La Vendée
Worth Reading
Reynald Secher, A French Genocide
Michael Ross, Banners of the King
Peter Paret, Internal War and Pacification: The Vendée, 1789-1796
Prelude: 2 September 1792
Saint-Germain-des-Prés
Rue Vaugirard
La Grande Guerre de Vendée
The passing of limited warfare
La Vendée Militaire (see map)
Four Departments: Loire Inferieure, Maine et Loire, Duex Severe, La Vandée
The topography (The Bocage, etc.)
The economy
The role of the local curé
Religious fervor (St. Louis de Monfort; St. Margaret Mary Alacoque—
the Sacred Heart of Jesus
The Vendéan nobility
The Civil Constitution of the Clergy (July 1790)
“non-juring” or “refractory” clergy vs. intrus (intruders)
The life of the non-juring priest
The reaction—August 1792, Bressuire
The regicide—January 1793
The levée en masse—February 1793
(The pace of implementation of the draft)
The reaction
Saint Florent 11 March 1793, etc.
The armies seek commanders:
François Athanase Charette de la Contrie,
Joseph Louis Maurice Gigost d’Elbée
Artus, Marquis de Marquis de Lescure
Henri Marquis de la Rochejaquelein
AND
Jean Nicolas Stofflet
Jacques Cathelineau
Cathelineau and Bonchamp in Maine et Loire: Saint Florent, Jallais (le Missionaire),
Chemille, Cholet, Vihiers (le Brutal), Saumur?, reinforced from Beaupréau (D’Elbée)
Charette in Loire Inferieure: Machecoul to Pornic
In the Bocage.
End of March1793: Catholics armies control interior; republicans control perimeter
April, May: Thuars, Fontenay
“Choc”
petite guerre
alternative governments
What next: Paris? Nantes? The English?
The republican backlash: propaganda (divorce, married clergy)
Nantes June 29: Death of Cathelineau
Torfou
Jean Baptise Kleber (an Alsatian)
France: a nation in transition; the French army: an army in transition (limited to
total war)
The retreat across the Loire
Savenay
Total War
François Joseph Westermann (another Alsatian)
Jean Baptiste Carrier
Nantes: the Republican Baptisms; The Republican Marriages
Les colonnes infernales
Louis Marie Turreau
The legacy of the Revolution: Georgia, South Carolina, 1864
The legacy of the rising in the Vendée
Christopher Check is the President of Catholic Answers, the largest lay-run apologetics and evangelization
organization in the English-speaking world. Though its radio program, Catholic Answers Live, its speakers bureau,
Catholic Answers Magazine, Catholic Answers Press, Catholic.com, and its team of full-time apologists who field
thousands of phone calls, letters, and e-mails each year, Catholic Answers works to deepen the faith of existing
Catholics, lead former Catholics home, and guide non-Catholics to the fullness of the Truth. Chris holds a degree in
English Literature from Rice University. He served for two decades as Vice President of The Rockford Institute and before
that for seven years as a field artillery officer in the United States Marine Corps in deployments and expeditions in the Far
East and the Persian Gulf. His writings have appeared in, among others, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, This
Rock, Touchstone, The Wanderer, Angelus, New Oxford Review, Culture Wars, and the Chicago Tribune. He has addressed
audiences at home and abroad including at the University of London, the Pontifical Augustinian University in Rome, the
Serbian Writers Union in Belgrade, the National Press Club, Catholic Answers, the American Chesterton Society, Legatus,
Catholic Citizens of Illinois, Saint Michael's Abbey, Silverado, California, Saint Gregory's Academy, The Institute for
Catholic Culture, The Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, Ave Maria University, Argument of the Month Club, and,
most respectable of all, the Irish Rose Saloon in Rockford, Illinois. He is the creator of The Lepanto Lectures, a series of
audio lectures on topics in Salvation History from ancient times to the present day.
the
N
Military
W
`
1792
Vendee
S
Loire
River
Savenay
Maine
et Loire
`
Nantes
Beaupreau
Loire
Inferieure
Jallais
ChemillE
Vihiers
`
Atlantic
Ocean
Saumur
`
Breton
Marshland
Angers
Saint
Florent
Torfou
Cholet
Machecoul
The
Bocage
Thuars
Deux
Sevre
France
`
La Vendee
Plain of
Luçon
La Rochelle
Fontenay
Christopher Check wishes to acknowledge the following scholars without whose work this lecture would not have been possible::
Warren Carroll, Michael Davies, Christopher Hibbert, Peter Paret, Michael Ross, and Reynald Secher.