The heartthrob with the contemplative gaze is Jacques Cathelineau, a young man from a modest French family. Jacques was immensely religious as is shown on the painting with the sacred heart and the rosary on his vest. He was very popular among villagers with his charismatic personality and good looks. He married at the tender age of eighteen and lived a normal life as a traveling peddler until his destiny called upon him.
It all happened a few years after the French Revolution, when the romantic spirit of liberty, fraternity, and equality started to turn into bloodshed. Hell broke loose in France, chaos in the First Republic’s army. French commoners rebelled against the revolutionaries and a kind of civil war began to form in the region of Vendee.
In the spring of 1793, strong and bold Jacques refused to join the First Republic’s army and as a royalist and a deeply devotional Catholic, he recruited a fistful troop of beggarly men whom he led from village to village and with whom he successfully fought against Republicans and for his faith. By combining other troops they became a 30,000-member peasant army, with Cathelineau as their general. The painting most likely depicts him at the peek of his success. He keeps two flintlock pistols around his waist like a cowboy and has the royalists’ white feather on his hat.
For a while, the civil soldiers seemed to be invincible; however, in July, in the battle of Nantes, Cathelineau was shot seriously. Although Jacques was still alive rumors spread of his death, and the peasant army was soon defeated. Without their hero, the men lost their faith and ran away. The sisters who hid Cathelineau could not save his life, despite all their efforts, and brave Jacques died from his injuries.
The terror continued for one more year with executions of all the Republic’s enemies until finally the Convention stopped it. Later, at the Bourbon restoration, the modest Cathelineau family was honored with nobility and thanked for Jacques’ valor. Jacques remained forever dapper, young, strong, and determined like in this painting, thus reminding posterity not to forget why revolutions used to break out: for freedom.
