Christmas 1792

Jean-François Garneray, Louis XVI à la Tour
 du Temple (1792) Musée Carnavalet

Tuesday 25th December 1792 was the first Christmas of the new French Republic.  At the Temple prison, Louis XVI spent the day writing his will, prior to his appearance at the bar of the Convention on the 26th.  Paris was in a state of security crisis and simmering uprest.  The religious policies of the Convention were wracked by indecision, with rationalists like  Pierre-Louis Manuel moving towards policies hostile to Christianity without declaring them openly.  In the Paris Commune, the ascendancy of would-be dechristianisers was assured by the election  on 12th December of  Pierre Chaumette as  procurateur with Hébert as his substitute.

The Doll, a Christmas tale

Légendes de Noël 

Another Christmas tale set in the time of the Terror, translated from G. Lenotre. Paternal sympathy triumphs over the Revolutionary divide!

 Illustrations are  by Paul Thiriat from the 1911 edition of the Légendes de Noël which is available on Gallica.


As far back as I can remember, I can picture the old marquise de Flavigny seated, smiling and serene, in an old armchair covered in peach-coloured velvet.  Her grey hair and her great bonnet of lace decorated with trembling knots stood out against the upholstery.

Next to her on a low chair, there almost always sat a woman of the same age, also smiling, with a calm and peaceful expression. They called her "Mademoiselle Odile" .  She was not a servant;  an intimacy united the two old ladies; they would sit together knitting the coarse blue woollen garments which were distributed to the poor, along with a loaf of bread and five two-liard coins, on Thursday mornings.  They exchanged interminable confidences in low voices, with an air of camaraderie, almost of complicity. On certain days,  days of tidying and arranging, the two friends laid aside their knitting and visited their cupboards, great chests of varnished oak with long brass lock fittings, narrow and tall, cut into arabesques. They opened boxes, tied up linen, spread out on shelves embroidered napkins, dusted and cleaned all day long.  We children were admitted to this salutary spectacle on condition that we touched nothing.

In the depths of one of these mysterious cupboards,  as though in a sanctuary,  there reposed in a glass case an object held by the two ladies in a sort of veneration.  It was a large doll, dressed in old-fashioned style, with a gown of threadbare silk. It was almost bald with age; its nose was broken, its hands and face cracked and discoloured. I remember that it had only one shoe, of cracked Moroccan leather with a blackened silver buckle and a high heel which had once been red.

When they came to this imposing trinket, the marquise and Mlle Odile moved it with great like a choirboy moving a reliquary.  They spoke about it in hushed voices, in short phrases.

SHE has lost more hair...  Her petticoat is now completely worn out...  This finger will come away soon...

The glass cover was lifted off with great care, the spices renewed, the skirts straightened carefully with a fingernail.  Then the doll was put back in its place, upright on the best shelf, as though on an altar.

Is she all right, my dear?" asked the marquise.

This was how she addressed Mlle Odile.  The latter called her familiarly "Madame Solange", without ever giving her her title. She spoke with with a hint of an Alsatian accent, but without roughness and so slight that it appeared eroded by time.

We knew nothing about the history of these two old ladies and their doll until one evening - it was Christmas Eve in a year now long past - when we were suddenly initiated into the mystery. That day Odile and the marquise had chattered with more animation than usual.  But towards evening they withdrew and became silent:  they held hands, looked at each other affectionately and it was clear that a common memory filled their minds.  When it got completely dark, Odile lit the candles; then, bringing out a bunch of keys from under her apron, she opened the cupboard containing the doll.

A Chouan Christmas

Légendes de Noël 

Another Christmas story translated from G. Lenotre.

In this sentimental tale, a band of Revolutionary soldiers fighting the Chouans find themselves overwhelmed by memories of Christmas.


 Illustrations are  by Paul Thiriat from the 1911 edition of the Légendes de Noël which is available on Gallica.


This story was told to me one evening beside the Couesnon River near Fougères where from 1793 to 1800 the epic struggle of the Chouans took place. Memories are still keen in these parts of the "great trial" of the Revolutionary era.

One night in the winter of 1795 a party of Republican soldiers was on the road skirting the forest of Fougères, which connected the routes from Mortain and Avranches. The air was fresh, but almost warm, even though it was one of the longest nights of the year. Here and there, behind bare hedges, patches of snow in the fields caught the light .

The patriots moved forward: their long hair hung out beneath their bicorne hats; their coats were blue with wide sashes; heavy cartridge pouches banged against their legs; their coarse red-striped trousers were stuffed into gaiters.  They went along bent and tired, weighed down by their haversacks and the heavy guns they carried. They led with them a peasant who, earlier that evening, had shot at the band from a hiding place among the gorse bushes.  His bullet had gone right through the sergeant's hat then ricocheted back and broke the pipe that one of the soldiers was smoking. They had immediately pursued him, hemmed him in against a bank, then captured and disarmed him.  The "Blues" were taking him to Fougerolles where the brigade was camped.

The peasant was wearing a goat fleece as a coat, which opened at the front to reveal his  Bretonne shirt and a waistcoat with big buttons.  He had clogs on his feet and on his head a felt hat with wide brim and ribbons over a woollen bonnet.  His hair hung down around his neck.  His expression was impassive and hard.  As he moved along, his small bright eyes furtively scanned the hedges that bordered the road and the winding pathways that led off it. Two soldiers held the rope that bound his hands, wrapping the ends around their arms.

A Christmas suicide pact

Here is a cheery tale to kick off the festive season -  the famous suicide of the "two dragoons" which took place at the Arbalêtre Inn in St Denis on Christmas day 1773.  The event aroused intense speculation at the time and, to this day, remains deeply poignant and enigmatic.

The following is taken from the Revd Charles Moore's dissertation on suicide which was published in 1790. Moore translates a first-hand account and the testament left by the two men,  plus a letter written by one of them to his lieutenant.


An account of two French soldiers, who killed themselves at St. Denis on Christmas-day, 1773.

De la Barre,

Monday Morning.

A very tragical event has just happened near us. On Friday last (Dec. 24, 1773) about eleven o'clock, two soldiers came to an inn at St. Denis and bespoke a dinner for the afternoon. Bourdeaux, one of these soldiers, went out to buy some gunpowder and two bullets. While making the purchase he observed, that St. Denis seemed to him to be so pleasantly situated, that he was determined to pass the remainder of his life in it. He then returned to the inn, and they spent the rest of the day together in great cheerfulness. On Saturday also (being Christmas-day) they were in good spirits, and seemed very merry at their dinner. They called for more wine, and about five o'clock in the evening they were both sound dead near the fire, with a table between them, on which were three empty bottles, the will, a letter, and half-a-crown (having previously discharged their bill). They were both shot through the head and the pistols were lying on the floor. The people of the house being alarmed at the report of fire-arms, rushed into the room. Monsieur de Rouilliere [Rulhière], Commandant of the Maréchaussée  of St. Denis, who dined with us yesterday, gave us the whole account, and showed us the will from which the following was copied.

 

A Sans-culotte Christmas

Légendes de Noël 

Another Christmas and another story translated from G. Lenotre.

In this tale, "Le petit Noël de quatre sans-culottes", four French Revolutionary soldiers find themselves, somewhat improbably, in Bethlehem on Christmas night.

Illustrations are  by Paul Thiriat from the 1911 edition of the Légendes de Noël which is available on Gallica.

There were four of them!  Four from the “Faubourg Antoine”, that volcano, now extinguished, which formerly, at almost regular intervals, spewed onto Paris torrents of revolutionary lava.

One morning in August 1792 they had followed the crowd to the Tuileries;  they had enjoyed themselves at the sack of the palace; they had  stabbed the mattresses of “le gros Capet” with their pikes; fired at the gods enthroned in Olympia on the painted ceilings; broken a few mirrors; and, like children, had  shaken the eiderdowns of the palace through the high windows of the gallery of Diana, to “make it snow”.

They cared little for politics, but this had not stopped them a few days later, in September, from being there at the prison massacres; not that they had killed anyone but  just “watched”, onlookers filled with joy at the novelty of the spectacle.  Then,  to the sound of drums and the canons on the Pont-Neuf,  they had  joined the  volunteer batallions and marched off, still singing, laughing and joking, to the Army of Champagne.   There they had been with the corps of the traitor Dumouriez, sleeping during the day, marching at night, without discipline, good soldiers only in battle.

The chance fortune that had brought them together persisted; together they had joined  the Army of the Alps and were part of the legendary bands that were  unleashed  by the “little Corsican” on Lombardy;  having left barefoot, thin and impoverished, they had returned from the campaign well shod, fat and comfortably off.  No-one knew better than they did how to take advantage of circumstances and profit from windfalls; they were nicknamed the “Parigots”.  They had long since forgotten the names that their parents had given them and adopted ones suited to the times: the first called himself “Nonidi”, the second “Décius”, the third “Tournesol” and  the last “Pimprenelle”, all names taken from the Revolutionary calendar.

Fouquier-Tinville at Christmas

Légendes de Noël 

A very merry Christmas!

The following is an abridged translation of a story from G. Lenotre's Légendes de Noël, a series of Christmas tales set in the Revolution and Empire, first published in 1910.

Lenotre (Louis Léon Théodore Gosselin) was a great historian and unusual for his time in his willingness to extend sympathies to both sides of the Revolutionary struggle. In this story, he finds humanity in one of the most hated figures of the Terror, the Public Prosecutor Antoine-Quentin Fouquier-Tinville.

I have been unable to trace the comte de Courville, but Lenotre's view of Fouquier-Tinville is certainly based on details fully documented elsewhere in his work. Accurate too is the description of Séraphin's famous silhouette theatre which operated in the Palais-Royal, to patriotic enthusiasm, throughout the darkest days of the Revolution.




In the time of the Terror, a passerby at night who walked along the quai de l’Horloge, under the walls of the Palais de Justice, would quicken his step and, take care, out of instinct, not to raise his head.  In one of the windows next to the towers of the Conciergerie, a light burned from dawn to dusk which, as far as it could be seen, made the people of Paris tremble in fear.

 This light illuminated the cell where worked, day and night, Antoine-Quentin Fouquier-Tinville, the Public Prosecutor, the feared magistrate who furnished the Revolutionary Tribunal with its required quota of accused and the guillotine with its daily harvest of heads. The life of this man, whose tragic name weighed over Paris like the legendary sword over the head of Damocles, was one of crushing labour.  He slept three or four hours a day, rarely more.  For twenty hours at a stretch, he prepared the work of the death-machine, a colossal task which he would entrust to no-one else.