Review: Quatrevingt-treize by Victor Hugo

“Au-dessus de l'absolu révolutionnaire, il y a l'absolu humain.” 
"Beyond the revolutionary absolute, there is a human absolute."

To me, the above statement perfectly summarises the theme of this amazing book set in France's terror years during the French Revolution.

Written in 1874, Quatrevingt-treize is Victor Hugo's last novel. He was 72 years old when it was published. Consider that Hugo was only 29 when he published Notre Dame de Paris.

In Quatrevingt-treize, Hugo reprises the thorny question of what one should choose when faced with a moral decision. At the climax of this story, three men encounter situations that will challenge their core beliefs. Two of them choose to uphold humanitarian principles over and above any revolutionary concerns-even at the cost of their own lives or mission. The third, however, cannot override his convictions, and as a result, his conscience and his failure to act in a humanitarian manner will lead to his demise.

Illustration for Quatrevingt-treize, 

by Caumont, Robert (circa 1922 - 1924)

The third man, Cimourdain, also functions as an anti-Javert while meeting the same end as Javert.
At the end of Les Misérables, Inspector Javert, who has shown humanity in letting Jean Valjean escape, will suffer enormous cognitive dissonance; through his lenience, he has acted against the grain of his perceived moral duty and cannot reconcile his benevolent behavior with the opposing rigid lawful attitude. His subsequent suicide is a desperate means to escape from a fraught self-integrity.

On the other hand, in Quatrevingt-treize, the character, Cimourdain does not allow humanitarian concerns overtake duty; but here again, dissonance arises because deep down, his emotional attachment to Gauvain reminds him over and over again that he has made the wrong decision. Facing the impasse between his broken conscience and the duty he was forced to obey, Cimourdain takes the same deathly path as Javert.

Danton, Robespierre, and Marat at the wine shop

Quatrevingt-treize

Wood engraving by Paterson.

What is revealed in his writings is that Hugo was painfully conscious of moral dilemmas and of the human distress that surfaces when people are forced into a choice that offers no solution - whether the choice is in line or goes against strongly held beliefs. Could this have resulted from his upbringing? I mentioned this before in an earlier post - Victor Hugo's parents could not have been more at odds. Could this tension between opposites have created a domestic climate of guilt where every decision was fraught with anxiety?

It is easy to imagine it. His father, Joseph Léopold Hugo was loyal to the French army. In his earlier years, long before the family lived in Spain where his son spent his early childhood, Joseph Hugo had fought in Western France against Bretons rebels, or Chouans, as these were called. Meanwhile his mother, Sophie Hugo, a Breton royalist from Nantes was firmly against the revolutionaries - she sheltered counter-revolutionaries - like the Chouans.

Or perhaps, the tumultuous times during which the author's parents lived were filled with stories that later inspired Victor Hugo? I noted that while depicting the tragic war and violence pitting Chouans against Republication soldiers, Victor Hugo emerges from his narrator's voice and chooses to remind the reader of Quatrevingt-treize that his father fought this war. It is intimate and marked with emphasis.

No matter its origins or the inspiration behind it, I felt that, more strongly than in Les Misérables, Quatrevingt-treize is the author's attempt to reiterate that we are doomed if we hold on too tightly to our convictions. Fanaticism harms the human soul and the human absolute must prevail.

La Tourgue, 1835

llustration by Victor Hugo for Quatrevingt-treize

The book is beautifully written. Like L'Homme qui rit, each chapter stands alone as a masterpiece. Through Hugo's vivid descriptions, I was fascinated by the landscape of Brittany's forests and the extensive network of subterranean caves, some of which date to the 9th century. I found a book published on this same subject, and which covers the terrain in La Roche-sur-Yon, not far from where my uncle lives today. Curious about Western France's subterranean network, I began to research the underground caves of the Vendée and have since featured these in my historical novel, Julien's Terror.

Beyond the rich historical insights of Quatrevingt-treize and the author's deep understanding of moral conflicts, I enjoyed Victor Hugo's rendering of the Breton culture and his colorful, immersive writing. It was a pleasure to read this book and to rediscover my grandfather's homeland. It was enriching to be inspired and moved by this great author.

La Guyonnière - an inspiration for my latest novel

Born in Hue, Vietnam, my Eurasian mother came to France for the very first time in 1955. She grew up in Paris and Nantes but warmly recalls memories of her summer holidays at her paternal grandparents' country home in Western France, in the area of La Guyonnière.


Her childhood was provincial in many ways.
She told me of how she would eat an entire Far Breton to herself, how she and the other children went cycling in the countryside, or else joyfully ate the ripe berries they had picked from the nearby groves.

It all sounded to me like an idyllic French holiday. I could imagine my mum in a summer dress and a little white apron, her hair parted in two braids alongside her moon-shaped face, her naturally tanned Eurasian skin basking in the French sunshine.

I learned from genealogy documents that my family's property in La Guyonnière extended for more than 100 hectares and was called La Roche-Thévenin. It had existed since at least the 14th century, passed down through my Bégaud ancestor.

Upon retirement, my great-grandfather, Pierre Candeau had become its guardian. Today, since passing on to his brothers and sisters, the property has been resold. It still exists but it is no longer part of my family's heritage. I don't know the current owner. I believe they often open the property to the public for commemoration of its history.

La Roche-Thévenin

Courtesy of Llann Wé 

When I wrote my latest novel, Julien's Terror, I stumbled upon the area of La Guyonnière again. It is an area east of Montaigu in the West of France, not far at all from Nantes. I had my characters spend some time there while traversing the Vendée. It was an accidental find.

I was actually researching the life of the Vendée general who, at the peak of France's revolutionary Terror, when extreme secularism saw the murder of priests and nuns, stood up valiantly to lead Vendée peasants against a government that tyrannised them.

From the rest of the world's point of view, Charette remains an unknown general despite being later praised by Napoleon for his genius military tactics. Charette was very much a leader of the people, and had been summoned by the peasants themselves who had had enough of mandatory conscription and the brutality against their priests. It is suggested that he practiced (invented?) guerilla warfare before the term became later known in Europe, following the Napoleonic wars in Spain.

It turned out that around the time when my novel takes place, there was such a thing called the Battle of La Guyonnière and it led to the capture of Charette. It took place in March 1796 when Charette had long lost hope and was living in hiding, from shelter to shelter. Seven months earlier, the defunct king's brother, the Comte d'Artois, who Charette had counted upon for bringing reinforcements, had decided he did not wish a part in the conflict, and had deserted him and the royalist cause, sailing back to England.

Now Charette was living on luck. He had even found refuge at one of my ancestors' home in Chavagne-en-Paillers. But in March 1796, his luck had run out. He was wounded and running for his life. Harrassed by General Hoche and progressively abandoned by his troops, Charette made way for La Guyonnière. From there, he and his men encountered a couple of the general's columns. They managed to escape to the woods of La Chabotterie until another larger column, this time led by General Travot, encircled them. All of Charette's men were killed, save for three. It was said the following exchange took place between Charette and Travot.

"Are you Charette?"
"Yes, it's me. Where is your commandant?"
"I am the commandant."
"You are Travot?"
"I am."
"About time. It is to you that I wanted to surrender," Charette replied, handing him his sword.

The Capture of Charette, Louis Joseph Watteau, 1796

Julien's Terror recounts the tragic fate of Charette following his capture, and how for several hours, to the sound of drums, he was paraded with great derision through the streets of Nantes. On 29 March 1796, exactly 222 years ago, he was shot on Place Viarme in Nantes.

Just as he had shown courage in the battle, he went bravely to his death. He refused to be blindfolded. He stood straight, and addressing the firing squad he designated the left side of his chest, calling out, "Soldiers, aim well. It is here that you must strike a brave man."

Charette's greatness is merely glimpsed in my novel but the landscape of the Vendée looms large both in my mind, and in this story which is so dear to my heart.

I can scarcely escape the pervasive presence of the Vendée in my family's history. One of my 19th century great-aunts was born south of Montaigu in the Brouzils, very near the forest where once Charette and thousands of Vendée peasants took refuge while infernal columns raged through Western France. La Guyonnière and its properties - La Roche-Thévenin, La Chausselière and La Friborgère - were all owned by my family. In the south of La Guyonnière, my ancestor, Pierre Charles Marie Gourraud de La Proustière had been mayor of Chavagne-en-Paillers, and his property brought refuge to Charette.

Despite this pervasive Vendée heritage, no one in the family speaks of it nor encouraged me to write Julien's Terror. I wrote it while knowing nothing of my family's strong roots in this Western region of France. While only one of my uncles now lives in the Vendée, in La Roche-sur-Yon, we are for the most part, scattered all over the world, from Corsica to Hawaii, from Norway to Australia.

I can't help but think it is no coincidence that of all places I could have written about, I returned to La Guyonnière and more broadly, to the Vendée, as though I was impelled by a collective memory, a spiritual energy that wished to be heard and take form.

We Bretons have a bond with the dead, so I'll take that. In memory of Charette.

The French Revolution: Brittany and the Vendée

Drownings of Nantes in 1793, Joseph Aubert (1882)

“We must exterminate all men who have taken arms against the Republic 

and strike down their fathers, their wives, their sisters and their children. 

The Vendée must become a national cemetery.” 

      – General Turreau

The French Revolution is generally accepted as covering the period 1789 to 1799, ending with Napoleon’s coup d’état and the dissolution of the Directory. Prior to the formation of the Directory government France was ruled by the National Convention headed by Robespierre. This period, aptly known as the Terror, lasted from September 1793 to July 1794. 

For Western France, in the region of the Vendée, the Terror was accompanied by bloody and religious civil war including a period of mass killings that some French historians have recently come to denounce as a genocide and which led to the decimation of a third of the inhabitants in the Vendée. 

In the Western town of Nantes the representative of the National Convention, Jean-Baptiste Carrier, was responsible for atrocities and massacres that defy imagination. 

In my latest novel, I was interested in portraying a female perspective for this turbulent period.

Origins of the Conflict

It is a misconception that aside from aristocrats and nobles all French people were in favor of the beheading of their king and queen. 

The inhabitants of Brittany and of the newly named region of Vendée (comprising parts of Brittany, Poitou and Anjou regions) were never in favor of the guillotining of their king, Louis XVI, on 21 January 1793. They were staunch royalists and deeply Catholic. The execution of King Louis was not well received. 

To compound the people’s outrage, the new Republic had not only nationalized church property, but it also outlawed all priests who refused to forsake their oath on the Holy Bible.  According to these new laws, priests now had to swear upon the Constitution. Those who resisted were labelled ‘refractory’ and banished from preaching. There were persecutions involving both priests and nuns. In worst cases such priests were hunted to death or murdered en masse, as happened in Nantes in December 1793 when hundreds of refractory priests were tied up, locked into a barge and drowned in the Loire River. 

Already unsettled, the Vendée peasants rose in arms against the Republic when in February 1793, the National Convention made a call for the conscription of 300000 unmarried men, from the age of 18 to 40 years. 

The people of the Vendée had already witnessed great injustices toward their beloved priests, whom they hid, but this new conscription law was the tipping point because it would have left thousands of peasants unable to fend for their families. Meanwhile they would be forced to enlist in support of a Republic they had come to see as tyrannical.

Determined to oppose the Republic, these men, often illiterate and attached to their land, elected nobles and landlords—local men whom they held in high esteem—to lead and train them in battle. The Great Vendéan Army was born. 

Initially this Great Army won many victories against the soldiers of the Republic, but from December 1793, its luck began to turn. From January to July 1794, Paris sent a giant army to sweep across the Vendée. Its orders were clear: annihilation with no quarters. 

The Infernal Columns

Children, women, the aged, even the sick and farm livestock were not spared from massacres. The Republican army practiced scorched-earth and sought to obey decrees from Paris aimed at starving or exterminating the population. 

The army possessed twenty columns led by several Republican generals. Some, like those commanded by General Grignon, were more cruel than others. These columns became known as the ‘infernal columns’ for the very hell they spawned. 

The living defend their dead. War of the Vendée. 

Georges Clairin, 19th century

The words pronounced by General François Joseph Westermann are powerful illustrations of the atrocities that followed: 

“There is no more Vendée. I have trampled the children to death with our horses, I have massacred the women, and they are no longer able to give birth to any brigands. I am not guilty of taking a single prisoner, I have exterminated them all… The roads are covered with corpses. There are so many of them at several places they form pyramids. The firing squads work incessantly… Brigands arrive who pretend that they will surrender as prisoners… but we are not taking any. One would be forced to feed them with the bread of liberty, but compassion is not a revolutionary virtue.” 

Writing the French Revolution 

In Julien’s Terror, my desire was to convey what might have been the experience of a young girl in these violent times. The journey begins when she is a spoilt child, daughter a well-to-do merchant, living on the prestigious Île Feydeau in the heart of Nantes. It follows her life after the Terror, when she is a spirited but destitute orphan. What she sees and lives in-between, and the aftermath of her horrendous psychological journey provide both drama and mystery, but more importantly, it casts a light on the hardships faced by many French women in this period.

My female character is barely nine when she loses her parents to Carrier’s butchery. She is reunited with relatives in war-torn Vendée, staying with them first in Montaigu, La Guyonnière and then later in Les Epesses—all communes that were swept by the infernal columns.

The Underground and the Hidden Places of the Vendée

What is less well-known about the conflict in Western France is how much the peasants’ knowledge of their natural surroundings supplied them with advantages for surviving the Republican army. Like the Viet Cong of Vietnam, the people of Brittany and Vendée crawled in secret undergrounds. They also waged a guerrilla war long before the word ‘guerilla’ officially surfaced, when Napoleonic French troops encountered fierce resistance in Spain.

As François Pagès describes in Secret History of the French revolution—the soldiers of the Catholic royalist army ceaselessly disappeared and then re-appeared to fight. The underground, the woods, the stones and the marshes in the West would conceal and then suddenly release hordes of former valets, brigands, priests, ex-nobles, and peasants. They were everywhere and yet they remained unseen. 

In his final novel, Quatre-Vingt Treize, Victor Hugo wrote of his father’s experience in the war against Breton royalists. He too mentions the forests that sheltered thousands of peasants in Brittany: 

“The peasant had two points on which he leaned: the field which nourished him, the wood which concealed him.”

“There were wells, round and narrow, masked by coverings of stones and branches, the interior at first vertical, then horizontal, spreading out underground like funnels, and ending in dark chambers. [ ] The caves of Egypt held dead men, the caves of Brittany were filled with the living.”

“The subsoil of every forest was a sort of mad repose, pierced and traversed in all directions by a secret highway of minds, cells, and galleries. Each one of these blind cells could shelter five or six men.”

In Les Epesses, my female character follows her great-uncle, a giant Breton man who walks everywhere with his large wooden staff, and seems to know all the secrets of the underground. He hides his family in an underground cavern where they remain for months. 

As the infernal columns advance in the Vendée countryside, my character witnesses horrors beyond her years. Later she will hide in the secret Gralas forest, south of Nantes, and meet one of the most courageous men to lead the Vendée rebellion – General François Athanase de Charette de la Contrie (Charette). In Gralas, she will also discover the strong, independent women who fought to death alongside Charette, and one of these women will change her life forever.

"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death" 

- the original motto of the French Republic

Further Reading:

1. Histoire secrète de la Révolution française depuis la convocation des notables jusqu' a la 
prise de l'ile de Malthe..., François Pagès, 1798.
2. Quatrevingt-treize, Victor Hugo, 1874.
3. Souterrains de Vendée, Laurent et Jérôme Triolet, Editions Ouest-France, 2013.
4. Colonnes Infernales - Wikipedia 
5. A French Genocide: The Vendée, Reynald Secher, University of Notre Dame Press, 2003.

Celebrating Bastille Day

Romantic literature's portrayal of the French Revolution as a bloody affair enraptures the imagination. Certainly blood flowed wherever Madame La Guillotine made her appearance, and she seemed to move around enough to indicate that the sight of her was unpleasant and evidently not good for local business. But was there blood everywhere? No. That is a romantic fancy. Or is it?

Perhaps if you ventured in Western France, in the Vendée of 1794, then you might see otherwise.

Were there massacres? Oh, yes. Again, not in Paris. But if you travelled to Lyon or else in Nantes, well - let's just say the word, terror, is rather an understatement. How does the word 'genocide' sound? Some would argue against the likes of historian Reynald Secher who advocates for this stance. Many, including the French philosopher Luc Ferry, support him. But that there exists controversy about this word, 'genocide', and whether or not it should be applied for what happened in the Vendée between January and July 1794, is enough to stir attention.

But enough of the romance. It is Bastille Day after all - time to reflect on those raw figures from the French Revolution.

So then, how many people were executed in Paris during the Revolution?
There were 2918 executions, including sadly the mathematician Lavoisier because...he had once been involved in tax collection. Well, that's the official story. The truth is that he made an enemy of Marat and Marat destroyed him.

How many were massacred during that fated event of September 1792?
3400, including the tragic mauling of la Princesse de Lamballe

How many people were guillotined in total, throughout France, during the Revolution?
13800.

But let's not stop here. You'll wish for romance, I promise.

How many were murdered by firing squad, shot or drowned?
18500, including 2000 children and 764 women in Nantes.

How many counter-revolutionaries died?
180000 - actually this could be anything between 200000 and 300000 according to research by the likes of Reynald Secher.
These were not soldiers. They were civilians, including women and children and the aged - mostly peasants from above or below the Loire River. Those originating from the north of the Loire were called Chouans. Those to the South were usually Vendeeins.

How many died of famine, cold, misery?
7000

Now when the Terror ended in late July 1794, a new terror of a different nature began. Those 'Jacobins' who had embodied the most radical tenets of the Republic and were strictly intransigent found themselves the victims of violent reprisals.
How many Jacobins died during this so called "White Terror"?
14600

Note that 70% of the executions listed above took place between October 1793 and May 1794 - coinciding with the unleashing of the infernal columns into the Vendée during the Terror. Refer to the genocidal term earlier. It suddenly acquires more color.

One thing is for certain. Even beyond the official Terror months of Sept 1793 to July 1794, there was fear. At the minimum, fear would have been a natural consequence of changes and it turns out that the French Revolution did change many things. One did not need to be an aristocrat to have one's life turned upside down -  schools and monasteries were closed, churches were pillaged and/or destroyed, church property was seized by the state, noble property was seized by the state, street names were changed dramatically, the names of towns were changed, the religious order was secularized, the calendar was transformed so that even the weekdays were no more, the forms of address changed - saying "Monsieur" was frowned upon, one had to use the term "Citizen" to express equality - the manner of dressing, or of expressing oneself changed, the metric system was introduced, government structure and reporting changed, judicial laws changed.

In the patriotic hunt to weed out counter-revolutionaries and traitors, pettiness was rife. And if you were hungry or envious of someone who had enough to eat, then you might accuse them of hoarding food. In the same way, if you were Marat and felt ugly or disadvantaged in some way, you might turn all your party against someone who had once humiliated your beliefs and was part of the Academy of Science...oh, I don't know, someone like Lavoisier for example. In modern day parlance, those who are good at TED talks and have an axe to grind can really do some damage.
The knowledge of human pettiness, the fear of being accused of treason - all this was also part of the Terror.

In Nantes, when the Loire river became infested with the corpses of the thousands drowned, one had to stop eating the fish. Madame La Guillotine pales in comparison to the reality of the French Revolution.

More on this fear for which the best example lies in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. This fear even permeated the new government - National Convention members became protective of their stance to the detriment of one another. Robespierre's increasing paranoia embodies the very spirit of the Terror. Even in his powerful position, he was wary. His acute fear rippled through the psyche of France.

The number of people incarcerated into asylums grew. People were terrified of losing their heads. Literally.

Even the butcher of Nantes, Jean-Baptiste Carrier, in his desire to serve the National Convention (while enriching his pockets) suffered this terror as much as he embodied it. When promising to purge Nantes of counter-revolutionaries he managed to gorge the prisons of the city until it was evident that they could take no more without the risk of a massive typhoid epidemic. What to do with all those prisoners and the threat of disease? What to do? Why, shoot them by the hundreds of course. No, wait. Drown them. Yes. Drown them by the hundreds. The children too. That will do it. Panic. Sheer terror. Fix this problem and report to the Committee of Public Safety that, yes, Nantes has been purged. I, Carrier, have done my duty.

And then there was the economy, just to make things worse.
Due to severe grain shortages in the years before the revolution, bread was already expensive at the time when the Bastille was taken. Guess what? It became even more expensive afterwards. If you thought chopping the king's head and calling everyone equal would mean more bread, unfortunately that wasn't the case. There were some real problems out there and no activism was going to fix things.
The index of Inflation from 1790 to 1795 was as follows:
1790 - 100
July 1795 - 180
Nov 1795 - 340

In early 1790, the government had issued a new paper currency called "assignat". In the next year, they pumped more assignats into circulation so that by late 1791, the currency's purchasing power had dropped by 14%. The fall of the assignat continued  well into 1795, so that by November 1795, purchasing power had decreased by 99%. Fun times. How does one plan when everything is chaos?

Then Napoleon happened. But that is another story.

In Rennes, there is a bronze statue of a man tearing a piece of paper. It receives a lot of attention. It was erected there to commemorate a brave figure. His name is Jean Leperdit. He was mayor of Rennes for several months during the Terror. The statue is amazing. It symbolizes defiance, courage and humanity. See, during the Terror, when Jean-Baptiste Carrier was on a killing rampage sending out letters and lists all over Western France asking for the execution of counter-revolutionaries, this Jean Leperdit reportedly stood up against Carrier and tore up a list of 23 names, refusing to execute these people. It is difficult to know if the story is true but it embodies for me the courage of all those moderating agents during the French revolution - people who were not swept up by terror or fear and managed to preserve their humanity in the face of chaos. These are the people I celebrate when I celebrate Bastille Day.

It could have been worse.

So then, Happy Bastille Day!

Charette in Nantes

In my late teens, I reproduced this scene from an illustration that I had found while devouring a French historical encyclopedia.

Back then, I was studying engineering, not history, and had only a faint notion of the Vendée wars. I ignored who he was - the man on the horse.

I only remember that I wanted to be him. Whoever he was...

Many years passed and I lost these old French volumes.

This year, while sleuthing around, I finally noted the words I had once written underneath the drawing to capture its context: "Entree de Charette a Nantes".

And everything clicked.

General Charette was a thirty year old royalist, an elected Vendée chief, who, following the French Revolution, deserted his life of ease to lead counter-revolutionaries in their guerilla-like fight against French troops.

For the republicans, this indomitable Breton represented the spirit of the counter-revolutionaries, then called, Brigands.

Here are some notes from an 1820 text to best describe this scene.  But before you read it, watch the people in the drawing. It all seems joyful, doesn't it?  Yet it is bittersweet, at least for the leaders of the counter-revolutionaries.

As it turns out, the amnesty was short lived.

The Setting

"The overthrow of the Jacobin system of terror, and the execution of Robespierre, led, in Vendée, to an amnesty.  Instead of proscription and carnage - a pardon, unity and protection was extended.

The Vendée chiefs, deserted by their followers, saw no alternative but to accept the proposed amnesty.

General Charette and the principal chiefs, in the name of the Vendéeans; and another chief, of the name Cormartin, representing that party which was distinguished by the appellation of Chouans, or Night-owls, agreed to live, in the future, subject to the laws of the republic and to deliver their arms.

On the 3rd of March 1795, the treaty was solemnly concluded, signed and ratified in Nantes.

The Scene

February 1795 - the entry of Charette and his companions into Nantes was announced by a discharge of twenty-one guns. Charette, who rode a beautiful charger, was dressed in blue, and begirt by a tricolored riband, his hat decorated with a feather. That general was at the head of the procession, followed by four of his lieutenants; then came a group of representatives; then another formed of the staff of Charette; [..] and followed by the remnants of the Nantes cavalry;

The representatives seemed to be elevated with joy: they ceased not to exclaim - Vive la paix; and the people repeated the cry. Charette seemed mournful, much affected. He received and returned, on both sides, the salutations. He said sometimes, Vive la religion, vive la paix; and some repeated Vive l'union."

Ahead of Charette, in my drawing, you can see a man brandishing a banner with the words, "Vive L'Union".  Here, we are speaking of the Vendée-Chouans union.

It was unlike Charette to sign this treaty which called upon the Vendee's total submission to France in exchange for their right to religion. Some believe that Charette had seen to a secret clause and it was this which led him to sign. The secret agreement was that the young king, Louis XVII, then languishing in the Temple, would be released on 14 June and delivered to him.

This was not to be.

It is said that the amnesty was feigned, only allowing the republicans to re-arm so that soon after this treaty, they resumed the fighting, leading to the eventual capture and execution of Charette in 1796, in the very city where he had ridden the year before.

I am glad that I have kept this drawing. I remember how it spoke to me while I drew it, I could almost hear the cheers.

Despite the events that would follow, the joy and eagerness for peace depicted in this Nantes scene are palpable. They spell relief. Understandable given the genocide that the Vendée had just lived.

But that, is another story.



More reading:

Christopher Kelly, History of the French Revolution and of the Wars Produced by that Memorable Event, T. Kelly (1820), p. 166