#vendee war

The death of Charette

29 March 1796, 230 years ago today, François-Athanase Charette de la Contrie was shot by firing squad in Nantes. His death, coming soon after the execution of Jean-Nicolas Stofflet in February, marked the definitive end of the Vendée War that had begun in 1793 and brought its main military phase to a close (1).

After the destruction of the main “Grand Army” during the Virée de Galerne (2) in late 1793, Charette and Stofflet had kept the rebellion going by carving out near-untouchable fiefdoms from which they launched continual ambushes. Their executions removed the last irreconcilable bands that had fought to defend the region, and to avenge it, against the Republic’s repression.

For all their complete military defeat, the near-simultaneous deaths of Charette and Stofflet bound them together in a common tragic fate that counter-revolutionaries would memorialize at length. In later “white” (royalist) historiography, their legends were fixed in place, with Charette especially recast as a flamboyant dandy and peerless master of guerrilla war, set against Stofflet’s reputation (3) as a harsh, brutal soldier.

Suffice it to say, as actual human beings, in life, both were more than those stereotypes.

More information about Charette and Stofflet's executions and what happed to their bodies here:

Notes:

(1) The war would continue in other forms until 1832, though increasingly in ways, and for reasons, only loosely connected to 1793.

(2) The ill-fated crossing of the Loire into Brittany and Normandy by the Vendéan army and its dependants followed the crushing defeat at Cholet on 18 October 1793, after which approximately 90,000 people were dead.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Maurice d’Elbée is a bit like the middle child of the Vendéan generals. He is not a peasant leader people half-believe is magical, like Cathelineau, and he is not out there climbing walls with his bare hands like Monsieur de La Rochejaquelein (yes, we know, you are absurdly brave and athletic, Henri). He is not a gruff gamekeeper building his own woodland kingdom like Stofflet, or “the king of the Vendée” like Charette. He does not have Bonchamps’s grand tomb, and he was not married to the woman who would end up shaping the story of the war, like Lescure.

But he was a genuinely remarkable man who had a fair amount of military experience, took command after Cathelineau died, managed to win some of the most striking victories in the Vendée, showed restraint and mercy toward his enemies, and died with dignity while defending an innocent man. And for the past month or so I have been working on an annotated translation of a biography of him by Ferdinand Charpentier.

So today, on the forgotten commander-in-chief’s birthday, I would like to share the first chapter of that book, which, even if it is not 100% historically accurate, does capture the spirit of the man rather well and, more importantly, shows that not everyone in the Vendée was a crazed royalist pining for the Ancien Régime. Some were. D’Elbée was not. He was, in his own way, a democrat.

So, happy birthday to the man known as General Providence!

LETTER FROM M. EDMOND BIRÉ

Nantes, 4 February 1905

Monsieur l’Abbé,

I have just finished reading the advance sheets of your book, and I hasten to tell you the impressions it has left upon me.

D’Elbée, whom you have so justly chosen for your hero, is one of the noblest figures of the Vendéan epic, of that epic greater than the Iliad: nescio quid majus Iliade(1). In History, the Crusades alone may be compared to that war of the Vendée, wherein entire populations, men, children, women, old men, were seen advancing to every immolation, sacrificing their lives and their goods, rushing to death and to tortures, with no motive save devotion to their beliefs, to their Catholic and Royalist faith.

If ever there was a popular movement, it was that one. Far from having drawn the peasants after them, the nobles were drawn by the peasants. It was not the leaders, as commonly happens, who enlisted the soldiers; on the contrary, it was the soldiers who enlisted the leaders. The signal of resistance, of struggle, and of glory did not descend from the château to the cottage; it rose from the cottage to the château.

It was thus for all those gentlemen, former officers, who distinguished themselves in the war of the Vendée, and in particular for Bonchamps(2) and for Henri de La Rochejaquelein(3) for Lescure(4) and for Charette(5). I knew, in my childhood, at Luçon, one of the bravest officers of the Army of the Centre(6), the Chevalier de Chantreau: he was in the courtyard of his modest country house, playing a game of bowls(7) when the peasants of the surrounding district came to beg him to place himself at their head. He did everything in his power to dissuade them from taking up arms, and yielded to their entreaties only after having convinced himself that their resolution was unshakable.

Likewise, when, on 13 March 1793, the young men of Beaupréau and of the neighbouring parishes came to implore d’Elbée to be their leader, he replied:

“My friends, as an officer of the King, I know what is required of me. I shall die in his defence; but I will lead no man into my devotion. My duties are not yours. Believe me: remain in your farms and in your homes.”

It was only on the following day, when the peasants returned in even greater numbers than the day before, that he consented to depart with them.

Far from being a fiery champion of the ancien régime(8), d’Elbée, like so many gentlemen of the old monarchy, had at the outset embarked with ardour in the reforming movement, and went so far as to approve the Civil Constitution of the Clergy(9). He was not long, however, in recognising his error; he immediately resigned the municipal functions with which the confidence of the inhabitants had invested him, and, withdrawn to his house of La Loge, he gave shelter there to the non-juring priests. Thankfully, religion reclaimed him from the Revolution, which was henceforth to have no braver adversary.

Companion and friend of Cathelineau, d’Elbée was called upon to succeed him, on 19 July 1793, as Generalissimo(10) of the Catholic and Royal Armies. He was to command them for no more than three months, from 19 July to 17 October 1793. Yet those three months were enough to win him immortal renown, to secure, against the ablest generals of the Republic, Marceau(11), Kléber(12), Aubert-Dubayet(13), the resounding victories of Chantonnay, Coron, and Torfou. On 17 October he was defeated at Cholet; but his conqueror, Kléber, paid him tribute in his Mémoires in these terms: “The enemy has lost his best leaders; d’Elbée and Bonchamps are mortally wounded; never have they delivered a battle so obstinate, so well ordered.”

On that day d’Elbée had received fourteen wounds, one of them through the chest. Unfit to take the field for many months, and conscious that he could now serve only as a burden to the army, he determined to withdraw until the day when he might again bear arms.

Charette had just taken the island of Noirmoutier and it was here that the Generalissimo was taken. On 4 January 1794, while he was still far from healed of his wounds, the island fell into the power of the Republicans. On 8 January, borne in his armchair to the place of execution, clad in the green uniform of the Vendéan chiefs and wearing his white-plumed hat, he was executed by firing squad, together with his brother-in-law M. Duhoux d’Hauterive, his friend M. de Boisy, and a Republican officer, M. Wieland, whom the Representatives of the People(14), Bourbotte(15) and Prieur(16), had added to the group “that the reckoning might be even.” on both his sides(17). The death of the Generalissimo was that of a hero and of a saint.

By your complete and exact narration of the facts you have clearly demonstrated, Monsieur l’Abbé, that d’Elbée, as a soldier and as a commander, was worthy of the rank and of the charge to which his comrades in arms had raised him. Even his adversaries, those whose testimony carries weight, have acknowledged his lofty and exceptional merit. It is General Hoche(18) who declares, in the celebrated proclamation by which he calls the inhabitants of the countryside to peace: “Who are your leaders? Have they the talents of d’Elbée, the gentleness of Bonchamps, the courage of Stofflet, the energy, the resource, and the local knowledge of Charette?”(19)

After Kléber, it is General Turreau(20) who writes in his Mémoires: “A consummate soldier, he had trained the Vendéans in the mode of warfare best adapted to the country and to the character of that people.” It is Jomini(21), the great military historian, who, in his Guerres de la Révolution, singles out “the most remarkable expeditions directed by the Generalissimo d’Elbée.”

His humanity equaled his courage and his talents. Faced with adversaries who multiplied massacres, pillage, and arson everywhere, he refused all reprisals. You show him more than once calming the fury of his own men. Take Chemillé, for example, on 11 April 1793: before soldiers thirsting for vengeance and shouting for death, he rose and commanded, “Soldiers, on your knees. Let us recite the Pater.(22)”

When he reached the words, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” he turned to the still-kneeling men and said, “You ask God for forgiveness, yet you will not forgive. Who will take vengeance now?” And they all, weeping with remorse, fell at the feet of the Christian hero and begged his pardon.

What men they were. What a war, to have witnessed such scenes. And how well inspired you were, Monsieur l’Abbé, to make them live again with such communicative emotion.

In the end, D’Elbée was a modest man, and it is above all for that reason that it was good, necessary, and just to restore him, as you have done, to full light, in a setting worthy of him. Was it not Bossuet(23) who said: “There is nothing greater than a great man who is modest?”

Once again, I cannot congratulate you enough on having chosen so fine a subject and so noble a hero. As an old and faithful Vendéan, I allow myself to add to my congratulations my heartfelt thanks.

Please accept, Monsieur l’Abbé, the assurance of my profound and devoted respect.

Edmond BIRÉ.

Notes

(1) Latin phrase meaning “I know not what greater than the Iliad,”

(2) Charles de Bonchamps (1760–1793), Vendéan general noted for his clemency, especially his pardon of Republican prisoners after the battle of Cholet.

(3) Henri du Vergier, Comte de La Rochejaquelein (1772–1794), young nobleman and one of the principal commanders of the Vendéan insurgents, who will succeed d’Elbee as Commander in Chief

(4) Louis-Marie de Salgues, Marquis de Lescure (1766–1793), Vendéan general admired for his piety, personal bravery, and moral authority among the insurgent forces.

(5) François-Athanase Charette de La Contrie (1763–1796), Royalist leader particularly active in the coastal and marsh regions of western France.

(6) One of the main divisions of the Catholic and Royal Army during the Vendéan uprising, operating chiefly in the central districts of the insurgent territory in 1793.

(7) Jeu de boules is a traditional French throwing game in which players aim to toss or roll heavy metal balls, called boules, as close as possible to a small wooden target ball, known as the cochonnet.

(8) The political and social order of France before 1789, characterised by absolute monarchy, hereditary privilege, and a hierarchical estate system.

(9) Legislation from 1790 reorganising the Catholic Church in France under state authority. Clergy were required to swear an oath to the Constitution; those who refused were termed prêtres réfractaires (non-juring priests).

(10) Commander-in-chief

(11) François Séverin Marceau (1769–1796) young Republican general distinguished in the Vendée.

(12) Jean-Baptiste Kléber (1753–1800) Republican general, later commander in Egypt under Bonaparte.

(13) Jean-Baptiste Aubert-Dubayet (1759–1797) Republican general active in western France in 1793.

(14) Deputies of the National Convention sent on mission (représentants en mission) with extensive civil and military powers.

(15) Pierre Bourbotte (1763–1795), deputy to the National Convention and Representative on Mission in the Vendée, involved in the repression of the Royalist uprising and later executed after the fall of Robespierre.

(16) Pierre-Louis Prieur, known as Prieur de la Marne (1756–1827), deputy to the National Convention, member of the Committee of Public Safety and Representative on Mission in the western armies

(17) In the original « afin que la partie fût carrée », the implication is that M. Wieland was not guilty of the charges against him and was executed arbitrarily

(18) Lazare Hoche (1768–1797): Republican general who later pacified the Vendée.

(19) The text refers to General Lazare Hoche’s proclamation addressed to the “habitants des campagnes”, dated 19 prairial an III (7 June 1795)

(20) Louis Marie Turreau (1756–1816): Republican general associated with the “infernal columns” sent to devastate the Vendée in 1794.

(21) Antoine-Henri Jomini (1779–1869): Swiss-born military historian and theorist; author of Histoire critique et militaire des guerres de la Révolution.

(22) The Lord’s Prayer, recited in Latin in Catholic liturgy.

(I read Dumas' The Last Cavalier this January and I have been fascinated/obsessed with Georges ever since. Alas for me, I cannot read French and am well aware that public domain sources and Google Translate can only get me so far....)

Thank you so much!!

Thank you so much for the question!

And second, thank you for calling it the Vendée proper. Not because the other conflicts in the region are somehow “improper,” but because there are real differences in geography, scale, leadership, and motives between the Vendéan war of 1793–1794 and the later conflicts or the chouanneries. Folding them together tends to blur what was actually happening.

Before answering, a small disclaimer. The Chouannerie is not necessarily my main area of expertise. The only relatively recent book I own and have read on Cadoudal is Georges Cadoudal et les Chouans by Patrick Huchet (in my opinion a fairly factual and balanced study), published in the late 1990s. A new book by Morgan Lazartigues is scheduled for release in March 2026, and I am interested in reading it but it’s not out yet. All of which is to say that the material I am drawing on is not especially recent. Now to the answer.

Yes, Georges Cadoudal was involved very early in the western conflicts between 1793 and 1796. While is best known as a leader of the Chouannerie, his military career actually begins in the Vendéan war.

Cadoudal’s entry into the conflict is tied to the Republic’s decree in March 1793 ordering the conscription of 300,000 men, which triggered widespread unrest across western France and beyond. In a region that was both very rural and very religious, and already irritated by the treatment of refractory priests, the decree was received with something less than enthusiasm, to put it mildly.

According to several royalist narratives, later repeated by historians such as Crétineau-Joly and G. Lenotre (both of whom should probably be read with a certain amount of caution, since their sympathies are not exactly hidden), Cadoudal first took part in resistance to the levy around Auray. He was briefly imprisoned and then incorporated into the Republican army as a conscript intended to fight the Vendéan rebels.

He deserted at the first opportunity and crossed over to the insurgents.

The details of this escape are somewhat murky and occasionally drift toward legend. One colourful story claims that Cadoudal smashed down a door and shot two Republican soldiers with a double-barrelled gun while making his escape. Whether this is fact or simply one of the many heroic anecdotes that later gathered around his reputation is very hard to say.

What is better documented is what happened after he reached the royalist forces.

Cadoudal and several companions joined the Catholic and Royal Army at Chalonnes, entering the Breton companies of the 3rd division under the command of the Marquis de Bonchamps. He became an officer and wore the division’s distinctive olive-green coat. Bonchamps’ units were pretty much the only ones that had something resembling a uniform. Possibly because Bonchamps had a taste for fashion, or possibly because he realised that in a civil war it can be useful to recognise your own men from those who may or may not be trying to shoot at you. But I digress.

Cadoudal seems to have shown military ability rather quickly. He rose to the rank of captain within the Breton companies, and his competence caught the attention of the army’s major general, Jean-Nicolas Stofflet, who entrusted him with cavalry command. Stofflet is said to have remarked about him: “If a cannonball does not carry him off, that big head will go far.” (“Si un boulet ne l’emporte pas, cette grosse tête ira loin…”)

Cadoudal fought throughout the brutal campaign of 1793. He took part in the Virée de Galerne, the disastrous expedition north of the Loire that lasted from October to December 1793 after the defeat at Cholet and left tens of thousands dead. During this campaign he fought alongside a close comrade, Pierre Mercier, and the two reportedly served frequently at the vanguard.

Cadoudal fought throughout the brutal campaign of 1793. He took part in the Virée de Galerne, the disastrous expedition north of the Loire that lasted from October to December 1793 after the defeat at Cholet and left tens of thousands dead. During this campaign he fought alongside his close friend, Pierre Mercier, and the two reportedly served frequently at the vanguard.

At the Battle of Pontlieu on 12 December 1793, Cadoudal and Mercier were noted for actions that reportedly “commanded general admiration”. The campaign ended shortly afterwards with the catastrophic Battle of Savenay on 23 December 1793, where the Vendéan army was effectively destroyed.

Cadoudal survived the massacre in the marshes around Savenay and returned to his native Morbihan with Mercier. With the main Vendéan army destroyed, the conflict in the west shifted in character. Cadoudal went home and began organising guerrilla resistance in Brittany, which became part of the Chouannerie.

He was arrested at the end of June 1794. During his imprisonment he made contact with an agent connected to the exiled royalist princes. He escaped in November 1794 and resumed the fight underground.

In 1795 his abilities as a commander quickly became evident. He became a lieutenant to de Silz, the principal royalist chief in Morbihan. During the disastrous Quiberon expedition in the summer of 1795, Cadoudal deliberately kept his distance from the flawed plans of the arriving émigré forces and withdrew his troops rather than be caught in the collapse.

His reputation for leadership and sound judgement grew quickly. In August 1795, at only twenty-four years old, he was elected major general by the commanders of the Chouan bands in Morbihan.

From that point onward Cadoudal became the principal organiser of the Breton counter-revolution and an important intermediary with the British government, continuing the struggle well beyond 1796 until the general pacification in the early 1800s.

Thank you again for the question. As always I am happy to answer more, so if there is anything else you would like to know about the Vendée or anything related to it, my inbox is open. As mentioned earlier, a new book on Cadoudal should be coming out in about a week, and I will be happy to return with more details once I have read it.

Le Général Providence😋🔥

A Practical Guide to Tracking Down Vendéan Generals

It’s a popular saying that “like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.” It’s true. Year II in the revolutionary calendar (1793–1794) was a bloodbath. The counter-revolution wasn’t much different. In fact, if there was a position more perilous than being a member of the Convention in 1793–1794, it was being a general in the rebel army of the west.

Why? Because out of the seven main generals (1) active in spring 1793, only two were still alive by spring 1794, and none made it to summer 1796. In short: they died. They did, and so did a very large proportion of their armies.

Which means that if you have a summer holiday plan like I did, namely to wander around the west of France and retrace the steps of the Vendéen (2) army during the First War in the Vendée (3 March 1793 – 2 May 1795), you will inevitably visit a lot of graveyards and a lot of obscure roadside crosses. 

No really. That’s what I did. That was my summer holiday. (You have no idea the looks I got when colleagues at work asked how my holiday was…)

So, in the spirit of that summer holiday, let’s talk about some depressing things: how the Vendée’s generals died, and where they’re buried. Because unlike the other side of my French Revolution interests, where I’d have to search the Catacombs or random patches of Parisian asphalt (none of the revolutionaries I care about studying got a grave, just the common pit) half of these men have… (multiple) graves.

Before getting into them individually, keep in mind that these men were Catholic (the fact that they led the Catholic and Royal Army is a fairly strong hint) and that they rebelled largely for said faith. Funerals and gravesites mattered to them, to their surviving families, and still matter to some people in the region. This is worth mentioning because it means that all the places I’ll be talking about are relatively easy to find and generally well maintained. I only had to crawl through a bush in someone’s backyard once (3).

I’ll go through the generals in the order in which they died.

Jacques Cathelineau (1759–1793)

The man who started it all, and the first commander-in-chief of the Catholic and Royal Army, was a very pious peasant. Not a count. Not a marquis. Not a prince. A simple peddler from Pin-le-Mauge. Jacques Cathelineau had no military training, no fortune, and no real business commanding an army. He emerged in March 1793 as one of the first local leaders of the uprising, propelled by a reputation for piety and for being, quite literally, magic (4). They called him the Saint of Anjou.  Elected generalissimo in June 1793 by men who knew far more about war than he did, but who recognised the charisma and symbolism he exuded (or perhaps just liked him; by most accounts he was a genuinely pleasant man), he barely had time to occupy the role. Shot during the assault on Nantes on 29 June 1793, he died of his wound on 14 July 1793 at Saint-Florent-le-Vieil.

Cathelineau’s first tomb was in Saint-Florent-le-Vieil, in the local cemetery, next to a chapel. To make sure his grave could be identified later, a white flint was placed at the bottom of it.

As the memorial plaque in the cemetery records, he rested there until 1858, when the Count of Quatre-Barbes, with the help of a public subscription, had a chapel built in the garden of the house where Cathelineau had died. He then arranged for Cathelineau’s remains to be transferred there, along with those of his son, Jacques Cathelineau, killed on 27 May 1832 by the soldiers of Louis-Philippe (5).

The chapel has since been closed to the public. If you want to visit it, you need to ask for the key at the tourist office in Saint-Florent-le-Vieil. If you’re in the area, it’s worth the effort. The chapel is small, quiet, and almost empty, save for the tomb itself. The sculpture is finely done, and its placement in the confined space gives the whole thing a restrained, almost private feel.

In the same graveyard in Saint-Florent-le-Vieil lie the remains of the woman who nursed Cathelineau on his deathbed: Jeanne Bussonnière, a nun and teacher in Saint-Florent.

In 1896, Cathelineau’s native commune, Le Pin-en-Mauges, erected a tomb for him in its church. On that occasion, part of the remains buried at Saint-Florent were transferred there. I haven’t visited it yet, but I plan to fix that in 2026. I also have a book on stained glass narrating the War in the Vendée, and some of the most beautiful panels are in this church, so it’s a must-see.

Addresses:

Cathelineau’s first tomb: Les Coteaux, 49410 Mauges-sur-Loire, France

Chapel Cathelineau: Rue Jacques Cathelineau, 49410 Mauges-sur-Loire, France (Tourist office where you can request the key: 2 Rue de Bretagne, 49410 Mauges-sur-Loire, France)

Cathelineau’s third tomb: Église Saint-Pavin du Pin-en-Mauges, Le Pin-en-Mauges, 49110 Beaupréau-en-Mauges, France

Charles‑Melchior Artus de Bonchamps (1760–1793)

Former royal army officer who had fought in the Indies at the end of the Ancien Régime, Bonchamps was generally considered one of the Vendée’s most competent generals. He joined the army young, as a cadet in the Aquitaine regiment in 1766, and served as a lieutenant overseas, where where he learned the realities of irregular warfare. That experience turned out to be very useful later in the Vendée.

Like many officers of his background, he initially welcomed the Revolution. The rapid collapse of his regiment, however, led him to withdraw to his estates. Unlike Cathelineau, when his peasants asked him to join their rebellion as one of their chiefs, he hesitated. A lot. He understood perfectly well how this was likely to end. Civil wars don’t have good outcomes. Still, he agreed to help them, and once he did, he committed fully.

Skilled and genuinely liked by his men, Bonchamps proved himself repeatedly in the field, leading, as all the Vendéan generals did, from the front (6). Mortally wounded in the abdomen at the Battle of Cholet on 17 October 1793, he was carried back to the house of Madame Duval in Saint-Florent-le-Vieil. There, on his deathbed, he ordered the pardon of five thousand Republican prisoners, an act that secured his posthumous fame. One of the men saved that day was the father of the sculptor David d’Angers (this becomes relevant later).

Because the Vendéan army decided to cross the Loire, Bonchamps was moved again, to a fisherman’s house in the village of La Meilleraie near Varades, where he spent his last hours. The house where he died can still be visited today. It’s a small, one two room building used for exhibitions.

That same evening, his body was taken to the cemetery of Varades and buried there. You can visit the cemetery, and his original resting place is still there.

In 1817, Count Arthur de Bouillé, husband of Bonchamps’ only surviving child, Zoé, had his remains exhumed and taken to the church of La Chapelle-Saint-Florent, to wait while his “final” resting place was being built. (Final, as it turned out, is optimistic.) During the exhumation they recovered bits of the shoes he’d been buried in, which are now on display in the museum in Saint-Florent.

In the 1820s, the family launched a subscription to pay for a proper monument. David d’Angers, whose father had been one of the Republican prisoners spared on Bonchamps’ deathbed, offered to do it for a low cost, as a tribute. Which is how Bonchamps ended up with the most impressive tomb of the lot.

Eight years later, in 1825, once David’s sculpture was finished, Bonchamps was moved into the choir of the Saint-Florent abbey. His son-in-law was there and placed a copy of Bonchamps’ biography with his remains at the centre of the monument.

In 1890, work had to be done in the choir, so they moved the monument from its original position. Which meant exhuming him again (so much for eternal rest), putting his bones in a wooden box, and placing him under the monument’s main sculpture, beneath the words “grâce aux prisonniers”.

If you want to know more about Bonchamp’s death and my thoughts on the tomb, they’re here: The Death of Bonchamps

Addresses:

House where the injured Bonchamps pardoned the Republican prisoners: Grande Rue, 49410 Mauges-sur-Loire, France

House where Bonchamps passed away: 61 rue de la Basse Meilleraie, Varades, 44370 Loireauxence, France

Bonchamps’ first grave: 212 rue du Général de Gaulle, 44370 Loireauxence, France

Bonchamps’ final resting place: Place Jeanne Bussonnière, 49410 Mauges-sur-Loire, France

Louis‑Marie de Salgues, marquis de Lescure (1766–1793)

Politics aside, I have a special fondness for Lescure because in the story of the First War in the Vendée people tend to… forget about him. Which is odd, because he was one of the few who actually had a proper military background and knew what he was doing, at least as much as anyone could in a civil war fought by peasants. He’d been educated at the École Militaire and took a cavalry commission in Royal-Piémont. He also had a reputation for being very well educated, pious, quiet, a bit “odd”, and apparently perfectly happy to be underestimated.

Politically, he was probably one of the more conscious, declared royalists among the Vendéan generals. He tried to leave France for a short time in 1791, came back, and supposedly received a royal order not to emigrate again, so he stayed in Paris until 10 August. After the mess that was the Tuileries (7), he retreated to his estate near Bressuire with his wife, Victoire de Donnissan (later known as the Marquise de La Rochejaquelein, and the most famous memorialist of the war). When the uprising broke out in March 1793, the authorities arrested him anyway as a likely instigator, although at that point he hadn’t really done anything. The royalists freed him, and from then on there wasn’t much chance of returning to a private, quiet life.

He became one of the main field commanders in the Catholic and Royal Army and he did what these men all did: take risks, and get shot for it. His crowning moment is stepping out in enemy fire, alone, completely uncovered, on a bridge, to convince his peasant army to stop being scared and advance.

Like Cathelineau, the “saint of Anjou”, Lescure picked up the nickname “saint of Poitou” because he was pious and because peasants thought he was magic and bullets couldn’t touch him. Sadly he wasn’t magic enough. He was shot in the head at La Tremblaye on 16 October 1793.

The place where he was wounded is marked with a cross. You can visit it, but you have to crawl through some bushes (and potentially someone’s backyard) to get there. And you really do have to pay attention because it’s easy to miss, we drove up and down the street for a good five minutes before we spotted the opening in the greenery.

After that, with the army retreating across the Loire after Cholet, Lescure was basically carried along in a cart. Obviously he couldn’t fight, but he did what he could to keep people going. In Laval there’s a plaque on Hôtel de Monfrand where, feeling a little better, he watched the Vendéan troops pass and stepped out onto a balcony to encourage them.

He died of his wounds on 4 November 1793 at La Pellerine, Mayenne. A cross has been erected where he died. It’s on a national road, so please be careful if you want to visit, but it’s easy to reach by car and you can park right next to it.

I won’t go into detail here because the saga deserves its own post, but long story short: Lescure has no tomb. After his death, afraid the Republican army would defile his body if they knew where he was buried, his wife had him rudimentarily embalmed and refused to part with him. After a few days, her father convinced her to let him bury his son-in-law in a secret place. It was so secret that no one remembers where he was put. It didn’t help that Mme de La Rochejaquelein’s father, the marquis de Donnissan, didn’t survive the war either.

So since he has no grave to visit, we have to make do with two crosses: one where he was wounded, and one where he died.

Later, in 1854, the La Rochejaquelein family built a chapel in Saint-Aubin-de-Baubigné and brought a number of their dead there. His widow erected in the chapel a cenotaph he shares with his cousin Henri (see below), his former father-in-law, and his wife’s future husband.

Addresses:

Cross where Lescure was wounded at La Tremblaye: 29 Allée Louis-Marie de Lescure, 49300 Cholet, France

Plaque on the house in Laval where he spent nine days recovering: 23 rue du Hameau, 53000 Laval, France

Cross where he died at La Pellerine: 131 chemin des Besnardières, 53220 La Pellerine, France

His cenotaph: Place de l’Église Saint-Aubin, 79700 Mauléon, France

Maurice d’Elbée (1752–1794)

If Lescure is remembered largely because he was married to the woman who ended up shaping the narrative of the war, Maurice d’Elbée has no such advantage.  In fact, the second commander-in-chief of the Catholic and Royal Army is even more obscure than Lescure. It doesn’t help that his tenure came AFTER the “saint of Anjou” and was followed by the Vendée’s golden child (and eventual mascot), nor that when he was elected there were rumours it only happened because Bonchamps was injured at the time (8).

That said, he wasn’t incompetent. Far from it. Given who he replaced, he at least had one clear advantage: he actually had military training.

Born into a family with long military traditions, d’Elbée served first in Saxon forces, then entered the French cavalry in 1772. He resigned his commission in 1783 rather than accept advancement through court favour, and settled as a small landowner around Saint-Martin-de-Beaupréau.

Like his good friend Bonchamps, he initially welcomed the Revolution, enough that he registered as an elector for the Third Estate. He was a constitutional monarchist to the point that, in 1789, when he heard the king was obstructing the Constituent Assembly’s work, he joined in sending an address offering material and physical support to the deputies representing Anjou. He even, to a certain extent, supported the Constitutional Oath of the Clergy.

He started changing his mind when religious policy hardened and the removal of local priests became violent. He then withdrew from local office and sheltered non-juring priests. He briefly emigrated in late 1791, then returned to Anjou in 1792. So when the uprising erupted in March 1793 and local men pressed him to lead them, he wasn’t particularly thrilled. He tried to persuade them to stay home. But once he accepted, he quickly emerged as both a disciplined organiser and a notably effective commander, someone who managed, more than most, to keep his men from turning into bloodthirsty maniacs.

After Jacques Cathelineau’s death, d’Elbée was chosen commander-in-chief of the Catholic and Royal Army on 19 July 1793. His command was short (July to October), but it included major victories, Chantonnay, Coron, Torfou, before it ended at Cholet on 17 October 1793, where he was shot fourteen times and somehow survived.

Survived, but barely. Incapacitated, he was taken to Noirmoutier under Charette’s protection while the army chose La Rochejaquelein as commander-in-chief and started frolicking on the wrong side of the Loire and dying in the process (9).

When the island fell in early January 1794, d’Elbée was captured and executed shortly afterwards. He was so ill he couldn’t even walk to his own execution and had to be carried in a chair. 

The chair still exists and is displayed in the Castle of Noirmoutier, bullet holes and all. When I went to Noirmoutier it was pouring rain and I didn’t really feel like getting soaked to see a chair, so I haven’t confirmed it with my own eyes yet. Hopefully I’ll manage this year.

As for his body, d’Elbée and the men executed with him were thrown into the moats of the château. Later, the mayor of Noirmoutier requested authorisation from the prefect of the Vendée to exhume the remains and transfer them to the cemetery, and the General Council even launched a public subscription for a monument. The Directorate of fortifications got authorisation from the Minister of War to excavate the ditch, but the military engineers delayed the work, and by 1824 the searches still hadn’t even begun. To my knowledge it was eventually dropped, and there’s no clear idea where in the moat d’Elbée’s body might be.

Addresses:

The castle of Noimoutier which should house the chair where he died and in whose moats is his resting place: Pl. d'Armes, 85330 Noirmoutier-en-l'Île, France

Henri du Vergier, comte de La Rochejaquelein (1772–1794)

A familiar figure on this blog. Third and youngest commander-in-chief, and the closest thing the Vendée had to a mascot. He’s remembered for sheer temerity in battle, but he also came up with plans that were often sensible and often ignored, mostly because he was too young.

He was born at the château of La Durbelière (Saint-Aubin-de-Baubigné). He was educated at Sorèze, then entered the army at thirteen as a cavalry officer in his father’s regiment, Royal-Pologne-Cavalerie. Later he served in the King’s Constitutional Guard (10) in Paris, narrowly escaped after 10 August 1792, and returned to the west.

In April 1793, being subject to the levée en masse that the peasants in his village were rebelling against, “Monsieur Henri”, as the troops called him, decided to join them. He immediately distinguished himself by being incredibly brave, taking a lot of risks, but he also had an instinct for discipline and morale.

After the defeat at Cholet and the crossing of the Loire, with Bonchamps dead and d’Elbée out of action, he was elected generalissimo at Varades, despite protesting that he was too young. He argued hard for an immediate return into Poitou via Angers or Nantes. The council overruled him, and the army drifted into the disastrous Virée de Galerne instead.

Even then, he still managed to get real battlefield successes, including the victory at Laval, which drew reluctant praise from his enemies.  After the collapse of the Catholic and Royal army  at Le Mans (11), he and Stofflet recrossed the Loire on 16 December 1793 and went back to a hunted, improvised guerrilla war in the marshes.

He was killed in a skirmish near Nuaillé on 28 January 1794. Shot in the head. Supposedly by the same man he’d spared moments earlier.

His first resting place was very close to where he fell. His second in command, Stofflet feared the Republicans would find him and profane the body, and more than that, he wanted the news kept quiet. He ordered the corpse stripped and left naked. Then, to prevent recognition, he slashed his face with his sabre and buried him a few metres away, in secret.

Today that first resting place is a small clearing off a national road. It’s actually quite lovely. If you plan to visit, be aware you really need a car, and there’s only limited space to leave it.

If you would like to read my impressions about his death and cenotaph, I have written an essay about it here: The General of the Royal and Catholic Army

Stofflet kept the burial secret. Unfortunately, Stofflet himself died in the war, and the only reason we don’t have another Lescure situation is that Stofflet, unlike Lescure’s father-in-law, had the good sense to at least drop hints about where he’d put his general. So in 1816, after Henri’s brother Louis died in another failed Vendéan adventure (12) and the family (13) wanted the two brothers together, they went looking. They eventually found Henri across the road from where he’d died, under a pear tree, and identified him by his injuries. He was given a funeral and buried in the old cemetery of his home town, Saint-Aubin-de-Baubigné.

In 1847, he and his brother were exhumed and moved from the old cemetery to the new one.

Only ten years later, in December 1857, the family exhumed him again to place him in a funerary chapel in the newly built village church. The body was transferred into a vault beneath the new church with his ancestors and twenty-one other family members. You can visit this church in Saint-Aubin-de-Baubigné and see the stained glass and the grave itself, which he shares with Louis, Lescure and Donnissan. It’s a beautiful marble construction, ornate, and very much designed to make them all look like they belong to antiquity. On a purely architectural level, it’s worth a visit.

That being said, personally I prefer the cenotaph in the woods.

Addresses:

Henri’s cenotaph: Route de Nuaillé (D160) (You can only really use the tiny parking space if you’re coming from Cholet towards Nuaillé. Wear boots if it’s raining. There’s no path to the cenotaph.)

The family grave: Place de l’Église Saint-Aubin, 79700 Mauléon, France

Jean-Nicolas Stofflet (1753–1796)

Together with Cathelineau, Stofflet was one of the first leaders of the rebellion and, like him, he was not of noble stock. Unlike Cathelineau, though, he had military experience. A gamekeeper for the comte de Colbert (14), he was known for organisation and for his methods of enforcement. He scared people into obeying him, which, for an undisciplined peasant army, was annoyingly effective.

Born at the other end of the country, in Bathelémont near Lunéville, he was the son of a miller and carpenter. At seventeen he enlisted in the Lorraine Infanterie regiment (10 November 1770). He spent eight years in garrisons and left in 1778 as a grenadier. He re-enlisted at the end of 1779 and later became a caporal-instructeur. In 1787 the comte de Colbert bought his discharge and brought him to Maulévrier as his head gamekeeper.

In March 1793, when the levée en masse (general conscription) hit the Mauges, the men who rebelled against it went to Stofflet for help, much as those in Anjou went looking for Cathelineau. He joined the first insurgents and quickly drew in people who already knew him: foresters, gamekeepers, peasants, artisans. He organised them into parish companies and larger groupings.

He fought through the main 1793 campaign and then, when the army crossed the Loire during the Virée de Galerne, he became “major-general”, meaning second-in-command, to Henri de La Rochejaquelein, who was then general-in-chief. They were not alike at all in personality, but they worked well together, and much of the Angevin contingent took its direction from Stofflet.

After Le Mans, and the drift into a smaller guerrilla war that eventually got Henri killed, Stofflet kept fighting around the Mauges and Haut-Poitou against the Republic’s new mobile “infernal columns”(15) moving through the Vendée militaire burning villages, seizing food, and killing suspects.

He also turned the Maulévrier–Vezins forest into a refuge zone, with camps, huts, an improvised hospital, stores, and even a small printing operation. By summer 1794, these insurgent “refuge zones” linked up across much of the Vendée militaire.

In 1795 the Republic tried to end the war by treaty. The main agreement was negotiated near Nantes at La Jaunaye (16). Stofflet arrived late, on 20 February, and refused to sign because the text required recognising the “République une et indivisible.” That said, he revised his position soon after, when Canclaux (17) forced him into a corner.

On 2 May 1795 Stofflet signed his own peace treaty near Saint-Florent-le-Vieil. That evening he dined with Republican officers at Varades and accepted the small tricolour plume offered to each signatory. The next day he published proclamations calling for the peace to be respected. He went to Cholet on 4 May to negotiate prisoner releases and prepared to settle back at Maulévrier.

Late 1795 and January 1796 did not bring stability. Surveillance tightened, and royalist émigré networks pushed for a restart of the war. Hoche (18) offered Stofflet exile with money, or residence under watch. Stofflet refused. On 26 January 1796, he caved under pressure and ended the peace and truce. He tried to seize Chemillé on 28 January, failed, and went back into hiding near Villefort.

He was captured because of a meeting. On 21–22 February 1796 his second-in-command proposed a night conference with the Chouans (19) at the isolated farm of La Saugrenière. The meeting was a trap, and when the door opened the house was rushed. In the fight, Stofflet took a sabre blow that dragged the skin of his forehead down over his eyes. Blinded and bleeding, he was taken.

He and the others were dragged 35 km from Chemillé to Angers in the cold and without medical treatment. They simply tied the loose skin above his eyes so he could see. A military commission heard them immediately, without a lawyer, and condemned them.

He was shot on 25 February 1796, around 10 a.m., on the Champ-de-Mars at Angers. Stofflet refused a blindfold and gave his watch, his last possession, to a Lorrainer in the firing party. A plaque now marks the street corner where he was executed.

What happened to the body is unusually well documented. After the volley, the corpses were loaded onto a handcart and taken to the cemetery of Le Clon, on a site now replaced by Place La Fayette. Before burial, Stofflet was decapitated and one arm was cut off.

The arm ends up being lost. The head, however, is very much… visible.

On 12 March 1796 an officer municipal noted that a citizen named Gauthier had put the head on display for the public, and the municipal response was approving, since it would ensure there were no doubts as to Stofflet’s death.

Before 1800 the head was already in the hands of a surgeon at Brain-sur-l’Authion. He kept it in esprit de vin (ordinary brandy) in a jar that wasn’t very airtight. The soft tissue decayed, and by about 1811–1813 only the bone remained.

The skull stayed in that same family in Brain-sur-l’Authion through the nineteenth century, passed on through marriage, then kept at Angers in the twentieth century. It was shown at La Chabotterie in 1993. In 1996 it was deposited at the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de Cholet. Anthropological analysis described an adult male consistent with Stofflet’s age (forty-three), consistent with a period of preservation in alcohol, and with a contusion on the frontal bone from a bladed weapon.

So, in short, Stofflet’s body went into a now-disappeared cemetery in Angers, without its head and missing an arm. As for the head, you can walk into the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de Cholet and see it on display.

Stofflet has no grave in the traditional sense, but the comte de Colbert put up a very nice obelisk in his memory in the courtyard of Château Colbert. It’s in Maulévrier and it’s very easy to access. The château is now a hotel, where we spent a few nights last summer. The hotel itself isn’t particularly great, but it’s decorated with a lot of Vendée war memorabilia. The restaurant, fittingly called Stofflet, is a different story. It’s genuinely brilliant (it helps that they have their own prize-winning potager for the vegetables). We went twice and we’ll definitely go back.

So while you can’t visit Stofflet’s grave, you can at least have an excellent meal in the château where he spent five years serving.

Addresses:

Plaque to Stofflet on the street where he was executed: Boulevard du Maréchal Joffre, Angers, France

Stofflet’s head in the museum in Cholet: 27 avenue de l’Abreuvoir, 49300 Cholet, France

Château Colbert (obelisk in the courtyard): Place du Château de Colbert, 49360 Maulévrier, France

François-Athanase Charette de La Contrie (1763–1796)

Charette holds the dubious distinction of dying last, and also of being slightly apart from the others by sheer geography. While all the others operated together in the centre and east of the Vendée militaire, Charette mostly kept to the Pays de Retz, only joining the rest for specific operations (like the siege of Nantes or the battle of Cholet), often with mixed results. That didn’t stop him from being dubbed the “King of the Vendée” once everyone else but Stofflet was dead, or from becoming the most recognisable face of the war.

Born at Couffé near Ancenis, he was educated at the Oratorians’ college in Angers and pushed towards the navy. He embarked as a young officer in 1779, completed eleven campaigns in nine years (six in wartime), and rose quickly, becoming a first lieutenant by 1787. Like most of his noble counterparts, he welcomed the Revolution as a shift away from absolute monarchy.

When the uprising began in 1793, Charette was initially reluctant to join, but was persuaded by the peasants who came looking for him (one version is that he really did not want to join the madness, so he was hiding under his bed, and they literally had to drag him out). He attached himself to the insurgent centre at Machecoul, and set about turning badly armed peasants into something closer to a force, drilling them and organising rudimentary artillery. In a matter of weeks he carved out control in the Pays de Retz and the Marais, took Machecoul after hard fighting, and made Legé his base. He spent most of the war “ruling” his little kingdom and fighting a guerrilla war against the Republican army.

His prominence only grew after the peace of La Jaunaye (1795) and the return to war that followed, especially once Louis XVIII himself acknowledged his command and treated him as central to any restoration project.

By then, however, whatever steam the Vendéan rebellion had had was completely gone (arguably it had been gone since December 1793). It didn’t help that the only two still standing, Stofflet and Charette, hated each other’s guts and were never going to work together. In short, like Stofflet, whatever return to arms Charette was planning was a folly and bound to fail.

On 23 March 1796, mostly abandoned by his army, after a fight with General Travot’s (20) troops in and around the woods of La Chabotterie, Charette was wounded, cornered, and taken alive. He was given first aid on a kitchen table before being taken to Nantes.

The Logis de la Chabotterie ended up becoming the key place tied to Charette. Now a museum, it has a really good exhibition on the Wars in the Vendée, complete with Charette’s death mask and a reconstruction of his face based on it. The building is preserved and furnished as a traditional 18th-century logis vendéen, which makes it genuinely beautiful to visit. The forest layout also follows the story of his capture and includes a cross placed where he was taken. When we were there in August, there was a live-action show about the capture of Charette that was actually quite fun to watch. In short, if you’re ever in the region, I really recommend it.

Anyway, he was sent downriver to Nantes on 27 March and brought to the Bouffay prison after midnight on the 28th, where he was interrogated. On Tuesday 29 March he appeared before a military council at the Bouffay, and he was executed by firing squad on the Place Viarme. He refused both blindfold and kneeling, asked to give the signal himself, and died after the volley. A marker was placed on the spot.

His body was immediately removed to the quarries on the road of Gigant, where the city disposed of the dead in a communal pit. A Nantes plasterer, Casanne, was authorised to take a death mask, likely shaving hair and beard to do it. The corpse was then thrown in without a coffin. Days later, Casanne was accused of having stolen the body and forced to return to the pit, locate it among decomposing corpses, and take a second imprint to prove identity. After that, Charette’s remains were simply left there, mixed with many others, somewhere in what later became suburban gardens near the road to Rennes, with no precise spot identified.

Addresses:

Marker placed where Charette was executed: Pl. Viarme, 44000 Nantes, France

Logis de la Chabotterie (where he was captured): Saint Sulpice le Verdon, 85260 Montréverd, France

Note

(1) Here I’m talking about the chefs. There were other generals leading the western armies, but let’s just say their survival rate wasn’t much better. I can count them on one hand and still have fingers left over.

(2) I really can’t stress this enough: when I say “Vendéan army”, I’m using it as a convenient umbrella term for the rebel forces of the Vendée militaire. It was not a monolith, and it didn’t even come solely from the Vendée itself. The Vendée militaire, the area where the uprising took place, actually spans four departments: Vendée, Loire-Atlantique, Maine-et-Loire, and Deux-Sèvres. The fighting forces were split into several armies. Very loosely, you can group them as follows: the Catholic and Royal Army (the largest one, what people usually mean when they say “the Vendéan army”, and the core of what we think of as the War in the Vendée), the Army of the Centre (which at various points either joined the Catholic and Royal Army or Charette), and Charette’s army in the Pays de Retz.

(3) In his defence, Lescure didn’t choose where he was injured. It also probably wasn’t a bush in 1793.

(4) I’m not joking: peasants genuinely believed that standing next to him would protect them from bullets.

(5) This was during a half-hearted attempt by the Vendée to rise in support of the Duchess of Berry, widow of Charles X’s son and mother of the “legitimate” Henri V.

(6) One particularity of the Vendéan armies was that they were made up almost entirely of peasants. Which meant zero military training. As a result, generals had to lead from the front, literally. They had to run ahead of the mass of peasants to show them what to do. Unsurprisingly, this contributed quite a lot to the extremely high mortality rate among Vendéan generals.

(7) The attack on the Tuileries on 10 August 1792, when a Parisian crowd and National Guards assaulted the royal palace, massacred the Swiss Guards, and effectively ended the monarchy. A lot of these men were in Paris at that point and were rather traumatised by it. 

(8) Bonchamps had really, really bad luck with bullets. He kept getting hit from June 1793 onward, right up until the one that killed him in October.

(9) It’s called la Viree de Galerne

(10) A short-lived royal guard unit created during the constitutional monarchy to protect Louis XVI. It existed for a matter of weeks in 1792 and was dissolved by the Legislative Assembly on 29 May 1792, partly because everyone was convinced it was an aristocratic nest of vipers 

(11) Le Mans is where the Catholic and Royal army pretty much collapses. The Vendéans take the town on 10 December 1793, then the Republicans retake it on 12–13 December and very much destroy the rebel army in the process.  

(12) Basically Louis uselessly got himself killed in 1815 trying to stop Napoleon’s return during the Hundred Days. He didn’t really need to do that. Napoleon had much bigger problems than a handful of people in the Vendée, but Louis seems to have wanted to be like his older brother.

(13) Victoire de Donnissan. First Madame de Lescure, then she remarried Henri’s brother Louis. She wrote the memoir that ended up setting a the narrative for the war, which is why her husbands keep showing up in footnotes.

(14) Charles Colbert de Maulévrier, owner of Château Colbert. Stofflet worked on his estate as head gamekeeper from 1787

(15) The name given to the Republican “incendiary columns” sent through the Vendée militaire from January to May 1794 under General Turreau. The idea was to sweep the area, burn, seize food, and wipe out the remaining insurgent base. In practice it meant a lot of civilians died.

(16) The manor near Nantes (Saint-Sébastien-sur-Loire) where the Treaty of La Jaunaye was signed on 17 February 1795, in an attempt to end the war. 

(17) Jean-Baptiste-Camille de Canclaux, Republican general. He defended Nantes against the Vendéans on 29 June 1793 and beyond

(18) Lazare Hoche, the Republican general who becomes the face of “pacification” in the west in 1795–1796. 

(19) Royalist insurgents operating mainly north of the Loire, in Brittany (and nearby bits). Related to the Vendée war, but not the same thing.