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The committee of public safety soon remedied this, by appointing one sole general-in- chief, Lechelle, and by introducing war on a large scale into La Vendee.
The Battalion returned to Havrincourt Wood on December 15 and remained in its frozen tents until the Division was relieved by the 63rd. After one night at Lechelle the Battalion entrained at Ytres and moved back to Christmas rest-billets at Suzanne, near Bray. Huts, built by the French but vacated more than a year ago and now very dilapidated, formed the accommodation.
Here they perceived that Lechelle had made some little attempt to defend his position. He had drawn out two cannons to the head of the bridge; had stayed the course of a few fugitives, with whom he attempted to defend the entrance into the town; and had again taken upon himself the duties of a General.
Henri turned out of the shop without saying a word; and as the others prepared to follow him, one of the men knelt down beside the body, and wrenched from the hand, which still held it fast, the fatal pistol which had so lately done its work. "At any rate," said he," there is no use in leaving this behind us; I doubt not but I can make a better use of it than General Lechelle has done."
He had just completed a letter addressed jointly to Thurreau and Lechelle, the commissioners whom he had newly appointed to the horrid task of exterminating the royalists of La Vendee.
Florent, and that the Republican troops would soon follow them, headed by Lechelle, whose name already drove the colour from the cheeks of every woman in La Vendee. They knew that a crowd of starving wretches would fall, like a swarm of locusts, on their already nearly empty granaries; and that all the horrors attendant on a civil war were crowding round their hearths.
The inhabitants of Chateau-Gonthier were very favourable to the Vendean cause; Henri received every information which the people could give him, and at last succeeded in tracing Lechelle into a large half-ruined house, in the lower portion of which, a wine shop, for the accommodation of the poorer classes, was kept open.
She had recounted to her in detail the celebrated passage of the Loire, the disastrous period when all the city of Saint Florent was burned by order of the Convention, and the only house left standing was the one occupied by the republican General LEchelle as his headquarters.
The republican troops of Lechelle and Thurreau were not long in making their way to the devoted district, and tidings soon reached Chatillon that they were devastating the country round Doue and Vihiers, and that parties of them had advanced to the neighbourhood of Cholet.
Nothing could be more complete than the success of the Vendeans, not only in the town of Laval, but also outside the gate; nor could any error be more fatal than that committed by the republican General, Lechelle.
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