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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
There is a sense in which all naval history is general history, since the structure and preoccupations of a State influence both the services which it demands of its fleets and the type of naval organization appropriate to their performance. This relationship is most obvious in periods of social and political revolution when the navy, like other institutions, finds itself out of harmony with the principles of the new order. Such a situation arose in France in 1789 when the Constituent Assembly set about the transformation of so many aspects of French society. The study of naval politics in the period 1789–91 consequently helps towards a fuller understanding of the Revolution as a whole. The changes introduced into the French navy form a not unimportant part of the general reconstruction of France while the debates on naval policy often throw a revealing light on the political attitudes of the protagonists.
1 See, e.g., Chevalier, E., Histoire de la Marine Française sous la Première Rèpublique (1886), ch. IGoogle Scholar; Tramond, J., Manuel d’histoire maritime de la France dès origines à 1815 (1927), 549–60.Google Scholar
2 For example, Chevalier and C. Rouvier (Histoire des marins français sous la République (n.d.)) devote only five pages each to the work of the Constituent Assembly, Tramond no more than four.
3 For an excellent account of the reforms introduced by de Castries, Minister of Marine Oct. 1780–Aug. 1787, see the article by Micheline Leclère in Revue des Questions Historiques (1937), 28–62.
4 A[rchives] N[ationales], D XVI, 14; for a survey of the officer corps see M. Loir, La Marine Royale en 1789 (1892), chs. 2 and 6.
5 The Grand Corps formed the main branch of the naval service, recruited from the aristocracy. Its lowest rank was that of lieutenant.
6 A[rchives] P[arlementaires], IX, 355. Unless otherwise indicated, references to debates in the Constituent Assembly are drawn from this source.
7 Actes des Apôtres, XII, chap, CLXVI; Pons, Z., Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la ville de Toulon (1825), 298, 307.Google Scholar
8 A.N., D XVI, 1–3, 14.
9 ibid. D XVI, 14.
10 Ports, constructions, armaments, movements; supplies and munitions; personnel and naval conscription; accounts; colonies; appointments. See Lévy-Schneider, L., Le conventionnel Jeanbon Saint-André (1901), 317, n. 5.Google Scholar
11 Presumably inoperative after the creation of a separate Comité des Colonies on 2 March 1790.
12 For a description of this system see Leclère, art. cit. 44–50.
13 The election of syndics had been advocated by the naval officer of the Left, Kersaint, in a memorandum which he read to the Comité de Marine and which is preserved in the committee's archives (A.N., D XVI, 14).
14 For these observations, see A.P. XIII (19 April 1790), 117–20.
15 See A.P. XVII (26 July 1790), 346.
16 The replacement of la Poype-Vertrieux by the marquis de Cypières on 26 April had not affected the balance of political opinions. Cypières owed his place to the fact that he had come thirteenth in the voting for membership of the Committee on 13 Oct. 1789.
17 Cf. the sarcastic comment of the Ami du Roi on 16 June: ‘The Comité de Marine was several members short so they nominated some lawyers to bring it up to strength.’
18 Rather oddly, the moderate royalist newspaper, the Ami du Roi (27 June), praised de Curt's speech, from which it quoted extracts, including that reproduced above.
19 For the committee's proposals, amendments and final text of the deree, see Procès Verbal de l’Assemblée Constituante, XXVII.
20 The cale did not literally amount to keel-hauling, the offender being dropped from a yard-arm into the sea. See O’Hier de Grandpré, Répertoire de la Marine (1829) on the cale and the bouline.
21 For an account of this mutiny, see A.N., BB 4, 3, fos. 103–85.
22 For the subsequent history of the Ferme, see A.N., BB 4, 5 and BB 4, 12 passim, and BB 4, 26, fo. 07.
23 A curious paragraph in the Révolutions de Paris (no. 57) alleges that the naval authorities at Brest had prevented the celebration of the Fête de la Fédération on 14 July, in spite of Rions's participation in the ceremonies in Paris.
24 Révolutions de Paris, no. 63.
25 Rions had previously complained of the high proportion of novices in the fleet, and of their being drawn from the very dregs of society (A.N., BB 4, 1 fo. 48).
26 Marigny was to assume command ashore in Brest in 1791. He resigned in January 1792, helped in the defence of the Tuileries on 10 Aug. and later commanded the rebel artillery in the Vendee, where he was condemned to death for treason by Charette. The Comte d’Hector left the navy in 1791 to command the naval detachment of the émigrés. The suspicions of the Brest municipality were therefore perhaps not without foundation.
27 A.N., BB 4, 1, fo. 96. Révolutions de Paris, no. 63.
28 For this reason the ensuing debate has been treated summarily, except where naval issues are concerned.
29 Révolutions de France et de Brabant, no. 48. Menou affirmed on the 21st that several deputies who had contributed to the drafting of the committees’ motion voted against it on the floor of the Assembly.
30 For the text see A.N., D XVI, 14.
31 The committee appears to have procrastinated even where questions of principle were not involved. In July 1790 the Minister requested its intervention to amend a decree concerning seamen's pay, but in spite of his frequent prompting the committee had taken no action by December (A.N., D XVI, 2).
32 A.P., 30 Oct., 1790, XX 141.
33 Champagny's proposals and such others as the Assembly ordered to be printed are to be found in Procès Verbal de l’Assemblée Constituante, vols. XLIII, LI, LII and LII.
34 Champagny, who was presumably one of the two, definitely gives the impression that he approved of the committee's proposals.
35 Kersaint, in a brochure printed in January 1791 (dated in error 1790), affirmed that the committee had refused to listen to his own suggestions. A.N., D XVI, 14.
36 The fees at the two naval colleges of Vannes and Alais amounted to as much as 600 livres a year (Leclère, art. cit. p. 54).
37 See especially the long report in the Ami du Rot of 17 Jan. 1791.
38 La Galissonnière—who was to emigrate—and de Menonville were classified with the chevalerie française, Biauzat, somewhat inaccurately, with the Jacobins, enragés, etc. by the Actes des Apôtres, XII, no. CLXVI.
39 The list of committee members given at the end of the Constituent Assembly, in the A.P. erroneously refers to the election of Cypières on 7 Feb., together with that of another naval officer, de Montcalm-Gozon. The latter is described in J. F. E. Robinet, A. Robert and J. Le Chaplain (Dictionnaire Historique et Biographique de la Révolution et de l’Empire (n.d.)) as having emigrated in 1790. A. Brette (Les Constituants (1897)) does not mention his resigning from the Assembly, but if he was elected to the Comité de Marine, there is no evidence of his having participated in its work.
40 A.P., 1 March, xxiii, 586.
41 Journal de Paris, 17 April 1791. The Annales Patriotes of 18 April reported that the evening session on the 18th had been cancelled because of the time taken up by the naval debate. According to the Ami du Rot (18 April), the debate had provoked ‘one of the most furious storms that have shaken the national arena’.
42 Courtier des 83 Départements, 20 April 1791.
43 20 April 1791.
44 See the Ami du Roi, 21 April 1791, for the measures taken to prevent discrimination by merchant navy captains against the employment of midshipmen from the royal navy.
45 Mahan, who gives the date of the decree as 1790 instead of 1791, has been led by his reliance on Chevalier into misrepresenting its implications. As a result of the concessions made by the Comité de Marine it is clear that those who aspired to high rank in the royal navy would find it expedient, if not absolutely necessary, to begin as aspirants and thereafter to serve as regularly as circumstances permitted in fighting ships. The system created was not radically dissimilar to that obtaining in Britain (see Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1, 51–4, and Chevalier, Histoire de la Marine Française sous la Première République, 24–7). Tramond, in his Manuel d’Histoire Maritime de la France, 557—9, is mistaken in claiming that Malouet alone defended the separation of the two services, deserted by the naval members of the Assembly who were mainly concerned with their own promotion. His allegation that the new measure was intended to hand over the navy to the bourgeoisie is neither convincing nor relevant to the question whether naval officers, whatever their social origin, should be separated from their colleagues in the merchant service.
46 In a memorandum to the Comité de Marine la Luzerne had suggested dealing even more drastically with the sub-lieutenants, to prevent the new navy from being filled with elderly lieutenants (A.N., D xvi, 14).
47 See Malouet's Mémoires (2nd edn., 1874), ii, 150–1.
48 D’André's delaying tactics appear to have prevented any decision on the supply services being taken before the session of the Constituent Assembly came to an end.