Vendée uprising

“ In this source of guilt and misery the people of La Vendee are now to be instructed—that people, who are acknowledged to be hospitable, humane, and laborious, and whose ideas of freedom may be better estimated by their resistance to a despotism which the rest of France has sunk under, than by the jargon of pretended reformers.—I could wish, that not only the peasants of La Vendee, but those of all other countries, might for ever remain strangers to such pernicious knowledge. ”

“ No matter—it’s a coward’s work to go and shave one’s country’s enemies. Do you think he’d have shaved any of the blues’ officers in La Vendée twenty years ago, for all the money they could have offered him? He’d have done it with a sword, if he had done it at all. ”

“ La Vendée was made illustrious mainly by men who dreaded neither the essentials of the Revolution nor its abiding consequences, but who strove to rescue their country from the hands of persecutors and assassins. ”

“ The decree which took place in March, 1793, for raising three hundred thousand men in the departments, changed the partial insurrections of La Vendee to an open and connected rebellion; and every where the young people refused going, and joined in preference the standard of revolt. ”

“ With regard to the department of La Vendée, whatever serves, trivial as it may be, to recall or illustrate the history of its wars and the character of its inhabitants, must ever possess a charm for those who delight to sympathize with the noble struggles of a gallant people, conscientiously devoting themselves to the cause of a fallen and persecuted monarchy, and resisting the cruel and destructive ferocity of a licentious enemy, who had broken down the most sacred fences of society, and trampled upon the dearest ties of human nature. ”

“ I think that, with them, it would be regarded as a war for their religion; while with the men it is the conscription that has chiefly driven them to take up arms."
Chapter 4: Cathelineau's Scouts.
For some days nothing happened. The insurrection spread like wildfire, in Poitou and Anjou; and everywhere the peasants were successful, the authorities, soldiers, and gendarmes for the most part flying without waiting for an attack.
The news that all La Vendee was in insurrection astonished and infuriated the Convention, which at once took steps to suppress it. ”

“ She made some attempts to begin the subject, which he did not notice, for he was still brooding over the unpleasant sensation which her words had occasioned; but at last she gathered courage, and said:
“The soldiers of the Republic have at last overcome the rebels of La Vendée—have they not, M. Robespierre?”
“It is not enough to conquer traitors,” answered he, “they must be crushed, before the country can be safe from their treachery.” ”

“ When once an impulse to plunder and pillage has been indulged in, it is difficult to stop it at will, as you, citizen Representatives, know; la Vendée has been treated just like a town taken by assault: everything in it has been sacked, pillaged, burnt. The soldiers do not understand why they are forbidden to do to-day what they did yesterday. You will not find even among the general officers any means of recalling the rank and file to a love of justice and more decent behaviour. I do not doubt that there are some who have higher principles and desire to return to a better state of things. ”

“ In the act of wounding France, the Vendée covered her with glory. There are times when human society presents enigmas whose meaning becomes evident to the wise, while for the ignorant it remains obscure, signifying nothing more than violence and barbarism. A philosopher is slow to accuse. He takes into consideration the disturbances caused by these problems, which never pass without casting a shadow like a cloud.
He who would understand the Vendée must picture the antagonism of the French Revolution on the one hand, and the Breton peasant on the other. ”

“ The priests and nobles had long viewed the Revolution with aversion, an aversion intensified by the proclamation of the Republic and the execution of the King. And {173} when, on the 26th of February, the Convention passed an army ballot law and sent agents to press recruits among the villages of the Vendée, the peasants joined their natural leaders and rose in arms against the Government. The Vendéens were, in their own country, formidable opponents. They had born leaders, men who showed wonderful courage, dash, and loyalty. ”

“ After the re-capture of Durbellière, and the liberation of Santerre, the Vendeans again assembled in arms in different portions of the revolted district, and fought their battles always with valour, and not unfrequently with success. They did not, however, again form themselves into one body, till the beginning of October, when news having reached them that a large army, under fiercer leaders, was to be sent by the Republic for their extermination, it became necessary to take some decided step for their own protection. ”

“ Nay worst of all: there is an enemy within our own territory itself. In the early days of March, the Nantes Postbags do not arrive; there arrive only instead of them Conjecture, Apprehension, bodeful wind of Rumour. The bodefullest proves true! Those fanatic Peoples of La Vendée will no longer keep under: their fire of insurrection, heretofore dissipated with difficulty, blazes out anew, after the King’s Death, as a wide conflagration ”

“ It seems that the royalist cause is despaired of even in La Vendée; the white banner is a rag which France repudiates. I am told there are not in Paris twelve hundred men who, for a few francs, would begin a riot in the streets ”

“ In La Vendée, one of the departments of France, an insurrection broke out against the Jacobinical government, in 1793.
Upwards of two hundred battles and skirmishes were fought in this devoted country. The revolutionary fever was in its access; the shedding of blood seemed to have become positive pleasure to the perpetrators of slaughter, and was varied by each invention which cruelty could invent to give it new zest. The habitations of the Vendeans were destroyed, their families subjected to violation and massacre, their cattle houghed and slaughtered, and their crops burnt and wasted. ”

“ These prophetic words produced some effect in the assembly; but the measures proposed by Vergniaud led to nothing.
The Jacobins were stopped for a moment by the failure of their first enterprise against their adversaries; but the insurrection of La Vendée gave them new courage. The Vendéan war was an inevitable event in the revolution. This country, bounded by the Loire and the sea, crossed by few roads, sprinkled with villages, hamlets, and manorial residences, had retained its ancient feudal state. In La Vendée there was no civilization or intelligence, because there was no middle class ”

“ 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. ”

“ It determined, therefore, to strike terror into the nation by exhibiting a fearful example in La Vendée. After full consideration, the Committee absolutely resolved to exterminate the inhabitants of the country—utterly to destroy them all, men, women, and children—to burn every town, every village, and every house—to put an end to all life in the doomed district, and to sweep from the face of the country man, beast, and vegetable. The land was to be left without proprietors, without a population, and without produce ”

“ It was impossible for la Vendée to pass the Loire. She could accomplish anything except this stride. Civil war does not conquer. Crossing the Rhine is the crowning work of Cæsar and the additional glory of Napoleon; crossing the Loire kills la Rochejaquelein.
The true sphere of la Vendée is within her own boundaries, there she is more than invulnerable, she is intangible. The Vendéan at home is a smuggler, a farmer, soldier, shepherd, poacher, sharpshooter, goatherd, bellringer, peasant, spy, assassin, sacristan, wild beast of the woods. ”

“ The French do not scruple to affirm (but here I suspect their love of exaggeration, not unmixed with national vanity, to preponderate) that the war of La Vendée has cost to the republic more men than all her foreign conflicts united. If, instead of men, perplexity and vexation were substituted, the account would be more credible.
The proclamation which announces a conclusion of the war of La Vendée is not the only one, which strikes at this moment the public eye, in Quimper. ”

“ But this cannot always be so, we cannot expect continual victory, and even victory itself, when so often repeated, will bring death and desolation into every parish and into every family.”
“I trust, father, the war will not be prolonged so distantly as you seem to think; the forces of Austria, England and Prussia already surround the frontiers of France; and we have every reason to hope that friendly troops from Britain will soon land on our own coast. I trust the autumn will find La Vendée crowned with glory, but once more at peace.” ”

“ Moreover, the government was badly informed in every respect by its agents in France, and had no idea of the extent of the rising in La Vendee, or how nobly the people there had been defending themselves against the whole force of France. It is not too much to say that had England, at this time, landed twenty thousand troops in Brittany or La Vendee, the whole course of events in Europe would have been changed. The French Revolution would have been crushed before it became formidable to Europe, and countless millions of money and millions of lives would have been saved. ”

“ The struggle has begun and, if the Republicans conquer La Vendee, we know how awful will be the persecutions, what thousands of victims will be slaughtered. Our only hope is in victory and, at any rate, those who die on the battlefield will be happy, in comparison with those who fall into the hands of the Blues. ”

“ Whilst blood was thus flowing by the guillotine, not only in Paris, but, under the management of Jacobin Commissioners, in nearly all the large towns of France, especially Lyons, Bordeaux, and Nantes, a terrible work of extermination was going on against the royalists of La Vendée. The simple people of that province, primitive in their habits and sincere in their faith, desired no Republic. ”

“ No nobleman lived in the country, who could afford to live at Paris or Versailles. Not to be seen at Court was equivalent to obscurity or disgrace. The nobles of La Vendée incurred the Government's displeasure by their obstinate adherence to their country homes and their lamentable unwillingness to perform their duties about the person of the King. Yet the nobles of La Vendée were the only part of the French aristocracy, which in the days of the Revolution died fighting for the Crown.
At Court the leaders of society set the wild example of extravagance. ”

“ I remained at the farmhouse, until the Vendeans could no longer maintain themselves in La Vendee and crossed the Loire; then I accompanied my husband."
"Well, madam, I congratulate you heartily on your escape. We heard terrible tales, in England, of what is going on in France."
"However terrible they are, they can hardly give you an idea of the truth. At Nantes, for instance, the guillotine is too slow; and hundreds of men, women, and children are put into boats, which are sunk in the middle of the river. It is too horrible to think of." ”

“ Of course, we heard that he was fighting in La Vendee and, as every one of us comes from one port or another there, we only wished that we had been with him."
"You were well out of it, Edouard. It was a terrible business. No one could have fought better than your people did, but they had all France against them; and few, indeed, of those who were engaged from the first can ever have returned to their homes. And even when they get there there can be no safety for them, for Carrier and his commissioners seem to be determined to annihilate the Vendeans altogether." ”

“ The taking Saumur frightened the Convention much more than any of the previous victories of the Vendeans. The republicans lost a vast quantity of military stores, arms, gunpowder, cannons, and soldiers’ clothing; and, which was much worse than the loss itself these treasures had fallen into the hands of an enemy, whose chief weakness consisted in the want of such articles. The royalists since the beginning of the revolt had always shewn courage and determination in action ”

“ What is her project? I know not. She has at least saved the unhappy boy from suicide.
JULY 30, 1793.—The royalist and "federalist" insurrection of Lyons, Marseilles, Toulon and Bordeaux against the Republic and the Convention has assumed a more threatening aspect through the war that broke out in the Vendee, and which is spreading amid scenes of ungovernable ferocity. Read, sons of Joel, and shudder at the atrocious reprisals, the nameless horrors, committed by the Vendeans under the leadership of their priests and the ex-nobles. ”

“ Its first duty was to raise soldiers to meet the enemies upon every frontier. For this purpose eighty-two deputies of the Convention were sent through France, two and two, to raise by volunteering where possible, but by conscription if other measures failed, 300,000 men. This call for recruits caused disturbances in many parts of France; in La Vendée it started civil war. It was to protest against the conscription, and not to defend the Church or the nobility, that the people of La Vendée rose in insurrection. ”