I would like to start this article with a quote from a very famous novel.
- About Vendée? Repeated Cimourdain. And then he said:
“This is a serious threat. If the revolution dies, it will die through the fault of Vendée. Vendée is scarier than ten Germaniums. In order for France to remain alive, Vendee must be killed.
Victor Hugo, "93". Remember?
Vendée is one of 83 departments formed in France during the French Revolution (March 1790). Its name comes from the river of the same name, and it was located on the territory of the former province of Poitou. The civil war of March-December 1793 actually unfolded in 4 departments of France (in addition to Vendee, these were Lower Loire, Maine and Loire, De Sevres), but it was Vendee who became most famous in this field, becoming a real symbol of the "counter-revolution of the lower classes", and was repeatedly convicted for this.
Vendee on France map
In the novel "93" already quoted here, V. Hugo wrote:
“Brittany is an inveterate rebel. Whenever she rose for two thousand years, the truth was on her side; but this time she was wrong for the first time."
Ancient church, Brittany
Attempts are currently being made to "rehabilitate" Vendée. There are works, the authors of which try to abandon the traditional view of the Breton rebels as dark slaughtered peasants opposing the envoys of revolutionary France, who on their bayonets brought them freedom and equality. Small museums dedicated to individual figures of the local Resistance are opening in the former rebel departments. The truth, as usual, is in the middle. The mutiny was a "blow in the gut" of bleeding in the unequal struggle with the interventionists of the French Republic. Its members objectively took the side of the enemies of their homeland and on the side of their former lords, who quite recently treated local disenfranchised peasants on their lands in a way that barons and dukes in other provinces of France had not dared to behave for a long time. But it must be admitted that the Vendée rebellion was also provoked by the clumsy policy of the new government, which did not want to take into account the customs of Brittany and the mentality of its inhabitants. The result of this inept policy was the semi-feudal peasant war, which is quite traditional for France. Previously, such performances by peasants were called "jaqueries".
The background of the Vendée War is as follows. At the beginning of 1793, the French republic was in a critical state. By February of this year, the number of her troops was only 228 thousand people (as early as December 1792 her armies numbered about 400 thousand soldiers). The external danger increased every day, so on February 24, 1793, the Convention adopted a decree on compulsory additional recruiting. The army was to be drafted 300 thousand people, recruitment was made in the communes by drawing lots among single men. This decree caused general outrage, and even isolated attempts at rebellion, which, however, were easily suppressed. In the Vendée, signs of dissatisfaction with the new government were noticeable as early as the summer of 1792. Local peasants were bypassed in the sale of confiscated estates, which went to outsiders, the reform of local government changed the usual boundaries of former church parishes, which introduced confusion in civil life, priests who had not sworn to the new government were replaced by newcomers.which were received by the believers very cautiously and did not enjoy authority. All this gave rise to a surge of nostalgic sentiments, but, despite some excesses, most of the population still remained loyal to the new government and even the execution of the king did not lead to mass peasant uprisings. Forced mobilization was the last straw. In early March 1793, the commander of the local National Guard was killed in the small town of Cholet, and a week later riots broke out in Mashekul, where a large number of supporters of the new government were killed. At the same time, the first detachment of rebels emerged, led by the coachman J. Katelino and the forester J.-N. Stoffle, former private in the Swiss regiment.
Jacques Catelino
Jean Nicola Stoffle
In mid-March, they managed to defeat the Republican army of about 3 thousand people. This was already serious and the Convention, trying to prevent the escalation of the rebellion, issued a decree. This was already serious and the Convention, trying to prevent the escalation of the rebellion, issued a decree according to which carrying a weapon or a white cockade - the symbol of "royal" France, was punishable by death. This decision only added fuel to the fire, and now not only the peasants, but also part of the townspeople of Brittany, rebelled. The military leaders of the newly organized partisan detachments, as a rule, were former officers from among the local nobles. The rebels were actively supported by England, as well as the emigrants on its territory and the rebellion very quickly acquired a royalist color. The troops of the Vendées became known as the "Catholic Royal Army" and it was the very first "white" army in the world ("L'Armée Blanche" - after the color of the banners of the rebel troops). Indeed, to carry out separate operations, the Vendée detachments sometimes united into an army of up to 40,000 people, but, as a rule, they nevertheless acted in isolation and reluctantly went outside of “their” districts, where knowledge of the area and established ties with the local population allowed them to feel yourself like a fish in water. The rebel units differed from each other in the degree of radicalism and in the level of cruelty towards the enemy. Along with evidence of really terrible killings and torture of captured Republican soldiers, there is information about the humane treatment of the prisoners, who in some cases were released without any conditions, mainly on the initiative of the commanders. However, the Republicans opposing them were also distinguished by cruelty. At the peak of the uprising, the troops of the Vendées occupied the city of Saumur and had an excellent chance of advancing towards Paris, but they themselves were afraid of such a success and turned back. They captured Angers without a fight and laid siege to Nantes at the end of June. Here they were defeated, and their recognized leader J. Catelino was mortally wounded. After his death, the joint actions of the rebels became the exception to the rule. In addition, the period of agricultural work was approaching, and soon the rebel army thinned by two-thirds. In May 1793, the rebels created their own headquarters, which united the commanders of the detachments, and the Supreme Council, which was mainly engaged in issuing decrees that were directly opposite in content to the decrees of the Convention. Even the text of the famous Marseillaise was altered:
Come on, Catholic armies
The day of glory has arrived
The Republic is against us
Raised bloody banners …
On August 1, 1793, the Convention decided to "destroy" the Vendée. It was assumed that the republican troops would be led by the young General Bonaparte, but he refused the appointment and resigned. An army under the command of Generals Kleber and Marceau was sent to the rebel departments, which was unexpectedly defeated on September 19.
General Kleber
General Marceau
However, the victory of the rebels turned out to be Pyrrhic: in mid-October, the combat units of the Western army transferred to the rebel departments completely defeated them at Chalet. The remnants of the defeated detachments led by Laroche-Jacquelin, having crossed the Loire, retreated north to Normandy, where they hoped to meet the British fleet. Huge crowds of refugees moved with them. Hopes for help from the British did not materialize, and the exhausted refugees, plundering towns and villages they came across on their way, moved back. In December 1793 they were surrounded at Le Mans and almost completely exterminated. The few of them that managed to escape the encirclement were finished off on the eve of Christmas 1793. Several small detachments remained on the territory of Vendée who refused to participate in the campaign against Normandy, they still continued to harass the Republicans, but the "big war" in Vendé was over. In 1794, the commander of the Western Army, General Tyrro, was able to begin the execution of the decree of August 1, 1793. "The Vendée should become a national cemetery," he said, and, dividing the troops into 2 groups of 12 columns each, began a grandiose "cleanup" rebellious territories. The locals called these columns "infernal" and they had every reason for that.
Stained glass window of the church of the commune of Le Luc-sur-Boulogne, where soldiers of one of the "infernal columns" shot more than 500 local residents
Some 10,000 people are believed to have been executed, half of them without trial. In July 1794, after the coup of 9 Thermidor, the repressions against the rebels were suspended. The surviving leaders of the Vendée troops signed a peace treaty in La Jaune, according to which the recalcitrant departments recognized the republic in exchange for a promise from the central government to free them from recruitment and taxes for 10 years and to end the persecution of priests who did not swear to the Republic. It seemed that peace had come to the long-suffering lands of Brittany. However, the peasants of the department of Maine and Loire (now Mayenne), who were called Chouannerie, from Chat-huant, the nickname of the peasants of the local aristocrat Jean Cottreau, refused to recognize this agreement.
Charles Carpentier, Chouans in ambush
After the death of Cottro on July 29, 1793, the son of a Breton miller and a failed priest Georges Cadudal stood at the head of the Chouans (who soon began to call all the peasants who joined them).
Georges Cadudal, leader of the Chouans
He managed to establish contact with the royalists in England and plan the landing of emigrants at Quiberon. This action provoked the surviving rebels to resume hostilities. The Republican army once again defeated the Vendéans. It was commanded by General Lazar Gauche - the only commander whom Napoleon Bonaparte considered his equal (“One way or another - there were two of us, while one was needed,” he said after his death in 1797).
General Lazar Ghosh, a monument on the Kybron peninsula
In June 1794, Cadudal was arrested, but very soon, immediately after the Thermidorian coup, he was recklessly released by the new government. By the spring of 1796 Vendée was pacified and subdued. However, in 1799, Georges Cadudal, who returned from Britain (he was there intermittently from 1797 to 1803), again tried to raise an uprising in Brittany. In October 1799, the rebels captured Nantes, as well as some other cities, but in January 1800 they were defeated by General Brune. Napoleon Bonaparte, who in November 1799 became First Consul, ordered part of the prisoners to be enlisted in the army, and the most intransigent of them were exiled to San Domingo by his order.
Ingres Jean Auguste, Napoleon Bonaparte in the uniform of the First Consul, 1804
Georges Cadudal did not stop fighting and organized two attempts on the life of the First Consul (in December 1800 and in August 1803). On March 9, 1804, he was arrested in Paris and, after a trial, executed. After the restoration of the monarchy, the Kadudal family was granted nobility, and the youngest of the executed Georges, Joseph, in 1815 organized an uprising against the returning emperor. New attempts at uprisings by the Vendéans and Chouans were noted in 1803 and 1805, but they were no match for the Civil War of 1793. The last and again unsuccessful action of Brittany against the republican government was noted in 1832.
