Battle of Savenay

At sunrise, the battle started, but it was the Vendéens and Chouans who unexpectedly launched it, in order to take the Touchelais woods and not be surrounded. The attack was commanded by Lyrot de la Patouillère and saw success: two cannons were captured along with 40 prisoners. Soon after, Kléber launched a counter-attack with his Gendarmes regiment, charging with bayonets and forcing the Vendéens to pull back to the gates of Savenay. In the center, Marceau, commanding the légion des Francs and Chasseurs de Kastel, encountered difficulties and was for a moment restrained by the Vendéen artillery.^{[citation needed]}

On their respective fronts,

During that time, on the church square, the Republicans took control of the cannon and turned it against the Vendéens. They fled, pursued by the Republicans, retreating out of Savenay and regrouping to the west of the town (the battle's commemorative cross marks that place). The Vendéens took their last two remaining cannons, which Marigny had kept in reserve, and tried to cover the retreat of the wounded and non-combatants. During this engagement, Lyrot was killed. Marigny retreated again, west to the Blanche-Couronne woods, with his two cannons and what was left of his men. He held his position for an hour, then cheered with his men in the marsh, for he had managed to escape. To the northwest, a group of 600 Vendéens managed to hold at the Butte des Vignes and retreated later to the Blanche-Couronnes woods but they were encircled mid-way by a corps of the Armagnac regiment and were massacred.^[citation needed]

Inside Savenay, the town was searched and hundreds of elders, women, and children were taken out of their houses and locked in the church before their trials. The wounded of both sides were brought to the Saint-Armel hospital and taken care of. By 14:00, the battle was over.^{[citation needed]}

The flight and massacres

After the battle, Kléber marched in Nantes to celebrate the victory with most of the troops. Yet the republican cavalry under Marceau and Westermann chased the Vendéens, searching the neighboring villages and the countryside, killing or capturing those left behind.^{[citation needed]}

During the search, the brigadier general Alexis Antoine Charlery attacked a position held by 500 Vendéens but failed to defeat them. He proposed that they surrender in exchange for the right to go home unimpeded, a proposition that they accepted and signed. The prisoners were sent to Nantes for ratification of the arrangement by a Représentant en mission, but he refused and had the prisoners shot and general Charlery arrested. He was later freed and reassigned.^{[citation needed]}

The Bignon Commission which arrived during the day was given the task of judging the prisoners. The commission worked for 3 days and ordered the execution of all the Vendéen combatants caught bearing arms. The executions started that same evening and lasted eight days, but the number executed is unknown. According to official statistics, they numbered 662, but there are doubts as to whether or not this number only reflects those executed during the 3 first days. The représentant en mission Benaban wrote that more than 2,000 were shot. Similarly, General François Carpantier boasted that he had 1,500 people executed. The 1,679 women and children were sent to prisons in Nantes. Some officers, such as Kléber and Savary, asked Carrier to spare them, but Carrier refused to listen and had them all shot or drowned.^{[citation needed]}

Other massacres took place in the countryside. Westermann and his hussards shot 500 to 700 prisoners, men, women, and children, at the Sem forest near Prinquiau.^{[citation needed]} Westermann, nicknamed the "butcher of the Vendéens" supposedly wrote to the Committee of Public Safety:

There is no more Vendée, Republican citizens. It died beneath our free sword, with its women and its children. I have just buried it in the swamps and the woods of Savenay. Following the orders that you gave to me, I crushed the children beneath the horses' hooves, massacred the women who, those at least, will bear no more brigands. I do not have a single prisoner to reproach myself with. I have exterminated them all...^[1]

Nonetheless, some Vendéens were lucky enough to manage to escape, helped by the local population. Jean Legland, a ferryman on the Loire, declared in 1834 that he helped 1,258 escapees pass in the days following the battle of Savenay. This was confirmed by written testimonies by the Abbé Bernier. In total, 2,500 people might have survived the battle.^{[citation needed]}

Consequences

The battle marked the end of the Virée de Galerne, and definitively ended the threat of Vendée to the republic. Yet fighting continued in Vendée. General Marceau, outraged by his soldiers' behavior, asked to be transferred. Marceau was soon replaced by Kléber as general of the Army of the West, and thereafter by Louis Marie Turreau. Guerrilla fighting continued for some time between the Vendéens and the Republican infernal columns.^{[citation needed]}

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