I got back from my vacation in France, and while I was there I was nerding it up with the local (local to the Vendee area, that is) history. None of you care, but I'll tell you anyway. The geography is important and interesting. After the last ice age, half of Vendee was claimed by the ocean, but wasn't very deep. But, due to some islands and ridges, sediment gradually built those submerged areas up and in the high Middle Ages, places that had been underwater became somewhat useful marshland. This meant that old medieval towns that were built on the coast, like the ironically-named Beauvoir-sur-Mer, are no longer close to the water at all. So in the modern era, Vendee consists of two types of terrain -- the bocage, which is a quiltwork of forest, pasture, and farmland cut into neat little rectangles by hedgerows that were grown to fence off property and reduce erosion; and the marais, which is a low-lying, flood-prone, fairly treeless flat area cut up by canals, and used mostly for pasture and sea salt (and more recently, crops). In the marais, farmers would carry poles to vault over canals and use flat-bottomed boats to navigate around. Their beds were built tall, because houses would be flooded so routinely. Also because of this geography, Vendee is a very isolated, rural place. Because of the marais, there is no good anchorage to be had for a good port. So other than Nantes on the northern edge of Vendee, Poitiers inland and in the southeast corner, and Bordeaux a good deal south, there aren't any really big towns. Talmont had a good port ealy in the middle ages, but the encroaching marais pushed it away from the coast and destroyed its function as a port town. So, it remains a small-town, rural and poor place. Calvinism comes to the area in the 1560s and many in the upper classes in the larger towns convert. But, most peasants remain good Catholics. Religious tensions mount and the War of Religions breaks out a few years later (in Vendee and elsewhere in France), with Protestants and Catholics committing atrocities against each other. Eventually, the Edict of Nantes is decreed and brings peace for a little while, but it is later revoked under Louis XIV and Protestants are run out of the Vendee. So, when the French Revolution comes, the Vendee is generally not happy. They don't resent aristocrats there as much as peasants in other parts of France, as these aristocrats are not terribly rich or exploitative. And, they see the king who was ousted by Revolution as the defender of Catholicism. The Revolution had a strong anti-church sentiment and a law that said the Republic was the head of the church in France, that priests had to swear loyalty to the new government, plus the seizures of church lands and killing of priests were greatly resented by the Vendeens. And then, threatened by aristocrats who had raised armies abroad to return to France to try to re-establish the monarchy, the Republic tried to raise an army with a draft. Many regions resist and riot, including Vendee and Brittany, just to the north. Brittany is put down fairly easily, but the Vendee, with it's marshland and it's tight hedgerows in the bocage was good terrain for guerrila warfare, and the Vendeens kick the Repblicans butts for a couple of years. This is the War in the Vendee, which seems to be the seminal moment in Vendee history. Eventually, the Commission for Public Safety (the base of Robespierre's power) orders a genocide in the Vendee. An army called colonnes infernales marches through Vendee killing men, women, and children until the area is pacified. They would do things like pack Vendeens on to boats and then sink them to kill as efficiently as possible. A couple hundred thousand people are ultimately killed in this war, in an area that had maybe a million people in it. I say it is the seminal moment, because it seems to have left a deep mark on the region. There is a Memorial and chapel built recently to mark the genocide (very nicely done, too), and you can find placards or stone monuments all over commemorating the 32 people killed in this little village by the infernal columns or the 12 priests slaughtered in this chapel. The region's heart logo and slogan come from this war. In the 1980s, a scholar created a controversy by calling the War in the Vendee the first modern genocide, causing a lot of argument about whether that term should apply. It all seems pretty bitter still, even though 200 years have passed. It reminded me a lot of the enduring resentment some in the Deep South still have about the Civil War. Even after the pacification, the area remained very conservative. When Bonaparte came back in 1815, Vendee fought for King Louis XVIII and had to be quelled again. And today, a prominent politician from the area (Viliers) contends to be a royalist, and runs on an anti-Islam, anti-EU platform. The new Protestants and Paris, I suppose. It was a cool trip for me in many ways. But, this time around, I got a much bigger helping on the history than I usually do, and I thought it was cool. Not much to discuss, I suppose, but therapeutic to write down.
