Knight of Saint-George

Biography

Saint-George was born slave in Guadeloupe, her mother, Anne, said Nanon (born about 1723 with the Lamentin, in Guadeloupe) being itself a slave of African origin. His/her father, Georges of Bologna of Saint-George (1711-1774), colonist Protesting of origin Dutchwoman, gave him a neat education. He excelled very young person in several disciplines: horsemanship, fencing, dance and music. Arrived definitively in metropolis in 1753, it was joined there, two years later, by his parents and entered to the academy of Nicolas Texier of Boëssière in order to prepare with the trade of officer. In 1761, it was allowed in the prestigious body of the gendarmes of the guard of the King and quickly became famous for its remarkable artistic and sporting capacities. It was in particular made know as violonist wonder and fencer except par.

Saint-George directed the orchestra of the Amateurs and composed of many concertos for violin, of the string quartets, the symphonia concertantes. Candidate to direct the opera (the royal Académie of music), it was évincé when two singers, Sophie Arnould and Rosalie Levasseur, as well as a dancer, Marie-madeleine Guimard, addressed a claim (petition) to the queen “to represent with Her Majesty that their honor and the delicacy of their conscience would never enable them to be subjected to the orders of a mulatto”. Saint-George accepted the support of the Parisian musical community. Louis XVI, to slice, allotted the responsibility for the opera to its Intendant of Amusements, Papillon of Ferté. This did not prevent Saint-George being received at the court and from becoming the close friend of Marie-Antoinette, which explains, perhaps, an attempted murder carried out by men of the secret police of Versailles.

In 1777, it made play Ernestine , a comedy with ariettas in three acts whose booklet had been written by Choderlos de Laclos. Protected by the house from Orleans and friend from the future Philippe-Equality, Saint-George bound, at the time of her stays with London, with another large fencer, the Chevalier of Éon.

With the Revolution, Saint-George settled with Lille and engaged in the National guard with the rank of captain. September 7th, 1792, he became colonel of the frank legion of the Americans and the South, partly made up of Afro-West-Indian; he made there name protected lieutenant-colonel his Alexandre Dumas, future general and father of the writer. The Legion was formed with Laon before joining Lille and the army of North under the new designation of 13 {{E}} regiment of hunters with horse where it was committed in the engagements against the Austrians.

Several times denounced and shown royalism - in particular at the time of the treason of Dumouriez - the knight was relieved of his command by Bouchotte, Minister for the War. November 4th, 1793, it was stopped with Castle-Thierry, in spite of the support of the municipality. Imprisoned initially in Chantilly, then with the castle of Hondainville (Oise), it was finally released, after almost a year of detention, by order of the Comité of general security. Falling under the blow of a law aiming at purifying the army of its royalist officers after the insurrection of Vendémiaire (October 1795), it was definitively revoked.

A legend affirms that the knight of Saint-George would have gone from 1795 to 1797 to Saint-Domingue where it would have met All Saints' day Louverture. He died in Paris on June 10th, 1799 of an infection of the consecutive bladder to a wound received with the leg during the Revolution. Contrary to what could be written, its death is honoured with dignity and all the newspapers of the time paid homage to him. Member of the famous Cabin of the Last nine Sisters of the the Great East of France, it was undoubtedly one of rare the former slaves to be received mason.

Saint-George knew second dead when the general Bonaparte, first consul of the first French Republic (and not still the Empereur Napoleon I {{er}}), after having restored illegally the Esclavage with the the Antilles the May 20th 1802, made burn all his works the same day. Napoleon i prohibits thereafter with the “blacks and coloured persons” the entry with the army (May 29th 1802), the access to the metropolitan territory (July 2nd 1802) and - for those which were there already - via Claude Régnier, the marriages enter the Blacks and the White (January 8th 1803). The destruction of its works plus the racial laws which were enacted thereafter led to the total lapse of memory of Saint-George.

Posterity

Saint-George returned to the mode to the romantic time, and was in particular quoted by Balzac, Alexandre Dumas and especially the Dandy Edouard Roger de Bully (known as Roger de Beauvoir) which devoted a novel adapted to the theater to him.

In December 2001, the street Richepanse (of the name of the general having restored slavery in the Guadeloupe on order of Bonaparte) divided between the 1 {{er}} district of Paris (even numbers) and the 8 {{E}} district of Paris (odd numbers), was débaptisée to become the street of Knight-of-Saint-George, but the plate comprises an erroneous birth date (1739, instead of 1745).

The autumn 2004, a spectacle written by Claude Ribbe, put in scene by Bartabas and devoted to Saint-George, was played Versailles in front of: 50000 spectators.

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