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Description
[Chouannerie]
Secret negotiations, pacification of the West, third insurrection in the Vendée, November 1799
Manuscript, 13 pp., large quarto, bound collection of sheets, Brumaire and Frimaire, Year VIII (November 1799), certified true copies by General Gabriel d’Hédouville, of the correspondence detailing, day by day, the direct negotiations conducted between the Republican command and the principal leaders of the third Vendée and Chouan uprising, immediately following Napoleon Bonaparte’s coup d’état on 18 Brumaire.
Correspondence exchanged between General d’Hédouville and the key figures of the revolt: the Count of Châtillon, the Count of Autichamp, and the Viscountess Turpin de Crissé, acting as a mediator. The major leaders Bourmont, Frotté and Suzannet are explicitly named and implicated.
The correspondence begins on 25 Brumaire (16 November), just one week after Bonaparte seized power. It reveals the crucial role played by Madame Turpin de Crissé (Henriette de Bougars, widow of Viscount Turpin de Crissé). A member of the Anjou nobility, she served as a diplomatic ‘bridge’. She vouched for the moral integrity of the elderly Chouan leader M. de Châtillon, thereby helping to establish the essential initial climate of trust between the two sides. In her letter of 6 Frimaire, she confirms that she had brought together the leading figures of the insurrection (Frotté, Bourmont, Autichamp, Châtillon), proving that her efforts had succeeded in uniting the royalist leaders around the negotiating table.
In his reply of 25 Brumaire, Hédouville scrupulously followed Bonaparte’s instructions: no political recognition: ‘the Government will not negotiate. It is not possible for the Government to recognise, in any way whatsoever, the meeting of the leaders’. The Republic refused to negotiate on an equal footing with rebels; instead, it opted for clemency and civil guarantees: in exchange for submission to the law, the authorities guaranteed the safety of property and persons and, in a fundamental new development, the ‘free exercise of religion’.
The letters of 26 November (from Châtillon and d’Autichamp) reveal the chaotic reality on the ground. The ceasefire had just been signed, but the momentum of violence persisted. Writing from Candé (26 November 1799), the Chouan leader, the Count of Châtillon, offers his formal apologies for a serious incident: the arrest by his troops of Republican officers bearing the terms of the truce. He promises to make an ‘exemplary example’ of the culprits. He also mentions that the Republican aide-de-camp Dalton has been escorted safely to Rennes and confirms his secret meeting at the Château d’Angrie with Frotté and d’Autichamp. Hédouville’s reply commends his loyalty in the face of provocations from the ‘extremists’ on both sides. On the same date, the Vendée general, the Count d’Autichamp, denounces the fury of certain local Republican soldiers ‘who have slit the throats of women and infants in their cradles’, reports that he is combating banditry amongst the rearguard and has had two thieves shot. Hédouville thanked him and proposed that the Republican forces join his own to eradicate banditry. Hédouville also granted protection and safe-conducts to the wounded commanders, notably the Count of Suzannet.
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