action. To-day at the head of
ten thousand men, the next day wandering with a score of horsemen, it
is very rare that one can come up with him. When we believed him to be
in our front, he was in our rear. Yesterday he threatened such a post,
to-day he is ten leagues from it; more able to avoid than fight us,
he almost always disconcerts, and often, without knowing it, all our
combinations. He endeavours to surprise us, to carry off our patroles,
and to kill our stragglers".

The inhabitants of le Marais and le Bocage for a long period confined
themselves to defensive warfare, for which nature seems to have formed
their country. The situation of le Marais enabled the brave royalists
to receive succours from the English, and to facilitate and protect
the debarkation of such as they wished to procure from the North side
of the Loire, the coast being flat and easy of access by sea.

The Vendeans, favoured by every natural advantage, had a peculiar
tactic which they knew perfectly well how to apply to their position
and local circumstances, and adopted a mode of fighting hitherto
unknown, and practicable in that country alone. Confident in the
superiority which their mode of attack gave them, they never suffered
themselves to be anticipated, they never engaged but when and
where they pleased. Their dexterity in the use of fire arms was such,
that no people, however well skilled in manoeuvring, could make such
good use of a gun; the huntsman of Loroux, and the poacher of le
Bocage, having been always proverbial as excellent marksmen. It was no
unusual thing for the Vendeans when at the plough, to carry with them
a musket; and whenever they observed "a blue coat," (as they called
the republican soldiers) they stopt their plough, took up their
musket, and fired at him; it seldom happened that they missed the
object of their vengeance. A melancholy circumstance, connected with
this mode of warfare, took place: the son of one of the Vendean
farmers, or ploughmen, had been compelled to join the republican army;
but having succeeded in escaping, he was hastening, in his republican
uniform, to rejoin his relations, when being observed by his father,
while at the plough, the latter, unable from the distance to recognize
his son, and seeing only the uniform of an enemy, fired and shot him.

Their attacks were always dreadful, sudden, and almost unforeseen,
because it was very difficult to reconnoitre or obtain information so
as to