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-

1
66). Many years after 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:

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).

2
 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

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

3
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 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

4
 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 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

5
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 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

6
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

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

7
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).

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

8
 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 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

9
 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 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

10
 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

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

11
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)

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

12
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

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

13
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

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

14
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

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

15
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 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,

16
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 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

17
 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:

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. .

18
 . .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 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,

19
 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

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

20
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

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

21
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 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

22
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

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

23
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

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

24
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 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

25
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

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

26
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,

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

27
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 that the illness and loss of his son prevented

the King from taking action toward the Assembly for at

28
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 of the common people (Padover 164-

65). It is significant that Louis XVI made no attempt to

29
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 that all hope for significant financial

30
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

Constitution of the Clergy, in which all priests and

31
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 French people into "an enemy of the

32
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.

33
 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,

 35
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 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).

 36
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 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

 37
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)

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

 38
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 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

 39
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. He valued that yield per

acre at £1 14s. 9 ¾d. and contended that regular

 40
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

 41
this figure to equal the total amount of farmland

available in England itself (Young 293). To have

so much waste land was all the 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,

 42
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 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

 43
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 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;

 44
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 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,

 45
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

 46
(intrus) though I have occupied my 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

 47
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 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-

 48
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). 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

 49
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 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

 50
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 opponents of the Church and as

advocates of new taxes that would bring

 51
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

 52
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 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).
 53
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

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

 54
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 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

 55
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 and Sutherland, "Rural

Community" 118).
 56
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:

 57
. . .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

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.

 58
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).

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

 59
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 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

 60
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 quite understandably they

 61
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

 62
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 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.

 63
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 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

 64
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.

 65
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).

 66
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, 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

 67
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 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

 68
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 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).

 69
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 served in the

French Guards, an elite regiment; he was skilled

in the reading and writing of the English

 70
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).

 71
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, 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

 72
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 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

 73
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 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

 74
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 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

 75
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 will

 76
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
 77
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.

 78
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 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

 79
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 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

 80
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

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

 81
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

(sic) order and forming themselves by

easy but regular & quick ways" (Armand

 82
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

 83
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 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

 84
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 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

 85
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 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

 86
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 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

 87
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 to

 88
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

 89
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 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

 90
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).

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

 91
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).

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

 92
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 Third Estate, commissioned

officers were appointed not only from the

 93
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

 94
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 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

 95
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 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

 96
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-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

 97
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 believe that it was through Cottereau's

 98
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.

 99
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 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

 100
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 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-

 101
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.
 102
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).
 103
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 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

 104
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 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

 105
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

 106
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).

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

 107
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

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).

 108
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 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).

 109
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 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

 110
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 (Godechot, Counter

 111
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

 112
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 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

 113
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 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

 114
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

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

 115
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

to the departments set up by the Revolution. La

Rouërie, by contrast, had set up the councils

consisting of two representatives each from the

 116
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

 117
with Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger and

the Count of Artois (Mathiez 121). To 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

 118
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-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

 119
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 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"

 120
(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 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

 121
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 the women of Paris made their

 122
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

 123
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 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).

 124
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 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

 125
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 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

 126
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).

Rey's suspicions were definitely

justifiable. In his work on Chouannerie, Donald

Sutherland contends that Baron Cormatin had

 127
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

 128
its members had authorized Carnot to declare a

cease fire with the Chouans.

Nevertheless, in spite of Boursault's fears,

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

 129
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 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

 130
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).

 131
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

 132
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 "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

 133
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 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-

 134
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 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

 135
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)

Louis also promised a complete pardon

against those who had taken part in the

 136
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

 137
continuing their raids. District administrators

complained that the Chouans "have robbed more,

burnt more, massacred more republicans than they

did previously. We 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

 138
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 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

 139
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

(Sydenham 61). The delay, however, had slowed

Puisaye's progress and led to disagreements

between some of the nobles

Qu. Landing
 140
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

 141
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 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

 142
(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 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

 143
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 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

 144
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 after word of the

alleged agreement had reached them (Phipps 43).

 145
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

 146
of Pitt's Cabinet to order all troops at Yeu to

withdraw immediately (Godechot, Counter Revolution

259).

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

 147
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 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

 148
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 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

 149
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 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,

 150
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

 151
to suffer because of 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).

 152
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 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.

 153
Brittany seems to be pictured as a "colony" of

the Paris government that has been exploited for

the purpose of economic gain.

 154
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

 155
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 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,

 156
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 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

 157
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.

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

 158
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 answered only by the passing of

time.
 159
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

 160
expressed consent of the Etats de

Bretagne. (Reese 16-17)

 161
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
 162
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 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

 163
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 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).
 164
Bibliography

Anthony, Katherine. Catherine the Great. New

York: Knopf,

1942.

Bernard, Paul B. Joseph II. New York: Twayne,

1968.

Bosher, J. F. The French Revolution. New York

and London:

Norton, 1988.

Brinton, Crane. The Anatomy of Revolution. New

York:

Prentice, 1965.

"Brittany." Online. Internet. 26 Dec. 1996.

Burckhardt, Jacob. "The Political Situation in

France

Before the Revolution." On History and

Historians.

Trans. Harry Zohn. New York, Harper, 1978.

Chandler, David G. Dictionary of the Napoleonic

Wars. New

York: Simon, 1993.

 165
Christophe, Robert. Danton: A Biography. New

York:

Literary Classics, Inc., 1984.

Churchill, Winston. A History of the English

Speaking

Peoples: The Age of Revolution. Vol 3. New

York: Dodd,

Mead, and Company, 1957.

Commager, Henry Steele and Richard B. Morris,

eds. The

Spirit of 'Seventy Six: The Story of the

American

Revolution as Told by Participants. 2 Vols.

New York:

Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1958.

"Council of Europe--Treaties: Minority

Protection,

Summaries." Online. Internet. 5 Nov. 1992.

Crankshaw, Edward. Maria Theresa. New York:

Viking, 1969.

Darnton, Robert. "Anecdotes sur Mme la comtesse

(sic) du
 166
Barry." The Forbidden Best-sellers of Pre-

revolutionary

France. New York: Norton, 1995.

De Bouille, Marquis. Memoirs Relating to the

French

Revolution. London: Cadell, 1797.

Du Pan, Madame de La Tour. Memoirs of Madame de

La Tour du

Pan. Ed. and trans. Felice Harcourt. New

York: McCall,

1971.

Duzuy, George, ed. Memoir of Barras. Vol. 2.

Trans.

C. E. Roche. New York: Harper, 1895.

Endicott, William. Memoirs of William C.

Endicott, LL.D.

Cambridge: Wilson, 1902.

Ergang, Robert. From the Renaissance to

Waterloo. Boston:

Heath, 1939.

"French Xenophobia highlighted at Celt's

Conference."
 167
Online. Internet. 27 July 1997

Gildea, Robert and Michel Lagrée. "The

Historical Geography

of Western France: The Evidence of Ille-et-

Vilaine."

English Historical Review 94 (October 1979):

830-847. Godechot, Jacques. The Counter

Revolution. Trans. Salvator

Attansaso. New York: Fertig, 1971.

---. The Taking of the Bastille, July 14th,

1789. Trans.

Jean Stewart. New York: Scribner, 1970.

Goodwin, A. "Counter-revolution in Brittany:

The Royalist

Conspiracy of the Marquis de la Rouërie, 1791-3.

Bulletin of the John Rylands Library. 39

(1957):

325-355.

Gottschalk, Louis R. Jean Paul Marat: A Study in

Radicalism. New York: Greenberg, 1927.

Guizot, François and Madame Guizot DeWitt

History of France from the Earliest Time to

 168
the Year 1848. Vol. 6. Trans.

Robert Black. Paris: Burt, 1878.

Haarman, Albert. "General Armand and his

Partisan Corps,

1777-1783." Military Collector and History.

Winter

(1960): 97-102.

Hassoteau, Jean, ed. The Memoirs of Queen

Hortense,. Vol.

1. Trans. Arthur K. Griggs. New York:

Cosmopolitan,

1927.

Higgins, E. L., ed. The French Revolution as

Told by

Contemporaries. Boston: Houghton, 1938.

Hutt, Maurice. "The British Government's

Responsibility for

the 'Divided Command' of the Expedition to

Quiberon,

1795." English Historical Review. 76 (1961):

479-487.

---. Chouannerie and Counter-revolution:

 169
Puisaye, the

Princes, and the British Government in the

1790's. 2 vol.

New York: Cambridge UP, 1983.

Jefferson, Thomas. Letters of Thomas Jefferson.

Tilton:

Hillside, 1975.

Ketchum, Richard M. American Heritage Book of the

Revolution. New York: American Heritage, 1958.

Kishlansky, Mark, Patrick Geary, and Patricia

O'Brian.

Civilization in the West. New York: Harper,

1991.

Kite, Elizabeth. "Charless-Armand Tuffin,

Marquis de La

Rouërie." Records of the American Catholic

Historical

Society. 59 (March 1948): 1-34.

Le Goff, T. J. A. Vannes and Its Region: A

Study of Town

and Country in Eighteenth-Century France.

Oxford:
 170
Clarendon, 1981.

Le Goff, T. J. A. and D. M. G. Sutherland. "The

Revolution

and the Rural Community in Eighteenth Century

France."

Past and Present. 62 (1974): 96-119.

---. "The Social Origins of Counter-revolution

in Western

France. Past and Present. 99 (1983): 65-87.

Loomis, Stanley. The Fatal Friendship. New York:

Doubleday, 1972.

Markham, James M. "A Calm, Ambivalent France

Looks Back to

1789's Fervor." New York Times. 14 July 1989.

A1+.

Martonne, Emmanuel de. Geographical Regions of

France.

London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1965.

Mathiez, Albert. The Thermodorian Reaction.

Trans.

Catherine Alison Phillips. New York: Knopf,

1929.
 171
Mercier, Sabastien. Memoirs of the Year Two

Thousand Five

Hundred. Ed. William Endicott. Trans. W.

Hooper.

Philadelphia: Dobson, 1795.

Miller, John C. Triumph of Freedom: 1775-1783.

Boston:

Little, Brown & Co., 1948.

Mitchell, Harvey. The Underground War Against

Revolutionary

France: The Mission of William Wickham, 1794-

1800.

London: Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1965.

--- "Resistance to the Revolution in Western

France." Past

and Present. 63 (1974): 94-131.

Monkhouse, F. J. A Regional Geography of Western

Europe.

New York: Praeger, 1967.

Montesquieu. "Letter CXXII." The Persian

Letters. Trans.

George Healey. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,

 172
1964.

---. The Spirit of the Laws. Trans. Thomas

Nugent. New

York: Hafner, 1949.

Padone, Ellen. The Appointed Hour: Death,

Worldview,

and Social Change in Brittany. Berkeley and

Los Angeles:

U of California P, 1989.

Padover, Saul K. The Life and Death of Louis

XVI. New

York: Taplinger, 1963.

Palmer, R. R. Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the

Terror in

the French Revoluton. New York: Atheneum,

1966.

Phipps, Ramsay W. The Armies of the First French

Republic,

1838-1923. 5 vol. London: Oxford UP, 1926-

1939.

Pinchemel, Philippe. France: A Geographical

Survey. New
 173
York: Praeger, 1969.

Planhol, Xavier de and Paul Cloval. An

Historical Geography

of France. Trans. Janet Lloyd. New York:

Cambridge UP,

1994.

Pounds, N. J. An Historical Geography of Europe,

1500-1840.

New York: Cambridge UP, 1979.

Really, Robin. William Pitt the Younger. New

York:

Putnam, 1979.

Reese, Jack E. The Bretons Against France.

Chapel Hill: U

of North Carolina P, 1977.

"The Role of the Celtic League in Our National

Struggles."

(June 7, 1996): Online. Internet. 2 Feb. 1992.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques. On the Social Contract.

Ed. Roger

D. Masters. Trans. Judith R. Masters. New

York: St.
 174
Martin's, 1978.

Smith, C. T. An Historical Geography of Western

Europe

Before 1800. New York: Praeger, 1967.

Stanhope, Earl. Life of the Right Honourable

William Pitt.

London, 1867. New York: AMS, 1970.

Stutesman, John H., Jr. "Colonel Armand and

Washington's

Cavalry." The New York Historical Society

Quarterly.

45.1 (1961): 5-42.

Sutherland, D. M. G. The Chouans: The Social

Origins of

Popular Counter-revolutoin in Upper Brittany,

1770-96.

Oxford: Oxford UP, 1981.

Sydenham, M. J. The First French Republic, 1792-

1804.

Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P,

1973.

Thiers, Adolphe. History of the French

 175
Revolution. Vol. 3.

Trans. Frederick Shoberl. London: Bentley, 1881.

Trewartha, Glenn. An Introduction to Climate.

New York:

McGraw-Hill, 1954.

Ward, C. The War of the Revolution. Ed. John

Richard

Alden. 2 vol. New York: Macmillan, 1952.

Ward, Townsend. "Charles Armand Tuffin, Marquis

de la

Rouërie." The Pennsylvania Magazine of History

and

Biography. 2.1 (1878): 1-34.

Weigley, Russell. The Age of Battles: The Quest

for

Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo.

Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991.

West. Willis M. The Story of World Progress.

Boston: Allyn

and Bacon, 1927.

Whitridge, Arnold. "The Marquis de la Rouërie,

Brigadier
 176
General in the Continental Army." Proceedings

of the

Massachusetts Historical Society. 79 (1968):

47-63.

Young, Arthur. Travels in France During the

Years 1787,

1788, and 1789. ed. Constantia Maxwell.

Cambridge,

Cambridge UP, 1929.

Zaretsky, Robert D. "Defining 'This Sublime

Sunrise'."

The Virginia Quarterly Review. 4 (Spring 1989).

Brittany's Savoury Charms

http://www.france.diplomatie.fr/label_france/Engl

ish/Region/Bretagne/breta.html January 20, 1998.

 177
Also FIX THE PAGE NUMBERING AND THE 1/2 TOP

problem!!!