How did the French revolutionaries, specifically those in charge of the newspapers and the National Convention, depict the War in the Vendée (1793) to the public and why?
Introduction/Argument
The War in the Vendée was, without a doubt, the most significant counter-revolutionary movement that took place in France during the French Revolution. Not only is this the case due to the massive number of casualties suffered on both sides during the conflict, but also because of the political implications that formed during the war. The War in the Vendée was fought from March to December of 1793 in multiple departments in western France. All of these departments combined came to be known as "The Vendée." What started as an uprising against the Republican government in Paris, turned into a war between the Revolutionary Army and the Catholic and Royal Army of the Vendée. The uprising was initiated by the peasants living in this area because they were angry about some of the actions that the revolutionary government took. Charles Tilly mentions how the historian Dubreuil argued that the peasants were hostile to the revolution and that led to counter-revolutionary movements throughout France. Tilly writes, "Revolutionary taxes, the advantages that the Bourgeois gained from the sale of church properties, and the agitation of the parish priests successively pushed the peasant farther from his initial attitude" (Tilly, p.42). The initial attitude of the peasants was one of sympathy toward the revolutionaries. However, once the government started stripping the role of the Church within society, the peasants became angry and revolted. The rebels in the Vendée were not favorably represented within French society. Public opinion was turned against the insurgents in the Vendée and in favor of the republic when images were released to the people through the most popular newspaper of the time, Recueil des Actions Héroiques et Civiques des Républicains Français. The revolutionaries used propaganda, sometimes with outright inaccurate information, to portray the Vendean rebels as violent and merciless and those in defense of the revolution as martyrs because they wanted to rally the people to their cause and have them enlist into the revolutionary army.
Recueil
An unprecedented number of people were exposed to the revolutionary newspapers, most notably Recueil. Recueil was a revolutionary publication with the sole purpose of telling stories of heroic deeds that "put virtue into action" (Clarke, p. 51). It was started by one of the more prominent leaders of the Jacobins, Abbé Grégoire. The Jacobin Club was a political club that emerged from the beginning of the revolution. Since the beginning of the revolution, the Jacobins always had representation within the legislative body of France. This representation intensified as the power of the king was gradually taken away and a republic was coming into form. Recueil began its publication in February of 1793 when the Jacobins held a lot of power in the National Convention. The various Jacobin clubs would gather material and send it to the Committee of Public Instruction, a committee dominated by Jacobins from the National Convention, who would then release monthly publications to the public (51). Throughout its 6 months of existence, Recueil averaged 150,000 copies per edition. However, this newspaper was not limited to the number of people who could read it. Recueil and other newspapers were read in the Jacobin clubs where the audience of each club was in the hundreds (52). Clarke goes on to say that, “By early 1794 the Jacobin club network was at its peak. With over 6000 societies nationwide, one in ten adult Frenchmen were members of a société populaire, and there is good evidence to suggest that the Recueil was read in most of them” (52). Due to the number of people throughout the vast number of Jacobin clubs throughout France, it is more accurate to say that Recueil readership alone was in the millions. Clarke asserts, “The Recueil was the Revolution’s single largest propaganda project and quite possibly one of the most widely circulated publications of the entire eighteenth century” (52). This commentary by Clarke is important because it shows that a significant portion of French society was exposed to the propaganda that turned the public against the rebels in the Vendée.
Fig. 1 Joseph Barra, by Jean-Baptiste Vérité (1794)
Inaccurate Information when describing Barra
The content used by the revolutionaries to depict Joseph Barra (Fig. 1) was factually incorrect. Joseph Barra was a teenager who was employed by the republican army and had the task of tending to the horses that the army used. He was killed in action by counter-revolutionary insurgents in the Vendée (Weston, p. 234). Fig. 1 shows that Barra is very young and that he is wearing the outfit worn by drummer boys in the revolutionary army. Below the picture of Barra in Fig. 1 reads “Joseph Barra: born in Versailles, aged 13, murdered by the rebels of the Vendée, died crying out for the Republic. The Convention awarded this young hero the honors of the Pantheon.” The first thing that was wrong with this image and other images of him is the idea that Barra was 13 years old and a drummer boy. Helen Weston writes, “The smallest boys in the army would be drummer boys, the next smallest would run messages and the older ones, like Bara, would have responsibility for looking after the horses” (240). Weston later talks about how Robespierre intentionally made Barra younger than he actually was and gave him a different image. She documents, “Robespierre’s narrative now replaced the slightly disreputable status of plucky but coarse child shouting obscenities from horseback, with the wholly honorable status of national hero” (241). Robespierre changing the image of Barra came from a speech given to the National Convention on December 28, 1793. In that speech, Robespierre said there was one hero that the whole nation should acknowledge and that was Joseph Barra (242). Robespierre commented on Barra's "love of country." Robespierre asserts, "This young child nourished his mother with his earnings; he divided his concerns between filial love and love of his country." Accordingly, it was Robespierre who claimed that Barra refused to shout, “Long live the monarchy” and he instead shouted, “Long live the republic.” Johnson describes how this narrative caused confusion in French society. He writes, “It is no longer true that every child in a state school knew the exchange between the little drummer-boy Bara, and the Vendéens” (Johnson, p.4). Weston does not address whether Barra actually said that but is Robespierre really a trustworthy source in making that claim when he intentionally changed the image of one of the martyrs of the revolution? What was the motivation behind that?
Motivation: Joseph Barra
The revolutionaries’ motivation for altering the image of who Joseph Barra really was was to portray the Vendean rebels as unnecessarily violent toward children and to create a sense of national unity. As described earlier, Weston described how Robespierre made Barra younger than he actually was. This was to appeal to the emotions of the general public and to use that as a political move to portray the Vendeans as the merciless enemy who massacres children. Regarding Robespierre’s image of Barra, Weston writes, “For with Bara he could produce a small republican child, pitilessly massacred by Vendéens at the tender age of thirteen” (240). This was not the first time the Vendean rebels were described as “pitiless.” McPhee talks about how Barére delivered two speeches in August and October that described the rebels as “terroristic.” He writes, “A terroristic rhetoric thus arose around the Vendée, to which all were linked who, for one reason or another, were at any given moment characterized as counter-revolutionary" (McPhee, p. 253). Robespierre saw that there was an advantage to making a 13-year-old Barra a martyr of the revolution. Weston states, “He saw the possibility of using Barra as a rallying point at a time when morale was low and some hopeful symbol of national unity was required” (241). Barra in his glorified, child-like image was a martyr for the revolution and was used to tie the country together.
Fig. 2 An Example of Heroic Courage, by Jean Thouvenin (1793)
Held by Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris.
An Example of Heroic Courage
The reason the revolutionaries used the image entitled “An Example of Heroic Courage” is because they wanted to increase a sense of courage among the general public to get more people to enlist into the revolutionary army. Like the image of the martyr Joseph Barra, Fig. 2 depicts the Vendean rebels as being the aggressors and unwarrantedly entering the home of a mother trying to protect her daughters. Instead of the mother retreating away from the insurgents or submitting herself to their ideas, she appears ready to sacrifice herself and her children as she holds two pistols in her hands. Part of the description under the image says that the woman was, “holding two pistols in the firm resolution to blow up her house and all her family rather than concede to the power of these madmen. Her courage and manly countenance impressed them, and her sanctuary was respected.” Clarke describes that she was very appealing to the public because she had the courage to fight her foes and the ability to prevail over them (Clarke, p. 65). This image showed the public that the woman is putting her country before any personal considerations. This, in turn, encouraged some people to have the courage and enlist in the revolutionary army. Clarke explains how Barra was inspired to enlist by propaganda that showed a woman setting a “virtuous example.”
Conclusion
The French revolutionaries used propaganda to depict the happenings of the War in the Vendée and portrayed the rebels as terroristic and those in favor of the republic who died as martyrs. The propaganda lacked historical accuracy in describing the events that happened in the Vendée. Barra, one of the most important martyrs of the revolution, was actually a very vulgar teenager who attended to the horses during the war. Yet the revolutionaries portrayed him as a child who was polished and polite so they would garner more support once he was killed. They also made the Vendeans out to be terroristic and merciless when it came to killing opponents. The revolutionaries in charge of the monthly publications of Recueil and other newspapers specifically chose children and women to be depicted as the targets of the Vendean rebels to show that they targeted the more vulnerable members of society. This propaganda rallied public support and encouraged some civilians to enlist. This conversation is important because the result of the War in the Vendée could have been different without public support and more people joining the army. Would the public opinion of the rebels in the Vendée be different if they weren’t depicted as terrorists? This could have possibly changed the outcome of the war.
Works Cited
Clarke, Joseph. "'Valour Knows Neither Age Nor Sex': The "Recueil Des Actions Héroïques" and the Representation of Courage in Revolutionary France." War in History 20, no. 1 (2013): 50-75. Accessed April 28, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/26098643.
Johnson, Douglas. “Winds of Change.” History Today. May 89, Vol. 39 Issue 5. http://ezproxy.csbsju.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=890 8280540&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Martin, Jean-Clement. “The Vendée, Chouannerie, and the State, 1791– 99.” In A Companion to the French Revolution, edited by Peter McPhee, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2012. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/csbsju/reader.action?docID=1037156&ppg=272.
Thouvenin, Jean. “An Example of Heroic Courage,” 1793, Paris, France, Accessed April 28, https://revolution.chnm.org/items/show/76.
Tilly, Charles. "The Analysis of a Counter-Revolution."History and Theory3, no. 1 (1963): 30-58. Accessed May 7, 2020. doi:10.2307/2504303.
Vérité, Jean-Baptiste. “Joseph Barra,” 1794, Paris, France, at Truth, Accessed April 28, 2020, https://exhibits.stanford.edu/frenchrevolution/catalog/mh793nc5576.
Weston, Helen. "Jacques-Louis David's "La Mort De Joseph Bara": A Tale of Revolutionary Myths and Modern Fantasies." Paragraph 19, no. 3 (1996): 234-50. Accessed April 28, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/43263499.