Early activities

A nobleman born in Couffé, arrondissement of Ancenis, Charette served in the French Navy under Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de la Motte, notably during the American War of Independence, and became lieutenant de vaisseau. He notably served on the 74-gun Hercule, under Puget-Bras.^[2]

Following the outbreak of the French Revolution, he quit the Navy in 1789 and emigrated to Koblenz (Trier) in 1792 (a common move for royalist aristocrats). He soon returned to France to live at his property in La Garnache, and became one of the royalist volunteers who assisted in defending King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette from physical harm during the mob attack on Tuileries Palace (the Insurrection of 10 August 1792); arrested in Angers, he was released through the intervention of Charles François Dumouriez.

Vendée War

François Athanase de Charette de la Contrie, by Jean-Baptiste Paulin Guérin (1819)

In 1793, the War in the Vendée against the French First Republic broke out, and the peasant fighters asked Charette to be their leader. He joined Jacques Cathelineau following the taking of Saumur in June 1793 and fought in most of the battles of the Catholic and Royal Army. On 19 September 1793, he participated in the victorious Battle of Tiffauges. Afterwards he and Louis Marie de Lescure had marched on Saint-Fulgent to pursue Jean-Baptiste Kléber, who had escaped. Charette won another victory over the Republicans at the First Battle of Noirmoutier. Some of the captured soldiers took part in the Machecoul Massacres and a quarter of them were executed for retribution by Charette's troops, against his orders. After the parting of the Vendean leaders in September 1793, he and his men retreated. He became the leader of the Lower Vendée, and successfully used guerrilla warfare against the Republican troops, capturing a Republican camp in Saint-Christophe-du-Ligneron, near Challans, but ran out of supplies and was decisively attacked by the troops of Nicolas Haxo. Trapped in the Isle of Bouin, Charette, with the fellow leader Jean-Baptiste de Couëtus was informed of an escape route by a local to the isle. Leaving behind all guns, ammunition, horses, refugees and the wounded, Charette, Couëtus and their men swam through the marshes to Châteauneuf. By a chance stroke of luck, Charette met up with the army of Jean-Baptiste Joly, and both he and Charette retaliated by circling Haxo, gaining back supplies and distracting the Republican army from the refugees.^[3] Haxo later attacked the Isle of Noirmoutier, with Louis Turreau, which had been taken by Charette the month before, and after promising life to the inhabitants if they surrendered, against Haxo's command Turreau killed most men, women and children on the isle at the steps of the local church (La chapelle de la Pitié), including D'Elbée who had taken refuge there after sustaining 14 wounds at the Second Battle of Cholet.^[4]

After this, Charette's army returned and collected reinforcements; Revolutionary brutality and the 'infernal columns' sent by the Convention to destroy the Vendée forced many peasants to join Charette's army merely for safety.^[5] Charette won a victory at Saint-Fulgent, only to be chased into hiding in the forest of Grala.^[6] He emerged from it to attack Les Brouzils; he was wounded in the arm but kept on until the end of the fight. After obtaining food for his starving army, Charette was brought to La Morière, a convent near Machecoul, to recover from his wound; he was only able to rest there for a few days when his location was betrayed and the Republicans surrounded the convent. Warned, he was able to escape, but the nuns and a large number of the refugees who had come with Charette's army and had hidden in the church were massacred.^[7][8]

The Capture of Charette, by Louis Joseph Watteau, 1796

Defeat

Execution of General Charette, in Nantes, March 1796, by Julien Le Blant

On 17 February 1795, after being introduced to it by his sister, Charette signed the Treaty of La Jaunaye with the emissaries of the National Convention, which included freedom of religion guarantees and excluded the conscription of local peasants from the levée en masse. The republicans soon reneged on the terms of the treaty, repudiating the guarantees of religious freedom; and they began conscripting peasants once again. They also murdered thousands of royalist prisoners including the Bishop of Dol, Urbain-René de Hercé. Charette and his men returned to the fight again in July and moved to help the planned invasion at Quiberon by French royalist émigrés with assistance from the British Royal Navy.

The Count of Artois, the Bourbon successor to the throne of France, made him Lieutenant General and gave orders to prepare for a royal return which, however, did not eventuate. Charette remained loyal to the old House of Bourbon and Catholicism, as did his men and most of the Vendean and Breton peasantry. He, and all the loyal royalists, later refused to join the liberal Orléanists. After the failure of the Quiberon expedition, Charette and his men were pursued by General Lazare Hoche. Charette was wounded but escaped. However, due to lack of munitions he was eventually captured outside La Chabotterie and taken to Nantes for a trial. He was sentenced to death by a republican court and then taken to the town square in procession for a public execution by firing squad.^[9] A plaque has been erected and still stands upon the place where he was shot. Today, memorial ceremonies continue to take place there.

According to a contemporary writing in Walker's Hibernian Magazine, it was Charette who said, by way of extenuating the number of deaths for which he was responsible, "Omelets are not made without breaking eggs."^[10]

François Athanase Charette de La Contrie, by Louis Bombled

Charette was described by Napoleon as a great character and military leader who "shows genius".^[11]