d, since d'Elbee and Bonchamp are
both desperately wounded, will gather a force to act as a rearguard.
If so we must stay with him; but I do not think that even his influence
would suffice to hold any considerable body of peasants together. All
have convinced themselves that there is safety in Brittany.

"At any rate, the enemy will need a day's rest before they pursue.
They must have suffered quite as heavily as we have."

The night, however, was not to pass quietly. At two o'clock two
officers, who had remained as piquets, rode into the town with news
that Westermann's division, which had marched through Moulet and
had taken no part in the action, was approaching. The horn sounded
the alarm, and the fugitives started up and renewed their flight.
Marthe could not be left behind now, nor did the others desire it;
and until they had crossed the Loire there could be no separation,
for the whole country would swarm, in forty-eight hours, with
parties of the enemy, hunting down and slaying those who had taken
refuge in the woods.

Jean and Leigh had lain down in the cart, to prevent any of the
fugitives seizing it. The two women and the child were hurried
down, and took their places in it. Francois, who had escaped, had
fortunately found them; and took the reins, and the journey was
continued.

There was no pursuit. It was only a portion of Westermann's force
that had arrived, and these were so exhausted and worn out, by the
length of their march and by the fact that they had been unable to
obtain food by the way, that they threw themselves down when they
reached the town, incapable of marching a mile farther.

At Beaupreau there had been no fewer than five thousand Republican
prisoners, kept under guard. On the arrival of the routed Vendeans,
the peasants, as a last act of retaliation, would have slain them;
but Bonchamp, who was at the point of death, ordered them to be set
free.

"It is the last order that I shall ever give," he said to the
peasants assembled round his litter. "Surely you will not disobey
me, my children."

The order was obeyed, and the prisoners were at once sent off; and
as the Republican column marched out from Chollet, the next day,
they encountered on the road their liberated comrades. The
sentiments with which the commissioners of the Convention were
animated is evidenced by the fact that one of them declared, in a
letter to the commander-in-chief of the army, that the release of
these p