At the time of the Revolution, counter-revolutionary bastions established themselves within France, the most famous and powerful of which was "Les Chouans" in the Vendée region of western France. Les Chouans rejected conscription into the national army and, alarmed by the radical anti-clerical direction of the Revolution, raised their own troops to oppose it. More largely, the term "Chouans" came to be associated with rural, anti-revolutionary, pro-royalist sentiment.*
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* They also came to be associated with the sound of sneezing. You could never be sure whether someone was discussing the "Chouans" or just had a heavy cold.
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