Louis de Frotté

Louis de Frotté , born with Alençon (Flowering ash) the August 5th 1766 and shot with Verneuil-sur-Avre (the Eure) the February 18th 1800, is the chief of the insurrection counter-revolutionary carried out in Basse-Normandie in 1795.

Biography

The count Louis de Frotté begins his military career in 1781 with the regiment Colonel-General. Officer of infantry at the time of the Revolution, young person, burning, and of a decided nature, it showed the adversary early and took the party of the emigration of it. He passes in the armed with Brunswick after the missed escape of Louis XVI. He fights the republican army with the Bataille of Valmy before emigrating in 1792 in Italy then in Germany.

In England, it is used in the regiment of the Knights of the Crown of the Viscount as Bussy and prepares the insurrection of its native province. Wanting to announce its devotion to the cause of the Bourbon S, he solicited highly with London, in 1794, near Mr. of Puisaye, in charge of the interests of the king in Brittany, the authorization to pass to France to make rise the Normandy, where he had intelligences. He accepted his capacities as well as a patent of colonel. Unloading on the coast of Saint-Malo at the beginning of 1795, with several other gentlemen, it supported a combat against the republican troops there, escaped to them, and arrived to Normandy through thousand dangers.

It brought there, with a great courage, a patience with any test, military talents natural, but little exerted, and an imperturbable continuation in its intentions. Besides devoured need to be made a name, it precipitated in the career of the civil war, the only one which was opened with its audacity. But it was a question then in the the Vendée and in Brittany of a bringing together and a suspension of fighting between the republicans and the royalists. National convention was flattered to decrease the number of its interior enemies by a peaceful system, pushed back hitherto by the revolutionists.

Opposed to any pacification, Frotté went on April 1st 1795 to the Conférences of Mabilais to Brittany. There, refusing to sign the treaty negotiated by Cormatin, he declared that he would never make bend his principles, and that there was not for the royalists of safety that in the weapons. It regained Normandy at once; and organizing for the insurrection the cantons bordering on the Apple-brandy and the Handle, he managed to establish a line of correspondence with Jersey by the islands Saint-Marcouf. He sought then, by the districts of Domfront and Tinchebray, to bind his operations with those of the royalists of the Maine.

Rubbed had initially only three hundred men under its orders, and still were they little aguerris. But its perseverance and its untiring activity were worth to him the successes partial and repeated against many republican quarterings. He endeavoured to gain the confidence of the inhabitants of the campaigns, and increased each day the number of his partisans. Its correspondence with the French England and princes was soon in full activity. To London several emigrated officers were sent to him, and defectors grew bigger, his party. Having refused to deposit the weapons, he lives with joy, in July 1795, the renewal of the hostilities between the royalists and the republicans in resque all the departments of the West, he made about this time, an incursion into Maine, where, joined together with other chiefs, he seized temporarily the town of Mayenne.

To the return of this forwarding, it brought back to Normandy the famous Picot, chief secondary, whom it had art to employ, it endeavoured to coordinate his operations with those of the other chiefs of the Anjou, Maine and Brittany; but the exit of the forwarding of Quiberon stopped the rise of its vast projects. The November 15th it was attacked in its general headquarter by the garrison of Mortain; it pushed back it, went at once on the station of the Tilleul, and following a very sharp engagement, made there put fire, thus forcing the republicans with the retirement, it held them in failure while showing itself everywhere, extended its organization in the Basse-Normandie, had a staff, heads of division, and endeavoured to introduce a severe discipline among its troops, which all, joined together, could have formed a body from four to five thousand men; but the nature of this war, almost never allowed general meeting.

Rubbed however united around Mayenne the columns of Scépeaux and Rochecotte; it attacked, in concert, several republican battalions which were initially inserted, but which, reinforced then by the garrison of Mayenne, returned to the load and collapsed in their turn the royalists. Those however joined after their rout, and the chiefs held council to rule on their later operations. But how to reconcile so many claims and various interests?

The royalist generals preferred to act separately in their respective districts; and combined forwardings almost never had happy results. Rochecotte, Scépeaux and Frotté separated; each one returned in its territory. Of return in Normandy, Frotté was joined by his/her father, who had just unloaded with dispatches and subsidies of the English ministry. Thus encouraged, he redoubled efforts; it formed a company, organized under the name of gentlemen of the crown ; its system of insurrection extended and was propagated. Rubbed became frightening with the republicans, whom it worried and badgered unceasingly. It at that time formed a gathering many in the Forêt of Halouze, where it usually held its general headquarter; and it went with approximately thousand five hundred men to attack Tinchebray, about which it had to complain. The garrison was not numerous, but a great number of republicans, contained in the city, had taken the weapons to resist to the royalists. The city was palisaded besides; the bell-tower and the church were notched and surrounded by loopholes. The attack was sharp and the bloody combat. Rubbed there showed intrepidity and coolness; it was everywhere: but after various attacks it failed to beat a retreat. The result of forwarding was only used to make fear the royalists, and this moral success was almost only reality.

The insurrection gained gradually in Normandy. Almost all the cantons had chiefs who obeyed Frotté. But in the Vendée, on be edges of the Loire, in Brittany and in Maine, the businesses of the royalists were consequently desperate. The general Hoche subjected all, while employing in turn the force of the weapons, the policy and moderation; he covered already all Normandy and Brittany of his many battalions. In spite of the most obstinate resistance, Frotté is lived constrained to be re-embarked for England, refusing any species of adhesion or personal tender to the republican government.

Before its departure, he had laid off his divisions until new order and charged the royal council with Normandy of the details of pacification, recommending to his soldiers to preserve their weapons, and establishing between Normandy and England two points of correspondence, one by the islands Marcou, the other by the Carteret.

Arrived at London in 1796, it was sent by the royalist committee established in this city, with Sir, Count d' Artois, then with Edinburgh, to urge Its Highness Royal to try a forwarding in Brittany. The circumstances did not seem favorable.

It was only after the rupture of the Congrès of Rastadt and during the war of 1799, that the royalists of the Western of France could take again the weapons. Rubbed unloaded in Normandy towards the end of September, with the rank of Brigadier, of the very wide capacities, and the command as a chief of the royalists of Normandy and the Perche. In September 1799, it returns to take the head of the Norman “brigands” under the name of war of “Blondel”.

The civil war took a more imposing character then. At least equal forces were opposed to the royalists. Rubbed attacked without success; it took several boroughs, but which were taken again then. It delivered his mother and a great number of royalists who had just been imprisoned pursuant to the law of the hostages. The weather was then in midday of the départemeht of the Manche a rather happy forwarding initially then mélée of reverse. However, in the middle of this active war, its troop was exerted, was disciplined, and Rubbed itself managed to extend its influence on almost all Normandy. The control of its divisions, rose its army with nearly eleven thousand men.

But the advent of Napoleon Bonaparte with the supreme capacity in the day of the 18 brumaire became disastrous with the armed royalist party. Rubbed was perhaps that of all the chiefs who had a presentiment of of them with the most accuracy the consequences; and in one of its proclamations it recalled with the colors more the sharp this day of Saint-Cloud. It represented there Bonaparte falling almost failing into the arms from its pomegranates, and to the day before to fail in its usurpation. A similar proclamation could not be forgotten by Bonaparte. The war carried out against the République by irreducible “the General of the Royalists of Normandy” east so pitiless that the First Consul regards it as his personal enemy.

As of this moment the loss of Rubbed was solved. One started to dissolve the royalist confederation with words of peace. In the conferences of, Frotté was constantly for the continuation of the war. Almost all the other chiefs had already capitulated, and it still resisted rejecting any species of pacification. Wanting to rejoin under its flags the insurrectionists of Maine, whose chiefs had just subjected themselves, it went with several colonies on the road of Alençon. It delivered to Mortagne-with-Pole, Chaux and the the Mesle-on-Sarthe in the middle of the winter, three bloody combat, where it lost its best officers, while its lieutenant, Hinguant de Saint-Maur, threatened Evreux and spread alarm with the surroundings.

But given up by its party and overpowered by always increasing forces, Frotté wrote to the general Hédouville, responsible for the pacification, which it subscribed to the laws accepted by the other royalist chiefs; and he announced it, the January 28th 1800, with the general Guidal, who ordered the Département of the Flowering ash. One sent at once a safe conduct to him to go to Alencon, in order to negotiate his compromise.

Rubbed was on the way when, with the contempt of the sworn faith, it was stopped with six of its officers. The February 15th 1800, it is made prisoner by treason with Alençon, with the Hotel of the Swan, whereas it negotiated with the Guidal general.

Three days later, a military commission condemns it to death, without lawyer nor witnesses, in Verneuil, where he is shot. The officer who had made it fall involuntarily into the trap killed out of despair at the moment when he saw the continuations of his imprudent confidence. Rubbed appeared in front of its judges with the audacity which had always characterized it.

One produced against him an intercepted letter, by which he announced with one his friends that it was necessary to be subjected to all out with disarmament. In the middle of the debates it was made bring wine; and on its invitation, its co-defendants shouted with him, while drinking, lives the king! the following day it was led to foot with the place or it was to receive death. A pomegranate of its escort pointed out to him that it did not go to the step: You are right, took again Frotté, I did not pay there attention and it took again the step. He did not suffer that one bandaged the eyes to him and awaited the rifle shots upright and with serenity.

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