Background to the French Revolution in Brittany

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Background to the French Revolution in Brittany

One historian has observed that "the French Revolution

has become a modern fable written and rewritten for people

who imagine they already know the story even before they

have read it" (Bosher ix). In support of this statement,

the reader should remember that many of the most famous

streets, avenues, and boulevards of Paris are named for

famous generals and political leaders of the French

Revolution (Bosher 286). The Revolution itself was

undoubtedly one of the pivotal events of the eighteenth

century. From the moment when Rouget de Lisle wrote the

words to "La Marseillaise," one of the most stirring anthems

ever to be composed, individuals have been attracted to one

of history's most famous revolutions. Their reactions have

ranged from very favorable to decidedly negative. For

example, William II told his teachers in the German Empire

that they "must teach that the French Revolution was an

unmitigated crime against God and Man" (West 404). On the

other hand, Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Madame

d'Enville dated April 2, 1790, hoped that the actions of the

French Revolution "may be but the beginning of the history

of European liberty. . ." (965-66). Many years after

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Jefferson's lifetime, Winston Churchill, in A History of the

English Speaking Peoples: The Age of Revolution, expressed

his belief that the ideas of the French Revolution

influenced "every great popular and national movement until

1917" (268). Francois Mitterand, who was president of

France when the Bicentennial of the French Revolution was

observed in 1989, reminded his fellow citizens of the debt

they owed to the movement:

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But the Revolution made the republic. And the

republic cannot, without denying origins, fail to

remember what it is, where it comes from, the

thought that underlies the ideals it embraces, the

movement it incarnates (Markham 14).

The number of works that deal with the French

Revolution is almost beyond counting. Robert D. Zaretsky,

in an article entitled "Defining 'This Sublime Sunrise',"

noted that in 1989 alone, more than 1,300 works had been

published on the Revolution. One can add to this the bound

and footnoted proceedings issued by about 250 academic

conferences and colloquia held in that bicentennial year

(175).

It is contended that as a result of the Revolution of

1789 both the political systems and social values were

changed in France, then Europe, and finally throughout the

world. The systems and values were transformed because of

the French ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity, which

shaped and defined the aspirations of modern, liberal

society. The idea of liberty rejected all forms of

unwilling service, including feudal charges on the land,

personal serfdom, and slavery overseas. The idea of

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equality denied the claims of the privileged estates,

guilds, corporations, and religious groups to special

treatment before the law. Fraternity, the Revolution's

final goal, emphasized the possibility that all citizens,

regardless of race, social status, or religion, would have

equal access to all of the benefits that society has to

offer. Certainly most Europeans and Americans today still

subscribe to these revolutionary ideas.

The origins of the Revolution have been studied by many

scholars. Many historians and writers think that the

Revolution was caused by the incompetence of Louis XVI and

his wife, Marie Antoinette. At the heart of the matter is

the issue of whether or not the French political system

failed. It had certainly appeared to function effectively

during the reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715), the powerful king

who once made the boast that "I am the State." Sir Winston

Churchill described Louis XIV as the creator of a French

government that, while quite inflexible in ability to

respond to the needs of the people, functioned reasonably

well under his leadership. The inferior successors of the

Sun King, however, "inherited all of his panoply of power

but none of his capacity. They could neither work the

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machine nor could they alter it," (Churchill 268)

particularly when it came to issuing the infamous lettres de

cachet, by which any individual could be sent to prison

indefinitely.1 To be aware that the French monarchy had

lost all of its respect in the decades prior to the outbreak

of the Revolution, it is necessary only to read the

following selection from the "Anecdotes sur Mme la comtesse

(sic) du Barry":

Our Father, who art in Versailles. Abhorred be

Thy name. Thy kingdom is shaken. Thy will is no

longer done on earth or in heaven. Give us back

this day our daily bread, which Thou has taken

from us. Forgive Thy parlements who have upheld

interests, as Thou forgiveth those ministers who

have sold them. Be not led into temptation by du

Barry. But deliver us from the devil of a

chancellor. Amen! (Darnton 373)2

Financial mismanagement continued under Louis XV (1715-

1774), and the expenses of the Seven Year's War drastically

lowered the reserves of the French treasury, but Louis XV

was apparently not concerned about such a problem unfolding

in his own lifetime. Supposedly he stated, "Apres moi, le

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deluge!"3 (Gottschalk 96). That flood was destined to

destroy the reign of his grandson, Louis XVI (1774-1793).

Historians all agree that Louis XVI and his wife, Marie

Antoinette, helped bring on the French Revolution in 1789.

There are, however, some incidents that have gone basically

unnoticed that might cast a bit more light onto the behavior

of the royal couple during this period than is normally

noted. No apology is offered for the actions of the King

and the Queen, but by employing a slightly different

approach the actions of Louis and Marie may, up to a point,

be more easily understood than is normally the case. The

King and Queen were, of course, products of their times, and

in many instances their responses to problems in their

kingdom were paralleled by the actions of their fellow

monarchs in other parts of continental Europe. The failure

of Louis to address the need for tax reform, for example,

may be compared to the very practical approach toward

taxation employed by Catherine the Great of Russia. This

Tsarina had come to realize that, while tax reforms were

desirable, any attempt by her to tax the powerful nobles

would meet with instant resentment, and Catherine knew that

she had to have the support of her big nobles to govern her

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kingdom effectively. Accordingly, she was careful to listen

to the advice from members of her Senate when she met with

them (Anthony 301-05). While Catherine's methods worked in

Russia, the same approaches failed Louis in France.

Among the many writers and historians who have studied

the Revolution was Saul K. Padover. Author of The Life and

Death of Louis XVI, he examined the royal couple and

provided both favorable and critical assessments of their

character. Louis, he noted, remained a relatively popular

figure in spite of his wife. He was liked for his lack of

pretentiousness and respected for his honesty, even though

there were diamond scandals and financial disorders tied to

his reign. He appealed to Frenchmen as a stoutly built,

hearty eater; had he exerted himself to carry out his

political intentions, he probably would have been one of the

most popular kings in French history. Even in their sharp

criticism of the government, the King's disillusioned

subjects exempted him from attack by separating him from his

ministers and the ministers from the system. Louis was

liked, after all, by many Frenchmen to the very end (Padover

127).

For Louis XVI, the Marquis de Bouillé had few

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complimentary words; he felt that the new king had a

pleasant enough personality, but he was concerned that Louis

apparently wanted above all else to please his people. To

this extent he had taken France into the American

Revolution, which De Bouillé regarded as a "ruinous war"

that exhausted the French treasury (19).

In contrast to Padover, Madame de La Tour du Pin, in

her Memoirs, provided a more critical, contemporary

evaluation of Louis: "Hidden away at Versailles or busy

hunting in the nearby forests, he suspected nothing, and

believed nothing he was told" (98). Sebastien Mercier, in

Memoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred, claimed that

the King seemed to be unaware, for example, that his capital

city had been described as:

a diamond in the midst of a dunghill. . . .On this

spot, where all things abound, I behold wretches

parishing (sic) from want; in the midst of so many

sagacious laws, a thousand crimes are committed,

among so many regulations of the police, all is

disorder; nothing [is] to be seen but shackles,

embarrassments, and practices contrary to the

public good" (4-5).

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Other shortcomings, as well as assets, were described rather

vividly by Lord Storment, the British Ambassador to France:

The strongest and most decided features of this

King's character are a love of Justice, a general

desire of doing well, a passion for Economy, and

an abhorrence of all those Excesses of the last

Reign.

He certainly does not consult the queen openly,

and he has been heard to say more than once, that

Women ought not to meddle with Politics. Were she

to attempt to take a decided lead, she would

probably lose all her power, but she is too wise,

and too well advised to take so unguarded a step.

She will I imagine employ the much surer arts of

Insinuation and Address, attempt to guide him by a

secret line, and try to make him follow whilst he

thinks he leads (Padover 66-67).

While opinions about the King varied, public opinion

tilted sharply against the Queen. Whether Marie Antoinette

ever said, in reference to the French peasants, to "let them

eat cake," the statement has come to personify the Queen as

a heartless, arrogant foreigner who had no interest at all

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in helping her subjects. Thomas Jefferson, in his Writings,

was less than complimentary of the Queen when he wrote of

her domination of Louis XVI:

This [kingdom] he would have faithfully

administered, and more than this I do not believe

he ever wished. But he had a Queen of absolute

sway over his weak mind, and timid virtue; and of

a character the reverse of his in all points.

This angel, as gaudily painted in the rhapsodies

of the Rhector Burke, with some smartness of

fancy, but no sound sense was proud, disdainful of

restraint, indignant at all obstacles to her will,

eager in the pursuit of pleasure, and firm enough

to hold to her desires, or perish in their wreck.

Her inordinate gambling and dissipations, with

those of the Count of d'Artois and others of her

clique, had been a sensible item in the exhaustion

of the treasury, which called into action the

reforming hand of the nation; and her opposition

to it her inflexible perverseness, and dauntless

spirit, led herself to the Guillotine, & drew the

king on with her, and plunged the world into

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crimes & calamities which will forever stain the

pages of modern history. I have ever believed

that had there been no queen, there would have

been no revolution. (92)

Jefferson also had his own idea about what should be

done with the Queen and her husband. He wrote that:

I should have shut up the Queen in a Convent,

putting harm out of her power, and placed the King

in his station, investing him with limited powers,

which I verily believe he would have honestly

exercised, according to the measure of his

understanding. (93)

The Queen outraged the French in many ways: she was

extravagant as an oriental despot, she was a foreigner who

associated with people of poor character, and she was the

wife of a faithful husband whom she henpecked. Georges

Danton, who was certainly no admirer of the monarchy, had

never liked Marie Antoinette and referred to her as "the

Austrian woman" (Christophe 143). Thrifty citizens of the

middle class resented her gambling, devout women suspected

her piety, and submissive husbands hated her domineering

habits. In short, everybody could find fault with the

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Queen, including her own brother, Joseph II, who was so

concerned about his sister's financial excesses that he

expressed his feelings to her openly when he visited her at

Versailles in 1776. By contrast, in Louis XVI he saw a

monarch who seemed to mean well and who was by no means

ignorant, who still lacked enough education and thereby had

become easy prey for those who wished to influence him

against reforms. He noted that Louis "was powerless to

change the course of policy, he could change only his

servants" (67). Since the monarchy was unable at the time

to provide heirs to the throne, public opinion was

particularly critical (Padover 96-97). Writing years after

the Revolution, Adolphe Thiers provided a similar view by

contending that:

Marie Antoinette was hated more cordially than

Louis XVI himself. To her were attributed the

treasons of the court, the waste of public money,

and, above all, the inveterate hostility of

Austria. Louis XVI, it was said, had suffered

everything to be done; but it was Marie Antoinette

who had done everything, and it was upon her that

punishment for it ought to fall. (225)

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Not consulted about their marriage, which was completed by

proxy in March, 1770, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had

become pawns in a high stakes game played by their elders.

In the opinion of Etienne Francois Comte de Stainville

Choiseul, a foreign minister and Intendant at Metz from 1766

to 1778, the marriage had been set up chiefly to provide a

closer tie in the alliance between France and Austria

(Padover 28). Empress Maria Theresa of Austria viewed the

French crown as the most illustrious in Europe and deserving

to be worn by her prettiest daughter, even if she were

married to "an imbecile of a man" (Padover 28). Maria

Theresa's trusted Ambassador, Mercy d'Argenteau, reported to

Vienna confidentially:

This monarchy, [Mercy wrote in 1769], is so

decadent that it would not be regenerated except

by a successor of the present monarch who, by his

qualities and talents, would repair the extreme

disorder of the kingdom. . . .But one should rely

very little on the resource, less because of the

heir apparent to the thrown [sic] is being

educated by an incompetent and vicious man (La

Vauguyon), than that nature seems to have refused

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everything to the Dauphin. This prince, by his

face and talk, shows an extremely limited

intelligence, much clumsiness. (Padover 28)

Mercy d'Argenteau's comments provide disturbing evidence of

a very weak monarchy.

Another factor helped worsen this weakness. Louis

suffered from a masculine inadequacy, impotency, with the

result that his honeymoon was ruined by disappointment and

physical pain. Since Louis also suffered from intellectual

inferiority, this condition only worsened his problem. His

wife, a fifteen year old bride, quickly developed a grudge

which she privately nursed against her husband because he

had failed to be a man. Louis, it would appear, had a

permanent sense of guilt in the presence of his wife and

consequently submitted to her wishes continually. Although

the King did everything to please his wife, Marie remained

completely self-centered and took advantage of his

"compliance and gentleness" (Padover 33).4

Louis was not a lover. He was kind, but his kindness

to his wife was no substitute for potency. The Queen,

however, did not know that her husband's impotence could be

corrected with relative ease. Doctors assured Louis that

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there was nothing permanently wrong with him that a little

courage could not resolve (Padover 35). A minor operation

that would correct the situation, Louis was told, might very

possibly enable him to become a father and thereby improve

his relations with his wife. This advice came at a critical

time: the lives of the King and Queen had become miserable,

the inability of the royal couple to produce a child was the

gossip of Europe, and Louis knew his wife was suffering

humiliation. She had told him that her mother constantly

scolded her, and he could not face her (Padover 36). Then

in 1776, Joseph, at the request of his mother, went to

Versailles and convinced Louis to submit to the operation.

Several months later the Queen bore a daughter, and other

children would eventually follow. Louis began to regain his

dignity, and the Queen began to show more respect for him,

although her opinion of her husband's character was still

not overwhelmingly favorable:

He had a decided bent for justice, and also good

sense and a prosperity in his own way of seeing

things. But I fear the effects of his

nonchalance, his apathy, and finally that failure

of will without which one can neither think nor

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feel keenly enough to act effectively. (Padover

38)

The King was only nineteen at this time, but the Queen

obviously felt that he was too indecisive. He had a good

attitude, but he was far too passive in his attempts to make

major decisions, and his lack of leadership ability damaged

a monarchy that had been weakening for decades.

Because of the King's inability to take a firm stand on

major issues, others would take advantage of his kindly

nature, particularly where finances were involved. Louis

was required by the system to spend over 6,000,000 livres a

year for food and drink for state banquets and about

1,500,000 livres on furniture. Annually, his personal

budget for special funds averaged around 500,000 livres, and

his Civil List ran into the millions. Unfortunately, to the

King's detriment, his family and their retainers never let

go of the treasury, which they regarded as their own

personal fund that could be tapped whenever they so desired

(Padover 119, Jefferson 92). About such expenditures, Jacob

Burckhardt, the nineteenth century Swiss historian, wrote

that "it was as though the kings wanted to keep not only

their relatives but every one of their retinue tremendously

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wealthy and had to compensate them quite disproportionately

for every loss. . ." (244). One such incident occurred in

1779, when Charles, Count of Artois, a well-known gambler,

ran up an enormous debt of 11,000,000 livres and asked the

King to pay it. When Louis refused, Artois replied that his

brother's title should not be Roi de France et Navarre but

Roi de France et Avarre.4 In the end, however, Louis paid

his brother's debt, apparently without ever realizing the

harm this action would inflict upon his government (Padover

120).

It is also possible that the King was not aware of the

many lettres de cachet that had been used against his

subjects. In his Memoirs, William M. Endicott observed

that:

[A] citizen is suddenly snatched from his family,

from his friends, and society; a piece of paper

becomes an invincible thunder-bolt. . .Intendants

and bishops have in their possession lettres de

cachet, and have nothing to do but put in the name

of any one they wish to destroy; the place is left

vacant. We have seen the wretched grow old in

prison, and forgot by their persecutors, while the

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king has never been informed of their crime, of

their misery, or even of their existence. (71)

One observer, however, who did grasp the activity of

the situation was Mercy d'Argenteau, the Austrian

Ambassador. A very conservative aristocrat, he wrote in

1786:

There is a cry of misery and terror. . .The

present government surpasses that last one in

feebleness, disorder, and rapacity, and it is

morally impossible that this anarchy continue for

long without giving place to some catastrophe.

(Padover 121)

To D'Argenteau and others, the system appeared to resemble a

fever that was growing worse and would eventually destroy

Louis' government. Mallet du Pan, a journalist, implied

that France was beginning to break with the past when he

wrote: "From day to day they change political systems. No

rules, no principles. The sun does not rise three days at

Versailles on the same counsels. Uncertainty of weakness

and total incapacity. . ." (Padover 145). Du Pan's

observations were echoed by Baron Phillip von Alvenslében, a

Prussian diplomat at Versailles in late 1787:

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The queen is more hated and more powerful than

ever. She has left her frivolous society and

occupies herself with politics. . . .The principal

minister is a mediocre fellow who will hold his

place only so long as the queen wishes and so long

as he is weak. . .He has arrived by intrigue and

will maintain himself by intrigue. . . .Count

Montmorin lacks not so much the will as the

ability to do evil. . .The Comptroller General is,

so to speak, null. . . Baron de Breteuil could

perhaps act with a certain energy, but the queen

will have nothing of him, since he is too much of

a man. (Padover 145-46)

The Baron provided a convincing description of a meddling

queen who had gone directly against the vow she made at her

marriage not to get involved in politics (Padover 146).

Louis was inadequate for her needs, and she despised others

whom she could not manipulate. As to prospects for future

reform, Von Alvenslében was not optimistic:

It is impossible for France to put order into

her affairs and consequences into her plans as it

is for water to go against the

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current. . . .France is like a young man who one

cannot free of his debts, because the more money

he has the more credit he gets, and the more

credit he gets the more he squanders. . .

To regenerate this nation, or rather the

government, it would require a king who has

capacity, will force, and, above everything,

perservance; but how can one ever get such a king

of France? (Padover 146-47)

The Baron's description reveals a nation united in its

reluctance to change. The French had, after all, lived

under the monarchy for centuries, and it certainly appeared

that sufficient public pressure for change had not yet

developed.

The incompetence of the monarchy was, of course, just

one of the reasons for the coming of the Revolution. While

the people had grown tired of their well-meaning but

incompetent king and his meddling wife, it was obvious that

the entire political system needed to be changed. Not to

change was to invite chaos and bloodshed, but violent

revolution seemed most unlikely. As Churchill noted in The

Age of Revolution, those who wanted to oppose the King's

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government were rarely inhibited from doing so, but "hardly

even a fanatic had dreamt of overthrowing it" (274). Even

before Louis had come to power, such political changes had

been advocated peacefully by the philosophers. The writings

of men such as Voltaire, Baron de Montesquieu, and Jean

Jacques Rousseau would influence many of the revolutionary

policies. Montesquieu wrote a series of observations about

both the French economy and the state of government. Partly

because he had traveled to Great Britain and witnessed the

beginnings of industrial growth there, he noted in his

Persian Letters a situation in France under Louis XV that

tended to discourage similar growth:

Nothing attracts foreigners more than liberty and

the wealth which always follows from it. The one

is sought for itself, and our needs direct us to

countries where we may find the other. . .It is

not the same in countries under an arbitrary

power, where the prince, the courtiers, and a few

groan under crushing poverty. (205)

Concern about this "arbitrary power" was stated more

forcefully by the Baron in The Spirit of the Laws, in which

he expressed concern that the Estates General had not met

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since 1614, and that if the current situation were to

continue, it would "put an end to liberty and the state

would fall into anarchy" (156-57). The Baron's prediction,

unfortunately, was destined to become a reality within the

next fifty years. As a solution to France's political

problems, Montesquieu proposed his idea of "separation of

powers," whereby government would be administered by three

individual branches: legislative, executive, and judicial.

Such separation, he believed, would prevent the abuses of

power that had regularly been plaguing France for so many

years (Montesquieu 150-53).

While Montesquieu was advocating the idea of

"separation of powers," Rousseau was attracting considerable

attention by writing The Social Contract (1762). In that

work, he stated his belief that a government could

degenerate by shrinking. He explained this process as

follows: "The government shrinks when it passes from a

large to a small number, that is from democracy to

aristocracy and from aristocracy to royalty" (96-97).

Rousseau liked to compare successful monarchs to the

Hellenistic scientist, Archimedes, who had been able to move

a large ship simply by sitting on the shore and manipulating

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the vessel through a system of levers and pulleys that he

had developed (87). By way of contrast, Rousseau believed

that under an unsuccessful monarchy there tended to be

appointments of "petty rascals" who possessed "petty

talents" and consequently proved to be poor public officials

(89). Since Louis XVI could be easily influenced by his

friends, too many of these individuals had wound up holding

responsible government positions. Such a situation had

induced Rousseau to make his famous observations that "Man

was/is born free, and everywhere he is in chains" (46).

Rousseau, however, believed those chains could be broken by

the people's acceptance of a "social contract," in which

everyone would agree to abide by majority rule. Adherence

to majority rule would, he believed, provide the "liberty,

equality, and fraternity" sought by the people.

The Social Contract quickly became a widely read

publication; its reference to "liberty, equality, and

fraternity" was taken up as the watchwords of the French

Revolution, and one of the Revolution's most prominent

leaders, Robespierre, numbered himself among the most loyal

disciples of Rousseau (Ergang 642).

There is no doubt that many of the suggestions made by

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the philosophes were being carried out by rulers in other

parts of continental Europe. Maria Theresa, during her

reign as Empress of Austria (1740-1780), introduced a system

of elementary education in her country that was regarded as

the best in Europe in the years before the outbreak of the

French Revolution (Crankshaw 229). Likewise, Frederick the

Great of Prussia invited Voltaire to his palace at Potsdam,

presumably to be closer to a political philosopher whose

ideas he greatly admired. Although the two men found it

difficult to work together in the palace, Frederick did put

into practice many of the reforms recommended by Voltaire

and his fellow philosophes; torture in the court system was

abolished, and a general policy of religious toleration was

introduced (Ergang 503). In contrast, Louis XVI introduced

no such reforms in France and continued to rule without

calling a session of his Estates General. There is no way

to determine if Louis read Montesquieu's prophecy in Spirit

of the Laws, which claimed that if his recommended political

reforms were not put into place France risked the danger of

political revolution (156-57).

One man, however, who did read Montesquieu's work was

Jean Paul Marat, the well-known Jacobin, who regarded

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Montesquieu as "the greatest man whom the century has

produced" (Gottschalk 18). It was his belief that the

Baron, if he had lived, would have been the only person fit

to instruct the future Louis XVII in his duties as the King

of France.

Other reforms suggested by the philosophes were being

put into place in Austria by Joseph II, who had succeeded

his mother, Maria Theresa, upon her death in 1780. Joseph

had not only granted complete religious toleration to his

subjects, but he had also taken a huge step into the future

by freeing the serfs in his kingdom (Bernard 117).

Eventually, of course, Joseph's reforms would be overturned

by his brother, Leopold II, who succeeded him in 1790, but

at the time there was no way for Louis XVI to foresee the

fate of Joseph's reforms. The actions of such "enlightened

despots" as Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great, and

Joseph II had, apparently, little impact upon Louis'

interest in reforms.

In spite of such lack of interest in reforms, Louis XVI

made an historic decision when he decided on August 6, 1788,

to call the Estates General into a session that would begin

on May 5, 1789; that body had not met since 1614, and no one

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could possibly predict what actions might be taken during

its upcoming sessions. The King also took the creditable

steps of asking that cahiers be submitted to the delegates

in the Estates and announcing that the number of delegates

who sat in the Third Estate was to be doubled (Ergang 652).

Now, since the traditional method of voting had been "by

Order," in which each Estate could cast but one vote, it

could be assumed by the middle class that their king

intended to change the method of voting so as to grant one

vote to each representative. Were such a reform to be

introduced, it would be well within the realm of possibility

that the delegates of the Third Estate would be able to vote

into law some of their most cherished objectives, because

they could count on limited support from members of the

first two Estates, and that support would give them the

majority they needed to pass their reforms.

While such actions by Louis XVI were generally viewed

as positive by the Third Estate and negative by the first

two Estates, it is important to remember that all three

Estates were prepared to do the King's bidding; Louis at

this time was still master of his fate, and positive action

by him at the opening session of the Estates would have

27

greatly strengthened his prestige as ruler of his people.

Such a rosy scenario, however, never played out; the

opening speech of Louis to the Estates General proved to be

a great disappointment because no change in the voting

system was proposed. Among the remarks made by the King

were the following:

Gentlemen--this day which my heart has awaited

a long time has finally arrived, and I see myself

surrounded by the representatives of the nation

which it is my glory to command. . . .

I have already decreed considerable

retrenchments in expenditures. . ., but despite

the resources which the most sever economics may

offer, I fear, gentlemen, not to be able to

relieve my subjects as I should like. I shall lay

before your eyes the exact conditions of the

finances. I am assured. . .that you will propose

to me the most effective means of reestablishing

them and to strengthen the public credit. . . .

May a happy understanding, gentlemen, reign in

this assembly. . . .(Padover 160)

The above speech by the King contained, unfortunately,

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no specific suggestions for reforms, and without those

suggestions, the delegates in the Third Estate realized that

any further participation on their part in the Estates

General would be meaningless. They were particularly

disappointed that the King had not mentioned possible

changes in the method of voting. The failure of Louis to

grant each delegate a vote doomed the Third Estate to

perpetual domination by the nobles and clergy (Padover 161).

It was this issue over voting rights that was recognized by

Crane Brinton, a very well-known authority on revolution, as

the formal cause for the French Revolution (Brinton 74).

Somewhat overlooked, however, in the developments that

surrounded the opening session of the Estates General was a

personal tragedy that was diverting the King from the

situation in the Estates General (Padover 161). He and his

wife had been preoccupied by the worsening condition of

their son, the dauphin. Barely eight years old, the little

prince died on June 8 from tuberculosis that, according to

the autopsy, had destroyed his left lung entirely.6

There is, of course, no way to prove that, without this

tragedy, Louis would have exerted his influence in a more

powerful manner, but it certainly would appear plausible

29

that the illness and loss of his son prevented the King from

taking action toward the Assembly for at least a few days.

Also, during the mourning period, the royal family moved

from Versailles to Marly, where Louis fell under the

influence of his wife and his brother, the Count of Artois.

With their encouragement, Louis began to reprimand the

delegates of the Third Estate, particularly for their

criticism of the nobles and clergy:

I disapprove of the repeated expression,

"privileged classes," which the Third Estate

employs to designate the first two orders. These

obsolete expressions serve only to maintain a

spirit of division absolutely contrary to the

advancement of the public good (Padover 165).

By making such remarks, Louis was losing control of the

monarchy. The delegates had come to believe they would get

no support from the King and would be unwise to depend upon

him for future assistance. Consequently, on June 17, 1789,

they took matters in their own hands. Under the leadership

of the Comte de Mirabeau, they declared themselves to be the

National Assembly of France. Their action represented an

immediate challenge to the monarchy from the representatives

30

of the common people (Padover 164-65). It is significant

that Louis XVI made no attempt to prevent this action, even

though his failure to act obviously cost him much prestige

and respect. It is also significant that a few members of

the clergy and the nobility joined the delegates in the

Third Estate. Within days, the members had decided to make

as their major objective the drafting of a written

constitution for France. This action was formalized by the

famous "Tennis Court Oath" of June 20, but the idea had

already been accepted by the delegates before that colorful

event even took place (Ergang 654-55).

It was after the famous oath that Louis again

demonstrated his inability to provide positive leadership;

he waited a week, and then, on June 27, he ordered the

remaining members of the first two Estates to join the

delegates in the National Assembly (Ergang 656). The fact

that Louis was immediately obeyed by the nobles and the

clergy provides obvious evidence that his position was still

very powerful, but his actions in the weeks that followed

served only to weaken that position greatly. When Louis

dismissed his Finance Minister, Jacques Necker, on July 11,

he seemed to send a message to the middle and lower classes

31

that all hope for significant financial reform was now gone.

Three days later, when the Bastille was attacked and burned,

Louis made an entry in his diary that spoke volumes about

his failure to understand his subjects' problems. The entry

was just one pitiful word: "Nothing" (Godechot, Bastille

249).

As work began in the National Assembly, it became

apparent that the shortage of money was going to be a

critical issue, and the solution to the problem, without

doubt, did much to produce the counter-revolution in

Brittany as well as in other parts of France. The national

debt had steadily increased from three hundred million

livres in January, 1789, to more than four hundred million

livres in October of the same year. Consequently, in order

to pay the most pressing debts, the delegates voted to

approve a proposal by the Bishop of Autun, Charles Maurice

Talleyrand, that the State take over the property of the

Church. Through this maneuver, it became possible to use

the confiscated lands as collateral for the assignats or

paper money. Not surprisingly, this decision brought down

the wrath of Pope Pius VI (1774-1799) upon the Assembly. To

make matters worse, the delegates drew up the Civil

32

Constitution of the Clergy, in which all priests and bishops

were to be elected by the voters and be held accountable to

the laws of the state. Henceforth, clergy were to be paid

by the state and would be required to take an oath of

allegiance to the Civil Constitution or lose their jobs.

Passage of this act has been compared to "placing a lighted

torch on a powder barrel" (Haarman 10). Its conditions,

understandably, were completely unacceptable to the Pope,

and on July 12, 1790, he formally condemned the National

Assembly for action it had taken.

The action of Pius VI created a critical problem for

delegates in the National Assembly; France was

overwhelmingly Catholic, and its people had always looked to

the Pope as their spiritual leader. The problem simply

worsened when approximately 50% of the clergy refused to

take the oath. Significantly, only seven of the 135 bishops

agreed to take the oath.7 This action of the clergy,

coupled with the Pope's condemnation of the Assembly,

created a religious crisis for France. Historians agree

that the passage of the Civil Constitution represented the

most serious mistake ever made by the Assembly, and one

flatly stated that it turned the church of most of the

33

French people into "an enemy of the Revolution" and made it

possible for "a mass-based counterrevolution to emerge"

(Kishlansky, Geary, O'Brian, 625).

Not surprisingly, Louis XVI did not approve of the

Civil Constitution and announced that he had signed the

document with great reluctance. He then proceeded to

surround himself with clergy who refused to accept the Civil

Constitution. From that time he began to plan a counter-

revolution, backed by whatever forces he could rally to his

side.

34

The French Revolution in Brittany

Even by attempting the "flight to Varennes" in 1791,

Louis XVI never completely lost the support of his subjects.

Under his Bourbon Dynasty, the provinces, including

Brittany, had been loosely governed by the rulers at

Versailles. Mounted police had been used to maintain law

and order, but in Brittany there were only approximately two

hundred of them to supervise approximately two million

residents (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Rural Community" 97).

Such a task, of course, was not practical; law and order had

to be maintained by local commissioners, and outside

interference by the government was resented. In the rural

villages, since there was little interference with basic

life-styles, there was general respect for the Bourbons and

their government (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Rural Community"

102-07).

After the creation of the National Assembly, however,

the presence of the central government became much more

noticeable in Brittany, especially with the passage of the

Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1790 and the appearance

of priests who were now paid by the government. Within a

short period of time, a significant uprising known as

35

Chouannerie had broken out in this northwestern corner of

France.

Brittany is certainly the most remote of the French

provinces. Not joined to France until 1491 and granted

special privileges by Francis I in 1532 (see Appendix), it

protrudes prominently into the sea on three sides, and

throughout its history its residents have been closely tied

to the sea for their economic livelihood.

The influence of the sea is felt all across the

province, although as one goes inland the pounding of the

waves diminishes, and the dampness of the ocean is less

noticed (Planhol and Cloval 2). There are basically two

separate regions: the country "of the sea," Ar-mor, with its

maritime activities, and the country "of the woods," Ar-

coet, with its pastoral and agricultural activities (Planhol

and Coval 70-71).

In regard to language, the region is divided into Upper

and Lower Brittany. Lower Brittany, to the west, includes

the areas where French and Breton, two of the Celtic family

of languages, have traditionally been dominant. Upper

Brittany, to the east, is separated from Lower Brittany by

an imaginary north-south line that crosses the peninsula

36

roughly between Vannes and Saint Brieu (Padone 1). In this

region, which borders on Normandy and Vendée, both French

and Gallo (a combining form of Gaelic: Gallo-Romance) a

Breton-influenced dialect, have traditionally been spoken

(Padone 1).

The climate of Brittany is a westcoast marine type that

features high humidity, cloudy skies and fine drizzle

(Monkhouse 456) Local weather in Brittany, however, is

changeable; "in Brittany, you get four seasons, all in the

one day" (Moffatt 1). This precipitation is well

distributed throughout the year, as may be seen in the chart

below. Although there is a contrast between the cool season

months (September to March), which all have more than 2.40

inches of precipitation, the absolute maximum comes between

October and December with more than 3.10 inches, and those

in the warm season (April to September), all of which have

less than 2.30 inches. This gives sufficient rainfall

during every month of the year to classify Brest, a major

Bretegne city, as having a marine climate (Trewartha 312,

318, 390, and 395)

37

Brittany is marked by a bocage (a geographical term

that refers to a "woody, bushy district"). Little valleys,

knolls, and many hedgerows of trees limit the horizon

considerably (Martonne 65). Along the coast, the wind of

the nearby sea produces a constant feeling of dampness. One

writer described the province as dominated by "a feeling of

gentle melancholy" because of rains that could last by the

days and the mist and fog during the intervals (Pinchemal

75). Such rains could, of course, make the few roads in the

province almost impassable and make any sort of fast travel

virtually impossible. Further impeding any chance for fast

travel was a very thick forest that was situated right along

the frontier next to Maine and Anjou (Pinchemel 75). For

guerrilla warfare, this setting was ideal.

Arthur Young, the Secretary for the British Board of

Agriculture, visited much of Brittany during the late summer

of 1788 and was most unfavorably impressed by it (Young 9).

As he entered the province at Pont Orfin on August 31, 1788,

he noted that:

[T]here seems here a more minute division of farms

than before. There is a long street in the

38

Episcopal town of Doll, without a glass window, a

horrid appearance. My entry into Bretagné gives

me an idea of its being a miserable province.

(Young 97)

On September 1, Young arrived in the small town of

Combourg, which he described as "one of the most brutal

filthy places that can be seen; mud houses, no windows, and

a pavement so broken as to impede all passengers" (Young

107). He also observed that throughout the area the cost of

a loaf of bread had become so high as to put the people in a

rebellious mood, and he detected an impending threat of

physical violence if reforms were not quickly introduced

(Young 182).

In the area around Vannes, Sir Arthur saw a sight that

obviously frustrated him considerably: "The common plow

team, two oxen; always harnessed by the horns, and a little

horse, a mere pony, before them; if no horse, the oxen are

led by a woman. The (sic) use aukward (sic), but light,

wheel-ploughs" (Young 127). Obviously the agricultural

revolution had not reached the area around Vannes.

Young also noted a lack of crop rotation, which he

believed to be responsible for the poor crop yield per acre.

39

He valued that yield per acre at £1 14s. 9 ¾d. and

contended that regular crop rotation could double the yield

(Young 280). He also placed much blame for the poor yield

on the farmers' practice of burning their fields (Young

289). Indeed, he stated bluntly that "there are great

tracts of country, so miserably cultivated, that the whole

would, by a good English farmer, be considered as waste"

(Young 293).

After he completed his tour of the province, Sir Arthur

calculated that three-fourths of Brittany was composed of

waste land (Young 92). He also lamented the constant

practice of cutting and burning the fields, with no changes

ever being considered. As he put it, "When will men be wise

enough to know, that good grass must be had, if corn is the

object?" (Young 92)

The amount of waste land in Brittany, as noted by

Young, was comparable to that found in the rest of France.

For that entire kingdom, which he visited between 1787 and

1789, Young estimated that approximately forty million acres

could be classified as waste land. He believed this figure

to equal the total amount of farmland available in England

itself (Young 293). To have so much waste land was all the

40

more serious because France, he believed, was overpopulated

by approximately six million people (Young 482)

After he had viewed the waste lands in France, Sir

Arthur made recommendations for their improvement. He

believed that the lands should be enclosed and that a

general tax exemption for twenty-one years should be granted

to the farmers. In addition, he recommended the

establishment of a model farm of between four hundred and

six hundred acres (Young 99) in each district "under a right

management," (Young 98) so that the farmers in the district

could observe the proper methods of planting, tilling, and

harvesting. Young predicted that such improvements would

produce a ten-fold increase in yield per acre (Young 98).

Unfortunately, no such improvements were being planned by

Louis XVI and his ministers.

Notwithstanding Sir Arthur's observations, the towns of

Brittany had played a very important role in earlier French

history (Young 10). During the great age of discovery,

exploration, and colonization, seaports in Brittany such as

Saint Malo, Brest, and Lorient became famous. For example,

little Saint Malo was the home of both Jacques Cartier and

Samuel de Champlain, and many of its fishermen caught cod

41

off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, dried or salted them,

and then sold them at various seaports in Italy, Spain, and

at Marseilles. It was estimated that approximately seventy

per cent of Saint Malo's fishing fleet was involved in this

activity (Smith 465).

The interior of Brittany, however, continued to be

occupied by small farmers who lived in remotely located

hamlets that were made up of fewer than ten families each.

Because roads were very poor and in some places virtually

non-existent, contact with Paris was usually made by water,

down the coast to a river. Brest was redesigned by the

Sieur De Vauban in 1683 (Smith 466) and became important for

its shipyards and naval barracks. Lorient was set up by

directors of the French East India Company to be the

headquarters for their overseas operations, and while its

commerce could not match that of Nantes, it enjoyed easy

access to markets at Orleans and Paris. For much of the

eighteenth century it was a major refining center for sugar

imported from the West Indies, and it also served as the

largest slave market in the entire kingdom (Smith 468-69).

In his writings, Arthur Young reported that 120 ships were

involved in the sugar trade, with twenty ships taking part

42

in the slave trade (11).

Residents in many of the small villages along the coast

produced sails, nets, and rope for local fishermen, and

larger towns such as Saint Malo, Lorient, and Nantes were

important exporters of fine lace and linen. In his travels,

Sir Arthur Young described Saint Malo as the center of the

linen industry in France (321). Such exports found a large

market in Spain; commerce in linen and lace had flourished

between that country and Brittany since the end of the

sixteenth century (Smith 464).

The flax that was processed along the seacoast was

grown in the interior of Brittany; linen was the most common

material for making clothing, and the men spent much of the

winter in weaving it after their women had spun it into

thread. Its culture was, however, described as "a mark of

rural poverty" (Pounds 234-35), the presence of which

constituted a potential problem for any government that

ruled France. Coupled with major religious changes and an

unpopular system of land tenure and lease-holding, such

rural poverty would produce serious discontent against the

ruling officials.

The major religious changes came in 1790 with the

43

passage of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which

produced wide-spread protests across France. It was

inevitable that the residents of Brittany would become

involved in those protests. Some of the priests, no doubt,

took the oath to the Civil Constitution merely as a matter

of convenience, but they had always been a part of rural

society, and many of them rejected the oath because of fear

of losing their influence over their parishioners. In the

diocese of Rennes, only seventeen percent of the clergy took

the oath (Gildea and Lagrée 830) Some went even further and

tried to swing their parishioners against the entire

revolutionary settlement. For example the Cúre of La

Baussaine in the district of Saint Malo supposedly stated:

. . .[T]hat he was the only cúre in La-Baussaine,

that he would continue to be; Monseiur de la Motte

[the constitutional priest] was an intruder, that

he did not recognize either the cúre, the National

Assembly, the department or the districts. (Le

Goff and Sutherland, "Social Origins" 76)

At La Chapelle-Janson, the rector took the oath, but popular

opposition was so great that he wrote that "The people

treated me as an intruder (intrus) though I have occupied my

44

functions for forty years" (Le Goff and Sutherland "Rural

Community" 116).

The examples listed above make it appear that the

priest's position on the oath of loyalty had much to do with

his hopes for a future position in the parish; to take an

oath to a document that had officially been condemned by the

Pope might result in an immediate loss of respect for the

priest among his parishoners. The priest was one of the

main spokesmen of the community, and the decision of his

parishioners to back his position was a way to demonstrate

to the rest of the world that they had rejected the

Revolution.

As a contrast from the district of Saint Malo, at

Apremont, which was in the district of Challans in the

Vendée, at the other end of the counter-revolutionary zone,

the country people spent ten days guarding the property of

Father Raut after word was spread that "local patriots"

intended to throw him into the river and drown him (Le Goff

and Sutherland, "Social Origins" 77).

The question of loyalty to the Church or to the

National Assembly confronted all of France, but those

regions in the west experienced more violence than other

45

regions because so few of their residents had gained obvious

benefits from the Revolution and had no hope of changing

their situation in the foreseeable future. The priests in

Lower Brittany, for example, had used their right of

petition to ask the National Assembly for abolition of the

domaine congéable, a system in which divided ownership of

the land was practiced, but their efforts had produced no

success (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Social Origins" 77). By

way of contrast, those priests who accepted the Civil

Constitution were often viewed as sympathetic to the

landlords who had gained so much out of the financial and

property reforms passed by the National Assembly between

1790 and 1791.

On occasion, those clergy who did not oppose the Civil

Constitution would be given not-so-subtle hints by their

parishioners to change their position. Such a case involved

Father Morin, who was both an assistant priest and the Mayor

of St. Ave, a town just outside of Vannes. A fair was just

ending, and many of the participants stopped by his quarters

and warned him to drop all official connections with the

other officials in the city because they represented the

government (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Social Origins" 76).

46

The position of the tenants is well described below:

Who can blame the rural elite for not standing up

for the new regime when the revolutionary

authorities intruded into their community,

removing the spokesman they knew, imposing a

priest they had most likely never seen in their

lives, and vesting him with civil, religious, and

moral authority they had no right to grant? (Le

Goff and Sutherland, "Social Origins" 77)

On other occasions, when the clergy openly expressed

their concerns about the changes in religion, the opposition

simply increased. For example, the cúre of Brandivy told

members of his congregation "that from now on marriages

would only be business deals, that people would take and

leave each other whenever they liked" (Le Goff and

Sutherland, "Social Origins" 76). This remark, since it was

made by one of the most respected members of the community,

simply intensified feelings against the government.

Similar opposition to the government can be seen in the

actions of Bishop Le Mintier of Treguier, whose diocese

included a large part of the western section of the

department. The Bishop succeeded in obtaining the

47

signatures of over half the priests in the western half of

the department for a protest petition against the Civil

Constitution (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Social Origins" 81).

In the same manner, the Bishop of Quimper obtained support

from the majority of priests in his department. Over in the

district of Vannes, a revolt broke out on February 14, 1791.

The peasants, led by a blacksmith name Le Mée, believed

their bishop, Sebastien Michel Amelot, faced the threat of

physical violence because he refused to take an oath to

support the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. The bishop

was popular with the priests in his district; virtually all

of them supported his position against the Civil

Constitution, and the peasants felt a need to rescue him

while there was still time (Le Goff 348).

It was estimated that approximately 1500 peasants

participated in the uprising at Vannes (Le Goff 351). While

they were put down by government troops, their action was

still quite significant; they represented the general rural

population and members of the Assembly should have realized

such a protest should have been taken seriously (Le Goff

351). Even local officials found themselves in a difficult

situation after the uprising; now they were often viewed as

48

opponents of the Church and as advocates of new taxes that

would bring additional misery to most of the peasants (Le

Goff 351). One of the worst fears was that a cartage (the

Breton's name for the salt tax) might be introduced into

Brittany (Le Goff 350). Such fears were undoubtedly

encouraged by Bishop Amelot, who circulated an Exposition

against the National Assembly in December, 1791 (Le Goff

348). As a result, it was only with considerable difficulty

that the new Church, with its fewer dioceses, was

established (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Social Origins" 81).

In the western Côtes-du-Nord, there were several

dioceses; consequently, it was easier to implement the

religious changes in the more moderate west than in the

east, where a counter-revolutionary feeling was rapidly

developing. Also, in the western region the new Church had

an additional advantage: the new constitutional Bishop of

Saint Brieuc was a relatively sympathetic parish priest from

the Breton-speaking half of the department (Le Goff and

Sutherland, "Social Origins" 81). The revolutionary

government was able to keep a rather restless grip on the

western Côtes-du-Nord by employing such individuals.

Even in such a district, however, the strength of the

49

revolutionary government was threatened by revolts against

the levy of a contingent of National Guards who were to be

sent to the frontier in 1792. Several thousand peasants

invaded Lannion and Pontrieux, chanting their slogan, "The

King! The Old Religion!" (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Social

Origins" 81). Later, in 1793, there was a general revolt

against military conscription around Saint-Pol-de-Leon, and

in 1795 the Chouannerie swept through the southwestern part

of the Côtes-du-Nord. The victories gained by the

revolutionaries in the western Côtes-du-Nord provide visible

evidence that the same basic grievances could turn to the

advantage of both the revolutionary and counter-

revolutionary causes (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Social

Origins" 81).

To enforce the position of the National Assembly, the

officials in the Department of Ille-et-Vilaine tried in

January, 1791, to force all of the non-juring priests into

taking the oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitution of the

Clergy (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Rural Community" 114).

Some of these priests were arrested and exiled, but with

little success. The King rejected such policies, but his

protests were ignored by Department officials. Then, during

50

the summer of 1792, even before they had gained permission

from the Legislative Assembly, Department officials

announced their intention to deport all but a few non-juring

priests in their territory (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Rural

Community" 115).

These deportation tactics, however, worked only rarely.

Only a small number of priests were arrested, and only a few

of them were ever deported. It was apparent that the

officials in the cities had lost contact with their subjects

in the countryside. The National Guard then began in the

eastern Ille-et-Villaine to make life difficult for non-

juring priests and their local supporters. Churches were

closed down, non-juring priests were chased out of the

district, and military support was offered to local

supporters (Patriots) of the Legislative Assembly (Le Goff

and Sutherland, "Rural Community" 115).

This action by the National Guard soon eliminated any

hope of securing the cooperation from the rural areas. In

Ille-et-Vilaine, as shall be noted subsequently, only two

parishes were not classified as under Chouan control in 1795

(Le Goff and Sutherland, "Rural Community" 116). It soon

became apparent that by intervening forcefully in an

51

arbitrary manner, especially against the priests who had

worked so closely with the old Bourbon government and its

local officeholders, the revolutionary government had

created a situation where only physical force was being used

to regulate rural/urban relations. Any rural politician who

tried to cooperate with the government immediately found

himself cut off from his rural constituents.

The dissatisfaction of those rural residents was

expressed by Joseph Thomas, a worker in London who stated

that he "regrets the passing of the old regime, because

every one was happy then and we all were as one, whereas

today we are two" (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Rural Community"

117). In reference to the reforms that had been passed by

the National Assembly and the Legislative Assembly, another

resident observed that "the more that happens, the worse the

people's lot gets" (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Rural

Community" 117-18). Many rural residents obviously

connected their feelings of better times in the Old Regime

to the King and the clergy. Thomas also commented that "he

would prefer a King, since everyone would be content and

happy. I want him back, and also Monsieur Baro [Barreau] de

Girac [the previous non-juring Bishop of Rennes]" (Le Goff

52

and Sutherland, "Rural Community" 118).

The intense support enjoyed by the Church among the

rural residents of Brittany is well illustrated by the

following remarks made by the Commissioner of the Department

of Finistere's Executive Directory:

But here in Finistere the inhabitants have a

strong belief in miracles, listen with eager

foolishness to accounts of happenings which appear

to them to lie outside the rural laws of nature,

and the shrewd man who has learned to win their

confidence is able before long to convince them

that the hand of God is ready to lay hold of them

with symbols of this sort. (Mitchell 98-99)

There were, however, apparently some differences

between the degree of religious enthusiasm in the bocage and

that found in the plains area of the west. As an

explanation for this difference, the Prefect in Vendée noted

that the residents of the plains area of the west were:

. . .less responsive than those in the bocage, not

capable of the same exulted feelings. In asking

the capacity of true conviction, they were

(content) to be resigned. They fell in with this

53

change rather from (feelings) of indifference than

from attachment to the Revolution. (Mitchell 100)

Regardless of the degree of religious enthusiasm in the

province, there was little doubt that the changes made in

the Church by the National Assembly had produced a very

serious repercussion. Religion on its own, however, could

not have produced the serious opposition to the

revolutionary government; the system of land tenure and the

practice of leaseholding were also key factors behind the

decision of so many residents in Brittany to oppose the

Revolution (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Social Origins" 66).

Leaseholding was quite common in many areas of western

France, including the eastern part of Brittany, where French

was the dominant language. By contrast, in Lower Brittany,

where Breton was chiefly spoken, land management was based

on the domaine congéable (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Social

Origins" 66). Under this system, the tenant usually claimed

ownership of the buildings and the crops, with a few trees

if they happened to grow in properly designated areas, and

the landlord claimed the soil itself and most of the

remaining trees (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Social Origins"

66).

54

In Brittany, however, as well as in other provinces,

other types of landholding also were followed. Under the

quevaise, which also was a system based upon divided

ownership, it was possible for a peasant to inherit his

landholding so long as annual payments and the corvée were

honored. The quevaisse was practiced mostly by religious

orders; the Cistercians and the Hospitallers of the Order of

Saint John of Jerusalem had approximately 1200 such

arrangements with peasants in the Côtes-du-Nord and

Finistere (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Social Origins" 66).

There is a surprising point that is revealed in the

above information on landholding: the typical tenant was not

verging on the edge of poverty. It was not unusual for a

peasant to own property worth at least six times the

estimated income from his lease. Since the tenant had to

supply a year's seed supply, horses for plowing, and various

farm tools, it is apparent that a fair amount of property

would have been accumulated (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Social

Origins" 67).

Notwithstanding the economic status of many tenants in

Brittany, there was a marked difference between their

holdings and the property held in the region that extended

55

south from Picardy to Brie, below Paris. Here a typical

farmer held 160 hectares, kept nine farmworkers on a

permanent basis, and averaged an annual income of 15,500

livres (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Social Origins" 67-69).

Often the sons of such individuals were appointed as

notaries and cathedral canons (Le Goff and Sutherland,

"Social Origins" 69).

In contrast to the situation in the Brie area, a farm

in the Lower Loire District averaged only thirty hectares in

size. Only one permanent worker was employed, and the

average annual income was only 2,500 francs (Le Goff and

Sutherland, "Social Origins" 69). Such income, of course,

would not cause the tenants in the district to stand out as

significantly wealthier than their neighbors, and the threat

of class struggle was far less than in regions to the east

of Brittany (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Social Origins" 69).

A development that apparently touched off much of the

trouble between the tenants and their landlords involved the

rising price of grain after 1750. Growing conditions were

good, and the tenants' profits increased until 1775, when

the landlords began to raise the cost of rent. The poor

crop yields in 1788-1789 reduced the tenants' income, and

56

quite understandably they hoped that the National Assembly

might pass reforms that would improve their situation.

Specifically, they favored reforms that would enable them to

purchase all of the lands or give them more of a share in

the profits, and they were disappointed in the Reforms of

August 4, 1789, since very few traditional practices were

going to be changed (Le Goff 342-43). Concerning the

domaine congéable, the council at Rhuys had issued pamphlets

demanding reforms, and the rector at St. Patern, Le

Croisier, even sent a petition to Louis XVI in which he also

condemned the domaine congéable, but he received no reply

from his king (Le Goff 343). Then, within a week after the

Reforms of August 4 had passed, the Deputy from Brittany,

Coroller du Moustier, made an unsuccessful effort to get the

Assembly to abolish the domaine congéable (Le Goff 344).

Such actions as described above illustrate how the

protests over religious and economic issues were coming

together (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Social Origins" 72). To

make matters worse, the Law of August 6, 1791, required

tenants under the domaine congéable to pay the imposition

fonciere themselves, whereas in the past, the vingtieme8 had

been paid in equal amounts by the tenants and their

57

landlords (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Social Origins" 73).

For tenants who, unlike the domaniers, had no claims of

ownership to the land, the situation was additionally

frustrating because the landlords refused to grant more time

on payments even in years of very poor harvests (Le Goff and

Sutherland, "Social Origins" 74) Their hopes for help from

the National Assembly also suffered a setback after the

night of August 4, 1789, when the members of that body chose

to emphasize the rights of property holders and refused to

extend payment deadlines (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Social

Origins" 74-75). To add to the tenant farmers' miseries,

the Law of December 1, 1790, stipulated that a sum of money

equal to that of the old Church tithe, which had been

abolished, would now be added to the tenants' obligations.

For many of these tenants, their total obligations increased

up to forty percent more than the sum they had been paying

in pre-revolutionary times, and the threat of violence

steadily increased (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Social Origins"

75).

Thus it can be seen that a combination of religious and

economic factors helped to produce significant unrest in

Brittany. The opposing sides were clearly defined; those

58

who supported the government were landowners, and those who

opposed the government were tenants who opposed the

bourgeoisie who owned the estates in Upper Brittany and

tenants who were unhappy with the domaine congéable in Lower

Brittany. When the Chouannerie broke out, its supporters

were particularly numerous in those parishes where there

were many bourgeois landholders. The peasants were

unquestionably the largest group to sympathize with the

counter-revolution because "what, in a peasant revolution,

has ever been more important that the question of land? And

who was more tantalized by it than the tenant thwarted in

his desire for ownership and security?" (LeGoff and

Sutherland, "Social Origins" 86-87).

It was in this background of general unrest, brought

about to a great extent by religious discontent coupled with

social and economic unrest, that the movement known as

Chouannerie began. Almost from the beginning, the Chouans

seemed to win overwhelming support from the residents of

Brittany, thanks in large measure to the work of an

influential Breton landowner, Charles Armand Tuffin, the

Marquis de La Rouërie.

59

The Role of Charles Armand Tuffin, Marquis de la

Rouërie

The Chouannerie, the peasant uprising in Brittany

against the revolutionary government, became a serious

threat largely through the work of one French noble, the

Marquis de la Rouërie, and no account of that rebellion

would be complete without an assessment of his career and

contributions to the Chouans. The Marquis, who has been

described as the inventor of Chouannerie, developed the very

tactics of warfare that would be used by the Chouans

themselves (Goodwin 348, Kite 22).

The passage of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy had

produced special anger in Brittany, where the peasants were

sincerely devout and opposed to any change in their church

(Goodwin 333). These unwanted changes inspired many of them

to resort to physical violence in defense of their local

clergy. In many instances, they were encouraged by their

local nobles, one of whom was Charles Armand Tuffin de la

Rouërie (1750-1793).

The original estate of the Marquis covered

approximately five thousand acres in size, and it had a

total of about fifty families attached to it as workers,

60

either in the forests or on the farmland itself (T. Ward 3).

As befitted a noble in such a situation, the Marquis and his

relatives held the key judicial positions in that part of

Brittany (T. Ward 3). The family, however, was not wealthy,

and its contact with the tenants on the estate was much

closer than the contact between most non-Breton nobles and

their own tenants (Goodwin 334).

La Rouërie was born on April 13, 1750, near Saint Ouen

de la Rouërie, on the border of Brittany and Normandy. The

neighboring countryside was beautiful, but travel through it

could be very dangerous. Along the streams were bogs of

quicksand and sunken roads, and thick masses of vines and

roots made travel almost impossible for strangers. The

area, in fact, was perfect for military tactics of hit and

run type, and it was here that the Marquis spent his boyhood

years. During that time, he became a skilled horseman, an

achievement that would serve him well in future military

actions both in his native Brittany and also in North

America (Stutesman 6). He also received extensive training

in the English and German languages, another talent that

would be of benefit to him in the future (Stutesman 6).

At the age of seventeen, the Marquis received a

61

commission as an ensign in the French Guards (Stutesman 6,

Goodwin 334), but he soon ran into the first major crisis of

his young life. He fell in love with Mlle. de Beaumesnil,

an opera singer who happened to be the mistress of his

uncle, the Monsieur de la Belinaye (Goodwin 335). De la

Belinaye, unfortunately, had been his mentor in Paris, and

relations between him and his nephew cooled immediately.

Then, to make matters worse, La Rouërie fought a duel with a

close friend of Louis XVI, the Comte de Bourbon Busset, and

almost killed him (Goodwin 335) For this action, which also

involved an opera singer, he was forced to resign from the

army, after which he became so despondent that he attempted

to take his own life by consuming an overdose of opium.

When that effort failed, he decided to enter a Trappist

monastery for the rest of his life (Goodwin 335).

La Rouërie remained in that monastery until the

American Revolution broke out, at which point some of his

relatives, who hoped to get him out of the monastery,

convinced him to volunteer his services to George

Washington's army (Goodwin 335). Through the recommendation

of the French Minister of War, Rouërie was given passage on

February 15, 1777, aboard the Amphitrite, a ship that was

62

carrying weapons and twenty French officers for the

Continental Army (Kite 4). Two months later, on April 15,

as the Amphitrite approached the harbor of Portsmouth, New

Hampshire, it was attacked and sunk by a British frigate.

La Rouërie and three other Frenchmen, swimming ashore, were

the only survivors of that disaster (Goodwin 335).

Once on shore, it was La Rouërie's objective to acquire

a military assignment. Accordingly, he journeyed to

Philadelphia and on May 10, 1777, he received a commission

from the Continental Congress as Colonel Armand (Haarman

97). As ordered by Congress, he next sought out General

Washington, who was at his headquarters at Morristown

(Whitridge 49). In his first letter to Washington, Armand,

as he would be known throughout the war, wrote that:

i (sic) am come into your country to serve her,

and perfect my feeble talent for war under the

command of one of the greatest generals in the

world, of you, my general. . .i was destined to be

a partisan in the next war. (Armand 19)

Such remarks, of course, did not displease Washington,

but Armand also possessed several practical qualities that

made his service seem attractive to Washington. He had

63

served in the French Guards, an elite regiment; he was

skilled in the reading and writing of the English language;

and he was well enough off financially to be able to finance

the equipping of his own regiment (Whitridge 48-49).

Armand's first assignment placed him in charge of a

unit of light infantry, composed mainly of German settlers

from Pennsylvania. His first action occurred near Short

Hills, New Jersey, on June 26, 1777, when he faced a

detachment of British troops under the command of General

William Howe. The battle ended with Howe still in

possession of the field, but Armand received a favorable

report from Washington for keeping control of "an artillery

piece which, except for your great courage, would have been

taken by the enemy" (Stutesman 10).

Washington's respect for Armand became apparent, as may

be seen from the following letter: "He appears to me to be

a modest, genteel, sensible young Gentleman, and I flatter

myself his conduct will be such as to give us no reason to

repent any civilities that may be shown him" (Haarman 97).

Later in the year, on November 24, 1777, Armand served

as second in command to the Marquis de LaFayette during an

engagement against a Hessian unit just outside Gloucester,

64

New Jersey (Stutesman 12). On this occasion, the Hessians

were forced to withdraw after suffering sixty casualties,

while LaFayette and Armand reported only one man lost

(Stutesman 12) although Armand's horse had been shot

underneath him as he was leading the charge. After the

battle, the colonel paid £130 of his own money to replace

his horse (Stutesman 12). For his conduct in battle, Armand

was described, along with LaFayette, as among the "men who

would have been distinguished in any army" (Miller 287).

Washington himself referred to them as "men of merit"

(Miller 287).

During the campaigns of 1777, Armand, with his mounted

dragoons and light infantry, resorted to night attacks in

which he would strike against the enemy quickly and then

withdraw into protective terrain. Such attacks both built

up the morale of the Continental troops and helped to

convince Armand at a later time that similar strategy could

be employed successfully during the counter-revolution in

France (Haarman 98).

Armand's actions in 1777, including the battle at

Whitemarsh on November 18, all involved the use of cavalry,

and it doubtlessly concerned him that General Washington

65

seemed not to appreciate the potential of this military

tactic, although the British had not emphasized the value of

cavalry patrols either. In fact, their failure to employ

such patrols had enabled Washington to succeed in his

attacks on Trenton and Princeton in 1776 (Stutesman 13).

Concerning that problem, Armand wrote that:

[T]here will be perhaps regiments of cavalry but

never a body of cavalry. There will be some

partial services rendered by that arm but never

the essential and continual services which are to

be expected from her numbers and bravery.

(Stutesman 18)

Despite Armand's concerns about the lack of use of

cavalry, the British were gaining more experience in this

tactic by operating out of an area known as the "Neutral

Ground." This territory was located between Washington's

main lines and the British base on Manhattan, and it saw

frequent cavalry patrols and hit and run maneuvers. Some of

the most famous British cavalry officers, including Simcoe

and Tarleton, acquired their experience in this region, and

the father of Robert E. Lee, "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, first

began making his reputation in this same area (Stutesman

66

21). Colonel Armand was to spend two years in this theater

of the war (Stutesman 21). During that time, he fought many

skirmishes against the British, always conducting his

operations at night, hitting the enemy quickly and then

disappearing into the darkness (Stutesman 22).

Of all the actions he led during that period, Armand

perhaps distinguished himself the most on the night of

November 7, 1779, when he led a small force of only twenty-

two dragoons on a twenty-two mile march to a house on the

outskirts of Morrisania and captured Major Baremore at the

house of Alderman Leggett (T. Ward 8). The Major, who was

caught in bed (Stutesman 23), had become infamous for his

ongoing attacks against patriots in the vicinity (Haarman

98), and Colonel Armand was immediately congratulated by

Washington himself (T. Ward 8). Armand used this

opportunity to try again to convince Washington that the use

of cavalry was indispensable under such conditions, but in

spite of all his efforts he was still not successful

(Whitridge 54).

Washington's reluctance to employ cavalry stemmed from

his own personal military experience during the French and

Indian War, during which the use of cavalry was virtually

67

nonexistent. He had campaigned in forested areas of

Pennsylvania where movement on foot was necessary because of

thick vegetation and the virtual absence of all but the

narrowest of trails, and he had come to believe that a man

on horseback might be useful only as a carrier of a message.

Consequently, he had continued to think of horses as being

useful only for means of transportation and communication

(Whitridge 54). As to the practice in the mountainous

regions of Georgia and the Carolinas where men might ride on

horseback to a particular location and then fight on foot,

he was either unaware or convinced that such tactics simply

could not work against the British (Stutesman 15).

In the Spring of 1780, Colonel Armand was sent south to

join Major General Horatio Gates, the commander of the

Southern Department (Haarman 98). Gates, who was near

Camden, South Carolina, was planning an attack against Lord

Cornwallis, and he ordered Armand's unit of 120 men

(including 60 cavalry) to lead a charge against the British.

Armand was to be supported on either side by light

infantrymen from Virginia and North Carolina, but he

objected to Gates that no such movement could approach at

night without being heard. Gates supposedly replied, "I

68

will breakfast to-morrow in Camden with Lord Cornwallis at

my table" (Young 724). As Armand feared, the unit ran into

Colonel Banastre Tarleton's British Legion on the night of

August 15, 1780, and Armand's men were immediately forced to

retreat. Tarleton used his cavalry so skillfully that

Gates' forces were eventually pushed all the way back to

Hillsborough, North Carolina (Stutesman 29-30), and

Cornwallis was credited with administering "the most

disastrous defeat ever inflicted on an American army" (C.

Ward 731; see map, Ward 727). This defeat for Gates had

been brought about partly by his own refusal to accept an

Camden

69

offer of scouts and cavalry from General Francis Marion, the

"Swamp Fox" (Stutesman 24). The behavior of General Gates

after the battle left much to be desired; it was

uncharitably noted that after the battle he had taken the

fastest horse available and had ridden it a distance of

sixty miles to Charlotte that very night (Commager and

Morris 1126). Armand's men apparently had enough discipline

not to panic, as Tarleton wrote in his report that he had

been forced temporarily to discontinue his pursuit of the

Americans "in order to collect a sufficient body to dislodge

Colonel Armand and his corps. . . .Colonel Armand's dragoons

and the militia displayed a good countenance. . .(Stutesman

28). One of those officers was George Schaffner, a

Pennsylvanian who had joined up in 1775 and became a second

lieutenant in Armand's first command, as well as Armand's

best friend (Stutesman 29-30). He was so loyal to his

commander that when Armand departed for France, Schaffner

decided to accompany him.

Armand narrowly missed death at Camden, and it was

ironic that General Gates, in his report from Hillsborough

(200 miles from Camden), actually listed Armand among the

dead (Stutesman 30). The colonel, in the meantime, had led

70

a strategic withdrawal to Charlotte, North Carolina

(Stutesman 30), but for all practical purposes his Legion

had been destroyed at Camden (Stutesman 31). His value to

Washington, however, was still significant; while Gates was

replaced by Greene as the new commander of the Southern

Department on December 3, 1780, Washington was recommending,

in a letter to Congress on October 11, 1780,

that, in addition to four regiments of cavalry,

the two partizan Corps be kept up commanded by

Colonel Armand and Major Lee. . . .Colonel Armand

is an Officer of great merit wch. added to his

being a foreigner, to his rank in life, and to the

sacrifice of property he had made renders it a

point of delicacy as well as justice to continue

to him the means of serving honorably. . . .

(Stutesman 31-32)

It was shortly after Congress approved Washington's

recommendation that Armand, on January 11, 1781, told

Washington that "I propose to set off for France. . .& bring

from there the equipments and clothing for the legion. I

offer to make the advance of the money. . ." (Stutesman 33).

From this letter it is clear that Armand intended to pay for

71

all necessary supplies and weapons out of his own pocket,

whether or not he ever would be compensated by Congress.

Armand's request to go to France was granted by

Washington, and the colonel left North America, not to

return for six months (Haarman 100). To get the provisions

he needed, he used his own finances. He reported that he

had acquired ". . .100 leather saddles. . .150 husards

swords. . .150 pairs of pistols. . . ." and large numbers of

shirts, blankets, boots, and caps (Stutesman 35). His

efforts did not go unnoticed by Louis XVI, who called him to

Versailles and awarded him the Cross of St. Louis (Whitridge

56).

In the meantime, while Armand was in France, the

Yorktown campaign had begun, and when the colonel joined

Washington's forces in October, 1781, he was able to join in

an attack on October 14, again at night. Because his force

had been significantly reduced to somewhere between twelve

and forty men (Stutesman 37) by skirmishing in his absence,

Armand made the decision to dismount his men and fight with

them on foot under the command of Lt. Col. Alexander

Hamilton, whose tactics he admired greatly. Armand took

part in the attack on Redoubt No. 10, captured it in ten

72

minutes, and subsequently helped to capture Redoubt No. 9 in

twenty minutes a short time later (Whitridge 57). The loss

of the two redoubts further tightened the noose around

Cornwallis; just three days later he was forced to surrender

to General Washington.

The action at Yorktown was the last that Colonel Armand

would see; he spent most of the remainder of the war at

York, Pennsylvania, to which he had been ordered to keep

watch over the last remaining British units. During this

time he took the opportunity once again to recommend to

Washington that a national cavalry school be established in

the United States. Members of that cavalry should, he

believed, be made up of

men of property such as goods farmers--in one word

men who can never desert & whose property is an

interest to them in addition to the difference of

the liberty of their country--all these men should

be inlisted (sic) for during the war. (Armand 345)

At the school, Armand wrote:

the troops would learn to take the advantage of

the ground--to arrive on it quick or slow agréable

(sic) to the occasion but allways (sic) in solide

73

(sic) order and forming themselves by easy but

regular & quick ways" (Armand 346).

Consistent to the end, Washington politely rejected the

colonel's recommendation in the following letter:

Congress have made no communication to me of their

intention respecting a Peace Establishment, nor do

I conceive under the present state of our Finances

they would incline to retain a Regiment of Cavalry

in pay. The expence, without an adequate object

would be too great for the economy we must

observe, the offer of your Services must however

be considered as an honourable testimonial of the

sincerity of your profession, but as it is your

request to me to make no mention of the

application you may rest assured of my silence.

(Stutesman 41)

While Washington did not favor establishment of the

school recommended by Armand, he did commend the colonel in

a letter to Congress on March 7, 1783, in which he described

Armand as:

an intelligent, active and very deserving Officer,

one who has been zealous in the Service of the

74

United States, and who. . .has expended

considerable Sums for the Establishment of his

Corps. . .for which he probably will not be

reimbursed for some time, if he expects ever to be

refunded. (Stutesman 41)

As a result of this letter, Congress promoted Armand on

March 26, 1783, to the rank of Brigadier General in the

Continental Cavalry (Stutesman 42) and awarded him the Cross

of the Order of Cincinnatus (Goodwin 335). Washington also

wrote to Armand that "You my Dear Sir, cannot pass

unnoticed. The great zeal, intelligence and bravery you

have shown, and the various distinguished services you have

performed, deserve my warmest thanks" (Haarman 102).

Washington specifically thanked Armand for his service in

such actions as those at the Short Hills, the Head of Elk,

and particularly the capture of Major Baremore (Haarman

102).

Later that year, on November 25, Armand formally

disbanded his unit and made plans to return to France

(Haarman 102), but before he could depart he was given one

final commendation by the Congress for "his bravery,

activity, and zeal so often evidenced in the cause of

75

America" (Haarman 102). Armand's experiences in the

American Revolution would shortly be put to practical use in

his own country, when the counter-Revolution began in 1791

(Haarman 102).

After his return to his estate in France, Armand

received an additional honor when he was appointed in 1788

by the Minister of War as a Colonel of Chasseurs (T. Ward

27). In the meantime he had become involved in a general

protest against proposed political reforms that would have

reduced the power of the local parlement in Brittany

(Goodwin 335-36). In protest, the Provincial Estates of

Brittany sent twelve nobles to speak to Louis XVI, and

Armand was made part of the delegation.

The trip to Versailles was useless, however; the King

refused to see the nobles, and they were sent to the

Bastille by Etienne de Brienne, the chief minister of Louis

XVI. The period of confinement in the Bastille lasted for

almost two months, until De Brienne lost power. Armand was

so profoundly affected by such unexpected treatment that he

did not speak out against the decision of Louis to double

the number of delegates in the Third Estate, even though

most of his fellow nobles had opposed the plan (Goodwin

76

336). When the King called for a meeting of the Estates

General for May 5, 1789, Armand hoped to become one of the

delegates, but his fellow nobles in Brittany refused to

select any delegates at all. It was their contention that

the delegates from Brittany should be chosen in their

Provincial Estates, and it was apparent to Armand that he

would have no chance of being selected under that process

because his family had no connections to the old nobility

(Goodwin 336).

Despite his disappointment, Armand began working on an

oath that would call for all Breton nobles to reject any

attempt to undermine their historic rights and privileges

(T. Ward 28). As the initial optimism disappeared after the

first meeting of the Estates General, Armand began to gather

more support from his fellow nobles.

After the Bastille was destroyed on July 14, 1789, and

"the Great Fear" spread across France, concern mounted about

the status of the royal family, which had been taken from

Versailles to the Tuileries, in Paris, in October 1789.

Also clouding the picture was the debate in the National

Assembly over the confiscation of Church property in France.

The direction being taken by the Revolution was of

77

increasing concern to Armand, and in January, 1790, he wrote

a letter to George Washington in which he compared the

American Revolution to the one currently underway in France:

"[Y]ou retained your belief in God, in the respect due to

virtue. . . .We neither believe in God nor have any respect

for virtue. . ." (Kite 9).

At the same time Armand was writing to Washington, in

January, 1790, the Breton Royalist Club was created, and

Armand became the unquestioned leader of the group (Kite

10). A few of the Breton peers had not fled the country

after the fall of the Bastille, and they now joined together

in making plans for armed resistance against the

Revolutionary government (Whitridge 60). There can be

little doubt that Armand was selected by his fellow nobles

as military commander because of his experience under George

Washington (Whitridge 61). As commander, it would be his

lot to command a much larger force than he had ever

commanded during the American Revolution. This force also

included many peasants whom he knew personally, and legends

about his leadership quickly sprang up. The colonel was

joined by an old friend from the American Revolution, George

Schaffner, and the two of them created a picture not likely

78

to be forgotten by any passerby who happened to see them.

According to Chateaubriand, the two men rode together on one

horse, with Armand always carrying a pet monkey in front of

him (Whitridge 61).

Armand's quest for additional support was made easier

when the National Assembly passed the Civil Constitution of

the Clergy on July 10, 1790. Passage of this act convinced

Armand and his fellow Breton nobles that both the Church and

the monarchy would have to be defended, but such tasks would

not be easy; the King and his family were still at the

Tuileries, and the King's brothers had fled to Coblenz,

where, with the support of the émigrés, they had established

a court (Kite 11).

Contact with one or both of the royal brothers was

recommended by Armand, and after extensive consultation with

the other members of the Breton Royalist Club he left for

Coblenz in May of 1792. On June 5, 1791, he was granted a

personal audience with the Count of Artois and the former

Minister of Finance, Calonne (Kite 11). During those talks,

Armand was given authority to put an army together in

Brittany, march toward Paris, and join up with the Austro-

Prussian army that would have entered France by way of

79

Verdun (Kite 12). Artois made it clear that Armand's group

was to be independent financially; perhaps the Count assumed

Armand to be capable of providing such assistance because he

had done so once before, during the American Revolution

(Goodwin 337).

Armand planned to set his group up in military fashion,

in the form of a Legion, and to follow the same guerrilla-

style tactics his unit had followed in the former English

colonies (Goodwin 337). As a specific concession to the

Marquis, Artois also promised that if the counter-revolution

were to succeed, all of Brittany's former constitutional

privileges would be fully restored, although no specific

examples of such privileges were provided (Goodwin 337).

After that meeting, the Marquis returned in disguise to

Brittany by way of Paris. He soon found out that at the

same time he had entered Paris, the entire royal family had

also returned from the little frontier town of Varennes,

where Louis and Marie had been caught just before they had

the opportunity to cross into Austria. This "flight to

Varennes" further weakened the power of Louis, even though

most of the people who watched the royal family return to

Paris blamed the Queen instead of Louis (Ergang 665).

80

From Paris, Armand returned to Brittany and immediately

began the process of organizing his followers and contacting

the most influential persons who could provide money or

volunteer fighters (Goodwin 338). His plan called for the

establishment of a council in each Episcopal town in

Brittany. Members of the committee would include one

secretary and two commissioners each from the three Estates.

These seven men would be responsible to the Marquis himself,

and they would inform other committees of any new orders.

Another duty of the council members was to recruit as many

volunteers for the Royalists as possible, with each

volunteer being able to reach a selected meeting point

within a day's notice. All men in Brittany were considered

as possible volunteers, even members of the regular army and

the national guard (Goodwin 339).

By the end of 1791, the Marquis had established

nineteen councils in Brittany and two more in Normandy

(Goodwin 340). The councils tended to be located along the

coast or along the frontier, where a military landing could

be carried out by counter-revolutionaries. It was apparent

that Armand was expecting help from forces that represented

either the émigrés or foreign countries (Goodwin 340).

81

Even with such organization, however, the Marquis still

had to deal with the fact that two of the chief cities in

Brittany, Nantes and Brest, were overwhelmingly in support

of the Revolution because of the changes in voting and

representation in the legislature. To make matters worse,

Armand and his associates on the council were having little

luck persuading most soldiers in the regular army to change

their support to the Royalists (Goodwin 340).

At that time, however, prospects brightened for the

Royalists; the Legislative Assembly declared war on Austria

and Prussia on April 20, 1792, and prospects for a French

defeat seemed likely. At the same time Calonne sent papers

to Armand that established him as the supreme military

commander in all Brittany. According to those papers, even

foreign troops that landed in Brittany in an attempt to help

the Royalists would have to operate under control of the

Marquis (Goodwin 341). Like a true commander in the French

army, Armand now commanded the Breton Legion, a unit

comprised of divisions, sections, and companies. There were

nine dioceses in the district, and each diocese was to serve

as a headquarters (Goodwin 341-342).

In a gesture that indicated Armand's sympathy for the

82

Third Estate, commissioned officers were appointed not only

from the nobility but from the lower classes as well. A

political council, consisting of one civilian from each of

the nine dioceses, plus commanders of the divisions and

their staffs, handled all orders that were of a non-military

nature. The actual military movements were supervised by a

special council of officers and a few civilians selected by

Armand from the political council (Goodwin 342).

The initial plan worked out by the Marquis called for

cutting off communications between Paris and Brittany. To

carry out this plan, it would be necessary for the Legion to

take over the entire Ille-et-Vilaine, which made up the

northeastern section of Brittany. Once this task was

accomplished, the Royalists would be able to set up a base

of operations at Rennes and cut off communications between

the capital and Brittany (Goodwin 343). In addition, the

coastal area between St. Malo and the mouth of the Seine

would be opened as the site for a possible military landing

by counter-revolutionaries sent by the émigrés. Armand had

been told by Calonne that such a military force was training

in the Channel Islands in preparation for an invasion of

Brittany. Coupled with a simultaneous invasion of

83

northeastern France by the Austrians and Prussians, chances

appeared favorable that the forces of the Legislative

Assembly would be caught in the middle and forced to

surrender (Goodwin 343).

Unfortunately for Armand, he needed more military

equipment, and Calonne, who was also hard pressed for

supplies, was unable to send the Marquis the equipment he

needed. To make matters worse, Armand was forced to ride

from one center to another, with the result that several

poorly organized uprisings broke out at different times and

were easily put down by government troops (Goodwin 344).

While Armand was trying to carry out his assignment,

the picture darkened considerably. The Austrians and the

Prussians were defeated at Valmy on August 22, 1792, and

were forced to retreat. This battle assured the

Revolutionary leaders that Paris would not be threatened by

foreigners, at least for the present, and it left Armand and

the other members of his Royalist Club completely on their

own. For three months the Marquis hid in Normandy under the

name of "M. Milleret," during which time he made plans to

continue the counter-revolution on his own. In September,

1792, he called for a meeting of his chief supporters and

84

set October 10 as the date for the rebellion to begin in

Brittany (Kite 20). He then moved into the heavily forested

region of central Brittany, from which, usually under the

cover of night, he continued to stir up opposition to the

Revolutionary government (Kite 21).

During the fall of 1792, Armand received considerable

help from an organization known as the Fendéurs. Its

members consisted mostly of woodcutters, but it was

supplemented by a few nobles (T. Ward 29). This group

offered assistance to anyone who had encountered trouble in

the forests, particularly from robbers. Such a victim could

take a stick of wood and hit a tree a certain number of

times. This action would prove to nearby residents that the

victimized person was a Fendéur, and help, including food

and lodging, would immediately be provided. Such activities

kept the Breton peasants and nobles in closer touch with

each other than would otherwise have been the case had no

such organization existed (T. Ward 29). Armand used this

organization to put together approximately forty thousand

followers. According to Claude Basire's "Report on the

Conspiracy of Brittany, 13th of 1st Month, Second Year of

the Republic," the Marquis "established the counter-

85

revolution in near fifteen of our Departments" (T. Ward 31).

During this period of hiding and working with the

Fendéurs, Armand worked very closely with Jean Cottereau, a

former smuggler whom he had met during the previous summer

at his own estate (Kite 21). It was Cottereau who, at the

orders of Armand, touched off the first uprising in

Brittany, at Saint-Ouen-Des-Touts, against a group of

national guardsmen who were trying to recruit volunteers and

install into power a new priest who was to replace the one

who had refused to take an oath to support the Civil

Constitution of the Clergy (Kite 21). Allegedly Cottereau

spoke to the Revolutionary commissioners as follows:

If the King were to call us to take up arms, I

vouch for every man here that not one would refuse

to obey. As for you. . .with your so-called

liberty, go and fight for it yourselves. Here

every man is for the King. (Kite 22)

It was after he delivered this speech that Cottereau

gradually came to be known as Jean Chouan. The word itself

was a Breton word for screech owl, and Cottereau supposedly

had made a whistle that had a very high sound to it that

sounded very much like the owl itself (Kite 22). Many

86

believe that it was through Cottereau's whistle that the

movement known as Chouannerie was created, ironically named

for a lieutenant of Armand's and not for the Marquis who had

developed the military tactics for which the Chouans would

become famous.

Armand, however, appeared incognito at many a peasant

meeting, and he never disclosed his identity to the

peasants. He invariably dressed like a peasant, but it was

clear to everyone present that he was commanding the

operation:

He bore the costume of the people, but his manner,

his language, his brilliant weapons, his hands

that labor had not tanned were remarked by all.

Jean Cottereau alone seemed to know him--which was

enough to make him obeyed by all. (Kite 22-23)

The followers of Armand made up a paradoxical lot; on

one hand they included many government officials who had

lost their jobs as collectors for the gabelle, but on the

other hand they also included the salt smugglers themselves.

To get additional money, Armand had managed to sell

"protection" to some of the more well-to-do residents of the

district by assuring them that their property would not be

87

harmed if they would provide money to the uprising and pass

on useful information from the meetings of the local

councils (Goodwin 348).

In the long run, the tactics of Armand served to

convince Calonne and most of the émigrés that widespread

revolts across France could represent the very best chance

for overthrowing the Revolutionary government. While the

uprising in the Vendée was certainly the most serious threat

to the Revolutionary government, the discontent in Brittany

remained long after the Revolution itself came to an end,

and as noted in the Epilogue of this paper, there still

exist factions that favor Breton independence from France

(Goodwin 350).

Armand continued his clandestine operations against the

Revolutionary government until the night of January 12,

1793, when he experienced a serious fall from his horse and

subsequently was rolled on by that unfortunate animal. Some

of his followers took him to the chateau of M. de la

Guyomarais, in central Brittany, where he had often stopped

in the past as a M. Gasselin. Here he was given immediate

medical attention, but he contracted a fever, and his

condition steadily worsened (Kite 25). To add to his

88

difficulties, he had to be moved to a nearby farmhouse when

La Guyomarais learned that his chateau was about to be

searched by government soldiers. When the soldiers came to

search that dwelling, the farmer's wife passed the Marquis

off as her dying brother (Kite 27). Subsequently, Armand

was taken back to the chateau, but the move was too much for

him to survive; he died on January 30, 1793, and his body

was buried on the edge of La Guyomarais' estate beneath an

oak tree. Today there is an iron cross that marks the place

where Armand was buried (Kite 33-34).

While Armand had passed away, his invention of

Chouannerie had developed a serious counter-revolution in

Brittany, and it produced significant problems for the

Revolutionary government before it was finally subdued. The

death of Armand, however, was an unquestionably serious loss

to the Chouans; their achievements might have been

considerably greater had he lived, for he possessed the

ability to work both with his fellow nobles and the peasants

both in the city and the countryside. After his death no

Chouan leader with similar ability appeared to take his

place, although the Chouannerie itself continued.

89

Count Joseph Puisaye and the Rise of the Chouans

The researcher faces several problems in conducting a

study of the Chouans. In the first place, official

documents were put together by the French government, and

correspondence from Chouans rarely found its way into such

collections. In addition, because many of the Chouans were

illiterate, they wrote very few letters. Of those letters

that were written, many were destroyed for reasons of

safety, with the result that such letters that still exist

are difficult to discover. Finally, for the researcher who

is not proficient in French, many documents remain

untranslated and thereby are of little benefit to the study

(Bernard 76).

Chouannerie itself was predominately a peasant

movement, but its members were led by nobles, with a small

number of bourgeoisie also participating, as may be seen

from the following chart (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Social

Origins" 82).

The Chouans were actually composed of three different

groups of people. One group consisted of men from the

Vendée who had managed to survive the battles at Le Mans and

Savenay and had escaped into Brittany. These men, who

90

included Joseph Defay and Auguste de Bœjarry, often sought

shelter around Morbihan and usually took positions of

leadership among the Chouans (Mathiez 119). It was their

practice to work closely with the nobles of Brittany,

including Collas du Reste and La Bourdonnaye.

These leaders worked with two other groups of Chouans:

local men who were opposed to the general military draft

issued by the National Convention and royalists and priests

who opposed the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Some of

these priests, including Fathers Metayer and Le Moine,

actually served as company commanders of Chouan units

(Matheiz 119-20). Members of all three groups, however,

dressed like peasants, in linen pants, round hats, and short

jackets, so that recognition of a particular class member

was virtually impossible just by sight alone (Mathiez 120).

As to general characteristics, the typical Chouan was a

male under the age of twenty-four, and the chances were

three out of four that he had been eligible for the military

draft imposed by the National Convention of 1792. Since the

average age for marriage for males in Upper Brittany was

twenty-seven years and two months, most Chouans were

probably single. Many were also farmhands and consequently

91

were known to their employers and very likely supported by

them.

It may also be seen from the table that many Chouans

were either spinners or weavers, or artisans who provided

services for the Chouans as shoemakers, masons, roofers, or

carpenters (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Social Origins" 39).

There were sizeable regions of France dominated by the

Chouans, but there were equally large regions dominated by

Table of CHoun trades

92

supporters of the First French Republic. Because of the

color of their flags, supporters of the Chouans were often

referred to as the "Whites," while supporters of the

Republic were known as the "Blues." In between the two

groups were, of course, those persons who were unable to

support either major faction, as well as those individuals

who simply backed the group that happened to be in power in

their district at that particular time. Sometimes the

reason for supporting the Chouans was stated very simply, as

in the case of Louise Geogaut. A household worker who lived

in Yrodouer, Geogaut stated that the purpose of Chouannerie

was "to bring back the king and the good priests just as

they had been before" (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Rural

Community" 115). It was apparant that individuals like

Geogaut viewed the Chouans as defenders of Roman

Catholicism.

There were many different theories as to how the name

of Chouan originated. In Brittany, people referred to the

owl as a chouan, because its hootings were always imitated

by salt smugglers who wished to communicate with each other,

particularly when they were planning a surprise attack

against the local police (Sutherland 7).

93

Another version identifies a Jean Chouan who had once

been arrested and convicted for salt smuggling. The

attraction to smuggle salt came from the absence of the

gabelle in Brittany and the heavily forested zone right

along the frontiers of Maine and Anjou, where the salt tax

was regularly collected (Sutherland 36). Many of the

smugglers had very little annual income, and it is believed

they resorted to smuggling periodically to supplement that

income. Some of them had specially trained "smuggling dog,"

and they made use of cabins that were concealed in the

forest and used for way stations or temporary hiding places

(Sutherland 36).

According to the above story, the only men who called

themselves Chouans were the actual followers of Chouan;

their allies farther to the west were known as Royalists.

In any case, both groups eventually wound up using the same

"coat of arms:" "a shield of fleur-de-lys flanked by two

owls" (Hutt, Chouannerie 7).

As mentioned in an earlier chapter, it has also been

suggested that the whole idea of Chouannerie as actually

developed by the Marquis de La Rouërie (Goodwin 348), who

took advantage of the repeal of the gabelle in the National

94

Assembly to recruit many men who had formerly been salt

smugglers. Ironically, he was also able to recruit many of

the revenue officers who had lost their jobs when the

gabelle had been repealed (Goodwin 348).

Still another theory about the origin of chouan rests

upon a belief that there were three brothers named Choin.

These brothers had all engaged in the smuggling of salt in

the area around Laval and La Gravelle, and they were

gradually able to increase the number of their supporters by

adding men from the departments of Brittany and La Manche

(Higgins 388).

While differing theories about the origins of chouan

have been proposed by historians, these same writers

generally agree that the usual method of operation of the

Chouans involved guerrilla warfare, with the bulk of the

action taking place at night. By and large, the Chouans

operated in obscurity; some of them blackened their faces

with coal and, for additional protection, some of them

assumed colorful names, such as "Sans-sourci" or "Fleur de

Myrthe" (Sutherland 33).

The theory that military deserters made up a large

number of the Chouans is not borne out from available

95

statistics. For example, eighty-one men were captured at

Dol in 1796, but only five were found to be deserters. In

Morbihan, 602 men surrendered, but there were only nine

deserters among them. All in all, the number of deserters

varied from 1.5% to 6.2% (Sutherland, 39).

On the other side of the coin, the enemies of the

Chouans included many persons classified as "Bourgeois"

(Sutherland 47, Le Goff 84). Included in this category were

many lawyers, who had never been widely trusted by the local

peasants (Sutherland 46). Artisans, who made up

approximately one-third of the list of enemies shown in the

chart, often tended to react toward the Revolution in the

same way that most of the other residents in their community

reacted. For example, the Vitre area was regarded as quite

supportive of the Revolution, and an overwhelming majority

of artisans in that area also backed the Revolution. By way

of contrast, those artisans who favored the Chouans were

found to be residents of communities that were opposed to

the Revolution (Sutherland 48).

It is also important to note that while the Chouannerie

was predominately a peasant movement, almost half of the

enemies of the Chouans were peasants. Upper Brittany was

96

very strong in support of the Revolution, even though there

was a large peasant population in that region. Many of the

residents here volunteered to serve in the National Guard,

and they helped to arrest priests who had refused to take

the oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy

(Sutherland 54).

The high proportion of peasants who did not support the

Chouans may be explained by the amount of land worked by the

peasant families. To survive economically, a tenant had to

rent a minimum of 4.2 acres of land; those peasants who

rented at least that minimum amount tended to be more stable

than peasants who worked fewer acres. With that stability

came a reluctance to sympathize with the Chouans (Sutherland

57, 71).

Despite significant opposition, especially from

residents of the large towns, the Chouans managed to resist

government forces with a considerable degree of success;

their night-time operations made them difficult to capture,

and they enjoyed support from the non-juring priests. In

addition, through the threat of violence, they obtained

supplies from many peasants as well as those individuals who

had bought up some of the confiscated church property

97

(Godechot, Counter Revolution 226).

While the Chouans undoubtedly committed much violence,

their victims were not tortured. Sometimes a public lesson

would be provided for the community; in Fleurigné, a man

named Jean Ahalmel was captured by the Chouans and forced to

climb up into the bell tower of the church and out onto the

roof. Here he was forced to wave a white flag and shout

"Vive Louis XVII!" (Le Goff and Sutherland, "Rural

Community" 118).

To be effective, however, such methods as described

above had to be supervised by intelligent leadership. After

the death of the Marquis de La Rouërie, his position as

leader of the counter-revolution in Brittany was taken over

by Count Joseph Puisaye. When the Revolution broke out,

Puisaye was serving as a colonel in the Swiss Guards for

Louis XVI. He had served previously as a cavalry lieutenant

for two years. A Deputy in the National Assembly, Puisaye

had returned to his estates in Normandy in 1791 after the

Assembly had established a limited constitutional monarchy

in the Constitution of 1791 (Hutt, Chouannerie 56).

When the Legislative Assembly was replaced by the

National Convention in 1792, Puisaye incorrectly was

98

believed to sympathize with the Girondins because of his

support for equal representation in the Legislature for each

district. As a result, the Jacobins made him a hunted man,

and Puisaye fled to the Vendée for safety (Mathiez 121).

Here he joined the military opposition to the National

Convention and subsequently became aware of the activity of

the Chouans in Brittany. He also realized that the movement

lacked leadership, no doubt partially because of the death

of Marquis de La Rouërie in 1793, and he saw an opportunity

to carry out his own objectives. To assist him, he put

together a general committee that included such nobles as

the Count de Boulainvillier, the Count de La Bourdonnaye,

and Aime, the Chevailier de Boisguy (Mathiez 121). In his

Manifesto of March 10, 1794, he stated his intentions to

restore Louis XVII as the rightful King of France and

reestablish the Catholic Church in its former position of

authority (Hutt, Chouannerie 58).

While he worked on his objectives, Puisaye benefitted

from his dynamic personality and physical build. He was

described as taller than the average man and very muscular.

He was able to keep going physically when many of his

associates were ready to quit, and he seemed constantly to

99

express his feelings of optimism about the future of the

Chouans. His willingness to stay in the forests with his

men also strengthened their loyalty to him, especially after

an incident in the forests of Pertre (Hutt, Chouannerie 53).

On December 19, 1793, a detachment of National Guards had

approached the cabins in which Puisaye and some of his

followers were staying. A two-hour battle resulted, and

approximately thirty Chouans were killed. The Guards

claimed to have killed Puisaye in the fighting; their

official report stated that "he held us at bay for quite a

time but at last he fell . . ." (Hutt, Chouannerie 54).

Such false reports simply added to Puisaye's reputation

among the peasants, as it appeared that the count could not

be killed (Hutt, Chouannerie 54).

As his followers increased in number, Puisaye continued

putting together his plans to return the Bourbon monarchy to

France. His support for a limited constitutional monarchy,

however, represented an idea that was totally at odds with

the plans of most of the émigrés, who wished to return the

monarchy to its former absolutist position. Such an

objective was clearly not practical; Mallet du Pan candidly

wrote that "it is as impossible to recreate the ancient

100

regime as it is to build St. Peter's in Rome with chimney

dust (Mitchell 252).

Regardless of the émigres' objectives, Puisaye wanted

his men to work with them. These nobles from the provinces

had been accustomed to operating with a great deal of

independence from Versailles, and Puisaye was planning to

use them in the same manner La Rouërie had used them when he

began the Chouannerie in 1791 (Hut, Chouannerie 364). The

Marquis had always sought to protect the rights of Brittany,

especially the right of the Breton Estates to continue to

operate. On this view, he had been supported by Rene-Jean,

Count de Botherel, the last Procurator-General of the

Estates of Brittany before the outbreak of the Revolution

(Hutt, Chouannerie 364).

It would appear that if La Rouërie had not died

prematurely he would have used Botherel to set up the civil

government in Brittany. When the Marquis died, Botherel

eventually turned to Puisaye as the man most likely to help

him carry out his objectives, since Puisaye also supported a

limited constitutional government and had previous political

experience. Botherel did not always agree with Puisaye's

objectives, especially the plan to divide Brittany according

101

to the departments set up by the Revolution. La Rouërie, by

contrast, had set up the councils consisting of two

representatives each from the three Estates (Hutt,

Chouannerie 366). Botherel did admit, however, that "all

the [chefs] were satisfied with M. de Puisaye's conduct and

that no one had any doubts about his good faith" (Hutt,

Chouannerie 366). For example, two other Chouan leaders,

Georges Cadoudal and Mercier-La Vendée wrote that "M. de

Puisaye has our confidence. . .and we think that his views

are sound (Hutt, Chouannerie 366).

Puisaye's leadership enabled the Chouans to make life

risky in the areas in which they operated, especially along

the borders of Maine and Anjou, where so many former salt

smugglers lived. According to Bancelin, the chief tax

collector in the district of Segre, "Trade and agriculture--

everything is destroyed in these centres, the roads are no

longer safe, the municipal officers are in hiding or have

taken refuge in the towns" (Mathiez 120).

With such progress being registered by the Chouans,

Puisaye felt the time had come for him to take a ship to

Great Britain and negotiate with Prime Minister William Pitt

the Younger and the Count of Artois (Mathiez 121). To

102

represent him during his absence, Puisaye appointed Pierre

Dezoteux, Baron de Cormatin. The Baron, through his wife,

owned a large estate in Saône-et-Loire and was a veteran of

military service. For a time he had been adjutant-general

to Bouillé, and he had fled to Coblenz with many other

nobles, but a personality clash with Artois' aides over

leadership convinced him to return to France, where Louis

XVI had made him a lieutenant-colonel Mathiez 121).

When he met with Pitt in September, 1794, Puisaye

explained his plan to bring Royalist troops to Brittany

under the leadership of a member of the royal family, either

the Count of Artois or the Count of Provence. He informed

the Prime Minister that he already had put together a force

of three thousand men and that he was expecting an

additional detachment of twelve hundred men from the German

states. Transportation to Brittany and additional financial

support, Puisaye hoped, could be provided by the British

Government (Really 335).

Pitt responded favorably to Puisaye's requests; he

approved the plan on September 30, 1794 and provided ten

thousand guineas in gold for operating expenses (Really

335). He also awarded Puisaye the rank of lieutenant-

103

general in the British army (Godechot, Counter Revolution

257).

After his meeting with Pitt, Puisaye presented the same

plan to the Count of Artois. The Count quickly granted his

approval, and he gave Puisaye the title of General-in-Chief

of the Catholic and Royal Army of Brittany (Mathiez 122)

even though he disagreed with Puisaye's plan to re-establish

a constitutional monarchy in France. Artois doubtlessly

believed that once the National Convention was overthrown he

would be able to restore the monarchy to its former

absolutist powers (Godechot, Counter-revoluton 257) and, for

the present, he needed Puisaye's military support to carry

out his plans. For his part, Puisaye was already sending

the counterfeit assignats to Baron Cormatin, and the Chouans

began receiving forty sous per day for their services

(Mathiez 122).

In the meantime, while Puisaye was setting up his

meeting with Pitt, the Thermidorian Reaction had occurred in

Paris on July 27, 1794, and Maximilien Robespierre had been

overthrown and executed. His death caused the Chouan

leaders to step up their actions against the National

Convention. They began to attack those villages where

104

supporters of the government had fled. In addition, they

frequently disabled wagons by removing the wheels or

breaking the axles, so that food could not be brought into

those towns that were under siege (Mathiez 123). Bancelin,

the president of the district of Segre, believed that the

Chouans were getting reinforcements from the Vendée, and he

complained that "the country-side is being deserted. In

many parts the harvest has not been got in, and in others

the fields are no longer being sown" (Mathiez 123).

With the problem worsening in Brittany, the members of

the Committee of Public Safety voted to negotiate with the

Chouans for a possible general pardon, and such an order was

issued by Lazare Carnot on August 15, 1794 (Mathiez 123-24).

As to specific treatment of the rebels, Carnot wrote that

"all the leaders of the brigands, all those who have

accepted rank of officer among them, will be punished by

death. Those who have merely been led astray or carried

away by violence will be pardoned (Mathiez 124).

While Carnot was issuing such offers of pardon,

however, a Chouan commander named Le Deist de Botidoux

offered to provide the Convention with information

concerning "depraved schemes" that involved Puisaye's plans

105

to get help from the British. De Botidoux was offered safe

conduct by the local representative, Boursault, and agreed

in return to transmit the Convention's offer of pardons to

his fellow Chouans (Mathiez 125). To improve the chances

for a complete peace agreement, Boursault also suggested to

the Committee of Public Safety that full pardons be granted

to the Chouan leaders as well as to their followers (Mathiez

125).

While some of Boursault's colleagues in Brittany

disagreed with his proposal, the Committee of Public Safety

recommended that the National Convention approve it. On

December 1, 1794, Carnot himself spoke to the Committee in

support of Boursault's recommendations (Mathiez 127) and the

Convention voted to grant a full amnesty to all rebels who

agreed to come in and lay down their weapons within the next

thirty days (Mathiez 128). This offer influenced many

additional Chouans to end their resistance to the

Convention, but those who surrendered made up only a

minority, and none of the Chouan commanders came in at all

(Godechot, Counter-revoluton 228).

To negotiate with the Chouans, Carnot turned to Louis

Lazare Hoche. Only a sergeant in the National Guard when

106

the women of Paris made their famous march to Versailles in

October, 1789, Hoche subsequently saw service in the

Austrian Netherlands and rose to the rank of general de

division in October, 1793. In this role, he became

Commander in Chief of the Army of the Moselle and won a

victory at Wörth over the Austrians in December, 1793

(Chandler 198). Subsequently, however, he was arrested by

the Committee of Public Safety. His appointment as

Commander in Chief had been opposed by Louis Antoine de

Saint-Just, who had advocated Jean Charles Pichegru for that

position and who pursued his opponents with such

determination that he was known as the "Angel of Death"

(Palmer 1, 191).9

In her Memoirs, Queen Hortense wrote that when Hoche

was arrested, he had been put into solitary confinement,

which was considered harsher than confinement with several

other prisoners. To speed up the number of executions,

charges of conspiracy were routinely leveled by the

Committee at groups of prisoners. Since Hoche, however, was

in solitary confinement, such charges could not be made

against him, and he was able to survive until after the fall

of Robespierre on July 27, 1794. Had he been imprisoned

107

with other individuals, Queen Hortense believed, Hoche would

surely have been sent to the guillotine (Hassoteau 21).

Having just escaped execution, it is understandable

that Hoche was personally opposed to any further mass

executions. As he stated, "Myself a victim of the system of

Terror, I will do nothing to bring about its return"

(Mathiez 128). He was apparently well aware of the factors

that had led many persons to side with the Chouans against

the National Convention. Any person who tried to hide a

non-juring priest was subject to execution. The same

penalty, of course, applied to the priests themselves (Hutt,

Chouannerie 146). Likewise, severe penalties against men

who had avoided the military draft of 1793 had influenced

those individuals to side with the Chouans as well (Hutt,

Chouannerie 193). Hoche also believed that the individuals

who had purchased confiscated church property had little

respect for the priests and the traditions of the church.

Their purchases, he believed, had helped turn the Chouans

against them (Mitchell, "Resistance" 107-108). He also

thought, although he was commanding an army that was vastly

superior in both number and equipment to that of the

Chouans, that to control such areas of rebellion it would be

108

necessary "to have the region administered by its former

inhabitants, and even by royalists who would have made their

peace with the Republic voluntarily" (Mitchell, "Resistance"

107-108).

Hoche immediately made contact with the Chouans through

a series of secret meetings. In those meetings he promised

that any rebel who would lay down his arms would receive an

instant pardon and twenty livres of silver, and "a

considerable number" of Chouans accepted the offer

(Godechot, Counter Revolution 228).

While Hoche seemed quite willing to offer amnesty to

the Chouans, he was still continuing to prepare for possible

continued resistance to the Convention. He put together a

number of companies that could operate in the same manner as

the Chouans by making sudden, hit-and-run attacks and then

disappearing into the forests (Godechot, Counter Revolution

228).

At the same time Hoche was establishing contact with

the Chouans, Carnot was authorized on January 12, 1795, to

announce a cease fire and negotiate a formal treaty with the

Chouans (Godechot, Counter Revolution 228). To show,

however, that he could continue the struggle if his offer

109

were to be rejected, Carnot sent twelve thousand additional

soldiers to Brittany (Godechot, Counter Revolution 228).

Carnot's willingness to negotiate a cease fire was

transmitted by Hoche to the Chouans, along with Hoche's own

promise that no harm would come to those who chose to

surrender. He promised that "We shall observe all possible

good faith. I too have been unfortunate! I neither can nor

will deceive those who are the same" (Mathiez 124).

Hoche's negotiations and the amnesty passed by the

Convention certainly appeared to represent a victory for

Boursault and the Chouans, but Boursault soon obtained

information that gave him second thoughts about the

sincerity of the Chouans in making peace with the

Convention. One of the Convention's officials, General Rey,

had disguised himself as a Chouan commander and had gone

into Saint-Brieue, where he had captured a Chouan commander

known as Prigent. Rey was most concerned that Prigent had

just brought 418,000 counterfeit livres worth of assignats

into Brittany from Great Britain (Mathiez 128), and he

relayed his concerns to Boursault. It seemed likely that

the Chouans were merely playing for time until a large

invasion force could be sent by the British (Mathiez 128).

110

Rey's suspicions were definitely justifiable. In his

work on Chouannerie, Donald Sutherland contends that Baron

Cormatin had accepted this treaty only for the purpose of

gaining additional time for military aid to arrive from the

British (Sutherland, The Chouans 293). A similar view is

presented by Maurice Hutt, who states in his work on the

Chouans that by negotiating with Hoche, the rebels would be

able to "gain time and in a little while our enemy will be

broken for good" (Hutt, Chouannerie 459).

Boursault was so convinced that the Chouans were

deliberately misleading the National Convention that on July

13, 1795, he wrote to its members that the Chouans:

have seen that since the English cannot effect a

landing till after the spring tides, at the

beginning of April, it is politic to lull us to

sleep on a powder-magazine, to organize their

insurrection in silence, and not to alarm the

republicans till that moment." (Mathiez 129)

The letter reached the Convention the day after its members

had authorized Carnot to declare a cease fire with the

Chouans.

Nevertheless, in spite of Boursault's fears,

111

negotiations began at Nantes in the spring of 1795, between

Baron Cormatin and some of the other Chouan commanders and

representatives of the Convention. The Chouans insisted

that certain questions be cleared up before final

negotiations be completed, such as whether punishment was

still to be handed out to émigres who had returned to France

and to those priests who had not taken the oath to support

the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (Mathiez 129-30). The

Chouans also asked if those persons who were delinquent in

their taxes would still be held liable for payment (Mathiez

130).

To secure answers to these questions, the

representatives of the Convention returned to Paris. Carnot

then ordered them, in keeping with his own authorization of

January 12, 1795, to suspend all hostilities in Brittany

(Mathiez 131).

From the above action, it was apparent that Carnot and

Hoche were hoping that the violence in Brittany had come to

an end, in spite of the letter that had been sent to the

Convention from Boursault which said "that the war we are

waging here is one of sheep against tigers. There is every

reason to fear that this so-called truce is nothing but a

112

stop toward fresh crimes. . ." (Mathiez 131). Boursault's

fears were borne out quickly; less than one week later the

Chouans captured the town of Gueméné. Apparently since no

peace agreement had yet been concluded, the Chouans had not

felt obligated to cease their activities (Mathiez 131).

Regardless of Boursault's warnings, a formal agreement

called the Treaty of La Mabilais was accepted by Baron

Cormatin on April 20, 1795. The terms were quite generous

to the Chouans: the government would help them rebuild

their damaged buildings, no young men of fighting age could

be drafted without their consent, and all property that had

been confiscated by the government was to be returned. On

the issues of the émigres and the non-juring priests, the

treaty was silent (Mathiez 132-33).

Carnot and Hoche, of course, were very pleased about

the agreement at La Mabilais but, unfortunately for them,

the Chouans had merely been playing for time. Working out

the peace negotiations had taken almost half a year, and

during that time Puisaye, Pitt, and Artois had been putting

together their plan for the invasion of Brittany (Mathiez

229).

113

Quiberon Bay and After

Count Joseph de Puisaye's meeting with William Pitt in

the late summer of 1794 left no doubt among the members of

the British Cabinet that Puisaye should be the overall

commander of the landing on the coast of Brittany. He had

worked for two years to organize the Chouans into an

effective unit, he was familiar with the local topography,

and he was very trusted by his followers. As evidence of

the respect in which he was held by the British, he had been

given the rank of lieutenant general under George III (Hutt,

"Divided Command" 480).

These qualifications notwithstanding, the Cabinet also

decided that Puisaye should be accompanied by Count

D'Hervilly, who had considerably more experience in the

field than Puisaye, including his assignment to protect the

King when the Tuileries were attacked in the August

Revolution of 1792. In August, 1794, D'Hervilly had been

given a commission as a colonel of a British regiment

because of the many recruits he had gathered, including

volunteers from Toulon and former prisoners of war from

Brittany (Stanhope 336, 338). He was told by Pitt to

approve a landing in Brittany only if he could determine

114

"that the attempt is practicable" (Hutt, "Divided Command"

481). If the landing were to occur successfully, then he

was to operate under Puisaye's authority (Hutt, "Divided

Command" 481).

The original plan formulated by Pitt and Puisaye called

for the Count of Artois to lead the expedition, but Artois

and his followers were reluctant to land in Brittany "to go

night-owling--de chouanner--as they said" (Stanhope 336).

Further to complicate this matter, Pitt and Puisaye had

decided not to tell the French emigrant leaders of their

plans, since it was critical for security's sake to keep the

plans known to as few individuals as possible. Since,

however, those émigrés wished to play a leading role in the

planning, the decision to exclude them served only to reduce

their desire to cooperate with the British ministry

(Stanhope 336-37).

In spite of the above problems, Pitt next turned his

attention to selecting a leader for the English portion of

the invasion. His choice was Sir John Borlase Warren, whose

previous naval service had provided him with extensive

experience in the waters off the coast of Brittany.

Warren's expedition included 18,000 uniforms for men who

115

were expected to rally to his cause once the landing had

been completed (Stanhope 337).

A successful landing in Brittany had the potential to

turn around the fortunes of the Chouans. One of the most

intriguing points about these rebels was their ability to

survive against forces that badly outnumbered them. Forces

of the Convention had established a number of small

garrisons across Brittany, but the Chouans took advantage of

the local topography and their ability to move quickly at

night to avoid the government troops. It was estimated that

in mid-May of the previous year (1794), they had numbered at

the maximum only 22,000 men. Of that number, most possessed

very crude weapons, yet in a period of fourteen days in the

District of Fougères, they had been responsible for the

deaths of twenty-three local officials (Sutherland 283-86).

Such achievements, however, were misleading; the

Chouans were of no serious military threat to the Convention

unless they could gain control of the key towns in Brittany,

and with a lack of military equipment such a possibility

seemed most unlikely. If carried out successfully, however,

the proposed landing at Quiberon Bay, with British

assistance, might help tip the scales in favor of the

116

Chouans (Sutherland 387).

While Pitt's preparations were underway for the landing

in Brittany, the nine-year old son of Louis XVI, known as

Louis XVII, died in prison on June 8, 1795 (Sydenham 59).

Immediately after he heard of the death of the little

"King," Louis, the Count of Provence, claimed the crown of

France as Louis XVIII. One of his first acts was to issue

the Declaration of Verona in July, 1795. His plan to

restore his absolute power as King of France may be seen

from the introduction to that declaration: "Louis, by the

grace of God, King of France and Navarre. . ." (Hutt,

Chouannerie 592).

In the Declaration, Louis stipulated that the people of

France had to "return to that holy religion which had

showered down upon France the blessings of Heaven" (Hutt,

Chouannerie 593). He also stated that the people:

must restore that government which, for fourteen

centuries, constituted the glory of France and the

delight of her inhabitants; which rendered our

country the most flourishing of states, and

yourselves the happiest of people; it is our wish

to restore it. (Hutt, Chouannerie 593)

117

Louis also promised a complete pardon against those who

had taken part in the Revolution, except for "the chiefs and

instigators of the revolt" (Hutt, Chouannerie 596). In the

meantime, to assist his return to power, he gave approval to

a landing in Brittany, with a march toward Paris as part of

the overall objective (Sydenham 59).

To carry out such plans as envisioned by Louis XVIII

would require significant support from the Chouans, although

supposedly their leaders had made peace when they accepted

the Treaty of La Mabilais. After that treaty had been

signed, however, the Chouans had moved their headquarters to

the Chateau de Bourmont, since the Count of Bourmont was one

of their leaders (Duzuy 92). From this chateau, plans were

made to support the approaching invasion.

While the Chouan leaders were meeting at Bourmont,

General Hoche gradually came to realize that Baron Cormatin

had not been sincere in his negotiations with the

government. Most notably, the Baron was issuing passports

in the name of Louis XVII (Mathiez 230), and the Chouans

were continuing their raids. District administrators

complained that the Chouans "have robbed more, burnt more,

massacred more republicans than they did previously. We

118

have published the peace; gracious heavens, what a peace!

The Chouans alone enjoy it, the republicans have it not"

(Guizot 267). In retaliation, when a Chouan chief named

Bois Hardi was killed in battle, his head was carried on a

pike, although Hoche himself strongly disapproved of such

actions (Guizot 268).

Hoche's suspicions of Cormatin were finally confirmed

on May 26, 1795, when letters that had been sent by the

Baron to Count de Silz, one of the Chouans' commanders at

Morbihan, fell into the hands of government representatives

at Vannes (Mathiez 230). Since the letters made it clear

that Cormatin intended to resume the rebellion as soon as he

had raised sufficient funds from the British, Hoche

immediately had the Baron arrested (Mathiez 231).

Shortly after the arrest of Cormatin, on June 15, 1795,

Puisaye's expedition for Brittany set sail with fifty ships.

Its destination was the Quiberon Peninsula, on the south

coast of Brittany. The bay was well protected and would

provide an excellent jumping off place for launching the

invasion (Stanhope 337).

The size of Puisaye's forces, however, was not as large

as had been promised by the British; 12,000 soldiers had

119

been promised, but there were only 4,500 on board the

British ships, and there were no English soldiers at all.

In fact, of the 4,500 soldiers, only about 1,000 were

émigrés; the others were French prisoners who had been

forced to join the operation (Godechot, Counter Revolution

258).

With agreeable weather, Puisaye's expedition reached

the Bay of Carnac without incident on June 27, and the men

landed without difficulty. They were quickly joined by an

estimated 10,000 Chouans who had been in the neighborhood

(Wilson 338). The Bishop of Dol, who had been named Vicar-

Apostolic by Pope Pius VI for the entire province of

Brittany, accompanied the Chouans (Mathiez 231).

The landing had scarcely been completed, however, when

Puisaye ran into a serious problem. Unfortunately,

D'Hervilly insisted upon getting approval for all actions

from London, although he finally agreed to attack Fort

Penthièvre, which was the key to the Quiberon Peninsula (see

map, Snydeman 63). The fort was quickly captured on July 3,

along with six hundred prisoners (Reilly 302), after which

the invaders captured the town of Auray, which controlled

access to the Peninsula of Quiberon from the landward side

120

(Sydenham 61). The delay, however, had slowed Puisaye's

progress and led to disagreements between some of the nobles

Qu. Landing

121

and the leaders of the Chouans. The nobles had time to

remember their high station in society and the very low

position occupied by most of the Chouans. For their part,

the Chouans found time to ask questions such as, "Where is

that Prince of the Blood who had been promised us?" and

"Where is that rapid advance of which M. de Puisaye spoke?"

(Stanhope 339)

The capture of Fort Penthièvre and the city of Auray

brought the Chouans to high tide; a counter-attack was

already being launched by General Hoche. Having been

tricked once before by the Chouans, Hoche was now determined

to defeat them once and for all. The delay experienced by

the émigrés and the Chouans gave him the time he needed to

increase his forces from five thousand to ten thousand men

(Stanhope 339). He then quickly moved from Vannes, where he

had been stationed, to Auray, which he easily recaptured

(Godechot, Counter Revolution 258). Subsequently, he led

his men to the neck of the Quiberon Peninsula and

constructed a series of earthworks that would produce the

effect of, as he wrote to the Convention, "enclosing the

royalists. . .like rats in a trap (Sydenham 61).

Once the earthworks had been completed, Hoche besieged

122

the rebels on the peninsula. He knew his position was

strong; the Chouans and the émigrés had no hope of escape

except by reaching the British ships off the coast

(Godechot, Counter Revolution 258).

To overcome this threat, Puisaye attempted, on July 16,

to break through Hoche's lines with the help of an

additional force of two thousand émigrés who had landed at

the Bay of Carnac the previous evening. Unfortunately for

Puisaye, his plans misfired; the Chouans he deployed to

Hoche's rear guard apparently misunderstood their assignment

and never reached their destination. To add to Puisaye's

frustration, a second unit that he had been expecting, some

eleven hundred men commanded by M. de Sombreuil, appeared

too late to provide any assistance because the time of the

landing had also been misunderstood (Stanhope 340). The

final blow was struck during the battle itself, when Hoche's

cannon, which commanded the cliffs that surrounded the

peninsula, opened up on Puisaye's men and inflicted heavy

casualties. One of those casualties was Count D'Hervilly.

Supposedly, the Count had managed to get the soldiers he had

captured at Fort Penthièvre to shift their support to the

rebels, but at their first opportunity they turned on him

123

and informed General Hoche about the plans for the attack.

It was their support that helped to guarantee such an

overwhelming victory for Hoche, who also benefitted from a

very high tide that prevented the English ships from

reaching the shore to help the rebels (Stanhope 340-341).

Puisaye's attempt to break Hoche's siege had been

costly; Hoche was able to capture 3,000 of Puisaye's men,

after which he recaptured Fort Penthièvre on July 21. It

was now obvious that the remaining émigrés and Chouans were

trapped on the edge of peninsula, and Hoche was able to

capture 8,000 of them, along with 20,000 muskets, 150,000

pairs of shoes, and an accumulation of 20,000 assignats

worth at least ten million livres (Godechot, Counter

Revolution 258). Hoche's victory at Quiberon was decisive;

one authority believed that it "destroyed the mainspring of

the largest Royalist uprising" (Weigley 299).

To follow up his success, Hoche ordered his men to fire

on those rebels who were attempting to swim out to the

British ships. Count Puisaye was one of the men to reach

safety, but approximately one thousand of his men, including

many émigrés surrendered, including Sombreuil and the Bishop

of Dol, after making an oral agreement with General Humbert

124

that they would be allowed to live if they offered no

further resistance (Stanhope 343).

The capture of the émigrés, who numbered 751, presented

a serious problem for Hoche; a decree enacted by the

National Convention on June 18, 1795, had stipulated that

any royalist who had been captured with a weapon in his

hands was to be executed immediately, without a trial

(Stanhope 344). Hoche was reluctant to order such a mass

execution, but he was accompanied by two deputies, Tallien

and Blad, who had been sent to the region by the National

Convention. Both of the deputies favored the immediate

punishment of the émigrés, and the issue was resolved when

they gave approval to shoot all 751 of them (Godechot,

Counter Revolution 259). In carrying out the execution,

Blad saw to it that the first victims were Sombreuil and the

Bishop of Dol (Stanhope 344).

The mass execution was very controversial; the captured

émigrés had all contended that they had surrendered to Hoche

because his officers had promised that none of them would be

executed except Puisaye. Hoche later rejected this account,

but it should be noted that the gunners on the British ships

had stopped firing onto the shore to protect the émigrés

125

after word of the alleged agreement had reached them (Phipps

43). In addition, Hoche sent a letter to the National

Convention in which he objected to being forced to use his

men "as butchers" (Stanhope 344).10

Responsibility for the happenings at Quiberon was

placed by Lucien Bonaparte on both the English and General

Hoche. Bonaparte accused the English "of ineffaceable

shame" for deserting the rebels and not providing them with

a means of escape, and he criticized Hoche for executing the

émigrés (Higgins 390).

While the émigrés were being executed, the Count of

Artois was accompanying a squadron of ships carrying five

thousand British soldiers toward Brittany (Reilly 302).

When he heard of the defeat at Quiberon, he decided to land

on the island of Yeu, which was located farther to the

south. Shortly after the landing, however, on September 30,

1795, Artois discovered that he was in a location that could

not be supported from the sea because of the storms that

blew over the region at that time of year. On October 15,

1795, news of those storms persuaded the members of Pitt's

Cabinet to order all troops at Yeu to withdraw immediately

(Godechot, Counter Revolution 259).

126

The failure of the invasion of Brittany convinced Pitt

to alter his strategy against the French. In a letter to

Lord Chatham, dated August 3, 1795, he wrote about his

disappointment over the failed invasion and suggested

that it makes it a new question whether any

British force can, without too great a risk, be

hazarded on the Continent of France. I incline to

think that our plan must now be changed, and that

the only great part must be in the West Indies,

where I trust enough may yet be gained to

counterbalance the French success in Europe.

(Stanhope 349)

The disappointment in Pitt's letter to Chatham may

possibly be explained by the influence of a letter written

to the Prime Minister by his close, personal friend, Lord

Auckland, in late November, 1794. In his letter, Auckland,

who had been Pitt's Ambassador Extraordinary to Holland from

1791 to 1793, expressed doubt about the reliability of

Britain's allies on the Continent and recommended that Pitt

drop his plans to invade Brittany and try to retain control

of the seas (Reilly 303).

As disappointed as Pitt was in the expedition to

127

Brittany, Count de Puisaye felt the failure even more. For

him the defeat at Quiberon marked the end of years of

planning for a successful counter-revolution. Many of his

men never understood why he had fled to a British ship in

the harbor, although to have remained behind would have

meant certain death, and Puisaye's problems merely increased

as he sought to regroup. After he had escaped to a British

ship in the waters off Quiberon, Puisaye traveled only to

the island of Houat, where he returned to the mainland.

General Hoche had always recognized Puisaye as the

"principal agent of the counter-revolution," (Hutt,

Chouannerie 465) and made every possible effort to capture

him. Puisaye, therefore, was forced to hide out in the

forests along the border of Brittany and Maine and was not

able to reorganize his followers.

To add to Puisaye's problems, Georges Cadoudal, who was

commanding the Chouans outside Morbihan, managed to get

himself recognized briefly as the new commander in chief of

the Chouans When he finally learned of Puisaye's

whereabouts, he sent him a letter in which he wrote "that as

it was necessary to have a chef, and not possible to get in

touch with you, they ought to take it upon themselves to

128

elect one" (Hutt, Chouannerie 361). These actions by

Cadoudal, of course, served only to divide the command among

the Chouans and make it easier for General Hoche to defeat

them.

It might have been possible for Puisaye to overcome the

difficulties with Cadoudal had the Count of Artois chosen to

support Puisaye as the unquestioned leader of the Chouans.

Artois, however, had never approved of Puisaye's plan to

create a limited constitutional monarchy in France, and

since someone had to be blamed for the failure at Quiberon,

the logical person was Puisaye, whom he described as "this

incompetent amateur" (Hutt, Chouannerie 368).

While he was continuing to search for Puisaye, General

Hoche had concluded that a new method of fighting against

the Chouans was needed, since the old approach of striking a

small village, pillaging it, and then withdrawing had not

worked at all. He also believed it would be infeasible to

keep a detachment in every village; he lacked the necessary

number of men, and small units would be easy for the Chouans

to attack and demoralize (Hutt, Chouannerie 449).

Hoche's new plan involved the use of "flying columns,"

composed of men who were ordered to ride from one base to

129

another and destroy any groups of Chouans they might

encounter along the way. Early in 1796, the columns were

able to capture two of the Chouan commanders: Stoufflet,

who was executed at Angers on February 25, 1796, and

Charette, who was executed at Nantes on March 29, 1796

(Godechot, Counter Revolution 260). The execution of

Charette was particularly gratifying to Hoche, since

Charette had executed a number of the Convention's soldiers

in revenge after the émigrés had been shot just outside

Auray (Godechot, Counter Revolution 259).

By constantly criss-crossing Brittany, the columns

continuously hit the Chouans, and as April gave way to May,

they were forced onto the defensive and began to surrender.

With each capitulation, Hoche recovered supplies of guns,

cartridges, and barrels of gunpowder. By May, 1796, most of

the Chouan chiefs were ready to surrender; on May 11, two of

them, generals Scépeaux and Châtillon, turned themselves in

to General Hoche, who immediately informed the members of

the Directory "That was the main Chouan army. The rest will

now certainly collapse" (Hutt, Chouannerie 459).

While Hoche was accepting the surrender of most of the

Chouan commanders, Puisaye continued to suffer because of

130

his differences with Cadoudal. To have any hope of success

at all, the Chouans would have had to function as one unit,

and since the disaster at Quiberon, they had been trying to

operate under two different authorities (Hutt, Chouannerie

370). Puisaye also had to try to cope with the continual

lack of both money and military supplies. Oddly enough,

even though he had questioned Puisaye's authority, Cadoudal

had written to him that he could not stop even half of

Hoche's forces, since "where there used to be posts of 100

men there are now up to 1,000" (Hutt, Chouannerie 459).

Puisaye managed to elude the pursuit of Hoche's best

general, La Barolière, but he gradually became convinced

that his only hope of continuing the counter-revolution was

to go to London and try to revive Pitt's interest in

overthrowing the Revolutionary government. To attempt this

objective, he left Brittany and arrived in London on March

6, 1797. He would never return to Brittany (Hutt,

Chouannerie 523). Unable to put together another operation

in Brittany because of lack of enthusiasm from Pitt, Puisaye

eventually sailed to Canada, where he attempted to establish

a colony for the émigrés. Their reluctance to participate

in the plan, however, led him to abandon his plans and

131

return to England in 1802, where he spent much of his

remaining life writing his memoirs. All entries, however,

stopped as of the Quiberon operation in 1795. It is ironic

that Puisaye, in the end, was criticized both by the

Revolutionary government and the Royalists whom he tried to

help (Hutt, Chouannerie 523-28).

The campaigns in Brittany had produced widespread

economic devastation, and residents of that province would

require many years to recover from it. During the

nineteenth century, additional protests against the

government at Paris occurred in Brittany, and today the idea

persists that the Bretons wish to separate from France, as

indicated by the existence of the Party for the Organization

for a Free Brittany. Brittany seems to be pictured as a

"colony" of the Paris government that has been exploited for

the purpose of economic gain.

132

Epilogue

This study of the French Revolution in Brittany has led

the writer to conclude that the discontent in that province

during the 1790's was one of many examples of the unrest

that has characterized Brittany over the years. Feelings of

the Bretons toward the government at Paris have been

strained on several occassions; in the twentieth century,

the latest examples include the formation of various Celtic

organizations.

One of the earliest of those organizations was the

Celtic Congress. Formed in 1902, it claims to have tried

"to promote the knowledge, use, and appreciation of the

languages and cultures of the six Celtic countries

[Scotland, Wales, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Cornwall, and

Brittany]" ("Council of Europe" 1). Many of its objectives

are shared by the Celtic League, which was formed in 1961

and "campaigns for the social, political, and cultural

rights of the Celtic nations" ("Role" 1). Its General

Secretary is Bernard Moffatt, who, at the last meeting of

the League (July 25-27, 1997), defended the minority rights

of the Bretons by suggesting that "the French government

should be invited to join the rest of us living in the

133

twentieth century and not the past" ("Role" 1).

An organization aimed strictly at preserving the

various forms of Breton music and encouraging their

performance is Dastum ("to collect" in Breton), which was

created in 1972. Much of that music incorporates the use of

the Celtic harp, which was very widespread during the Middle

Ages. The central office of Dastum is located at Rennes,

where a computer index has been assembled for all of the

recordings.

It is in the western half of Brittany that the Celtic

customs are still so widespread. In this region,

approximately 350,000 people still speak Breton on a daily

basis, and they are trying to keep their language alive.

They were greatly encouraged in 1975, when the International

Committee for the Defence of the Breton Language was

established in Brussels, Belgium. It might be noted that a

branch of the committee was formed in the United States in

1981. The committee's main objective is to work for the

preservation of the Breton language, particularly in the

schools, but also in the media and public places in general.

Additional support came to the Bretons in November,

1992, when the European Charter for Regional and Minority

134

Languages was drawn up. Part of that document states "that

the protection and promotion of regional and minority

languages in the different countries and regions of Europe

represents an important contribution to the building of

diversity" ("Role" 1).

Support for the charter seemed to grow when President

Chirac visited Quimper, in Brittany, in 1996 and promised to

ratify the document. Then, however, on February 22, 1997,

the French Council of the State ruled that France's

Constitution of 1992 was "incompatible with the European

Charter for Regional and Minority Languages" because it

stipulates that "the language of the French Republic is

French" ("French Xenophobia" 1). One of the representatives

from Finistere has stated that Chirac's failure to ratify

the European Charter "stresses the inability of France to

respect her own minorities" ("French Xenophobia" 1). Rather

bitter criticism has been directed toward Chirac's

government, as may be seen in the following statement:

Brittany has often been maintained as a colony by

Paris; the Bretons have seen their language

steadily eradicated, and the interior severely

depopulated through lack of centralized aid.

135

Today, the people still tend to treat France as a

separate country. . . .("Brittany" 1)

The discontent in Brittany represents merely one area

of Celtic unrest; the situations in Wales, Scotland, and in

the Basque country of Spain are all associated with a common

desire for political independence. Bernard Moffatt, the

General Secretary of the Celtic League, has stated that "we

should let other peoples know that the Celts are determined

to assert their nationhood and that they have original

contributions to make to the achievement of more

satisfactory relations between individuals and Nations"

("French Xenophobia" 2).

Whether such goals as described by Moffatt will

eventually be reached is open to speculation, but it might

be remembered that in the last ten years, Europe has seen

the breakdown of many large states into smaller units. The

most famous breakdown, of course, occurred in the former

Soviet Union, but other states, such as Yugoslavia and

Czechoslovakia, have also experienced separation movements.

Will the Bretons one day be able to say demat ("good

morning" in Breton) to each other in their own state of

Breizh ("Brittany" in Breton)? That question will be

136

answered only by the passing of time.

137

Appendix

The Pact of Union of August 1532 made the following

provisions in the unification of Brittany and France:

1. No tax levied at Paris could be collected in

Brittany without the prior assent from the Etats;

2. Revenue from certain taxes levied in Brittany

was to be reserved exclusively for use in

Brittany;

3. The juridical sovereignty of the parlement of

Brittany and the right of Bretons to have their

cases tried in Breton courts would be maintained;

4. No Breton could be compelled to serve in royal

armies outside the peninsula;

5. Ecclesiastical benefices in Brittany were to be

held only by Bretons; and

6. No alteration in the legislation, the

institutions, or the customs of Brittany could be

made without the expressed consent of the Etats de

Bretagne. (Reese 16-17)

138

Notes

1 The excessive use of the lettres de cachet is well

illustrated by an entry made by Sir Arthur Young. Lord

Albemarle, the British Ambassador to France in 1753, noted

that a man named Gordon was on a list of prisoners in the

Bastille. Since Albemarle assumed Gordon to be a British

subject, he asked the French minister for Foreign Affairs to

investigate the situation. Subsequently the Minister

informed Albemarle that he had talked to various officials

and had been unable to obtain any information, after which

he had talked to Gordon himself, only to be told that the

British subject had no idea why he had been imprisoned in

the Bastille. It then came to light that Gordon had been in

the Bastille for thirty years. Finally, the Foreign

Minister informed Albemarle that he had ordered Gordon

released from the Bastille. As Young subsequently wrote,

"Such a case wants no comment" (p. 597, volume 1).

2 The dustjacket for Darnton's book describes the

Anecdotes as "a deliciously scathing work of political

slander with the King as its target.

3 "After me, the flood!"

4 She governed her husband in all small things without

139

his making the slightest objection. In fact, he seemed to

relish her nagging and meddling.

5 "Not King from France and Navarre but King from

France and Miserly."

6 It was reported that, suddenly bereaved by loss,

Louis broke down in shock, and Marie Antoinette's hair

turned white.

7 Talleyrand was one of the seven bishops who took the

oath.

8 The vingtieme was the main land tax in Brittany in

the years before the Revolution began.

9 Saint-Just made a poor enemy. Described by R. R.

Palmer as "the enfant terrible of the Revolution" (10), he

firmly believed in the Revolution and his own position. It

was said that "he carried his head as if it were the holy

sacrament" (Palmer 181). While the Army of the Rhine was

under his jurisdiction, the Austrians, near Strasbourg,

requested a conference, but Saint-Just told them that "The

French Republic takes from and sends to its enemies nothing

but lead" (Palmer 184).

10 The place where the émigrés were executed, outside

the town of Auray, soon came to be known as "the field of

140

martyrs." In 1823, the Duchess of Angouleme placed the

first stone for what was to be a Grecian-style temple as a

lasting monument to those who had been shot (Stanhope 344-

45).

141

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Brittany's Savoury Charms

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