Another request came to the District Directory ‘from the Lady Baudéan Parabère on 23rd September at mid-day’. She asked that ‘as a result of her great infi rmities and her continual fevers, she should be allowed to remain in her apartments until she was recovered, at the charge of paying rent for them to start on 10th October next’.17 In view of the certifi cate from Doctor Fourestier dated 18 October pointing out the serious state of her health, the attorney-general took note: ‘We think that because of the grave illness with which the superior of the Benedictines fi nds herself affl icted
at this time, she can be allowed not to leave the house until her convalescence permits her to vacate it without danger, or until the sale of it is completed.’ In accepting her request, however, the administrators were anxious to point out that if she made any kind of fuss, they would not comply with her wishes, but they wanted to show themselves as being concerned for a sick old woman.
Th
e abbess died on 30 September.18
After she was dead, the question of what to do with her belongings remaining in her rooms arose. Th
ere was said to be a sack containing 1000
livres in a cupboard in her bedroom, and another one containing assignats for household expenses for which the remaining nuns made a claim. Th e
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e Unseen Terror
opinion of the municipality, reached as a result of the attorney-general’s advice, was that the law of 4 October 1790 did not allow the sisters to gain anything from it if they left the abbey to recover their ‘political’ (secular) existence. Th
ey could not keep the furniture taken with them when they
left, nor could their relations inherit it. Th
ey could not even sell the furni-
ture from their cells, as was the case for the sisters who had already left the convent and for the abbess who had died still resident there, according to article 24 of the law of 16 August 1792.19
Th
e Directory offi
cials claimed that the money claimed as salary by the
sisters was not in the cash box in the abbey treasurer’s offi ce, where such sums
ought to have been kept. If it had been, then that money would have been separate from any other which might have been inherited by relations of the ci-devant abbess. Well before her death, the account of each sister ought to have been fi nalized at the time the law ordered their dispersal. All others who presented themselves as distant relatives of Dame Parabère, since the law did not recognize them, were declared ineligible to benefi t from their claims. As reported in the Directory’s minutes, the situation of her heirs was very confused and the wrangling went on after the death of the abbess for another three months – a particular bone of contention was the inheritance of an expensive harpsichord. What is remarkable is the reluctance to come to an agreement on the part of the District Directory, whose attention was on anything which might produce cash for the war eff ort.
Former abbey servants who had worked there for a long time were considered, and a decision was made that redundancy payments should be paid to them in accordance with the law, now that they were out of work.
Th
e money was to come from what was left of the abbey’s capital. Th ere is
quite a lengthy list of these former employees drawn up between December 1792 and April 1793, together with a record of what they each were to receive. Th
e redundancy payments that the district decided upon, which would have provided a lot of artillery pieces and a great number of military uniforms, appear to have been 28,037 livres, not counting the open-ended payments off ered to some of the employees. It may have appeared a generous settlement to all but the shepherd who got nothing after 13 years’ service, but there is no confi rmation that it was ever paid. Unless it was a one-off payment settled immediately, it may have gone the same way as the salaries of constitutional priests which ceased entirely in 1795.
On 7 October 1792, the department had examined a proposition dealing with the lodging of priests who had refused the oath but were infi rm and more
National Property and Closed Convents
165
than 60 years old in a building opposite the west front of the abbey church.
It contained 24 bedrooms with fi replaces which did not need repairs, but they turned it down in favour of the Carmelites up on the ramparts,20 where, instead of being looked after, the old men were systematically pillaged, and at least one died as a result of the treatment he received there.21
On 22 October 1792, the District Directory decreed that the sale ‘of horses which were found at the abbey and were the cause of useless expense’
should be announced by posters. Th
e remaining sisters were being expelled
‘to avoid the cost of guarding them’, and the impending sale of the buildings and orangeries was announced by posters. On 15 October, the citizens of the church of Saint-Eutrope asked for the altar and the iron stair-rails from the abbey church, and the altar alone, not the stair-rails, was given,
‘the National Assembly having dedicated this material to the manufacture of pikes’. Th
e search for metal objects ran on and on.22 Th
e profi t from the
sale of the abbey furniture was announced as a mere 32 livres 10 sols, and the auction lasted three days.23
A payment of 175 livres for the quarter year just completed was made on 30 January 1793 to Catherine Maron, ci-devant Benedictine, last of the nuns of the Abbaye aux Dames in a long line from the foundation of the house by Geoff rey Martel, Count of Anjou, and his wife Agnès de Bourgogne in 1047.24
In January 1793, the Directory proposed to make the former convent into barracks, and on 7 May a sum of 206 livres was set aside by the municipality to pay the workmen who had knocked down cupboards in the churches and buildings of religious communities at the instigation of the Republican Society. Th
ree workmen gained approval for their invoice
of 55 livres for taking down the stalls in the choir of the abbey church in March 1794 and, on 11 July, a man called Bonhomeau was ordered to carry out works for the establishment of a prison at the abbey. Between July and October, Guibaut and Rocheteau, who were market gardeners, complained about the loss of fruit for the sick and convalescents still at the abbey, and there was a complaint from a farmer of the fi elds next to the gardens against the orchards and fi elds being taken as a cemetery, but that is what happened on 1 October.25
From then onwards there is a list of depredations: the organ pipes could be taken by anyone who wanted them and gave their equivalent weight in metal in exchange for them. It was commented that ‘this exchange will turn to public instruction and the Republic will lose nothing’. Th e district
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e Unseen Terror
offi
cial Vanderquand, whose signature on many documents is enormous, was allowed to rent part of the garden for 36 livres to start a new orangery.
M. Jules, director of the military hospice, was allowed to take the planks of a wooden staircase from the choir for work to be done at his establishment. Th
e municipality was able to take 25 planks for use at
the 11th Hussars depot. Rullier, another locksmith, received 25 livres for more work involved in making the abbey into a prison. To make sure that the symbolism for a national property was right, workmen were sent into the buildings to chisel off all the noble coats of arms they could fi nd in the stonework, as Bernard de Saintes was doing at the same time while taking over the Duchy of Montbéliard from the House of Württemburg.26
In the darkness of what was soon to happen, a quiet note in the council records becomes something of ominous proportions when we learn that Manseau, a locksmith, was paid eight livres for work done to enable the imprisonment of priests who had refused the oath. It is probable that people like him became a bit better off in these years with so many people being put under lock and key
.
An offi
cer called Dubousquet asked if the abbey could be emptied to accommodate his company which was guarding some Spanish deserters and several other detainees. Th
e department conceded the enjoyment of
two gardens adjoining the abbess’s fl owerbed free to army veterans when the previous letting expired. Old glass panels could be taken away to replace those that were broken at the military hospital.
Offi
cials paid a visit in July 1794 to see whether there would be room to bring the detainees dispersed elsewhere at present in four prisons into the abbey.
‘Too many risks would be run’, the attorney-general advised the district, ‘if the prisons stood on one side of this enclosure and the warders found it impossible to stop communication with the other side where there would be shops and your grain stores . . . under the gaze of evil doers who could be enemies of the people. I think that you should not even look at the property.’27
As we shall see, that opinion did not prevail for long.
chapter 12
Disappearing Priests
During the autumn of 1792, the priests who had refused to take the Oath to the Constitution made their way to the frontiers facing all sorts of indignities and insults and some were even murdered on the journey. Nobody risked protecting them for fear of being denounced for it. Priests from the coastal diocese of Saintes were perhaps more fortunate than those whose parishes were far inland because they managed to reach Spain in safety. Even so, they could not avoid being searched by customs men at border posts or robbed by offi
cials as they passed checkpoints on
roads and rivers.
Th
e Departmental Directory of the Charente-Inférieure had ordered that priests leaving the country could take only 50 livres with them. Every jack-in-offi
ce took upon himself the right to enforce this edict. An example of this is found in the registers of Annepont, a little parish near Taillebourg, where the municipality minutes record the departure of their curé in the entry for 10 September 1792, a month after the overthrow of the monarchy and a week after the massacres in Paris:
M. le Curé Jean-Baptiste David decided to leave for Spain. With him was the Curé of Nantillé, Samuel Saint-Médard.1 Th
ey slept at Taillebourg and the
same night took a boat on the Charente at about two hours after midnight, and arrived in the afternoon alongside a guard post, where the offi cials paid
them a visit, took all the silver they found on them and gave them paper money instead. On Wednesday at three o’clock in the afternoon, they raised anchor and set sail for their destination in a brig owned by M. Simmonet of Saint-Savinien who took great risks with such priests on board.2
When the time for voluntary exile had expired, department, district, and even municipal offi
cials were writing to their higher echelons of power to
ask where to send any refractory priests who were denounced to them for not having left. Th
e government ministries in Paris seemed to be making up
167
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e Unseen Terror
their replies to the departments as they went along.3 Th
e attorney-general
of the Charente-Inférieure, Réné Eschasseriaux, wrote to the minister of the Interior from Saintes to tell him that three priests who had not left the Republic in the time the law allowed had been taken to La Rochelle. He asked him to give the orders for them to be transported to Guyana. After three weeks, the harassed Roland replied that Eschasseriaux’s predecessor had already asked him that question, but he could not answer it until the navy minister had announced his intentions.4
On 14 January 1793, another law was passed which off ered a reward of 100 livres for denouncing any refractory priest who still had not left France.
More laws, dated 18 March and 23 April, said that all refractory priests found on the territory of the Republic had to be brought before a military tribunal and ‘suff er the death penalty within twenty-four hours’.5 Th ose
who sheltered priests, even if they were their relations, would also suff er the death penalty and a certain number of priests came out of hiding and surrendered to the authorities to save their protectors.
In May 1793, the new navy minister, Dalbarade, drew up a plan for the deported priests to settle at Macary, a long way from the main settlement of Cayenne, so that they could have no infl uence on disaff ected colonists in Guyana.6 Th
ey would become farmers, with 30 or 40 slaves to assist
them, women to set up a laundry, and an armed force to keep them in their enclave. Th
e expenditure involved would soon be recovered by selling their produce, and their fanatical infl uence would soon be eradicated. Necessary provisions were listed: building materials, livestock, tools, and furniture for three-man huts. Th
e cost was an estimated 2,198 livres for each deportee
and no more than 200 of them were expected at a time. Th
e Conven-
tion ordered Dalbarade to draw up the decree based upon his plan, and he turned all his suggestions into articles for it.7
Meanwhile, the departments did not wait for orders. From April 1793
onwards they sent many priests condemned to deportation to Bordeaux and Rochefort. On 14 December 1793 at Saintes, it was reported that in a session of the general council [of the Departmental Directory] two gendarmes appeared at the offi
ce . . . who said that they had been ordered
to bring forty nine priests sentenced to deportation in the Department of the Allier to Saintes to be taken to Rochefort, and the Council has ordered Citizen Macaire, one of its members, to go to the house of the former abbey to choose the place in which to lodge them while they are waiting for vessels to transport them down the river Charente.
Disappearing
Priests
169
Macaire made his report, and the part of the Abbaye aux Dames called New Lodgings was used to accommodate the priests. Mattresses and other necessities were put there, and a guard was available once they arrived.
Th
ere were 51 priests on the gendarmes’ list, but one was dead, and another was too ill to go any further and had been left in a hospital on the way. Th
e president of the Departmental Directory, the Protestant shipowner Garesché, was satisfi ed enough to sign this report because Catholic priests of the old order did not exist any more.8
During a debate in the National Convention on 24 July 1793 Dalbarade’s project was summarized. Th
en Georges-Jacques Danton suggested leaving
them on a beach in Italy instead:
Th
at’s the country for fanaticism, and it was in that way that the former government dealt with the Jesuits . . . Th
e empire of the Holy Father [is]
where we must concentrate this priestly stink. It will make an explosion there, doubtless, and destroy itself. Th
e furtive return of these fanatics is
feared, but if they dare to come back, we must consider them as outlaws under pain of death . . . if they return to French territory, then they die!
Pierre-Joseph Cambon, chairman of the Convention’s fi nance committee currently presiding over the infl ation of the assignat, said Italy was too near: If you throw a large number of these malefactors into Italy, you will see them forming the advance-guard of your enemies, taking Nice and Haute-Provence from you . . . What merits more discussion is maintaining the decree which sends them to the New World. In any case, that would be an economy: it is a mistake to fear the expense of chasing this political pestilence far from the Republic.
Maximilien Robespierre intervened with fastidious circumlocution: It is permitted for one to be astonished at the circumstances in which such a delicate question is being brought up. Th
e National Convention has passed
a wise decree to remove the
contagious pestilence of the fanatical priests far from French soil, and today it is proposed to it that they should be brought back to us . . . but it is forgotten that, if they remain in France, they will always be a rallying point for conspirators, and that a sedition could at any moment deliver and release these ferocious beasts into the midst of us. It is forgotten that from the threshold of their prison they could again poison the people by their sacrilegious writings. Th
e diffi
culty of transport is used
in opposition to this decree which takes them far from us. I do not recogn-ise this diffi
culty at all . . . I demand that the decree be carried out.
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e Unseen Terror
Antagonism towards the clergy on a national scale was clearly represented in this debate, but the decision was referred to a committee.9 Nevethe-less, the captive priests continued to be brought from all over France to Bordeaux or Rochefort.
* * *
In the phase of the Revolution known as the Terror, when the constructive elements of what had been achieved disappeared down a side street while the main road was taken over by the representatives on mission from the National Convention and its Committee of Public Safety, the priests would be made to ‘disappear’. Lequinio actually used the word in a report to the Convention.10 Th
e Popular Society at Rochefort represented this extreme
view, and sent a letter to the National Convention to announce that the monster of fanaticism is dead; the Eternal is not known here any more;
[the new] cult is the love of humanity, of liberty and equality. Th ere are no
more Christians, neither Catholics nor Calvinists. Th
ere are only men who
reason as true republicans, totally delivered from superstitions.11
Constitutional priests who had changed their minds about the oath were sent to the revolutionary tribunal at Rochefort. One of them was Louis-Marie Léonard, curé of Marennes, whose active support for the Revolution in his parish did not prevent him from being sentenced to deportation for life.
The Unseen Terror Page 24