"This is a much more serious business than I had expected," Berruyer said. "I certainly imagined that, with such forces as we have gathered round La Vendee, the campaign would be little more than a military promenade. I see, however, that I was entirely mistaken. These men have, today, shown themselves capable of taking advantage of the wild character of their country; and as to their courage, there can be no question, whatever. If this is a fair sample of the resistance that we have to expect, throughout the whole country, we shall need at least fifty thousand men to subdue them." "Fully that," Menou said, shortly. "There is no doubt that we blame the National Guards, who were so easily routed by the peasants on the tenth of March, more severely than they deserve. I rode forward to encourage the men, at their last attack. I never saw soldiers fight with such fury as did these peasants. They threw themselves on the troops like tigers, in many cases wresting their arms from them and braining them with their own muskets. Even our best soldiers seemed cowed, by the fierceness with which they were attacked; and as for the men of the new levies, they were worse than useless, and their efforts to force their way to the rear blocked the way of the reinforcements; who were trying, though I must own not very vigorously, to get to the front. "The peasants were well led, too, and acting on an excellent plan of defence. They must have been sheltered altogether from our fire, for among the dead I did not see one who had been killed by a cannonball. The country must possess hundreds of points, equally well adapted for defence; and if these are as well and obstinately held as this has been, it will take even more than fifty thousand men to suppress the insurrection." "The Convention is going to work the wrong way," Berruyer said. "The commissioners have orders to hang every peasant found in arms, and every suspect; that is to say, virtually every one in La Vendee. It would have been infinitely better for them to have issued a general amnesty; to acknowledge that they themselves have made a mistake; that the cures of Poitou and Brittany should be excepted from the general law, and allowed to continue their work in their respective parishes without interruption; and that for a year, at least, this part of France should be exempt from conscription. Why, if this campaign goes on, a far larger force will be employed here than the number of troops which the district was called upon to contribute, to say nothing of the enormous expense and loss of men. "It is a hideous business altogether, to my mind. I would give all I possess to be recalled, and sent to fight on the frontier."