No Surrender; A Tale of the Rising of La Vendee - Book 32

My reading has slowed way, way down.  It's depressing me.  Anyway, No Surrender; a Tale of the Rising of La Vendee is by G. A. Henty, the English writer of children's historical novels in the late 1800s and around the turn of the last century.  This one was published in 1900, in fact.  According to Wikipedia he wrote 122 books of this sort.

The books are intelligent in that they really delve deep into the historical context they are set in.  However, Henty has a way of using long, stilted, laborious dialogue as a tool for exposition.  It makes for very clunky writing.  The heroes are all brave and noble and everybody sounds exactly alike.   But when you finish reading them, you really feel you've learned the history Henty was presenting.

During the French Revolution, the Republican government made law the Civil Constitution of the Clergy which tried to undermine the power of the Roman Catholic Church by only allowing priests who swore their allegiance to the state to say Mass.  Many priests refused and many were imprisoned and eventually guillotined.  The western area of France near the Atlantic just below Brittany was a very Catholic and traditional area.  They were angered at the attack on the clergy and gave refuge to the nonjuror priests.  When the government tried to draft the peasants into the Republican army, they went into full fledge rebellion.  This book traces the events from the first acts of rebellion through the eventual defeat of the Vendean peasants.

Patsey is from England and has married her French merchant sailor, Jean Martin, whose father runs a successful shipping company.  She brings her favorite younger brother to live with her when she moves to France to be with her new husband.  They live at first in Nantes, but when trouble begins, Jean decides it is safer to move to his country estate in the Bocage, the forests of La Vendee.  Leigh the younger brother moves with them.  The struggle begins and both Jean and Leigh are passionate about fighting on the side of the peasants.  Leigh turns out to be quite a military strategist, even though he is young.

The plot has four or five storylines that move chronologically.  The first is about the exciting beginnings of the revolt and the great peasant general, Cathelineau, who dies in battle and how Leigh shows such courage and precocious military genius.  The second is when Patsey and Jean Martin's father are taken prisoners in Nantes and Jean and Leigh must rescue them.  Then is the long sequence of battle after battle as the peasant army becomes more and more depleted and battle weary until they are being hunted cat and mouse style all over their beloved Vendee.  Then in the wake of the final defeat, Jean is separated from the two others;  Leigh and Patsey must smuggle themselves out of France.  This was quite a difficult feat as the Reign of Terror was at its highest peak.  And finally, they are reunited with Jean Martin and learn how he too made his escape to England.

Chateau d'Angers - I was here almost 40 years ago!

It was an entertaining book.  I've been teaching about the French Revolution to my co-op class and this book made it come alive for me.  Since I've been poring over maps of France, all the geographical references (and there are many) made sense to me.  Way back when I was 18, I actually spent a month in Angers and I don't think I even knew anything about the Vendean Revolt there.  This is a chapter in the French Revolution that doesn't get much attention, except in Catholic history circles.

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