Vendee

The weekend after Belgium, I went with SUNDEF to the Vendée militaire.  It took me the whole week to figure out what the Vendée militaire was.  Turns out Vendée is a region of France, one that sits right next to Anjou (home to Angers) in the west of France.  And the Vendée militaire was a region (roughly modern Vendée, but including some of what is nowAnjou) where there was a strong resistance to the French Revolution.  That is, there was a large Royalist presence, people who were perfectly happy living in their comfortable homes, practicing their religion, and being maintaining their allegiance to the king.  Then, over in a little town called Paris there was this tiny little event the FRENCH REVOLUTION.  The Royalists of the Vendée worried that their lives would never be the same, some of them fled to England, but many stayed put and went about their lives.  Unfortunately, as the Revolution got ugly and the Reign of Terror ensued, suddenly the Republican revolutionaries weren’t having any of the Vendéans Catholicism and general political grumblings.  Their response?  Kill ‘em! Yes, Robespierre ordered the mass slaughter of the population of Vendée, which, ironically, included both Royalists and Republicans.  And so one day a rather large, rather mean group of Republican fighters showed up and started killing people indiscriminately.  The Vendéan people weren’t really having this, they started fighting back and a small war broke out in what is now known as the Vendée Militaire.  Among other atrocities, pregnant women were bayoneted through the womb and people were skinned alive with their flesh taken to tanneries for experimentation (a little Nazi foreshadowing, anyone?).  Now, over a century later, the residents of the Vendée are still pretty unhappy about the whole affair, and who can blame them?  Especially since it took the government that whole century and then some to admit that this actually happened.  In response, the Vendéans have built a theme park comprised of a series of live shows to reenact the horrors of the Vendée militaire and keep the memory alive of the thousands slaughtered.  And while this sounds odd, their shows have gained world renown for the little part of French history that nobody really likes to talk about.  

Below is the church that houses the grave of Bonchamps, on of the local nobles who became a Royalist war hero.  He is remembered for having pardoned a half dozen or so Republican POWs.  Not wanting to perpetuate the turmoil of the war and from a general desire to express a Christian grace, he ordered the POWs be released. Unfortunately they returned a few weeks later with some friends and killed some more Royalists.  Some thanks.

In the church above resides the grave and memorial of Bonchamps, pictured below. 
A church in the Vendee where Republicans locked up about 100 Vendeans and set the building on fire.  Naturally, this isn't the original church, but a restored one on the same site that stands as a memorial with the names of the dead carved on the walls.   
A picture from the Vendee, near another memorial, despite it's dark past, it's a very pretty region of France.