Chapter 1 Th
e Old Order Changes
1 Edgar Clenet, ‘Documents pour servir à l’histoire de la Commune de Rioux, Mémoires de Jean Bouquet’, Recueil XVIII (1908–12), pp. 373–90.
2 Th
ere is a sixteenth-century wooden statue group in Rioux church with traces of colour on it dating from the time of François I made for the Château de Rioux. Its subject is the mystical marriage of St Catherine of Alexandria. François de Beaumont, seigneur of Rioux seduced Catherine de Souza-Bragance, a fi lle d’honneur to Louise de Savoie, Duchess of Angoulême, mother of François I, who obliged Beaumont to marry Catherine. Th
e face of the saint, kneeling before the Virgin and Child and holding the Child’s hand, is said to be the Baronne de Rioux’s likeness. Mme Bibard, the historian of Rioux, denies that this was in the church in Bouquet’s time.
3 Jacqueline Bibard, L’histoire de Rioux à travers les siècles (Gemozac, 2003).
4
Pierre Guillemeteau came back to Rioux as curé after Bonaparte’s Concordat with Pope Pius VII in 1802, by which time Bertry had died. Citizen Bouquet had also died by then, on 10 brumaire, year 9 (1801), and so no opportunity of his challeng-ing the authority of the restored curé presented itself to him. Bouquet was buried in the churchyard, but a new cemetery for the commune was provided in 1860, and the whereabouts of his remains are not known (Jacqueline Bibard, L’histoire de Rioux à travers les siècles (Gemozac, 2003)).
Notes
231
5 Th
is was the usual term on the lips of the revolutionaries for ‘previous’, ‘former’, or, as lawyers might have said, ‘heretofore’.
6
Nowadays it houses the Musée Dupuy-Mestreau.
7 Saintes et L’Histoire de ses rues, Société d’Archéologie d’Histoire de la Charente-Maritime, pp. 195ff .
8
Business manager of the Duke of Orleans and the author of Dangerous Liaisons.
9
Georges Martin, ‘Branche des comtes de Paulin’, Chapter IV, in Histoire et généalogie de la maison de la Tour du Pin (La Ricarderie, 1985).
10 Dominique
Droin,
L’histoire de Rochefort, Tome 2 (Saint-Laurent-de-Prée, 2002), pp. 147f and 182f.
11
I am indebted for this information to M. Christian Gensbeitel, former Directeur de l’Atelier de Patrimoine in Saintes.
12 Philip
Mansell,
Louis XVIII, revised edition (London, 2005), pp. 19–39.
13 Th
is realization was developed in Patrice Leconte’s 1996 fi lm Ridicule, in which a provincial seigneur tries to gain the king’s necessary acceptance for a land drainage scheme to save his people from total dependence upon a fi sh diet and the scourge of malaria, and is eff ectively barred from approaching him by the court nobles.
14
Didier Poton, ‘Un protestantisme reconnu 1787–1799’, in Francine Ducluzeau (ed.), Histoire des protestants charentais (Aunis, Angoumois, Saintonge) (Paris, 2001), pp. 215–34.
15
Jean Cavaignac, ‘Troubles Municipaux à Saint-Jean-d’Angély au debut de la Révolution’, Receuil XXV (1974), pp. 257–66; and T. Debussy and P. Vincent, ‘Claude-Alexandre Normand d’Authon, un maire méconnu de Saint-Jean-d’Angély’, RSA XIV (1988), pp. 63–71.
16 Marquis de Grailly Henri, Histoire de Famille, begun in January 1951, pour fi nir quand il plaira a Dieu; completed by Jean de Grailly and privately circulated, November 1986, pp. 103–06.
Chapter 2 Elections, Grievances, and Feudal Dues
1 Th
e king’s minister Necker had agreed that there should be the same number of third estate deputies as from the clergy and the nobility together. Th is was known as
‘ doubling the third’.
2
For an explanation of the three orders, see section ‘Successive Forms of Government’
p. xvii.
3 Ibid.
4
Marillet, Volume 1, p. 20.
5
Ibid., p. 22.
6 Th
e qualifi cation to vote for a third estate deputy in a provincial assembly in the old order was to be male, over the age of 25 and having one’s name on the list of taxpayers.
7
Ibid., p. 23.
8
Garnier had to wait until 1792 to be a deputy, when he was elected to the National Convention.
9 Ibid.
10
Ibid., p. 24.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
232 Th
e Unseen Terror
13
Ibid., p. 28.
14
Ibid., p. 29.
15 Th
ese were written by the king to governors of prisons, at the request of privileged nobles, ordering individuals to be taken into custody, sometimes for political reasons, sometimes for criminal reasons, and sometimes merely to remove an embarrassing member of a noble family. It was a cover for arbitrary arrest without trial.
16 Eugène
Reveillaud,
Histoire politique et parlementaire de La Charente et de La Charente-Inférieure de 1789 à 1830 (Saint-Jean-d’Angély, 1906) (reprinted Paris, 1987), pp. 73–96.
17
M. D. Massiou, Histoire de la Saintonge et de l’Aunis, Tome VI (Paris, 1836), p. 2.
18 Th
e signature of the president of the assembly which drew up the cahier at Taillebourg is ‘Marillet’, which was probably that of the dean who was also the curé, Jacques-Th
omas, brother of François-Guillaume, the keeper of the Histoire secrète in Saintes.
Since 1500 there had been a well-endowed collégiale (a cathedral-sized establishment but without a bishop’s throne) at Taillebourg, which had suff ered in its fabric in the Wars of Religion, but still had a dean who was also the curé and at least one canon in 1789. Th
ey both had lavish accommodation in the impressive, recently completed outbuildings of the chateau. Dean Marillet had 11 rooms at his disposal.
19 Reveillaud:
Histoire politique, pp. 73–96.
20 Dominique
Droin,
L’histoire de Rochefort, Tome 2 (Saint-Laurent-de-Prée, 2002), pp. 203ff.
21
Some of the lists have been lost; for example, that of the clergy at La Rochelle and of the nobles at Saint-Jean-d’Angély.
22
Arch. Dep. Char. Mtme., C 260 bis, quoted in full in Marc Seguin, Jonzac pendant la Révolution (Jonzac, 1986), pp. 167–73.
23
Jonzac’s main occupation was the manufacture and sale of serge cloth.
24
Ibid., pp. 18f.
25
Dr. Guillotin was a third estate deputy for Paris, soon to be responsible for the law adopted at his suggestion ordering that ‘the method of punishment shall be the same for all persons on whom the law shall pronounce a sentence of death. Th e criminal
shall be decapitated . . . by a simple mechanism’. A story persists that his mother, out for a walk by the Charente heard the cries of a convicted man being broken on the wheel, and rushed home to give birth to Joseph-Ignace prematurely, provoking a birth-memory in his adult mind. It gives a thrill to newcomers in the Saintonge nowadays to see signs advertising businesses run by people called Guillotin.
He also solved the problem of speakers in the assembly not being able to hear each other by arranging their seats in a semicircle around the tribune, something that became permanent.
26 William
Doyle,
Th
e Oxford History of the French Revolution (Oxford, 1989), p. 107.
27 Reveillaud:
Histoire politique, p. 166.
28
Ibid., p. 123.
29 Jacques
Lamarre,
La Vie Rurale avant et pendant La Révolution (Niort, 1982), pp. 10ff .
/> 30 Jean-Noel Luc, ‘Les campagnes d’Aunis et de Saintonge en 1789: Une révolution silencieuse?’, RSA III (1977), pp. 79–117.
31
Louis Audiat, ‘Une lettre du curé de Montendre à son évêque’, RSA XXI (1911), pp. 202f.
32
Arch. Dep. Char. Mtme., 1877, quoted by J.-N. Luc.
Notes
233
33
Lettre à terrier en faveur du seigneur de Sousmoulins, le 11 avril 1789. Requête au présidial de Saintes et autorisation du tribunal le 4 mai 1789, Arch. Dep. Char. Mtme., B853 23, quoted by J.-N. Luc.
34 Th
is was a detested seigneurial due, paid in kind, of a fraction of a tenant’s grain harvest, varying from a third to a twentieth of the produce.
35
Yvon Pierron, in F. Julien-Labruyère (ed.), Dictionnnaire Biographique des Charentais (Paris, 2005), p. 1156.
36 Dominique
Rousseau,
Saint-Th
omas de Conac, Une histoire en bord d’estuaire (Jonzac, 2008), pp. 114–18. Note 5 refers to Roux’s discours quoted in full in Bibliothèque Nationale document P87, 1172.
37
For the text of Roux’s Parisian speeches and the Enragés’ manifesto, see John Hardman, Th
e French Revolution, the Fall of the Ancien Régime to the Th ermidorean Reaction
1785–1795 (London, 1981), pp. 171–6, citing Georgi Markov.
38
Jean-Noel Luc, ‘Les Révoltes paysannes de Varaize et des villages voisins en 1790’, Receuil XXV (1974), pp. 245ff .
39
All that follows is based on minutes and reports of interrogations for the insurgents’
subsequent trial: Arch. Dep. Char. Mtme., B1005, L147, L650, L739, & L748, also quoted by J.-N. Luc.
40 Anthony
Crubaugh,
Balancing the Scales of Justice, Local Courts and Rural Society in Southwest France, 1750–1800 (Pennsylvania, 2001), pp. 55–6.
41
Ibid., pp. 101–3.
42 Th
e canton was, and is, a group of communes that was the next stage down from the district in each Department.
43
Ibid., pp. 139–41.
44
Ibid., p. 136.
45 Marc
Seguin,
Jonzac pendant la Révolution (Jonzac, 1986), pp. 80–81.
46
Gallocheau remained in offi
ce until 1811. When the monarchy was restored, he was
appointed as a judge in Saintes, and remained in offi
ce until his death in 1826. He is
also recorded as writing a song about the Hirondelle, the fi rst steamboat to appear on the Charente. Frédéric Morin, in F. Julien-Labruyère (ed.), Dictionnaire Biographique des Charentais (Paris, 2005), p. 569.
47
Quæorens, ‘La Municipalité de Saint-Saturnin de Séchaud’ , RSA XXVII (1907), pp. 74–6.
Chapter 3 A Representative of the People
1 Armand Lods, Un Conventionnel en Mission, Bernard de Saintes et la Réunion de la Principauté de Montbéliard à la France (Paris, 1888), p. 9.
2
Marillet, Volume 1, pp. 38–40.
3
Ibid., pp. 27–34.
4
Blue and red were the colours of Paris and white of the royal family.
5
Ibid., p. 35.
6
After the re-election of Garnier as maire in February 1790, the door of his house was decorated with laurel garlands and some young people prepared a triumphal armchair all covered in laurels for him. Bernard never knew anything like that. Th ere
was a sting in the tail for Garnier’s acclamation, however. Several days afterwards, he found three horseshoes and a piece of boxwood to make a comb out of left on his doorstep. Marillet, not one to admire social mobility, explains that this was done
234 Th
e Unseen Terror
to remind Garnier of his grandfather and father: the former was a blacksmith at Marennes, and the latter a domestic servant.
7
Ibid., p. 36.
8
In this context the Jacobins were the order of Franciscans, which still occupied the buildings around the courtyard where the Mediathèque Municipal François-Mitterand is now found. Th
e term does not refer here to the Jacobin Club in Paris, nor to its counterparts soon to be set up all over the country.
9 Th
e author’s fi rst visit to the Hôtel de Monconseil was made a special occasion when the museum guide opened the fi rst-fl oor shutters and the whole of the meadow across the river could be seen at once.
10
Marillet always calls it ‘the Club’.
11
Much of Marillet’s opinionated reportage was fi ltered by Charles Dangibeaud in articles in Le Journal de Saintes, 12, 19, 26 June and 3 and 10 July 1926, thoughtfully pasted into Martineau’s MS transcription of Marillet’s own text kept in the Médiathèque municipale François-Mitterrand at Saintes. Th
ese newspaper articles were reproduced
as one in RSA XLII (1926–7), pp. 45–58.
12 Th
e king had managed his escape from the Tuileries Palace with the queen, his children, and his sister, intending to make his way to the French border at Montmedy to proclaim himself independent, leaving a letter behind explaining his action. He was recognized by the postmaster at Sainte-Ménéhoude from his picture on the paper money, captured, and brought back to Paris.
13 Ibid.
14
Marillet, Volume 2, pp. 195f.
15 Or, when he remembered, Xantes, which is what the medieval chroniclers like Matthew Paris and William de Nangis had called it.
16
Ibid., Volume 3, p. 27.
17
Dangibeaud, op. cit.
18 Jean-Christian
Petitfi ls, Louis XVI (Paris, 2005), pp. 899–934.
19 Eugène
Reveillaud,
Histoire politique et parlementaire de La Charente et de La Charente-Inférieure de 1789 à 1830 (Saint-Jean-d’Angély, 1906) (reprinted Paris, 1987), p. 289.
20
Ibid., p. 289, n. 1.
21 Jean-Th
éodore Viaud and Élie-Jérôme Fleury, Histoire de la Ville de et du Port de Rochefort, Tome 1 (Rochefort, 1845) (reprinted Marseille, 1977), p. 316.
22 Dominique
Droin,
L’histoire de Rochefort, Tome 2 (Saint-Laurent-de-Prée, 2002), p. 272.
23 Reveillaud:
Histoire politique, p. 290.
24 Colin
Jones,
Th
e Great Nation (London, 2002), p. 486.
25 Lods:
Un Conventionnel en Mission, p. 48.
26
Ibid., p. 30.
27
Ibid., pp. 38–40.
28
He was the former president of the Dijon Parlement under the old order, and very wealthy. Bernard lived in part of his empty but luxurious house and then, having personally supervised his execution, took it over completely.
29
Ibid., pp. 57–69.
30 Colin
Jones,
Longman Companion to the French Revolution (London, 1988), p. 100.
31 Lods:
Un Conventionnel en Mission, p. 82.
Notes
235
32
Ibid., p. 84.
33
Dangibeaud, op. cit.
34 François
Furet,
Revolutionary France 1770–1880 (ET Alison Nevill, Oxford, 1988), p. 159; Lods: Un Conventionnel en Mission, p. 84.
35 Lods:
Un Conventionnel en Mission, p. 84n.
36
Ibid., p. 86.
37 Philip
Mansel,
Louis XVIII (London, 2005), p. 326.
38 Lods:
Un Conventionnel en Mission, p. 86.
39
Arch. Dep. Chte. Mtme., L1085, quoted in Marc Seguin, Jonzac pendant la Révolution (Jonzac, 1986), pp. 31–6.
40 Seguin:
Jonzac pendant, p. 166.
Chapter 4 Th
e Terror in Saintes
1
Marillet, Volume 1, p. 1.
2 Ibid ., Volume 2, p. 98.
3 Th
e curé of Taillebourg, who was also dean of the collégiale there, was his brother and left for exile in Spain to be replaced for a while by a constitutional priest called Bossard. Dean Marillet returned in 1803.
4 Ibid ., Volume 3, pp. 55–9.
5 Ibid ., pp. 59–61.
6
Ibid., p. 61.
7 Ibid.
8
Ibid., pp. 64–5.
9
Ibid., p. 67.
10
He was representative on mission at the time in the Gironde and surrounding Departments.
11 Th
at does not seem to be true. Marillet says that people marched to ‘the Mountain’ during the festival in honour of the battle of Fleurus (discussed earlier) and the revolutionary festival which he reports after this. Righteous indignation knows no boundaries.
12
Ibid., pp. 68–9.
13
Ibid., p. 70.
14
Ibid., p. 72.
15
Ibid., p. 73.
16
A prominent landowning lawyer and member by marriage of the noblesse de robe in Authon, a village near Saint-Jean-d’Angély, who had been elected maire in the early months of the Revolution.
17
Ibid., p. 75.
18 Ibid.
19
Before 1789, Stoffl
et was a gamekeeper. In 1793 he led rebels in Anjou to unite with the Vendéans to fi ght under Cathelineau at Cholet. He eventually became commander of the force alongside Charette, and was ambushed and shot by the Republicans in 1796 (Colin Jones, Longman Companion, p. 393).
20
Nous braverons vos eff ors et vos menaces.
21
Ibid., Volume 4, pp. 154–7, 170ff & 175.
236 Th
e Unseen Terror
22
Ibid., pp. 160ff .
23
Ibid., p. 197.
24
Ibid., pp. 199–200.
25
Ibid., p. 206.
26
Ibid., p. 207.
27
Marillet’s most used epithet for those in power is the archaic word scelerat.
28
Ibid., pp. 238–43.
The Unseen Terror Page 33