When was the Battle of Savenay?

On 22 and 23 December 1793, during the war in the Vendée, near Savenay on the north bank of the Loire estuary.

Who won the Battle of Savenay?

The French Republic. The Army of the West under Kléber and Marceau destroyed the remnant of the Vendéen Catholic and Royal Army.

What was the Virée de Galerne?

The two-month march of tens of thousands of Vendéens, with women and children, north of the Loire to Granville and back in October to December 1793, which ended at Savenay.

How many died at Savenay?

Encyclopaedia Universalis says several thousand Vendéens were killed near Savenay, and the victory was followed by mass executions of prisoners.

Is there a memorial at Savenay?

Yes. The Croix des Vendéens, a stone cross raised in 1881 in the town center, and a remembrance trail across the battlefield.

Battle of Savenay, 1793: the end of the Virée de Galerne

Location map of Savenay on the Loire estuary, drawn for this article. Location map: Natural Earth data (public domain)

Quick answer

What happened at the Battle of Savenay?

On 22 and 23 December 1793 the Republican Army of the West under Generals Kléber and Marceau destroyed what was left of the Vendéen insurgent army at Savenay, near the Loire estuary. It was the last battle of the Virée de Galerne, the two-month march of tens of thousands of Vendéens, women and children among them, north of the Loire and back. Several thousand were killed, and many prisoners were executed.¹

Savenay was the end of the most desperate episode of the war in the Vendée. The army that fought there was no longer really an army but the exhausted remnant of a whole people on the move, and its destruction was followed by some of the worst repression of the Revolution.²

The Virée de Galerne

The royalist and Catholic rising in the Vendée broke out in 1793, when the Republic's mass levy of soldiers set the countryside alight. After a Republican offensive failed because of political rivalries, the Republicans took the initiative again, and most of the Vendéen armies were crushed at Cholet on 17 October 1793. Kléber, in fact if not in name, commanded the Republicans that day.³

What followed is known as the Virée de Galerne, the turn to the northwest. Several tens of thousands of Vendéens, women and children among them, crossed the Loire, were joined by the Breton chouans, and marched through Maine and Brittany to the port of Granville on the Channel, hoping to meet the English. They could not take Granville, and turned back in a series of very bloody battles. Along the way they won at Entrammes and at Dol on 22 November, when the Republicans preferred General Westermann's plan to Kléber's.⁴

Le Mans

Kléber's friend Marceau, only 24 and recently made a general, was named interim commander of the Army of the West at the end of November. Knowing Kléber had more experience, he told him that he would take all the responsibility but that Kléber should really lead, asking only for the advance guard in the moment of danger; Kléber agreed, and told him that if things went wrong they would face the guillotine together.⁵

Under them the Republicans won at Le Mans, and the beaten Vendéens fled toward Laval. The pursuing soldiers began to massacre their routed enemies and the people following them. Marceau tried to stop the slaughter and personally rescued a woman, who was later discovered, tried and guillotined; suspicion fell on Marceau himself, and only the protection of the deputy Bourbotte, whose life he had saved earlier that year, kept him safe. Kléber, who arrived too late to fight at Le Mans, also tried to limit the massacres.⁶

The last stand at Savenay

The survivors turned west along the Loire, toward the estuary. The new commander, General Turreau, sent word for Marceau to halt the pursuit until he arrived. Marceau answered that he would attack at dawn and destroy the enemy, and that Turreau had better hurry if he wanted to see the end of the war.⁷

According to the Loire-Atlantique tourist board, the battle was fought on 22 and 23 December 1793 near the little town of Savenay, in the estuary country north of the Loire; FrenchEmpire.net dates Marceau's victory to 23 December. It ended with the destruction of the Catholic and Royal Army and a decisive Republican victory. Encyclopaedia Universalis says several thousand Vendéens were killed near the town. Napoleon and Empire credits Kléber with a major role in the victory, which annihilated the Vendéen army for good, at the cost, it adds, of mass executions. Turreau arrived a few days later and took command, and Marceau left the army in poor health.⁸

Repression

With the First Terror at its height, repression in the West was left to representatives on mission. At Nantes, Jean-Baptiste Carrier emptied the prisons by shootings and by drownings in the Loire that killed several thousand people, while Turreau's incendiary columns, the infernal columns, burned, raped and killed across the countryside. The Convention recalled Carrier only in February 1794 and Turreau in May. The war itself went on in other forms, under leaders such as Charette and Stofflet, until early 1796; the Loire-Atlantique tourist board counts more than 200,000 dead in the wars of the Vendée as a whole.⁹

Remembering Savenay

In 1881 a stone cross with fleurs-de-lis and coats of arms, the Croix des Vendéens, was raised in Savenay as an act of remembrance; it became part of the town's protected heritage in 1888, and a remembrance trail now follows the ground of the battle. The Virée had begun two months earlier with the defeat near Cholet, where the Vendéen general Lescure was gravely wounded at La Tremblaye.¹⁰