Noirmoutier

Noirmoutier-en-l’ÎIe is the main town on the Île du Noirmoutier, not surprising really. The island which is located about 4.5 km off the Atlantic Coast of France is connected to the mainland the Passage de Gois, a cobbled causeway built at the point where the waters meet at high tide and part first as the tide goes down. No one seems to be saying when the Passage was constructed, but a local told me that it was established when the Dutch were running the island which places it at somewhere after 1657.

Sitting out on the edge of France, with a solid strategic position, it seems to be a favourite place to invade. The Vikings started the habit in the early 800s, arriving every year around salt harvest time to collect some of the valuable product.  The English tried and failed in 1342,1360 and 1396, the Spanish in 1524 and 1598 but the island held out against all of these before it fell to the Dutch in 1657. Noirmoutier was the site of the final act of the Vendee uprising against the French Republic in 1793.

It is this last event which still plays a strong role in the island’s self image. First some background. Following the revolution in 1789 and the Reign of Terror, the French Republican Government sent its armies to Vendee (the area to which Noirmoutier attaches) in 1793 to conscript 300,000 young men for the Republican Army.  The Vendee area was not so enthusiastic about the revolution – it supported the King and the Catholic Church – and so the locals decided that if they were to die fighting, they would do it for something they believed not something they opposed. From this was born an army which captured considerable weaponry from the Republicans and defeated the Republicans in several decisive battles over the next year or so. They were eventually defeated in Le Mans and the result was the execution of around 15,000 prisoners.  The Republicans did not stop there and sought to eliminate all opposition by wiping out towns, crops and buildings all the way from Le Mans to the coast.

The remnants of the Royalist army, including its leaders Le Tesselier and Fontiniere retreated across the Passage de Gois to Noirmoutier, presumably to regroup. However, the republicans managed to take the island and execute the leaders of the Royalist army. The story becomes a little unclear from here, but there are reports of people leaving the north of the island by boat to escape the reprisals, and people in Noirmoutier-en-île being massacred, leaving no royalists.

I am not sure they left no royalists, because today the Hotel de Ville (the town hall and the main representative of the republic in every town) does not display the French Coat of Arms in contrast to every other Hotel de Ville in France. The Hotel du General d’Elbée, where we stayed was named after the Royalist General, had its rooms named after the leaders of the Royalist Army, and it backed onto a street called the Passage de Martyrs. In fact the manager of the hotel told us that the Republican leaders watched the execution of General d’Elbée from the balcony window of our room.  In the local museum there is a full description of the glorious acts of the Royalists and the atrocities of the Republicans.   They still take their money, though, and build impressive roads and public buildings, and make most of their living from French tourists in the summer holidays.