The Vendée"
By John Wilder
“There was nothing spooky about the French Revolution. People lopped off with the heads of thousands of aristocrats and carted them away in straw baskets, then turned the blades on themselves and killed thousands more. Just another segment of Western History.” – Kolchak, "The Night Stalker"
"The French Revolution was the first major Leftist revolution in the world. The ideology of the Revolution was stunning in its scope. Not only was every single structure of the country to be changed, but even its history. Nothing was sacred – especially the churches and clergy. Notre Dame was renamed the Temple of Reason, though recently it was a really hot tourist attraction.
Additionally, something as simple as the calendar wasn’t exempt. 1792 was proclaimed as year one. Each day was 10 hours long. Each hour was 100 minutes long. And each minute was 100 seconds long. Of course, the week wasn’t spared – each month consisted of three 10 day weeks. Yeah, they renamed the days of the week, too, and managed to eliminate both Friday and Saturday. Bogus.
The names of the months were changed, too. There were still 12, since the French could not figure out how to change the amount of time it took for the world to revolve around the Sun. My favorite French month? Ventôse, or the “month of wind” which lasted between February 19 to March 20. The Ventôse Decrees (I assume issued during this “month”) legalized confiscation of everything counterrevolutionaries owned and redistribution to “needy” people. One would assume that the leadership was just as “needy” as the Biden family.
This was also the time when the Republic decided that the old way of measuring things needed to be chucked, too. So out went feet and gallons and pounds and in came meters and liters and kilograms. So, if you ever hear me talk about communist units, well, here’s the reason. The metric system was just another part of the Leftists attempting to subvert all of history.
Oh, and they pulled down statues, too. It’s as if there’s something familiar with what I’m seeing with the woke crowd in the United States. Hmm. Whatever could it be?
Regardless, there are some other events that happened during the French Revolution that are less known. The item that’s the subject of today’s post? The Vendée. The Vendée is an area of France. The French have lots of names for these areas, many of which sound like Joe Biden clearing his throat before a speech. Let’s just stick with area or region, that’s close enough.
Not long after the French Revolution, the people running France realized that they were surrounded by hostile countries that were headed by Kings. When King Louis XVI was guillotined in 1793, the people who ran the French Republic were pretty freaked out and worried that they were going to be invaded by groups of Kings that weren’t fond of the whole, “kill your leader because it’s Tuesday” concept.
That’s when they decided to have a general draft to build a French army with 300,000 new additional recruits. Many areas fought back against this draft, since, outside of Paris, the whole, “kill the King, destroy religion, and start a war” policy of the Commies in charge of Paris wasn’t especially popular.
One area, though, was really good at fighting back. The Vendée. It’s on the western shore of France, and is notable for making that invisible rope that French mimes use as the primary regional product. Like I said, they fought back well – they wanted to be left alone and to reopen their churches. The army that was formed, the “Catholic and Royal Army” was initially very successful for several months in spring and summer of 1793.
From a military viewpoint, they were very successful, at first. Early in May they captured over 5,000 Republican troops. They asked them to leave and promise not to fight against them anymore. And then released the Republican troops. This may have been a mistake. Again, through May and June they kept winning, capturing lots of Republican cannons, powder and supplies. Until they lost. The Republicans captured quite a few folks from the Vendée Army. And shot them or put them in boats and drowned them.
By October of 1793, the Committee of Public Safety in Paris decided that the solution to the Vendée was complete physical destruction. After the defeat of the Vendée army in December, the revenge started. The Republicans were not shy about what they wanted. When one commander asked what he should do about women and children, the response was simple, “if it was necessary, to pass them all by the sword”. The women were of particular interest, since they would be carrying anti-revolutionary babies. Yeah. Dark.
The Vendée folks paroled their prisoners. The Leftists? Murdered them. For the people in the Vendée, it got worse. Some people from the Vendée got together with the British and the British funded and supplied a really lame invasion of France. It failed. Spectacularly. The French might not like each other, but one thing was for certain – the French, I mean, all the French, hate the British. This didn’t help the Vendée with the rest of the French. Public relations level? Disaster.
The Vendée had about 800,000 folks living in it prior to the French Revolution. The Leftists killed, for the sake of ideological reasons, between (best sources I can find) 250,000 to 400,000. This is about 1.5% of the population of France at that time. That’s proportionately like losing half the population of Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, New Jersey, or Virginia.
This proves, once again, that the only people that the French can beat in a war is the French. It also proves, once again, that when Leftists run a country, the first priority of business is to kill their own people who aren’t on board with the Left. Regardless, this didn’t stop the people from the Vendée. They kept fighting, and were even a thorn in the side of Napoleon in 1814.
The Vend̩e made me think of the United States today. It is easy to see the parallels Рthe full attack on every value. The attempt to destroy everything from the past is in full force now. The removal of the statues is part of the playbook. The vilification of the values and heritage people? Also part of the playbook.
Where is the Vendée in the United States? Oklahoma? Ohio? Missouri? It is clear that the values of the Left do not match values of many. What happens when a line is crossed? When the gun confiscation comes in? If the Vendée acts alone, it fails. If it’s not alone? It wins. You are not alone. Nor is Oklahoma, or Missouri, or Ohio, or Texas, or Idaho. This isn’t 1793, and we don’t cotton to the metric system. Me? I’ll never accept the metric system because I don’t want a foreign ruler."
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