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The Novels of Victor Hugo, Fully Translated (1895)
The Novels of Victor Hugo Fully Translated - 1895 Author:Victor Hugo Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: X. THE HOSTAGES July had gone, August came, a blast, fierce and heroic, swept over France, two spectres had just passed beyond the horizon, Marat with a da... more »gger in his heart, Charlotte Corday a headless corpse, the situation everywhere was becoming terrible. As for the Vendee, beaten in her grand strategic schemes, she took refuge in little ones, more formidable, as we have already said; this war was now an immense fight scattered about among the woods; the disasters to the large army, called the Catholic and Royal, had commenced; the army of Mayence had been ordered into the Vendee; eight thousand Vendeans had fallen at An- cenis; the Vendeans had been driven out of Nantes, dislodged from Montaigu, expelled from Thouars, chased from Noirmoutier, flung headlong out of Cholet, Mortagne, and Sau- mur; they had evacuated Parthenay; they had abandoned Clisson; fallen back from Chatillon; lost a flag at Saint-Hilaire; hadbeen beaten at Pornic, at the Sables, at Fon- tenay, Doue, at the Chateau d'Eau, at the Ponts-de-Ce; they were kept in check at Lucon, were retreating from the Chataigneraye, and routed at the Roche-sur-Yon ; but, on the one hand they were threatening Rochelle, and on the other an English fleet in the Guernsey waters, commanded by General Craig, and bearing several English regiments and some of the best officers of the French navy, only waited a signal from the Marquis de Lantenac to land. This landing might make the royalist revolt again victorious. Pitt was in truth a state malefactor; in politics there are treasons, even as in an outfit of arms there is the dagger. Pitt stabbed our country and betrayed his own; to dishonor his country was to betray it; under him and through him England waged a Punic war. She spied, she cheated, she lied. A poacher and a forger,...« less