The Chevalier François-Athenase de Charette was first to lead the rebels in the wild marsh-lands of Lower Poitou. He had been a ship’s lieutenant. Despite the known laxity of his private conduct, Charette was a power. In matters of sense and courage he was equal to the best of his extraordinary colleagues, all of whom he was destined to outlive. He was twenty-eight years old when he took command at Machecould. Charles-Melchior Artus, Marquis of Bonchamp, was enrolled at the solemn inauguration of the war. He had seen service in India, and was in his early prime: a scholar, an accomplished tactician, and a man greatly beloved, whose name is yet in benediction. La Ville-Baugé, placed by force among the Blues (so called from the color of their coats, which under the kings had been white), abandoned them, and joined the insurgents at Thouars. He was a youth of marked steadiness and patience, dear to Lescure and to Henri. Gigot d’Elbée, late of the Dauphin cavalry, was forty years of age, already white-haired, of small and compact build. Possessed of many virtues, he was not a striking nor engaging character; his conceit, fortunately, harmed neither himself nor others. It was he who read sermons to his men, who carried with him the images of his patron saints, and who, above all, talked so much and so well of the wisdom which directs us, that the roguish congregation in camp fastened on him the nickname of “_La Providence_.” For Lescure, as for Cathelineau, the peasants had a veneration. Unselfish, contained and cool, versed admirably in military science, Lescure at twenty-six was a bookish recluse, with a heart all kindness, and a bearing somewhat lofty and austere. Born in 1766, in 1791 he had married his first cousin, Victoire, daughter of the fine mettlesome old Marquis of Donnissan. To this timid girl, who heroically followed her husband through the Vendean crisis (and who herself, years after, was to play a second illustrious role as the wife of Louis de La Rochejaquelein), we are beholden for the _Mémoires_, naïve and precious, which supply nearly every main detail of the long struggle, which persuaded out of life the ignorance and prejudice of its traducers, and which serve as the worthiest monument ever raised to the loving army, Catholic and Royal.