or found in the storehouses of the towns,
there were sufficient to supply almost every man of the population
with firearms; and in addition, they possessed a good many pieces
of artillery.

Unfortunately they had learned little during the four months'
fighting. Their methods were unchanged. Love of home overpowered
all other considerations; and after a victory, as after a defeat,
they hurried away, leaving with their generals only the officers
and a small body of men, who were either emigres who had returned
from England to take part in the struggle, or Royalists who had
made their way from distant parts of France, for the same purpose.

After the capture of Saumur, too, a good many Swiss and Germans,
belonging to a cavalry regiment formed of foreigners, had deserted
and joined the Vendeans. Thus a small nucleus of an army held
together, swelling only when the church bells summoned the peasants
to take up arms for a few days.

But while the Royalists of La Vendee remained quiescent, after they
had expelled the invaders; the Republicans, more alarmed than ever,
were making the most tremendous efforts to stamp out the
insurrection.

Beysser, who had commanded at Nantes, was appointed to succeed
Menou. Orders were given that the forests and hedges of La Vendee
were all to be levelled, the crops destroyed, the cattle seized,
and the goods of the insurgents confiscated. An enormous number of
carts were collected to carry faggots, tar, and other combustibles
into La Vendee, for setting fire to the woods. It was actually
proposed to destroy the whole male population, to deport the women
and children, and to repeople La Vendee from other parts of France,
from which immigrants would be attracted by offers of free land and
houses. Santerre suggested that poisonous gases should be inclosed
in suitable vessels, and fired into the district to poison the
atmosphere.

Carrier, the infamous scoundrel who had been appointed commissioner
at Nantes, proposed an equally villainous scheme; namely, that
great quantities of bread, mixed with arsenic, should be baked and
scattered broadcast, so that the starving people might eat it and
be destroyed, wholesale. This would have been carried out, had it
not been vigorously opposed by General Kleber, who had now taken
the command of one of the armies of the invasion.

The rest of July and the first half of August passed comparatively
quietly. General Toncq advanced with a column into La