The most prominent Vendéan leaders, next to Rochejacquelin, were La Rochefoucault de Beaulieu and the Marquis de Lescure. The former was one of the first to raise the standard of Louis XVIII. Scarcely had he called together a few hundred neighbours and their peasant tenantry when he received a visit from Madlle. de la Rochefoucault, a near relative, and at this time only eighteen. She was accoutred _en Amazon_, with a sword by her side and a brace of pistols in her belt. She presented the troops with embroidered standards, worked by her own hands, and declared her resolution to fight personally for the royal cause. Mademoiselle de la Rochefoucault displayed the greatest possible daring in the numerous encounters between the contending armies. She was always the first to advance and the last to retreat. But though she was so fierce while the battle raged, directly it was over she showed her kind and humane disposition by the care which she took of the wounded. She made no distinction between friends and foes; the unfortunate, whether Royalists or Republicans, were always sure of her sympathy and assistance. In the disastrous battle of Chollet, when the superior numbers of the Republicans spread such confusion through the Chouan ranks, Mademoiselle de la Rochefoucault rallied her troops three times successively, and charged the foe. Repulsed a fourth time, she ascended a slight eminence, and addressed seven hundred of her followers in a speech well calculated to rouse their sinking energies. Once more she led them against the foe. This time they returned without her! But the most famous heroine of this war was Renée Bordereau, commonly called Langevin, known as the "Military Heroine of La Vendée," who afterwards wrote and published her autobiography. She was born in June, 1770, at the village of Soulaine, near Angers, of poor, but honest parents. When the insurrection of 1793 broke out, the Republican troops ravaged and massacred without mercy throughout La Vendée. It chanced that forty-two of Renée's relatives fell victims, successively, to this fury. At last the barbarous murder of her father before her eyes so transported Renée with rage and a thirst for revenge that she devoted herself thenceforth to the royal cause. She bought a light musket with double sights, and learned privately to load, fire, and aim at a mark. She also practised the military drill; and when she considered herself sufficiently expert, she procured a suit of masculine clothes, and joined a corps commanded by M. Cœur-de-Roi--whose name, by the way, was only a _nom de guerre_. She enrolled under the name of Hyacinthe, that of her brother, but her comrades soon gave her the soubriquet of Langevin, a name she never lost.