While we look upon a genocide of our Catholic and non-Catholic brethren of Iraq and Syria, let us look back for a few minutes at another genocide--the first really of modern times and one committed by those of the same blood. Like England, one day France will have to come to terms with the horror which it committed upon its own citizens.
The Freemasons of France outdid England, but England has no reason to be praised.
May the English Martyrs and the Martyrs of Vendee intercede.
Vendée French call for revolution massacre
to be termed 'genocide'
It was one of the most infamous episodes of the bloody French Revolution.
In early 1794 – at the height
of the Reign of Terror – French
soldiers marched to the Atlantic Vendée, where peasants had risen up against the Revolutionary government in Paris.
Twelve "infernal
columns" commanded by General Louis-Marie Turreau were ordered to kill
everyone and everything they saw.
Thousands of people – including women and
children – were massacred in cold blood, and farms and villages torched.
In the city of Nantes, the
Revolutionary commander Jean-Baptiste Carrier disposed of Vendéean
prisoners-of-war in a horrifically
efficient form of mass execution. In the
so-called "noyades" –mass drownings – naked men, women, and children
were tied together in
specially constructed boats, towed out to the
middle of the river Loire and then sunk.
Now Vendée, a coastal
department in western France, is calling for the incident to be remembered as
the first genocide in modern
history.Residents claim the massacre has been
downplayed so as not to sully the story of the French Revolution.
Historians believe that
around 170,000 Vendéeans were killed in the peasant war and the subsequent
massacres – and around 5,000
in the noyades.
When it was over, French
General Francois Joseph Westermann penned a letter to the Committee of Public
Safety stating: "There is no
more Vendée... According to the orders that you
gave me, I crushed the children under the feet of the horses, massacred the
women who, at
least for these, will not give birth to any
more brigands. I do not have a prisoner to reproach me. I have exterminated
all.”
Two centuries on, growing
calls from local politicians to have it declared a "genocide" have
sparked intellectual debate.
"There was in the
Revolution a clearly stated programme to wipe out the Vendéean race," said
Philippe de Villiers, European deputy and
former presidential candidate for the
right-wing traditionalist Movement for France (MPF) party.
"Why did it take place?
Because a people was chosen to be liquidated on account of their religious
faith. Today we demand a law officially
declaring it as a genocide; we demand a
statement from the president; and recognition by the United Nations."
Mr de Villiers – who opposes
Turkish entry into the EU – was in Armenia last month, where he compared the
Vendée of 1794 to the 1915
massacres of Armenians. In neither case, he
said, "have the perpetrators admitted their fault or asked forgiveness of
the victims".
The bloody events of the
Vendée were long absent from French history books, because of the evil light
they shed on the Revolutionaries.
However, they were well known in the Soviet
bloc. Lenin himself had studied the war there and drew inspiration for his
policies towards the peasantry.
According to the historian
Alain Gérard, of the Vendéean Centre for Historical Research, "In other
parts of France the revolutionaries killed the
nobles or the rich bourgeoisie. But in Vendée
they killed the people.
"It was the Revolution
turning against the very people from whom it claimed legitimacy. It proved the
faithlessness of the Revolution to its own
principles. That's why it was wiped out of the
historical memory," he said.
While today nobody denies
that massacres took place, some historians argue they cannot be called
"genocide" as there were excesses on
both sides in what was a civil war, and they do
not fit the UN criteria of killings based on ethnic or religious identity.
"The Vendéeans were no more
blameless than were the republicans. The use of
the word genocide is wholly inaccurate and inappropriate," said Timothy
Tackett of the University of
California.
For Mr. Gérard, the massacres
were clearly "a deliberate policy on the part of the authorities". For
Mr. de Villiers, an aristocrat whose family seat
is in the Vendée, genocide does indeed apply as
his forebears were killed for religious reasons: they had rebelled to protect
their priests, who refused
to swear an oath to the new constitution.
"It's the rare case of a
people rising up for religious reasons. They did not rebel because they were
hungry, but because their priests were being
killed," he said.
"It is my burden – and
my great honour – to defend the Vendée to the end of my days. The Vendée is not
just a province of France, it is a province
of the spirit. If today we enjoy the freedom to
worship the way we choose, it is largely down to the sacrifice of those who
died here."
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