Religion und Gewalt in den Revolutions-und Napoleonischen Kriegen: Zwischen Tradition und Moderne

During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, popular resistance to the French occupation and annexation of European territories was often driven by a rejection of the secularising principles of the Revolution, engendering what can be described as a form of religious-centred violence – i.e. violence motivated by religious faith. Not all violent resistance to the French was religiously motivated, though, just as not all counter-revolutionaries were devout believers. Yet, religion played a larger role, both as a direct cause for revolt and in inspiring opposition, than many historians of the period have admitted. Focusing on a number of key Catholic regions across Europe where the Revolutionary and Napoleonic armies clashed with local populations, this chapter contends that violent resistance to the French was often driven by and placed within a Catholic worldview; opposition would be framed as a pious as well as devotional activity and defended as a spiritual necessity. Although such religiously motivated violence was very much a product of its time, it also helped to shape a distinctive nineteenth-century Catholicism.