ABSTRACT
The war in the Vendée commenced on 5 March 1793. Peasants rose in revolt near Buffelière [we do not know which village she is referring to]; they then scattered into the neighbouring parishes and came to find M.Sapinaud de Bois-Huguet, better known by the name la Verrie. ‘We take you’, they told him, ‘as our general, and you will march at our head.’ Sapinaud tried to make them understand the misfortunes that they were going to bring down on themselves and the Vendée. ‘My friends’, he said, ‘you will meet more than your match. What can we do? Only one department against ninetytwo! We shall be crushed. I do not speak for myself; I hate life since I was witness to all the crimes and the barbarities which our unfortunate patrie has accumulated, and I would rather die at your head, fighting for my God and my king, than be dragged to some prison as they have done to all my peers. Believe me, go home, and do not destroy yourselves uselessly.’ Those brave peasants, far from yielding to his reason, showed him that they could never submit to a government that had taken their priests away, and had imprisoned their king. ‘They have deceived us’, they said; ‘why do they send us constitutional priests? They are not the priests who attended our fathers on their death beds, and we do not want them to bless our children.’ My brother-in-law did not know what side to take; he hesitated to give himself up to those good peasants,
and expose himself to an almost certain death; but, seeing their obstinacy, he finished by ceding, put himself at their head, and left the same day for Les Herbiers. The peasants of La Gaubretière joined them. Passing by the château of Sourdy, they forced Sapinaud de La Rairie to march under the orders of his uncle. That same evening, that undisciplined troop, having for its defence nothing more than a few hunting rifles, sickles and sticks, arrived in front of Les Herbiers.
