CHAPTER II

JEAN AUDUBON AND HIS FAMILY

Extraordinary career of the naturalist's father—Wounded at fourteen and prisoner of war for five years in England—Service in the French merchant marine and navy—Voyages to Newfoundland and Santo Domingo—His marriage in France—His sea fights, capture and imprisonment in New York—His command at the Battle of Yorktown—Service in America and encounters with British privateers.

Few names of purely Gallic origin are today better known in America, or touch a more sympathetic chord of human interest, than that of Audubon, and few, we might also add, are so rare. John James Audubon first made his family name known to all the world, and though he left numerous descendants, it has become well nigh extinct in America, and is far from common in France. The great Paris directory frequently contains no entry under this head; Nantes knows his name no longer, and it is rare in the marshes of La Vendée, where at some remote period it may have originated.

The lists of the army of five thousand which Rochambeau's fleet brought to our aid in the American War of Independence show but a single variant of this euphonious patronym, in Pierre Audibon,[15] a soldier in the regiment of Touraine, who was born at Montigny in 1756; but in the fleet of the Count de Grasse which coöperated with our land-forces at the Battle of Yorktown, on October 19, 1781, a ship was commanded by an officer with whom we are more intimately concerned. This was Captain Jean Audubon, who was later to become the father of America's pioneer woodsman, ornithologist and animal painter.

By birth a Vendean, at the age of thirty-seven Jean Audubon had plowed the seas of half the world, and in the course of his checkered career, as sailor, soldier, West Indian planter and merchant, had met enough adventure to furnish the materials for a whole series of dime novels. Short of stature, with auburn hair and a fiery temper, he was then as stubborn and fearless an opponent as one could meet on the high seas, and one of the gamest fighting cocks of the French merchant marine. How much Jean Audubon's son owed to his French Creole mother will never be known, but to this self-taught, thoroughly capable, and enterprising sailor we can surely trace his restless activity, his versatile mind and mercurial temper, as well as an inherent capacity for taking pains, which father and son possessed to a marked degree.

The true story of Jean Audubon's career has never been told, but even at this late day it will be found an interesting human document; and what is more to our purpose, it throws into sharp outline much that has hitherto remained obscure in the life of his remarkable son. The first Audubon to leave any imprint, however faint, upon the history of his time, this honest, matter-of-fact sailor, would have been the last to wish to appear in the garb of fiction, and we shall base our story solely upon the unimpeachable testimony of public and private records, which researches in France had happily brought to light before the beginning of the war in 1914.[16]

Jean Audubon came by his sailor's instincts and fighting prowess naturally, for his father, Pierre Audubon of Les Sables d'Olonne, was a seaman by trade. Like his son he captained his own vessel, and for years made long voyages between French ports in both the old and the new worlds. Pierre Audubon, the paternal grandfather of John James Audubon, and the first of that name of whom we have found any record,[17] lived at Les Sables d'Olonne, where with Marie Anne Martin, his wife, he reared a considerable family in the first half of the eighteenth century.

Les Sables, at the time of which we speak, was a small fishing and trading port on the Bay of Biscay, fifty miles to the southwest of Nantes, but is now become a city of over twenty thousand people. Lying on the westerly verge of the Marais, or salt marshes and lakes of La Vendée, the inhabitants of the district, and more particularly of the _Bocage_, or plantations, to the north and northeast, were noted from an early day for their conservatism, as shown in a firm adherence to ancient law and custom, as well as for their unswerving loyalty to the old nobility and to the clergy. Like their Breton neighbors on the other side of the Loire, the Vendeans were honest, industrious, and faithful to their civic obligations; they were also independent, resourceful, and knew no fear. When the neighboring city of Nantes planted trees of liberty and displayed the National colors in 1789, the Vendeans were stirred to indignation and later to arms, while the Chouans on the right bank of the river were quick to follow their example; in short, the rebels of La Vendée raised such a storm that for months the very existence of the infant Republic was threatened. This spirit of revolt to the newer order, the _Chouanerie_, as it came to be called, was stamped out for the time, but a few smoldering embers always remained, ready to burst into flame at the slightest provocation; recrudescent symptoms of this tendency had to be suppressed even as late as 1830, when Charles X, the last Bourbon king, lost his crown. Pierre Audubon's family, no doubt, shared many characteristics of their Vendean and Breton neighbors, but as the sequel will show, one at least did not approve of their political course, for he took up arms against them, and presumably against many of his own kith and kin.

Jean Audubon was born at Les Sables on October 11, 1744, and was christened on the same day, his godfather being Claude Jean Audubon, in all probability an uncle after whom he was named, and his godmother, Catharine Martin, presumably an aunt. Twenty-one children, according to the naturalist, blessed the union of Pierre Audubon and his wife, and were reared to maturity. Whether this statement is strictly accurate, or what became of so large a family cannot now be ascertained.[18]

Pierre Audubon was engaged by the French Government to transport the necessities of war to Cape Breton Island in 1757, when the world-wide struggle between France and Great Britain for supremacy in the New World was at hand. The French were determined at all hazards to hold their great fortress of Louisburg, which had been taken by the English but again restored to the French not many years before. This was the strongest and most costly fortress on the American continent, as well as a great center for the valuable trade in salted fish. By a coincidence, or possibly out of compliment to his wife, Pierre's ship bore the name of _La Marianne_, and when he sailed from his home port of Les Sables d'Olonne on April 15, 1757, he took with him his own son, Jean, as cabin-boy, when the lad was but thirteen years old. In the following May Great Britain threw down the gauntlet to France, and the terrific seven years' struggle began. The great fortress of Louisburg fell in the following year to the English fleet, and was left a heap of ruins. His father's ship, the _Mary Ann_, was involved, and young Jean Audubon, who thus began his fighting career at fourteen, was wounded in the left leg and made a prisoner. With many of his compatriots he was taken to England, landing on November 14, 1758, where he remained in captivity for five years; he was released but a short time before the treaty of peace was signed at Paris, February 10, 1763. Apart from her interests in the West Indies, France was stripped at this time of all her vast possessions in America, save only the two little islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon.

Whether Pierre Audubon shared the fate of his son we are unable to say, for at this point he drops out of our records and we do not hear of him again. It is certain that he never made another voyage with Jean, who returned to his native town with his passion for the sea unabated, and at nineteen reëntered the merchant marine as a novice. His next voyage, on the ship _La Caille_, Captain Pigeon, was to execute a governmental commission at the Island of Miquelon. Five golden years of his youth had been spent in captivity; if productive of nothing else they had given him a knowledge of the English tongue, but they had also engendered bitter hatred of the English race, a feeling which his son confessed to have shared in his youthful days.[19]

The period from 1766 to 1768 was occupied in four voyages to Newfoundland, probably in the interest of the codfish trade, first as sailor before the mast in _Le Printemps_, and then as lieutenant in a ship called also _La Marianne_, with alternate sailings from, and to, La Rochelle and Les Sables d'Olonne. On his third voyage to Newfoundland, which was made in 1767, when he was twenty-three years old, Jean Audubon ranked as lieutenant of his vessel, but in the summer of 1768 he shipped again from Les Sables as sailor before the mast for a short trading cruise on the coast of France; in this instance the vessel, called _Le Propre_, was captained by Pierre Martin, who was possibly an uncle. At this juncture Jean Audubon enlisted in the French navy (service for the State) as a common sailor, and made two voyages on governmental business from the port of Rochefort, serving altogether nearly nine months (1768-9). After the termination of this last engagement nothing is heard of Jean for over a year, when in 1770 he makes his first appearance at Nantes, the city that was to know him in many capacities for nearly half a century. There he reëntered the merchant marine, and on November 1, 1770, began a series of eight voyages, lasting as many years, to the island of Santo Domingo, the western section of which was then in possession of France.

Since much of the mystery which hitherto has shrouded the early life of John James Audubon is involved in the West Indian period of his father's career, we shall now trace this history in considerable detail.

The great export trade of French Santo Domingo in those days was in brown and white sugar, then known as the "Muscovado" and "clayed" sorts, which for the year 1789 amounted to over 141,000,000 pounds, valued at more than 122,000,000 francs; and in coffee, which in the same year totaled nearly 77,000,000 pounds, estimated to be worth nearly 52,000,000 francs.[20] While all such estimates were no doubt very crude, they serve to illustrate the richness of the prize that attracted Frenchmen by hundreds to the colony, an island that to many seemed a paradise in prospect, but which proved to be a purgatory in disguise.

Jean Audubon's voyages were all made in the interest of this valuable trade. Since they commonly lasted from six months to nearly a year, they became doubly hazardous to a French sailor after the outbreak of the American Revolution, for if he escaped his Scylla, the inveterate pirate, he might expect to encounter an equally formidable Charybdis in an English privateer. Though the northwestern corner of Santo Domingo was the center of their forays, Jean never lost a ship to the buccaneers, and though sometimes caught by the English, he never surrendered. He made three successive voyages from 1770 to 1772 in _La Dauphine_, commanded by Jean Pallueau, first as lieutenant and later as captain of the second grade, but on his last five voyages to the West Indies he captained his own ships, known as _Le Marquis de Lévy_ (1774), _Les Bons Amis_ (1775-6), and _Le Comte d'Artois_ (1777-8).

Captain Audubon was married on August 24, 1772, at Paimbœuf, to Anne Moynet,[21] a widow of some property, who had been born at Nantes in 1735 and was thus nine years his senior. Her married name was Ricordel. She possessed several houses at Paimbœuf, and acquired one in 1777, which was rented to the Administration at the time of the Revolution (see Vol. I, p. 80), as well as a dwelling at Nantes, where she lived while her roving sailor of a husband was in Santo Domingo or the United States. Madame Audubon was a woman of simple tastes, devoted to culture, and, as we shall see, possessed of a kind heart.

When Captain Audubon left Les Cayes, Santo Domingo, on his last trading voyage, in the spring of 1779, bound for Nantes with a valuable cargo, his ship, _Le Comte d'Artois_, was attacked by four British corsairs and two galleys. With the odds overwhelmingly against him, he fought until his crew were nearly all killed or disabled, and after an abortive attempt to blow up his vessel, tried to escape in his shallop. For the second time he was made a prisoner by the English, who in this instance took him to New York, then in the possession of British troops. He was landed in that city on May 12, 1779, and was held there as a prisoner of war for thirteen months. If our inference be correct, he finally owed his release to the efforts of the French Ambassador, Monsieur de la Luzerne, the same, we believe, who had been a Governor of Santo Domingo, and who in 1790 became its Minister of Marine. As will be seen presently, this diplomat again exerted himself in Captain Audubon's behalf.

It is interesting to find that on this occasion Jean Audubon was fighting not only for his life, but for his property. His vessel, _Le Comte d'Artois_, was very heavily armed. Though of only 250 tons, she carried no less than ten cannon, four of which were mounted on gun carriages, and ten bronze pivot guns, which might imply that she was originally designed as a privateer. The ship was not destroyed when her captain was made prisoner, but was taken by the English to Portsmouth, New Hampshire (?), and burned there before December 15 of the following year.[22] Before starting on this disastrous voyage Captain Audubon had sold the vessel and his interest in her cargo to the Messrs. Lacroix, Formon de Boisclair and Jacques, with whom later he had extensive dealings in slaves; but he was not paid, and though an indemnity seems to have come from the British Government, he was never able to obtain a satisfactory settlement of the Formon claim.[23]

Jean Audubon's release from captivity in New York, in June, 1780, probably marks the period of his first intimate acquaintance with the United States. We know only that he did not return immediately to either Santo Domingo or France, but became an enthusiast for the American cause, and sought the earliest opportunity to avenge his wrongs at the hands of the British. He did not have long to wait, for through the exertions of the Ambassador de la Luzerne, he was placed in command of the corvette _Queen Charlotte_. With her, in October, 1781, he joined the fleet of the Count de Grasse before Yorktown,[24] where he soon witnessed the surrender of Cornwallis and the humiliation of his enemies. After this turning point of the war Captain Audubon remained in the United States, and in April, 1782, commanded a merchantman called _L'Annette_,[25] in which he was also personally interested, and delivered a cargo of Virginia tobacco at the port of Nantes. Shortly after his return to America in the same year he was placed in command of an American armed vessel _The Queen_ and sent on another mission to France. Near the Chaussée des Saints he was attacked by a British privateer, but after a stubborn fight at close quarters he sank his enemy and entered the port of Brest. Nothing is said of the taking of prisoners on such occasions, and there were doubtless few survivors among the defeated crew. This command Jean Audubon held until peace was concluded between Great Britain and her former colonies in America, probably until the close of 1783. The hostile army was disbanded in the spring of that year, the treaty of peace was made definitive in September, and on November 25, 1783, the last British troopers left the city of New York.