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    For Altar and Throne: The Rising in the Vendee
    For Altar and Throne: The Rising in the Vendee
    For Altar and Throne: The Rising in the Vendee
    Ebook139 pages2 hours

    For Altar and Throne: The Rising in the Vendee

    By Michael Davies

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    About this ebook

    Many know very little about the Catholic uprising in the Vendee - the most important opposition to the French Revolution and its Reign of Terror. In this book, Michael Davies provides the whole truth of the history of the Revolution of 1789, in France.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateFeb 21, 2017
    ISBN9781483594651
    For Altar and Throne: The Rising in the Vendee

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      Book preview

      For Altar and Throne - Michael Davies

      FOR ALTAR

      AND THRONE

      Copyright 1997 Michael Davies

      ISBN: 1-890740-00-4

      eISBN: 9-78148359-4-65-1

      MADE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

      The Remnant Press

      2539 Morrison Avenue

      St. Paul, Minnesota 55117

      1997

      Dedication

      This book is dedicated to my dear friend

      – Father Frederick Schell –

      In gratitude for and in admiration of his fifty years as a Priest according to the Order of Melchisedech.

      1947-1997

      Contents

      Bibliography

      Introduction

      First Preface

      Second Preface

      It was the worst of times…

      Appendix

      BIBLIOGRAPHY

      Some of the sources referred to in the following text have been abbreviated as follows:

      AF A. Forrest, The French Revolution (Oxford, 1995).

      BB J-C Martin, Blancs et Bleus dans la Vendée déchirée (Découvertes Gallimard/Histoire/8).

      DR H. Daniel Rops, The Church in an Age of Revolution (London, 1965).

      GH Jean Tulard, Guide Historique des Guerres de Vendée (Editions Pays et Terrors, Cholet).

      HS H Servien, Petite histoire des guerres de Vendée (Chiré en Montreuil, 1983).

      OX W. Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution (Oxford, 1989).

      PFR P. M. Jones, The Peasantry in the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1988)

      Ross M. Ross, Banners of the King (London, 1975).

      SS Simon Schama, Citizens (Vintage Books, New York, 1989).

      WAD W. & A. Durant, The Age of Napoleon (New York, 1975).

      FOR ALTAR

      AND THRONE

      The most romantic and most charismatic of all the Vendéan generals–Monsieur Henri

      Introduction

      In September 1996 His Holiness Pope John Paul II paid a pastoral visit to France to take part in the commemoration of the fifteen-hundredth anniversary of the baptism of King Clovis in Rheims Cathedral, which was, in effect, the baptism of France into the Catholic Church, of which she has since remained the Eldest Daughter. During his visit the Pope traveled to the Vendée region in the west of France, and on 19 September, in the Basilica of St-Laurent-sur-Sèvre, the Holy Father spoke the following words:

      You who were born in the land of Vendée...are the heirs of men and women who were courageous enough to remain faithful to the Church of Jesus Christ at a time when her freedom and independence were threatened... In the numerous acts of witness that have come down to us, it is moving to see that the people of the Vendée remained attached to their parishes and their priests in spite of the cruelty of persecution.

      It is a matter of great regret that very few English-speaking Catholics know anything whatsoever about the events to which the Holy Father was referring. Very few, in fact, would even recognize the word Vendée. The aim of this modest book is to commemorate the visit of the Successor of St. Peter to the Vendée, where the people remained faithful to the Vicar of Christ and attached to their parishes and their priests, in spite of the cruelty of persecution to which they were subjected during the French Revolution. There is no more noble or inspiring story in the entire history of the Church than that of the heroic struggle of the people of the Vendée to defend their altars and their King. This struggle has been set within the context of the French Revolution, as it cannot be appreciated properly without some knowledge of this momentous and disastrous event. A chronological table of the Revolution has been provided as an appendix.

      Reference is made in this book to the Encyclopaedists and the Philosophes. both names refer to the same group of liberal, frequently Masonic, anti-Catholic intellectuals who compiled a thirty-five volume Encyclopedia (L’Encyclopédie) between the years 1751 and 1780. Some conservatives were also asked to contribute in order to conceal the radical anti-Catholic ethos of the work. The French Revolution was the practical expression of the general spirit of the Philosophes.

      I wish to thank Monsieur Arnaud de Lassus and Monsieur Christian Bhavsar for their generous prefaces, Mr. James Bogle for his invaluable criticisms and suggestions for improvement, Miss Mary Cooney for giving me access to her scholarly research, to Mr. Don McLean for permission to use material on the Martyrs of Avrillé by Brother Albert Kallio, OP, which first appeared in his journal, Catholic, and to Mr. Tom Brannon for his illustrations, which are the most valuable feature of the book.

      Michael Davies

      29 December 1996

      Feast of St. Thomas of Canterbury,

      who gave his life for the rights of the Church

      First Preface

      Little is known of the war in the Vendée outside of France. Nonetheless, the results that it obtained, and the consequences resulting from it possess a significance that extends well beyond the territory of France. It is thanks to this war that France–which was at that time the principal Catholic power– remained as such.

      In making this war known to the English-speaking world, Michael Davies has undertaken a most important task, a task which he has performed with a level of competence and emotion that I am pleased to salute here.

      It is fashionable to claim today that truth, and especially religious truth, is strong enough to defend itself on its own merits, and has no need of protection by force of arms. This is a grave error, which even a minimal knowledge of the history of the Church is sufficient to dispel. Is it necessary to recall the military exploits of our ancestors, without which we would not be Catholics today? To mention only the most notable examples subsequent to the Crusades, we must cite the three great victories over the Turks which saved Christian Europe: Belgrade (1456), Lepanto (1571), Vienna (1683), and five wars which can be termed internal: the rising of the peasants of Devon and Cornwall (1549), the wars of religion in continental Europe in the 16th century, the war of the Vendée (1793-1796), the war of the Cristeros in Mexico (1926-1929), and the reconquest of Spain (1934-1939).

      The war of the Vendée occupies a special place in this series of wars, in view of the devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary which formed the soul of the Catholic army; in view of the military qualities of its leaders, by the numbers of men put into the field, and by the respect for the laws of war shown on the Catholic side (something that is rare in a civil war); and in view of the double fidelity to their religion and their King which characterized the Vendéan soldiers. Their struggle well deserves the name crusade, which Michael Davies uses to describe it. This crusade was prepared for almost a century before the war began, by the preaching of one of the greatest saints of modern times, Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort. Read the history of the war of the Vendée, and you will find it permeated with the spirit of Saint Louis-Marie.

      Arnaud de Lassus

      Action Famille et Scolaire

      Paris, France

      Second Preface

      Truth across the Channel? Error on this side?

      It is beyond dispute that a number of authors from the British Isles have possessed a penetrating insight into our history, which they sometimes analyze more effectively than we do ourselves, as they have not been involved in the quarrels which divide Frenchmen. Thus we had Edmund Burke, an Irishman and a contemporary of the French Revolution. Thus we have Michael Davies, a Welshman, President of the International Una Voce Federation, who has provided us with an illuminating synthesis of the wars of the Vendée.

      Firstly, what is the Vendée? Until 1789, it was no more than an unknown river in Bas-Poitou, with tranquil waters. When the Constituent National Assembly abolished the provinces of the old regime, the Vendée was raised to the status of a department. But the same men from the West of France who had said Yes to the initial measures taken by the National Assembly in 1789, measures generally welcomed throughout the Vendée by the clergy and the faithful, said No in 1793. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, imposed in 1790, which demanded that priests take an oath of fidelity to the State, shocked lay Catholics and their pastors.

      On 2 May 1791, at Saint Christophe de Lignerons, near Challans, a priest who had taken the oath, preferring to obey Paris rather than Rome, was confronted by hostile parishioners when he arrived with a military escort. There was a fight. A young peasant named Barillon was badly wounded. Give yourself up, a soldier commanded. Barillon replied: Give me my God, and then he died, bayoneted by the revolutionary National Guard. Was this cry of warning to be heard?

      The response of the central power came in 1792; refractory priests, those who refused to take the oath were deported.

      On 21 January 1793 King Louis XVI was executed. In the following year, the Convention ordered the mass conscription of 300,000 men. This was the spark which set off the mass rising. The rebels of the West

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