The Unseen Terror

by Richard Ballard

  e presumed treason of Villeneau turns

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  e Unseen Terror

  out to be the possibility of collusion with the British, as it was in the cases of the offi

  cers from the Apollon and the Généreux fi ve years before.

  * * *

  Perhaps the best illustration of Rochefort having rediscovered its proper purpose is the successful combined operation carried out by a Spanish fl eet and gunboats from the port against a British naval force which made an attack on the Roads of Aix in July 1799.42 To understand why the Spanish were there, we have to go back to 12 March in that year, when the Directory declared war on Austria and Tuscany, and Naples and Piedmont, pressurized by Austria, also reverted to hostilities against France. Russia and Turkey began to take steps against General Bonaparte during his expedition to Egypt since, after Nelson’s victory in August 1798 at Aboukir Bay,43 he was cut off from contact with his masters in Paris. In response to the new coalition, orders were received by the naval commander at Brest to prepare 25 ships of the line for forthcoming action. Admiral Bruix, who was the Directory’s navy minister, decided to go and take charge of this fl eet himself and, when it was ready, to sail with it to the Mediterranean, as he did on 26 April 1799.

  Talleyrand, the former bishop of Autun, was foreign minister and took over Bruix’s responsibilities in the navy ministry until a successor should be appointed. Th

  is meant that, during a time of naval action off Rochefort, the minister responsible was anything other than a naval tactician. Th e

  security of the Republic was threatened and the alliance between France and Spain became very important in respect of maritime tactics.

  As soon as the weather was calm enough for sailings to begin again that spring, the British were cruising in force in the Channel and down the French Atlantic coast. A Spanish squadron under the command of Admiral Don Francisco Melgarejo was dispatched to Rochefort to meet this threat. At the same time, Bruix had arrived in Cadiz, but was ordered to return to Brest, calling in at Rochefort on the way, and to assume Melgarejo’s squadron into his fl eet, now also destined for Brest.

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  e Spaniards arrived at Rochefort on 8 May, the troops and crews establishing themselves on the île Citoyenne (Madame), their headquarters being at Port-des Barques at the mouth of the Charente, while senior offi

  -

  cers were received at Rochefort as the guests of the military commander, Vice-Admiral Pierre Martin.

  Martin had had meteoric promotion in the Republican navy as a genuine example of ‘the career open to the talents’. In January 1793, as a lieutenant,

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  Rochefort

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  he was given command of the frigate Hermione, originally built at Rochefort to take the marquis de Lafayette to America 15 years before, but she was lost on the rocks at Four near the mouth of the Loire on 20 September through no fault of his own.44 He was then given command of a frigate captured from the Spanish when they had been allied with Britain. Th e pilot responsible for the loss of Hermione was found guilty of professional incompetence in a court-martial in November, and Pierre Martin was made a rear-admiral at the same time. After three months he was commander of the French naval forces in the Mediterranean, based at Toulon, retaken after Hood’s departure. December 1796 saw him as a vice-admiral and appointed military commander of the port of Rochefort on account of intuitive skill as a naval tactician as well as his unshakeable revolutionary convictions. He had to cope with the ineffi

  ciency of naval supply under the Directory, and the

  presence of the British 45 fl eet inhibiting the departure of political prisoners to Guyana.46 Nevertheless, as we saw in the case of Villeneau’s frigate, a good deal of shipping did make its way in and out of the Roads of Aix.

  While Spanish offi

  cers were enjoying the sights of the Charente- Inférieure

  and exchanging compliments and presents with Martin, Admiral Bruix was slow in arriving, so consideration was given to sending the Spanish squadron on its own to Brest. Martin had his opposite numbers at Nantes and Brest warned to clear away the British privateers off shore from their stations by means of small ships to enable its passage north.

  On 13 June 1799, while the Spaniards were preparing to leave, a British fl otilla, commanded by Rear-Admiral, Sir Charles Pole, appeared before the île d’Oléron, and intelligence reports said that there was another one further north. Two British frigates and a support ship kept station constantly in the Antioche Narrows while several enemy vessels appeared to have established themselves under the île d’Yeu, off the Vendée coast, ostensibly to prevent Melgarejo’s fl eet from leaving Rochefort.

  Pole sent in boats to assess the armament on the Spanish ships, and then made ready for a confrontation. At fi ve in the morning on 17 June, Vice-Admiral Martin came to the île d’Oléron and found that ‘there were seven ships . . . about four leagues off shore tacking with the NNE wind to hold the entrance of our Roads’, as he wrote to tell Talleyrand.

  Martin also knew that the British squadron at the île d’Yeu was composed of four ships of the line supplemented by several frigates, two of which were at anchor further south in the Breton strait, not far from La Rochelle. Th ere

  were also 15 privateers threatening the coast.

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  e Unseen Terror

  Only one garrison was in arms on the île d’Oléron, whose task was to guard refractory priests imprisoned there, inadequate to prevent a British landing which would be seen as an obvious disaster for the Republic.

  Martin did not trust the eff ectiveness of soldiers from the colonial militia on the île d’Aix. Th

  e île de Ré was the best defended of the three islands,

  but part of the garrison from there had been sent to Grenoble. Martin realized that if the British took these islands, it would be almost impossible to dislodge them again and Rochefort could be forced to surrender. He had to convince Talleyrand of the gravity of the situation:

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  e observations that I am submitting to you, Citizen Minister, are of the greatest importance. I have fulfi lled my duty as a Frenchman; I pray you let me at least fulfi l it as a military man. If the observations which I have the honour to make to you . . . appear consequential enough to be taken into consideration, I pray you to communicate them to the minister of war and let him know the situation on the coast. It is hard to believe that the coast down from Les Sables d’Olonne to the river at Bordeaux should be so badly provided with men.

  On 27 June Martin sounded the alarm.

  Th

  e enemy approaches each day and, at the moment that I write, two frigates are anchored in the roads of La Rochelle, that is to say, at two cannon ranges of the île d’Aix. Th

  ey have told the Spanish admiral that he cannot

  go out to sea, and that they intend to take the île d’Aix . . .

  Melgarejo himself, on the other hand, expressed himself as confi dent about responding to the British threat and expected to be able to attack the British at anchor.

  At ten o’clock on 2 July, the coastguards passed the information to Martin that 11 English ships were positioned in the Roads of La Rochelle. Th en a

  violent cannonade resounded as far inland as Rochefort. Th

  e English and

  Spanish were fi ring upon one another near the île d’Aix, as could be seen from the signal tower in the port. Martin had promised support to Melgarejo, so, at one in the afternoon, he took several armed launches out of the Charente and was alongside the Spanish fl agship by fi ve o’clock. He ordered some neutral ships that had moved out into the Roads to re-enter the river mouth: ‘I swear to you that I do not count enough on their loyalty to make them spectators of our operations’, Martin signalled to Melgarejo as he came near him.

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  Th

  e gunboat S
phinx opened fi re on the smaller British ships. Melgarejo sent launches from his squadron, all armed with cannon, in support. Th e

  British gunboats withdrew, going about and rejoining their large ships. At the same time, the Aix garrison fi red on the British, making them retreat further.

  Early next morning, Pole’s ships left the narrows. It was incontestably a French victory, for which the crew of the Sphinx received the laurels. At four in the afternoon, the British moved further away to take up station two leagues out to sea, but it was thought they would attack again. Th ree

  hundred men from the Spanish squadron landed on the île d’Aix, as well as a hundred French artillerymen and dragoons who were intended for Guadeloupe. Th

  at made, with the colonial troops already there, a force of 800 men which waited in good order for the enemy’s return.

  Th

  e British had incurred too many losses, however, for that to happen.

  Th

  eir gunboats had been towed into safety, but debris from them was found fl oating in the narrows and washed up on the beaches. Th

  ey left to fi nd ref-

  uge behind the île d’Oléron. Th

  eir movements were observed from the light-

  house at Chassiron Point as they went to join the rest of their fl eet off the île d’Yeu. French coastal traffi

  c began again under escort. A British account of

  this action belittles it, saying that ‘on both sides’ it was ‘perfectly harmless’.

  Nevertheless, respect is paid to ‘the superior range of the French mortars’.47

  Melgarejo’s squadron had to put up with delays and fever breaking out, and the presence of a fresh British fl otilla. Admiral Bruix went straight to Brest without calling in for him, and not until another French fl eet arrived from Brest after seven weeks could he leave Rochefort. Even then, he had to wait at La Rochelle for another week because the winds were contrary before making sail for Brest.

  Pierre Martin did not stay in offi

  ce long after these events. He fell ill, and

  was replaced by La Dall-Tromelin, recovered in revolutionary morale after his release from internment as a counter-revolutionary suspect at nearby Brouage. La Dall-Tromelin was in command at Rochefort when news came that Bonaparte had pushed the Directory aside and formed the consulate with Sieyès and Ducos in November.

  chapter 8

  Internment in Brouage

  The deposition of King Louis XVI on 10 August 1792 during the violent day at the Tuileries Palace was the prelude to a period of harsh government and Terror being adopted as offi

  cial policy. On

  the day after the overthrow of the monarchy, the Legislative Assembly gave the municipalities powers to arrest those suspected of not supporting what had taken place.

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  e new National Convention met on 20 September 1792, and intensifi ed the policy against opponents of the Republic, regarding as suspects all those who were denounced as not actually in favour of it. Danton, as minister of justice, Marat, Robespierre, and other Jacobins were being accused by Brissot and other Girondins of having at best looked the other way when the sans-culotte sections of Paris used their assemblies in perpetual session to condemn the bishops, priests, noblemen, and noble women who were hacked to death during the September massacres three weeks after the king lost his power.1 Th

  e excuse given for that savagery was the suspicion that

  the nobles and clergy were conspiring to break out of their prisons and kill the families of soldiers who had left for the eastern border of France to repulse the Austrian and Prussian invaders.

  Suspicion of ‘enemies of the people’ became increasingly focused and, from the spring of 1793 onwards, more and more people were being detained, despite there being as yet no real defi nition of who was a suspect and who was not. Th

  e National Convention passed the Law of Suspects on 17 September 1793 in order to make their selection and imprisonment easier. Th en the process was intensifi ed by the infamous law of 22 prairial (10 June 1794), which gave unrestricted authority to revolutionary tribunals all over the country to act more severely against suspects. Th

  is, in many cases, led to an automatic

  death sentence. It stayed in intensive use for six weeks until after the execution of Robespierre and his associates on 10 thermidor (28 July 1794).

  People like the businessman Mathieu Levesquot at a village called Saint-Saturnin de Séchaud attracted attention because one of his brothers was a 116

  Internment in Brouage

  117

  priest in exile, and another was an emigré in the army of the princes. Th e former maire of Saintes, Gaudriaud, was a suspect because he had not supported the changes that Bernard and Garnier had brought about in the town.

  Th

  e Law of Suspects was so imprecise that anybody could be sent to the revolutionary tribunal, but it allowed political arrests, and certain social types immediately qualifi ed for them. Since the nobles were assumed to be willing to co-operate with the Austrians and Prussians to erode the Revolution, they had to be made harmless. Anyone known to have contact with emigrés, would certainly be in danger of arrest. Th

  is process had been

  gathering momentum since the overthrow of the monarchy, and plenty of people were in the prisons not knowing what would befall them.

  Th

  e third estate fi gured large among the suspects if they were known to be royalist sympathizers or supportive towards priests who had not taken the Oath to the Constitution. Th

  e Vendée rebellion against the Republic

  from February 1793 onwards was too close to the Charente-Inférieure, as we have seen, for its authorities to tolerate such internal opposition. Any bachelor between 18 and 25 who had not presented himself for the army was suspect, no matter if he were a fervid Republican. After 2 June, being a known supporter of the Girondin group, in opposition to what Marillet called ‘the ruling faction’ of Jacobins in the National Convention and which had now been crushed, was suffi

  cient qualifi cation for becoming a suspect.

  Th

  e only way not to be suspect was to apply for, and be granted, a certifi cate of civism from the municipality where you lived. Even with such a certifi -

  cate, you had to be in good standing with the local surveillance committee, who ran around like wolverines in a forest to fi nd suspects everywhere. You stood a good chance of being a suspect if you were wealthy because you might be hoarding grain or speculating in the provisions market.

  It was the committee of surveillance that decided whether you were a suspect or not. A decree of 21 March 1793 ordered the composition of these committees. In every commune there were to be 12 citizens elected to serve on them, who must be neither former nobles nor churchmen, nor any who had been agents of deposed seigneurs. Th

  ey were ordered to draw up lists of sus-

  pects in their communes and impound their private papers at the same time as they ordered their arrest. Under such a system, the members of the committees of surveillance had every incentive to settle old scores and personal grievances.

  Th

  e departmental directory chose the fortress of Brouage in the marshlands south of Rochefort as the principal place to intern the Charente-Inférieure’s suspects.2 Brouage on a summer’s day now is a pleasant tourist attraction

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  e Unseen Terror

  full of craft shops, small galleries, and restaurants. It was the birthplace of Samuel Champlain, the founder of Quebec. Cardinal Richelieu developed it as a naval base before Rochefort was thought of, and it is a masterpiece of contemporary military engineering, with its walls raised up on piles above the marshes. It had a harbour when it was fi rst built and the sea-ward approaches were free for navigation. One of the complaints of the cahier de doléance from the population of Brouage3 was that the deliberate sink-ing of ships fi lled with stones in the channels
on Richelieu’s orders at the time of his siege of La Rochelle in 1628, together with the fact that several of the ships were never raised from the bottom of the channels, had taken Brouage’s trade away and caused the salt marshes to be less productive.4

  Visit Brouage out of season, and you might sense diff erent imprints from the past, as represented by the sad story of Marie Mancini.

  She was Cardinal Mazarin’s niece, and the young Louis XIV was in love with her. Her uncle decided that she had to be removed from the king’s presence because his intended marriage alliance with the Infanta of Spain was considered to be of such great importance. Th

  e governor

  of Brouage was another of her relations, and she spent three and a half months in 1659 as his guest there with a few other girls of her own age, regretting her lost love. On the way back from his Spanish wedding, when Marie had left the place, Louis XIV came himself to Brouage to add to the accumulation of sadness.

  From early summer in 1793 onwards, the suspected opponents of the newly established Republic, denounced by the new committees of surveillance, had a very good chance of spending several months at Brouage. No comfort was available to them in the governor’s palace, though it was still there, since the town was in ruins. Th

  e suspects lived in makeshift dormito-

  ries, their food was irregular, and the supply of bedding and warm clothes was extremely inadequate. Th

  e risk of malaria was constant in the marshes.

  Th

  e French historians of Brouage,5 whose work is the source for most of the material in this chapter, overcome their distaste for the term to call the town at the time of the French Revolution ‘a concentration camp’.

  Rochefort had been chosen as the principal place to keep the suspects at fi rst, but the prisons there were soon overfull and the eyes of the departmental directory fell on Brouage. Th

  e buildings were nearly all empty, including

  the barracks which provided shelter for no more than a half company of army pensioners. Th