Chouans

Chouans is a Romance of Honore de Balzac published in 1829.

Begun with the autumn 1828 and almost finished with Ferns, in the house of the general of Pommereul, who was the host of Balzac and which remained always his/her friend, the novel initially had as a title the Guy , then Chouans or Brittany thirty years ago , before becoming temporarily the Last Chouan . The first edition, in 1829 at Urbain carried finally the title the Chouan Last or Brittany in 1800 . Into 1834 with the Vimont editions the title still changed for Chouans or Brittany into 1799 . In the Furne edition of 1845, Chouans appears in the volume XIII of the human Comedy in the section: Scenes of the military life .

Balzac and the writing of the Chouans

In 1835, Balzac declares that the Chouannerie bathes in an atmosphere where two convictions “ allow all, like formerly the catholics and the Protestants ”: it is a civil war of partisans which does not go without crimes and plundering. The novel thus paints the impossibility of the compromise between Chouans and Révolutionnaires.

It was conceived much more like painting of an environment that like a historical novel. The author says that the novelist who makes work of historian should not make “ history a mass grave, a gazette, a civil statue of the Nation ”. On the contrary, it must restore the one time spirit or an event.

However Balzac consulted historical works, which proves that it documents in an erudite way:

the War of Vendean and Chouans , by Jean-Julien Savary
History of the French revolution , by Adolphe Thiers
History of the revolution , by Minniet.

It goes even in September 1828 to Fougères where it will live in a general to carry out research on the spot.

In the novel, the cruelest scenes always put in scene Chouans, makes it possible to think that Balzac was closer to the Jacobins than of the Vendéens. This violence is, for the author, a form of religious fanaticism, the ferocity of Chouans being based on a great credulity. Their excesses take a epic and tragic dimension then, that Balzac puts in scene through its painting of the Clergé in the person of the Gudin abbot, who galvanizes the troops.

Topic

In 1799, under the French revolution, with the Breton peasants is armed for the return with the king and against the republican troop with the commander Hulot. An aristocrat, Marie de Verneuil, is sent by Joseph Fouché to allure and capture their chief, the Marquis de Montauran, told to the Guy . She must be helped by a skilful, ambitious and not very scrupulous police officer, Corentin.

However, it falls in love with its target. Against Corentin and the chouans which hate it, it will make its possible to marry the marquis. Misled by Corentin which makes him believe that the marquis loves his rival mortal, Madam of Gua, it orders in Hulot to destroy the rebels. Discovering too late the fraud it was sacrificed to test, without success, to save her husband the shortly after his marriage.

Some key quotations of the novel

“ These two troops was devoted then to a eagerness sharpened by all the fury and the cruelty of the spirit of party which made this war an exception ”.

“ Each camp diabolise the other ”.

“ In this terrible war the two parties did not make prisoners ”.

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