measure; and many of his observations on this subject are eminently just but there is a fallacy in the reasoning which infers from the success of the nobles in the western departments, that, if persons of this class had remained in all the other parts of the kingdom, the same results would have attended their efforts. He is, we believe, better founded in stating the bigoted attachment of all the members of the Bourbon family to the antient order of things; since universal report, the style of their public instruments, and their silence respecting any disposition to compromise, or to conform to circumstances, prove that this charge has not been groundlessly made.

M. de Calonne, we are told, quitted ease and affluence, gave his services to the princes, and laid the whole of his fortune at their feet but he was too sincere and enlightened long to retain his situation near them; and, through the intrigues of frivolous courtiers, he was speedily turned adrift on the world, in a state of absolute beggary. When Monsieur (now Louis XVIII.) held his court at Coblentz, scarcely a man in his suite was capable of acting in the difficult circumstances to which the royal interests were reduced; his retainers were persons of the most insignificant kind, as incapable of just reflection as of energetic conduct; and they regarded the awful enterprize in which they were about to embark, and which was to decide their fortune for ever, as a hunting party, or as a journey to Fontainebleau or Compiégne. In their meetings, it was said that the subjection of France would prove at most the work of one campaign: that the regiments of the line which they had commanded would, at the very sight of them, lay down their arms; and that the republican forces, reduced to raw artisans and peasants, would furnish only pursuit without battles, or victories without glory. At an early period, they considered themselves as sufficient in number to reduce the whole kingdom, and regarded new-comers with jealousy. Those whom their private affairs had occasioned to arrive late were received with coldness, and with difficulty acknowleged; and eight days priority on the list of emigration was considered as a proof of superior merit;-a line of conduct which drove back some men of the highest merit, to join the armies of the Committee of Public Safety. All the intrigues of a court were carried on among their attendants; and their ears were as much fenced against the entrance of truth, as those of the most powerful monarch in the days of his highest prosperity. Men, whose sole merit consisted in courtly address, in soft, artful, and insinuating speeches, and in consuming a share of the scanty allowance of the Princes, employed themselves successfully in prejudicing the minds of these high personages against those

who

who were sacrificing their fortunes, and endangering their lives, in favour of, the royal cause. It was, says the author, to the interposition of these persons between the Princes and their adherents in the interior, that we are to ascribe the gradual decline and the final extinction of their party in France.We must observe, however, that this abject state of the Bourbon interest does not very well agree with the admission made by the author, of the probable restoration of Louis XVIII.; and indeed the weakness of the royal councils, the prejudices by which they are swayed, and the state of society and the distribution of property at present existing in France, seem to place insurmountable obstacles to this termination of the contest.

M. de Puisaye maintains that the premature commencement of the war proved another cause of the failure of the royalists. He does not, with many others, deny the right of foreign states to wage war on France on account of its internal affairs; he even contends for it: but it is with the season of exercising it that he finds fault. He thinks that the weakness of the government of France had no doubt been considered, in the adjustment of the balance under which Europe found tranquillity: but this government could not be exchanged for another, without its becoming incumbent on all provident states to watch the event, and to interfere to preclude the interruption of the general tranquillity which it was likely to occasion. In such an emergency, a defensive league is the measure which he recommends; and he strongly deprecates one that is offensive in the first instance, clearly displaying the inconveniences that arose from that which caused the revolutionary war. An offensive foreign war strengthened the authority of those who were in possession of power, and confounded their cause with that of the country; while it furnished millions of soldiers, whose numbers and irregular impetuosity supplied the want of skill and experience. Had a defensive plan been followed, the evil would gradually have consumed itself in its own focus; contagion would have spread less; the contests in the interior would have been more general and more animated; and if the mischief would not, as in England, have thus come to an end, it would have been easy for a powerful foreign confederacy to have given the desirable turn to affairs. He contends that it was to be foreseen that a war, so prematurely begun as was that between the coalesced powers and France, would terminate, as it actually did, in being beneficial to the Jacobins, and most prejudicial to the general interests of Europe. Not only, he maintains, was the war too much precipitated, but it was conducted on principles which must infallibly render it unsuccessful. The parties to the general league were influenced by

+6

individual

individual views, instead of being actuated by a regard to the welfare of the European community. When the French na tion, he tells us, saw that the object of the powers in arms against it was to strip it of provinces, to seize its colonies, to reduce it to insignificance, or even to annihilate it as a state; when it beheld the Imperial eagle waving over the ramparts of Quesnoy, Valenciennes, and Condé; when it was agreed in a council, consisting of members belonging to various nations, to dismantle the harbour and to burn the shipping in the road of Toulon: when they heard Wurmser invite the inhabitants of Alsace to share in the happiness of becoming Germans; when it found the kings at war so indifferent to its internal interests, as to omit the precaution of binding by an oath the prisoners released from the captured fortresses, not to fight against the royalists of the western departments;—it was natural that it should lose all confidence in them, and unite as one man to resist their attacks; that it should turn its attention from temporary sufferings, however keen and poignant, to a more imminent and lasting danger; that it should endure painful wounds, to save its existence; that it should resolve to suffer within, in order to protect itself from being crushed from without; that it should submit to the yoke of a Robespierre, rather than see its territory the prey of foreign violence.

Satisfied, however, that it had become the duty of all good Frenchmen to resist by force the Jacobin faction, when it could be done with safety and effect, M. de Puisaye had retired to his own province to digest and mature plans, in order to carry his scheme into execution. While thus employed, the departmental war broke out. It was utterly foreign from his intentions to have made a common cause with the proscribed deputies: but de Wimpffen having precipitately espoused their party, his friendship for and connection with that General forced him to join in that insurrection. His plans being thus defeated, and the opposition to the convention having proved unsuccessful, he was advised to consult his safety by retiring into Brittany. Previously to his arrival in that province, the Marquis de Rouarie, availing himself of the discontents which religious persecution had universally excited, had organized an insurrection which would have extended over all its parts. This nobleman held his command from the French Princes; and they took their directions from the coalesced powers, with regard to the instructions which they transmitted to Brittany. Having received the commands of his superiors to raise the whole province on a certain day, he formed his measures accordingly, and the necessary steps were adopted to ensure a general rising of the royalists. A very little while before the day fixed, or

ders came to defer his muster: but the time would not allow of his sending notice to all stations; partial risings therefore took place; the vigilance of the Convention was roused; and its wonted vengeance was inflicted. The injury thus done to the royal cause was, in the author's opinion, such as exceeded all calculation. Had Rouarie been allowed to act without control, the Jacobins would have been expelled for ever, and the province rendered incapable of being reduced by any force which the Convention could send against it. Such was the terror produced by the executions and tortures which followed the discovery of Rouarie's plans, that the number of Bretons who lived on the surface of the earth was inferior to that of those who sought concealment within its bowels. Nine hundred in the town of Rennes alone, who were supposed to have emigrated, remained invisible, concealed in the most incom-. modious and confined places, and were harboured by their friends at the imminent risk of their own lives. These unhappy beings only quitted their retreats for a few moments during the night, in order to take the air and some nourishment, which consisted merely of the pittance which the family could spare from its necessities, as the members of each were inscribed on the outer door; and if any one family laid in more provisions than seçmed adequate to its wants, this was sure to be observed, and a domiciliary visit was the consequence.

Though the horrors committed by the agents of the Convention had stunned the inhabitants of this ill-fated province, the unceasing persecutions under which they suffered made them again resolve on resistance; and M. de Puisaye, who now resided in the midst of them, was invited to be their leader; which situation he accepted. If the new commander was less thwarted by foreign control than his predecessor, his authority was less extensive, and the various bodies of insurgents acted independently. Had these all been subjected to his command, and obedient to his orders, he assures us that Brittany might still, with the greatest ease, have been severed for ever from the conventional domination. It was to the want of a supreme command that we are to ascribe the massacre of Machecoul, the neglect of the Vendéean army to seize the whole of Upper Brittany, its fatal course towards Mans, and its subsequent ill-judged march into Normandy; and it was this want of concert that rendered ineffectual the matchless exertions of the insurgents of the western departments. The whole of the account here given confirms the notion generally entertained, that if one of the Princes of the blood, or a person of great authority commissioned by them, had taken the command in REV. OCT. 1804.

N

the

the western departments, a most serious if not a fatal blow to Jacobin ascendancy might have been struck.

The author paints in very favourable colours the manners and dispositions of the inhabitants of the insurgent provinces. They did not prove refractory till goaded by incessant persecution; and their resistance did not assume the appearance of being frantic, till every species of horror had been practised among them, till all the arts of torture had been exhausted on them. He repels the charges of cruelty and pillage circulated by their enemies, and draws a flattering picture of the state of society which prevailed among them.

La Vendée (he says) will live while there is any recollection of the revolution. Its well-meant, disinterested, and heroic exertions will be set againt those atrocities for which France will have occasion long to blush. I shall not attempt to write its history. I leave to the accurate General Beauvois, and to the eloquent Abbé Bernier, the task of tracing facts which bear the impression of their talents and their courage. Let those who have survived so many intrepid defenders of their liberty, of their religion, and of their laws, substitute truth for falsehoods, which have imposed on the present generation. Let their pens inform future generations that on one day, at the same hour, on all the points of Poitou and Anjou, all the inhabitants rose at once, without any other impulse than that of their own feelings, without any other object than justice, without any other guide than their courage, without any other weapons than their own hands! Let them relate how these simple unsophisticated persons overturned all that was opposed to them, rendered themselves masters of all the posts, towns, depôts, and magazines, and of an immense artillery! Let them relate how in six weeks they snatched more than one hundred thousand muskets from the hands of soldiers sent to fight with them; how they gained whole legions to their cause by their moderation and clemency, and in a short time banished every trace of pretended republicanism from their territory. Let them celebrate the first chiefs of this people, and represent how Stoflet and Catilineau, born in humble life, shewed themselves worthy of the highest rank. Let them rescue the names of d'Elbée, of Bonchamps, of Escure, of La Roche Jacquelin, and of so many others, from beneath heaps of victims, commit them to the hands of history, and assign them the places which their virtues claim for them. Let them not forget to record this noble trait of Bonchamps, who on the bed of death, sinking under his wounds, on learning that a ferocious enemy had cut the throats of all his men whom they had taken prisoners, yet ordered, conjured, supplicated, and prevailed, that repri sals should not be made on ten thousand soldiers of the Convention, but that they should be restored to their families. Will it be beHeved that these wretches, on being liberated, and transported over the Loire, finding some artillery there, fired grape shot on their deliverers! Let them be told how each success of the allies became

fatal