Was the repression of the Vendée a genocide?
Before discussing this topic, I want to clarify that I am not an expert in the Vendée: I've only read a few books on the subject. So, if I say anything incorrect, I would be very grateful if you would correct me.
I must add that I also haven't read Secher's famous doctoral thesis, but I did read Alberto Bárcena's La Guerre de la Vendée. This book is heavily based on Secher's work, but with an even more religious and idealistic perspective.
The War in the Vendée remains a controversial topic that sparks much debate among historians. It is documented that there were tens of thousands of deaths, the vast majority of them civilians. For this reason, some historians speak of genocide, but that would lead us into unstable territory, as this term is often overused.
Genocide is something very specific and well-defined by the Rome Statute. Genocide is when there is an attempt to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. It's a relatively recent term, coined in the 20th century, in 1944. It was created to name the Nazis' Final Solution for the extermination of Jews in occupied territories. Genocide is the persecution of a group with clearly defined ethnic and religious characteristics to the bitter end. Genocide is a political decision made by a government that believes a group must be eradicated.
In the case of the Vendée, this isn't entirely accurate. The Vendéans were eliminated first by the Convention's army and then by the Directory's because they were considered counter-revolutionary rebels. They were killed not for being Vendéans, nor for being Catholic, but because a significant number of them had taken up arms against the revolution. There was no order from the Convention or the Directory to exterminate Vendéans simply for being Vendéans. The Vendéans didn't even recognize themselves as a specific regional or ethnic group. The objective was to crush a rebellion. Furthermore, many Republicans were also massacred.
In the book I mentioned before, the author argues that the Vendée massacre was a genocide because it was planned by the revolutionary government and that the main cause was religious, since the Revolution was anti-Catholic. I disagree. It is true that the Revolution adopted anti-Catholic measures, but I believe we must try to separate politics from religion —although they were very intertwined at that time. The measures taken were an attempt to dismantle the political power of the Church, not to eliminate the faith itself; there was de-Christianization, but that doesn't represent the entire Revolution. It is true that the Vendée was predominantly Catholic, but they had more reasons to take up arms than that, and, I repeat, they were not eliminated for being Catholic, but for staging an insurrection against the revolutionary government.
It is not my intention to deny that it was a very brutal repression, because it was. But what the revolutionaries did during those years in the Vendée falls into the category of war crimes, or, to be more specific, it could be called populicide (the total or partial annihilation of a people or population by a government—a term coined by Babeuf in 1795 to describe what happened in the Vendée). But it does not fall into the category of genocide. It is incorrect to use that term; if it is used, genocide could also be applied to many other things, and we would be distorting what genocide truly means.
ellievsbear
dailybridgerton
2087
tangentwithtanner
prguitarman
stormborns
