a202  0853  09 Jul 89
AM-French Revolution, Bjt,0657
French Dissenters Say Country Whitewashes Dark Side of Its Revolution
LaserPhoto NY5
An AP Extra
By MORT ROSENBLUM
AP Special Correspondent
    LES HERBIERS, France (AP) - In the Vendee region, where liberty and
brotherhood were eclipsed by scorched earth and slaughter, talk of
the French Revolution's bicentennial provokes cool, hard stares.
    ''For us, it was a horrible genocide, a lasting source of national
shame,'' said Roger Jouteau, manager of this little town which is
still recovering, in some ways, from a republican assault in 1794.
    As official France basks in glory, many Frenchmen dispute the view
that their revolution shaped the principle of universal human rights.
Instead, these critics accuse authorities of whitewashing a black
period.
    One such group of dissenters hopes to assemble 500,000 people on
Aug. 15 to pray for forgiveness for revolutionary excesses. They will
gather at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, where King Louis XVI was
beheaded.
    Bitterness is especially profound and even personal in the rolling
hills of Vendee, a region of rich farmland south of the Loire River
and extending east from the Atlantic Ocean.
    ''The first human right is the right to truth,'' said Philippe de
Villiers, a member of Parliament from Vendee, in raucous debate on
the popular television program ''Apostrophes.''
    His book, ''Open Letter to the Head Choppers and Liars of the
Bicentennial,'' notes that Vladimir Lenin studied France's revolution
as a model for Russia, and Josef Stalin recalled its period of
bloodletting, known as the Reign of Terror, to justify his purges.
    The guillotine is famous, de Villiers argues, but few recall the
300,000 Vendeens killed in battle, disemboweled, starved, or shoved
alive into bread ovens in a two-year civil war.
    Most victims were not aristrocrats but peasants who defended the
Roman Catholic clergy and resisted conscription to fight faraway
wars. Children, described as future rebels, were massacred.
    Such new studies as Simon Schama's U.S. bestseller, ''Citizens,''
assert that much of France remained loyal to the king, who initially
agreed to enlightened rule under a constitution.
    Critics say bicentennial celebrations ignore the terror that
followed and later produced Napoleon Bonaparte and finally another
Bourbon king.
    Typical of the Vendee, Les Herbiers is to mark the revolution July
14 as it always does: with only a brief ceremony ordered by Paris.
    ''To forget what happened, it is shocking,'' Jouteau said. ''To
spend hundreds of millions of francs that could be used for other
things, shocking.''
    De Villiers hammered away at this theme on television, criticizing
what he estimated as the equivalent of $50 million being spent on
celebrating French glory in the presence of foreign leaders.
    He touched a nerve across the country, but reaction was perhaps
strongest in Vendee.
    Monique Amirda, a patriotic woman, wears a gold necklace in the
shape of the region's emblem: a double heart with a cross and crown
to indicate loyalty to God and king.
    After watching de Villiers, she told a reporter about visiting a
bicentennial display in Paris that listed enemy territories subdued
by the revolution. One was the Vendee.
    ''I was so horrified, I nearly went into shock,'' she said.
    Yves Viollier, who writes historical novels and teaches at La
Roche-sur-Yon, said de Villiers might be too strident, but his point
is indisputable.
    He estimated Vendee's 1789 population at 250,000, of which 150,000
were killed on both sides in the civil war. ''I'm ready to call it
genocide,'' he said.
    Schools suppressed history of the war during the 19th century, he
said, but the region was still regarded with suspicion. In World War
I, he added, Vendeen units were sent straight to the front.
    ''Until I was 11, life here was almost like it was in the 19th
century,'' Viollier. ''It was only in the last 30 years that we
rejoined the world.''
    
 
AP-NY-07-09-89 1139EDT
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