pasturage, the only abundant product was cattle. The peasants cultivated only enough corn for their own support, and used as the medium of exchange the fleeces of their sheep, the hides of their oxen, the cattle themselves. Pasturage was not carried on on a large scale, but the little holdings were lived on, each by a single family, which divided with the land owner the products. It took little to support people who lived in the simple style of the peasants of La Vendée, who dressed themselves in skins of the sheep and lived on plain food. They spent much of their time in the open air and led, while not idle, rather easy-going, leisurely lives.

The land owners generally lived on their estates, and the spacious, though unornamented, chateau placed in the midst of the wild, surrounded by farm offices and cottages, in which dwelt the laborers immediately employed upon the estate, marked the residence of the powerful noble of Vendée. He did not, as a rule, pass his time in Paris or Versailles, in the dissipation of the court, allowing his tenants to see him but rarely and to know him but as the person for whom the farm bailiff exacted from them the uttermost penny, that it might be squandered on the luxuries or the vices of the Marquis, the Duke or the Count. Living amongst the people, there grew up between the seigniors and their humbler neighbors an intercourse marked by cordiality and by a respectful familiarity. Their sports were in common, and the chief sport was hunting, in which the lord and his followers, in large part composed of peasants who had flocked from far and near and who were nearly all expert marksmen, moved upon the game almost like an invading army, and attacked with a marked concert of action, although divided up into little parties.

The intimacy of seignior and peasant was not, however, confined to the chase. On Sundays and holidays the dependents of a family would come to the chateau and dance in the barn or in the court-yard, according to the

season, and, we are told, "the ladies of the house joined in the festivities, and that without any airs of condescension or of mockery; for in their own life there was little of splendor or luxurious refinement. They traveled on horseback, or in heavy carriages drawn by oxen, and had little other amusement than in the care of their dependents and the familiar intercourse of neighbors, among whom there was no rivalry or principle of ostentation."

As for political views, the noblemen were, of course, devoted to the crown and the people, accustomed to follow in all things their natural leaders, naturally enough were royalists of the most devoted, unreasoning character.

The clergy of the district were pure and simple; they were chiefly men born and brought up in La Vendée; they spoke the patois of the country; they were intimate with and shared the sports of their flocks, who reverenced them for their office, and honored and loved them for their personal character, and if the religion taught by them tended to the creation of superstition, it was a superstition which manifested itself by an excessive veneration for the symbols and offices of the faith, for crucifixes and the mass, but left the people singularly free from that manifestation of superstition which renders men hard and cruel or persuades them that formal religious observance can supply the lack of a good life or atone for sin committed; for the lives of the Vendeans were remarkably pure and good; great crimes were unknown; honesty and lightheartedness were the characteristics of the region.

So the consideration of La Vendée presents to us an almost ideal state of society, in which high and low lived together in peace and happiness, without envy and without tyranny, without squalid poverty and without luxurious wealth. Such, when the great revolutionary movement began, was the condition of La Vendée, ruled

by a spirit of loyalty and religion, the two principles being woven together into a strange union, so that afterward, to the peasants and nobles alike, the cause of God and the cause of the King were one and the same.

The Revolution came, but what did it matter to La Vendée? Paris was so far off, what did the assembly of the States-General, what did its orders, its resolutions, its attacks on abuses and wrongs mean to a happy people which suffered, or believed it suffered, from no wrong, which was unaware that the social contract had been violated, which had never heard of Rousseau? The Bastille was taken. Again what did it matter to La Vendée? Paris was so far off. Let these fools of Parisians do as they will in their own town, let them tear down prisons, if they wish; La Vendée has no prison, no Bastille with its oubliettes. The news came that the Convention, that great, curious body sitting in Paris, had abolished all the feudal rights, and decreed that the nobles should no longer exact dues and tribute from their people, and La Vendée was told that the King had assented to this, and that it was law, law for La Vendée. To which La Vendée replied: Well, it is not forbidden to pay dues, even if it be forbidden to exact them; and so the peasants came to their lords and paid the dues as of old. Again, the news came that a new system of government for the country had been established, that the people were to be governed by Mayors, and that they must choose the Mayors, and that the men were to be organized into a military body called the National Guard, and must choose their officers. Well, La Vendée was advised by its natural counsellors, the nobles, that the law must be obeyed, and so the electors of La Vendée met and besought their lords to become Mayors, and the guardsmen chose to be officered by nobles.

Save in a change of name the Revolution seems to have made very little difference in La Vendée.

But there was something coming which was to make a very great difference in La Vendée.

We have seen what were the relations existing between the clergy, the curés and the people. It was an attack upon the priests which first enraged the peasants and spread war and fury throughout the hitherto peaceful region.

In 1790, the Constituent Assembly adoped a new constitution for France, and, by a decree, required all priests to take the civic oath, or oath of fidelity to the Constitution, on pain of deprivation. The oath was extremely distasteful to many priests and abhorrent to the consciences of many, and does not seem to have been rigorously enforced, except in Paris, and, even in the capital, non-jurors were allowed to conduct their own worship under national protection.

The Constituent Assembly, having done its work, passed away, and was succeeded by the Legislative Assembly. That body, on receiving from two commissioners, Gensonné and Gallois, a report to the effect that disaffection to the revolutionary cause existed in the departments of La Vendée, Deux-Sevres and Maine-etLoire, and was due to the influence of the curés, passed, in November, 1791, a more severe decree, enjoining the taking of the oath on all priests, depriving all who refused of their salaries, depriving them of all right of private worship, rendering them liable to be shifted from place to place, and even to be imprisoned, provided their influence tended to excite civil war.

As said by a great historian, "It is a special characteristic of popular tyranny to transform suspected persons into criminals and informers into virtuous men." And so it is not difficult to see how easy it was to satisfy any revolutionary tribunal that the influence of any given priest "tended to excite civil war;" and, even if that could not be done, the mere refusal of the oath cost the curé his charge; and so the good peasants saw their

pastors, who had always lived with them, who spoke their patois, who had baptized them, had prepared them for their first communion, had heard their confessions and had absolved them, rudely ejected from their livings, poor as they were, and constitutional priests, ecclesiastics into whose character the element of the politician entered largely, strangers to the land and to the people, placed in their pulpits to give, instead of the old, simple faith, instruction in which a modicum of religion was bound up with teachings upon the contract social, and the doctrines of the nation and the omnipresent liberty, fraternity, equality! and the peasants wondered as at a strange thing.

Here, then, was the Revolution actually pressing upon La Vendée, and the Vendeans began to be restless, nervous, resenting the interference with their religion, and tumults took place, acts of violence accompanied the instalment of the new and undesired pastors. There was no widespread, open outbreak, but the peasants were beginning now to think that the new government was the enemy of religion, and to look upon resistance to constituted authority as a possibility.

On the 21st of January, 1793, King Louis XVI died on the guillotine, the victim of the sins of his ancestors, and France then found herself alone against all the powers of Europe, without any sympathy in any court whatever. Already she was opposed by Prussia, Austria and Piedmont, and, in February, England was added to the list of her active enemies. The rising up of France against the forces of the coalition is one of the most remarkable national efforts in history. The spectacle of the country, torn by internal dissension, bleeding from internal wounds, rising in her might, alone, and hurling back from her frontiers the giants who sought to crush out in her the spirit of freedom, is one to thrill the student of history to the very soul; but here is not the time to speak of this effort, our part lies with those