Such, Mad. de L. assures us, was the
tumult and terror of the scene, and so awful the recollections it
inspired, that it can never be effaced from the memory of any of
those who beheld it; and that many of its awe-struck spectators have
concurred in stating, that it brought forcibly to their imaginations
the unspeakable terrors of the great day of judgment.--_Edinb. Rev.
No. LI. p. 24._]
It is said that when the Prince Talmont, with the royalists, crossed
over from Saint Florent, under the fire of the republican troops who
had taken possession of the heights, they consisted of thirty thousand
individuals, but that there were not twenty thousand warriors; among
them were five thousand women: arrived in the open country, without
warlike stores, they soon wanted provisions. This multitude created
a famine wherever it went, and suffered a famine itself. The first
unsuccessful enterprize produced discouragement, and necessarily the
desertion of the army: it diminished two-thirds when it was repulsed
at Angers; and when the chiefs, despairing (after the battle of Mans)
of not being able to recross the Loire at Ancenis, led back the wrecks
of the army to Savenay, it consisted only of fifteen thousand men,
half dead with hunger and misery: the major part of these were
exterminated by the republicans; the rest dispersed themselves, and
from that time all efforts ceased. Prince de Talmont was arrested near
Erne, tried at Rennes, and executed at Laval: of the fate of Lescure
and the other chiefs, a melancholy catalogue is furnished by Madame de
la Roche-Jaquelin.
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