e deacon Michel paid 50 francs for a pint of milk.
Th
e camp blew down in the autumn. Some priests heard that the Deux-Associés was ready for them again, and drew up a petition to the authorities at Rochefort not to go back on board her. A ship’s offi
cer took the paper,
along with 200 francs in assignats and someone’s two last gold louis. He burnt the petition once he had the money.
Th
e priests who were not ill on the Deux-Associés had been transferred to l’Indien, and they were now put aboard the Washington. Th at left l’Indien free
for the remaining sick priests from the île Madame. By 5 November all the moves had been made, and the convalescents were back on the Deux-Associés.
Th
ey were no longer locked in between decks at night now, and Captain Laly’s behaviour refl ected political change. Winter closed in. Th ey had no
blankets. Th
e sickness had not gone away any more than the lice. Even if between decks was clean on the Deux-Associés now, and eight shared a table to have the same rations as the sailors, there were still a great number who were ill or convalescent and they were very hungry. On l’Indien conditions were more bearable, since mattresses and bedcovers were provided, along with soup twice a day, but this was still a prison sentence.31
A change of government in Paris had little eff ect at this time upon the misery of the priests. All they could do was stay alive long enough to be released. No one in an offi
cial position seemed ready to plead their cause.
Th
ey had disappeared.
chapter 13
Persecution and
Reinstatement
After the Terror was over in Rochefort, a naval offi cer serving on the frigate Gloire and a Protestant businessman called Elie Th omas wrote to
Henri Grégoire1 to say that, although the priests on the ships had broken the law, their treatment was part of the systematic bloodletting which had oppressed the whole of France. Th
ey suggested transferring them to Brouage as
suspects instead of leaving them to rot in the Roads of Aix any longer.2
On 20 December, the detainees on the Deux-Associés, the Washington, and l’Indien were not alone. Th
e Gentil (or Jeanty) arrived, followed nine days afterwards by the Dunkerque and the Républicain carrying other priests who had been brought to Bordeaux. Th
ey were allowed to exchange visits,
and concerts were given by the priests from Bordeaux who had managed to keep their musical instruments, but they had no prospect of freedom as they went from ship to ship.3 Th
e ships had become unseaworthy hulks,
usually referred to by French writers as les pontons de Rochefort.
* * *
On 27 December, the Committee of General Security decided to move the detainees on the three Rochefort ships to Saintes. François-Guillaume Marillet’s journal says that as early as 3 January 1795 news reached Saintes about ‘our poor priests detained on vessels at Rochefort and the Isle of Aix to the number of about eight hundred from all the Departments, waiting for their deportation since they were put on those vessels, and of whom nearly six hundred had died’.
It is not clear whether this was the fi rst knowledge Marillet had of all this. Th
at he has more to say in this entry suggests it was not so well kept a secret as the authorities hoped it was.
178
Persecution and Reinstatement
179
Th
ey are eaten with lice and they have so many of them that people are reluctant to approach them. It is being said at the moment that the representative of the people on mission at Rochefort had them transferred to Brouage, but this is by no means certain. Th
ere are some among them who
have had the good luck to get away and return to their families, but it is a very small number. We must hope that these confessors of the faith do not have to wait to derive pleasure from the sort of government we now have, and that they will come out of their tomb like a second Lazarus . . . 4
As a prelude to the arrival of the priests from the ships, Marillet’s entry on 9 January (he never used the revolutionary calendar in his journal) says that sixty seven men and women, such as fathers and wives of emigrés, suspects and nuns from all orders detained in the Abbaye aux Dames, were set free and that it was announced that all the others would be let out on 13th on the orders of Leriget.
Leriget was the national agent of the district, castigated elsewhere by Marillet for his cruelty, but he comments now that ‘he appeared as kind, honest and well-meaning, as he had been hard and inhuman. Th
is is the conduct that
new circumstances have prescribed for him; it is all they require of him.’
Marillet follows this by a comment which represents the immediate reaction of an ordinary citizen to the government emerging after the fall of Robespierre:
Th
is new régime is hard to understand. In fact we do not understand it at all. It is the perfect opposite of what there used to be three months ago.
All the unhappy men and women [suspects] have been let go, though they have been stripped of all their property and all their furniture; they have been left no more than freedom to breathe at their ease in the midst of their devastation. It is unbelievable.5
Th
e Municipality of Saintes was ordered to make arrangements for the arrival of 366 priests on 10 January, but the Charente and the estuary froze over, so no movement was possible until February, and no adequate quantities of supplies could be brought to the ships off Port-des-Barques; especially now there were six of them.
Marillet did not believe that these arrangements presaged any good purpose.
Th
e house [i.e., the Abbey] had to be empty by that evening. In truth, we can conceive nothing of the way all the administrative bodies work and
180 Th
e Unseen Terror
their way of thinking which is entirely bloodstained ( sanguinière): at present very humane, but since they still maintain the character of the Jacobins it pains them much to act diff erently. So we can say that we still have the tail of Robespierre ( la queue de Robespierre) in all its force.6
When at last the thaw came, the transfer decided upon in Paris took eff ect.
Th
e deportees from Rochefort began making their way to Saintes, and those from Bordeaux to Brouage. Th
e priests had to be put back on the ship where
they had been incarcerated in the fi rst place. After that, the Deux-Associés and the Washington moved into the mouth of the Charente and made their way upriver. Th
ey took four days to get to Rochefort, and when they reached the town, Deux-Associés broke her last anchor and crashed into a Danish ship.
Next day, 6 February, boats came to move the priests to Tonnay-Charente, but they were not set ashore until the next morning.
Th
ey were taken on carts as far as Saint-Porchaire, where they were put in the church for the night. Th
ey found the walls inside covered with
Republican slogans, and painted over the west door was this: ‘Th e French
people recognize the existence of the Supreme Being and the Immortality of the soul.’ Fires were lit in the nave for warmth, but the smoke could not escape from the church and sleep was hard to come by.
Th
ey arrived at Saintes in the early afternoon of 8 February, and went across the bridge through the Roman Germanicus Arch to the Abbaye aux Dames.
Marillet met some of them and heard that, from the Rochefort ships, only 251 priests survived out of 764. All those who had died had done so from misery, from lice, and as the result of the bad treatment which they had been made to suff er . . . Th
ey arrived here full of lice and with their
clothes in rags. Th
&nb
sp; ey could not change these because they had been robbed
of everything when they had gone on board the ships: clothes, linen, cases, gold, silver, assignats, and even their breviaries, all had been pilfered. Th ey
had been fed on very black bread, beans and water. Th
ey were crammed
together one on top of each other in the sleeping space, and to make them die quicker, they put a barrel full of mixture there, throwing in a red hot bullet so that the vapour would choke them – they even shut the doors.
Th
ey were all very weak and infi rm. Th
e number of charitable acts that
were done towards them in the town is surprising. Some carried them off to change their clothes, to delouse them, to get them warm, and a great number went to stay in private homes where they were taken care of. I have a relation called Lalaurencie Chaduri d’Augumois who came to stay at my house and of whom my daughter took great care. Th
ey were brought food
Persecution and Reinstatement
181
and clothes of all kinds, it could be said that the town stripped itself to clothe them.7
Marillet was very sorry for them and did his best to help where he could.
Yet he was in no mood to compromise his principles, and he observes that they were not all honest men. Th
ere were forty of them who had taken the
oath. Two were married. Th
ere was a constitutional bishop among them
who had been elected bishop before being ordained priest . . . All these people had been deported by judgements of the tribunals, and it was the change of system to which they owed their better fortune. We are assured that they will not be staying here for long, and that each one will be sent to his respective District. Out of forty who went from the town, so many from the Carmelites and from the Abbey, only two have come back: M.
Mongrand of the Charterhouse, and Father Michael, Guardian of the Capuchins at Rochefort or La Rochelle, and they are two worthy men, above all Father Mongrand whom I know particularly well. Every ten days some who have obtained their liberty leave. Th
e picture they paint of the
suff erings they were made to endure makes us groan. Th
ey fi nd themselves
in paradise here. Th
ey are very cheerful, and they fi nd amusement in mak-
ing up songs.
Marillet carefully wrote out one of the songs which they had started to make up as soon as they were told they were leaving the ships to come here.
Th
ere are 11 triumphalist verses. Th
e Carmelite priests wrote a riposte to
it in fi ve more and, Marillet says, ‘Th
is [second] song seems to me the fruit
of great riches.’
However happy they might be at their comparative freedom, the priests like everybody else in Saintes were feeling the cold. Th
e word exceptionnel
was on many lips in February 1795. Marillet says that
the cold has begun again from an impetuous north wind and ice which did not give up until 18th. My thermometer went down to five degrees below freezing. The sun has appeared every day. On 19th there was snow, and the thaw came on 21st. There is the feeling that the cold has disappeared.8
Th
e central government of France was still offi
cially de-Christianized.
Moreover, in September 1794, the budget for the cults, out of which the salaries of the constitutional priests came, had been cancelled. In February 1795 there was a decree for the separation of Church and State
182 Th
e Unseen Terror
which meant that churches could be opened, but the State had no obligation towards them.9 Th
e municipality assembled the priests to hear a lec-
ture about all this, mainly to reassure them that they had nothing to fear.
Th
e municipality petitioned the National Convention for power to close down the committee of surveillance. Th
is was done very quickly.
Marillet says it took four days. It emerges that the Convention had already made the decree suppressing such bodies, and this is why the members of the committee in Saintes were looking round for something to justify their existence – and their pay – by interrogating some women and nuns ‘in a Robespierrist manner’ about a crackpot letter supposed to have been written in gold which descended from heaven 20 years before and conferred easy childbirth and a cure for many illnesses on those who had sight of it.10
Th
e priests were certainly welcome in the homes of traditionalist Catholics.
Th
ere are many Masses said in the town by the priests who come out of Notre Dame [the Abbey] with passes saying their profession was nursing, and greasing the palms of their guardian, Massiou. Th
e houses where there
are chapels are those of Mesdames Mongrand [a relation of the admired Carthusian?], the Widow Labbé, Bouyer, Charnier the younger, Dière, Rabillard, Marviaux, Lolalie, Faure, Pichon, Boutinet, Mareschel, Pureau, Grou and Antoine. Th
ese are all women of my acquaintance.11
Th
e priests spread out into the villages, accepting invitations to say mass and to hear confessions, baptize babies, and solemnize marriages. All the same, their liberation was slow to appear. Th
e constitutional priests were
freed fi rst, but the refractory priests received family letters saying that the Committee of General Security had ordered their liberation whether they had taken the Oath to the Constitution or not.
Th
e decisive factor in their being set free was a correspondence from a man from Rochefort, La Mermilière, with someone called Guyot, who was the father-in-law of Louis Legendre, a friend of the late Georges Danton and his supporter in the Cordeliers Club. Legendre used his position on the Committee of General Security to set the victims of the Terror free.
We can only speculate about his own feelings, but he had been president of the assembly of the Luxembourg section assembly when it gave the order to arrest those who were massacred in the Carmelite convent garden in September 1792. Some of the priests who had blown in from Bordeaux
Persecution and Reinstatement
183
and were still anchored off Port des Barques had been, from January 1795, the fi rst to benefi t from his attitude. He then turned his attention to those at Saintes.
Th
e painstaking Marillet compiled a
list of the priests from diff erent Departments condemned to deportation and who had been transferred to the vessels Vaginston ( sic), and Bonhomme ( sic) in the roads of Rochefort near the île d’Aix, divided by Departments
. . . I did not write this list merely for my own interest but I have regard for several of my children who, not having any fortune, will perhaps be obliged to travel to earn their living, and my hope is of fi nding protectors for them among these gentlemen in the towns where they might fi nd themselves.
In recognition of the welcome that the people of Saintes gave them on this occasion, they will remember the children of this town and be able to give [the same kind of ] help that their fathers gave, and provide them with protection to fi nd them positions or just to help them. Th is is the motive
which makes me do this and I think, in doing justice to their sentiments, I am not deceiving myself.12
He reproduced what the priests said to express their gratitude to the Saintais:
It is a sacred duty for us to express our recognition for all your benifi cence.
You welcomed us and drew us out of our misery. Your care impressed us and gave us back our life. You forgot your own needs abundantly to satisfy ours. For more than two months that we have felt the eff ects of your charity, far from easing off , it seems to have increased. We suff er from not being able to respond to your bounty except by means of
words well beneath what we feel, but we raise our hands to heaven on account of your being inspired to care for us, and may that be your recompense.
‘Th
is letter appeared at the time of their being set entirely at liberty, and M. Pibia was its author’, Marillet adds.13
Th
e priests from the ships at Rochefort were not the only ones freed in the town of Saintes. Th
ere were those over 60 who had been shut up in
‘houses of reclusion’ like the convent of the Carmelites, and they were set free on 2 April 1795. Th
ere had been 30 of them, and already 6 or 7 had
come out as a result of individual applications by their families. Marillet was obviously apprehensive about what would happen to those who were free, as in hindsight he might well have been.
184 Th
e Unseen Terror
As long as this is not a trap that they mean to hold out to these good people, the new régime of the Convention makes its announcement out of gentleness and humanity more acceptable in them after such a cruel persecution, and we draw from it a very great advantage from the spiritual help that we receive from it. It is good to think that the Convention will maintain this stance.14
On 22 April, as a result of two letters written by Leriget to the municipality, an order was announced saying that all citizens had to go and make a declaration within 24 hours if they were lodging any priests who were not from Saintes in their houses.
Intending to do this on account of a Capucin father whom I have received out of humanity into my house when he came out of prison, I was made to read him Leriget’s letter which ordered that they should leave the town within twenty four hours unless they had legitimate reasons of illness which they must come and declare to the District. Th
is conduct of Leriget’s shows
that there is in him a decided taste for Robespierre’s system, as a result of which he cannot extract himself from continuing to do as much evil as he can . . . [Leriget does not realize that] in default of any means, after being stripped of everything when they went on the ships, as well as the fact that they cannot fi nd carriages or horses because they are few and far between, and because the few that there are sell for an exorbitant price (to be driven to Angoulême they have been asked to pay six hundred livres, into Perigord two thousand, and to Paris three thousand). But the despotic and tyran-nical Leriget wants them to go and they will go. He is one of the men of probity, as the Convention used to call them – and still does. Although they are the ones who have done so much harm, they want to appear to be doing good. What? Th
The Unseen Terror Page 26