The infernal columns ( French: ''colonnes infernales'') were operations led by the French Revolutionary general Louis Marie Turreau in the

War in the Vendée The war in the Vendée (french: link=no, Guerre de Vendée) was a counter-revolution from 1793 to 1796 in the Vendée region of France during the French Revolution. The Vendée is a coastal region, located immediately south of the river Loir ...

, after the failure of the Royalist Virée de Galerne. Following the passage on 1 August 1793 and 1 October 1793 by the

National Convention The National Convention (french: link=no, Convention nationale) was the parliament of the Kingdom of France for one day and the French First Republic for the rest of its existence during the French Revolution, following the two-year Nationa ...

of laws, the National Convention stated that the goal was to exterminate "brigands" in the area south of the river

Loire The Loire (, also ; ; oc, Léger, ; la, Liger) is the longest river in France and the 171st longest in the world. With a length of , it drains , more than a fifth of France's land, while its average discharge is only half that of the Rhône ...

(the so-called

Vendée Vendée (; br, Vande) is a department in the Pays de la Loire region in Western France, on the Atlantic coast. In 2019, it had a population of 685,442.

), 12 army columns were formed and sent through the Vendée to exterminate the local anti-Republican population. In January 1794, Turreau wrote to the National Convention's Minister for War, to lay out his proposed tactics: "My purpose is to burn everything, to leave nothing but what is essential to establish the necessary quarters for exterminating the rebels." It has been estimated that from 16,000 to 40,000 inhabitants were killed during the first quarter of 1794. Nicolas Delahaye et Pierre-Marie Gaborit, ''Les 12 Colonnes infernales de Turreau'' (in French), p. 53. The employment and actions of these "infernal columns" continues to be a subject of heated debate, both in France and abroad. French historian Reynald Secher has gone so far as to characterise their operations as a "Franco-French

genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Lat ...

," while Claude Langlois of the Institute of History of the French Revolution has derided Secher's claims as "quasi-mythological." The debate has become highly politicized. The term 'infernal column' has also been used for a similar movement in the Voulet-Chanoine Mission.

References

External links

www.rembarre.fr.
La Vendée de janvier à mai 1794 (in French).

1793–1993. Un autre bicentenaire (in French). War in the Vendée {{France-battle-stub

See also

References

External links