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General Rossignol a ’Sans-culottes’ who loved Praslin Island.

By Julien Durup, a student of history

General Jean Antoine Rossignol was born from a poor family on 7 November 1759 at in the faubourg of Saint-Antoine, Paris. After his death the French politician/historian François René de Chateaubriand (a Breton and founder of Romanticism in French literature), accredited him to his last following words in articulos mortis: "I die overwhelm with horrible pain, but I will die happy if I could learn that the tyrant of my homeland shall endure the same fate”.

 

General Jean Antoine Rossignol 1759-1802  from Wikipedia

General Rossignol started work as jeweller but later on went on a six months foray to look for work in Bordeaux, La Rochelle and Niort in Poitou-Charentes. On his return, he found part time employment with various jewellers.   He later joined the army under the Ancien Régime (Former Regime). In August 1775, he was posted in Dunkirk in an Infantry Regiment. In 1783 he took leave and restarted his former business. During the Revolution as a “Sans-culottes”, he took part in the capture of La Bastille and was promoted sergeant and acting officer. In 1792, he was made captain during the Vendée War, a year later was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel. He was later denounced with General Charles-Rossin by Pierre Philippeaux a jurist who was later guillotined. Rossignol regained his post after being defended by Georges Danton and supported by Maximilien Robespierre and the Convention.  He was again promoted to General and headed an army in Brest and later in Cherbourg.

He was destitute by the Comité de Salut Public and he relinquished his command and retired in Orléans as a civilian. He was imprisoned on 2 August 1794 and liberated on 25 October 1795 by an armistice. He was again arrested and imprisoned from May to April 1797 and was free by the High Court of Vendôme. He later re-joined the army and was alleged to have supported a clandestine military opposition.      

Napoleon detested him and banished him from Paris after his coup d’état of 18 brumaire. Napoleon later used the attempt at Saint-Nicaise which was organised by the English to get rid of him. He was imprisoned like many innocents Jacobins and condemned for deportation to the Seychelles. They left Paris and transported at night through Nantes en route to Saint Nazaire to board two corvettes; the Chiffonne thatarrived in the Seychelles with the first group of Jacobin deportees on Quintidi 25 Messidor An IX (Tuesday 14 July 1801) after 7 months at sea. Later on, in September of the same year the second batch of Jacobin deportees arrived on board the Flèche under Captain Eustache Bonamy.

Afterlanding at Mahé, Rossignol addressed his fellow compatriots, and said “Friends! please do not be alarmed, we will again see our homeland. The monster that had sent us here will end violently. The ‘New Nero’ (Napoleone Bounaparte). He will finish his career sooner that you imagine. France will not stay long under the yoke of this oppressor. He will perish, and the news of his death will be to our deliverance”.

As soon as he arrived, Captain Pierre Guieysse of the Chiffonne convened a meeting with the notables and it was decided that the deportees were allowed to stay and that the Seychelles authorities were obliged to feed them.

Captain Charles Adam, a Scot, who had captured the Chiffonne which was under repaired in the Seychelles Harbour visited the deportees and wanted some of them to go with him to India. But they said that they wanted to stay under the orders of the French Government, even though during that time the Seychelles had capitulated to the British..

Meanwhile Malavois, and Jean-François Hodoul were the main culprits who saw their presence as undesirable and managed later on to convince the authorities to expel the deportees.  As soon as he arrived, Rossignol avoided any confrontation with the authorities and went into self-exile at Praslin, where he fell in love with the island and very rarely came to Mahé.  At Praslin he was staying with Captain Jean Sausse, a native of Fréjus, in Var, France, and Sausse was doing direct business with La Réunion from the small island of Praslin.

Early in 1802, some high officials at Mahé, headed by Louis Mondon masterminded, with the authorisation of Queau-Quincy, a well organised vicious plot to get rid of the most intellectuals of the deportees, including Rossignol. Before the first meeting, Mondon advised the deportees to elect someone as leader to represent them on the committee to discuss all the arrangements. So they wrote to Rossignol at Praslin to come over to Mahé. Arriving back at Mahé, Rossignol attended the first meeting with other Jacobins. During the meeting Mondon said, “If we believe you, you will buy a boat to take you to Europe. If you do not have the necessary finances, we will loan you the sum under guarantee from your fortunes in France.”    They came up with the idea of getting a boat for the deportees to get away.  That plan was a ruse; and all they wanted to know was what the plans of the deportees were, to enable  them to press their case in Isle de France for the banishment of the deportees outside the Seychelles Islands.

In the next meeting Mondon said that they have found a boat  from Jean Planeau and that boat will be sold in the name of Jean-Baptiste Vanneck, an ex-army commandant and richest of the deportees. The next plan involved certain Mr Conan who was supposed to provide them with a boat and some slaves and then arrange to take them to Europe and later they were told that Captain Sausse would take them to Mozambique where they could  acquire Portuguese citizenship and that would allow them to easily  move back to France. At the last meeting Mondon (who knew that a man-of-war  was on its way to remove the unwanted deportees) ceased the ruse and informed the deportees that the authorities had stopped supporting the project.

With continuous pressure from Hodoul, Malavois and others, General Magallon de la Morlière, the Governor of Isle de France (Mauritius), decided to send the Corvette Belier, under the command of the Créole, Captain Victor André Garit Hulot, as well as a number of troops under the command of Captain Joseph Lafitte of the 8th Artillery Regiment. They arrived on 11 March 1802 and the deportees were taken by surprise when they were surrounded and arrested by an armed contingent headed by Mondon, and Savy that was mainly comprised of slaves. They were put into a large shed, and later Captain Lafitte read Magallon’s order to Rossignol regarding sending them to the Anjouan, popularly known by mariners as Johanna in the Comoros. Rossignol replied that he could only obey the government and that he would simply advise his comrades to do likewise. Lafitte then formed an official group of investigation comprising of himself and two residents. After interrogating all of the deportees they selected 37, including Rossignol, for immediate deportation. They left Mahé via Frigate Island on 13 March 1802 for the Comoros, and after a short period in Anjouan, most of deportees died. Rossignol was the first of them to die at Mutsamudu on 27 April 1802 as a result of an epidemic.  Many others managed to escape by visiting ships that called at Mutsamudu.

Arriving at Anjouan, Lafitte presented to Sultan Seyyid Abdullah bin Mohamed, in a form of a bribery, gifts from Magallon for the Sultan to keep the deportees. The gifts consisted of two 8-pounder cannons, with 100 cannon balls, 16 bales of red cloth, 12 barrels of powder and 40 new muskets. The Corvette Bélier then returned to Mauritius and sailed to Pondicherry, and later back to France.

Ref:

 

1. Adrien Bélanger : Rossignol, un plébain dans la tourmente révolutionnaire : ISBN 2-9523207-0-7
2. Attentat de la Rue Saint-Nicaise-Wikipédia.
3.   Hippolyte Magen : Histoire de la Terreur Bonapartiste : 1852.         
4. Jean-Baptiste-Antoine LeFranc: Les Infortunes de plusieurs Victimes de la tyrannie de Napoléon Buonaparte : Seychelles National Archives.
5. Letter of 22 pages of the deportees that remained in the Seychelles to the Colonial Prefect of Isle de France: TB11/8: Mauritius National Archives.
6. Ternaux Mortimer: Histoire de la Terreur, 1792-1794.
7. Victor Barrucaud : La vie véritable du Citoyen Jean Rossignol vainqueur de la Bastille et Général  en Chef des armées de la République dans la guerre de Vendée : Paris 1820.
8. William McAteer: Rivals in Eden 1991. Chapters 10 and 11.