War in the Vendée

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War in the Vendée
Part of the War of the First Coalition
Henri de La Rochejacquelein at the Battle of Cholet in 1793 by Paul-Emile Boutigny, (19th C.), Musée d'art et d'histoire de Cholet, Cholet, France.
Date March 1793-March 1796 Location Vendée, France Result Republican victory
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French Republic	French Royalists

Location of Vendée.
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The War in Vendée was a civil war between Royalists and Republicans during the French Revolution. The war (not the Revolution) took place from 1793 to 1796 in Vendée, in a coastal region, immediately south of the Loire River in west central France.

[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 their Catholic faith.^{[citation needed]} There were outbreaks of anti-Republic violence in 1791 and 1792.^{[citation needed]} 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.^{[citation needed]}

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 suppressed 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][unreliable source?]}

The March 1793 conscription of 300,000 Vendeans enraged the populace, who took up arms as "The Catholic Army", "Royal" being added later, and fought for "above all the reopening of their parish churches with their former priests."^{[8][unreliable source?]}

[edit] Outbreak of revolt

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.^{[citation needed]}

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. The bloodiest outburst was in Machecoul on March 11, where 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.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[9]

[edit] Republican response

Insignia of the Vendean royalist insurgents. Note the French words 'Dieu Le Roi' beneath the heart-and-cross, meaning 'God (is) the king'.

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,^{[citation needed]} the majority being raw young recruits: barely trained, badly equipped and fed, scared and with miserably low morale.^{[citation needed]} 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,^{[citation needed]} but limiting control to a few urban centres, and providing many weak garrisons as targets.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

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 River 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, from April onwards the army lost cohesion and its special advantages. 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.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Defeat

On August 1 the Committee of Public Safety ordered General Jean-Baptiste Carrier to perform a 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 defeated in the last, decisive battle at Savenay on December 23.

A massacre of 6,000 Vendée prisoners, many of them women, took place after the battle of Savenay, along with the drowning of 3,000 Vendée women at Pont-au-Baux and 5,000 Vendée priests, old men, women, and children killed by drowning at the Loire River at Nantes in what was called the "national bath" - tied in groups in barges and then sunk into the Loire.^[10][11][12]

With these massacres 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 targeted at residents of the Vendée regardless of combantant status, political affiliation, age or gender.^[13]

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 exterminated all. The roads are sown with corpses. At Savenay, brigands are arriving all the time claiming to surrender, and we are shooting them non-stop... Mercy is not a revolutionary sentiment."^{[14] [15]}

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.”^[16]

Following the law of 14 Frimaire, in December alone over 6,000 prisoners were executed,^[15] a number in what was called "the Republican baptisms" or the "national bath": tied in groups in barges and then sunk into the Loire.^[17] Initially, these mass drownings were confined to priests and took place by night, but before long they became habitual and occurred in broad daylight.^[17] Those attempting to escape by jumping in were sabered in the water.^[17] Estimates of those who were dispatched in this manner range from 2,000 to 4,800;^[17]

When the campaign dragged to an end in March 1796, the estimated dead - both Republican and Royalist - numbered between 117,000 and 500,000, out of a population of around 800,000.^[18][19][20]

[edit] 1815

During Napoleon Bonaparte's Hundred Days in 1815, 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.^[21]

[edit] Genocide debate

In 1986 Reynald Secher wrote a controversial book entitled: A French Genocide: The Vendée, in which he argued that the actions of the French republican government during the revolt in the Vendée (1793–1796), a popular Royalist uprising against the Republican government during the French Revolution, was the first modern genocide.^[22] Secher's claims, in addition to his political and religious affiliations, caused a minor uproar in France amongst scholars of modern French history, as mainstream authorities on the period—both French and foreign—published articles refuting Secher's claims (see below). In the rebellion, initially the Vendée rebels gained the upper hand, so on August 1, 1793 the Committee of Public Safety ordered General Jean-Baptiste Carrier to carry out a pacification of the region. The Republican army was reinforced and the Vendéan army was eventually defeated. Under orders from Committee of Public Safety in February 1794 the Republican forces launched their final "pacification" (the Vendée-Vengé or "Vendée Avenged")—twelve columns, the colonnes infernales ("infernal columns") under Louis-Marie Turreau, were marched through the Vendée, and, according to Secher, killed both rebels and civilians indiscriminately.^[23][24] When the campaign dragged to an end in March 1796 the estimated dead, both Republican and Royalist, numbered between 117,000 and 500,000, out of a population of around 800,000.^[25][26][27]

Secher's allegation of genocide, Claude Langlois (of the Institute of History of the French Revolution) derides as "quasi-mythological".^[28] Timothy Tackett of the University 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 Vendéeans were no more blameless than were the republicans. The use of the word genocide is wholly inaccurate and inappropriate." ^[29] Hugh Gough (Professor of history at University College Dublin,) considers Secher's book an attempt at historical revisionism that is unlikely to have any lasting impact.^[30] 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.^[31] Other scholars who have published against Secher's thesis include: Julian Jackson (professor of history modern at the University of London),^[32] and professors of modern history and related fields François Lebrun of the University of High-Brittany-Rennes II,^[33] and of the University of Paris, I-Pantheon-Sorbonne, Paul Tallonneau^[34] Claude Petitfrère,^[35] and Jean-Clément Martin.^[36]

Peter McPhee says that the pacification the 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 government.^[31] 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". ^[37] 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,^[38] 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.^[39] 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 subjecting them to the program Gracchus Babeuf, "the inventor of modern Communism", characterized as "populicide" in 1795 against the people of the Vendée.^[40] British historian Ruth Scurr states that the actions of the revolutionaries, such as mass executions by grapeshot fired from cannons and group drownings in the Vendée, constitute crimes against humanity that they would today be held accountable for under the European human rights legislation they themselves pioneered.^[41]

Secher attracted further controversy in 1991 with his publication Jews and Vendeans: From One Genocide to Another, comparing the fate of Royalist Vendeans with Jews in Nazi Germany. ^[42]

[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:
  • Chouannerie (another Royalist uprising)
  • Cholet
  • Clisson
  • Fontenay-le-Comte
  • La Roche-sur-Yon (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.52-53 2006 University Press of Kentucky ISBN 0813123399
9. ^ General Hoche and Counterinsurgency
10. ^ Wars Of The Vendee
11. ^ What are the educational options for British children moving to France?
12. ^ In a Corner of France, Long Live the Old Regime
13. ^ Jones, Adam Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction p.7 (Routledge/Taylor & Francis Publishers Forthcoming 2006)
14. ^ Davies, Norman. Europe: A history Pimlico, (1997). p. 705
15. ^ ^{a b} Schama, Simon (2004). Citizens. Penguin Books, p. 788. ISBN 0141017279. 
16. ^ Schama, Simon (2004). Citizens. Penguin Books, p. 791. ISBN 0141017279. 
17. ^ ^{a b c d} Schama, Simon (2004). Citizens. Penguin Books, p. 789. ISBN 0141017279. 
18. ^ Three State and Counterrevolution in France by Charles Tilly
19. ^ Vive la Contre-Revolution!
20. ^ McPhee, Peter Review of Reynald Secher, A French Genocide: The Vendée H-France Review Vol. 4 (March 2004), No. 26
21. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition Waterloo Campaign.
22. ^ Secher, Reynald. A French Genocide: The Vendée, University of Notre Dame Press, (2003), ISBN 0268028656.
23. ^ The Heart of Darkness: How Visceral Hatred of Catholicism Turns Into Genocide
24. ^ Wars Of The Vendee
25. ^ Three State and Counterrevolution in France by Charles Tilly
26. ^ "Vive la Contre-Revolution!"
27. ^ McPhee, Peter Review of Reynald Secher, A French Genocide: The Vendée, H-France Review Vol. 4 (March 2004), No. 26.
28. ^ 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.
29. ^ Voir l'intervention de Timothy Tackett, dans French Historical Studies, Autumn 2001, p. 572.
30. ^ Hugh Gough, "Genocide & the Bicentenary: the French Revolution and the revenge of the Vendée", (Historical Journal, vol. 30, 4, 1987, pp. 977–88.) p. 987.
31. ^ ^{a b} Peter McPhee, a review of Reynald Secher, A French Genocide, published in H-France Review Vol. 4 (March 2004), No. 26.
32. ^ 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 ),
33. ^ 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.
34. ^ Paul Tallonneau, Les Lucs et le génocide vendéen : comment on a manipulé les textes, éditions Hécate, 1993
35. ^ Claude Petitfrère, La Vendée et les Vendéens, Editions Gallimard/Julliard, 1982.
36. ^ Voir Jean-Clément Martin, La Vendée et la France, Le Seuil, 1987.
37. ^ Jonassohn, Kurt and Karin Solveig Bjeornson Genocide and Gross Human Rights Violations p. 208, 1998, Transaction Publishers, ISBN 0765804174.
38. ^ 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.
39. ^ J. Tulard, J.-F. Fayard, A. Fierro, Histoire et dictionnaire de la Révolution française, 1789-1799, Robert Laffont, collection Bouquins, 1987, p.1113
40. ^ Courtois, Stéphane (1999). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press, p. 9. ISBN 0674076087. 
41. ^ Scurr, Ruth (2006). Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution. Metropolitan Books. p. 282 ISBN 0805079874
42. ^ http://www.zundelsite.org/french/rhr/Secher.pdf