Vendée Genocide Thread
Please share if you wouldn't mind not to gain me followers or spread content but because everyone deserves to know why that tawdry tricolor rag is a disgusting symbol of a vile ideology and regime. I could get into the destruction of priceless artifacts...

& etc., the massacre of the Swiss guards at the Tuileries Palace, the September massacres of 1792, the murder of Le bon roi and his wife and the neglect which lead to the death of their child the young dauphin, the destruction of communities and religious orders centuries old...

and countless other atrocities but we'll be focusing on that brave and pious region that became know as the Vendée.

Quote break:
"It is essential to make the people perpetrate deeds that will prevent them from turning back"
François-Noël Babeuf

1st Massacre: Bressuire
The...

first occurrence was when peasants, armed with farming instruments, attempted to prevent the eviction of a convent of nuns. The better armed National Guard slaughtered them with 100 dead and 500 captured, most of whom were later massacred with the Blues cutting off their ears...

and pinning them to their hats as cockades. Those who survived were sent to trial and while they only needed to shout "Vive la Nation" to be free but they replied "No Monsieur, our officers have not betrayed us; we will shout 'Vive le roi'."

Quote break:
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." Thomas Jefferson's justification for the slaughter of French King, Queen, & aristocrats
Massacre of Hospital near Yzernay:
A field hospital..

hidden in the forest that had been established by Stofflet and was betrayed by a man named Porcher who led the Blues to the hospital where they massacred wounded soldiers, women, children, the elderly, and the traitor Porcher. Almost two thousand victims and on the site of...

their death stands the Chapel of the Matyrs

Quote break
"Now that dirty scoundrel Bonchamps has arrived, we are completely....( I'll leave it to your imagination what he said)"
General Kléber as his army was engulfed by the Vendéan grand choc at Torfou

The disaster at Savenay
The Vendée are defeated at Savenay on the 23rd of December 1793 and as many as 6000 prisoners many being women, a number of who are pregnant, are massacred
Quote break:
"The Vendée no longer exists. It died beneath our sabers with it's women and...

children. I have buried it in the swamps and woods of Savenay. I crushed the children beneath the hooves of my horses and massacred the women. I do not have one prisoner to reproach myself with; I have exterminated them all. The roads are littered with corpses. Kléber and...

Marceau were not there. We took no prisoners. It was necessary to feed them with the bread of liberty, AND PITY IS NOT A REVOLUTIONARY SENTIMENT." Report to Committee of Public Safety by General François-Joseph Westermann "Butcher of the Vendée"
In many ways the defeat at...

Savenay was the end of the first uprising and with it one would find some 50 thousand Catholics and as many republicans dead and for every ten peasants who went to fight scarcely one would return.

Drownings at Nantes
As the war progressed the cities such as Nantes were packed..

full of Catholic prisoners many who we're dying of sickness or neglect. But the situation became even worse with the appointment of Jean-Baptiste Carrier on 23rd of November 1793. He drew up plans to put tied together prisoners on modified barges to drown in the River Loire...

It began with ninety priests but by the end of the terrorist as many as 5000 priests, men, women, children, and elderly were drowned.

Quote break:
"Never have I had so much amusement as in seeing the last grimaces of priests as they die."
Jean-Baptiste Carrier

Will continue..

While some would content republican commanders would content themselves with bayonetting or drowning, at Angers mass shooting was the means of choice to kill Catholics. A field outside of Avrillé was offered by it's owner with the words "Send out as many as you can. They will...

...make good fertilizer."
They were marched out in groups of 400 and shot in front of trenches in groups of 50. Most would only be wounded & finished with swords & bayonets.
Around 4000 would be murdered between January & April 1794 in this fashion.
The field is now know as...

... "Field of the Martyrs of Avrillé" and the path to it the "Path of Silence"
100 were beatified by Pope St. John Paul II in '84 including 12 guillotined priests.
Below is accounts of the martyrdom of Blessed Marie Louise de la Soriniére & Blessed Sisters Marie-Anne Vaillot &..

...Odile Beaugard.
Blessed Nor Pinot a priest who was betrayed & condemned to dead on Feb 21, 1794 ascended the steps to the scaffold in his Mass vestments reciting the words "Introibo ad altare Dei."

Quote break:
"The Republic consists of the extermination of everything that opposes it"
Saint-Just's dictum

In January of 1794 the "infernal columns" were unleashed upon the Vendée under General Turreau. Six divisions with each divided into two columns were under the orders...

"I order you to burn all that can be burned, and to bayonet every human being that you encounter. I know that there are some patriots in this country, but it cannot be helped. We must sacrifice everything"

A cháteau near Parc Soubise was burned to the ground, 250 villagers...

were shot the bodies burned on a pyre and the remains thrown in a well on the premises.
At Gonnard two hundred women, children & the elderly were forced to dig a trench that they were shot in front of and tumbled into. At least 30 women & 2 children were alive while it was...

filled with dirt.
To starve out any survivors they destroyed all crops, food stores and domestic animals.

The massacre at Les Lucs
Feb 28, 1794
564 Catholics, of whom 110 were under 10, were killed after fleeing the surrounding villages to the to the Church. It's 70yo curé...

Abbé Voyneau attempted to appeal to whatever humanity remained in the Blues but they tortured and then killed him in front of the terrified innocents who were fired upon with those inside being killed by cannon fire and the subsequent collapse of the Church.

Back to that unhappy city of Nantes the four sisters, the Demoiselles Mello de la Metairie who without either of their parents among the living continued to live in their native town caring for the sick and poor. They were accused of no crime but still their actions of kindness..

was denounced by the revolutionary tribunal and they were condemned to be guillotined the next day. They were taken to a prison in the dungeon of the Clock Tower, it was specifically chosen with the cruel intention that they would know every moment of their last night as the...

pendulum swung. They fell upon their knees in prayer until their jailor came to retrieve them, they embraced then said in a firm voice to him "We are ready". The eldest, at the age of 24, was first to go pointing toward heaven as she embraced her sisters. The youngest at age...

15 was last and while the crowd looking upon her cried mercy for the young maid, even the executioner joining, she in turn...

The poor Madame De la Roche Saint André was arrested as a royalists but spared death on account of her pregnancy. Instead she was sent to prison where she gave birth and nursed her child whose life preserved the life of who had given it life. But sadly because of sickness and...

the foul air of the prison the child died and the mourning mother was accosted by the republicans and told "Your child is dead; we only allowed you to live that you might nourish it; today you shall die." Her sister begged to be taken in her stead but was told "No, you would...

be too happy to make the sacrifice." Thus the Madame de la Roche Saint André was resigned to her fate and died as a Christian on the scaffold.

Cruelty even to those simply trying to save their children from the Nantes drownings

At Rennes the children of captured royalists were forced to perform the office of executioners, the muskets were put into their hands and the boys weeping turned away as they fired. Unfortunately given their lack of skill their fathers suffered in a prolonged fashion which...

brought joy to the revolutionaries.

The republican general Westermann in the days after the siege of Angers proclaimed an amnesty. 1200 Vendée surrendered themselves with their wives and children, they were confined in the Cathedral for 3 days without food or supplies. Then...

these men were marched to St. Gemmes and lined up near a massive dyke to be shot. Their children sent to Nantes to go "coral fishing" (drowned), and their wives sent to prison for later execution.