The Unseen Terror
Page 29
formalities had not been observed’, say the council minutes. Th ere were
objections to the commune giving new certifi cates because Louis Lévesquot had caused trouble before, so they were refused ‘automatically’.
Certifi cates of civism were to all intents and purposes identity cards and anyone who did not have one would be considered suspect. Th ey contained full and detailed descriptions of their holders’ personal appearance
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e Unseen Terror
so that there should be no mistake about who they were whenever they were required to show them to a functionary. Th
at is why the Lévesquots,
père et fi ls, were so eager to have them.
Municipal councils had been authorized on 1 April 1793 to keep fathers, brothers, and male children of emigrés under surveillance as suspects. If they stepped out of line, arrest was to be automatic. Th
e women in the
Lévesquot family were also suspects, Maire Gaudin claimed, after many marks of a lack of civisme, and their arrest was decided upon.
On 2 April at two in the morning, the councillors and 20 national guards-men searched the Lévesquots’ and other suspects’ houses. Th e
Lévesquots
were expected to pay for the guard of ten men placed around their house until they could be apprehended, since the only one at home was Louis Lévesquot’s wife, Magdeleine née Chaudron. When she was asked about the whereabouts of her family, she said she did not know where they were.
Th
e councillors set seals on the house, and they trusted Madame Lévesquot with seeing they were not broken.26
Th
e committee of surveillance in Saintes declared Lévesquot père suspect and required the council at Saint-Saturnin to arrest him. Th ey replied that
he had left his house at six in the morning on Easter Day, but agreed to arrest him if he came back. Th
e council was also asked its opinion by the
district about a petition from Madame Lévesquot, who wanted to move into her house at Saintes. Th
e council ‘gave her a favourable opinion for her
tranquillity and ours’ on condition that the offi
cials at Saintes would take
over her surveillance, and the maire of Saintes agreed this on 20 April. On 29, it was reported that she had arrived there, taken up the Charente on M. Guillieux’s gabare, and he was told, ‘Your gabare is an excellent means of surveillance; it will be desired that all municipalities do the same.’27 Ladies of a certain age are not given to jumping out of moving boats.
In contrast to his father, everybody knew where Mathieu Lévesquot was.
He was in the former Convent of the Saint-Claires in Saintes, now used as a prison, and had been there since 6 April. Th
en he was transferred as
a detained suspect to Brouage, and the council had given his wife, Claire Couturier, a unanimous refusal to her request for a certifi cate of civism for him since it was ‘known that he has an émigré brother (André) and another in exile (the priest, François) . . . Th
e citizen Noureau had observed,
furthermore, that he (Mathieu) had told him that he regarded the civic oath that he had taken as null and void since he would never recognize the constitutional priests.’
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Claire petitioned for him to come home on 15 September because ‘he would be useful for the grape-harvest’, but he was retained at Brouage
‘as the relation of an émigré, and not having qualifi ed for a certifi cate of civism. Not having asked to be set at liberty for the cereal harvest, he is no more useful for the grape harvest.’28
Th
ere was a certain amount of hand-washing on the part of the council of Saint-Saturnin in Louis Lévesquot’s case. Th
ey argued that a new law
allowed them to be relieved of making decisions about the sequestration of his property. Th
ey claimed it was for the district authority at Xantes to
decide those issues.
Although there had been no detailed report of his arrest after his earlier disappearance, Louis Lévesquot was set at liberty on 12 November 1794, on the orders of the Committee of General Security in Paris, and he presented his declaration made at Xantes about coming home to Saint-Saturnin on 29 March 1795. Pressure was still being applied to him as the father of an emigré and a deportee, since it was ordered that he would have to pay for the ashes washed in the saltpetre factory established in his buildings at the Prévoté – ‘ashes belonging to the nation which he had spread on his fi elds’ –
or face prosecution.29
Th
e same order from the Committee of General Security had also freed Mathieu. Th
e deprivations at Brouage were severe and he had died in
Xantes two months after his release, on 10 January 1795, presumably at his mother’s house.30 As for his father, he appears to have been reinstated in the public esteem as time went on, since he was soon signing minutes as being present at meetings.
It is astonishing that the Committee of General Security is involved in decisions concerning the minutiae of business in individual communes all over the nation. Th
e Republic was indeed One and Indivisible.
* * *
In contrast to the general fearful acceptance of the situation that set in, there were a few incidents which show that it was just possible successfully to resist the new authorities if their opponents understood the law themselves.
At the Château de Panloy, just past Port d’Envaux on a loop of the Charente, a crisis was resolved by Anne-Marie de Saint-Dizant’s good sense and her knowledge of the law.31 Her husband, the Marquis Henri de Grailly, had a typical career as a member of the noblesse d’épée in the old order, becoming
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e Unseen Terror
14. Port d’Envaux: Château de Panloy.
a captain in the Royal Piémont Cavalry in 1789. He had the right to be a member of the noble assemblies both at Saintes and at Angoulême, and was appointed as a deputy to the Estates-General by the latter. When members of the Constituent Assembly were decreed not eligible for offi ce in the new
Legislative in May 1791, Henri de Grailly left for Hamburg to join the Army of the Princes. When he and Savinien de Garrigue ordered carriages to take them across Paris, they told the man who owned them they would be back in two or three months, but he was an emigré for nine years.
A law of 7 December 1793 ordered the confi scation of all houses and land of the fathers and mothers of emigrés and Anne-Marie expected that a subsequent law would take the property of their wives as well. Panloy had been part of her dowry. Another law, of 20 September 1793, had instituted divorce in France. So she fi led for hers on 16 December and, according to the document signed by an offi
cial at Bordeaux, ‘she will be
from now on Citizeness Saint-Dizant, divorced wife of Citizen Grailly’.
Th
is type of divorce in order to keep family property was frequent at the time of the Revolution.32 Baron Normand d’Authon’s wife had to adopt the same tactic when her husband was interned at Brouage as a suspect,33 and Marie-Anne-Rosalie Turpin divorced the Marquis de la Roche-Courbon34
on account of his emigration to St. Petersburg.35 Mme de Grailly had her divorce announced, according to police dossiers, ‘following in that number of wives of émigrés who used this legal subterfuge to assure the future of their children’. Panloy escaped confi scation.
From October 1796 onwards, she gave a home at Panloy to Citizen Joseph Merveilleux, a former curé, making him her steward with power of attorney over her property. He had taken the civic oath at diff erent times
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as required by the law,36 and after Bonaparte’s Concordat he was appointed curé of Saint-Savinien, just across the river.
&n
bsp; In January 1797, the council at Port d’Envaux agreed to her request for a passport for Hamburg ‘so that she could take her two children there to learn foreign languages and commerce’ . 37 Th
is attempt to go and meet
Henri seems to have been unsuccessful at the higher echelons of republican power, because on 19 germinal, year VII, 8 April 1798, she moved from Angoulême, where she had lived for a year, back to Panloy. She was not safe from all interference, however, because on 11 September 1799 a domicili-ary visit was made upon Citoyenne de Grailly, femme d’émigré to see that no benefi t fraud was involved.
Th
e minutes of the commune of Saint-Saturnin de Séchaud on 16 nivôse year XI (December 1800) register the certifi cate of amnesty for Henri de Grailly who had returned to Panloy.38
Subsequent developments took their time, however. On 21 February 1803 there was a change of steward at Panloy:
Dame Anne-Marie Michel de Saint-Dizant, living on her domain of Panloy, commune de Saint-Saturnin de Séchaud, gave a general power of attorney for the administration of her property to Citizen Henry Grailly, landowner, living in the above-mentioned commune of Saint-Saturnin de Séchaud.
Th
e divorce had lost its purpose, and on 6 May 1806 at nine in the morning, accompanied by four witnesses, Monsieur Henri de Grailly, aged 45 years, and Dame Marie-Anne Michel de Saint-Dizant, aged 44 years, went to the Mairie in Saint-Saturnin de Séchaud to make a marriage contract. Th
e certifi cate did not mention their marriage in church under the old order in 1785, nor that they had two sons, Étienne and Th éodore.
Anne-Marie died in 1833 and Henri survived her until 1847. Henri had lost his property, the marquisate of Touverac, the lands of Lavagnac and Sainte Terre in the Gironde, and a house in the rue Saint-Maur in Saintes.
He was awarded compensation of nearly 77,000 francs for the loss of all these properties under the milliard des émigrés organized by Louis XVIII’s minister Villèle in 1825.
* * *
Th
ere is an impressive memorial tablet on the north wall inside the church at Nieul-lès-Saintes to ‘Messire Gabriel-Isaie Lemouzin, Chevalier, Seigneur
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e Unseen Terror
Baron of Nieuil, Varzay and other places, benefactor of this parish, who died on 17th December 1797 at the age of 86 years’. Outside the village is his château, with a moat and drawbridge and domestic buildings now being carefully conserved inside its medieval enclosure.
M. de Lemouzin’s daughter, Marie-Henriette, had married Pierre Boscal Réal de Mornac and had a son, François-César, but died in childbirth.
Gabriel-Isaie had no son, so his grandson was his heir. De Mornac went as an emigré to Hamburg and took the son of his fi rst marriage, de Lemouzin’s heir, with him. Th
e District Directory at Saintes regarded the land and usu-
fruct as forfeit because of the emigration of the heir, and made a move to confi scate it in accordance with the law. Gabriel-Isaie wrote to the Directory protesting that the land was still his because he was not dead yet. His letter is dated 25 January 1793 – a few days after the king’s execution – a dangerous time for nobles.39
He set out the facts of the situation regarding his daughter’s death, his son-in-law’s subsequent remarriage, and present emigration along with the boy who, ‘on account of the docility and weakness of his age was in no position to resist the wishes of his father’. Th
is double emigration had
brought about the sequestration of the property at Nieul, which had always been Limouzin’s own home and still belonged to him, together with the furniture inside it. ‘But this sequestration is the result of an error or a lack of information’, he says. ‘I reserve to myself the right to prove the usufruct and ownership of the lands in question from authentic deeds in my poses-sion: a right all the less incontestable in that I have expressly reserved it until my death.’ As far as the house is concerned, he says, no one can sell it as a national property since it remains his own. A great number of reliable witnesses would testify that de Mornac himself had never brought in furniture of his own.
M. de Limouzin’s case is based on local knowledge. He bravely confronts the lawyers of the district, Vanderquand and company, in terms of their own expertise:
Th
e law cannot have a retrospective eff ect and the intention of our legislators is too pure for them to have dictated anything to the prejudice of a third party. I repeat, death alone can deprive me of the enjoyment and the usufruct that I have the right to claim, and it is only after that fatal event that the nation, which replaces the heir on whom the decreed penalty falls, would be able to sell the said lands at Nieul.
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He asks, therefore, to be ‘maintained in the enjoyment of [his] property with the tranquillity of which the law ought to be the sure guarantee’. He also requests that the furniture which belonged to him be released, and adds that he hoped that he would obtain wisdom from the council when they agree with the argument he has put forward. He sends his daughter’s marriage certifi cate to back up his assertions.
He seems to have been left to stew by the district for three weeks, but the reply sent to him on 14 February 1793 accepted his claim, and he kept his lands and their produce. Th
ere were further problems when the
personnel of the District Directory changed, and Lemouzin was arrested and imprisoned for a few months, but was released.
Th
e grim reaper made his contribution to the story. Gabriel-Isaie, as his memorial tablet says, died at the end of 1797, and his grandson soon after, so the house and the lands did become national property and were absorbed into other local terrains.
In the end, Pierre Boscal de Réal de Mornac was the one who profi ted.
He returned in 1800, became Marquis de la Chaize de Vicomte, and was compensated in Villèle’s milliard des émigrés to the tune of nearly 90,000
francs paid out of taxes ten years after the restoration of the monarchy.
* * *
More typical was the story of another nobleman nearby, Jean-Bretagne-Charles-Godefroy, Duke of la Tremoille, Count of Taillebourg, who was not successful in his claim. Early in the Revolution, he left for Nice, which was at that time outside France, on the orders of his wife’s doctor. She died there. He tried to prevent Taillebourg from being confi scated on the grounds that he was not an emigré within the meaning of the law of 12
February 1792 because, in spite of his record in the Seven Years’ War and holding the rank of Maréschal de Camp, he had not undertaken any military involvement to restore the king. His case was heard on 3 May 1792 by the National Assembly’s committee of legislation. He lost the case and died 12 days afterwards. His house in the Faubourg Saint-Germain in Paris and the recently built Château at Taillebourg, divided into 12 lots, were put up for sale as national properties.40
chapter 15
War and Education
From May 1793 onwards, the council minutes of Saint-Saturnin1 are full of details of prices and wages under the so-called ‘Maximum’
decreed by the National Convention as a doctrinaire attempt to regulate infl ation in time of war. No one could pay his employees, and no prices were to be charged, above the detailed, uniform scales of wages and prices published throughout France.
Jean David, who lived upriver from Saint-Saturnin at Port-à-Clou, declared before the councillors that he had to pay his servant François Limousin a wage of 120 livres a year because the man ‘did not wish to accommodate himself to the Maximum’, and would not accept as little as was allowed by it, threatening to leave after a day. It seems the council accepted his explanation.2 Even so, not to co-operate with this Jacobin policy was to be counter-revolutionary, since everything was to be revolutionary until victory against the kings of Europe had been achieved.3
Under the decree of the Committee of Public Safety, day
-rates of wine-harvesters’ wages were regulated, and inspectors had to be appointed to speed up the fl ailing of grain. Two citizens were given the right to requisition workers, and fi ve others to make a count of forage and cattle. Wood faggots and wood stripped of its bark had to be taken to Saintes. Labourers for the gunpowder factories had to be supplied. Working hours and transport costs were published in detail. Taxes were charged on requisitioned items like cattle-feed. Arguments between suppliers and carters are recorded, and the lawyer Gaillard’s name keeps cropping up as the one who had responsibility for working all this out and applying it.
Work needed to be regulated by the time of day, and Pierre Brault was paid an allowance of fi ve livres a day for nine days for going round the lanes beating a drum at the appropriate times. Th
e clock they relied on in the
church tower would have been using the bell saved from the Abbaye aux Dames with its silvery note by now, and the workers in the fi elds or the forest would not always hear it.4
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209
Ordinary concerns and personal tensions continued to assert themselves, however. A municipal offi
cial held a divorce hearing in June 1794. Estelle
Piocheau, wife of Jacques Piocheau, had petitioned for divorce under the new law that made it possible, but she declared that, ‘having taken thought, this divorce was founded only on the simple incompatibility of humours’, and withdrew her suit, going back to Jacques ‘to live following the custom of the law’. He said he would receive her back and that they ‘should live as a married couple’.5
* * *
Th
e national government under the new constitution after the fall of Robespierre’s Jacobins needed to maintain the basic tenets of the Revolution without Terror while the war against the kings of Europe was still a threatening reality and morale still had to be maintained. So orders were given for communal festivals to be held all over the country, and the canton of Port d’Envaux, on 15 pluviôse year IV,6 decided to hold a festival of the Just Punishment of the Last King, and another of Hatred for Royalty. With the growing number of royalist sympathizers in the nation at large, such a Republican publicity move seemed necessary. Th