The Unseen Terror
Page 28
Th
e fi rst task for the commune’s ‘active’ citizens was to elect a maire and 5 municipal offi
cials to work with him and, after that, 12 ‘notables’ to form a municipal council with the maire and his offi
cials. So we fi nd the 60 or so elec-
tors of the parish of Saint-Saturnin de Séchaud holding their meeting on the last day of January 1790 in a large room of the house called La Tour opposite the church. Th
e National Assembly had sent letters-patent via the Districts to the Communes, and the meeting was in obedience to the requirements made in them. A notary named Gaillard was elected president of the meeting and the process of electing other men of means to the various offi ces was set in
motion. Charles Girardin3 was elected secretary ‘by nearly all the voters’. Jacques Bucherit, a timber merchant from the hamlet of Saint-James, was elected Maire
‘by twenty three votes out of forty three voting, and he took his oath.’4
Next day, they were back at eight o’clock in the morning to appoint their municipal offi
cers, who included Etienne Yonnet – still signing council
minutes ten years later, Pierre Videau, a farmer who lived in Saint-James, a
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195
merchant called Saturnin Violleau, Pierre Piocheau, who raised beef cattle, and Jean Vignaud, a wheelwright. Th
e notary Gaillard became procurator-
fi scal, the precursor of the justice of the peace to be instituted by subsequent laws. Th
ese offi
cials took their oath to be faithful to ‘the nation, the
law and the King’. Th
ree years later, perhaps they felt a cold shudder when
the third object of their oath went to the scaff old.
Th
ey had to fi nd men to take offi
ce as ‘notables’. Th
eir choice fell fi rst
on the recently appointed curé, François Lévesquot; then upon the distinguished lawyer, Jean-Baptiste Héard-Fondclair; then Louis Lévesquot, the curé’s father, a wealthy businessman; Pierre Coumailleau, nicknamed ‘Low-Tide’, who had a river transport business; Michel Glemein, a shoemaker whose family had been immigrants from across the Rhine; Louis Piocheau, who had the mill and baked the bread; Pierre Menet, another baker; Jean Gelinaud, a merchant; and then on Jean Bertrand, Joseph Mallet, and Nicolas Piochaud, who raised beef cattle. Louis Lévesquot was to be treasurer. A roll of taxation recorded that there were 450 hearths in the parish and, ‘taking fi ve souls per hearth, we could have 2,250 souls’.
Th
e clearest indications of what they seemed to hope for were expressed in a speech made on 21 February at the ceremony arranged for public oath-taking. Th
e ceremony was also a parade for the National Guard battalion in their new uniforms, though armed with no more than pikes, in the fi eld where the parish market was held. Th
e proceedings began with a speech
from the commandant of the battalion, Colonel Gallocheau. His speech does not sound like an offi
cial handout. It is likely the words were his own.
In any case, it was a clear pronouncement of hopes and intentions spoken by someone who belonged in these parts. It is worth quoting extensively.5
Messieurs,
Th
e municipal offi
cials whom you have chosen present themselves today in
all honesty to take the oath to exercise the important functions you have entrusted to them with zeal and fi delity. Honourable men, worthy of the trust placed in them have been selected. By their wise administration, they will off er all the advantages of a well-organized society. Taxes and public works . . . will be shared with equality and directed with intelligence, so will not be a subject of vexation . . . Th
e complaints of the oppressed will not be
stifl ed by an imperious voice of subjugating despotism. Th e French have
broken their chains. Free from now on, and subject to the law alone, we will not see the balance of justice incline in favour of the powerful any more, so much so that its sword is powerful for the weak. Such are, Messieurs,
196 Th
e Unseen Terror
the glorious eff ects of a constitution founded upon the rights of man and political equality. Let us open our hearts in recognition towards the enlightened legislators who are responsible for this immortal monument of reason and human wisdom, and towards a just and benefi cent monarch who has sworn solemnly to be its most fi rm supporter. Who of us, Messieurs, has been able to hear without the liveliest emotion the reading of the sublime and caring speech which he made on that occasion? Let us exert ourselves to imitate so great an example. Let us swear to be faithful to the nation, to the law and to the king. Let us swear to maintain a constitution which ought to give happiness to all, and which off ers us the inestimable enjoyment of liberty for the fi rst time (author’s italics).
* * *
Some of the clergy viewed the publication of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy on 12 July 1790 as enough to clinch their loyalty to the nation, as in the case of Bonneau, the curé of Pont l’Abbé d’Arnoult.6 However, fi ve months later, when the National Assembly decreed that all clergy who wished to remain in offi
ce must take an oath to uphold the Civil Constitu-
tion or be regarded as having resigned,7 tension mounted at Saint-Saturnin de Séchaud, as it did in many other places.
Secretary Girardin had a hard time writing the minutes concerning what happened on 30 January mil sept cent quatre vingt onze,8 which are full of scratchings-out and re-writing.9 At midday, as the processional Mass was ending in Saint-Saturnin church the councillors of the commune went into the vestry to meet the curé, François Lévesquot, and his vicaire, Jacques Saurin. Lévesquot had earlier, ‘being at the altar and addressing his words to all the people’, refused take the Oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
Girardin asked the two priests if they would take it now in the presence of the people still in church. Lévesquot’s answer was unequivocal.
My brothers, I have made an oath to be faithful to the nation, to the law and to the king, to uphold the constitution of the kingdom with all my power in all that is not contrary to religion. Th
ey want [‘to force us’ is
scratched out, and replaced between the lines with] us to take another oath that I believe to be contrary to [‘religion’ is scratched out and replaced with]
the discipline of the church. I cannot do it.
Saurin also refused this oath and both priests off ered to repeat the one they had made previously, which the councillors could not accept.
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197
13. Saint-Saturnin de Séchaud: Th
e Church.
Nothing more seems to have happened for three months,10 until the maire and municipal offi
cials met François Lévesquot on 16 April 1791
to take the keys of his house and the church from him. Lévesquot said he complied only to be obedient to the law, and they gave him a receipt.
Lévesquot was required to sign the minutes so that there could be no subsequent argument about what had been said.11 His reply to the offi cials is
interesting. He had accepted the Revolution in the early days of enthusiasm for change, and had not noticeably taken the side of tradition. Th e respect
for the law as the yardstick of behaviour was something he was not denying even at the moment of his being relieved of his offi
ce.
Very soon after, however, François Lévesquot started saying Mass illegally upstairs in a house his father owned in Port d’Envaux, the next village along the river, and several women ‘who idolized priests and their sayings’ were present at it. Municipal offi
cers, bringing a guard with them, visited the
house intending to surprise him before an alta
r.
Th
e Municipality made a detailed search of the said bedroom, in which the legs of a man who was believed to be climbing the chimney were found.
198 Th
e Unseen Terror
But what a surprise! Having dragged him down from this chimney, he was recognized as a devotee, Baudry fi ls, from the commune of Coteaux, brother-in-law of one of the sons of . . . Lévesquot père.12
Maire Boucherit complained that Lévesquot was
seditious and incendiary in the things he said and was trying to persuade the villagers that they ought not to recognize the new curé and denying that he had authority to hear confessions or administer the sacraments.
Upon which, the Directory [in Saintes] . . . considered that M. Lévesquot . . .
conveys audacity and indecency, one could say infamous criminality, to the point of abusing in his confessions the credulity of timorous and feeble souls in extracting promises from them to have no faith in ecclesiastics who have submitted to the law, and has in this way excited them to fanaticism and revolt.13
On 29 April, Lévesquot was denounced to the public prosecutor and left the commune on a boat owned by his father called La Contesse de Grailly. He reached Spain, where he stayed until 1801. He did not take back his parish at Saint-Saturnin, but was appointed to the cathedral at Saintes. He died aged 58 on 5 January 1816 at his nephew’s house in the rue Saint-Maur.
Reading between the lines of the minutes, this was the last thing the municipal offi
cers wanted to do to their curé. André-Louis-François Lévesquot had only been in offi
ce since 1789, but he had been elected one of
the 12 notables of the commune at the outset of the revolutionary period, had taken an oath to support the Revolution on 2 February 1790, and celebrated the mass on 14 July 1790 in the halles at Port d’Envaux to celebrate the fi rst anniversary of the storming of the Bastille.14 Lévesquot had not compromised his faith and had obeyed his bishop. Yet the members of the Municipal Council were committed to a fi xed position every bit as much as he was, and conformity with the law was, when push came to shove, more important than Lévesquot’s moral scruples.
* * *
Th
e council had met at six in the morning on Sunday 17 April15 to carry out what had been ordered by the electoral assembly at Saintes. Th e men on
the ground did what they were told as they always had done in the time of seigneurs and royal intendants: the diff erence now was that they had elected the new authorities themselves.
Hope and Disillusion
199
Th
ey had received papers from Ouvrard, former curé of the parish of Saint-Sulpice d’Arnoult who had taken the civil oath. A certifi cate signed by the constitutional bishop, Robinet, declared that Ouvrard had been instituted to the parish. Nobody from Saintes came to introduce him. He came on his own.
‘In consequence’, the council invited Ouvrard to take the Oath to the Constitution again in the church in the presence of the people.
We have received him . . . by these presents, as curé and public functionary of the said parish; to this eff ect we have put him in possession . . . real and actual of the said church and presbytery . . . at six thirty in the morning, the day, month and year above, and M. Ouvrard has signed with us.16
Ouvrard gives every appearance of being a ready-made village cockerel, involved in the beginning of a revolutionary squeeze on his predecessor’s father and brothers. He was elected president of the assembly which was to choose a new council when the time came in December 1791. Th ere had been
some undisclosed arguments, because the District Directory had discussed disorder in Saint-Saturnin and sent an inspector, Jean-Jacques-Fabien Baron, a Chevalier of the Order of Saint-Louis, to lend a hand to restore calm. Th e
details of a complaint made against the commune by Louis Lévesquot do not emerge from the commune’s records, nor from a discussion of the matter by the District Directory on 6 August 1792. Powers were given on 11 August to Ouvrard, the new Maire Gaudin, Dr Chouet, and Michel Glemein to look into the matter. A campaign then built up against Louis Lévesquot, as a businessman living nobly, and his family, and we have not heard the last of it.17
Th
e annual assembly met in the church in December 1792 for the election of a third municipal council. Ouvrard was elected president of the assembly again, and Gaudin was kept as maire.18 Ouvrard was elected as Gaudin’s replacement when he accepted the post of sailors’ spokesman, as you were not supposed to hold more than one offi
ce at a time. Th
e
constitutional
curé was breaking the same rule by accepting election as maire.
Ouvrard handed over his church registers to the council as required on 18 January 1793, since the recording of births, marriages, and deaths was now a civil matter, but he told the councillors that his accounts were not ready and there were outstanding payments. Th
e council ‘undertook to
meet the costs of the cult’. He had taken the Oath to the Constitution but he was no longer guaranteed a quiet life.
Th
e king was executed three days after Ouvrard’s church expenses had been taken over and, as the year went on, the commune refl ected national
200 Th
e Unseen Terror
opinion. Th
e National Convention and its committees were presenting an increasingly hard line towards the clergy who had taken the oath as much as those who were now under a ban. Th
is gave licence for the nation to
take over more of the church’s assets since what had been gained from selling its land had been already spent on war. So, on 24 November 1793, after the council members had fi nished a debate on ‘the need in which the Republic could fi nd itself, and on the help that the whole commune as well as every citizen ought to off er as being inviolably attached to its interests’, they confi scated ‘six great chandeliers in bronze, a silver-plated cross, two silver-plated fl asks and a bowl, which will be sent to the District tomorrow to serve their purpose,’ from the former church.
Lequinio, the representative on mission, had been hyper-active in Rochefort for three months now and had power in the whole department. He ordered the constitutional clergy to leave their presbyteries and to undergo re-education in communal houses. On his orders, the council took away all the linen from the house and the Temple. Ouvrard was refused a certifi cate of civism by eight votes to three at a council meeting without explanation19
and then appears to have dropped out of sight in silence. As with Lévesquot previously, no one seems to have raised a hand in his defence. Fear bred acceptance which looked like conformity. Th
e minutes do not say what
became of him. Perhaps he laicized himself to adopt another role in the Revolution. Marillet includes him in his list of 62 ‘villains’ responsible for the implementation of the Terror in the Charente-Inférieure as ‘Ouvrard, curé of Saint-Sorlin,20 married, villain by nature’.21 Th
e only other reference
is an indefi nite one, where his surname appears among those responsible for terror in Rochefort, from which nothing certain can be concluded.
* * *
Th
e Lévesquot family as a whole had now become suspect. Early in February 1793, Louis Lévesquot had petitioned the council to register a certifi -
cate affi
rming that another of his sons, André (or d’Anville), had been in Amsterdam on business22 for over a year, provided by a Dutch notary and accepted by the commissioner of the Republic for trade with Holland.23
However, André Lévesquot had left the country as an emigré in 1791, which his father had acknowledged by paying the fi xed fi ne required by law from an emigré’s parent. Th
e procurator of the commune, Michel Glemein,
refused to accept this certifi cate, ‘which had every appearance of being
false’,
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201
and sent it to Saintes. Vanderquand and Guivret, district administrators, replied to say, ‘You have acted prudently. It is not with such documents as these that the law is evaded.’
Louis Lévesquot applied again on 17 March, only to have a second refusal from the municipality. Lévesquot was questioned about his son on 29 April, and fi rst replied that he thought he was in Poitiers now ‘to do his studies’ and, afterwards, that he did not know where he was. He had thought he was an emigré at one point and had paid the sum fi xed as a fi ne to avoid trouble. Th
e council still maintained that both the petition for
André Lévesquot-d’Anville to come back to France and the father’s new application for the fi ne of 883 livres 18 sols to be given back to him ‘should be declared null and void’.
Th
e anonymous 1906 editor of these council minutes found a fi le in the administrative archives of the ministry of war under André Lévesquot-d’Anville’s fi rst name, Amédée, which records his claim for pay as an emigré offi
cer to a committee set up after Waterloo. Th
is said that he left France
on 1 October 1791, was commissioned, and had six years in his rank, with active service in two campaigns.24 It seems that Louis Lévesquot and his son had agreed that it did not matter what story they told, as long as it was the same one.
Yet one more Lévesquot remains: Mathieu. He and his father had gone to Saintes together on 24 March 1793 and heard that rebellion had just broken out in the Vendée.25 All who did not have passports or certifi cates of civism were being arrested, so the Lévesquots went to the municipality and asked for certifi cates, making a declaration that, although Louis had a son who was in exile as a refractory priest, they did not hold any uncivic opinions, but they needed certifi cates ‘to obtain their free passage in the places where they had business to do with their commerce’. Th e offi
cials in
Saintes issued them.
Back in Saint-Saturnin it was obvious that Louis and Mathieu Lévesquot had applied for certifi cates of civism in Saintes because they knew it would be very unlikely that they would receive them in their own commune. ‘Th e