Ch. 1 - An Ambuscade - Page 2

men, had the historic merit of serving as a transition
between the goatskins and the brilliant, almost sumptuous, dress of a
few individuals dispersed here and there among the groups, where they
shone like flowers. In fact, the blue linen trousers of these last,
and their red or yellow waistcoats, adorned with two parallel rows of
brass buttons and not unlike breast-plates, stood out as vividly
among the white linen and shaggy skins of their companions as the
corn-flowers and poppies in a wheat-field. Some of them wore wooden
shoes, which the peasants of Brittany make for themselves; but the
greater number had heavy hobnailed boots, and coats of coarse cloth cut
in the fashion of the old regime, the shape of which the peasants have
religiously retained even to the present day. The collars of their
shirts were held together by buttons in the shape of hearts or
anchors. The wallets of these men seemed to be better than those of
their companions, and several of them added to their marching outfit a
flask, probably full of brandy, slung round their necks by a bit
of twine. A few burgesses were to be seen in the midst of these
semi-savages, as if to show the extremes of civilization in this
region. Wearing round hats, or flapping brims or caps, high-topped
boots, or shoes and gaiters, they exhibited as many and as remarkable
differences in their costume as the peasants themselves. About a dozen
of them wore the republican jacket known by the name of "la
carmagnole." Others, well-to-do mechanics, no doubt, were clothed from
head to foot in one color. Those who had most pretension to their
dress wore swallow-tail coats or surtouts of blue or green cloth, more
or less defaced. These last, evidently characters, marched in boots of
various kinds, swinging heavy canes with the air and manner of those
who take heart under misfortune. A few heads carefully powdered, and
some queues tolerably well braided showed the sort of care which a
beginning of education or prosperity inspires. A casual spectator
observing these men, all surprised to find themselves in one another's
company, would have thought them the inhabitants of a village driven
out by a conflagration. But the period and the region in which they
were gave an altogether different interest to this body of men. Any
one initiated into the secrets of the civil discords which were then
agitating the whole of France could easily have distinguished the few
individuals on whose fidelity the Republic might count among these
groups, almost entirely made up of men who four years earlier were at
war with her.

One other and rather noticeable sign left no doubt upon the opinions
which divided the detachment. The Republicans alone marched with an
air of gaiety.