My husband (who is not a Redditor or a historian) is researching some background on a larger-than-life figure from Bath Maine: Francois de Loche (died 1889). Fascinating as his later history is, his early life reads something like a Kipling novel. He appears to have been the subject of a “secret mission” given to a well-known French naval commander, that took some 20 months to accomplish (with murder getting mixed in along the way).
The family concerned were Freemasons, but I am doubtful that association could have resulted in such an order being given. There are other questions, as it’s a fascinating story, so any insight or background would be vastly appreciated.
Possible areas of expertise that could help: French navy of the late 1800s; the Lautrec Family; French Freemasonry; French Revolution of 1848; Whaling in the South Pacific and Japan/Java seas late 1800’s; French presence in Macau and Manila; French consulate in Sydney NSW (1840’s); Jurien de la Graviere; ships la Bayonnaise (the second, less famous one) and/or l’Enterprise and l’Nil.
The facts of the story as we know them are below. All dates and details are from official sources such as ships logs and court reports or Graviere’s book mentioned below and linked at the bottom. Where we have connected information or are speculating (e.g., from plotting the ships’ voyages) I’ve italicized it.
13 October 1847, the French whaler l’Entreprise, under the command of Captain Briancon arrives in Sydney harbor.
5 November 1847, Francois & Louis return to the ship
Early November 1847, l’Enterprise departs having been refinanced and resupplied. A new, mostly English crew, is hired as replacements for the French deserters
23/24 January 1848, l’Enterprise arrives in Bay of Isles (New Zealand) – at the time mostly a whaler camp. The newly hired English are all thrown off the ship for insubordination and replaced with mostly American crewmen, including William Petty of New York (hired and eventually promoted to second in command).
Feb 1848 begins the revolution of 1848 in France (February Revolution).
28 Feb 1848, the French corvette Bayonnaise returns to Macau after a week in Hong Kong, under the command of Captain of Frigate Jurien de la Graviere (who later became Vice Admiral).
8 March 1848 the Bayonnaise departs Macau, in darkness with no fanfare or salutes, which was apparently out of the ordinary, and heads straight for Manila. (This is per the chaplain’s complaint/testimony)
15 March 1848, Bayonnaise arrives in Manila. According to personnel records, on 26 March 1848, a cousin of Chevalier Charles (Charles Augustus Deloche) is transferred from the whaler Gustav to the Bayonnaise. Anecdotal reports from the Lautrec family say the cousin was to assist the Bayonnaise in removing Francois from l’Entreprise and place him on the whaler l’Nil.
16 November 1848, Bayonnaise is in Macau and (according to the court report of a subsequent trial), Captain Graviere is tasked with conducting an extensive investigation into the actions of Captain Briancon of l’Entreprise (unknown what actions are being investigated – the events that are the subject of the trial had yet to occur).
For the next 12 months, Bayonnaise sails the Pacific*, stopping at (seemingly) every whaling camp* from the Sea of Japan to the Java Sea and back again, without encountering l’Enterprise.
12 May 1849, a murder begins on board l’Entreprise (this is now 6 months after Graviere is tasked with investigating Briancon). The murder victim was a French financier (Mr. Tignol) – who was to be the new owner of the ship. The man was severely whipped/beaten on board the ship by Petty, and when he survived, was taken ashore, and beaten to death.
Around early November 1849, Bayonnaise is in Macau, and Graviere learns that l’Entreprise is in Hong Kong harbor. Graviere requests permission to seize l’Enterprise (Hong Kong being under British rule at the time). The British deny the request and inform Graviere that if a French warship fires a shot in Hong Kong harbor the English forts will engage.
3 January 1850, Bayonnaise (with Francois aboard) departs Macau for Manila.
12 January 1850, on the order of the Consul of France, Francois is transferred to the whaler l’Nil in Manila harbor. Sometime between Nov 8 and 12 January he gave testimony regarding Mr. Tignol’s murder, which was introduced in the subsequent trial in France.
23 March 1851, Nantes France; the trial of Briancon & Petty for the murder of Mr. Tignol. They were convicted and hung.
Summary:
Francois is the son of a minor noble (at best). Jurien de la Graviere is, at the time of these events, already a military officer and author of some renown.
What power, that survives a revolution, could have a French warship commanded by a famous Captain, spend 20 months on what appears to have started as a mission to remove said son from one whaler and put him onto another (intervening murder not withstanding)? Nothing directly says that Francois is the “secret mission”, but the Bayonnaise did nothing other than head for ports that l’Enterprise would conceivably have been at – nothing else happens of note, and the Bayonnaise heads for home as soon they are done with the investigation of the murder (after returning the Consul to Macao).
Sources:
Legal Gazette
http://data.decalog.net/enap1/Liens/Gazette/ENAP_GAZETTE_TRIBUNAUX_18510323.pdf
Enterprise Disarming Papers
https://www.archinoe.fr/v2/ad44/visualiseur/navires_nominatif.html?id=440604912
Graviere's book, tomb 2.
full ship schedule on page 382
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k65497244/f5.image
Chaplain’s complaint – reference has been lost. It was an official protest recorded with the Chaplain’s superiors in the Catholic church.
Site hosting the l'Nil's arming papers has been down since the pandemic started (French records from L'Havre).
Great story, and thanks for sharing! Reading through the various documents you linked to, I'm under the impression that some of the answers to your questions are already there.
The main mission of the warship La Bayonnaise, commanded by Edmond Jurien de la Gravière, was to transport to Canton the new diplomatic mission headed by Baron Alexandre Forth-Rouen des Mallets, and then to assist them in their duties. The ship left Cherbourg on 24 April 1847, did several stops (Portugal, Brazil), and finally arrived in Macau 8 months later, on 4 January 1848 (Jurien de la Gravière, p. 45) and Forth-Rouen could proceed to Canton. On 24 April 1848, while anchored in Macau, the crew of the Bayonnaise learned about the events of February in France in a copy of the English-language French newspaper Galignani’s Messenger that had arrived from Alexandria (p. 175). The information was scarce: Jurien read about the new governement, and a little about the fighting. He knew that there would be no news until May. Jurien's immediate fear was about the reaction of the foreign powers, and notably the British. An additional worry was that any news the French could receive in China had to pass through the British post office in Alexandria or Ceylan (p. 178). They were on their own in a volatile and potentially critical situation, "5000 leagues from France". The Bayonnaise was a warship, and would certainly be involved in a naval war. Jurien had the crew make the ship battle-ready in case the British fleet launched a surprise attack against them. The Portuguese governor of Macau, João Maria Ferreira do Amaral, offered to shelter the ship in the city's inner harbour, but to make this possible (the harbour was not deep enough) the guns of the Bayonnaise would have to be removed and loaded in a Chinese ship, leaving it defenseless against any British vessel. Jurien could not agree to that.
Instead, Jurien accepted the offer of the American consul Forbes to shelter the Bayonnaise in the well-protected waters of Guam... and wait. The plan was the following. If nothing happened the Bayonnaise would simply return to Macau and resume its mission. But, if war broke out, the Bayonnaise would go to Formose and start hunting British merchant ships loaded with opium and silver, and then sail to Polynesia (if it was still French), or to California (if it wasn't), to keep on fighting. This is probably the "secret mission" the Chaplain talks about. In the Chaplain's timeline the crew learned about the Revolution at the end of February, which is simply impossible. In Jurien's memoirs, the ship left for Guam on 3 May, loaded with 7-months worth of food and (according to Jurien), a crew daydreaming about future naval glory. They had Forth-Rouen inform the French government (whoever that was) of the plot, and they arrived in Guam on 26 June. On 8 August, mail brought from Macau to Guam told them the latest news from Paris (dated 24 April), which were that the French troubles were strictly internal and that there would be (disappointedly) no war against the British. They would not get to play pirates! On 12 September, the Bayonnaise was in Manilla, where they learned about the events of July and were finally able to take orders from the new government. This seems to be the moment (16 November) when Jurien got the order from Forth-Rouen to investigate what was going on with the Entreprise (Gazette des Tribunaux, 23 March 1851). But the Bayonnaise crew became sick from "miasmatic affections" and Jurien hastened the departure from Manilla on 1 December. The ship was back in Macau one week later (p.253). Now that the situation was sort of back to normal in France (there was a Ministry of Marine after all), the Bayonnaise resumed its diplomatic/military activities. Notably, the ship took Forth-Rouen on an extensive diplomatic tour of the Chinese coast in the early months of 1849, and it later visited Philippines and Indonesia (including Singapore). It was back in Macau late 1849, when it took part in the events that followed that assassination of Amaral by Chinese men: this time, Jurien (and Forth-Rouen, whose wife was Portuguese) had the ship anchored in the inner harbour of Macau in September, in a show of force to support the Portuguese. The incidents with L'Entreprise happened later that year.
Jurien's memoirs make clear that he had a strong working relationship with Forth-Rouen. The latter had spent a good part of his time since April 1847 on board of the Bayonnaise, first on the trip from France and later on various diplomatic missions. It is important to note here that, at a time when communications betwen faraways lands took months, consuls were not mere representatives of their mother country. French diplomats in Asia did not like the position very much, as it means that they would be away for years in a land that was considered hostile and dangerous, but they enjoyed the independance brought by the distance. When a problem arose, they could not (yet) just pick up a phone and ask for instructions: they were on their own and had to take the initiative. And not just in matters of diplomacy: consuls were involved in all matters of trade. Forth-Rouen was fascinated by bamboo and sent bamboo seeds and objects to France; his colleague Montigny had yaks shipped to France at his own expense. More importantly for our story, consuls were also responsible in matters of police and justice (they could set up a court and act as the president), and for maritime affairs: they could arrest sailors and captains, and were involved in maritime contracts (chartering, loans etc.) (Bensacq-Tixier, 2008).
In this light, it is not surprising that Forth-Rouen took a special interest in the activities of a rogue whaling captain. As shown during the trial, Briançon was a terrible at seafaring and he had no leadership abilities whatsoever. After his disastrous whaling campaign, he embarked in a series of bizarre schemes to make money that all ended up in failure, and the latter in tragedy when the man who had loaned him money (with the ship as collateral!) for his latest venture turned up dead after having been gruesomely tortured. It is likely that rumours brought by other ships before the assassination came back to Nantes about Briançon, which prompted an enquiry from the ministry that was relayed to Froth-Rouen and Jurien. As told at the Petty/Briançon trial:
In the mind of the Minister of the Navy, it was only necessary to obtain accurate information on the type of navigation in which Captain Briançon was engaged, and to safeguard the interests of the shipowners Ernest François Raudot Ducarrey and Le Cour, traders in Nantes.
The involvement of the Bayonnaise also makes sense in that respect. Forth-Rouen just asked them to investigate, first in November 1848 after he got news of Briançon's bizarre behaviour and then the following year after the crime had happened. The ship was his only police force available. Jurien actually talks briefly about this at the end of his memoirs (volume 2, p. 262):
The happy agreement which had not ceased to reign, for three years, between the French legation and the naval station, of which the Bayonnaise was the sole part, had assured the independence of our movements. Charged with enlightening justice on the circumstances of a maritime drama which later took place before the court of assizes of Nantes, and of which I would reproach myself for stirring up the dust, we formed the project of going to the eastern extremity of the group of the Carolines Islands.
Jurien seems a little bit coy here, but the truth is that this was not the brightest moment of French maritime history.
In a nutshell, nothing particularly strange seems to have happened. The Revolution of 1848 was just a blip in that story and everyone was back to work once there was a functional government in place. The consul took his usual interest in maritime problems (that was his job) and got help from the commanding officer of the warship attached to the legation (that was his job too). Both men were involved in much more serious issues of trade and diplomacy than those caused by a tragically incompetent whaling captain.
I'm not sure of what happened with the young François. The Lautrecs was an ancient aristocratic family going back to the Crusades and who considered themselves to be true aristocrats (so much that they did a little bit of inbreeding, see Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and a few of his cousins). They may have wanted to get François back at any cost, and enrolled the help of some of their aristocratic friends in the navy or in the diplomatic corps. This is just speculation as I'm running out of time now (I may have a look later).