e Vendee had risen in
arms for God and King Louis XVII.

The Vendee was a large district of France, a great part of the ancient
province of Poitou, lying just to the south of the Loire and near the
Atlantic Ocean. A great part of the country was cut up by tracts of
forest and thick and numerous hedges. The peasants were fairly
prosperous, and well-affected to the priests and seigneurs. The latter
were mostly resident landlords, holders of small estates, living near
and on kindly terms with their peasantry. The priests and nobles had
long viewed the Revolution with aversion, an aversion intensified by
the proclamation of the Republic and the execution of the King. And
{173} when, on the 26th of February, the Convention passed an army
ballot law and sent agents to press recruits among the villages of the
Vendee, the peasants joined their natural leaders and rose in arms
against the Government. The Vendeens were, in their own country,
formidable opponents. They had born leaders, men who showed wonderful
courage, dash, and loyalty. They prayed before charging an enemy, and
on the march or in battle sang hymns, always the most irresistible of
battle songs. Their badges were the white flag, the Bourbon lilies,
and the cross. For awhile they swept everything before them.

Danton arrived in Paris on the 8th of March. He immediately attempted
to reconcile the factions of the assembly, and to persuade its members
to turn their wasted vigour into war measures. From neither side did
he receive much encouragement. To his demands for new levies and
volunteer regiments, Robespierre replied that the most urgent step was
to purify the army of its anti-revolutionary elements. To his proposal
that the executive should be strengthened by composing the ministry of
members of the Convention, the Girondins opposed their implacable
suspicion and hatred. But Paris had long been working up {174} its
hostility to the Gironde; an insurrectional committee had just come
into existence that aimed at dealing with them after the fashion in
which it had dealt with Louis on the 10th of August; and the Girondins'
stand against Danton precipitated the outbreak.

On the 9th of March a premature and imperfectly organized insurrection
occurred, directed against the Gironde. The demonstrators marched
against the Convention, but were held in check by a few hundred
well-affected provincial national guards. On the 10th it became known
that Dum