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The Machecoul massacre is one of the first events of the War in the Vendée, a revolt against mass conscription and the civil constitution of the clergy. The first massacre took place on 11 March 1793, in the provincial city of Machecoul, in the district of the lower Loire. The city was a thriving center of grain trade; most of the victims were administrators, merchants and citizens of the city. Although the Machecoul massacre, and others that followed it, are often viewed (variously) as a royalist revolt, or a counter-revolution, twenty-first century historians generally agree that Vendee revolt was a complicated popular event brought on by anti-clericalism of the Revolution, mass conscription, and Jacobin anti-federalism. In the geographic area south of the Loire, resistance to recruitment was particularly intense, and much of this area also resented intrusion by partisans of the republic, called "blue coats", who brought with them new ideas about district and judicial organization, and who required reorganization of parishes with the so-called juring priests (those who had taken the civil oath). Consequently, the insurgency became a combination of many impulses, at which conscription and the organization of parishes led the list. The response to it was incredibly violent on both sides. ==Background== In 1791, two representatives on mission informed the National Convention of the disquieting condition of Vendée, and this news was quickly followed by the exposure of a royalist plot organized by the Marquis de la Rouerie. It was not until the social unrest combined with the external pressures from the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790) and the introduction of a levy of 300,000 on the whole of France, decreed by the National Convention in February 1793, that the region erupted.〔James Maxwell Anderson (2007). ''Daily Life During the French Revolution,'' Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 0-313-33683-0. (p. 205 ).〕〔François Furet. ''The French Revolution, 1770–1814'', Blackwell Publishing, France, 1996. ISBN 0-631-20299-4. (p. 124 ).〕 The Civil Constitution of the Clergy required all clerics to swear allegiance to it and, by extension, to the increasingly anti-clerical National Constituent Assembly. All but seven of the 160 French bishops refused the oath, as did about half of the parish priests.〔Anthony James Joes, (Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency ), Lexington, University Press of Kentucky, 2006 ISBN 0-8131-2339-9. p.51.〕 Persecution of the clergy and of the faithful was the first trigger of the rebellion. Those who refused the oath, called non-juring priests, had been exiled or imprisoned. Women on their way to Mass were beaten in the streets. Religious orders had been suppressed and Church property, confiscated.〔 On 3 March 1793, most of the churches were ordered closed. Soldiers confiscated sacramental vessels and the people were forbidden to place crosses on graves.〔Joes, p.52.〕 Nearly all the purchasers of church land were bourgeois; very few peasants benefited from the sales.〔Charles Tilly, "Local Conflicts in the Vendée before the rebellion of 1793", French Historical Studies II, Fall 1961, p. 219.〕 To add to this insult, on 23 February 1793 the Convention required the raising of an additional 300,000 troops from the provinces, an act which enraged the populace,〔 who took up arms instead as The Catholic Army; the term "Royal" was added later. This army fought first and foremost for the reopening of parish churches with the former priests.〔Joes, pp. 52–53.〕 In March 1793, as word of the conscription requirements filtered into the countryside, many Vendéans refused to satisfy the decree of the ''levee en masse'' issued on 23 February 1793. Within weeks the rebel forces had formed a substantial, if ill-equipped, army, the ''Royal and Catholic Army'', supported by two thousand irregular cavalry and a few captured artillery pieces. Most of the insurgents operated on a much smaller scale, using guerrilla tactics, supported by the local knowledge and the good-will of the people.〔Jonathan North, (General Hoche and Counterinsurgency ) ''The Journal of Military History'', 67.2 (2003), pp. 529–540. 〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「First Massacre of Machecoul」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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