Vendée (Department, France)

Last modified: 2002-10-12 by ivan sache
Keywords: vendee | pays de la loire | heart | general council |
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by Jaume Ollé & Ivan Sache

• Administrative data
• Flag of the department
• Flag of the General Council
• The Sacred Heart of Vendée

See also:

• France
• France: Metropolitan departments
• Clickable map of France (departments)
• Vendée (Department, France): Yacht clubs

Administrative data

Code: 85
Region: Pays de la Loire
Traditional provinces: Poitou
Bordering departments: Charente-Maritime, Loire-Atlantique, Maine-et-Loire, Deux-Sèvres

Area: 6,720 km²
Population (1995): 525,700 inhabitants

Préfecture: La Roche-sur-Yon
Sous-préfecture: Fontenay-le-Comte, Les Sables-d'Olonne
Subdivisions: 3 arrondissements, 31 cantons, 282 communes.

The department is named after the historical region of Vendée.

Flag of the department

The flag of the departement is vertically divided red-white with the logo of the General Council in the centre.

The logo of the Général Council was created by the agence Carré Noir, who made also the logos of the cities of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Noisy-le-Roi, Sceaux.

Source: Société Vexillologique de l'Ouest

Ivan Sache & Jaume Ollé, 2 December 2000

Flag of the General Council

by Jaume Ollé & Ivan Sache

The flag of the General Council is white with two vertical thin red and white stripes in the centre, charged with the logo. The writing VENDEE CONSEIL GENERAL appears below the logo.

The vertical stripes and logo are very commonly seen as car stickers but are not used as a banner.

Source: Société Vexillologique de l'Ouest

Ivan Sache, 2 December 2000

The Sacred Heart of Vendée

The Sacred Heart of Vendée is a plain red heart topped with a plain red Christian cross. The Sacred Heart was used during the Vendée insurrection between 1793 and 1796.
After the execution of Louis XVI, the Republican government (the 'Convention') decided the conscription of 300,000 new soldiers. In the region of Vendée (West of France), a general insurrection, with noble and peasant leaders, bursted out. The so-called 'Catholic and Royal Army' (the 'Whites', as opposed to the 'Blues', the Army of the Republic) used a white flag seme with fleurs-de-lys, often charged with the words Vive Louis XVII, referring to the young son of Louis XVI. The leaders wore on the chest a wool badge with the Sacred Heart. The Vendée War, a typical pacification war, is one of the darkest page of the French history, and its proper evaluation is still to be done. Activists still claim for the acknowledgement of a Vendean genocide, which is quite far from the historical reality (all of this occurred during the Terreur period, when everyone opposed to the Republic risked death as an 'enemy of the nation'). Sporadic local insurrections occurred in the area up to 1816.

Ivan Sache, 20 November 1997