La Vendée : A Story of France

The Vendée is a maritime department of western France, formed in 1790. The War
of the Vendée was a counter-revolutionary insurrection which took place during
the French Revolution.

The history of France in 1792 has been too fully written, and too generally
read to leave the novelist any excuse for describing the state of Paris at the
close of the summer of that year. It is known to everyone that the palace of
Louis XVI was sacked on the 10th of August. That he himself with his family
took refuge in the National Assembly, and that he was taken thence to the
prison of the Temple.

The doings on the fatal 10th of August, and the few following days had,
however, various effects in Paris, all of which we do not clearly trace in
history. We well know how the Mountain became powerful from that day; that
from that day Marat ceased to shun the light, and Danton to curb the licence
of his tongue that then, patriotism in France began to totter, and that, from
that time, Paris ceased to be a fitting abode for aught that was virtuous,
innocent, or high-minded; but the steady march of history cannot stop to let
us see the various lights in which the inhabitants of Paris regarded the loss
of a King, and the commencement of the first French Republic...

Nothing occurred in the provinces, subsequently called La Vendée, during the
autumn or winter of 1792 of sufficient notice to claim a place in history, but
during that time the feelings which afterwards occasioned the revolt in that
country, were every day becoming more ardent. The people obstinately refused
to attend the churches to which the constitutional clergy had been appointed;
indeed, these pastors had found it all but impossible to live in the parishes
assigned to them; no one would take them as tenants; no servants would live
with them; the bakers and grocers would not deal with them; the tailors would
not make their clothes for them, nor the shoemakers shoes. During the week
they were debarred from all worldly commerce, and on Sundays they performed
their religious ceremonies between empty walls.

The banished priests, on the other hand, who were strictly forbidden to
perform any of the sacerdotal duties, continued among the trees and rocks to
collect their own congregations undiminished in number, and much more than
ordinarily zealous, in their religious duties; and with the licence which such
sylvan chapels were found to foster, denunciations against the Republic, and
prayers for the speedy restoration of the monarchy, were mingled with the
sacred observances.

The execution of Louis, in January, 1793, greatly increased the attachment
which was now felt in this locality to his family. In Nantes and Angers, in
Saumur, Thouars, and other towns in which the presence of Republican forces
commanded the adhesion of the inhabitants this event was commemorated by
illuminations, but this very show of joy at so cruel a murder, more than the
murder itself, acerbated the feelings both of the gentry and the peasants.