Vendée

Department

Prefecture building of the Vendée department
in La Roche-sur-Yon

Flag

Coat of arms

Location of Vendée in France

Coordinates: 46°40′14″N 1°25′36″W / 46.67056°N 1.42667°WCoordinates: 46°40′14″N 1°25′36″W / 46.67056°N 1.42667°W

Fontenay-le-Comte
Les Sables-d'Olonne

Government

• President of the General Council

Yves Auvinet

Area

• Total

6,720 km² (2,590 sq mi)

Population (2013)

• Total

655,506

• Rank

37th

• Density

98/km² (250/sq mi)

Time zone

CET (UTC+1)

• Summer (DST)

CEST (UTC+2)

^1 French Land Register data, which exclude estuaries, and lakes, ponds, and glaciers larger than 1 km²

The Vendée (French pronunciation: [vɑ̃.de]) is a department in the Pays-de-la-Loire region in west-central France, on the Atlantic Ocean. The name Vendée is taken from the Vendée river which runs through the southeastern part of the department.

The area today called the Vendée was originally known as the Bas-Poitou and is part of the former province of Poitou. In the southeast corner, the village of Nieul-sur-l'Autise is believed to be the birthplace of Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122–1204). Eleanor's son, Richard I of England (the Lionheart) often had his base in Talmont. The Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) turned much of the Vendée into a battleground.

Since the Vendée held a considerable number of influential Protestants, including control by Jeanne d'Albret mother of Henry IV of France, the region was greatly affected by the French Wars of Religion which broke out in 1562 and continued until 1598. In April of that year King Henri IV issued the Edict of Nantes and the Wars came to an end. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 caused many Huguenots to flee from the Vendée.

It is also remembered as the place where the peasants revolted against the Revolutionary government in 1793, which opened with a massacre at Machecoul in March. They resented the harsh conditions imposed on the Roman Catholic Church by the provisions of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy act (1790) and broke into open revolt after the Revolutionary government's imposition of military conscription. A guerrilla war, known as the Revolt in the Vendée, led at the outset by peasants who were chosen in each locale, cost more than 240,000 lives before it ended in 1796 (190,000 Vendeans who were republicans or royalists and 50,000 non-Vendean republican soldiers; according to the Jacques Hussenet and Centre Vendéen de Recherche Historique's book "Détruisez la Vendée"). The Revolt in the Vendée must not be confused with the revolt of the Chouans, which took place at the same time in Maine and Brittany. In 1804, Napoleon I chose La Roche-sur-Yon to be the capital of the departement. At the time, most of La Roche had been eradicated in the Vendée Revolt (1793–96); the renamed Napoléonville was laid out and a fresh population of soldiers and civil servants was brought in. Napoléonville had a square-grid street network and was designed to accommodate 15,000 people.

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Wikipedia