Resisting the Republic: The Politics of Commemoration in the Vendée, 1870-1918 Gareth Oakland Royal Holloway, University of London Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 2020 2 Declaration of authorship I, Gareth Simeon Oakland, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. ...............................................................................14 January 2020. 3 Acknowledgements Fifteen years ago, I was sitting in a farmhouse in the small village of Venensault, Vendée, having dinner with Monique and Dominique Favroult. They were smallholders (nous sommes les paysans) who had farmed the land there for as long as anyone knew and had sold part of it to my mother-in-law, so that she could have a place to live in France. We were discussing my plans for life after I retired from my career in the accountancy firm PwC and I said I would like to go back to history one day. “Ah, if you want to understand our history,” said Dominique, “you have to know about the war.” Of course, I thought he meant the story of the Flying Fortress crew who, in 1943, had crashed in the woods nearby, been spirited away from the occupying Germans and off to Spain. Or perhaps the sacrifice of so many young men in 1914-1918 commemorated on the memorial at the crossroads in the village. But no, this was a war that I had not heard of, a civil war fought by Mon and Dom’s ancestors against fellow Frenchmen over two hundred years before. The tales of glory and horror passed down by each generation had been burned into their memory. I knew I had to find out more – to understand why this period of history defined these people in a way that nobody else I had met in France had ever been. I would like to thank both the Society for the Study of French History (SSFH) and The Friendly Hand for funding visits to both regional and national archives. The archivists, local historians and museum curators in the three departments studied were unfailingly helpful in my search for documents and pictures. I have been fortunate to have tested some of the conclusions of the thesis at conferences organised by Manchester Metropolitan University and SSFH. The comments, questions and feedback received on those papers were all helpful. I am grateful to the many academics who have helped me along the path which has led to this work. My first history degree came from Cambridge in 1979; when I returned to university 4 in 2014, it was to the taught Masters course at Queen Mary University of London where I quickly understood that almost everything had changed. The patience and inspirational teaching particularly of Mark Glancy, Daniel Wildmann and, during my term at University College London, Andrew W.M. Smith, reignited my love for the subject and showed me how to use the new tools that were at my disposal. QMUL’s Julian Jackson and Colin Jones were enormously helpful as I put together the proposal that has led to this thesis. They, along with other historians who were as enthusiastic about the project, mentioned a young academic, Rob Priest, at Royal Holloway who might be able to help me. Rob has supervised my work since 2016 and helped me to turn it into something worthwhile. I cannot praise the clarity of his thinking, dedication or kindness highly enough. My final word of thanks is to the people whose love has been stretched to its limits over the past three years and will probably be glad never to see or hear about another statue. My children, friends (cycling, academic and otherwise) and to Helen Miller, who must have read every word of this document at least four times, all deserve a large glass of Vendée’s best cuvée. Thank you. Gareth Oakland, January 2020. 5 Abstract Resisting the Republic: The Politics of Commemoration in the Vendée, 1870-1918. This thesis considers the way that groups in the Vendée used the memory of the 1793-96 civil war to construct competing regional and national identities between 1870 and 1918. Republicans used the education system, the national press and the commemoration of republican “great men” to achieve their aims. Their conservative opponents, deprived of formal national power, turned to alternative channels such as the regional press, learned journals, pulpit sermons and memorials to the martyrs of the civil war. While many historians have focused on official republican ‘statuomanie’ and commemorative culture, this thesis demonstrates how Vendéen conservatives used similar techniques to achieve their cultural and political aims. After considering the problems of research in a loosely defined région de mémoire, and showing that this was more politically contested than normally assumed, the thesis first establishes the emergence of competing historical narratives of the Vendée wars in the Third Republic. The core chapters explore four commemorations: republican statues of Joseph Bara (Palaiseau, 1881) and Louis-Marie Larevellière-Lépeaux (Montaigu, 1886), and royalist statues of Henri de La Rochejaquelein (St. Aubin-de- Baubigné, 1895) and Jacques Cathelineau (Le Pin-en-Mauges, 1896). The final chapter considers how nationalism and external threats occasionally provided the spur for reconciliation between the competing ideologies in the region, but these broke down and the memory of the civil war continued to be a resource for ideological conflict. The thesis concludes that the Vendée was a region of political contestation where both republicans and conservatives used the disputed memory of 1793-96. The statues of civil war 6 heroes had a local significance that was at least as powerful as those erected by the republican state. Despite modern theories that the Republic had hidden the “real” history of the civil war, debates about its causes and consequences were very prominent in the region after 1870. 7 Contents Acknowledgements Abstract List of illustrations 1. Introduction 12 2. The Vendée: Geography, History, Religion and the Politics of Memory 59 3. The Memory of the Vendée Wars in the Academy and the Classroom 92 4. Republican Statuomanie and the Memorial to Louis-Marie Larevellière-Lépeaux 125 5. Reactionary Politics in the Vendée and the Memorial to Henri de La Rochejaquelein 151 6. Jacques Cathelineau: A Disputed Memorial 191 7. Reconciliation or Resistance: The Memory of the Vendée Wars, 1896-1918 232 8. Conclusion 273 Bibliography 286 Appendix 1 – Election Data 1881 to 1914 306 Appendix 2 – Members of the Revue de Bas Poitou 310 8 List of Diagrams and Illustrations 2.1 Map of Région de Mémoire 61 2.2 Map of the electoral balance of Vendée 85 in 1906 62 2.3 Population of France 1801-1911 68 2.4 Share of right-wing votes in legislative elections 1876- 84 1914 2.5 Votes cast in legislative elections, Vendée 85, 1881- 86 1914 2.6 Number of deputies elected, Vendée 85, 1881-1914 87 3.1 Number of Vendee (85) children registered in school 1879 and 1912 102 3.2 La Mort de Bara by Jacques-Louis David, 1794 112 4.1 Statue of Louis-Marie Larevellière-Lépeaux erected 125 June 1885 4.2 Statue of Joseph Bara erected in September 1881 130 4.3 Statue of Denis Papin erected in 1880. 132 4.4 Marble bust of Larevellière-Lépeaux by David 141 D’Angers, 1825. 4.5 Postcard of the statue of Larevellière-Lépeaux, undated and unattributed 144 5.1 Statue of Henri de la Rochejaquelein erected 1895 151 5.2 Clay pipe and engraving of Henri de La 157 Rochejaquelein 5.3 Model for Faguliere’s statue of de La Rochejaquelein and bas-relief from the tomb in the church of St. 158 Aubin-de Baubigné 5.4 Bonaparte au Pont d'Arcole by Antoine-Jean Gros, 176 1876 5.5 Henri de La Rochejaquelein by Pierre-Narcisse 176 Guérin, 1817 9 5.6 Léon Gambetta by Alexandre Falguière, 1884 177 5.7 Stained glass window in the Chapel in Saint-Aubin- de-Baubigné 179 6.1 Statue of Jacques Cathelineau, completed 1896 191 6.2 Relationships between families in Le Pin, 1793 197 6.3 The Brevet de Généralisme signed by all the Vendée 202 leaders 6.4 Lithograph of original statue of Cathelineau erected in 205 1827 6.5 Lithograph of Jacques Cathelineau by unknown artist and painting by Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson 207 6.6 Portrait of Jacques-Joseph Cathelineau compared to the portrait of his father. Both pictures by Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson. 208 6.7 Statue of Jacques Cathelineau, now badly damaged and stored in the parish church of Le Pin-en-Mauges 209 6.8 Window in parish church, Le Pin-en-Mauges 210 6.9 Statue of Cathelineau placed on the plinth but still in 217 its box 7.1 Statue of George Villebois-Mareuil erected in 1902 232 7.2 Map showing relative resistance to Church Inventories in France 255 7.3 Photograph of the damaged church door of St. Aubin- de-Baubigné 256 7.4 Great War army officers and the saying of de La Rochejaquelein 267 10 11 Resisting the Republic: The Politics of Commemoration in the Vendée, 1870-1918 1. Introduction In early 1894, almost 25 years after France adopted a republican form of government for the third time, a royalist newspaper in the Department of the Vendée informed its readers of plans to construct two memorials: Several newspapers have already announced the intention of Anjou to have a memorial to General Cathelineau. The Vendée cannot be left behind. We understand that a committee has already been set up to raise money for a statue to Henri de La Rochejaquelein.1 This newspaper story reveals some of the questions that this thesis sets out to answer.