François de Charette participant of War in the Vendée
François Athanase de Charette de la Contrie (French pronunciation: ​[fʁɑ̃swa atanaz də ʃaʁɛt də la kɔ̃tʁi]; 2 May 1763 – 29 March 1796) was a Franco-Breton Royalist soldier and politician. He served in the French Navy during the American Revolutionary War and was one of the leaders of the Revolt in the Vendée against the French Revolution. His great-nephew Athanase-Charles-Marie Charette de la Contrie was a noted military leader and great-grandson of Charles X, the penultimate king of France.Vendée War
In 1793, the Revolt in the Vendée against the French First Republic broke out, and the peasant fighters asked Charette to be their leader. He joined Jacques Cathelineau following the taking of Saumur in June 1793 and fought in most of the battles of the Catholic and Royal Army. On 19 September 1793, he participated in the victorious Battle of Tiffauges. Afterwards he and Louis Marie de Lescure had marched on Saint-Fulgent to pursue Jean-Baptiste Kléber, who had escaped. Charette won another victory over the Republicans at the First Battle of Noirmoutier. Some of the captured soldiers took part in the Machecoul Massacres and a quarter of them were executed for retribution by Charette's troops, against his orders. After the parting of the Vendean leaders in September 1793, he and his men retreated. He became the leader of the Lower Vendée, and successfully used guerrilla warfare against the Republican troops, capturing a Republican camp in Saint-Christophe-du-Ligneron, near Challans, but ran out of supplies and was decisively attacked by the troops of Nicolas Haxo. Trapped in the Isle of Bouin, Charette, with the fellow leader Jean-Baptiste de Couëtus was informed of an escape route by a local to the isle. Leaving behind all guns, ammunition, horses, refugees and the wounded, Charette, Couëtus and their men swam through the marshes to Châteauneuf. By a chance stroke of luck, Charette met up with the army of Jean-Baptiste Joly, and both he and Charette retaliated by circling Haxo, gaining back supplies and distracting the Republican army from the refugees. Haxo later attacked the Isle of Noirmoutier, with Louis Turreau, which had been taken by Charette the month before, and after promising life to the inhabitants if they surrendered, against Haxo's command Turreau killed most men, women and children on the isle at the steps of the local church (La chapelle de la Pitié), including D'Elbée who had taken refuge there after sustaining 14 wounds at the Second Battle of Cholet.After this, Charette's army returned and collected reinforcements; Revolutionary brutality and the 'infernal columns' sent by the Convention to destroy the Vendée forced many peasants to join Charette's army merely for safety. Charette won a victory at Saint-Fulgent, only to be chased into hiding in the forest of Grala. He emerged from it to attack Les Brouzils; he was wounded in the arm but kept on until the end of the fight. After obtaining food for his starving army, Charette was brought to La Morière, a convent near Machecoul, to recover from his wound; he was only able to rest there for a few days when his location was betrayed and the Republicans surrounded the convent. Warned, he was able to escape, but the nuns and a large number of the refugees who had come with Charette's army and had hidden in the church were massacred.