<h3>MADAME DE LA ROCHEJAQUELEIN.</h3>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_286" id="Page_286"></SPAN></span></p>
<p class="heading">[BORN 1772. DIED 1857.]<br/>
JEFFREY.</p>
<p><ANTIMG src="images/it.jpg" alt="T" width-obs="78" height-obs="72" class="floatl" />HIS
hard-fated woman was very young and newly married when she was
thrown, by the adverse circumstances of the time, into the very heart of
those deplorable contests [the war in La Vend�e, during the first and
maddest years of the French Republic]; and without pretending to any
other information than she could draw from her own experience, and
scarcely presuming to pass any judgment upon the merits or demerits of
the cause, she has made up her memoirs of a clear and dramatic
description of acts in which she was a sharer, or scenes of which she
was an eye-witness, and of the characters and histories of the many
distinguished individuals who partook with her of their glories and
sufferings. The irregular and undisciplined wars which it was her
business to describe were naturally far more prolific of extraordinary
incidents, unexpected turns of fortune, and striking displays of
individual talent, and vice and virtue, than the more solemn movements
of national hostility, where everything is in a great measure provided
and foreseen, and where the inflexible subordination of rank, and the
severe exactions of a limited duty, not only take away the inducement,
but the opportunity, for those exaltations of personal feeling and
adventure which produce the most lively interest, and lead to the most
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_287" id="Page_287"></SPAN></span>
animating results.</p>
<p>This lady had some right, in truth, to be delicate and royalist beyond
the ordinary standard. Her father, the Marquis de Donnison, had an
employment about the person of the king, in virtue of which he had
apartments in the Palace of Versailles, in which splendid abode Madame
de la Rochejaquelein was born, and continued constantly to reside in the
very focus of royal influence and glory till the whole of its
unfortunate inhabitants were compelled to leave it by the fury of that
mob which escorted them to Paris in 1789. She had, like most French
ladies of distinction, been destined from her infancy to be the wife of
M. de Lescure, a near relation of her mother, and the representative of
the ancient and noble family of Salgues in Poitou.</p>
<p>The picture of the war [in which Madame de la Rochejaquelein figured so
prominently, and in which she lost her young husband] is shaded with
deep horrors. The convention issued the barbarous decree that the
country [La Vend�e], which still continued its resistance, should be
desolated, that the whole inhabitants should be exterminated without
distinction of age or sex, the habitations consumed with fire, and the
trees cut down by the axe. A multitude of sanguinary conflicts ensued,
and the insurgents succeeded in resisting this desolating invasion.
Among the slain in one of those engagements the republicans found the
body of a young woman, which, Madame de la Rochejaquelein informs us,
gave occasion to a number of idle reports, many giving it out that it
was she herself, or a sister of M. de la Rochejaquelein, who had no
sister, or a new Joan of Arc, who had kept up the spirit of the
peasantry by her enthusiastic predictions. The truth was, that it was
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_288" id="Page_288"></SPAN></span>
the body of an innocent peasant who had always lived a remarkably quiet
and pious life till recently before this action, when she had been
seized with an irresistible desire to take a part in the conflict. [She
deserved to be "a woman of history," but her name has not been
preserved.] She had discovered herself some time before to Madame de la
Rochejaquelein, and begged of her a shift of a peculiar fabric. The
night before the battle, she also revealed herself to M. de la
Rochejaquelein, asking him to give her a pair of shoes, and promising to
behave in such a manner in the morrow's fight that he would never think
of parting with her. Accordingly, she kept near his person through the
whole of the battle, and conducted herself with the most heroic bravery.
Two or three times, in the very heat of the fight, she said to him: "No,
mon general, you shall not get before me; I shall always be closer up to
the enemy even than you." Early in the day she was hurt pretty severely
in the hand, but held it up, laughing, to her general, and said, "It is
nothing at all." In the end of the battle, she was surrounded in a
charge, and fell fighting like a desperado. There were about ten other
women who took up arms, Madame de la Rochejaquelein says, in this cause:
two sisters under fifteen, and a tall beauty who wore the dress of an
officer.</p>
<p>At the end, after the loss of her husband, Madame de la Rochejaquelein
was told that it was impossible to resist the attack that was to be made
next day, and was advised to seek her safety in flight and disguise,
without the loss of an instant. She set out accordingly with her mother,
on a gloomy day in December, under the conduct of a drunken peasant;
and, after being out most of the night, at length obtained shelter in a
dirty farm-house, from which, in the course of the day, she had the
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misery of seeing her unfortunate countrymen scattered over the whole
open country, chased and butchered without mercy by the republicans, who
now took a final vengeance for all the losses they had sustained. She
had long been clothed in shreds and patches, and needed no disguise to
conceal her quality. She was sometimes hidden in the mill when the
troopers came to search for fugitives in her lonely retreat, and often
sent in the midst of winter to herd the sheep or cattle of her faithful
and compassionate host, along with his raw-boned daughter.</p>
<p>While skulking about in this state of peril and desolation, they had
glimpses and occasional rencounters with some of their former
companions, whom similar misfortunes had driven upon similar schemes of
concealment. In this wretched condition, the time of Madame de la
Rochejaquelein's confinement drew on; and after a thousand frights and
disasters, she was delivered of two daughters, one of whom died within a
fortnight. The result at length was, that Madame de la Rochejaquelein,
after several struggles with pride and principle, was prevailed to
repair to Nantes, to avail herself of an amnesty.</p>
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