Vendée
, department (1990 pop. 509,356), W France, on the Bay of Biscay, in Poitou.
The offshore islands of Noirmoutier and Yeu are
included in the department.
Largely an agricultural (dairying, cattle raising)
and forested region, the Vendée has many beach resorts and fishing ports.
Canned fish, leather, textiles, fishing boats, cider
apples, and uranium are the chief products.
La Roche-sur-Yon (the capital) and Les Sables
d'Olonne are the main towns.
The department gave its name to the insurrection of
1793 to 1796, which began there.
The peasants of the Vendée, who had lived amiably
with the local nobility, began violently to oppose the French Revolution when it turned
against the Roman Catholic Church.
Under Henri La Rochejaquelein and others, an army of
more than 50,000 men was raised to clear the region of Revolutionary authorities. The army
occupied Saumur and planned to continue through Brittany, Maine, and Normandy to join the Chouans, the
anti-Revolutionary peasants of those regions. However, the important city of Nantes held out against the
Vendeans, who marched as far north as Granville but were then forced by lack of discipline
to return south late in 1793.
Overtaken at Le Mans and Savenay by the republican
army, they were totally defeated and suffered terrible reprisals.
Robespierre's overthrow led to the peace of La
Jaunaie (1795), by which the government granted an amnesty and freedom of worship to the
Vendeans.
Renewed conflict began in 1796, when royalist
émigrés, backed by Great Britain, tried to land at Quiberon in Brittany; they were
routed by government forces under Gen. Lazare Hoche.
The comte d'Artois (later Charles X), who had landed
on the isle of Yeu, took fright and abandoned the Vendean leaders to capture and
execution.
Smaller royalist uprisings occurred in 1799, in 1815
(against Napoleon I), and in 1832, when the duchess de Berry tried to stir up the Vendée
for the Bourbon cause against Louis Philippe.
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