CHAPTER V

LIEUTENANT AUDUBON AS REVOLUTIONIST

Background of Audubon's youth—Nantes in Revolution—Revolt in La Vendée—Siege of Nantes—Reign of terror under Carrier—Plague robbing the guillotine—Flight of the population—Execution of Charette—The Chouan raid—Citizen Audubon's service—He reenters the navy and takes a prize from the English—His subsequent naval career—His losses in Santo Domingo—His service and rank—Retires on a pension—His death—His character and appearance.

The ancient city of Nantes, long famed for the beauty of its situation on the banks of a noble river, within easy reach of the sea, as well as for its importance in the arts of war and peace, numbered at the time of the Revolution 70,000 souls. The modern visitor to this favored spot will find quiet and orderly streets adorned with monumental statues (one of these representing Guépin, the revered historian of the city), the old buildings nearly all replaced by better, the Loire spanned by handsome bridges, and the ancient bounds of the town extended until it has become the sixth city of the Republic. Since Nantes formed a somber background to Audubon's youth, we shall follow in brief some of the ordeals through which his family, in common with thousands of other Nantais, were destined to pass during those eventful years which witnessed the close of the eighteenth century in France.

When Captain Audubon reached Nantes presumably not far from the beginning of 1790, he found the city in a state of the greatest turmoil and agitation. The commons, or third estate, included hundreds of its rich and influential citizens, and their demands for a fair hearing and a representation equal to that of the other orders had then passed the stage of open revolt, for they had planted their "liberty tree" and were sworn to defend it. In August of 1789 a permanent Committee of Public Safety had been constituted at Nantes, and by the end of that month 1,200 had volunteered for service in the National Guard. There were many loyalists in the city but they could not crush the ardent spirit of this revolt, and when in September money was needed to equip the revolutionary soldiery, young school children raised large sums for the popular cause. Jean Audubon immediately cast his lot with the revolutionists and joined the National Guard, but how much service he saw in the field cannot now be determined; it is known, however, that he was with these troops in the spring of 1792.[60]

In March, 1793, the loyalists of La Vendée rose to arms, and marching on Nantes under the able leadership of Charette, threatened to put its garrison to the sword if it were not surrendered within six hours. The National Guard met these invaders outside the walls and left the citizens to shift for themselves. Thus thrown upon their own resources, the Nantais showed that they could help themselves. They requisitioned and used for defense everything at hand; they exhumed the leaden coffins in their grand cathedral and appropriated waterspouts for ammunition, while their church bells were molded into cannon. Though held in check, the Vendeans laid siege to the city, and but for the resolution of its mayor, Baco, Nantes would probably have fallen—in which event Audubon would have had a different history and would probably never have become a pioneer naturalist in America. Baco, disregarding the advice of his military chiefs, immediately placarded the walls of Nantes decreeing death to any who should suggest capitulation, and called all the inhabitants to arms, sparing neither woman nor child. The Vendeans had met their match, for they were dealing with many of their own blood, but though the siege began in early March, they were not effectually dispersed until the end of June, and then only after much bloodshed without the walls. When the immediate crisis had passed, the Constitution of the Republic was unanimously accepted by the eighteen sections of Nantes, on the twenty-first day of July, 1792.

A few months later in that fateful year a more terrible calamity befell the city, when the reign of terror under the notorious ultra-revolutionist, Jean B. Carrier, began. Carrier reached Nantes on October 8 and at once proposed to exterminate both the Vendean royalists and their Nantais sympathizers. He reorganized the entire administration to suit his purposes, and to carry out his plans recruited from the lowest classes a revolutionary army to spy upon, denounce and arrest private citizens, many of whom were sent to Paris for trial when not secretly dispatched. The whole district was soon paralyzed by the barbarity of the crimes then committed, and the unhappy Vendeans were dragged to Nantes, to be shot, guillotined or drowned, in such numbers that the city was unable to bury its dead or the river to discharge them to the sea. Thus perished thousands, uncounted if not unknown, and the pestilence of typhoid fever that immediately followed claimed another heavy toll regardless of political sympathies. While these dire scenes were being enacted, Jean Jacques Fougère Audubon, then a lad of eight years, was living in the heart of Nantes, and his father was one of its leading revolutionists. An aunt of the future ornithologist, according to his account, who was one of these wretched victims of revolutionary fury, was dragged through the streets of Nantes before his eyes, but apparently she did not actually meet her death at that time.[61]

That Jean Audubon moved his family out of Nantes during the revolutionary crisis is possible, and Couëron would have been available as a place of refuge. Many Nantais are known to have fled to Lorient on the coast of Brittany, where they found in the heroic youth Julien the ardent and fearless patriot who was destined to become the real savior of their stricken city. Young Julien denounced Carrier in his letters to Robespierre, and when one of these was intercepted, defied him in person. When his stirring appeals finally reached the Tribunal at Paris, its misnamed representative was recalled, and left Nantes under cover of night on February 14, 1794. During his mad reign of four months, Carrier had gone far towards carrying out his theory of republican government, that should begin, as he openly avowed, by "suppressing" half of the population of France. The records show that nearly nine thousand bodies were buried in Nantes in a little over three months, from January 15 to April 24, 1794. The plague of fever no doubt accounted for many of these, but the wide reaches of the Loire never told their full story.

Though the most grievous affliction of Nantes passed with the recall of Carrier, the city had no lasting peace until the execution of the Vendean leader, Charette, in March, 1796; "Poor Charette," said Audubon, writing in his journal at Liverpool, December 24, 1827, "whom I saw shot on the place de Viarme at Nantes." This virtually ended the war in the Vendée, but the Chouans, under their intrepid chief, Dupré, the miller, called "Tête-Carrée," managed to furnish considerable excitement, and raided Nantes in 1799. Dupré's followers stole in secretly at three o'clock on the morning of October 19 and left before daylight, after liberating fifteen royalists from the prison, which seems to have been their chief purpose. The cannon of alarm was fired from the Chateau; the tocsin sounded, calling the city to arms; there was much street fighting, but it was too foggy and dark to distinguish friend from foe, and when the National Guard was finally assembled, the enemy had vanished. This brief attack cost the city twenty-one deaths and wounds for twice the number,[62] but it was only a passing incident in comparison with events that had gone before. Thenceforth the history of the town is blended with that of the nation.[63]

We have only slight indications of Jean Audubon's activities from the close of 1789, when, according to his own statement, he was in the United States, to the period of his service in the National Guard at Nantes in the spring of 1792; he was then living in the house of Citizen Carricoule, rue de Crébillon, and the lease of his "Mill Grove" farm, which was renewed in October, 1790, was dated at Nantes. We may safely assume that he was engaged in revolutionary business during most of this interval: his name begins to appear in the written records of Nantes and of the department of the Lower Loire in January, 1793, and existing documents[64] show that he was engaged as a commissioner and member of the Department and as a member of the Council of the Navy until the twenty-fifth of June, when he enlisted for active service in the navy of the Republic. Jean Audubon served also on various republican committees, his duties comprising the enlistment of recruits, organizing the National Guard, soliciting funds and food supplies for Nantes, finding cannon and other military or naval materials, posting proclamations, administering the oath of allegiance, and watching the movements of loyalist troops in the district. We have seen that the father of the naturalist was a game and determined fighter, and there is ample written testimony to prove that in the commune of Nantes he was regarded as an ardent patriot, who could be relied upon to act with tact, and if necessary with force.

Having been appointed a Civil Commissioner by the Directory of the Department on January 17, 1793, Citizen Audubon was sent to Savenay, a town of some importance twenty-five miles to the northwest of Nantes. His instructions on this mission were to gather useful information on the civil, moral and political state of the district, "in order to bring a remedy," and to administer the oath of allegiance to all administrative and judicial bodies. Jean began operations without delay, and his report, which was kept in journal form and embraces the period from January 19 to September 10, 1793, is an interesting document; it covers fifty-one large foolscap pages, written now in a fine and again in a bold, regular hand, in the course of which his characteristic signature[65] occurs no less than twenty-two times, each section of the report having been signed as completed. In one section of this journal he wrote: "Our operations having been finished, we assembled around the tree of liberty, and there sang the hymn of the Marseillaise, which was interrupted with frequent shouts of '_Vive la république!_,' '_Vive la nation!_,' and more than one charge of musketry."

Jean Audubon with eight others was charged with organizing the National Guard in the canton of Pellerin, and ordered to accompany the detachment that marched to the relief of Pornic, March 27, 1793. The Citizen was busy also in other directions. He said in his report:

In virtue of the power conferred upon us by the Central Committee, on the ninth of April we were transported to the parish of Couëron, where we arrived at seven o'clock in the morning. Proclamations were posted both at Couëron and at Port Launay close by, while some were sent across the river to Pellerin. We availed ourselves on this occasion of the services of two officers of a corsair, who demanded that we aid in removing from Pellerin four cannon with four-pound balls, and we succeeded in putting to flight a small barque and four men, who an hour later returned with cannon.... The parish of Couëron appears very tranquil, and is in a better mood than [at first] seemed to us.

A little later Jean proceeded to Paimbœuf on a similar errand. His letters to the citizen-administrators of that commune are dated at Nantes on the seventeenth of April and the fourteenth of May; in one of these he refers to "the sum of four hundred francs" due from the Administration "for one year's rent of my house in calle Rondineau (_à la calle rondino_), which you have taken for a _corps de garde_" (see Vol. I, p. 32).

In July and August of this second year of the Republic, Citizen Audubon was sent to his native town of Les Sables d'Olonne to follow the movements of the loyalist generals Westermann and Boulart,[66] a mission which could hardly have been agreeable if, as seems to have been the case, some of his own people were loyal to the old _régime_. Correspondence by sea between Les Sables and Nantes, which was open before the siege, was not broken at this time, for the royalists had named one of their representatives, Benoit, as a delegate "to fraternize with the citizens of Nantes, to invite the authorities to correspond, and beg them to send food if they had more than they required." Four of Jean's letters, dated at Les Sables on the fifth and eighth of July and the sixth of August, besides one from La Rochelle on the fourteenth of July, all addressed to the Administration of the Loire inférieure, have been preserved.

In the manuscript records of the Department for 1793 is found also a notice of Jean's appointment as Special Commissioner, with a memorandum of all the money paid to reimburse him for the expenses of his numerous journeys. Thus, it is noted that he had been paid 145 francs for a service of twenty-nine days, which would represent the modest allowance of a dollar a day. Another item shows that he had received 100 francs for a tour of ten days; a note which was added to this item to explain the Directory's sanction for the payment of another forty-five francs and ten sous reads as follows: "by its order of the sixth of March last, the Council had, in effect, named Citizen Audubon as its Commissioner, to visit the coasts and to secure signatures, with full power to treat with all people, to acquire materials for the navy and other objects of his mission; if this mission did not prove successful, it was solely through force of circumstances, and not from any lack of zeal on his part."[67]

On the twenty-fifth of June, 1793, while engaged in duties to which we have just referred, Jean Audubon was appointed, with rank of ensign, to command the Republican lugger named the _Cerberus_.[68] During this charge, which lasted until the twenty-second of November of the following year, he fought one of the stiffest engagements of his career. On the twelfth of July he encountered the _Brilliant_, an English privateer of fourteen cannon which had captured an American ship laden with flour; and after a desperate battle which lasted three hours, in the course of which Jean was wounded in the left thigh, the Englishman, beaten and obliged to surrender his prize, was glad to escape under cover of night. Jean towed the American into the port of La Rochelle, and afterwards sent to the Administration a full account of the engagement.[69] Ensign Audubon's next command was a dispatch boat called _L'Eveillé_ ("The Awakened"), on which he served for nearly nine months, from November 23, 1794, to August 14, 1795. He was then detailed for port duty at La Rochelle from August 15, 1795, to January 24, 1797. His last ship was _L'Instituteur_ ("The Institutor"), which he commanded with the rank of _lieutenant de vaisseau_, January 25 to October 3, 1797, while he was engaged in governmental business between the ports of La Rochelle and Brest.

The financial losses which Lieutenant Audubon sustained at Les Cayes in consequence of the revolution in Santo Domingo were a crushing blow to him; he never recovered his fortune, later estimated by his son-in-law at a sum which at that day would have been fabulous.[70] The business house in which he was interested failed; his plantations, refinery, houses and stores, the rents from which, as we have seen, in certain years after 1789, had yielded 90,000 francs, were presumably ravaged and partially destroyed. When the news of this misfortune reached him after 1792, his hands were tied by revolutions at home. Though he applied to his Government for relief, as undoubtedly did a host of other losers, he was eventually granted only a small indemnity, not exceeding 30,000 francs.

Friends of Jean Audubon at Nantes had made repeated demands of the Ministry of Marine that he be given a rank more in accord with his patriotism and efficient service to the State, and on October 11, 1797, he was commissioned lieutenant-commander (_lieutenant de vaisseau_),[71] one grade below that of captain. He held this rank for three years, during which he was engaged in vigilance service at Les Sables d'Olonne and in military duty at Rochefort, or until he was retired from the navy for disability, January 1, 1801 (_le 11 nivose, an 9_), at the age of fifty-seven.[72] He had served the State for over eight years, and his total period of active duty on sea and land when employed in the merchant marine and navy of France, as estimated from port to port, amounted to nineteen years, nine months and twelve days, while it had extended with interruptions over more than forty years.[73] After this long period of service, when, suffering from a pulmonary affection, he applied to his Government for a pension, he received the paltry annuity of 600 francs or $120.

With this modest pension and a property yielding an income not above $2,000 a year[74], Lieutenant Audubon retired to his quiet villa of "La Gerbetière," at Couëron, where he could indulge his taste for country life and for raising his favorite fruits and flowers; he is said to have kept some live stock, but could have been a farmer only on a modest scale. Meanwhile he continued to maintain a house, or at least rooms, at Nantes, whither he went periodically to conduct his correspondence and business affairs. The following letter of attorney, issued by Lieutenant Audubon a year after he had retired from the navy, shows that he still had interests in Santo Domingo, and was endeavoring to collect rents, long overdue, from houses and stores that belonged either to himself or to his clients. Whether through the dishonesty of agents or from what other cause, this property which the elder Audubon held in his own right seems gradually to have melted away:

The 19th pluviose, in the eleventh year of the Republic, one and indivisible [January 7, 1802], before the public notaries of the department of Loire inférieure, who reside in Nantes and Doulon, the undersigned have seen present the citizen Jean Audubon, lieutenant of frigate, retired, and proprietor at Santo Domingo, aged 59 years, infirm and unable in consequence of his infirmities to go himself to attend to his business affairs in Santo Domingo, living in Rubens Street, in the Mocquard house,[75] No. 39, in the city and commune of Nantes, department of Loire inférieure:

Who has made and constituted for his general and special attorney Jean François Blanchard, merchant, and originally from the commune of Chateaubriand, department of Loire inférieure, living at the town of Les Cayes, in the southern section of the island of Santo Domingo, opposite Ile à Vaches, to whom he gives full and complete powers to revoke for him, and in his name, every preceding bill of attorney, for the purpose of managing the stores [_magazins_] at Les Cayes, in the southern part of Santo Domingo, opposite Ile à Vaches: To demand and obtain all accounts from the holders of said properties, who have had or still have charge of them there; to examine the said accounts, to debate, close up and stop them ... to lease the said properties, without the power of making any extensive repairs to them whatsoever, about which he had not informed the constituent in France, and that he has not authorized him there to do, at least by a special letter, it being understood that the actual tenant is obliged to make all the necessary repairs to the said houses and stores to the extent of 15,000 francs, and he should not use more than 4,000 francs yearly for the space of five years, counting from the month of thermidor, year 8 [July 19-August 17, 1800].

It is demanded of citizeness Fauveau, or of her assigns, to know the reason why she has failed, to the present moment, to pay to the constituent in France for the domicile of the citizeness Coyron,[76] the twelve thousand six hundred francs that she should annually pay to him, according to the act of July 15, 1788, as given by Domergue, notary at Les Cayes. You will satisfy them with the state of the dwelling house in the plain of Jacob, opposite Ile à Vaches.

This was sold by the said act to the said citizeness Fauveau and to her late husband by the said constituents, to whom he will report regularly on the state of affairs, at least twice in the year....

[Signed at Nantes] J. ROYER [one of the undersigned notaries]

Lieutenant Jean Audubon died at Nantes,[77] when on a visit to that city, on February 19, 1818, at the age of seventy-four, "regretted most deservedly," said his son, "on account of his simplicity, truth, and perfect sense of honesty"; "his manners," he continues, "were those of a most polished gentleman ... and his natural understanding had been carefully improved both by observation and by self education." Jean Audubon's means in France had been reduced partly by bad debts, for he seems to have been generous in lending money to his friends; Madame Audubon found herself greatly hampered by lack of ready money, although, as her son-in-law remarked, her hands were full of notes.

When Jean Audubon applied for nomination to the naval service of the Republic in 1793, we find a description of his previous life and habits recorded as a part of the information required by the Committee of Public Safety. The commune of Nantes at that time gave a flattering testimonial to his patriotism, in which he was described as an officer of merit, who had acquired through long experience at sea an extensive knowledge of navigation, who was a man of honor, and devoid of any inclination to vice or gambling; his nautical experience had been chiefly gained in American waters, the voyages of his choice being those to Santo Domingo and the United States.

At the age of forty-eight the elder Audubon thus briefly described himself: short in stature, measuring five feet, five inches; figure, oval; eyes, blue; nose and mouth, large; eyebrows, auburn; hair and beard turned gray. Contrary to the naturalist's expressed belief, there seems to have been little or no physical resemblance between father and son. At a corresponding age, John James Audubon, according partly to his own account, stood five feet, ten inches in stockings; his hair was dark brown; he had sunken, hazel eyes, flecked with brown, and of remarkable brightness; while his clean-cut profile showed an aquiline nose. "In temper," said the son, to continue the comparison, "we much resembled each other, being warm, irascible, and at times violent, but it was like the blast of a hurricane, dreadful for a time, when calm almost instantly returned."

Though passionate at times, Jean Audubon was a man of force and decision, as his career amply shows. If he does not loom large in the history of his time or was but little known beyond the limits of his province, it must be remembered that the time called forth thousands of the ablest men of his nation.