The French Revolution: Brittany and the Vendée

Drownings of Nantes in 1793, Joseph Aubert (1882)

“We must exterminate all men who have taken arms against the Republic 

and strike down their fathers, their wives, their sisters and their children. 

The Vendée must become a national cemetery.” 

      – General Turreau

The French Revolution is generally accepted as covering the period 1789 to 1799, ending with Napoleon’s coup d’état and the dissolution of the Directory. Prior to the formation of the Directory government France was ruled by the National Convention headed by Robespierre. This period, aptly known as the Terror, lasted from September 1793 to July 1794. 

For Western France, in the region of the Vendée, the Terror was accompanied by bloody and religious civil war including a period of mass killings that some French historians have recently come to denounce as a genocide and which led to the decimation of a third of the inhabitants in the Vendée. 

In the Western town of Nantes the representative of the National Convention, Jean-Baptiste Carrier, was responsible for atrocities and massacres that defy imagination. 

In my latest novel, I was interested in portraying a female perspective for this turbulent period.

Origins of the Conflict

It is a misconception that aside from aristocrats and nobles all French people were in favor of the beheading of their king and queen. 

The inhabitants of Brittany and of the newly named region of Vendée (comprising parts of Brittany, Poitou and Anjou regions) were never in favor of the guillotining of their king, Louis XVI, on 21 January 1793. They were staunch royalists and deeply Catholic. The execution of King Louis was not well received. 

To compound the people’s outrage, the new Republic had not only nationalized church property, but it also outlawed all priests who refused to forsake their oath on the Holy Bible.  According to these new laws, priests now had to swear upon the Constitution. Those who resisted were labelled ‘refractory’ and banished from preaching. There were persecutions involving both priests and nuns. In worst cases such priests were hunted to death or murdered en masse, as happened in Nantes in December 1793 when hundreds of refractory priests were tied up, locked into a barge and drowned in the Loire River. 

Already unsettled, the Vendée peasants rose in arms against the Republic when in February 1793, the National Convention made a call for the conscription of 300000 unmarried men, from the age of 18 to 40 years. 

The people of the Vendée had already witnessed great injustices toward their beloved priests, whom they hid, but this new conscription law was the tipping point because it would have left thousands of peasants unable to fend for their families. Meanwhile they would be forced to enlist in support of a Republic they had come to see as tyrannical.

Determined to oppose the Republic, these men, often illiterate and attached to their land, elected nobles and landlords—local men whom they held in high esteem—to lead and train them in battle. The Great Vendéan Army was born. 

Initially this Great Army won many victories against the soldiers of the Republic, but from December 1793, its luck began to turn. From January to July 1794, Paris sent a giant army to sweep across the Vendée. Its orders were clear: annihilation with no quarters. 

The Infernal Columns

Children, women, the aged, even the sick and farm livestock were not spared from massacres. The Republican army practiced scorched-earth and sought to obey decrees from Paris aimed at starving or exterminating the population. 

The army possessed twenty columns led by several Republican generals. Some, like those commanded by General Grignon, were more cruel than others. These columns became known as the ‘infernal columns’ for the very hell they spawned. 

The living defend their dead. War of the Vendée. 

Georges Clairin, 19th century

The words pronounced by General François Joseph Westermann are powerful illustrations of the atrocities that followed: 

“There is no more Vendée. I have trampled the children to death with our horses, I have massacred the women, and they are no longer able to give birth to any brigands. I am not guilty of taking a single prisoner, I have exterminated them all… The roads are covered with corpses. There are so many of them at several places they form pyramids. The firing squads work incessantly… Brigands arrive who pretend that they will surrender as prisoners… but we are not taking any. One would be forced to feed them with the bread of liberty, but compassion is not a revolutionary virtue.” 

Writing the French Revolution 

In Julien’s Terror, my desire was to convey what might have been the experience of a young girl in these violent times. The journey begins when she is a spoilt child, daughter a well-to-do merchant, living on the prestigious Île Feydeau in the heart of Nantes. It follows her life after the Terror, when she is a spirited but destitute orphan. What she sees and lives in-between, and the aftermath of her horrendous psychological journey provide both drama and mystery, but more importantly, it casts a light on the hardships faced by many French women in this period.

My female character is barely nine when she loses her parents to Carrier’s butchery. She is reunited with relatives in war-torn Vendée, staying with them first in Montaigu, La Guyonnière and then later in Les Epesses—all communes that were swept by the infernal columns.

The Underground and the Hidden Places of the Vendée

What is less well-known about the conflict in Western France is how much the peasants’ knowledge of their natural surroundings supplied them with advantages for surviving the Republican army. Like the Viet Cong of Vietnam, the people of Brittany and Vendée crawled in secret undergrounds. They also waged a guerrilla war long before the word ‘guerilla’ officially surfaced, when Napoleonic French troops encountered fierce resistance in Spain.

As François Pagès describes in Secret History of the French revolution—the soldiers of the Catholic royalist army ceaselessly disappeared and then re-appeared to fight. The underground, the woods, the stones and the marshes in the West would conceal and then suddenly release hordes of former valets, brigands, priests, ex-nobles, and peasants. They were everywhere and yet they remained unseen. 

In his final novel, Quatre-Vingt Treize, Victor Hugo wrote of his father’s experience in the war against Breton royalists. He too mentions the forests that sheltered thousands of peasants in Brittany: 

“The peasant had two points on which he leaned: the field which nourished him, the wood which concealed him.”

“There were wells, round and narrow, masked by coverings of stones and branches, the interior at first vertical, then horizontal, spreading out underground like funnels, and ending in dark chambers. [ ] The caves of Egypt held dead men, the caves of Brittany were filled with the living.”

“The subsoil of every forest was a sort of mad repose, pierced and traversed in all directions by a secret highway of minds, cells, and galleries. Each one of these blind cells could shelter five or six men.”

In Les Epesses, my female character follows her great-uncle, a giant Breton man who walks everywhere with his large wooden staff, and seems to know all the secrets of the underground. He hides his family in an underground cavern where they remain for months. 

As the infernal columns advance in the Vendée countryside, my character witnesses horrors beyond her years. Later she will hide in the secret Gralas forest, south of Nantes, and meet one of the most courageous men to lead the Vendée rebellion – General François Athanase de Charette de la Contrie (Charette). In Gralas, she will also discover the strong, independent women who fought to death alongside Charette, and one of these women will change her life forever.

"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death" 

- the original motto of the French Republic

Further Reading:

1. Histoire secrète de la Révolution française depuis la convocation des notables jusqu' a la 
prise de l'ile de Malthe..., François Pagès, 1798.
2. Quatrevingt-treize, Victor Hugo, 1874.
3. Souterrains de Vendée, Laurent et Jérôme Triolet, Editions Ouest-France, 2013.
4. Colonnes Infernales - Wikipedia 
5. A French Genocide: The Vendée, Reynald Secher, University of Notre Dame Press, 2003.

Julien's Terror - My Third Novel

This is not the cover of Julien's Terror by the way.

As readers, we do judge a book by its cover, don't we?

What imagery comes to your mind with the words - French Revolution, mysterious woman, tormented couple, obsession, haunting and psychological thriller?

Where to start? How can a self-published author avoid cliches yet use appropriate book cover symbols to draw a desired audience? What is my desired audience? I think she is female, over 25 and obsessed with 18/19th century France. The macabre and gothic must appeal to her while she must also have a fascination for the human mind and for unveiling secrets.

Is that you? Then how can I best attract you with my book cover? Tell me.

The next six months will be intensely creative as I finalise the imagery to feature on the cover of my third novel, Julien's Terror, before preparing an art brief.

Despite the tenebrous aspects of this novel, I was overjoyed over the last months. I spent ample time researching fascinating real-life characters, all of which are featured or mentioned in the story. They include 18th century fortune-teller, Marie Anne Lenormand, writer Germaine Staël, the unflinching Minister of Police Fouché, the brave Breton counter-revolutionary François de Charette, the unique physician Franz Anton Mesmer, to name a few...

I am excited!

And I've saved it for last: Julien's Terror now has a blurb...

***

Julien's Terror

Eight years after France's bloody Reign of Terror, a young couple is happily married in Paris. Julien d'Aureville is an upcoming bourgeois raised in the poor and intensely revolutionary district of Saint-Antoine. His young wife, Marguerite Lafolye, is an orphan from Brittany who escaped the cruelty of Nantes' butcher, Jean-Baptiste Carrier. Fiercely royalist, she remains a mystery to her husband.

Marguerite becomes obsessed with Dauphin Louis-Charles, youngest child of the late Queen Marie-Antoinette and in Le Temple, the medieval prison where Louis-Charles was kept for almost three years before his death. 

Meanwhile terrifying nightmares plague Julien from the beginning of their marriage. In desperation, he reaches out to Paris' celebrated fortune-teller, Marie Anne Lenormand. But when Marie Anne attempts to draw insights into Julien’s wife, she is startled to find that she cannot read her cards.

Who is Marguerite Lafoyle? 

To Marguerite's horror, Napoleon wishes to demolish Le Temple. The couple make a final visit to the old Templar building where Marguerite mysteriously faints.

And then jealousy rears its head. A romantic visit to Napoleon's Venice sees one of the fortune-teller’s predictions come true. When Marguerite meets dashing Austrian, Maximilian Von Hauser, Julien's worst fears are realised.

And it's only getting more sinister... Marguerite begins to behave strangely.

Deep in Marguerite's past, where the tyranny of murderous Republicans meets with ancient Breton folklore, lies a terrifying secret. Is Marguerite a liar? 

Who is she really? And is she truly possessed by the late Dauphin? 

In this chilling psychological tale set in post-revolutionary France, a young couple confront their darkest fears. Looming above them, between healing and oblivion, lies the French Republic's most shocking secret.

The Ankou and the Legend of Death

The Bretons, those inhabitants of France's Brittany region, are a mysterious people. Traditionally dressed in black, proud and cider-loving, it is also said they are exceptionally stubborn, at once cold and welcoming, often times brooding and hard working. One of their key traits is their openness and adventurous spirit. Indeed today, much of Brittany's people reside outside of Brittany, and throughout history, France's soldiers and naval officers counted many Bretons, of which several were my ancestors.

I often say, employing a nationalistic shortcut, that I am one-quarter French, from my grandfather.
He, on the other hand, would have me say that it is not so, that I am in fact, one quarter Breton.

Brittany in popular culture

There are four things the world takes for granted from the Bretons.

First, there is the Breton stripes - those ubiquitous blue and white marine stripes which traditionally constituted the Breton sailor's uniform and which today, through a fashionable trajectory arguably begun by Coco Chanel, can manifest itself through all manner of clothing, from dresses, bags, hats, tshirts, jumpsuits to coats.  For the last couple of years, the Breton stripes have been a force of fashion, a staple of many women's wardrobes. And if Jean-Paul Gaultier's Fall/Winter 2015-2016 show is anything to go by, Brittany's rich black velvets and magnificent gold embroidery may future impact our closets.

 Left: Traditional costume of Brittany

Right: Sample from Gaultier's 2015-2016 Fall/Winter collection

And then there are the French crêpes. There is nothing French about crêpes, let me tell you. They are 100% Bretons.

Another gorgeous Breton dessert is the emerging and fabulous Kouign Amann, a 19th century Breton culinary invention. This is a rich buttery pastry that Bostonions, Singaporians, Japanese and New Yorkans have newly 'discovered' and which graces any self-respecting foodie's blog. If you haven't tried Kouign Amann, I pity you.

And finally the top Brittany export par excellence, is prolific author, Jules Verne. Born and raised in the city of Nantes, an explorer both of the world and of futuristic possibilities, this celebrated father of science fiction has left an indelible mark in many languages.

The Land of Death

The Breton traditionally saw today's Brittany region as composed of 'countries'. 

The above map shows the Breton name for each country ("Bro" means "Country")

Note that France is called "Bro-C'Hall"

Recently I have been delving deeper into my ancestors' legends and beliefs, seeking to uncover their soul and temperament. What I have discovered is that much like the Venetians, they were traditionally a people preoccupied with death. Their psyche was entwined with the memory of those who have passed and there existed only a thin veil between their existence and the world of souls.

According to Anatole le Braz, the distinction between the natural and the supernatural does not exist for the Bretons, at least in the meaning we ascribe to these; the living and the dead are both inhabitants of the world and they exist in perpetual relation one with the other.

The entire Brittany region - from the mountains to the sea, from Brest to St Malo, from the Mont St Michel to Angers - is they say, filled with erring souls that cry and wail.  Brittany is above anything, the Land of Death. The dead live there with the living in close intimacy. Souls are not confined to the tombs of the cemetery; they wander by night through the large roads and the desert paths.

The Ankou - ancient Celtic legend

This way of living gave rise to many legends and to rich and varied set of symbols all with their own significance as concerns death.

One of their legends concerned l'Ankou. Who is this Ankou? For the Bretons, the Ankou is the servant of death, the personification of death. If he draws near you, usually at night when the moon is full, you will perceive first the rattling of his advancing horse-drawn cart. Then he emerges - hideous, a spectrally tall and thin old man with black sunken eyes, as though they are not at all there. He stands upon his cart, his long white hair hanging well past this shoulders, and he is clad with a black vest and a long brim felt hat.

A Breton is overcome with anguish at the mere sight of l'Ankou. The sound of his cart, the sight of him, presages only death. If you have seen the Ankou, then you have been gifted with a glimpse into the world of the dead. Seeing the Ankou is a sign of impending death among one of your close ones. Either that, or your own death will soon follow.

In the commune of La Roche Maurice, not far from the town of Brest in Brittany, a 17th century (1639-1640) church gives a chilling illustration of the Ankou symbolism. The church's principal entrance features the Ankou as a skeletal engraving with the words, "Je vous tue tous" - I kill you all. In what I conceive as a marriage between legend and Christianity, here, the Ankou warns us to be wary of our eventual death, he serves as a reminder. Nearby, another Latin inscription written in 1640 announces, "Souviens-toi, homme que tu n'es que poussière" - Remember, man that you are mere dust.

Perhaps it is this memory, the omnipresence of death, that sees the traditional Breton embrace his ever mourning black clothing. With such a preoccupation, the Breton could almost be thought of as the original Goth, but his beliefs lie beyond.

Anatole Le Braz, Cultural preserver

I feel that they are best represented by celebrated Breton culture expert, Anatole Le Braz, "The Bard of Brittany".  Anatole's work is a precious heritage considering that he lived during a period when the Breton language, the only living Celtic language in France, was banned from being taught in school and children were punished and humiliated for speaking it. This ban, effective from 1880 to 1950, meant that Anatole's collection and translation of Breton legends and cultural traditions was not only a defiance of French hegemony, but also a gift for generations to come. In his childhood and beyond, my grandfather could never be taught his own language. Today, Breton is the only Celtic language currently in use in Continental Europe.

***

An excerpt from Anatole de Braz's La Légende de la Mort, 1892
For non-French speakers, I have provided my translation in Italics.

Si nombreuses que soient les âmes qui demeurent avec les vivants dans leurs basses maisons de granit ou qui vivent dans les cimetières et les landes désertes, elles passent invisibles à la plupart des yeux et il est peu d’oreilles qui entendent dans l’air calme du soir leur vol silencieux et doux. Cependant on n’est jamais en ce monde sans nouvelles de cet autre monde de mystères, du monde des âmes et de la mort. Il en vient sans cesse comme de vagues rumeurs, des bruits lointains, des signes, des présages. Nul ne meurt sans que quelqu’un de ses proches n’en ait été averti. Certaines personnes ont entre toutes le don de voir, elles lisent plus aisément au livre de l’avenir, elles pénètrent tous les secrets de la mort, elles ont sans cesse des avertissements, des pressentiments ; elles aperçoivent des signes qui restent cachés aux yeux de ceux qu’absorbent les soucis de ce monde. C’est le bruit que font autour de nous les gens et les bêtes qui éteint pour nous ces voix légères qui viennent du pays des morts ; si nous n’étions pas pris tout entiers par nos affaires et nos plaisirs, nous saurions presque tout ce qui arrive de l’autre côté de la tombe.

No matter how numerous those souls that inhabit the world of the living in their low granite homes, or who live in the cemeteries or the desert moors, they are invisible to most eyes, and there exist few ears, who in the calm air of the night, can hear their gentle and silent flight. Yet, we are never in this world without news of this other world of mysteries, the world of souls and of death. They come to us in vague rumours, in distant sounds, signs and presages. No one dies without one of their close ones being advised. Certain persons have among others, the gift to see, they read more easily into the book of the future, they penetrate the secrets of death and they consistently have notices, presentiments; they perceive signs that remain hidden to the eyes of those who absorb the worries of this world. It is the sound around us, made by people, animals, that shut out for us, those light voices coming from the world of the dead; if we were not so taken entirely by our affairs and our pleasures, we would know almost all that takes place on the other side of the tomb.

Il ne faut pas croire au reste que les gens qui nient qu’il y ait des intersignes, aient été plus que les autres privés de ces avertissements, mais ils craignent ces choses d’épouvante (traou-spont), et ne veulent rien voir ni rien entendre de l’autre vie. Beaucoup de Bretons ont comme un recul involontaire devant ce monde mystérieux qui les environne de toute part, si étrangement mêlé au monde réel ; les choses de la mort ont pour eux un invincible attrait et en même temps ils les fuient, comme poussés par une instinctive et toute-puissante terreur. Il est dangereux d’être en trop fréquente et trop intime communication avec les âmes qui peuplent l’autre monde ; il est dangereux même d’en savoir trop sur l’autre vie ; ceux qui reçoivent du pays des morts de trop fréquents messages sont déjà marqués pour être la proie de l’Ankou. Il n’est point rare que ceux qui ont reçu quelqu’une de ces étranges révélations meurent eux-mêmes au bout de quelques semaines ou de quelques mois.

On dirait que de ce pays lointain qu’elles habitent les âmes tirent à elles les vivants et que lorsqu’elles viennent parmi les hommes elles les enchantent et les charment et les emmènent captifs jusque dans leur silencieuse demeure. Tous ceux qui ont été mêlés à quelqu’une de ces scènes étranges, qui précèdent parfois la mort, à ces cérémonies mystérieuses qu’accomplissent les âmes auprès de ceux qui vont mourir perdent à jamais la gaieté, la joie insouciante qui s’exhale en chansons ; ils restent graves, ensevelis en un rêve dont rien ne les peut éveiller ; c’est encore sur la terre des hommes qu’ils marchent, ils mangent et boivent comme les autres hommes ; comme les autres ils conduisent la barque et la charrue, mais ce ne sont déjà plus des vivants.

Nous sommes là en présence de conceptions très anciennes, l’idée du présage ne s’est point démêlée des autres idées auxquelles elle est entrelacée. Les apparitions des âmes sont à la fois signes et causes de mort ; aussi ne peut-on considérer l’intersigne comme un avertissement divin ; c’est la Mort elle-même qui décèle sa présence, c’est elle qui fait sortir du tombeau les âmes, qui vont devant elle, comme des hérauts, appelant les vivants ; tous ceux qu’elles rencontrent, elles les fascinent, elles les blessent, l’Ankou n’aura plus qu’à achever leur besogne. La nature entière frémit à l’approche de la mort : c’est l’oiseau (sparfel) qui voltige autour de la maison et vient frapper à la vitre, ce sont les chiens qui hurlent, c’est la pie qui vient se poser sur le toit. Pas une nuit ne se passe sans que quelques signes n’indiquent l’approche de la mort ; elle rôde sans cesse autour des hommes, les Bretons la sentent toujours présente et peut-être est-ce au sentiment que la grande mangeuse d’hommes est toujours là tout près d’eux, la main levée prête à s’abattre sur leur épaule, qu’il faut attribuer cette étrange tristesse, cette tristesse grave et songeuse, coupée d’éclats de gaieté, dont sont encore empreints ceux que n’ont point trop changés les idées nouvelles venues du pays de France.

Ce perpétuel contact avec la mort a imposé sur l’âme des Bretons une empreinte profonde ; il n’est pas de pays où ceux qui ne sont plus restent ainsi mêlés aux vivants ; les morts gardent, à vrai dire, leur place dans leur maison, le cimetière est comme un prolongement du foyer ; on y va, si j’ose dire, causer avec les siens. Il y a dans les grandes villes, à Paris par exemple, une sorte de religion de la mort, mais c’est, à tout prendre, bien plutôt le culte des tombeaux que le culte des morts ; on ne vit point en intimité avec eux. En Bretagne, il semble que ceux qui sont partis ne soient point partis tout à fait, qu’ils soient encore là tout près, qu’ils aient seulement changé de demeure, qu’ils habitent le cimetière au lieu de la maison. Aussi y a-t-il une vive résistance aux tentatives faites pour éloigner les cimetières des villages ; cela paraît aux Bretons une sorte de profanation, il leur semble qu’on brise les familles, qu’on contraint les vieux à habiter loin de la maison de leurs fils.

Further Reading:

Adkins, Madeleine, "Will the real Breton please stand up? Language revitalization and the problem of authentic language", 2013.
http://www.academia.edu/4513013/Will_the_real_Breton_please_stand_up_Language_revitalization_and_the_problem_of_authentic_language