Watkin Tench

“ The memory of Robespierre they have uniformly affected to hold in abhorrence; but if I may trust to a hint, which was imparted to me on board the prison-ship, very different was once the tone of Captain Le Franq, and all his officers. They now load the character of this extraordinary man, before whom, not six months since, they prostrated themselves like reptiles, with all the assassinations and misery which have overspread France during the last two years. To him alone, it seems, every crime which stains the national character is imputable. ”

“ Indeed, a ship is in all situations very unfavourable to scrupulous nicety; but no description can convey an adequate idea to a British naval officer, who has not witnessed it, of the gross and polluted state in which the French habitually keep all parts of their vessels, if I may judge from what I see in this. And to complete the jest, Captain Le Franq has more than once boasted to us of the superior attention which he pays to the cleanliness of his ship. ”

“ What stronger proof of the depravity of this legislative assembly can be adduced than their perpetual deliberate acts of treachery towards each other, in betraying private conversations, which have passed among themselves? Their annals are full of it. How many of their members have been hurried by it to the guillotine; and how many more have been supplanted in the public favour by the informers!
The thirst for dissipation is not lessened; but whence the means which enable many of the French to pursue it in its present form are derived, is a mystery. ”

“ My opinion is very different; and I am persuaded, that if the Charibean islands were at this moment independant states, our shipping would not be less numerous (for our immense capital would flow into other channels) nor would sugar, rum, coffee, and Barbadoes water, be less attainable to administer to our luxury. If the opulence of England be founded on the basis of African slavery; if the productions of the tropics can be dispensed to us only by the blood and tears of the negro, I do not hesitate to exclaim—“Perish our commerce;” let our humanity live! ”

“ In this attitude he stood all the evening, and thrusting himself among the ladies, had the impudence to enter into familiar conversation with the Marchioness de Ploeuc, and other women of rank and delicacy, with all the airs which conscious superiority of power can instil into a reptile. This brutal manner of mingling in society, and addressing women, has become, since the revolution, the ton of republican coxcombs, and during the reign of Robespierre set decorum and the restraints of civilized life at defiance. ”

“ Paine is not destined to shine on the theatre of French politics. But whither shall he retire to better his fortune, and re-lume his fame? America would now prove a sterile and unproductive soil for the transplantation of such a genius; while ungrateful Europe (the French dominions excepted) shutting every avenue against him, bids him wander, like a second Cain, without an asylum, or a resting-place. ”

“ A man who has seen only this skirting of France would demonstrate the highest degree of presumption, were he to pretend to draw a parallel between it and England; but, to confine myself to what I have seen here, I may venture to affirm, that civilization, luxury, a general diffusion of the comforts of life, or by whatever other name you please to call it, is more advanced in Cornwall and Wales than it was in this province, even before the revolution. ”

“ We eat with the officers of the ship, who are allowed a traitement, or table-money, of three livres six sols a day, besides a ration of provisions, for each of us; so that the fault does not seem to be imputable to the government. But either the markets of Brest are extravagantly dear, or these patriotic gentlemen make an advantage of us; for hardly a day passes in which we have a sufficiency of any thing but coarse brown, or rather black, bread, so full of sandy particles as to be almost uneatable. ”

“ The sublime music of this fine lyric composition, the gaiety breathed by the Carmagnole, and by many other popular airs which are continually in their mouths, during their most ordinary occupations, must produce a prodigious effect on the pliant minds of Frenchmen, and highly contribute to invigorate that spirit of idolatry for a republic, and that hatred and contempt of monarchy, which it is so much the interest of their leaders to encourage. I need not point out to you the good policy of such national establishments, and how deep a knowledge of human nature they manifest ”

“ I mean ship-building. Our vessels want length, and in the construction of their bottoms are undeniably very inferior to those of our enemies. Hence the continual escapes of the French fleets from ours, by superior sailing, when we want to bring them to action, which no skill, diligence, or bravery in our commanders can surmount. We possess models from which we might learn to correct our errors, and supply our deficiencies; but these patterns we are more ready{41} to destroy than to imitate, as if fearful lest comparison of them with our own productions should demonstrate our inferiority. ”

“ I live with the most rigid frugality, and yet cannot bound my expences within less than 250 livres a week. It is certain that false assignats abound; and the tongue of malevolence has not scrupled to assert, that many of them have been issued from the national treasury, “in order to lessen the public debt, when the day of presentation for payment shall arrive.” Remember, I do not pretend to state this as more than the whisper of party. It is evident that the habits, which this plenty of the medium of exchange, however obtained, creates, are destructive of all industry. ”

“ The national taste has suffered equal degradation. The dramas of Racine, and the odes and epistles of Boileau, are supplanted by crude declamatory productions, to which the revolutionary spirit has given birth. The French have been almost as ingenious as ourselves. ”

“ Every where I see the dove-cotes demolished, which were the earliest victims of the first revolution; and I cannot lament their overthrow. The game-law now established{142} gives liberty to every one to kill what game he may find upon his own ground, or that which he rents; and if any person, without leave, shoot on his neighbour’s ground, he pays for each offence a fine of ten livres. How superior is this simple regulation, conceived in a spirit of equity, to a perplexed and odious code of penal statutes for the preservation of hares and partridges! ”

“ All the judicial institutions of their navy, and the punishments allowed to be inflicted, as well as the cases to which they apply, are strictly defined. The conseil de discipline is impowered to try only inferior officers and men. The officers of the état major (answering nearly to those of our ward-room) and all above them, can be tried only by a board of officers, who assemble in the admiral’s ship. Neither of these courts has the power of condemning to death: all offences of a capital nature must be tried before the revolutionary tribunal. ”

“ They all, however, consoled themselves in believing that the information was unfounded. “How,” said they, “can we credit any thing which our enemies tell us? How many victories have not we been commanded to celebrate, which were gained only in the fertile inventions of those who fabricated them, and issued the orders! Did they not assure us, that the English fleet was defeated, and almost utterly destroyed, in the engagement of the first of June? ”

“ To return to my subject.—The present period is certainly an interesting one in the history of the revolution. The convention is not popular, and every day loses ground in the affection of the people. You can form no adequate idea of the closeness with which its proceedings are scrutinized, and the asperity with which they are attacked, in the news-papers, and in private circles. Since I have resided among the French, freedom of opinion and speech has made an extraordinary progress. ”

“ To hear them, one would suppose that he is the only man in England hostile to their growing republic. Even{17} Captain Le Franq, who has certainly hitherto behaved towards us with more delicacy than the other officers, did not scruple to call him “a Robespierre.” To argue with these people I find impossible; “but to be grave exceeds all power of face.” My only resource, on such occasions, is to ask some question foreign to the subject they wish to talk upon: even here I can make no progress; I am either repulsed by want of common knowledge, or bewildered in contradiction. ”

“ Having established it as a maxim, that some degree of information may always be gained by talking to men of their own professions, I am as inquisitive as I modestly can be, about their naval institutions. But, if my question be heard by more than one, such shocking abrupt oppositions of opinion follow, and so pertinaciously does each party defend his assertion on the most ordinary points, that my only alternative, to prevent a perfect equilibrium of mind, is to place the little confidence left at my disposal in the champion who has been least violent and vociferous ”

“ In the process of her confinement, liberty of walking in a garden, at the back of her prison, was granted to her ladyship; and this signal indulgence was followed up with leave to walk in the town, or to be carried in a sedan which she had borrowed, guarded, however, by her sentinel, lest her machinations might endanger the republic. The humane beneficence exerted by Lady Anne and her brother, to all ranks of their poor countrymen in captivity, are proclaimed here in terms of the most enthusiastic applause and gratitude. ”

“ The French officers at Brest had assured me, that there were no longer any in the republic; the government undertaking to make a{135} provision for those, who might have no ostensible means of subsisting. In consequence of this intelligence, I had dressed up a fine speculation, in favour at least of one change effected by the revolution.—If, said I, the noble and opulent are stripped and have fallen, yet the oppressed and miserable part of the community have emerged from that gulph of wretchedness, into which, under the ancient government, the most numerous class of inhabitants were plunged. ”

“ How consolatory to French vanity are these satisfactory solutions of this dreadful overthrow! Happy people! who,{45} in all your conflicts against other nations, conquer by superior skill and bravery only; and are never vanquished but by disparity of number on the side of your enemy, or by treachery among yourselves!
An error, which you with myself, and all other Englishmen, have fallen into about this engagement, I must beg leave to correct, or at least to offer you my reasons for believing it to be one.—Lord Howe’s account of the action states, that two ships of the enemy were sunk. ”

“ Official bulletins of all public events, which the convention find it their interest to promulge, are printed on board La Montagne, from a copy transmitted from Paris, and distributed, at the expence of the government, to the officers and seamen of every ship. This is a popular measure, which wonderfully flatters the lower orders, who deem themselves in possession of all the secrets of state, and conclude that politics are no longer a mystery. ”

“ If then the coalition be on the point of its dissolution, and Charette has laid down his arms, either we must abandon the subjugation of France, or seek for other means to accomplish it, which, if they exist at all, are internal. Nothing can be more dazzling and imposing than the great success of the French against their foreign enemies, and the seeming ease with which the vast machine of the republican government moves ”

“ Of real seamen they have few left, many thousands of their best having been drafted early in the war, and sent to serve as soldiers on the frontiers. Robespierre (whose execution was certainly the triumph of humanity, but not of the allies) by annihilating their foreign commerce, destroyed the only nursery which can ever supply the consumption of a numerous navy. Their ships are, therefore, filled with landmen, who, previously to their being drafted for actual service, are sent on board certain vessels fitted on purpose, where they are taught all the elementary parts of practical seamanship. ”

“ The French do not scruple to affirm (but here I suspect their love of exaggeration, not unmixed with national vanity, to preponderate) that the war of La Vendée has cost to the republic more men than all her foreign conflicts united. If, instead of men, perplexity and vexation were substituted, the account would be more credible.
The proclamation which announces a conclusion of the war of La Vendée is not the only one, which strikes at this moment the public eye, in Quimper. ”

“ The evening of a market-day here presents as drunken a scene as I ever beheld in England; but these good folks do not appear to be so quarrelsome in their cups as ours generally are.
The diocese of Quimper stands in a district called Cornwall. The truly old British words Pen, and Caer, are affixed to the names of innumerable places in the circumjacent country; and mark the origin of this people, were we to seek no other proofs.
The town is surrounded by the châteaux of the gentry. Very few of the right owners live in them, and many of them are going fast to decay. ”

“ Knowing from sad experience, that in such a situation all distinction of property is confounded, and that the officers and public stores of the ship become at once the indiscriminate prey of the enemy and their own crew, I left the deck, and descended into the bread-room. There I had in the morning deposited one of my trunks, out of which I filled a clothes-bag with such necessaries as I thought would be most useful to me, and left it in the charge of my servant, while I endeavoured to save a part of what a very large trunk, lodged in the marine store-room, contained. ”