Civil War and Genocide in the Western Loire
Introduction
In the spring of 1793 the population of the Western Loire, took up arms against the French Revolution that was destroying their way of life, but also increasing taxes and demanding more and more young men for military service in foreign lands. A wave of incomers had taken for themselves most of the land confiscated from the Church and the nobility and were running many of the communes in their own interest.
The response of the Revolutionary Government to this popular uprising was to order the massacre of the entire population and to try to turn the region into a desert, as an example to anyone else wishing to oppose them.
As a result, between March 1793 and December 1794, up to a quarter of a million inhabitants of what became known as the Vendée Militaire were brutally and senselessly killed by military units, both irregular and regular, sent by Paris.
Nobody knows for sure how many troops and others from the republican side died because nobody bothered to count their bodies when throwing them into communal burial pits (one hundred thousand seems a reasonable estimate).
Many villages and towns were so totally destroyed and depopulated that for years they were inhabited only by packs of wolves and wild dogs fighting over the human remains rotting in the streets.
The people of the Vendée Militaire fought with such courage and tenacity in an essentially hopeless cause, against superior numbers and resources, that they earned the admiration of Europe. The Emperor Napoléon said, "it was a war of giants" and that he "would have been proud to have been born Vendéen".
Even when supposedly at the mercy of their enemies, their army totally destroyed, this brave people rose off their knees and fought a ferocious guerrilla war for their survival, forcing the French Republic to sue for peace.
The Civil War in the Western Loire has spawned no triumphal monuments to Victory because in truth there were no winners. The new and first French Republic may have carried the day militarily in the end, but in doing so, it besmirched its soul with that most horrible and unforgivable state crime, Genocide.
This act of genocide, perhaps the first in Europe, was committed by Frenchmen on Frenchmen, in a land where the Declaration of the Rights of Man had just been passed into law and where the key words were Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité.
As a result one of the most populous and prosperous areas of France was laid waste, leaving a trail of disease, famine and misery, as well as a legacy of bitterness and distrust that lasted well over a hundred years and which still exists in some areas today.
There were, in all, five uprisings in the Western Loire between March 1793 and June 1832. The first two were against the Revolution, then two against Napoleon and the fifth in support of the Bourbon monarchs after they were ejected from the throne in the revolution of 1830. The direct cause in each case was an increase in central government sanctioned religious persecution and interference with the values of the area. It is said that some "hardheads" continued to resist until the 1850's.
Only the national demands of the First World War finally healed the wounds and reconciled the region to the rest of France.
But even after almost two centuries of determined republican education in schools which has largely suppressed the Civil War and distorted its causes, the memory lives on in the region and perhaps grows stronger.
It is present in those few memorials which Republicans have allowed to be erected; in the ruined or partially rebuilt chateaux that dot the area; in discreet plaques placed on buildings and in fields, marking the site of hideous crimes against humanity, as well as in the unique testament to the Civil War - the stained glass windows of the regions churches.
And more powerfully, despite official and semi-official attempts to deny or distort the historical record, particularly the extreme brutality of the republican troops, the history lives on in the folk memory of the region's people.
So, when a piece of ground was being cleared on the isle of Noirmoutier, officials chose to ignore the folk legend that it was the site of a major Civil War massacre. Hundreds of skeletons were unearthed, still bearing the evidence of their violent ends, and reburied in a local churchyard.
At Les Lucs-sur-Boulogne, folk memory spoke of the hideous massacre of most of the parish - apologist historians denied it. In 1863 the site of an ancient ruined church was cleared and the remains of hundreds of victims discovered. In 1874 a manuscript was found in the roof of a local house bearing the names of the 564 victims, compiled by the refugee parish priest who had come across the scene and recorded the names of his dead flock whilst administering what rites he could. Many historians still chose to deny the events or the authenticity of the document.
Even today, archaeologists, working against time to record historic sites ahead of the construction of motorways, find unmarked and unknown grave pits into which bodies were hurriedly thrown by the hundreds, to avoid the spread of disease and perhaps to hide the horror of what wTas taking place.
Such was the rage of Robespierre and the Convention in Paris at the popular uprising that from the end of January 1794, for nine months, the entire region was criss-crossed by mobile incendiary columns, whose sole purpose was the destruction of every living thing in the area, as well as the means of survival or making a living. One column commander reported proudly that his troops had "sent 600 people behind the hedge"(i.e. killed) in one day.
In their eagerness to punish the simple farmers and peasants, who had defied them, even the name of one Departement was changed from Vendée to Vengée (Vengeance).
Only after Napoléon took power was an uneasy peace and pacification eventually achieved, but at the price of further repression under his Chief of Police, Fouché.
However such was the remaining tension and distrust as well as general lawlessness that twenty-five thousand troops had to be permanently garrisoned in the region. Had these men been available, the balance might have been tipped in favour of France at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. But they were busy putting down another uprising in the Vendée Militaire, but this time instigated, armed and partly paid for by emigrés and the British Government.
The Western Loire was not unique in opposing the aims of the young Republic. In 1793 almost half the country was in arms against the Revolutionaries (see map below).
The aims of the different regions were however not always the same. Some were avowedly Royalist, others engaged in a fratricidal war with the ruling clique in Paris, either because they disapproved of the influence of the "sans culottes" (people of the streets), or wanting power to return to the bourgeois. Still others were more Federalist in approach, wanting power to be spread to the regions.
The citizens of Toulon even went so far as to hand the city over to the British who were eventually removed thanks in large part to the artillery fire of a young officer named Napoléon Bonaparte.
In every case, opposition to the Revolution was crushed with great cruelty, particularly in Lyons where the name Fouché became synonymous with terror.
However nowhere in France was the insurrection so determined or so long as in the Vendée Militaire and nowhere was it repressed with such ferocity and barbarity.
The response of the Revolutionary Government to this popular uprising was to order the massacre of the entire population and to try to turn the region into a desert, as an example to anyone else wishing to oppose them.
As a result, between March 1793 and December 1794, up to a quarter of a million inhabitants of what became known as the Vendée Militaire were brutally and senselessly killed by military units, both irregular and regular, sent by Paris.
Nobody knows for sure how many troops and others from the republican side died because nobody bothered to count their bodies when throwing them into communal burial pits (one hundred thousand seems a reasonable estimate).
Many villages and towns were so totally destroyed and depopulated that for years they were inhabited only by packs of wolves and wild dogs fighting over the human remains rotting in the streets.
The people of the Vendée Militaire fought with such courage and tenacity in an essentially hopeless cause, against superior numbers and resources, that they earned the admiration of Europe. The Emperor Napoléon said, "it was a war of giants" and that he "would have been proud to have been born Vendéen".
Even when supposedly at the mercy of their enemies, their army totally destroyed, this brave people rose off their knees and fought a ferocious guerrilla war for their survival, forcing the French Republic to sue for peace.
The Civil War in the Western Loire has spawned no triumphal monuments to Victory because in truth there were no winners. The new and first French Republic may have carried the day militarily in the end, but in doing so, it besmirched its soul with that most horrible and unforgivable state crime, Genocide.
This act of genocide, perhaps the first in Europe, was committed by Frenchmen on Frenchmen, in a land where the Declaration of the Rights of Man had just been passed into law and where the key words were Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité.
As a result one of the most populous and prosperous areas of France was laid waste, leaving a trail of disease, famine and misery, as well as a legacy of bitterness and distrust that lasted well over a hundred years and which still exists in some areas today.
There were, in all, five uprisings in the Western Loire between March 1793 and June 1832. The first two were against the Revolution, then two against Napoleon and the fifth in support of the Bourbon monarchs after they were ejected from the throne in the revolution of 1830. The direct cause in each case was an increase in central government sanctioned religious persecution and interference with the values of the area. It is said that some "hardheads" continued to resist until the 1850's.
Only the national demands of the First World War finally healed the wounds and reconciled the region to the rest of France.
But even after almost two centuries of determined republican education in schools which has largely suppressed the Civil War and distorted its causes, the memory lives on in the region and perhaps grows stronger.
It is present in those few memorials which Republicans have allowed to be erected; in the ruined or partially rebuilt chateaux that dot the area; in discreet plaques placed on buildings and in fields, marking the site of hideous crimes against humanity, as well as in the unique testament to the Civil War - the stained glass windows of the regions churches.
And more powerfully, despite official and semi-official attempts to deny or distort the historical record, particularly the extreme brutality of the republican troops, the history lives on in the folk memory of the region's people.
So, when a piece of ground was being cleared on the isle of Noirmoutier, officials chose to ignore the folk legend that it was the site of a major Civil War massacre. Hundreds of skeletons were unearthed, still bearing the evidence of their violent ends, and reburied in a local churchyard.
At Les Lucs-sur-Boulogne, folk memory spoke of the hideous massacre of most of the parish - apologist historians denied it. In 1863 the site of an ancient ruined church was cleared and the remains of hundreds of victims discovered. In 1874 a manuscript was found in the roof of a local house bearing the names of the 564 victims, compiled by the refugee parish priest who had come across the scene and recorded the names of his dead flock whilst administering what rites he could. Many historians still chose to deny the events or the authenticity of the document.
Even today, archaeologists, working against time to record historic sites ahead of the construction of motorways, find unmarked and unknown grave pits into which bodies were hurriedly thrown by the hundreds, to avoid the spread of disease and perhaps to hide the horror of what wTas taking place.
Such was the rage of Robespierre and the Convention in Paris at the popular uprising that from the end of January 1794, for nine months, the entire region was criss-crossed by mobile incendiary columns, whose sole purpose was the destruction of every living thing in the area, as well as the means of survival or making a living. One column commander reported proudly that his troops had "sent 600 people behind the hedge"(i.e. killed) in one day.
In their eagerness to punish the simple farmers and peasants, who had defied them, even the name of one Departement was changed from Vendée to Vengée (Vengeance).
Only after Napoléon took power was an uneasy peace and pacification eventually achieved, but at the price of further repression under his Chief of Police, Fouché.
However such was the remaining tension and distrust as well as general lawlessness that twenty-five thousand troops had to be permanently garrisoned in the region. Had these men been available, the balance might have been tipped in favour of France at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. But they were busy putting down another uprising in the Vendée Militaire, but this time instigated, armed and partly paid for by emigrés and the British Government.
The Western Loire was not unique in opposing the aims of the young Republic. In 1793 almost half the country was in arms against the Revolutionaries (see map below).
The aims of the different regions were however not always the same. Some were avowedly Royalist, others engaged in a fratricidal war with the ruling clique in Paris, either because they disapproved of the influence of the "sans culottes" (people of the streets), or wanting power to return to the bourgeois. Still others were more Federalist in approach, wanting power to be spread to the regions.
The citizens of Toulon even went so far as to hand the city over to the British who were eventually removed thanks in large part to the artillery fire of a young officer named Napoléon Bonaparte.
In every case, opposition to the Revolution was crushed with great cruelty, particularly in Lyons where the name Fouché became synonymous with terror.
However nowhere in France was the insurrection so determined or so long as in the Vendée Militaire and nowhere was it repressed with such ferocity and barbarity.
Necessarily I have had to be brief and select only a fraction of the information available - I have tried to choose what is readily accessible to the visitor, but to anyone with the will to explore there is so much more to discover around almost every corner.
I have also had to compress the complex issues of the French Revolution and the war in the Vendée Militaire into a hundred odd pages and may have erred on the side of oversimplification. For this I apologise in advance.
If readers should sense that I have shown a little partiality towards the people of the region, they are right, but I hope this minor bias will not spoil your enjoyment of this text.
I have also had to compress the complex issues of the French Revolution and the war in the Vendée Militaire into a hundred odd pages and may have erred on the side of oversimplification. For this I apologise in advance.
If readers should sense that I have shown a little partiality towards the people of the region, they are right, but I hope this minor bias will not spoil your enjoyment of this text.
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