29
Ibid., p. 278.
30 André
Zweyaker,
Mémoire pour le diplome d’études superieures d’histoire présenté à la faculté des Lettres de l’université de Poitiers, 1958, unpublished MS, Médiathèque municipale François-Mitterand de Saintes, Fonds Ancien et Regional, preface.
Chapter 5 La Rochelle Becomes a Frontier Town
1 Paul Langford, Modern British Foreign Policy: Th
e Eighteenth Century, 1688–1815
(London, 1976), pp. 69 & 147–150.
2 Jean-Pierre Queguiner, ‘Jean Amable Lessene, capitaine de navire négrier’, Écrits d’ouest, No 12 (2004), pp. 107–127.
3
Arch. Dep. Chte. Mtme., L395, Brumaire An. 2.
4
Francine Ducluzeau (ed.), Histoire des protestants charentais (Aunis, Saintonge, Angoumois) (Paris, 2001); Didier Poton, Un protestantisme reconnue 1787– 1799, pp. 215–34.
5 François Masgnaud, Franc-Maçonnerie et Franc-Maçons en Aunis et Saintonge sous l’Ancien Régime et La Révolution (La Rochelle, 1989), pp. 229ff .
6 Claudy Valin, La Rochelle – La Vendée 1 793 (Paris, 1977), pp. 100–06.
7
In 1787, he had denounced Bishop Crussol d’Uzès in 1789 for his opposition to Louis XVI’s Edict of Toleration for Protestants on a national scale and was elected maire soon after.
8
Ibid., p. 42.
9
Ibid., pp. 112–30.
10
Ibid., p. 148.
11
In 1776 de Coucy had been made a royal chaplain at the age of 30, and was a canon of Reims in October 1789, when he was nominated by Louis XVI to the bishopric of La Rochelle after the reactionary Crussol d’Uzès had died. He obtained a passport to enable him to go to the spa at Barèges in the foothills of the Pyrenees from where he crossed the Spanish border to Pamplona in July 1791 (C. Valin, Dictionnaire Biographique des Charentais, p. 356).
12
Ibid., p. 63.
13
Ibid., pp. 189–94.
14
Ibid., p. 181.
15
Ibid., p. 184.
16 Ann
Bernet,
Charette (Paris, 2005), pp. 61ff .
17 Reynald
Secher,
A French Genocide: Th
e Vendée (ET George Holoch, Notre Dame,
Indiana, 2003), fi rst published in French in 1986 with the title Le Génocide franco-français.
18
Review of Reynald Secher by Peter McPhee, University of Melbourne, H-France Review 4/26 (March 2004), to be found at www.h-france.net/ vol4reviews/mcphee3.html
Notes
237
19 Mark
Levene,
Th
e Rise of the West and the Coming of Genocide, Volume II: Genocide in the Age of the Nation State (London and New York, 2005), pp. 157–61.
20
Bernard had had to relinquish the post of colonel upon his election as one of the Charente-Inférieure deputies in the National Convention.
21
Joseph Niou had been maire of Rochefort, instrumental in expelling Lazarist priests from the church there.
22 Valin:
La Rochelle, pp. 192f.
23
Ibid., n. 112.
24
Arch. Dep. Chte. Mtme., L388, pp. 66ff .
25 Valin:
La Rochelle, p. 202, quoting the Municipal Archives of La Rochelle, li3/1, notes du 20 mars.
26 Th
is narrative depends upon Arch. Dep. Chte. Mtme., L1085/7, the records of the trial and subsequent judgements, used by P. Lemmonier, ‘Les Journées de 21 et 22 mars 1793 à La Rochelle’, RSA XXXII (1912), pp. 201–11, and Valin: La Rochelle, pp. 201ff , and Autopsie d’un Massacre (Saint-Jean-d’Angély, 1992).
27
Crassous was not a rough-cut fi gure like Marat, Hébert, or, even, Danton in Paris.
He began as an academic lawyer trained at the University of Paris, and was subsequently an advocate in the Paris parlement. He fi rst appeared at La Rochelle in 1779
as a deputy procurator in the fi nance offi
ce. After fi ve years, he went to practise law in
Martinique, and then came back in 1791 to stand for election to the District Directory of La Rochelle, by then in his early fi fties (C. Valin, Dictionnaire Biographique des Charentais, p. 371).
28 Valin:
La Rochelle, p. 197.
29 ‘Dead priests, victims of popular emotion’. Th
e similarity between ‘emotion’ and
‘ émeute’, which means ‘riot’, is striking.
30
I found the writing in this small and fl imsy document hard to read, especially after it has been repeatedly handled over more than 200 years, and I asked the archivist on duty whether there were a specialist in orthography in the room. Th ere was: a dignifi ed elderly lady who was willing to be distracted from columns of accounts. She read it to me, and made the comment, Vos études ne sont pas gaies, monsieur! (‘Your studies are hardly cheerful . . .’)
31
See Chapters 12 and 13.
32
Arch. Dep. Chte. Mtme., L1085, the last document in the dossier.
33 Valin:
La Rochelle, p. 215.
34
Ibid., pp. 217f.
35
Ibid., p. 215.
36
Ibid., p. 217.
37
Ibid., pp. 231f.
38 Th
is was the organization of which Citizen Bouquet was forming a contingent in the village of Rioux at the same time as this (Chapter 1).
39
Ibid., p. 239.
40
Ibid., pp. 240f.
41
Ibid., p. 242.
42
Ibid., pp. 243f.
43
Ibid., p. 244.
238 Th
e Unseen Terror
Chapter 6 La Rochelle in Wartime
1
See p. xvii.
2 Ann Bernet, Charette (Paris, 2005), p. 197.
3 Th
e Oxford dictionary of Quotations, ad.loc.
4
Robert and Isabelle Tombs, Th
at Sweet Enemy, the French and the British from the Sun King to the Present (London, 2006), p. 121.
5
La Sentinelle, 9 April 1796, quoted in Émile Gabory, L’Angleterre et La Vendée d’après des documents inédits, Granville, Quiberon, l’île de Yeu (Paris, 1930), pp. 7–13.
6
As we shall see, most of the refractory clergy from the Charente-Inférieure went to Spain.
7 Gabory: L’Angleterre, Tome I, pp. 46–69.
8
Ibid., pp. 70–93.
9
Henri du Vergier, comte de Larochejacquelein, now aged 21, had been an offi cer in
Louis XVI’s Constitutional Guard in 1791, but he escaped from Paris after the overthrow of the monarchy to lead the Vendéans from late 1793.
10 John
Ehrman,
Th
e Younger Pitt: Th
e Reluctant Transitio n, Volume 2 (London, 1983),
pp. 322–5.
11 Claudy
Valin,
La Rochelle – La Vendée 1 793 (Paris, 1977), p. 343.
12 Gabory:
L’Angleterre, pp. 94–112.
13
Land with sunken lanes and hedgerows, well known to those who lived there, but full of traps for newcomers.
14 Claudy Valin supplies maps showing that the battalions were raised in places as distant as Brest, Lille, Strasbourg, Marseille, and Toulouse, pp. 356f.
15 Valin:
La Rochelle, p. 367.
16
Ibid., p. 359. Th
is account of Turreau’s columns depends upon Valin: La Rochelle, pp. 353–64.
; 17 Th
ere is more to that last word than ‘thief ’.
18
Ibid., pp. 279–83.
19 William
Doyle,
Th
e Oxford History of the French Revolution (Oxford, 1989), p. 258.
20 Valin:
La Rochelle, p. 279.
21
Ibid., p. 280.
22
Ibid., p. 283.
23 Susbielle provided the minute book for the district’s meetings and his bookplate is stuck inside the cover of the volume that contains the minutes of meetings held between 1 brumaire year II and 16 brumaire year IV. Th
e bookplate is a pre-war relic,
advertising paper from Holland, sealing wax from Spain, pencils from England and Germany. Arch. Dep. Chte. Mtme., L389.
24
Ibid., p. 284.
25
Ibid., p. 289.
26
See Chapter 8.
27
Ibid., p. 292.
28 Doyle:
Oxford History, p. 229.
29
Arch. Dep. Chte. Mtme., L395 2 3 frimaire an 2.
30 Valin:
La Rochelle, pp. 310f.
31
Arch. Dep. Chte. Mtme., L395 21 frimaire an 2.
32 Valin:
La Rochelle, pp. 368f.
33
Ibid., pp. 313f.
Notes
239
34
Ibid., p. 314.
35 Ibid.
36
Ibid., p. 317.
37
By this time the ‘decade’ had replaced the seven-day week as the timescale for all activity, public and private alike.
38 Ibid.
39
Ibid., p. 318.
40
Arch. Dep. Chte. Mtme., L395, 10 brumaire an 2.
41 Valin:
La Rochelle, p. 321.
42
Mirabeau was a profl igate nobleman elected to the Estates-General for the third estate, who sold his services to the king and queen as an adviser on constitutional monarchy as the papers found in the king’s secret strongbox made clear when they were discovered.
43
Ibid., p. 324.
44 Th
e Th
ird Republic reinforced this by commissioning a huge canvas of Bara’s death for the salon of 1883 from J.C.Weerts, in which the boy in his uniform is about to be bayoneted among the blown horses of the cavalry charge.
45
Ibid., p. 325. Th
ere is a reproduction of this on the cover of Robert Gildea, Th e Past in
French History (New Haven and London, 1994). Bara was a hero on a national scale.
46
Ibid., pp. 325f.
47
Ibid., p. 328.
48 Ibid.
49
Ibid., p. 372.
50
Arch. Dep. Chte. Mtme., L395, brumaire an 2.
51 Valin:
La Rochelle, pp. 375f.
52
Ibid., pp. 416–26.
53
Ibid., p. 433.
54
Ibid., pp. 436–8.
55
Ibid., p. 440.
56
Arch. Dep. Chte. Mtme., L388.
57
It is said that Napoleon I was persuaded to give the status of chef-lieu of the department to La Rochelle after Comtesse Laure de Regnaud de Saint-Jean-d’Angély had been cold-shouldered, as it were, by the buttoned-up, respectable bourgeois matrons of Saintes for wearing the décolleté Paris fashion of the day at the reception held for her and her infl uential husband, the Emperor’s confi dant (E.-J. Guérin, ‘La Prefec-ture de Saintes 1790–1810’, RSA XXXIII (1913), pp. 57–71, and Jean Th aumiaux,
Les deux Regnault . . . , Sud-Ouest, 23 March 1962).
58 Valin:
La Rochelle, pp. 445–7.
Chapter 7 Lequinio’s Rochefort
1 Dominique Droin, L’histoire de Rochefort, Tome 2 (Saint-Laurent-de-Prée, 2002), pp. 7–29.
2
Ibid., pp. 216–22.
3
Ibid., pp. 239–42.
4 P. Lemonnier, La Déportation Écclésiastique à Rochefort 1794–1795 d’Apres les documents offi
ciels. Publication de la société des archives historiques de la Saintonge et de l’Aunis (La Rochelle, 1916), p. 29.
240 Th
e Unseen Terror
5 Droin: L’histoire de Rochefort, p. 250.
6
Ibid., p. 287.
7
Ibid., p. 284.
8 François Masgnaud, Franc-Maçonnerie et Franc-Maçons en Aunis et Saintonge sous l’Ancien Régime et La Révolution (La Rochelle, 1989), pp. 229ff .
9 Tout va marcher içi rudement.
10 Lemonnier:
La Déportation, p. 34.
11 Droin:
L’histoire de Rochefort, pp. 290ff .
12 D.M.G.
Sutherland,
France, 1789–1815, Revolution and Counterrevolution (London, 1985), p. 189.
13 Droin:
L’histoire de Rochefort, p. 286.
14
Ibid., p. 287.
15 O.
Troude,
Batailles Navales de la France, Tome 2 (Paris, 1867), pp. 296ff .
16 John
Ehrman,
Th
e Younger Pitt: Th
e Reluctant Transitio n, Volume 2 (London, 1983),
pp. 303–21.
17 Lemonnier:
La Déportation, p. 32, quoting Arch. Nat., C.277.
18
According to the Abbé Lemonnier, who found it in the National Archives for his 1916 book.
19 Masgnaud:
Franc-Maçonnerie, pp. 235ff .
20
Born in La Rochelle in 1741, a sailor at 14, a freemason in his mid-twenties, captain of a slave ship, winning sea-fi ghts with English privateers and Barbary pirates, he had suff ered several shipwrecks which ruined him fi nancially and took away his independence. After falling out with at least one shipowner who employed him, he joined the navy as a marine offi
cer, though with a reputation as a royalist sympathizer.
21
Moniteur Universel, No 77, 7 December 1793, quoted in Masgnaud: Franc-Maçonnerie, p. 239.
22 Claudy
Valin,
La Rochelle – La Vendée 1 793 (Paris, 1977), p. 229.
23 Masgnaud:
Franc-Maçonnerie, p. 241.
24
Claudy Valin in F. Julien-Labruyère (ed.), Dictionnaire Biographique des Charentais (Paris, 2005), p. 398.
25 Eugène
Reveillaud,
Histoire politique et parlementaire de La Charente et de La Charente-Inférieure de 1789 à 1830 (Saint-Jean-d’Angély, 1906) (reprinted Paris, 1987),, pp. 362–70.
26 Lemonnier:
La Déportation, p. 31.
27
Ibid., p. 32.
28
Ibid., pp. 42f.
29
Quæorens, ‘La Municipalité de Saint-Saturnin de Séchaud’, RSA XXVIII (1908), pp. 31–43.
30 J.-T. Viaud et E.-J. Fleury, Histoire de la Ville et du Port de Rochefort, Tome II (Rochefort, 1845) (Lafi tte Reprints, Marseille, 1977), pp. 380–95.
31
Mme Lequinio was even related to the de Grailly family at Panloy in the Charente-Inférieure, whose reaction to the Revolution will appear in Chapter 14.
32
Marquis de Grailly Henri, Histoire de Famille, completed by Jean de Grailly, 1986, privately printed. Original edition, No 7, pp. 193–5, generously lent to me by the present marquis.
33
Arch. Dep. Chte. Mtme., L920.
Notes
241
34
S.H. Dpt ‘Marine’, Rochefort, 1 L3/1.
35
Les paymens (sic) seront f
aits moitié comptant en numéraire eff ectif, & l’autre moitié dans le delai d’un mois à compter du jour de l’adjudication, aussi en numéraire eff ectif; il ne sera point question de lettres de change.
36 Droin:
L’histoire de Rochefort, pp. 415f.
37
S.H. Dpt ‘Marine’, Rochefort, 1 L3/1.
38
S.H. Dpt ‘Marine’, Rochefort, 3 O 53.
39
S.H. Dpt ‘Marine’, Rochefort, 3 O 54.
40
See Chapter 12.
41
Villeneau says she achieved nine knots as she tried to get away from Naiad.
42 Droin:
L’histoire de Rochefort, pp. 402–12.
43
Which schoolboys of my generation were taught to call Th
e Battle of the Nile.
44
Ibid., pp. 299–304.
45
Always called ‘English’ by French writers (and the people who work in the naval archives at Rochefort), perhaps out of subconscious awareness of their auld alliance with Scotland.
46
Ibid., p. 374
47 William
James,
Th
e Naval History of Great Britain from the Declaration of War by France in 1793 to the Accession of George IV (London, 1837), pp. 269–70.
Chapter 8 Internment in Brouage
1
See Chapter 9.
2 Th
e donjon at Pons was another.
3 Elaine and Jimmy Vigé, Brouage, Ville d’histoire et Place fort (Saint-Jean-d’Angély, 1989), pp. 170f.
4
As they remained until they were replaced by oyster-beds in the next century.
5 Vigé: Brouage, p. 170.
6
Ibid., p. 179.
7
Now the actual prison in Saintes, between the avenue Gambetta and the Abbaye aux Dames.
8 Marillet, Histoire Secrete, Volume 4, pp. 71f.
9 T. Debussy and P. Versat, ‘Claude-Alexandre Normande d’Authon, un maire méconnu de Saint-Jean-d’Angély’, RSA XIV (1988), pp. 63–71.
10 Vigé:
Brouage, pp. 180f.
11 Dominique
Droin,
L’histoire de Rochefort, Tome 2 (Saint-Laurent-de-Prée, 2002), pp.
244f.
12 Droin:
L’histoire de Rochefort, pp. 261f.
13
Ibid., p. 264.
14
Ibid., pp. 269f.
15
Ibid., p. 277.
16
Ibid., pp. 362ff .
17 Vigé:
Brouage, p. 180.
18
Ibid., pp. 180f.
19
Ibid., p. 182.
20
Ibid., p. 183.
21
Claudy Valin, ‘Un document Jacobin rochelais de première importance’, RSA XXVI (2000), p. 141, n. 17.
242 Th
e Unseen Terror
22 Vigé:
Brouage, pp. 183f.
23
Ibid., p. 181.
The Unseen Terror Page 34
