Revolt in the Vendée

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The revolt in Vendée was an 1793-1796 popular uprising against the Republican government during the French Revolution.

Variously known as the Uprising, Insurrection, Revolt, Vendéan Rebellion, or the War in Vendée, it took place in Vendée, a coastal region, immediately south of the Loire River in west central France. The insurgency resulted in the largest and most violent counter-revolutionary events of the First French Republic. The Vendéans were originally largely supportive of the revolution but with repression of the Church they became increasingly royalist. Some scholars claim that the massive killing after the insurgency failed constitutes the first modern genocide.

[edit] Background

Class differences were not as great in Vendée as in the capital Paris and the other French provinces, and in rural Vendée, the local nobility seems to have been more residential and less bitterly resented than in other parts of France.^[1] The conflicts that drove the revolution were also lessened in this particularly isolated part of France by strong adherence of the populace to Roman Catholicism. There were outbreaks of anti-Republic violence in 1791 and 1792, as the peasants perceived that their position had worsened, not improved since the fall of the Ancien régime. It was not until the social unrest combined with the external pressures from 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 by extension to the increasingly anti-clerical National Constituent Assembly. All but seven of the 160 bishops refused the oath, as did about half of the parish priests.^[2] Persecution of the clergy and the faithful was the first trigger of the rebellion; the second being conscription. Nonjuring priests were exiled or imprisoned. ^[3] Women on their way to Mass were beaten in the streets.^[4] Religious orders were supressed and Church property confiscated.^[5] On March 3, 1793, virtually all the churches were ordered closed. ^[6] Sacramental vessels were confiscated by soldiers and the people were forbidden to place a cross on their graves.^[7]

The suppression of the Church and its faithful made the Vendeans potential rebels but what made them actual rebels was the March 1993 conscription of 300,000 of them while the Rebublican officials gave themselves and exemption.^[8] The Vendeans saw these Republican officials who made themselves exempt from the draft as the very same people who ordered their priests exiled and imprisoned and who purchased the best Church properties which they expropriated.^[9] Seeing the Republicans, exempt from the draft and enriched with Church property, as having profited at the suppression and expense of themselves and their Church, they took the name "The Catholic Army", "Royal" being added later, and they fought for "above all the reopening of their parish churches with their former priests."^[10]

[edit] Outbreak of revolt

Although the Vendean peasants initially supported the revolution^[11], they rebelled against injustices of the Republic on March 7, 1793. There were other levy riots across France, after conscription was adopted in August, but in Vendée there were few troops to control them, whereas the superficially more serious riots in Brittany were quickly broken.

Following the initial outbreak, there were spontaneous and uncoordinated riots on March 10-13 in many towns and villages. The representatives of the Republic — mayors, judges, National Guardsmen, educationalists, priests and others — were singled out for attack and murder. In the bloodiest outburst, in Machecoul on March 11 forty men were beaten and stabbed to death on the streets, before another four hundred or so 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 then joined, moving from the smaller to the larger settlements, armed with captured weapons and led by gamekeepers and wheelwrights. Cholet and Chemillé in the north and Fontenay-le-comte in the south, quickly fell to the rebels, their numbers overwhelming the inadequate Republican garrisons. Local nobles were approached, and while many declined, some (d'Elbée, Sapinaud de la Verrie, Charette) became the leaders of their local force, creating a small loyal force for each locality. The clergy were also fairly reticent, but certain prominent members played an important role in rallying the people.

Within a few weeks the rebel forces had formed a substantial, if ill-equipped, army, the Royal and Catholic Army, supported by two thousand irregular cavalry and a few captured artillery pieces. The main force of the rebels operated on a much smaller scale, using guerrilla tactics, supported by the insurgents' unparalleled local knowledge and the good-will of the people.

[edit] Republican response

The Republic was quick to respond, dispatching over 45,000 troops to the area by the end of March. Unfortunately for the government, less than one bleu in twenty was adequately trained, the majority were raw young recruits - barely trained, badly equipped and fed, scared and with miserably low morale. Worse, this force was scattered in "penny packets" of fifty to a hundred men throughout the region, allowing the brutality of the 'invading' bleus to anger many people, but limiting control to a few urban centres, and providing many weak garrisons as targets.

The first pitched battle was on the night of March 19. A Republican column of 2,000, under General de Marcé, moving from La Rochelle to Nantes was intercepted north of Chantonnay at Pont-Charrault (La Guérinière), near the Lay. After six hours of fighting rebel reinforcements arrived and routed the Republican forces. The rebels advanced as far south as Niort. In the north, on March 22, another Republican force was routed near Chalonnes, leaving their equipment for the grateful Vendéans.

The Vendée Militaire covered the area between the Loire and the Lay - covering Vendée (Marais, Bocage Vendéen, Collines Vendéennes), part of Maine-et-Loire west of the Layon, and the portion of Deux Sèvres west of the Thouet. Having secured their pays the deficiencies of the Vendéan army became more apparent. Lacking a unified strategy (or army) and fighting a defensive campaign, the army lost cohesion and its special advantages from April onwards. Successes continued for some time: Thouars was taken in early May and Saumur in June, there were victories at Châtillon and Vihiers. But the Vendéans then turned to a protracted and wasteful siege of Nantes.

[edit] Defeat

On August 1 the Committee of Public Safety ordered General Jean-Baptiste Carrier to perform a ruthless pacification. The Republican army was reinforced, benefiting from the first men of the levée en masse and reinforcements from Mainz. The Vendéan army had its first serious defeat at Cholet on October 17; worse for the rebels, their army was split. In October 1793 the main force, commanded by Henri de la Rochejaquelein and numbering some 25,000 (followed by thousands of civilians of all ages), crossed the Loire, headed for the port of Granville where they expected to be greeted by a British fleet and an army of exiled French nobles. Arriving at Granville, they found the city surrounded by Republican forces, with no British ships in sight. Their attempts to take the city were unsuccessful. During the retreat the extended columns fell prey to Republican forces, suffering from hunger and disease they died in their thousands, the force was finally shattered in the last, decisive battle at Savenay on December 23. At the revolt’s concluding chapter at Savenay, the French general Francois Joseph Westermann penned a letter to the Committee of Public Safety stating “There is no more Vendée. It died with its wives and its children by our free sabres. I have just buried it in the woods and the swamps of Savenay. According to the orders that you gave me, I crushed the children under the feet of the horses, massacred the women who, at least for these, will not give birth to any more brigands. I do not have a prisoner to reproach me. I have all exterminated.”^[12]

When the campaign dragged to an end in March 1796 the estimated dead numbered between 117,000 and 500,000, out of a population of around 800,000.^[13][14][15]

[edit] 1815

During Napoleon Bonaparte's Hundred Days in 1815, the some of the population of Vendée remained loyal to King Louis XVIII forcing Bonaparte – who was short of troops to fight the Waterloo Campaign – to send a force of 10,000 under the command of Jean Maximilien Lamarque to pacify the region.^[16]

[edit] Genocide debate

The government in Paris saw ineptitude, treason and conspiracy in their defeats during the revolt, and enacted stern measures. The Reign of Terror, seen elsewhere in France, was extraordinarily brutal in Vendée. According to historian Simon Schama, “Every atrocity the time could imagine was meted out to the defenseless population. Women were routinely raped, children killed, both mutilated. . . . At Gonnord . . . two hundred old people, along with mothers and children, [were forced] to kneel in front of a large pit they had dug; they were then shot so as to tumble into their own grave. . . . Thirty children and two women were buried alive when earth was shoveled onto the pit.”^[17]

Following the law of 14 Frimaire, in December alone over 6,000 prisoners were executed,^[12] a number in what was called "the Republican baptisms" or the "national bath" - tied in groups in barges and then sunk into the Loire.^[18] Initially, these mass drownings were confined to priests and took place by night, but before long they were routinized and occurred in broad daylight.^[18] Those attempting to escape by jumping in were sabered in the water.^[18] Estimates of those who were dispatched in this manner range from 2,000 to 4,800,^[18] among them were 400 children whom Carrier hated especially, seeing in them "brigands to be".^{[citation needed]}

Reynald Secher has written a book (A French Genocide: The Vendee) in which he says that in that the actions of the French republican government during and after the revolt was the first modern genocide. ^[19][20]

On August 1 1793 the Committee of Public Safety ordered General Jean-Baptiste Carrier to carry out a "pacification" of the region, by complete physical destruction.^[21] The Republican army was reinforced and the Vendéan army was eventually defeated. The orders for "pacification" were not carried out immediately, but a steady stream of demands for total destruction continued.^[22] Under orders from Committee of Public Safety in February 1794 the Republican forces launched their final "pacification" (Vendée-Vengé or "Vendée Avenged") - twelve columns, the colonnes infernales ("infernal columns") under Louis-Marie Turreau, were marched through Vendée.^[23] General Turreau inquired about "the fate of the women and children I will encounter in rebel territory", stating that if it was "necessary to pass them all by sword" he would require a decree.^[24] In response, the Committee of Public Safety ordered him to "eliminate the brigands to the last man, there is your duty..." .^[25]

From February 1794 the Republican forces launched their final "pacification" (Vendée-Vengé or "Vendée Avenged") - twelve columns, the colonnes infernales ("infernal columns") under Turreau, were marched through Vendée, indiscriminately targeting not only the remaining rebels and the people who had given them support, but the innocent as well^{[citation needed]}. 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 Vendée regardless of combatant status, political affiliation, age or gender. The campaign was ordered as such by the Comité de Salut public:

"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."^{[citation needed]}

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."^{[citation needed]}

Secher's allegation of genocide, Claude Langlois derides as "quasi-mythological" ^[26] and Hugh Gough considers Secher's book an attempt at historical revisionism that is unlikely to have any lasting impact.^[27] Peter McPhee roundly criticizes Secher, including the assertion of commonality between the functions of the Republican government and Communist totalitarianism. McPhee does this by pointing to what he considers to be a number of dubious assumptions and flawed methodology on Secher's part.^[28] Several other scholars have published against Secher's thesis. ^{[29] [30] [31] [26][32] [33]}

Peter McPhee says that the pacification of Vendée does not fit either the United Nations' CPPCG definition of genocide or that of Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn ("Genocide is a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator") because the events happened in a civil war. So it was not a one sided mass killing and the Committee of Public Safety did not intend to exterminate the whole population of Vendée as parts of the population were allied to the revolutionary regime.^[28] However in Genocide and Gross Human Rights Violations Kurt Jonassohn writes "The reason we consider this a case of genocide is that exterminatory intent was clearly stated in the orders of several generals as well as in the several decrees passed by the government". ^[34] Further support for Secher come from Adam Jones, who wrote in Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction a summary of the Vendée uprising, citing Secher and others, supporting the view that it was a genocide,^[35] and Pierre Chaunu, a professor of history at Paris IV-Sorbonne university.^{[citation needed]} Other historians have employed the term "genocide" to describe the massacres made during the civil war in the republican camp, such as Jean Tulard. Stéphane Courtois, a Director of Research at the CNRS who specializes in the history of Communism, tells of how Lenin compared the people of Vendée to the Cossacks, and expressed joy at the program of Gracchus Babeuf, "the inventor of modern Communism", of "populicide" in 1795 against the people of the Vendée.^[36][37] In his book Death by Government, Professor R.J. Rummel argues that "a full scale genocide was carried out in the Vendée in which possibly 117,000 inhabitants were systematically murdered."^[38]

[edit] See also

• Vendéean leaders:
  • Charles Melchior Artus de Bonchamps
  • Jacques Cathelineau
  • François de Charette
  • Louis d'Elbée
  • Louis Marie de Lescure
  • Jean-Nicolas Stofflet
  • Henri de la Rochejaquelein

• Republican leaders:
  • Jean-Baptiste Carrier
  • Lazare Hoche
  • François Joseph Westermann

• Other links:
  • Chouan (another Royalist faction)
  • Cholet (city almost wiped out in the aftermath)
  • Fontenay-le-Comte (capital of Vendée)
  • Ninety-Three (novel by Victor Hugo)

[edit] References

• Secher, Reynald A French Genocide: The Vendee Univ. of Notre Dame Press; (June 2003) ISBN 0268028656
• Fournier, Elie Turreau et les colonnes infernales, ou, L'échec de la violence A. Michel; (1985) ISBN 2226025243
• Davies, Norman Europe: A History Oxford University Press; (1996)

1. ^ Schama, Simon (2004). Citizens. Penguin Books, p. 589. ISBN 0141017279. 
2. ^ Joes, Anthony James Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency p.51 2006 University Press of Kentucky ISBN 0813123399
3. ^ Joes, Anthony James Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency p.51 2006 University Press of Kentucky ISBN 0813123399
4. ^ Joes, Anthony James Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency p.51 2006 University Press of Kentucky ISBN 0813123399
5. ^ Joes, Anthony James Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency p.51 2006 University Press of Kentucky ISBN 0813123399
6. ^ Joes, Anthony James Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency p.52 2006 University Press of Kentucky ISBN 0813123399
7. ^ Joes, Anthony James Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency p.52 2006 University Press of Kentucky ISBN 0813123399
8. ^ Joes, Anthony James Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency p.52 2006 University Press of Kentucky ISBN 0813123399
9. ^ Joes, Anthony James Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency p.52 2006 University Press of Kentucky ISBN 0813123399
10. ^ Joes, Anthony James Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency p.52-53 2006 University Press of Kentucky ISBN 0813123399
11. ^ Masson, Sophie Rembering the vendee (Godspy 2004. First published in "Quadrant" magazine Australia, 1996)
12. ^ ^{a b} Schama, Simon (2004). Citizens. Penguin Books, p. 788. ISBN 0141017279. 
13. ^ Three State and Counterrevolution in France by Charles Tilly
14. ^ Vive la Contre-Revolution!
15. ^ McPhee, Peter Review of Reynald Secher, A French Genocide: The Vendée H-France Review Vol. 4 (March 2004), No. 26
16. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition Waterloo Campaign.
17. ^ Schama, Simon (2004). Citizens. Penguin Books, p. 791. ISBN 0141017279. 
18. ^ ^{a b c d} Schama, Simon (2004). Citizens. Penguin Books, p. 789. ISBN 0141017279. 
19. ^ Secher, Reynald. A French Genocide: The Vendee, University of Notre Dame Press, (2003), ISBN 0268028656
20. ^ Masson, Sophie Rembering the vendee (Godspy 2004. First published in "Quadrant" magazine Australia, 1996)
21. ^ Sutherland, Donald The French Revolution and Empire: The Quest for a Civic Order p. 222, 2003 Blackwell Publishing ISBN 0631233636
22. ^ Sutherland, Donald The French Revolution and Empire: The Quest for a Civic Order p. 222, 2003 Blackwell Publishing ISBN 0631233636
23. ^ Masson, Sophie Remembering the Vendée (Godspy 2004. First published in "Quadrant" magazine Australia, 1996)
24. ^ Sutherland, Donald The French Revolution and Empire: The Quest for a Civic Order p. 222, 2003 Blackwell Publishing ISBN 0631233636
25. ^ Sutherland, Donald The French Revolution and Empire: The Quest for a Civic Order p. 222, 2003 Blackwell Publishing ISBN 0631233636
26. ^ ^{a b} Claude Langlois, « Les héros quasi mythiques de la Vendée ou les dérives de l'imaginaire », in F. Lebrun, 1987, p. 426-434, et « Les dérives vendéennes de l’imaginaire révolutionnaire », AESC, n°3, 1988, p. 771-797
27. ^ Hugh Gough, « Genocide & the Bicentenary: the French Revolution and the revenge of Vendée », (Historical Journal, vol. 30, 4, 1987, pp. 977-88.) p. 987
28. ^ ^{a b} Peter McPhee, a review of Reynald Secher, A French Genocide, published in H-France Review Vol. 4 (March 2004), No. 26
29. ^ Stefan Berger, Mark Donovan, Kevin Passmore (dir.), Writing National Histories - Western Europe Since 1800, Routledge, Londres, 1999, 247 pages, contribution by Julian Jackson. (jackson biography published by QMUL ).
30. ^ Voir l'intervention de Timothy Tackett, dans French Historical Studies, Autumn 2001, p. 549-600
31. ^ François Lebrun, « La guerre de Vendée : massacre ou génocide ? », L'Histoire, Paris, n°78, May 1985, p.93 to 99 et no. 81, September 1985, p. 99 to 101
32. ^ Paul Tallonneau, Les Lucs et le génocide vendéen : comment on a manipulé les textes, éditions Hécate, 1993
33. ^ Claude Petitfrère, La Vendée et les Vendéens, Editions Gallimard/Julliard, 1982
34. ^ Jonassohn, Kurt and Karin Solveig Bjeornson Genocide and Gross Human Rights Violations p. 208, 1998, Transaction Publishers, ISBN 0765804174
35. ^ Jones, Adam. Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, Routledge/Taylor & Francis Publishers, (2006) , ISBN 0-415-35385-8. Chapter 1 Section "The Vendée uprising" pp 6,7
36. ^ J. Tulard, J.-F. Fayard, A. Fierro, Histoire et dictionnaire de la Révolution française, 1789-1799, Robert Laffont, collection Bouquins, 1987, p.1113
37. ^ Courtois, Stéphane (1999). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press, p. 9. ISBN 0674076087. 
38. ^ Rummel, R.J. (1997). Death by Government. Transaction Publishers, p. 55. ISBN 1560009276. 

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