he earliest, was a carrier, sacristan in his village, who had
never seen a shot fired when he went out with a few hundred neighbours
and took Cholet. By his side there was a gamekeeper, who had been a
soldier, and came from the eastern frontier. As his name was
Christopher, the Germans corrupted it into Stoffel, and he made it
famous in the form of Stofflet. While the conflict was carried on by
small bands there was no better man to lead them. He and Charette held
out longest, and had not been conquered when the clergy, for whom they
fought, betrayed them.

The popular and democratic interval was short. After the first few
days the nobles were at the head of affairs. They deemed the cause
desperate, that one of them had promoted the rising, scarcely one
refused to join in it. The one we know best is Lescure, because his
wife's memoirs have been universally read. Lescure formed the bond
between gentry and clergy, for the cause was religious as much as
political. He would have been the third generalissimo, but he was
disabled by a wound, and put forward his cousin, Henri de la
Rochejaquelein, in preference to Stofflet. We shall presently see that
a grave suspicion darkens his fame. Like Lescure, d'Elbee was a man of
policy and management; but he was no enthusiast. He desired a
reasonable restoration, not a reaction; and he said just before his
death that when the pacification came it would be well to keep
fanatics in order.

Far above all these men in capacity for war, and on a level with the
best in character, was the Marquis de Bonchamps. He understood the art
of manoeuvring large masses of men; and as his followers would have
to meet large masses, when the strife became deadly, he sought to
train them for it. He made them into that which they did not want to
be, and for which they were ill-fitted. It is due to his immediate
command that the war could be carried on upon a large scale; and that
men who had begun with a rush and a night attack, dispersing when the
foe stood his ground, afterwards defeated the veterans of the Rhine
under the best generals of republican France. Bonchamps always urged
the need of sending a force to rouse Brittany; but the day when the
army crossed the Loire was the day of his death.

La Vendee was far from the route of invading armies, and the district
threatened by the Germans. There were no fears for hearth and home, no
terrors in a European war for those who kept out of it. If they mus