| War in the Vendée | |||||||
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| Part of theFrench Revolutionary Wars | |||||||
 Henri de La Rochejaquelein at the Battle of Cholet in 1793, byPaul-Émile Boutigny | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 French Republic |  Vendeans | ||||||
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| Strength | |||||||
| 130,000–150,000[1] | 80,000 | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| c. 30,000 military killed[1][2] | Several tens of thousands killed | ||||||
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| Persecutions of theCatholic Church |
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 Catholicism portal |
TheWar in the Vendée (French:Guerre de Vendée) was acounter-revolutionary insurrection that took place in theVendée region ofFrance from 1793 to 1796, during theFrench Revolution. The Vendée is a coastal region, located immediately south of the riverLoire in western France. Initially, the revolt was similar to the 14th-centuryJacquerie peasant uprising, but the Vendée quickly became counter-revolutionary andRoyalist. The revolt was comparable to theChouannerie, which took place concurrently in the area north of the Loire.
While elsewhere in France the revolts against thelevée en masse were repressed, an insurgent territory, called theVendée militaire by historians, formed south of theLoire-Inférieure (Brittany), south-west ofMaine-et-Loire (Anjou), north ofVendée and north-west ofDeux-Sèvres (Poitou). Gradually referred to as the "Vendeans", the insurgents established in April a "Catholic and Royal Army" which won a succession of victories in the spring and summer of 1793. The rebels briefly overran the towns ofFontenay-le-Comte,Thouars,Saumur andAngers, but were halted at theBattle of Nantes.
During the autumn, the arrival of theArmy of Mainz as reinforcements restored the advantage to the Republican camp, which in October seizedCholet, the most important city controlled by the Vendeans. After this defeat, the bulk of the Vendée forces crossed theLoire and marched toNormandy in a desperate attempt to take a port to obtain the help of the British and theArmée des Émigrés. Pushed back toGranville, the Vendée army was finally destroyed in December atMans andSavenay. From the winter of 1793 to the spring of 1794, during theReign of Terror, violent repression was put in place by the Republican forces. In the cities, and in particular inNantes andAngers, around 15,000 people were shot,drowned or guillotined on the orders of thereprésentants en mission and Revolutionary Military Commissions, while in the countryside about 20,000 to 50,000 civilians were massacred by theinfernal columns, who set fire to many towns and villages.
The repression provoked a resurgence of the rebellion and in December 1794 the Republicans began negotiations which led between February and May 1795 to the signing of peace treaties with the various Vendée leaders, thus bringing about the end of the "first Vendée war". A "second Vendée war" broke out shortly afterwards, in June 1795, after the start of theQuiberon expedition. The uprising quickly ran out of steam and the last Vendée leaders submitted or were executed between January and July 1796. The Vendée still experienced last and brief uprisings with a third war in 1799, a fourth in 1815 and a fifth in 1832, but they were on a much smaller scale. The number of victims is estimated at 200,000 dead, including approximately 170,000 for the inhabitants of the military Vendée, i.e. between 20 and 25% of the population of the insurgent territory.
In the rural Vendée, the localnobility seems to have been more permanently in power than in other parts of France.[6]Alexis de Tocqueville, of France, noted that most French nobles lived in cities by 1789. AnIntendants' survey showed one of the few areas where the nobility still lived with the peasants was the Vendée.[7] In this particularly-isolated feudal stronghold, the class conflict that drove the revolution in Paris and other parts of France was further suppressed by the institutional strength of theCatholic Church in alliance with the nobility.Counter-Enlightenment authorFrancois Mignet accused that militant Republicans wanted to destroy both the independence and influence of theCatholic Church in France, which the people of theVendée considered unimaginable.[8]
In 1791, tworepresentatives on mission informed theNational Assembly that the Vendée was being mobilized against theFirst French Republic, and this news was swiftly followed by the exposure of an allegedroyalist conspiracy organized by theMarquis de la Rouërie.[9] Subsequent defenders of the Vendée rebels argue that this plotting against the Republic was an understandable response toThe Terror (a period between 1793 and 1794 where thousands of both real and suspected dissidents were beheaded byguillotine), theCivil Constitution of the Clergy (1790) and the introduction ofconscription upon the whole of France, decreed by the National Convention in February 1793.[10][11]
In whatMax Weber later dubbedCaesaropapism, theCivil Constitution of the Clergy required allRoman Catholic priests to transfer their allegiance from theHoly See to the Constitution and, by extension, to the increasinglyanti-clerical andanti-CatholicNational Constituent Assembly of the Republic. All but seven of the 160 French bishops refused to take the oath, as did about half of the parish priests.[12]Anti-clericalism andcoercive secularization ofFrench culture triggered the Vendée belligerence; another trigger was further mass conscription into theFrench Revolutionary Army. The March 1793 conscription requiring Vendeans to fill their district's quota of the national total of 300,000 enraged the local nobility, clergy, and the populace,[10] who took up arms instead as "The Catholic Army", "Royal" being added later, and fought for "above all the reopening of their parish churches with their former priests."[13]
Although town dwellers were more likely to support the Revolution in the Vendée,[14] there was some support for the Revolution among the rural peasantry. Some Vendean peasants had lived as tenant farmers on Church-owned farmland, and they overwhelmingly embraced the Revolution after all Church lands were seized and redistributed by the Republican government.[15]Counter-Enlightenment historians have argued that localfeudalism had primarily protected the peasantry. They cite the fact that over the 100 years of struggle to imposerepublicanism upon France, the middle class were the primary beneficiaries. Nearly all the purchasers of former Church land were members of thebourgeoisie and very few peasants benefited from the confiscation and sales.[16]
There were other levy riots across France when regions started to draft men into the army in response to the Levy Decree in February 1793. The reaction in the northwest in early March was particularly pronounced with large-scale rioting verging on insurrection. By early April, in areas north of theLoire, order had been restored by the revolutionary government, but south of the Loire in four departments that became known as theVendée militaire there were few troops to control rebels and what had started as rioting quickly took on the form of a full insurrection led by priests and the local nobility.[17]
Within a few weeks the Royalist forces had formed a substantial, ill-equipped, army, theRoyal and Catholic Army, supported by two thousandirregularcavalry and a few capturedartillery pieces. The main force of the Royalist operated on a much smaller scale, usingguerrilla tactics, supported by the insurgents' local knowledge and social networks.[18]
Geographically, the insurrection occurred within a rough quadrilateral approximately 60 miles (97 km) wide. The territory defied description in the terms of the redistricting of 1790, nor did it align itself to descriptors used in theAncien régime; the heart of the movement lay in the forests, withCholet at its center, in the wild districts of the old county ofAnjou, in the Breton marshlands betweenMontaigu and the sea. It included parts of the oldPoitiers andTours, thedepartements ofMaine-et-Loire, the Vendée, andDeux Sèvres, but never completely fell under Royalist control. The further the land was from Paris (the seat of revolutionary power), the more Counter-revolutionary belligerence occurred.[19]
The insurrection began in March 1793, as a rejection of the mass conscription edict. In February, theNational Convention had voted to approve a levy of three hundred thousand men, to be chosen by lot among the unmarried men in each commune. Thus, the arrival of recruiters reminded locals of the methods of the monarchy, aroused resistance in the countryside, and set in motion the first serious signs of sedition. Much of this opposition was quelled quickly, but in the lowerLoire, in theMauges [fr] and in the Vendeanbocage, the situation was more serious and more protracted. Youths from communes surrounding Cholet, a large textile town on the boundary between the two regions, invaded the town and killed the commander of the National Guard, a "patriotic" (pro-revolutionary) manufacturer. Within a week, violence had spread to the Breton marshlands; peasants overran the town ofMachecoul on 11 March, and several hundred Republican citizens weremassacred. A large band of peasants under the leadership ofJacques Cathelineau andJean-Nicolas Stofflet seizedSaint-Florent-le-Vieil on 12 March. By mid-March, a minor revolt against conscription had turned into full-fledged insurrection.[20]
The Republic was quick to respond, dispatching over 45,000 troops to the area. The first pitched battle was on the night of 19 March. A Republican column of 2,000, undergeneralLouis Henri François de Marcé [fr], moving fromLa Rochelle toNantes, was intercepted north ofChantonnay near the Gravereau bridge (Saint-Vincent-Sterlanges), over the river le Petit-Lay.[21] After six hours of fighting, rebel reinforcements arrived and routed the Republican forces. In the north, on 22 March, another Republican force was routed nearChalonnes-sur-Loire.[22]
There followed a series of skirmishes and armed contacts. On 3 May 1793,Bressuire fell to Vendéen forces led byHenri de la Rochejaquelein.[23]
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TheBattle of Thouars occurred on 5 May 1793, the main clash took place on thePont de Vrine, the bridge overthe river leading intoThouars. The Vendéens proved unable to take the bridge for six hours, untilLouis Marie de Lescure (fighting in his first battle) showed himself alone on the bridge under enemy fire and encouraged his men to follow him, which they did, crossing the bridge. The Republicans there were taken from behind by the cavalry underCharles de Bonchamps, which had crossed the river at a ford. Despite the arrival of reinforcements, the Republicans were routed and withdrew towards the city. The insurgents, headed byHenri de La Rochejacquelein, took the rampart by force and poured into the city, and the Republican troops quickly capitulated. The Vendéens seized a large amount of arms and gunpowder, but allowed the captured Republican forces to leave, after having sworn to no longer fight in the Vendée and had their hair shaved off so they could be recognised lest they went back on their word and were recaptured.
On 25 May 1793 the Catholic and royalist army tookFontenay-le-Comte. Lescure led his men in a courageous charge under enemy fire, shouting 'Long live the king!' and braving cannon fire, which left him unharmed. Likewise La Rochejacquelein wore his distinctive three red handkerchiefs on his head, waist and neck even though the gunners in the Republican forces were aiming for them. Following the victory his friends decided to copy him and all decided to wear three red handkerchiefs too so that La Rochejacquelein could not be distinguished by the enemy in the future. After this the only Vendée towns remaining in the control of the Republic wereNantes andLes Sables d'Olonne.[24]
On 9 June 1793, Vendean insurgents commanded byJacques Cathelineau captured the town ofSaumur fromLouis-Alexandre Berthier. The victory gave the insurgents a massive supply of arms, including 50 cannons. This was the high point of the insurgency.[25] The Vendeans had never before attempted to take such a large town, and they captured it in a single day, inflicting heavy losses on its Republican defenders. Many prisoners were taken, some of whom went over to the Vendean cause, while many of the citizens fled toTours.[26]
On 24 June 1793, the commanders of the Catholic and royalist army issued an ultimatum to the mayor of Nantes,Baco de la Chapelle to surrender the city or they would massacre the garrison.[27] On 29 June, they began an assault with a force of 40,000. Inside the city were Republicans from the surrounding countryside who had fled to Nantes for safety, fortifying the defenders with tales of the horrors that the rebels inflicted on towns they managed to take. Baco de la Chapelle stood on a dustcart that he called the "chariot of victory" to urge the people on, even after he had been wounded in the leg. Poor coordination between the four Vendean armies led byCharette,Bonchamps, Cathelineau and Lyrot hampered the assault, and Cathelineau's forces were delayed in their deployment by fighting along the riverErdre with a Republican battalion. Cathelineau himself was shot at the head of his forces, causing his men to lose heart and retreat; ultimately, the Vendeans were unable to take the city.[28] In October 1793, to punish the Vendean prisoners taken after the failure of the siege of Nantes,Jean-Baptiste Carrier ordered them to be shot en masse. When this proved impractical, he had the prisoners rounded up and put out on the riverLoire in boats equipped with trap-door bottoms; when these opened the victims were left to drown.[29] On this occasion it was rumored that female prisoners were stripped and tied up with men before being sent to their deaths, the so-calledRepublican Marriage.[30] Some later historians dispute this story as a counter-revolutionary myth.[31]
On 5 July 1793, theFirst Battle of Châtillon took place atChâtillon-sur-Sèvre near the commune of Mauléon. In that action, Marquis de la Rochejaquelein commanding 20,000 Vendean Royalists attacked a French Republican force led by GeneralFrançois Joseph Westermann. The Vendean Royalists were victorious, killing and wounding 5,000 French Republicans. Among those killed in the battle was French Republican General Chambon.[32]
The Vendeans won a victory over the revolutionary army led bySanterre at theBattle of Vihiers on 18 July 1793.[33]
TheBattle of Luçon was actually a series of three engagements fought over four weeks, the first on 15 July and the last on 14 August 1793, between Republican forces underAugustin Tuncq and Vendean forces. The engagement on 14 August, fought near the town ofLuçon was actually the conclusion of three engagements betweenMaurice d'Elbée's Vendean insurgents and the Republican army. On 15 July,Claude Sandoz and a garrison of 800 had repulsed 5,000 insurgents led by d'Elbee; on 28 July, Tuncq drove off a second attempt; two weeks later, Tuncq and his 5,000 men routed 30,000 insurgents under the personal command ofFrançois de Charette.[34]
TheBattle of Montaigu was fought on 21 September 1793 when the Vendéens attacked generalJean-Michel Beysser's French Republican division. Taken by surprise, this division fought back but lost 400 men, including many captured. Some of these prisoners were summarily executed by the Vendeens and their bodies later found in the castle wells by troops underJean-Baptiste Kléber.[citation needed]
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TheBattle of Tiffauges was fought on 19 September 1793 between Royalist military leaders against Republican troops under Jean-Baptiste Kléber and Canclaux.[citation needed]
On 11 October 1793, theSecond Battle of Châtillon took place at Châtillon-sur-Sèvre near the commune of Mauléon. In that action, a Vendean Royalist force led byLouis Marie de Lescure andCharles de Bonchamps skirmished with a column of French Republican soldiers from the Coasts of La Rochelle Army. The Republican force commanded byAlexis Chalbos was routed by the Vendean Royalists. Later in the evening of the same day,François Joseph Westermann led a Republican raiding party and attacked the Vendean encampment inflicting losses upon the rebel fighters and non-combatants. The next day the Vendean Royalists withdrew toward Mortagne-sur-Sèvre.[35]
TheBattle of Tremblaye (15 October 1793) took place near Cholet during the war in the Vendée, and was a Republican victory over the Vendéens. The Vendean leader Lescure was seriously injured in the fighting.[36]
On 1 August 1793, theCommittee of Public Safety orderedJean-Baptiste Carrier to carry out a "pacification" of the region by complete physical destruction.[37] These orders were not carried out immediately, but a steady stream of demands for total destruction persisted.[37]
The Republican army was reinforced, benefiting from the first men of thelevée en masse and reinforcements fromMainz. The Vendean army had its first serious defeat at theBattle of Cholet on 17 October; worse for the rebels, their army was split. In October 1793 the main force, commanded byHenri de la Rochejaquelein and numbering some 25,000 (followed by thousands of civilians of all ages), crossed the Loire, headed for the port ofGranville where they expected to be greeted by a British fleet and an army of exiled French nobles. Arriving atGranville, 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 the thousands. The force was defeated in the last, decisiveBattle of Savenay on 23 December.[38][39] Among those executed the following day was lieutenant-generalJacques Alexis de Verteuil, but some historians assert that after the battle of Savenay the rebellion was still going on.[clarification needed][40]
After theBattle of Savenay (December 1793), in a document whose authenticity is disputed,[41] General Westermann reported to his political masters at the convention: "The Vendée is no more ... According to your orders, I have trampled their children beneath our horses' feet; I have massacred their women, so they will no longer give birth to brigands. I do not have a single prisoner to reproach me. I have exterminated them all."[39] Such killing of civilians would have been an explicit violation of the convention's orders to Westermann.[42]and several thousand living Vendéan prisoners were being held by Westerman's forces though when the letter was supposedly written.[40]
With the decisiveBattle of Savenay (December 1793) came formal orders for forced evacuation; also, a 'scorched earth' policy was initiated: farms were destroyed, crops and forests burned and villages razed. There were many reported atrocities and a campaign of mass killing universally aimed at residents of the Vendée regardless of combatant status, political affiliation, age or sex.[43] One specific target were the women of the region. Since they were seen, in a way, that they were carrying anti-revolutionary babies, they were seen as primary targets.[30]
From January to May 1794, 20,000 to 50,000 Vendean civilians were massacred by thecolonnes infernales ("infernal columns") of the generalLouis Marie Turreau.[44][45][46] Among those killed towards the end of the conflict were BlessedGuillaume Repin and 98 other religious figures, many of whom were laterbeatified by the Catholic Church.[47] InAnjou, directed byNicolas Hentz andMarie Pierre Adrien Francastel, Republicans captured 11,000 to 15,000 Vendeans, 6,500 to 7,000 were shot or guillotined and 2,000 to 2,200 prisoners died from disease.[48]
Under orders from the Committee of Public Safety in February 1794, the Republican forces launched their final "pacification" effort (namedVendée-Vengé or "Vendée Avenged"): twelve infernal columns underLouis Marie Turreau, marched through the Vendée.[49] 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.[37] In response, theCommittee of Public Safety ordered him to "eliminate the brigands to the last man, there is your duty..."[37]
The Convention issued conciliatory proclamations allowing the Vendeans liberty of worship and guaranteeing their property.General Hoche applied these measures with great success. He restored their cattle to the peasants who submitted, "let the priests have a few crowns", and on 20 July 1795 annihilated anémigré expedition which had been equipped in England and had seized Fort Penthièvre andQuiberon. Treaties were concluded atLa Jaunaye (15 February 1795) and at La Mabillaie, and were fairly well observed by the Vendeans; no obstacle remained but the feeble and scattered remnant of the Vendeans still under arms and theChouans. On 16 July 1796, theDirectory proclaimed the official end of the war.[50] On 30 July the state of siege was raised in the western departments.[51]
Estimates of those killed in the Vendean conflict—on both sides—range between 117,000 and 450,000, out of a population of around 800,000.[52][page needed][53][54]
During the time of republican and imperial rule, the department name ofVendée was renamedVenge. Towns and cities were also renamed.[citation needed]
According to Theodore A. Dodge,[55] the war in the Vendée lasted with intensity from 1793 to 1799, when it was suppressed, but later broke out spasmodically especially in 1813, 1814 and 1815. DuringNapoleon'sHundred Days in 1815, some of the population of the Vendée remained loyal toLouis XVIII, forcing Napoleon—who was short of troops to fight theWaterloo Campaign—to senda force of 10,000 under the command ofJean Maximilien Lamarque to pacify the 8,000 Vendeans led byPierre Constant Suzannet, which ended with theBattle of Rocheservière.[56]
This relatively brief episode inFrench history has left significant traces on French politics. The Vendée revolt became an immediate symbol of confrontation between revolution andcounterrevolution, and a source of unexpurgated violence.
Charles Tilly has claimed that the imposition of direct rule was the result of imposition by Paris of social and political changes:
[The] West's counterrevolution grew directly from the efforts of revolutionary officials to install a particular kind of direct rule in the region: a rule that practically eliminated nobles and priests from their positions as partly autonomousintermediaries, that brought the state's demands for taxes, manpower, and deference to the level of individual communities, neighborhoods, and households that gave the region'sbourgeois political power they had never before wielded. In seeking to extend the state's rule to every locality, and to dislodge all enemies of that rule, French revolutionaries started a process that did not cease for twenty-five years.[57]
But other historians posit the insurrection as a revolt against conscription that cascaded to include other complaints.
For a period of several months, control of the Vendée slipped from the hands of Parisian revolutionaries. They ascribed the revolt to the resurgence of royalist ideas: when faced with insurrection of the people against the Revolution of the People, they were unable to see it as anythingbut an aristocratic plot.Mona Ozouf andFrançois Furet maintain it was not. The entire territory, none of it unified under a single idea from theancien régime, had never been a region morally at odds with the rest of the nation. It was not the fall of the old regime that aroused the population against the Revolution, but rather the construction of the new regime into locally unacceptable principles and forms: the new map of districts and departments, the administrative dictatorship, and above all the non-juring priests. Even theregicide did not trigger insurrection. What did was the forced conscription. Although the Vendeans, to use the term loosely, wrote God and King large on their flags, they invested those symbols of their tradition with something other than regret for the lost regime.[58]
The popularhistoriography of the War in the Vendée is deeply rooted in the pervasivepolitical polarisation within post-1789French culture and historiography. As a result, scholarship on the uprising is generally lacking inobjectivity, coming down strongly in defense of either theFirst French Republic or of the Vendéen rebels and the local Catholic Church.[59] This conflict originated in the 19th century between two groups of historians. TheBleus, so-named for their defense of theFrench Revolutionary Army and who based their interpretations solely on documents from Republican sources. TheBlancs, on the other hand, are so named in a denigrating reference to their continued membership in theCatholic Church in France, also based their findings on Republican archival documents, but also used eyewitness accounts, memoirs by survivors, and "local oral histories".[60]Les Bleus generally allege that the War in Vendée was not a popular uprising, but was the result ofreactionary noble and priestly lies and manipulation of the local peasantry against their self-appointed liberators. One of the leaders of this school of history,Charles-Louis Chassin, published eleven volumes of letters, archives, and other materials in an effort to argue for this interpretation. Meanwhile,Les Blancs were at least sometimesRoman Catholic priests, local historians, or survivors of the pre-1789 localFrench nobility. They allege, on the other hand, that the Vendean peasant rebels were acting out of "genuine love" and loyalty towards individual local families of less wealthy and non-absentee landlords and, far more importantly, a desire to protect the Catholic Church from bothreligious persecution, theReign of Terror, and coercedCaesaropapism at the hands of the First French Republic.[60]
TheCounter-Enlightenment interpretation byLes Blancs was widely popularized among thesocial conservatives throughout theAnglosphere during theNeoliberal era, with French historian Reynald Secher's 1986A French Genocide: The Vendée. Secher argued that thetotal war against the local population and thescorched earth tactics unleashed by both the Republican government and theFrench Revolutionary Army during the War in the Vendée were the first moderngenocide.[61][page needed] Secher's claims caused a minor uproar in France among scholars ofFrench history, as many mainstream authorities on the period—both French and foreign—published articles denouncing Secher's allegations.[62] Claude Langlois (of the Institute of History of the French Revolution) derides Secher's claims as "quasi-mythological".[63] Timothy Tackett of theUniversity of California summarizes the case as such: "In reality ... the Vendée was a tragic civil war with endless horrors committed by both sides—initiated, in fact, by the rebels themselves. The Vendeans were no more blameless than were the republicans. The use of the word genocide is wholly inaccurate and inappropriate."[64] Hugh Gough (Professor of history atUniversity College Dublin) called Secher's book an attempt athistorical revisionism unlikely to have any lasting impact.[65] While some such as Peter McPhee roundly criticized Secher, including the assertion of commonality between the functions of the Republican government and thetotalitarianism ofStalinism, historianPierre Chaunu expressed support for Secher's views,[66] describing the events as the first "ideological genocide".[67]
Critics of Secher's thesis have also accused his methodology of being flawed. McPhee asserted that these errors are as follows: (1) The war was not fought against Vendeans generally but Royalist Vendeans; the government relied on the support of Republican Vendeans. (2) The Convention ended the campaign after the Royalist Army was clearly defeated—if the aim was genocide, then they would have continued and easily exterminated the population. (3) He fails to inform the reader of atrocities committed by Royalist forces against Republican civilians and POWs in the Vendée. (4) He repeats alleged folkloric myths as facts (5) He does not refer to the wide range of estimates of deaths suffered by both sides, and that casualties were not "one-sided"; and more.[54]
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Peter McPhee says that the pacification of the Vendée does not fit either the United Nations'CPPCG definition of genocide because the events happened during a civil war. He states that the war in the Vendée was not a one-sided mass killing and the Committee of Public Safety did not intend to exterminate the whole population of the Vendée; as parts of the population at least were allies of the revolutionary government.[54]
Concerning the controversy,Michel Vovelle, a specialist on the French Revolution, remarked: "A whole literature is forming on 'Franco-French genocide', starting from risky estimates of the number of fatalities in the Vendean wars ... Despite not being specialists in the subject, historians such asPierre Chaunu have put all the weight of their great moral authority behind the development of an anathematizing discourse, and have dismissed any effort to look at the subject reasonably."[68]
Shortly before his return to theRussian Federation after decades of exile in 1993, formerSoviet dissident and winner of the 1970Nobel Prize in LiteratureAlexander Solzhenitsyn delivered a speech inLes Lucs-sur-Boulogne to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Vendée Uprising. Coming down strongly in favor of calling the Republican response genocidal, Solzhenitsyn comparedVladimir Lenin'sBolsheviks following theOctober Revolution with the leadership of theJacobin Club during theFrench Revolution. Solzhenitsyn also compared the Vendean rebels with the Russian, Ukrainian, andCossack peasants who similarly rebelled against the Bolsheviks, saying that both were destroyed mercilessly by "revolutionary despotism". He commented sadly that, while the FrenchReign of Terror ended with theThermidorian reaction, the toppling of the Jacobinsingle party state by theFrench Revolutionary Army, and the execution ofMaximilien Robespierre, its Soviet equivalent continued to accelerate until theKhrushchev thaw of the 1950s.[69]
Debate over the characterization of the Vendée uprising was renewed in 2007, when nine deputies introduced a measure to theNational Assembly to officially recognize the Republican actions as genocidal.[70] The measure was strongly denounced by a group of Far LeftFrench historians as an attempt to use history to justify political extremism.[71]
At the start of 2017 Jacques Villemain publishedVendée, 1793–1794 : Crime de guerre ? Crime contre l'humanité ? Génocide ? Une étude juridique (English:Vendée, 1793–1794: War crime? Crime against humanity? Genocide? A juridical study), which an analysis by him of the Vendée war from the perspective of the international courts of justice inThe Hague (such as theInternational Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and theInternational Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda). Jacques Villemain is a French diplomat, and is currently the vice representative of France atOECD and is representing France at theInternational Court of Justice. He presented a legal study on the War of Vendée based on currentinternational criminal law, according to modern findings in the international courts on genocide cases like theRwanda Genocide and theSrebrenica massacre, is that the government of theFirst French Republic was guilty ofwar crimes beginning in March 1793,crimes against humanity between April and July 1793, and genocide from 1 August 1793 to the middle of 1794.[72]
In the heart of the modern controversy lies Secher's evidence, whichCharles Tilly analyzed in 1990.[73] Initially, Tilly maintains, Secher completed a thoughtfuldissertation-style thesis about the revolutionary experience in his own village,La Chapelle-Basse-Mer, which lies near Nantes. In the published version of his thesis, he incorporated some of Tilly's own arguments: that conflicts within communities generalized into a region-wide confrontation of anti-revolutionary majority based in the countryside with a pro-revolutionary minority that had particular strength in the cities. The split formed with the application of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the oath to support it, in 1790–1792. From then, the local conflicts grew more sharply defined, over the choice between juring and non-juring priests. The conscription of March 1793, with the questionable exemption for Republican officials and National Guard members, broadened the anti-revolutionary coalition and brought the young men into action.[74]
WithLe génocide français, Reynald Secher's thesis for theDoctorat d'État began with a generalization of the standard arguments to the whole region. AlthoughLa Chapelle-Basse-Mer served him repeatedly as a reference point, Secher illustrated his arguments with wide citations from national and regional archives to establish a broader frame of reference. Furthermore, he drew on graphic, nineteenth century accounts widely known to the historians of the Vendee: Carrier drownings and the "infernal columns of Turreau". Most importantly, however, Secher broke with conventional assessments by asserting on the basis of minimal evidence, Tilly claims, that the pre-revolutionary Vendée was more prosperous than the rest of France (to better emphasize the devastation of the war and the repression). He used dubious statistical methods to establish population losses and fatalities, statistical processes that inflated the number of people in the region, the number and value of houses, and the financial losses of the region. Secher's statistical procedure relied on three unjustifiable assumptions. First, Secher assumes a constant birth rate of about 37 per thousand of population, when actually, Tilly maintains, the population was declining. Second, Secher assumes no net migration; Tilly maintains that thousands fled the region, or at least shifted where they lived within the region. Finally, Secher understated the population present at the end of the conflict by ending it 1802, not 1794.[75]
Despite the criticism, a number of scholars continue the assertion of genocide. In addition to Secher and Chaunu, Kurt Jonassohn and Frank Chalk also consider it a case of genocide.[76] Further support comes fromAdam Jones, who wrote inGenocide: A Comprehensive Introduction a summary of the Vendée uprising, supporting the view that it was a genocide: "the Vendée Uprising stands as a notable example of a mass killing campaign that has only recently been conceptualized as 'genocide'" and that while this designation "is not universally shared ... it seems apt in the light of the large scale murder of a designated group (the Vendéan civilian population)."[77]Pierre Chaunu[66] describes it as the first "ideological genocide".."[78]Mark Levene, a historian who specializes in the study of genocide,[79][full citation needed] considers the Vendée "an archetype of modern genocide".[80] Other scholars who consider the massacres to be genocide includeR. J. Rummel,[81]Jean Tulard,[82] and Anthony James Joes.[83]
In 2020,David Bell published a paper inJournal of Genocide Research to rebut the genocide theory.[84]
The events of the Vendee have been the subject of books, films, and music.
Filmed on location in France,The Hidden Rebellion, adocu-drama produced and directed by Daniel Rabourdin, presents the rebellion as an example of the courage and love for God and country that the royalists possessed. Winner of the 2017 Remi Film Award, it has aired onEWTN and is available for purchase on DVD.[citation needed] The uprising in the Vendée was also the subject of an independent feature film fromNavis Pictures.The War of the Vendée (2012), written and directed by Jim Morlino, won awards for "Best Film For Young Audiences" (Mirabile Dictu International Catholic Film Festival, at the Vatican) and "Best Director" (John Paul II International Film Festival, Miami, FL).[85][86]
The Vendée Revolt was the setting for one of the BBC'sThe Scarlet Pimpernel (TV series) series entitled "Valentine Gautier" (2002).[citation needed] The Vendée Revolt was also the setting for "The Frogs and the Lobsters", an episode of the television programHornblower. It is set during the French Revolutionary Wars and very loosely based on the chapter of the same name inC. S. Forester's novel,Mr. Midshipman Hornblower and on the actual ill-fatedQuiberon expedition of 1795.[citation needed]Vaincre ou mourir was a related 2022 film released byStudio Canal in co-operation with thePuy du Fou theme park company.[87]
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Media related toWar in the Vendée and Chouannerie at Wikimedia Commons| Preceded by War of the First Coalition | French Revolution: Revolutionary campaigns War in the Vendée | Succeeded by Battle of Neerwinden (1793) |
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