War in the Vendée The War in the Vendée ( 1793 to 1796 ; ) was a Royalist rebellion and counterrevolution in the Vendée region of France during the French Revolution . The Vendée is a coastal region , located immediately south of the Loire River in western France . The uprising headed by the self - styled Catholic and Royal Army was closely tied to the Chouannerie , which took place in the area north of the Loire . Initially , the war was similar to the 14th - century Jacquerie peasant uprising , but quickly took on counterrevolutionary themes . Tens of thousands of civilians were massacred by the Republican armies . Some historians have even labeled Republican crimes as genocide . Background . Class differences were not as great in the Vendée as in Paris or in other French provinces . In the rural Vendée , the local nobility seems to have been more permanently in residence and less bitterly resented than in other parts of France . Alexis de Tocqueville noted that most French nobles lived in cities by 1789 . An Intendants ' survey showed one of the few areas where they still lived with the peasants was the Vendée . The conflicts that drove the revolution were also lessened in this particularly isolated part of France by the strong adherence of the populace to their Catholic faith . In 1791 , two " representatives mission " informed the National Convention of the disquieting condition of Vendée , and this news was quickly followed by the exposure of a royalist plot organized by the Marquis de la Rouerie . It was not until the social unrest combined with the external pressures from the Civil Constitution of the Clergy ( 1790 ) and the introduction of a levy of 300 , 000 on the whole of France , decreed by the National Convention in February 1793 , that the region erupted . The Civil Constitution required all clerics to swear allegiance to it and by extension to the increasingly anti - clerical National Constituent Assembly . All but seven of the 160 bishops refused the oath , as did about half of the parish priests . Persecution of the clergy and of the faithful was the first trigger of the rebellion ; the second being conscription . Nonjuring priests were exiled or imprisoned . Women on their way to Mass were beaten in the streets . Religious orders were suppressed and Church property confiscated . On 3 March 1793 , virtually all the churches were ordered closed . Sacramental vessels were confiscated by soldiers and the people were forbidden to place a cross on their graves . Nearly all the purchasers of church land were Bourgeois , very few peasants benefited . The March 1793 conscription requiring Vendeans to fill their district ' s quota of the national total of 300 , 000 enraged the populace , who took up arms instead as " The Catholic Army " , " Royal " being added later , and fought for " above all the reopening of their parish churches with their former priests . " Town dwellers were more likely to support the Revolution in the Vendée , but support among the rural peasantry was not unknown . Many lived on monastery properties , and they overwhelmingly embraced the Revolution after these lands were seized and redistributed among them by the republican government . Outbreak of revolt . There were other levy riots across France , when regions started to draft men into the army in response to the Levy Decree in February . The reaction in the northwest in early March was particularly pronounced with large scale rioting verging on insurrection . By early April , in areas north of the Loire , order had been restored by the revolutionary government , but south of the Loire in four departments that became known as the " Vendée Militaire " there were few troops to control rebels and what had started as rioting quickly took on the form of a full insurrection led by priests and the local nobility . Within a few weeks the rebel forces had formed a substantial , if ill - equipped , army , the " Royal and Catholic Army " , supported by two thousand irregular cavalry and a few captured artillery pieces . The main force of the rebels operated on a much smaller scale , using guerrilla tactics , supported by the insurgents ' unparalleled local knowledge and the good - will of the people . The Republic ' s response . The Republic was quick to respond , dispatching over 45 , 000 troops to the area by the end of March . The first pitched battle was on the night of 19 March . A Republican column of 2 , 000 , under General de Marcé , moving from La Rochelle to Nantes , was intercepted north of Chantonnay at Pont - Charrault ( La Guérinière ) , near the Lay . After six hours of fighting rebel reinforcements arrived and routed the Republican forces . The rebels advanced as far south as Niort . In the north , on 22 March , another Republican force was routed near Chalonnes . The " Vendée Militaire " covered the area between the Loire and the Lay – covering Vendée ( Marais , Bocage Vendéen , Collines Vendéennes ) , part of Maine - et - Loire west of the Layon , and the portion of Deux Sèvres west of the River Thouet . Having secured their " pays " , the deficiencies of the Vendean army became more apparent . Lacking a unified strategy ( or army ) and fighting a defensive campaign , from April onwards the army lost cohesion and its special advantages . Successes continued for some time : Thouars was taken in early May and Saumur in June ; there were victories at Châtillon and Vihiers . But the Vendeans then turned to a protracted siege of Nantes . Defeat . On 1 August 1793 , the Committee of Public Safety ordered General Jean - Baptiste Carrier to carry out a " pacification " of the region by complete physical destruction . These orders were not carried out immediately , but a steady stream of demands for total destruction persisted . Under orders from the Committee of Public Safety in February 1794 , the Republican forces launched their final " pacification " effort ( named " Vendée - Vengé " or " Vendée Revenged " ) : twelve columns , the " colonnes infernales " ( " infernal columns " ) under Louis Marie Turreau , marched through the Vendée . General Turreau inquired about " the fate of the women and children I will encounter in rebel territory " , stating that , if it was " necessary to pass them all by sword " , he would require a decree . In response , the Committee of Public Safety ordered him to " eliminate the brigands to the last man , there is your duty . . . " . The Republican army was reinforced , benefiting from the first men of the " levée en masse " and reinforcements from Mainz . The Vendean army had its first serious defeat at the Battle of Cholet on 17 October ; worse for the rebels , their army was split . In October 1793 the main force , commanded by Henri de la Rochejaquelein and numbering some 25 , 000 ( followed by thousands of civilians of all ages ) , crossed the Loire , headed for the port of Granville where they expected to be greeted by a British fleet and an army of exiled French nobles . Arriving at Granville , they found the city surrounded by Republican forces , with no British ships in sight . Their attempts to take the city were unsuccessful . During the retreat , the extended columns fell prey to Republican forces ; suffering from hunger and disease , they died in the thousands . The force was defeated in the last , decisive battle of Savenay on 23 December . Among those executed the following day was lieutenant - general Jacques Alexis de Verteuil . With this came formal orders for forced evacuation ; also , a ' scorched earth ' policy was initiated : farms were destroyed , crops and forests burned and villages razed . There were many reported atrocities and a campaign of mass killing universally targeted at residents of the Vendée regardless of combatant status , political affiliation , age or gender . From January to May 1794 , 20 , 000 to 50 , 000 Vendean civilians were massacred by the Infernal columns of the general Louis Marie Turreau . In Anjou , directed by Nicolas Hentz and Marie Pierre Adrien Francastel , Republicans captured 11 , 000 to 15 , 000 Vendeans , 6 , 500 to 7 , 000 were shot or guillotined and 2 , 000 to 2 , 200 prisoners died from disease . General Westermann reported to his political masters at the Convention : " The Vendée is no more . . . According to your orders , I have trampled their children beneath our horses ' feet ; I have massacred their women , so they will no longer give birth to brigands . I do not have a single prisoner to reproach me . I have exterminated them all . " The Convention issued conciliatory proclamations allowing the Vendeans liberty of worship and guaranteeing their property . General Hoche applied these measures with great success . He restored their cattle to the peasants who submitted , " let the priests have a few crowns " , and on 20 July 1795 annihilated an " émigré " expedition which had been equipped in England and had seized Fort Penthievre and Quiberon . Treaties were concluded at La Jaunaie ( 15 February 1795 ) and at La Mabillaie , and were fairly well observed by the Vendeans ; no obstacle remained but the feeble and scattered remnant of the Vendeans still under arms and the Chouans . On 30 July 1796 the state of siege was raised in the western departments . Estimates of those killed in the Vendean conflict – on both sides – range between 117 , 000 and 450 , 000 , out of a population of around 800 , 000 . Later revolts . According to Theodore A . Dodge , the war in Vendée lasted with intensity from 1793 to 1799 , when it was suppressed , but later broke out spasmodically especially in 1813 , 1814 and 1815 . During Napoleon Bonaparte ' s Hundred Days in 1815 , some of the population of Vendée remained loyal to King Louis XVIII , forcing Bonaparte – who was short of troops to fight the Waterloo Campaign – to send a force of 10 , 000 under the command of Jean Maximilien Lamarque to pacify the region . Controversy . The historiography of the War in the Vendée is deeply rooted in conflicts between different schools of French historiography , and as a result , writings on the uprising are generally highly partisan , coming down strongly in support of the revolutionary government or the Vendéen royalists . This conflict originated in the 19th century between two groups of historians , the " Bleus " , named for their support of the republicans , who based their findings on archives from the uprising and the " Blancs " , named for their support of the monarchy and the Catholic Church , who based their findings on local oral histories . The " Bleus " generally argued that the Vendée was not a popular uprising , but was the result of noble and clerical manipulation of the peasantry . One of the leaders of this school of thought , Charles - Louis Chassin , published eleven volumes of letters , archives , and other materials supporting this position . The " Blancs " , generally members of the former nobility and clergy themselves , argued ( frequently using the same documents as Chassin , but also drawing from contemporary mémoirs and oral histories ) that the peasants were acting out of a genuine love for the nobility and a desire to protect the Catholic Church . This conflict was popularized in the English - speaking world in 1986 , when French historian Reynald Secher wrote a controversial book entitled : " A French Genocide : The Vendée " . Secher argued that the actions of the French republican government during the War in the Vendée was the first modern genocide . Secher ' s claims caused a minor uproar in France amongst scholars of modern French history , as mainstream authorities on the period – both French and foreign – published articles rejecting Secher ' s claims . Claude Langlois ( of the Institute of History of the French Revolution ) derides Secher ' s claims as " quasi - mythological " . Timothy Tackett of the University of California summarizes the case as such : " In reality . . . the Vendée was a tragic civil war with endless horrors committed by both sides – initiated , in fact , by the rebels themselves . The Vendeans were no more blameless than were the republicans . The use of the word genocide is wholly inaccurate and inappropriate . " Hugh Gough ( Professor of history at University College Dublin ) called Secher ' s book an attempt at historical revisionism unlikely to have any lasting impact . Peter McPhee roundly criticizes Secher , including the assertion of commonality between the functions of the Republican government and Communist totalitarianism . Historian Pierre Chanu expressed support for Secher ' s views , describing the events as the first " ideological genocide " . Critics of Secher ' s thesis have alleged that his methodology is flawed . McPhee asserted that these errors are as follows : ( 1 ) The war was not fought against Vendeans but Royalist Vendeans , the government relied on the support of Republican Vendeans ; ( 2 ) the Convention ended the campaign after the Royalist Army was clearly defeated – if the aim was genocide , then they would have continued and easily exterminated the population ; ( 3 ) Fails to inform the reader of atrocities committed by Royalist against Republicans in the Vendée ; ( 4 ) Repeats stories now known to be folkloric myths as fact ; ( 5 ) Does not refer to the wide range of estimates of deaths suffered by both sides , and that casualties were not " one - sided " ; and more . Peter McPhee says that the pacification of the Vendée does not fit either the United Nations ' CPPCG definition of genocide because the events happened during a civil war . He states that the war in the Vendée was not a one - sided mass killing and the Committee of Public Safety did not intend to exterminate the whole population of the Vendée ; parts of the population were allied to the revolutionary government . Concerning the controversy , Michel Vovelle , a specialist on the French Revolution , remarked : " A whole literature is forming on " Franco - French genocide " , starting from risky estimates of the number of fatalities in the Vendean wars . . . Despite not being specialists in the subject , historians such as Pierre Chanu have put all the weight of their great moral authority behind the development of an anathematizing discourse , and have dismissed any effort to look at the subject reasonably . " Debate over the characterization of the Vendée uprising was renewed in 2007 , when nine right - wing deputies introduced a measure to the " Assemblée nationale " to officially recognize the republican actions as genocidal . The measure was strongly denounced by a group of French historians as an attempt to use history to justify political extremism . Despite the criticism of the assertion of genocide , a number of scholars make the assertion . In addition to Secher and Chaunu , Kurt Jonassohn and Frank Chalk also consider it a case of genocide . Further support comes from Adam Jones , who wrote in " Genocide : A Comprehensive Introduction " a summary of the Vendée uprising , supporting the view that it was a genocide : " the Vendée Uprising stands as a notable example of a mass killing campaign that has only recently been conceptualized as ' genocide ' " and that while this designation " is not universally shared . . . it seems apt in the light of the large scale murder of a designated group ( the Vendéan civilian population ) . " Pierre Chaunu describes it as the first " ideological genocide " . " Mark Levene , an historian who specializes in the study of genocide " , considers the Vendée " an archetype of modern genocide " . Other scholars who consider the massacres to be genocide include R . J . Rummel , Jean Tulard and Anthony James Joes . Film . The uprising in the Vendée was the subject of an independent feature film from Navis Pictures . The War of the Vendée ( 2012 ) , written and directed by Jim Morlino , won awards for " Best Film For Young Audiences " , ( Mirabile Dictu International Catholic Film Festival - at the Vatican ) and " Best Director " ( John Paul II International Film Festival - Miami , FL ) The Vendee Revolt was also the setting for " The Frogs and the Lobsters " , an episode of the television program " Hornblower " . It is set during the French revolutionary wars and very loosely based on the chapter of the same name in C . S . Forester ' s novel , " Mr . Midshipman Hornblower " and on the actual ill - fated Quiberon expedition of 1795 .