Vendée Uprising

March 1793

Catholic peasants in the western Vendee, furious at conscription and the civil constitution of the clergy, rose against the Republic. They were led by nobles and country priests. The civil war that followed would kill more than 150,000 people; revolutionary armies used the word 'extermination' in their reports. The Vendee remains the Revolution's most troubling episode, debated by historians as civil war, genocide, or both.