Page:Englishhistorica36londuoft.djvu/146

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138 REVIEWS OF BOOKS January Recueil des Actes du Comite de Salut Public avec la Correspondance qfficielle des Representants en mission. Tome xxv. 30 Juin-28 Juillet 1795. Publie par F. A. Aulard. (Paris : Imprimerie Nationale, 1918.) The Quiberon expedition forms the central subject of interest in the present volume. Although the landing had taken place on 27 June, the resolution of the committee of 1 July appointing Tallien and Blad representants en mission to the departments of the west authorized them to take necessary measures ' pour empecher la descente que les ennemis de la Republique veulent tenter et pour les vaincre s'ils l'effectuent '. It was not till they were at Alencon on the evening of 3 July that General Dubayet received from Hoche a letter dated 10 messidor (28 June) announcing that ' les Anglais debarquent en grandes forces a Carnac '. After their arrival at Hoche's head-quarters the reports of Tallien and Blad are few and meagre, and throw no light on Tallien's relations with Hoche or the emigres. After a joint report sent on 16 July of a success for the Kepublican armies, with further details from the pen of Tallien next day, there is no further dispatch of any kind from either. On 23 July the committee reminded them that news was anxiously expected, and that a courier must be sent every other day, whether there was news of importance to communicate or not. By that time Hoche's victory was accomplished and Tallien was on his return to Paris. The silence of Blad remained unbroken. The Quiberon expedition necessarily reacted on the other armies of the Republic. Although the committee had dispatched 1,200 reinforce- ments from the camp of Paris on 6 July and had ordered a further 10,000 to be sent from the army of the North, Hoche's success was not won without dangerously weakening Dubayet's army of the Cotes de Cher- bourg and the local garrisons, particularly that of Nantes. The inevitable result, predicted by all the representatives to the departments and armies concerned, was the recrudescence of chouannerie to such an extent that by the end of July Nantes was practically isolated. The plan for the advance beyond the Rhine was abandoned for the time, causing, at any rate in the opinion of Merlin of Douai, an increasing pressure on the armies of the Alps and Italy, which necessitated the withdrawal of the right wing to a shorter and stronger line covering the department of Alpes-Maritimes. This army had not only suffered to a greater extent than any other from desertion, but, out of the 10,000 reinforcements ordered previously from the army of the Rhine, so many had been diverted on the way to quell the insurrections at Lyons and elsewhere that only 200 had reached Kellermann. On 19 July Chiappe reported that the two armies had only 35,000 effectives with which to oppose allied forces of 150,000 which were being constantly augmented. The same day the committee had instructed the representatives at Trevoux only to keep at Lyons such troops as were absolutely indispensable for the maintenance of order, now happily restored, and to send the rest as quickly as possible to Kellermann's relief, to enable him to hold out until such time as the further 10,000 troops ordered from the Rhine could arrive. The com- mittee also sent 500,000 livres in foreign paper, the sum in specie not