1793: Thousands of Frenchmen went into battle on this date wearing a unique badge: a heart topped with a cross and the words Dieu Le Roi—“God the King,” though some said it also meant “God and the King.” These men were not professional soldiers but civilians resisting the antireligious government that ruled France following the French Revolution. The Revolutionary government learned that not all French people hated the king or the Catholic Church, and resistance to the Revolution was particularly strong in the Vendée region in western France. There the locals were horrified that church property was confiscated, women were attacked on their way to church, and priests who would not swear a loyalty oath to the secular government were imprisoned or exiled.
When the government ordered the drafting of all able-bodied men into the French army, the Vendée broke into armed revolt, so the government sent thousands of troops to “pacify” the region. The rebels had formed a militia calling itself the Royal and Catholic Army, and though they were badly outnumbered, they knew the local terrain better than the government’s troops, and they could rely on the aid of local people. In spring 1793 the Royal and Catholic Army won victories, and Christians all over Europe prayed the victories would continue. But the government’s well-trained professional regiments finally “pacified” the Vendée at the Battle of Savenay on December 23, 1793. Afterward, the troops followed a “scorched earth” policy, burning farms, looting homes, raping women, and killing men and boys.
Historians know these events as the War of the Vendée, a classic case of a secular government carrying out a policy of genocide against its own people whose only “crime” was being more loyal to God than to a political system. In the short run, France’s secular Revolutionary government won. In the long run, the church continued on, outlasting the Revolution and other political changes.
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