his salt or exchanged it for other merchandize. "Le sucre des pauvres," as
salt has been aptly called, was severely taxed under the old regime;
distributions of the "sel royale" were yearly made by the Government among
the gentry of the provinces, but the poor, who had no such privileges,
severely felt the oppression, and smuggling was consequently extensively
carried on, and the "faux saulnier," with his double bag across his
shoulders, secretly sold salt upon which the gabelle had not been paid.
With a faux saulnier originated the great peasant rising in Brittany, the
Chouan war; a war to which Napoleon said, "All preceding wars have been
but games." Jean, father of the four brothers Cottereau, was a maker of
wooden shoes, and lived in a forest near Laval (Maine). From his solitary
life he had acquired such sombre, wild, melancholy habits, that people
gave him the name of Chouan, Maine patois for Chat-huant, and his family
received the sobriquet long before the insurrection of 1792. Jean
Cottereau was the most celebrated faux saulnier of Maine; he had
accidentally killed a revenue officer in one of his encounters, and his
heroic mother made a journey to Versailles, barefooted, "sur le cuir de
ses pieds," to obtain his pardon. Jean's master and patron was
guillotined, his two sisters shared the same fate, and one of his brothers
died of his wounds, and his body was disinterred by the Revolutionists.
These personal wrongs, the treatment of the King, the interdiction of the
Catholic religion, its processions, its bells, the persecution of its
ministers, all goaded the Breton peasantry to revolt; and Jean was the
first to fire a gun against a Republican at the cry of "Vive le Roi." The
rising began with a few peasants, armed with a gun or a stick, dressed in
short breeches open at the knee, with leather gaiters, and coloured
garters; their long hair streaming over the shoulders, their heads covered
with a wide-brimmed hat, or brown or red cap, sabots tipped with iron,
and, in cold weather, a loose coat of goatskin. The Chouans assembled in
small bands and attacked the Republicans at night in ambuscade, and when
they had killed a few "Bleus" disappeared among the corn-fields or the
furze-bushes. Simple peasants, they fought against the Republicans in
defence of the altar and the throne. Their "commandements" ran thus:--

"Ton Dieu, ton Roy, tu serviras
Jusqu'a la mort fidelement.
Docile a tes chefs tu seras,