{"id":506,"date":"2026-05-24T22:05:25","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T22:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hometransferguide.com\/?p=506"},"modified":"2026-05-24T22:05:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T22:05:25","slug":"heroic-epic-about-french-catholic-resistance-reaches-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hometransferguide.com\/?p=506","title":{"rendered":"Heroic Epic About French Catholic Resistance Reaches America"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WASHINGTON<\/strong> \u2014 Why should Americans care for a movie about a Catholic monarchist freedom fighter resisting the French Revolution in the 1790s?<\/p>

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That\u2019s a question Eduard Habsburg-Lothringen, Hungary\u2019s former ambassador to the Holy See, answered at the U.S. premiere of \u201cVictory or Death,\u201d a French film which has been re-released for streaming and on DVD with English subtitles.<\/p>

\u201cWhat I think will connect most with Americans is you have a nation that\u2019s built from the bottom up,\u201d Habsburg said during a screening of the film Sunday at the Trump-Kennedy Center. \u201cYour smallest item, identity, is the family, the township, the county. And while you are a nation, you are still the United States.\u201d<\/p>

The film is also important to Americans, its backers advocate, due to the dangers of violent, anti-Christian movements. The film retells an often forgotten chapter of the French Revolution: the violent, ruthless genocide against Catholics in western France who resisted and took up arms against the new government after the murder of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, a distant cousin of Habsburg-Lothringen.\u00a0(RELATED: Olivia Rodrigo Gives Subtly Bloodthirsty Answer To Question On Palace Of Versailles)<\/strong><\/p>

\u201cYou want to know what the origins \u2014 this is just my view \u2014 of violence against people who stand up for the Catholic faith? You want to know where the origins of antifa are? You want to know where the origins of woke are? Look at the philosophies, look at the French Revolution,\u201d said Brian Brown, leader of the Louis IX Foundation, a fiscal sponsor of the film\u2019s U.S. release.<\/p>

The movie follows the final years of the life of Fran\u00e7ois-Athanase de Charette de la Contrie, a French naval officer who supported the Revolutionary War in America, then, upon returning to his homeland, resisted the French revolutionary government\u2019s chaotic and bloody suppression of regions that remained loyal to the Catholic Church and the monarchy.<\/p>

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\u201cFor God and the King\u201d was a rallying cry of the Vendee rebels. (Courtesy: Innonde Films\/Christine Tamalet)<\/p><\/div>

\u201cIt is a story of a small people, farmers and peasants from Western France who rose against a totalitarian project that sought to destroy their roots and impose a new order and a new kind of man. It is a little-known story because it comes in contradiction with the official narrative,\u201d said producer Guillaume Allaire of Innonde Films.<\/p>

The film opens with Charette being urged to lead peasants of the Vendee region of the western coast of France in an uprising in early 1793. Charette, hoping for a life of peace, struggles with the call. He believes in the royalist cause, opposes the secularist republican regime and is horrified by the oppression of the deeply Roman Catholic region. One peasant in the movie likewise complains the French government had removed the \u201cgood priests.\u201d<\/p>

Though he senses the fight is unwinnable, Charette agrees to lead the ragtag army.<\/p>

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Courtesy: Innonde Films\/Christine Tamalet<\/p><\/div>

The action sequences, script, and acting stand up against any Hollywood epic. The first half of the film, however, suffers slightly from narrated exposition\u00a0as it recounts a year of fighting, during which Charette and his band of peasant fighters win surprising victories against the vastly superior armies of the new government.<\/p>

Napoleon, decades later, would praise Charette\u2019s skill as a military leader and exemplar of heroic virtue.<\/p>

\u201cCharette was the only great character, the true hero, of that remarkable episode of our Revolution, which, if it presented great misfortunes, at least did not sacrifice our glory. In the wars of La Vend\u00e9e, Frenchmen destroyed each other; but they did not degrade themselves,\u201d Napoleon observed.<\/p>

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The latter half of the film, however, has no expository weaknesses. Instead, the film vividly depicts Charette and others who, facing certain defeat, fight to the end. Though often violent, the action sequences have none of the awkwardness self-conscious American religious movies sometimes exhibit.<\/p>

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Courtesy: Innonde Films\/Christine Tamalet<\/p><\/div>

\u201cThe message of that resistance against an unjust government or regime has to happen locally, has to happen through a band of friends who, with all their weaknesses and all their problems, and all their not being competent to do that, find out that they have to do it,\u201d Hapbsurg said.<\/p>

Despite ruthless oppression and betrayal by the royals he offered his life to restore to the throne, broken promises of the republican regime, and risks of disloyalty by his own men, Charette persists until his final end comes.<\/p>

\u201cThere is a resurgence of interest in the war of the Vendee. Historians, artists, commentators have taken notice. This story is one we cannot allow to come lost to history. This is a story that needs to be told again today,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>

Estimates of the number of people killed in the Vendee genocide range between 120,000 and 200,000. Suspected brigands would be executed in groups without trial.\u00a0Drowning became a regular method of punishing rebels and even children and women, who would be drowned naked, often after being raped. \u201cRefractory\u201d priests were likewise rounded up by the dozen and drowned.<\/p>

One French general even bragged about the brutality, stating, \u201cCitizens of the Republic, there is no more Vend\u00e9e. She has died beneath our sabre of freedom, with her women and children. I have buried her in the woods and marshes of Savenay. Following your orders, I have crushed her children under the hooves of my horses, and massacred her women \u2026 who will give birth to no further brigands now. There is not a single prisoner who could criticize my actions\u2014I have exterminated them all.\u201d<\/p>

The producers \u201cnever ever imagined that this film would one day be shown in the U.S.,\u201d Allaire said.<\/p>