About the same time began the first formidable uprising against the Revolution, the War of La Vendee, the region lying to the south of the lower Loire and facing the Atlantic. Its inhabitants differed in many ways from the mass of the nation. Living far from large towns and busy routes of commerce, they remained primitive in all their thoughts and ways. The peasants had always been on friendly terms with the gentry, and the agrarian changes made by the Revolution had not been appreciated so highly as elsewhere. The people were ardent Catholics, who venerated the nonjuring clergy and resented the measures taken against them. But they remained passive until the enforcement of the decree for the levy of 300,000 men. Caring little for the Convention and knowing nothing of events on the northern or eastern frontier, the peasants were determined not to serve and preferred to fight the Republic at home. When once they had taken up arms they found gentlemen to lead and priests to exhort, and their rebellion became Royalist and Catholic. The chiefs were drawn from widely different classes. If Bonchamps and La Roche-jacquelin were nobles, Stofflet was a gamekeeper and Cathelineau a mason. As the country was favourable to guerilla warfare, and the government could not spare regular troops from the frontiers, the rebels were usually successful, and by the end of May had almost expelled the Republicans from La Vendee. The Committee of Public Safety. Danger without and within prompted the Convention to strengthen the executive authority. That the executive and legislative powers ought to be absolutely separate had been an axiom throughout the Revolution. Ministers had always been excluded from a seat in the legislature. But the Assemblies were suspicious of the executive and bent on absorbing the government. They had nominated committees of their own members to control every branch of public affairs. These committees, while reducing the ministers to impotence, were themselves clumsy and ineffectual. It may be said that since the first meeting of the states-general the executive authority had been paralysed in France. The Convention in theory maintained the separation of powers. Even Danton had been forced to resign office when he was elected a member. But unity of government was restored by the formation of a central committee. In January the first Committee of General Defence was formed of members of the committees for the several departments of state. Too large and too much divided for strenuous labour, it was reduced in April to nine members and re-named the Committee of Public Safety. It deliberated in secret and had authority over the ministers; it was entrusted with the whole of the national defence and empowered to use all the resources of the state, and it quickly became the supreme power in the republic. Under it the ministers were no more than head clerks. About the same time were