Whatever You Do, Don't Mention the Revolution...

Summary

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Where better to be on the 14th of July - Bastille Day - than deep in rural France, we thought. The fun, the fireworks, the celebrations... perfect timing for a holiday. But then a friend with a better grasp of history than mine noticed our destination was the Vendee, that bit of France tucked down below the western end of the Loire, made up of rolling farmland and coastal marshes, running down to the sea. "They might not make much of Bastille Day," he warned. "The Vendee didn't go much on the French revolution." He was right. Much of Bas Poitou, as the region was known in the late 18th century, opposed the establishment of France's first republic and the people there fought a series of bloody wars against republican troops over many years, suffering a number of atrocities, including the slaughter of hundreds of women and children, whose loss is mourned to this day. Sure enough, when July 14 dawned, there was nothing special going on in any of the quiet towns and villages near to where we were staying between Aizenay and Le Poire sur Vie, deep in farming country.

Not that it detracted at all from our holiday. The Vendee people opposed the revolution because, some historians believe, life for them was not at all bad in the 18th century. The gap between peasant and nobility was less stark than in many other parts of France and the Vendee peasant was, so the theory goes, contented with his lot.

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Whatever You Do, Don't Mention the Revolution...

Well he might be. Much has obviously changed in the years between the Vendee wars and today and the region did succumb to republican forces in the end. But one of the many wonderful things about France is that the connections between the centuries seem more apparent than they are in some other parts of the world and the Vendee is...

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