businessmen and ships’ chandlers, all living and working in the dignifi ed setting of classical architecture from the time of the building of Versailles.
In the years of the Revolution, there were mutinies of ships’ companies in port by the crews of La Capricieuse in December 1790,2 Dromedaire in August 1791,3 and L’Embuscade in January 1792. Th
e noble naval offi
cers
were demoralized, with a good number of them resigning and withdrawing to their estates around and about, later to be arrested as suspects.
When the noble offi
cers had gone, they were replaced with former pilots
and sailing masters whom the revolutionary government had to accept on the grounds of their professional skills. Th
ey could not hope to gain the respect
of their crews or overawe them, and the result was indiscipline. Th e navy
was reorganized on revolutionary lines by successive decrees of the National Assembly and Convention. Under the constitutional monarchy, the service was rebuilt without reference to nobility, though some noble offi cers retained
their positions. Promotion was on the basis of meritorious service. Young men were commissioned as ensigns after sitting for a competitive examination.
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e Unseen Terror
After the fall of the monarchy, the navy minister was in charge, and then, during the offi
cial Terror, there was a decree of purifi cation ( épurement) of the same kind as was applied to departmental, district, and municipal councils, to weed out those not regarded as suffi
ciently enthusiastic
for the Revolution. From then on, Republican virtue was as important as nautical skill. If the candidates for the navy were in any way suspect, a decision about them was passed on to the National Convention itself. Th e
names of the aspiring offi
cers were posted up in their home communes, and
denunciations were taken seriously, usually leading to rejection, or worse.
If offi
cers were dismissed on the grounds of lack of revolutionary zeal, the minister for the navy was responsible for having them replaced.4
Th
e volunteers in the army units in Rochefort were indisciplined. Some young Parisians and other opportunists had recently arrived to avoid recruitment in the capital. Th
e scene was coloured to a certain extent by people
deported from Saint-Domingue to France by Admiral de Grimouard, who tended to dominate Rochefortais society.5 Convinced revolutionaries were present, who, when new and relentless leadership appeared, would go into a hyperactive state.
Lequinio and Laignelot, whose activity in La Rochelle we have already seen, arrived to provide this leadership. Th
ey chose to settle in Rochefort
because the sailors and workers at the arsenal there were as devoted Jacobins as they were themselves. After moving into in the Hôtel du Bacha, whose owners were of irreproachable civic virtue,6 the representatives set up the social machinery for the Terror, creating a revolutionary tribunal to judge and imprison all suspects.
Th
e most important factor in their motivation, as we have seen, was that the Vendée rebellion in the name of the Louis XVII and the Catholic Church was increasingly dangerous to the Republic. Lequinio’s intransigent actions in La Rochelle and Rochefort were largely responsible for the rebellion not spreading south into the Charente-Inférieure, then or later.
Another factor in the containment of the rebellion was the strong presence of Protestants and Freemasons completely unsympathetic to the Catholic enthusiasm of the Vendéans. Th
e Protestants in La Rochelle and Rochefort
had purchased as much church and emigré land as the bourgeoisie of Nantes had, but their social control of the rural hinterland of the two towns was very tight. Furthermore, Dalbarade, minister for the navy, dreaded the idea of the Vendéans being helped by a landing by the British or by emigrés, and ordered Rochefort to send a frigate to cruise permanently under sail
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before Les Sables d’Olonne without dropping anchor during her tour of duty. Th
e frigate chosen was the famous Hermione, on which Lafayette had sailed to America 15 years before. Ships cruising from the the île d’Oléron to Belle-île and back cut off all communication with any who might try to land, whether emigrés, refractory priests coming home from Jersey, or any others who might bring help to the rebels.7
Freemasons in Rochefort, as elsewhere, were active in support of the Revolution at the outset. Four of them are found among the fourteen citizens of the town who had formed the popular society there, intending ‘to spread Truth, to defend Liberty, to maintain the Constitution with all our power, to write and talk openly, to profess our principles proudly’.
Réne Bestier was the constitutional curé of Rochefort, and was admitted into the Society of the Friends of the Constitution on 11 May 1791 on the basis of his freemasonry. Several of his patriotic speeches given for the Amis de la Constitution as well as in his church sermons were written down in the minutes ( procés-verbaux) of the society. He was elected president of it on 2 December 1791. His Republican involvement drew insults and threats upon him from his former parishioners as a turncoat, so the municipality gave him a guard of two fusiliers when he had to go out at night. He continued to participate in assemblies of citizens held in his church up to the beginning of 1793, but he was, despite the civic oath, a rigorous church-man. He refused to bless the marriages of those who refused to go to confession, or of divorced people, and continued to keep the registers of baptisms, marriages, and deaths in his vestry, rather than accepting that such records were to be at the Mairie now, and this led to his exclusion from the society.
Local Freemasonry was both a stimulant and a restraint, but with the arrival of Lequinio and Laignelot in September 1793, most of the masons retired from the popular society or were expelled from it by them.8
* * *
Lequinio wrote to the Convention to say, ‘Everything is going to happen without compromise here.9 Th
e people go by themselves to the torch of
reason . . . the revolutionary tribunal that we have just set up will make the aristocrats march and the guillotine will make heads roll.’10 Out of the 190
accused that appeared before this tribunal between November 1793 and April 1794, 52 were condemned to death, 19 to chain gangs, 35 to ordinary imprisonment, 6 to deportation, 17 to fi nes, and 61 were acquitted. Among
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the condemned were Vendéans, refractory priests, parents of émigrés, naval offi
cers, supporters of the Girondin politicians, and people guilty of economic crimes like hoarding food, forging assignats, and robbing military stores. Th
e guillotine was set up as a fi xture in the Place de la République in the heart of the town ( Place Colbert as it was before and is now).
In its composition and functioning, the revolutionary tribunal was a replica of the one in Paris. Of 23 members that made up its regular personnel, at least 14 were working men and 7 were exiles from Saint-Domingue. Th ese exiles
got their own back on Admiral Grimouard, who was condemned to death after being denounced by them for having supported the slave revolt in the colony. Th
ey were all enthusiastic Jacobins, and eight more of them also sat on the committee of surveillance at Rochefort, whose task was to search for counter-revolutionaries, among whom from now on were included those who had not actively supported the changes which had been made. All this was enough to prevent any kind of counter-Revolution in the Charente-Inférieure.
Th
e public prosecutor was Victor Hugues, born in Marseilles, who had been a labourer, a baker, and then himself a colonist in Saint-Domingue.
One member of the surveillance commi
ttee was a former merchant marine offi
cer, Viguier, known to be an alcoholic, recently nominated as commandant of one of Rochefort’s coastal outposts at Vergeroux. Th e executioner
Henz was another drunkard from Saint-Domingue, who had volunteered for the task in the popular society. Another member of the committee was Noleau, a former stonemason who was often seen dressed in clothes of good quality which he had taken off the bodies of Henz’s victims. Lequinio and Laignelot set the revolutionary tribunal up in the former chapel of the Saint-Charles Hospital, a place that was large enough to accommodate large crowds at the spectacular public trials they intended to arrange.11
* * *
Th
e British fl eet was constantly patrolling the coast of the Charente-Inférieure, and its domination of the deep water demoralized the Republican naval offi
cers further. In fact the turn taken by events in Rochefort in the autumn of 1793 was indirectly provoked by British political and naval intervention a long way off , in Toulon.
Th
at came about after the General Committee in the southern naval port had opted – along with Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille, and other Provençal centres – to resist the Republican centralizing government. After
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the Jacobins had expelled the Girondins from the National Convention in Paris at the beginning of June, many in the large provincial towns of France resented control of the country by the Jacobin rump of the Convention, dominated by the Paris Commune, which they had not elected.
Th
is caused a determined backlash on the part of the Jacobins, enforced by representatives on mission with full powers to act independently.
Th
e Convention’s representatives on mission in the Midi had cut off food supplies to Toulon, and members of the general council there negotiated with the British Admiral, Lord Hood, about provisioning the town from the sea, for which Hood’s price was their acceptance of Louis XVII as King of France.12 After they had accepted his terms, Hood entered Toulon harbour and took possession of Fort La Malgue, landing in force with British and Spanish troops at the end of August 1793.
Dalbarade, the navy minister, announced to the National Convention that the inhabitants of Toulon had acted treasonably. A number of secret agents and emigrés had come to Toulon and persuaded the residents to go further in opposition to the Jacobins than they meant to. Th
e port commander, Rear-
Admiral comte de Trogoff -Kerlessy, made the approach to Lord Hood.13
Two ships from Rochefort had joined the Toulon squadron to boost its eff ectiveness in the previous year. Th
ey were the Apollon (80 guns), under
the command of Capitaine de Vaisseau Th
omas Imbert, and the Généreux
(74 guns), under Cazotte. Imbert had become the president of the general council of the sections in Toulon, and it was he who proclaimed Louis XVII as king. His manifesto was sent to the Republican Captain Saint-Julien, who, as soon as Hood entered the outer harbour, denounced Trogoff and sailed his ship Topaze away, leaving a reluctant offi
cer and eight men behind on shore.
In October, Hood ordered cannon to be removed from several French ships, including Apollon and Généreux,14 and 6,000 French Republican sailors whom the British or the moderates in Toulon did not trust were put on board them. Th
eir captains were allowed by the British to return these
ships to their home ports – Brest, Lorient and Rochefort – sailing under a fl ag of truce. Apollon reached Rochefort at the end of the month, followed by Généreux soon after, and the coaster Pluvier soon after that.15
Lyon and Marseilles were brought to their knees by the Republicans, so hopes that Toulon could be used as a base for supporting these other places were disappearing. Hood was reconsidering his position by the end of October and, in November, the National Convention and its Committee of Public Safety found more troops to raise their force before Toulon to 30,000.
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Young Captain Bonaparte’s artillery dispositions could have blasted the British fl eet out of the water. So, on 18 December, Hood decided to leave, embarking some citizens of Toulon who would certainly have been victims of Republican reprisals. He was clear of the harbour on 20 December.16
When Apollon and Généreux arrived off Rochefort, Lequinio and Laignelot gave orders that the ships’ companies were not to be allowed ashore, despite the fact that many were ill and there was little in the way of provisions on board. On Lequinio’s orders Captains Imbert and Cazotte, their offi cers,
and several sailors were arrested, accused of having participated in the surrender of Toulon to the English fl eet and of intending to come to Rochefort to bring about the same thing. As we have seen, the fi rst charge would stick.
Th
e second was tendentious, but it was the main argument of the speech Lequinio made to open the travesty of a trial. He said that the Convention had learnt that the English ( sic) had planned to do what they had done at Toulon in all the ports of France, and for that reason they had allowed the Apollon and the Généreux to proceed unmolested to Rochefort.
At the end of his letter to the Convention of 18 October 1793,17
Lequinio wrote in his own hand:18
While we were visiting the coast, the Apollon came from Toulon. We waited for several days . . . we have just formed a commission for the examination of this aff air and the interrogations begin today. We do not deny that this vessel came here only to corrupt public spirit and deliver the port to the English, like the ones that came to Lorient and to Brest . . . We presume that before long we will have the fall of several heads to announce to you from here.
Adieu. We are republicans. Count on us. Laignelot, Lequinio.
Victor Hugues was in charge of the proceedings after that. On the evidence of one sailor only, the tribunal brought a verdict of guilty for 19 out of 33
accused. Nine of these, all offi
cers, were condemned to death, two to depor-
tation, and eight to six months’ detention. Th
e others were acquitted.
After Généreux had arrived, one of Cazotte’s offi
cers on board her,
Lieutenant Joseph Crassous de Médeuil, brother of Joseph-Auguste the politician, was interrogated on 8 November 1793.19 His earlier career had been a colourful one.20 He served on the Apollon and then transferred to the Généreux after Hood took Toulon.
During his interrogation (presumably by Victor Hugues) Joseph Crassous said he had been on the Généreux since 12 September 1792, but
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denied being involved in the political life of Toulon while the ship was stationed there. He insisted that he wanted to keep the oath to the Republic which he had made at Rochefort before Apollon left her home port and had urged the ship’s company of the Généreux to be faithful to the national fl ag. It had been the cowardliness of others that had overridden his opinion.
He denied that he had ever worn a royalist cockade in his hat, or joined in when others shouted ‘Vive Louis XVII.’
After a great number of the corrupt crew members had deserted during the night, he said, he had had to surrender to greater power and even his death would not have protected the Republic from the infamous treason of de Trogolf ( sic) and those in charge at Toulon.
When asked why Apollon was ordered to receive four months’ provisions on 11 September when they should have been taken on board Généreux, he replied that he presumed Apollon was sailing to Rochefort, taking all those who had chosen to return to the bosom of their nation and who openly refused to serve the cowardly Toulonnais, and she had to be supplied with extra provisions. He concluded, ‘So, left to ourselves in this awful set of circumstances, we had only our own good faith and the courage to come back am
ong you.’
Th
e interrogator’s questions were tendentious, and he certainly led his witness, but the judge at the revolutionary tribunal before whom he appeared, Gaspard Gorand, decided that he had conspired against the unity and indivisibility of the Republic. Th
is was enough to have him con-
demned to death. His execution took place at Henz’s expert hands three weeks later on 28 November.
On the same day as Crassous’s execution, Lequinio and Laignelot wrote a letter to the Convention with their observations on the aff air of the Apollon. Th
ey said the condemned offi
cers were villains who had brought
their ship to Rochefort to prepare for the arrival of the English in the port and to hand it over to them in the same way as they had contributed to the surrender of Toulon. Th
ey reported that the revolutionary tribunal had
recently condemned nine offi
cers from the Apollon, and the avenger of the
people (the executioner) had saved the Republic:
All the sailors, and all the dockyard workers and several offi cers had gone to
escort them in two ranks to the place of execution ( expiation), where the air retained the cries of ‘Vive la République’ at the fall of each head.
Patriotic songs and cheers for the revolutionary tribunal were a just tribute to its members. Th
ey said they seized the opportunity to give praise to the
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public prosecutor of the town, Hugues, whom they describe as an excellent Jacobin, whose civic virtue, ability, and conduct were of the highest degree.
Th
ey also gave praise to the reliability of Lieutenant Crassous’s brother, Joseph-Auguste, now a deputy in the National Convention, whom they knew, of course, from La Rochelle, where he had been involved to a mys-terious extent in the murder of the six priests in March. On this occasion, they report, he had told them that he would have condemned his brother himself if he had been the judge.
Lequinio and Laignelot asserted that the last words of Lieutenant Crassous were that the sailors should remember he had warned them at Toulon that their conduct could only lead them to the scaff old: ‘Th
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