War in the Vendée

The war in the Vendée (French: Guerre de Vendée) was a counter-revolution from 1793 to 1796 in the Vendée region of France during the French Revolution. The Vendée is a coastal region, located immediately south of the river Loire in western France. Initially, the revolt was similar to the 14th-century Jacquerie peasant uprising, but the Vendée quickly became counter-revolutionary and Royalist. The revolt headed by the newly-formed Catholic and Royal Army was comparable to the Chouannerie, which took place in the area north of the Loire.

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War in the Vendée
Part of French Revolutionary Wars
Henri de La Rochejaquelein at the Battle of Cholet in 1793, by Paul-Émile Boutigny
Date 3 March 1793 – 16 July 1796 Location Western France: Maine-et-Loire, Vendée, Loire-Atlantique, Deux-Sèvres (or former provinces of Anjou, Poitou, Brittany) Result French Republican victory
Belligerents
French Republic	Vendeans Supported by:  Great Britain
Commanders and leaders
Jean Baptiste Camille Canclaux Armand Louis de Gontaut  Jean Antoine Rossignol François Séverin Marceau Jean-Baptiste Kléber François Joseph Westermann Jean Baptiste Carrier René François Lecomte † Jean Léchelle † Louis Marie Turreau Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Lazare Hoche Pierre Augereau	Jacques Cathelineau † Maurice d'Elbée  Charles de Bonchamps † Louis Marie de Lescure † Henri de la Rochejaquelein † François de Charette  Jean-Nicolas Stofflet  Charles de Beaumont d'Autichamp Charles Aimé de Royrand † Georges Cadoudal
Strength
130,000–150,000[1]	80,000
Casualties and losses
c. 30,000 military killed[1][2]	Several tens of thousands killed
Inhabitants of the Vendee: c. 170,000 military and civilians killed[1][3] c. 200,000 dead in total[4][5]

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While elsewhere in France the revolts against the levée en masse were repressed, an insurgent territory, called the Vendée militaire by historians, formed south of the Loire-Inférieure (Brittany), south-west of Maine-et-Loire (Anjou), north of Vendée and north-west of Deux-Sèvres (Poitou). Gradually referred to as the "Vendeans", the insurgents established in April a "Catholic and Royal Army" which won a succession of victories in the spring and summer of 1793. The towns of Fontenay-le-Comte, Thouars, Saumur and Angers were briefly overrun, but the Vendeans failed before Nantes.

During the autumn, the arrival of the Army of Mainz as reinforcements restored the advantage to the Republican camp, which in October seized Cholet, the most important city controlled by the Vendeans. After this defeat, the bulk of the Vendée forces crossed the Loire and marched to Normandy in a desperate attempt to take a port to obtain the help of the British and the Armée des Émigrés. Pushed back to Granville, the Vendée army was finally destroyed in December at Mans and Savenay.

From the winter of 1793 to the spring of 1794, during the Reign of Terror, violent repression was put in place by the Republican forces. In the cities, and in particular in Nantes and Angers, around 15,000 people were shot, drowned or guillotined on the orders of the représentants en mission and Revolutionary Military Commissions, while in the countryside about 20,000 to 50,000 civilians were massacred by the infernal columns, who set fire to many towns and villages.

The repression, however, provoked a resurgence of the rebellion and in December 1794 the Republicans began negotiations which led between February and May 1795 to the signing of peace treaties with the various Vendée leaders, thus bringing about the end of the "first Vendée war".

A "second Vendée war" broke out shortly afterwards, in June 1795, after the start of the Quiberon expedition. However, the uprising quickly ran out of steam and the last Vendée leaders submitted or were executed between January and July 1796.

The Vendée still experienced last and brief uprisings with a third war in 1799, a fourth in 1815 and a fifth in 1832, but they were on a much smaller scale.

The number of victims is estimated at approximately 200,000 dead, including approximately 170,000 for the inhabitants of the military Vendée, i.e. between 20 and 25% of the population of the insurgent territory.