ey are in all the places where
their virtue will be compromised if they have any. Th
e young men, the few
who remain in the town, fi nd so many opportunities in the women’s houses and are corrupted before they are grown up.9
He tells us that his ‘good friends the patriots’ had decided that they wanted to turn the building that used to be the chapel of the boys’ college in Saintes into a place for ‘the Club’ to hold its meetings. Th
ey had not found a hall
good enough anywhere else. Th
ey appointed an expert called Avé as chief
engineer, and asked him for an estimate. Th
is enterprise needed funds, so
the rich had to be soaked. ‘Nothing is so easy. Th
ey have proposed their
plan to Jacques Garnier, who is here for two or three days,10 and who has adopted it with the greatest pleasure.’
Garnier asked for and was given a list of the well-off , hoping that the names of aristocrats whom he hated would appear on it. Once he had the list, he raised a round total of 60,000 livres as an arbitrary tax ‘from those who annoyed him most’ in the town and the surrounding countryside.
Th
e department offi
cials shared the money among themselves, Marillet
says. Garnier had his own cut, and no new meeting room was provided.
Marillet says that Garnier’s arbitrary tax had the same outcome as the forced loan for the building of ‘the superb [artifi cial] Mountain’. Th e
suspects were taxed, and nothing was done, but the roll was drawn up and the money collected.11 Marillet was accusing the district offi cials of embez-zling under cover of the direction given by the National Convention, ‘their sole, arbitrary and vexatious authority’.12
When he comes to writing about the 1794 production of Th
e
Festival
of the Anniversary of the Taking of the Bastille in what had been the cathedral, Marillet is only a few syllables away from modern satire. We can understand the diff erence between English humour and French irony on the basis of this account.
Th
e festival was ‘very simple but pagan like the others’. It was announced the day before by cannon fi re and, on the day itself, drum-rolls called the citizens together to the command-posts of their respective National Guard
Th
e Terror in Saintes
63
captains. Marillet called this ‘a new kind of tyranny’. At four o’clock the companies were drawn up in the Square of the Federation, then marched to the Temple of the Supreme Being, ci-devant of Reason, where Citizens Héard, Gaudet, and Citoyenne Lacheurie, the wife of a priest called Forget, went up into the pulpit and sang the song Aux armes, citoyens (Th e
Marseillaise!), accompanied by the band on its platform, where there was a model of the Bastille and, all around the platform, the names of the departments. When the song had fi nished, Le Tour, a member of the departmental directory, took the singers’ place in the pulpit and made a speech, after which the same singers went up again and sang another patriotic song.
Most of the spectators, patriots and others, agreed that it was a real farce.
Th
e companies reassembled and the offi
cers went to their command posts
to hand out punishment to those who had not presented themselves in their companies in time, which was for us a great patriotic favour.
Th
en M. Morineau from Saujon, president of the district, made a speech in the Square. From there they went to the Mountain, where the maire made another one, and the battalion moved on to Fleurus Square, where Davaret, a member of the district, perched on the parapet of the staircase, made yet another one. All these speeches were a reworking of what Robespierre, Barère, Collot d’Herbois, and ‘other rabids and shedders of blood’ had said in the Convention and which had been repeated in the Jacobin Club: a great diatribe against kings, slaves, priests, and their supporters and great talk of liberty and equality on which they played continually. ‘After Davaret’s speech, the companies were at liberty to go and rest, of which the greater part of the men of my age [he was sixty] had a great need . . .’13
Acute wartime conditions had arrived now. Men from the municipality went round all the houses in the town looking for ‘all the iron that one might have: plaques, fi rebacks, fi redogs, iron pots, cast-iron stoves, and they took it all in requisition, only leaving one fi reback in each house’.
Th
ere was also talk of taking away all the balconies and bannisters as they had done in other towns. ‘I am not mistaken in saying that little by little they are taking everything. It is for the casting of cannon, they say, and for the other instruments of war.’14
When the Terror arose, Marillet saw himself twice on the point of being imprisoned. He was left at liberty but he does not explain why. He asked a friend to hide the fi rst volume of his history and he put it under a rock, where it remained exposed to damp until the fall of Robespierre, when he took it up again with his account of ‘the Death of Robespierre, Member of the
64 Th
e Unseen Terror
Convention’, as his marginal note heads it. He is almost cheerful at this point in contrast to the acute depression conveyed in what he had written before.
We learned . . . yesterday of the death of Robespierre who wanted to grab, it was said, sovereign authority. He was guillotined with Saint-Just, Le Bas, Couthon, and others, twenty-two in all. Th
ey had been arrested, judged,
condemned and executed in twenty-four hours. Robespierre had had Hébert, Danton and others who were at the head of a faction guillotined . . . and how many others are going to follow as their supporters? All the Municipality of Paris is under arrest: our Garnier could run risks. Th
is death of a man
dominant in France, who directed all the constituted authorities, even the Convention, has astonished everyone, and each time you meet anyone, you say to one another: Robespierre has been guillotined.
You do not know what to say any more; you do not know what opinion to hold. You have to be everything: for Marat a little while ago, then Hébertist, then Montagnard, then Robespierrist; the most prudent way has always been, and is still, never to have any opinion at all about these factions which form themselves and that we see destroy each other. Th e patriots are extremely astonished at this death and ask themselves to whom they should give their trust . . . Th
e Convention is going to blame Robespierre
for all the cruelties and the massacres which it has had committed, just as it blamed Hébert for all the odiousness of atheism in which they used to glory at the Convention. It seems that there is going to be a plan for justice and humanity to come next, and that the guillotine and the imprisonments will not be so à la mode.15
But now a personal matter: the Revolution has come home to the rue de la Commune.
My son Léon of the Compagnie Franche was forced from the town into the garrison at Saint-Jean-d’Angély more than a year ago where I asked my relation, M. de Normand,16 to keep an eye on him, and he has this morning left for Luçon, and from there into the Vendée . . . May God preserve and save him. He is in great danger of losing his life. He is wise, reasonable, and right thinking, but force constrains the law as daily experience proves.17
Writing his criticism of the town council seemed a good cure for depression.
Th
e Municipality gives an example that makes us shiver for the people. At the smallest movement of discontent they could come to pillage our houses without us being able to oppose them, since the municipality authorizes it for them in giving them such an example. Th
e motion [about this] had
Th
e Terror in Saintes
65
already been made at the Club several months ago. It is a very unhappy thing to be witn
esses to similar acts at the moment when the Convention shows itself humane and more moderate in letting go several detainees from diff erent prisons, although experience makes us fear that this measure will not last for very long.
Th
ere is a sad little entry which contains all his pent-up resentment at the humiliations imposed upon those who a few years before felt confi dent of their position in society. He says,
On 23rd, the Club ordered all citizens and citoyennes to go and cut nettles and other weeds to burn them and make them into ash for the gunpowder factory. Everyone has to bring in ten pounds [weight of ash] to the church of La Charité.18
It was announced in Saintes on 24 February 1795, on the basis of a letter from General Rubel in Nantes to the maire of La Rochelle, that peace had been made in the Vendée. Marillet’s reaction is to say that the peace perhaps is true, but it is found most impossible to believe that Charette [the present Vendéan leader] would have so quickly abandoned the aims for which he has fought for two years, namely the re-establishment of religion, of royalty, and the return of the emigrés with the restoration of their property . . . we will wait until Sunday for confi rmation of the news.
We have been deceived several times in the last year.
Marillet’s confusion is understandable: Charette had made a truce rather than peace at La Jaunaye. He and other Vendéan leaders had been led to such despair by the actions of the Republicans that they had negotiated, but they sent secret messages to London to say that they intended to carry on their struggle. Marillet had no way of knowing that.
Th
is cruel war has cost the lives of four hundred thousand Frenchmen.
And now, once more, we cannot believe in this peace which is against all reason, and about which several of the patriots themselves doubt whether it is a true or a political act, after the declarations and plans that the rebels have made with the powers of the coalition. Time will teach us all that.
Marillet reproduced in full Nicolas Stoffl
et’s19 reply about the truce, which
refers to the ‘the third year of Louis XVII’, and off ers continued defi ance to the Republicans: ‘We will stand up to your actions and your threats’.20 Marillet’s last comment is ‘Th
e Vendée is an impenetrable chaos’.21
66 Th
e Unseen Terror
6. Th
e Medieval Bridge, Hotel de Monconseil and Cathedral: Prints from 1791.
On 26 February there was sign of a possible return to pre-terror conditions with the suppression of the Committees of Surveillance by the decree of the National Convention on 20 February.
Th
is decree has dismayed the villains of whom our committee is made up, and who only exist by means of their foul conduct for which they sacrifi ce the sentiments of humanity and to maintain the nine livres a day which enriches them, one could better say gives them the means of satisfying their debauches and their libertinage.
He denounces all those whom he considers villains for having issued hundreds of arrest warrants. ‘Th
ey should be arrested themselves to expiate all
Th
e Terror in Saintes
67
their crimes. Th
eir committee papers will be put under seal and the false
arrests they made will soon be known.’22
Th
e post-Th
ermidorean reaction had a formidable task to be able to
bring some reassurance to François-Guillaume Marillet. He writes another of his ‘state of the nation’ entries on 31 March 1795 to say that France, at this moment, is in terrifying chaos. She is governed only by factions who aim to destroy each other and actually do so . . . we are reduced to one half pound of bread a day – something inconceivable – and provisions have not been suffi
cient even for this amount, so we have been obliged to
get by on rice and biscuit in the provinces.23
Th
e Club is governed by several Robespierrists . . . Th
e main leaders are
Lemercier and Vanderquand from the district, Gaudet, Brunet, Boquier and Hector Savarit from the department, and others. Th
ere are a great number of
rabids who are astonished by the new régime and who have the appearance of being moderates, given in the circumstances to hope that the Jacobin party, which appears to have been destroyed since the members of their society are now under arrest, will come back again. If they do return we shall see more villains than ever before. Nevertheless . . . people are talking about the general purge of all the administrative bodies and the destruction of the club.
We might soon enjoy peace, and even some of that liberty for which we have often repeated the word without having the thing itself, which could come only with a government that is solid and fi rm, with a king who is the unique remedy for the evils of all sorts which the revolution has made us suff er for three years. Everything suggests it is coming but we have not yet come to the end and, in order to get there, we have to wait for perhaps a general explosion in the kingdom.24
A rumour said that the King of Prussia was about to make peace with the Republic. Marillet did not believe it, but it was true. Frederick William II’s government signed the Treaty of Basle with France on 5 April 1795
to make a separate peace.25
Hopes began to rise when Charles-Auguste Blutel arrived. His powers were limited as the Convention’s representative on mission to the Navy at Rochefort as yet, but Marillet says they had been ‘waiting three months for him’ to preside over the dismantling of the Terror.
‘He announced a more gentle and humane régime on the part of the Convention; that the reign of terrorism was dead and that it would never appear again; that divisions and particular hatreds had to disappear to give place to a general reunion.’ He invited citizens to make denunciations of
68 Th
e Unseen Terror
méchants but, when they did, he soon realized that a great part of that was in order to settle personal scores.26
Marillet provides a list of ‘ méchants and of those who served as instruments in the hands of the leaders to bring evil about and work to their personal advantage. To fi nd the names more easily, I have put them in alphabetical order.’ Th
ere are 62 names of these local small-fry.
All these men are without good manners, without delicacy, without probity, without honour, without religion. Th
ey are drunkards, debauchees, and
gluttons. Th
ey swallow up national property; they are the ones who have stripped the churches bare and who have enriched themselves by robbing them. Th
eir houses and offi
ces are full of furniture, linen and silver which
belonged to the nobles, the exiled priests, and those who have been interned, and it would cost a lot in compensation if they were obliged to refund its value. Th
at is why they support the terrorists with all their power. It is the only way they can keep what they have taken. Th
ey are two-faced men.27,28
Marillet’s fi nal entry was made in July 1795:
Our patriots par excellence do not know what to say of all that has gone on.
Th
ey put their ears down and fi nd themselves in the same uncertainty as we
[all] are under these events. Th
ey want to be honest. It is true that they are
disapproved of to a great extent, in the same way as the married priests who are in such a degraded state.29
After he had stopped writing his journal, he stood for an offi cial position, and
was elected twentieth judge at the Civil Tribunal of the Charente-Inférieure by a hundred and seven votes on 11 October 1795. He was subsequently re-elected on 14 May 1797, then appointed director of the jury of the arrondissement of La Rochelle, and went to live there. Th is meant he had
to administer th
e new law whether he liked it or not. As we shall see, this offi
ce involved him in what must have been a very painful compromise. He died in offi
ce aged 68 on 5 March 1800.30
Marillet’s journal fi nished too soon to tell us whether his son came home safe and sound, or how the next new constitution – the Directory – was received in Saintes. What he has given us, however, is a much needed contemporary’s immediate reaction to what it was like during the Terror for those who had been solid citizens. His journal communicates his agony. It is painful to read, but it reminds us that there were people involved in all these developments, ordinary people who were close to having forgotten what it meant to say, as French people often do of good things, ‘ C’est normale’.
chapter 5
La Rochelle Becomes a
Frontier Town
Economic stability in La Rochelle, based on Atlantic trade and support of French colonies, had been eroded by 1789.1 France had lost Canada and the fur trade important to La Rochelle, and Spain had taken over Louisiana, though it was back in French hands in time for it to be bought by the United States from First Consul Bonaparte in 1802. Th e
triangular voyages of slavers were still profi table to individual ship owners like the Catholic Goguet and the Protestant Garesché families, and some of the captains they employed made substantial profi t for themselves out of the independent enterprises they were allowed.2 Yet, La Rochelle’s public buildings and infrastructure – despite the Corinthian splendours of the newly completed Palais de Justice – could no longer be maintained from municipal funds, and public cleansing had to be done by criminals serving hard-labour sentences in chain gangs.3
Th
e Revolution found natural support among Protestants4 like Pastor Bétrine and his congregation, whose predecessors had resisted royal absolutism since Cardinal Richelieu’s time.5 Freemasons were also in the forefront of the Revolution.6 Among their number were the lawyers, Charles Jean-Marie Alquier,7 and Pierre Morin, the printer Louis Chauvet and the publisher Vincent Cappon. It was well known that they had much in common with the ideals of progressive Jacobins.8 Th
ey founded the Society
The Unseen Terror Page 10