Each field was a fortress, every tree an ambush; the hollow trunk of
each old willow hid a stratagem. The place for a fight was everywhere.
Sharpshooters were lurking at every turn for the Blues, whom laughing
young girls, unmindful of their perfidy, attracted within range,--for
had they not made pilgrimages with their fathers and their brothers,
imploring to be taught wiles, and receiving absolution from their
wayside Virgin of rotten wood? Religion, or rather the fetichism of
these ignorant creatures, absolved such murders of remorse.
Thus, when the struggle had once begun, every part of the country was
dangerous,--in fact, all things were full of peril, sound as well as
silence, attraction as well as fear, the family hearth or the open
country. Treachery was everywhere, but it was treachery from
conviction. The people were savages serving God and the King after the
fashion of Red Indians. To make this sketch of the struggle exact and
true at all points, the historian must add that the moment Hoche had
signed his peace the whole country subsided into smiles and
friendliness. Families who were rending each other to pieces over
night, were supping together without danger the next day.
The very moment that Commandant Hulot became aware of the secret
treachery betrayed by the hairy skins of Marche-a-Terre, he was
convinced that this peace, due to the genius of Hoche, the stability
of which he had always doubted, was at an end.
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