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impetuous-impulse · 1 year ago

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Ruthless Representatives, Unjust Executions (2/3): Tribunals and Arrests

In Part 1 of this series, I listed three memoirs that included details on Saint-Just condemning an artillery captain to death and described their inconsistencies. @josefavomjaaga has noted that the overall arc of the story is still true, which raises the question: did the captain actually get executed?

Dr. Lawrence Joseph Fischer, in his paper about Jourdan’s career in the Revolutionary army, says of this affair: "The evidence reveals that much of this was threat only; the artillery captain, for example, was never guillotined.” He adds in a footnote: "Such punishments were announced in each order of the day; no such execution, or even arrest, of any artillery captain was ever announced, either before or after Fleurus." (p. 214) If the artillery captain was executed, there would have to written evidence, because if there was one thing civilians were good at doing, it was paperwork!

Indeed, a look through official documents of the representatives, such as vol. 2 of the Œuvres completes of Saint-Just, turns up no news about the execution of an artillery captain. However, Saint-Just's Œuvres do contain correspondence and proclamations that Saint-Just made during his time as a representative in the Army of the Nord. The text shows that despite threatening executions around every corner, Saint-Just does not act on his word as much as expected.

First off, the decree for forming the extrajudicial military tribunals that Saint-Cyr condemned (cited by @josefavomjaaga in this post) indeed did exist. It was proclaimed on 4 May 1794, the second time Saint-Just and Le Bas went to the Nord. See pages 404, and 406-407, documents number 2. and 7., for more details.

7. The Representatives of the People to the Army of the Nord decree the following: Article 1. — The agents or partisans of the enemy who are found either in the Army of the Nord, or in the surroundings of this army, the prevaricating agents in all posts of the same army, will be shot in the presence of the army. Article 2. — The military tribunal sitting at Réunion-sur-Oise is raised to this effect by the special and revolutionary Commission and will not, for the cases mentioned above, be subject to any particular form of procedure. Article 3. — The tribunal will pronounce in the same manner in the fate of those imprisoned at Réunion-sur-Oise if they know agents or partisans of the enemy. To Réunion-sur-Oise, 15 floréal, year II of the Republic one and indivisible. LE BAS, SAINT-JUST. (pp. 406-407)

Two further decrees of 21 floréal/10 May adds the military tribunal are authorised to print their verdicts, and affirms that “until further notice the military tribunal of the army will make judgements without being bound by the formality of the jury.” (pp. 413-414) Saint-Just and Le Bas give their reasoning in the following document of 27 floréal/16 May:

Proclamation to the Army of the Nord Soldiers, We call you back to rigourous dicipline, which alone can make you conquer, and which spares our blood; abuses have crept in among you; we have resolved to repress them. Those who provoke the infantry to disband in front of the enemy cavalry, those who leave the line before combat, during the combat, or during the retreat, will be arrested on the hour and punished by death. All cantonments will carry out patrols; they will recognise errant soldiers and arrest them; if they flee, they [the patrols] will fire. Soldiers, we will do you justice; we will punish those who refused it to you; we will share your work; but whoever deviates from his duty will be struck with a prompt death. […] (pp. 414-415)

These proclamations are extreme in its character, but I don’t doubt that indiscipline was occurring in the army. On 25 priarial/13 June, the Representatives specify that anyone convicted of having commandering supplies, implying that such excesses occurred, would be brought to the tribunal and punished with death (p. 430). We can debate whether the representatives’ proclamations were the cause of more privations and desertions, but there was reason for the representatives to watch the armies on the north-eastern frontier so closely. Fischer, in his paper on Jourdan, assesses the army of the Nord pre-Jourdan:

[...] the generals of the 'Nord' worked amid the aftereffects of the Dumouriez conspiracy. The sudden treason of the most powerful general of the Republic had shaken the government greatly. To men such as Robespierre and St Just, who had been weaned on the classics and the tales of military usurpers such as Sulla and Julius Caesar, all generals became objects of suspicion. [...] Because the 'Nord' had been Dumouriez'[s] army, its officers fell under particular scrutiny. The representatives with the 'Nord' were issued specific instructions to root out any who might have been Dumouriez'[s] accomplices. In such an atmosphere honest mistakes could easily be misconstrued as treasonous acts, and treasonous acts could bring execution to those who committed them. (pp. 48-49)

This also explains why so many specific accounts of representatives using disproportionate measures are found in memoirs of soldiers from the Nord, the Sambre-et-Meuse, and the Rhin-et-Moselle. By contrast, when recalling Toulon, Victor also mentions the representatives in his Memoires inédits, calling the representatives acclaimations "frenetic" and critizing revolutionary ideals as "bellicose" (p. 13), but his descriptions of the representatives are markedly less acerbic than Soult’s or Saint-Cyr's. The threats of the representatives of the Nord succeeded in creating an atmosphere of fear among the army cadres in the northeast, but whether they were uniformly as formidable across France is another question.

If the representatives did threaten officers with death, the fact remains to see if they carried it out, especially if there is printed evidence. Curiously, in Saint-Just’s oeuvres, I could only find two instances of dismissals and two instances of arrests, and none of them exhibit the bloodlust contemporary memoirists associate with Saint-Just. The first, dated 19 floréal/8 May, is this:

The Representatives of the People to the Army of the North decide that citizen Plaideux, general of brigade of the Army of the North, will retire to the Ministry of War, the Army of the Nord not having for the moment any need of his services. (p. 410)

So what happened to Plaideux? According to Georges Six’s Dictionnaire biographique des généraux et amiraux français de la Révolution et de l'Empire : 1792-1814, vol. 2, he was additionally issued an arrest warrant on 21 April of the same year. However, on 14 August, he assumed detachable command at Béthune, and on 6 November, he took up the post of general of brigade in the Laclaire devision (p. 318). In other words, he was back to work in three months. No executions here.

Saint-Just issued the other dismissal on 1 messidor/19 June:

Considering the citizen Capella, chef de brigade, commanding the 132nd demi-brigade, had neither the knowledge nor the energy necessary to fill a post so important; That this demi-brigade, composed of bataillons who have acquired in the war the highest reputation, has been exposed to see its glory eclipsed by an unable leader and his character, notably on the day of the 28th of the previous month, under the very eyes of the Reperesentants of the people; We decree that the citizen Capella will cease to be employed. He will present himself to the War Ministry his service records to obtain his retirement. (p. 433)

Next, the representatives promote Pouchin, captain of the 4th battalion of la Manche, in place of Capella, and orders that “all officers, non-commissioned officers, and soldiers acknowledge him and obey him according to military laws. Just like in Plaideux’s case, nowhere does Saint-Just order the execution of Capella, and despite Capella's incompetencies, Saint-Just does not sentence him to the extrajudicial military tribunal where he would have met certain death.

As for the arrest warrants, such as the one on 29 priarial/18 June, Saint-Just justifies them thus:

The Representatives of the People to the Armies of the Nord, the Moselle, and Ardennes, On the account given to them by the general of division Kléber that, yesterday, the second battalion of the Vienne fled shamefully before the enemy, during which the flags of the other battalions from two divisions of the Army of the Nord flew on the road to victory, and that it ignored ther voice of the general who called him back to his post; Considering that the crime cannot be of the entire battalion, because the bravery and the hatred of tyrants exist in the hearts of all the French and that, when a troop leaves their battle post, the cause is in the cowardice of officers or in the negligence of those tasked to maintain the discipline and to shape the soldiers they command to have a love of glory, which consists of braving the dangers of war and to conquer or to die at the post that the fatherland has conferred them; Decree that the chef de bataillon and all the captains of the second battalion of the Vienne will be dismissed and put under arrest; They will be replaced on spot according to the law. The chief of staff will execute the present decree. (pp. 432-433)

While this may seem extreme, knowing Saint-Just’s fanatic reputation, we might have expected him to force the representatives and generals to put the whole battalion to death. Moreover, this decree shows that generals in high command "tip off" the representatives on military indiscipline for them to correct, which I am sure deserting during a victory would count as. That said, the civilian respresentatives' attempts to rectify this military indiscipline may have caused irritation among the officers.

Notice that the proclamation also does not condemn the rightfully arrested to the military tribunals, as the Representatives have promised earlier, and that for the second time, these dissmisals and arrests decree all procedures to be done in accordance to the law. It is far cry from the disregard the representatives seem to have for the law and for the words of the generals, as they say their declaration of the military tribunal. And when prisoners are to be tried, it is also according to "the law", as in this proclamation on 1 messidor/19 June.

The Representatives of the People to the Armies of the Nord, the Moselle, and Ardennes, Approve the nomination made on the battlefield by the general of division Marceau of citizen Verger, captain of the carabiniers, to the rank of chef of the 1st battalion of the 9th demi-brigade of light infantry, and decree that the officer who commanded that battalion at that time and who refused to rally it despite the orders of the general, will be dismissed, put under arrest, and brought before the military commission established at the headquarters of the combined armies, to be judged in accordance to the law. The chief of staff is charged with executing this present decree. (pp. 434-435)

This proclamation raises a few questions. Is the military commission the same as the military tribunal, and if it is, is it following the laws of decree that the Representatives proclaimed on 15 floréal/4 May? If all the above are true, and Verger was found to be an agent of the enemy, then this is the only instance that the military tribunal had their hand in an execution.

Even so, Verger was not arrested for not being patriotic enough, but due to direct insubordination on the battlefield, as Marceau's actions indicate. Of course, Marceau may not have wanted to condemn his captain to arrest even with his insubordination, or one could argue that the representatives forced Marceau to denounce Verger. We would be here all day if we were to debate how much the representatives' paperwork differed from their historical actions. The bottom line is that despite all the threats the representatives have made about giving disobedient soldiers a prompt death, very few of the arrested individuals were made to appear before the military tribunals or were sentenced to death on paper. Furthermore, all the arrestations appear to be for actual offenses, even if said arrests are disproportionate to the offences.

Because of the comparatively lenient nature of the arrest warrants in Saint-Just's Œuvres, I am inclined to think tales of Saint-Just's ruthlessness, while not unfounded, are greatly exaggerated. Feel free to add any additional information.

#louis antoine de saint just #memoirs #representatives #frev #revolutionary army

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impetuous-impulse · 1 year ago

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Ruthless Representatives, Unjust Executions (1/3): the Death of an Artillery Captain

This is a response to @josefavomjaaga's recent post, which partially deals with the alleged arrest and execution of an artillery captain by Saint-Just, then a representative on mission, during the siege of Charleroi, and the representatives' abuse of military men around the time of the battle of Fleurus. Josefa enquired whether anyone could shed light on this incident from the FRev community. While I am not well-versed in FRev events, I would like to offer some of my findings about military justice in the army during the Revolution in relation to the representatives in three parts. The first part deals directly with the tale of Saint-Just's execution of the artillery captain, and how it was turned into a symbol that exemplifies the Revolution's extrajudicial violence. All translation errors are my own.

The source about Saint-Just's terrorisation and execution of the artillery captain that is cited the most is from Soult’s memoirs (1854). Writers, including Colonel Phipps, use this source verbatim without questioning it, because Saint-Just and all the representatives were obviously Stupid Civilians who thought that any incompletion of their orders amounted to betrayal:

It was above all the siege division which deployed with activity before Charleroi. The colonel Marescot directed the engineering operations, under the eyes of Generals Jourdan and Hatry; we had a sufficient artilery crew, and the representatives Saint-Just and Lebas stood at the foot of the trench to speed up the work. One day, they visited the site of a battery that had just been marked out: "At what time will it be finished?" asked Saint-Just of the captain responsible for having it executed. "That depends on the number of workers that I will be given; but we will work relentlessly," responded the officer. "If tomorrow, at six o'clock, she is not ready to fire, your head will fall off!..." In this short time, it was impossible for the work to be completed; even though as many men were put there as the space could contain. It was not entirely finished when the fatal hour struck; Saint-Just kept his horrible promise: the artillery captain was immediately arrested and sent to his death, because the scaffold marched in the wake of the ferocious representatives. (pp. 156-157)

Saint-Just, in Soult's depiction, is the proper Archangel of Death, guillotining everything that stands in his path. In portraying Saint-Just thus, Soult criticizes the representatives' murder of an innocent man. Worse, he depicts representatives as civilians that can only stand around instead of hardworking soldiers bringing the siege to fruition, making their commands unjustified. Soult condemns the fact that a civilian's word could be the injust law that separated soldiers from life or death.

That said, as Soult is no friend of the political figures of the Revolution, his remembered account requires precise corroboration to be valid. I found one earlier source that describes, presumably, the same incident, from Victoires, conquêtes, désastres, revers et guerres civiles des Français, de 1792 à 1815, vol. 3. It was written in 1817 by "a society of soldiers and men of letters", and edited by Charles Théodore Beauvais de Préau, a general of the Revolution and Empire. Though this anonymisation may have been taken to avoid the wrath of the Bourbons in the Restoration, it means we have no idea who wrote the following section, nor their intentions:

This fierce man [Saint-Just], who never showed himself in the trench, informed that a captain of the first regiment of artillery had been somewhat negligent in the construction of a battery of which he was in charge, had him shot in the trench. At the same time, he gave General Jourdan the order to arrest, and consequently have shot on the spot, the General Hatry, commander of the besieging troops, the General Bellemont, commander of the artillery, and the commander Marescot. The General Jourdan had, at the risk of his own life, the courage to resist the wishes of this gutless representative. The officers of whom we have just spoken of had the audacity of protesting against the cruel sentence which condemned the unfortunate artillery captain Méras, and, in his his atrocious delirium, Saint-Just dared to accuse them of complicity. (p. 47)

If we infer from the title of this source that the editor compiled the accounts of his comrades, then this account was written by a former Revolutionary and Imperial officer who could have some memory of the incident. However, many aspects of this text don’t line up with Soult’s account, including the way the captain was executed (shot in the trench here, guillotined in Soult's account). Saint-Just's successive condemnation of high-ranking officers, which highlights how much power he had over even the highest echelons of the army, also does not appear in Soult's account. But we do have a name for the captain: Méras. His name, in fact, appears in a 1797 publication: L'observateur impartial aux armées de la Moselle, des Ardennes, de Sambre et Meuse, et la Rhine et Moselle, a memoir by Pierre Charles Lecomte, at the time "the conducteur general of the artillery in the Army of the Rhin-Moselle [sic]". This is his account on the affair, relegated to a footnote:

Before giving the details of the capitulation of Charleroi, I must cite a horrible feature of the role of Representative Saint-Just. The French proconsul ordered the construction of a battery that he thought was necessary.* The general Bollemont [sic] entrusted its execution to an artillery captain, named Méras. All the shovels, pickaxes, and other utensils happened to be employed in other work, the orders of the Representative could not be executed. The morning of the next day, passing close to the location where the battery was supposed to be constructed, he [Saint-Just] shouted, raged, sent to search for the captain; and, without listening to his reasons, he had him arrested. Two days later, when his [Méras’] company was battling against the enemy, he [Saint-Just] had him taken from the prison, he had him conducted to the middle of his works; and there, o misery! o inhumanity! he had him assassinated. At night his company returned to the camp covered in glory; they learned that their chief had been shot; they surrendered to despair. They wanted to go to the tyrant: they were stopped, under the fear that some of these brave soldiers would have become new victims. Méras was so much loved, that all of the artillery wanted to enact vengeance on his assassin. This almost universal rumour made itself heard amongst the trenches; and, for preventing it from having consequences, the company of the unfortunate Méras was sent into the interior. *We know that there was a time when the Representatives, often little-instructed in the military arts, dared impudently to command old soldiers whose arms had dulled, and obliged them to sacrifice, according to their whims, some thousands of brave soldiers. (p. 38-39)

Once again, the details contradict even more with Soult’s account, and with that of the 1817 one. Soult says as much help as possible was given to the artillery captian, but Lecomte says all other workers were occupied and that captain received little help (presumably because the battery was militrarily unimportant). Méras’ misery is stretched out over two days instead of him being shot immediately, and it is not the generals who protested against Méras' execution that Saint-Just raises a hand against, but Méras' entire company, which the civilian government sends to the Vendée. The message could not be clearer: under "tyrannical representatives" like Saint-Just, the Revolution is eating its soldiers, the common people it was supposed to protect.

Is this the truth of the matter, since it is the earliest version? The publication is contemporary enough, but I am inclined to doubt the reliability of a text explicitly titled “impartial”. A look at the author's background reveals his attitudes. Lecomte was, according to BnF data, the maître de pension in Versailles until 1792 (presumably up to the abolishment of the monarchy), then the inspector of octroi taxes in Paris until 1815. Seeing that he served the First Empire, I am inclined to think that he was no die-hard revolutionary, and certainly not part of the Montagnard faction. Furthermore, he published his account after the fall of the Montagnards, during the height of the Directory. This makes the affair more likely to be Thermidorian propaganda, and indeed Lecomte even admits that his account was an “almost universal rumour”, not a fact, because in his story, no one is present at the scene of Méras’ death other than Saint-Just and his executioner. This makes the account unverifiable, and makes it more likely to be fabrication.

It would seem that, after Saint-Just’s death, the army’s fear and hatred of representatives turned into slander against their characters, often resulting in widely circulated variants of the same tale to emphasise different effects. The 1797 version highlights Saint-Just’s cruelties as a tyrant against the “small folk” of the Revolution and uses exclamatory language to amplify the reader's pathos. The 1817 version emphasises Saint-Just’s power over even the generals of the army, exaggerating his dictatorship. Finally, in Soult’s memoir, Saint-Just is not just a dictator who could dismiss soldiers with a wave of a hand. He and the representatives were synonymous with the guillotine and the excesses of the Revolution themselves.

The accounts of Saint-Just condemning Méras to death are inconsistent, and should amount to nothing more than invalid hearsay, which tells us nothing of the representatives' historical actions. If anyone has more information on the topic or the wider subject, feel free to add to this.

#jean-de-dieu soult #louis antoine de saint-just #frev #representatives #memoirs #revolutionary army

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