War in the Vendée was not until the social unrest and the fear of The Terror (a period between 1793–94 where tens of thousands of people were beheaded by use of guillotine) combined with the external pressures from the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790) and the introduction of a levy of 300,000 on the whole of France, decreed by the National Convention in February 1793, that the region erupted. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy required all clerics to swear allegiance to it and, by extension, to the increasingly anti-clerical National Constituent Assembly. All but seven of the 160 bishops refused the oath,
An Episode Under the Terror An Episode Under the Terror Un épisode sous la Terreur "(An Episode Under the Terror)" is a novel by French author Honoré de Balzac, published in 1842. Originally titled "Une messe en 1793" "(A Mass in 1793)", the text took its final title in the Chlendowski edition of 1845. The work appears in "Scènes de la vie politique" "(Scenes from Political Life)", which is a part of the series of works that make up "La Comédie humaine" "(The Human Comedy)", Balzac’s multi-volume collection of interlinked stories. The later edition is dedicated to Monsieur Guyonnet-Merville, under whom Balzac had done his