Vendee

von-da', a department of western France lying on the Bay of Biscay. It is a country of hills, plains, thickets, valleys, and salt marshes, a land of wheat, flax, hemp, and grapes. The inhabitants are noted in history for simplicity of manners and a stubborn loyalty to the Catholic faith and to the cause of the Bourbons. They gave the leaders of the French Revolution infinite trouble. Uprisings took place repeatedly. The broken nature of the country made it difficult to subdue them. In 1793 the Republican forces drove hordes of the peasantry into Nantes and drowned them in the Loire. The last uprising took place in 1815. See Chouans