The Unseen Terror

by Richard Ballard

  Siege-mentality and totalitarianism went together.

  chapter 6

  La Rochelle in Wartime

  The need for a concerted, national response to the brigandage in the Vendée, as the Republicans called it, led to the National Convention setting up the Committee of Public Safety in early April 1793. Once they were rid of Girondin opposition in early June,1 the Jacobins maintained an uncompromising position towards the rebels. Republican military defeat at Saumur in early June was followed by successful defence of Nantes. Angers was threatened in July, but the government removed troops from Mainz on the Rhine and sent them against the Vendée, where they were victorious at Luçon. All British subjects found in France were arrested to prevent them dispensing fi nancial help to the rebels. All departmental, district and municipal authorities were purged to replace suspect offi

  cials with known patriots.

  François-Athanase Charette had emerged as the principal Vendéan leader after the charismatic carter, Jacques Cathelineau, died at Nantes.

  Th

  e Republicans defeated Charette at Montaigu, but he beat General Kléber at Tougoin. D’Elbée’s force lost the important battle of Cholet to the Republicans on 17–18 October.2

  French emigrés and British supplies were being gathered on the island of Jersey to raise the Vendéans’ hopes. Th

  e Marquis de Ximénèz3 revived

  the phrase ‘perfi dious Albion’4 in October 1793, which became a slogan for revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries alike. Th

  e British government

  had harboured emigré nobles and priests, and considered plans for invasion of France, but eventually did nothing more beyond landing an ineff ective émigré force on the Quiberon peninsula in June 1795, after which Charette was reported to have said, as he was taken to his execution, ‘Look where these damned English ( gueux Anglais) have brought me!’5

  Nevertheless, the Republican government had remained convinced that the British were involved in the Vendée rebellion and would give it maritime support. Th

  ere were good enough grounds for this, because

  French nobles from the fi rst emigration in 1789–90, and from the second in 1791, followed by many refractory priests, had gone to England.6 Th e

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  La Rochelle in Wartime

  85

  clergy had been made particularly welcome there, with subscriptions raised for their support and a royal palace at Winchester made available to them by George III himself. After a while, the nobles’ welcome wore thin since they were reluctant to enlist in a regiment to fi ght republicans in France, as their counterparts in the Army of the Princes at Coblenz intended.

  Louis XVI’s two brothers, Provence and Artois, realized that British foreign policy was still antagonistic towards them after they had actively supported the Americans in their War of Independence. Artois, the younger brother, having wasted millions given to him to raise an army by Catherine II of Russia, would have liked British support. Provence, claiming to be regent for Louis XVII, preferred Spanish assistance, and set up his secret agency in Paris, ostensibly in opposition to Artois’ plans. William Pitt, the British Prime minister, was all for avoiding the cost of a new war, having organized fi nancial recovery from the last one. He did not favour the Prussian suggestion that Britain should seize the French colonies. Th e declaration

  of Pillnitz issued on 27 August 1791 by Leopold II of Austria and Frederick William II of Prussia raised the hopes of the emigrés in Britain, but when Talleyrand came to London as foreign minister for the constitutional monarchy in January 1792, Pitt gave a verbal promise of what amounted to neutrality. When the French were victorious against Prussia and Austria at Valmy on 20 September, Pitt saw it as regaining lost territory and therefore a defensive action. Th

  ings changed after another French victory at

  Jemappes in Belgium on 6 November 1792 and the execution of Louis XVI on 21 January 1793. Th

  e French Ambassador, the Marquis de Chauvelin,

  was sent home, and an outraged Republic declared war on Great Britain and Holland on 1 February 1793. Only then did Pitt use hostile language towards revolutionary France. When the Vendée erupted in recognizable rebellion a month later, newspapers in London took up the issue and spies were sent to the Vendée to fi nd out what support might be needed.7

  Th

  e British Cabinet took too long to make up its collective mind about supporting the Vendéans, having to balance what they were asking for against all the other demands of a maritime world war. By October 1793, when the Vendéans had suff ered their serious setback at Cholet, it was too late for intervention to be useful.8

  Nevertheless, that was when things started to move. A spy was sent to off er British help to the Vendéan commanders who agreed to make a move to Brittany since Saint-Malo was discussed as a port where support could be landed. Th

  ey crossed the Loire in force, but they still had not decided

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  e Unseen Terror

  which port to make for. After two more emigrés arrived with letters signed by Pitt and Dundas, Larochejacquelein, the young nobleman in command now,9 decided upon Granville, with the intention of signalling the British fl eet after taking the town and its port.

  Th

  e Committee of Public Safety made a priority of having an army on the Breton coast before the rebels did, but no Republican force prevented the Vendéans from reaching Granville, which, from the British point of view, could have been a bridgehead to the mainland of France. Orders from the Admiralty to prepare a fl eet were issued, but without a sailing date or even the destination of help to be given to the Vendéans. A regiment of emigrés had been assembled but, for the present, there was nothing left in the arsenals with which to supply them.

  Lord Moira, in charge of the force raised to assist the Vendéans, and an associate of the Prince of Wales, used all his powers of persuasion, but the government was more concerned about its large expedition to the West Indies in preparation at the same time. Besides, the British ministers had not made any concrete off er to the Vendéan leaders because intelligence was confused about where they were and what the Republicans might be planning.

  Larochejacquelein and his Vendéans had already besieged Granville for 26

  hours on 13–14 November in the hopes of gaining possession of its port to gain British help. When none came, the Vendéans called off the siege and went south again. A factor in their siege involved the Charente-Inférieure because the garrison in Granville was composed of old soldiers from the Regiment of Aunis and the Vendéans hoped they would defect to their cause. None did.

  Moira’s fl eet arrived off Cherbourg (nowhere near Granville) too late to fi nd Larochejacquelein and, after deciding against raiding the coast without contacting the Vendéans fi rst, returned to Cowes with the crews and their emigré passengers smitten with disease.10 Th

  e Vendéans were defeated at

  Angers and Le Mans. Larochejacquelein was hunted down and executed.

  Th

  e Vendéan army appeared to have been destroyed as a coherent force at Savernay on 23 December by the Republican General Westermann, who boasted, ‘Th

  ere is no more Vendée.’ But, as Robespierre said, this was an exaggerated claim.11 Th

  ere followed the sort of small actions by the rebels

  that later on in Spain would attract the title ‘guerilla’, only to provoke reprisals in the form of mass executions in various centres by the Republic.

  Th

  e British ministers, Pitt and Dundas, spoke of sending the French emigrés to the West Indies for the colonial part of what was, essentially, a world war, but others in the Cabinet, especially Lord Auckland, remarked

  La Rochelle in Wartime

  87

  that ‘It is in Europe that we must destroy the Convention.’12 Th e Republican

  government, faced with a real, if very vague, threat from the Royal Navy, had two Fren
ch departments with a western sea-coast that were continuing to escape its authority. Th

  ere was a new minister of war from April 1793,

  Jean-Baptiste Bouchotte, responsible for fi nding marshals’ batons in many knapsacks, even Bonaparte’s. His programme was aligned to sans-culottisme.

  Six months later, after crops in rebel areas had been destroyed, orders were given to ‘exterminate all the brigands’, and in December 1793 Bouchotte appointed General Louis-Marie Turreau as commander of the Army of the West. He was politically close to the Hébertists, a hard-line de-Christianizer.

  Turreau presented his plan, a more forceful version of one already devised by General Kléber. Twelve infantry columns would advance in parallel from east to west over territory held by the rebels holding out beyond Cholet in the bocage 13 towards General Haxo’s troops on the coast. Th e Committee of

  Public Safety accepted his plan. It was well received by the sans-culottes now in charge in La Rochelle, who agreed that the town should provide horses and carts in return for an enormous quantity of grain and livestock made available by this action. Turreau’s ‘columns from hell’ advanced from Parthenay, Bressuire, Doué, and Angers on 22 pluviôse (10 February 1794) with a force of 70,000 gathered from all over France.14 Th

  eir orders were to slaughter men,

  women, and children indiscriminately as deliberate policy in the villages of the Vendée, even to the extent of using bayonets to economize on shot.

  Many soldiers deserted. Th

  ose who were wounded and went to hospital

  in La Rochelle prolonged their stay there as long as possible, and were registered as suff ering from the ‘sickness of the Vendée’.15 Th e young soldiers

  were terrifi ed by stories of atrocities perpetrated on Republican troops by the families of the rebels: especially relentless, it was said, were the women and boys of the age of 12, who cut bodies in pieces before they burned them. It was a mutual horror. Valin comments, ‘ . . . the type of warfare Turreau envisaged from then on for the execution of the tasks he had conceived . . . had no need of heroes’.16

  Protests immediately resulted from La Rochelle, despite complicity in the plan. Adjutant-General Laurent wrote directly to Maximilien Robespierre on 27 pluviôse (15 February 1794) to protest, and involved Robespierre’s own ‘man of confi dence’, Marc-Antoine Jullien, in his complaints, who reported that inhabitants of communes where the houses had been set on fi re by the Republicans were themselves arresting other rebels in order to hand them over to the Republicans in self-protection. He added, ‘Can you

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  e Unseen Terror

  believe that, on the pretext of following your orders, they (republican soldiers) cut the throats of children, women and municipal offi cers in their

  sashes . . . or that your generals set the example of pillaging to make the sublime task of a defender of the fatherland degenerate into the vile occupation of a voleur?’17 Th

  e Jacobins in Niort denounced Turreau. His subordinate

  generals made protests. Far from ending the civil war, the ‘infernal columns’

  made it worse, they said, because the Vendéans were more determined to resist, and a spirit of revenge brought more recruits into the ranks of the counter-revolutionary army led by Charette and Stoffl

  et.

  * * *

  Joseph-Marie Lequinio and Joseph-François Laignelot had arrived in the Charente-Inférieure on 24 September 1793 as representatives on mission, with virtually unlimited powers delegated from the Convention and a fi xed-focus patriotic zeal animating both of them.18 Th

  eir arrival coincided

  with the enactment of the Law of Suspects. From now on, people could be arrested simply for not being enthusiastic towards the new order.19

  Lequinio was a Breton lawyer, elected as a deputy in the Legislative Assembly and then in the Convention for the Morbihan. He had been on mission in other departments, was a keen supporter of de-Christianization, committees of surveillance, and popular societies. Furthermore, he had voted for the king’s death and against referring the decision to the people. He would be associated later with the notorious Jean-Baptiste Carrier, who brutalized the Vendée into submission after Turreau’s columns had done their barbarity. His colleague Laignelot was a dramatist and one of the deputies for Paris in the Convention. He had voted for the suspension of the king’s death sentence but, in terms of republicanism, was no less enthusiastic than his colleague.

  Lequinio claimed that he had been sent to La Rochelle because of the maritime threat from England on the basis of intercepted letters about a conspiracy to set fi re to French port installations.20 Lequinio’s fi rst preoccupation in La Rochelle was to purge the governing bodies of the district and the commune in favour of committed Jacobins.

  He dismissed General Verteuil, who had been denounced by the sans-culottes after the disaster at Pont Charrault in March, and replaced him with the National Guard commander at Saintes, Jean Léchelle, known to be a sans-culotte sympathizer. Th

  e ci-devant noble offi

  cers in the 60th and 110th

  Infantry Regiments were also purged.21

  La Rochelle in Wartime

  89

  All the levers of power were in the hands of the popular society by November. Th

  e new municipality was established in the former church

  of Saint-Sauveur, and a very large cast for the new drama appears in the archives. Only Jacobins were acceptable as district directors, and their leader was the lawyer Jean Barbet, a founder member of the popular society. Other Jacobins were representatives of the lower ranks of the bourgeoisie, like André Chrétien, a timber merchant, who never compromised his prejudices.22

  Th

  en Lequinio turned to the formation of a surveillance committee, whose task was to fi nd counter-revolutionary suspects. He chose as its leader a clock-maker, Jean Parant, who had lost a limb at the rout of Pont-Charrault and had organized several riots against the refractory priests in the town: unquestionably a sans-culotte. He was assisted by a bookbinder, Pierre Susbielle.23 All the committee had impeccable pedigrees as sans-culotte supporters. More like them were found over the coming months.24

  Lequinio appointed a military commission consisting of low-ranking offi

  -

  cers and soldiers from the town garrison to speed up the trials of the Vendéan prisoners, but he was alarmed at their reluctance to hand down death sentences. He appointed Jean Barbet as judge of the district and the judgements complied with his intention of a harsh punitive system.25 Even so, a hundred and ninety one people were kept back for further investigation in the Saint-Nicolas Tower at the south side of the harbour entrance, where many of them soon died in epidemics. Twelve were actually declared innocent and set free.

  He also harried any remaining nobles, members of the bourgeoisie who might have a tendency to hoard produce, smugglers, black-marketeers, and deserters from the army or navy. Th

  e Vendéans, by being rebels, belonged to

  all these categories. Th

  ey were the enemy within, and their opposition to the

  Republic had to be neutralized. Th

  e revolutionary surveillance committee,

  as opposed to the military commission, was responsible for the imprisonment of 87 suspects in the period between October 1793 and the end of March 1794. At fi rst the prisoners were detained in the former convent of the Dames Blanches in the middle of the town, and then in the old and ruinous fortress town of Brouage between Rochefort and Marennes, which was the principal holding place for suspects in the Charente-Inférieure.26, 27

  A week before Lequinio took control of La Rochelle, it was estimated that there was enough grain stored in the town for a month and six days for the inhabitants, the garrison, the refugees, and the prisoners. Lequinio ordered the Republicans in the Vendée to make regular requisitions of grain for the town each month. Th

  e ‘General Maximum’ f
i xing prices and wages was

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  e Unseen Terror

  decreed by the National Convention28 and applied on 22 October. Th ere

  was a run on the shops and they were soon empty. Th

  e inevitable bread

  queues followed.

  Lequinio’s eventual solution was radical. He ordered the vines to be dug up to return the land to the growing of cereals. Th

  e labour for this was found

  by demobilizing some soldiers.29 Yet, even if in due course there was grain to be made into bread, the bakeries had no fi rewood to heat their ovens. He authorized the requisitioning of wood from any authority that had some.

  Transport would be provided in requisitioned wagons or river boats.30

  Shoemakers had run out of leather, and they had no money to buy it, even if there was any.31 Th

  e elected offi

  cials were less and less able to deal

  with these scarcities, and the representative on mission was the only one with enough executive authority to obtain necessary goods. When an American ship arrived in port with a cargo of grain, the municipal and district offi cials

  vied with each other to commandeer it. Even so, there were fears that it might be contaminated and would infect the citizens with yellow fever.32

  Th

  ere had been a total of nearly 3,000 deaths in the town during the autumn and winter of Year II and the bodies lay unburied for as long as 10 days. Earlier burials had not been made deep enough, so a stench came from the cemetery into the town on the wind.33 Th

  e popular society was

  worried about the health hazard, and accused the gravediggers of stealing clothes from the bodies and leaving parts of them exposed.

  Besides that, the wells were contaminated, and wounded soldiers brought back from action in the Vendée to the hospitals in La Rochelle faced a desperate situation since none of the food was wholesome. Fruit was mouldy and hair was always being found in the bread. Sheets could not be washed properly, and shirts were ruined by not being deloused soon enough. Th e

  offi