François Levaillant (sometimes written Valiant the ), born in 1753 with Paramaribo, capital of Guyana Dutchwoman (today Surinam) and died the November 22nd 1824 with the Valley close to Sézanne, is an explorer, collector and Ornithologue French.

Genealogy and descent

The Valiant one

On the two sides governor and maternal, Levaillant is resulting from a line from lawyers and senior officials of the east of France.

Anthoine Vaillant in 1532 was tax collector to Verdun where in 1655 was born a François Vaillant who was going to become to advise of the King and alderman of Verdun.

His/her son Claude Barthélemy Vaillant (1690-1737) was to advise with the baillage Metz where the family is established. His/her son Nicolas François was born in 1723, made to with it his studies at the university of Pont-à-Mousson and very young person became lawyer adviser in Metz. However it ruins this career full with promises when it carries out in 1751 the removal of a pretty girl unchaining the ire of the father of the young lady, Etienne Francois, substitute of the public prosecutor of the Parliament. This one having refused the hand of his/her daughter (the anecdote of removal is however questioned by the South-African specialists in Levaillant, in their work published in 2004). The François family had provided to the town of Metz, during the 17th century a long line of lawyers. The woman of Etienne Francois, Albertine Flayelle, had been destined for Paris to be used as nurse with a morbid baby who was going to become King de France under the name of Louis XVI, so that their own daughter, future mother of the explorer François Levaillant was the foster sister of Louis XVI. After a marriage precipitated in May 1751, the young couple flees and takes refuge in South America. They settle with Paramaribo, capital of the Surinam which belonged then to the Dutch Compagnie of the Western Indies. Nicolas François Levaillant who had become a business man, is named French Consul to Surinam.

Marriages of François Levaillant

At the twenty years age François Levaillant Marie with Lunéville, with Suzanne Marguerite Denoor, on September 18th, 1773, in the presence of his/her father, then widowed. Suzanne Denoor was girl of a Hungarian captain, with the service of Marie-Therese of Austria. His/her mother is Eléonore Guilleux d' Achy.

The couple will have three or four children:

• François Antoine Emmanuel, born on January 17th, 1775.
• Therese Francoise born on February 10th, 1776, died in low age on August 21st, 1776.
• Francoise-Julie, born on March 10th, 1777, Madam Alexandre François-Xavier Legoux de Flaix,
• Adolphe, on which we do not have information.

Under the Revolution, François Levaillant will benefit from the new laws on the divorce to legalize his separation with Suzanne Denoor, by a marked divorce on August 21st, 1793. Indeed, since 1789, he lived with Pierrette Charlotte Foyot.

Suzanne Denoor, will be remariera with collector Chenié a tax, presented by Bokhorst like the brother of the poet André Chénier. There would have been between Levaillant and Pierrette Foyot a church wedding in June 1789 with Auxerre-native Saint-Germain-L', whereas it was still married with his first wife, but this is not proven.

Four children come from this new couple:

• Jean, brigadier general, knight of the royal and military Order of Saint-Louis.
• Julie.
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau general and naturalist.
• Charles, major general, large-officer of the Legion of honor.

His new wife had a sister: Louis-Julie Foyot, who will marry with Charles Dufailly. This couple will have a girl: Caroline Dufailly, wife of Joseph-François Baudelaire father of the poet Charles Baudelaire. In a letter with his/her mother dated February 6th, 1834, Baudelaire will require of him, to bring several books to him being in its cupboard, including two volumes of the Voyage of Levaillant .

In 1798 Pebble Foyot dies.

Remained only, François Levaillant puts himself in household with Rose Victoire Dubouchet (1783-1818), of which it had 4 children:

• Louis Victor in 1803.
• Rose Aimee Olympe in 1806 which will die in 1823.
• Julie born on November 12th, 1806, in Paris, 15, rue du Sépulcre.
• Calixte in 1809, death in 1821.

Biography

The youth of François Levaillant

August 6th, 1753, François Levaillant came in the world. Thereafter the young person François Levaillant will go to school of Paramaribo, will accompany his parents in their voyages inside, acquiring very good hour the love of the adventure and a deep interest for the mysteries of nature, the animals, the birds and the primitive ones of the country.

When his/her father turns over in Europe, in 1763, it starts to follow normal studies, initially during two years in Germany then during seven years to Alsace, in particular with Metz. It meets Jean-Baptiste Bécœur (1718-1777), owner of the one of the largest collections of Oiseau X of the time, and which teaches him its method of conservation from the birds.

Starting from 1777, it spends three years to Paris where it studies the Ornithologie, in particular thanks to the collection of Pierre Jean Claude Mauduyt of the Game preserve (1732-1792). But collections of natural history that it cotoie leaves him a feeling of melancholy: But these superb displays gave me soon a faintness, they left in my heart a vacuum that nothing could remplir.

The call of the voyage, a difficult return

In 1780, it leaves to the Netherlands where it meets Jacob Temminck, then treasurer Dutch Compagnie the Eastern Indies. Impressed by the young man, Temminck sends it in the province of the Cape in South Africa in 1781. It collects specimens in the area and makes in particular two voyages, one in the east of the Cape and one in north of the river Orange and in Large the Namaqualand.

It pays in France, in 1784, more 2  000 skins of birds. But Levaillant does not receive the reception which he hoped for: Powerful men had attracted me, cherished, flattered. I do not hide any, I had counted on their recognition; the reasons which seemed to found it were pure and true. I complained with reason to have sacrificed my fortune and my more beautiful youth with progress of a science hitherto all in theory and than little experiment had founded. I opposed admittedly brilliances novelists, long studies of cabinet, that no one to no purpose did not claim to have made; but I came the evidence to the hand. I opened also a cabinet of natural history; I deposited there the many individuals who I had been to seek with four thousand miles of Paris.

But its work is mainly accommodated by criticisms and sarcastic remarks. Levaillant will express, through its books, very often its bitterness. He proposes for a modest sum the integrality of his collection to the national Muséum of natural history. But the period of the Revolution arrives and if the successive governments decide to acquire its collection, they never put at execution this project. Finally at the end of nearly 15 years of effort, one proposes to him to make an estimate of his collection: One spoke to make make the estimate of my cabinet. One by one TO ESTIMATE the individuals of a collection! who had cost me thirty years of work, including five years of races in the extreme deserts of Africa, and for which I did not ask for the twentieth part of the value; then, in spite of progress of times and the difference of the needs, the sum offered in 1789 was that which I still requested from the government in 1795… Lastly, this sum, in spite of its reasonableness, remained in the treasures of the nation, and my cabinet is always in my capacity, and probably will pass abroad or be dispersed, because my fortune does not allow me any more a garder.

Thus its collection is finally dispersed and sold abroad, mainly in particular in Temminck. Those will join the collections of the natural history museum of natural history of Leyde.

It makes appear the Voyage in the interior of Africa (1790, 2 volumes) which is an immense success and which is quickly translated in many languages. In 1793, under Terror, François Levaillant is stopped, it does not owe his safety that with the fall of Robespierre on July 27th, 1794. It is undoubtedly to put itself at the shelter that in 1796, François Levaillant and his family settle with the Valley (the Marne) in the old presbytery which his/her father-in-law François-Didier Foyot had, undoubtedly, bought at the time of the sale of the national goods in 1794. In this pastoral refuge, Levaillant can enjoy the countryside and wood surrounding, it drives out and increases its collection of birds. It paints, of a naive style, its field, where it is represented with his wife and her children. The property was divided since, and the current town hall of the Valley occupies a part of it. It continues, in 1796, the exploitation of its memories by publishing the Second voyage in the interior of Africa (1796, 3 volumes). Then the Natural history of the birds of Africa (1796-1808, 6 volumes) with drawings of Jacques Barraband (1767-1809). This History , which appears simultaneously in three different versions, all splendidly illustrated, is also a great success in spite of their rather high prices.

It wishes to privilege a simple and open speech. He writes in one of his forewords: Solved well to speak only about what I saw, of what I did, I will not say only according to myself…
La true language of a science is that who facilitate the study of it, by putting his principles at the range of everyone. Pedant which only seeks to impose some and not to teach, overload his lessons of terms useless, and sows with each step of difficulties which finish by to disgust that its inclination carried naturally with study, and which would have taken there taste if the roads of science had been levelled to him, instead of roughcasting them spines: manner that did not adopt, with the remainder, our small scientific charlatans that to dazzle the fates which, hearing words which they often do not include/understand, look at those which output them like gifted beings of a knowledge supérieur.

Enivré by this success, it makes appear several other works almost simultaneously. They are the Natural history part of new and rare birds of America and the Indies (only one published volume, 1801), the Natural history of the birds of paradise (1801-1806), the Natural history of the parrots (two volumes, 1801-1805) the Natural history of the cotingas and todiers (1804), and the Natural history of the calaos (1804).

But the popularity of the Valiant one declines and the last volume of the Natural history of the birds of Africa is sold badly. Its many books and their pleasant style are the object of serious criticisms. Thus Carl Jakob Sundevall (1801-1875) shows it to have made many errors and, worse, to have described species while taking as a starting point drawings made by others and to have even invented details for enjoliver its descriptions. In 1802, in its house of the Valley, Levaillant, accepted the visit of the German zoologist Carl Asmund Rudolphi (1771-1832), carrying a letter of introduction of Johann Ray, collector from Amsterdam.

Again widowed in 1812, it remains with the Valley. In 1818, it receives the visit of the zoologist William Elford Leach (1790-1836) of the British Museum which tells him in a pleasant way that the more it lived, plus its fame increased.

To amuse its fellow-citizens it makes run the noise that it had been married with the girl of the king of Surinam. This plot was collected by the too credulous abbot Boitel, author of a conference held in Sézanne on January 29th, 1849, on the naturalist entitled: “Biographical note on Valiant, famous naturalist who resided 30 years with the Valley”. The text of this conference is preserved at the Municipal Files of Sézanne. November 22nd, 1824, he dies with the Valley where he is buried under a simple monticule and in 1862 its four wire made build the current monument. After its death the sale by sale by auction of its real goods was ordered by two judgments given by the civil court of Épernay. Preceded by a preparatory adjudication of August 28th, 1825, the final adjudication took place on September 11th, 1825 in the house of the late one.

The Valiant one is opposed to the use of the binomial nomenclature introduced by Carl von Linné (1707-1778) and gives only one French name to the new species which it describes. It should be noted that the reasons of its opposition are very relevant. Indeed, for Levaillant, only the study of the birds in their natural environment makes it possible to separate the species between them, which is unable to make a classifier working only in one laboratory on dead subjects.

Certain names which he imagined are still of use as Bateleur and Chanteur. Naturalists allotted later names linnéennes to these species and some of them dedicated to him certain species like the Coucou of Levaillant ( Oxylophus levaillantii by William Swainson (1789-1855) in 1829 and the Pic of Levaillant ( Picus vaillantii Alfred Malherbe (1804-1866) by 1847.

Levaillant with the immense merit to have drawn the attention of the ornithologists to the fauna of the South Africa, hitherto almost unknown.

Appendices

Iconography

; Cless/Westermayer: The image of Levaillant illustrating this article comprises a legend which is not reproduced on this reproduction: Key LED 1801, Westermayer S . What means: drawn by Cless in 1801, engraved by Westermayer. The engraver is to be identified with one of the Westermayer family members, probably Konrad Westermayer (1765-1834). The draftsman is Jean Henri Cless, painter, draftsman and miniaturist raises of Jacques-Louis David. ; Boilly: Louis-Léopold Boilly or his son Julien Léopold Boilly. An engraving reproduces the features of Levaillant, only annotated Boilly, according to nature 1820 , it illustrates the page biography external site mentioned low. ; Audebert: One knows another portrait exposed to the Living room of Year IV (1795) by the Audebert citizen (domiciled 154, rue Mazarine). This one exposed under the n° 7 a " tally containing several Portraits in Miniature, whose one of Cit. the Valiant one is that, Auteur of the Voyage in Africa, at Hottentots". This Audebert is undoubtedly to bring closer to Jean-Baptiste Audebert, painter, aquafortist and naturalist.

List partial of the publications

• Natural history of the parrots , Paris Levrault, Schoell & Co, Year IX-XII (1801-1805), 2 volumes.
• Natural history of the birds of paradise and the rolliers, followed those of the bearded toucans and , Paris, Denné the young person & Perlet, (1801-1806), 2 volumes.
• Natural history of the promérops and the guépiers (and the couroucous and touracous, making following that of the birds of paradise) , Paris Levrault, (1806) 1807, (1816 or 1818) 3 volumes.

External site

• Site devoted to François Levaillant.

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