. Castles and chateaux of old Touraine and the Loire country. is most animated, and any painter whois desirous of emulating Eosa Bonheurs Horse Fair (painted at the great cattlemarket of Bernay, in Normandy) cannot finda better vantage-ground than here, for one maysee gathered together nearly all the cattle typesof Poitou, the Vendee, Anjou, Bas Maine, andof Bretagne Nantaise. In earlier days Cholet was far more sad thanit is to-day; but there remain practically nosouvenirs of its past. The wars of the Vendeeleft, it is said, but three houses standing whenthe riot and bloodshed was over. Two o
. Castles and chateaux of old Touraine and the Loire country. is most animated, and any painter whois desirous of emulating Eosa Bonheurs Horse Fair (painted at the great cattlemarket of Bernay, in Normandy) cannot finda better vantage-ground than here, for one maysee gathered together nearly all the cattle typesof Poitou, the Vendee, Anjou, Bas Maine, andof Bretagne Nantaise. In earlier days Cholet was far more sad thanit is to-day; but there remain practically nosouvenirs of its past. The wars of the Vendeeleft, it is said, but three houses standing whenthe riot and bloodshed was over. Two of thegreatest battles of this furious struggle werefought here. On the site of the present railroad stationKleber and Moreau fought the royalists, andthe heroic Bonchamps received the wound ofwhich he died at St. Florent, just after he hadput into execution the order of release for fivethousand Eepublican prisoners. This was onthe 17th October, 1793. Five months laterStofflet possessed himself of the town andburned it nearly to the ground. Not much is , It?. r/y;^ ^ Donjon oj the Chateau de Clisson South of the Loire 307 left to remind one of these eventful times, savethe public garden, whicli was built on the siteof the old chateau. La Moine, a tiny and most picturesque river,still flows under the antique arches of the oldbridge, which was held in turn by the Vendeansand the Eepublicans. To the west of Cholet runs another line ofrailway, direct through the heart of the Sevre-Nantaise, one of those petits pays whose old-time identity is now all but lost, even more cele-brated in bloody annals than is that regionlying to the eastward. Here was a countryentirely sacked and impoverished. Mortagnewas completely ruined, thougfi it has yet leftsubstantial remains of its fourteenth and fif-teenth century chateau. Torfou was the sceneof a bloody encounter between the Vendeanhordes and Klebers two thousand heroiquesde Mayence. The able Vendean chiefs whoopposed him, Bonchamps, DElbee, a
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpublisherbosto, bookyear1906
