Vend\u00e9e is a region in Western France bordering the Atlantic. For resisting the French Revolution, the Vendeans paid a heavy price.<\/p>\n
General Westermann eventually reported to the welfare committee: “There is no more Vendee, my republican fellow citizens! It died beneath our sabers along with its women and children. I just buried them in the swamps and woods of Savenay. According to your orders, the children were trampled to death beneath the hoofs of our horses; their women were slaughtered so that they couldn’t bring any more soldiers into the world. The streets are full of corpses; in many places they form entire pyramids. In Savenay we had to make use of massive firing squads because their troops are still surrendering. We take no prisoners. One has to give them the bread of freedom; however, mercy has nothing to do with the spirit of the revolution.” Westermann, however, soon met his nemesis; he was guillotined a short time later with his friend Danton.<\/p>\n
Le Mans was the scene of further brutality; women, the aged, and children hiding in the houses of this large city were discovered and then under the eyes of Barbott and Prieure had their clothes torn from their bodies with sabers and bayonets; women and girls were raped, and since there weren’t enough living females for the “boys in blue,” the corpses were violated as well. This at least partially necrophilic orgy ended when the mob, accompanied by the rejoicing of the government’s soldiers, bound the cadavers together as “republican batteries” as they had done at Arras. In Angers, however, the mob decapitated those it had already hanged and demanded of the doctors that they prepare the heads so that they could place them on the battlements of the wall surrounding the city. Since the physicians were too slow at their work, the mob quickly decapitated another group of prisoners, among who was a saintly, 82-year-old abbess.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There is a rounding tribute song to their struggle here:
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