Machecoul

Machecoul lies in the country of Retz south of the Loire, where a castle guarded a town on the edge of the coastal marshes. It was a seat of the lords of Rais, among them Gilles de Rais, marshal of France and companion of Joan of Arc. Arrested at his castle in 1440, he was tried and executed at Nantes for crimes including the murder of children.

In March 1793 rural insurgents opposed to the Revolution entered Machecoul. Over the following weeks more than a hundred and fifty Republicans were killed in and around the town. The violence became one of the early massacres of the Vendée uprising, bringing civil war to a place whose castle had already been linked to a notorious chapter of Breton history.