Renée Bordereau, nicknamed The Angevin, was a woman who disguised herself as a man soldier. She fought in the Vendée as a royalist cavalier under the Marquis de Bonchamps during the insurrection against the Revolution.
Background
Renée was born in 1776, Soulaines-Sur-Aubance in France, in a peasant family south of Angers. Her humble parents worked the land. They raised her with great piety. She may have done some smuggling during her youth, carrying illegal salt between Maine and Brittany.
Education
Renée Bordereau had little education and was illiterate. The things she knew best were how to ride and how to handle weapons and these skills proved fortuitous.
Career
In 1793, as peasants rose in "Vendee" against the French Revolution, she followed her father in the riots, during which he was arrested and executed by revolutionaries in December.
Not allowed to fight as a woman, Renée Bordereau disguised herself as a man and took her brother’s name Hyacinthe to fight against the Bleues. Dressing in men's clothes and riding a horse, the thirty-year-old Bordereau took part in all the battles of the war: in Nantes, Chemillé, Laval, Dol, Antrain, and Le Mans. Fighting at the front line, she commanded about twenty men. She reportedly cut the neck of her own uncle, a republican officer.
Bordereau went through Brittany during the "Viree de Galerne" in late 1793 and fought continuously from 1794 to 1795. She once managed to kill two opponents at the same time, with a pistol and a sword. After three years of "false peace", she fought again during the small war of 1799. She worked a short time as a butcher in Cholet, but was spotted by the imperial police and jailed from 1809 until 1814 in Angers and in the fortress of Mont-Saint-Michel, until the Restoration gave her liberty. She met King Louis XVIII and dictated her memoirs during this year. When she was nearly fifty, she fought again in the war against Napoleon in 1815, then retired in the village of Vezins, where she was commonly dressed in men's clothes. Bordereau died in 1822.
Politics
Located in a department in the Pays-de-la-Loire region in west-central France is the region called Vendée, and it was there in 1793 that a peasant revolt occurred. The violence swept up Renée Bordereau and others. Those revolting formed an army, which became known as the Royalists. They opposed the Republicans, who disliked anyone who held royalist sentiments, and so the Republicans gathered an army to put down the revolt and that army became known as the "Bleues".
Renée Bordereau was so zealous in her support of the Royalists and their cause that when one of her uncles joined the Republicans, she beheaded him.
Views
Quotations:
"Arriving near the Loire, I destroyed five of my enemies, and finishing off the day, I broke my sword on the head of the last one… Seeing only one horseman near me, I doubled back to our army. I alone, killed twenty-one that day. I'm not the one who counted them, but those who followed me, and if they hadn't said so, I wouldn't have spoken about it myself."
"I then found in Saint Lambert, where the enemy was encamped on the hills of Beaulieu, close to the bridge Barre; ... I took four that I killed with my own hand. One had a child about six months old dangling from the end of his bayonet along with two chickens... Coming from the Loire, I destroyed five of my enemies, and ending my day, I broke my sword on the head of the latter in the Rue des Ponts de Cé... To me alone, I killed 21 on that day... There, we ate soup and the two chickens that I took in the from the Republican."
Personality
Napoleon considered Renée extremely dangerous. In fact, he set a price of 40,000 francs on Langevin’s head, which resulted in her arrest and imprisonment. While imprisoned, it was claimed she survived by living off "black bread and water which fell from the clouds, and which she collected in a bason". She remained imprisoned for several years, until the accession of Louis XVIII when she became viewed as a Royalist hero.
Physical Characteristics:
Renée Bordereau was of average height and very plain.
Quotes from others about the person
"Always on horseback, in the very advance of her company, soliciting to be preferred to the most dangerous posts, she never quitted the field of battle, till compelled by wounds, or the toils of the day. Her only ambition, her only passion, were the triumph of Religion, and the re-establishment of her lawful King." - the Staffordshire Advertise
"Yesterday, before Mass, the heroine of La Vendee, the Demoiselle, Renee Bourdereau, was presented to the King by the Marquise de la Rochejaquelin. His Majesty received with his accustomed goodness this extraordinary female, who was covered with wounds, which she received in fighting for the Throne and the Altar." - The Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser
"This letter, which bears signs of the Marquise's tears, is a flower placed on the grave of the obscure and valiant peasant who had testified her fidelity to God and to her King by twenty years of combats, sufferings, and imprisonment." - Madame de la Rochejaquelein
"There were three or four other women who fought; one belonging to Bonchamps' army followed her father, and the story goes that seeing him fall in an engagement at the Ponts-de-Сё, she was roused to such a heat of vengeance that she slew nineteen men with her own hand. She was of average height and very plain. She was pointed out to me one day at Cholet: 'Look at that soldier with sleeves a different colour from his jacket; it is a girl who fights like a lion.' Her name was Renee Bordereau, known as the Angevin, and she served in the cavalry; she was renowned throughout the army for her extraordinary valour. She is still alive, having fought in all three wars with the most signal courage." - Marquise de la Rochejaquelein