waged a war of extermination.

We have seen the list of the principal names which constituted this
revolt; the regent had wittily said that it contained the head and
tail; but he was mistaken--it was the head and body. The head was the
council of the legitimated princes, the king of Spain, and his imbecile
agent, the prince of Cellamare; the body was formed by those brave and
clever men who were now in the Bastille; but the tail was now agitating
in Bretagne among a people unaccustomed to the ways of a court, and it
was a tail armed with stings like those of a scorpion, and which was the
most to be feared.

The Bretagne chiefs, then, renewed the Chevalier de Rohan, under Louis
XIV.; we say the Chevalier de Rohan, because to every conspiracy must be
given the name of a chief.

Along with the prince, who was a conceited and commonplace man, and even
before him, were two men, stronger than he; one in thought and the other
in execution. These two men were Letreaumont, a Norman gentleman, and
Affinius Vanden-Enden, a Dutch philosopher; Letreaumont wanted money, he
was the arm; Affinius wanted a republic, he was the soul. This republic,
moreover, he wanted inclosed in Louis XIV.'s kingdom, still further to
annoy the great king--who hated republicans even at a distance--who had
persecuted and destroyed the Pensioner of Holland, John de Witt, more
cruel in this than the Prince of Orange, who, in declaring himself De
Witt's enemy, revenged personal injuries, while Louis XIV. had received
nothing but friendship and devotion from this great man.

Now Affinius wanted a republic in Normandy, and got the Chevalier de
Rohan named Protector; the Bretons wished to revenge themselves for
certain injuries their province had received under the regency, and they
decreed it a republic, with the power of choosing a protector, even were
he a Spaniard; but Monsieur de Maine had a good chance.

This is what passed in Bretagne.

The Bretons lent an ear to the first overtures of the Spaniards; they
had no more cause for discontent than other provinces, but to them it
seemed a capital opportunity for war, and they had no other aim.
Richelieu had ruled them severely; they thought to emancipate
themselves under Dubois, and they began by objecting to the
administrators sent by the regent; a revolution always commences by a
riot.

Montesquieu was appointed viceroy to hold assemblies, to hear the
people's complaints, and to collect their money.