The Protestant galley slaves (cont.)

If you were to see me in my fine Galley Slave habit, you would be ravished with admiration!  I have a fine little red Jacket, made just after the fashion of the Carriers' Frocks of the Ardennes. ...I have likewise a fine red Cap, two pairs of Breeches, two Shirts with threads as big as my finger, and Stockings.
[Letter of the Huguenot convict Louis de Marolles to his wife from Marseilles]


Writings of the Protestant convicts and their circulation 

As David van der Linden has recently emphasised,  publicity for the plight of the forçats pour la foi was sustained among the Huguenot exiles by the exchange of letters with the captives.  Ministers like Pierre Jurieu and Jacques Basnage acted as "memory brokers" collecting tales of the Protestant galley slaves which highlighted their suffering as "confessors to the faith". The correspondence which individual smuggled out to their pastors in exile often formed the basis for publications.  Thus the letters of Louis de Marolles were turned into a history by Isaac Jacquelot in 1699;  Etienne Girard, a minister in exile in Utrecht,  wrote a "history of the sufferings" of his former parishioner  Isaac Le Fèvre  and the pastor Jean Morin wrote a life of Elias Neau (1662-1722).   Both these last were printed in Rotterdam by Jurieu's publisher Abraham Acher.(p.190).  English translations of the material rapidly followed.

David van der Linden Experiencing Exile: Huguenot Refugees in the Dutch Republic, 1680–1700 (2015), p.187-90.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=g1tLBgAAQBAJ&pg=187#v=onepage&q&f=false

A number of key texts in English are conveniently gathered in Edward Arber, The Torments of Protestant slaves in the French King's galleys, and in the dungeons of Marseilles 1686-1707 A.D. [London 1908]
https://archive.org/details/tormentsofprotes00arbeuoft


 Louis de Marolles and Isaac Le Fèvre

 The earliest testimonies came from members of the Protestant elite, caught up in the immediate aftermath of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.  Marolles, a Conseiller du Roi and amateur mathematician, and Isaac Le Fèvre, an advocate were both captured attempting to flee France.  They remained obdurate in the face of attempts to induce them to escape the galleys by abandoning their faith.(In a poignant letter to his wife from La Tournelle Marolles recounts how he lay aside his hat to be chained about the neck).  In Marseille, in the convict hospital and aboard the galley, they at first enjoyed a certain amount of privilege and contact with the outside world; in particular both were invited to attend disputations at the Bishop's residence.  Soon afterwards they were separately imprisoned,  Marolles specifically because of his contacts with Holland; no doubt the presence of such cultured and articulate men among the forçats - and the attention they threatened to attract abroad  -  were a considerable embarrassment to the Catholic authorities.  The cruel solution taken was simply to abandon them in prison.   Marolles - who enjoyed mathematical puzzles and was prepared to argue the case against transubstantiation with senior members of the Catholic hierarchy - leaves a sad chronicle of endurance in his letters;  malnourished, almost naked and confined in the dark and damp, he finally died in 1692, followed by  Le Fèvre in 1702.  "I continually give thanks to God", he wrote, "for the honour which he hath done me, in no thinking me unworthy to suffer for his Name's sake".

Illustration from J.Morin's A Short
 Account of the Life and Sufferings of Elias Neau
  (London 1749).  See Kamil, p.403

Elias Neau, "the galley preacher"

Elias Neau was another well-to-do Huguenot, whom unlucky chance condemned to the galleys. Originally from La Rochelle, Neau had fled to Boston and successfully rebuilt his career as a merchant, but was captured by a French privateer on a return voyage from London to New York. When asked at his trial to choose between "death or the Mass" Neau, in a moment of personal crisis, decided to follow his conscience and chose "chains".  He arrived in Marseilles - significantly enough on the day of Pentecost -  and during six years as a galérien made himself a focal point for resistance among the Huguenots, so much so that he attracted the epithet of "the galley preacher" He was a determined man; when placed in solitary confinement on board ship he continued to bellow out hymns and psalms through the grill. Finally in 1694 he was taken ashore, incarcerated in a series of prisons and eventually ended up in the Château d'If. His Bible remained with him, saved quasi-miraculously from repeated searches. He was held under horrendous conditions, first in a tiny cell the size of his own body, then with three Camisard prisoners;  Neau's account no doubt advisedly, resemble a description of Hell:

 I verily believe there is no more dismal place in the world....all our senses were attacked at once; sight by darkness, taste by hunger, smell by the stench of the place, feeling by Lice and other vermin, and hearing by the horrid blasphemies and cursing.....

Disseminated in English in Cotton Mather's translation  as A present from a Farr Country Neau's letters, with their quasi-mystical emphasis on the sacrificial nature of Christ's love, are still appreciated today.  Neau describes his spiritual rebirth in the "Burning Furnace" of his dungeon." His "constant prayer" was that God would grant him "pleasure in this pain, in oppression and persecution".  Thus his persecutors deprived him of all human relief, but God offered him the opportunity to reshape himself in conformity with Christ.  

 Neau was eventually released in 1697 and rejoined his wife and two children in New York where he later opened a school for escaped negro slaves.

On Neau: 
Catherine Randall, From a far country: Camisards and Huguenots in the Atlantic world. (University of Georgia Press, 2011) , p.101-10
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=sdmnYJxQp9cC&pg=PA101

Neil Kamil, Fortress of the Soul: Violence, Metaphysics, and Material Life in the Huguenots' New World, 1517-1751(2005)  p.402-8.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ekSkZXXjVWUC&pg=PA402


Règlements of 1699

As well aid, the convicts at an early date to created a rudimentary religious organisation to sustain their spiritual resistance.  Soiled devotional books and manuscript copies of prayers circulated, and there was an understanding that silent intercession should be joined when the cannon sounded nine o'clock to mark the end of the day.  A text survives from 1699 in which a group of convicts, acknowledging the inspiration of Neau,  set out regulations for a devotional society offering "mutual support and encouragement"; it is signed by men with Camisard names (Serres, Domouyn, Pelecuer, Valette, Allix, Bancillon, Pereau, Masseton, Maurin, Gonin, Lardant) 

As they were without pastors, those who were educated were to act as deacons and spiritual guides,  teaching others to read and instructing them in the faith.  They were also charged with exhortations to steadfastness, and to record examples of "faith, patience, courage and piety".

For this text:
Règlements faits sur les galères de France par les confesseurs qui souffrent pour la vérité de l'Evangile (1699)
http://icp.ge.ch/po/cliotexte/sites/Arisitum/cdf/galere1.html

Affaire des bonnets 1703

Following the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697, the Protestant galériens were victims of a particular sadistic bout of persecution.  Up to this time Protestants were not compelled to take part in Catholic worship, but now the missionaries insisted that the chained gang remove their bonnets during mass, save for the Turks.  Refusal  resulted in a systematic campaign of whippings that left several men dead.  Faced with indignation from the Protestant powers, Louis XIV was compelled to issue orders reining in the brutalities.

TEXTS:
After the Peace of Ryswick, the Missionaries undertook to force the Protestant Slaves, while Mass as saying, to kneel with their Heads uncovered, and observe the same Posture of Devotion with the Roman Catholics.  To succeed in this, they found no great Trouble in bringing over to their Interests Mr. Bonbelle, Major General of the Gallies, a Man possessed of all the Spirit of inquisitorial Persecution.  It was resolved between them, that everyone of the Reformed should undergo the Bastinade till he should comply, and promise to kneel while Mass was saying.  to make all more sure, and more methodical, it was also determined that the Major should being the first Day with one of the Gallies, the next with another, and so on till all was gone through and then he was to renew the Punishment till he forced a Compliance, or till the Slave should expire under the Lash.  Bonbelle began his bloody Business, and executed his Commands without Mercy.
His brutal Manner of exhorting them to a Compliance is remarkable enough.  Dog (he used to say) fall on you Knees, and in this Posture if you won't pray to God - pray to the Devil if you will, for what I care.  All who were thus inhumanly treated, persisted in their courageous Resolution without shrinking; and while the Executioner was mangling their Bodies, seemed with unfeeling Serenity to give their Maker Praise for this Trial of their Constancy.(Memoirs of Jean Marteilhe, p.162-3;
https://archive.org/stream/memoirsaprotest00martgoog#page/n160/mode/2up)

Arber, Torments of Protestant slaves, p.274ff reproduces a number of letters, plus the petition drawn up by the convicts to the Intendant of the Galleys in Marseilles.

https://archive.org/stream/tormentsofprotes00arbeuoft#page/282/mode/2up

The Protestant galley slaves

According to André Zysberg, in the period between the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, 5%  of convicts entering the galley fleet in Marseilles were Huguenots and Camisards - 600 out of a total of 12,000 convicts at any one time. (The figure dropped to 1% after 1716).  In all 1,550 Protestants are recorded in the Marseille registers. The pattern of their arrival mirrored the peaks of Louis XIV's policy of repression against the Huguenots:the Revocation itself, the start of the War of the League of Augsburg (1690), the Peace of Ryswick in 1697 and the Revolt of the Camisards in the early 18th century.  They were condemned according to the provisions of the Edict of Fontainbleau:  22%  for attempting to leave the country, 53% for illegally gathering in "Churches of the Desert", 11% for possession of firearms or gunpowder and 1% for sheltering a pastor.

The Huguenot galley slaves are commemorated in the Musée du Désert in Anduze in the Gard. The museum's website has a comprehensive A-Z listing of names of those persecuted.  Building on the work started by Gaston Tournier in the 1940s, they have amassed over 2,700 biographies. (This is getting on for twice Zysberg's number, a discrepancy not entirely explained, even if not all those condemned actually ended up in Marseilles).

Gallery and memorial in the Musée du Désert

Contemporary lists and accounts  give a little more sense of the reality behind the numbers. According to the former galley chaplain Jean Bion, Protestants entered Marseille in the chain gang a hundred at a time but by 1707 less than a quarter survived - and many of those who remained  languished in the dungeons of the Château d'If and other prisons.  A "True and Exact List" published in 1698 gives the disposition of some 350 Protestants,  dispersed a dozen or so to each galley.  According to Jean Marteilhe, there were twenty-two Huguenots aboard the six galleys of the Atlantic fleet at the fall of Dunkirk in 1712 and forty on the flagship La Réale in Marseille.  He reports that in 1714 lists were drawn up of "upward of three hundred" Protestants in Marseille in the wake of  diplomatic pressure from Britain for a general amnesty.  Despite these initiatives - and the fact that many Huguenots  were able eventually to buy their freedom  - in 1755 a list of "Protestants who are now actually slaves aboard the French Gallies" could still muster fifty names.  The very last forçats pour la foi - Paul Achard, aged 72 and Antoine Riaille 64, unaccountably omitted for lists,  were finally released in 1775, both having served over thirty years as bagnards.


Museum and lists of names:

 Musée du Désert - Virtual visit (galley slave memorial and memorabilia)
http://passcevennes.com/musee-du-desert/

" Les Galériens Protestants" on on the Musée du Désert website:
http://www.museedudesert.com/article35.html

The genealogical site, "Huguenots de France et d'ailleurs" is also preparing a database of Protestant galley slaves:
http://huguenots-france.org/france/galeres/galeres.htm

Athanase Coquerel, Les forçats pour la foi, étude historique (1684-1775) (1866)
https://archive.org/stream/lesforcatspourla00coqu#page/262/mode/2up
This older study has a list by year

See also:
"Sentenced to the galleys"  article in Virtual Museum of Protestantism
http://www.museeprotestant.org/en/notice/sentenced-to-the-galleys/

Contemporary lists: 
A true and exact list of the French Protestants, slaves on board the French Galleys, for adhering to the Profession of the Protestant Religion [July 1698]
https://archive.org/stream/tormentsofprotes00arbeuoft#page/270/mode/2up

List of 1755
https://archive.org/stream/memoirsaprotest00martgoog#page/n240/mode/2up

Galériens on the Fleur de Lis (galley of 1690)

This impressive (and rather frightening) virtual reconstruction of a galley being rowed is the work of Gérard Delacroix, a specialist in marine archaeology, who has pioneered the application of CAD to the recreation of historic ships.

His lavishly illustrated books combine detailed plans and drawings with photographs of scale models. The 1690 Marseille galley Fleur de Lis was among his most ambitious publications/projects. A model, built to Delacroix's specifications by Bruno Rimlinger, was on view at the annual conference and exhibition of the Association "Archéologie et Modélisme de l'Arsenal" held at Vazerac in 2014:

References

Prospectus for the book:

http://gerard.delacroix.pagesperso-orange.fr/galere/plaquette-e.htm

Exhibition at Vazerac, 2014
http://www.amarsenal.be/06_27a_Vazerac14.html

For a description of the mechanism of rowing, see Richard Mowery Andrews Law, Magistracy, and Crime in Old Regime Paris, 1735-1789: Volume 1 (1994),, based on André Zysberg's account:

The galley slaves of Marseilles

La Réale rentrant au port (Anonymous, after 1694)

Musée national de la Marine, Paris

It comes as some surprise to learn that penal servitude in the royal galley fleet  was a reality in Ancien régime France until as late as the 1770s.  An increasing anachronism in 18th century warfare, galleys survived surprisingly late into the 18th century. The zenith of the war galley as an instrument of French naval hegemony in the western Mediterranean was in the 1690s, when the royal fleet based in Marseilles numbered up to forty vessels (There was also a small fleets in Dunkirk, Brest and Bordeaux). In 1699 the Arsenal at Marseilles was rebuilt and extended. The galleys were a symbol of French royal power, as is clear from the magnificent decorations of the lead galley, La Réale, preserved today in the Musée de la marine in Paris. The royal galley was a piece of Baroque theatre; according to Nicolas Arnoul, Louis XIV's intendant of the fleet, it was "a triumphal chariot, with 300 chained slaves; Roman emperors could not boast as much" (cited by André Zysberg)   Followed the War of Spanish Succession, from 1719 to 1738 a dozen or so galleys were maintained of which only six to eight were operational.  The Regent's legitimised natural son Jean Philippe d'Orléans was given the post in 1719 of Général des galères, which he held until his death in 1748  - an appointment which no doubt contributed to the continued  nominal existence of the fleet.  The last campaign in which galleys were involved took place under his command in the summer of 1747.  On 27 November 1748 Louis XV finally signed the order which formally disbanded the fleet and merged its personnel into the navy.  The majority of convicts were shifted elsewhere, chiefly to Brest, the chief base of the Atlantic fleet.  In 1779 there were only two galleys remaining in Marseilles and four in Toulon.  The very last galley of France, la Ferme, was broken up in 1814.

http://www.musee-marine.fr/content/ornements-de-poupe-de-la-galere-reale

The Peine des Galères

The concept of "penal servitude" in the galleys was laid down relatively late in the galleys' history.   "La peine des galères", with the double meaning of punishment and hard labour,  was not institutionalised in law until 1670 to 1690;  up to this period, galleys had been manned on a fairly ad hoc basis by Muslim slaves, deserters from the royal army, vagabonds and gypsies, and criminals whose death sentences had been commuted.  Slaves, particularly Turks from central Europe, continued to provide about 20% of the galériens. The Criminal Ordinance of 1670 for the first time set fixed term sentences to the galleys (three, five, nine years) as penalities for grand criminel offences in royal courts - bailliages, presidials, and the  Parlement -and made life in the galleys an alternative sentence for many capital offences. Further laws in May 1680, June 1722 and August 1729 made a term of servitude in the galleys the mandatory penalty for smuggling and the illicit sale of salt, tobacco and painted fabrics. During the reign of Louis XIV prisoners were often kept beyond their sentence, but under the Regency sentences were strictly adhered to.

The decline of the fleet did not mean an end to "la peine des galères" as punishment -  far from it. The convicts were merely diverted onto servitude in port of Marseilles, where they worked both in the Arsenal, the prison factory and contracted out to employers in the town. After 1748 this organisation was taken over and adapted in the bagnes (dockyard penal compounds), notably the notorious Bagne at Brest. According to Richard Mowery Andrews, the regiment which developed in the galleys and the bagnes provided a model for later penitentiaries. The modern prison was not "born" in the late 18th century, as Michel Foucault has argued, but in the galleys : "the progenitive form of the modern French penitentiary... were the royal war galleys at Marseilles". (Andrews, Law, Magistracy and Crime p.316)

Who were the galley slaves?

In 1989 André Zysberg  published a monumental study of the Marseilles galériens using the (then) pioneering technics of computerised data analysis to examine detailed records, preserved in the Toulon archives,  of 60,000 convicts registered between 1680 and 1748. The numbers involved were huge,  suggesting an average of 870 entering the system each year. In the early 18th-century, there were some 12,000 convicts at any one time,  represented a sixth of the total population of Marseilles.  40% of the men were sentenced by the royal courts or condemned to the galleys for vagabondage and mendicancy; 30% were smugglers ; 25% were deserters from the army (until 1716 when  the figure dropped to 5%  due to the re-imposition of a mandatory death penalty for desertion) 



Here is André Zysberg in a TV programme from 1978, examining the registers. Many of those convicted were guilty of pitifully minor crimes - the theft of spoons and forks, or of a cow  In addition about 5% were Huguenots, though this figure declined to 1% after 1716.

The chain gangs.
 The great chain gangs on their way to the galleys in Marseilles were a conspicuous and minatory sight on the roads of  Ancien régime France.   Prisoners  from all over France converged on Paris, Rennes and Bordeaux, where the Grandes Chaînes were formed,  heavily armed convoys of between 250 and 400 men.  In Paris the chain gangs left twice a year from the notorious fortress prison of La Tournelle on the Left Bank, taking the main route to Dijon via Auxerre and Montbard, as far as  Chalon. They were then transported in open barges down the Saône and Rhône to Avignon. The final 70 miles over the hills of Provence were completed on foot. More than 300 miles were covered in a month or so, at a forced pace of 15 miles a day, each man burdened with 40 pounds of iron around his necks and ankles. Many perished en route.

On arrival at the Arsenal in Marseilles, the convict was entered in the registers (with physical description) and given a number by clerks, then thoroughly inspected by physicians and officers.  If deemed fit to row, he was unchained and taken aboard a training galley.  He was stripped naked and his head shaved; issued with the uniform of the galérien, the infamous red stocking cap, blue shirt and knee-length kilt, rough red stockings and long heavy winter cape.  He went barefoot except when detailed to work ashore.  He constantly wore a leg fetter and chain aboard the galley.


Life on board the galleys

Jean-Baptiste de La Rose, Arsenal des galères de la ville de Marseille, 1666 
 Marseilles, Musée de la Marine

The chiourme, or company of chained oarsmen, lived in their galleys all year long, even in the "dead season" from October to April, when the fleet was anchored in the inner harbour of Marseilles.  In winter they slept on the deck under a huge canvas covering.  Many died of cold - 3,000 in the winter of 1709-10.  On board space was unimaginably constricted. 450 soldiers galériens  and crew, with all their equipment, munitions and stores, were packed into a vessel which measured a mere 49 yards long by 10 yards wide.  There was a cargo hold divided into twelve compartments, an elevated stern deck which contained the officers' quarters and the main deck filled by the rowing benches.  In addition, soldiers, sailors and cannons  were housed on or under the raised prow deck.  

There were typically 260 oarsmen - twenty-six benches, with five rowers to each oar. Each man was given a station according to his relative strength; often Turkish slaves held the most onerous positions.  Each bench was seven feet long and six inches wide, with a slanted back and foot planks on the back for the rowers on the bench behind.  The oarsmen moved shoulder to shoulder, completing one stroke every three seconds.  In calm seas they could achieve the considerable speed of five nautical miles an hour.  Only cutting sugar cane or mining were remotely comparably in the expenditure of human energy.  The exhausting regime was prey to the petty tyrannies of the comites or overseers, who were free with the lash and open to corruption.  Like all prisons of the Ancien régime, peculation was rife among the petty officers and prisoners with access to funds could significantly improve their lot, gaining more rations or a better placement on the rowing bench. In 1703 it was estimated that about one-third of the galley slaves did not leave the port because they had bribed the officers.  "Everything was for sale" remarks André Zysberg, "even freedom itself".

Like the forced labour of later centuries, on the galleys a fine balance was maintained between punishment and the need to preserve sufficient strength to work.  Rations were minimally adequate - a pound-and-a-half of wheat bread, bean soup, olive oil and a litre of red wine.  Each galley had a surgeon, small infirmary and medical stores - though as the memoirs of Protestant convert Jean Bion attest, conditions for the sick on board the galleys could be truly appalling.  The Royal Hospital in the Arsenal was an advanced facility by the standards of the day - heated, well-ventilated, with 175 available beds.  Almost half of convicts died during their servitude  - most of infections and cold, and most within the first three years -  a figure which remained constant in war and in the period of peace and work in the Arsenal between 1716 and 1748. 

On the galleys of Louis Quartorze, rehabilitation remained a goal for the next life rather than this. On ceremonial occasions galley slaves were expected to provide archaic howls of despair to denote their condition as lost souls in a captive body. A resident chaplain, usually drawn from the Lazarists of St Vincent de Paul  led prayers morning and evening on board the galley, celebrated mass on Sundays and attended to spiritual welfare.



In the port of Marseilles

During the winter months, between October and April, when the galleys came into port, the convicts worked in the Arsenal or were contracted to the artisans and merchants of Marseilles.  At the apogee of the system some two thousand men, chained in pairs, came daily into the town to work.  They were concentrated mainly in the soap factories of the Rue Sainte  and Place aux Huiles and in the sugar refineries.   Leather goods and clothes were also made on board ship.  Contracts were usually controlled by the petty officers who paid the convicts piece rates, but it was also possible for the oarsmen themselves to amass money for raw materials such as cotton and silk thread.  The rive Neuve of the Arsenal, where the convicts produced goods as artisans and operated small dockside shops and stalls constituted a thriving and cosmopolitan market area.

The cheap labour of the galley slaves was critically important to the Marseilles economy.  In 1702 rules were negotiated by the guilds and corporations with the officers of the galleys to regulate hire, salary and rights of the galériens; at this time no less than seventy-seven merchants and craftsmen, representing all the corporations of Marseilles, were involved in the use of convict labour.

18th-century print of the Arsenal after Jacques Rigaud (1681-1754)
One of a set of 4 prints depicting the galleys of  Marseilles - sold by Vasari in December 2014
http://www.vasari-auction.com/html/fiche.jsp?id=4485077&np=2&lng=fr&npp=20&ordre=&aff=2&r=%20The%20Galley 

As the number of galleys at sea declined in the 18th century, work ashore became increasingly important.  The royal Arsenal in Marseilles, expanded significantly at the beginning of the 18th century, is reckoned as  "possibly the largest factory in France".  Inside its walled enclave was the armory of the fleet, plus  docks, construction and repair yards, and a vast complex of foundaries, ateliers and warehouses, reckoned to employ several thousand men - artisans, salaried or piece-rate workers as well as  convicts. A brigade of four hundred galériens were assigned permanently to hard labour in the docks, added to by oarsmen in the off-season.

Plan of the Marseille Arsenal: http://desinroc.free.fr/chrono2/galere.html

The decline in numbers of galleys, from fifteen in 1720 to just six in 1748, meant that labour at the Arsenal became the principal form of punishment for most convicts.  The Marseilles bagne or penitentiary factory was created in 1700 on the initiative of Phelypeaux de Pontchartrain, then Secretary of State for the Navy.  One to two thousand prisoners deemed unfit to row served out their sentence there, producing textiles for the fleet.  Work was contracted out to a consortia of Marseilles merchants, who received a subvention for each convict worker and paid them a small wage.  The bagne was administered by the intendant of the galleys, with the state providing  food and clothing, guards and medical care.  The accommodation - a long, barrack-like, two-story building - prefigured subsequent compounds at Brest, Rochfort and Toulon.  On the ground floor was an immense factory space, where convicts were fettered to their work tables,whilst on the second floor the dormitory could accommodate perhaps 2,000 chained inmates. The justification of the system by Benigne du Trousset d'Hericourt, the last intendant of the galleys, expresses the full Enlightenment agenda or utility and reform: "The establishment of the bagne factory is useful to the State and to the galleys in several ways; it provides for manufacturing, it forms workers, it occupies and instructs convicts with term sentences so that once their sentences are served they know a trade and can earn a living, it furnishes uniforms for the oarsmen at no expense to the State". (quoted by André Zysberg)


References

André Zysberg
Les Galériens du roi - vies et destins de 60 000 forçats sur les galères de France : 1680-1748 (1987)
There are no extracts from the book available on the internet, but you can hear André Zysberg discuss his principal conclusions in this episode of Apostrophes from 1987:
http://www.ina.fr/video/CPB87009596

See also:  Richard Mowery Andrews Law, Magistracy, and Crime in Old Regime Paris, 1735-1789: Volume 1 (1994), p.316-30.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Magistracy-Crime-Regime-Paris-1735-1789/dp/0521361699

The Hermione arrives at Yorktown

The Frigate L'Hermione sails the seas in the cause of freedom once more!

Arriving at Yorktown on Friday 5th June http://www.yorkcounty.gov/hermioneyorktown/Home.aspx

In 1780 the frigate L'Hermione ferried Lafayette to Boston with a declaration of French support for the American insurgents.

Thanks to injections of modern US cash, a beautiful replica of the ship has been created in the historic dockyard of the Arsenal de Rochefort.  Launched into the Charente on 6th July 2012, in April of this year she embarked on her maiden voyage, retracing Lafayette's original route.  This weekend she  arrived at her first port of call in Yorkdown, and will make her way up the Eastern seaboard stopping at Philadelphia, Boston and Baltimore.

See
L'Hermione website:
http://www.hermione2015.com/
Facebook page:
La frégate Hermione Lafayette
https://www.facebook.com/pages/La-fr%C3%A9gate-Hermione-Lafayette/185262083157

Feature on the Poitou-Charentes Tourism blog.
http://www.visit-poitou-charentes.com/en/Poitou-Charentes-Blog/News-Offers/The-Frigate-Hermione-making-waves-across-the-Atlantic

"Foudroyant", "Terrible", "Merveilleux" - naming warships in 18th-century France

 Here is a nice piece of  maritime trivia: an article on the significance of the names given to ships in the French navy in the course of the 18th century.

A total of 1376 French naval ships and frigates were launched between 1661 and 1815, with 969 different names. (The study encompasses 862 of them.) Names might be either nouns or adjectives. By tradition ships-of-the-line were given  masculine names and frigates feminine ones, Ships were more likely to be given proper names. Names were often mythological  but rarely religious in reference.  Four principal themes can be discerned: the sea itself, its navigation and dangers; war, the sovereign power, and geography.


1. Names relating to the sea

Unsurprisingly, names relating to the sea constituted a continuous theme: Marin and Pélican belonged to the 17th-century fleet; the first French ship to bear the name Océan was launched in 1756. Under Louis XIV ships were readily given names evoking their qualities and handling (Adroit, Ardent,Excellent, Léger, Prompt).  These disappeared  for ships of the line in the Regency but became common for frigates, reflecting their new prominence in naval tactics. Swiftness was evoked by names associated with  flight (Oiseau, Hirondelle, Aigrette). Mythological names, with marine associations accounted for 145 vessels and were more or less bellicose according to period, among them; thus Neptune, Néréide, Nymphe, Amphitrite, Protée, Thétis, Jason and Argonaute.  No less than six different vessels bore the name Trident.  Another category related to the heavens (Lune, Etoile, Vénus, Astrée, Pléide) and the winds (Aquilon, Borée, Eole, Zéphir).  Marine hazards could be evoked directly (Ecueil, Orage, Tourbillon) or by mythological reference (Sirène, Méduse); so too, names associated with chance and magic, whether  the vagaries of weather or the fortunes of war (Destin, Fortune, Hasard, Circé, Médée, Magicienne, Fée).


2. Names relating to war

Fighting ships were naturally given names which evoked aggression, courage and power. Suitable animals -  Aigle, Lion, Tigre and Dragon - were commonly chosen, again throughout the period; Faucon was a 17th-century ship, whereas Léopard and Panthère appeared for the first time in the 18th.  Bellicose qualities - Brave, Conquérant, Foudroyant, Invincible, Terrible Tonnant, Puissant  Redoubtable - and warlike mythical figures - Hercule, Achille, as well as Diane, Médée and Hermione - were again often chosen.  The frequency of warlike references depended on the policy of the time.  The resumption of shipbuilding in the Regency from 1719 to 1725 heralded mythological names such as Phénix,  Ferme, Espérance and Solide  which expressed the regime's aspiration towards peaceful reconstruction.  On the other hand bellicose names increased  after the Seven Years War as naval conflict escalated in importance; unsurprisingly such names are associated particularly with heavily-armed ships-of-the-line. The Republic favoured Roman war warriors such as Brutus, Cato, Trajan and Timoleon, or names which were straightforwardly agressive (Canonnière, Furieuse, Guerrière).

3. Names relating to sovereignty 

These represented only 42 of the names studied, but constituted a continuous theme throughout the period.  Under the Ancien régime, attributes of kingship were often chosen: Couronne Diadème, sceptre, Fleur de Lys.  The fleet of Louis XIV boasted a Favori and a Courtisan. Royal names also featured: five vessels between 1666 and 1738 were called the Bourbon; there was also the Royal Dauphin and the Royal Louis and, for Louis XV, Le Bien Aimé.   The birth of the duc de Bourgogne was marked by the renaming of a vessel  under construction at Rochefort.  Between 1703 and 1715 there was a Toulouse for the Admiral of France; under the Regency, a Duc d'Orléans for the Regent and an Elisabeth for  his mother. As late as 1783 Les deux frères referred to Louis XVI's brothers who had financed the ship.  The Royal orders of Saint-Michel and Saint-Esprit also furnished the names for half a dozen different vessels.


Comparatively few ships were named after individuals other than the royal family.  It was not until 1786 that a naval heroes began to be honoured; Duquesne was the first, followed by Tourville, Jean Bart and Duguay-Trouin in 1787 and 1788. The Revolution honoured its martyrs - Marat, Barra, Viala, and favoured defenders of liberty Franklin, Guillaume Tell, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

During the Revolution and the Empire the fleet expanded and lost vessels were constantly replaced, with  269 ships and frigates launched between 1791 and 1814. Ships changed their names rapidly, often up to five times. Over half the names of both ships and frigates were used for the first time in the period.  Naturally in the Republic imposed its own political agenda:Monarque, Majestueux, Couronne  gave way to Indivisible, Jacobin, Convention, Révolution, even Tyrannicide.  The Etats de Bourgogne became the Montagne; Majestueux, became Républicain; Couronne, first Révolution, then Ça ira.  Crowns and sceptres were temporarily replaced by the Cocarde and the Pique. Frigates included an Incorruptible and a Régénérée. (Sadly Napoleon soon reinstated the regal references, with the addition of the Impérial...)

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4. Names relating to places and geographical features

Before 1671 twenty or so vessel were named after provinces or recently acquired territories. However, in Louis XIV's reorganised navy 65 out of 83 vessels were rebaptised. The names tied the navy more closely to the Crown, either by their direct association with royalty or by the replacement of references to private individuals and localities with more generic names. Geographical names were only reinstated  after the Seven Years War when, at Choiseul's instigation, French regions and corps began to finance the building of particular ships.Eighteen such ships were built between 1761 and 1766, ten of which had names referring to their donors.  A similar strategy was employed after the American War of Independence, giving rise to ships named Commerce de Bordeaux (1784), Commerce de Marseille (1783) and even Etats de Bourgogne (1786).

In the Imperial period geographical references returned but in a different spirit - they now largely commemorated Napoleon's land battles and annexed territories.


References

Taken from:
Acerra Martine. "La symbolique des noms de navires de guerre dans la marine française (1661-1815) Histoire, économie et société. 1997, 16(1)  pp. 45-61.
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/hes_0752-5702_1997_num_16_1_1934

For lists of the names:
Wikipedia.fr:  Liste des vaisseaux français
hhttp://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_vaisseaux_fran%C3%A7ais

Les états abrégés de la marine française (1669-1772)
http://www.netmarine.net/bat/listes/etatabreges/index.htm

See also: Highlights of the Musée de la Marine, Paris
http://www.patrimoine-histoire.fr/Patrimoine/Paris/Paris-Musee-de-la-Marine.htm

Inside the mind of Robert-François Damiens

Contemporary engraving (Bibl. nat)
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8409348q

Despite  unremitting attempts to unearth a wider conspiracy, his  judges were finally forced to admit that  Robert-François Damiens had acted alone in his ineffectual attempt to stab the King. What was his motivation?  The following is summarised from Dale K. Van's book The Damiens Affair (Princeton University Press, 1984)

There was certainly nothing obvious in Damiens's early life to account for his later dramatic behaviour.  His career was remarkable mainly for its recalcitrant banality.  He had been born in the tiny village of Tieulloy in Artois, the son of a poor labourer called Pierre-Joseph Damiens and his wife Marie Guillemant.  He was thus forty-two years old at the time of his attempt on the King's life, though Damiens himself, like many men of the time, did not know his exact age.  At the time of his arrest he was an unemployed domestic servant of no fixed address.  He had a wife, Elizabeth Molerienne , whom he had married in 1739, and a seventeen year old daughter,as well as a younger brother, also a servant, living in Paris; his aged father and older brother, Antoine-Joseph and a widowed younger sister Catherine remained in Artois, in Saint-Omer.

Following his mother’s death in 1729 the young Damiens had been sent to be raised by his maternal great-uncle, a well-to do grain merchant and cabaret owner  in nearby Béthune.  He had resisted his uncle’s well-meaning attempts to have him educated and subsequently to apprentice him to a local locksmith; he spent a couple of years as an apprentice wig maker or cook, then left Artois for good.  He became servant to a captain in the Swiss regiment and accompanied his master on several campaigns, most notably to the siege of Phillipsburg in 1734.  There is little to substantiate the “official” conclusion that he was unruly from “his tenderest  youth”, still less that he earned himself the epithet of “Robert the devil”.  He himself testified only that he had no taste for study, was possessed of a “youthful levity” and wanted to see the world. 

L'horrible attentat du 5 janvier 1757 Engraving. Château de Versailles
http://www.histoire-image.org/pleincadre/index.php?i=1337

After he contracted a fever at Phillipsburg, he left military life and settled in Paris where he found employment as a domestic servant.  His career was unexceptional, though, in an age when servants were integrated into the household and loyalty expected, he changed masters with discreditable frequency, and attracted criticism for his “impertinances” and “vivacities”. From 1736  to 1739 or 1740 he worked (though not continuously) at the Jesuit College Louis-le-grand in the rue St-Jacques as a [potboy] and lackey.  His final dismissal was blamed on “impertinences he said against the Jesuits”; it probably coincided with his marriage since servants were  normally required to live-in as bachelors.  He appears to have remained on relatively good terms with the Jesuit fathers, particularly Père de Launay who recommended him for a position as late as 1753.  

Engraving by Augustin de Saint-Aubin (Bibl.nat.)
http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb41507687q

 In the 1740s Damiens went through a rapid catalogue of masters, lasting only a few months with each, punctuated by periods of unemployment. A particular crisis occurred in 1753 and 1754  when he was taken on for two separate periods by Bèze de Lys,a councillor in the parlement of Paris and an ardent Jansenist.  His first engagement was terminated by his master's  imprisonment in the fortress of Pierre-en-Cise in Lyon. Prior to this time there are testimonies to Damiens being a competent and faithful servant; from then on  "impertinences" - implying over-familiarity and rudeness towards his social superiors -  increased. He affected the nickname/pseudonym "Flammand" His family remained loyal, but testified to his erratic behaviour and taste for mystification.  His wife could not even remember with certainty the names of the masters he had served.

On 6th June 1756  Damiens crossed the line into criminality when he stole 240 louis from the last of his masters, the merchant Jean Michel. Up to this point he had no history of theft. Perhaps he was motivated by the financial difficulties of his family in Artois who were engaged in a legal dispute over inheritance at the time.  Certainly he fled  immediately to Saint-Omer where he attempted to lavish money and gifts on his brother and his widowed younger sister.  He is reported to have carried off his brother, a journeyman wool carder, to a local cabaret where began "to spend money as if it were hay". The family,  were having none of it;  informed of the theft, they immediately confronted him.  Damiens went to the apothecary, acquired arsenic and attempted suicide. During the sickness which ensued he constantly refused to restitute the money or to confess to a priest,but railed constantly against the dishonesty and bigotry of the clergy. 

Damien in prison (Bibl.nat)
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8409338b

On July 16th the Châtelet officially ordered Damien's arrest.  Having parted from his brother in Ypres, for the next five months he frittered away his time aimlessly in Flemish and Artesian cabarets and auberges, exhibiting behaviour which today would surely be recognised as psychotic, and which in retrospect was clearly prefigured in his earlier career. He seems to have been tormented by guilt.  He drank heavily, stayed alone in his room, became agitated and upset when approached and on several occasions had himself bled to excess "so the bad blood could get out".  One witness who shared a room with him reported how he had talked to himself the whole night long, and finally barricaded himself in the cellar of a cabaret.  Curiously, the judges placed little emphasis on these evident symptoms of "folly", probably because they were convinced Damiens could not have acted alone and were intent on unravelling a political conspiracy.

In fact, as Dale Van Kley notes, Damiens himself was quite explicit as to his motivation.  Although the judges took little notice, he repeatedly maintained that the reason for his actions was "religion". He claimed, with some plausibility, that his intention had not been to kill the King but to "touch" him and  thereby "prompt him to restore all things to order and tranquility in his States".  He pointed out that he had used a short knife and had made no attempt to repeat his blow.  When asked what he meant by "religion", he explained that the sacraments should not be refused to people who lived holy lives,and coupled this with comments on the poverty and misery of the people. The King should be persuaded "to dispense justice, and cease heeding the pernicious advice of his ministers".  Damiens thus echoed the views of Jansenist magistrates like his former master Bèze de Lys, together with common popular concerns about poverty, taxes and the high price of bread.  Perhaps he formed his "execrable design" in the long hours of waiting for his master in the rooms of the Palais de justice, where he was privy to the loud discourses of "lawyers, councillors and ecclesiastics".   Under torture, he admitted that, when "returning from the Parlement", he had heard a Jansenist remark that, if someone could "hit" the King, the Archbishop of Paris might be prevented from further refusal of sacraments.  Fellow domestics reported he was in the habit of conducting mock trials of the Archbishop. Interest in the religious conflicts of the day were in fact widespread among servants and ordinary people;  lackeys wearing the Archbishop's livery had been so insulted and set upon that they were forced to travel incognito. Damiens stood out mainly in "the degree of his personal and psychotic involvement" (Van Kley, p.).  He reportedly took a keen interest in the unfolding refusal of the sacraments crisis, even during his time on the run in Artois. It would seem he hit upon  the assassination attempt as an expiation for his theft; he would wipe out his personal guilt with a great act of service to the state and "die like Jesus Christ amid pain and torments" (a wish which was amply fulfilled)
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In the last days of December Damiens took the mail-coach back to Paris, entering via the barrière Saint-Martin. He made contact with his younger brother and was reunited with his wife, with whom he stayed for a few days in the rue du Cimetière Saint-Nicolas des Champs where she worked as a cook. He left the remainder of the stolen money in a bag in her room where she could find it.  At 11pm on night of January 3rd he boarded a coach to Versailles and the next day found himself a room in an inn on the rue Satory.  On the morning of 5th January, Damiens asked to have himself bled; he left the inn around 10 o'clock in the morning and was noticed at 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon by a guard in the courtyard of the château. The fateful attack on the King took place at 5.45pm.

Reference

Dale K. Van Kley The Damiens Affair and the Unraveling of the Ancien Regime, 1750-1770 Princeton University Press (1984)
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9OP_AwAAQBAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s

The coat of a regicide

Vêtement du régicide Damiens, 1757,
Paris, Archives nationales

This coat belonged to the would-be regicide Robert-François Damiens, who was spectacularly executed in 1757 following an ineffectual attempt to stab Louis XV with a penknife. It was one of the items included in the exhibition La Bastille ou "l'enfer des vivants" held at the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal - home to the archives of the Bastille -  in November 2010-February 2011.  The coat was conserved with the judicial papers relating to Damiens's trial in the Archives judiciaires, once housed in the Palais de Justice and now part of the National Archives.  Lady Morgan saw them on a visit to the Palais in 1829-30:
"Close to the papers of the trial of Damiens, in an old box, was his coat, the coat he wore when he was dragged from his dungeon, to be_______but there is no dwelling on such subjects.  In the same box was the rope by which the Count de _____(I forget the name) escaped the Bastille  What singular relics!"
 France in 1829-30.vol.2, p.56.

Also included in the exhibition were Damien's rosary and a set of four assorted knives belonging to members of his family - who were arrested, interrogated and presently banished, although they could not be implicated in Damien's crime.

Chapelet du régicide Damiens, 1757 Archives nationales

References

La Bastille ou "l'enfers des vivants" exhibition press release & video:
http://www.bnf.fr/documents/dp_bastille.pdf

Virtual visit
http://www.collection-privee.org/public/galerie-virtuelle/expo-bastille/EXPO_BASTILLE.html

Other pictures:

http://i47.servimg.com/u/f47/11/37/69/24/img_1118.jpg

http://www.montjoye.net/images/chateau/chateaux-ile-de-france/forteresse-de-la-bastille/robert-francois-damien-bastille.jpg


On the archives of the Bastille: 

http://www.bnf.fr/fr/collections_et_services/anx_fds_col/a.archives_bastille.html
http://gallica.bnf.fr/html/und/manuscrits/archives-de-la-bastille



The horrible showpiece execution of the pathetic Damiens for the grand crime of lèse-majesté is a dark blot on the "century of light".There is a famous description by Michel Foucault in the opening pages of his Discipline and punish, which you can read if you so wish; here it is in English translation:

"1757: Robert-Francois Damiens, disciplined and punished"  Executed today,  post of March 28th 2008
http://www.executedtoday.com/2008/03/28/1757-robert-francois-damiens-discipline-and-punish/

Here are the wise comments of Professor Jack McManners:
"It is the historian's duty to go back, sympathetically, into the minds of former generations.  But there are areas of their thought where we cannot penetrate except to record without comprehension, areas opaque to our understanding, where sympathy dies.  It is difficult to make the effort of the imagination and accompany the men of the past on their way to a public execution - on the way to the Place de Grève in Paris in 1757, for example, to see Damiens slowly pulled to pieces by horses because he he had lifted his hand against the King.  It is more difficult still to accompany the women of quality who had hired strategic windows for the occasion and, we are told, proved to be less squeamish than the men....Sensitive people were sickened by this ritual of terror.  Louis XV himself was sunk in gloom on the day of the execution, and spent the afternoon praying for his would-be assassin.  The comte Dufort de Ceverny spent the day away from Paris with his wife and two friends (whose names he gives "to pay tribute to their humanity") with instructions that on his return no one should speak of what had happened.  The pious duc de Luynes shuddered at the part he had had to play in the trial and condemnation.  But not one voice was raised to say that Damiens should be executed in a less outrageous fashion." Death and the Enlightenment, 1985 (p.383-4)