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War of the
Vendee
Carl Marx in
his writings uses the word Vendeen to mean counter revolutionary and in essence
that is what the war of the Vendee was.
The Vendee was Strongly Royalist,
this being where Richard the Lionheart had his main castle at St Hiliare en
Talenmondaires,nr Les Sables d'Oloron. Richards Mother Eleanor of Aquitaine was
married in the abbey at Maraizais and buried in the royal abbey at Neile sur
Autais both just out side Fontenay le Comte in the South of the Vendee. This is
Plantagenet country, so with the Revolution the Vendeens found themselves on the
losing side.
Background
Differences in class were not as great in
theVendee as in the other French provinces, or Paris. In rural Vendée, the local
nobility seems to have been more residential and less resented than in other
parts of France. In this particularly isolated part of France the conflict that
drove the revolution was lessened by strong adherence of the populace to the
Catholic Church. There were outbreaks of anti-Republic violence in 1791 and1793.
It was not until the social unrest combined the Civil Constitution of the
Clergy((1790) and then the Conscription(or "Levy") Decree (1793) that the region
erupted.
The Civil Constitution required all clerics to swear allegiance to
it and to the anti-clerical NationalConstituent Assembly. The Vendean clergy
almost to a man refused to swear the oath and were replaced by the Revolutionary
authorities with ”Jurors”, who were disliked and condemned as intruders.
Nonjuring priests declared the new civic ceremonies worthless; in response gangs
of Republicans came from the cities into the countryside, closing and
vandalizing the churches of nonjuring priests.
Outbreak of
revolt
Vendean peasants initially supported the revolution, but they
rebelled against injustices of the Republic on March 7,1793. In the Vendée there
were few troops to control them, whereas the more serious riots in Brittany were
quickly broken.
There were spontaneous riots on March 10-13 in many
towns and villages. The representatives of the Republic were singled out for
attack and murder. In the bloodiest outburst, in Machecoul on March11 forty men
were beaten and stabbed to death on the streets, another four hundred were
gathered up and arrested. The men were taken out in 'rosaries' (tied in a line
with rope around the chest), made to dig ditches and shot - their bodies then
tumbled into the grave they had dug.
The crowds moved from the smaller to the
larger settlements, Cholet in the north and Fontenay-le Comte in the south, fell
to the rebels. Local Nobels were approached, d’Elbee, Sapinaud de Verrie and
Charett became the leaders of their local force. The clergy were also fairly
active in rallying the people.
. The main force of the rebels operated on a
small scale, using guerrilla tactics and supported by the insurgents' local
knowledge and the good-will of the people.
Republican response
The
Republic responded quickly, sending in March over 45,000 troops to the area. The
“Bleu’s” were young, badly trained and equipped with low morale and were
dispersed in small groups throughout the region, limiting control to a few urban
centers, and providing many weak garrisons as targets.
The first battle was
on the night of March 19th. A Republican army of 2,000, under General
de Marcé, moving from La Rochelle to Nantes was intercepted north of Chantenay
at Pont-Charrault near the Lay. After six hours of fighting rebel reinforcements
arrived and routed the Republican forces. The rebels advanced as far south as
Niort. On March 22nd, another Republican force was routed near chalonnes in the
north leaving their equipment for the grateful Vendéans.
The Vendee Army
covered the area between the Loire and the Lay, part of Maine-et-Loire west of
the Layon, and the portion of Deux Sevres west of the Thouet. Successes
continued for some time: Thouars was taken in early May and Saumur in June, but
the Vendéans then turned to a protracted and wasteful siege of
Nantes.
Defeat
On 1stAugust the Committee for public safety ordered
General Jean-Baptiste carrier to perform a ruthless pacification. The Republican
army was reinforced. The Vendéan army had its first serious defeat at Cholet on
October17th; their army was split. In October 1793 the main force, commanded by
Henri de la Rochejaquelein and numbering some 25,000 crossed the Loire, headed
for the port of Granville where they expected a British fleet and an army of
exiled French nobles. Granville was surrounded by Republican forces, with no
British ships in sight. Their failed to take the city. During the retreat they
fell prey to Republican forces, suffering from hunger and disease they died in
their thousands, the finally battle at Savenay on December 23rd was
decisive.
Claims of genocide
The government in Paris enacted stern
measures. The Reign of Terror seen elsewhere in France, was extraordinarily
brutal in the Vendée. Followingthe Law of 14 Frimaire, in December alone over
6,000 prisoners were executed, a number in what was called the "national bath" -
tied in groups in barges and then sunk into the Loire. Among them were 400
children whom Carrier hated especially, seeing in them "brigands to be”.
From
February 1794 the Republican forces launched their final "pacification" (the
Vendée-Vengé or "Vendée Avenged") - twelve columns, the colonnes
infernales ("infernal columns") under Turreau were marched through the
Vendée, indiscriminately targeting not only the remaining rebels and the people
who had given them support, but the innocent as well. Beyond this massacre there
were formal orders for forced evacuation and 'scorched earth' - farms were
destroyed, crops and forests burned, villages razed. There were many reported
atrocities and a campaign of mass killing universally targeted at residents of
the Vendée regardless of combantant status, political affiliation, age or
gender.
Extracts from the committee read:
"The committee has prepared
measures that tend to exterminate this rebellious race of Vendéeans, to make
their abodes disappear, to torch their forests, to cut their
crops
The orders to Turreau were:
"Exterminate
the brigands to the last man instead of burning the farms, punish the fleeing
ones and the cowards, and crush that horrible Vendée. Combine the most assured
means to exterminate all of this race of brigands”
The campaign dragged
to an end in March 1796. Historians have since estimated the dead to number
between 117,000 and 500,000, out of a population of around 800,000, while others
have disputed the figures
A solution was hammered out in the end whereby
the vendeens would stop fighting and pay their taxes and in exchange the
churches were allowed to reopen.
Napoleon was later, as a way of punishment
to take the seat of power away from Fontenay le Comte which had been not only
the capital of the Vendee, but of the Bas Poitou region and move it to a small
village of just a few houses called "Le Roche sur Yon" and hence was created
first Napoleon town built on a grid system now copied in so many towns and
cities in America.
The Emblem of the Vendee is the two inter-linked hearts
with a cross on top, symbolizing the twin love of their country and of the
church.
When I first came to live in the Vendee 16 years ago there was
still a strong hatred of Parisiennes to the extent that if one was to move into
a house in the area he could expect to be burgled in the first week, it was a
matter of duty, but with the recent explosion in population this seem now after
more than two hundred years to be dying out quickly.
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