ISBN-13: 9780268028657 / Angielski / Twarda / 2013 / 306 str.
This work provides a detailed narrative of the civil war in the Vendee region of western France, which lasted for much of the 1790s but was most intensely fought at the height of the Reign of Terror, from March 1793 to early 1795. In this shocking book, Reynald Secher argues that the massacres which resulted from the conflict between patriotic revolutionary forces and those of the counterrevolution were not the inevitable result of fierce battle, but rather were premediated, committed in cold blood, massive and systematic, and undertaken with the conscious and proclaimed will to destroy a well-defined region, and to exterminate an entire people. Drawing upon previously unavailable sources, Secher argues that more than 14 per cent of the population and 18 per cent of the housing stock in the Vendee was destroyed in this catastrophic conflict.