As it can be seen the Vendee uprising was of a
greater magnitude that is generally realized. In fact it was a
counter-revolution. At one point it had the potential of
defeating the Parisians standing between the Vendeans and
Paris. And the volunteers in Paris would not have counted
for much against the enthusiastic Vendeans. But at that
time the Vendeans had not the leadership capable of such
enterprise nor - perhaps - were its peasant soldiers willing
to engage themselves far from their fields and farms.
The consequences of La Vendee on the Republic military machine are easier to project. Firstly, the 300,OOO soldiers planned to be raised from the Vendee did not materialize. Then, the conscription was not implemented in the Vendee until 1803, hence depriving the French army of a substantial number of recruits, certainly in the ten years period between 1793 to 1803 exceeding 100,000 men.
In addition, the armies on the Frontiers had to be drained of valuable troops to fight in the Vendee at a time when the Republic needed all the available forces to check the invasion by the Allies. As mentioned earlier, in October 1794, General Canclaux commanding the main Republican force in the West, i.e. involved in the Vendee, estimated the nominal strength of the three armies there as 136,000, out of which after deduction of the garrisons, left some 50,000 men to be employed as active forces in the field.
Assuming that the garrison troops had to be in the West to face any possible invasion by the English army, one can postulate that at the very least, the 50,000 men employed as active forces in the field could have been sent to defend the frontiers. It about the number of troops - 45,000 - that were sent to the frontiers in 1796 when the Vendee was finally pacified as shown below.
To be complete, let us repeat that in 1794, in contrast, the two Republican armies one conquering Holland and the other advancing on the Rhine had respectively some 67,000 and 111,000. So the equivalent of a main French army was immobilized by the war in the Vendee. In 1796, when the Vendee was finally pacified, Hoche's army of the West was about 117,000 strong, about 45,000 of which were sent as reinforcements to the frontiers.
In addition, let us not forget the moral damage done to the local population and to the western part of France. Finally, the toll of the struggle between the "Blues" (Republicans) and the "Whites" (the Vendeans) was extremely heavy and caused an estimated 600,000 casualties. Indeed a very heavy drain for any country. One should realize that, in 1789, France had a population of approximately 26 millions.
If we carry our calculations a step further and take into account that the estimated casualties of the Wars of the French Revolution and of the Empire amounted to some 4,000,000, the war of the Vendee accounted for no less than 15% of that figure....
SOURCES:
Blanc, Louis Histoire de la Revolution Francaise, Paris
Montagnon, A. Une Guerre subversive: La Vendee, Paris, 1959.
Walter G.: La Guerre de Vendee, Paris, 1953.
Drawings from Louis Blanc Histoire de le Revolution Francaise.
ENDNOTES
[1] I must confess that I am a Vendean at heart and since I was a
child, very sympathetic to the Vendean cause and condemned the
excesses of the early Republic and of its Terror system. I don't
think that even today that many French staunch Republicans are
very sympathetic to the excesses of the early Republic. Of
course, I am very far to justify the massacres committed by the
Vendeans. My sympathy lies with the real Vendeans cause and
its true heros - peasants or noble - like Cathelineau and La
Rochejacquelin fighting for what they deeply believed in. I don't
condemn the true soldiers, like Grouchy or Hoche who fought for
the Republican side, who disassociated themselves with the
massacres ordered by men like Turreau. I'll do my best to present
a very objective view of la guerre de la Vendee.
La Vendee Napoleonic French Rebellion 1793
[2] The Poitou nobles were partisans of strict feudal rules and
challenged the King's authority. At the eve of the Revolution, one
finds them plotting to make their province independent from the
central authority. In addition, the majority of them were
notoriously iffeligious and sympathetic to the Philosophers'
teachings. Many of them had protestant ancestors, who had been
forced to convert to catholicism, and dispensed themselves from
going to mass until their privileges and fortunes were menaced by
the Revolution.
[3] The Chouans (or "owls", called by such name because they used
the hoot of the owl as rallying signal) were peasants of the
province of Brittany, Maine and Touraine who rose against the
Convention. The movement called Chouannerie was rather
disorganized and started in 1793. It eventually merged with the
contemporary rising in La Vendee. The initial motives of the
Chouans were less devotion to the monarchy than a resentment at
interference by the new republican government with their old
habits, the ruin of their contraband trade by the abolition of the
gabelle (the despised tax on salt). Then, like in Vendee, the
anticlerical policy of the republican government and the
enforcement of conscription did the rest and increased the
popular support.
[4] As a general rules, the bourgeois of France were under the
influence of the 18th century philisophers and welcomed, the
liberty of expression and the reforms that finally made them the
equals of the nobles. They were not unhappy to see the clergy
prosecuted, as the clergy also symbolized privileges. Of course
the bourgeois did not live in the country but in the towns and
cities. It the bourgeoisie that made the Revolution possible and
give it the majority of its political leaders. Robespierre was from a
bourgeois family and was a lawyer
in Arras.
[5] Cathelineau was a simple, 40 years old devout man,
living peacefully in Pin-en-Mauge, quietly raising his family of
five children. He became the respected original leader of the
Vendean insurrection. He provided strong leadership that
somewhat unified the highly divided factions of the insurrection.
After he was killed on June 30, 1793, the different Vendean
factions lost their cohesion. Cathelineau had 3 brothers, 4 brothers-in-law, and 16 first cousins. All of them were to die for the Vendean cause. D'Elbee succeeded Cathelineau but no one replaced him.
[6] The tocsin is an alarm signal that was sounded in the French
villages, towns and cities in case of peril (fire, invasion, etc.).
[7] The Marais is part of the low-Poitou that is adjacent to the sea. It
is a flat country covered with vegetation. Access to it is
impractical in the winter and very difficult during the other
seasons. The marais is cut up everywhere by small canals and salt-
marshes, natural fortifications that rendered the attacks very
dangerous and favored the defense. The canals are between 30 to
40 feet wide. The rebel, having his musket slung across his
shoulder, with the help of a long pole, jumped from one levee to
another with disconcerting ease. If the enemy was present and did
not allow him to use his pole, he jumped into his miole, a very
light and very flat boat, and moved around the canals, always
hidden by the low banks, with extraordinary speed. Soon he
would reappear, fire his musket and disappear again....
[8] The Chevalier de Charette was one of the few original Vendean
leader to survive the initial Vendean insurrection. Unlike
Cathelineau he was a violent, ambitious and uncompromising man.
During his brief carrier as Vendean leader he committed many
excesses and atrocities. He was a very capable military leader. He
was distrusted by many of his companions. He became the leader
of the Vendean cause
after the disasters of Le Mans and Santenay. After the first
pacification of the Vendee, he kept control of some 2000
men. On June 25, 1795 he was the first one to reopen the
combat against the Republicans, but did not survive that
second rebellion. He was captured and shot at Nantes, on
March 26, 1796.
[9] The majority of the Vendeans insurgents had the habit of
going home on a more or less regular basis. Of course that
caused serious effective problems. For instance, Saumur
after its capture on June 1793 could not be held because, the
majority of the Vendeans involved-there decided to go home.
After all their deep desire was to live peacefully in their farms
and fields but free to worship the way they used to do it.
[10] For instance, Camus was too involved in his desire of
implementing his reform of the church (the Constitution
civile du clerg6) to even consider the possible consequences
of such a move!
[11] The sans-culottes were the cr~me de la cr&me of the
ordinary crowd. The sans-culottes got their name from the
fact that common people were not wearing culottes, a knee
length trouser worn by the nobles (and the bourgeois also),
but the long trousers extending all the way down to the ankle,
hence their names. So, the sans-culottes were revolutionaries
of the most humble origin and that alone, in the eyes of
Robespierre, the Jacobins and the like, qualified them for all
duties (even the ones for which they had no qualifications
whatsoever). The name came to be used for revolutionary
zealots of the most violent type. We find sans-culottes in
many volunteers battalions of the second ban and they
composed all the famous (or infamous) battalions of
F6d6r6s. In fact, mostof the sans -culottes were abunch
of undisciplined scoundrels almost ready to anything
except fight the enemy. Some of them like Rossiginol,
L'Echelle and Santerre rose to the rank of general in no
time, with the results that could be expected. Most of
them fell quickly in disgrace afterthe fall of Robespierre
when their flagrant incapacity could be exposed.
[12] After Cathelineau's death, Gigot d'Elbee was
elected as the new commander of the Vendean army.
He was an able commander. At that time the Royal and
Catholic army was organized as if follows: D'Elbee,
commander in chief; Bonchamps, Lescure, Donnisan
and Royand, General of Division. D'Elbee remained
in his new function only a short while as he was killed
(with Bonchamps) on October 17,1793, atthe battleof
Cholet.
[13] The decree was dated August I st, 1793 and stipu-
lated that combustibles of all kinds were to be sent to
the Vendee to set fire to all the woods, edges, etc.. The
forests were to be leveled, the rebel bases destroyed,
the harvests seized and taken to the rear of the armies.
The livestock taken away and the women, children and
elderly moved to the interior where they were to be protected
and provided for by the Republic. The application of the
decree by Turreau was much more barbarous than the Convention had anticipated.
[14] On July 23, 1793 Mainz capitulated to the Prussians, and
the garrison some 16,000 strong marched out with the honor
of war on the stipulation that they could not serve against the
Allies for one year. That the Vendeans were fighting in the
same cause as themselves never struck the Prussians. So,on
Beauharnais' recommendation these 16,000 seasoned sol-
diers were sent to reinforce the Republican armies in la
Vendee. The blunder made by the Allies was repeated when
Valenciennes surrendered to the Austrians and English on
July 28. The garrison 6,000 strong was also sent to reinforce
the Republican armies in la Vendee.
[15] Henri Du Vergier, comte de la Rochejacquelin (1771-1794), in spite of his youth was elected commander of the
Royal and Catholic army. He was born on August 30, 1772
and unlike his father and his two other brothers he did not
emigrate but served in Louis the XVIth's Constitutional
Guard until the fall of the Monarchy on August 10, 1792. He
then took refuge with his friend the marquis de Lescure, who
was also to become a Vendean leader, in his estates in
Parthenay in Poitou. Both joined the Vendean revolt in
March 1793. After the defeat of the Vendeans at Cholet, in
spite of his youth, he was elected commander-in-chief of the
Royal and Catholic Army. Unfortunately, he was more or less
only the nominal commander as he had to obey his army and
could only display his personal valor in action. Like
Cathelineau, he was an outstanding figure in the Vendean
rebellion that commanded respect from friends and foes
alike. He was, like Hoche on the Republican side, a pure hero
completely hostile to cruelties and the vile machina-
tions of his fellow Vendean commanders like Charette.
He was killed at Noyer on January 26, 1794. La
Rochejacquelin was praised by Victor Hugo in his
poem "93". When LaRochejacquelin was asked tojoin
the Vendeans, he declared: "If I advance follow me, if
I fall back kill me, if I die avenge me." He was killed at
NouailI6 on February 9, 1794. His younger brother
Louis came back to France in 1801 when there was an
amnesty for the emigres. He married the marquise de
Lescure (Marie Louise Victoire de Donnissan), the
widow of the marquis de Lescure (who had been killed
At Cholet on October 17, 1793), the friend of his
brother Henri. Her Mintoires give a remarkable picture
of the war in Vendee and of the Royalists. In 1814,
Louis was made a marichal de camp by Louis the
XVIIIth and during the Hundred Days, he joined the
Vendean rebels and was killed during a skirmish at the
Pont de Mathes St.Gilles on June 4, 1815.
Madame de la Rochejacquelin, his widow, published
her memoirs, in which one can find a very objective
account of the war of the Vendee.
[16] According to Blanc (a staunch Republican), p. 386,
Kleber's report on that action is mute on the cause of the
defeat. Phipps, vol.2, p. 29, comments on L'Echelle as an
incompetent general who was responsible for the above
defeat because he remained inactive with his second Division.
Phipps continues with Kleber's description of L'Echelle as "the
most cowardly of soldiers, the worst of officers, and the most
ignorant leader ever seen. He did not understand maps, hardly
knew how to sign his name, and did not once approach within
cannon shot of the rebels; in a word, there was nothing
comparable to his poltroonery and his inefficiency, except his
arrogance, his brutality, and his obstinacy. " Shortly after,
L'Echelle was forced to resign on account of ill health...
[17] In September 1793, anenvoyfrom the British government was
received by La Rochejacquelin and Lescure at the castle of La
Boulaye. The Vendeans accepted the help offer and recommended
the landing of 50,000 men as soon as possible, around the Sables
d'Olonnes or Paimboeuf. They insisted that force had to be
commanded by a Bourbon prince and composed in majority with
imigres.
[18] La Rochejacquelin and his staff did not know that Cherbourg
was practically undefended and would have been an easy capture.
[19] The incompetent Rossignol was finally removed from
command and replaced by Marceau who took command of the
united Republican forces at Rennes.
[20] Canclaux, Grouchy, Kleber and many others were against any
violence against the Vendeans, but Turreau in his own diabolic
mind would not listen (Phipps, vol2. p.33). As for the gallant and
chivalrous Marceau, he was sick at heart. For him the the two
battles of Le Mans and Santenay had been two carnages and he
wished to leave for another command.
[21] After Paris heard of his sinister performances, the Republican
government suspended Turreau on May 13, 1794. Arrested after
Thermidor he was judged but acquitted by a court-martial on the
ground that he only executed the orders of the Convention. He
served under the Empire and became a baron. In 1816, he revisited
the Vendee on the staff of the Duke d'Angoul6me!
Incomprehensibly, such a monster died in 1816, in favor with the
Royalists!
[22] Hoche's success was due to lack of cohesion among the
Royalist leaders and to the foolish way in which French soldiers,
prisoners of War in England, had been enlisted and placed in the
ranks of the emigres. Out of 4,000 to 5,000 imigris taken at
Quiberon, about 748 were shot.
[23] A Concordat is an agreement specifically between the pope, in
his spiritual capacity and the temporary authority of a state. Its
juridical status is now generally accepted as being a contract
between Church and State and as such it is a treaty governed by
international law. The Concordat of 1801 between the Consulate
(of which Bonaparte was the main figure) and Rome officially
reestablished the status of the catholic religion in France. Hence
the Vendean satisfaction.
[24] Chandler, Dictionary of the Napoleonic Wars, Macmillan, New York, 1979, p. 242.
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