e former governor’s palace was falling down, and the
convent in the fortress town was empty.
Internment in Brouage
119
Th
e fi rst transport arrived on 12 May 1793.6 Th
e intention was to take away
the detainees’ dignity. Th
ere was nothing ready in the way of accommodation.
Th
ey were put into the empty buildings and told to fend for themselves. Th ey
turned the rooms into dormitories and were forced to adopt a democratic lifestyle whether they liked it or not, with all classes and professions lumped together. Th
e groups that formed depended upon where they came from and the time they arrived. Th
e arrival time depended upon when the municipalities
that sent them found their own accommodation for them was full.
François-Guillaume Marillet says he went to watch the suspects from Saintes leaving for internment and wrote his reaction in his journal. Th ey
had been detained in the rooms at the Abbaye aux Dames for a month under the Law of Suspects, and now the decision had been made by the Department for the transfer of 46 of them to Brouage.
On 23rd July [1793] the ladies and gentlemen detained at the Sainte-Claires7
and at Notre Dame [the Abbaye aux Dames] in the number of forty odd, left to go under arrest to Brouage. Th
ey were taken by horse, by carriage, by
cart and by boat as far as Soubise, and from Soubise to Brouage by wagon.
Th
ey found there at least six hundred other people from other towns in the department and they breathed like them the bad air which reigns there in the months of August and September which caused a great number of them to perish according to the desire of those who had sent them there. What was the point of this departure? What did they want to do to them? What was in the mind of the Assembly? It is what the times have brought. Th e happiest thing
for them [the Assembly] will be the sale of their furniture, the sequestration of their lands and perhaps the sale of them: and certainly if they die, for this is the great talent of the men who govern us, to buy, to pillage, and not pay.8
Marillet gave the names of all those whom he and his friends knew in the party, sadly commenting that one couple had their two backward daughters with them. Th
e suspects included Vice-Admiral de Vaudreuil, who had been the commander-in-chief at Rochefort, and his family, a good few others whose names have the nobiliary particle before them, two spinster sisters, a canoness, and several family groups. ‘Th
e chambermaids followed in a party. Th
ere is
talk of transferring others who are found to be ill, and some nuns, to Brouage in a few days. Th
ere are more than two hundred from other towns and com-
munes already there.’ Also included was A.-G. Gaudrieau ( sic), the maire toppled by Bernard and Garnier in 1789. He would be joined at Brouage by Marillet’s friend, Baron Normand d’Authon, who had challenged the maire at Saint-Jean-d’Angély, and was suspect because his son was an emigré.9
120 Th
e Unseen Terror
Th
e suspects at Brouage were not a static population. Th
e total number
was never constant. Th
ere appears to have been no real list of detainees. Th
e
best indication of the numbers and types of suspects kept there exists in the form of list made by one of them, Mademoiselle de Conty,10 of the people who were there with her. Additions from other sources have been made by the historians and, although the list is tentative, it at least gives a sketch of who had to be there.
Mlle de Conty mentions 617 names, and her list of people divides up into 79 noblemen and 93 noble women, 18 Catholic priests, 145 monks and nuns, together with 162 men and 120 women from the third estate.
So the third estate provided the largest number, and there were more women than men. Th
e presence of a large number of nuns expelled from their
convents and the fact that so many noble husbands had left France to join the emigré armies in part explains this imbalance between the sexes. Most of the nobles interned at Brouage came from the Charente-Inférieure, and the rest came from the Vendée or Deux-Sèvres, part of the area in rebellion against the Republic. Many of them were obscure personalities, but some had been prominent among the former establishment of Saintes, like Brémond d’Ars, La Morinière, Martin de Bonsonge, d’Abzac, and Richier de la Rochelongchamp. Th
e last named had been a deputy in the Estates-General.
Marillet named, as we saw, Vice-Admiral Louis-Philippe Rigaud de Vaudreuil as one of the internees. His position was particularly poignant because he had a particular relationship with the late king. Louis XVI had accepted the proposed constitution which limited the monarchy on 14 September 1791 so, for a while, when it was thought this constitution would be acted upon and there was no embargo on crossing and re-crossing the frontiers of France, it was also thought that nobles who had already emigrated would return home. Th
e king himself hoped this would
happen, and a recent historian of Rochefort, M. Dominique Droin, has reproduced the letter which the king wrote to de Vaudreuil at Rochefort on 13 October 1791, consisting of a ‘pathetic appeal’ to him not to leave his post, but to stay and co-operate loyally ‘to assure the carrying out of the laws which the nation thinks ought to bring it happiness . . . It is your king who requires you to stay inviolably attached to the duties which you have always fulfi lled so well. You would see it as a crime to disobey his orders.
You will not refuse his entreaties.’
Th
e king concluded by ordering de Vaudreuil to send copies of his letter to all the naval offi
cers under his command, and particularly those who had
Internment in Brouage
121
taken leave. In other words, de Vaudreuil was called upon to help staunch the blood loss of experienced offi
cers who were taking the option of emi-
grating, and was ordered himself not to leave.11
Six months afterwards, however, we fi nd de Vaudreuil trying very hard to resign. Because of the changes among his superiors at the navy ministry, his letters of 3 March, 21 April, and 12 May remained unanswered, so he wrote to the king in person with his resignation, ‘sparing the sensibilities of the best of kings from the details of all that he had suff ered for three years from this reign of anarchy’.12 Th
e king accepted his resignation, but
a replacement was hard to fi nd. Two offi
cers refused the post. Finally, the
king accepted the word of the most recently appointed navy minister, Jean de Lacoste, who recommended Le Dall-Tromelin to succeed de Vaudreuil, who had to stay in offi
ce until he had trained his successor in his duties.
Th
is meant his resignation was not eff ective until 18 July, and on 25 he made his way to his house at Saintes.
As minister for the navy, Lacoste seems to have acquiesced in de Vaudreuil’s retirement. Th
e next minister, du Bouchage, was in offi
ce only
for three weeks, and he was followed by Gaspard Monge, the mathemati-cian turned politician13 who, after the overthrow of the monarchy on 10
August 1792 and in the new intensity of the Republican government, did not intend to leave de Vaudreuil, or people like him, in peace.
Th
e Convention established that taking the Oath to the Constitution was to be the only acceptable proof of loyalty to the nation. Th ose who had
not taken it were to be regarded as suspect of secretly maintaining their loyalty to the tyranny that had been overthrown. Monge asked for a list of all those who had taken the oath in Rochefort. On 26 October, he asked for proof of loyalty from de Vaudreuil.
Th
e new military commander, Le Dall-Tromelin, wrote to his predecessor in Saintes to ask him to give it, but de Vaudreuil did not reply because he was on the point of emigrating. Monge intensifi ed his pressure on 10
November, and once more demanded a certifi cate to say that de Vaudreuil had taken the oath, and decided that his silence was now to be taken as proof that he had renounced his employment and had lost his considerable pension rights as a vice-admiral. Arrest and imprisonment in the Abbaye aux Dames rapidly followed, and, in July 1793, he was on his way to Brouage.14
Along with him was his very successor in his former post, Le Dall-Tromelin, who had been dismissed in turn by Monge’s successor as navy minister,
122 Th
e Unseen Terror
Dalbarade, on 1 April 1793, charged with not having signed his certifi cate of civism and with having a son who was an emigré. In fact, he and his wife were released from Brouage a month after their arrival there because a letter to them from their son had been found in which he said they begged him to return to his former loyalty to the nation. Tromelin was reinstated, but his post at Rochefort had been given to Vice-Admiral de Rosilly-Mestros.15 He had to wait until November 1796 before he was re-appointed, but he had to give way to the rapidly promoted Pierre Martin in the following month.16
Most of the nobles were accompanied by their wives or by their daughters. Ladies – like Mme de Vaudreuil, Mme Le Dall-Tromelin, and Mme Aubert de Petit-Th
ouars – were interned there, some of them with their
maids. One who had asked for her maid to be allowed to come with her because of her husband’s bad health was given unexpected authorization from the District of Saintes, ‘considering that that the law punishes but does not avenge, and that it is humane to look after enemies’.17
Th
e 18 priests had either taken the oath or had not gone into voluntary exile in time. Th
e constitutional curés who at the beginning of the
Revolution had been accepted and even given salaries were suddenly found to be suspect as well as the refractory ones as soon as the process of de-Christianization began. Two of these priests had bought national property, as confi scated church and emigré land was called, two were freemasons, and three had given up their letters of ordination. Th ey had done
all that the new administrators had required of them, but none of it stopped them from being interned.
Th
e nuns represented all the orders whose convents had been closed down or hospitals taken over in La Rochelle, the île de Ré, or Rochefort.
Nearly all their mother superiors were with them. Some came from other areas like Brittany, the Languedoc, and even from other countries like Saint-Domingue and Canada. One who stands out is Sister Françoise Percheron, who actually came from Brouage in the fi rst place and was brought home under these bizarre conditions.
Th
e third estate suspects were of all types: doctors, lawyers, skilled workers, merchants, farmers, soldiers, domestic servants, and even artists. Th ey were
mostly local people from Marennes, Oléron, La Tremblade, Rochefort, and La Rochelle. Some were from neighbouring departments, and some from much further away: Paris, Dijon, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Marseille, Corsica, and there was even one from America. He was called Noblet, and we can speculate that his name was the only grounds for his arrest. Th
ere was even an Irishman and
Internment in Brouage
123
an Englishman, with the obviously misheard names of Scecq and Stak. Th e
third estate women were usually wives or daughters who accompanied their husbands or their fathers. Th
ere were even entire families: the Guitots, and
the de Luçons, who include the mother and six daughters. Some have what old registers used to call a quality, ‘as merchant, servant, underwear-maker, or working woman . . . there were even two black domestic servants from Guadeloupe.’18 How did they get to be suspects?
Brouage was not a prison in the strictest terms. Th
e suspects could walk
about the town, but they were not allowed up on the ramparts which surrounded it. Th
eir main problems were fi nding enough to eat and somewhere more or less comfortable to sleep at night. Th
ey were allowed to bring furni-
ture from their homes if they lived near enough. Because they were suspects, the property they left behind had been confi scated and then sold, so those who did not move quickly enough could not take advantage of this permission. Th
ey spent a lot of time remembering what their property had been, making lists of it, and hoping to be compensated for its loss one day. When their money ran out, they were allowed 40 sous a day in food and clothing allowance. Yet a lot of them were shut up in Brouage because it was their wealth that made them suspects, and they were able to muddle through.
Th
e living quarters were basic. Because they were all crowded close together in dormitories, privacy was hard to fi nd, since the only curtains available took the form of mosquito nets – useful for their proper purpose so close to the marsh, but not thick enough to give the women shelter from bored and lascivious eyes.
Th
ey had to fend for themselves for food, and what there was in Brouage soon ran out. Th
ere was nothing much to buy even if there was money to
buy it. Th
e current scarcity was acute enough for the naval administration in Rochefort to have pity and open its stores for the suspects for a while.
Day-to-day life was probably very depressing and the deprivations hard to bear. But at least one of the detainees was making the best of it in an account he gave, which the Brouage historians reproduce.
Th
ere was a garrison of infantrymen set to guard the detainees, for the most part soldiers near retirement age, and offi
cer’s epaulettes had fallen
on the shoulders of one of them ‘when they were thrown out of the window above him’, as was remarked. Th
is man was known to be fond of the
bottle. So one of the lady’s maids among the detainees, whose name was Gabrielle, started up a little canteen where off -duty offi cers and men could
buy cognac and eau-de-vie. Gabrielle spent her time with her ears open for indiscreet remarks from her customers, and she gathered news from outside
124 Th
e Unseen Terror
the fortress – no newspapers were allowed. One of the genteel offi cers took
a liking to Gabrielle. She was not pretty, says this informant, but she was no fool, and took advantage of the attention that was being paid to her.
Each tenth-day holiday, she went for a walk outside the walls with another offi
cer’s wife with whom she made friends, followed by her admirer, and the family she worked for went too. Th
at could not have happened unless they
were under this offi
cer’s eye.
Relations with the residents of Brouage were cordial. One particular woman who lived there risked being prosecuted and possibly guillotined by bringing food to detainees and giving them news from outside. After the Terror was over, she, aged 38, married one of them, a retired captain from the Queen’s Regiment, M. de Montsabre, who was 61. Th
e suspects
gave each other mutual support, and those who were well-off lent money to those who were not. Th
ere were also rats among the detainees. Two priests,
Madé of Saint-Martin-de-Ré and Messin, former vicaire of Chaniers, tried to obtain their own freedom by denouncing other prisoners and causing trouble. It was noticed that agents provocateurs were introduced who shared the life of the suspects, and reported their conversations to the governor, which caused more aggravation for them. One of these was a shoemaker from La Rochelle called Quintard.19
Th
e detainees’
self-imposed main task was to keep clean and tidy and provide food for themselves but, after that, keeping the boredom at bay.
Th
ey walked out beneath the trees at the bottom of the ramparts and in the garden of the former convent, where they were allowed to grow vegetables. Th
ey ignored the rules about the ten-day festivals and discreetly kept Sundays as special days each week, with the women keeping some better piece of clothing to wear to mark the day. Th
ere was an auction sale of the
property of an offi
cer condemned to death by the revolutionary tribunal at
Rochefort on 24 February 1794. It was observed that the detainees bought as much as the residents did.20
Th
ere was a signifi cant group of nuns who had refused the oath among the suspects at Brouage, brought there by order of the District Directory of La Rochelle, signed by André Chrétien, a fervently anti-religious timber merchant in the rue des Carmes there.21 Th
e Chronicles of the Congregation
of the Daughters of Wisdom gives a detailed account of how the 42 sisters were treated during their detention.22 Th
eir order was well known in La
Rochelle for having provided the nursing staff for the military hospital.
Th
ey arrived in a shaken condition after a sea-crossing which had taken three days and they were lodged in the storage hall where there were a
Internment in Brouage
125
number of other nuns already. Th
e sisters were shown the area of the prem-
ises which they had to occupy. Th
ey were provided with straw to sleep on
and only bread to eat. Th
e ‘citizenesses’ were free to worship ( pratiquer leur
culte) in the building. Like the other detainees, they could go for walks round the interior of the ramparts.
Th
ey were not supplied with any clothes other than the ones they arrived in, which had to be constantly washed and mended. Besides these almost normal tasks, forced labour ( corvée) was imposed upon them. Th ey were
ordered to weed the town streets and stop the wild grass growing between the paving stones. No tools were given out for this and they had to do it with their fi nger nails. It was winter and the cold froze even the handker-chiefs in their pockets. Th
The Unseen Terror Page 18
