Paris, October 1821
MADAME Lucile and Madame de Farcy, who had returned with me to Brittany, now wished to go back to Paris; but I was detained by troubles in the province. The Estates were convened on the last day of December 1788. The commune of Rennes, and after it all the other communes of Brittany, had passed a decree forbidding their deputies to involve themselves in any other business until the matter of hearth money had been settled.
The Comte de Boisgelin, who was to preside over the Order of the Nobility, rushed to Rennes. Gentlemen were summoned by private letters, even those who were, like me, still too young to have a vote in the deliberations. Seeing that we could be attacked, it was a matter of arms as well as votes: we went to our posts.
Several meetings were held at M. de Boisgelin’s house before the Estates opened. Here, all the scenes of confusion at which I had been present repeated themselves. My uncle, the Comte de Bedée, called “Bedée the Artichoke” on account of his fatness and to distinguish him from another Bedée, tall and skinny, called “Bedée the Asparagus,” broke several chairs by climbing on them to hold forth. The Marquis de Trémargat, the peg-legged naval officer, made plenty of enemies for his order. One day, everyone was discussing the establishment of a military school where the sons of poor aristocrats could be educated, when a member of the Third Estate cried out, “And what about our sons? What of them?”
“Your sons have the workhouse,” Trémargat replied.
These words fell among the crowd and promptly took root.
I noticed during these meetings a tendency of my character that I have since rediscovered in all matters of politics and war: the more hot-tempered my friends and colleagues, the cooler-headed I became. I could see a tribunal or a cannon set on fire with indifference. I have never cheered either for speeches or bullets.
The result of our deliberations was that the Nobility would deal first of all with general business and would not occupy themselves with the matter of hearth money until all other matters had been resolved—a resolution directly opposed to that of the Third Estate. The nobles had no great confidence in the clergy, who had often abandoned them in the past, especially when they were presided over by the Bishop of Rennes, a fawning, plodding personage who spoke with a slight lisp, not without elegance, and who always made the best of his opportunities at Court. A newspaper, La Sentinelle du Peuple, printed up in Rennes by a scribbler lately arrived from Paris, helped foment hatred.
The Estates were convened in the Jacobin Convent on the Place du Palais. We entered the main hall in the mood I have just described, and no sooner were we in session than the people besieged us. The twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh, and twenty-eighth of January 1789 were unhappy days. The Comte de Thiard had only a few troops. An ineffective and indecisive leader, he maneuvered without accomplishing anything at all. The law school in Rennes, led by Moreau, had sent for the young men of Nantes. They arrived four hundred strong, and the Commandant, no matter how he pleaded, could not prevent them from invading the city. Meetings of various kinds, held on the Champ-Montmorin and in cafés, ended in violent brawls.
Tired of being blockaded in our chamber, we made a resolution to sally forth, swords in hand. It made for a very fine sight. At a signal from our president, we all drew our swords at once, to the cry of Vive la Bretagne! and, like a garrison deprived of resources, we executed a furious sortie, trying to pass through the heart of our besiegers. The people received us with howls, stones, iron poles, and pistols. We forced a gap in the surging crowd, but they closed in on us again. Several gentlemen were wounded, dragged, lacerated, and covered with bruises and contusions. Only with great difficulty did we manage to disengage ourselves and thread our ways back to our separate lodgings.
Duels followed, between gentlemen and the law students and their friends from Nantes. One of these duels took place publicly on the Place Royale. The honors rested with the old naval officer Keralieu, who fought with such incredible vigor that he won the applause of his young adversaries.
Another mob had formed. The Comte de Montboucher caught sight of a student named Ulliac in the crowd and called out to him, “Monsieur, this concerns the two of us!” A circle was formed around them. Montboucher made the sword jump from Ulliac’s hand and then returned it. They embraced, and the crowd dispersed.
At least the Breton nobles did not yield without honor. They refused to send deputies to the Estates-General because the Estates had not been assembled according to the fundamental laws of the province’s constitution. Later, they would go in great numbers to join the Army of Princes, to be decimated with Condé or Charette in the Vendée Wars. Would it have made any difference to the majority of the National Assembly, if they had taken part? It is unlikely. In these great social transformations, individual resistance, however honorable for those who resist, is powerless against the facts. Even so, it’s difficult to say what might have come of a man of Mirabeau’s genius, but of opposite opinions, had he been found in the ranks of the Breton nobility.
The young Boishue and Saint-Riveul, my former schoolmate, had died before these conflicts began, on their way to the Chamber of Nobles: Boishue was defended in vain by his father, who served as his second.
Reader, I ask you to pause. Consider the first drops of blood that the Revolution spilled. It was ordained that they should come from the veins of my childhood companion. Suppose I had fallen instead of Saint-Riveul: they would have said of me, changing only the name, exactly what they said of the victim with whom the great immolation began. “A gentleman, named Chateaubriand, was killed on his way to the Estates.” These few words would have taken the place of my long story. Would Saint-Riveul then have played my part on earth? Was he destined for the noise of fame or for silence?
Pass on now, reader; wade the river of blood that separates forever the old world, which you are leaving, from the new world at whose beginning you shall die.