A cartoon captioned “St. George & the Dragon” with the dragon symbolizing the slave trade, appeared in the Morning Post on April 12, 1789. On his previous trip to London, when Saint-Georges passed Brissot’s request onto the British abolitionists, they complied by translating their literature into French for his fledgling Société des amis des Noirs. Saint-Georges met with them again, this time on his own account. “Early in July, walking home from Greenwich, a man armed with a pistol demanded his purse. The Chevalier disarmed the man… but when four more rogues hidden until then attacked him, he put them all out of commission. M. de Saint Georges received only some contusions which did not keep him from going on that night to play music in the company of friends.”[52] The nature of the attack, with four attackers emerging after the first one made sure they had the right victim, was obviously an attempt on his life disguised as a hold-up, arranged by the “Trade” to put an end to his abolitionist activities.[53]
In late June, Philippe, dubbed “The Red Duke2 in London, finally realized that his “mission” buy viagra for female buy viagra lanzarote online there was a ruse used by the king to get him out of France. At first he consoled himself by attending horse races, trussing girls and swilling champagne with his friend, Prinny.[54] At that point, perhaps, to save his pride, Philippe clung to a vague promise made by King Louis to make him Regent of the Southern Netherlands. But when the harebrained attempt to impose him on the Belgians who wanted a Republic, failed miserably,[55] Saint-Georges, disillusioned by Philippe’s self-serving behavior, instead of returning to London, headed North, back to France.
“On Thursday, July 8, 1790, in Lille’s municipal ballroom, the famous Saint-Georges was the principal antagonist in a brilliant fencing tournament. Though ill, he fought with that grace which is his trademark. Lightning is no faster than his arms and in spite of running a fever, he demonstrated astonishing vigor.”[56] Two days later looking worse but in need of funds, he offered another assault, this one for the officers of the garrison. But his illness proved so serious that it sent him to bed for six long weeks.[57] The diagnosis according to medical science at the time was “brain fever” (probably meningitis). Unconscious for days, he was taken in and nursed by some kind citizens of Lille. While still bedridden, deeply grateful to the people who were caring for him, Saint-Georges began to compose an opera for Lille’s theater company. Calling it Guillome tout Coeur, ou les amis du village, he dedicated it to the citizens of Lille. “Guillaume is an opera in one act. …The music by Saint-George is full of sweet warmth of motion and spirt…Its [individual] pieces distinguished by their melodic lines and the vigor of their harmony. The public…made the hall resound with its justly reserved applause.”[58] It was to be his last opera, lost, including its libretto.
Louise Fusil, who had idolized Saint-Georges since she was a girl of 15, wrote: “In 1791, I stopped in Amiens where St. Georges and Lamothe were waiting for me, committed to give some concerts over the Easter holidays. We were to repeat them in Tournai. But the French refugees assembled in that town just across the border, could not abide the Créole they believed to be an agent of the despised Duke of Orléans. St. Georges was even advised [by its commandant] not to stop there for long.”[59] According to a report by a local newspaper: “The dining room of the hotel where St. Georges, a citizen of France, was also staying, refused to serve him, but he remained perfectly calm; remarkable for a man with his means to defend himself.”[60]
Louise describes the scenario of Saint-Georges’s “Love and Death of the Poor Little Bird”, a programmatic piece for violin alone, which he was constantly entreated to play especially by the ladies. Its three parts depicted the little bird greeting the spring; passionately pursuing the object of his love, who alas, has chosen another; its voice grows weaker then, after the last sigh, it is stilled forever. This kind of program music or sound painting of scenarios such as love scenes, tempests, or battles complete with cannonades and the cries of the wounded, conveyed by a lone violin, was by that time nearly forgotten. Saint-Georges must have had fun inventing it as he went along. Louise places his improvisational style on a par with her subsequent musical idol, Hector Berlioz: “We did not know then this expressive …depiction a dramatic scene, which Mr. Berlioz later revealed to us… making us feel an emotion that identifies us with the subject.” Curiously, some of Saint-Georges’s biographers are still looking for its score, but Louise’s account leaves no doubt that it belonged to the lost art of spontaneous improvisation.[61]
Tired of politics yet faithful to his ideals, St. Georges decided to serve the Revolution, directly. With 50,000 Austrian troops massed on its borders, the first citizen’s army in modern history was calling for volunteers. In 1790, having recovered from his illness, Saint-George was one of the first in Lille to join its Garde Nationale.[62] But not even his military duties in the Garde Nationale could prevent St. Georges from giving concerts. Once again he was building an orchestra which, according to the announcement in the paper, “Will give a concert every week until Easter.”[63] At the conclusion of the last concert, the mayor of Lille placed a crown of laurels on St. Georges’ brow and read a poem dedicated to him.[64]
On April 20, 1792, compelled by the National Assembly, Louis XVI declared war against his brother-in-law, Francis II.[65] General Dillon, commander of Lille, was ordered by Dumouriez to attack Tournai, reportedly only lightly defended. Instead, massive fire by the Austrian artillery turned an orderly retreat into a rout by the regular cavalry but not that of the volunteers of the National Guard.[66] Captain St. Georges, promoted in 1791,[67] commanded the company of volunteers that held the line at Baisieux.[68] A month later, “M. St. Georges took charge of the music for a solemn requiem held [in Lille] for the souls of those who perished for their city on the fateful day of April 29.”[69]
Légion St.-Georges
On September 7, 1792, Julien Raimond, leader of a delegation of free men of color from Saint-Domingue (Haiti), petitioned the National Assembly to authorize the formation of a Legion of volunteers, so “We too may spill our blood for the defense of the motherland.” The next day, the Assembly authorized the formation of a cavalry brigade of “men of color”, to be called Légion nationale des Américains[70] & du midi, and appointed Citizen St. Georges[71] colonel of the new regiment.[72] St. Georges’ Légion, the first all colored regiment in Europe, “grew rapidly as volunteers [attracted by his name] flocked to it from all over France.”[73]
Among its officers was Thomas Alexandre Dumas, the novelist’s father, one of St. Georges’s two lieutenant colonels.[74] Colonel St. Georges found it difficult to obtain the funds allocated to his unit towards equipment and horses badly needed by his regiment. With a number of green recruits still on foot, it took his Legion three days to reach its training camp in Laon. In February, when Pache,[75]the minister of war, ordered St. Georges to take his regiment to Lille and hence to the front, he protested that, “Short of horses, equipment and officers, I cannot lead my men to be slaughtered …without a chance to teach them to tell their left from their right.”[76]
That May, Citizen Maillard denounced St. Georges’ Legion to the Committee of Public Safety, for enrolling individuals suspected of royalist sentiments; he did not mention their being “men of color.”[77] Meanwhile Commissaire Dufrenne, one of Pache’s henchmen, accused St. Georges as: ”A man to watch; riddled by debts he had been paid I think 300,000 livres to equip his regiment; he used most of it I am convinced to pay his debts; with a penchant for luxury he keeps, they say, 30 horses in his stables, some of them worth 3000 livres; what horror…”[78] Though Dufrenne’s accusations were based on mere hearsay, Saint Georges was called to Paris where, promptly established by the Committee of Public Safety that Pache never sent his regiment any funds,[79] St. Georges was cleared of all charges and re-confirmed as Colonel of his Legion.
Meanwhile the legion’s colonel had other grievances. On his return to Lille to rejoin his regiment on its way to the front, he found most of his black troopers and some of his officers gone. It must have been a bitter moment when he realized that without them his legion had lost its raison d’être. Moreover, War Minister Pache, instead of sending him supplies and officers, decreed leaving for the front, the Légion St. Georges would be renamed le 13e regiment de chasseurs à cheval, and attached to the army of Belgium. Some of its men of color were ordered to embark for the West Indies “to defend our possessions in America.”[80] Only the Legion’s first company, still called l’Américaine, retained some of Saint Georges’ original staff: Lieutenant Colonels Champreux and Dumas, and Captains Duhamel and Colin, along with seventy three of his old troopers. With Lille virtually on the front lines, while patrolling in enemy territory,”Citizen Saint-Georges, was seen by some of his comrades standing up to the enemy with only fifty of his chasseurs and taking command of a passing column, on his own volition, purely for the pleasure of serving the Republic.”[81]
On January 21, 1793, Louis Capet, the former King Louis XVI, was found guilty of treason and guillotined on the Place de la Révolution (today’s Place de la Concorde). General Dumouriez, who became minister of war after Pache was removed for corruption, took charge of the army of the North. Dumouriez, a Girondist, on the moderate side of the Revolution, spoke out too freely against the Jacobins of the Convention for executing the king. As a result, though revered as the hero of the French victories at Valmy and Jemappes, the National Convention ordered his arrest. Failing to dislodge him from the front, they sent a delegation led by Beurnonville, the new minister of war, to Dumouriez’s headquarters to bring him back to Paris. Colonel St. Georges was ordered to take a hundred of his chasseurs and escort the delegation from Lille to Dumouriez’s headquarters inSt. Amand. On reaching the village of Orchies, claiming that the horses were fatigued after six leagues at a gallop, St. Georges asked the delegation to take another escort for the rest of the way. It is possible that, told of the purpose of the mission, he preferred not to be part of it. The delegation continued on with an escort provided by General Joseph de Miaczinsky, commander at Orchies.
Next morning at breakfast, a courier from Dumouriez arrived with a note for Miaczinsky. After reading the message, the General showed it to St. Georges and his officers. According to the note, Dumouriez, having arrested the delegation, was ordering Miaczinsky to take Lille with his division and join him in his march on Paris to “uphold the ‘will of the army,’ to reinstate the constitution of ’91 and to save the Queen.”[82] When Miaczinsky asked St. Georges to assist him on his march on Lille, St. Georges refused, saying that “being under orders to his commander, General Duval, nothing on earth could force me to fail in my duties.”[83] This was the moment when Saint-Georges, the son of a slave, chose the Revolution over his doomed Queen and the society that nurtured him. Accompanied by Lieutenant Colonel Dumas and Captain Colin, he took off at a gallop to warn Lille of the looming danger. Having warned the garrison in time, when Miaczinsky arrived he was arrested by Duval.[84] Taken to Paris he was tried, found guilty and guillotined. General Dumouriez, his plans thwarted by “ the famous mulatto Saint-Georges, colonel of a regiment of hussars… “[85] together with Louis-Philippe, son of the Duke of Orléans and future king of France, defected to the Austrians.
In spite of the continuing shortages of officers and equipment, Saint-Georges’s regiment distinguished itself in the Netherlands campaign. But at the siege of Bergen op Zoom, their Colonel could not take part in the action. On 25 September St. Georges and ten of his officers were arrested and taken away. After two weeks, his officers were released, but St. Georges remained in prison.
Early that September, Maréchal Bécourt, commandant of Lille, wrote to inform the Ministry of War, that “The 13th regiment of Chasseurs, formerly called Légion St. Georges, has arrived here in great penury due to the laxity of its leader. That is the report of Lieutenant Colonel Dumas….”[86] Ten days before the arrest of Colonel St. Georges and his officers, Dumas, skipping a rank, was promoted to Brigadier General. One day later, skipping yet another rank, writing his superiors: “ …leaving for the army of the Pyrenées, I must have real Revolutionaries to work with against the enemies of our liberty…” he signed himself, “Dumas, Le General de Division.”[87] Alas, Thomas Alexandre Dumas earned his spectacular rises in rank as Commissaire of General Security and Surveillance of the Committee of Public Safety.
Under the new Law of Suspects, St. Georges was incarcerated without charge in the fortress of Hondainville-en-Oise for 13 months. During his incarceration, France was in the midst of the Terror. On October 12, 1793 the Queen was guillotined on Place de la Republique; Brissot and 22 of his fellow Girondins, mounted the scaffold on October 31 and Philippe Orléans, obliged to call himself Égalité, followed them on November 5. With Danton riding in a tumbril to the scaffold, the Terror began to devour its own. The number of executions including those of ordinary citizens swelled to 26 a day. Paris grew weary of the killing and, as the successes of the army had relieved the public of the threat of invasion used by Robespierre to maintain theTerror, on July 28 the National Convention shook off its fear and sent Robespierre and 21 of his cohorts to the guillotine. St. Georges, living under the threat of execution, was spared only because Commissaire Sylvain Lejeune of Hondainvile and the district of Oise gave bloodthirsty speeches, but kept his guillotine under wraps. Three more months went by before the Committee of General Security ordered Colonel St. Georges, never charged with any wrongdoing, released from prison.[88]
His former world in Paris a thing of the past, St. Georges had only one compelling ambition: to regain his rank and his regiment. It took six months of cooling his heels at the Ministry of War, while living on an inactive officer’s half-pay, for the army to re-instate him as colonel of his regiment. In theory. In practice he found that while he was in prison his regiment had acquired, not one, but two colonels. One of them, Colonel Target, offered to cede his post to “the founder of the regiment,” but the other one, Colonel Bouquet, vowed to fight St. Georges tooth and claw. After a long and arduous year spent between hope and despair fighting to keep his post, on October 30, 1795, invoking an obscure law,[89] Bouquet won his case. Saint-Georges was dismissed from the army and ordered to leave his regiment. In addition he was ordered to retire to any community save the one where the regiment might be located. Thus ended Saint Georges’ military career, with nothing, not even a cheap medal, to show for his travails.
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