Chouannerie

Chouannerie
Part of French Revolutionary Wars
The defence of Rochefort-en-Terre, painting by Alexandre Bloch, 1885
Date 1794–1800 Location Brittany, Maine, Normandy Result Republican victory
Belligerents
French Republic	Chouans Émigrés  Great Britain
Commanders and leaders
Jean-Baptiste de Canclaux Jean-Michel Beysser Jean Antoine Rossignol Jean-Baptiste Kléber Lazare Hoche Jean Humbert Guillaume Brune Gabriel d'Hédouville Pierre Quantin Claude Ursule Gency	Georges Cadoudal  Joseph de Puisaye Jean Chouan † Marie Paul de Scépeaux Aimé du Boisguy Louis de Frotté  Pierre Guillemot † Amateur de Boishardy Comte Louis de Rosmorduc Louis de Bourmont Louis d'Andigné Pierre-Mathurin Mercier † Jean-Louis Treton Guillaume Le Métayer Charles Armand Tuffin, marquis de la Rouërie
Strength
Army of the West: 1795: 68,000 men 1799: 45,000 men 1800: 75,000 men	1795-1800: ~55,000 men

The Chouannerie (from the Chouan brothers, two of its leaders) was a royalist uprising or counter-revolution in twelve of the western départements of France, particularly in the provinces of Brittany and Maine, against the First Republic during the French Revolution. It played out in three phases and lasted from spring 1794 to 1800.^[1]

The uprising was provoked principally by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790), which attempted to impose Caesaropapism upon the Catholic Church in France, and the mass conscription, or levée en masse (1793), which was decided by the National Convention. A first attempt at staging an uprising was carried out by the Association bretonne to defend the French monarchy and reinstate the devolved government, specific laws, and customs of Duchy of Brittany, which had all been repealed in 1789. The first confrontations broke out in 1792 and developed in stages into a peasant revolt, guerrilla warfare and finally full-scale battles. It only ended with the Republican forces defeating the rebels in 1800.^[1]

Briefer peasant uprisings in other départements like in Aveyron and Lozère are also identified as "chouanneries". Another petite chouannerie broke out in 1815, during the Hundred Days War, and a final one occurred in 1832.