ds once more with the old expression of despair, like
criminals on their way to the galleys to live or die.

The march of this column upon Mayenne, the heterogeneous elements
of which it was composed, and the divers sentiments which evidently
pervaded it, will explain the presence of another troop which formed the
head of the detachment. About a hundred and fifty soldiers, with arms
and baggage, marched in the advance, commanded by the _chief of a
half-brigade_. We may mention here, for the benefit of those who did
not witness the drama of the Revolution, that this title was made to
supersede that of colonel, proscribed by patriots as too aristocratic.
These soldiers belonged to a demi-brigade of infantry quartered at
Mayenne. During these troublous times the inhabitants of the west of
France called all the soldiers of the Republic "Blues." This nickname
came originally from their blue and red uniforms, the memory of which is
still so fresh as to render a description superfluous. A detachment of
the Blues was therefore on this occasion escorting a body of recruits,
or rather conscripts, all displeased at being taken to Mayenne where
military discipline was about to force upon them the uniformity of
thought, clothing, and gait which they now lacked entirely.

This column was a contingent slowly and with difficulty raised in the
district of Fougeres, from which it was due under the levy ordered by
the executive Directory of the Republic on the preceding 10th Messidor.
The government had asked for a hundred million of francs and a hundred
thousand men as immediate reinforcements for the armies then fighting
the Austrians in Italy, the Prussians in Germany, and menaced in
Switzerland by the Russians, in whom Suwarow had inspired hopes of the
conquest of France. The departments of the West, known under the name
of La Vendee, Brittany, and a portion of Lower Normandy, which had
been tranquil for the last three years (thanks to the action of General
Hoche), after a struggle lasting nearly four, seemed to have seized this
new occasion of danger to the nation to break out again. In presence of
such aggressions the Republic recovered its pristine energy. It provided
in the first place for the defence of the threatened departments by
giving the responsibility to the loyal and patriotic portion of the
inhabitants. In fact, the government in Paris, having neither troops nor
money to send to the interior, evaded the difficulty by a p