Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency

3: Religion and Insurgency in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centures

50 RESISTING REBELLION 50 CHAPTER 3 RELIGION AND INSURGENCY IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES While it would be difficult to identify a guerrilla insurgency driven exclusively by religious issues, it is undeniable that a number of insurgencies have had their primary genesis in a reaction to perceived outrages against religious institutions and sentiments. For countless millions of human beings, especially those in rural communities, religion is intimately connected to their self-definition and to their perceived well-being both in this world and in the next. Consequently, an insurgency in defense of religion will be resolute and protracted, and may have the most serious consequences for the regime that provokes it. In our own time, religious insurgency is widely and understandably associated with Islam, the result of conflicts in Afghanistan , Chechnya, Kashmir, Kosovo, Mindanao, Palestine, Sinkiang, and elsewhere. But five of the six insurgencies analyzed in this chapter and the following one were non-Islamic: in France, Spain, Mexico, Tibet, and Sudan. Three of these insurgencies arose against a domestic regime (in the Vendée, Mexico, and Sudan), and three against a foreign occupation (in Spain, Tibet, and Afghanistan). The present chapter shows as well the undeveloped and self-destructive counterinsurgency methods of the armies of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, at home and abroad. THE VENDÉE As the Revolutionary regime in Paris entered its most radical phase in the early 1790s, insurgencies broke out in several areas of France. The most famous of these, in the province of La Vendée, became “the symbol of the counterrevolution.”1 There and in other areas2 rural folk rose up, driven to desperation by a full-scale assault on their way of life, especially on their religious practices. The enormities committed by Religion and Insurgency in the 18th and 19th Centuries 51 the Revolutionary regime against its own civilians, enormities perhaps assumed to be exclusive to the twentieth century, make these Vendean events all too familiar to present-day observers. In many areas of rural France, the social life of the people revolved around the parish church.3 The “country curates [parish priests] of the Estates General [were] the most authentic representatives of the majority of Frenchmen. They were certainly much closer to the People so freely apostrophized by the Third Estate than the lawyers, functionaries and professional men who made up that body.”4 The Revolution suppressed religious orders and confiscated Church lands, most of which went to rich bourgeoisie. But the Revolution’s main blow to the Church was the cluster of decrees known as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of July 1790. This document provided that “the laws of the state are absolutely binding upon the clergy, even when they are opposed to the discipline or dogma of Catholicism.” That is, “the state was master even in the religious sphere; it was the source of all law, authority and truth.”5 In March 1791 Pope Pius VI condemned the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.6 Indeed, “no pope could for a moment have considered accepting it. Although there was the usual diplomatic delay, the break between the pope and the revolutionary government was inevitable, and with it a powerful and conservative group of Catholics was forced irreconcilably into opposition .”7 “The Turning Point” The regime demanded that every bishop and priest not merely conform to the Civil Constitution but swear a public oath of allegiance to it. “If there was a point at which the Revolution ‘went wrong,’ it was when the Constituent Assembly imposed the oath to the Civil Constitution of the clergy, November 27, 1790. This marked the end of national unity and the beginning of civil war. For the first time popular forces were made available to the opponents of the Revolution.”8 Here “was the fatal moment in the history of the Revolution,”9 because “it brought wide popular support to its adversaries.”10 It was “certainly the Constituent Assembly’s most serious mistake.”11 All but seven bishops (out of 160) and about half of the parish priests became “nonjurors,” refusing the oath. The Legislative Assembly, successor to the Constituent Assembly, imprisoned or exiled recalcitrant priests.12 Women on their way to religious services were beaten on the streets “before the eyes of the jeering 52 RESISTING REBELLION National Guards.”13 Nonjuring priests risked harsh penalties for ministering secretly to their flocks.14 In June 1792 local authorities began the...