The Unseen Terror

by Richard Ballard

  cers of the 10th Cavalry Regiment refused to send their wounded men to any hospital in La Rochelle.34

  Nearly 500 English and Spanish prisoners of war were kept in two big rooms in the Saint-Nicolas Tower, one above the other, and the fl oor between them was in a dangerous state. Moreover, the women prisoners from the Vendée had all been crowded into one room there, so infectious diseases were rife.35

  All this presented a crisis for the Revolution in La Rochelle, and morale was at rock-bottom. Maintaining the patriotic front against the Vendéan rebels was diffi

  cult when the Republic seemed so incapable of delivering the promises it had off ered in the autumn of 1792. Nevertheless, the revolutionary impulse remained among the majority of ordinary people, and when the campaign

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  91

  against the Vendéans was renewed in March 1794, there were no popular outbursts against it. Th

  e principle of equality was re-asserted when a petition in

  the popular society said that it was not right for a well-off family to provide just a single offi

  cer when a family of sans-culottes sent four soldiers to the front.36

  On 12 December 1793, a decision was made to clean up the town because of fear of an epidemic. Th

  e citizens had to wash their house fronts

  and carters were sent round to take all the accumulated mud and manure away from the streets and alleys. Th

  e fi lth was taken out of the hospitals

  and the streets swept, and this was ordered to be done three times in every ten days.37 Conditions in the cemeteries were improved by spreading lime in the existing burial places, and Lequinio established a new cemetery outside the town with graves at a proper depth on the confi scated lands of an emigré in January 1794.38

  In contrast to the self-interested bourgeois resentment against the refurbishment of Saintes by the Royal Intendant before the Revolution, this co-operation with the decisions of the elected General Council, even if kick-started by the uncompromising Lequinio, shows grass-roots support for the new institutions. It also represents popular vehemence against the Catholic and Royal Army in the Vendée, and the readiness of the majority of Rochelais families to support the fi ght to prevent it from spreading further south. Th

  ere was suffi

  cient unanimity to restrain protest and continue

  the armed struggle on land and preparedness at sea. Lequinio was even criticized for having set 13 suspects at liberty.39

  Even so, among all the letters in the dossier of the General Council of La Rochelle, there is one that suggests at least nostalgia for normality. It is dated 10 brumaire an 2 (31 October 1793), and is addressed to the administrators of the district from the School of Hydrography in the town: Th

  ere are models of ships in the ci-devant churches of Saint-Jean and Saint-Nicolas given as votive off erings by sailors. Th

  ese could be used as

  demonstration models in the school for teaching [navigational] manœuvres. Th

  is would be a good use of them for the service of the republic.40

  * * *

  Despite their experience and devotion to duty, the sisters at the White Ladies who had been taken on as nurses in the military hospitals were regarded as ideologically dangerous in the eyes of André Chrétien, Lequinio’s agent on the District Directory, who called the sisters ‘hypocritical vermin’. He

  92 Th

  e Unseen Terror

  ordered up to 80 of them to be sent as suspects to Brouage. Th e municipality protested, however, and pointed out the diffi

  culties of fi nding nursing

  staff for the Saint-Étienne hospital, in use as a hospice and for looking after children who were infected by the adults in the general hospital. Th e district

  directory took a fortnight to reply, and expressed reservations about some of the sisters known to have opposed the Revolution, but the ones who had kept quiet were allowed to continue their functions as in the past.41

  After Lequinio had removed the infl uence of the remaining clergy, elected offi

  cials at all three levels of administration were concerned about the lack of moral guidance. So the popular society took it upon itself to inculcate the new value of civism by making the Temple of Truth (formerly the Saint-Sauveur church), in which they held their meetings, a focus of Republican loyalty, with busts of revolutionary martyrs on display, and festivals to keep the revolutionary pulse-rate beating steadily. For a while, until what was found in the king’s secret strongbox discredited him, Mirabeau’s death provided the nation with a symbolic fi gure for national loyalty.42 Patriotic songs were written and people sang them together in public.43 ‘Liberty or death!’ was a favourite theme.

  Another fi gure found to symbolize the citizens’ belief in the republican cause was a 13 year-old boy called Joseph Bara, who had met his death in the Vendée and became a conspicuous martyr for liberty. At the meeting of the popular society held on 2 April 1794, Bonnin, president of the popular society, made a speech about him:

  He had charged at the enemy with the cavalry; the brigands had seized him and tried to make him shout, “Vive la Religion. Vive le Roi!” but he would not. He cried out “Vive la République!” instead and they killed him . . .

  Bonnin made him into a cult fi gure who would watch over his listeners’

  words and actions as a Republican saint. Bara was to be seen as a model for the young to imitate. Citizen Bouquet, with his cadet force 50 miles to the south in the village of Rioux, would have agreed.44,45

  Public celebrations were arranged for signifi cant occasions like the return of Toulon to Republican control, and there were fraternal banquets. Th ese

  occasions were every bit as didactic in their intention as the liturgy of the Church had been.46 Th

  e names of the town’s fi ve sections were changed

  from the saints’ names of the parish churches to La Montagne, La Liberté, l’Égalité, La Fraternité, and l’Unité. Th

  e sections were subdivided and a long

  list of patriotic names was devised for them. How would residents have felt about living in a street called La Modestie?47

  La Rochelle in Wartime

  93

  Th

  e rôle of women in moral education continued to be recognized. Young women were required to swear never to marry an aristocrat or a fanatic, but to give their hearts to good sans-culottes. Spinsters dedicated themselves to being models of Republican behaviour.48 Th

  e rôle of the revolutionary

  woman remained primarily to give birth to and bring up the next generation of patriots, but it would not qualify her for a vote until after 1945.

  * * *

  Nearly everything in La Rochelle had become conditioned by the civil war, the danger of invasion, and the miserable conditions of scarcity. Th e insurgents in the Vendée had systematically destroyed the numerous bridges over streams so that the republicans could not move with their cannon or their baggage trains. Th

  e journey from La Rochelle to Nantes now took days

  instead of hours. By the beginning of summer in 1794, Charette and the Vendéans were in control of enough territory to disrupt the harvest from which it was hoped to gain La Rochelle’s provisions for the coming year.

  Th

  e European war continued. Th

  e French navy captured several coali-

  tion ships and between November 1793 and the following spring, the deaths in hospital of sailors from eight British and eight Spanish ships were registered, together with deaths from one Danish and one Dutch ship.

  Between September 1793 and October 1794, a third of the total population left the town from all levels of society, and some of the great names of the port’s former prosperity were among them: Garesché, Duvivier, Admyrault, and a few aristocrats.49 Refugees from the Vendée and Deux-Sèvres Departments, mostly widows, orphans, and old people, arrived to replace them.50 Thr />
  is migration of widows and orphans was a direct result of Turreau’s troops’ deliberate brutality in the spring of 1794. Any able-bodied men who came with them were soon encouraged ‘to pour out their blood to the last drop for the patrie’. Women who came carrying an authorization from the rebels to leave their homes were soon interned at Brouage. Jacques Garnier, representative on mission in the Loir-et-Cher and the Sarthe, but keeping his interest in the Charente-Inférieure, forbade the refugees from the Vendée to go home: they had to stay where they were and help with the harvest.

  Prisoners of war were to do the same. Garnier made a further decree that the work-shy should be interned as suspects.51

  * * *

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  e Unseen Terror

  War conditions intensifi ed the development of the Revolution in La Rochelle, but the alliance between bourgeois Robespierre supporters, led by the broker Jean-Michel Ganet, and the sans-culottes supporting the clock-maker Jean Parant could not hold together. Jean Parant’s faction comprised craftsmen and those with small businesses like the bookbinder Susbielle, and even the wig-maker Darbelet, who had not yet been arrested. Ganet’s faction controlled the popular society. Parant’s supporters had the surveillance committee as its power base. Th

  e two groups sank their diff erences in sending spokesmen to congratulate the National Convention in Paris when the Hébertists went to the guillotine in March, and then Danton and his faction in April 1794. Th is

  co-operation was ended, however, by the fall of Robespierre and his Terrorist faction in July. Th

  e artisans and small traders particularly resented the Gen-

  eral Maximum, and Parant could not control them. He decided to look for work in Paris because he feared for his family’s safety.

  Charles Auguste Blutel, very much in sympathy with the Th

  ermidoreans

  now in the ascendant in Paris, arrived in November as representative on mission. He had sat with the ‘Marsh’ in the National Convention, voted for suspension of the death sentence on Louis XVI, and had come to dismantle the apparatus of the Terror in the Charente-Inférieure. Th

  e committee of sur-

  veillance was suppressed after another month, but it had already lost its teeth.

  Bourgeois notables reappeared in association with the general council. People like Darbelet no longer had infl uence or power to persuade the citizens.52

  Th

  e popular society formed a welcoming committee for Blutel when he arrived from Rochefort, and ordered the end of the Terror on 15 April 1795. In June a new general council of the commune appeared, led by a very traditional Rochelais fi gure called Jean Perry, a businessman, the former director of the Chamber of Commerce, and a Protestant. Since he had been detained in the White Ladies’ convent as a suspect, he represented the rehabilitation of the victims of the Terror. Other members were the shipowners Louis Admyrault and Samuel Demissy, who became maire. Th ese

  men were moderates, who supported the Constituent Assembly’s achievements up to November 1789, before ever war was declared or violence was regarded as a normal feature of Republican life. With the dismantling of the Terror, they could re-appear as the natural party of government.

  All suspects were set free from Brouage and Pons, and claimed certifi cates of civism when they came home. Th

  is apparent conciliation did not necessarily

  mean that tribulation was a thing of the past. On 15 October 1794, someone called Siellès was accused of ‘raising the people against the magistrates’. Th e

  La Rochelle in Wartime

  95

  end of the Maximum on prices and wages accentuated the poverty of those who had been sans-culottes. Th

  e opening of trials for acts of terrorism raised

  serious questions, especially the one concerning the murder of the six priests on 21 and 22 March 1793 presented in the last chapter. Th

  e imprisonment of the

  prominent sans-culotte Darbelet seemed like victimization to his sympathizers.

  * * *

  Th

  e civil war in the Vendée continued, but gestures were made towards the Vendéans. Blutel released the last 103 prisoners from La Rochelle. Th e National

  Convention had decreed an amnesty for the prisoners on 2 December 1794

  and off ers of talks were made to the Vendéan leaders. An ephemeral treaty was signed with Charette at La Jaunaye on 24 February 1795 and, in hopes that it would hold good, a fortnight later the Municipality of La Rochelle called for an end to requisitions for the National Guard.53

  Yet the Vendéans had not given up their weapons, and hostilities began again in May. As late as September 1795, there were troops passing through the town to go into the Vendée, and wartime scarcities continued. It was realized that there would not be enough bread to go round and, as reports of their protest show, a practical solution was to suppress the supply to the British prisoners of war. Alternative food in the form of a large supply of beans from Marennes and American imported stockfi sh, damaged in transit by rats, was improvised. Th

  e terrible winter added to the misery.

  Ornamental trees in the town were cut down for fi rewood, but a high price was asked for it, and prices of chicken, vegetables, and fi sh were exorbitant.

  It was the same story as in Marillet’s Saintes.

  Blutel had no authority to make requisitions. Th

  e municipality intro-

  duced rationing because the Maximum had been dismantled. Th e offi

  cial

  claim that peace had been made in the Vendée helped a little, and prices of eggs and fresh butter came down in February. As soon as it was realized that the claim about peace was false, the prices rocketed again. Th e ideology that

  lay behind the Terror could not be revived. Communal desperation was represented by the gravediggers in the new cemetery being caught stealing wood from coffi

  ns and shirts from corpses.54

  In the fi nal action against the terrorists, Joseph-Auguste Crassous, as a prominent member of the Paris Jacobin Club, was arrested by a decree of the Th ermidorean Convention on 5 April 1795. He spent a little while in the Four Nations Prison (where David was making his portrait of Bernard along the corridor),

  96 Th

  e Unseen Terror

  and then taken to be locked up in the former monastery at Mont-Saint-Michel, in an area dominated by Chouan sympathizers with the Vendéans.

  Th

  e timber merchant André Chrétien, who had been responsible for sending the nursing sisters to Brouage, gave up in La Rochelle and went away to carry on his business in the country. Darbelet stayed in the prison at Saintes for nearly two more years. Jean Parant set up his clock-making business in the rue Mazarine in the University quarter of Paris. He was involved in a riot on 17 March, and sent to La Force prison.55

  Th

  e original revolutionaries returned as administrators in La Rochelle.

  Samuel Demissy had cleared his debts and recovered his respectability before becoming the new maire. Th

  ere is a clear illustration of his business interests

  in relation to his political life in the register of the debates of the District Directory for 19 ventôse an 3 (9 March 1795). Without information about how he had acquired it, the report says that Demissy sold a 16-gun corvette to the port of Rochefort in 1793 (‘old style’, as the secretary points out).

  ‘Understanding that La Rochelle had need of such weapons’, he left the cannon out of the sale of the ship. Th

  e price of the guns to La Rochelle had

  been set at 1,000 livres each, but the bill had not been settled by the time the government brought in the Maximum on prices and wages. When the Maximum had become law, the War Ministry ordered the District of La Rochelle to pay for the guns at the price set for them, obviously less than the sum agreed. ‘Since Citizen Demissy had had not believed at the time of the sale that he should have to su
ff er from the delay’, he asked for satisfaction.

  Th

  e administrators took up the question and established a commission of its members to examine the case.56

  People like him had foreseen the economic changes that had to be made, but they had to wait until well into the Napoleonic Empire before La Rochelle’s stability could be restored and its rôle as administrative centre recovered from Saintes by an imperial decree of 1810.57

  At the end of December 1795, although there were shouts of ‘Vive le Roi!’ in the streets, starvation conditions remained, and food prices were impossible, the new municipality retained its authority. Even though offi

  -

  cially proscribed now, Protestantism was too strong a tradition to allow the Catholic army to be acceptable. Th

  e control exercised by the representatives

  on mission and the popular society had produced enough energetic resistance against the Vendéans to prevent their encroachment further south and, despite the failure of the Republic to provide anything resembling prosperity, a resolute republicanism remained in place during and after the long communal anxiety in La Rochelle.58

  chapter 7

  Lequinio’s Rochefort

  Rochefort was built virtually from scratch not much more than a century before the Revolution by Louis XIV’s minister Colbert, who laid it out as a grid of streets on the right bank of the Charente. Shipyards, dry docks, an arsenal, a facility for rope-making, and a centre for provisioning and arming the ships of the French navy extended between the town and the river bank itself.

  At the end of Louis XV’s reign, Rochefort was allowed, after a long struggle against vested interests in La Rochelle, to have a chamber of commerce of its own and trade directly with the colonies in its own right.1 Nevertheless, the port’s main raison d’être remained military, and this accounts for the particular troubles experienced there during the revolutionary years.

  By Louis XVI’s reign, the population there was totally concerned with seaborne commerce and military preparedness. Th

  ere were sailors and sol-

  diers in plenty, dockyard workers, and a good number of convicts. Th ere were