La Vendée: An Historical Romance is Anthony Trollope's third novel, published in 1850. His first two novels, set in Ireland, had been unsuccessful, so he decided to try further afield in both setting and time. This is his first historical novel, set in France immediately after The French Revolution, about the Vendean uprising
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The French Revolution succeeds in overthrowing and executing Louis XVI. Unfortunately for its leaders, they reckoned without the rural, strongly Catholic, emphatically pro-monarchy area of La Vendée. They make the critical mistake of conscripting Vendean men into the revolutionary army.
The town of St. Florent objects. When the soldiers attempt to take conscripts by force, it sets off a riot that triggers an uprising. Caught up in the midst of it are three friends: Henri de Larochejaquelein, Charles de Lescure, and Adolphe Denot. Henri and Charles become leaders of the counter-revolution, while Adolphe turns traitor.
The book is available for free on Project Gutenberg.
Contains examples of:
- Adaptational Name Change:
- The real Henri was named Henri de la Rochejaquelein. Trollope altered the spelling of his surname to "de Larochejaquelein".
- The real Charles was named Louis Marie de Lescure.
- The real Barrère's surname was spelt Barère.
- All Love Is Unrequited: Adolphe and Cathelineau both love Agatha, who doesn't love either of them. She later realises she was in love with Cathelineau, though only after he dies.
- Bad Habits: A rare heroic example. Father Jerome brings a bishop to address the army, and later they discover the bishop was an imposter.
- Conscription: This is what starts the uprising. The Republican army try to draft Vendean men, and the Vendean men don't want to be drafted.
- Doomed Moral Victor: The Vendeans want to restore the monarchy and stop the Republic's atrocities. They fail.
- Downer Ending: The uprising is crushed. Most of the named characters are killed.
- Dying Declaration of Love: Cathelineau tells Agatha he loves her as he's dying.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Santerre is shocked that Adolphe is willing to betray his friends just because Agatha refused him, and he pities Agatha for how Adolphe plans to treat her.
- Heel–Face Revolving Door: Adolphe starts out nominally on the heroes' side. Then he becomes a traitor and sells them out to Santerre. His former friends take him prisoner and send him home under guard, and he later becomes the head of his own royalist faction fighting alongside his friends.
- Historical Character's Fictional Relative:
- Henri's sister Agatha is fictional. His father the old Marquis is semi-fictional; we know he obviously had a father, but not any details about his life.
- Similarly, Charles' sister Marie is fictional.
- Historical Domain Character: Henri, Charles, Cathelineau, and many other characters are based on real people.
- It's All About Me: Adolphe is extremely self-centred and constantly assumes people are slighting him. He becomes a traitor because he thinks his allies deliberately insulted him by not offering him a promotion.
- Karma Houdini: Barrère started out as a royalist, became a republican when the royalists were defeated, became a supporter of the Reign of Terror, turned against the leaders of the Reign of Terror... and instead of dying at the guillotine like so many others, he lives to the ripe old age of eighty-five.
- La Résistance: To the French Revolution.
- Love Makes You Evil: Adolphe's love for Agatha. After she rejects him he betrays the Vendeans and asks the republicans to kill her entire family but keep her alive.
- Never Got to Say Goodbye: Henri rides for hours to see Cathelineau before he dies, and he arrives almost two hours too late.[Cathelineau] died about three in the morning, and before five, Henri Larochejaquelin arrived at St. Laurent from Clisson. He had ridden hard through the previous day and the entire night, with the hope of once more seeing the leader, whom he had followed with so much devotion, and valued so truly; but he was too late.
- Poor Communication Kills: A breakdown in communications results in half the Vendean army attacking Varin too early, and many of them die as a result.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Deconstructed. The Vendean army is made up of farmers, shopkeepers, a postilion (essentially the eighteenth-century equivalent of a bus driver), priests, noblemen, and many other unlikely characters... and they're mostly untrained, poorly armed, unused to army discipline, and win their first battles mainly by luck and taking the enemy by surprise. Once they go up against the Republican army for real, things start to go badly for them. In the end they're defeated and most of them are killed.
- Redemption Equals Death: Adolphe returns to the Vendeans' side and is fatally injured in battle.
- Sanity Slippage: Adolphe starts out slightly unhinged, and he just gets worse over the course of the book.
- Storming the Castle: The attacks on Varin and Saumur. The first one is a catastrophe because the soldiers don't know what they're doing and the officers can't regain control. The second one is much more successful.
- Super Window Jump: Henri jumps out a window (with Marie in his arms!) to escape the republicans when they attack the house.
- Young and in Charge: Henri is only twenty-one when Charles gives him command of the Vendean army. Justified, since everyone older is either dead or too injured to lead the army.
- We ARE Struggling Together: The five republican commanders don't get on well. Their first meeting almost ends in a duel between Bourbotte and Westerman.Westerman: [about Bourbotte's soldiers] Whenever they have encountered a few peasants with clubs in their hands, your doughty heroes have invariably ran away.Bourbotte: I have yet to learn that you yourself ever were able to make good soldiers out of country clowns in less than a month's time. When you have done so, then you may speak to me on the subject without impertinence.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The epilogue is set twenty years later and has Chapeau telling another character about Charles' and Henri's deaths.
