A Tale of the Rising in the Vendee by G A Henty. (Preface 1899)
In the world's history there is no more striking example of heroic bravery and firmness than that afforded by the people of the province of Poitou, and more especially of that portion of it known as La Vendee, in the defence of their religion and their rights as free men. At the commencement of the struggle they were almost unarmed, and the subsequent bettles were fought by the aid of muskets and cannon wrested from the enemy. With the exception of its forests, La Vendee offered no natural advantages for defence. It had no mountains such as those which enabled the Swiss to maintain their independence, no rivers which would bar the advance of an enemy, and although the woods and tickets of the Bocage, as it was called, favoured the action of the irregular troops, these do not seem to have been utilized as they might have been, the principal engagements of the war being fought on open ground. For eighteen months the peasants of La Vendee, in spite of the fact that they had no idea of submitting either to drill or discipline, repulsed the efforts of forces commanded by the best generals France could furnish, and which grew after every defeat until at length armies numbering in all over two hundred thousand men were collected to crush La. Vendee. The losses on both sides were enormous. La Vendee was almost depoulated, and the Republicans paid dearly indeed for their triumphs, no fewer than one hundred thousand men havinf fallen on their side. La. Vendee was crushed, but never surrendered! Had the British governement been properly informed by its agents of the desperate nature of the struggle that was going on, they might, by throwing twenty thousand troops with supplies of stores and money into La Vendee, have changed the wholw course of events, have crushed the Republic, given France a monarch, and thus spared Europe over twenty years of devasting warfare, the expenditure of enormous sums of money, and the loss of millions of lives.
(G A Henty was a British war correspondant, who also wrote novels who teenage boys.)
Thanks to J. Brant...
