In their curious dialect, the Vendeans had a verb, _s’égailler_, _s’éparpiller_, and they lived up to it. It meant scattering and sharp-shooting, every man for himself, in what we Americans might call the historic Lexington style. Each carried his cartridges in his pocket. If any complained of lack of powder, Henri had a pricking answer: “Well, my children, the Blues have plenty of it!” which reversed matters in five minutes. Bred in a hunting country, the King’s men were expert shots from boyhood. Farming weapons fixed on handles adorned the marching no-pay volunteers. Such guns as they had were put into the ablest hands; and wonderful musketeers they made, these hunters of Loroux and the Bocage. They crept behind walls and hedges, not firing, as did the troops of the line, at the height of a man, but aiming individually, and rarely missing, so that throughout an action their loss was but as one to five; they leaped garden terraces, and peered from the angles of strange little foot-paths, making sudden volleys and attacks, the chief usually foremost, the men eager and undrilled; or they ran forward by scores, fronting the hostile cannon, flinging themselves down at every explosion, and so creeping nearer and nearer, until they might grapple with the stupefied cannoneers hand to hand. This was their favorite strategy. More than one town was actually taken by savage wrestling and boxing, without a report of fire-arms at all. They lacked wagons, reserves, luggage; each carried his own rations. They travelled without a calendar, for that sanctioned by the Republic, and therefore, with Fabre d’Eglantine’s pretty fooleries of _Floréal_ and _Pluviose_, cashiered, was the only one extant in France.
They had thirty lively drums and no trumpets; when they wanted an inspiring noise they sang a hymn. Sentinels could not be trained; it seems incredible that they should have done for two years without pickets or patrols, except when the officers took turns at a necessary duty. But in this, as in other matters, the strong-minded rustics, who freely entered the ranks, reasoned, objected, fought shy, and were at once the solace and the despair of their commanders. A certain fatal independence was born in their blood. What chance, at any time and however valiant, has the army of momentary concurrence against the army of sworn obedience? Innocent of discipline, they were all but impossible to direct on an open plain. Every movement was a farce in tactics. A chief exercised his full authority according to the individual esteem in which he was held. This singular code, likely to be subversive of all authority elsewhere, was the only one which proud and willing Vendée could be brought to understand. “Such a general goes such a way,” the adjutant would call; “who goes with him?” And the tenants of his own seigneury, the guerilla vassals, would run with a shout after him, forming their lines by some convenient object--a house or a tree. Their Monsieur Henri had a formula borrowed unconsciously from the old war-cry of Gaston de Foix: “He who loves me follows me!” When he flashed down the front on his wonderful white horse, which the cheering peasants had christened the Fallowdeer, thinking nothing else could be so wild, so delicate, so amazingly swift, parish after parish rallied to him in a little cloud. The fashion of gathering in clans and bands, primitive as it was, had its advantages. Every one stood, in action, next another of his own estate or blood; and La Vendée was notoriously careful of its wounded and slain. Never were men more dependent on the nerve and sagacity of their leaders. A disabled officer dared not budge, or the crazy columns would give way. Lescure, unhorsed at Saumur, would have kept the troops ignorant of his hurt had not the boy Beauvolliers thrown himself upon him with a loud cry of lamentation and started a panic in the ranks. Charette being wounded long after at Dufour, his regiments dispersed like sheep. When Cathelineau of the shining brow fell in sight of his army, there was instant rout. At the recapture of Châtillon many a dissembler, sick and weak, rode forth in affected vigor, and so forced the splendid issue of the day.