Re-Published
By IAN DE MELLO
Staff Writer
The War in the Vendée (1793 – 1796) refers to the peasant counter-revolutionary forces that rebelled against the Republican regime during the French Revolution. The citizens of the heavily religious and rural region of the Vendée (Loire-Atlantique) found very little to be enthusiastic about when the Republicans took control. Backed by atheist intellectuals and the middle class, the Revolution seemed out of touch with the poor Catholic peasants, causing tensions to rise. A blow to Catholic loyalty occurred when the Republicans enacted the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which attempted to establish state control over the Catholic Church in France. Eventually, calls for general conscription resulted in a full-blown revolt, with the town of Cholet being the first to mobilize in the Vendée. This was not the only region that had unrest, as the same sentiments could be mirrored in Normandy and Brittany. The Revolution now had to face a counter one.
The peasants were rallied together by noblemen such as Charette and Rochejaquelein, and peasant leaders like Stofflet and Cathelineau. Compelled by loyalty to God and King, thousands of peasants, armed only with their scythes, marched to the drums of war. This Breton song aptly described the feelings of the peasantry.
Nos gars n’ayant point d’épées,
Our lads had no swords,
Pour venger le Roi (Le Roi!)
To avenge the King (The King!)
Leurs faulx, dans le sang trempées,
But had scythes drenched in blood,
Pour venger le Roi. (Le Roi!)
To avenge the King (The King!)
Couchaient les Bleus par centaines,
Killing the Blues by the hundreds,
Comme le blé noir; dondaine.
Like black wheat; dondaine.
Ah, ah, ah! Debout les gars, vive le Roi!
Ah ah ah! Arise lads, long live the King!
Against the odds, they quickly won a series of battles, assuming control over the towns of Thouars, Parthenay, and Fontenay-le-Comte. At their peak, they seized the city of Angers but ultimately failed to take the important city of Nantes. With reinforcements, the Republican Army retook control of Cholet, resulting in the peasants retreating North across the Loire river. A last stand was commanded by Charette with only a couple thousand peasants in the Vendée region. However, the main Vendean Army was now stuck north of the Loire, and in a last-ditch effort, attempted to seize a port to gain aid from the British. Due to the reorganized Revolutionary Army, they were defeated at the Battle of Lemans and destroyed at the Battle of Savenay. Open fighting had ceased, but the worst of it was yet to come.
The Revolutionary Army, in their rage, carried out a “scorched earth” policy in the region, massacring anyone that they could get their hands on. Be it men, women, or children, women in specific were targeted, as the Republicans believed them to be carrying “anti-revolutionary babies”. Nicknamed the “infernal columns”, these troops burnt down houses and farmsteads leaving the region a smoldering ash heap. The orders that were given can be best described by general Louis Marie Thureau, the main orchestrator of the slaughter, “My purpose is to burn everything, to leave nothing but what is essential to establish the necessary quarters for exterminating the rebels.”
French historian, Reynald Secher, was among the first to describe these actions as genocide with his work, A French Genocide: The Vendée. Secher used new sources and documentation, even provincial data, to explain how the massacres were not merely a product of fierce patriotism and the frenzy of war, but a premeditated plan to destroy the Vendeans.
The historically biased viewpoint of the French Revolution has disallowed any real discussion of the events in the Vendée, which could be clearly seen by the visceral reaction that French historians had towards Secher’s work. Fortunately, over the years, those rose-tinted goggles had slowly slipped off, and more historians have reached the same conclusion as Secher. For example, Jacques Villemain 2017 published his own works calling the events in the Vendée a genocide that spanned from 1793 to 1794. However, there are still some historians who question the notion that it was a genocide, while others have varying degrees of agreement with Secher.
The sheer barbarism that was displayed in the Vendée was characteristic of much of the Revolution, as shown by the reign of Robespierre. This was just one of the many awful acts that were committed by the Revolution as a whole in the name of “liberté, égalité, fraternité”. It is a sobering fact that bad actors can and will use the plight of the people to usurp power for themselves.
In the end, it is a shock in its own right that such an atrocity took this long to be called for what it truly was—genocide. A genocide of Catholics. Genocide of the Vandeans.
“But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.”
– Edmund Burke
