What We Can Learn From The French Revolution: The Vendée

“There was nothing spooky about the French Revolution. People lopped off with the heads of thousands of aristocrats and carted them away in straw baskets, then turned the blades on themselves and killed thousands more. Just another segment of Western History.” – Kolchak, The Night Stalker

The French Revolution was a pain in the neck.

The French Revolution was the first major Leftist revolution in the world.  The ideology of the Revolution was stunning in its scope.  Not only was every single structure of the country to be changed, but even its history.  Nothing was sacred – especially the churches and clergy.  Notre Dame was renamed the Temple of Reason, though recently it was a really hot tourist attraction.

Additionally, something as simple as the calendar wasn’t exempt.  1792 was proclaimed as year one.  Each day was 10 hours long.  Each hour was 100 minutes long.  And each minute was 100 seconds long.  Of course, the week wasn’t spared – each month consisted of three 10 day weeks.  Yeah, they renamed the days of the week, too, and managed to eliminate both Friday and Saturday.  Bogus.

The names of the months were changed, too.  There were still 12, since the French could not figure out how to change the amount of time it took for the world to revolve around the Sun.  My favorite French month?  Ventôse, or the “month of wind” which lasted between February 19 to March 20.  The Ventôse Decrees (I assume issued during this “month”) legalized confiscation of everything counterrevolutionaries owned and redistribution to “needy” people.  One would assume that the leadership was just as “needy” as the Biden family.

What’s the best way to kill lots of communists?  Communism.

This was also the time when the Republic decided that the old way of measuring things needed to be chucked, too.  So out went feet and gallons and pounds and in came meters and liters and kilograms.  So, if you ever hear me talk about communist units, well, here’s the reason.  The metric system was just another part of the Leftists attempting to subvert all of history.

Oh, and they pulled down statues, too.

It’s as if there’s something familiar with what I’m seeing with the woke crowd in the United States.  Hmm.  Whatever could it be?

Regardless, there are some other events that happened during the French Revolution that are less known.  The item that’s the subject of today’s post?

The Vendée.

The Vendée is an area of France.  The French have lots of names for these areas, many of which sound like Joe Biden clearing his throat before a speech.  Let’s just stick with area or region, that’s close enough.

Why is the French flag blue, white, and red?  So that they can rip off the sides and surrender.

Not long after the French Revolution, the people running France realized that they were surrounded by hostile countries that were headed by Kings.  When King Louis XVI was guillotined in 1793, the people who ran the French Republic were pretty freaked out and worried that they were going to be invaded by groups of Kings that weren’t fond of the whole, “kill your leader because it’s Tuesday” concept.

That’s when they decided to have a general draft to build a French army with 300,000 new additional recruits. Many areas fought back against this draft, since, outside of Paris, the whole, “kill the King, destroy religion, and start a war” policy of the Commies in charge of Paris wasn’t especially popular.

One area, though, was really good at fighting back.  The Vendée.  It’s on the western shore of France, and is notable for making that invisible rope that French mimes use as the primary regional product.  Like I said, they fought back well – they wanted to be left alone and to reopen their churches.  The army that was formed, the “Catholic and Royal Army” was initially very successful for several months in spring and summer of 1793.

The Popemobile is cool, but let me see you try to fly in a Papal airplane.

From a military viewpoint, they were very successful, at first.  Early in may they captured over 5,000 Republican troops.  They asked them to leave and promise not to fight against them anymore.

And then released the Republican troops.

This may have been a mistake.

Again, through May and June they kept winning, capturing lots of Republican cannons, powder and supplies.  Until they lost.  The Republicans captured quite a few folks from the Vendée Army.  And shot them or put them in boats and drowned them.

By October of 1793, the Committee of Public Safety in Paris decided that the solution to the Vendée was complete physical destruction.  After the defeat of the Vendée army in December, the revenge started.  The Republicans were not shy about what they wanted.

When one commander asked what he should do about women and children, the response was simple, “if it was necessary, to pass them all by the sword”.  The women were of particular interest, since they would be carrying anti-revolutionary babies.

Yeah.  Dark.

The invention of the shovel was groundbreaking, but it was the broom that really swept the nation.

The Vendée folks paroled their prisoners.  The Leftists?  Murdered them.  For the people in the Vendée, it got worse.  Some people from the Vendée got together with the British and the British funded and supplied a really lame invasion of France.  It failed.  Spectacularly.  The French might not like each other, but one thing was for certain – the French, I mean, all the French, hate the British.

This didn’t help the Vendée with the rest of the French.  Public relations level?  Disaster.

The Vendée had about 800,000 folks living in it prior to the French Revolution.  The Leftists killed, for the sake of ideological reasons, between (best sources I can find) 250,000 to 400,000.  This is about 1.5% of the population of France at that time.  That’s proportionately like losing half the population of Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, New Jersey, or Virginia.

This proves, once again, that the only people that the French can beat in a war is the French.  It also proves, once again, that when Leftists run a country, the first priority of business is to kill their own people who aren’t on board with the Left.

Regardless, this didn’t stop the people from the Vendée.  They kept fighting, and were even a thorn in the side of Napoleon in 1814.

I asked my friend how things were going in Moscow.  He said, “I can’t complain.”

The Vendée made me think of the United States today.  It is easy to see the parallels – the full attack on every value.  The attempt to destroy everything from the past is in full force now.  The removal of the statues is part of the playbook.  The vilification of the values and heritage people?  Also part of the playbook.

Where is the Vendée in the United States?  Oklahoma?  Ohio?  Missouri?  It is clear that the values of the Left do not match values of many.

What happens when a line is crossed?  When the gun confiscation comes in?  If the Vendée acts alone, it fails.  If it’s not alone?  It wins.

You are not alone.  Nor is Oklahoma, or Missouri, or Ohio, or Texas, or Idaho.

This isn’t 1793, and we don’t cotton to the metric system.  Me?  I’ll never accept the metric system because I don’t want a foreign ruler.

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

28 thoughts on “What We Can Learn From The French Revolution: The Vendée”

  1. We now get to test your theory that gun confiscation could be a critical line to cross. Last Friday (the 13th), ATF passed a new rule making 10 to 40 million AR-15 “pistols” illegal if they have a 9 inch barrel and an “arm brace”. Owners have 120 days to destroy the arm brace and replace it with a traditional stock, or replace the 9 inch barrel with a 16 inch one, or register the “short barrel rifle” with the ATF, or give it to the ATF outright, or destroy the whole weapon outright.

    https://www.atf.gov/rules-and-regulations/factoring-criteria-firearms-attached-stabilizing-braces

    https://www.atf.gov/rules-and-regulations/docs/undefined/bracefinalruleguidance-commerciallypdf/download

    Unlike unlicensed short barrel rifles, guillotines remain legal to own in all 50 States and do not require a license.

    http://www.madehow.com/Volume-7/Guillotine.html

    http://boisdejustice.com/Drawings/Drawings.html

    2. This is an edge case, like banning pink ARs. Not sure I even know anyone with a pistol brace. This isn’t Joe’s AR ban, which would be a bright line.

  3. Very interesting parallels made here sir. Food for thought. Genocide appears to have been an idea which is tried in different cultures and continents. Good idea to keep your wits about you – news is set on ‘crazy’ .

  4. Manboons (h/t-Tex) is not a learning animal which is why we still have Jacobins and libertines among us.
    Beijing Brandon will come in under budget and ahead of schedule on burning it all down the best but maybe there will be something left to destroy in Barry’s fourth term.
    Forward! Yes we can, Sí, se puede!

  5. “….a foriegn ruler.” So, let’s do Maffs.

    100 sec/min x 100 min/hr x 10 hr/da x 10 da/wk = 1,000,000 sec/wk. 3 wk/mo = 3,000,000 sec/mo.

    60 sec/min x 60 min/hr x 24 x 7 = 604,800 sec/wk x 4.33 wk/mo = 2,618,784 sec/mo.

    Looks like they’ll have to lop something off to equate.

    OOPS! Dr Guilliotine figured that out for them.

    1. Not actually a problem, Lamont. They just re-defined the second to make it come out even.

      My objection to the “metric” system is that any system of measurements can be regarded as “a” metric system. We mostly use the imperial metric system in the US. Scientists get to choose between the meter-kilogram-second (mks) metric system, or the centimeter-gram-second (cgs) metric system, for the constants of nature. Apart from measurement of physical quantities, a set of agreed-upon criterial for judging organizational performance could be called “a metric system”.

      Also, it’s rather arrogant (or myopic) to pick one unit of measurement and designate it “the meter”. My house has a gas meter and an electric meter, and my shop has micrometers, ammeters, voltmeters, and multi-meters. Only one of them measures distance. (A guy I used to work with in a factory refered to his 6″ dial calipers as his “peter meter”. I wonder what he meant by that. Doesn’t seem like 6″ would be adequate. 😉 )

      When a French mechanic buys a rachet handle and a socket set, of course it’s made to fit mm-sized bolt heads. But is the drive shaft specified in mm also?

  6. Bravo John this may be your best.

    What’s the best way to kill lots of communists? Communism this is as true as scripture.
    Note: Genocide has never been attempted on an armed populace.

  7. “This is about 1.5% of the population of France at that time. That’s proportionately like losing half the population of … North Carolina …”

    Fascistinating sidenote: NC population is almost 11 million people this year. (Granted, it was “only” 4.5 million in 1960, before the Yankeelocusts descended on her, and Bill Gates bought up most of her farmland (for Microagriculture, I suppose)).

    The comparison with the Vendée and whatever resistance may arise in the USSA lies in the distribution of dissidents. There are pockets throughout the country, but in most states they are contained in “states” that toe the line with DC. Texas is a good example, and we’ll have to see about Florida. NC is right blue-nosed, and the peasants (sorry, “resistance”) are scattered. We’re heading into interesting times, no matter how many seconds there are in a day. Keep your powdered wig dry!

  8. John, I find it both disturbing and remarkable that governments who will use a “light touch” on foreign opponents and citizens have no issue crushing their citizenry to the ground (or below ground, in this case). Tyranny of intellectual agreement quickly becomes the tyranny of support and obedience. Tyrants, whether they be an individual or a committee, do not suffer dissidents gladly.

    One question in your potential comparison: 18th Century France at least had the ability to physical support its needs to some extent, How will modern nation-states do so when the loci of power are so intensely reliant for food, energy, water, and almost every basic need are the concentrated population centers likely issuing such orders? Seems a bit like cutting off the nose to spite the face.

    1. It happens so often it becomes a trope – again, the Soviets killed more Soviet citizens than they killed Germans. Ditto the Chinese. And our bloodiest war is still that little shindig that started in 1860.

  9. I worked for Michelin during the ’90’s and over the 12 years of serving my sentence, I spent over 2 years in France getting training and orientation. You get to know people if you get two years of ‘immersion’. lol.

    Three things I learned.

    1. Parisians hate everyone who is not Parisian.
    2. The French who are not Parisians hate Parisians.
    3. All the French people hate the British because ‘they burned Joan of Arc’. Many of the French that I came in contact with were very appreciative of what the Americans did for them in WWII, so I joined them in dumping on the Brits.

    One bonus point; never push the owner’s cat off of your restaurant table. Worse offense than talking about the need for a Friday bath.

    1. Hahahahaha!

      Yup, the French hate the British. And vice versa. But the French have better wine and food, and the British have better comedy.

  11. Yeah you’re right on it here.

    The American and French revolutions were a single entity, managed by the same luciferian (largely masonic) networks. Ben Franklin, to take one example, was leader of the Philadelphian Lodge and was prominent in arranging with the European chapters the two revolutions, which in reality were power-grabs and power-concentrations of the planetary old-money elite families. Most of whom belong to one occult organization or another.

    When you see the Davos Dildos gathering to decide the agendas of the politicians, they are merely transmitting orders. They do non innovate, or they get squashed.

    The silly People were sold an attractive array of Liberte, Egalite, and Fraternite as keys to the chains of their spiritual and material enslavement to the ‘evil monarchists’. Satan always makes it sound SO good, and ever-so-empowering.

    Liberte is that monstrous idol of a goddess perched haughtily on ‘Liberty Island’ in N.Y. Harbor. She is Slavery, not Freedom.

    Egalite is the cultural poison of Equality and Equity . . . a particular refrain in the speeches of Bozo Obamo, if you’ll recall. Egalite spawns totalitarian feminism, identity politics, and P.C.-everything.

    Fraternite means THEIR satanic fraternities. Not some sappy and impossible ‘Brotherhood of Man’ which is completely counter to the reality of human nature.

    Apologies for the length.

    1. Those videos are still up on youtube. It’s the stuff of nightmares. Don’t watch them before bed. She goes into way more detail than John does in this article.

    2. I haven’t seen that. Been a while since I’ve been to Ann’s place. Sounds like I need to take a look. No, I came across the Vendee several years ago, and back-pocketed it for a post. Came across a video by Asha Logos (Highly recommended – he has several banned from YT, but is still on there) and the muse hit to finish this one.

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