Robert Anchel

“ VENDÉE, WARS OF THE, a counter-revolutionary insurrection which took place during the French Revolution (q.v.) , not only in Vendée proper but also in Lower Poitou, Anjou, Lower Maine and Brittany. The district was mainly inhabited by peasants; it contained few important towns, and the bourgeois were but a feeble minority. The ideas of the Revolution were slow in penetrating to this ignorant peasant population, which had always been less civilized than the majority of Frenchmen, and in 1789 the events which roused enthusiasm throughout the rest of France left the Vendeans indifferent. ”

“ In February 1793 the Convention decreed a levy on the whole of France, and on the eve of the ballot the Vendée, rather than comply with this requisition, broke out in insurrection. The Vendéan peasant refused to join the republican army, not for want of fighting qualities or ardour, but because the army of the old regime was recruited from bad characters and broken men, and the peasant, ignorant of the great change that had followed the Revolution, thought that the barrack-room was no place for a good Christian. ”

“ On the 31st of July, therefore, at Barere's suggestion, it was decreed that the woods of the Vendée should be burnt, the harvest carried off to safe places in rear of the army, the cattle seized, the women and children concentrated in camps in the interior, and that every male from the age of sixteen in the neighbouring regions should be called upon to take arms. Further, on the 1st of August, the troops that had formed the garrison of Mainz, which were unavailable against foreign enemies by the terms of their capitulation to the Austrians, were ordered to Vendée. ”