ese memorable words
are the best proof without doubt that the tribunal has made a good judgement and one must confess that it has fulfi lled its mission perfectly.’21
Pluvier had left Toulon and made for the Gironde, but was driven by contrary winds to La Rochelle. Her crew were arrested and brought to Rochefort, where, on 15 February 1794, they appeared with other offi
-
cers and sailors before the revolutionary tribunal. Out of this whole group, seven were condemned to death and six acquitted, and an engineer who was a part of the headquarters staff in the port had been killed in the scuffl e
when Pluvier came to tie up there.
* * *
Another example of the representatives’ Republican anger is their hounding of one of the deputies for the Charente-Inférieure in the National Convention, Gustave Dechézeaux, also an ardent revolutionary. At the king’s trial, he had courageously expressed his opinion that Louis XVI did not have to die for the public good. Th
is led the Jacobins of Rochefort to say that they had
lost confi dence in him as a deputy, and wanted, in modern terms, to deselect him. Th
ey denounced him to the then representatives on mission, Niou and Carra, and to all the popular societies in the department. In their eyes he had become ‘an enemy of the patriots’ despite his Republican record.22
Th
e Convention decreed that his opinion on the judgement of the king should be withdrawn. Dechézeaux persisted in voting for the king’s imprisonment, but wrote to the Rochefort Popular Society saying that he was still a staunch Republican. On 10 February 1793, the society refused to accept his letter and the Municipality of Rochefort decided not to defend him.
Dechézeaux allied himself with the Girondins in the Convention, and his position locally was untenable as a result. So on 11 August he resigned, to
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be replaced as a deputy by Réné Eschasseriaux, the procurator-general of the Charente-Inférieure. One of those who denounced him was the hyperactive Joseph-Auguste Crassous de Médeuil.23
Dechézeaux left Paris for his home on the île de Ré on 10 September, and joined the Popular Society in La Flotte. He said he wanted to leave the world of national politics, but he was not able to escape from the Committee of General Security, which he had defi ed in June. By now Lequinio and Laignelot were in charge in the department and they applied the Law of Suspects to his case, which meant he could be arrested on a far less important pretext than defying the Committees if need be. Th
ey sent a leading Jacobin from La
Rochelle, Jean Parant, and another from Rochefort, Bobe-Moreau,24 to take him forcibly from his home and shut him up in the Saint-Maurice prison in Rochefort. Lequinio and Laignelot, with the support of the Committee of General Security in Paris, brought an action against the ‘rebel’ Dechézeaux.
On 13 January 1794, he was brought before Junius André, the president of the revolutionary tribunal at Rochefort. He was interrogated about ‘Louis Capet’ and about his association with the Girondins who had been condemned and expelled from the Convention on 2 June 1793. He was sent back to the Saint-Maurice prison. Four days later he appeared before the public prosecutor charged with having conspired against the unity and indivisibility of the Republic, seeking to discredit the Convention, participating in a federalist plot, and corrupting the republican spirit with his ‘liberticide’ writings. Dechézeaux conducted his own defence, and the judgement against him was handed down the same evening. He was executed straight away, not by the offi cial executioner, Henz, but another found for the purpose. Th
is made the two repre-
sentatives on mission unpopular, despite all the bombast they were currently uttering. An historian who was also a Republican deputy, writing just over a century later, commented that ‘the base of a republic is not cemented together with the blood of its best citizens’. Dechézeaux was posthumously reinstated and his property restored to his family on 3 May 1795.25
* * *
One important aspect of Lequinio’s actions has been touched on in relation to La Rochelle: his intransigent motivation by aversion towards the clergy.
He had written a pamphlet entitled ‘Prejudices destroyed’ ( Les Préjuges détruits), and set himself to root out Christianity. Here is an example of his attitude, translated from his letter to the Convention, already quoted above, written at Rochefort on 18 October 1793:
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e Unseen Terror
8. Portrait of Joseph-Marie Lequinio (reproduced by permission of the Musée Ernest Cognacq at Saint-Martin-de-Ré).
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We have just cut down the poisoned tree of religious prejudice in this area, which for so many centuries has covered men with its mortal shadow, and we have just worked a miracle.26
Th
ere is much more like this, all of it fi lled with the kind of fervour redolent of the triumphalism of some of their opponents. Th
ere is a camp meeting
quality to it all, and the atheists are claiming miracles in their literal sense of things to wonder at. Th
ese de-Christianizers claimed to have carried all before
them, to have woken the people to realities that were suppressed or distorted by what was taught by Catholic priests and Protestant ministers alike.
‘Reason makes progress daily, prejudices extinguish themselves and a public spirit is forming’,27 Lequinio goes on. Th
e popular society supported him in all
this, and he translated his programme into a detailed regulation in ten articles issued from Saintes which was to be kept more rigorously than any cardinal of the Inquisition could ever have dreamed of doing, forbidding preaching or writing to favour one religion over another, with any clergymen doing so to be summarily executed. Anyone giving a hearing to those who were previously priests or ministers would cause those ministers to be treated as suspects and the listeners to be arrested. Former presbyteries were now to be schoolhouses.
Committees of surveillance were to be set up to carry out this regulation and no ci-devant minister was to be allowed to be a member of such a committee.
Th
e citizens had to assemble in the Temple of Truth as often as possible to hear and discuss the public news and to listen to civic speeches. Th ere
was to be a fraternal banquet every ten days in every commune ‘served without luxury . . . carrying with it the character of simplicity, mixing all the citizens, inspiring joy, making men forget the hardship and the need for misery which they accept, which puts into the spirit of the poorest and the most unfortunate man the sense of social equality and raises him to the full height of his dignity . . .’28
When this was put into practice at Saint-Saturnin de Séchaud, as the council minutes kept there show, the slogans were painted all over the church walls, but the ten-day festivals were a complete disaster. In the end very few came to them apart from the primary school teacher and her pupils, and she was paid to be there.29
* * *
Th
e Terror was rigorously applied in the Charente-Inférieure on account of its being near the Vendée, but the period of repression was short because
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e Unseen Terror
Jean-Baptiste-Nicolas Topsent and Mathieu-Claude Guezno, the representatives with special responsibility for the navy who followed Lequinio and Laignelot in February, reduced the intensity of the revolutionary tribunal at Rochefort. Th is
curtailing of the Terror was bound up with the departure of the most fanatical representatives on mission, but due above all to the law of 27 germinal year II (16 April 1794), which brought people arrested as counter-revolutionaries for trial and execution in Paris. In application of this law, Jacques Garnier of Saintes denounced the Rochefort tribunal’s excesses in the Convention.
After t
he fall of Robespierre and his colleagues on 9 thermidor year II (27 July 1794), Republican clubs everywhere saw the leading Jacobins as usurpers of the main local and national offi
ces and began to purge their
membership, and not least in Rochefort. From this moment on ‘several of these miserable men who had covered our walls in blood disappeared to go into unknown places to hide their outlawed heads’.30 Th e Popular
Society of Rochefort was reconstituted and took down the slogan ‘War on the tyrants, peace towards virtue, and justice towards all’ from the wall in the Capucins church off the main square where they met.
Th
e Terror was started by the National Convention, and that was the body which ended it. Local politicians still acted only on orders from above. Very little could happen until the arrival of Charles-Auguste Blutel, whom the Th ermidorean Convention sent as a new representative on mission to the navy at Rochefort in late October1794. His explicit mission was to re-establish order, stop the Terror, and punish the perpetrators of it, as he also did at Saintes and La Rochelle.
Lequinio, like Bernard de Saintes, survived the purge of terrorists because of the amnesty of 4 brumaire year 4. He eventually rallied to Bonaparte and was sent to Newport, Rhode Island, to be sub-commissioner of commercial relations in 1802, and then to be vice-consul for the French Empire in Savannah, Georgia, after three years. Th
en there was an astonishing develop-
ment. He married Odette de Lévis-Mirepoix, a former canoness of the chapter of Saint-Louis at Metz, who had been born into the nobility. 31 He had met her 25 years earlier, and wrote to her in 1798 to say that ‘the torments of the revolution had passed a long time ago’. Her elder brother had died on the scaff old in 1794, but Lequinio was, incomprehensibly, acceptable as her husband, and appears to have got on well with his surviving brother-in-law.32
* * *
Once the Terror had been dismantled in Rochefort, ships based there began once more to succeed in their home waters against a number of British, Spanish,
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and other nations’ vessels which were brought into the port as prizes.33 So great was their success that the disposal of these captured ships had to be systematized at Rochefort. Th
ere is a large spreadsheet in the archives of the Marine, which lists the sale of 40 captured allied ships in the year beginning August 1795 (13
fructidor year 3). Twenty-one of them were British, seven Spanish, three Portuguese, three Danish, one Swedish, one from Bremen, and one American.34
Th
ese prizes were sold off so that they could be used as corsairs or privateers, if needed as such, or as merchant ships. A poster for a sale to take place in fructidor year 5 (August 1798) bears this out. It advertises ten ships, ranging in size from two three-masted vessels of over 300 tonnes, named as La Belle London and Le Progrés, to a brig of 40 tonnes called Le Friendschip ( sic), and announces that
these ships will be sold as seen on the appointed day, with their masts, sails and rigging, according to the inventories placed under naval control, details of which will be available before and after the sale. Half payments are to be made in metal currency, and the other half is to be paid on the reckoning day within a month, also in current coinage, and there will be no question of letters of exchange.35
With the Directory’s return to metal currency, no use could be made of assignats any more. Th
e notice is signed by Chevillard the Younger, who had
been moved from the post of Commandant des armes to that of Ordonnateur de la marine in Rochefort.36
Some redundant ships belonging to the Republic were also assigned for use as privateers and a set of conditions was issued whenever this took place. Th
ey were applied to the frigate L’Africaine on 10 October 1797.37
Th
e vessels were licensed to ‘ship-owners whose morality and fi nancial standing [were] well known’ for a period of four months counted from the day they left Rochefort. Th
e shipowners were responsible for fi tting out
the vessels and for supplying them with the crew’s rations and the military materiel they would need. Th
e licensees could change the armament if they
wanted to. Th
e commanders were to be only from those currently on the
Republican navy list, and their choice would be a matter for the navy minister, as for all other ships. Other offi
cers could be chosen by agreement
between the commanders and the licensees. Th
e licensees could choose the
voyages these ships were to make, and what was to be done with the prizes they took. Prize money would be divided: the crew would receive a third between them, the Republic would have a third, and the remaining third
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e Unseen Terror
was for the licensee who was obliged to sign a submission to all 30 regulations to be seen by the navy minister.
However, before we are led to wander too far in the direction of Republican triumphalism, we can note that there is a list kept at Rochefort of French offi
cers who had to answer for the loss of their ships to the enemy.38 Th ere
were eighteen instances of frigates, corvettes, fl utes (merchantmen armed as warships), and coasters ( chasses-marée) recorded as captured by the English and two others by the Spanish between 1795 and 1799. One of these was the frigate La Décade. Her captain, Jean-Baptiste Villeneau, faced a court-martial on 4 March 1799 (14 germinal year 7), and the verdict was against him. He had a lengthy justifi catory riposte to this judgement printed, reiter-ating his own version of events on 23 August 1798 (6 fructidor year 6).39
Villeneau says he left the Bordeaux estuary on 7 fl oréal year 6 to take 193 prisoners condemned to deportation (perhaps refractory priests40 ) to Cayenne in the French colony of Guyana. He arrived there on 22 prairial, left his deportees and set sail for home on 11 messidor with the mail from the colony, under orders to make the Atlantic crossing in 15 days because the mail included important dispatches. As he approached Cape Finisterre on 5 fructidor, two ships were sighted fl ying enemy colours, one a frigate and the other a brig. He had to choose between making a run for the coast, which would unavoidably mean being caught, or making for a Spanish port with a possible chance of evasion. He chose the latter course, but did not achieve his purpose. An engagement was inevitable.
Th
e document is written in the fi rst person.
Offi
cers and sailing masters had given evidence that the Décade, with thirty four guns, twenty six of which were twelve-pounders, and eight six-pounders, was forced to surrender under the crossfi re of the English frigate, Naiad . . . and another English ship Magnanimous. Th ey had also said that
six of Villeneau’s cannon on the starboard side were not fi red during the action, which proved that he had not returned fi re, except with seven guns and four in the gaillards, since the position of the other English ship had taken away the chance of moving his armament from port to starboard.
With such a disadvantage, what could I hope for from a long engagement?
Meanwhile, I need not add anything to what impartial Frenchmen who had found themselves prisoners on board H.M.S. Magnanimous have said in the certifi cate which I submitted to the sight of the jury, and had no need to conceal or alter the truth of it:
‘Citizen Villeneau . . . having asked us to bear witness about the enemy forces that captured him, we, the offi
cers of the French ship Colombe of
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Bayonne, Captain Joseph Darribeau, prisoners of war . . . certify that the aforementioned frigate Décade was captured on 6 fructidor year 6 of the Republic by the English ship Magnanimous, commanded by Captain de Courcy, armed with twenty eight twenty four pounder guns, twelve of twelve pounds, and six for
ty two pounder carronades, and also by the English frigate Naiad, Captain Pierrepont, armed with forty four guns, twenty six eighteen pounders, ten of nine pounds and six thirty two pound carronades. We also certify that the frigate La Décade employed all means possible to evade the enemy’s pursuit, but her inferior speed41 could not prevent it.
Th
e enemy attacked at six in the evening, and this obliged La Décade to engage in combat until half past six the same day. Not being able to hold off such superior forces as the enemy had, she struck her fl ag after being boarded several times from both sides. In belief of which we have delivered this document to validate and maintain what is true.
On board the said vessel, being at sea, 7 fructidor year 6 of the Republic one and indivisible, signed, J. Darribeau, Captain, Dominique Hondarrague, Second Captain, B Larrond, Lieutenant, Dannedon, Sub-Lieutenant.’
Th
e English themselves, of whose pride and arrogance we are still aware, in writing up this action in their newspapers, bring forward nothing to put the blame on my conduct. By what mischance am I still victim of the declaration of a doubtless badly informed jury, who let the circumstances given above make their judgement hostile and fall unjustly on my head?
Th
e conclusion of his printed defence pleads Villeneau’s good naval record of 20 years at sea, 8 years and 3 months of which in time of war, either under orders or commanding the Republic’s frigates. He claims he has been the victim of a conspiracy, and adds his signature. A manuscript note, obviously friendly towards him, if not actually written by him, has been added at the foot of the printed papers. It says that he has forgotten to mention that before he left to take the deportees to Guyana he was malevolently off ered a sum of money to take his ship, once unloaded, to England and surrender it to the enemies of the Republic. He had refused this temptation, but the calumny had persisted and was believed by several members of the jury who condemned him upon suspicion of having made a rendezvous with the English ships. Th
is prejudice on their part had caused the verdict of guilty.
It was not possible to fi nd from the Rochefort archives whether Villeneau managed to have this verdict reversed or not, but we can see that, even after the dismantling of the Terror, the question of perfi dy was liable to surface every time someone in a responsible position came under suspicion of counter-revolutionary behaviour. Th
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