AN ABRIDGED ACCOUNT OF THE SUFFERINGS OF ALMOST 800 FRENCH CLERGYMEN, ...
[in the Île d'Aix Roads, 1794-95]
ex M.-B.-P. Bottin, Récit abrégé des souffrances de près de 800 ecclésiastiques français, ..., Crapart, Paris, 1796.


AN ABRIDGED ACCOUNT

Of the sufferings of almost eight hundred French clergymen, condemned to deportation, and detained aboard the ships Washington and Deux Associés, in the vicinity of Rochefort in 1794 & 1795: of the death of the greater number of them; of the transfer and confinement of others to Saintes, and of their good reception and deliverance in this city :

By a parish priest of Paris whom God deigned to associate with these persecuted clergymen, and who delivered him with those who survived the persecution.

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They passed through many tribulations, and they remained faithful. Jth. 8:23

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Carte partielle de la région

OPINION OF THE AUTHOR

The following account has not been composed in the spirit of vengeance: such a feeling does not find access in the heart of a priest who has been considered worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus Christ. The author aimed only to edify some friends, and, with them, to be eternally grateful to God, who gives patience and consolation. He believed he should publish his account, to show all Frenchmen the nature of the humanity and tolerance of our contemporary philosophers, who, in recent years, have spoken to us so much about fraternity and about the freedom of opinions and faiths. The modern unbelievers boasted of having so enlightened our age, that would have rendered it incapable of the cruelties that history accuses men who preceded us; and yet, in the disastrous time in which we live, it has committed barbaric excesses which had been hitherto unknown to mankind. If this dreadful truth still needed to be proved, it would be so by the account that you are going to read; and even did one well weaken the features of the picture that he presents. When you have contemplated this scene of horror, which offers itself following the prison massacres, the shootings, the drownings, and the executions on the scaffolds, you should be convinced that philosophy is not a torch which shines: but one which burns.

By reading the same account, those who have remained faithful to the Roman Catholic Church, in this unfortunate land, will learn of the loss of a great number of clergymen worthy of their regrets. Alas, they had already lost so many others that enemies of religion had removed from them by innumerable types of persecution! They will worship the impenetrable decrees of Divine Providence, which enabled the beast to wage war on saints and defeat them. And after having shed tears on the deaths of these irreproachable men, they will religiously preserve their memory, and will be strengthened in the Faith by the remembrance of their generous firmness. They will address ardent wishes to Heaven for the inhabitants of Saintes, who welcomed with such an affectionate sensitivity those of the deported clerics whom death had spared until then, and who, by such kind treatment, saved the lives of this valuable remainder; they will carry these charitable Christians in their hearts; and if, as St. Paul said, the whole body should rejoice by the honouring of one of its members (1 Cor. 12:26), they will regard the good done to several of its ministers as done to the entire Church.

Those who allowed themselves to be led from the fold and who abandonned their pastor to follow a stranger, will be able to see, should they wish to cast their eyes on the following account, that so many priests who sacrificed everything — possessions, peace, consideration, friends, relatives, homeland, liberty, even life itself — rather than adopting innovations contrary to the doctrines and practices of the true Church, were neither mules nor zealots: conscience alone can require and obtain such a sacrifice; they preferred to die rather than transgress God's holy law, and they perished (cf. 1 Macc. 1:60 and 1:66).

Although the author of this account depicts particularly the state of the deportees who were detained aboard the Washington, amongst whom he was, his description is also appropriate for the situation of his companions in misfortune who were detained aboard the Deux Associés: it is merely necessary to suppose some relatively slight differences due mainly to the greater size of this latter ship and its considerably greater number of prisoners.

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ACCOUNT


I.  Arrival of the deportees in Rochefort, their
embarkation and detention on two ships.

In March 1794, almost eight hundred clergymen were to be found gathered in Rochefort, mostly priests, and all condemned to deportation in hatred of Jesus Christ and His Church. Included in this numerous clergy, sent from all parts of France, were vicar generals of various dioceses, commendatory abbots, deans of chapters, canons, parish priests, vicars, superiors or directors of seminaries, teachers from religious colleges, and monks from every order. A layman, named M. Girard, a former bodyguard of the Comte d'Artois, had been joined to us; and this respectable soldier edified us much by his virtues.

We had been brought to Rochefort by detachment in open carts, into which we were packed and sometimes chained as criminals; an escort of soldiers drove the carts. The places where we were made to spend the night were prison dungeons. Our entrance into the towns encountered on our passage, was, as our departure, accompanied by abusive lines of people stirred up against us, and marked by greater or lesser humiliations. Here is one of these humiliations; it is more remarkable than the others. Eighty clergymen from the Department of Allier, at whose head was Father Imbert, ex-Jesuit and Vicar Apostolic of the Diocese of Moulins, arrived in Limoges. On arriving there, they found an immense crowd at the city gates, that curiosity had gathered to consider a new kind of spectacle. There was a great quantity of asses and oxen covered in sacerdotal dress, which advanced by forming a long file, and an enormous pig covered with pontifical ornaments, which brought up the rear; a mitre fixed on the head of this latter animal bore this inscription: Pope. The individual who presided over this irreligious festival, of which he was the designer, had the carts which conveyed the clergymen stopped, ordered these venerable men to descend, and placed them, in pairs, in line with the animals. And, in this manner, the sacrilegious procession entered the city. When it had reached the main square, it was arranged in circle around the scaffold on which was erected the instrument of death called the guillotine. Then the circle opened to allow passage to the gendarmerie, who brought a non-juring priest whom the city's revolutionary tribunal had just sentenced to death by this method of execution. The execution was carried out immediately. The executioner then showed the people the head that he had just slaughtered, and said: The villains that you see here, deserve to be treated like the one I've just executed. With whom do you want me to start? The people cried out: With whomever you want. However, after the crowd had savoured the pleasure of frightening them, by the expectation of an imminent death, they were led to prison to spend the night there. So ended a day which seemed to them to have to be the last of their journey and their life: the cruel game, practised at their expense, contented itself with ridicule and terror.

After we had assembled in Rochefort, so executing the judgements which sentenced us to deportation, they put us aboard two ships: three hundred of us were embarked on the Washington, and the others, numbering almost five hundred, on the Deux Associés; the crew of each ship consisted of the captain, several officers, and some soldiers and sailors.

To embark, it was necessary to climb on the ship by a tall ladder of a dozen steps. This unsteady ladder swayed ceaselessly; and, because its rungs were widely separated from one another, one could not reach them without making hard efforts. The soldiers and sailors, irritated by what one did not go up rather quickly, shouted: Move along, then, villain! One arrived finally on board the ship. There one found a second ladder, about six feet high, by which it was as difficult to descend as it had been to ascend the first. The old men in particular risked a dangerous fall. After having descended, one was led by two sailors before the captain.

The captain sat in front of a table, in regulation uniform, a bare sabre in hand. At his sides were two officers dressed and armed like him; to the right and left of the officers were soldiers carrying fixed bayonets; behind the soldiers were unarmed sailors. This well-ordered retinue formed a large circle, which opened to introduce the deportee and then closed again. When the deportee had reached the middle of the circle, four soldiers were ordered to place themselves near him and to keep the points of their sabres directed against his body. Then the captain ordered him to hand over his pocket-book. As soon as he had obeyed, several sailors threw themselves upon him: they tore the cocarde from his hat, whilst saying to him, Villain, you are unworthy of wearing this ornament of our heads ; they removed from him all his clothes, leaving him only his shirt (although some were left completely naked). After having reduced him to this humiliating state, they inspected the clothes that they had removed from him, and the modest luggage which he had been able to bring with him on board, in order to find gold that they supposed to be hidden there; and, for fear that this metal might escape their searches, they cut the soles and heels of the shoes. The inspection finished, they chose, from among the effects taken from the deportee, a pair breeches, a pair of stockings, a habit, a hat and a handkerchief, all of the poorest quality: then they made a package of these, threw it at his head, and made him leave the circle. The deportee went to join those of his colleagues who had already undergone this ignominious ordeal: there, like them, he dared not complain nor raise his eyes.

Father le Clerc, a parish priest from the Diocese of St. Brieux, had saved from the plunder a coloured handkerchief, a corner of which was tied and contained 25 louis. Just as he was going to re-dress himself, a sailor caught sight of the handkerchief and grabbed whilst saying: Ah! Villain, you dare harm the nation with this handkerchief! Having untied it, he found the gold hidden in the knot, and carried the whole to the captain. The latter immediately clapped this respectable clergyman in irons, as culpable of having wanted to steal from the nation. Father le Clerc, still naked, spent 24 hours chained to the ship's bridge.

On 25th March, after we had all boarded and been despoiled, the two ships set sail and went as far as the Île d'Aix Roads, a few leagues from Rochefort. There they remained until the following 1st November. At that time, they moved a little closer to Rochefort, and overwintered in Port-des-Barques. On 1st February 1795, they left this port; and returned to Rochefort on the 5th of the same month.

During this long period of time, detained on board these ships, we could say like the psalmist: "Every day we are put to death for the Lord's name; they regard us as lambs intended for the slaughter" (Ps. 43:22).


II.  The deportees' sufferings.

Their situation during the day.

To separate the deportees from the crew, they had made a partition of planks on the bridge. At both ends of this partition, two low and narrow doors had been provided. At each of these doors, inside that part of the bridge intended for the clergymen, a solider was always kept on guard, armed with a rifle equipped with its bayonet, a sabre, and two pairs of pistols. Within the length of the partition, six openings had been made, through which passed as many gun muzzles; and these guns were charged with grapeshot and trained on the site reserved for the priests.

The part of the bridge intended for the deportees was that where the bowsprit is placed. This part was always dirty, always filled with mud, and always cluttered up with ropes and barrels; and to the sides of the mast were two small cabins, in each of which a pig was fed.

Such were the premises where 300 clergymen were forced to spend all day. In this narrow site, cluttered up still further by various objects, the deportees were squeezed in tightly, like persons are gathered by curiousity as a crowd in the same place. They always had to be kept standing; and the discomfort of such a bearing was felt especially at mealtime. In this tiring position, which did not became more bearable even when we gained more room by the loss of several of our colleagues, we were still exposed to all the ravages of the air and the bad weather of the seasons. During the summer, the sun's rays beat down on our heads and burned our faces. During the winter, thick fogs envelopped us unceasingly, and rain or snow often on our bodies: we felt the full rigour of the cold which France experiences in December and January. At all times, the rolling of the ship greatly inconvenienced the majority of us; and, when the sea was rough, this rolling, becoming therefore stronger, caused them violent nausea and vomiting to the point of spitting blood.

Their food.

The deportees' food consisted of bread, ship's biscuit, salted meat, cod, gourganes (a type of broad bean), and wine. This food was of very bad quality: the bread, black and mouldy; the biscuit, spoiled and full of worms; the salted beef, dry and devoid of juice; the cod, yellow and rotten; the gourganes, awash in a great quantity of water, upon which a little rancid oil floated: the wine alone was good.

The distribution of this food would have been interminable, if one had done so individually. To abridge it, the captain had simplified it. He divided the deportees into «tables», made up of ten «guests»; and had appointed to each a head, who, at mealtime, was required to go and fetch the food intended for his table. This word table, used by the captain to designate each group of ten guests, was quite inappropriate: because our meals were not taken at tables; and it would have been impossible to place one amongst us, since we lacked space even to sit down. For the service of each table, there was a mess-tin, a can, a cup, a knife, and wooden spoons, when gourganes were distributed. The mess-tin was a wooden bowl, which contained the salted meat, cod or gourganes; the can was a wooden vase, where the wine was put; the cup, which was of tinplate, was used for each guest to drink in his turn the quantity of wine which was due him; and the knife was used by the head divide up the food. Whilst the head divided the rations, the mess-tin was held by one of the guests. Once the rations had been distributed, each guest held his own in his hands, and tore it with his teeth. In this operation, he was constantly hindered or prevented by the movement of his neighbours, who for their part experienced a similar inconvenience; so many were greatly obstructed in the press in which they found themselves. The act of eating was therefore always difficult and painful; but it became almost impracticable when gourganes were given out. Then, each guest held the mess-tin, and, using their spoons, the others tried a few of these gourganes and the clear sauce in which they swam. When he had taken something, he did not manage to carry the whole to his mouth: before arriving there, a part fell on his clothes.

If only each table had had the ration which was fixed and paid for by the government, they would not have suffered from hunger. But this was not so: since, under the terms of an arrangement reached between the captain and the purser, each head of table received only three pounds of bread, instead of five; forty ounces of biscuit, instead of sixty; five measures of wine, instead of ten. The rest of the food, which passed through the crew members' hands, supported a considerable reduction. This therefore resulted in each guest's share being too modest to be able to sustain him. So we saw, more than once, some amongst us, who were tormented by hunger more than the others, remove from the pigs, whose cabins were in the middle of us, the rejected gourganes and the pieces of rotten bread which were in these animals' troughs.

Their situation during the night.

The place where the deportees spent the night was hardly more spacious than that where they were confined during the day. We descended there by a ladder so narrow and steep that each day, in descending, several of us received dangerous leg injuries. Air and light penetrated only by the hatchway; that is, by the opening which was used to descend. So, only the entrance of the cubbyhole was lit by a feeble light; the rest of its space was constantly in the thickest darkness.

Such was the lodgings that had been assigned to 300 clergymen. They stretched out there next to each other, without leaving their habits and without having the least support for their heads.

There were, at intervals, buckets placed for the use of those who felt pressing needs, and who not able to go and satisfy them outside their lodging because its exit was closed by bolts. The deportees' dormitory was therefore a true dungeon.

When they had confined us in our frightful dormitory, we had a great deal of difficulty in taking there the rest that the fatigue of the day had made so necessary for us. Several causes contributed to chasing sleep very far from our eyes. In the summer we felt a suffocating heat, and in the winter, especially in December and January, we felt a penetrating cold, without being able to obtain the slightest covering to protect us. The air that we breathed was corrupted by the breath of such a large number of people crammed into such a small space, and by the stinking odour which rose from the buckets. Under the pretext of purifying it, every day at 4 a.m. they came to burn some grape-based pitch at the entrance of our cubbyhole: but, for us, the only effect of this singular fumigation was to clog up our lungs. Abundant vermin, drawn by our involuntary dirtiness, criss-crossed our skin, devoured what little flesh remained to us, and gnawed us to the marrow.

After we had spent ten hours in our nocturnal dungeon, we were pulled out and made to go back up on the bridge; and this forced transfer at least procured for us the advantage of breathing freely.

The ill-treatment that was afforded them.

On entering the ships, we had not expected to be either well received or well treated by the soldiers and sailors. The rudeness which is found in those who have not been educated; the licentiousness known to be commonplace to soldiers and sailors; even more the disorder that the Revolution had wrought in French society, and the upheaval that it produced under the prevailing conditions: all this should prevent us from believing that these men, at the mercy of whom we were placed, would have consideration for us. Indeed, every day they took pleasure in violating our gaze with their monstrous indecencies; and sullying our ears with their foul language, infamous songs, atrocious invectives, and appalling blasphemies: and we, we pitied the degradation of these unfortunates who no more than men of straw.

However, we had hoped that the conduct of captains and their officers would be have decent — or at least reasonable and fair. But there, unfortunately, we were mistaken: they were so markedly prejudiced against us. We had been represented as bad citizens, as enemies of the public good, as the curse of society. Accordingly, the leaders on whom we depended looked upon us as the sweepings of France, as refuse to be cast outside her limits. They therefore believed to have absolved themselves from any feeling of humanity towards us, and not to treat us as men. Instead of sacrificing all the victims put in their power in one large single holocaust, they preferred to do so by degrees. They had apparently been recommended to let us die slowly, and to make us swallow the bitter chalice by drops. Be that as it may, God only we wanted to return them evil for evil, and that we called revenge on their heads: like our divine Master, who prayed for his executioners, we forgive our persecutors their insults, injustices, and violences; and we ask the Lord that the ill-treatment that we experienced serves as an expiation to those who did them to us.

At the time of our embarkation, the captains removed from us all our books and even our breviary. They doubtless feared that the unfortunate deportees seeking and finding in prayer an amelioration of their troubles. They even prohibited us from moving our lips. The captain of the Washington once saw a clergymen who was praying below, and said to him furiously: What! Fanatics, I believe you're calling upon your Jesus! It's futile to pray to that rogue; he wouldn't know how to remove you from here. If they had been able to extend their empire on our minds and on our hearts, they would have prevented us from thinking of God, and would have forbidden us to love Him.

We were not spared bitter mockeries and impious sarcasms. The captain of the Deux Associés, at the end of an orgy which had been held aboard the Washington, entered the part of the bridge occupied by the deportees; and after having feasted his eyes on the pleasure of contemplating their misery, he said to them in a derisive tone: What! Villains, you're not laughing here! I know the principles of your religion. Doesn't your Jesus say that one should consider oneself blessed when one suffers? Do so, then, and savour your happiness.

Unceasingly our patience was tried by vexations of every kind. They allowed us to wash the poor handkerchief and the poor shirt which had remained to us, without condescending to give us either the place, utensils, or soap which we would have needed to do this essential washing properly. They refused us a needle and thread to stitch together the poor rags which they had left us, and which went away in tatters. The deportees who had buried some of their colleagues, and who returned to the ship drenched in rain or sea water, asked in vain to have the means to make their clothes dry, or to have returned for a few hours the other clothing that had been removed from: but they did not obtain such fair relief. One day, the captain of the Washington had a sergeant clapped in irons for having given some refreshments to six clergymen, who, on that very day, had successively buried eight of their colleagues, and had received rain throughout the duration of this painful operation. He would never grant a second handkerchief and a second shirt to the 85 year-old Father Cordier, an ex-Jesuit. He even removed from this old man the stick by which he used to support his invalidity; and when depriving him of this support, he said in a derisive tone: Old villain, if I left you that, you would be able to lead a counter-revolution on my ship ... If a knife or a mess-tin was lost by the crew members' negligence, the loss was put on the deportees' door, and they were accused of a major crime. To punish them, they were all deprived of the wine that they were due; or, at mealtime, each head of table was refused the knife which he needed to distribute the food.

When we dared to complain about some ill-treatment, or to protest against some injustice, our complaints or protests were answered by acts of violence. In January 1795, when the weather was so harsh, four clergymen represented to the captain of Washington that they and all their colleagues suffered greatly from hunger, because the purser had considerably decreased their rations: they were simply clapped in irons for a week. The captain of the Deux Associés was no more equitable. In August 1794, he appeared to have taken pity on the deportees' fate, and said to them: Draft a statement which explains your deplorable situation, and I will present it to those who can ameliorate your troubles. Father de la Romagère, Vicar General of Châlons-sur-Marne, drafted the report in question, signed it with fourteen other clergymen, and handed it to the captain. After having received it, this latter came into the part of the bridge where deportees were detained, called out the names of all those who had signed the exposition of their communal misery, and sentenced them to be clapped in irons.

The libellous denunciations that crew members liked to make against us were favourably received; and going by these denunciations, they sentenced us without a hearing. Father de Roailhac, Canon of Limoges, was accused by a sailor of having said: If among my colleagues there were a hundred men like me, we would indeed overcome the crew. On the evidence of the accuser alone, and without having been required to justify himself, he was sentenced by the captain of Deux Associés to be shot on the bridge. He was immediately served with his sentence and given half an hour to prepare for death. This time having elapsed, he was attached to the bowsprit. Before they executed him, he said to the other deportees who witnessed his execution: "My dear colleagues, as I am about to appear before God's court, you should believe that I tell you the truth. I never made the statement that has been attributed to me. I ask you for the support of your prayers."

Their diseases.

Such sufferings had not yet sufficiently purified the ministers of Jesus Christ and His Church: God completed their purification by disease; and this state was for them what the crucible is for gold.

The patients' hospitals were established on small schooners, which were about 50 foot long and 14 foot wide at their greatest breadth. At the end of each boat was a cabin which served as a billet for its skipper and two sailors, together with a sergeant and four soldiers. The rest of the capacity, which was nearly 40 foot in length, was reserved for the patients; this space was five foot high in the middle of the boat. It was there that up to fifty patients were placed, crammed together, laid out on the planks, wrapped in their usual clothes, and having neither covering for their feet nor support for their heads. On these small boats, the rolling was much stronger, and much more inconvenient and dangerous than on the ships: however calm the sea, the swell violently tossed the boats, and the patients were shaken relentlessly. The water which fell on the bridge often seeped down below and flooded the entire hospital. What added further to the horror of the patients' situation was suffering the extraordinary needs that disease caused, and, lacking a change of clothes, they remained continuously steeped in filth, so that their clothing rotted on them. The vermin, who usually tormented them, increased with the squalor: sometimes even worms ate them alive. By dint of rubbing against the planks, their entire backs were grazed, and scraps of their habits stuck in their bloody wounds: a vile odour — one of death — spread throughout the pokey little hole which trapped them, as fresh air could never be replenished in such a hospital.

The patients' drink was a bad herbal tea or an even worse broth: often even they lacked such completely, and suffered raging fevers without being able to quench their thirst. Two so-called surgeons, the oldest of which was 24, sometimes appeared in the hospitals; but these young people, by their inexperience, harmed the patients more than they helped them. If they administered them some purgatives, they didn't know how to regulate their dosages; and medicines which could have been beneficial in moderate quantities, became disastrous by excessive use.

In August 1794, the hospitals established on the boats were abolished, so as to establish them on the small Île Madame, a neighbour of the Île d'Aix; and, in the following November, they were transferred to the shore of Port-des-Barques when the ships overwintered in this port. Eight tents were erected on shore, and thirty beds placed in each. Thus, the patients started to have a bed as such, and it was major improvement for them: but they were much inconvenienced when it rained, because the rain wetted the pallets on which they were lying; moreover, the regime which had been adopted on the boats continued under the tents. The orderlies' difficulties were greatly increased by the displacement of the hospitals; they had to cover a good quarter of mile, walking in muddy water which came until to their midriffs, and carrying on their shoulders, not only patients, but also wood and the other provisions that were sent from the ships every day.

The patients' orderlies were their own colleagues. Each one of us aspired to the privilege of serving his colleagues when disease struck them: we vied with each other as to the merit of this good work, and the spirit of charity excited a holy rivalry amongst us. Brother Élie, a monk from Sept-Fons Abbey, said, after having obtained permission from his superior to devote himself to the service of patients: "I dedicate myself to this honourable ministry. I know that my health will not withstand the efforts and the fatigues that it will cause me: but I readily sacrifice my days to save those of my brothers; and I will die content if I can redeem their life by my death." Father Arnaudot, a young deacon from the Diocese of Poitiers, fulfilled with admirable zeal the orderly's functions for a long time. The preservation of even one clergyman appeared to him more than adequate compensation for the efforts he took, the fatigues he endured, and the dangers he incurred; and several of us owed the restoration of our health to his generous care. One day, whilst he was occupied in transferring the bodies of eight recently deceased priests from a boat to a canoe, the sailors, determining that he was not going quick enough in this strenuous work, harshly shouted abuse at him. A moment of sensibility, of which he was not the master, drew from him these words: "You are much keener to come and look for the dead to despoil them, than you are to bring remedies to relieve the patients." This answer was reported to the captain, who had him clapped in irons for five days: but such a rigorous punishment did not prevent him from resuming his functions as an orderly with renewed enthusiam. This deacon, by serving the priests at the altar where they sacrificed themselves, hoped to be associated with their sacrifice: but God, who had animated in him such lively charity, did not allow him to be a victim.

The patients, in the middle of their distress and pains, revealed unfailing patience and perfect resignation: they showed themselves ministers worthy of God in the necessities, fears, and torments. Father Tabouillot, a priest priest from Lorraine, asked Father de Brigeat, Dean of the Avranches' Chapter, who served him, for a drink. He answered that he had neither herbal tea nor broth to give him. The patient replied with a holy liveliness: "Ah! It is quite just that I endure this deprivation, since my adorable Saviour's thirst was quenched with gall and vinegar."

They took pleasure in their afflictions, they glorified in them, persuaded that the present afflictions bore no proportion to the glory that one day which will be discovered in us. When they were cursed, they blessed; and when they were mistreated, they prayed for their enemies. No complaints, no murmurs issued forth from their lips: in their miserable hospital, they asked, as did Jesus in the Garden of Olives [cf. Mark 14:32-42], that their Father's will be fulfilled in them.

In their painful state, they were given to visions of angels and men. This spectacle impressed several constitutional priests who were amongst us. These colleagues, blind or weak-willed, had adopted all the innovations that had been proposed to them, and had taken all the steps that had been required of them; and, as a reward for their sincere or simulated submission, they were sentenced like us to deportation, and detained with us. That there was not the price which they expected to pay for their obedience or their accommodation: but their expectations were very cruelly deceived. So, at the outset of our common captivity, they cast off the yoke put on them by the Divine Hand, and rebelled against the goading. By their ill humour, improvident actions, and protestations against God, they aggravated the evils that we shared with them, and weighed down the cross that we bore together. However, on seeing under their eyes the peace and patience of their companions in misfortune, they looked within themselves, and understood that our attachment to the Roman Catholic Church, which appeared to us in health and even more so in a state of illness, was the principle of this peace and resignation: they immediately abjured the schism which had separated them from the centre of ecclesiastical unity, and from then on acted with us as one heart and soul.


III.  The death of the greater number of the deportees.

We were all the victims of the Lord; He had placed us all on the altar: but he did not want to sacrifice us all, and His double-edged sword was satisfied with striking down the greater part of us. In the ten months which passed from the end of March 1794 until the beginning of February 1795, disease removed around 560 colleagues, detained and suffering with us; see footnote 2.

On their deathbeds — that's to say, on the planks of the hospital boats, or on the poor pallets which had been substituted for them — the deportees yearned for the blessed moment when their soul, disengaged from corporal links, would be reunited with God the Creator, with God the Redeemer, and with God the Sacrificer. Father Pétiniaud, Vicar General of Limoges, collecting the remainder of his forces, reminded the colleagues dying at his sides of several Scriptural passages appropriate to their common situation, and said to them with heart overflowing: "Death is a gain for us. For what do we still need to live? The holy city of Earth is delivered to the power of its enemies: its old men have been garotted in public squares; its young people have fallen under a homicidal double-edged sword; its temples have been reduced to profound solitude, with the instruments of its glory removed; its name days have been changed into days of mourning; its solemnities dedicated to infamy; its magnificence desecrated; its brightness sullied; and its honours destroyed. Let us die, therefore, with the hope that we will be introduced into the holy city of Heaven, and reunited with our elder brothers who have already been admitted; let us die with the hope that our trials and tribulations, which will have lasted but a moment, will soon bring about eternal glory in us; let us die with the hope that Jesus Christ will one day transform one our mean and abject bodies, so as to conform them with His glorious body." (cf. Phil. 1; 1 Macc. 1 and 2; Heb. 2; 2 Cor. 4; Phil. 3).

They eagerly took the rough cross that an orderly had hurriedly made them, as if it had been gold; and, lovingly kissing this sign of our salvation, they died in the Lord's embrace.

As soon as they had died, the crew members present shouted with barbaric enjoyment: Long Live the Nation! Down with the sanctimonius churchgoers: when will these villains' deaths come? This triumphant shout then repeated itself on the ships, and continued for a while. They hastened to have the bodies of the dead removed and buried in the ground, like objects of horror and execration. The Île d'Aix, Île Madame, and the shore of the Port-des-Barques were successively the designated sites for the deportees' burial. These were where the surviving clergymen were obliged to drag on a wheelbarrow — or to carry on a stretcher, and often on their backs — each one of their deceased colleagues. The transfer effected, they dug the pit; but, before depositing the body that they had brought, they were required, at the risk of being shot, to strip it entirely and reduce it to absolute nakedness. Four soldiers and as many sailors, who attended the burial, threw themselves on the spoils of the deceased, and shared this modest booty amongst themselves. Whilst they shared the spoils, they said to these grieving clergymen, who put their colleague in the pit and covered his stripped body with earth: Villains, isn't your life harder than his? So, when will your turn come?

Beloved brothers, that was how we were forced to give you the last rites; that there was all the funeral arrangements that we were allowed to make in your honour. We could sprinkle only with tears the corner of ground where we deposited the remains of your mortal life, and pray in the secrecy of our hearts for the repose of your immortal souls. Dear colleagues, God knows how much it cost us to lose you, and how much the separation appeared cruel to us. It seemed to us that we had torn off a part of ourselves, and our hearts made strenuous efforts to follow you. New losses ceaselessly caused us new regrets, and we shed tears for everyone only with greatest difficulty.

And yet, amongst these anxieties, God spread a sweet consolation in our souls. We could not refrain from considering your death as precious in the eyes of the Lord, and we would prefer to think that you are already enjoying the happiness promised to those who suffer persecution for the truth. In this expectation, all our hearts say to you: "Martyrs of Jesus Christ, you fought well, and you reached the end of the career without your faith having been undermined; we hope that in appearing before the just Judge, you will have received the crown of justice from His hands. The foundation of our hope is in the resemblance that you had with Jesus, who is the sovereign priest, the prince of ministers, the head of the entire Church. Servants of this Lord who made Himself poor, you were dressed in His liveries. Disciples of this Lord who made Himself the man of sorrows, you carried His mortification in your bodies, and the mark of His cross on your limbs. Ministers of this Lord abandonned by His Apostles and by His Father at the end of His mortal life, you, in your latter days, were rejected by your fellow citizens, and banished from the soil which had seen you born. Associated to the priesthood of this Lord, who is both sacrificer and victim, you sacrificed the holy host for many a year, and you finished by sacrificing yourself like a host of an agreeable odour. The Heavenly Father has made you similar to His Divine Son; He should therefore glorify you with Him. Our persecutors, in seeing you dying, believed that you would die for ever, and your departure from this world appeared to them to be true destruction: but you live in presence of the Lord, and death has no more empire over you. Now that you have entered in possession of the kingdom to which we all called, do remember your companions in captivity, who are still are in irons. Now that you have reached our common fatherland, do remember your brothers, who still remain in this place of exile, in this vale of tears, on this earth which devours its inhabitants. Pray to God for us, that He foreshortens our pilgrimage, or that He gives us the strength to bear its extension. Pray to Him that those who were associated with your sufferings be also in your bliss; and, since our Father has wished that His children be, for a while, separated from one another, ask Him that He soon reunites them in His paternal bosom."


IV.  Disembarkation of the remainder of the deportees, their transfer to Saintes
to be confined there, their good reception and liberation in this city.

At the end of November 1794, the National Convention, informed of our unfortunate state, had ordered that we were put ashore, and had sent the execution of its decree to the constituted authorities of Rochefort. But these authorities were, for the most part, still composed of the bloodthirsty men who had been installed during Robespierre's tyranny. Wishing therefore to prolong our sufferings, they delayed the execution of the decree which was favourable to us; and, to justify the our continued detention on the ships, they said that they didn't have any premises ready to receive us, and that it would take time to prepare one. This delay had very dire consequences for us, because we had to spend the harsh winter which afflicted France on board the ships, and the extreme cold, exacerbating our troubles, caused the death of many of us.

They finally resolved to send us to Saintes. Accordingly, on the 1st February 1795, both ships left Port-des-Barques and arrived in Rochefort on the 5th, where they brought back only 228 deportees — the small remainder who had escaped the ravages of death. The following day we left the ships, and transferred to several small schooners which conducted us the same day to Tonnay-Charente. We spent the night there, packed in our boats, and, on the following morning, we were put ashore.

Fifteen carts hitched by oxen, which the government had made ready, took care of our patients and invalids; and those among us who could still walk followed; thirty gendarmes were ordered to escort us. We set out in very heavy rain, which did not let up all day, and put up at Saint-Porchaire. We spent the night there on the paving stones of a church. However, some consideration was given to our situation; and, so as to dry our clothes and warm our limbs, several large fires were lit around us. But thick smoke soon filled our miserable lodgings, and it was impossible for us to free ourselves from the humidity and cold which had penetrated us to the marrow.

The day finally appeared, and we continued our journey. The rain, which had not ceased during the night, still continued as we set off; and it accompanied us to Saintes, where we arrived at 11 o'clock in the morning.

Despite the foul weather, curiosity had gathered on our passage a large crowd of spectators. Before their eyes, they saw trundle past fifteen filled carts of our patients and invalids, followed by those of us who were on foot, and the gendarmes who escorted us. Our rain-drenched tattered rags, pale complexions, hollow cheeks, and emaciated bodies: everything about us showed the dreadful misery to which we had been reduced. This sad spectacle deeply moved all those which were witnesses: they could not hold back their tears in seeing, amongst themselves, men half-dead, skeletons which preserved only skin dried and stuck on the bones, corpses that barely managed a weak breath of life.

We were put up in the vast house that formerly housed the Benedictine nuns of Notre-Dame, to remain confined there as long as it pleased the Lord to allow it. There, a straw bed was prepared for each of us. But Divine Providence, which wanted to put an end to our troubles, had led us to blessed ground, where charity, that pleasant daughter of Heaven, established its favourite dwelling place. The inhabitants of Saintes came to our aid with such unbounded enthusiasm, and in such unanimous concert, that in a short time we were all provided with beds, mattresses, sheets, covers, tables, chairs, and other necessary furniture; and they hurriedly provided with the clothes and linen that we lacked. After these valuable services had been rendered us with the most perfect selflessness, they set on our behalf a daily and plentiful distribution of food of the finest quality together with the medicines that the patients needed.

A common emulation stimulated all the citizens to do us good, and even the poorest were eager to contribute to the holy prodigality which concerned us. A day labourer of the city came to our cloistered residence, addressed himself to M. du Pavillon, Vicar General of the Diocese, and said: Sir, my work enables me to buy two bottles of wine every day for my own use, and that of my wife and children; allow that I dispose of one for a deportee. The offer of this excellent man was welcomed as it deserved to be.

To appreciate the true worth of the universal devotion of which we were the object, one should known that foods were then very rare and very expensive in Saintes. But the generous inhabitants made every necessary sacrifice to provide us with them in abundance: they deprived themselves of a part of their subsistence, so that ours was whole.

The indefatigable zeal of the good people who took care of us, their constant sollicitude and generosity, allowed us to recover our strength with almost miraculous promptitude: blood started to fill our near-empty veins; and the deep traces that long sufferings had imprinted on our bodies were erased almost entirely. Our patients were soon recalled from death's door, and returned to life.

Our benefactors had furnished, dressed, nourished, thoroughly relieved, and virtually resuscitated us: they crowned all their benefactions by obtaining from the Committee of General Safety the return of our freedom. Such a happy event for us was a veritable triumph for them: they felt even more joy by announcing to us the news of our liberation than ourselves by learning of it. When the moment came for us part company with them, they did not want to let us go without having given us the money necessary for our travel expenses.

Virtuous inhabitants of Saints, compassionate and generous people, such are the works of mercy that you practised on our behalf. You saw the priests of your religion experiencing needs of every kind, and you relieved them. You saw them reduced to almost complete nudity, and you clothed them. You saw them tormented by hunger, and you nourished them. You saw them tormented by disease, and you looked after them. You saw them detained in a prison; and not content to visit and help them, you obtained their freedom. After so much benefactions spread on the Lord's anointed, it still seemed to you that you had done too little for them; your inexhaustible generosities, which had satisfied their present necessities, extended to their future needs. You did not want to receive the good-byes, without providing them with the resources for the road which remained them to be done; and your gifts led them to their place of destination. Nothing could prevent you from pursuing until the end the movements of the charity of Jesus Christ, who urged you to help His ministers: the mockeries, insults, and the threats of the Church's enemies were not able to cool your zeal, nor to slow down the course of your good work. These pitiless men marked your names on the list of death, but the God of all goodness registered them on the book of life.

Yes, our most beloved brothers, you dilated the saints' entrailles, that long worries had tightened: you provided them with the rest that they had not hoped to enjoy any more. Each soul opened out: it engaged a feeling that it no longer knew, to the satisfaction of still finding on the soil of France hearts sensitive to the misfortunes of others. For a long time they had been drinking in the chalice of tribulations: as soon as they had arrived within your walls, they were flooded by a torrent of delights.

You who were all our comforters, our benefactors, our liberators: how will we repay you for the gentle compassion which you showed us, for the charitable care which you lavished on us, and for the plentiful generosities with which you filled us? How will we discharge the debt of gratitude that we owe you in so many respects? Well, we cannot satisfy your generosity by reciprocal benefactions because God removed from us all our possessions in this world. But, in our asceticism, there remains in our hearts to love you with an eternal love: there remains on our lips to bless you before Heaven and Earth, to wish you every kind of prosperity in the possessions of nature and the gifts of grace, and happinesss in both the present and the future life. May all the Roman Catholic Church be informed of the alms that you poured so profusely on the bosom of its suffering priests, and celebrate them with us forever!

___________________________________________________

[Footnotes.]

1. M. Bourdon [Brother Protais], Guardian of the Capuchin Friars of Rouen, was attacked by a raging fever, which required his compannions to bind him with their handkerchiefs so as to protect him from the harmful effects of his transport. The surgeon summoned declared that the patient did not have a fever, and that the extraordinary speeches that he made were proof of a conspiracy woven by the deportees. The captain of the Deux Associés convened a military jury, who proposed shooting all the clergymen aboard the ship. A single officer stopped this dreadful precipitation, by stating that the existence of the plot should be noted, and, in the meantime, the alleged patient should be put in irons: this opinion prevailed. M. Bourdon was shackled; and, after having spent the rest of the day injuring himself with his shackles, he died during the middle of the night in dreadful agony [23rd August 1794].

The officer of health administered four to five grains of emetic to four dangerously ill clergymen; a little tepid water, which would have been necessary to activate this strong remedy, was refused them, and they perished in demented pains.

2. Here are the names of those who were the most well known: M. de Bonnay, Vicar General of Mâcon; M. de Brie, Vicar General of Arles; M. de Brigeat, Dean of the Avranches' Chapter; M. de Cardaillac, Vicar General of Cahors; M. Cordier, ex-Jesuit; M. Foucault, Archdeacon of Limoges; M. Gilbert, Vicar General of Angoulême; M. Imbert, ex-Jesuit and Vicar Apostolic of Moulins; P. Urbain Jacquemart, Procurator General of the Reformed Augustinians of France; M. de Longueil, Vicar General of Metz; M. de Luchet, Canon of Saints; M. de la Momagère, Vicar General of Bourges; M. de Omonville, Canon of Rouen; M. de Peret, Dean of La Sainte-Chapelle in Bar-le-Duc; M. Pétiniaud, Vicar General of Limoges; M. Brunel, Prior of the Abbey of La Trappe; M. de Richemont, Vicar General of Angoulême; M. Rolland, Vicar General of Mâcon; M. Souzy, Vicar General of La Rochelle; M. de Vassimont, Vicar General of Saint-Dieu.


[End of M.-B.-P. Bottin's monograph]

[Notes]

1. R. Peters, An Abridged Account of the Suffering of Almost Eight Hundred French Clergyman, ... [in the Île d'Aix Roads, 1794-95], translated from the original French: M.-B.-P. Bottin, Des souffrances de près de huit cents ecclésiastiques français,..., Crapart, Paris, 1796.

2. Father Marie-Bon-Philippe Bottin (1750-18..), who lived at Lagny-sur-Marne in the Canton of Meaux, was condemned to death as a non-juring priest on 16th October 1793, by the Criminal Tribunal of the Department of Seine and Oise; unfortunately, at the present time, other details of his life are not available.

3. On 2nd July 1994, His Holiness Pope Jean-Paul II beatified 64 priests who died on the hulks moored in the Île d'Aix Roads or on Île Madame, including Florent Dumontet de Cardaillac (died 5th September 1794), Jean-Nicolas Cordier (d. 30th September 1794), Joseph Imbert (d. 9th June 1794), Raymond Pétiniaud de Jourgnac (d. 26th June 1794), Scipion-Jérôme Brigeat Lambert (d. 4th September 1794), Jean-Baptiste Étienne Souzy (d. 27th August 1794), Nicolas Tabouillot (d. 23rd February 1795), (presumably) Gervais-Protais Brunel (a Cistercian monk from Mortagne, Father Priory the Abbey of La Trappe», d. 20th August 1794), and Pierre-Joseph Le Groing de La Romagère (d. 26th July 1794).

4. For a more detailed account of priests during the Terror, see that of Jacques Hérissay (1882-1969), Les Pontons de Rochefort, Paris, 1925 (republished by the Librairie de la Voûte, Paris, in 2000; 480 pages).

5. For an account of the second wave of deportations of priests, following the coup d’État of 18 Fructidor An V (4th September 1797), see that of Jean-Jacques Aymé (1752-1818), Déportation et naufrage de J. J. Aymé, ex-législateur ;..., Paris, Maradan, 1800.

6. R. Peters' Home Page.
[December 2004]