War of the Vendée - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

(Or them) the war (S) of the Vendée is a Civil war which opposes in favor and adversaries of the revolutionary movement, between the An I and the An IV (1793 and 1796) during the French revolution, and more particularly during the First Republic.

As everywhere in France, the Vendée knew country demonstrations, between 1789 and 1792. But it is at the time of the Levy in masse, in 1793, that the revolt or Vendean rebellion , so called the Vendean insurrection , started initially like a traditional Jacquerie country, before taking the form of a movement counter-revolutionary.

Spread out over three years, the war knew several phases, with a short period of peace, in spring 1795. It stopped only at the beginning of 1796, afterwards many combat, died and destruction.

Context

Historiographic evolution on the causes of the insurrection

The historical study of the war of the Vendée is marked by a conflict long tradition, where are expressed the mémorielles competitions, the quarrels between historical and current schools ideological, between the university historians and the scholars, the publicity agents or the academicians. The result of these quarrels is an immense bibliography, opposing two currents, that of the partisans of the Revolution and that of the partisans of the Vendean ones.

The first texts published on this war are the Memories of actors, royalists like Madam of Rochejacquelein, Poirier of Beauvais, Puisaye, and republicans like Grouchy, Kléber, most famous Choudieu… is that of the Mémoires Madam of Rochejacquelein, widow of Lescure, which describes a spontaneous rising of the peasants to defend their King and their Church.

During the 19th century, the question opposes particularly the Historien S, basing their research exclusively on the files, and the scholars, engaged in the defense of the Vendée, who collect the mémorielles traditions and transmit them. The principal figures of this fight are:

on the side of the university, Charles-Louis Chassin, raises Alphonse Aulard, which published eleven volumes of files and memories. Adopting the republican point of view, he denies any popular character with the movement, considering that they are a pure machination noble and priests, followed blindly by the most ignorant part of the population. In addition, hostile to the Sans-culottes and Robespierre, it returns this last person in charge of the repression of 1794. Alphonse Aulard, first holder of the pulpit of history of the French revolution of the Sorbonne, Jules Michelet or Jean Jaurès, authors one and the other of a Histoire of the French revolution , contributed, from the influence of their writings, to build a certain vision of the Vendean insurrection.

on the side of the scholars, sensitivity monarchist, traditionalist or catholic, the abbot Bossard, the abbot Deniau, author of a History of the Vendée in five volumes based on oral testimonys and the memories partisans published during one century, or the abbot Uzureau, priest in the Diocese of Angers, which offers the analysis of the “White”, based on documents, sometimes the same ones as Chassin. According to them, the troops of Paysan S - inevitably very catholic, very attached to their nobility - are carried out by small the local Noblesse in order to restore the royalty and to save Catholicism.

Being based largely on the oral testimonys, collected and transmitted by “white” authors, the scholars concentrate on the violence of the repression of 1793-1794, while the predilection of “Blue” for the files prohibits any evocation of felt republicans and, for a long time, an evaluation of their sufferings. The “white” reading is found among the academicians, in the writings of Pierre Gaxotte or Jean-François Chiappe.

For one century, the Historiographie has largely renewed the question.

A revisited history

At the 20th century, the historical research knew deep evolutions, with in particular the development of the socio-economic analysis. Claude Petitfrère sees in this renewal the mark of a third category of authors, around Paul Bois, Marcel Faucheux and Charles Tilly, whom it calls the “scientific” history.

As of the years 1920, Albert Mathiez considers that the causes of the Vendean insurrection, in spring 1793, are to be sought under the economic conditions and social of the time.

With the beginning of the year 1950, Marcel Faucheux watch that the fundamental causes of the insurrection are to be sought well beyond the civil Constitution of the clergy, of the execution of Louis XVI or of the Levy in masse, which they must be connected so that it names the “Paupérisme the Vendée N”. The Révolution did not know to satisfy the hopes generated by the convocation of the General states in 1789: the sharecropper S, majority in the Vendée, do not profit from the abolition of the feudal rights, which are redeemable (until in 1793), the national goods benefit the primarily middle-class and with the commercial S. From there, the upheaval of the traditional social structures, the authoritative reform of the Clergé and the Levy in masse at most constitute the spark which caused the explosion of an older dissatisfaction.

Being based on the detailed analysis of the the Sarthe, Paul Bois looks further into the question, by emphasizing the hatred which then opposes the peasant to the middle-class man and watch the existence of a deep social cleavage between urban and rural, very former to the Revolution, which constitutes one of the major causes of rising.

This work was largely confirmed by work of the American Sociologue Charles Tilly, for which the growth of the French cities of XVIIIe, the economic aggressiveness of those and their tendency to monopolize the local political power caused country resistances and hatreds, whose Vendean insurrection is only one exacerbated example.

On its side, Albert Soboul describes agricultural work force in the embarrassment, predisposed “to draw up itself against the middle-class men, very often farmer general in this country of share-cropping, traders in grains and purchasers of national goods”, of the departments of the West to the very sharp faith since the efforts of catechization of Mulotins, congregation of missionary S established with Saint-Laurent-on-Separates since the end of the XVIIe century, finally the assimilation, by the Paysan S, of the drawing lot for the raised 300 000 men with the militia, institution of the Old Mode particularly honnie. If he considers that “the simultaneous character of rising authorizes to think that it was concerted”, it explains why the peasants “were neither royalist, nor in favor of the Old Mode” and that the noble ones were initially surprised by rising, before exploiting it at their ends.

More recently, Jean-Clement Martin indicated that, if the peasants passed to the Contre-révolution, according to the provinces, for very diverse reasons, including between the various zones of the Vendée, the words of religious order and Community defense are common for them. These watchwords are due to the maintenance of the weight of the Impôt S and the Fermage S, with the aggravation of the fate of the sharecropper S, with the incapacity of the small rural elites to buy national goods, monopolized by the urban elites, with the loss of the autonomy of the small common rural vis-a-vis to the boroughs, where are installed the capacities policy (the district) and economic, with the attacks of the civil Constitution of the clergy, with freedoms of the communities, which defend their priest and their religious ceremonies. The tensions assemble until March 1793, without finding discharge system, when the Levy in masse provides the occasion to the communities to be linked against the government officials, in a movement which returns to the traditional Jacquerie S, and to form bands with the head of which the local elites are placed, of more or less gladly.

In the the Sarthe, they are the easy farmers and their allies which are raised, whereas the rural dependant ones on the cities and their neighbors tisserands represent the spearhead of the insurrection in the Mauges. As for the chouans of Ille-et-Vilaine, they are recruited primarily among the sharecropper S and their close relations. In all the cases, it is the defense of the Community balance, put at evil by the civil and religious laws of the Révolution, which pushes towards the revolt. The Royalisme seems not very deep there, as in the Midi in 1791-1792, and personal and local hatreds play a big role, with oppositions between common neighbors; in the majority of the cases, risings start with “settlings of score, huntings for the revolutionists and plundering”.

Royalist activists, pertaining to the rural elites, take part in the first insurrections, specifies it, but they are very few; the noble counter-revolutionaries imply themselves little in the movement, in March 1793, in front of an unorganized movement and badly armed.

All are surprised by the brutality of the rebellion, the majority hesitate to rejoin the insurrectionists, some even as Cart must be constrained there by the force.

In addition to the thesis of the plot “clérico-peerage-book”, Jean-Clement Martin calls into question, with Roger Dupuy, antagonism “city - countryside” (very former to the Revolution) and the difference in nature which would exist between the origins of the chouannery and the causes of the war of the Vendée.

For Roger Dupuy, which notes that the recent Historiographie “is released from the narrow optics which attached to the religious problem a paramount importance in the process of rising”, it is “side of the major identity of the Communauté S country-women” which it is necessary to seek the roots. “Rising is all the more exasperated that violence plays a determining role in the constitution of this identity”: violence of misery, violence of young men attached to make respect their honor, collective violence against the bad lord who misuses his feudal privileges.

Applying the approach of the Microphone-history to three Parish S of the Mauges between 1750 and 1830, in the middle of the “Vendée-soldier”, Anne Roland-Boulestreau offers a table of the local notability to the day before of the Revolution (large sharecroppers with Neuvy or the Pine-in-Mauges, members of the world commercial with Holy-Christine), a notability founded on the public recognition: its members occupy of the public office (Cathelineau are sextons of wire father), are used as moral guarantee in front of notary and are often selected like witnesses at the time of the marriages.

Then, analyzing the reactions of the three common S vis-a-vis the Revolution, it notices that notable Neuvy and Pin are confirmed after 1789 with the head of the communes, while with Holy-Christine, commune open to the trade, with many craftsmen, new social categories mix with old. With Neuvy and the Pine, the communes are closed around the traditional elites (which acquire few national goods) vis-a-vis the reforms which threaten the community. With Holy-Christine, on the contrary, where the notable buildings acquire some grounds, the reforms are seen like the occasion to gain in importance, while becoming in particular Chef-lieu of canton. In 1792, the traditional elites are not represented with the elections, marking their refusal of the political evolution, and leave the place to notable more modest, the but pertaining one to the same networks and parentèles. The following year, into the beginning of the insurrection, the 27 men who follow Cathelineau, into the Pin, are integrated in the parentèles and networks of the commune (two thirds are craftsmen, a third of the peasants). With Holy-Christine, the Vendean patriots amount especially among the modest craftsmen recently established in the parish, little integrated into the networks of the community.

Lastly, studying the emergence of a new sociability forged through the test of the Vendean insurrection, it notes that the participation in the Vendean insurrection is from now on a requirement to obtain the confidence of the local populations. With Holy-Christine, where the war leaves the very divided population, the traditional commercial elites are évincées by men of the ground and the nobility, which invests functions that she scorned before. The rooting and the bonds of confidence from which profit make it possible small notable they to be, at the XIXe century, with the noble ones, the intermediaries impossible to circumvent between the community and the State.

The situation before the insurrection

At the end of the XVIIIe century, the Vendean company (current department of the Vendée and part of the departments bordering: south of the Loire-Inférieure, west of Maine-et-Loire, north of the Two-Sevres) has a social composition similar to good of other provinces of France, very rural. The West had been lately reconverted with the Catholicisme by the father of Montfort.

At the end of the Old Mode, according to Michel Vovelle, the property peerage-book occupies more half of the grounds, against 10 to 20% for the Bourgeoisie, less than 30% for the farming community and less than 5% for the Clergé. In the same way, it evaluates the density of the population between 700 and 790 inhabitants per square mile and general information. Lastly, the elimination of illiteracy is rather weak there, compared to the north and in the east of the country, with 10 to 20% of the couple knowing to sign their name.

In 1789, the peasants of the West rather favorably accommodate the beginnings of the Révolution. The Registers of grievances of the Brittany, to the Maine, the Anjou or bottom Poitou testify to the hostility of the farming community with regard to survivals of the feudal system , just as the election of patriotic deputies, than confirm the violences antiseigneuriales Great fear or the violences repeated against the aristocrats and their residences in 1790 and 1791. In addition, the the Vendée and the Maine-et-Loire are two of the twelve departments which send the most deputies Jacobins to the legislative Assemblée. Many priests also seem to have accompanied the movement with enthusiasm: in the Vendée, some covered the new loads created by the Révolution, for example while becoming mayors. The Revolution, like everywhere else, thus represented a great hope.

Rise of dissatisfaction

The July 12th 1790, the constituent Assembly vote the civil Constitution of the clergy. The Decree of application, last in November 1790 and signed by the king the December 26th 1790, provides that the officialized priests, like all the civils servant, lend oath to the constitution; the civil Constitution of the clergy and this oath are rejected by a whole part of the Clergé, which regards the priests swearers as deviating of the catholic way. Anxious for their safety, of many peasants prefer to continue with the refractory priests. This contributes to deeply divide the Vendean ones between partisans and adversaries of measurement and to develop a certain dissatisfaction among the country communities which, moreover, do not perceive improvement of their situation since the Révolution. In relatively converted campaigns coldly and West, the clergy mainly became refractory, in the West, with the obligation of the constitutional oath, and after the pontifical briefs condemning the civil Constitution of the clergy, in 1791. In May 1791, the constituent Assembly takes a decree on the freedom of the worships authorizing the refractory worship, but this Tolérance does not satisfy any camp, and the positions harden.

The application of the civil Constitution of the clergy (July 1791) causes a multitude of acts of resistance among the population, which resorts more and more to physical violence. In the Poitou, make out see in the civil constitution the work of the Protestant and the Jewish . Brawls oppose “aristocrats” and “democrats”, between parishioners (in some Paroisse S, the populations make body to protect their priest and their practices from life), especially at the time of the burials. More serious, in January 1791 in the commune of Saint-Christophe-of-Ligneron the (in the south of Nantes, close to Machecoul), of the conflicts develop around the opposition to the civil constitution of the clergy, and the intervention of the national guards in load of the maintenance of law and order causes the first dead ones of the Vendée; but the conflict does not degenerate.

In this context, the legislative Assemblée takes, in November 1791 and the May 27th 1792, of the repressive decrees against the refractory clergy, whose worship is prohibited. The second envisages the deportation out of the French territory of any refractory priest on the simple request of 20 citizens. The day before the August 10th, 1792, when the Parliament removes the last existing congregations, a good part are imprisoned. Obliged to hide, in order to avoid the deportation with the bagne in Guyana, the priests not swearers are protected by women, who take part in clandestine masses. In spite of these measurements, the new constitutional clergy is not able to be essential in a broad part of the area. Sworn in represent, according to Michel Vovelle, 0 to 35% of the priests in Loire-Inférieure (like the whole of Brittany) and in the Vendée, against 35 to 55% in the Maine-et-Loire and 75 to 100% in the Two-Sevres, in 1791. As a whole, more than 65% of the clergy refuses to lend oath in the West (against 48% at the national level). Around Châtillon and from Bressuire, an overall homogeneous zone of refusal is distinguished. The religion of the peasants of the West, as in good of other places, is a propitiatory religion (aiming at ensuring the abundance of harvests, the fruitfulness of the cattle, the realization of a marriage, the birth of a child, the cure of a disease, etc), which organizes the Calendrier and the landscape, with a call to the specialized saints, with their vaults, with particular rites. In the same way, the ecclesiastical career represents means of promotion social for many country families, a means that the exclusion of the refractory priests threatens.

Sign that the attachment with the Ancien Mode - and the royalty - is not the factor release of the first riots, null riot is not observed during the emigration of noble, nor when Louis XVI is guillotine in January 1793.

Circumstances of the release of the war

Dissatisfaction was latent. As of February 1793, the Charente-Lower faces an surge of refugees. The insurrection bursts truly in March when the Convention, the February 23rd, orders a raised 300 000 men “to face the sudden fall of manpower of the armies of the Republic due to the losses, with the desertions but especially with the massive departures of the volunteers, surveys the previous year for the duration of a campaign and which, the enemy having been brought back to the borders and even beyond, estimated to be able to return on their premises”. The Vendée (altogether not very concerned because of a weak puncture) represents only one of the provinces which rise in 1793, like the valley of the Rhone, where agitation is endemic since 1790 and will last until 1818. In June 1793, towns of Bordeaux, Marseilles, Toulouse, Nimes and Lyon, as well as the Normandy see the development of federalistic Insurrections and royalist.

Remained with the country, the minor nobility did nothing but follow the country insurrection, before recovering it definitively and giving him a coloring frankly and explicitly royalist and catholic, especially as from July 1793.

The republican camp is then divided between of Gironde and mountain, which is mutually shown to support the Contre-révolution. While the Breton ones are crushed by Canclaux in the extreme West, by Beysser between Rennes and Nantes (agitation will begin again only at the end of 1793, in the form of the Chouannerie), the agitation repressed in Alsace, to the south of the the Loire, the insurrectionists not only manage to overflow the national guards, too very few, and to seize several cities, but beat a column of soldiers of trade, the March 19th.

Envoys to accompany the lifting by 300 000 men, the envoys on mission of the Convention are alarmed by the spectacle of risings, which they dramatize, showing the local authorities, often moderated, of complicity, and claim of Paris of energetic measurements. Considering that the Contre-révolution is everywhere with work, organizing plots, and that risings form an organized unit, the “military Vendée” becomes the symbol of this Counter-revolution.

This design was taken again at the same time by royalist writer S and catholic, for the “magnifier”, and of the writers and historians republican, at XIXe and the beginning of the XXe centuries. This construction always has important effects on the development of the local and regional identities: thus, many Vendéens interiorized an identity strongly marked by the Religion, even a nostalgia of a Ancien folk Mode - two aspects which, one saw it, however do not correspond at the origins of the insurrection of 1793. In the same way, the identity of the Nantes townsman is worked out amongst other things compared to “belly-with-cabbages” Vendean, of the countryman, always suspect of attachment to the royalty, and which it is of good tone to make fun.

To conclude, the Vendean insurrection is not born from a single cause, but from multiple factors, all related to a popular discontent growing. The origin of this insurrection does not reside, at least for the peasants and craftsmen who were in the beginning, in any nostalgia of the Ancien Mode. The disappointments and frustrations, accumulated since several years; the arrival of a new administrative hierarchy, a Middle-class of the boroughs which monopolizes political power and economic; the aggravation of the situation of the peasants; economic difficulties and social, with the forced course of the Assignat; questioning of the country communities and their religious uses; all that constituted a whole of factors, whose conscription was only the water drop, which makes it possible to explain the gathering of the first bands of Artisan S and Paysan S.

Vendean wars and Chouannerie

Although having common points, the Vendean wars must be distinguished from the actions of the Chouannerie. In the first case, in the south of the the Loire, the insurrectionists take the advantage on the republican troops and organize in “catholic and royal Armée” inside the territory which they control; these wars oppose two framed armies. In the second case, the republican troops initially carry it on the insurrectionists. The resurgence of the conflict, at the end of 1793, sees the development of a multitude of specific local resistances organized in Guérilla S in Brittany, in the Maine and in Normandy. However, in fact the same reasons push with the revolt.

First feats of arms and organization

Fatal jacqueries

At the beginning, this Insurrection hardly differs from the other insurrections which develop in France with the Printemps and with the be 1793. The difference, they is that, everywhere else, the troops come to end from the riot S. In the Vendée, on the contrary, a column armed soldiers with trade is demolished the March 19th with the Bridge-Charrault, involving the area of a confrontation limited towards a Civil war. In the north of the the Loire, the insurrectionary movements are repressed brutally but effectively in a month.

The Sunday March 3rd, with Cholet, of young people of the canton joined together by the District “to take note of the methods of the recruitment of the local quota for the lifting of the 300.000 men” express their refusal to leave.

An army counter-revolutionary

Following days, 35 000 men meet in Chemillé to try to organize itself in a true army. Several noble, often of former officers, joined them: Cart, of Elbée, Lescure, Rochejaquelein. These chiefs resulting from small the Noblesse did not assert themselves of their own initiative on these bands of villager. A religious faith generally not very intense, having been able to preserve all their goods since 1789 and being even materially enriched by the important purchase by national goods caused by the Revolution, they do not feel spontaneously responsible for these insurgent bands. It is only later that they will be able to recover popular anger to give him a definitely catholic and royalist turn.

The goal of the new army is to seize Chalonnes, avant-garde of Angers. Including/understanding the strategic interest defend it, the republicans concentrated 4 000 men and 5 guns. The 22, in spite of the opinion of the Maire and the officers of the national guard, the municipal ones and crowd go to the White; the national guards are folded up towards Angers by throwing their guns in the the Loire. Whereas Angers expects an imminent attack, the army dissolves and the combatants return in their hearths. “One had raised oneself to avoid being soldier and there was no question of becoming it to restore monarchy in the capital. More than one rising counter-revolutionary, the rebellion remained still a jacquerie against the requirements considered to be intolerable of the nation”.

The republicans try to take again the advantage. Under the orders of the general Marcé, charged by Convention with subduing the Rebellion, a column of 2 200 soldiers, 100 riders, equipped with 8 guns, seeks to cross the insurgent zone of La Rochelle to Nantes. The March 17th, at Chantonnay, the column puts in escape the peasants, who give up forty dead and 3 guns. The evening of the 19, whereas it is on the point of bivouacking in a content of valley, in the Vendean Bocage, they is taken in a shooting. Relaxing itself, the column flees towards La Rochelle, which it joined in one night. On its arrival, Marcé is relieved and stopped.

The offensive capacity of the republican forces was destroyed. The large assemblies of the previous days still develop, under commanement of a handle the noble ones like Royrand and Sapinaud. However, the bands of the Breton Marsh and bottom Scrap-metal, is 10 000 men, under the orders of Jean-Baptiste Jolly, a former sergeant of the royal army, fail by twice in their attempt seizing the Sand-with Olonne, the 24 and March 27th (this day, they lose 300 men, against 2 for the republicans).

The military Vendée

Organization

At the end of March, the “military Vendée” is for a drawn good portion: the department of the the Vendée, southernmost halves of the Loire-Inférieure and the Maine-et-Loire. The North-West of the Two-Sevres falls in its turn in May.

The insurgent armed is centralized little, badly equipped (the three quarters of the men do not have rifle before the attack of Chalonnes, most of the weapons and ammunition coming from the skins from the republican soldiers) and nonpermanent, the peasants turning over on their grounds as soon as they can it after the engagements. However, of the soldiers of trade, deserters of the republican army, join it, bringing their experiment to him. Thus, Cart hardly has authority on its men, whose failures and the careful tactics poke mistrust, initially; it is the arrival better elements, of which republican deserters, and the constitution of a Cavalerie of elite made up of noble and middle-class men equipped with their expenses which enable him to gain its first truths success and to impose itself.

Three armies, made up starting from the gatherings of March, compose it: the army of Anjou, in the east of the river Separates Nantes (40 000 men); the army of the Center, in the middle of the the Vendée (10 000 men); the army of the Marsh, between the Separates Nantes and the Atlantic Ocean (15 000 men). They are occupied above all to safeguard the portion of territory from which they result.

“Popular” army, it finds a support as well at the logistic level as military among the small people of the campaigns. The famous “mills of the Vendée” from which the position of the wings are used to prevent movements of the governmental troops are an illustration.

The strategy of the engagements, based on operations of harassing, is organized around the assets which the Bocage gets, everywhere present: composed of hedges and sunken lanes, it facilitates the operations of ambush and embarrassment the operation of the great units of the revolutionary army. Lastly, the military Vendée obtains a supreme authority, which also makes civil decisions, the Superior council of administration of the Vendée, after the catch of Fontenay on May 26th.

The first operations are one big hit for the White. After a first failure with the First Battle of Fontenay-the-Count the May 16th, the army of the Center, with Rochejaquelein, Lescure, D' Elbée, Cathelineau, Stofflet and Bonchamps, enters Fontenay-the-Count (Second battle of Fontenay-the-Count) the May 25th and beats the 7 000 men of the general Chalbos (half are made prisoners), before withdrawing itself. The following week, the states majors of the armies of the Center and the Mauges decide to attack Saumur; a detachment of 1 500 republicans is overcome with Vihiers the June 6th, of the republican reinforcements coming from Thouars dispersed with Montreuil-Bellay the June 8th; the White seize Saumur the June 10th, with approximately 15 000 rifles and more than 60 guns (to obtain the rendering of the garrison, they made work in front of them the women and the children of the national guards. In front of the demoralization of Blue, 4 riders alone manage to seize the Arrow.

However, whereas the royalist staff hesitates between going over Nantes or Paris and attacking Niort, in order to destroy the army of Biron, as of the June 12th, 20 000 of the 30 000 peasants gathered return on their premises, thus ruining the successes of the previous days. In addition, of the competitions oppose between them the multitude of the officers chosen by their men. To ensure the cohesion of the unit, the chiefs - resulting from small the Nobility - elect " généralissime" not-noble, Cathelineau, the June 12th.

The failure of the attack against Nantes

Transfered of Galerne

A reorganization of the republican troops

In front of successes of the Contre-révolution naires, which beat with the Bataille of Vihiers an army of 6.000 men made up of the garrisons of Angers and Saumur (which lose 1.500 killed and 22 guns) and by fear of contagion, Biron is relieved and the noble generals (Canclaux, Grouchy, Aubert-Dubayet) replaced, on the initiative of the Minister for the war Bouchotte, by Sans-culottes (Rossignol, Ronsin, Léchelle, former servicemen, but also the actor of the Th3e4atre Fran1cais Grammont or the brewer Santerre ), which appears poor generals, with the head of composite army a “, badly equipped, condemned to plundering to survive and hated by the populations”. This interference of the Hébertistes in the war of the Vendée lasts until November.

The crossing of the Loire and the movement towards Granville

The return towards the Vendée and the destruction of the catholic and royal Armed

The repression of the Vendean insurrection

End of the Transfered of Galerne mark the beginning of a policy of bloody reprisals.

The Terror in Nantes

Sent on mission in the five Breton departments by a Decree of the August 14th 1793, Jean-Baptiste Carrier is installed with Nantes by a Arrêté of the Comité of public hello of the September 29th (where it remains in spite of new a Décret October 13rd, assigning it to the Armée with the West with Bourbotte, Francastel and Turreau, the cousin of the general). Arrived the October 8th, it finds a city deeply divided between its popular elements and its notable. At the end of September and at the beginning of October, its predecessor, Philippeaux, relieved the elected administrations in December 1792 and created a committee and a tribunal revolutionary; this Tribunal formed the Compagnie Marat, a small revolutionary army of an about sixty men recruited on the port (for 10 books per day).

Having start of the instruments of a policy of Terror, Carrier uses corn requisitioned in the Vendée to nourish the army and the small Nantes people, creates a police force occults (in competition with the Marat company) and simplifies the procedure of the revolutionary Tribunal, which leads to the Guillotine 144 people suspected of complicity with Vendean the in November and in December 1793. After the crushing of Savenay, thousands of prisoners are sent in the prisons of Nantes, then, in front of the lack of place, in the cargo warehouses (where several thousands die of epidemic). In front of the medical threat that they represent for the city, and because it acts counter-revolutionaries, a military commission is created; at the end of December at the end of February, it makes shoot 2.600 people (with a maximum of 200 executions in one day). But, as one is not able any more to bury them and that the shootings are not enough, Carrier organizes the “Mariages republican”, massive drowning of the “brigands” of the insurrection, attaches and dependant between them and stripped of all their goods

One does not know the exact number of these drownings (there would have been between 7 and 11), but one can say that 300 to 400 people are drowned each time. For the number of the victims, several evaluations coexist, among the authors. In 1839, Ange Guépin speaks about 3.500 drowned. In 1924, Gaston Martin estimates them at 1.800. Among the more recent evaluations, Alfred Lallie considers that there were 4.860 victims. As for Jean-Clement Martin, he explains why nearly 4.000 people at least die of these drownings. 10.000 undoubtedly on the whole disappear during the few months that Carrier passes to Nantes.

In the same way, 132 notable Nantes is stopped like federalists and envoys with Paris to be judged by the revolutionary Tribunal; 12 die during the voyage, 24 in prison. The exactions of Carrier are denounced by Julien of Paris, agent of the Comité of public hello on mission on the Atlantic coast, and it is obliged to ask its recall the 9 Pluviôse An II (February 8th 1794).

Repression in Angers and Saumur

With Angers, where the envoys on mission Hentz and Francastel are confronted, like Carrier with Nantes, on arrival of thousands of Vendean prisoners after the Bataille of Savenay, the soldiers form in January 1794 military a commission known as Parein, which condemns to death 2.000 people, primarily women, in a few weeks, most of the time for activity Contre-révolution naire (generic term returning as well to an active participation with the rebellion as the participation in a mass given by a refractory priest, the relationship with insurrectionists or even the refusal to yield in advance judges). Jean-Clement Martin notes:

This diversion at personal ends of the repressive principles causes the rejection of this military commission by the local revolutionists.

The practice of the drowning is also used, with a less measurement, in Angers and Saumur, where thousands of insurrectionists were imprisoned.

Infernal columns

After Savenay, Rochejaquelein and Stofflet, which managed to cross the the Loire, are joined by a few thousands of survivors. On its side, Cart, which did not take share with the “Virée of Galerne”, holds the Breton Marais. In front of the return of a guerilla warfare and knacks, Blue, exasperated, same those originating in the departments concerned, claim the execution of the decree of the 1793 on the “destruction of the Vendée”. Named general-in-chief of the Armed with the West, although noble, the general Turreau proposes a plan of columns flamers, baptized the “infernal Colonnes”, with the Comité of public hello, which does not give him the full power that he hopes for, being satisfied to invite it to carry out the decisions of the Convention by respecting “the spirit and the terms” of his Décret S.

The February 17th, the plan is put at execution, with two armies divided each one into six columns, leaving one the west, the other of the east. However, all the chiefs of the columns did not apply the orders of destruction and systematic slaughters. In the same way, the Members of the Commission civil and administrative created with Nantes to recover vivres and cattle with the profit of the Blue ones, accompany the armies, which makes it possible to save lives and localities. Certain columns, on the other hand, are delivered to plundering and massacre the civil population, raping and torturing, killing women and children with the knife not to waste the powder, burning Village S entireties, destroying harvests and killing the cattle. Well far from making disappear the revolt, the more so as out of the Vendean patriots are killed very as much as insurrectionists, the columns make flee the population (see the refugees , hereafter). Some leave the department, but several thousands join the bands of Cart and Stofflet, intensifying the Guérilla, which becomes crueler than ever. This period also sees the return of practices related to the violence of Ancien Mode: “on decision of a military commission, heads of some Vendean and chouans notable, of which that of the prince de Talmond, are same exposed after decapitation to terrify the public. ”

In answer, Cart assembles a victorious campaign in the Marsh and the Scrap-metal, Rochejaquelein and Stofflet in the Mauges. The Blue ones are thus dispersed with Cholet, Beaupréau, Bressuire and Nickle silver-the-Castle. The April 22nd 1794, Cart, Stofflet, Sapinaud and Marigny are found with the castle of Boulaye, in order to bury their quarrels and to link their forces, but in vain. The July 10th, the men of Stofflet shoot Marigny.

Turreau is finally suspended the May 17th 1794, and the activity of the infernal Colonnes decrease gradually during the Printemps. This represented a recovery into hand of the reins of the State by the Committee of public hello which, “at the price of a use of the firmest watchwords and of an iron determination”, manages to control violences which ensanglantent the country.

According to the authors, the assessment of these massacres varies between 20 000 and 200 000 dead. A hundred villages are burned, but all their inhabitants are not killed, much finding the means of taking refuge in wood and the Bocage S and joining the insurrectionists. The Vendée will lengthily be marked by this dramatic passage of its history (to be brought closer to the “Dragonnade S” of the time of Louis XIV) and will preserve the marks of them a long time, as well in the landscape as in mentalities.

For Jean-Clement Martin:

After the victory of Savenay, the revolutionary army hesitates between a strict military occupation, preached by Marceau and Kléber, and the destruction of the always active risen bands. The commander-in-chief Turreau joins with this second solution by covering Décret S of August and October 1793, but by leaving his free generals apply the clauses of protection of the populations disarmed - in spite of the reiteration of the orders of the Convention. Some generals maintain a discipline military which preserves the rural ones. Others engage their soldiers in an operation of devastation. Organized in columns “flamers”, baptized “infernal”, the republicans massacre, burn and violent one on their passage, primarily in the Nantes Pays and the Mauges (other zones being more or less protected by hostile generals with these practices, or by representatives on mission jealous of their prerogatives). The destruction is important, though random and often ineffective, ressuscitant rural resistance where it had disappeared and completing to unify the Vendée area around the insurgent chiefs.

Peace

A short and dubious pacification

With the Spring 1794, the infernal Colonnes of Turreau are dissolved, and of measurements taken to confine the soldiers and to prohibit plunderings. Under the Convention thermidorienne, the representatives on mission (Boletus, Boursault, Lane) and the new military chiefs, Notch in Brittany, Canclaux in the Vendée, pass to a policy of leniency. The prisoners are slackened, the amnestied unsubmissive people. The September 24th and the October 13rd, a Amnistie is promised to the rebels of Ille-et-Vilaine and the Morbihan which would go in the ten days. Thereafter, the Amnistie is extended to the rebels who would subject themselves in one month by the Décret of the December 2nd, while the representatives on mission are authorized by the Convention to negotiate with the royalist chiefs. The December 23rd, of the negotiations are started, and Cart receives Office-Batardière, republican emissary, the 25. After hard negotiations, it is decided that Cart will meet the police chiefs of Convention to the castle of Jaunaye, the February 12th 1795. However, the January 28th, Stofflet request the re-establishment of the throne in a proclamation contresigned by the abbot Bernier.

In same time, republican military operations include. At the time, in the Vendée, Cart holds the Marais, Sapinaud the Bocage and Stofflet the Mauges. Organizing mobile columns, Canclaux badgers the royalist bands and manages to isolate Stofflet from Cart. On its side, Hoche organizes an effective against-guerilla to fight the Chouannerie.

Vendean refugees

The study of the phenomenon of the refugees is still very recent. It covers at the same time the chronological and sociological aspects, but also the attitude of the authorities as for their reception. The quantification is still far from being satisfactory, but, in 1796, one can estimate at least forty thousand the number of people who did not return to them.

Before even the beginning of the war, refugees flow into the departments close to the Vendée. In February, they are sufficiently many in Charente-Lower so that a decree is taken to organize their reception. The first important waves arrive as of the March 10th 1793 at Nantes. Between the 19 and the May 31st, between 650 and 1000 families arrive at Angers. They are then primarily republicans, who flee the zone of the engagements, or give up the cities before they are attacked by the Vendean ones. Thus, close to 10 % of the population of the Roche-sur-Yon flees the city.

A second wave of refugees takes place of August 1793 at January 1794. The Décret of, which orders the destruction of the Vendée, organizes the evacuation, the reception and the protection of the refugees. If the refugees of spring were well accommodated, their number, difficulties of provisioning, and suspicion in their connection cool a little the reception. Fearing that many royalist agents are in their rows, the representatives on mission Francastel, Garrau and Hentz take a decree, the February 20th 1794, moving away them twenty miles (80 km) of the zone of the engagements. The sums necessary to their voyage theirs are provided, and are exempted to distance the patients, the old men, the children, their close family and their servants, as well as specialized craftsmen useful for the army.

Lastly, as from January 1794, the third vagueness mixing Blue and White, flees the infernal Colonnes (in particular that of the general Cordellier). It is very numerous, is systematically far away from the theater of the operations. More of the third of the French departments accommodate refugees thus.

The refugees are primarily women (approximately two thirds) and children (about half): the men under-represented are probably engaged on a side or other. They come from the cities and the small boroughs for more half, but the rural component remains strong: the Vendean company is rather well represented, except for the priests and of the noble ones. If the population is sometimes being wary, and if the authorities call upon sometimes the difficulties of subsistence to accommodate some the least possible, they generally find a lodging, even a work for the duration of their exile.

If the return is authorized to the carriers of a certificate of good citizenship as of October 1794, it takes place really only in the calm zones, still rare. Elsewhere, the refugees fear the decree of the Superior council of the Vendée of the July 24th 1793, which requires the oath of fidelity with Louis XVI, or orders the departure with prohibition to return. The authorization is extended to spring 1795, in order to relieve public finances, and the true return starts, even if the bands make the campaigns not very sure, and if the reprisals of the overcome White still frighten. The massive return takes place with the pacification of Hoche.

Last sudden starts of the war

Following the resumption of the war in 1795, in connection with the Unloading of the emigrants with Quiberon, Cart (named the general July 8th “of the catholic and royal Armed” by the count de Provence (future Louis XVIII) since Vérone) takes again the fight, at the end of June, but manages to bring together only 4.000 peasants around him. To fight it, Hoche organizes mobile columns from 50 to 60 riders which it makes go the night. The September 30th, the advertisement that the count d' Artois will unload on October 12th on the continent makes it possible Cart to bring together 15.000 men, but the departures and the desertions multiply after the abandonment of the project, the October 12th. While Cart, badgered by the republicans, must flee, Stofflet takes again in its turn the combat, in January 1796, following a pressing order of the count d' Artois, but it joins together only 2 to 3.000 men. Continued, the last Vendean chiefs are captured and shot, Stofflet at the end of February (which succeeds Charles Marie de Beaumont d' Autichamp and Henri Forestier, but the first flowerhead in May and the second leave France in August in the hope to find of the assistance to start again the revolt), Cart at the end of March.

In spite of the will of in découdre of the local republicans, Hoche adopts a policy of firmness with regard to the chiefs and of conciliations towards the rural ones depositing the weapons, excesses of the republican troops limit, prevent sometimes the return of the republican refugees in the pacified zones and let the catholic worship be reinstalled, thus detaching the peasants of their chiefs and supporting the return to a state of calm: many deposits the weapons and of many parishes make their tender. Lastly, it takes again the plan imagined by Kléber in 1793, squaring the area by strengthened camps. The July 15th 1796, the Directoire can announce that the disorders in the West are alleviated .

But for a long time, the the Vendée, bloodless, guard marks of the engagements. The professor Henri Laborit mentions it, in 1980, introduction of film of Alain Resnais, My uncle d' Amérique , which wonders about the human dysfunctions.

Human account

The exact evaluation of the victims of the war of the Vendée, a fortiori distinction between deaths bound directly or indirectly to this war, forever been able to be established, and only approximate evaluations are had, from where variations in the figures. Thus, it is not possible to determine the losses recorded among the foreign combatants and civilians at the four departments of the “military Vendée” (certain originating in the colonies), very few, as a whole, among the rebels, but who represented the greatest part of the republican troops.

Very early, one tried to offer an evaluation quantified of dead of this war. In 1796, the general Shakes, evaluates the human consequences of this war with 380 000 died for the whole of the West (Chouannerie and war of the Vendée). In a letter of the February 12th 1796, it estimates that six hundred and thousand French perished in the Vendée . In the Year V, in its general and impartial History of the errors and faults made during the French revolution , Louis Marie Prudhomme, estimates to him at 120.000 the number of died in the Vendée, against 184.000 in the colonies and 800.000 for the defense of the country in the armies.

According to the statistical analysis of Donald Greer, in 1935, out of 35 to 40.000 people carried out in the whole of the France for the period of the Terror (16 594 condemned to died by the courts, the remainder being victim of summary executions), 75% are rebels taken the weapons with the hand, condemned in the name of the martial law and 52% the Vendean west and chouan concern (against 19% for south-east and 16% for Paris). This estimate, considered as a reference, was taken again by all the historians. These figures include/understand the executions without judgment of Nantes, Lyon and Toulon. On the other hand, they do not take account of deaths related to the combat of the Civil war, directly (battles, massacres) or indirectly (epidemics, malnutrition, exhaustion…).

In the Years 1980, Reynald Secher stripped the parochial registers and of registry office of 700 common S of the four departments of the war of the Vendée (the Vendée, south of the Loire-Atlantique, west of Maine-et-Loire, north of the Two-Sevres). Starting from the births between 1780 and 1789, then between 1802 and 1811, it releases an average rate of births, to which, in both cases (1780-89 and 1802-11), it applies a common multiplier (27), in order to restore the populations before then after the war. The subtraction of the population of the years 1800 by that of the years 1780 makes it possible to obtain a “lack” of 117.257 people on a total of 815.029 (either 14,38% of the population). However critics were addressed to this work:

the populations thus “restored” are those of 1784 and 1807, which exceeds the real limits of the conflict (1792 and 1802) ;
this work is based on the assumption that there no was change in the French Démographie between the end of XVIIIe and the beginning of the XIXe centuries and does not take account of the Déficit births for the period of the guerre ;
it does not make the share of Vendean killed during the war (whose share only were victims of massacres or executions) and of the deaths caused indirectly by the guerre ;
it does not take account of the refugees installed durably in the zones bordering nor on the exodus towards the villes ;
it does not distinguish deaths according to their political opinion (Vendean republican, royalist or undecided, whose neutrality is called into question by the violence of the conflict) ;
finally, it however does not hold any account of dead nonVendean, consequent.

In 1987, Jean-Clement Martin took again the question of the human account. It tried to establish an assessment of the human deficit undergone by the area by basing on an analysis of the censuses of 1790 and 1801, of which it corrected the inaccuracies from what the study of the sources of the modern time could reveal us Démographie XVIIIe century (with an evaluated annual natural increase with 1 %). It finds that in 1801, it misses 200.000 to 250.000 people, compared to what the natural increase should have allowed, if the balance of the births and the deaths had not been upset by the war. This demographic hollow is ascribable primarily with slaughters of the engagements, concerning as well the republicans as the royalists and ascribable with the two camps. In addition, it specifies that these figures should not make forget that an exact evaluation of the republican losses is practically impossible, the combatants coming from the whole of France, “even of the West-Indian colonies ”. Moreover, one should not neglect the displacements of population, analyzed by Guy-Marie Lenne in 2003.

In the same order of idea, Louis Marie Clénet, considers that the wars of the Vendée made 200.000 deaths Vendean (of which 40 000 for the infernal Columns of Turreau).

In 2005, Anne Bernet, on her side, gives the figure of 150.000 dead for the Vendean ones and 150.000 for the republican army and announces, in these terms, a quarrel of figures:

An exact assessment of the victims in the two camps is impossible to establish, for lack of reliable sources. The highest estimates give a report on 600.000 dead, lowest of 120 000. Today one evaluates with 300 000 the number of missings.

Lastly, tertiary source to take with many precautions, the Quid 2006 evaluates the losses of the “military Vendée” with “117 000 dead (according to Reynald To dry)”, of the whole of the wars of the Vendée and the Chouannerie between “400 000 dead (according to Rene Sédillot)” and “more than 600.000 dead (according to Hoche, Pierre Chaunu) of which republican soldiers 18.000, chouans 80.000, civil carried out 210.000, deaths of cold and of hunger 300.000, including more than 100.000 children. ” Moreover, it specifies that, according to Antoine Casanova, which with the same low estimate as Rene Sédillot, 400 000 dead would be distributed between “220 000 Vendean” (sic) and “180 000 Blue”.

The edition 2007 of the Quid specifies, in the article “the military Vendée”: “There was 156 000 with 195 000 died by massacre or epidemic, is 22,7% of the inhabitants” (on an evaluated total of “765 300 with 775 800 inhabitants”).

“Genocide”: a recent historical debate

Definition of “genocide”

The term “Génocide” is created in 1944 by Raphaël Lemkin, American law professor of Polish Jewish origin, in order to try to define the Crime against humanity perpetrated by the Nazis against the people Juif and gypsy during the Second world war, as well as the crimes committed by the Turks against the Armenians during the First World War and the Assyrian massacres of in Iraq in 1933. He writes: “New concepts require new words. By genocide, we understand the destruction of a nation or a ethnicity. ” It is a word which Lemkin had initially created in Polish in 1943: ludobójstwo (of lud , which wants to say people, and zabójstwo , which means murder). In 1944, it translates the Polish term into English by “ genocide ” (genocide), hybrid word composed of the Greek root “genos”, which means Race or tribe, and of the Latin suffix “cide” (of “caedere”, which means to kill).

The term is defined officially by the general meeting of the United Nations in article 2 of the Convention for the prevention and the repression of the crime of genocide , adopted the December 9th 1948. The Charter of UNO and article 8 of the convention of Geneva oblige the International community to intervene “to prevent or stop acts of genocide”. More recently, article 6 of the statute of the International penal court defines the crime of genocide, which is characterized by the intention from total extermination from a population, on the one hand, implementation the systematic (thus planned) of this will, on the other hand. It is often the dispute of the one of these elements which makes debate for the official recognition of a crime as a Génocide.

The debate on the “Vendean genocide”

The debate around the assumption of a Vendean Génocide appeared in the university community in the years 1980. The character strapping of the civil war and the repression of the insurrection in the Vendée is disputed by nobody, even if the figures remain vague and discussed (see various the assumptions on the importance of the victims of the war of the Vendée) and if traditional descriptions of a massacre as that of the Lucs were called into question by the historical research. On the other hand, the supposed genocidary wills of the republicans and the genocidary character of the massacres made by their camp are the subject of important disputes. One of the sources employed by holding of the idea of a Vendean genocide is a text of Gracchus Babeuf.

Babeuf and the populicide

In 1794, under the Convention thermidorienne, Babeuf publishes a lampoon, system of depopulation or the life and the crimes of Carrier , in whom he denounces the exactions made by Jean-Baptiste Carrier at the time of his mission with Nantes, of which he affirms (in paragraph IV) that they return to a system of depopulation that he names “ Populicide ”, Néologisme which is created to evoke a new idea. Employed under the Révolution at the same time in a form nominal and adjectival (the only one which survived the revolutionary period, in the French language), “populicide” is used to indicate what causes the death or the ruin of the people. The word is formed of the Latin root populus (people) and of the Latin suffix cide . Like the word " genocide " , forged by Lemkin in 1944, it is employed to indicate a form of crime whose apprehension is new.

In its text, the “system of depopulation” relates to the whole of the French population. Indeed, in its Lampoon, Babeuf, taking again criticisms of the Enragés which defended the immediate application of the Constitution of year I, denounces the Terreur, which he considers responsible for the massacres made in 1793-1794, and attacks (with the moderate ones, the Muscadins and the neo-Hebertists) the Montagnards and the Jacobins. This committal for trial is supported on the update, after Thermidor, of the executions, the massacres and the destruction of the civil war and Terror. With other lampoonists, Babeuf takes again the charges of the newspaper the Nantes Sheet which, in its number of the 5 Brumaire An III, shows the Incorruptible to have wanted “dépopuler” the country. According to its assertions, members of Committee of hello public, around Robespierre, aiming at establishment of more large equality possible in France (project he declares himself interdependent in addition), would have planned the death of a great number of French. Their analysis would have been based, according to him, on the reflections of the political philosophers of the XVIIIe century (like Jean-Jacques Rousseau), who considered that the establishment of the equality required a population less than that of France of the time (in fact, for these philosophers, a democratic government, based on a certain equality of the richnesses, the city-State following the example of of the Antiquité, of Geneva or Venice, claimed not only one number of citizens reduced, but a not very wide territory). According to this theory, the civil war in the West (with death in the battle of the White and Blue) and the repression of the federalistic Insurrections and royalists would have been the tool of this programme of depopulation of the France, whose Carrier, with Nantes, would have been only one local staff. The defeats of the republican troops vis-a-vis the royalist insurrectionists would have been programmed by the committee of public hello in order to prolong the war, thus leading to the multiplication of the human losses, the two sides, and with the toughening of each camp

, Become aware to thereafter support the enemies of the Constitution of year I by its attacks, with the reaction thermidorienne, Babeuf, in the Powerful orator of the people of the December 18th 1794, is repositioned compared to holding of a constitution censitaire:

When I have, one of the first, thundered with vehemence to make collapse the monstrous scaffolding of the system of Robespierre, I was far from providing that I contributed to found a building which, in an opposite construction industry all, would not be less disastrous to the people…

Later, perhaps under the influence of Philippe Buonarroti or Simon Duplay, of which it makes knowledge in prison in 1795, it still evolves/moves, in its writings, passing, with regard to Robespierre, of criticism to the praise. In the n° 24 of the Tribun of the people , already, he denounces the thermidoriens which speak about the revolutionary government “like Holy of Holies with veneration and respect and indignation of the government of Robespierre, the Terror and the system of blood, as if all that were not only one and even thing! ” In the n° 34 of the November 6th 1795, it explains:

Let us dare to say that the Revolution, despite everything the obstacles and all the oppositions, has advanced until the Thermidor 9 and that it moved back since.

Lastly, in the n° 40 of the February 24th 1796, in reply to a letter of a captain of the Armed with the West, it enhardit until placing, according to the word of Mathiez, “its own doctrines under the aegis of Robespierre and Saint-Just”. Five days afterwards, he explains, in a letter with his friend Bodson: “I confess today in good faith that I want to be some to have formerly seen in black and the revolutionary Government, and Robespierre, and Saint-Just”, justifying even the death of Hébert and Chaumette (“the safety of twenty-five million men should not be balanced against the care of some individuals ambiguities”).

Partisans of the thesis of the genocide

In 1986, Reynald Secher makes appear Vendée-Avenged, the Franco-French genocide , work in which he studies the relationship between the Révolution and the Vendean ones since 1789 and endeavors to take stock of the repression of the Vendean insurrection, while trying to obtain the relationship between the births in the years 1780 and those in the years 1800 and while trying to index the destruction and rebuildings. Starting from these data, he explains in his general conclusion why it is convinced that the massacres made at the time of the war of the Vendée constitute, in his eyes, a genocide, while drawing from the texts of the actors and witnesses of the time of the extracts interpreted like translating a genocidary will of the republicans. To strengthen its assumption, it takes again the word “Populicide” quoted by Babeuf, of which it republishes the text under a new title.

The thesis Reynald Secher was taken again and supported particularly by Pierre Chaunu, professor emeritus of the university Paris Iv-Sorbonne, which belonged to the jury in front of which the young doctorand supported its thesis, in a article published in the Cross the June 29th 1986.

Other historians employed the term of “Génocide” to qualify the massacres made during the civil war in the republican camp. One can quote Jean Tulard, Emmanuel Roy Ladurie or Stephan Courtois, research director with CNRS, specialist in the history of the Communisme. This last explains why Lénine compared “the Cosaques with the Vendée during the French revolution and exposed them with joy to a program that Gracchus Babeuf, l'" inventeur" modern Communism, qualified in 1795 (sic) of " populicide". ”

Echoes out of the university world

The assertions of Reynald Secher also knew a certain repercussion out of the university world and were included in the media. The January 28th 2000, in conclusion of the Stockholm International Forum off the Holocaust , Michael Naumann, delegated German Federal government to the culture and the media of 1998 with 2000 and former editor association of Die Zeit , affirms: “The French term " Populicide " was sometimes employed before the term of " Genocide " was invented. He was invented by Gracchus Babeuf in 1795 (sic) and described the extermination of 117.000 farmers (sic) of the Vendée. This fertile sector (sic) in the west of the France is indeed remained practically uninhabited (sic) during 25 years. ”

In the same way, the writer Michel Ragon, in the 1793 Vendean insurrection and the misunderstandings of freedom (1992), whose sales leaflet largely takes again the elements proposed by Secher, endeavoured to show the reality of the programming of the massacres and official intentions of extermination of people. In its book, it sticks to the whole of the repression of the Vendean insurrection, whose main actors, republican side, are the general Turreau, organizer of the “infernal columns”, on the one hand, the envoys on mission Carrier in Nantes, Hentz and Francastel in Angers, cities where thousands of Vendean prisoners are piled up, on the other hand. Other areas of France saw the development of insurrections (royalist or federalistic) against the Convention in 1793. According to the cases, the envoys on mission adopted a reconciling attitude (as in Normandy) or carried out a specific repression, others adopted a more repressive attitude. Some were devoted to true exactions, as Barras and Fréron with Toulon, Collot d' Herbois and Fouché with Lyon or Tallien with Bordeaux. In the case of the war of the Vendée, Michel Ragon tries to prove that the exactions made by the envoys on mission corresponded to the requirements of the Comité of public hello, and even of Convention.

With this intention, it draws from the documents of time of the passages drawn from the speeches, proclamations, letters or reports/ratios left by several revolutionary personalities, which it interprets like the consent of genocidary wills. Thus a proclamation of Francastel posted with Angers, the December 24th 1793, informant: The Vendée will be depopulated, but the Republic will be avenged and quiet… My brothers, that Terror does not cease being with the day order and all will be well. Hello and fraternity. In the same way, a letter of Carrier, December 12th 1793, addressed to the general Haxo who asked him for vivres for the republican Vendée, from which it underlines the formulas which seem to justify its thesis: It is quite astonishing that the Vendée dares to claim subsidies, after having torn the fatherland by the bloodiest war and cruelest. It enters my projects, and they are the orders of the national Convention , to remove all the subsistence, the food products, fodder, all in a word in this curses country , to deliver to the flames all the buildings, of to exterminate of them all the inhabitants … Oppose of all your forces so that the Vendée takes or keeps only one grain… In a word, anything to this country proscription does not leave.

February 21st, 2007, nine French deputies of right-hand side, explicitly being based on work of Reynald To dry and Michel Ragon, deposited a private bill to the National Assembly aiming to the “recognition of the Vendean genocide”.

Adversaries of the thesis of the genocide

On the other hand, the thesis of the “Vendean genocide” was rejected by the greatest university part of the world, who regards it as the demonstration of a past which does not pass.

She was thus criticized by Australian the Peter McPhee, professor with the Université of Melbourne, specialist in the history of the contemporary France, which reconsiders the influence of Chaunu in the assertion of a bond between the French revolution and the communist Totalitarisme , records the weaknesses of the analysis Secher on the number of victims or the glance of the revolutionists on the Vendean insurrection, calls into question the “description of the economic, religious and social structures” of the the Vendée pre-revolutionist and the causes of the insurrection by Secher, note the little of importance given to the massacres of republicans by their neighbors risen in his book; moreover, it supports that Reynald Secher, in its following work, did not hold any account of posterior university work moderating or contradicting its analyzes. It notes, in conclusion of its article on the translation of Vendée-Avenged, the Franco-French genocide :

The insurrection remains the central element in the collective identity of the population of the west of France, but it is doubtful that she - or the historical profession - was well been useful by the coarse Méthodologie and the not very convincing Polémique To dry.

In the same way, among those which refused to adhere to the thesis of the genocide, one counts the Welshman Julian Jackson, professor of modern history to the Université of London, the American Timothy Tackett, professor with the the University of California, the Irishman Hugh Gough, professor with the Université of Dublin, the French François Lebrun, professor emeritus of modern history to the university of High-Brittany-Rennes II, Claude Langlois, director of studies of the practical École of the high studies, director of the European Institute in sciences of the religions and member of the Institute of History of the French revolution, Paul Tallonneau, Claude Petitfrère, professor emeritus of modern history to the University of Turns or Jean-Clement Martin, professor with the university Paris I-Pantheon-Sorbonne.

Inter alia arguments, Jean-Clement Martin note that, in its work, Reynald To dry, which practices “a writing of authority, condemning the history which is not concerned with absolute truth”, does not comment nor does not discuss the word “genocide”. However, for him, the question arises “of knowing which is the nature of the repression implemented by the revolutionists”. He explains, following Franck Chalk and of Mr. Prince why “without the ideological intention applied to a well delimited group, the concept of genocide does not have a direction. However it is not possible nor to find an identity " vendéenne" preexistent with the war, nor to affirm that it is against a particular entity (religious, social… racial) that the Revolution was baited. ”

He takes again the question of the Décret 1793 envisaging the “destruction of the Vendée”, and the report/ratio of Barère which affirms: Destroy the Vendée and Valencian will not be any more with the capacity of the Austrians. Destroy the Vendée and the the Rhine will be delivered Prussian (...). The Vendée and still the Vendée, here is the canker which devours the heart of the Republic. It is there that it is necessary to strike. He recalls that one and the other excludes the women, the children and the old men (to which the decree of October 1st 1793 adds the men without weapons), which must be protected. In the same way, it notes that the revolutionists did not seek to identify people to destroy it , looking at the Vendée simply like the symbol of all the oppositions to the Revolution , and concludes that the atrocities made by the revolutionary troops in the Vendée concern what one would call today of the war crimes .

For him, the speech of Barère and the Decree take part of the vision which makes Contre-Révolution a single block, a hydre threatening, legitimating the thought of a " just violence" and installing the war of the Vendée under particularly absurd conditions. The local administrators do not cease complaining about the absence of delimitation of the area-Vendée, of the inaccuracy of the " term; brigands" to indicate the beings dedicated to the destruction (since the women are excluded, the children, the old men, " men without armes"). Menuau de Maine-et-Loire does not manage to make specify what must be destroyed in " Vendée". Not only the Convention does not endorse the intrigues of the soldiers and the representatives, who oppose his decrees, but, in the area even, the mobilization of local revolutionists succeeds in stopping unjustified violences of Angers or the south of the the Vendée. In the army, officers refuse to pursue the policy of devastation of their colleagues, sometimes succeeding in translating some in front of courts and making them of them carry out.

According to its analysis, the atrocities made during the war of the Vendée are explained, republican side, by the mediocrity of the framing of the soldiers, who “are left with their own fear”. Other side, the insurrectionists took again the old practices of the rural revolts, driving out and putting at dead the representatives of the State, plundering the boroughs, before their chiefs do not succeed in diverting them, during a time, of these practices which have an aspect of revenge and a Messianic dimension.

In its eyes, it is not the violence of a State extremely which falls down on its population; the State is too weak to control and prevent the spiral of violence which breaks out between insurgent and patriotic, and this until spring 1794.

Professor emeritus with the university Paris I-Pantheon-Sorbonne, former director of the Institute of history of the French revolution, Michel Vovelle also positioned against the thesis of the genocide. In the text “the historiography of the French revolution the day before the bicentenary”, published in 1987, it writes:

“François Furet is not recognized, and said it, in the recent alarm clock, caused to some extent since two or three years by the approach of the bicentenary, of a Historiographie openly Contre-révolution naire. To tell the truth, had it ever disappeared? It had kept its strong positions, of tradition since the XIXe century, with the French Academy (in the wake of Pierre Gaxotte) or in the libraries of the stations. Old a little tired song, it knew a remarkable renewal of vitality very recently. Caricatural small change of the reflections of François Pipe cleaner, the image of a totalitarian revolution, anteroom of the Gulag makes flora. The comparable Revolution with the Terror and the blood bath becomes the absolute evil. A whole literature develops on the topic of the " genocide franco-français" starting from often daring appreciations of the number of died of the war of the Vendée 128.000,400 000… and why not 600.000? Certain historians, without being specialists in the question, put, such Pierre Chaunu, all the weight of their moral authority, which is large, to develop this speech of the anathema, disqualifying of entry any attempt for reason to keep. Such history holds much place, according to the supports it has, in the media as in part of the press. Does it have to hide us today the more authentic aspects of a building site of the revolutionary studies in full alarm clock? ”

In 1998, max Gallo is him also declared against the assumption of a “Vendean genocide” in the article “Civil war yes, genocide not! ” appeared in the review Historia .

Posterior observations and analyzes

Historian of the radicalism, Samuel Tomei analyzes the recent attacks against “the mystifications of the republican memory”, in the name of one Duty to remember towards the people oppressed by an amnesic colonizing Republic and towards the people corsetés by a Republic jacobine. Clarifying the second point, it notes:

After the expansion with the outside, one accuses interior colonialism. A second example which illustrates the use of the duty to remember well is, especially since the commemoration of the bicentenary of the French revolution, this propensity to fustigate some republican Jacobinisme in the name of the memory of the oppressed regional minorities; certain historians going until speaking, like Pierre Chaunu, a little agitator undoubtedly, of the " génocide" the Vendean ones by the Republic: " We never had the order written of Hitler concerning the Jewish genocide, we have those of Barère and Carnot relating to Vendée." And the large historian of the time of the Reform S to honor with its way the memory of the Vendean victims: " Moreover, to each time I pass in front of the college Carnot, I spit by terre".

In the same order of idea, in the report which it devotes to the handbook the French revolution of Eric Anceau, Serge Bianchi, professor with the university of Rennes II, raises that the presentation of the Mad , the complex personality of Robespierre, the war of the Vendée is not caricatured. Not question of skid, tyrant or " génocide" , nor of " proconsuls" for the representatives on mission…

Sticking to the question put at the program of the contests of the CAPES and the aggregation of History in 2005 - 2006, such as it was treated in the handbook directed by Patrice Gueniffey, in the article “In connection with the Révolte S and Révolution S of the end of the 18th century. A tentative an assessment historiographic”, Guy Lemarchand, professor with the University of Rouen, distinguishes the various historical schools which analyzed the French revolution, explaining:

Very minority the current one of origin legitimist, ultra appears now preserving, formerly of royalist dyeing , which was fixed on its ground of predilection in the years 1980: the “Genocide” of the Vendée. One finds of them elements in the chapter written by A. Gérard (Poussou 2). The author is not obviously more with the idyllic vision of the mode seigneurial of the province according to the Mémoires of the marchioness of Rochejacquelein, and it also notes him that the peasants of the province initially were favorable to the Révolution. However, according to him and without giving the evidence of the assertion, the Vendée would have been not only one revolt of great extent, but also an instrument between the hands of the Montagnards in their fight against the Girondins before the June 2nd 1793. They would have abstained from pushing the Convention to order a fast repression, in order to compromise Of Gironde the then dominant ones, which facilitated the expansion of rising. Then, Masters of the government, they would have delivered themselves to the purifying fury which characterized them. Second original idea, the Vendean ones did not fall into cruelty from their adversaries: they released their prisoners when the Blue ones shot them. As for the generals and political directors who ordered the devastations of the “infernal Colonnes” and the Noyades of Nantes, A. Gérard releases Turreau of part of its responsibilities in order to charge the Comité with public hello and Carrier, emanation of the Jacobins which would be “the prototype of the professional revolutionists”. It begins again thus without distance criticizes the speech of the thermidoriens in the search of goat-emissary in order to make forget their own orientation before the Chute of Robespierre, and to get rid of part of the Mountain dwellers become cumbersome.

On its side, Guy-Marie Lenne opened a new field of studies incompletely explored still today, that of the refugees of the Vendée (cf supra ). Their number (at least several tens of thousands), their political orientation (as well republican, as neutral or even suspected of royalism) did not prevent the Republic (that they are the municipalities, the districts, the departments or Convention) to come to them to assistance, to accommodate them, nourish them, sometimes to provide them a work. According to him, this attitude is in complete contradiction with the assumption of a genocide: one cannot want to massacre people, and to organize the evacuation and the assistance to a portion of these same people.

For Didier Guivarc' H, professor with the University of Toulouse Mirail and member of the Group of Research in Immediate History, the study of the " Place of memory " The Vendée by Jean-Clement Martin highlights “the policies of the memory and their stakes. So for the historian they are the Blue ones which, as of 1793, builds the image of the Vendée symbol of the Contre-révolution, they are the White and their successors who use and turn over this image to 19th and 20th centuries to sit a regional identity. This identity is a tool for social mobilization but also a contemporary political instrument. The success of the spectacle of the Puy-du-Fou, launched in 1977 by Philippe de Villiers, results from the meeting between a receptive medium made by a Pédagogie from the to remember 150 years and the concern for a politician to build an image. The Vendean example of the years 1980 and the beginning of the year 1990 illustrates the new challenges which arise for the historian memory. Confronted with a memory sharp and pressing, it is led to déconstruire Mythe or Légende and to thus call into question the exploitation of passed by the present. In the context of the bicentenary of 1789, then of 1793, the use of the term Génocide is thus in the center of an intense debate because it is a stake for those which want to show that " the Revolution at all the times and under all the latitudes would be devourer of libertés". ”

In the same way, in 2007, evoking the persistent memory of the war of the Vendée, marked by the success of the Puy-du-Fou, Mona Ozouf and André Burguière note: “Piece of choice for a long time in the debate between left and right-hand side in connection with the Revolution, the Vendean episode did not make any more receipt when a test published in the day before of the bicentenary, which did not bring anything of nine if not the charge of " génocide" , the war between historians relit; a war curiously out of phase at the time when the celebrations proceeded in a climate of festive consensus. Everyone today defends the heritage of the Human rights. Nobody regrets the royalty, but no one would not condemn Louis XVI to death. It is this respectful postmodern France of all the memories, in love with all the traditions, which goes up time each summer among crowd in costume of the Puy-du-Fou. ”

See too

Wars of the Vendée
French revolution
Counter-revolution
Terror
Wars of the French revolution
Chouannerie
Armed catholic and royal
War with the Peasants (1798) in Flandres

Novels

Alexandre Dumas, White and Blue the , 1867.
Victor Hugo, Quatre-vingt-treize , 1874.
Michel Ragon, red Handkerchiefs of Cholet , 1984.

Literature of youth

Henri Servien, Little story of the Wars of the Vendée , ED. of Chiré, illustrated by Merry Rene, 1983. A book for youth according to the point of view of the Vendean ones.
Jean-Clement Martin, White and Blue in the torn Vendée , Discovered/Gallimard, 1986. A serious book, with many illustrations.
Yves Swolfs, Dampierre , Glénat, cartoon, 10 albums, 1988-2002.
Reynald To dry and Rene Honzec, the Vendée, 1789-1801 , cartoon, Fleurus, 1989, Reynald editions To dry, 1994.

External bonds

Historical of the war of the Vendée
wars of the Vendée
wars of the Vendée in Bressuirais (Pierre Vay)
History of Noirmoutier (primarily for the revolutionary period)
Saumur formerly
History of Brittany and the Countries of the Loire, page of bonds
Site of association '' Vérité for the Vendée '', which gives itself for goal the recognition of the term Génocide concerning the massacre of Vendean during the war of the Vendée.
“Twelve columns with the one”, personal point of view of Gilles Marchal

Random links:

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