He was a bit of a '
chouan'; born in Brittany of a parliamentary family, and ennobled by Louis XVIII.
The novella takes place in Brittany during the 1793 Vendee war against the Republic, and exploits themes familiar to those who have read Balzac's Les
Chouans, or Hugo's later Quatrevingt-treize.
"A Passion in the Desert" The
Chouans. A Passion in the Desert.
Une passion dans le desert joins Les
Chouans as one of only two texts Balzac completed among the twenty-three titles he projected for the Scenes de la vie militaire in his 1845 "Catalogue des ouvrages que contiendra La Comedie humaine," titles which were to include the aforementioned Egyptian trilogy as well as two Algerian narratives, L'Emir and Le Corsaire algerien.
History bursts into life; we experience Napoleon's cool intelligence, Talleyrand's elegant evasions, Josephine's intuitions and Fouche's brilliant, cold-blooded police-work as the heroic Cadoudal looses his
Chouans against the Republic.
Thermidorians thought religion should "be kept quiet, dull, and indoors." Royalists and
chouans were like oil and vinegar, producing a "rich savor" when properly mixed, but with a "natural tendency to separate" (240).
Jonathan Steele correctly reminded us that "arming insurgents against elected governments has a long US pedigree, and it is no accident that Elliott Abrams, the deputy national security adviser and apparent architect of the anti-Hamas subversion, was a key player in Ronald Reagan's supply of weapons to the Contras who fought Nicaragua's elected government in the 1980s." But those Contras, ubiquitously present at every revolution, the
Chouans of the VendE[umlaut]e, the Contras of French revolution, the Cossacks of Don, the Contras of the Russian revolution, Savimbi's Unita, the Contras of the Angolan revolution, did have some truth on their side, and expressed some legitimate interests.
26 The
Chouans, or "screech owls", were royalist guerrilla fighters in which country in the 18th century?
Her alleged delight in the romantic interest that formed the basis of the novel that since 1834 had been known as Les
Chouans causes her to accept an invitation to Fougeres: 'Elle voulut voir Fougeres ou s'etait denouee l'aventure du marquis de Montauran, et parcourir le theatre de cette guerre pittoresque dont les tragedies [...] avaient berce son jeune age' (CH, IV, 912).