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Updated: May 8, 2025
The two officers sprang to the portico; there they beheld a hundred or so of Chouans aiming at the few soldiers who were not shot down at the first discharge; these they fired upon as upon so many hares.
A few days later the government despatched to Mayenne so strong a force of "patriotic conscripts," that Hulot was able to fill the ranks of his brigade. Disquieting rumors began to circulate about the insurrection. A rising had taken place at all the points where, during the late war, the Chouans and Bretons had made their chief centres of insurrection.
"What makes you think the Chouans are hereabouts?" said the coachman. "The Ernee people tell me that Commandant Hulot has not yet started from Fougeres." "Ho, ho, friend driver!" said the youngest of the travellers, "you risk nothing but your own carcass! If you had a thousand francs about you, as I have, and were known to be a good patriot, you wouldn't take it so easy."
"Keep to the left if you don't want to be shot." He stood quite still; then observing that Madame du Gua was making for the Papegaut tower, he followed her at a distance with diabolical caution. During this fatal encounter the Chouans had posted themselves on the manure towards which Marche-a-Terre had guided them.
"Well," interposed Captain Merle, "what we have to do now is to act as good patriots and prevent the Chouans from communicating with La Vendee; for, if they once come to an understanding and England gets her finger into the pie, I wouldn't answer for the cap of the Republic, one and invisible." As he spoke the cry of an owl, heard at a distance, interrupted the conversation.
Scarcely out of prison he was seized with pity for the misery of the pardoned Chouans, veritable pariahs, who lived by all sorts of contrivances or were dependent on charity, and he made their care his special charge.
He not only possessed great popularity among the lower classes, but acquired so far the confidence of the Vendean chiefs that he was appointed one of the supreme and directing Council of the Royalists and Chouans. Even so late as the summer of 1799 he continued not only unsuspected, but trusted by the insurgents in the Western departments.
For some moments the two men gazed, silently at each other. At length Dalibard said, with an air of calm superiority, "My friend, it is time that I should be presented to the chiefs of your party!" "Chiefs, par tous les diables!" growled the other; "we Chouans are all chiefs, when it comes to blows. You have seen my credentials; you know that I am a man to be trusted: what more do you need?"
The organization of the Chouans was complete, and this civil war caused Bonaparte much more uneasiness than that which he was obliged to conduct on the Rhine and in Italy, because, from the success of the Vendeans might arise a question respecting internal government, the solution of which was likely to be contrary to Bonaparte's views.
Here and there the bodies of a dozen or more Chouans lay stretched upon the sod. But it was evident that the Republicans, still massed together, had lost double that number. Wounded men dragged themselves across the open space, meeting, rearing their bodies like mangled snakes, to fight, the Republicans with their bayonets, and the Chouans with their knives.
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