By the time they reached Chollet, they were fifteen thousand. They had seized a piece of cannon at Jallais, which they christened the _Missionnaire_; and a second, at some other place, which was dubbed _Marie-Jeanne_. All along the route priests joined their ranks, exhorting, preaching, singing mass to them. They started on the 12th, as we have seen; after the 14th, a large band joined forces with them, headed by a man who was to share the command with Cathelineau, and, later, to succeed him. This was Stofflet, another rough but brave peasant, a gamekeeper on M. Maulevrier's estate, whose grandson, poor lad, the last descendant of the race, was killed out hunting, at the age of sixteen. When the Vendean army reached Chollet it sent in a flag of truce--a strange envoy he was, too, and he gives us a good idea of the times, the place and the circumstances: his head and his feet were bare; he carried in his hand a crucifix crowned with thorns, bound round with a huge rosary; his eyes were lifted to heaven, as those of a mystic or martyr, and he cried out between his sobs--
"Surrender, my dear friends, or you will all be put to fire and sword!"
This summons was made in the name of _commanding officer_ Stofflet and _almoner_ Barbotin.
The whole of the garrison of Chollet comprised three hundred patriots armed with muskets, and five hundred armed with pikes; they attempted to offer resistance to fifteen thousand men; but, of course, resistance was utterly impossible; M. de Beauveau, the head of the Republicans, fell in the first attack. The patriots retired into a part of the castle which commanded the square, and from whence they could fire upon the Vendeans as they entered the square; this was all the easier as there was a Calvary in the square before which every peasant knelt and prayed, heedless of the firing, not returning to the fight until his prayers were finished and the sign of the cross made. These good folk--let us lay stress on the word and call them brave folk--for they did not understand the enormity of the crimes they were committing, since their priests had ordered them!--did not plunder, but they killed not merely during battle, which was a necessity, but even afterwards, and they killed cruelly, as we shall see.