The War in the Vendée (French: Guerre de Vendée [ɡɛʁ də vɑ̃de]) was a counter-revolutionary insurrection that took place in the Vendée region of France from 1793 to 1796, during the French Revolution. The Vendée is a coastal region, located immediately south of the river Loire in western France. Initially, the revolt was similar to the 14th-century Jacquerie peasant uprising, but the Vendée quickly became counter-revolutionary and Royalist. The revolt was comparable to the Chouannerie, which took place concurrently (1794–1800) in the area north of the Loire.
While elsewhere in France the revolts against the levée en masse were repressed, an insurgent territory, called the Vendée militaire by historians, formed south of the Loire-Inférieure (Brittany), south-west of Maine-et-Loire (Anjou), north of Vendée and north-west of Deux-Sèvres (Poitou). Gradually referred to as the "Vendeans", the insurgents established a "Catholic and Royal Army," which won a succession of victories in the spring and summer of 1793. The rebels briefly overran the towns of Fontenay-le-Comte, Thouars, Saumur and Angers, but were halted at the Battle of Nantes.
During autumn, the arrival of the Army of Mainz as reinforcements restored the advantage to the Republican camp, which in October seized Cholet, the most important city controlled by the Vendeans. After this defeat, the bulk of the Vendée forces crossed the Loire and marched to Normandy in a desperate attempt to take a port to obtain the help of the British and the Armée des Émigrés. Pushed back to Granville, the Vendée army was finally destroyed in December at Mans and Savenay. From the winter of 1793 to the spring of 1794, during the Reign of Terror, violent repression was put in place by the Republican forces. In the cities, and in particular in Nantes and Angers, around 15,000 people were shot, drowned or guillotined on the orders of the représentants en mission and Revolutionary Military Commissions; while in the countryside about 20,000 to 50,000 civilians were massacred by the infernal columns, who set fire to many towns and villages.
The repression provoked a resurgence of the rebellion. 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 the Quiberon 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 brief uprisings, with a third war in 1799, a fourth in 1815, and a fifth in 1832, but these 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.
Background
In the rural Vendée, the local nobility seems to have been more permanently in power than in other parts of France. Alexis de Tocqueville noted that most French nobles lived in cities by 1789. An Intendants' survey showed one of the few areas where the nobility still lived with the peasants was the Vendée. 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 the Catholic Church in alliance with the nobility. Counter-Enlightenment author Francois Mignet accused militant Republicans of wanting to destroy both the independence and influence of the Catholic Church in France, which the people of the Vendée considered unimaginable.
In 1791, two representatives on mission informed the National Assembly that the Vendée was being mobilized against the French First Republic. This news was swiftly followed by the exposure of an alleged royalist conspiracy organized by the Marquis de la Rouërie. Subsequent defenders of the Vendée rebels argue that this plotting against the Republic was an understandable response to The Terror (a period between 1793 and 1794 where thousands of both real and suspected dissidents were beheaded by guillotine), the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790), and the introduction of conscription upon the whole of France, decreed by the National Convention in February 1793.
In what Max Weber later dubbed Caesaropapism, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy required all Roman Catholic priests to transfer their allegiance from the Holy See to the Constitution and, by extension, to the increasingly anti-clerical and anti-Catholic National 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. Anti-clericalism and coercive secularization of French culture triggered the Vendée belligerence; another trigger was further mass conscription into the French 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, 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."
Although town dwellers were more likely to support the Revolution in the Vendée, 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. Counter-Enlightenment historians have argued that local feudalism had primarily protected the peasantry. They cite the fact that over the 100 years of struggle to impose republicanism upon France, the middle class were the primary beneficiaries. Nearly all the purchasers of former Church land were members of the bourgeoisie, and very few peasants benefited from the confiscation and sales.
Outbreak of revolt
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 the Loire, order had been restored by the revolutionary government. However, south of the Loire, in four departments that became known as the Vendée militaire, there were few troops to control rebels and what had started as rioting quickly became a full insurrection led by priests and the local nobility.
Within a few weeks the Royalist forces had formed a substantial, 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 Royalists operated on a much smaller scale, using guerrilla tactics, supported by the insurgents' local knowledge and social networks.
Geographic coverage
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 the Ancien régime; the heart of the movement lay in the forests, with Cholet at its center, in the wild districts of the old county of Anjou, in the Breton marshlands between Montaigu and the sea. It included parts of the old Poitiers and Tours, the départements of Maine-et-Loire, the Vendée, and Deux 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.
Vendée military response
The insurrection began in March 1793, as a rejection of the mass conscription edict. In February, the National 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 lower Loire, in the Mauges and in the Vendean bocage, 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 of Machecoul on 11 March, and several hundred Republican citizens were massacred. A large band of peasants under the leadership of Jacques Cathelineau and Jean-Nicolas Stofflet seized Saint-Florent-le-Vieil on 12 March. By mid-March, a minor revolt against conscription had turned into full-fledged insurrection.
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, under general Louis Henri François de Marcé, moving from La Rochelle to Nantes, was intercepted north of Chantonnay near the Gravereau bridge (Saint-Vincent-Sterlanges), over the river le Petit-Lay. After six hours of fighting, rebel reinforcements arrived and routed the Republican forces. In the north, on 22 March, another Republican force was routed near Chalonnes-sur-Loire.
Battle of Bressuire
There followed a series of skirmishes and armed contacts. On 3 May 1793, Bressuire fell to Vendéen forces led by Henri de la Rochejaquelein.
Battle of Thouars
The Battle of Thouars occurred on 5 May 1793; the main clash took place on the Pont de Vrine, the bridge over the river leading into Thouars. The Vendéens proved unable to take the bridge for six hours, until Louis 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 under Charles 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 by Henri 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.
Battle of Fontenay-le-Comte
On 25 May 1793 the Catholic and royalist army took Fontenay-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 by wearing 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 were Nantes and Les Sables d'Olonne.
Battle of Saumur
On 9 June 1793, Vendean insurgents commanded by Jacques Cathelineau captured the town of Saumur from Louis-Alexandre Berthier. The victory gave the insurgents a massive supply of arms, including 50 cannons. This was the high point of the insurgency. 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 to Tours.
Battle of Nantes
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. 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 by Charette, Bonchamps, Cathelineau and Lyrot hampered the assault, and Cathelineau's forces were delayed in their deployment by fighting along the river Erdre 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. 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 river Loire in boats equipped with trap-door bottoms; when these opened the victims were left to drown. On this occasion it was rumored that female prisoners were stripped and tied up with men before being sent to their deaths, the so-called Republican Marriage. Some later historians dispute this story as a counter-revolutionary myth.
First Battle of Châtillon
On 5 July 1793, the First Battle of Châtillon took place at Châtillon-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 General François 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.
Battle of Vihiers
The Vendeans won a victory over the revolutionary army led by Santerre at the Battle of Vihiers on 18 July 1793.
Battle of Luçon
The Battle 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 under Augustin Tuncq and Vendean forces. The engagement on 14 August, fought near the town of Luçon was actually the conclusion of three engagements between Maurice 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 of François de Charette.