An onlooker, watching the strange procession as it approached from the far side of Moutiers and slowly ascended the hill, would have found it difficult to make out the meaning of the strange jumble of men on foot and on horseback: Whites in the costume made sacred by Charette, Cathelineau and Cadoudal, Blues in the Republican uniform, accompanied by women, children and peasants, and rolling along in the midst of this human tide, restless as the waves of the ocean, an unknown machine unless the spectator had seen one of Coster de Saint-Victor's placards.
But these placards were for the time being considered merely as one of those gasconades which the parties permitted themselves at this period; and many persons had come from afar, not to see the promised execution that would have been too much to expect but to learn the explanation of the promise which had been made them.
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