ABSTRACT
In mental images of the French Revolution, the people are constant protagonists. The impact of the Revolution varied enormously according to the area of France that it lived in and the precise situation which it occupied. Significantly, meanwhile, the impact was particularly severe in the west of France, an area in which it can be argued that the peasant revolution of 1789 ended up being frustrated at every turn by the very groups against whom it was primarily directed. The basic problems that had given rise to the resistance had not been resolved in the slightest, and, if the situation was reasonably quiet, it was in large part only because conscription was no longer in operation. Resistance to the Revolutionary religious settlement was to continue throughout the 1790s and beyond, and all the more so when the Committee of Public Safety and the Convention began to move in the direction of outright de-christianisation.
