- Background and History1. The Area, The People
The Vendée Militaire, as it became known, (Map 2) lies south of the Loire, takes in the Départements of Maine-et-Loire and La Vendée as well as northern Deux-Sevres and the southern part of Loire-Atlantique. It stretches from the ancient towns of Saumur, Thouars and Parthenay in the east to the Atlantic coast in the west, from the banks of the Loire in the north, to Renaissance Fontenay-le-Comte and Luçon in the south.
Geographically it is an area of wide contrasts and historically its peoples were (and still are) as different as chalk and French cheeses.
On the western coast have always been fishing and trading communities, who look to the Atlantic and beyond for their prosperity. Traditionally they provided the crews for the French Navy. Their enemies had always been the English, largely in the form of the British Navy, whom they had fought for supremacy of the sea throughout the world, during countless wars.
Many had fought with French forces on the side of the rebels in the American War of Independence and had seen at first hand the birth of the new Republic. Broadly they welcomed the Revolution.
The immediate hinterland is flat and marshy, the great Marais Breton and Pays de Retz, huge marshes with rich, reclaimed farmland and forests, broken up by canals, deep drainage ditches and dykes, making access difficult for outsiders, easy for those with local knowledge to move around. Its people were introverted and private, lovers of wide-open skies.
They knew the hidden routes and paths through the marshes and were highly skilled in the use of small boats (called nioles) for getting about the maze of waterways and rivers. For moving swiftly from dyke to dyke they simply jumped across, pivoting on long poles (lingues). Renowned as skilled hunters and superb shots with their ancient hunting muskets, their later reputation as lethal snipers and sharpshooters made them feared by the enemy.
To the east, the Bocage, perfect country for guerrilla warfare, a heavily farmed land of gentle hills and hidden valleys, with many woods and forests, criss-crossed by hundreds of streams that turned to torrents in the frequent rains. Its thousands of small irregular fields around which the tracks that passed for roads in the area twisted and turned, were protected by deep ditches and high, impenetrable hedges. Many of the villages hidden down these primitive lanes had remained unchanged for centuries.
The farmland was fragile but fertile, needing careful management, supporting one of the highest population densities in France. However, a couple of bad harvests meant that famine could still strike the land.
The system of crop rotation meant that after a couple of seasons cropping, fields were planted with genets (a type of broom), which grew impenetrably thick and high. Then they were allowed to lie fallow for five years. At any one time, a substantial number of the fields were planted in this way. Many refugees from the violence were able to hide deep inside these plantations and escape the attentions of republican troops.
Further to the east, the Haut Bocage, and the Gatine, high plains with colder winters and a more begrudging, rocky land, its people harder and unforgiving of wrongs, again a place of small thickly hedged fields and mysterious unmapped by-ways.
To the north, Anjou and les Mauges, a wide high plateau broken up by steep rocky valleys that could hide whole regiments and which were perfect for ambush.
And to the south, suddenly discovered in the space of a few kilometres, La Plaine, wide-open, flat, rather boring country with huge fields, stretching as far as the eye can see, with yet another huge marsh, Le Marais Poitevin leading to the coast. Both these areas remained staunchly Republican throughout the wars.
Unlike other parts of France, many of the peasant farmers in the Vendée Militaire were relatively well off. Their lands were self-sufficient, very intensely farmed units dedicated to raising and selling cattle at the many traditional markets in the region (a practice stilll widespread throughout the area).
In consequence the farmers dealt amongst themselves and were largely independent of animal dealers and moneylenders. Food produced in the region not only fed the towns and cities on the circumference, but also travelled by road and water (along the Loire and via associated rivers or canals) to such places as Paris, and even to the Mediterranean.
In the north of the region, the production of grapes for wine, also largely sold to the capital, was paramount.
As with many other areas, craftsmen often combined their skills with working the land. Ownership of a piece of land, however small, meant independence, so this was the ambition of most landless families. There was much competition to purchase when any became available.
The region has long been inhabited, first by prehistoric peoples (there are still a few complete megaliths that have not been broken up because they were in the way or because the stone was useful). Then, after the long Roman occupation, followed those people, for example, Visigoths, Arabs, Normans, the English and even the French themselves, who spent centuries fighting each other in the political and religious wars that eventually led to the forging of the French nation.
As a result, the region is full of often rebuilt churches and chateaux in many different styles, and any number of evocative ruins. Many of the missing stones from these buildings have gone into the construction of the towns, farmhouses and peasant cottages nearby where they can often be spotted.
Until Napoleon took a hand, there were few major roads beyond the Routes Royales, which joined the large towns situated round the periphery of the area ( Map 2.). The rest were largely narrow twisty tracks with not enough room for a cart to turn. In summer they were dusty and rutted, and in winter made impassable through mud or raging streams, which swept them away. Many villages could be effectively cut off for months.
Because of these inadequate roads, much of the region was isolated, not only from the rest of France and the currents of change, but also from itself.
So it remained inured in its own introverted traditions -religious, social, agricultural - and resentful of outside interference in its ways. Most peasants remained illiterate, regarding reading, writing and advances in medical science with suspicion. Even agricultural development, so necessary if French farming was to move forward, had failed to penetrate the region.
News and ideas from the outside world spread via the mass of travelling merchants and salesmen who went from market to market throughout the area. In addition, the Vendéens were great long distance walkers, used to going miles to market. This attribute was to prove a significant factor in their military success.
Loyalties were very local, largely within the parish boundaries, or those immediately adjacent. The concepts of Paris and La Nation (i.e. the French Nation) were too distant to have any real force or relevance, often seen as interfering with local life.
The essentially feudal relationship between the Church, the Nobility and the smaller farmers and peasants had remained largely harmonious for more than a century, thanks to the region being agricultural and prosperous.
Particularly strong was the devotion of the country dwellers to their rather old-fashioned form of Catholicism, a major focal point of their lives. This sat easily with pre-Christian traditions of sacred oaks, sacred places, holy vases and image worship (though the images were largely Catholic ones) and a completely irrational terror of the dark.
In the large towns on the perimeter like Nantes, Angers, Fontenay-le-Comte and Luçon, lived the wealthy, educated, professional and merchant classes, influenced by the American Revolution and by the reforming ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Their culture and thinking had almost nothing in common with the isolated rural areas of the Vendée Militaire and there was certainly no interchange beyond the commercial.
It is interesting to notice that rural areas in La Plaine, which had increased social and commercial intercourse with cities such as Niort and Luçon, as well as the area immediately adjoining Nantes, did not join the insurrection, remaining loyal to the Revolution, though sometimes provoked by republican troops.
Nationally, absolute power still remained in the hands of the King and great nobles. Locally, the aristocracy, lived cheek-by-jowl with their peasants on their estates, but maintained hereditary power. Despite the "purity" of their blood and antiquity of their titles, many were very poor, for all their pretensions. Others had acquired their titles either through money or other more dubious means and were known as the "petite noblesse". There was a tension between the old and new aristocracy.
The Church too, living off its huge landholdings, both in the countryside and in urban areas, also managed political and social affairs with an eye to its own interests and was not keen to share this hold on power.
The emerging and wealthy bourgeois middle-classes that effectively controlled the economy of the country had become increasingly resentful of this archaic political and social system. It effectively excluded them from the running of national or local, affairs, whilst at the same time extracting heavy taxes to finance the extravagance of the King and Court. They resented too the land and property holdings of the Church and Nobility, seen as impeding the growth of their own wealth.
Broadly speaking then, the inhabitants of the larger towns were supporters of any change which would enable them to grab power, whilst the countryside was largely immutable.
Apart from the traditional moans and groans, nobility and peasantry lived largely in harmony, content to operate a system sanctified by time. If rents were low and their income consequently reduced, the methods of production often antique, at least there was time for such pastimes as hunting, protected on the seigneurial (aristocratic) lands.
The small plot of church land which the local priest and his predecessors had cultivated since time immemorial not only provided food for the poorly paid (sometimes unpaid) incumbents but also gave them a tie with the same land as their parishioners.
The Vendée Militaire, as it became known, (Map 2) lies south of the Loire, takes in the Départements of Maine-et-Loire and La Vendée as well as northern Deux-Sevres and the southern part of Loire-Atlantique. It stretches from the ancient towns of Saumur, Thouars and Parthenay in the east to the Atlantic coast in the west, from the banks of the Loire in the north, to Renaissance Fontenay-le-Comte and Luçon in the south.
Geographically it is an area of wide contrasts and historically its peoples were (and still are) as different as chalk and French cheeses.
On the western coast have always been fishing and trading communities, who look to the Atlantic and beyond for their prosperity. Traditionally they provided the crews for the French Navy. Their enemies had always been the English, largely in the form of the British Navy, whom they had fought for supremacy of the sea throughout the world, during countless wars.
Many had fought with French forces on the side of the rebels in the American War of Independence and had seen at first hand the birth of the new Republic. Broadly they welcomed the Revolution.
The immediate hinterland is flat and marshy, the great Marais Breton and Pays de Retz, huge marshes with rich, reclaimed farmland and forests, broken up by canals, deep drainage ditches and dykes, making access difficult for outsiders, easy for those with local knowledge to move around. Its people were introverted and private, lovers of wide-open skies.
They knew the hidden routes and paths through the marshes and were highly skilled in the use of small boats (called nioles) for getting about the maze of waterways and rivers. For moving swiftly from dyke to dyke they simply jumped across, pivoting on long poles (lingues). Renowned as skilled hunters and superb shots with their ancient hunting muskets, their later reputation as lethal snipers and sharpshooters made them feared by the enemy.
To the east, the Bocage, perfect country for guerrilla warfare, a heavily farmed land of gentle hills and hidden valleys, with many woods and forests, criss-crossed by hundreds of streams that turned to torrents in the frequent rains. Its thousands of small irregular fields around which the tracks that passed for roads in the area twisted and turned, were protected by deep ditches and high, impenetrable hedges. Many of the villages hidden down these primitive lanes had remained unchanged for centuries.
The farmland was fragile but fertile, needing careful management, supporting one of the highest population densities in France. However, a couple of bad harvests meant that famine could still strike the land.
The system of crop rotation meant that after a couple of seasons cropping, fields were planted with genets (a type of broom), which grew impenetrably thick and high. Then they were allowed to lie fallow for five years. At any one time, a substantial number of the fields were planted in this way. Many refugees from the violence were able to hide deep inside these plantations and escape the attentions of republican troops.
Further to the east, the Haut Bocage, and the Gatine, high plains with colder winters and a more begrudging, rocky land, its people harder and unforgiving of wrongs, again a place of small thickly hedged fields and mysterious unmapped by-ways.
To the north, Anjou and les Mauges, a wide high plateau broken up by steep rocky valleys that could hide whole regiments and which were perfect for ambush.
And to the south, suddenly discovered in the space of a few kilometres, La Plaine, wide-open, flat, rather boring country with huge fields, stretching as far as the eye can see, with yet another huge marsh, Le Marais Poitevin leading to the coast. Both these areas remained staunchly Republican throughout the wars.
Unlike other parts of France, many of the peasant farmers in the Vendée Militaire were relatively well off. Their lands were self-sufficient, very intensely farmed units dedicated to raising and selling cattle at the many traditional markets in the region (a practice stilll widespread throughout the area).
In consequence the farmers dealt amongst themselves and were largely independent of animal dealers and moneylenders. Food produced in the region not only fed the towns and cities on the circumference, but also travelled by road and water (along the Loire and via associated rivers or canals) to such places as Paris, and even to the Mediterranean.
In the north of the region, the production of grapes for wine, also largely sold to the capital, was paramount.
As with many other areas, craftsmen often combined their skills with working the land. Ownership of a piece of land, however small, meant independence, so this was the ambition of most landless families. There was much competition to purchase when any became available.
The region has long been inhabited, first by prehistoric peoples (there are still a few complete megaliths that have not been broken up because they were in the way or because the stone was useful). Then, after the long Roman occupation, followed those people, for example, Visigoths, Arabs, Normans, the English and even the French themselves, who spent centuries fighting each other in the political and religious wars that eventually led to the forging of the French nation.
As a result, the region is full of often rebuilt churches and chateaux in many different styles, and any number of evocative ruins. Many of the missing stones from these buildings have gone into the construction of the towns, farmhouses and peasant cottages nearby where they can often be spotted.
Until Napoleon took a hand, there were few major roads beyond the Routes Royales, which joined the large towns situated round the periphery of the area ( Map 2.). The rest were largely narrow twisty tracks with not enough room for a cart to turn. In summer they were dusty and rutted, and in winter made impassable through mud or raging streams, which swept them away. Many villages could be effectively cut off for months.
Because of these inadequate roads, much of the region was isolated, not only from the rest of France and the currents of change, but also from itself.
So it remained inured in its own introverted traditions -religious, social, agricultural - and resentful of outside interference in its ways. Most peasants remained illiterate, regarding reading, writing and advances in medical science with suspicion. Even agricultural development, so necessary if French farming was to move forward, had failed to penetrate the region.
News and ideas from the outside world spread via the mass of travelling merchants and salesmen who went from market to market throughout the area. In addition, the Vendéens were great long distance walkers, used to going miles to market. This attribute was to prove a significant factor in their military success.
Loyalties were very local, largely within the parish boundaries, or those immediately adjacent. The concepts of Paris and La Nation (i.e. the French Nation) were too distant to have any real force or relevance, often seen as interfering with local life.
The essentially feudal relationship between the Church, the Nobility and the smaller farmers and peasants had remained largely harmonious for more than a century, thanks to the region being agricultural and prosperous.
Particularly strong was the devotion of the country dwellers to their rather old-fashioned form of Catholicism, a major focal point of their lives. This sat easily with pre-Christian traditions of sacred oaks, sacred places, holy vases and image worship (though the images were largely Catholic ones) and a completely irrational terror of the dark.
In the large towns on the perimeter like Nantes, Angers, Fontenay-le-Comte and Luçon, lived the wealthy, educated, professional and merchant classes, influenced by the American Revolution and by the reforming ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Their culture and thinking had almost nothing in common with the isolated rural areas of the Vendée Militaire and there was certainly no interchange beyond the commercial.
It is interesting to notice that rural areas in La Plaine, which had increased social and commercial intercourse with cities such as Niort and Luçon, as well as the area immediately adjoining Nantes, did not join the insurrection, remaining loyal to the Revolution, though sometimes provoked by republican troops.
Nationally, absolute power still remained in the hands of the King and great nobles. Locally, the aristocracy, lived cheek-by-jowl with their peasants on their estates, but maintained hereditary power. Despite the "purity" of their blood and antiquity of their titles, many were very poor, for all their pretensions. Others had acquired their titles either through money or other more dubious means and were known as the "petite noblesse". There was a tension between the old and new aristocracy.
The Church too, living off its huge landholdings, both in the countryside and in urban areas, also managed political and social affairs with an eye to its own interests and was not keen to share this hold on power.
The emerging and wealthy bourgeois middle-classes that effectively controlled the economy of the country had become increasingly resentful of this archaic political and social system. It effectively excluded them from the running of national or local, affairs, whilst at the same time extracting heavy taxes to finance the extravagance of the King and Court. They resented too the land and property holdings of the Church and Nobility, seen as impeding the growth of their own wealth.
Broadly speaking then, the inhabitants of the larger towns were supporters of any change which would enable them to grab power, whilst the countryside was largely immutable.
Apart from the traditional moans and groans, nobility and peasantry lived largely in harmony, content to operate a system sanctified by time. If rents were low and their income consequently reduced, the methods of production often antique, at least there was time for such pastimes as hunting, protected on the seigneurial (aristocratic) lands.
The small plot of church land which the local priest and his predecessors had cultivated since time immemorial not only provided food for the poorly paid (sometimes unpaid) incumbents but also gave them a tie with the same land as their parishioners.
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