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,
Terror (politics) Terror (politics) Terror, is from the French "terreur", from Latin "terror" meaning "great fear", a noun derived from the Latin verb "terrere" meaning "to frighten", is a policy of political repression and violence intended to subdue political opposition. The term was first used for the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. Modern instances of terror include red terror or white terror. Before the late twentieth century, the term ""terrorism"" in the English language was often used interchangeably with ""terror"." Some contemporary writers use terrorism to refer to acts by groups with a limited political base or parties on the