattered in foreign courts filled them with 
 their complaints, as well as with their fears and their hopes. 
 They declared that all crowns were aimed ui or threatened 
 in the person of Louis XVI., and that France was groaning 
 under the tyranny of a few demagogues, and they rashly 
 prophesied a general uprising of the nation in favour of the 
 King if foreign armies crossed the frontiers of the kingdom. 
 
 Thus was prepared, in 1791, the first coalition between the 
 German sovereigns, who compromised louis XVI. by pro- 
 claiming their own cause on^ with his, and thus rendered 
 his situation more perilous and more cruel. 
 
 After an aborti\'e attempt on the part of the Royal 
 family to gain the frontier, followed by its arrest at Varen- 
 nes, the deposing of the King was proposed ; but the Con- 
 stituent Assembly annulled the motion as unconstitutional ; 
 it forced the King to keep'* his crowni and throne, and at 
 
 ^ Cardinals instead of ordinals. 
 
 * Vivaitj from vivre. 
 
 ^ Observe well the use of cedilla before a, o. ?.' 
 
 ■* Oarder, to keep ; se garder de, to beware of. 
 
-— *i^iifjttt- 
 
 : ■a^at-J'tei- ■J:'?.-*i.»i*^-' 
 
 12 
 
 LAZARE HOCHE. 
 
 I !' 
 
 the same time it deprived him of all power, of all the adjuncts 
 of royalty. 
 
 Already the Prussians were ad\ancing ; our armies gave 
 way before them ; and France was invaded. To each suc- 
 cessful attempt of the enemy there answered, in the midst 
 of the multitude in Paris, greater rage against the King 
 and the Queen, too unfortunate and too much threatened 
 not to be suspected' of secret complicity with those who 
 announced that they were marcliing to accomplish their 
 deliverance, and accused, not without foundation, of having 
 certain intelligence with the princes of their dynasty armed 
 in their favour. Already the populace, whose fury was 
 excited by ardent demagogues, dictated to the Commune or 
 Municipality of Paris and ruled the Assembly. On the 
 20th "uie, 1792, it rushed into the Tuileries and heaped 
 outrages on the King; on the 10th of August"^ it over- 
 threw the throne, slaughtering its defenders. Louis XYI. 
 and his family >vere incarcerated in the Temple.^ Never- 
 theless the enemies advanced ; Longwy was taken and 
 Verdun invested. Popular rage now knew no bounds ; it 
 became exasperated against the nobles and the priests, sus- 
 pected^ of favouring the success of the foreign armies. 
 Tliousands of unfortunates^ belonging to the old privileged 
 ranks were snatched from their homes and huddled together 
 in the prisons of Paris. On the 2nd of September — day of 
 execrable memory — the vilest populace, encouraged by the 
 concourse of the municipal authorities and by the tacit com- 
 plicity of the Minister of Justice, Danton, invaded the prisons 
 and massacred all the prisoners with frightful barbarity. 
 
 1 ScnqjconrUs : c soft, so7ipgon, used in English, meaning a small 
 quantity. 
 
 '^ Xote well the pronunciation of this word aotlt; it is simply on. 
 The prep, de sometimes precedes the name of the month, but it is 
 better to omit it. 
 
 2 Temple, or rather Tour du Temple, the ruins of a monastery. 
 Tliis was the prison of Louis XVI. He entered it on the 14th Aug., 
 1792, and left it on the 21st of January, 1793, to ascend the scaffold. 
 
 '^ Suspects ; pronounce last part like paU. 
 
 ^ Many adjectives are used substantively in French. 
 
 cr 
 sti 
 th^ 
 gei 
 
 fig] 
 EiJ 
 
PROGRESS OF THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 13 
 
 com- 
 
 small 
 
 1 My object' is not to relate here the bloody scenes of our 
 civil troubles, to which Hoche at this epoch was a complete 
 stranger. I have been obliged, however, to recall briefly 
 that which was indispensable, to give a correct idea of the 
 general situation of the country at the time when his heroic 
 figure appeared on the scene of the great struggle between 
 Europe and invaded France. 
 
 The armies were then the focus of all the glories of tlie 
 fatherland. In no other class of the nation was the senti- 
 ment of ecjuality purer, because there was none other where 
 it could be better blended with the strictest etjuity, and 
 because it was natural and just that the country should 
 show itself grateful and generous towards those who shed 
 their blood for her."^ There, the pure enthusiasm of liberty 
 was fostered in all hearts \s in days of yore, because iu 
 the army the idea of liberty was closely allied to the free- 
 dom of the national soil; that idea, awakening the most 
 I generous sentiments, had as jct lost nothing of its prestige, 
 and it accomplished on our frontiers what it has done 
 everywhere — it brought fc»rth prodigies of heroism and of 
 devotion. The love of liberty, thus confounded with patriot- 
 ism, produced yet greater enthusiasm in the minds of the 
 soldiery, on account of the abolition of feudal servitude, 
 which had been so oppressive to their families, and when, to 
 the sound of the dread Marseillaise Hymn, they rushed on 
 the armies of Europe, the hirelings of kings, they believed 
 indeed that they were pressing forward, not only to the aid 
 of the fatherland in danger, but also to the deliverance of 
 the nations yet groaning under the feudal yoke, and whom 
 they named their brethren. That is why the Revolution, in 
 spite of so much violence and so many crimes, remained 
 always popular in our newly organized armies, composed of 
 volunteers ; and it is thus, that after a few early reverses. 
 
 * Before the Revolution the brevet of officer was only granted, 
 with very few exceptions, to privileged people. 
 1 But ; t fully sounded. 
 
i 
 
 14 
 
 LAZARi: HOCIIE. 
 
 ^>Si 
 
 they became invincible.^ These reverses were inevitable 
 at the beginning of the Revolution. The officers, belonging 
 at that time for the most part to the old nobility, formed 
 a distinct class from that of the soldiers, and there were in 
 the army two parties, divided in interests and opinions : the 
 chief mistrusted the soldiers, the soldier had no confidence 
 in his chief ; from this arose complete disorder before the 
 enemy, and numerous reverses Many officers had already 
 left their regiments to follow the princes into exile; a num- 
 ber of others followed their example in the end, or were 
 driven away by their soldiers. They were replaced in 
 all grades, from the sub-lieutenant to the general , by men 
 who had risen from the ranks, and those of the old general 
 officers, nobles for the greater part, who preserved their 
 command. La Fayette, Beurnonville, Custine, Biron, Du- 
 mouriez, ' Kellermann, had all adopted the principles of 1789, 
 and continued to serve the revolutionary cause with ardour 
 and devotion. Harmony then began to reappear between 
 the chiefs and the soldiers, and from that d&,te oui' armies 
 won their first victories. They had conquered under Kel- 
 lermann at Valmy, under Custine on the frontier of the 
 Rhine, under Dumouriez at Jemmapes. Belgium was con- 
 quered and the enemy repulsed on all points, when the 
 execution of Louis XVI., one of the most virtuous princes 
 who had ever honoured the throne, and whom the Constitu- 
 tion declared unimpeachable, excited public horror to the 
 highest pitch, deprived the Revolution of a number of hearts 
 which until then had remained devoted to it, and increased 
 tenfold the number of its enemies in Europe and in*France. 
 This fatal result of the bloody deed enacted on the 21st of 
 January^ is, in my opinion, the most unexceptionable argu- 
 ment against a perverse doctrine, which lays dov/n as a prin- 
 
 * The Revolution said to them : ' ' Volunteers ! die for the salva- 
 tion of all nations, your brethren." Satisfied, they replied, '* Yes." 
 Go, my old soldiers, my beardless generals ; and these haughty but 
 poor men were seen advancing before an admiring world. 
 
 1 Dumouriez belonged to an old parliamentary family. 
 
 2 January 21st ; day of the execution of Louis XVI. 
 
 
 ''t^. 
 
 m 
 
 "?! 
 
 ■ a. 
 
PROGRESS OF THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 15 
 
 levitable 
 elonging 
 , formed 
 ) were in 
 ons : the 
 )nfidence 
 efore the 
 [ already 
 3; anum- 
 , or were 
 placed in 
 1, by men 
 d general 
 sred their 
 iron, Du- 
 s of 1789, 
 th ardour 
 ' between 
 ix' armies 
 [ider Kel- 
 er of the 
 
 was con- 
 when the 
 
 s princes 
 
 Constitu- 
 
 lor to the 
 
 of hearts 
 
 increased 
 n*France. 
 te 21st of 
 ible argu- 
 
 as a prin- 
 
 the salva- 
 3d, "Yes." 
 aughty but 
 
 
 ciple that the violent and criminal acts of the terrorists 
 were indispensable to insure the triumph of the French 
 Revolution. A greater wrong, a more cruel insult, has never 
 been offered to the latter than in supposing that the grand 
 ideas and noble sentiments with which the Constituent 
 Assembly was imbued at its beginning were, four years 
 later, without any serious reason, completely obliterated in 
 all minds, and so far forgotten that it was necessary to 
 replace the rash though generous enthusiasm of 1789 by the 
 Reign of Terror of 1793. If it be true, however, if it be 
 impossible to deny, that by this reign resources which devo- 
 tion would no longer have given ' were obtained, it is not 
 less true, and it is important to say, that the Revolution- 
 ary cause had already been compromised and lost in the 
 minds of honest men through excesses and crimes per- 
 petrated in its name, and among which the execution 
 of Louis XVI. was the most horrible. The indignation 
 
 };^ which it inspired encompassed the National^ Convention 
 with new dangers, and it was thus drawn along in a new 
 path of violence and atrocities, in which it became each 
 
 i^^ day more difficult to stop."^ The preceding alliance had 
 
 * The Revolution assumed a new character after the massacres of 
 September and the execution of the King ; and when one reflects 
 that the Committee of Public Safety, inaugurated in 1793, was led 
 from violence to violence and froni crime to crime, so far as to 
 threaten indiscriminately with the revolutionary axe every one, 
 without distinction of class, of sex, or of age, so far as to behead the 
 most illustrious and the most venerable, so far as to sacrifice old men, 
 women, young girls, the poorest as well as the richest, the friends 
 of the revolution as well as its enemies conveyed in numbers to 
 the scaffold, — the following beautiful lines of Racine, addressed by 
 Burrhus to Nero, are recalled to one s memory : *' You will be com- 
 pelled to pass from crime to crime, to sustain your severity by 
 cruelties as rigorous, and wash your blood-stained arms in blood. 
 Y^'ou kindle a fire which cannot be extinguished. Feared by all the 
 universe, you will have to fear all; ever punish; ever tremble in your 
 projects, and reckon all your subjects as your enemies." — Britan- 
 nicus, Act IV., Scene iii. 
 
 ^ Observe the agreement of the participle preceded by its direct 
 object. 
 
16 
 
 LAZARE IIOCIIE. 
 
 t M 
 
 only rallied against us two or three powers ; but after the 
 crinui of the 21st of January, Europe, horrified, took up 
 arms with unanimity. The Revolution could count as its 
 avowed enemies, England, Holland, Spain, all the Germanic 
 Confederation, Naples, the Holy See, then Russia, and 
 almost at the same time the Vendee rose, threatening and 
 tf^Tible. It was necessary, ' besides the enemy at home, to 
 contend against three hundred and fifty thousand men of 
 th(5 best troops of Europe, who were advancing on all tlie 
 frontiers of France. The first effort of this formidable 
 coalition fell on the Army of the Ardennes, the general of 
 which, Dumouriez, was then in Holland ; it was, in his ab- 
 sence, commanded, as well as the Army of the North, by 
 ( leneral Miranda, and its winter- quarters were on the right 
 l>an]cs of the Meuse, above Li^ge. The Austrians had re- 
 sunuid tlu! ofi'ensive ; they surprised and attacked at Alten- 
 howcn, in March, ^ 1793, the French brigades, which, under 
 th(^ orders of Gen. Le Veneur, surrounded Maestrecht, put 
 theiii* to rofit, and forced them to raise the siege of that 
 town. It is at this epoch that Hoche first'"' appears in history. 
 A})})ointed lieutenant, then soon after captain in the 58th 
 Il(>giment of infantry, \n) had already been remarked by 
 General Le Veneur, who had not been slow in appreciating 
 his activity, his intelligence, and his couriige ; and he was 
 ordered to protect on that disastrous day the evacuation of 
 the commissariat waggons, and of the artillery, under the 
 fire of the enemy. Hoche carried out this operation with 
 boldness and success. Thanks to him, all the material of 
 war was saved, and the Austrians could not take possession 
 v>f a single^ cannon. General Le Veneur praised most highly 
 
 ^ FalliU, from fallolr ; falloir demands subjunctive in a restricted 
 sense ; infinitive when speaking in general terms. 
 
 '^ iliver ; sound the r. 
 
 •^ Mars; ^4* sounded. 
 
 * Mettre, to put ; se mettrc d, to commence. 
 
 •'"' Fois; remark the difference between fois and temps: une fois^ 
 d''ux/ois, troi^fois; but beau temps, dans les premiers temps. 
 
 ^ Seul differs in meaning according to position ; iin sen/ homme, 
 a sinc'le man ; un homme yeic^, a man alone. 
 
 '-f 
 
 ■Si* 
 
THE ARMY OF THE ARDENNES. 
 
 17 
 
 ,er the 
 »ok up 
 
 as its 
 rnianic 
 a, and 
 Lig and 
 3nie, to 
 men of 
 all the 
 nidable 
 leral of 
 his ab- 
 >rth, i)y 
 lie right 
 had re- 
 ; Alten- 
 1, under 
 cht, put 
 of that 
 history, 
 he 58th 
 rked by 
 •eciating 
 
 he was 
 ation of 
 ider the 
 on with 
 ,terial of 
 )ssessioii 
 
 it highly 
 
 restricted 
 
 W>s. 
 d hortimc, 
 
 i the young captain who had so valiantly and so successfully 
 executed his orders ; he; named him his aide-de-camp, and 
 attach(^d him to his service for life. Dumouriez, however, 
 had hastened from Holland, and had stopped the retreat of 
 his army. Taking the offensive in his turn, he marched 
 against the Austrians, gave battle, and was defeated on the 
 IHtli March, at Nerwinde. Hoche distinguished himself 
 above all in that battle, and in those which followed at 
 Vertrich and Blangen. Covering the retreat at the passage 
 of the Dyle, in front of Louvain, he struggled incessantly 
 and with indomitable obstinacy. He had two horses killed 
 under i im, and continued to fight on foot, rallying the 
 troops and leading them with vigour against the enemy. 
 He afterwards joined his general, who took up his quarters 
 on the frontier in the camp of Maulde. As a reward for 
 his glorious conduct, Hoche was named adjutant-general, 
 chief of battalion, a well merited promotion, but one which 
 his modesty refused, preferring to remain as aide-de-camp 
 to General Le Veneur, who showed him as much esteem as 
 friendship. General Count Le Veneur was among the 
 number of those picked men who, belonging to the French 
 aristocracy,* had adopted through conscientious conviction 
 the fundamental principles of the Revolution. The poli- 
 tical aspect of France at the dawn of 1789 had not appeared 
 to him to be in keeping either with its civilization or its 
 progress. The royal authority, during several ages, had 
 overthrown or considerably weakened all the barriers which 
 the general and provincial states, the parliaments and 
 the communal liberties, opposed to it. The power of the 
 monarch, limited in principle, had in fact become absolute, 
 and the Government of France, restrained only by estab- 
 lished customs,-^ had become almost similar to that of the 
 Sultans. 
 
 After the deplorable reign of Louis XV., during which 
 the country was humiliated before Europe, and ruined in 
 
 ^ A ristocratie ; pron. the termination as if it were cie. 
 ® Moeurs ; s fully sounded. 
 
18 
 
 LAZAKE HOC HE. 
 
 Ill 
 
 If 
 
 
 the interior, Count Le Veiieur believed, in common with 
 the most enlightened men of his times, that the liour 
 had come for the nation to take part in the conduct of its 
 affairs. He recognized, on the other hand, that great aliuses 
 needed reform ; he found little justice in the obstacles op- 
 posed by the traditional institutions and by privileges to 
 free rivalry, to the aspirations of individual strength, and 
 his heart was in unison with his intellect to adhere to the 
 great principle of equality of all' in the eyes of the law. 
 Tiie privileges of birth and the voice of personal interest 
 did not stifle in his soul the appeal for natural equity and 
 patriotism. He applauded the generous movement which 
 induced the deputies of a part of the nobility and of the 
 clergy to make, on the 4th of August, 1789, in the Consti- 
 tuent Assembly, the sacrifices of their privileges and of their 
 feudal rights; and the crimes committed later in the name 
 of liberty, the deeds which dishonoured the cause of the 
 Revolution, whilst filling his soul with the deepest grief, 
 did not shake his firm conviction in the justice of the great 
 principles proclaimed at the commencement of this re- 
 doubtable crisis. After the downfall of the King on the 
 10th of August, even after his execution in January, 
 1793, Count Le Veneur did not desert his post, in face of 
 the Austrians, on the frontier ; and he believed it his duty, 
 as long as the sword was not snatched from his hands, to 
 preserve it, to turn it against the invaders of his country. 
 Such were also the sentiments of his young aide-de-camp ; 
 but, in the fiery and quite '^ republican soul of Hoche, they 
 existed with the effervescence of youth, with the exaltation 
 and with the rashness of passion. Hoche loved with trans- 
 port a cause with the triumph of which all his future seemed 
 connected, and a social transformation which permitted him 
 to soar to the height to which he felt his talents would lead 
 him. Count Le Veneur had nobly and courageously anado 
 the sacrifice of his privileges on the altar of patriotism and 
 
 ^ Tons ; sound the s here. 
 
 2 Toute ; variable here on account of the following consonant. 
 
 m<l 
 
 L^ 4 Mi 
 
1 
 
 THE ARMY OF THE ARDENNES. 
 
 n witli 
 le hour 
 t of its 
 . abuses 
 cles op- 
 leges to 
 th, and 
 B to the 
 bhe law. 
 interest 
 lity and 
 Lt which 
 d of the 
 e Consti- 
 1 of their 
 ihe name 
 ie of the 
 est grief, 
 the great 
 this re- 
 ig on the 
 January, 
 in face of 
 his duty, 
 lands, to 
 country. 
 de-can\p ; 
 oche, they 
 exaltation 
 trith trans- 
 ire seemed 
 nitted him 
 would lead 
 usly aifiadr 
 Lotism and 
 
 (iisonant. 
 
 19 
 
 of liberty, and the sanie^ fire which had consumed all his 
 titles had kindled all the hopes of Hoche and given wings^ 
 of flame to his genius. From that arose in his manners as 
 in his language an impetuosity, a republican warmth, at 
 which a chiefs belonging to the old nobility might have 
 been offended, if he had been less kind and less wise ; but 
 Count Le Veneur, through all this effervescence of youth, 
 had recognized the hero ; the loyalty of Hoche, his probity, 
 his disinterestedness, and his great patriotism, had captivat- 
 ed his general, and touched his heart. He was seized with 
 the ambition of assisting nature in forming a great man * 
 for the country, to complete the education of this young 
 aide-de-camp, to give him all he needed in experience, in 
 the usages of the world, and in the difficult art of govern- 
 ing men whilst having perfect control over himself. It was 
 thus that he initiated^ him in the refined pleasures of a 
 select society which Hoche had never known ; he polished 
 his manners, purified his language, directed his reading, and 
 implanted in the heart of the young man a grateful and 
 filial affection towards himself which only died^' out with life. 
 Two years later, in the middle of his first successes, and when 
 the aide-de-camp had been promoted above his oldj^eneral 
 and commanded our armies, the same intercourse existed be- 
 tween them. Hoche continued to lend a willing ear to him, 
 whom he called his second''' father, who blamed the soldier- 
 like tone of his corresoondence, of his nroclamations, and 
 of his reports, and entreated him to give to his language 
 that character of simple and natural dignity which was im- 
 printed in his attitude and in his whole person. Thus was 
 established between these two men a touching intercourse. 
 
 i M&me ; note difference when used before and after the iioiin : 
 mvmefeUy the same fire ; lefeu mime, the fire itself. 
 '^ Aile, pronounce ell (long). 
 3 C%<3/;/ sounded. 
 
 ^ Un (jrand homme, a great man ; lui hommc <jrand, a tall man. 
 - Uinitia; tia as if cia. 
 6 S'Ueignit, from eteindre, to extinguish. 
 '' Second ; c as ^. 
 
 le 
 
• 
 
 20 
 
 LAZARK HOCIIK. 
 
 
 if • ■' 
 
 which does no less honour to the pupil than to the mastor. 
 Th(; latter liad too exalted a mind to ^'ive way to jealousy ; 
 an affectionate and respectful deference was no effort to the 
 former, and gratitude was no burden for his magnanimous 
 heart. They were together at the camp of Maulde when 
 the treachery of Dumouriez was heard of (March, 1793). 
 The latter imputed his last reverses' to the Jacobites ;^ he 
 felt a perfect horror for the violent measures of the Con- 
 vention and the tyranny of the commune of Paris, and 
 spok(3 openly of repairing to the capital and re-establishing 
 the monarchical government. The Convention summoned 
 Dumouriez to its bar, and sent into his camp four deputies 
 to order him to obey and to repair to Paris. Dumouriez 
 refused ; he delivered all four of them into the hands of the 
 Austrians, and prepared to march on Paris at the head of 
 his army, with the Imperialists as auxiliary troops. But 
 the soldiers perceived treason in the conduct of their gene- 
 ral ; they abandoned him, and Dumouriez passed into the 
 camp of the Austrians. The example of his perfidy brought 
 disorder into his army and disorganized it before the enemy. 
 Hoche was then selected by his general to give an account^ 
 at Park, to the Executive Government, of the true state of 
 affaii'S, and to point out the proper remedies to adopt, to 
 assuage the dangers of the situation. The frightful state 
 in which he found the capital tilled him with sadness. The 
 Committee of Public Safety was inaugurating its reign; all 
 heads were threatened ; all suspected persons filled the pri- 
 sons ; judgments of the revolutionary tribunal, composed of 
 execrable elements, were without appeal. The struggle at 
 st, a mortal struggle, was going on between the Montag- 
 iiards, all powerful'* in the commune, and with the Jacob- 
 
 * Revers ; s silent. 
 
 3 Jacobin ; a member of a political society established in 1789 in 
 Paris, in the old convent of the Jacobins (monks of the order of St. 
 Dominic), for the propagation of democratic ideas. 
 
 3 Compte ; p silent, as well as in compter. 
 
 4 Tout-puissants ; toitt, invariable in this compound in the mas- 
 culine, but variable in the feminine, toutes-puissantes. 
 
 U 
 
 .:■** 
 
TOE ARMY OF TIIK AUDENNKS. 
 
 21 
 
 nastor. 
 ilousy ; 
 b to the 
 iiiinous 
 e when 
 
 1793). 
 )s ;• he 
 le Coii- 
 •is, and 
 ^lishiiig 
 [iinoiied 
 leputies 
 mouriez 
 s of the 
 liead of 
 s. But 
 5ir gene- 
 into the 
 brought 
 
 enemy, 
 ccount* 
 
 state of 
 dopt, to 
 ul state 
 ss. The 
 sign; all 
 
 the pri- 
 posed of 
 uggle at 
 Montag- 
 3 Jacob- 
 
 in 1789 m 
 ier of St. 
 
 the maa- 
 
 ites and the Girondins, who had as yet a niajority in the 
 Convention.* 
 
 Hoch(^ was received with warmth by the Montagnarda, 
 who exhorted him to designate among the Girondins tho.se 
 who liad latt^ly corresponded with Dumouriez ; they hoped 
 l»y that means to find a weapon with which to strike them, 
 and to be able to denounce tliem as accomplices of his 
 treason. Hoche refused this ; he had not come, ' he said, 
 to till the ortice of informer, but to enlighten the Government 
 on the present critical situation of the army. His lieart 
 was <listressed at the spectacle offered in Paris on the eve 
 of the 3 1st May — fatal day -when the Girondins succumbed ; 
 he poured forth his indignation and his grief in his corres- 
 pondence to liis general. *' The true field of battle," he 
 said, ** is not on the Meuse and the Rhine between the 
 Austrians and ourselves ; it is here, in the Convention, 
 between the men of La Gironde and those of La Montague." 
 He hastened to leave Paris, where liberty, fraternity and 
 equality were nothing more than empty sounds, words void 
 of sense and altogether derisive, where the best citizens 
 trembled before a ferocious populace, and where terror 
 took the place of law. He returned to the army, in the 
 midst of his brave companions in arms, who only heard but 
 a feeble echo of the crimes committed at a distance, and in 
 the heart of whom the pure enthusiasm of 1789, and the 
 love of liberty were a^ yet confounded with the holy love 
 of the fatherland and with national independence. 
 
 ' The Girondins were thus named because the most celebrated 
 members of this political party, Vergniaud, Gaudet, Gensonne, had 
 been sent to the Assembly by the department of La Gironde. They 
 sat on the right of the Assembly. The Montagnards, their adver- 
 saries, occupied the crest on the left, whence the name by which 
 they were named. The first desired a legal rule and the forms of a 
 constitutional government in the republic which they wished to 
 establish. The second, less enlightened than the Girondins, were 
 much bolder ; the most extreme democracy seemed to them the 
 best of governments. They had as principal chiefs, Danton, Kobes- 
 pierre and Marat. 
 
 1 Observe the use of "to be" with venir. 
 
":^S3SESE:fS 
 
 22 
 
 LAZARE HOCHE. 
 
 !S'^'^ 
 
 :i 
 
 I 
 
 I. 
 
 ■ ril 
 f^ If 
 
 !■ \-\ 
 
 I 
 
 ft.: 
 
 ! i 
 
 it: J 
 
 t 
 
 General Le Veneur was in the interim, and in the absence 
 of Oustine, Commandant of the Army of the North ; he 
 ordered his aide-de-camp to reconnoitre the line of defence 
 which the army had to guard. Hoche went through the 
 country, and a few days sufficed for his keen eye to make 
 the required investigation. He brought back valuable 
 information from his excursion on the frontier. What was 
 his grief when, on his return to the camp, he beheld his chief 
 and his friend, Greneral Le Veneur, surrounded by gen- 
 darmes, denounced as being suspected, and served with a 
 summons, which almost always at that epoch was equivalent 
 to a sentence of death. Enraged at this sad spectacle by 
 indignation and anger, Hoche cried, " Do Pitt and Cobourg 
 then govern France, since the Republic is deprived of its 
 bravest defenders?" Imprudent words, and which almost 
 cost the life of him who pronounced them. Forgetting the 
 storm he had thus drawn on his head, Hoche put in writing 
 the observations he had made, and drew up several military 
 memoirs* justly considered as master- pieces.^ His atten- 
 tion had not only been directi^d on the frontier which he 
 had visited, but on all the points where the Republic 
 seemed to him vulnerable. The Vendue, which was rising, 
 then attracted his attention. Already all that district was 
 up in arms ; it had fought its first battles, and the Repub- 
 licans recoiled before the La Rochejaquelein, the Bon- 
 champ the d'Elb^e and the Lescure. Hoche saw the errors 
 which they had made ; 'he perceived at once the very 
 peculiar tactics which war required in this country, which 
 he had never seen but which he studied in military reports 
 and on maps. He pointed out the necessity of establishing 
 entrenched camps there, of forming flying columns, of imit- 
 ating in its manner of fighting an almost imperceptible 
 enemy ; and in this young captain of twenty-four summers 
 the general-in-chief of the Armies of the West and of the 
 Ocean could be traced. 
 
 i Memoire, meaning memoir, is masculine ; tnemoiref memory, 
 feminine. 
 
 2 OlicAi-d'ceuvre ; pronounce chefs, che. 
 
 
THE STRATEGY OF WAR. 
 
 23 
 
 } absence 
 orth ; he 
 defence 
 )ugh the 
 to make 
 valuable 
 Vhat was 
 his chief 
 by gen- 
 1 with a 
 D[uivalent 
 ctacle by 
 Cobourg 
 ved of its 
 h almost 
 stting the 
 n writing 
 1 military 
 lis atten- 
 which he 
 Republic 
 as rising, 
 strict was 
 e Repub- 
 the Bon- 
 :he errors 
 the very 
 ry, whicli 
 y reports 
 :ablishing 
 of imit- 
 srceptible 
 summers 
 id of the 
 
 In another memoir which he wrote on the mode of war- 
 fare in the North, Hoche revealed by instinct the genius of 
 the military art of modern times, and the advice which he 
 gave is but the prelude of the revolution brought about later 
 by Bonaparte in tactics and strategy. " Routine," he said. 
 
 a 
 
 IS our ruin ; the art of war must be regenerated. 
 
 Let us level the strongholds which we can no longer defend 
 without being disseminated, and let us place ourselves 
 boldly in the centre of the armies of the enemy. Stronger 
 united than each one of them isolated, let us march from 
 the army which we shall have conquered to the one we 
 have to conquer."' He afterwards indicated the names of 
 the citadels which must be levelled to the ground, those 
 the garrison of which must be reduced, the position to oc- 
 cupy by the Armies of the Ardennes and of Moselle ; he 
 gives at last, says his biographer already mentioned, all the 
 details of the plan which was adopted in the campaign of 
 1794, on which rests the reputation of Carnot, and the 
 conclusion of which was the victory of Flc^rus. 
 
 Hoche was completing the drawing up of this memoir 
 w^hen he was arrested. The order was given to arraign him 
 before the revolutionary tribunal of Douai, suspected^ on 
 account of his devotion to General Le Veneur, and accused 
 of having said that Pitt and Cobourg governed France. 
 Hoche, without emotion, address 3d his last memoir to 
 Couthon, member of the Committee of Public Safety, whom 
 he had met accidentally in Paris, and wrote to him the 
 following noble epistle, in which he delineates his own 
 character. " As I had promised it you, citizen, I forward 
 you my work on the frontier of the North; this is without 
 doubt the result of a patriotism more ardent than en- 
 lightened, but could you believe that it is the effort of a 
 young man arraigned before the revolutionary tribunal '] 
 Whatever may be my fate, let the country be saved, and I 
 
 , memory, 
 
 ^ Vaiiicre ; note that the three persons singular of the ind. 
 present are not used ; Je suis victorieux is used instead. 
 ® Suspect ; pronounce as if ph. 
 
24 
 
 LAZARE HOCHE. 
 
 hf 
 
 t' '■ 
 
 f ; 
 
 ^^!l 
 
 
 i 
 
 I 
 
 shall be content. But at every moment the danger in- 
 creases. . . . Your generals have no plan ; there is 
 not among them to-day a man able to save the frontier, I ask 
 you then to be heard, either before the committee or by the 
 deputies near the armies. Let me be allowed to work in a 
 cell, fettered though I be, until the enemies be driven from 
 France. I am certain to indicate the means of driving 
 them away before six weeks ; afterwards, let them do what 
 they will with me." 
 
 Couthon read this letter to the committee, before whom 
 he pleaded the cause of Hoche with success, and the order 
 was given to set him at liberty at once. Hoche was named 
 adjutant-general, chief of battalion in the Army of the North. 
 Three months later he was placed with that rank under the 
 orders of Gf leral Souham, at Dunkirk, and particularly 
 entrusted witn the defence of that town. 
 
 IV. 
 
 DUNKIRK. — WISSEMBURG. ^ 
 
 Two hostile armies surrounded Dunkirk. One of twenty- 
 one thousand English and Hanoverians, under the Duke of 
 York, besieged the town on the ocean side; the other army, 
 of about sixteen thousand men, under Marshal Freytag, 
 protected the siege on the Lille side in front of the marshes 
 so as to hinder the place from being relieved. Dunkirk 
 seemed then unable^ to sustain a long siege ; the circle 
 being extensive and the forts detached, would have required 
 for their defence fifteen thousand soldiers ; the garrison 
 scarcely contained half that number; it was dejected and 
 demoralized by a continual series of reverses. Hoche found 
 the fortifications in a deplorable condition, the ditches 
 partly tilled and not puddled ; no assistance, in short, could be 
 expected from people whom the Convention had alienated ; 
 a flotilla had been ordered to protect Dunkirk ; the crews 
 
 ^ vV^isseiiiburg ; pron. as yitf. 
 * Jfors : s silent. 
 
DUNKIRK. 
 
 26 
 
 ^nger in- 
 there is 
 er. I ask 
 or by the 
 t^ork in a 
 ven from 
 I driving 
 do what 
 
 re whom 
 bhe order 
 as named 
 he North, 
 ander the 
 rticularly 
 
 )f twenty- 
 Duke of 
 
 ler army, 
 Freytag, 
 
 e marshes 
 Dunkirk 
 
 the circle 
 
 e required 
 garrison 
 
 Bcted and 
 
 ►che found 
 e ditches 
 , could be 
 lienated ; 
 
 the crews 
 
 rebelled at the sight of the enemy, • and the vessels re- 
 entered the port. 
 
 Anything like serious resistance appeared then quite out 
 of the question. Hoche alone ventured to hope for success ; 
 he was but twenty-four years of age, with a subordinate 
 rank, and already he spoke and acted as a master, a man 
 sure of himself, and who commanded at once confidence 
 and obedience. He corresponded with the Committee of 
 Public Safety and with the deputy of the Minister. He 
 wrote to the first : " The place shall be reduced to ashes 
 before we surrender." To the second he writes : " If the 
 Citizen Guard undertake to force us, it must expect to see 
 the arms destined to fight tyrants and traitors turned against 
 it." This resolution, said one of his latest biographers, 
 he communicated to the hearts of his soldiers, and reani- 
 mated them ; he re-established discipline in their ranks, and 
 made them work before leading them against the enemy. 
 At the same time he drove out of the town the strangers 
 and all s'.ispected individuals ; he dismissed and imprisoned 
 ithe temporary governor of the place, who commanded with 
 effeminacy ; re-established the popular society which had 
 been dissolved — spoke, wrote, excited, warned, electrified all 
 souls. Led by his entreaties as well as by his threats, the 
 sailors went back to their duty, and he induced them to re- 
 turn to the station which they had abandoned. At last, at 
 the end of a few days, he was able to write to Audouin : 
 f* They promised us prompt^ and powerful assistance, but 
 even should they delay a fortnight, in the state in which, by 
 ^int of work, the place is at present, we could wait for it." 
 ^he expected assistance was at hand ; a part of the Army of 
 the North was advancing rapidly, guided by the Generals 
 Bouchard and Jourdan. On the 5th ^ of September it 
 Ikttacked the positions of Marshal Freytag, forced him to 
 fell back on Furnes, and on the 8th '* September, 1793, 
 
 »*■■- ■ ■ ■- I .. ■-■ — — ■ I. , -■■■■ , - ■ , ■ — - , ■ , ,,-. . — I ■ I ,,., „ 
 
 I ^ Ennemi ; pronounce first syllable as inEnghsh. 
 % * Prompts; pronounce as if pron. 
 ._ 3 Cinq Septew.hre ; q silent in cinq in this case. 
 '* Huit Septembre; t silent in huit in this case. 
 
 0- 
 
26 
 
 LAZARE IIOCHE. 
 
 (''■) 
 
 m I 
 
 ■a !S 
 
 Houchard forced Freytag to stop, and attacked him at 
 Hondschotte, a few leagues from Dunkirk. At the report 
 of the cannon Hoche made a vigorous sortie, attacked the 
 English and Hanoverian troops under the walls of the 
 town ; he thus hindered the Duke of York from assisting 
 Marshal Freytag with any efficacy, and contributed in a 
 powerful manner to the victory of Houchard. Freytag was 
 obliged to fall back on Furnes. The Duke of York saw the 
 victorious French army at Hondschotte about to fall on 
 him ; he hastened to leave the dangerous position he then 
 occupied before Dunkirk, between the marshes of Long- 
 moor and the ocean, abandoned the artillery and the bag- 
 gage, and raised the siege. 
 
 It is to Hoche especially that the honour of this glorious 
 result belongs ; to him who, showing himself at the same 
 time chief and soldier, administrator and popular tribune, 
 imparted the electric fire of his soul to the heart of a 
 divided and discouraged garrison, and placed in a fortnight 
 a dilapidated fortress in a position to resist and overcome a 
 powerful enemy. The masterly defence of Dunkirk had 
 drawn on Hoche the attention of the Committee of Public 
 Safety, and great hopes of his talents were formed in con- 
 sequence. In the space of six weeks he was the object of 
 three nominations in succession, and promoted from the 
 rank of major to that of brigadier general, from general of 
 division, and at last, on the 23rd October, 1793 (2 brumaire, 
 year two'), was named general in chief of the Army of 
 Moselle. The first successes of this army, as well as those of 
 the Army of the North and the Army of the Rhine, had 
 been followed by great ro^^erses. 
 
 The French, after having advanced as far as Liege under 
 Dumouriez, and having taken Mayence and Frankfort 
 under Custine, had withdrawn from the centre of Belgium 
 as far as Valenciennes, and from the borders of the Rhino 
 even into the Yosges, behind the lines of the Lauter. 
 *' Thanks to the talents and the energy of Hoche, Dunkirk 
 
 ^ Brumaire ; 2nd month of autumn ; brumn, mist, fog. 
 
THE ARMY RE-ORGANIZflD. 
 
 27 
 
 d him at 
 the report 
 acked the 
 lis of the 
 a assisting 
 )uted in a 
 reytag was 
 rk saw the 
 to fall on 
 )n he then 
 i of Long- 
 id the bag- 
 
 lis glorious 
 t the same 
 lar tribune, 
 heart of a 
 a fortnight 
 overcome a 
 mkirk had 
 e of Public 
 ned in con- 
 e object of 
 i from the 
 
 general of 
 2 brumaire, 
 e Army of 
 
 as those of 
 Rhine, had 
 
 jiege under 
 Frankfort 
 
 )f Belgium 
 the Rhine 
 
 Ihe Lauter. 
 
 le, Dunkirk 
 
 m 
 
 had resisted," says one of his biographers, ** but the tv/o other 
 barriers of France had succumbed." Mayence was in the 
 power of the Prussians ; Valenciennes and Le Quesnoy saw 
 the imperial standards wave over them ; the Army of the 
 North had withdrawn behind the line of the ScJirpe, be- 
 tween Arras ^ and Douai, and Hoche had found the Army 
 of the Moselle without backbone and without strength, 
 scattered along a line of about twenty-five leagues. In 
 front of this army, of which Hoche had just taken com- 
 mand, one hundred thousand soldiers, under the command 
 of the best generals of Prussia and Austria, occupied the 
 lines of Wissemburg, kept Landau blockaded, and, en- 
 trenched on the outpost of Kayserlautern, their columns 
 were advancing on the Sarre and beyond the Blise. They 
 were inured to war, disciplined, well clothed, well paid, well 
 fed. Encouraged by our reverses, these armies had the 
 audacity which victory gives, and, compared to our troops — 
 without bread, without clothes, and bare feef^ — they were at 
 Once superior to us by their organization and by their 
 moral tone. 
 
 Hoche was scarcely promoted when, recalling the recent 
 victories of Houchard at Hondschotte and of Jourdan at 
 Wattignies, he said to his soldiers : " Frenchmen, on all 
 sides our armies are triumphant ; we are the last to con- 
 quer, but we shall be victorious. Patriots such as you, if 
 they are disciplined, have but to undertake. We are going 
 to spread liberty, but that is not enough ; we must make 
 her be loved. This time your conquests will not be in vain ; 
 to fight and to take advantage of triumph is your lot. . . . 
 We are about to enter the promised land, never to leave it 
 more." 
 
 Soon discipline was re-established, confidence restored ; 
 the proud attitude of Hoche, the energy of his language 
 find of his acts, kindled enthusiasm ; he watched with a 
 paternal solicitude over the more pressing needs of the 
 
 - Arras ; s sounded. 
 
 *-* Pieds-mts ; agreemeat of nws. because it follows 7>2>r/s. 
 
;ii -ii 
 
 28 
 
 LAZARE IIOCIIE. 
 
 soldier ; and in the extremity in wliich he found himself 
 before enemies very superior in number, lie had recourse to 
 extreme means, very dangerous ones doubtless in ordinary 
 times, and which could only be rendered legitimate by the 
 imperious necessity of conquering under penalty of death. 
 
 Hoche organized his army anew without regard for 
 hierarchy ^ or rights of seniority ; warlike and patriotic 
 ardour, talent and courage, took the place of years or rank. 
 He formed new divisions, took subaltern officers from the 
 ranks and placed their superiors under them ; sergeants 
 became captains and lieutenants were made colonels. An 
 electric commotion thus passed into all ranks, and the fever 
 of ambition, which nothing could moderate, seized upon the 
 chiefs and the soldiers. Excitement was at its height ; 
 Hoche, who had fostered it, was also imbued with it ; his 
 language showed it,^ and it imparted to his words, already 
 powerful in themselves, a certain bombastic style, in imita- 
 tion of the jargon of the clubs, ^ which was the stamp of the 
 official writings of this epoch. It is thus that on the 12th 
 November, 1793 (21 brumaire), after having re-organized 
 his army about to act in the Vosges, in concert with the 
 Army of the Rhine, commanded by Pichegru, Hoche wrote 
 to the deputy of the Minister of War : *' May the Genius 
 of Liberty be propitious to our arms. The measures are 
 taken, and, if I believe my presentiments, the best cause 
 will triumph. I should survive a reverse, but with diffi- 
 culty ; if I had this misfortune, I should send our bloody 
 spoils to Paris. Patriots, show thera to the people ; let it 
 summon its reserves,'* and may its last effi)rt be the death 
 stroke of the tyrants." 
 
 The great object of Hoche and his army was the deliver- 
 ance of Landau, and the retaking of the lines of Wissem- 
 
 ^ flierarchie ; ch soft. 
 
 ^ S' en ressent ; note well that the e«^ here is fully sounded, not 
 being the sign of the third person plural. 
 
 3 Clubs ; 8 silent. 
 
 •* ArrUre~ban ; reserves composed of the oldest citizens, and only 
 called out in case of great peril. 
 
 y/t'.' 
 
 I . I 
 
WISSEMBURG. 
 
 29 
 
 1 himself 
 
 icourse to 
 
 ordinary 
 
 ,te by the 
 
 t death. 
 
 jgard for 
 
 patriotic 
 
 5 or rank. 
 
 from the 
 
 sergeants 
 
 lels. An 
 
 the fever 
 
 upon the 
 
 3 height ; 
 
 h it ; his 
 
 s, already 
 
 in imita- 
 
 mp of the 
 
 the 12th 
 
 organized 
 
 with the 
 
 3he wrote 
 
 e Genius 
 
 sures are 
 
 est cause 
 
 nth. diffi- 
 
 r bloody 
 
 e ; let it 
 
 ihe death 
 
 e deliver- 
 Wissem- 
 
 nded, not 
 
 and only 
 
 burg, which form the principal boulevard of France on its 
 extreme north-east frontier. These famous lines are formed 
 by the Lauter and the Sarre falling over the two declivities 
 of the Vosges, to flow, the first on the right of the Rhine, 
 
 ' the second on the left, towards the Moselle. Wisseraburg 
 is behind the Lauter ; Landau, more to the north, is behind 
 the Queich, another tributary of the Rhine. The Vosges, 
 covered by thick forests, are only approachable on a few 
 points; their rocky chain cannot be penetrated or crossed, 
 except at Saverne, Bitche, Pirmasens and Kayserlautern. 
 Wurmser, on the eastern declivity, blockaded Landau and 
 occupied Wissemburg, facing with fifty thousand men 
 the Army of tlie Rhine, commanded by Pichegru ; Bruns- 
 wick and the Prussian army were on the other declivity, 
 opposite Hoche and his Army of La Moselle ; the Sarre 
 separated the Prussians from the French. 
 
 The plan of operations imposed on Hoche by the Commit- 
 tee of Public Safety was to cross the Sarre, to drive before 
 him the Prussian army, then intrenched on the right of 
 the river ; to skirt the Yosges as far as Kayserlautern ; to 
 carry away this post, attacking the Austrians in the rear 
 on the opposite side. Hoche was to co-operate with the 
 army of Pichegru in such manner that Wurmser, taken 
 between the fire of the two armies, would be forced to 
 evacuate Wissemburg and raise the seige of Landau. On 
 the 17th November, 1793 (27 brumaire, year two), the army 
 moved in three columns, and rushed upon the Prussians. 
 The latter abandoned the Sarre, and recoiled over the 
 Blise to the heights of Blise Castel. Hoche rushed in on 
 
 " them. After a bloody struggle the enemy fled towards 
 Deux-Ponts, then to Kayserlautern, where Brunswick re- 
 assembled his divisions, and concentrated formidable means 
 of defence. If that position can be won, Hoche will go 
 round the Yosges and raise the siege of Landau. On both 
 isides forty thousand men and a hundred cannons were 
 
 'engaged. The enemy, well intrenched, occupied a supe- 
 rior position; but the enthusiasm of the Republican soldiers 
 seemed irresistible. Hoche gave the signal, throwing 
 
30 
 
 LAZARE IIOCHE. 
 
 :ir' 
 
 ^1 
 
 lit 
 
 his liat in the air to the deafening cry, repeated a thou- 
 sand times, of *' Vive la R^publique!" and the battlo 
 began with fury. Hoche was in the centre ; his lieutenants, 
 Anibert and Taponnier, attacked the enemy on the flank. 
 The Prussians, with the Yosges at their back and under 
 cover of their entrenchments, opened a fierce tire on the 
 French, who, decimated and arrested by grape shot, returned 
 to the charge; made several assaults, and were repelled. 
 Finally, after a bloody struggle of two days, their ammuni- 
 tion gave out, and the enemy was reinforced. Hoche saw 
 victory escaping from his grasp ; he gave the order to sound 
 tlie retrograde march, disguising the retreat under this 
 name, and fell back beyond the Blise in an attitude so 
 proud ' and in such good order, that the enemy did not dare 
 molest him. The audacity and the vigour which Hoche 
 had shown in the execution of a plan of attack the work of 
 the Committee of Public^ Safety, which he had less accepted 
 than put up with, made him find some degree of favour 
 from the members of this redoubtable committee, which 
 required victory from its generals under penalty of death, 
 and from which he received, af^er his defeat,^ words of en- 
 couragement and praise. 
 
 Hoche, however, to take a signal revenge, had other 
 obstacles to surmount, other adversaries to conquer, than 
 those which the irregularities of the land and the presence 
 of foreign armies offered him. Pichegru was jealous of the 
 rising glory and popularity of his young rival ; he seconded 
 liim with repugnance, and had only given him his help 
 slowly and in an incomplete manner. Hoche indulged, on 
 tliis subject, in bitter recriminations against Pichegru ; he 
 complained also not to have had for his actions sufiicient 
 liberty. He showed himself determined^ to take no counsel 
 
 ^ Ficrjitfi; r lid sounded ill the masculine as well as in the feminine. 
 
 2 Public ; c sounded. 
 
 3 Echec ; pronounce icliek both in singular and plural, and in the 
 phiral the s is not carried on next word. 
 
 '^ Risolu^ from r^soudre, has two past participles ; resolu, resolved : 
 r/.sou.% dissolved. 
 
APPROACHING OPERATIONS. 
 
 31 
 
 d a thou- 
 he battle 
 sutenants, 
 bhe flank, 
 nd under 
 re on the 
 , returned 
 repelled, 
 ammuni- 
 [oche saw 
 • to sound 
 nder this 
 jtitude so 
 I not dare 
 [)h Hoche 
 e work of 
 3 accepted 
 of favour 
 ee, which 
 of death, 
 'ds of en- 
 ad other 
 uer, than 
 presence 
 us of the 
 seconded 
 his help 
 iilged, on 
 jru ; he 
 sufficient 
 o counsel 
 
 } feminine, 
 nd in the 
 resolved ; 
 
 in future but his own, and refused to admit into the secret 
 of his approaching operations the representatives Saint 
 Just and Le Bas, sent to the Army of the Rhine by the 
 Committee of Public Safety, having extraordinary powers, 
 and both of them warm protectors of Pichegru. He derived 
 certain strength against them by the assent which he found 
 in two of their colleagues, Lacoste and Baudot, sent by 
 the Convention to the Army of the Moselle, and invested 
 with unlimited powers. The latter gave all the authority 
 to Hoche ; they thus provoked the enmity of Le Bas and 
 Saint Just, who, taking immediately the part of Pichegru 
 against Hoche, confirmed the first in his malevolent and 
 jealous disposition, and sought, in the reports which they 
 addressed to the Committee of Public Safety, to make him 
 share their prejudices and their resentments. In that very 
 committee Hoche had made an equally redoubtable adver- 
 sary in the person of Carnot, who was entrusted with the 
 military operations, and who, by directing them far and 
 near with the knowledge of experience and the instinct of 
 genius, obtained great results, although often committing 
 the error of substituting, for the execution of his plans, his 
 private views to those of the generals. Seeing Hoche 
 determined, after the defeat at Kayserlautern, to listen only 
 io his personal inspiration, and to hide his plans from the 
 committee, he did not dare to deprive him of his command 
 in the position he held before the enemy, and adjourned 
 the crisis. It is now through the defiles of Pirmasens, 
 between the lines of the Queich and the Lauter, that 
 Hoche has determined to pierce the chain of the Vosges 
 and to make a junction with the Army of the Rhine, 
 whi'^h was to act in concert with him, and he ordered 
 with as much energy as prudence all the measures neces- 
 sary to strike a decisive blow. He had himself an eye 
 to everything, took no repose, and gave none to his 
 soldiers. " Repose," he says, - *' is the rust of courage." 
 ^0 sustained the moral tone of his soldiers by his con- 
 fidence in success, by patriotism, by the sentiment of 
 honour, by Republican enthusiasm. It was the middle of 
 
r'iSCTeafJ^Tsa - i..j"iiii kl-w 
 
 w 
 
 32 
 
 LAZARR IIOCIIE. 
 
 "'I' 
 
 • iH.'i 
 
 m- 
 
 !!« 
 
 
 winter, the cold was severe, and he did away with the tents 
 as useless baggage in a Republican army ; the regiments 
 camped in the open air, the forests of the Vosges sheltered 
 them and kept up their fires. A regiment murmured, and 
 demanded winter quarters ; Hoche published in the ordei* 
 of the day that this regiment should not have the honour 
 of participating in the action of the first combat. The 
 soldiers of that corps entreated him to rescind an order in 
 which they saw an intolerable insult ; they swore to expiate 
 their fault by their bravery, and they kept their word. 
 Hoche deceived the enemy as to his projects ; he cut up the 
 roads and destroyed the bridges in the places where he 
 intended to pass, and he prepared stealthily wooden bridges 
 to take the place of those which he had removed. He kept 
 an impenetrable secret even with liis own officers. " If 1 
 thought," he said, " that my cap knew my plans, I would 
 cast it in the fire." At last, when everything was prepared, 
 and he had assured himself of the co-operation of i\n\ 
 Army of the Rhine, he ordered the march through the 
 Vosges at the p;\ss of Pirmasens, that he might fall on the 
 right flank of the Austrians whilst they were engaged with 
 the army of Pichegru on il\e eastern declivity. Two formi- 
 dable redoubts, formed at ReischofFen and at Freisch wilier, 
 defended the passage, and their batteries vomited death on 
 the Republican army. Hoche, under the fire of their can- 
 nons, conceived the idea of putting them up at auction. 
 " Comrades," he cried gaily, " six hundred livres a-piece !" 
 " Gone !" replied his brave fellows, and they rushed on the 
 redoubts on the double, broke through them, killed the ar- 
 tillerymen, and seized their cannons. The pass was taken ; 
 the Austrians fell back on Wert, where they rallied ; Hoche 
 rushed on, ' waged a new combat, drove them before him , 
 and settled at Wert in the position which the enemy aban- 
 doned. Wurmser saw himself overpowered, left the line of 
 the Molter, and waited for the French on the plateau of 
 
 ^ Accourt ; note well that in narration the prasent in French must 
 be translated by the past in English. 
 
 
 i)*it-' 
 
Wb 
 
 -Pf: 
 
 DEPliAT OF THE AU8TRIANS. 
 
 33 
 
 the tents 
 •egiments 
 sheltced 
 Lired, and 
 the ordei- 
 e honour 
 )at. The 
 order in 
 bo expiate 
 eir word. 
 !ut up the 
 where he 
 3n bridges 
 He kept 
 s. '' If I 
 3, I would 
 prepared, 
 Lon of ihv 
 [rough the 
 all on the 
 aged with 
 wo formi- 
 schwiller, 
 death on 
 their can 
 auction, 
 a-piece ! 
 d on the 
 id the ar- 
 [as taken ; 
 |d; Hoche 
 'ore him, 
 |my aban- 
 e line ot" 
 ateau of 
 
 [ench must 
 
 Hulz. Hocho followed hitn closely, and met him onoo 
 nioro face to face on the 2.3rd December. A marsh sepa- 
 rated the two armies ; Iloche crossed it, commanded an 
 attack witli cannon and bayonet, ' rode down the Austriana, 
 drove them on the Lauter and into Wissemburg, and ef- 
 fect(d his junction with the Army of the Rhine. 
 
 Unity in command. and in action had now become indis- 
 pensable. Hocho, stifling his resentment against Pichegru, 
 who was vei'y slow in seconding him, expressed the wish 
 that the two armies should bo united under one chief, and 
 that tliat chief should be Pichegru. His request was sup- 
 ported by the deputies. Saint Just and Le Bas. But their 
 colleagues, Lacoste and Baudot, had recognized superior 
 talents in Hoche ; by virtue of the unlimited powers which 
 they had received from the Convention, it was to him that 
 they gave the command of the Armies of the Moselle and of 
 the Rhine, and Pichegru, his senior and his equal in posi- 
 tion, descended to the second rank, and became his inferior' 
 and his subordinate. Hoche prepared everything to regain 
 "Wissemburg and its famous lines, guarded by the Austrians 
 under Wurmser, and by the army of the French refugees 
 under the Prince of Conde. The latter was at Lauterbourg ; 
 the Austrians advanced in front of Wissemburg, and occu- 
 pied in an intrenched camp the heights of Geitsberg, pro- 
 tected in the front of the position by a fortress bristling 
 with batteries, and protected by hedges, by trees which had 
 been cut down, and by deep ravines. The Prussian army, 
 under Brunswick, had gone round the Vosges and seconded 
 the efforts of Wurmser. Hoche stationed three divisions 
 On his left to oppose the Prussians ; he ordered the Army of 
 the Rhine to fall on the left of the enemy, and to carry 
 Lauterbourg; he himself, in person, intended to direct the 
 littack of the centre on the Geitsberg ; and he pointed out 
 to his soldiers the deliverance of Landau as the infallible'^ 
 
 ^ Balonnettp, or htvionpite ; first introduced by Louia XIV., and 
 manufactured at Bayonne. 
 " InfaiUihle ; two // Hquid. 
 3 
 
34 
 
 LAZAiiK iiocm:. 
 
 : 1 
 
 III. 
 
 ill 
 
 result of Uk! victory of the next day. His lottois to tlio 
 Ministor of War, as well as the onh'rs which he tr iiismittrd 
 to his ^(MU^rals, were couch(;d in a style; hri(!t'' and full of 
 encrt;y, breathing confidence, (nithusiasni, and an exalted 
 repuhlicanisirj, of (;ontenii)t for tlie enemies, whom he treated 
 as the vile slaves of tyrants. One feels an impulsive 
 stren<j:th, an irresistible force, in the enthusiasm which he 
 imparted to Ids lieutenants, and amon^^'st them we see hv. 
 Fevre, Cham])ionnet, Andn^ossy, Dc^saix, S(jult,- Moreau, 
 for the most })art unknown as yet, but all called to a high 
 destiny, and who were starving und(;r him tlicj apprenticeship 
 to glory. 
 
 However, und<'r the weight of an inuuense respoJisibility, 
 in the midst of th(! anxi<^ties of an important command in 
 the imn) of tlie enemy, and a prey to a double fever of 
 military and Repul>lican exaltation, he remembered his 
 old chief, (leneral Le Veneur ; he felt the need of pouring 
 forth the different sentiments which agitated him into a 
 heart worthy of understanding him, of gathering, in short, 
 new strength, and to raise himself in his own estimation, 
 by taking as a witness of his thoughts and of his actions 
 before postei'ity a good man and a friend. On the eve of 
 the decisive battle, and in the silence of night, he collected 
 his thoughts and Avrote these lines : " Behold them again, 
 these transports which we beheld in former times in front 
 of the enemy. Discouragement and fright have fled far 
 from us ; I am only surrounded by brave men, marching 
 against the eni^my without yielding an inch. Around all 
 the fires kindled on the whole line, I have seen on all 
 their faces the temerity and the audacity which are the 
 precursors of victory. Not a murmur against this bitter 
 wind which sweeps upon us, not a regret for those tents 
 which I condemned from the first. There are few who 
 pride themselves on imitating the conqueror of Rocroi,^ 
 
 ^ Bref ; /sounded. 
 ' Soult ; I and i sounded. 
 
 3 Rocroi or Roci oy ; a fortified town in the Ardennes. Battle of 
 Rocroi, won by the Prince of Conde over the Spaniards in 1643. 
 
 Vv 
 
( AFTIJKK ,y LANDAU. 
 
 ;{5 
 
 and whom it will ho necessary to awak( ii for tho hatth; ; 
 hut the wind is k(!eii, and I prefer Icadin;^ them irritated at 
 their want of slecf) rather than ei niph;t(dy njsted hy repose, 
 always fatal to "ntliusiasm in this t(;mp(;rature. lieeo;jfnized 
 hy th(5 greater nmnher, I was everywhere greeted l)y this 
 cry: ' Landau shall he fret; !' Yes, general, Lanchiu shall 
 be free ; tlu; days of grief and shami; have pass(;d. With 
 8()ldi(^rs so w(5ll prepared, an uidimited authority, and the 
 support of th(; (lt;puti(5S, I must con([uer or die ;,it is an 
 alternativii which f have accepted. Yes, general, if this 
 letter is hut the too presumptuous announcement of a 
 success which 1 believe infallihh;, it will hear you my la,;t 
 farewell. I am on the eve of the most glorious or tho lasi; 
 day of my life." 
 
 The n(;xt day, 2Gth J)ecemb(ir, 1793 (nivose, ' year two), 
 all the army was on foot before the dawn, and moA «'(i to the 
 cry, re-echoed a thousand times, "Landau, or death !" Jt 
 met on the ({eits])erg the enemy's army, which was also 
 preparing for a general attack, i)rotected by the; castle of 
 that name, occupied by several battalions. Nothing could 
 arrest the impetuosity of the French. The chateau was 
 stormed after an obstinate struggle, and the Austrians 
 withdrew into their entrenched camp of tin; Geitsberg. The 
 French advanced on the double through a most murderous 
 tire ; all the obstacles were overcome and struck down ; the 
 fight was soon nothing more than a complete rout. Bruns- 
 wick and the Prussian army covered the retreat of the 
 enemy. Wurmser was driven back into Wissemburg, which 
 he evacuated during the night. The French entered the 
 place ; the allies fell back on the lihine, whilst accusing each 
 other for their defeat ; and' Landau was delivered, in the 
 midst of the cheers of the army and of the whole of France. 
 
 ^ Nivose, lii'st moutli of winter ; nivosus, snowy. 
 
36 
 
 LAZARE nOOIIE. 
 
 V. 
 
 MARRIAGE OF lIOtMIE. 
 
 -HIS DEPARTURE FOR THE ARMY OP 
 ITALY. 
 
 S'i: 
 ( ,1 
 
 In aTinouncing to the Committee of Public Safety the 
 capture of the lines of Wissemburg and the raising of the 
 blockade of Landau, Hoche terminated his report with 
 these simple words : " Now that the end is attained, I only 
 wish to be in command of the Army of the Moselle. The 
 command of the two armies is too great a responsibility for 
 a head of tw(mty-six." Tiiis wish which he expressed was 
 granted ; but the modesty of Hoche did not protect him 
 from the distrustful suspicions of Robespierre and of the 
 majority of the committee, nor from the private resentment 
 of the redoubtable enemies which he had made in their 
 midst, of Carnot and St. Just, to the advice of whom he 
 had refused to make his plans and his actions subordinate. 
 St. Just and Le Bas, always at their post with the Army of 
 the Rhine, ^ould not besides pardon Hoche for having been 
 preferred to Pichegru in the command in chief of the two 
 assembled armies ; and in their reports to the committee 
 ihey claimed for Pichegru the principal honors of the mili- 
 tary operations in the Yosges, and among others the victory 
 of Wert and the deliverance of Landau. 
 
 On hearing of this refusal of justice, Hoche could neither 
 contain his indignation nor his anger, which burst forth in 
 language violent and disdainful against his colleague. The 
 committee gave him no reply, and was already thinking of 
 striking him down The acme of the Reign of Terror had 
 been reached. Robespierre and his colleagues had sacrificed 
 to their suspicious jealousy and to their hatred all who 
 were most eminent by rank, virtue, t ilent, science, by the 
 splendour of their services, by grace and by beauty: the 
 <^ueen, Madame Roland, Bailly, Barnave, Malesherbes, the 
 most celebrated constituents, and with them the Giron- 
 dins, }iad followed Louis XVI. to the scaffold ; the perse- 
 
 ^ De.blocns ; s sounded. 
 
COMMITTEE OF PITBLK^ SAFF/PY 
 
 37 
 
 cutors of the Gironcle, the most dreaded of tlie Montaijnards, 
 Danton himself, had been struck in their turns, when they 
 showed a tardy horror for so many murders and so much 
 blood. The first chiefs of the Republican armies — Biron, Cus- 
 tine, Luckner, Houchard, the conqueror of Hondschotte — 
 had fallen under the relentless axe of the committee, which 
 pardoned no sooner the pride of victory than the shame 
 of defeat. The popularity of Hoclie vvith the Armies of the 
 East gave umbrage to the committee ; it was irritated at 
 the pride, at the temerity of his language, and it resolved 
 to punish this proud and young concjueror ; but it dared 
 not to strike him in the middle of the army of which he 
 was the idol, and before overthrowing him it tormented 
 him with indignities, without tiring his constancy or his 
 fidelity. It left him without instructions, without direc- 
 tions, at the head of the Army of the Moselle ; at times 
 imposing on him some vigorous order, the execution of which 
 was impossible. Hoclie appealed, received no answer, and 
 if he took the initiative, his most simple actions were inter- 
 preted against him. Having one day assisted a battalion^ 
 in distress, deprived of clothes and shoes, he was warned 
 that he was interfering with military administration, and 
 that his responsibility was greatly compromised. The com- 
 mittee carefully concealed its views with regard to him, 
 but Hoche felt himself threatened by a silent and invisible 
 power ; the sword of Damocles hung over his head ; he 
 recognized the danger of the situation ; his sufferings were 
 cruel and his indignation of the deepest, and sometimes 
 discouragement filled his heart with sad foreV)odings which 
 he did not conceal ; and the following lines, addressed to 
 his friend, Dulac, depict fully the state of his mind: 
 " Whether the charts which, you advise me of be of any 
 use, I know not, my friend. Filled with disgust, it is 
 no longer the man whom you have known who writes 
 to you ; it is an unfortunate wretch, who tries to flee 
 from himself and who can find repose nowliere. I want a 
 
 * Baiaillon ; two II liquid. 
 
38 
 
 LAZARIO JIOOHE. 
 
 hi 
 
 resignation, which 1 am about ^" forward, to be accepted 
 witliout bitterness and in the same spirit as it will be 
 tendered. Warm friend of the Revolution, I thought slie 
 would chang(i present customs. Alas ! intrigue is still in- 
 triixue, and woe to the one who has no ])rotectors. Drawn' 
 from the ranks, by whom 1 know not nor for what reason, 
 I shall return tliere as I came out, without pleasure as 
 without pain. . . 1 have imparted enough of my 
 wretchedness to you. . . 1 (mvy your lot." 
 
 Fatigued with his position, and paralysed or annoyed in- 
 cessantly by tlie committee, thwarted by so many obstacles 
 which male\olenc(; scattered in his path, Hoche tried to 
 find at the domestic hearth the calm and content which was 
 denied him in public life and in the camp. He had noticed 
 at Thionville, in a fete, a young girl as much distinguished 
 by the cc^rectness of her demeanour as l)y her beauty. Her 
 fatlun", named Dechaux, was Chief Victualler ; but Hoclie 
 did not seek in the one whom he wished to make the com- 
 panion of his life either rank or fortune. His choic(^ was 
 made. He wrote to his friend Privat, entrusting to him 
 the asking in marriage of this young girl. " I ask for 
 atFection," he said, " and not for wealth ; do not forget it," 
 and he ends with these words in which love, firm trust and 
 serious devotion are depicted : " The woman I love may be 
 assured that she will only want for those things that she 
 will not demand." 
 
 This marriage l>y far surpassed the most ambitious hopes 
 of tlie parents of the young girl. But the most ardent 
 wish of Hoche was to obtain her from herself ; and to make 
 sure of her atFection, he wrote to her these lines, inspired 
 by the most delicate and affectionate sentinn^nt: 
 
 '' Mv Dear Adelaide, — The tie which is about to unite 
 you to me is holy and sacred. It is not for a moment that 
 we shall be bound together ; it is for ever, for ever. Re- 
 flect well on this. Perhaps you have not sutHciently re- 
 
 ^ 7'irrr, to draw ; sa tirer ch, to get out of ; -s-e '.ir^r d'lnw mau- 
 raise ajfalrr, to get out of a bad scrape. 
 
 \i 
 
MARRIAGE OF HOCIIK. 
 
 39 
 
 ilectecl on this engagement. Consider me but as a simple 
 citizen ; let not a name too much eulogized by public report 
 make you desirous of becoming the wife of a man whose 
 only ambition is to make }'ou hapjjy. There is yet time. 
 If some other may have drawn your attention, say but a 
 word ; I shall withdraw my pledge to yL>u ; I shall confine 
 myself to remaining your friend, and only crave your es- 
 teem. Impart this confidence freely to a man generous 
 and just enough only to complain of fate. If, on the con- 
 trary, your heart has not yet beaten for another, give it to 
 my love ; in becoming my wife, become my friend. Let us 
 make no rash oath ; let us promise l)efor(? the Eternal Crea- 
 tor never to part. I never told a lie. Your heart will be 
 a guarantee for your sincerity." 
 
 Hoche had scarcely enjoyed for a few days the bliss of 
 liis happy marriage, when the committee, impelled by the 
 influence of Robespierre, of St. Just, and we must add also 
 of Carnot, judged the moment opportune to overthrow in 
 this young hero one of the greatest warriors of the Repub- 
 lic. However, it yet dissimulated, and before striking him, 
 it wished to remove him from his army. Hoche was told 
 that as an acknowledgment for the eminent services which he 
 had rendered, the committee gave him as a reward a more 
 important command, and it entrusted him to continue in 
 the Army of Italy the work of regeneration which he had 
 so well accomplished in the Army of the Moselle. It was 
 to him that it preferred to entrust this difficult mission as 
 being the most fit, and the one alone who could carry it out. 
 Hoche was thus taken away from the love of his soldiers. 
 He obeyed ; he bade his army an affectionate farewell, and 
 announced his departure (March, 1794) in an order of the 
 day remarkable on account of its simplicity : " Citizens, 
 the service of the Republic, our common mother, calls me 
 elsewhere. Continue to merit her praise. The name of the 
 new chief whom you have (Jourdan) has already reached 
 your ears ; with him you cannot fail to annihilate the 
 tyrants banded against our holy liberty, one and forever 
 united ! Lazare Hoche." He was not, however, mistaken 
 
E \ 
 
 40 
 
 LAZARE HOOHE. 
 
 as to the true intentions of the committee ; he entrusted his 
 misgivings to the deputy Lacoste; 8.nd on the point of set- 
 ting out for Italy, he transmitted him his farewell, with a 
 copy of his correspondence. 
 
 " I wish," he said, *' that it may serve to bring the truth 
 to light, and to describe to our posterity what it has cost 
 their fathers to obtain liberty." 
 
 Vi 
 
 M 
 
 VI. 
 
 DISGRACE AND CAPTIVITY. 
 
 The conqueror of Wissemburg had been preceded by his 
 great renown in the Army of Italy ; it learned with joy 
 that he had been named as the chief, and it made prepara- 
 tions to give him an enthusiastic welcome. The head- 
 quarters were at Nice. Scarcely arrived, Hoche, before 
 taking a moment's repose, unrolled^ the map of Upper 
 Italy and studied it for a long time ; then he uttered, in 
 pointing to the Alps, this famous saying, repeated later by 
 his more fortunate rival in glory: "The true field of 
 battle is on the other side of those mountains ; that field 
 where victory shall decide between us and Austria." 
 
 Temperate, as he always was, he had asked for bread, 
 olives and water, and he had scarcely commenced his frugal 
 repast, when old General Dumerbion, emissary of the Com- 
 mittee of Public Safety and bearer of its instructions, 
 entered. Hoche, without mistrust, rose in deference to his 
 hoary locks, offi^red him a chair, and invited him to share 
 a supper, the only merit of which, he said smiling, was to 
 recall the repast of Pythagoras with his disciples. Dumer- 
 bion, after having shown some embarrassment, drew from 
 his pocket a paper, and read in a harsh tone a decree of the 
 committee couched in these terms : " The Committee of 
 
 1:1 1 
 
 ^ Prei d, on the point of ; prit a mourir ; prU dc, disposed to. 
 Le voila prU de /aire en tout vos volontes. 
 
 ^ Verbs in oyer or ayer^ change the y into * before e mute, though 
 ^yer is yet written by good authors, je paye. 
 
DISGRACE AND CAPTIVITY. 
 
 41 
 
 Public Safety decrees that the expedition of O'Neille, ' which 
 was to be carried on by General Hoche, shall be entrusted 
 to Citizen Petit Guillaume, General of the Army of the 
 Alps, to whom it has given command to that effect. The 
 deputies of the people in the Army of Italy will cause 
 without delay General Hoche to be arrested, and will send 
 him to Paris under good and safe escort. — Carnot, Collot 
 d'Herbois." After having heard this reading, Hoche said 
 calmly, with restrained indignation : " Excuse me, general, 
 I was not aware that you were a gendarme ; I was going 
 to retire ; I need repose, and my conscience permits me to 
 sleep ; to-morrow morning I shall be at your service."* 
 Dumerbion asked him for his sword, and placed guards at 
 the door of his apartment, where several superior officers 
 entered, who, seeing as a prisoner him whom they came to 
 salute as their general, burst forth in warm indignation, at 
 the peril of their lives ; several even entreated Hoche to 
 avoid by flight the execrable tribunal before which every 
 prisoner was convicted beforehand. Hoche refused; he 
 replied, *' That he owed it to himself to appear before his 
 accusers, and that he did not wish to give an example which 
 might serve as an excuse for traitors in the future or in the 
 past." He spoke to them a long time with a sang-ft'oid'^ and 
 a tranquillity which he preserved throughout in their pres- 
 ence. After having shown in what manner he believed that 
 war was going to be conducted in Italy, he begged of them 
 if they were again witnesses of great injustice, unavoidable 
 without doubt, not to follow the counsels of angry feelings, 
 which always proved fatal. All those who were present, 
 his aide-de-camp especially, burst into tears ; but he with a 
 brow still serene, a proud and mild look, endeavoured to 
 
 * This warrant, preserved in the family of General Hoche, and 
 communicated by it, is' written altogether in Carnot's own hand- 
 writing. 
 
 1 O'Neille ; a town in Sardinia. The garrison of i^ had fired on 
 some French parliamentarians, and it was taken and sacked by 
 Admiral Tniguet, Oct. 24, 1794. 
 
 * Sang-froid ; g and d silent. 
 
V2 
 
 LAZAKE TIOCHE. 
 
 m 
 
 
 comfort thoiii ; he appeared like Socrates in the midst of his 
 disciples before the drinking of the hemlock. ' 
 
 Hoche asked pcirmission to write. Plis first letter was to 
 his wife, his dear Adelaide, to whom he admitted tliat he 
 was going to Paris by order of the Committee of Public 
 Safety, whilst concealing from her that lie was under arrest. 
 He wrote the next day to M. Dechaux, his father-in-law, 
 and told him the sad truth. " Whatever may be the 
 motives of my arrest," he said, " being without reproach I 
 am without fear, although there is, without doubt, every- 
 thing to fear. I do not complain. It is you and Adelaide, 
 both of you, whom I pity. I only suffer because you are 
 about to suffer through me. . . . Hide from her as 
 long as possible that I have become suspected, and that I 
 am deprived of my liberty. ... In republics. I know 
 it, the general too much loved by the soldiors he commands 
 makes distrustful citizens suspicious ; but I ! should I have 
 ])een suspected 1 I see, however, no other grievance'-^ against 
 me except the devotion and the affection of the army. 
 Ah ! well, let me enter again in the class of the othei* 
 citizens ; I shall be happy, if my example can serve the pub- 
 lic cause. After having saved Rome, Cincimiatus went to 
 plough his field. I am far from pretending to equal that 
 great man ; but, like him, I love my fatherland, and if my 
 abasement can provj useful, I only ask to return to the 
 ranks, whence chance and duty have withdrawn me too 
 soon for my own peace." 
 
 The pride of a patriotic heart and a spotless conscience 
 breathe in every line of this letter, which one would say 
 was written by a hero in the palmy days of Greece or 
 Rome. 
 
 One wonders at finding there the confidence, or at least 
 a vague hope, that in appearing before the revolutionary 
 tribunal he was not hastening to his doom ; and it can be 
 
 1 Of 
 
 yujuc ; having the diuresis over the e^ the n is fully sounded, 
 not pronounced therefore as the word^^.^M^. 
 3 Oriefs ; s silent. 
 
 
ARRIVAL IN PAIMH. 
 
 43 
 
 
 concluded tVom this fact, and t'roni many otlior similar 
 ones, that only a feeble report of the horrors committed in 
 the capital since tlu? fall of the Girondins readied the 
 armies. 
 
 Hoche started for Paris — a prisoner, escorted )>y gen- 
 darmes. Scarcely there (12th April, 1794), he asked to Ix^ 
 led before the Committee of Public Safety, which had sii^iu-d 
 the order for his arrest. He met Saint .Just in the ante- 
 chamber, s])oke to him, and asked for justice. "Justic<; 
 will be given you," l)rieHy replied Saint Just, " that justice; 
 which you deserve," and he ord(^red the g( udarmes to 
 conduct the prisoner to the Carmes, wdiere he pined for five 
 weeks in a fetid cell. Hoche was ti-ansferred on the 16th 
 of May to the Concicrgerie, ' from wliich prisoners only 
 <iame out to appear before the tribunal, and from the tri- 
 bunal to the scaiibld. The Conciergc^ivie and the other 
 prisons of the capital, the whole of Paris and the pi'incipal 
 towns of France, presented then the most frighful spectacle. 
 Anarchy, terror, and murder reigned supreme. " From all 
 the remote parts of France victims w^ere conveyed to the 
 Oonciergerie," said a writer, friend of the Girondins, who was 
 a long time a prisoner with them ; " the increase of assassina- 
 tions was something terrilic." At first fifteen persons were 
 placed in the murderous carts (also called biers on Avheels) ; 
 soon they put thirty, afterwards eighty-four, and everything 
 was arranged to send one hundred and fifty at a time to 
 the place of execution. An aqueduct, destined to hold the 
 blood, was dug in the square Saint Antoine, whither the 
 guillotine had been transported. It was about three in the 
 afternoon when the long processions of the victims descended 
 from the tribunal, passing slowly under long arches between 
 the prisoners. " I saw," said RioufFe, " forty-five magis- 
 trates of the Parliament of Paris, thirty-three of the Par- 
 liament of Toulouse, going to meet their death in the same 
 way as they marched formerly in public processions. I 
 
 1 Concicraerie ; a nrison contiguous to the PahAs de Justice. Seve- 
 ral prisons were called cnnciergeries. 
 
44 
 
 LAZARE JIOCHE. 
 
 saw thirty farmers of the King's Revenue pass with a calm 
 and steady pace ; twenty-five leading merchants of Sedan, 
 pitying, as they marched to death, ten thousand workmen 
 which they left behind without means of support. . . . 
 i saw all those generals whom victory had just covered 
 with laurels, changed so soon into cypress trees ; no coki- 
 plaint was uttered by them ; they marched in silence as 
 if struck with stupor, and only knew how to die." In 
 these slaughters of men, which were called batches , on 
 several occasions whole generations were absolutely destroyed 
 in one day ; the venerable Malesherbes, more than eighty 
 years old, was dragged to death at the head of his whole 
 family ; he perished with his sister, his daughter and his 
 son-in-law, and the daughter and son-in-law of his daughter. 
 Four Briennes were killed at the same time. In other 
 hatches were assembled the most lovely of nature's children ; 
 fourteen young girls of Verdun.^ of unsurpassed candour, 
 and who seemed to be young virgins decked for a public 
 fete, were led together to the scatfold. * They all disap- 
 peared at once, cut down in the flower of their youth ; the 
 court-yard reserved for women looked, on the day after 
 their death, like a flower garden stripped by the storm. . . 
 Twenty women of Poitou, poor peasants, were also murdered 
 together. ... In the prisons of Paris were a number 
 of artisans, of labourers, of insignificant men who were per- 
 fect ciphers, arrested in the departments, and mixed in the 
 Conciergerie with the most illustrious of men. The obscurity 
 of their lives, their poverty, did not protect them -, for one 
 aristocrat, ten patriots might be counted. The frightful 
 law respecting suspected people enveloped as though in a 
 net all the population of France. The friends of the ac- 
 cused, their relatives, theix servants even, were suspected. 
 
 In those days people considered as blessings the most 
 painful diseases and wounds, which at all events gave a 
 
 * They were accused of having danced at a ball given at Verdun 
 by the Prussians. The eldest was eighteen. 
 1 Echafaud, scaffold ; ichafaiidage, scaffolding. 
 
 J 
 
IN THE GONCIERGERIE. 
 
 45 
 
 a 
 
 LC- 
 
 a 
 m 
 
 cliance of escape from the scaflbld even if procured at the 
 expense of death. Hoche's fathor-in-law was arrested and 
 cast into prison, considered guilty for having given him his 
 daughter; his brother- in-law, General Debelle, declared as 
 suspected as being too closely allied to him, rushed into the 
 midst of the enemy at Fleurus, and fell weltering in his 
 own blood, pierced by seven wounds. " God be praised," 
 cried Hoche on hearing of this ; " these wounds are a 
 mercy from Heaven." 
 
 In the Conciergerie he sought a certain alleviation to his 
 troubles and the forgetfulness of his personal miseries in 
 the intercourse of a select society, in the conversation of 
 men and women distinguished for sundry causes, awaiting, 
 like himself, their sentence of death, and who, though di- 
 vided in opinion, were united by the sentiment of their 
 common misery. It Avas there that Hoche made the 
 acquaintance of the charming Duchesse d'Aiguillon, of 
 Madame de Fontenay, who soon after became Madame 
 Tallien, and Josephine de Beauharnais, ' predestined to rise 
 to an exalted position, and whom he had met in the pri on 
 of the Carmes. Hoche also obtained forced relaxation from 
 work ; lie drew up certain memoirs, and he had found the 
 means of corresponding with his wife, on whom he did not 
 cease to lavish the marks of the most delicate and tender 
 love. It was on her account that he sufi'ered and was 
 uneasy. On hearing of the arrest of his father-in-law, he 
 wrote to her : " Why has cruel fate placed me on thy path \ 
 If I had not met thee, thou wouldst be happy in the bosom 
 of an honoured family. Forgive me ; I could not foresee^ 
 that I should bring thee such torments and such ennui." 
 He did not tremble for his own fate, and never perhaps did 
 he show more true greatness than at the time when he saw 
 himself, in the brilliancy of his glory, hurled to the very 
 depth of the abyss. He preserved in his fetters and while 
 
 ^ Josephine de Beauharnais, first wife of Napoleon the First ; 
 Maria- Louise, Archduchess of Austria, was his second wife. 
 ^ Pr&Doyais ; future, pr^ivoirai. 
 
4fi 
 
 LAZ.VUK HOC I IE. 
 
 th 
 
 I' i 
 
 ii> 
 
 fi ^ 
 
 iih 
 
 aAvaitinj^ his oxociitioTi all i\w, fiVMnloTn of his mind, a per- 
 f(?ot cciuaniniify, jukI alv/ay^ t'lw,' Kainc (h^votioii to his 
 oountry ami to the rauso he Ijad sorvcd so well. He looked 
 with devotion on tlie <^v(Mit principles in tlie name of which 
 thi) Revolution had heen inaugurated, and from which she 
 had so widely sti'ayed ; lie had made a vow to worship 
 thcnn in tlie dcppest recesses of his heart; and as the faithful 
 do not hold tlicir cluirch responsible for the crimes often 
 committed in its nam(^ by mistaken or barbarous priests, so 
 hfoehe always I'efused to impute to the immortal principles 
 of 1789, to the ^reat ideas from which the lle\olution had 
 sprung, th(! crimes of tlm monsters who had so unworthily 
 sul)verted tliem, and who disi^raced them whilst invoking 
 them. The Revolution had borne him when <|uite young 
 in her pov/erful arms ; she liad done everything for him ; 
 she was his mother, and he on his side was always a grate- 
 ful son ; he would only nuiu^mber her kindnesses, and, as a 
 resigned victim, he n^fused to give her his curse when she 
 was a))out to sacrifi(;e him. He tried to impart to his 
 young wife tln^ tirmness of his own heart. '^' Do not allow 
 thyself to be cast down,'" he said to her ; ''be my worthy 
 spouse by courage^ : thou owest this to my love, to thy 
 family, to thy country ; it is not she who is ungrateful." 
 Tlie pr"obal)ility of an approaching death atFected neither 
 his patriotism nor his republican virtue, but awakened the 
 tenderest affections of his heart. He wrote to his wife : 
 *' Tell those of my friends who have remained faithful to 
 me how precious their atfection is to me ; tell them, above 
 all, that in the midst of my woes my love for my Republic 
 does not belie itself, and that if my life be useful, I am 
 quite ready to sacrifice it."' In the memoir which he drew 
 up, and in which he gave an account of his military opera- 
 tions on the Rhine, Hoche made a thorough investigation 
 of his conscience ; he examined himself ; he sought to know 
 in what particular he might have been guilty, and the 
 motives of his arrest. " With the exception of the good 
 pleasure of the committee," wrote he, " my memory cannot 
 furni:.h me any other than my refusal to confer with the 
 
l-:Xi:(?UTI()N OF TIIOlUAf^. 
 
 '17 
 
 dcputipf? vvhrn I thouj^lit it was urgmit to act. fs (hat 
 insuborclination? Wliatovor it may mst mo, J rIimH remain 
 convince(1 of tho sayiii/; of Eiijriu', that ovrry ^'^riicral who 
 con vokos a council of war has no clcsiro to act. In pre- 
 sence of tlio opportunity wliicli it was necessary to ^'rasp, I 
 never feared to enj^aj^o my responsi))ility. 1 always thouijfht 
 that the most terrihh^ one was to render an account some 
 day to the Hupreme l^einuf for the human Mood which mi<^ht 
 have been uselessly shed, and I must say that that and that 
 alone lias always made me shudder." 
 
 The thought of a Just and merciful Ood sustained him . 
 he hoped in His providence, in His kindness. He wrote to 
 his brother-in-law: " A just (lod has protected nn^ until 
 now ; I rely altogether on Him ; the thought of a crime has 
 never entered into my heart." And to his wife : '' He who 
 presides over everything will sustain my courage. 
 All our miseries will soon be at an end. Tt is in the bosom 
 of the Eternal One that we shall meet again ; may His jus- 
 tice at least reunite us there." A new and poignant grief 
 was yet reserved for him. A young man about twenty 
 years of age, called Thoiras, an adjutant in the regiment of 
 his brother-in-law and a friend of his family, had been ar- 
 rested at Thionville, where Adelaide had n^mained near her 
 captive father, lavishing on him her cares, whilst tremV)ling 
 for his life and that of her' husband. Thoiras, in the eyes 
 of the government, was suspecu'd on account of his devo- 
 tion to this unfortunate family, and guilty of open enthu- 
 siastic admiration for his general. He was sent to Paris, 
 and confijied with him in the same prison in the Concier- 
 gerie. Hoche found a l)itter yet sweet pleasure in con- 
 versing with this young man of the objects so dear to his 
 heart ; he wrote to his wife : " Thoiras has given me news 
 of thee; each one of his w^ords filled my soul with emotion," 
 and he hoped that his young friend would find protection 
 from the fury of the tyrants on account of his age and the 
 obscurity of his position. 
 
 Vain hope ! On the fourth day, in the morning, the 
 door-keeper, the daily purveyor of the scaffold, entered the 
 
48 
 
 LAZARR nociu:. 
 
 li \ 
 
 ml 
 
 1 1 
 
 ■ ■A 
 
 prison and rojul aloud, aocordiii,'; to his custom, tlio list 
 of tJK'! prisounrs suuiiiioikkI on that day Ix^foro tho rc^volu- 
 tionary tribunal. !!oclu> Inward th(^ nanuis of several with 
 whom Ik; was intimate, and In; (;.\pi3ct(;d his turn, wliich did 
 not come. The last name inscribed on the; fatal list was 
 that of Thoiras. llochc grew pale on hearing this name, 
 more, without doubt, than he would have done if he had 
 h(Mxrd Ins own, .and he remained silent, his soul divided be- 
 tween sond)re wrath and liopeless pity. TJioiras did not 
 change; countenance ; he pulled out liis watch, and giving it 
 to Hoche, he begged of him to keep it for ever,^' and asked 
 in excliange a llower from a bouquet of roses which lie 
 h{;ld in his liand, and wliich he liad received that very 
 morning from a person wlio remained unknown. All the 
 other prisoners called before the tribunal with Thoiras 
 begged for one also ; all were condemned, and ascended the 
 steps of the scaffold wearing a rose in the button-hole. 
 Thus they died in those days, with a careless firmness and 
 a disdain for life energetically expressed by Hoche when, in 
 a parting letter addressed to his wife, he said : " Death is 
 no lonirer xn evil when life has ceased to be a blessing." 
 
 It is said, however, that after the death of Thoiras, a 
 notable change took place in the manners of Hoche in the 
 Conciergerie. and in his language with his jailers* and his 
 judges, and that to a cold indifference succeeded- an anger, 
 a haughty rage, whose scornful and irritable expression he 
 could no longer contain. What would he have thought had 
 he known that a day would come when that frightful regime 
 — which had swallowed up so many illustrious defenders of 
 the Revolution and of the fatherland, which was about to 
 
 * The watch of Thoiras is to-day in the possession of the daughter 
 of Hoche, the Countess of Roys, and it still marks the hour at which 
 it stopped on the day when this young officer was torn from the 
 arms of his general. 
 
 1 OeSUers ; g soft. 
 
 ^ SuccAdi. Note difference between succider and Hussir ; suc- 
 ckder^ to follow, to come in succession ; rSussir, to succeed in an 
 undertaking. 
 
 h\ 
 
THE KEIUN OF TEUHUU. 
 
 49 
 
 tlio list 
 rovolu- 
 •al with 
 lioh did 
 ist was 
 > name, 
 lie had 
 Jed be- 
 Jid not 
 vhn^ it 
 I asked 
 lich he 
 it very 
 Vll the 
 ^hoiras 
 led the 
 n-hole. 
 ss and 
 len, in 
 ath is 
 
 'as, a 
 in the 
 id his 
 mger, 
 >n he 
 had 
 \gime. 
 Irs of 
 It to 
 
 'hter 
 
 [hich 
 
 the 
 
 \8flC- 
 
 an 
 
 strike him also, and which had sown for a century perhaps, 
 in the heart of numherh-ss families, hatred and horror for 
 the Republic — would b(^ extolhid as having saved it. With 
 what stupefaction, with what grief and indignation, his 
 magnanimous soul would have been seized, if he had been 
 told that such a doctrine would become a precedent and bo 
 popular in France. Ah ! even as a noble and lovable 
 victim who had preceded him in his cell, the brave ' Mad- 
 ame Roland — who during the day collected her remaining 
 strength to exhort her companions in misfortune, and who 
 during the long hours of night wept bitterly in silence* — 
 he also would have shed evertlowing tears ; he would have 
 wept over the Republic ; he would have despaired of a 
 generation capable of opening its ears and its heart to such 
 monstrous sophistry, t 
 
 ^ Hero8 ; h aspirated, but silent in hAro'hH and Iierolque. 
 i * The woman who waited on her said to me one day : "In your 
 
 presence she collects all her strength, l>ut in her room she remains 
 sometimes three hours weeping, leaning on her window. " 
 
 t A patriot, the illustrious Daunou, a prisoner himself at this 
 epoch, has given a frightful and faithful picture of the prisons 
 during the Reign of Terror, and of the frightful lot to which the 
 two hundred thousand prisoners of the Committee of Public Safety 
 were reduced in France. "This committee," he said in conclusion, 
 *' once invested with supreme authority, slaughtered in the terrified 
 city of Paris more than two thousand victims in four months. A 
 mode of execution invented to lessen suffering, became in its dicta- 
 torial hands a means of rapid extermination ; people were almost 
 tempted to regret the old mode of torture, because it seemed that it 
 would have been less expeditious. In the height of their fury, the 
 murderous sword of the decemvirs descended alike upon all sexes, 
 all fortunes, all opinions ; they directed it by choice on all distin- 
 guished talent, on all energetic dispositions ; they cut down as much 
 as they could the flowers and hope of the nation, . . . I sa<v 
 snatched from my side unfortunates who were called summarily 
 before the tribunal, dragged three hours afterwards to meet their 
 doom with forty accomplices whom they had never seen. Every prison 
 was CO provide a previously settled number of victims. Blood was at 
 a premium, and it only sufficed for the judges to have the time, not 
 to cross-question but to insult each one of the prescribed victims. 
 . . . . Let us say, however, that in this heartrending' spectacle 
 one thing at least consoled and ennobled humanity ; that was, the 
 4 
 
50 
 
 LA.KARB HOCHE. 
 
 B i' 
 
 I' i 
 
 |y I 
 
 
 1 1'' 
 
 ..if 
 
 The hour of deliverance was at hand; discord reined 
 amors: the terrorists. Robespierre, a few days after having, 
 at the acme of his power, presided at the fete consecrated 
 to the Supreme Being, had decreed through the terrified 
 Convention, the prairial law, more sanguinary than all the 
 others, suppressing a^ useless in most cases, before the 
 revolutionary tribunal, all witnesses and defenders, holding 
 the sword suspended over the entire Convention, and taking 
 away from the latter the right to denounce or to protect its 
 own members, the lives of whom were entirely at the mercy 
 of the implacable Committees of Public and General Safety.* 
 All then felt in a state of peril. Most of the members of 
 the committees trembled before the much dreaded triumvi- 
 rate of Robespierre, Couthonand Saint Just.f They under- 
 stood that the latter, after having satiated their fury on 
 their enemies in the Convention, would sacrifice them in 
 their turn should they not be prevented, and they felt they 
 must either kill them or perish. Collot d'Herbois, Billaud- 
 Varennes, Barrere, Cambon, members of the Committee of 
 Public Safety, leagued themselves with their colleagues of 
 the Convention, those most in danger, Tallien, Amar, Bour- 
 don de rOiso, Lecointre, and many others. Tallien was the 
 soul and the arm of this conspiracy, which ended by the 
 
 courage of tlie victiiiia. Such injustice, such atrocity, called forth in 
 all its brightness the inherent pride of man ; a magnanimous devo- 
 tion assumed forms suitable to age, to sex and to character. Inno- 
 cence pci. 3hed M'-ith mild sensibility or with calm serenity, and virtue 
 sank with pride in the abyss of carnage. M. Daunou never thought 
 that such a frightful rt^gime could ever have resulted in the preserva- 
 tion of the territory, or rendered any service whatever to the country. 
 He was, on the contrary, deeply convinced that if this regime of 
 blood had continued, the nation was hastening to utter ruin." — 
 Taillandier, Biographical Document on Daunou. 
 
 * On hearing the reading of this proposed law, a deputy named 
 Ruamps dared to say aloud, ** If this becomes law, all that I'emains 
 for us to do is to blow out our brains. " 
 
 t These formed, in the body of the Committee of Public Safety, a 
 triumvirate which for a long time had arrogated all power to 
 itself, and wheivoe emanated in a direct manner the most atrocious 
 resolutions. 
 
OVERTHROW OP ROBESPIERRE. 
 
 M 
 
 ty. a 
 ►r to 
 bious 
 
 defeat of the triumvirs and their most sanguinary acolytes 
 on the memorable day of the 9th tliermidor. 
 
 But before that day of freedom — the eve of it, in fact — 
 the scaffold was in its usual appointed place and the knife was 
 doing its work. Several members of the most illustrious 
 families of France went to meet their doom, and together 
 with them the two Trudaine, models of fraternal affection, 
 and Andre Chc^nier, the immortal writer of "La Jeune Cap- 
 tive," cut down in all the brilliancy of his genius, and his 
 friend Roucher, author of the poem of the " Mois," and 
 who, at the point of death, sent his portrait to his children 
 with these lines : 
 
 "Wonder not, my darlings, so precious to mine eyes, 
 At the sad air in the portrait which already feels your cries, 
 For when the master artist limned those features pale yet true, 
 I saw piepared the scaffold ; 'twas then I thought of you." 
 
 Hoche saw them ascend the fatal cart ; already the storm 
 of the thermidorean ^ re-action was at its height ; a few 
 hours later they would have been saved, but they returned 
 no more ; they were, in Paris, the last and the much lament- 
 ed victims of this era of blood-i. 
 
 The next day a widely spwd murmur, mingled with 
 imprecations and cries of joy, resounded around the Concier- 
 gerie ; these cries announced the victory of the conspirators 
 and the downfall of the tyrants. Soon the gates of the Con- 
 ciergerie were opened. Robespierre, and with him Couthoii, 
 Saint Just and their chief adherents, entered . loaded with 
 chains ; all were about to occupy those same cells which they 
 had filled with innocent people. Saint Just, in the prison, 
 met Hoche face to face ; the latter only avenged himself on 
 his fallen enemy by silence. 
 
 The Montagnards, to save their own heads, had over- 
 throM'n Robespierre ; they had arrested the course of the 
 Reign of Terror for a moment, but they had not over- 
 thrown it, and they tried at first to suppoit it against the 
 
 ^ 9th thennidor, year two — i7th of Julv, 1794 ; dat3 when Robes* 
 pierre was arrested and beheaded on the following day. Ther- 
 midor ; heat, or summer. 
 
52 
 
 LAZAKE HOCUE. 
 
 y: 
 
 uplifted wave of public horror. They could not succeed in 
 this ; the prisons, however, only opened their doors at first 
 to those among the prisoners whom the Convention ordered 
 to be liberated, at the request, and in some manner on the 
 responsibility, of the deputies. Hoche was of the number ; 
 the deputy Lacoste, a witness of his exploits at Wissemburg, 
 caused him to be set free. Hoche was liberated on the 17th 
 thermidor, year two, poor, and in such destitution that he 
 was unable to pay his fare or to take a conveyance to go 
 and meet his wife at Thionville. His first care had been to 
 write to his friend lacoste and to his wife, two letters in 
 which his grateful, passionate though stem character is well 
 portrayed. He said to the first : " I cannot complain of 
 my misfortunes since they have taught me to know what a 
 friend I had in thee, thou, my liberator ! " He wrote to his 
 wife : '* I am free, let us thank Heaven for it ! I am going 
 to meet you on foot, as becomes a Republican." 
 
 Twelve days later (29th thermidor) Hoche obtained a com- 
 mand : he was ordered to quell in the west the rebellion 
 of the Chouans ; and the same Committee of Public Safety 
 which three months before had unanimously declared Hoche 
 to be a traitor to his count%rf gave him now a mission to 
 defend it, and named him general in-chief of the Army of 
 the Coasts of Cherbourg. 
 
 ' 
 
 III:! 
 
 ^j.f'i :■ 
 
 I ' 
 
 |C 
 
 . -i'- » ■■'. 
 
SECOND PART. 
 
 I. 
 
 VENDEAN WAR. — CHOUANISM. 
 
 The insurrection of the Vendee had reached Anjou, 
 Maine, and a great part of Brittany. These trackless, 
 wooded regions, as yet foreign to arts and commerce, had 
 preserved their old customs. In the districts which the 
 nobility had not abandoned for the towns, the populations 
 remained submissive to their lords and to their priests. 
 Ancient loyalty had become deeply rooted with religious 
 faith ; and when they saw their priests interfered with in 
 their rites and in their properties by the decrees of the 
 Convention; the ancient ordejs^ both social and political, 
 overturned ; the massacres of September, the King dethroned 
 and tortured ; the clergy proscribed, the scaffold permanently 
 erected in Paris, common horror united still more closely 
 the aristocracy and the people. The Vend6.^ was the first 
 io rise and to produce heroes. Among its chiefs the ple- 
 beians and patricians were mixed confusedly. The most 
 noted were the teamster Cathelineau, the gamekeeper 
 Stofflet, the naval officer Charette, Bonchamps, Lescure, 
 d'Elbee, the Prince of Talmont, and Henri de La Roche- 
 jaquelein, justly called the Achilles of La Vendue. They 
 frequently defeated the regular troops and the battalions of 
 the National Guard which marched against them. Every- 
 thing gave way before the intrepid enthusiasm of the 
 Vendean peasants. Without arms, they seized the artil- 
 lery, rushing in on the cannons which mowed them down. 
 It was thus that several republican generals were conquered 
 in rotation. Masters of numerous places, the Vendeans 
 
54 
 
 LAZARE HOCHE. 
 
 * ; 
 
 
 Iff 
 
 formed three corps of ten to twelve thousand men each ; 
 the first, under Bonchamp, occupied the borders of the 
 Loire, and received the name of the Army of Anjou ; the 
 second, under d'Elb^e, in the centre, was called the Grand 
 Array ; the third formed the so-called Army of the Marshes, 
 under the redoubtable Charette, who, by his audacity, his 
 energy, his great activity, his indomitable perseverance, and 
 by the astonishing fecundity of his resources and strata- 
 gems of war, was the greatest partisan chief which France 
 ever saw. 
 
 A council of operations was established, and the chief 
 command was given to Cathelineau, who perished at the 
 attack of Nantes, after which the Vendeans, driven beyond 
 the Loire, defeated in succession the republican Generals 
 Biron, Rossignol and Canclaux. At last, seventeen thou- 
 sand men of the old garrison of Mayence, reputed to be the 
 elite of the army, were sent into La Vendue ; Kl^ber was 
 in command. They were at first conquered by the Ven- 
 deans, but the latter experienced several defeats at Chatillon 
 and at ChoUet, and their principal chiefs, Lescure, Bon- 
 champ and d'Elb^e, received mortal wounds in these bloody 
 contests. 
 
 The insurgents then communicated with England to re- 
 ceive some assistance from her. They wished to obtain 
 possession of a port in the English Channel, and the great 
 Vendean army, eighty thousand men strong, marched on 
 Granville. Repelled before that place for want of artillery, 
 put to rout at Mans, it was almost annihilated in trying 
 to pass the Loire at Savenay. The Vendee was thus de- 
 feated for the first time in December, 1793. Its popula- 
 tion, overwhelmed, decimated, and deprived of almost all 
 its chiefs, killed in battle, seemed disposed to surrender, 
 when a frightful system of extermination was introduced 
 against it, and made it find new strength in its despair. 
 The promoter of this system was the republican General 
 Thurreau, who surrounded the Vendee with sixteen in- 
 trenched camps. By his orders twelve flying columns, 
 known under the name of " infernal columns," scoured the 
 
 
VENDEAN WAB. 
 
 56 
 
 re- 
 
 >r. 
 
 , 
 
 country in every direction, putting the land on all sides 
 mercilessly to fire and sword, scattering everywhere devas- 
 tation and death. They thus reanimated the insurrection, 
 which was almost at an end ; the exasperated inhabitants 
 flew again to arms in 1794, and formed again two redoubt- 
 able armies under their last surviving chiefs, Charette and 
 Stofflet. 
 
 The insurrection gained Brittany, which in its turn 
 revolted. But the war in this country did not assume the 
 same character as in the Vendue, where the parties had 
 struggled in large masses, and where sanguinary battles had 
 been fought. In Brittany the insurgents waged against the 
 Republicans a party war, a war of surprises, of ambuscades, 
 carrying away their posts, falling unawares on their detach- 
 ments, and firiQg on them from behind the hedges, from 
 under cover, and from ravines in which they were hidden. 
 This war, generally called Chouanism, derived its name from 
 a family of smugglers of salt, or salt sellers (faux sauniers)^ 
 the chief of which was named Jean Cottereau. The latter, 
 usually of a sad and taciturn disposition like the owl, the 
 bird of night, had received for this reason the name of 
 Chouan. ' He was of rare intrepidity, cunning, energetic, 
 indefatigable. He had haunted the woods fully armed, with 
 his three sons, at the beginning of the great requisition* of 
 1792, and he was the first to give the signal of the war 
 which two years later assumed a redoubtable character, and 
 which carried desolation into Britt* -ly, Anjou, Maine, and 
 a part of Lower Normandy. A man gifted with great 
 energy, and as intelligent as clever, the Count Joseph de 
 Puisaye, had from its inception fomented the insurrection 
 in Brittany. An old deputy of the nobility of the Perch 
 in the Constituent Assembly, he first embraced with zeal 
 the principles of the Revolution, and later, like many others. 
 
 s 
 
 o 
 
 1 De Balzac says that this name was adopted by this party from 
 the call which they used resembling the cry of the screech-owl. 
 
 * Demand for men or provisions made by authority. It comprised 
 all young men from 1 8 to 25. 
 
56 
 
 LAZARE HOCHB. 
 
 
 ii 
 
 I 
 
 
 11 i 
 
 
 H 
 
 he had been re-enlisted to the royal cause through horror 
 for the regicide and for the Reign of Terror. Few men 
 have given evidence of more indefatigable activity, of as 
 much elasticity of mind, of a purpose as persevering as firm, 
 as fit to triumph over all obstacles ; he succeeded in estab- 
 lishing a most friendly intercourse with the Briton peasants, 
 and in exercising a great ascendancy over the insurgent 
 chiefs, the principal survivors of whom, after the great dis- 
 asters of the Yendeans at Mans and at Savenay, were, as 
 we have said before, Stofflet and Charette. 
 
 Puisaye, present everywhere, watching every thing, was the 
 true originator of Chouanism. He strongly advised the at- 
 tacking of the outlying posts, the defeat of the republican 
 detachments, the attack of the commissariat trains, and the 
 seizing of the public treasury, creating at a number of 
 points, with the assistance of the priests, means ol resist- 
 ance, and cleverly connecting all the plots of the insurrec- 
 tion. Arms and ammunition were wanting. Puisaye 
 repaired to London in the autumn' of 179 i to obtain the 
 assistance and the co-operation of the English Government, 
 and he received at the same time extraordinary powers from 
 Monsieur, Count of Provence, who, since the death of his 
 brother, assumed the title of Regent of the Kingdom.*" 
 Puisaye kept up from London an active correspondence 
 with the insurgent chiefs of La Vendue, of Brittany, and of 
 Anjou, and he had in the country of insurgents as principal 
 instruments, Desotteux, Baron of Cormatin, who took the 
 title of Major-General of the Catholic Armies of the West. 
 After the revolution of thermidor, three republican^ armies 
 occupied the departments where the insurrection had arisen : 
 the Army of the West, in Vendee, under General Canclaux, 
 that of Brest, in Brittany, and the Army of the Coasts of 
 Cherbourg, scattered in Maine and Lower Brittany. The 
 Atterwas the one of which Hoche, in September, 1794, had 
 
 * This prince, younger brother of Ijouis XVI., was called to the 
 throne in 1814, and reined under the title of Louis XVIII. 
 ^ Automne is masculine and feminine; the masculine is preferred. 
 
 i-'ii ^ i< < 
 
THE DEPARTMENTS OF THE WEST. 
 
 57 
 
 received command, and to which the Committee of Public 
 Safety added later that of the Army of Brest. These 
 armies together comprised no more than forty thousand 
 men, forces quite inadequate to cover one hundred and fifty 
 leagues of the coast, along an irregular country, divided by 
 trackless ravines, bristling with forests, and the popula- 
 tion of which, altogether hostile, was excited by religious 
 passion and by an unquenchable hatred for the revolution- 
 ary cause, the latter being inseparable in its eyes from an 
 execrable system of spoliation, of bloody tyranny and terror. 
 
 II. 
 
 HOCHE IN THE DEPARTMENTS OP THE WEST. — AMNESTY AND 
 
 FIRST PEACEFUL MEASURES. 
 
 Hoche found his Army of the Coasts of Cherbourg in a 
 state of thorough disorganization ; the soldiers, scattered in 
 detachments in the cities and the large country towns, had 
 lost the habit of discipline and drill ; they believed^ they 
 might do anything, lived by pillage, and scattered them- 
 selves in the revolted districts, much less to rally their 
 inhabitants for the republican government than to abandon 
 themselves to all excesses, and to perpetrate the most hate- 
 ful exactions. Hoche understood that his first duty on the 
 coasts of the ocean, as in the preceding year in the Vosges, 
 was to reorganise the army, to awaken in it the sentiment 
 of honour and duty, ar.d with that view to keep the soldiers 
 united around the fla;;, under the eyes and the hand of 
 their chiefs. He v/itl drew them, with this end in view, 
 from the cities and the hamlets where they were quartered, 
 obliging the latter to watch over their own safety, and he 
 established in the country districts a great number of 
 intrenched camps, containing two or three hundred men, 
 which he kept constantly at work. During the day he 
 made them work at their intrenchments, and in the night 
 he made them take sundry excursions to disperse all armed 
 
 ^ Croire d^ to believe in. 
 
d« 
 
 LAZARE HOCHE. 
 
 li'ii 
 
 ''i 
 
 ■ IK i 
 
 m ^ 
 
 w: 
 
 ^therings, to anticipate the surprises of the enemy, and to 
 pacify the country. He himself gave the example, taking 
 no rest, seeing to everything, often walking with his gun on 
 his shoulder through the forests and fields like a simple 
 grenadier, who might be at the head of the columns. He 
 insisted on the most rigorous discipline in these excursions 
 as well as in the camps, punishing marauding without 
 mercy, ordering the inoffensive or submissive inhabitants to 
 be well treated, sympathizing with their misery, and seeking 
 by every means to impart the noble sentiments of his soul 
 to that of his officers and of his soldiers. These sentiments 
 may all be found in the proclamation which he issued on 
 the 9th November, 1794 ; it sounds almost like the echo of 
 the language of men of old: **At the call of the fatherland," 
 said Hoche, " the free man runs to arms and hastens to 
 defend its homes, without seeking to imitate the slave of 
 tyranny, who is actuated by vile interest or by fear of chas- 
 tisement. . . . The Republican, who knows no master, 
 but who cherishes his duty, and whose severe discipline 
 consists in an ardent love for his country, observes it every- 
 where ; he protects the weak against the oppression of the 
 strong, causes their properties to be rigidly respected, 
 comforts the wretched, and loves them all. He avoids 
 voluptuousness and drunkenness — they degrade the soul; 
 he knows no other ornament than the preservation of his 
 arms and of his accoutrements ; he does not make a display 
 of virtues, but they are dear to him, he puts them in prac- 
 tice ; he is a conqueror, or he perishes honourably." 
 
 One feels in this manly and proud language the tore of 
 truth ; these are not conventional phrases adapted to the 
 circumstance, and which one forgets after having uttered 
 them ; the voice of the general, of the citizen, and of the 
 honest man — Hoche himself — is there. He exhorted still 
 better by example than by words, and practised on all 
 occasions this precept, of which he had made his device : 
 i?eA 7ion verba — "Actions, not words." In showing himself, 
 when needed, indulgent and severe ; always anxious for the 
 maintenance of discipline; always attentive to the material 
 
 1; 
 
CH0UANI8M. 
 
 b9 
 
 requirements of the armies, and still more to the sustaining 
 and the raising of their moral tone ; always simple in hi& 
 tastes and always dignified, he knew how to commai^d 
 more rapidly perhaps than any other general the enthusi- 
 astic respect and love of his soldiers, whose father he was; 
 and he said truly when he wrote with humour, at this epoch 
 of his life : " The Army of La Moselle was a tall girl, whom 
 I cherished like a mistress ; she is a darling child, which I 
 am bringing up as an offering to my country." 
 
 Hoche in the west was in the midst of Chouanism ; and 
 in that war of hedges and nocturnal surprises, waged by an 
 enemy for the most part invisible, he breathed only with dif- 
 ficulty. In this field, so gloomy and so restricted for a man 
 possessing such valour and such genius, powerfully as he 
 controlled himself before others, he poured forth all his feel- 
 ings in his intimate correspondence. In this he is seen to 
 start with joy at the report of the successes of his old Army 
 of Moselle, now the Army of Sambre and Meuse. " I wish 
 it to be remembered," he wrote, " that I also served in this." 
 On hearing of the great victory of Jourdan at Fleurus, he 
 wrote with refreshing modesty : "If I did not fear to be im- 
 portunate, I would address a few lines to Jourdan ; but 
 what right has the scholar at this juncture to disturb the 
 master? Continue, brave and old friends, to sustain the 
 reputation of your name ; when posterity will search in 
 your correspondence, perhaps one of my letters by chance^ 
 will bear witness to your friendship, and will bring me 
 forth from the ruin of oblivion." However, he neglected no 
 part of his duties in the rugged and restricted path in which 
 he was condemned * to act ; he devoted himself to it entirely, 
 and he displaj^d, in the ins'^ructions which he gave to his 
 officers, the qualities of the vi^laut captain and the talents 
 of the statesman. " Only place," he says, " at the head of 
 the columns men who are perfectly disciplined, able to show 
 themselves as brave as moderate, and to be mediators as 
 well as soldiers." He recommended them to acquire a per- 
 
 ^ Condamne; m silent, as well as in damner. 
 
60 
 
 LA^iARK HOOHK. 
 
 ^ 
 
 .* %}. 
 
 Wl '1 
 
 ;i. 
 
 H-ff 
 
 1^ 111 
 
 hi MM 
 
 feet knowledge of the ground, to confer with and to estahlish 
 intimate relations with the peaceful peasants, to reassure 
 them, to gain their affection by kind and sincere proceed- 
 ings, whilst struggling against the stratagems and cunning 
 of the Chouans. "Let us use," he says, "humanity, virtue, 
 probity, force, and cunning if need be, yet ever preserving 
 that dignity which is becoming to Republicans." He 
 preached tolerance to his soldiers, and he applauded the 
 decree of the Convention on the freedom of worship. Al- 
 though very undecided himself in his religious principles, 
 he respected religion ; he did not share, in this respect, the 
 indifference or the unl)elief of his contemporaries. He felt 
 deeply the happy effects of Christian convictions for guid- 
 ance in life, for consolation in suffering ; and in his friendly 
 correspondence is seen how much he rose above the sad 
 prejudices of his epoch.* Not only he ordered, through 
 policy, that the priests should be tolerated in the wretched 
 districts under his command, but he wished that the Repub- 
 lic should treat them as friends, and he saw no power able 
 to be substituted for the action of the clergy, if it limited 
 itself in employing it for the peace and the good of souls. 
 He ordered, therefore, that the priests should not be mo- 
 lested nor the peasants disturbed in their belief, and that 
 they should be assisted in their indigence. ** Many have 
 suffered," he wrote, " many are longing for a return to 
 agricultural life. A little assistance must be given to such 
 men to repair their farms." Thus we see that he knew 
 how to mingle opportunely indulgence with severity, and 
 show himself humane and just without relinquishing any- 
 thing of his vigilance and of his firmness. 
 
 * Hoche thus portrays himself in one of his letters : '* I shall al- 
 ways esteem a pious man. The moral of the Gospel is pure and 
 sweet, and whoever carries it into practice cannot be a bad man. 
 Far from me with all fanaticism but respect to religion ; it comforts 
 one in the troubles of life. I tolerate all beliefs ; mine is not yet set- 
 tled. For a long time I have searched for truth ; a day will come, no 
 doubt, when my reason, more enlightened, will make me adopt the 
 inspirations of my conscience. " — Tjetter of Hoche, communicated by 
 JiU family. 
 
AMNESTY AND PEACE. 
 
 61 
 
 So many eflbrts aiid such perseverance produced happy 
 results. A new spirit animated tlie army ; the popula- 
 tions ceased to have to complain of the soldiers of the 
 Republic ; a considerable portion of the inhabitants of this 
 desolate country aspired to repose ; the insurgent chiefs 
 themselves ordered their subordinates to refrain from all 
 violence, and, on the other hand, the National Convention, 
 for whom this fratricidal war had become the most serious 
 preoccupation, judged the moment opportune to grant a 
 general pardon to the Vendeans and to the Chouans who 
 had taken up arms against the governinent of tlie Republic; 
 it promulgated accordingly a decree of amnesty in the last 
 month of the year 1794, and about fifteen' deputies were 
 sent on a mission in the departments of the west* with 
 very extensive powers, to make sure of the execution of this 
 decree and to pacify the country. 
 
 Success seemed at first to answer the hopes of the Con- 
 vention ; the insurgents, obeying the order of their chiefs, 
 seemed to accept the amnesty in good faith, and many, 
 without doubt, were sincere in accepting it. Hoche at first 
 trusted to appearances, and thought the insurrection quelled. 
 He gave I imself to repose, and, taking advantage of his. 
 leisure moments to extend his knowledge, he sent for books, 
 applied himself to the reading of the ancients, and resumed 
 with vigour the study of Latin, the elements of which liad 
 been taught him in his childhood -^ by an old priest. A soul 
 tempered like his, brought up to worship the Republic and 
 with a horror for tyramiy, could not help being charmed by 
 Tacitus ; and he deemed himself happy to have succeeded, 
 after many efforts, in interpreting this author without the 
 assistance of translation. 
 
 His leisure moments were l)ut of short duration. The 
 
 ^ The termination ainc in such words as dizaine, quinzaine^ tungt-^ 
 aine, implies about ten, fifteen or twenty. Quinzaine as a noun 
 means foi*tnight. 
 
 * Guest ; t sounded also in VE^t, the east. 
 
 3 En/ance in this'sense must not be translated infancy ; infancy in 
 French is usually translated by has-age. 
 
<62 
 
 LAZARR HOCMB. 
 
 Apparent calm around him was due principally to the fatigue 
 of factions ; hatred was yet too keen, wounds too recent, 
 and sufferings too great ; finally, the remembrance of the 
 crimes of the revolutionary government yet kindled too 
 much indignation and horror to make it possible to obtain 
 a lasting peace. The greatest number of Vendean and 
 Chouan chiefs only sought to gain time, watching the fa- 
 vourable opportunity and the early arrival of the assistance 
 promised by the British Government. 
 
 III. 
 
 ■i'i 
 
 I 
 
 I ? 
 
 li 
 
 I!' i^^ 
 
 .1 I 
 
 H 
 
 it < 
 
 TREATIES OF LA JAUNAYE AND LA MABILAIS. — RENEWAL OF 
 
 HOSTILITIES. 
 
 Among the chiefs who were actively and secretly prepar- 
 ing a new uprising, with the co-operation of England, the 
 most influential, as also the most clever, was the Count 
 Joseph de Puisaye, who from London, where he had been 
 for six months, held in his hands all the threads' of the 
 web woven* by him with the most indefatigable persever- 
 ance in Brittany, in Anjou, in Maine, and in Lower 
 Normandy. He had succeeded in organizing in these 
 provinces fifty divisions of a thousand men each ; all 
 received the word of command from him, .nd only awaited 
 the signal to recommence a mortal struggle. 
 
 Puisaye limited himself just then to forbidding* the 
 taking up of arms, or any untimely manifestation which 
 might cause the Republicans to suspect before the time that 
 an approaching uprising was at hand ; and more loyal than 
 any other -chiefs, he refused to lend his assistance to the 
 negotiations of a treaty the clauses of which he might not 
 feel disposed to observe, and to a delusive peace fit only 
 
 ^ Sons, fits ; pronounce Jis, s fully sounded. Threads, Jils ; pron. 
 JUt I sounded. 
 
 * Ourdie, from ourdir. ' i 
 
 ' Note second per. of Ind. pres. vmis interdisez. 
 
A TREATY OP PEACE. 
 
 99 
 
 to excite the suspicion of the English Government, or to 
 render its assistance less efficacious. Cormatin was less 
 scrupulous. This man, by dint of intrigue, had succeeded 
 in gaining a little importance ; all means were good in his 
 opinion to lull the vigilance of the Republicans, and he 
 thought he could do nothing better than by treating with 
 them. A subordinate in everything to Puisaye, and having 
 acquired through him a certain amount of influence with 
 the principal Vendean and Chouan chiefs, he succeeded in 
 winning over the mind of Monsieur, Count of Provence, 
 who held in his position, as Regent of the Kingdom, a little 
 court at Verona, and corresponded in Paris with a royalist 
 agency composed of a few trusty followers. Cormatin suc- 
 ceeded in fascinating the members of the entmirnge of the 
 prince, and the most influential members of the royalist 
 agency ; he caused himself to be recognized by this agency 
 as the major general of the Catholic armies, and obtained 
 powers extensive, and independent of the authority of 
 Puisaye. He then proclaimed himself aloud authorized to 
 negotiate the terms of a serious peace with the republican 
 government. He interviewed the generals, Canclaux and 
 Hoche, and asked them for their permit to confer freely 
 with the insurgent chiefs to bring about their submission. 
 But Hoche, whose frank and upright character presented so 
 many contrasi-s with that of Cormatin, did not listen to him 
 without mistrust ; he preserved in his relations with him a 
 dignified and haughty reserve, and insisted that Cormatin 
 should be escorted by one of the chief officers of the repub- 
 lican army in his intercourse with the insurgents. He 
 appointed to this mission Humbert, a young general who 
 had a bright future before him, and who, like himself, owed 
 all his position to the Revolution, and one who united to an 
 upright heart a keen and far-seeing mind. 
 
 Humbert soon formed suspicions of the sincerity of Cor- 
 matin, and imparted them to Hoche, who insisted that in 
 treating with the Vendean insurgents, their disarming and 
 the guarantee of a durable submission should be obtained. 
 But the Convention and its numerous commissioners in the 
 
64 
 
 LAZARK HOCHE. 
 
 ill 
 
 1. 
 
 ^?:' 
 
 
 ' i 
 
 .1 
 
 'J] 
 
 west were anxious to see this wasting war brouglit to an end; 
 they placed blind confidence in the pledges of Connatin, and 
 withodt yielding to all the demands of the insurgent chiefs, 
 they neglected to be advised by prudence in treating with 
 them. They granted, with the liberty of worship, indemni- 
 ties for the devastations committed, the exemption of military 
 service for the yoking men of the present requisition in order 
 to populate the country districts anew, and the payment of 
 the bonds signod by the chiefs to the amount of two millions. 
 To these equitable conditions the deputies added a few others 
 which Hoche, not without good cause^ judged very danger- 
 ous. Not only did they leav^ the insurgents their arms, but 
 they consented to their forming a territorial guard, not very 
 large, it is true, but distributed ^ in the country districts in 
 the very heart of the insurrection, under the command of 
 the local authorities. 
 
 Such were the principal conditions of a first treaty which 
 was signed on the 17 th February, 1795, at the Chateau of 
 La Jaunaye, near Nantes, by the representatives in the 
 west, for the republican government on the one side, with 
 Cormatiii, Chtcrette, Sapinaud and their officers acting in 
 the name of the Vendean army. They submitted, recog- 
 nized the laws of the Republic, and a few days afterwards 
 Chare tte made with General Canclaux a formal entrance 
 into the city of Nantes, where he had a magnificent recep- 
 tion extended to him as a hopeful akid joyful pledge at the 
 termination of a war so disastrous. 
 
 Two months later, in April, a second peace, a fictitious 
 peace, was signed, through the agency of Cormatin, with the 
 principal Chouan chiefs of Brittany, at La Mabilais, be- 
 tween Rennes and La Prevalaye, general quarters of the 
 royalist army ; it was founded on nearly the same condi- 
 tions as the preceding treaty concluded •'or Ia Vendue at 
 La Jaunaye. Stofflet, directed by the Abb^ Bernier, was 
 stilJ struggling in Anjou. Seeing himself left sole com- 
 mander, beaten by the Republicans, almost alone and with- 
 
 ^ Jicpartir, to set out again ; ripartir^ to divide, is regular. 
 
 ♦■X 
 
A TREATY OP PEACE. 
 
 65 
 
 LS 
 
 ks 
 
 out resources, he surrendered in his turn to Saint-Florent, 
 and the first amnesty of Brittany and of La Vendue might 
 have been considered complete. 
 
 It had been brought about without the participation of 
 Hoche, who did not believe it would last. Cormatin and 
 the Chouan chiefs knew but too well his just suspicions, 
 and fearing the piercing look of the young General of the 
 Army of Brest, they had demanded that he should be ex- 
 cluded from the conference in which this deceitful peace 
 had l)een prepared. The deputies paid no attention to his 
 advice, and were, as we have seen, too rash in their trans- 
 actions with the Chouan chiefs. Hoche had foreseen the 
 ruinous consequences of their imprudent conduct. " You 
 have made a treaty with a few, not with the masses," and in 
 his notes are found, on the very day of the signing of the 
 treaty of la Mabilais, the following lines, remarkably ex- 
 pressive of his forebodings : *' During the conference of to- 
 day 1 pointed out to Gh^rin two flocks of crows, flying in 
 the air above la Mabilais. Soon they separated ; one of 
 them remained united, the other divided. My good old* 
 comrades, would you not have discovered there a significant 
 omen of what is to occur after this peace-making T The 
 situation of Hoche became then very painful. Peace, dic- 
 tated in some manner by the insurgents and by Cormatin, 
 deputy of the royalist agency in Brittany and in La Vendue, 
 gave to the party wishing to continue the insurrection and 
 the war an exaggerated trust in its own strength. . . . 
 *' There was not," Avrote then the Adjutant-General Savary, 
 " a single insurgent on V>oth sides of the Loire who did not 
 think but that he had treated the Republic very leniently."^ 
 Such presumption engendered contempt for the republican 
 authorities and for the forr^es of the government, and serious 
 excesses were committed in many places with that audacity 
 which the certainty of impunity imparts. 
 
 ^ Ancj^n was applied also in those days to one of the sections of 
 the Legislative bociy. 
 
 ' Fatre grdce d, to pardon ; donner le coup de grdce, give the finiaJi- 
 iBg stroke. 
 
()6 
 
 LAZARK HOCIIE. 
 
 
 ii ' 
 
 Sit 
 
 
 I ft 
 
 ■ ! 
 
 ••ti: 
 
 (■: 
 
 f 
 
 ■''j! 
 
 The numerous deputies in the west, most of them men 
 of but little standing, weak and vain, only agreed on the, 
 one point, to attribute to themselves the merit of having 
 delivered the Republic from an exterminating ' scourge, and 
 to palm themselves off as being the principal authors^ of 
 the peace. They were divided as to the plan of consoli- 
 dating it ; some saw the means of attaining this end by 
 rigorous measures ; others by new concessions. They acted 
 accordingly and each from his own standpoint, giving contrary 
 orders, and substituting everywhere their authority to that 
 of the generals ; disposing of the troops according to their 
 fancy ; incapable of organizing anything durable ; equally 
 powerless in contending with anarchy and in restraining 
 the rebellion. Already on all sides complaints arose against 
 the generals and the functionaries, unable^ to repress dis- 
 order and to prevent the violent and bold acts of a number of 
 insurgents who, in spite of the peace, traversed the land in 
 arms,* and often even penetrated into the large villages'* and 
 into the towns, to abandon themselves to odious cruelty 
 either on the municipal officers or on those men known to 
 be attached to the Repul)lic. 
 
 Hoche, whose energy was paralyzed by the deputies, who 
 tied his hands and disposed of his soldiers, w^as nevertheless 
 held accountable everywhere for the liarm which he could 
 not prevent; he saw himself <>u all sides a mark for unjust 
 attacks, and denounced by the deputies to the Committee 
 
 * Under pretext of ealniiug all iiiiiids still in a state ot ferment, 
 the chiefs ran througii the pai'isiies, pressing all men from sixteen to 
 forty years of ago into the service. The hour of mass was the ap- 
 pointed moment for these gatherings. The people wont to churcli 
 nilly armed. Reviews took place, th^ men wearing white oockadesi 
 and plumes, and shouting " Lcmt^ live the King."' 
 
 ^ Extcrmmateur : fern, exterminatricc. ,. ... 
 
 ^ Auteur ; no fem., therefore, mic fcmm*' aufeitr nuist be used. 
 
 ^ Horn is used sometimes without the preposition de : tout eat 
 perdu hors Vhonneur. 
 
 ■* Littre says that hounj is pron. hour, g silent ; tbe French Aca- 
 demy says hourk ; in the plural the s is not carried; ho^rgs etendvf 
 is hour Hendus. 
 
THE DEPUTIES AND THE WAR. 
 
 6? 
 
 of Public Safety as being guilty, when, on the contrary, he 
 kad so much against them of which to complain. The com- 
 mittee, judging of the situation from the erroneous reports 
 of most of the deputies in the west, and lulled into a dan- 
 gerous delusion as to the dispositions of all minds in Brit- 
 tany and in La Vendue, joyfully received their complaints 
 against Hoche, and addressed several despatches to him filled 
 with remonstrances and bitter' reproaches. Deeply hurt 
 and devoured with grief, Hoche replied nevertheless to the 
 committee in a calm and dignified tone : " The position of 
 a general whose army is scattered, in platoons of sixty, 
 eighty or a hundred^ men, over a space of four thousand 
 square leagues is not certainly an enviable one ; it is all the 
 more unenviable , though he redoubles every day his efforts 
 to serve his country, to be accused of weakness and neglect 
 by the very government to which he is devoted, whilst his 
 enemies accuse him aloud of too much severity in his con- 
 duct. I have not feared until this day to tell the truth ; 
 you may be convinced of this by the enemies I have made ; 
 I might reply to the latter ; but I shall not give to my 
 fatherland the sight of a struggle, advantageous to me it is 
 true, but scandalous for the Republic." This letter, to which 
 the committee did not reply, caused Hoche some days of 
 painful anxiety, the fact of which is revealed in his 
 friendly correspondence with General Le Veneur, his old 
 chief and frienc! : ''I am weary of being thus badgered. . . 
 I cannot remain any 'iger submissive to the caprice of 
 events. Hear what reproaches are made to me. Is it for 
 having spoken the truth 1 I shall always do so. Alas ! ^ 
 one year ago I was thrust into the depth of a damp cell for 
 its sake, but to no purpose. What matters it after all that 
 men should do me justice, if my conscience reproaches me 
 with nothing. Happy inhabitant of Morbihan, thou who 
 
 ^ Amer ; the r is sounded in siii^eular and plural. 
 
 > Cent, when multiplied by a number, takes the mark of the 
 plural, but not if used for an ordinal number; the year twelve 
 hundred, Pan douze cent, metming here centiime. 
 
 3 Hdas ; » folly soun(i«d. 
 
"f 
 
 s 
 
 «8 
 
 LAZARE HOCHK. 
 
 'li 
 
 « 
 
 ; j_ 
 
 ^1 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 i: 
 
 livest only now to worship thy God, I envy thy lot ; why 
 am I not in thy place !" Hoche heard then that General 
 Jourdan, the conqueror of Meurus, was, like himself, men- 
 aced with disgrace. At this he shuddered with indignation 
 and grief. '' What !" he says, " will intrigue always win 
 the day 1 Jourdan, the most worthy of our generals. Jour 
 dan is misunderstood." At this news discouragement seized 
 his soul ; he entertained the idea of handing in his resigna- 
 tion. He longed to live far from the intrigues, far from 
 men, in a retreat near his wife. But soon he rose equal to 
 the occasion ; he thought of his fatherland, and was himself 
 again. " I owe my whole being to her," he wrote to his 
 brother-in-law; "ah ! would that I could serve her as I love 
 her ! Ah ! ' whatever envy may do, it shall not overcome 
 us. We have as our defence the remembrance of those 
 great days in which our armies gained the victory. Our 
 judges are the soldiers of Fleurus and of Wissemburg. 
 Glory does not protect one from proscription, but it makes 
 the outlaw immortal, and to ascend the steps of the scaf- 
 fold is equivalent sometim3S to ascending those of the 
 Pantheon."^ 
 
 Hoche was not deprived of his command, but he lost the 
 generalship of the Coasts of Cherltourg, which was given 
 to General Aubert du Bayet. He nominally only com- 
 manded the Army of Brest ; but his colleagues Du Bayet 
 and Canclaux agreed in showing for his opinions a deference, 
 the result of the intimate feeling which they both had for 
 the merit of Hoche and for the superiority of his talents. 
 
 The situation of the republican armies in Brittany be- 
 came very critical ; but whilst* on one side the Chouans, 
 in the anticipation of a new insurrection, agreed to seize 
 
 * Note that parts of the verb allfr are often used as exclamations. 
 
 ^ PaiUMon ; national monument where the remains of the illus- 
 trious dead were pUced. The Church of Ht. Oenevifeve, in Paris, was 
 called the Pantheon at the beginning of the Revolution. It l>ears 
 this inscription : Aux grandM hatnmes, la patrie recormaisgante. 
 
 3 Tandis qm ; pe^uiatU que. These conj. are synonymous. Tan- 
 dis que has almost the meaning of tant que. 
 
 .»'' 
 
CORMATIK. 
 
 69 
 
 be- 
 tas, 
 )ize 
 
 lOIUi. 
 
 Ilua- 
 iwaa 
 krs 
 
 "an- 
 
 the provisions, and to make it a very diificult matter to 
 supply the troops of the government; on the other side 
 the most severe orders forbade to the latter forced requi- 
 sitions and pillage. Scarcity was felt ; the Chouans took 
 advantage of this to bribe the soldiers, who deserted in 
 large numbers. 
 
 Hoche redoubled his eftbrts and his vigilance, whilst 
 limiting himself strictly to his instructions ; he was able, 
 by the assistance of the priests, whom he treated with 
 much consideration and kindness, to organize on all points 
 a very active guard, and thus to prevent many disorders 
 by the rapidity of his actions. He acquired, at the same 
 time, every day the certainty of an approaching and gen- 
 eral uprising. He nevertheless restrained his feelings ; 
 resolved not to give any hold to his adversaries, and to ab- 
 stain, with regard to the Chouans, from any hostile act until 
 he had in his power the irrefutable proof of their aggres- 
 sive projects. He never lost sight of Cormatin, the inde- 
 fatigable instrument of the royalist agency ; he believed 
 him as false as he was audacious, and he had, on more than 
 one occasion, replied by contempt to his unbearable boast- 
 ing. Cormatin, humiliated, avenged himself in denouncing 
 Hoche to the deputies, whom he intimidated, and placed 
 himself as an arbiter of peace and war. " I have to make 
 but a -sign," he said, " and all Brittany is mine, and in 
 
 arms. 
 
 Hoche obtained at last the written and ardently wished 
 for proof of the danger which he had foreseen, and of the 
 flagrant conspiracy of several of the chiefs in rebellion 
 against the Republic. A letter, addressed to the Baron of 
 Solilhac and to two other Chouan chiefs, was intercepted ; 
 it bore as a signature the name of Cormatin and that of 
 Bois-Hardi, who had acquired in the civil war a great repu- 
 taticn for valour and audacity. It revealed their ulterior 
 projects, and announced the approaching resuming of hos- 
 tilities against the Republic. No doubt was any longer 
 possible. Hoche sent this letter to the Committee of Public 
 Safety, and obtained from a few of the deputies the order 
 
70 
 
 LAZARK HOOHS. 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 ■I'i 
 
 1 1 
 
 ii 
 
 to arrest Cormatin and Boi. Rardi, by whom the letter wag 
 signed, as well as the three chiefs to whom it was addressed 
 
 Instructed by Hoche, the committee prescribed to lead 
 back the misguided men in the right path ; to protect the 
 peaceful men, and co carry out the amnesty with regard 
 to the royalist chiefs who had submitted in good faith ; but 
 it ordered at the same time the merciless pursuit of the 
 chiefs who might have violated it, and to disarm the com- 
 munes. The committee gave at the same time to Hoche 
 the necessary authority to act and to dispose alone of the 
 troops placed under his command. 
 
 Cormatin and Solilhac were arrested ; Bois-Hardi and the 
 two other chiefs who were compromised resisted, and 
 perished bravely fighting for their lives. The Chouans saw 
 that the Republic would no longer be satisfied with a mock 
 peace. Thus warned, they resumed their arms and held 
 themselves ready for battle ; the approaching arrival of an 
 English squadron, bringing the assistance so long waited 
 for, was announced, and already, on several points in Mor- 
 bihan specially, parties had met and many bloody engage- 
 ments had taken place. ' 
 
 At last, free to act and master of his movements, Hoche 
 announced the resuming of hostilities to the army in his 
 proclamation. " Brave comrades," he said, "your courage is 
 no longer fettered ; you may henceforth fight against those 
 of your enemies who have insulted your long forbearance 
 and repelled the benefits of national clemency. . . . March 
 with your accustomed valour on the gathering of rebels ; 
 disperse them, disarm them, but spare blood, it has already 
 flowed too freely. ... A scrupulous observer of the acts 
 of peace, I shall welcome with humanity and fraternity 
 those who will submit in good faith. . . I shall pursue 
 the perjured ones without relaxation until they lay down 
 their arms ; I shall especially attack the chiefs of the rebels ; 
 they will be struck down without mercy." 
 
 ^ Note well that there is no agreement of the past part, here, 9s 
 the s is an indirect regimen. 
 
QUIBKROIi, 
 
 t 4 
 
 This was the signal of a new war ; flying columns went 
 through the country in all directioils, and rushed on the 
 armed gatherings, which they dispersed ; hut others were 
 rising everywhere, and in a few days Brittany was under 
 arms ; the Ciiouans Hocked round the standard of their 
 chiefs ; they pressed on in large bodies towards the coasts of 
 Morbihan ; and soon the English squadron, bearing several 
 regiments of refugees and powerful assistance in the shape 
 of arms and ammunition, cast anchor opposite the Breton 
 coast in the Bay of Quiberon. 
 
 rv. 
 
 )e 
 1 
 
 y 
 
 e 
 n 
 
 QUIBEKON. 
 
 The Count of Puisaye had at last persuaded the British 
 Government to arm a formidable expedition to try and 
 effect a landing, and to second the efforts of the Chouans 
 on the coasts of Brittany. Several regiments of refugees 
 from the Army of Oond6, after the consecutive defeats of 
 the coalition on the continent, had already passed, since the 
 preceding campaign, into the service of England. The 
 English Goverinnent formed five' regular corps of them 
 and several staffs of other regiments, intended to be com- 
 pleted in Brittany with the assistance of the Chouans. The 
 five corps formed were: 1st, the Regiment d'Hervilly, or 
 Royal-Louis, the colonel of which was Count d'Hervilly, 
 destined to a superior command ; 2nd, the Marine Legion, 
 commanded by Count Hector, late commodore, and almost 
 entirely composed of refugee officers of the old royal navy ; 
 3rd, the Legion of du Drenay, under the orders of the Mar- 
 quis of that name ; 4th, the Regiment of Loyal Emigrant or 
 of La Chatre ; 5th, and lastly, a regiment of artillery, com- 
 manded by M. de la Rotalie, and composed almost entirely 
 of the officers and subaltern officers of that body which had 
 defended Toulon against the Convention. The principal 
 chiefs of this small army of about five thousand men were 
 
 ^ Cinq : q silent here. 
 
72 
 
 LAZAR£ HOCHE. 
 
 m 
 
 the Counts of Puisaye, d'Hervilly, De Vauban, Dubois, 
 Berthelot, and the Chevalier de Tintcniac ; the Bishop of 
 Dol, with a number of missionary priests, accompanied the 
 expedition. This first division of refugees wore the white 
 cockade, in order to retain the national character of their 
 enterprise. These regiments and these staffs were for- 
 warded alone, and at first with rather important materials 
 in arms and in ammunition. 
 
 This first convoy was to be promptly followed by another, 
 carrying the residue of several other regiments of refugees 
 assembled in Hanover, to be transported into Brittany. 
 These troops, cruelly tried and decimated, were the remains 
 of the regiments of B^on, of Rohan, of Perigord, and of 
 8alm ; they formed, under the command of the young Count 
 of Sombreuil, a total of about fifteen hundred men. They 
 sailed down the Elba, were transpoi ted on a British fleet to 
 Portsmouth, and from there sent on toQuiberon. In short, 
 when the two first expeditions had succeeded in landing, if 
 Brittany rebelled, as Puisaye had said, and if he could take 
 possession of an important position on the coast, a new expe- 
 dition, formed of an English army, considerable materials, 
 together with a French prince, the Count d'Artois, would 
 at once put to sea. 
 
 The first fault was to have divided the enterprise into 
 three expeditions without appointing them to act simul- 
 taneously ; it was another error not to have placed the 
 prince at the head of the first ; a third fault, and one which 
 had fatal consequences, to have divided the command be- 
 tween the Count of Puisaye, whose spirit of adventure and 
 rashness was dreaded by the British Government, and the 
 Count d'Hervilly, commander of the first regiment of refu- 
 gees, a methodical man, strict • observer of the rules of the 
 art of war, much more fit to command a regular army in 
 battle than a body of volunteers in an invasion, where suc- 
 cess often depends on the rapidity of the movements and 
 the audacity of the attack. 
 
 ^ ^'^tricf ; t iully »o\\nded. 
 
 
 l\ 
 
LANDING AT <2UIBER0N. 
 
 73 
 
 Puisaye insisted justly on landing whilst the coast was 
 but feebly guarded, and in marching onward rapidly, an- 
 Tiexing on its way all the armed bands of Chouans who 
 were scattered over the country, and hastening to draft 
 them into the service. He intended, in fact, to seize at 
 once an important town on the coast, and there proclaim 
 Louis XVII. in announcing the approaching arrival of a 
 French prince. Thus conducted, the enterprise had real 
 chances of success in the present state in which all minds 
 were in France, and at the strongest period of therm idorian 
 reaction against the terrorists and the Convention. But 
 the prince, who could have rallied all the factions of the 
 royalist party, did not appear ; the quarrels among the 
 chiefs, their long delays in landing, caused precious mo- 
 ments to be lost. At last the advice of Puisaye won 
 the day. Commodore Warren decided on landing. It 
 took place on the 27th June, 1795, in the Bay of Quiberon, 
 formed on the one side by the coast of Brittany, on the 
 other by a peninsula of about two leagues long, and the 
 width of which varies without being more than three kilo- 
 metres. This is the famous peninsula of Quiberon, joined 
 to the coast of Brittany by a narrow strip of sand about 
 a league in length, named La Falaise. Fort Penthievre, 
 occupied by seven hundred Republicans, and constructed 
 in the centre of the peninsula, defended the approaches 
 of the latter from the continent. The expedition landed at 
 the end of the bay, at the village of Carnac. At the same 
 moment bands of Chouans ran up, conducted by their 
 chiefs, Dubois, d'A l^gre, Mercier, and George Cadoudal ; 
 they routed on th( coaist several republican detachments, 
 and reached the shore, numbering four or five thousand 
 men ; the peasants of the neighbourhood joined them at 
 the cry of ** Long live the King !" and Puisaye believed 
 in the approaching insurrection of the whole of Brittany. 
 But soon vexatious quarrels broke out between the Chouans 
 and the refugees. The latter, who had served in the regu- 
 lar armies of the continent, received in their ranks with 
 uneasiness and repugnance men without discipline, in rftgs^ 
 
74 
 
 LAZARE HOOHB. 
 
 Ill 
 
 rr 
 
 i). 
 
 lit 
 
 
 
 'i'l 
 
 deprived of all military inatniction, much more titled for* 
 guerillas than for service in bodies of chosen troops. The 
 antipathy soon became reciprocal ; brawls arose froui this ; 
 it became necessary to keep them apart, and so lose in 
 preparations, time which should have been employed in 
 marching against the foe. 
 
 Orders arrived at last from London to confer on Puisaye 
 alone the supreme command of the expedition. Puisaye 
 immediately formed clever preparations ; ordered a dashing 
 attack against Fort Penthi^vre, which surrendered almost 
 without opposition. Puisaye established himself there in 
 a strong position, and by solid works in stone he connected 
 the fortress with a rock sixty feet high, which formed a 
 side of the peninsula on the west towards the open sea, so 
 that it was entirely cut oflf, and every outlet was closed 
 from one shore to the other. At the same time all the 
 material of war brought by the English fleet was landed 
 by his orders, and clothes and arms distr'Nuted to th»^ 
 Ohouans. Ten thousand among them occupied the import 
 ant line from Lorient to Auray. The intention of Pui 
 saye was to take Brest, Lorient or St. Malo, where he had 
 certain intelligences, and to march afterwards on Rennes. 
 His emissaries went through Brittany with the rapidity of 
 lightning, exciting the populations, stimulating their prin 
 cipal chiefs, Charette, Stofflet, Sc^peaux, etc., and announc 
 ing to them the approaching arrival of a {)rince of the 
 royal blood of France, together with an English army. A 
 fortnight had passed since the first apparition of the squad 
 ron at Quiberon. Hoche hastened from Rennes with all 
 the forces at his disposal, and showed himself superior to 
 the perils of his situation. He had arrived at Auray with 
 only five thousand men, and the generals of the Armies of 
 Brest and of Cherbourg, hastening to answer his call on all 
 sides from the republican detachments, were marching to 
 join him. About the 6th of July, * ten or twelve thousand 
 men having joined his headquarters, he thought himself 
 
 l;-i' 
 
 1 JuUkt ; a Uquid. 
 
rVHTrHK OF SAINTK-HAKHK. 
 
 
 atrong enough to attack the Chouans, who, under the com 
 mand of Vauhan and of (feor;,f C-adoudal, to the number 
 of about ten thousand, occupied, facing the peninsula, the 
 whole line between Saint-Michel, Carnal, and Hainte- Barbe. 
 Hoche and Vauban had both of them understood the im- 
 portance of the post of Sainte-Harl>e, which kept tJie com 
 munications of the peninsula with the coast opened. It 
 was to this point that all the efforts of Hoche were di- 
 rected. Vauban on his side did his utmost to defend it, 
 calling to his assistance the refugees of the regiment of 
 d'Hervilly ; the latter made an unfortunate charge, after 
 which d'Hervilly ordered the retreat. A longer resistance 
 was impossible. Vauban, to avoid seeing his army cut in 
 two and driven back into the waves, caused his centre and 
 his right to fall back behind the left, which still occupied 
 Sainte-Barbe, which he abandone<l afterwards to cover the 
 retreat of the Chouans in the p^-ninsula. They entered 
 there with a multitude of women and children, and in the 
 most frightful confusion, sorely pressed by the republican 
 bayonets. They were all in danger of their lives, and were 
 saved this time by the gun-boats of the English squadron 
 which, standing broadside to La Falaise o!i both sides, sent 
 a perfect hailstorm of cannon balls on the Republicans and 
 arrested the pursuit. But already the refugees and the 
 Chouans found themselves cut off in the peninsula. Horhr 
 considered them his prisoners, and he established his head- 
 quarters at Sainte-Barbe. 
 
 Hoche, however, was himself in a very critical situation. 
 Behind him and around him all the countrv was hostile to 
 his anny and to his cause; it was necc^ssary to bring pro 
 visions from afar uruler escort ; the arrival of the troops 
 was slow, and the moi-e his troops increaserl in numbers the 
 greater were the difficulties of feeding th(Mn. The soldiers 
 scattered again in the rural districts to live as best they 
 could, and abandoned themselves to pillage and to all sorts 
 of crim( Hoche, exasperates!, ordered them back to their 
 camp, which he forl)ade them to leave. Driven then by 
 privations to nnirmur and to revolt, the soldiers mutinied ; 
 
76 
 
 LAZARE HOCHE. 
 
 
 ^t 
 
 ' gi' 
 
 n' 
 
 ' i '* f 
 
 I4J! 
 
 Hocht) hastened thither, and striding rapidly up to one of 
 the ringleaders, he struck him down with his sword and 
 thus c|uelled the sedition. He returned full of anxiety to 
 Sainte-Barbe, into the barn where he had established his 
 head(}uarters, and whence he observed with a Held glass 
 the movements of his own troops in the camp, when he 
 ic^ceived the visit of two deputies, lilad and Tallien, whom 
 the National Convention sent to the spot with extraordinary 
 f)owers ; they were accompanied by Rouget de I'lsle, author 
 of the celebrated hymn, ''La Marseillaise," and who has left 
 UH a minute and faithful relation of the bloody episode of 
 (.^uiberon. There he relates that tirst interview, in which 
 Hoche, far from accusing his soldiers, vividly described 
 their sufferings, and inspire<l in him at first tlte liveliest 
 sympathy, founded on respect and admii^tion. ''Whilst 
 he spoke," said Rouget de I'lsle, " I could not refrain from 
 admiring his imposing stature, his warlike air, although 
 gmceful and unostentatious ; his mild and proud features, 
 which wen^ rendered still more striking by a large scar, 
 which, without defacing them, completely crossed his fore- 
 jiead, ending near th*^ right eyebrow. I admired his heroic 
 simplicity, the pleasant harmony of his words and of his 
 manners, of the sound of his voice with his expressions ; 
 everything in him revealed a superior man." 
 
 The two deputies employed, to give provisions to the army, 
 the revolutionary means by which the Convention provided, 
 successfully it is true, for present exigencies; but in doing 
 so, they sowed in the hearts of the populations thus robbed 
 and terrified the imperishable seeds of hatred and rage. 
 The danger of the small republican army, isolated in the 
 midst of exasperated populations, was increased by this ; 
 i«,nd, on the other hand, Hoche saw in front of him a 
 numerous and very redoubtable enemy, occupying, in the 
 small peninsula where it was confined, under protection of 
 Fort Penthi^vre and the English squadron, a very strong 
 position, and one to all appearances impregnable. 
 
 Puisaye conceived a plan of attack which, had it been 
 well carried out, would have been followed by disastrous 
 
DKATH OF TINTKNIAO. 
 
 77 
 
 he 
 
 Ib; 
 a 
 Ihe 
 lof 
 
 m 
 
 IB. 
 
 conscquciuN'H for the n'publican army. He determined to 
 stMid seven thousand (Jhouans, divided into two divisions, 
 out of the peninsula, with the order to join the chiefs and 
 the populations in a stat*' of rebellion in the interior of the 
 country, to fall together on the rear of the camp of Sainte- 
 Barl>e, whilst he attacked tiie front. Four thousand Chouans, 
 commanded l>y the Cvount de Tint^niac, with Mercier and 
 All^grc under him, wt»re sent, and landed on the 1 1th of 
 July, in fishing smacks, at Sarzeau, near the mouth of the 
 Vilaine. A second division of three thousand men, under 
 two good chiefs, Jean-Je-an and Lantivy, landed a little 
 above Quimper. These two divisions were ordered to meet 
 oYi the I4th July at Bard, in the rear of the Republicans, to 
 make an attack simultaneously on the 16th, and to seize 
 the camp of Sainte-Barbe by making a rear attack. 
 
 The royalist agency of Paris, always hostile to Puisaye, 
 caused this cleverly laid plan to prove • abortive. This 
 agency, which would have liked to act independently of the 
 English, and to secure without their assistance a j)Osition 
 on the sea coast, after having failed in an attempt to carry 
 St. Malo, was now thinking of taking possession of Saint 
 Brieuc, and when it heard that Tint6niac and Lantivy had 
 landed safely v»ith their divisions, these two chiefs were 
 summoned by it, in the name of the King, to march on that 
 place and to reduce it. They yielded with regret to that 
 royal iYi junction, and two days later Tin teniae was killed 
 at the attack of the Chateau of Coetlogon. Puisaye, igno 
 rant of his fate, and confident in the execution of the orders 
 which he had given, caused Vauban to embark with twelve 
 hundred Chouans, and ordered him to make a false attack 
 on the left of the Republicans at Carnac, in endeavouring 
 to effect a junction on the rear of their camp with Tint^niac. 
 A single fusee was to be tired by Vauban if he succeeded 
 in landing, and a second in case he should be repelled and 
 not be able to keep his position on the shore. Vauban 
 landed and fired his first fusee, but soon the enemy came 
 in superior forces ; Vauban, obliged to re-eml)ark, fired his 
 second fusee, but this was not perceived. 
 
78 
 
 LAZAKE IIOCHE. 
 
 Ifi* 
 
 fl 
 
 J- 
 
 r I 
 
 I 
 
 
 ill 
 
 Puisaye was persuaded that he had succt'eded in securing 
 a position and in joining T^'nt^niac. He was wrong in not 
 making sure of this in a precise manner ; and he left the 
 peninsula before daybreak with all his regular troops, 
 advancing proudly in attacking columns to the number of 
 five thousand men. The regiment of Loyal Emigrant was 
 at the head ; on the right advanced the regiments of Royal 
 Marine and of du L>renay, supported by six hundred 
 Ohouans, under the orders of the Duke of L^vis ; the 
 regiment d'Hervilly, w^th a thousand Ohouans, formed the 
 left ; and the artillery, in which the Toulon ai-tillerymen 
 were incorporated, marched under Oolontil Rotalie. The 
 royal army thus advanced by >^ay of La Falaise, on tile 
 camp of Sainte- Barbe. 
 
 Puisaye, hearing the firing of musketry at a distance, 
 cried, **Jt is Tint/miac !" and he rushed on the republican 
 outposts, eomihanded by (leueral Humbert; the latter could 
 jiot withsti^ud this impetuous attack, and fell back on the 
 camp. 
 
 Hoche, perfectly calm, waited for the Royalists in his in- 
 trenclimcnts, which they attacked with fury. Uncovering 
 iheir redoul^table batteries on their flank, he over\vhei»iied 
 them und(^r a perfect shower of grape shot, of shell and 
 l>all. 'J'he massacre was frightful. The most heroic 
 efforts of the Royalists wen? powerless to contend with an 
 [li'my three times their number, commanded by a general 
 as clevor as ho was indefatigable. Whole ranks fell, cut 
 down by the Are ; most of the chiefs were killed or 
 wounded. No one, however, recoiled ; and the survivors 
 fought with unequalled desperation. However, the tiring of 
 musketry had ceased in the rear of the republican camp. 
 It was evident that Tinteniac and Lantivy were not at the 
 appointed place, and that the small royalist army was alone 
 engaged in the attack. Nothing like a conquest could be 
 expected. Puisaye ordered the retreat. This was efi*ected 
 with great confusion, under a terrible lire. Hoche pur- 
 sued the Royalists, and his cavalry spread itself over the 
 plain to drive them into the sea before they could reach 
 
DEFEAT OF THE ROYALISTS. 
 
 7ft 
 
 ip. 
 
 [he 
 
 pe 
 
 be 
 
 'y 
 
 Fort Penthi^vre. As a crowning pieoe of misfortune^ 
 d'Hervilly, who was making the greatest effort, was struck 
 fully in the breast by a musket shot,' which disabled him, 
 and the whole army would have perished if Admiral War- 
 ren had not ordered his gun-boats to advance. The latter 
 had received Vauban and his twelve hundred men, driven 
 from the shore where they had first landed. They rushed 
 on La Falaise, the entrance of which they protected ; they 
 thus covered the disastrous retreat of the royal army, and 
 kept the Republicans at bay, whilst the boats opened a 
 dreadful fire on them. They stopped, fell back in their 
 turn, and re-entered the camp. 
 
 The losses of the refugeer. were enormous, and in the 
 regiment of Royal Marine alone, out of seventy-four 
 officers, fifty-three had been killed or put hcyra de combat ; 
 but at the same time reinforcements were arriving. The 
 second division, that of Germany, formed of regiments in 
 the service of England, had entered on the 16th of July 
 in the roadstead of Quiberon at the very moment of the 
 combat, but too late to take part in the action. Only 
 the impetuous Sombreuil, who commanded it, had obtained 
 from the admiral permission to land. He had fought as a 
 volunteer, and it was ho whom d'Hervilly, being mortally 
 wounded, appointed to succeed him in command under the 
 superior direction of Puisaye. It was this same Sombreuil 
 who to the last struggled with Hoche for the possession 
 of this remnant of blood-stained land, the grave of so 
 many heroes. 
 
 To exterior gifts and graces were united, in the person of 
 Sombreuil, chivalrous scMitinicnts and gi*eat courage, the 
 more exalted by the ronK^nbrance (»f a father and brother 
 who had met their doom on the scaffold, and of a whole 
 family fatally dragged into misery, exile, or the grave. He 
 had quite recently married in London a young person whom 
 he loved to distraction, and the y^iv^ day of liis wedding ho 
 
 bh 
 
 ^ Biaedien means musket and also ball ; so called from Bisoaye,, 
 where it was first used. 
 
 • A 
 
u 
 
 80 
 
 L\ZARK HOCHK 
 
 ■'K 
 
 'ii: 
 
 if 
 
 
 
 Ii 
 
 hfiwi torn himself away from his young hrido to join the 
 English squadron and sail toM'ards Quiberon. 
 
 Sonibreuil had recognized all the importance of Fort 
 Penthi^vre, which, flanked by intreuchnients constructed 
 by the refugees on the sea side, entirely cut ott* the penin 
 sula from one shore to the other ; on the preservation of 
 that fort depended the salvation of the royal army. 
 Sombreuil insisted that its keeping should be entrusted 
 exclusively to his division ; Puisaye refused, fearing to 
 offend the refugees of the other divisions. But in all 
 these were incorporated many republican prisoners, who, 
 to escape the sufferings wl\ich they had endured or which 
 awaited them on the English pontoons, had consented to 
 enlist in the royalist armies, accepting their offers until 
 the time when they could escape and betray their new 
 companions. Already a large number, taking advantage 
 of the low tide along the walls, had rushed through the 
 water which covered the sands of La Falaise, and had joined 
 the republican army, noticing on the right and on the left 
 of Fort Penthievre the fordable passages which led to the 
 camp. Thus every night brought thither new deserters ; 
 one of them, David Goujon, offered to Hoche to head a 
 column at high tide as far as the fort ; Hoche act jted, and 
 resolved to attack the peninsula without delay. The next 
 day, 19t'i of July, he drew up a proclamation, remarkal)le 
 among all others for its precision and its terrible energy. 
 Fort Penthievre was to be attacked on three sides at once, 
 the following night at low tide ; on the left, by Genera! 
 Humbert ; on the extreme right by General Valletan and 
 by the Adjutant-General Manage, who, with three hundred 
 picked men, was to attempt to scale the rock connected with 
 the fort by the intrenchments of the refugees ; Hoche, in 
 person, was to direct the attack in the centre. 
 
 During the night of the 20th of July, the weather being 
 cloudy, Hoche moved with his columns, marching at their 
 head with the deputies, Blad and Tallien. His progress 
 was arrested by a frightful storm of hail and frozen rain, 
 which fell in torrents, whilst the relentless fury of the 
 
( AFTUIiE OF FORT PENTHIEVRE. 
 
 81 
 
 A 
 
 [ce, 
 Iral 
 Ind 
 red 
 ith 
 in 
 
 ^S9 
 
 % 
 
 n 
 
 winds wildly whirled the loose sand ; the soldiers could 
 neither distinguish their way nor the voices of their chiefs, 
 and stopped in frightful disorder. At last they resumed 
 their march, and reached, after many efforts and without 
 being perceived, the foot' of the ramparts, in the centre of 
 the position ; there they stopped and awaited news of the 
 attack on the left. The latter failed ; Humbert, arrest«Ml 
 by the fury of the elements, was only able to reach the 
 fortress at the dawn of day, at the moment when the 
 central division was discovered by the besieged. The 
 artillerymen of Toulon opened their fire on it, and gave 
 the alert to an English gun-boat, which overwhelmed the 
 division of Humbert with ball and shell. He was obliged 
 to retreat. The day seemed lost ; the only chance of 
 success depended now on the attack from the right, com- 
 manded by Manage, and undertaken under the direction of 
 the deserter, David. But immense difficulties presented 
 themselves. The sea in its fury was beating against the 
 fortified rock, to the foot of which David led the republican 
 column. Protected by the fury of the waves and by dark- 
 ness. Menage and his troop scalt^d the rock, clinging to the 
 braml>les, to the shrubs, making /echelons of their bayonets, 
 which they thrust into the crevices. Assisting and pushing 
 each other, they reached the summit ; the parapet remaintul 
 to be crossed, and it required but the sentry's call to hurl 
 them into the sta. But they heard friendly words ; David 
 had accomplices in the fort, and the latter held out their 
 hands to the Republicans, who rushed on the platform. 
 The Royalists, who had belies tnl themselves conquerors, were 
 surprised and massacred ; the Toulon artillerymen, taken in 
 the rear, were killed at their cannons ; all who resisted 
 were slaughtert;a ; and Menage planted the tricolour flag on 
 the wall. Hoche perceived it and returned immediately ; 
 he entered without resistance into the fortress, embraced 
 Menage, appointed him brigadier-general, and prepared 
 everything to complete his victory. At the first report of 
 
 ^ Pied : d silent. 
 
 6 
 
p'< 
 
 82 
 
 LAZARE HOCHE. 
 
 I' 
 
 l! ' K 
 
 t! 
 
 Il 
 
 the capture of the fort, Puisaye felt that all was lost. It 
 was no longer a question of defending the peninsula against 
 the ever increasing numbers of the repuMican troops, liut 
 of stopping them sutKciently long to pennit the drbrv* of 
 the royalist army to embark. Sombreuil and he hastily, 
 with this end in view, formed urgent and vain dispositions 
 in the midst of frightful confusion. All the aHillery was 
 taken or destroyed ; no intrenchments were formed in the 
 interior of the peninsula, filled by a crowd of wounded men, 
 aiid by a multitude of peasants, old men, women and chil- 
 dren, all running in despair towards the shore, breaking and 
 dragging with them the brave l)attalions who end<*avoured 
 to rally, and who had but their own persons to oppose to 
 the violent discharge of musketry and cannons. At dif- 
 ferent points, rallied by Sombreuil, they succeeded in form- 
 ing, and rushing on the Republicans with all the fury of 
 despair, they made them recoil. Vain efforts ! What could 
 the heroic valour of three or four thousand men do against 
 an enemy four times their number and intoxicated with 
 victory. At every moment the Royalists lost giound and 
 drew near the sea ; but the tide was low, the English fleet 
 was at anchor about a league from the shore, and the storm 
 uplifted the waves and rendered the apjuoach of the boats 
 very difficult. The sky was dark, and the Admiral did not 
 perceive the tricolour Hag waving on the fortress ; he was 
 unaware of its capture. Puisaye sent in succession to the 
 fleet an intrepid pilot and an aide-de-camp, the Marquis de 
 la Jaille ; then seeing everything in a desperate state, he 
 embarked at Fort Haliguen in a light skiff", to hasten 
 the arrival of help, and also, he said, to put in a place 
 of safety his correspondence, which would liave compro- 
 mised all lirittany. Military honour demanded that he 
 should remain to die with those he had drawn into peril, 
 but his flight was wrongly considered as being a treasonable 
 
 Informed of the disaster, Admiral Warren put on all 
 sail to reach the shore, and opened a terrible fire on the 
 Republicans. A few shots, badly aimed, struck the crowd 
 
SURRENDER OF THE ROYALISTS. 
 
 83 
 
 of the fugitives and their defenders. The most frightful 
 spectacle was then offered to the eye. The sea, agitated 
 under a lowering sky, scattered tiie boats, towards which a 
 multitude of both sexes and of every age stretched their 
 hands, uttering cries of distress. Many even advanced into 
 the sea, to appear no more, or fell tos'^ed and broken down 
 on the shore, to the noise of the firing of musketry and of 
 the cannons of the squadron, which showered iron around 
 them and on them.* 
 
 A small dismantled fort. Fort Neuf, otherwise called 
 Fort St. Pierre, was at the southern* extremity of the 
 [>eninsula, and at a quarter of a league from Fort Hali- 
 guen ; this was the last place of refuge of the royalist 
 legions. This fort was undefended on the land side; about 
 «'ight hundred refugees were assembled there, with their 
 backs towards the sea ; the shore on the right and on the 
 left was deserted on account of the continuous tire from the 
 gun-boats, which rendered all approach very dangerous ; 
 but in front of the refugees the republican grenadiers, with 
 Hoche at their head, kept on advancing, crying '* Down 
 with your arms ; surrender to us the patriots!" Several 
 voices also cried, ** Surrender ; no harm will be done to 
 you." At a})Out three hundred paces they stopped, and 
 Hoche advanced in front of his troops. Sombreuil came 
 out of the fort to meet him and to capitulate ; he said to 
 Hoche that he offered his life as a sacrifice for his unfor- 
 tunate companions, and asked that the latter should be 
 treated as prisoners of war. But the laws were stringent, 
 and, in the desperate state in which the refugees were, 
 Hoche did not believe that he could accede to the re- 
 <|uef t of Sombreuil. He admired his noble devotion, and 
 answered that the conquered must trust to the mercy 
 of the Convention. However, he pulled his watch from 
 
 * Unjust repvoaolies have heeii addressed concerning this to the 
 Knglisb squaaron. It was impossible, in the frightfid melee, to 
 avoid a certain number of Royalists being injured by the very balls 
 intended to pi'otect them. 
 
 ^ ^'iui : li somulei). 
 
84 
 
 LAZAUK IIOCHE. 
 
 li- -4 
 
 
 his pocket, and granted half an hour for the re-emhark- 
 ment. Sombreuil returned to the fort, and, accordin*? t 
 some versions, he induced his companions to believe thai 
 they would bo treated as prisoners of war. But, according 
 to a royalist writer who was present on this occasion and 
 who heard the words of Sombreuil, the latter said to the 
 refugees : ** Half an hour is granted you to embark," and 
 he ordered all arms to be laid down. A murmur arose, the 
 men tremblingly obeyed, and every man laid his musket 
 low by his side. Twice then the Count of Sombreuil urged 
 his horse forward towards the point of the rocks in the 
 direction of the English Heet, and twice he was flung back 
 on the coast by the fury of the waves. The madness of 
 despair was in his eyes, said the author of this account al- 
 ready mentioned ; he sought death, and as he was about 
 to dash forward a third time an officei' held his horse ; 
 Sombreuil then alighted, and seemed resigned. 
 
 The English squadron, arrested by repeated signals, had 
 ceased its firing ; but before the boats had put to sea the 
 half hour granted by Hoche had elapsed. Hoche with- 
 drew ; his army marched forward, surrounded the Royalists, 
 and made them prisoners. It is said that several refugees 
 pierced themselves with their own swords ; others threw 
 themselves into the waves to escape the fate which awaited 
 them. 
 
 After these bitter combats came the judicial massacres. 
 The eight hundred prisoners captured at Fort Neuf, joined 
 to those of Fort Penthievre, numbered about three thousand 
 men, who were sent to Auray under the care of General 
 Humbert and the deputy, Blad. Tallien repaired to Paris, 
 where he made the most of the recent victory of the armies 
 of the Republic, praising himself, and showing himself 
 merciless towards the conquered. Hoche had interceded 
 for them, and thought that he had moved the heart of Tal- 
 lien in their favour ;* but Tallien called national vengeance 
 
 li: ';' 
 
 * According to Rouget de I'lsle, Tallien had promised Hoche to 
 intercede for the prisoners 
 
i500MED TO DEATH. 
 
 85 
 
 k1 
 
 le 
 
 on tlieir heads ; he did more, he calumniated them ; and 
 before sacrificing his victims he tried to slander them, by 
 accusing them of carrying poisoned weapons. The unfor- 
 tunate prisoners, conducted to Auray, were huddled together 
 in the churches and in the prisons of that small town ; with 
 them was the Bishop of Dol and all the priests who had, 
 like himself, formed part of the expedition of Quiberon. 
 The Chouans were afterwards separated from the refug(;es. 
 The latter were subjected to a military commission, before 
 which they placed themselves under the protection of a 
 capitulation, the existence of which, however, they were 
 unable to prove, having mistaken for a regular convention 
 the words of clemency which had proceeded in the heat of 
 battle from the republican ranks.* 
 
 Public feeling pronounced itself with energy in fa\'our of 
 this multitude of unfortunates, some in the flower of youth, 
 others grown grey in battle, covered with wounds, mourn- 
 ful and proud, misled, without doubt, but all victims of 
 their chivalrous loyalty, of their heroic devotion to their 
 cause, and a great number of whom had been, under the 
 preceding rule, the pride of the French navy. The deputy, 
 Blad, did not perceive the indeUl)le stain which the blood of 
 so many brave men, coolly shed by the (ilovennnent, w«uild 
 imprint on the whole Republic ; tlie soldiers themselves, 
 appointed to guard them, were moved with compassion ; 
 twice the Commission seomed to waver, and assembled again; 
 Blad was inexoi*able, and the National Convention b(;fore 
 its dissolution offered yet this holocaust to the demon of 
 civil war. 
 
 The refugees belonging to the different regiments were 
 conducted in succession, and by division, to the place of 
 
 • The question of knowing whether there had been a verbal 
 capitnlatiou or not huM given rise to hiterniinable coutioversies. 
 The attentive study of facts, and the loyal disposition of Hoche, do 
 not allow one to admit that he had consented to a capitulation. 
 This (question has been examined with impartiality in the biography 
 of Hoche by M. Desprez ; I have inserted a short extract of this 
 amongst the vouchers. {See Note B.) 
 
86 
 
 LAZAKK IIOCIIE. " 
 
 ii 
 
 i!i i 1 
 
 ll 
 
 <■■( 
 
 puiiisliineiit. Those of the regiment of Been, were sum- 
 moned first. " I saw them pass l)efore me going to meet 
 their doom," said a refugee who (^scaped from the massacre ; 
 *'a drummer preceded them heating a marcli ; then followed 
 a squad of infantry ; a number of peasants with spades on 
 
 their shoulders closed this funeral procession 
 
 The officers marched two and two; calm and resignation was 
 depicted on their features, pride in their demeanour." They 
 were all led to a field near the town of Auray. 'inhere they 
 were shot ; more than seven hundred of their companions 
 shared the same fate, and the executions lasted several 
 days. 
 
 The Count of Somhreuil had been transferred a few days 
 l)efore from Auray to Vannes with the Bishop of Dol, and 
 the next day they were led to the place of execution. A 
 republican general drew near Sombreuil and begged of hinj 
 to allow his eyes to be bandaged. " No," replied 8om 
 breuil, " 1 wish to look my enemy in the face to the last." 
 Requested t<i kneel, he said : " I consent, but I wish you 
 to observe, that 1 put one knee on the ground for my (lod 
 and the other for my king." He died as a soldier and as 
 a Christian. The Hishoj) of Dol perished after him, shot 
 down with his priests. 
 
 Twenty years later, the remains of these brave fellows 
 who died at Auray were collected with great care, and a 
 funeral monument was erected h> their memory in the very 
 field where they had perished, and whit^h oven to-day in 
 consecrat«Hl by popular Hentimenf under the name of thn 
 ♦'Field of the MartyrH." 
 
 One shudders al thr rememltraiu^e of HUiih « rueltles vnv 
 ried out in mid blood. Hoche himself had to suffer from 
 the Hentiujent of geiuMal horror which wmh engenflere<l by 
 this di'eadfiil sacrifice, which Ih> rh«MirfMl lo prevent iJioK^fi 
 he was jxjwerless to hinder it, and (he fesiiMnHlbllMy of 
 which belonged altogether to Tallifui, to H\in\, to the ifum 
 mittee of Public Safety, and to the ConNenlion. 
 
 The royal cause received at Quiberon an lliepttrtllllH 
 (;he(!|(, but France received also, through the «acrillce at (^ji 
 
 ;. 1«.' 
 
OPKKATIONS IN THE WEST. 
 
 87 
 
 * 
 
 many victims, a lasting wound ; she <(av»^ afterwards a 
 painful souvenir to the brave companions of d'Estaing, de 
 Orasse and Suttren, so cruelly sacrificed at Auray, when 
 she wished, aft«'r these fratricidal wars, to dis{)ute the 
 empire of the seas with the English ; and more than once, 
 since tliat epoch in its naval disasters, it heard from thr 
 depth of the abyss which swallowed up its Heet this cry of 
 vengeance : " Quiberon ! Quiberon !" 
 
 V. 
 
 OONTINI'ATION AND END OP THE OPERATIONS OF HOCHK IN 
 THE WEST. -PACIFY1N(S OF BRITTANY AND LA VENDEE. 
 
 Charette had again taken up arms, and occupied a great 
 portion of Lower Vendee and all the sea coast, when he 
 heard of the disaster of the refugees at Quiberon, and the 
 massacre of the survivors. At tliis last news rage stazed 
 his soul, and in retaliation he caused three hundred Repub- 
 licans, whom he kept as prisoners, to be shot before him 
 without mercy. He obtained, about the same time, marks 
 of the greatest favour from tlie Prince, who was living at 
 Verona, and whom the Royalists and foreign powers had 
 recognized as king, under the name of Louis XVIIJ.* 
 Charette received the red riVjbon, the title of lieutenant- 
 general, and the command -in -chief of the Catholic and 
 royal armies. 80 many favours heaped on his person stimu 
 lated still more his indefatigable ze^l, and he increased in 
 energy to excite the country to rebellion to cope with the 
 three republican Armies of the West, of Brest, and of 
 Cherbourg, the g(*nerals of which went to Nantes to con- 
 uoet li |>lan for future operations. 
 
 This conference iiad 110 serious result, llocho was (h^eply 
 eNdiM ttl IhJH, and in his report to i]w Committee of 
 
 » 'I 
 
 IT, 
 
 The young pv\tuie, named Tionls XVIT. since the 21 fit .Tttntlftry, 
 |7I|}|, Jittd died at the aue of eight years, in C(»n80(nienee of tli*! 
 Iriglitfiil Meafcinent reeerved in June, MWi. His cjainis to thf 
 throne passed iu iiia iiiicle, Louis Stanislas Huvjar, ('Oiuit of I'n^ 
 
88 
 
 r.AZARE HOCHB. 
 
 r 
 
 \r 
 
 ii. 
 
 Public Safety, ho announcecl the approaching landing of a 
 new English expedition on th*' coast, and deplored the 
 slowness with which the war was conducted. " Shall I 
 always see," he said, " to the shame of our armies, our 
 troops grow rusty in our canipsl Is it the intention to 
 wait for the rainy season to connnence operations in Ven- 
 der* 1 Can it not be seen that the rebels are 8(?eking U) 
 gain tim(», and an^ awaiting the assistanc*^ promised them 
 toacf} Oods of my country, inHame all hearts, (irant, 
 oh Liberty, ' that all our soldiers may become heroes, and 
 the independence of the fatherland will be preserved." 
 
 A few days aftcT the forwarding of this report, Hoche 
 was appcinted to the command of the Army of the West 
 in place of (reneral Canclaux, and, in his first proclama- 
 tion, he gave evidence of the great principles which had in 
 all circumstances directed his conduct : Obedience to the 
 (rovernment ; rigorous observance of discipline ; inviolable 
 respect for the laws of honour ; compassion for the unfortu- 
 nate ; considerate attentions and protection to the peaceful 
 inhabitants of the country districts ; war without mercy 
 against the guilty and the enemies of the country. Hoche 
 obtained leave that his army, occupying then the very 
 '•entre of the royalist insurrection, should be forty-four 
 thousand men strong, and he took immediately the clever- 
 est dispositions to prevent the landing of the expedition 
 announced on all sides. 
 
 The danger indeed was imminent. The disaster of Qui- 
 beron had not discouraged the English Uoveniment. A 
 new fleet sailed towards the coast of France about the 
 end of September ; it carried two thousand infantry, tive 
 hundred horse fully eijuipped, staffs of the regiments of 
 refugees, arms, ammunitions, provisions for a numerous 
 army, and finally the prince so long expected, the Count 
 d'Artois, brother of Louis XVL, and who afterwards 
 became King Charles X. 
 
 1 Note that the second person singidar is used in atidressing the 
 l^city, gods or goddesses. 
 
 4< 
 
DEPARTURE OF THE KKITIHII FLEET. 
 
 89 
 
 The Prince landed at the hejjinnin^' of the month of 
 OctoVK»r, with a ^>art of the troopH of the expedition, in 
 I'tle Dieu, and he intended to land opposite Tiower Vendue, 
 wliere Charette, in posseHsion of the coast, was to protect 
 his landing. Hut Hoche baffled all the plans of thi« n»douht- 
 able chief ; he defeated him in several encounters, ohliji^ed 
 him to withdraw into tht^ int<*rior of the country, and made 
 himself master of all the coast. 
 
 Landing was no longer practicable, and the higli tide 
 made it impossible for tht^ fleet to remai » any longer in 
 these dangerous quarters. Tt was recalled. After sojourn 
 of six weeks on the sterile rock of I'lle Dieu, the Count of 
 Artois retume<l to England, and all the fruits of this grand 
 expedition were lost. 
 
 The departure of titc fleet threw the R<»yalists into the 
 greatest consternation. Charette was deeply irritated at 
 this. He saw all the I'epublican forces now centred in 
 Vendet^ ; henceforth he was obliged to s.ruggle ahnost alone 
 and without hope, and lie resolved to sell dearly to his 
 adversaries both \ ictcjry and his life. 
 
 Hoche, in spite of his successes, was again in a very difli- 
 cult situation ; ail Lower Vendee, comprising tlie countrv 
 between 8cvre Nantaise and the ocean, was morally gained 
 over to the royal cause ; the population had kept their 
 anns, and although apparently {>eacoful, one victory would 
 have sutHced to cause a general uprising. A clever chief, 
 8apinaud, had recommenced the struggle, and carried tlie 
 town of Mortagne. Stofflet, jealous of the favours granted 
 to Charette, had refused to answer his call, but lie only 
 waited for a favourable opportunity, and always directed by 
 the Abbe Bernier, he Exercised an absolute influence in 
 Anjou and in Upper Vendue, where, surrounded by a court 
 of officers and refugees, he was master of the country. 
 Puisaye, on the other hand, had reappeared in Brittany, 
 and called to his aid all the Chouan chiefs, organized the 
 insurrection, and served, with the most indomitable energy, 
 the cause of the princes who had not known either how to 
 
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 appre<;iato his devotion or his talents. All the west, at 
 the first signal, might be again in arms. 
 
 Threatened with so many perils, Hoche conceived a new 
 plan. He saw very well that it was no longer by arms 
 that an enemy which could not be reached anywhere was 
 to be conquered. "The inhabitant of La Vendue," says 
 the historian of the Revolution,^ *' was at once peasant 
 and soldier. In the midst of the horrors of civil war. 
 he had not ceased to till his fields and tend his cattle.- 
 His gun was at hand, hidden under the ground or under 
 straw. At the first signal of his chief he ran thither, 
 attacked the Republicans, then disappeared through the- 
 woods, returned to his fields, hid his gun again, and the 
 Republicans only found a peasant, without arms, in whom 
 they could not recognize an enemy. Whilst the VendeansH 
 "had always had the means of living and obtaining recruits, 
 the republican armies, which a ruined administration coukl 
 no longer support, wanted everything, and were in the 
 most frightful destitution. Hoche, without ruining the 
 country, devised an ingenious plan to reduce it, by taking 
 away part of its weapons and a part of its provisions for 
 the use of the republican army." He formed a circular 
 line from the S^vre to the Loire, and one which by degrees 
 would surround the whole country. This line was com- 
 posed of posts passably fortified, connected by patrols, so 
 that there was not a free space through which anything 
 like a numerous enemy could pass. These posts were com- 
 manded to occupy every small town and every village, and 
 to disarm all the inhabitants ; they were to take possession 
 of the cattle and the grain heaped up in the barns ; they 
 were also to arrest all the most noted inhabitants, and not 
 restore the cattle, the grain, nor set at liberty the inhabit- 
 ants taken as hostages, except when the peasants had 
 voluntarily surrendered their arms. Recommendation was 
 
 ^ Thiers (s not sounded) was the author of ** I'Histoire de la 
 Revolution," and one of the presidents of the French Republic 
 after the Franco-Prussian war. 
 
 ? Bestianx ; s sounded. 
 
DISARMING THE PEASANTRY. 
 
 91 
 
 at 
 
 made to deaiand a number of guns equivalent at least to 
 the quarter of the male population. After having received 
 the arms, the hostages, the cattle, the grain, were to be 
 faithfully returned, with the exception' of a part deducted 
 as a tax, and placed in the store rooms of the army. Hoche 
 had recommended to the officers to treat the inhabitants 
 with extreme gentleness, to fraternize with thorn, to use them 
 well, to send them sometimes to his headquarters, and to 
 make them a few presents. He had also ordered the priests 
 to be treated with the utmost consideration. " The Ven- 
 deans," he said, *' have but one true sentiment — aflPection 
 for their p^ests. The latter only require protection and 
 rest ; grant them these two things, add even a few bene- 
 fits, and the affection of the country will be restored to us." 
 The line which Hoche called the disarming line was to sur- 
 round Lower Vendee in a circle, advance little by little, and 
 end by embracing it altogether. Whilst narrowing its circle, 
 it left the country behind unarmed, reconciled, and protected 
 it against the insurgent chiefs, who usually punished by de- 
 vastation submission to the Republic and the rendition of 
 arms. Two flying columns preceded it to fight against these 
 chiefs, and to seize them if possible, and soon, by confining 
 them into narrower space,they would inevitably capture them. 
 Hoche submitted his plan of peace-making to the Direc- 
 tory, which approved of it. Such was the name of the 
 new executive power which had succeeded in France the 
 bloody reign of the Convention and the Committee of Pub- 
 lic Safety.* The Directors summoned Hoche to Paris to 
 concert matters and to confer new powers on him. 
 
 * France had adopted at tliis epoch a new constitution, that of the 
 year three. This constitution put an end to the existence of the 
 National Convention ; it vested the legislative power in two coun- 
 cils, that of the Cinq-Cent'j and that of the Anoiens, and the execu- 
 tive power in a Directory composed of five regicides, named La 
 Reveill^re-Lepeaux, Barras, Rewoell, L^e Tourneur, and Si^y^s, soon 
 replaced by Carnot. They commenced their functions {fonction ; c 
 sounded) on the 27th October, 1795 (4 brumaire, year four). 
 
 ^ Hauf ; f sounded. Sain et saitf^ safe and sound, in the feminine 
 plural becomes aaines et satives. 
 
:i « 
 
 92 
 
 LAZARE HOCHE. 
 
 liS:? 
 
 m 
 
 ! ; 
 
 m 
 
 ,> %'' 
 
 H. 
 
 The thermidorian reaction was then in all its violence 
 in Paris as well as in the principal towns ; everywhere 
 authority, supported by public sentiment, closed the clubs 
 of the Jacobins and of the revolutionary societies, and saw 
 agam drawing-room receptions, where, alongside of illustri- 
 ous generals, distinguished writers and politicians, who had 
 contributed to the Revolution of thermidor or had welcomed 
 it, were met already a few men belonging to the old aristo- 
 cracy, and who, exiled under the Reign of Terror with their 
 families, did not, however, show themselves hostile to the 
 new rule. The drawing-room of the beautiful Madame 
 Tallien (rise Cabarus) was the most celebrated as well as 
 the most frequented. Hoche appeared there, and was the 
 object of general attention ; his great services, his genius, 
 his youth (he was scarcely twenty-eight), were so many 
 titles to admiration, and he added also to this a noble air, 
 a natural dignity observable in all his actions, and a 
 noble simplicity in his manners. " The loyalty of Hoche," 
 says his biographer already mentioned, " the sincerity of 
 his devotion to the Republic, did not permit any one to 
 fear for her sake this glorious arm, however powerful it 
 might be. Never in his speech could one perceive those 
 words which portray the general who might be inclined to 
 tyranny on account of his popularity. He was not one of 
 those men who dazzled, whose power is increased by enthu- 
 siasm, and whom the masses follow, seized with infatuation, 
 into the arena where God has permitted them to astonish 
 the world. Above all, and in the highest degree, he inspired 
 confidence. A deep sentiment of honour and morality per- 
 vaded his conduct, rare exception in all times, and more 
 particularly in those which followed the Reign of Terror. 
 Every one felt that the cause of the Republic was safe in 
 his hands. The Directory did honour to itself in understand- 
 ing him, and did not show itself jealous of his glory ; it 
 approved of all the measures proposed by Hoche to pacify 
 Brittany and La Vendee ; it intrusted to him the three 
 armiei? of the Coasts of Brest, of Cherbourg, and of the 
 West, which formed but one, under the name of the Army of 
 
PACIFIC MEASURES. 
 
 93 
 
 7) 
 
 the Sea Shore ; and to this great military command it added 
 the most extensive civil powers. Never had a man since 
 1789 had greater authority. Hoche received this testimony 
 of such absolute confidence with modesty, and did not show 
 himself intoxicated by it. His renown was without blem- 
 ish ; it was the highest and at the same time the purest of 
 the epoch." Hoche at last was considered as the most 
 glorious representative of the Republic, and her firmest 
 supporter. 
 
 After the stay of a month in Paris, Hoche returned into 
 the west to complete the execution of his new projects, by 
 which a whole army was gradually to surround the revolted 
 provinces and to disarm them. His vast plan of operation 
 was to be put in force first in Vendee, then in Brittany ; 
 and it was for Hoche to determine the time when the 
 submission of the rebellious country should permit the 
 substitution of a constitutional and legal rule for a military 
 one. 
 
 Hoche went first to Angers, and found that he had b^een 
 very badly represented by General Willot, who had com- 
 promised everything in the absence of his chief. Want of 
 discipline had again crept into the army : Charette had 
 pierced through the disarming line and again showed him- 
 self redoubtable ; other chiefs had retaken their arms, or 
 threatener^ to do so. Everything changed on the arrival of 
 Hoche, and to make sure of the execution of his plan of 
 disarmament and pacification, he felt that the first thing 
 to do was to overcome the surviving chiefs, and above all 
 Charette and Stofflet. The latter, closely watched in An- 
 jou, and on the point of being reduced to weakness, had 
 recommenced hostilities. Hoche did not give him time to 
 rally his forces ; the republican columns, setting out from 
 different points, enveloped him on all sides, defeated him 
 twice in succession, and followed him into the woods. 
 Stofflet, betrayed it is said by a few of his own men, was 
 delivered into the hands of the Republicans, conducted to 
 Angers, tried before a court martial, and shot. - 
 
 Hoche continued, however, his plan of general pacifying 
 
I» 
 
 ■I 
 
 i 
 
 m 
 
 ■V' :i 
 
 m 
 
 
 94 
 
 LAZARE HOCHE. 
 
 with pertinacity, and endeavoured to punish or to prevent 
 indiscriminately all excesses committed either by the 
 Royalists, by his army, or by the patriots. He thus pro- 
 voked the complaints of all those whose fury he restrained; 
 he incurred their hatred, and saw himself again, in Vendee 
 as in Brittany, denounced, accused by all who malcontents. 
 Several times, overwhelmed l)y immense responsibility, 
 driven to despair, and feeling himself disheartened, ' ' I can 
 V)rave cannon balls," he said, "but not intrigue," and he 
 offered to resign his command. He showed on all occasions, 
 by his example, that true love for liberty is inseparable 
 from high morality and of perfect esteem of self. Poor, he 
 carried scruple to the point when disinterestedness becomes 
 a rare virtue. The historian of the Revolution said of him : 
 "That young general, who loved pleasures, who was at the 
 head of an army of one hundred thousand men, and who 
 disposed of the revenue of several provinces, sometimes 
 wanted necessary things. His pay, made in republican 
 scrip, amounted almost to nothing. He needed horses, 
 saddles, bridles, and he asked permission to take, paying 
 for them, six saddles, six bridles, horse shoes, a few bottles 
 of rum and a few sugar loaves, from the stores left at 
 Quiberon by the English ; admirable example of delicacy 
 often giv^n by our republican generals, and which every day 
 was to become more rare. Hoche knew no more of power 
 than its burden and responsibility ; he longed for the 
 delights of domestic life. The letters which he wrote at 
 this epoch, a few months after the bloody scenes enacted at 
 Quiberon, depict his uneasiness, his great preoccupation for 
 his wife and the child which she was about to bear him. 
 On reading them, one sees how well he knew how to drive 
 away the grave anxieties of his vast command, to enter 
 with solicitude into intimate details, and into the most 
 minute cares of dawning paternity. This noble independ- 
 ence, this freedom of action which he loved, this dignity of 
 character, all those precious blessings which he valued so 
 highly, he desired his child to possess also. From the 
 cradle everything must tend to this end. "I do not wish 
 
IlOCflE TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 96 
 
 my child to have any swaddling clothes ; let it not be 
 confined in these as in a vice. . . No leading strings, 
 
 no padded cap ; let it crawl on its hands and feet — on a 
 blanket in a room in winter, in the garden in summer. 
 . . Speak to it sensibly from the very first; let it respect 
 and obey you without fearing you ; let it love you because 
 you are its mother and not for the sake of bonbons ; let it, 
 above all things, never know that there are certain beings 
 who beat their children ; mine must never be humiliated*' " 
 A few days afterwards it is to his wife that he gives 
 intelligent advice for herself ; he thinks of completing her 
 education, as later he will endeavour to complete the edu- 
 cation of his unborn child. lie directs her readings, he 
 teaches her how to fix her attention and her thoughts on 
 what she reads, and the familiarity of the language adds to 
 its precision. " You must not," he says, " be like a parrot, 
 which repeats without understanding ; read little and ana- 
 lyse a great deal ; say many things in a few words. You 
 see I treat you as a friend ; I believe I have the right to do 
 so ; certain that I am the author whose precepts you remem- 
 ber most willingly." His affection is later poured forth 
 with effusion, and humour is mingled in his writings with 
 more than the serious gravity of a man who has met with 
 reverses in glory, and found thorns under his laurels. "You 
 will soon be a mother," he writes; "how sweet it will be 
 for me to embrace the mother and the child ! What caresses 
 I shall lavish on both ! Who knows better how to love than 
 myself? Although I have a melancholy appearance and 
 expression, is there a more feeling heart than mine 1 No. 
 Doubtless long misfortunes and great losses may liave given 
 to my face, to my conversation, a mournful and pensive 
 tone, but I shall again find happiness in your arms ! I 
 shall also find my gaiety again, that gaiety which has been 
 lost for so many years." His task indeed was a sad one ; 
 he shuddered at the reports of the combats on the distant 
 frontiers fought by his companions in arms, his glorious 
 competitors ; he envied their victories won over foreigners 
 on the Rhine or on the Alps, whilst he was struggling 
 
96 
 
 LAZARE IIOCHE. 
 
 
 
 against the French on tlie bloody soil of the fatherland. 
 He sympathized df>eply with the misfortunes of the con- 
 quered, but he did not any the less pursue his ungrateful 
 task with as much constancy as vigour. 
 
 Of all the famous chiefs who had acquired a great name 
 in Vendee there only remained one, the most skilful as the 
 most indomitable. Charette still struggled, and, although 
 only followed by a few hundred men, the prestige which he 
 exercised over all minds was immense, and Hoche under- 
 stood that the country would never be at peace as long as 
 Charette was above ground. He caused him to be tracked 
 by all his columns, and principally entrusted the care of his 
 pursuit to the Adjutant-General, Travot. The latter gave 
 no repose nor truce to his troops, pursuing Charette as 
 though he were a deer. Every time that he was on the 
 point of seizing him, Charette escaped, refusing all the con- 
 ditions which might have saved his life, preferring death to 
 exile, severe towards himself, terrible to his enemies, cruel 
 towards traitors, pitiless for those who spoke of peace and 
 submission. He was at last drawn into an ambuscade; 
 the supreme struggle lasted several hours, and Charette fell 
 exhausted. A German then acted nobly ; he put on the 
 hat of his general and was killed in his stead, whilst one of 
 his men carried away Charette on his back through the 
 woods, and concealed him under briers at the entrance of 
 the coppice of la Chabotterie. A deserter betrayed him 
 that he might be pardoned, and delivered him into the hands 
 of the Republicans. Travot ran up, and it was to him that 
 Charette gave up his sword. Travot treated his prisoner 
 with the respect due to courage and to misfortune. They 
 entered the town of Angers side by side, talking familiarly 
 whilst passing through the crowds which had come to meet 
 them. A handkerchief, soiled with blood, covered the fore- 
 head of Charette. Never had his countenance been more 
 proud nor his look more defiant. Transferred to Nantes, 
 he was judged there and condemned to die. The military 
 authorities, in spite of the formal orders of Hoche, allowed 
 Charette to be insulted with impunity in that very town 
 
EXECUTION OF CHARETTE. 
 
 D7 
 
 where the preceding year he had made ahnost a triumphant 
 imtry. The officer of th(^ escort entrusted to conduct him 
 to the place of execution, made him pass designedly under 
 the windows of the house where his family had taken refuge. 
 His sister appeared at the window. Charette stopped, 
 raised his eyes, and encouraged her with a look and with a 
 gesture.* Having reached the fatal place, intrepid and 
 calm when facing death, he remained standing, gave the 
 word of connnand for firing, and gently sank on his knees. 
 His loss threw the Royalists into a state of consternation, 
 and filled the Republicans with joy. The Government or- 
 dered public rejoicings: Hoche did more; and rendered the 
 most brilliant homage to the valour of this famed chief by 
 ordering, on the very day that he heard of his execution, 
 that the state of siege in the whole of Vendue should be 
 raised. 
 Hoche afterwards passed with his arniy into ^Brittany, 
 • and surrounded that province with a long line of troops, 
 from the Loire as far as Granville. The Chouans were 
 then unable to struggle against so powerful a surrounding ; 
 they nevertheless opposed an obstinate resistance to it, and 
 allowed themselves to be nearly driven into the sea before 
 they submitted. The province of Morbihan at last gave 
 up its arms ; Sapinaud had already given up his ; all the 
 royalist divisions followed this example in succession ; 
 Frotte entered into negotiations in Lower Normandy, and 
 was transported with his troops into England. Puisaye, 
 seeing himself alone and on the point of being arrested, em- 
 barked for Jersey. Hoche, master of the country, distri- 
 buted his hundred thousand men in a number of small 
 divisions to watch it, and to surround it with, as it were, a 
 wall of bayonets, ' and he thus achieved its submission. 
 
 He had now to govern it and to maintain peace in it. 
 He bestowed on these cares a few months of gentle, skilful, 
 
 * Informed of the fact, Hoche dismissed this officer from the ranks 
 as unworthy of his position. 
 ^ JUseau literally means net, 
 
 7 
 
98 
 
 LAZARK FIOOHK. 
 
 1 
 
 J \ 
 
 ,1 
 
 -I 
 
 i V 
 
 
 equitable government, as free from weakness as it was from 
 violence, and, whilst fanatics of all parties denounced his 
 administration as provoking and oppressive, he every wlipr« 
 raised the siege, abdicated the extraordinary powers with 
 which he was invested, and voluntarily resigned the dic- 
 tatorship. He brought under the yoke of legal order the 
 Royalists as well as the Republicans, and re-established the 
 authority of laws in the unfortunate districts where the 
 sword alone had been supreme for four years. He could 
 not succeed in this without meeting on both sides with a 
 great resistance, from which he had to suffer most bitterly, 
 and for the tifth time he offered his resignation, which the 
 Directory refused to accept by granting him renewed marks 
 of its confidence and of its esteem. Hoche gained courage, 
 and continued his work, without ceasing to look lovingly to- 
 wards his home and to sigh after family joys. A child was 
 born to hi'n. Hoche was the father of a daughter whom he 
 named Jenny, and over whom he watched from a distance 
 with impassioned solicitude ; he insisted on her being 
 nursed by her mother, and at the height of his last struggle 
 in Vendee, the day before the capture of Charette, he wrote 
 to his wife : " How affecting must be the sight of my Ade- 
 laide caressing and nursing our child, my Jenny ! This is 
 wanting to my happiness ; shall I not soon enjoy it V 
 Other letters written during his peaceful administration 
 show him to us so profoundly convinced of the necessity of 
 causing the law to be respected, that he wishes his wife to 
 be imbued with his principles as well as himself. *' Be 
 always a good Republican," he writes to her, " not in talk- 
 ing about politics, but in not allowing anyone in your 
 home or in your presence to abase constitutional laws, and 
 also by the practice of virtues." He could not comprehend 
 liberty without high morality — a republic without strong 
 and manly minds. "Yours," he says to his wife, " must 
 grow in vigour, and your husband must have imparted to 
 you that portion of energy which becomes you." Hoche 
 acted as he spoke : always firm and dignified. Just before 
 anything else, preferring to conquer hearts by kindnesses 
 
 h 
 
ADMINISTRATIVE ABILITY. 
 
 99 
 
 rather than l>y violence, he commanded, under p<malty of 
 the most severe punishment, the respect of property and 
 person, and at the same time he re-established religious 
 worship in all places submitted to his authority. Before 
 the time of Bonaparte he proclaimed religious toleranct^ 
 and reopened the churches. So many intelligent cares, so 
 much activity, prudence and probity, bore their fruits, and 
 succeeded in gaining for Ueneral Hoche the esteem and the 
 confidence of the populations of the west ; his loyal word 
 was respected as a living law, and the inhaV)itants preferred 
 a simple promise from him to every engagement contracted 
 with the Government ; the priests, above all, showed them- 
 selves grateful, and were devoted to him. *' God himself," 
 wrote one of them, " satisfied with what you have done for 
 the support of His religion, for the preservation of His 
 ministers, who are your brethren, will listen favourably to 
 the prayers which we do not cease to offer Him for you. 
 and He will load you with His blessings." 
 
 Hoche effected the work of reconciliation in the depart- 
 ments of the west with the Republic ; he pacified Brittany 
 and Vendue, which was his most noble work. Not having 
 been able to conquer him by arnjs, the royalist party tried 
 to bribe him. Before applying to Bonaparte, it recalled to 
 Hoche the part of Monk in England, and caused the sword 
 of High Constable to shine before his eyes. Hoche rejected 
 it nobly, without disdain and without boasting. Faithful 
 to the Republic, and rejecting the advances of her most 
 ardent adversaries, he, on the other hand, informed the 
 Directory of their intrigues in a persuasive and respectful 
 style, very different from the threatening tone which later 
 the hero of brumaire ' assumed with this same government. 
 Pleading in favjur of a few patriots, and pointing out the 
 dangers of thermidorian reaction, Hoche wrote to the 
 Minister : *' Why violate the law and judge by courts-mar- 
 tial a few unfortunate enthusiasts 1 They have banished 
 me ; I cannot be accused of partiality in their favour, but 
 
 ^ On the 1 8th brumaire Bonaparte overthrew the Republic. 
 
100 
 
 LAZAHK HOCHK. 
 
 ii.i 
 
 11^* 
 
 L ■■ 
 
 r speak lor tlie sake of principle ... it is time. 
 Mistrust tliose wlio with elegant and polished manners 
 deceive you as to the situation of the ll«;pul)lic, and who 
 jioint out the patriots to the daggers of the assassins, de- 
 scribing theni as terrorists. ... As I'llojyital' and 
 Sully, ■• anxious for the public good, dared to te)! the truth 
 to their king, to their master, without doubt you will 
 })ardon a republican soldier for having imitated these great 
 !uen in their simplicity. ' 
 
 Hoche now was at the Inught of his glory and of his 
 fortune ; the [directory recognized the services which he 
 had rendered, and awarded him that recompense, the most 
 coveted at this epoch, when luxury, inseparable from inva- 
 sions and conijuests, had not aft'ected the customs of our 
 armi<^8, and when the generals yet preserved something of 
 the simplicity of former days ; it decreed that Hoche should 
 receive as a national recompense two magnificent chargers 
 and a pair of pistols, as a mark of honour ; and issued a 
 proclamation aying that the Army of the Sea Shore and its 
 chief had mei'iied much from the country. 
 
 VL 
 
 THE IRISH EXPEDITION, 
 
 m 
 
 The peace of Brittany and of Vendue took from Eng- 
 land the hope of triumphing over the Republic by means 
 of the support of the provinces of the west. This power, 
 on the contrary, saw fifty thousand men who could be 
 utilized henceforward in some redoubtable enterprise against 
 itself ; and Hoche had, since tiie epoch of his brilliant 
 defence of Dunkirk, conceived the idea of eflfecting a land- 
 ing on the coasts of England or Ireland. The moment for 
 carrying this great project into execution seemed to liave 
 
 ^ Michel de I'Hopital, Chancellor of the kingdom in the reign of 
 Francis II. 
 
 ** Sully, minister of Henry IV. 
 
TIIK miSli KXPKDITION. 
 
 lOl 
 
 1 
 
 comn, aiifl it was in Ireland that lir wiahod to strike a tirst 
 blow af^ainst British rule. 
 
 Ireland, then ()j)i)ressed, was the focus of permanent in 
 surrections, and the Association of l)(»fenderfi, or United 
 Irishmen, [)repared a general u})rising against England. 
 This association, supported on the one side by the sympathy 
 of all the Catholic population, and on the other by a French 
 army, could accomplish its end, which was to separate Ire- 
 land from England. She called the French to her aid, and 
 promised to the projected expedition of Hoche great chances 
 of success. 
 
 France covered then its frontiers with young repulUics, 
 and Bonaparte captivated all imaginations by his marvellous 
 exploits in Italy. Hoche, detained by the painful cares 
 of the pacifying of the west, had followed with his ardent 
 soul the conqueror of Arcole through all his victories. 
 *' Great youth," he cried, striking his brow, " how much I 
 envy thee !" He was yearning to achieve things as great, 
 and to find a field o£ glory worthy of his genius ; he then 
 projected the revolution of Ireland, and its transformation 
 into a republic. His plan was then to pass into England, 
 and to strike her to the heart. He caused his project to 
 be adopted by the Government', which, after having concert- 
 ed a plan with the revolutionary Irish chiefs, prepared at 
 Brest a great expedition, of which Hoche had command. 
 
 In consequence of the treaty of Saint Ildephonse, which 
 established with Spain an offensive and defensive alliance, 
 the Spanish navy united to the French navy was in a 
 position to dispute with the English the empire of the seas ; 
 but the naval forces of France and Spain were scattered 
 over the ocean ; to bring thein together would require a 
 considerable time, and the impatient ardour of Hoche would 
 not brook much delay. He redoubled in activity, and 
 powerfully seconded by the Minister of Marine, Truguet, 
 he hastened to till up the great vacancies which had taken 
 place in the staffs of the fleet of Brest through emigration 
 and the disaster of Quiberon, and he succeeded quickly in 
 placing the fleet on a formidable footing. The expedition 
 
102 
 
 LAZARE IIOCIIE. 
 
 i| « ' 
 
 
 i'i* 
 
 m 
 
 w.k 
 
 was to consist of several divisions of the Army of the Sea 
 Shore, which were made available by the peace of Brittany 
 and La Vendue, and which were sent to Brest ; to this 
 Hocb'^ joined two legions, which he named Legions of the 
 Franks ; the first was composed of officers and soldiers who 
 were the most venturesome, bold, in fact, even to rashness ; 
 the other he formed, it must be acknowledged, of unworthy 
 elements, and this, we regret to say, is a stigma on his 
 memory. Hating England, sharing popular prejudice, and 
 considering, on account of the hate which he entertained for 
 the British Government, the British people as the tool of 
 perfidious ministers and of a detested aristocracy, all means 
 seemed permissible t(?him to humble and harass that proud 
 nation ; he acted in consequence, and introduced into that 
 second legion all the abandoned wretches, the bandits and 
 murderers he could get together, and placed it under the 
 command of a foreign chief known for his savage energy.* 
 This legion was to land in England to deceive the enemy 
 as to the true destination of the fleet carrying the main 
 corps of the expedition; its order was to land at the mouth 
 of the Severn, to go by night to Bristol, to fire that town 
 and to sow devastatioxi in the surrounding country ; then 
 to re-embark, to land several detachments on difierent parts 
 of the coast, carrying everywhere death, ravage and fire, 
 thus calling on itself and keeping in England a considerable 
 portion of the British forces, whilst the expedition should 
 sail towards the Irish coast. The Directory had sent to 
 
 to' 
 
 Hoche full powers to direct at his will the expedition which 
 lie prepared with so much ardour, and already twenty 
 
 * The first thought of the forming of this infernal legion is at- 
 tributed to the Republican General, LabaiToliere, who made it the 
 subject of a note which Carnot used later in directions drawn up by 
 him for the establishment of Chouanism in England. A few extracts 
 from this will be found at the end of this volume. Note D. Hoche 
 saw this, and was wrong in using it in the forming of his Second 
 Legion of the Franks, and in the instructions whicii he gave to it. 
 For more ample information on this subject see an interesting 
 work by M. le General, Marquis de Grouchy, published under the 
 following title: "General Grouch j and Ireland in 1796." 
 
TIIK IRISH EXPEDITION. 
 
 103 
 
 thousand troops were assembled at Brest, ready to embark 
 in November, 1796. But the state of the navy was far 
 from efficient ; the devotion and the activity of tlie new- 
 chief, given to the fleet at Brest, had not yet been able to 
 furnish all it needed. The supplies were not ready ; the 
 numerous vacancies which emigration and its disastrous 
 consequences had made in the ranks of the officers* were 
 badly filled, many new officers were wanting in experience, 
 and had to contend on board their ships with the wsmt of 
 discipline and insubordination, and this state of things 
 incessantly created new obstacles. Hoche, irritated at so 
 much delay, learned that Ireland was in open rebellion; he 
 heard that the insurgents had expelled from the island ten 
 thousand English sent to quell the insurrection. His blood 
 boiled • he did not think of danger ; he had promised to 
 succour the Irish defenders ; he would not vv^ait for the fleet ; 
 lie would start alone, and he wrote to the Directory : "I 
 liave pledged my word that I would go to the assistance of 
 that brave nation, and I mean to keep it. Permit me to 
 start with one frigate ; you will send me tliis winter what- 
 ever help you may judge requisite. I ask for one frigate 
 because the fleet is not ready to start, and because, whilst a 
 generous and trusting people are breaking their fetters, the 
 most disagreeable scenes are enacted here. . . . The 
 Generals Villaret and Morard de Galles have promised to 
 second me ; T rely on their word." 
 
 The Directory did not grant the permission cra\ed by the 
 young and ardent general. A month passed by, after which 
 Hoche, losing all patience, gave way to discouragement, and 
 wrote to the Minister of War : "After many labours, I see 
 myself obliged to give up my enterprise ; our wretched navy 
 can and will do nothing. I offVr to the Government the 
 sixteen thousand men I had reserved for the expedition ; 
 
 *At the time of a fii^st visit thcat Hoche ami tli<' Admiral Villaret 
 made to the harbour of Brest, where several disabled shij s were 
 lying, Hoche inquired what had become of the ofiiccrs who had 
 commanded them so gloriously. Villaret replied : *'Lost for France ; 
 dead at Quiberon ! " 
 
iV if 
 
 104 
 
 LAZARE IIOOIIK. 
 
 I- 1 
 
 to wait any longer would be exposing them to perish of 
 hunger and misery ; grant permission, I pray you, that I 
 may not leave them. I will lead them where required as 
 their general of division, and whoever may be the man 
 under whom I am placed, be convinced that I shall fulfil 
 my duty" 
 
 The Directors to whom this letter was submitted received 
 it better than the first. They had little confidence in the 
 success of the expedition, although they had given to Hoche 
 every power to act. Struggling with the Legislative Assem- 
 blies, they were meditating a coitp-cVHat to strengthen their 
 wavering authority, and already they had chosen among 
 themselves Hoche as being the most suitable man to second 
 their views, daring to reckon on his absolute devotion to 
 tha republican cause, and on the attachment of the army 
 for his person. They saw him then with certain satisfac- 
 tion give up of his own accord a difficult enterprise which, 
 to all appearances, would keep him away at the time when 
 they foresaw that they might need his services ; and after 
 having hesitated ten days, they decided that the expedition 
 should not take place, and called Hoche to Paris. It was 
 too late ; when the order of the Directory had reached 
 Brest Hoche had thought better of the matter ; confidence 
 had returned to him ; his fiery disposition had carried every- 
 thing before it ; the fleet had got under weigh two days 
 before, and was sailing towards Ireland. 
 
 The army of this expedition was about fifteen thousand 
 men strong. The vanguard was under the orders of Gene- 
 ral Lemoine ; Grouchy, the oldest of the generals of divi- 
 sion, commanded the battle corps, and General Hurty the 
 rearguard, or the reserve. The fleet comprised seventeen 
 vessels, thirteen frigates, and thirteei. inferior ships; in all, 
 forty -three sails. Morard do Galles was the Commander- 
 in-Chief, having under his orders Major-General Brueix, 
 and the three Rear- Admirals, Richery, Bouvet and Nielly. 
 
 The Bay of ' iantry, in Ireland, was the rallying point 
 given to all th captains under sealed orders, which were 
 only to be opened at sea, and the orders of the day of the 
 
 \ 
 
THE EMBARKATION. 
 
 105 
 
 Oeneral-in-Chief contained detailed and precise instructions 
 to effect an immediate landing. Hoche and the Admiral 
 Morard de Galles were together on a very light frigate, 
 La Fraternite^ in order to be able ' to repair, at a moment's 
 notice, to all points where their presence might be needed. 
 The order to weigh anchor was given on the night of the 
 15th and 16th December, during cloudy and favourable 
 weather. On leaving the port four vessels collided and 
 caused some damage ; the fleet was delayed and obliged to 
 cast anchor that very night in the exterior roadstead, called 
 Camaret. The following night it weighed anchor again, 
 and its departure was marked by a first and terrible dis- 
 aster : the ship Seduisanty of 74 cannons, struck a rock'^ 
 in the darkness in the passage du Raz, and sank. Out of 
 the thirteen hundred men who manned her, forty-five only 
 were saved and picked up on the coast. The other ships 
 succeeded in gaining the open sea without meeting the 
 English cruisers. The seals were broken, and all the fleet 
 sailed towards the Bay of Bantry, in Ireland. 
 
 But then, as on all occasions when, since the epoch of 
 the Norman Conquest, a foreign invasion had threatened 
 England, her happy destiny averted the peril. Never has 
 this fact been more striking than under the Revolution and 
 the Empire ;* and if one reflects ever so little, reason is 
 confounded before the numberless obstacles, altogether in- 
 dependent of the will and the genius of man, which at 
 different epochs and for eight centuries have come be- 
 tween England and her enemies. Perhaps, then, we may 
 be allowed to ask whether it did not form part of the mys- 
 terio\ici designs of that Providence which rules human des- 
 tinies that liberty, founded on the respect of right and 
 
 * I know iiothii?^ more conclusive in this respect than the narra- 
 tion given by M. Thiers, of the causes, as numerous as extraordin- 
 ary, which checked the famous expedition projected at Boulogne. 
 
 * Etre en tnesure de, and its synonym Stre d m^me de^ are both 
 equivalent to pouvoir. 
 
 * Donn^er sur has also the nieatiing of to look on ; Cette porte 
 donne sur le jardin. 
 
!! 
 
 ! ; 
 
 
 J it' 
 
 In ^'^ 
 
 i 
 
 I! ii 
 
 106 
 
 LAZARE HOCHE. 
 
 legal order, should have in Europe an inviolable abode. 
 Scarcely had this formidable fleet reached as far north as 
 Ushant Island than a tempest arose and dispersed all the 
 ships. The third day the wind fell and the greatest part of 
 the fleet was rallied by Rear- Admiral Bouvet, and directed 
 towards the point designated for the landing, opposite the 
 coast of Ireland (County of Cork), and at the entrance of 
 the Bay of Bantry. Nine ships wore missing, and among 
 them the frigate which bore the two chiefs of the expedition, 
 Hoche and the Admiral de Galles. 
 
 The circumstances, however, were propitious. The chiefs 
 of the Irish association came and promised their powerful 
 assistance. No English force was at hand, or had been 
 warned. The weather was calm ; everything, in fine, fa- 
 ^'oured a landing, for which Hoche had left precise orders 
 m wrijbing. In the absence of Hoche the command fell 
 upon General de Grouchy, the oldest of the generals of 
 division. The latter ordered Rear-Admiral Bouvet, chief of 
 the naval division, to send for his two colleagues, Richery 
 and Nielly. He told them that he had no special instruc- 
 tions in case of the absence of the general-in-chief ; but he 
 added that he would act in accordance with the orders 
 received, and do his duty. He then commanded the three 
 admirals to sail into the Bay of Bantry with their divisions, 
 and to effect a landing without delay, such as ordered by 
 General Hoche. 
 
 Bouvet alone obeyed;' he entered into the bay, the depth 
 of which was twenty-eight kilometres, ^ with seventeen 
 ships, carrying seven thousand men of excellent troops, and 
 made the first preparations necessary for landing. 
 
 The wind rose again on the 23rd December, and gave 
 fears in the fleet of a tempest arising whilst at anchor in 
 an unprotected place. Admiral Bouvet believed bis ships in 
 danger, and thought the landing difficult with troops too 
 
 ^ Obiir governs <l when followed by an object. 
 ^ Kilometre ; about a thousand metres. The metre is equivalent 
 to 3 feet, 3f| inches. 
 
RETURN OF THE FLEET. 
 
 107 
 
 few in number besides to obtain in the island any serious 
 result ; seeing moreover the,4idmirals, Richery and Nielly, 
 keeping with their nineteen ships outside of the bay, and 
 more disposed to take them back to France than to land 
 the troops in Ireland. Presuming at last that the frigate 
 which bore Hoche and the Admiral-in-Chief had been either 
 captured or wrecked, Bouvet changed his resolution, and 
 followed the example of his colleagues. 
 
 Setting at defiance the command and even the threats of 
 General Grouchy, who, in his order of the day of the 24th 
 December, ordered an immediate landing. Admiral Bouvet 
 gave order to cut the cables, left the Bay, and with his 
 colleagues steered towards France. The fleet w& : again 
 scattered by the winds, and at last, on the 1st of January, 
 a fortnight after having left the port of Brest filled with 
 boldness and hope, it returned thither tempest- tossed and 
 disabled.* On that very day Hoche and the Admiral, after 
 having run the greatest dangers to escape the cruisers of 
 the enemies, themselves entered the Bay of Ban try. Hoche 
 found there neither the fleet nor his army, and when he 
 heard that they had come, that the army had not landed, 
 and thai, the fleet had taken it back to France, he was seized 
 with frightful despair, and would have pursued it to return 
 with it to Ireland, had it not been that his vessel was again 
 assailed by furious tempests for three weeks, and he only 
 re-entered Brest after an absence of more than a month. 
 He found the fleet unable to put to sea at once, and he 
 deferred until another time his great enterprise on the other 
 side of the Channel.! 
 
 *A11 these facts, supported by irrefutable documents, have l>een 
 produced with perfect exactness in the pamphlet written by the 
 General, Marquis de Grouchy, to defend the memory of General 
 Grouchy, his father, to the conduct of whom M. Bergounioux and 
 other historians have too lightly attributed the failure of the Irish 
 expedition. General Grouchy, brought back to France in spite of 
 himself, denounced before the Directory the conduct of Admiral 
 Bouvet, and provoked his dismissal. 
 
 fThe Second Legion of the Franks, commanded by Colonel Tale, 
 after having disembarked in England according to the instructions 
 
108 
 
 LAZARE HOCHE. 
 
 m 
 
 } i 
 
 It! 1 
 
 Thus were destroyed by destiny all the hopes which 
 Hoche had formed for an expedition prepared with so 
 much care and at so great an expense. He conceived the 
 bitterest grief in consequence ; but he soon obtained from 
 the Directory a command on the Rhine worthy of his 
 ambition and of his genius, and was named in January, 
 1797, General-in-Chief of the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse. 
 
 VII. 
 
 I . 4 
 
 HOCHE GENERAL-IN-CHIEF OF THE ARMY OF SAMBRE-ET- 
 MEUSE. — CAMPAIGN OF 1797 ON THE RHINE. 
 
 Sambre-et-Meuse ! Glorious name, dear \.o all French 
 hearts ! What souveniis it recalls ! What famous exploits, 
 how many victories I Wattignies, Wissemburg, Fleurus ! 
 Belgium conquered, the Rhine brought under subjection, 
 the Danube threatened. The Army of Sambre-et-Meuse, 
 in which the Army of Moselle had been merged, had accom- 
 plished all these great things. It was composed of heroic 
 men, hardened to fatigue, inured to all perils, able to defy 
 Europe. Enthusiasm had not disappeared from their hearts, 
 the disinterested love of liberty yet inflamed the soul of the 
 soldiers and of their chiefs ; and those chiefs were Le F^vre, 
 Grenier, Richepanse, Ney, Championnet, and many others, 
 predestined, as these, to a glorious renown. This army had 
 been led the preceding year (1797) by Jourdan into the 
 heart of Germany as far as the frontiers of Bohemia ; then 
 it had bocn driven back, with that of Moreau, by the skil- 
 ful manoeuvres of the Archduke Charles, and after ' having 
 lost two battles, it had fallen back on the Rhine. Jourdan, 
 whose glory lost nothing by his reverses, but for whom the 
 
 received, was soon surrounded by superior forces, and all were made 
 prisoners of war. The English Government, ha\ing heard of what 
 unworthy elements this legion was composed, thought it might 
 render a service to France by keeping it in its pontoons. It caused 
 it therefore to re-embark, and returned it whole to France, whence it 
 had been oast on the British coast. 
 
 ^ Apr^'i ; note well the construction of the verb here. 
 
 
A NEW COMMAND. 
 
 109 
 
 
 hour of repose had come, had asked permission to retire, 
 and had been replaced by Beurnonville ; it was the latter 
 whom Hoche succeeded. 
 
 The Army of Sambre-et-Meuse then occupied on the 
 Rhine the advanced positions of Dusseldorf and of Neu- 
 wied, and was supported on the right by the Army of the 
 Rhine, commanded by Moreau, whilst Bonaparte, having 
 Alvinzi in front, was preparing to d-^stroy, at Rivoli, the 
 last army that Austria had in Italy. Such was, in January, 
 1797, the situation of the French armies, on the eve of 
 making a decisive effort to dictate peace to Austria. The 
 name of Hoche, the gallant conqueror of Wissemburg, had 
 been received by the Army of 8ambre-et-Meuse as the omen 
 of new victories, and it welcomed its new general with 
 enthusiasm. A great change had taken place in him in 
 three years. He had yet the same devotion to the Revolu- 
 tion and to the Republic, and his fiery heart yearned ever 
 for glory and for the fatherland ; but matured before time 
 by the habit of command, to the impetuous excitement, to 
 the brilliant language of the general of the old Army of 
 Moselle, had succeeded a cold dignity and a laconic mode of 
 expression. He had felt the need of imposing further 
 respect to chiefs older than himself — men already illus- 
 trious and who had become his subordinates, with whom 
 he showed himself dignified, cold, reserved, and who was 
 now only familiar in intimacy. A new and dangerous 
 disposition, too frequently adopted by military chiefs— con- 
 tempt for civil authority and the citizens — found moment- 
 ary access in his heart. On the other hand, to establish 
 in France a free and stable government, he had little con- 
 fidence in the intervention of the multitude by universal 
 suffrage •* by losing many illusions, he also felt sometimes 
 his respect for legal rule growing weak, and the facts which 
 he had then under his eyes were but little fitted to inspire 
 
 • <<i 
 
 18 
 
 'The ^ople which suffers," he wrote to the Directory, 
 always desirous of some improvement or other, and it believes it 
 will find this in ceaseless changes. " 
 
110 
 
 LAZARE HOCHK. 
 
 .1 
 
 Hi,; 
 
 :i '■ 
 
 {' affi,,ai 
 
 him with other thoughts. His army was wanting in neces- 
 sary things in a conquered country, where commissariat 
 officers named by the Legislative Councils satiated them- 
 selves with the substance of the populations ruled by them. 
 Hoche obtained permission from the Directory to substitute 
 the law to dismiss, without the assistance of the two coun- 
 cils, these prevaricating agents. He took in hand, by his 
 own authority, the supreme management of all the territory 
 occupied by his army, and he gave the direct rule of it to 
 those who had it before the conquest, to the bailiffs and 
 even to the diocesan chapters. Hoche irstituted, to watch 
 over them, a superior commission, composed of men of great 
 probity, whom he declared elected for life ; and he leased 
 out the taxes, the payment of which this commission was 
 ordered to receive. The public service was then safe ; the 
 soldier was fed, clothed and provided with shoes, at the 
 expense of the conquered provinces. Hoche then remounted 
 his cavalry and his artillery ; he even offered provisions to 
 his colleague, Moreau, whose army was in want of them, 
 and he enabled his own to win new victories. 
 
 Reinforced by thirty thousand men of the Army of the 
 Sea Shoio, it presented a splendid effective force of ninety 
 thousand soldiers. Hoche divided his infantry into three 
 corps ; he entrusted the right to Le F^yre, the left to 
 Championnet, the centre to Grenier. He reassembled his 
 army in large masses, grouped according to the different 
 arms. On the right he placed the light cavalry under 
 Richepanse ; Klein commanded the dragoons on the left 
 wing ; Ney the hussars in the centre, and d'Hautpoul the 
 heavy cavalry forming the reserve. 
 
 Hoche' s plan was to cross the river at the end of March, 
 and to combine his movements with those of the Army of 
 the Rhine, commanded on his right by Moreau. This army 
 was not yet ready. Moreau, according to his established 
 custom, would not commence operations before his troops 
 were perfectly provisioned and supplied with all the 
 mat\3rial of war indispensable to a campaign. They were 
 not prepared, and wanted also boats to cross the Rhine. 
 
CAMPAIGN ON THE RHINE. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Hoche, impatient and anxious to fight, sent to Moreau 
 temporary bridges, and told him that on the 1 7th of April 
 he would cross the river with or without his aid, and that 
 he would attack the Austrians. 
 
 The latter, under the orders of Field-Marshals Warneck 
 and Kray, had accumulated formidable means of defence 
 between Mayence and Dusseldorf ; the head of the bridge; 
 before Neuwied was beset with batteries and obstacles ; in 
 the neighbourhood all the houses were battlemented, and 
 here and there redoubtable armys of cannons of large calibre 
 defended the position which Hoche was preparing to attack. 
 
 On the 17th of April' Championnet received the order 
 to leave Dusseldorf, t^ pass the 8ieg, and to attack the; 
 Austrians in the rear. He obeyed ; Warneck, informed of 
 his manoeuvres, concentrated his forces at Diersdorf to over- 
 whelm him ; but he thus weakened, in front of Hoche, the 
 corps of Marshal de Kray, who was defending Neuwied. 
 The mass of the French forces in the night between the 
 17th and 18th assembled at Andernach, and before day- 
 break the army crossed the river at Neuwied and drew up 
 in the plain. On the point 'of being attacked, Kray came 
 to a parley and asked for a short truce. Hoche demanded 
 that the celebrated fortress of Ehrenbreitstein should be 
 given up to him, and that the Austrian army should with- 
 draw behind the Lahn, conditions which a conquered army 
 alone could accept. Kray rejected them, ordered the fire 
 to commence, and covered the plain with ball and shell. 
 The French army then advanced ; nothing could resist its 
 onslaught ;2 the lines of the enemy were forced, its cavalry 
 thrown over, its formidable redoubts were overthrown and 
 stormed with the bayonet. Hoche pursued the Austrians 
 into the mountains, then he marched on Diersdorf to assist 
 Championnet ; the latter. had passed the Sieg the preceding 
 night and carried the heights of Ukerath and Altenkirchen. 
 Hoche met on his way near Diersdorf* an Austrian reserve 
 
 ^ Note well the absence of the preposition in French. 
 
 * Choc ; c sounded. 
 
 * PHs is usually followed by de. 
 
1; I 
 
 !l 
 
 112 
 
 LAZAKK HOCHE. 
 
 I) 
 
 
 Hi 
 
 of about eight thousand men : he attacked and put it to 
 flight, whilst on the right De Fovre also defeated the 
 enemy, and pursued it closely' as far as Montabauer. 
 
 Such was the day of the 18th April (29 germinal^) in 
 which the Austrians, forced in thcdr entrenchments, were 
 driven beyond the Lahn and over the Mean, after having 
 lost eight thousand men, seven Hags, twenty-seven mortars 
 and sixty cannons. The French also occupied Diersdorf, 
 Altenkirchen and Montabauer. 
 
 Victory with Hoche only acted as a stimulant ; it incited 
 him to hasten to new triumphs. A conqueror at Neuwied, 
 at the head of an army of 86,000 men, he felt able to repel 
 the Austrians as far as the Danube. Already, driving 
 Warneck before him, he had waged several glorious com- 
 bats, and he was taking the necessary steps to cut off his 
 retreat and separate him from Austria. His vangutird, 
 commanded by Le F^vre, was marching rapidly on Frank- 
 fort ; it had crossed the Nidda, and was preparing to attack 
 the place and to charge the enemy, when a courier arrived, 
 bearer of the preliminaries of peace signed by Bonaparte at 
 Leoben. 
 
 Hoche immediately suspended his glorious march, giving 
 up the almost cer^^ain glory of forcing an Austrian army to 
 lay down its arms. He only showed the satisfaction of 
 sfieing the shedding of blood stopped, and he wrote to the 
 Directory to bear witness of this : " After having travelled," 
 he said, " over thirty-five leagues in four days, triumphed 
 in three battles and five skirmishes, the Army of Sambre- 
 et-Meuse welcomed the news of peace with deep emotion." 
 
 Hoche addressed at the same time these simple lines to 
 his wife, as a pure expression of an affectionate heart, and 
 in which one recognizes, as well as the hero, the husband 
 and the father : " Peace is proclaimed, my darling ; your 
 husband is conqueror, in good health, and embraces you ; 
 take care of our dear child." , ' 
 
 ^ Literally, the sword in the back, ' ' 
 
 * Germinal ; from fjermen, first month of spring. 
 
 f 
 
 I 
 
THE COUP-D ETAT OF FRUCTIDOR. 
 
 113 
 
 The hostilities having been suspended between France 
 and Austria, Hoche thought again ardently of Ireland ; it 
 was through her that he wished to reach and strike the 
 English Government, in which he ever saw the most re- 
 doubtable enemy of France. Acting in concert with Admiral 
 Truguet, he took all the necessary dispositions to prepare 
 a new armament more formidable than the preceding one. 
 The works in the harbour in Brest were renewed with 
 activity, the old ships were repaired, new ones were built. 
 Hoche, although at a distance, filled all souls with the 
 enthusiasm of his own ; he sent to the Minister of Marine 
 the savings which he had effected on the taxes of the con- 
 quered countries ; then he hastened into Holland to come 
 to an understanding with the Batavian Republic, then an 
 ally of the French Republic, and planned with the principal 
 land and sea officers a simultaneous descent of the French 
 and Dutch troops on the coasts of Ireland. Having returned 
 to the camp of the Rhine, Hoche sent a numeroJis detach- 
 ment of the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse, and repaired at last 
 to Paris to hasten the preparations for the new expedition, 
 and also, it must te said, to second the conspiracy of the 
 majority of the Directory against the legislative bodies, and 
 to prepare with them the coup-detat of the 18th fructidor. 
 
 )r 
 
 I 
 
 VIII. 
 
 COUP-d'eTAT of fructidor.^ — ILLNESS AND DEi»TH OF 
 
 GENERAL HOCHE. 
 
 It was impossible that a state of things so horrible as the 
 Reign of Terror should not provoke a violent reaction of a 
 long duration, and that the men who had establishe»l it 
 should not soon be subjected to public hate and to general 
 horror. This reaction, commenced on the 9th thermidor, 
 1794, continued during the following years with an ever 
 increasing violence, sustained by a cause which historians 
 
 ^ Fnicticlorj the twelfth month of the republican calendar. Fruc- 
 tU8, fruit. 
 
 8 
 
11 
 
 114 
 
 LAZAKE IIOCIIK. 
 
 ! 
 
 I .( 
 
 have not sufficiently kept in view. The Rfugn of Terror had 
 fallen, Vmt most of those who had inaugurated it did not fall 
 with it. A few scoundrels had perished, but the greatest 
 number of those members of the Convention who had 
 sustained them by their votes had remained, and were 
 masters of the situation. The Convention survived a year 
 after Robespierre, and when it withdrew from the scene, it 
 was rtivived with fresh vigour under other names. It pro- 
 claimed and managed to make a number of enthusiastic and 
 lionest Republicans believe — (General Hoche among the num- 
 ber — that the Revolution was incarnate in the members of 
 the Convention, and it did violence to public opinion by 
 (loclaring, by the decrees of fructidor (year three), that two- 
 thirds of its members would constitute a part of the new 
 Legislative Councils, of which they would thus form the 
 majority. 
 
 After the promulgation of these decrees, and the day of 
 the 13th vend^miaire, ' when the Convention shot down the 
 Parisian citizens who had rejected them, and who protested 
 against them by open force, the two Legislative Councils, 
 that of the Ancients and that of the Cinq-Cents, the two- 
 thirds of which were formed of old members of the Con- 
 vention, sought a guarantee against reaction by choosing 
 the five members of the Directory invested with the execu- 
 tive power amongst the most compromised of the regicides* 
 in the eyes of the Royalists. 
 
 The opposition, conquered in vend^miaire, awaited its 
 success from the new elections! and from the lawful course 
 of events ; it was predominant in the electoral body, better 
 constituted then than it has been perhaps in any epoch of 
 our history. The elections were of two degrees, and the 
 electors combined with the authority of number that au- 
 thority, not less necessary, of presumed ability. Their 
 
 * Thus were called those whose votes had sent Louis XVI. to the 
 scaffold. 
 
 t A third of the members of councils were re-elected every year. 
 
 ^ Vendimiaire, first rnonth of the republican calendar. Vindemia, 
 harvest. 
 
THE CUUP-D ETAT OF PIU'CTIDOR. 
 
 lift 
 
 choice was, in the year four, as thc^ preceding year, the faith- 
 ful expression of the ruling opinion, that of the spirit of 
 reaction against the terrorists and the Montagnards, and 
 that of the constitutional and moderate party, friendly to 
 the principles of 1789, and who saw with terror the execu- 
 tive power vested ever in the hands of the members of the 
 Convention and the rebels. 
 
 The two Legislative Councils, after the election of the 
 second third of their members, were then composed in a 
 great measure of men who, without wishing a counter- 
 revolution, wished nevertheless, as well as peace, to have 
 the abolition of the revolutionary laws still in force,"* a 
 real liberty and the successive and legal cleansing of a 
 Directory the heir of the Convention. 
 
 The names of a few ardent loyalists, it is true, had been 
 brought forth at the last elections. The latter, faithful to 
 the constant tactics of the minorities, considered their cause 
 one with the constitutional and moderate majority, and 
 sought by all means possible to create a disturbance and to 
 increase their importance. In this they were but too well 
 seconded by three directors — Barras, Rewbell and La Re- 
 veill^re-Lepeauxf — and by their Montagnard friends, who 
 said aloud and published in their papers that the whole 
 opposition was monarchical, that power was about' to pass 
 to the Royalists, that the Bourbons and the aristocrats would 
 soon reappear, and that it was all over with the Revolu- 
 tion. I 
 
 *These laws closed the churches and proscribed the priests ; they 
 decreed penalty of death and confiscation against the refugees, and 
 many other draco nian measures. (Draco, an Athenian legislator, who 
 enacted that all crimes should be punished by death). 
 
 t These three directors constituted the majority in the Directory, 
 where they were opposed by Carnot and Barth^lemy ; the latter 
 had been recently elected by the moderate party in the place of 
 Letourneur. 
 
 In his impartial "History of the Directory," M. de Barante has 
 resented in its right light that epoch which has been made obscure 
 y historians belonging to the extreme and most opposed parties. 
 ^ AUait passer. Alkr^ before an infinitive, denotes bemg on the 
 point of performing the action which that infinitive expresses. 
 
 I 
 
::n 
 
 '- k 
 
 ii 
 
 ^•*m 
 
 1- 
 
 I'* 
 
 N '} 
 
 II 
 
 u 
 
 'i; 
 
 p^i. 
 
 
 116 
 
 LAZARE HOCHE. 
 
 These threatening reports, exaggerated by fears, were 
 believed, especially at a distance, by many honest people 
 sincerely devoted to the Revolution, enthusiasts for liberty, 
 which they sa-w almost ex<^lusively in civil equality, in the 
 maintaining of the republican rule, and in national in- 
 dependence. General Hoche, as we have said, belonged to 
 this number. Having ascended rapidly, by his merit, from 
 the lowest rank to the highest, he had always before his 
 eyes, in the old order of things where he risked vegetating 
 in an obscure position, those shackles which might have 
 restrained his progress, and all the obstacles which he would 
 have met in a society constituted as it was under the 
 abolished rule. 
 
 Resembling in that the greatest number of men who have 
 owed their elevation only to themselves, he did not like in 
 principle, and considered as suspicious, all privileged per- 
 sons, whether kings or noblemen ; ' "^ he deemed the first 
 tyrants, the second their natural supporters or accomplices, 
 in the privileges which had made them what they were the 
 greatest obstacle to liberty, and in these privileges liberty 
 ioself. Hoche thus confounded equality with liberty ; he 
 had not sufficiently studied the true conditions of the exist- 
 once of political franchise, the only guarantee of all the 
 others ; he seemed to ignore that the representation of a 
 people cannot be truly national except as far as it is the free 
 and true expression of the public will ; he forgot, in short, 
 ^hat liberty only exists as long as the law reigns, and that 
 the law is only supreme if the legislator is inviolable. 
 
 Hoche considered the fate of the Republic as bound to 
 the policy of the Directory, which tended to revolutionize 
 
 •In the daily affairs of life, this disposition often gave way in him 
 to very earnest affection for men belonging to the class of the old 
 privileged persons, especially for those who served under his orders, 
 and we have seen also that he preserved a grateful friendship for the 
 General Count Le Veneur, whose aide-de-camp he had been. He 
 had even the happiness in the last moments of his life of rendering 
 an important service to his old general and friend. 
 
 ^ Note that gcntilshommes must not be translated by gentlemen 
 
THE DIRECTORIAL COUNCIL. 
 
 ir 
 
 I 
 
 Europe, and to maintain the revolutionary laws, which 
 proscribed the refugees and armed the Government with 
 extraordinary powers; in his eyes the true patriots, the 
 only defenders of the Revolution and of liberty, were the 
 three Directors and their partizans who wished to preserve 
 at any cost these exceptional laws ; whilst those who wished 
 to annul them and to substitute a lawful and moderate 
 rule were in his estimation Royalists, adversaries of liberty, 
 enemies yet to be destroyed. 
 
 Hoche arrived in Paris, and imparted to the Government 
 his fears with regard to the progress of royalism in the midst 
 of the Legislative Councils, and said that it was indispen- 
 sable to triumph over this, if need be, by force. He con- 
 ferred particularly with Barras, and he offered to assist any 
 active undertaking of the directors against the electoral 
 majority and legislative power. He sent, in concert with 
 him, two of his divisions commanded by Richepanse to 
 Brest, under pretext of making them take part in a new 
 expedition against Ireland ; he made them pass at a short 
 distance from Paris, and made them take up their quarters 
 at La Ferte-Alais, on this side of the limits fixed by the 
 Constitution for the troops who should not be called to the 
 capital by legislative authority itself.* The arrival of these 
 troops in the neighbourhood of Paris, and within a prohi- 
 bited distance, coincided with a ministerial remodelling, in 
 which Hoche was designated as Minister of War. 
 
 The Council of the Cinq-Cents was excited at this ; it 
 believed itself in peril, and declared the Constitvition violated 
 if the troops did not take a retrograde movement as far as 
 the limits that it had fixed. It opposed at the same time 
 the projected promotion of Hoche to the Ministry of War, 
 alleging that he had not reached the legal age for ministerial 
 functions, and it demanded that the Directory should give an 
 account of its conduct. Out of the five directors, three only 
 
 *By virtue of the Constitution, it was forbidden to the troops to 
 approach within a radius of twelve leagues of the place where the 
 Legislative Councils were in session, unless a law was passed to 
 that effect. 
 
 % 
 
v\ 
 
 1 • 
 
 fri\ 
 
 r 5 1 
 
 118 
 
 LAZAKE HOCHE. 
 
 wanted a coup-cTStat against the Councils ; the two others, 
 Oarnot and Barth^lemy, opposed themselves to it, and per- 
 sisted in wishing to remain within the pale of the law. 
 Oarnot occupied then the presidency of the Directorial 
 Council ; he called upon General Hoche to account before 
 the assembled directors for his absence from his army, his 
 presence in Paris, and the orders given to the troops who 
 had gone beyond the constitutional limits. Hoche pleaded 
 ignorance ; he said that General Richepanse had received or- 
 ders to take his division to Brest, and that undoubtedly he 
 was ignorant that La Ferte-Alais was within the prohibited 
 circle. He had reckoned on Barras to defend him, and Bar- 
 ras was silent. La Reveillere-Lepeaux interceded, and put 
 an end to this severe and perilous cross-questioning. Hoche 
 not bei\ g sustained by the Government, seeing besides the 
 Directory uncertain and the coup-d'etat deferred, ordered 
 his divisions to take a retrograde movement as far as Alsace, 
 left Paris and returned to his headquarters at Wetzlar. 
 But alarm had penetrated the legislative majority, which 
 feared very justly a coup -d'etat, and the adversaries of 
 Hoche had recourse to all possible means, even the most 
 odious ones, to ruin his credit and destroy his popularity. 
 General Willot, his personal enemy, denounced him openly 
 before the Council of the Cinq-Cents as aspiring to play the 
 part of Marius ; another member, Dufresne Saint Leon, 
 accused him of having only deposited in the public treasury 
 a small part of the sums raised on the territories which his 
 army occupied, by the financial commission which he had 
 arbitrarily instituted, and he gave it to be understood that 
 without doubt Hoche had kept the rest for himself and his 
 staff. Hoche, it is true, had only deposited a part of those 
 sums in the coffers of the state ; he had reserved another 
 portion for the eventual needs of the Government, and with 
 the rest he had nourished and kept his soldiers, preferring 
 to use these resources rather than have recourse^ to the 
 
 ^ Recourir. Note well the strong accentuation given to the double 
 r in the future of this verb. . . . 
 
CALUMNIES REFUTED. 
 
 119 
 
 greedy contractors and speculators whom he had driven 
 away from his army. 
 
 The illustrious General Jourdan, a member of the Coun- 
 cil of the Cinq-Cents, could not in cool blood listen to the 
 calumniating accusation directed against the one whom he 
 considered as the honour of the French armies, and, although 
 belonging to the threatened majority, he rose with indigna- 
 tion and said : *' Often the armies would have perished 
 from starvation if the generals-in-chief had not used the 
 taxes levied in conquered countries. I commanded one 
 hundred and fifty thousand men, and I have the proofs 
 that the Government paid a set of scoundrels for one hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand rations per day, and that the 
 army only received ten thousand. It was then necessary 
 that the generals should bestir themselves in keeping the 
 rest of the army alive. It is not in the power of any one 
 to make me believe that General Hoche has committed any 
 other crime, and those guilty as he have right to obtain the 
 thanks of a grateful fatherland." 
 
 This shining tribute, given by so great a man, to his 
 integrity, rendered less bitter for Hoche a calumny against 
 which he at once protested by demanding a public trial. 
 But the unjust reproaches to which he had seen himself a 
 prey in the midst of the Legislative Councils, of which he 
 had excited the alarm, keenly irritated him. He believed 
 that the majority had determined upon his ruin to be more 
 free to accomplish its contra-revolutionary projects ; he 
 wished to return threat for threat to his adversaries, and, 
 having assembled his generals in a patriotic banquet to 
 solemnize the fete of the 10th of August, the last day of the 
 monarchy, he drank to the Republic, and said : *' Friends, 
 peace is about to be signed ; but I must not conceal it from 
 you, you cannot yet lay down those terrible arms by which 
 you have so often obtained victory. Before doing this, 
 perhaps we shall have to make sure of the tranquillity of 
 the interior, which rebels against the laws of the Republic 
 are trying to disturb." But Hoche's progress iu this di- 
 rection was drawing to a close. Already death was in 
 
120 
 
 LAZA.RE HOCIIE. 
 
 ii .mm 
 
 ;l 
 
 his heart, that premature death which places the glorious 
 deeds of good men in safety, and protects them from the 
 reverses of fortune. He had felt at Brest, the preceding 
 year, the first attack of an unknown disease, which in- 
 creased in intensity at Wetzlar ; he soon fell seriously ill, 
 and the report was spread that he had been poisoned. He 
 was, in the eyes of the Royalists, the most resolute and 
 bravest champion of the republican government ; as such 
 he was open to criminal attacks, and he had before escaped 
 as if by a miracle from an assassin hired by his enemies ;* 
 his life was knov/n to be threatened, and each new crisis of 
 a disease which seemed inexplicable v/as believed to be a 
 mark of an attempt against his person. 
 
 Distracted by a dry cough, devoured by an inward and 
 devouring fever, he was a prey to nervous irritation, and 
 fell into spasms which left him completely exhausted. He 
 was pining away in this painful state when he heard of the 
 violent action of the 18th fructidor, executed against the 
 Legislative Councils by the three directors, Barras, La Re- 
 veillere-Lepeaux and Rewbell. This news, impatiently 
 expected and of which he did not foresee the consequences, 
 caused him the liveliest joy and restored his strength. The 
 Directory, however, had had recourse to odious means to 
 succeed in its enterprise,! and had imposed on itself a long 
 series of tyrannical acts without ever being 'j,ble to stop 
 within the lav^, until the not far distant day when, in its 
 turn, it fell a despised victim by the coup-d^etat of bru- 
 
 * Returning one evening from the theatre at Rennes, as he re- 
 entered his residence a shot was fired point-blank at him and did 
 not touch him. The a sassin, who confessed his crime, was seized, 
 and he designated as his accomplice an old chief of the Chouans. 
 Hoche solicited their pardon in vain — they perished on the scaf- 
 fold. 
 
 t The principal means to which the three directors had recourse to 
 prolong their authority were : The transportation to Cayenne of 
 their two colleagues, Carnot and Barth^lemy, of fifty -nine mem- 
 bers of the two Legislative Councils, and forty journalists ; the 
 suspension of the liberty of the press ; and the resumption of the 
 revolutionary measures against the refugees and the priests. 
 
 \ 
 
DEATH OF HOCHE. 
 
 121 
 
 .# 
 
 maire.* Hoche.did not foresee this, and hailed with 
 enthusiasm the liberty which he believed saved by the day 
 of fructidor, whilst, on the contrary, it was irretrievably lost 
 A few days afterward, the Directory dismissed General 
 Moreau, who had lost its conlider :e, and gave his army to 
 General Hoohe, who thus united the command of the two 
 armies of Sambre-et-Meuse and that of the Rhine. But his 
 strength gave way again ; a prey to the fever which devoured 
 him, he represented himself as being clothed, like Hercules, 
 with the poisoned robe of the Centaur. His doctor, Pous- 
 sielgue, ordered necessary repose ; but for that ardent nature, 
 of which action was the natural element, inaction was more 
 a fatigue than a relief. He appeared resigned, however, and 
 repaired to the fair at Frankfort to take a little recreation ; 
 he met there some famous quack who promised to cure him 
 without imposing inactivity ; Hoche secretly took his 
 remedies, and his condition soon became desperate. He read 
 his sentence in the eyes of Poussielgue, saw he was dying, 
 and gently resigned himself to his fate. He wished once 
 more to receive his friends and his companions in arms, and 
 he did so with a calm air, whilst at the foot of his bed his 
 young wife stifled her sobs. He conversed about an hour 
 with them, thanking them for their affection, and even 
 endeavouring to smile. He also spoke of public affairs, and 
 referred to the coup-d^etat of fructidor, which he always 
 judged indispensable. Nevertheless, better informed, at 
 his last moment he recognized that it was fortunate that 
 none of the generals who were commanders-in-chief of the 
 armies of the Republic had participated in this act of vio- 
 lence, and that Augereau, in executing it by the order of 
 the three directors, had appeared to obey the civil powers ; 
 a republic, he said, should always be served and not pro- 
 tected by the sword. 
 
 * On that day, 19th brumaire, year eight (10th November, 1799), 
 Gen. Bonaparte, who had recently returned from Egypt, expelled 
 the Council of the Cinq-Cents at St. Cloud, arrested three directors, 
 and annulled the constitution of the year three. He was afterwards 
 elected First Consul. 
 
■■■ 
 
 I'' * 
 
 1^ 
 
 122 
 
 LAZARE HOCHE. 
 
 This last effort had exhausted him ; he dismissed his 
 lieutenants, and towards evening he fell asleep. After a 
 few hours of repose he awoke with spasms. He was speech- 
 lesr ; he had a terrible crisis, and on the 19th September, 
 1797, he expired gently in the arms of his wife and of 
 General Debelle, his brother-in-law."*^ 
 
 Hoche was scarcely twenty-nine, and his renown, like 
 that of his young and brilliant rival, the conqueror of Ar- 
 cole and of Rivoli, ^ filled Europe. What could describe the 
 grief of his companions in arms, the despair of his soldiers'^ 
 The whole army ofiered to its chief an affectionate and im- 
 posing funeral. It was decided that he should be buried at 
 P^tersberg, in the intrenched camp of Coblentz, alongside 
 of a young hero, like him carried off in the flower of his 
 youth, in the midst of a glorious career, and who left a 
 grand name behind him — General Marceau. 
 
 The funeral procession left Wetzlar on the 21st Septem- 
 ber, and advanced towards Coblentz. The aides-de-camp of 
 Hoche, the generals, and all the staff, escorted the funeral 
 car, before which were carried the standards and flags draped 
 with crape. The procession thus advanced to the dull 
 sound of mufiled drums, and to the solemn tone of the bells 
 rung by the inhabitants of the cities and large villages 
 which it traversed. The peasants of the neighbourhood 
 hastened in numbers to join the procession of the General, 
 from whom they had received tokens of commiseration, and 
 who had lightened for them the burdens of war. 
 
 The body was received with honour at Braunfels by the 
 sovereign prince, who awaited it on the public square at 
 the head of all the members of his household. When it 
 passed at the foot of the famous ramparts of the citadel of 
 Ehrenbreitstein, guarded by the Austrians, it was saluted 
 by all the batteries of the place and by the firing of the 
 
 * His body was opened, and in the stomach were found a few 
 specks, where it was thought that marks of poison could be traced ; 
 marks sufficient to warrant suspicions, but too weak to confirm them. 
 
 ^ Napoleon Bonaparte. 
 
 \ 
 
BURIAL OP HOCHE. 
 
 123 
 
 a 
 
 / 
 
 garrison as&embled in battle array on the glacis. The 
 governor advanced from the gates to receive it, and con- 
 ducted the body to the banks of the Rhine, between a 
 double line formed by the soldiers of France and Austria. 
 The procession passed through Coblentz, then wended its 
 way towards the heights of Petersberg, where a part of the 
 army was under arms to receive it. There a modest monu- 
 ment, which a great poet has celebrated in immortal verse, 
 contained the remains of Marceau.* This simple tomb, for 
 which Hoche had subscribed out of his savings a short time 
 before his death, contains the bodies of the two heroes. 
 The body of Hoche was lowered in it after having received 
 the adieux of his comrades. Le Fevre, Championnet and 
 Grenier paid a just tribute to their general in military lan- 
 guage, simple and true ; after them a grenadier advanced, 
 presented arms before the coffin, placed a wreath of oak 
 leaves, saying, "Hoche, in the name of the army, receive 
 this wreath," and he burst into tears. His tears expressed 
 better than any words the feelings of all. 
 
 Hoche was no more, but he still lived in the hearts of 
 his soldiers and of his co-citizens. France herself deeply 
 felt his loss, and public sorrow was shown in the solemn 
 obsequit^s ^ ith which the Government honoured his memory. 
 On the Ifac of October following, in Paris, all the bodies of 
 the State, the people and the army, were assembled by the 
 Directory in the Champ de Mars for this fete, at which the 
 illustrious Daunou pronounced the funeral oration of the 
 
 \ 
 
 * That which Lord Byron has said of Marceau, may in many re- 
 spects be applied to Hoche, to whom the poet has equally rendered 
 homage. * * Near Coblentz, on a smiling hill, is a simple and modest 
 pyramid crowning the summit of a green mound : under its base 
 rests a hero. . . Rapid and triumphant was his flight. All have 
 wept for him, friends and enemies, and the foreigner who stops here 
 to meditate, may justly pray for the repose of his generous mind, 
 for he was the best champion of liberty. He was among those, too 
 few, alas ! who have not overstepped the just limits which she assigns 
 to the warriors whom she arms with her sword. His soul remained 
 spotless ; that is why men have wept for^him." 
 
124 
 
 LAZARE HOCHE. 
 
 \H 
 
 1 
 
 I; 
 
 
 hero, and was the eloquent interpreter of the grief of the 
 nation. 
 
 Such was the brilliant though too short career of Lazare 
 Hoche, who excited the admiration of all, even of his 
 enemies, and who obtained a most enviable glory at the age 
 when the most illustrious commence to attract attention. 
 He had in an eminent degree that character peculiar to 
 great men, of always appearing superior to their position ; 
 the more he rose the greater he seemed, and it is recognized 
 by common accord that his success, if he had lived, would 
 have had no limit except that traced by duty and marked 
 out by himself. His whole life bears the stamp of true 
 greatness. In contemplating it the soul is elevated, and 
 feels inclined to practise self-abnegation, devotion and great 
 actions. His most prominent points were loyalty, magna- 
 nimity, ardent patriotism, the worship of honour, and a 
 devouring activity, for which repose was an intolerable 
 suffering. To these grand traits we must add the disinter- 
 estedness of an ambition which had no other aim but the 
 welfare of his country, a kind compassion for the miseries 
 of the unfortunate, an integrity so natural as not to appre- 
 ciate its own worth. " You recommend me," he wrote to 
 his young wife, " to think of the fortune of our child. I 
 shall leave her a spotless name ; it is all I owe her." Never 
 did a general possess better the heart of his army. "Love," 
 he often said, ''if you would be loved." It was in this man- 
 ner, by loving his soldiers, that he became their idol. His 
 property was theirs, and his generosity knew no bounds. 
 " You would have in your purse 200,000 francs more," said 
 one of his relations to him, " if you did not give what you 
 possess right and left." " I should have a million less," 
 replied Hoche, " in that of my friends, if I had need of it." 
 To meet in this respect, among the heroes of history, a 
 captain worthy of being compared to him, we must go back 
 to Du Guesclin, whose life I have related before his, and 
 whom Hoche resembled in many ways. We admire in 
 them the same generosity, the same heroism, the same com- 
 
 ( » 
 
 
DU GUESCLIN. 
 
 125 
 
 ry, a 
 back 
 and 
 re in 
 com- 
 
 miseration for the wretched, the same horror for knaves and 
 for the bloodsuckers of the poor. They both had, before 
 the enemy, perfect possession of their own faculties, a rapid 
 glance and a sudden inspiration ; they displayed an equal 
 proportion of caution in preparations, impetuosity in ac- 
 complishing, and, despising routine, they caused military 
 art to progress, and showed the instinct of great innova- 
 tions germs of modem strategies and tactics. Both, in 
 short, had the. good fortune of conquering every time that 
 they had the chief command, and the bitter regret of dying 
 in their beds, after having passed their lives in the midst of 
 perils and on the battle field. 
 
 Hoche had this great advantage over Bertrand du Gues- 
 clin, that he was born in a more enlightened epoch of 
 civilization, and he understood the superiority that the 
 culture of letters gives, and the enjoyments which it pro- 
 cures. Bertrand could not read, and never was troubled 
 about it ; Hoche, on the contrary, always regretted that he 
 had only received in his childhood too limited an education, 
 and he did all in his power to make up for his deficiencies. 
 He read, he studied in the camps; the ancient authors, and 
 above all the historians of Greece and Rome, had a power- 
 ful attraction for him ; he found in their writings a source 
 of republican virtue from which his honest soul drank with 
 delight, and he felt powerfully attracted by those great 
 chiefs who, whilst laying down their glorious sword, felt 
 proud to drive the plough. He gained a great deal by his 
 study of antiquity ; one perceives it especially in the style 
 of his proclamations and his orders of the day, losing, as 
 they did by degrees, that declamatory style in use then in 
 the official language, to attain a pure, stern precision of 
 eloquence. Hoche obtained taste through the application 
 of a delicate mind and of rare good sense to the study of 
 great models ; and after having, in his early youth, read a 
 great deal without rule and without choice, he learned to 
 discriminate, to choose, and to give excellent counsels to 
 his young ^fe to guide her in her readings ; he sought to 
 
126 
 
 LAZARE HOCHE. 
 
 form her taste by enlightening her mind ; and at an epoch 
 when the enthusiasm for Rousseau's works was at its 
 height, Hoche did not give a slight proof of hfs common 
 sense by abstaining from the general contagion ; he discov- 
 ered exaggeration, paradox, falsehood, even through the 
 magic of too seductive a style, and he took care to fore- 
 warn his wife against the perils of this reading. Several 
 of his letters are full of delicate and charming details ; all 
 breathed the pride of an upright, strong, independent mind, 
 and in a few of them one perceives the extreme importance 
 which he attached to the education of women as well as to 
 that of men, and to all which tends to develop at an early 
 age, in all minds, vigour, energy and sincerity. All in him 
 tended to the same end : words, writings and actions. His 
 disposition offers to the attentive observer a type har- 
 monious and grand in every detail as in the whole. 
 
 A few dark sides are also found in his disposition ; 
 Hoche always had a great deal of trouble in doing violence 
 to his nature, ardent, impetuous and an enemy of every 
 restraint ; as impressionable as passionate, he passed rapidly 
 from one resolution to another, sometimes altogether op- 
 posite, as in the epoch of the expedition of Ireland, which 
 he abandoned one day to undertake it again the next. He 
 was subject to dejection of mind and to temporary weak- 
 nesses ; but the latter sometimes proceeded from error of 
 judgment, sometimes from excessive irritation or from pain- 
 ful deception, never from any vice. Soon his great reason, 
 his firm and loyal heart, assumed their pre-eminence, and led 
 him back in the right path, towards his true aim. He 
 had a few of the prejudices of his time and of his personal 
 situation ; he committed errors, he risked placing in peril 
 the liberty of his country whilst believing that he was serv- 
 ing it; he was mistaken, but in good faith ; his intentions 
 remained pure. Liberty, which he loved with a love more 
 sincere than enlightened, remained dear to him, and the 
 great principles of 1789 were always sacred to him. But 
 he wanted experience as well as every one els^ with time 
 
FREEDOM AND LIBERTY. 
 
 127 
 
 he would have recognized the true conditions of the exist- 
 ence of liberty in the midst of a great nation. Hoche would 
 have understood that freedom can have no other founda- 
 tion than respect for the rights of all, for legal order, and for 
 public opinion firmly expressed ; never would he have pre- 
 ferred his own advantage to the good of his country, never 
 either would he have based his fortune on the ruins of 
 liberty. He was of the race of those who live again, in 
 the Lives of Plutarch, for the honour of humanity ; he be- 
 longed to the great family of such men as Cimon, Phocion, 
 Paul u^milius, men by whom republics subsist or who fall 
 with them. 
 
 har- 
 
 more 
 
 the 
 
 But 
 
 time 
 
! ' I 
 
 '•? 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Note A. 
 
 La Terreur in Paris. — By M. de Lamartine, 
 
 More than eight thousand suspected people filled the prisons of 
 Paris a month before the death of Danton. In one single night 
 three hundred families of the Faubourg St. Germain were cast into 
 them ; all the great names of historical, militaiy, parliamentary, 
 episcopal France. The trouble of inventing a crime was not even 
 taken ; their name was sufficient ; their riches denounced them ; 
 their rank delivered them up. One was guilty for having lived in 
 a certain district, for his rank, fortune, relationship, family, religion, 
 opinion, for presumed sentiments ; in fact, there were neither inno- 
 cent nor guilty ; there were no longer any but proscribers and 
 proscribed. Neither age nor sex, nor old age nor childhood, nor 
 infirmities which rendered all criminality naturally impossible, 
 could save one from accusation and condemnation. Paralytic old 
 men followed their sons ; children their fathers ; women their hus- 
 bands ; daughters their mothers. One died for his name, another 
 for his fortune, for having manifested his opinion, for his silence, for 
 having served royalty, for having embraced the Republic with 
 ostentation, for not having worshipped Marat, for having regretted 
 the Girondins, for having emigrated, for having remained in his 
 abode, for having starved the people by not spending his revenues, 
 or for having displayed a luxury which was an insult to public 
 misery. Reasons, suspicions, contradictory pretences, anything was 
 adopted. It sufficed only to ha\ informers in the district, and the 
 law encouraged them by giving them a part of the confiscations. 
 The people, at the same time informers, judges and heirs of their 
 victims, looked forward to enriching themselves with confiscated 
 possessions. When proscribers required some pretext for death they 
 watched for true or feigned conspiracies in the prisons. Spies, dis- 
 guised like prisoners, endeavoured to obtain confidences, sighs for 
 liberty, plans of evasion among the prisoners, invented them some- 
 times, then revealed them to the public accuser. They wrote on 
 their lists of information hundreds of names of suspected people 
 who first heard of their crimes through their accusations ; this is 
 what was called the batches of the guillotine. They created a cer- 
 
 ■'■i 
 
pi sons of 
 ;le niglit 
 ;ast iuto 
 iientary, 
 not even 
 I them ; 
 lived in 
 religion, 
 er inno- 
 •ers and 
 pod, nor 
 )0S8ible, 
 l^tic old 
 eir hus- 
 another 
 nee, for 
 ic with 
 retted 
 in his 
 'enues, 
 public 
 ing was 
 Ind the 
 ations . 
 jf their 
 [seated 
 they 
 IS, dis- 
 rhs for 
 [some- 
 )te on 
 )eople 
 bhis is 
 cer- 
 
 APPEXniX. 
 
 129 
 
 , 
 
 \ 
 
 tain vacuum in the cells . . . they kept up terror, they imposed 
 silence on murmurs. Every day the numl)er of tlic carts employed 
 to conduct the condemned to the scatt'old increastMl. At four o'clock 
 they wont across the bridge Au Change and the Rue St. Honore 
 towards the square of the Revolution. Tliey took the longest way 
 ir order to prolong the spectacle for the mob, as well as the pun- 
 isnment for the victims. It was murder given as a spectacle and 
 as an amusement to a whole people. — History of the Qirondim^ Bk, 
 L VI. 
 
 Note B. 
 
 Inference, of M. Chnide Desprez as to the Capitulation called that of 
 
 Quiberon . 
 
 As of this capitulation no traces can be found, says M. Desprez, 
 therefore upon what foundation remains the report which has oeen 
 handed to us ? If on words which are attributed to Sombreuil after 
 his conference with a republican chief, then we would rather believe 
 Sombreuil himself in the matter. Twice he has spoken of the capitu- 
 lation, on the faith of which the refugees " laid low their arms ; " 
 the first is in the letter which he wrote to Admiral Warren, in the 
 following terms : "Having no more resources, I had recourse to a 
 capitulation to save that which could not escape, and the general 
 cry of the army replied to me that all who were refugees would be 
 prisoners of war. and spared like the others." 
 
 The second letter is dated at Auray, and addressed to Hoche : 
 "All your troops," said Sombreuil to him, "were engaged against 
 the small number which remained to me, and which necessarily must 
 have succumbed ; but, sir, the word of those who came even into 
 the ranks to give it to tha^ small number should be a sacred thing 
 for you. " 
 
 One sees that in this second letter, as in the first, it is only a 
 question of the cries of the soldiers, or, at most, tlie words of a few 
 officers without authority. Yet if Sombreuil had treated with 
 Hoche, or even with Humbert, he would not have failed to recall it, 
 and to summon Hoche on his honour to cause the promises he had 
 received from him to be respected. The answer of Hoche to tljis 
 last letter has not reached us, but he cp.used the following lines to 
 be inserted in the letter to Admiral Warren : "I owe it to the 
 army to declare that there is an error in the letter which 1 pub- 
 lished. I was at the head of the seven hundred grenadiers who 
 captured M. de Sombreuil and his division ; no soldier cried that 
 the refugees would be treated as prisoners of war, which I should 
 have contradicted immediately." 
 
 To so clear an affirmation we will only add one fact. A few 
 months later Hoche commanded in La Vendee. One of h's com- 
 mandants, General Bonnaire, had some of the insurgents whom he 
 9 
 
130 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 had taken in the Chateau of Saint-Mesmin, shot. Hoche was told 
 that this happened after having promised them their lives. Hoche 
 immediately ordered his arrest. Better informed, he countermanded 
 this. . . . **I think," he wrote to him, "that you will not 
 take in bad part a severity called for by honour. " And he adds : 
 " A man of honour could not have thus betrayed sworn faith. " Let 
 us come to the conclusion, then, that if the refugees believed that 
 they were under the protection of a capitulation, it is because they 
 took to themselves, the pardon promised by the republican soldiers 
 only to the prisoners who had enlisted, and it was in consequence of 
 this misunderstanding that they gave up a life which they could not 
 longer defend ; but let us proclaim aloud that they were not vic- 
 tims of a perfidy. — Claude Desprej^ Lazare Hoche^ p. Ji 14-217. 
 
 Note C. 
 
 2 Thenuidory year four (20th July, 1796). — Decree of the Directory. 
 
 The Directory, wishing to give a testimony of its esteem to 
 General Hoche, Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Sea Shore, 
 for the services which he has rendered to the country and to do 
 honour in his person to the brave defenders who, under his orders, 
 have terminated the long and unfortunate war of La Vendue and of 
 the Chouans, decrees : 
 
 " In tlie name of the French Republic, a present is made to Gen- 
 eral Hoche of the two finest chargers in the depots of war, with their 
 trappings ; he will also receive a pair of pistols of the manufactory 
 of arms at Versailles. Caenot." 
 
 %< 
 
 Note D. 
 
 Extract from the plan of Carnot for the i^.ganizmg of Chouanism in 
 
 England, and in which Hoche obtained the instructions given 
 
 hy him to the Second Legion of the Franks. 
 
 "The men employed in this expedition will require to be, as 
 much as possible, young, robust, daring, of a mind accessible to the 
 alljirement of booty." 
 
 '* They mast following the examples of what the filibusters did 
 in the Antilles, know how to carry into the midst of their enemies 
 terror and death." 
 
 1^ 
 
 "One might incorporate in these troops those condemned by 
 judgment to carry irons or chains, in whom the physical and moral 
 dispositions requisite for the individuals employed in this expedition 
 might be recognized. The possession of the plunder taken might 
 be offered to these individuals as an inducement. The quiet enjoy- 
 ment of it might be promised them in some of our colonies. It 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 131 
 
 was told 
 Hoche 
 rmanded 
 will not 
 le adds : 
 bh." Let 
 ved that 
 use they 
 
 soldiers 
 uence of 
 ould not 
 
 not vic- 
 7. 
 
 irectory. 
 
 teem to 
 a Shore, 
 d to do 
 3 orders, 
 e and of 
 
 ;o Gen- 
 th their 
 actory 
 
 mism m 
 
 be, as 
 to the 
 
 ers did 
 lemies 
 
 led by 
 moral 
 
 dition 
 
 might 
 njoy- 
 
 s. It 
 
 would be necessary, besides, to give to these convicts the hope that 
 their sentences would be reprieved, as a reward for the services 
 rendered to the fatherland. " 
 
 "The first nucleus of th6se men, to the number of about two 
 thousand, would be organized in companies of about fifty each, who 
 would be officered, and would be under the immediate command of 
 a single chief in full charge of the operations. This chief would be 
 invested with superior authority. " 
 
 • ••••*• 
 
 *' We must not lose sight of the fact, that an expedition attempted 
 at first with so few people can only succeed by extraordinary 
 means." 
 
 "It will not require great preparations in matter of clothing ; the 
 resources of the troop must be in its courage and in its arms." 
 
 • • • • • • • 
 
 "The landing must be effected on different points of the coast; 
 either because desolation and terror, spread over a great extent of 
 territory, will increase in the eyes of our enemies the number of our 
 forces, or because the means of subsistence will be more easily ob- 
 tained." 
 
 " On arriving, the chiefs will proclaim themselves and their sol- 
 diers the avengers of liberty and the enemies of tyrants." 
 
 • • ■ • • • • 
 
 " The legion must swear war to the chateaux and peace to the 
 cottages, and that its conduct, above all at the outset, ba in con- 
 formity with this declaration." 
 
 "As they advance they will open the prisons, will recruit the 
 convicts and incorporate them ; they will call on the workmen, the 
 poor, the malcontents, to make common cause with them : will 
 present them with arms and m ith food ; will oflfer them the charms 
 of plunder. They will destroy all carriages. " 
 
 • •••••• 
 
 "The enemy must be pursued to the death when conquered, and 
 no mercy for prisoners " 
 
 " The bridges must be broken, the communications intercepted, 
 public conveyances arrested ; burn everything which belongs to the 
 navy ; . . . summon the communes to give up their 
 
 arms ; shoot all who resist. " 
 
 Note E. 
 
 In a letter written from Meaux, and dated 26th pluviose, year five 
 (14th February, 1797), Hoche gives an account to his brother-in-law, 
 Debelle, of a patriotic f^te which he witnessed on the occasion of 
 the capture of Mantua. Having perceived the procession, he fol- 
 lowed it and heard the speech of a municipal officer, who, in the 
 
H 
 
 132 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 probable expectation of a royalist counter revolution, found means 
 not to utter the compr-^'-iising words "citizen " and "republic," in 
 order to be ready for any emergency. Hoche, in recalling this, 
 could not restrain his indignation : "Those are indeed our French- 
 men," he cried, "to be in turns constitutional with Lacour, 
 moderate with Brissot, Jacobins under Robespierre, thermidorians 
 with Andre Dumont.'and Royalists, as a few violent demagogues be- 
 came ; such are the principles of that sheep-like class which is com- 
 posed of the majority of well-to-do gentlemen, of the present public 
 officials, of the lawyers, the attorneys, and middle class people, for 
 whom a return to the old order of things is a sort of resurrei tion, 
 . . . . and whose opinion frequently expressed is, that what 
 matters national opinion, public prosperity, commerce, the arts 
 interfered with by continual reactions, provided that tlie soup is 
 nice and hot, and that no taxes are required. Wretched set ! . . 
 You merit your lot." 
 
 Note F. 
 
 Hoche acknowledged, says his biographer, M. Bergounioux ""at 
 a monarchical rule was more free than a republican rule, aiid yet he 
 was altogether opposed to the re-establi':Jin)ei)t of royalty. . . . 
 "Whoever the monarch might be.'' wrote Hoche, "and by the very 
 fact alone of his being the monai'ch, he would struggle against the 
 principle, against the very esserce of the Revolution, wliich means 
 the abolition of classes ; he would be, in spite of himself, forced to 
 re-estahlish a nobility, and the reviving of that nobility would 
 prove the cause of his ruin by aggravating the commoners, who 
 would no longer represent all or every one. Monarchy would fall 
 by the fact alone ot that scheme, new revolution. We want a gov- 
 ernment M hich will consecrate, by fact as well as right, the principle 
 of equality . . . that government can only be the republican 
 government " 
 
 As to the personnel of this government, Hoche added : "The 
 following are my fundamental ideas : An elective president who 
 may be re-elected ; two assemblies, one entirely elective, the other 
 only half elective. 
 
 Other documents prove how his ideas on political organization 
 generally were yet undecided, impracticable, and sometimes con- 
 tradictory. Thus, for example, his natural good sense put him on 
 his guard against the dangers inseparable from universal suffrage ; 
 he saw with reason that the public vote was less a light than a 
 function, and he was not ignorant that every function gives an idea 
 of certain talent, at least presumed talent, in the one who fills it. 
 " Every man," he said, "is not a citizen," and he feared to call the 
 multitude to the public square to record their votes. Patriotism 
 was not a sufficient guarantee for him. "The people who suflfer, " 
 
 / — 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 133 
 
 nd means 
 )ublic," in 
 lling this, 
 r French- 
 1 Lacour, 
 midorians 
 jogues be- 
 ch is com- 
 3nt public 
 eople, for 
 iirreition, 
 hat what 
 the arts 
 e soup is 
 et ! . . 
 
 oux '^at 
 id yet he 
 
 • • • 
 
 the very 
 linst the 
 5h means 
 "orced to 
 / would 
 rs, who 
 >uld fall 
 t a gov- 
 •rinciple 
 )ublican 
 
 •'The 
 snt who 
 e other 
 
 ization 
 5S con- 
 lim on 
 EFrage ; 
 t.aan a 
 n idea 
 ills it. 
 ill the 
 otism 
 iffer," 
 
 
 he wrote to the Directory, "is always desirous to obtain some 
 amelioration or other, and it thinks it crj,n find this by changing 
 incessantly. " However, in spite of thi^j danger, Hoche adopted 
 universal suffrage as the basis of election, but on the condition that 
 it should be regulated and not become an abuse in the hands either 
 of the aristocracy or of the democracy, from whom, he said, truly 
 laborious, patriotic, honest France wiU be obliged long to defend 
 herself. Hoche had devised for this end a system, good perhaps 
 in theory but very difficult to put in practice ; he wished that the 
 press should be free, but that the proper names should be put be- 
 yond all discussion, and that there should be, with regard to the 
 canilidates in the elec ions, absolute absence of interference on the 
 part of the Government and of the press ; he wished, in fine, that 
 they should only be designated by general considerat.on and public 
 notoriety. "To act otherwise," he said to Cherin, "would be to 
 facilitate the plots of the aristocracy and of the plebeiaxis. These 
 are two minorities which must be disarmed and hindered from 
 creating too much disturbance. It is serv ing liberty to limit it with 
 those who demand it only for the sake of oppression. " To demand 
 the liberty of the press in the face of universal suffrage, and at the 
 same time to forbid to the press all intermeddling in the elections, 
 is an anomaly which astonishes one in a man of such upright com- 
 mon sense, and which is only explained by the want of all practical 
 experience. 
 
 Note G. 
 
 Extract from a letter written hi/ Hoche to hU Wife on the 9th June, 
 
 1795, on the Education of Oirls. 
 
 In general, education in France is good for nothing, especially 
 that given to women. We make of our girls giddy coquettes, or 
 women like Agnes, whose timidity disgusts. The English under- 
 stand these things better ; their wives are retiring, learned ; they 
 speak to the point and know no timidity ; they allow to girls the 
 liberty of going out, of speaking to men ; their mothers make them 
 feel horror for vice, the fear of betrayal, and besides, they do not 
 treat them as slaves. Thus, note well, my dear, that the very girl 
 who near her parents is timid, and who never speaks without 
 blushing, is scarcely married that she knows no more restraint. 
 Why did her parents treat her as a slave, etc., etc.?