On March 29, 2025 took place in Vendée, in the woods of the famous Logis de la Chabotterie, a very beautiful and moving ceremony at La Croix de Charette, a place where the generalissime of the Catholic and royal armies was arrested, 230 years ago. Ceremony organized by the Friends of the Chabotterie with the support of the Jubilee association of the Vendée.
Exclusively for the Beige Salon, here is the speech pronounced in the name of the Generalissime:
“Me, François Athanase Charette de la Conrie, I have a specific memory of this very place where you are here faithfully gathered. This is precisely 229 years. This place where my dear bodyguard, Pfeiffer, removed my headgear by force to style it, then to run in the woods, just here, in front of you. For, by signaling to the Blues, go to a certain death. Accepted sacrifice of his person, for me to live. Or at least for me to live a little, time to finish my epic with panache, since I only had to defend me.
But what do I see coming there? Yes it is him my old panache all overwhelmed, all stuck. He returns, he always testifies to a faith, a hope (The plume is deposited at the foot of the cross).
But, in the past, how did I get here, me that we called the “King of Vendée”, to finish abandoned by almost all, hunted down like a wild beast, when there were little still we were so close to victory? I who often fought, who was sometimes beaten, but who was never shot.
I remember the fall of this tyrant, Robespierre, who wanted to regenerate humanity, make a new man! To do this, he had to eliminate the ancient man, the man of our bocages and our marshes who simply wanted to continue to live his faith peacefully. I remember this convention laid in the face of our power that nothing seemed to be able to stop. I remember these general, fearful generals of the western army, at the end, and who proposed peace to us.
I wanted this peace. Many of my loved ones feared that it was only a trap to kill our resistance. But against these prudent and worried opinions, I hoped. I kept a huge hope thanks to a secret clause. Clause that had to change everything, but that I could not entrust my loved ones as it was fragile and risky.
I accepted a treaty to the Jaunaye under highly negotiated conditions. May our religion be free, first. That the insurgent territory be erected in a body of nation. That the Vendée army becomes a territorial guard. And, following his attempt at extermination, that our people receive a fair compensation so that they can relive as much as possible, but also to confirm this infamy in the eyes of the generations to come.
I built very close to here, around noon by hardly more than three leagues, a house will be called “royal palace”. It made me laugh as she was so welcoming but modest. My political drawing was ambitious. I estimated it crucial. I wanted to erect on our land thus protected a small kingdom intended to receive our very young king. Here is this secret clause: I was promised the return of Louis-Charles de France and his sister Marie-Thérèse of France, the two innocent orphans maintained ignominiously in the Tower of the Temple.
But this June 20, 1795, at noon, thunderclap. Lightning falls on me. I learn that the little king, Louis the seventeenth, is no longer. The Royal Palace will remain empty, forever! My feelings are violent, confused, paid. I cried the death of the king. I wanted for him a crown of gold and precious stones, he had only a crown of thorns. I wanted for him a kingdom on earth, I understood suddenly that his real kingdom would not be of this world.
At the very moment I understood intensely the word of an old priest, a sage: “Hope is built on the ruins of hope”. And then, I only remained for me than a last mission to accomplish: save the honor! Transmit pride. Transmitting a plume, to encourage, to strengthen the soul of generations of fighters to come, as the future trials will remain numerous, I knew it well.
Panache raised with pride by those of my line, these dear Athanasius, peer of France and pontifical zouave, which continued the fights of their eras. I warned them: “As long as the cart has a wheel, the cart will drive!” ». Panache also carried by many others, to defend God, the King and France, so much God is deeply inscribed in the destiny of our country.
Today I contemplate these ceremonies, these commemorations, here even where I was captured, in Nantes where my soul was returned to God, or even, not far, in this great theater of Puy-du-Fou. They are sometimes only a few handfuls of faithful, two or three platoons, at best a big company. But that they do not lose courage, with little more I beat whole regiments of Blues.
Not long ago with my dear sister Marie-Anne we went to ten leagues from here, towards the Levant, on our “inspired hill” in Vendée, Mont des Alouettes. A jubilee to commemorate a chapel of reconciliation desired by our dear Marie-Thérèse. I heard the Gregorian chant go to the sky with the smoke of incense. I heard the mass of Father Abbé Bénédictin, an age -old family who like all very lively families cause children, and swarm to new foundations.
And it is with great emotion that I honored the parents of our children of the temple, welcoming Louis, the eldest of our long Capetian line. And all his family because there too the family is alive, and gives children who will always represent the pillars of our homeland, the founding walls. And it was with immense respect that I gave him my proud panache, the same that I wanted to give our little Louis-Charles once.
I recently saw large posters that speak of the “last plume” … the last? They make me laugh! Why the last? They should have said the first plume! I see arising in my little kingdom in Vendée a whole youth who without noise, like the forest that grows, forms, begins, sets up shows, fills the churches, founds families and gives vocations. A youth who more than ever works with joy, with pride. A youth who has faith and hope. Panache is always very lively.
And I see, like the modest Vendée river winding at the borders of the department, which would have come out powerfully from its bed to cover entire regions, that my little “kingdom of Vendée” has become a “province of the spirit”, radiating throughout France. I see that the united hearts of Jesus and Mary, who, following my sea epics, proudly go around the seas of the globe to the amazement of the whole world. I then remember the first words of the one who captured me, but who respected me, the commander Travot: “What a lost heroism!” ». I replied highly, I remember well: “No sir. Nothing is lost, never! ».
And it was by contemplating this resurrection that I understood the true meaning of my life. When my dear Pfeiffer snatched my headgear to go to a certain death, in place of mine, here, he gave me these few days of respite, meditative walking to Nantes. Six days, no more. This city which had acclaimed to me so much, almost with branches, to then lead me on a way of the cross. These days of respite so necessary to consciously offer my whole life. And there I understood that my values, that our values would only be transmitted if with the plume we add the sacrifice offered. »
Pascal Théry,
For the Jubilee Association of Vendée
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