Vendée er en avdeling in western France, located south of the Loire River and on the Atlantic coastline. The Vendée was the epicentre of the largest counter-revolutionary uprising of the French Revolution and its people would pay a heavy price for their resistance. The government’s response was swift and triggered an internecine war in the region. The fight for control of the Vendée lasted three years and produced violence and mass killing that left the Parisian Terror in its wake. Sorokin suggests a conservative death toll of 58,000 but the real loss of life in the Vendée in 1793-96 may well be closer to 200,000.

Reasons for rebellion

In March 1793 provincials in the Vendée, never much interested with the revolution in Paris or its ideas, mobilised and took up arms against the Nasjonal konvensjon. Det var mange grunner til dette opprøret, men den viktigste blant dem var stigende landskatter, den nasjonale regjeringens angrep på kirken, henrettelsen av Louis XVI, utvidelsen av revolusjonerende krig og innføring av verneplikt.

Viewed retrospectively, the Vendée region had all the ingredients for counter-revolutionary sentiment. Located almost 300 miles from Paris, or several days’ travel in the 1700s, it was distant and disconnected from events in the capital. The Vendée was almost entirely rural, with just a few towns and no major cities.

The vast majority of Vendeans were relatively successful peasant farmers; their living conditions were better than those of their counterparts in northern France. The Vendée peasants were not as bitterly affected by the harvest failures and bitter winter of 1788-89. They also enjoyed a comparatively better relationship with the First Estate (unlike elsewhere in France, the noblemen of the Vendée remained on their estates and did not act as absentee landlords).

The citizens of the Vendée were also devoutly religious and dependent on their local parish and clergy.

Indifference to the revolution

Vendernes holdning til den franske revolusjonen kan sees i deres deltakelse, eller snarere mangel på det, under den store frykten. Bøndene i Vendée uttrykte lunken støtte til føydale reformer i Cahiers men mobiliserte ikke under panikken juli-august 1789. Det var få rapporter om uro i Vendée og ingen slott ble brent.

The events of 1790 further alienated the Vendeans from the revolution. Food policies determined in Paris had a detrimental impact in rural areas, where market prices slumped. Yet taxes were not lowered and in some rural areas, they actually increased.

The more pressing issue in the Vendée was the National Constituent Assembly’s attacks on the church. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy was widely resisted in the western provinces, where most of the priests refused to take the oath and were backed by their parishioners. The arrival of government officials and constitutional priests in the Vendée in 1791 and 1792 was often met with violent resistance, albeit on a small scale.

Volden bryter ut

Vendée-opprøret begynte med små skritt, men eskalerte raskt. Utløserpunktene var henrettelsen av Louis XVI (januar 1793), deretter de følgende måneders nasjonale konvensjon Levee des 300,000 hommes, en ordre som krever 300,000 ekstra militære rekrutter fra provinsene.

This combination of regicide and forced conscription tipped the Vendée’s peasants from localised resistance into full-scale counter-revolution. As the winter snows thawed, small bands of peasants participated in minor but provocative attacks on symbols of the republican government. Department embetsmenn, juringprester og republikanske sympatisører ble fornærmet, slått, kjørt ut av regionen eller myrdet.

I midten av mars organiserte en lokal hawker ved navn Jacques Cathelineau en gruppe bønder og grep våpen i Jallais. Cathelineaus menn brukte de neste tre månedene på å rydde regionen for republikanske soldater og tjenestemenn.

In Beaupréau, a local peasant militia elected a former cavalry officer, Louis d’Elbée, to lead them. Under his command they captured Chemillé in April. After this victory d’Elbée prevented the slaughter of several hundred Republican prisoners by reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Another significant leader was Jean-Nicolas Stofflet, a gamekeeper and former private in the Swiss Guard, who became a general in the Vendean army.

“Fra mars til juni 1793 erobret bevegelsen alt. I begynnelsen ble opprørerne organisert av landsbyer med beskjedne mennesker i spissen. Stofflet, en tidligere soldat, var en gamekeeper; Cathelineau var en vaktmester. Men når kampene begynte, ble squires i regionen søkt om å ta ledelsen. Begivenhetens hastighet overrasket konvensjonen, og de tidlige svarene var svake ... Plutselig brøt Vendée-opprøret ut av det isolerte bocage-landskapet. ”
Annie Moulin, historiker

Tidlige seire

In April 1793, counter-revolutionary forces in the Vendée united to form the Catholic and Royal Army. At its peak, this army would number 80,000. Most were farmers and labourers, some were boys as young as 12 or women disguised as men.

The counter-revolutionaries adopted Dieu et Roi (‘God and King’) as their motto. Their officers wore the white cockade of the Bourbon monarchy while the soldiers wore the Sacre Couer ('Hellig hjerte'). De hadde liten eller ingen trening og var dårlig utstyrt, mange bevæpnet med ljå og gjedde i stedet for musketter.

While the Vendeans lacked the training and discipline to stand against a professional army, the republican armies had themselves been left weakened and disorganised by four years of disruption and desertions. For three months, the royalists of the Vendée swept all before them, capturing significant towns including Beaupréau, Vihiers, Saumur, Angers and Chemillé. They also won control of the Vendée’s most important commercial town, Cholet, and its avdeling capital, Fontenay-le-Comte.

The National Convention had a small number of troops garrisoned in the Vendée so could do little initially.

Tidevannet snur

The tide turned in late June 1793 when the Catholic and Royal Army marched north and laid siege to Nantes, one of France’s largest cities. Their attack was poorly planned and coordinated, and failed after just two days. Jacques Cathelineau, one of the Vendeans’ more competent commanders, was killed during fighting on Bastille Day, 1793.

In October, a 40,000-strong Vendean force marched on a smaller republican army near Cholet but was outmanoeuvred and defeated. Changing tactics, they embarked on a ‘Virée de Galerne’ (‘northern spree’), an attempt to link up with counter-revolutionaries in Brittany and Normandy. In November, the Vendeans marched on the port city of Granville, where they hoped to align with a regiment of English marines. They laid siege to Granville but found no English, only Republicans, so were forced to scatter.

Deres antall nå ned til færre enn 8,000 menn, den katolske og kongelige hær trakk seg tilbake sør og fanget byen Savenay. En kampherdet republikansk styrke av 18,000 ankom dagen etter, og Vendeans ble snart omringet og beseiret.

Retribution

It took several months but the National Convention eventually mobilise a strong military response to the rebellion. What followed in the Vendée was a campaign of recriminations that bordered on genocide.

I regi av representanter på misjon fra Paris begynte republikanske styrker å slakte vendiske royalister, uavhengig av alder, kjønn eller aktiviteter. Den nasjonale konvensjonen, etter å ha sanksjonert terrorregimet, godkjente dannelsen av 12 hærdivisjoner kalt Colonnes Infernales (‘Infernal Columns’).

Under the command of General Louis Marie Turreau, these columns swept through the Vendée in the first half of 1794. They crisscrossed the province, tearing down buildings, burning crops and leaving death and destruction in their wake.

The instruments of the Terror were then focussed on the Vendée, where more than 6,000 people – including 400 children – were executed. Some were guillotined but most were shot, stabbed, bayoneted or forcibly drowned. Farms, crops and forests were burned across the Vendée, affecting the innocent as well as the rebels. Action against the potentially rebellious Vendée would continue as late as 1796.

1. Vendée var en landlig provins i det sørvestlige Frankrike. I løpet av våren 1793 ble det stedet for den største motrevolusjonære oppstanden fra den franske revolusjonen.

2. Bøndene i Vendée likte bedre levekår, bedre forhold til edelmennene og var mindre plaget av høstesvikt. De var også harde katolikker.

3. Allerede lunken mot revolusjonen reagerte Vendeans sint på sivil konstitusjonen til presteskapet og andre opplevde angrep på kirken, og motarbeidet myndighetene.

4. Henrettelsen av Louis XVI og innføringen av verneplikt tippet Vendée til kontrarevolusjon. I april 1793 hadde Vendeans dannet en “katolsk og kongelig hær” på 80,000 XNUMX menn og gutter.

5. Det tok republikanerne flere måneder å mobilisere, men sen 1793 hadde Vendeans blitt beseiret. Dette ble fulgt av en lang periode med brutalitet, terror og anklager mot Vendée som varte i flere år.

De Levee des 300,000 hommes (1793)
Rapporter om opprørere som kjemper i Vendée-opprøret (1793)
Benaben beskriver beskyldninger tatt mot opprørere i Vendée (1793)
General Turreaus taktikk i Vendée (1794)

Informasjon om sitering
Tittel: ‘The Vendée uprising’
Forfattere: Jennifer Llewellyn, Steve Thompson
Utgiver: Alfahistorie
URL: https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/vendee-uprising/
Dato publisert: September 20, 2019
Dato oppdatert: November 6, 2023
Dato tilgjengelig: November 28, 2023
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