Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/386

 376 Reviews of Books In spite of Professor Charlety"s confidence in the obvious implications of the documents he analyzes, only a specially trained observer is likely to extract a great deal from his volume, the character of which is, of course, entirely different from the clear and explicit cahiers. Yet one even slightly tinctured with curiosity in regard to the actual situation of the church at the opening of the Revolution will discover much of interest in the first chapter, which enumerates the ecclesiastical corpora- tions — the numerous chapters, the secular and regular communities of men and those of the women, with a tolerably full account of their sources of income and of their numbers. For, as is well known, even the driest document or mere statistical table becomes more eloquent to him that can see than the glowing pages of the most fascinating his- torian. James Harvey Robinson. Memoirs of the Count de Cartric: a Record of the Extraordinary Events in the Life of a French Royalist during the Jl'ar in La Vendee and of his Flight to Southampton rvhere he Follon'cd the Humble Occupation of Gardener. With an Introduction by Frederic Masson, Appendixes and Notes by Pierre Amedee PiCHOT and Other Hands. (London and New York: John Lane Company. 1906. Pp. Ixxxii, 249.) These memoirs of an unknown cannot be dismissed with Louis XVI. 's impatient " Encore un memoire ! " Though not himself famous, Cartrie was famously related, for his sisters Mesdames Sapinaud and Bulkeley are well known in Vendean annals. While the memoirs may add little to the available stock of knowledge, they do present an unsur- passed picture of the Vendee and of provincial France during the Terror. Toussaint-Ambroise Talour de la Cartrie de La Villeniere was born January 26, 1743, of a family of the judicial nobility in Anjou. At the age of eleven he entered the army, and soon joined the Regiment de Berri on service in Canada and surrendered with it at Montreal in 1760. He returned to France on parole, secured his discharge from the army, married his cousin, Anne-Michelle de I'fitoille, and settled on one of the ancestral estates, Cartrie, a few miles from Angers. Here he followed the quiet life of a country gentleman, winning the devoted admiration of his dependents and neighbors and bringing up a family of three sons and three daughters. From this quiet existence he was driven by the events of 1793 to espouse the cause of the Vendean royalists. After the defeat at Cholet, he watched over the dying moments of his nephew, the brave and generous Bonchamp. Then, with several members of his family, he followed the fortunes of the Vendean host in the march to Granville; in the return to Angers, where he was active in the futile assault upon the town ; in the march to Le Mans; and after the disaster of December 12, 1793. joined in the hope- less retreat to Ancenis. The failure to effect the crossing of the Loire