Vendée French call for revolution massacre to be termed ‘genocide’
It was one of the most infamous episodes of the bloody French
Revolution.
By Henry Samuel in Paris
Daily Telegraph/UK
Last Updated: 4:52PM GMT 26 Dec 2008
In early 1794 ` at the height of the Reign of Terror ` French soldiers
marched to the Atlantic Vendée, where peasants had risen up against the
Revolutionary government in Paris.
Twelve "infernal columns" commanded by General Louis-Marie Turreau were
ordered to kill everyone and everything they saw. Thousands of people `
including women and children ` were massacred in cold blood, and farms
and villages torched.
In the city of Nantes, the Revolutionary commander Jean-Baptiste
Carrier disposed of Vendéean prisoners-of-war in a horrifically
efficient form of mass execution. In the so-called "noyades" `mass
drownings ` naked men, women, and children were tied together in
specially constructed boats, towed out to the middle of the river Loire
and then sunk.
Now Vendée, a coastal department in western France, is calling for the
incident to be remembered as the first genocide in modern history.
Residents claim the massacre has been downplayed so as not to sully the
story of the French Revolution.
Historians believe that around 170,000 Vendéeans were killed in the
peasant war and the subsequent massacres ` and around 5,000 in the
noyades.
When it was over, French General Francois Joseph Westermann penned a
letter to the Committee of Public Safety stating: "There is no more
Vendée… According to the orders that you gave me, I crushed the
children under the feet of the horses, massacred the women who, at
least for these, will not give birth to any more brigands. I do not
have a prisoner to reproach me. I have exterminated all."
Two centuries on, growing calls from local politicians to have it
declared a "genocide" have sparked intellectual debate.
"There was in the Revolution a clearly stated programme to wipe out the
Vendéean race," said Philippe de Villiers, European deputy and former
presidential candidate for the right-wing traditionalist Movement for
France (MPF) party.
"Why did it take place? Because a people was chosen to be liquidated on
account of their religious faith. Today we demand a law officially
declaring it as a genocide; we demand a statement from the president;
and recognition by the United Nations."
Mr de Villiers ` who opposes Turkish entry into the EU ` was in Armenia
last month, where he compared the Vendée of 1794 to the 1915 massacres
of Armenians. In neither case, he said, "have the perpetrators admitted
their fault or asked forgiveness of the victims".
The bloody events of the Vendée were long absent from French history
books, because of the evil light they shed on the Revolutionaries.
However, they were well known in the Soviet bloc. Lenin himself had
studied the war there and drew inspiration for his policies towards the
peasantry.
According to the historian Alain Gérard, of the Vendéean Centre for
Historical Research, "In other parts of France the revolutionaries
killed the nobles or the rich bourgeoisie. But in Vendée they killed
the people.
"It was the Revolution turning against the very people from whom it
claimed legitimacy. It proved the faithlessness of the Revolution to
its own principles. That’s why it was wiped out of the historical
memory," he said.
While today nobody denies that massacres took place, some historians
argue they cannot be called "genocide" as there were excesses on both
sides in what was a civil war, and they do not fit the UN criteria of
killings based on ethnic or religious identity. "The Vendéeans were no
more blameless than were the republicans. The use of the word genocide
is wholly inaccurate and inappropriate," said Timothy Tackett of the
University of California.
For Mr Gérard, the massacres were clearly "a deliberate policy on the
part of the authorities".
For Mr de Villiers, an aristocrat whose family seat is in the Vendée,
genocide does indeed apply as his forebears were killed for religious
reasons: they had rebelled to protect their priests, who refused to
swear an oath to the new constitution.
"It’s the rare case of a people rising up for religious reasons. They
did not rebel because they were hungry, but because their priests were
being killed," he said.
"It is my burden ` and my great honour ` to defend the Vendée to the
end of my days. The Vendée is not just a province of France, it is a
province of the spirit. If today we enjoy the freedom to worship the
way we choose, it is largely down to the sacrifice of those who died
here."