Fox of France

Kano worked hard, trying to send more men and supplies to the north. However, the Northern Army did not immediately receive sufficient personnel and supplies for the simple reason that a large-scale rebellion broke out in the Vendée area.

The Vendée is a region full of hills and forests. It is one of the most traditional, backward and closed regions in France. The way of life of the people there is not much different from that of hundreds of years ago.

However, the closed and backward Vendée region is not actually the base of the royal party, and the peasants there have no feelings for the king. This is also very normal, just like the farmers in the Eastern Daegu country sang in "The Song of Hitting the Soil": "Work at sunrise and rest at sunset. Drill wells to drink, plow the fields to eat. What does Dili mean to me?" Is there?" So, from the perspective of the peasants in the Vendée region, what happened to the king, what did it matter to them?

The fact that the revolutionary government chopped off the head of a guy named Louis XVI was not a big deal to the farmers in the Vendée—are the crops still growing? If it's still growing, it's fine! As for the aristocrats, the peasants in the Vendée were also not too concerned. The old men were hung up with street lights, so what's the matter with them? As long as there are crops in the field... Therefore, the Vendée is very stable when the monarchy is constitutional; the Vendée is still very peaceful when the king is beheaded.

But recently, farmers in the Vendée have also gradually felt that there is something wrong with the current revolutionary government.

The first annoying move of the revolutionary government was that they actually wanted to drive out the priests. After the revolution, the "Clerical Law" was passed, stipulating that priests must take an oath of allegiance to the government, which led to the split of the church in France. But in the Vendée, those priests who did not swear allegiance to the government still opened their churches, performed their rituals, and held the keys to heaven for every poor peasant. The French government in Paris actually had no control over it. to such a poor country. Therefore, the influence of the "Clerical Law" on the Vendée was also very limited for a while.

But after the king lost his head, the situation changed. Because many priests who refused to swear allegiance to the government became the backbone of rebellions everywhere. So the National Assembly passed another decree, announcing the expulsion of all priests who had not sworn allegiance to the government.

According to this new decree, all priests who have not sworn allegiance to the government must leave France within the time specified in the decree. , would be considered a rebel and could be sentenced to death without trial.

Some priests in the Vendée area also launched some rebellions after the king was executed. These rebellions at first looked no different from rebellions in other regions. The vast number of peasants in the Vendée still maintained the attitude of "I have nothing to do with Dili", and did not participate much. So these rebellions were quickly suppressed.

But the subsequent expulsion of "undocumented" priests caused great discontent among the Vendée peasants. Because in the closed Vendée area, there are basically no so-called "certified" priests. Therefore, the action of the republican government in the Vendée was, in a sense, an action to remove Christianity from the Vendée.

If the rebellion of the priests did not get much support from the farmers, the republican government's expulsion of the priests aroused the anger of the entire Vendée region.

But if it was just this problem, the Vendée rebellion might not have been so serious. Because of the crisis in the north, the Republican government passed the decree of the national conscription proposed by Carnot. And sent special commissioners to various places to supervise conscription and tax collection.

Because of the limitation of production methods, generally speaking, the agricultural population is generally unwilling to leave their hometown. The same is true of the peasants of the Vendée. In fact, even the National Guards in the cities are generally unwilling to leave their cities to fight elsewhere, let alone the farmers in the Vendée? Coupled with those priests, nobles and foreigners fanning the flames, the rebellion in Vendée expanded rapidly.

The revolutionary government mobilized some National Self-Defense Forces to suppress it, thinking that it could easily suppress the peasant rebellion just like in the past. Unexpectedly, the current situation in Vendée is completely different from the past. The peasants of the Vendée were no less brave than the volunteers in defending their homeland. And their commanders were all nobles who had served as mid-to-high-ranking officers in the French army.

The Vendée is close to the sea. At the beginning of the rebellion, the British discovered that this was a good opportunity to attack the French, so they searched for exiled nobles in France who were full of hatred for the Republic and at the same time had certain People with more military experience, gathered them to England, organized them, and then sent them to the coastline of Vendée with warships, and then they went to different teams under the leadership of the local church to take command. This is how the Marquis of Landenac in Hugo's last novel "Ninety-three" landed on the land of the Vendée.

Therefore, when the sans-culottes generals of the revolutionary government who had no combat experience brought the National Guards into the Vendée, what they had to face was not the kind of troops they had imagined. They are not subordinate to each other and cannot cooperate with each other, but a real army with the same high morale as them, better command, better cooperation, and more soldiers.

In this way, the result of the battle is naturally self-evident. The government army was defeated by the peasant army, and the entire Vendée region fell. At that time, most of the French domestic troops were transferred to the north to fight against the Prussian-Austrian coalition forces, and the entire south was empty. If the rebels take the opportunity to go north, the Republic will fall into a crisis of fighting on two fronts.

Since joining the camp against France, the British have not really put even a platoon of combat troops on the ground, but in terms of threats and losses to France, they are no less than issuing a mobilization order. Austria and Prussia mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops. The legendary shit stirrer is so terrifying!

Of course, the specialization of the shit stick will also bring other problems. For example, I hope to rely too much on the power of others to play the trick of "using the barbarians to control the barbarians", and I am unwilling to spend a penny of my own efforts. In the case of nationwide conscription in France and the constant mobilization of Puao, the British also cut down the size of the army by a quarter to save costs.

This brings up another problem, that is, although the royalists who led the rebellion in the Vendée were very much looking forward to the British Army being able to land in the Vendée, join forces with them, and march northward to Paris to suppress the rebels and restore Poland. beside. But the British refused to send a single soldier, and only hoped that the rebels could solve the problem on their own. Because according to the calculations of the British, if the Vendée rebels marched northward at this time, it would be enough to achieve their goals.

But something unexpected happened to the British and the royal party, that is, the farmers in the Vendée were not actually loyal to the royal family.

In fact, just as the National Guards in the cities were unwilling to leave their hometowns to fight in remote frontiers, the peasants in the Vendée were also unwilling to leave their villages and farmland. This kind of nostalgia for hometown even goes far beyond those citizens in the city.

When the city people who forcibly dragged them hundreds of miles away to fight the war were driven away, the peasants dispersed, went back to their homes, and went to their mothers. In the end, only those nobles were left, and a few kittens and puppies who followed them.

Looking at the group of peasants who dispersed in a hurry, whether they were from the Republic side, the Royal Party side, or other foreigners, they were all stupid, and each of them felt that their eyes had deceived themselves.

So the Northern Expedition to Paris naturally has no drama at all, or how can we say that the peasants are too...too sincere?

But leaving Vendée alone is not enough. What if, what if the British army really came from there? The British haven't sent troops here now, but who can guarantee that they won't send troops here in the future? If the British were stabbed in the back while they were having a good fight with Puao, it would be really...

Therefore, the revolutionary government can only hope to stand against the north, and then transfer the troops transferred to the north to the south in order to completely solve the problem of Vendée. Fortunately, Austria and Prussia are also more cooperative, especially Austria. Seeing that the pressure on the battlefield has eased, they immediately remembered that the queen ate such a large piece of meat, but they only let them smell the meat. So he turned around again, and became entangled with the queen about the special interests of the "Holy Roman Empire" in Poland.

In addition, Austria feels that if he is too desperate in the north now, he will only attract more French troops. In the end, they will fight hard, and most of the benefits will be taken away by the British and Spaniards. If it was done like this, wouldn't it be possible to smell the meaty smell from other people's side again?

As for Prussia, I also feel that we should take it easy now and let the French fight the French themselves. It is best to have the French and the British fight, and then do it, so that the benefits can be maximized.

As a result, the two kings and one emperor's small calculations, which were originally the most critical, were temporarily quiet as the decisive northern battlefield. Instead, the French got a rare chance to breathe.

Taking advantage of this gap, Kano quickly transferred Joseph, Napoleon, and the Red Army back. Anyway, the commander of the Northern Army now felt that they were too influential in the army to prevent him from commanding the army.

Carnot transferred Joseph and Napoleon back, and one of the ideas was to let them take charge of suppressing the Vendée rebellion. However, when he brought up the matter with Joseph, Joseph expressed firm opposition.

"The matter of the Vendée is not a military issue, but a political issue. If political issues must be resolved by the military, Lazar, then I have to say that the number of troops you have prepared is too small."