The Unseen Terror

by Richard Ballard

  ere will not be a total change? We will not have a new and

  more just government?15

  Freedom was one thing. Being able to travel to the other side of France, perhaps, was another.

  On 21st July, the Department enforced the decree which ordered the refractory priests who were not from the town itself to leave within twenty four hours to present themselves in their respective communes. Th e president

  and another member [of the Departmental Directory] have done all they could to delay this unjust and unnecessary measure, but it has not been possible. Th

  e majority carried it. One member in support of the measure has said that it was so necessary that, if we would give him twenty four hours, he would present to the Department a woman who had made her confession to one of these men who had asked her if her husband was a

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  185

  patriot, and counselled her that if he was, then she should cut his throat.

  Can you take calumny and villainy any farther? Th

  e statement caused hor-

  ror. One cannot conceive how the Department has been able to bring itself to make such a decree at a time when all men enjoy liberty . . . 16

  As a result of private and public pressure, priests set free in Saintes fanned out over France on the road network to make their way to their families as unemployed men in the many departments from which they had been deported. Some of them had to pass through Paris and they called on Louis Legendre to thank him for their release – to his great embarrassment. The present administration was still as anti-religious as the one which preceded it, and so would be the Directory which followed it. The priests were at liberty at the moment, but they were redundant.

  In spite of all he had consistently been saying for six years, François- Guillaume Marillet had to admit that life means compromise from time to time. He had been in need of work, and stood for election to offi

  ce in the town as a judge

  and was successful. He had been putting his name forward since August 1791, and had been elected a deputy judge without actually attending sittings but, in October 1795, he was elected again as one, albeit the last to be appointed, receiving only 57 votes as compared to 268 for the most favoured candidate. On 19 March 1796, he was elected to offi

  ce in the civil tribunal and, on 13 January

  1797, as we saw in Chapter 5, he had to sign the release paper for Joseph-Honoré Darbelet, who had been convicted of murdering a priest at La Rochelle nearly four years before. Marillet was the sixth among twelve judges elected to the civil tribunal on 3 May 1797. Six months later, he had risen to be the third judge.

  Finally, in early 1800, he was made president of the Correctional Tribunal in La Rochelle, and he died in offi

  ce there on 5 March.17

  * * *

  Th

  ere are two postscripts, as it were, to the story of the priests on the hulks moored off Rochefort. Th

  e fi rst concerns the ships themselves. Les Deux-

  Associés was a Nantes ship, laid off from her rôle as a slave ship to become a transport for chalk and coal before she became a prison for priests. She was returned to her owners in February 1796. A month later, the Washington was wrecked on the Point des Baleines at the north-western extremity of the île de Ré on her way back to Lorient.18

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  e Unseen Terror

  Th

  e other postscript concerns Laly, the captain of Les Deux-Associés. He was charged in court with undue harshness towards his prisoners. His trial dragged on for some time and Lelarge, Chevillard’s successor at Rochefort, wanted to have done with it, especially since no one wanted to serve under Laly’s command any longer. Th

  e Committee of Public Safety passed judge-

  ment that ‘the wrongs for which he could be reproached appeared to be more those of a lost man than of an accomplice of a régime of blood’. He was authorized to take service in the merchant navy, but ‘he was not judged worthy to be employed by the State’. After that, he lived a mediocre existence back home on the île de Ré. He had no regular income because he was not a commissioned offi

  cer.19 One day in Louis XVIII’s reign, he came home to

  his house at Saint-Martin-de-Ré and found the Abbé Joseph-Nicolas Adam on his doorstep. He was now the Chaplain of the 52nd Regiment of the Line, stationed on the island, and he asked Laly if he remembered him from the Deux-Associés. He said he did, and the priest gave him 20 gold pieces.20

  Th

  e curé of Saint-Martin-de-Ré recounted in a book published in 1877

  that Jean-Baptiste-René Laly was reconciled with the Catholic faith at the age of 70 in the town hospice, and that he died there on 18 April 1836.21

  * * *

  Th

  e vessels from Bordeaux stayed at anchor where they had fetched up. No one knew what to do with this remaining embarrassing cargo. Th e priests

  became a little less numerous as some died and others who had powerful friends and patrons were singled out for release. At one point it seemed as if they would all get away. Every fortnight, the Committee of General Security changed its president, and Louis Legendre was given the immense powers of the presidency of it at the same time as conditions for travel improved in the spring thaw. He decided that all the priests who requested release should be given it. Th

  e good news reached the three ships, and lists

  of detainees’ names were drawn up, once more in too much of a hurry, and there were a great number whose names were left off them, as had already happened on the Rochefort ships. A corrected copy was sent to Paris, but by the time it reached the Committee it was too late because Legendre’s fortnight was over. Th

  e priests whose names were not on the fi rst list stayed

  where they were.

  On 14 April 1795, the District of Marennes was informed on the orders of Citizen Blutel, representative of the people in the Charente-Inférieure, that

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  187

  250 priests were going to be transferred to Brouage from the ships at anchor off Port-au-Barques. Provisions were already on the way; all that remained was to get lodgings ready. Th

  eir stay would not last long and it was even thought

  that they would be allowed to return to their homes within 15 days.

  On 26 April 1795, 203 priests were put ashore, and taken to Brouage by road, while the other 42, too ill for the land journey, were taken there by boat with such baggage as there was. Th

  e number of detainees would never

  remain static during the year they stayed there. Some who were being looked after in the hospital at Rochefort came to rejoin the others at Brouage after they had recovered enough. Th

  irty even came to be freed. It is impossible

  to say how many there were in the absence of an offi

  cial list.22

  Th

  ey were given no mattresses or palliasses, not even any straw. Six months later, when it was cold, things were just the same. Th ey counted

  themselves lucky if they could fi nd a plank to sleep on. A whole administrative correspondence insists on the insalubrity and unsuitability of the lodgings. Th

  ey stayed there for a year and, like their counterparts from the Rochefort ships, were released after a while spent in the abbey at Saintes.

  Marillet was not keeping his journal any more by that time.

  * * *

  During the National Directory under Barras and his successive colleagues, action against the priests all over France began again, and hulks off the isles of Ré and Oléron, and the citadels there, were used as prisons for them.

  Th

  e deprivation was by no means as severe, but it lasted for upwards of four years until the Concordat, which First Consul Bonaparte made with Pope Pius VII.

  Th

  e traditionalist church was well organized because the Pope had demanded
that the exiled bishops continue to direct it from wherever they might be. Monseigneur de Coucy, who still regarded himself as bishop of La Rochelle, sent his directives from Pamplona to be copied and distributed at the risk of the women who did it being denounced.23 So the Church reconstituted itself largely by itself and, in 1801, nominations were made to parishes when around a 150 priests returned from exile and exercised their ministry in the former diocese. Th

  en Bonaparte made his Concordat with the Pope

  and legitimized the situation. Th

  e former vicaire of Rioux, Pierre Guilleme-

  teau, came back as curé in 1802 (his natural adversary Citizen Bouquet had died the year before), and continued in offi

  ce until his death in 1823.

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  e Unseen Terror

  Many constitutional priests had accepted the progressive ideas of their parishioners and were working in good faith, but when the Revolution was over, they had to retract publicly – or in private before their bishop alone so as not to be humiliated before those to whom they were ministering. Th

  e unhappiest were those who had married, sometimes under

  pressure from local opinion, and they could not take up their priesthood again unless their wives had died, or they were able to have their civil marriages annulled. Th

  is was an issue of strangely infl ated importance. It

  seems that about 12,000 of the constitutional priests on a national scale did marry.24 One of them, Montillé, was the curé of Taillant, a village between Saint-Savinien and Saint-Jean-d’Angély. He had been a Franciscan monk and had married the niece of the constitutional bishop of Saint-Maixent in the Vendée. He changed his mind about the married state and, at the time of Bonaparte’s Concordat, was nominated curé of Coucoury, not far away from Taillant.

  * * *

  Bonaparte wanted to re-establish the Church to gain the support of royalists and to give greater social stability. His Concordat and Organic Articles of 1802 specifi ed that the bishops in concert with the prefects in each department should establish a new map of parishes. Th

  e Prefect of the Charente-

  Inférieure quickly announced the free exercise of the cult and instituted curés of the fi rst rank at a salary of 1,500 francs, more at the second rank on a salary of 1,000, and others as assistants.

  At the end of 1802, a decree of the Consuls at the instigation of the minister of fi nance required that an inventory of the churches and presbyteries should be made, and an account given of how much had been devastated, how many chalices melted down at the Hôtel des Monnaies, how many bells taken away, how many churches disposed of, and how many presbyteries sold or occupied by the village schoolmaster. Th

  e state repaired the fabrics,

  with interior repairs to be paid for out of the off erings of the worship-pers, the exterior out of public funds. Th

  e municipalities quickly voted the

  sums needed to top up the salaries of the vicars and other clergy, such as chaplains at hospitals, schools, and prisons. Th

  ose who sat on municipal

  councils were most often those who had bought church lands, presbyteries, or libraries of curés and who wanted to be reconciled to the Church while keeping their acquisitions.25

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  189

  Th

  e Concordat was the imposition of a peace formula for the Church and, to a great extent, it worked. In the context of the refractory priests and their opponents, Bonaparte’s decision to reconcile the consular Republic with the Catholic Church was one of the reasons for his acceptance as Emperor two years later, because it aligned the Church behind his régime and helped to pacify the rebellious Chouans who continued the same struggle as the Vendéans in the west of France.

  Bonaparte had gone further than any ancien régime monarch in claiming divine authority to support his throne.26 Th

  e law of 18 germinal year

  X modifi ed what had been agreed with Pius VII by means of the Organic Articles, which regulated how the French Catholic Church worked. Contact between the French clergy and Rome was restricted and, after 1804, the Emperor asserted his own control over the bishops and clergy. A similar arrangement was made for the Calvinists and the Lutherans in France, which changed them into supporters of the new regime. All the Christian traditions shared in a new State establishment which was kept until the legislation of 1905 which separated the Church and the State once more.27

  What Napoleon did for the Catholic Church in France was appreci-ated by at least some of the clergy. When Jean Valade, a former dragoon of the First Regiment, married a girl who received a personal dowry from the Emperor at Jonzac on 29 April 1808, the curé, Réné-Antoine de Saint-Legier de Boisnard d’Orignac, preached a sermon at the wedding extolling absolute loyalty to Napoleon. He said that princes were the living images of the master of the universe, and that every Frenchman ought to take pleasure in obeying the Emperor. M. de Saint-Legier (whose name is crammed full of nobiliary particles), had been a canon of Saintes Cathedral from 1780, and joined in the early stages of the Revolution as a municipal offi cer in the

  town. However, he refused the civil oath and went into exile, fi rst in Spain and then in England. At the time of the Concordat he was appointed curé of Jonzac and vicar-general of the Diocese of La Rochelle, and remained as such until his death in 1835.28

  Everything had gone full circle. God appeared to have transferred his choice from Louis XVI to Napoleon in the eyes of his priest at Jonzac. His vicar on earth, Pope Pius VII, appeared to be in agreement.

  Part IV

  Revolution in One

  Village

  chapter 14

  Hope and Disillusion

  Minutes of the meetings of the Municipality of the Com-

  mune of Saint-Saturnin de Séchaud between January 1790

  and June 1800, with some additional material from 1800 to

  1819, give us an overview of the way the Revolution unrolled in the ten years after 1789.1

  Saint-Saturnin became at the time, and remains still, a component of the Canton of Port d’Envaux, the jurisdiction of which extended along the left bank of the Charente to take in seven communes, with one more on the right bank at Saint-Vaize. Th

  e canton was part of the District of Saintes, the

  Directory of which issued decrees. Reports and minutes were sent back to show they had been acted upon. Other instructions, together with copies of new laws from the National Assembly and the later Convention, emanated from the Departmental Directory, located in the Hôtel de Monconseil at Saintes. Th

  e rigid control exercised over the municipality in each commune by the three higher authorities (the canton, the district, and the department) is surprising. Behind them was the overarching power of the national government in its successive manifestations including, during the Terror, the representatives on mission of whom we have seen so much already.

  After the new arrangements had been set in place by means of elections, the king in the National Assembly was the ultimate authority for the time being, accepted seriously by the men of 1790 in these rural areas. As they saw it at the time, what they had asked for in the lists of grievances ( cahiers de doléance) was being implemented. Th

  e promulgation of Th

  e Rights of

  Man and of the Citizen a few months before these registers opened seemed to include the right to be confi dent in a future bright with release from arbitrary rule and seigneurial justice, especially in the minds of those who thought that the past had been dark with bondage to it.

  Th

  e word ‘election’ is deceptive to modern ears. Th

  e National Assembly

  had decreed in October 1789, and the king had no diffi

  culty in accepting,

  that only men over 25 who paid what amounted to a sum equivalent to 193

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  e Unseen Terror

  three days’
wages for an unskilled labourer in taxes could be voters. At a national level, this qualifi ed them for no more than being able to vote for a social tier of electors who paid the equivalent of ten days’ wages for such labour, and it was they who were to elect the deputies to the National Assembly as and when required.2 Th

  e reformed government had provided

  itself with an unreformed electorate, however unconsciously, on the English model, though without such discrepancies as rotten boroughs or the occa-sional one-man, one vote system as in Preston or Westminster.

  At a local level, those who were primary electors were regarded as ‘active’

  citizens, as opposed to those with less ability to be taxed, who were ‘passive’

  ones. Th

  e ‘active’ citizens in the commune of Saint-Saturnin de Séchaud were making the decisions in January and February 1790 in a way that neither they, nor their fathers or grandfathers, had ever done in their lives before. Th is is

  what they meant by Liberty, and they seemed to expect a great deal from it.

  Th

  ey would have to work hard to defi ne Equality in their system, but they managed it with reference to there being one law for all regardless of wealth or social clout. Th

  ere was not much talk of Fraternity in the early stages.

  Not many were qualifi ed under this system to exercise voting power, or to be elected to offi

  ce, and the same men come and go in successive elec-

  tions recorded in these minute books, despite a purge of the councils and several of their members becoming offi

  cial suspects for a while. In Saintes,

  eight hundred ‘active’ citizens were qualifi ed to vote but, as ever, some were more active than others.