After experiencing a golden age in the 18th century, Bordeaux, France's leading port, emerged bloodless from the revolutionary period, undermined by political disorder and the maritime war led by England. It saw a third of its population disappear and the ruin of its trade, based largely on slavery. Also, the arrival of Napoleon in power arouses hope and some reasons for satisfaction. At least, at the beginning...
A municipal affair
If the city regained certain stability after 1800, the municipality remained divided into three entities (north, center, and south) since the Directory, a retaliatory measure that followed the "federalist" insurrection of 1793. From then on, coordinating their actions is a challenge. We had to wait for the law of March 6, 1805, to see a single mayor and municipal council (the city councilor, six deputies, and thirty councilors). Due to promotions, departures, deaths, and, above all, chronic absenteeism, the council will never sit in full.
Two mayors appointed by Napoleon embody the imperial period. Laurent Lafaurie de Monbadon (1805-1809), former advisor to the Parliament of Bordeaux, was perhaps chosen because of his kinship with the Tascher de la Pagerie, Joséphine's family. Reappointed in 1808, he resigned to join the Senate. Jean-Baptiste Lynch (1809-1815), former president of requests to Parliament, was imprisoned during the Terror and returned from emigration, succeeded him and was reappointed in his functions in 1813. Through these choices, the Emperor shows his will to rely on the old elites without eliminating the problem of the sincerity of the rallies and therefore of the solidity of the regime when we see Lynch's choice to rally the Bourbons in March 1814.
The councilors are also chosen by the State from among the notables who, through their professional activities and their notoriety, seem it to best represent the interests of the population, even if they play a hidden role alongside the deputies and the mayor. Unsurprisingly, the council was dominated by commerce before being gradually replaced by landowners, a sign of the difficulties of Bordeaux commerce. The prefect, by nature a mobile civil servant, knowing little about his department, often relies on the recommendations of the mayor who composes his entourage as he wishes. The last advisors chosen by Lynch were not likely to be strong supporters of the Empire as few resigned in 1814.
However, the influence of the State remains strong. Cities cannot in fact make any expenditure without authorization from the administration. The central administration controls local finances very closely through the prefect, who gives his assessment of each budget line before the Minister of the Interior makes his proposals. Napoleon then approves the budget. The cumbersomeness of these procedures and the distance due to the war only delayed imperial approval. It is estimated that it takes an average of 212 days to obtain approval. The Bordeaux budget of 1806 was signed on January 25, 1807, in Warsaw, where Napoleon was. The mayor is then often obliged to start the budget year without having received authorization... Due to exhausted public finances, the city budget does not provide much room for maneuvering for expenditure: general administration (36 %), maintenance of order (21%), support for various hospices (31%), town planning, public works, public education, and culture (12%).
The mayor must strive to have good relations with other local authorities (prefect, general police commissioner, archbishop) who are all obstacles to his prerogatives. Concerned about their local freedoms, the people of Bordeaux have difficulty getting used to being placed under supervision. The State interferes in all aspects of municipal life and the mayor must establish close collaboration with the prefect, as well as with the commissioner, to act in concert. But he often has to complain about state initiatives which paralyze his room for maneuver. It is therefore not insignificant that he is sometimes put in his place by the prefect. The regime's increasingly high tax levies are creating a secret disaffection for a government whose future seems more and more uncertain at a time of defeat.
Living in a cesspool
All testimonies agree that this town of 62,000 inhabitants (compared to 92,000 in 1789), whose urban planning excited travelers twenty years earlier, is now only a shadow of itself at the beginning. of the 19th century. One report is clear: “What a disgusting sight! […] There is filth everywhere, everywhere mud where you don't know where to put your foot [...], there is no circle where the filth of our public places does not provide material for complaints. What are the quagmires with which the streets are covered made of? From the sweeping of houses where kitchen debris, remains of plants, game, and especially fish, are confusedly mixed together, an eminently corruptible substance; Let's add urine and manure of all kinds to this, and let's not be surprised by the unbearable odor that exhales from all our streets. » Mayor Lafaurie finds himself faced with an immense challenge which he is trying to meet by showing intense regulatory activity to fight against abuses and deal with the most urgent problems such as paving or street lighting, which are notoriously insufficient. But the financial difficulties are such that the municipality is no longer able to pay its employees!
Therefore, it is not surprising that outbreaks of “fever” appeared between 1803 and 1810. The government then sought to raise awareness among the population. The first vaccinations took place in 1801. In 1804, district committees were created and helped to popularize vaccine inoculation. In 1807, a vaccine depot was established in the abandoned children's hospice. However, let us note a certain inertia of the population, which explains the few outbreaks of smallpox epidemics. In 1808-1809, new outbreaks were linked to the influx of Spanish prisoners and numerous French wounded into the city's hospitals and temporary establishments, which were quickly overcrowded. Witness to these epidemics, Doctor Berthet reports that there are 2,000 to 3,000 sick people in the city.
The major town planning works of the end of the 18th century were practically interrupted by the Revolution, which was a real period of anarchy. The Society of Medicine highlights the “hideous, dark, poorly distributed and poorly built houses that we find.” Significant wetlands remain in the city. Due to a lack of resources, many institutions (schools, hospices, high schools) are not or are poorly maintained. However, a few projects saw the light of day under the Consulate: the French Theater (today cinema), built by the architect Dufart (1801), construction of Rue Montaigne and Rue Montesquieu which ensured a direct passage between the Cours de l'Intendance and the Allées de Tourny, the Place des Grands Hommes which becomes a market. In 1808, the departmental architect Louis Combes built a vast begging depot (current Lycée G. Eiffel).
Commerce: economic decline or catastrophe?
At the dawn of the Consulate, the city's commerce office made this pessimistic observation: "The source of its wealth is dried up, its culture is discouraged, its navigation is wiped out, all maritime workshops are paralyzed and all its means of prosperity disappeared. » It is the same for Lorenz Meyer, brother of the consul of Hamburg, in 1801: “The ancient splendor of Bordeaux is no longer […]. The devastation and loss of colonies destroyed trade and at the same time ruined the wealth of the main city of France. We see it everywhere. The Stock Exchange is full of traders, but most only go there out of habit. Business is rare. »
The situation improved quickly with the return of American ships (1801) and with the Peace of Amiens (1802), greeted with joy because it allowed the reopening of traditional maritime routes. Colonial exchanges resumed with the Indian Ocean and with the sugar-producing West Indies even if the unrest in Santo Domingo was far from being calmed. Bordeaux traders are also turning to the American coast. Thanks to a series of excellent wine harvests (1798, 1801, 1802), the cellars are full
The resumption of hostilities with England (1803) did not call into question (at least initially) this resumption. Shipowners in fact use neutral ships (especially American and Danish). However, the continual war with Albion under the Empire put a severe test on the Bordeaux trade. Out of one hundred and fifty-five ships then at sea, sixty-three were taken by the English. Relations nevertheless persisted with the more or less tacit consent of the two governments: from 1803 to 1807, the wine trade continued in approximately normal conditions thanks to the use of neutral navigation. The naval blockade, put in place by the English in May 1806 (we often forget it), remained fairly flexible, even if certain sectors of activity in the hinterland began to suffer. Everything becomes complicated when Napoleon sets up his Continental Blockade, drying up sources of income. Indeed, the decree of November 23, 1807, ordered the seizure of any ship having docked in a British port, which affected neutral ships. Retaliation by the English who interrupt this semi-prosperity. In 1808, this resulted in an almost complete stoppage of traffic. The American consul observes that “grass grows in the streets of this city. Its splendid harbor is deserted, except for two fishing schooners from Marblehead [in Massachusetts] and three or four empty ships. »
Bordeaux trade managed to avoid total suffocation through cabotage and smuggling. Thanks to the export of wines to England under the cover of simulated shipments to Norway and a very liberal licensing policy issued by the British government, the economy experienced a significant recovery in 1809-1810, however, compromised from 1811. The same year, an industrial survey provided a rather gloomy picture of the economic crisis: shipbuilding and the refining industry (nine compared to thirty in 1790) were severely affected.
Nevertheless, racing warfare gives sailors something to do, but it is only a weak palliative. Napoleon then tried to revive the economy by granting a loan to support the Gironde vineyards no longer finding markets. In 1812, he bypassed his own blockade by also establishing a system of licenses for ships or by granting American permits. Thus, the wines can be exported to England again. In exchange, ships are allowed to import sugar, coffee, and indigo. The Emperor also launched the construction of warships and created a tobacco factory. But all this is at best a stopgap measure. We cannot hide the resounding bankruptcies, the overall decline in economic activity, and the reorientation towards land assets practiced by traders.
Overall, the economic sector suffered greatly under the Empire. A lot of capital was lost, and the elements of prosperity no longer existed like Santo Domingo which had become independent (Haiti). England seized the Nordic markets for the sale of colonial goods. As for the Neutrals, thanks to the war, they discovered the direct routes leading to the English market and those of the Hispanic world.
The square and the brush
The masonry was being completely rebuilt at the beginning of the 19th century, after being dormant during the Revolution. Having undertaken to constitute intermediary bodies dedicated to bringing together elites and supporting his regime, Napoleon wished to benefit from a controlled revival of lodge activity. The counterpart of this renaissance is the concentration of lodges in a single official obedience under the orders of Napoleonic power. The Essence of Peace was thus the first Bordeaux lodge to resume its work in September 1800. These lodges, however, experienced recurring financial problems, thus revealing the situation of a port whose economic activity was hampered by the blockade. In 1807, the treasurer of the L'Anglaise lodge (the largest and oldest in the city) was even forced to borrow to pay the rent of the premises!
The cults are also reorganized. Bonaparte allocated the former chapel of the Convent of the Sisters of Notre Dame to Reformed worship, which became the Temple of Hâ. After the formation of the National Jewish Consistory of France (1808), a regional consistory was created in Bordeaux in the same year. A year later, a large synagogue was built on rue Causserouge (it burned down in 1873).
The signing of the Concordat (1801) with the Holy See put an end to revolutionary divisions. Bishops and archbishops are now appointed by the head of state before receiving canonical investiture. Charles-François d'Aviau du Bois de Sanzay thus became the new archbishop of Bordeaux in 1802. This Poitevin, who refused the civil Constitution of the clergy and emigrated to Italy, occupied the archbishopric of Vienna until 1801. Welcomed with enthusiasm by the population, he noted the scale of his task: the Saint-André cathedral was unusable due to the damage that occurred during the Revolution. It is the Notre-Dame church, nearby, which serves as a cathedral during the repairs. He undertook the reconstruction of the archdiocese: on a material level, he rehabilitated numerous dilapidated places of worship.
On a human and spiritual level, the archbishop intends to be respected: swearing priests wishing to be reconciled with the Church will be reinstated subject to an act of adhesion on their part. This last point is a subject of friction with the prefect of Gironde, Dieudonné Dubois, who finds it unacceptable that these priests are not automatically reinstated. Supported by his bishops, d'Aviau addressed the First Consul who decided in his favor. The prefect was replaced by the former minister Charles-François Delacroix (father of Eugène) in 1803. Another time, it was a priest who deliberately decided to marry the daughter of a mayor with whom he already had a relationship. relationship. D'Aviau called in the Minister of Religious Affairs to prohibit civil registrars from receiving the marriage certificate. Over time, d'Aviau became a popular figure among his flock.
In 1811, he was summoned to the Council of Paris, assembled by Napoleon for the purpose of transferring the papal canonical institution to the metropolitan archbishop and approving his conduct towards the captive pope. D'Aviau speaks out against it. Remaining a royalist at heart, he eagerly welcomed the return of the Bourbons in 1814 and received with great pomp the Duke of Angoulême, the king's nephew, at the door of Bordeaux Cathedral. He remained in place until his death in 1826.
Bordeaux and Napoleon: I love you, me neither
The city welcomed the Emperor four times due to Spanish affairs, from April 4 to 13, 1808, from July 31 to August 3, 1808, then during two lightning visits on November 1, 1808, and January 20-21, 1809. In April 1808, the people of Bordeaux welcomed the imperial couple with grandiose festivities. Received with pomp the previous year, Cambacérès had been able to observe the good public spirit. However, Napoleon did not hide his bad mood when he arrived in town, heading straight to the Rohan Palace (currently the town hall, but then the prefecture), where he was staying. As a man in a hurry, he hardly appreciated the double constraint of crossing the Dordogne and the Garonne by boat. There are only a few days left to receive the grievances of local officials and traders, to flatter the population and improve its image. He is in fact awaiting the arrival of the Spanish sovereigns whom he has summoned to Bayonne. After her departure, Joséphine unwillingly extended her stay in Bordeaux (from April 10 to 26) while rumors of divorce were already circulating.
During his visits, Napoleon noted the improvements that urgently needed to be made to the city. On April 25, 1808, in Bayonne, he signed a long decree (fifty-five articles) in which he specified all the measures he endorsed for the planning and development of the city: transfer of the town hall (to the period attached to the Grosse cloche which is its belfry), transfer of the prefecture to the Saige hotel, destruction of the Château-Trompette (current Place des Quinconces) and Fort Louis, filling and cleaning of the old moats, ditches and marshes, construction of a courthouse, a large hospital, a begging depot (which will serve as a hospital or barracks), etc. The municipality hastened to express its gratitude to the Head of State. In a particular decree of June 26, 1810, Napoleon ordered the construction of what would be the Stone Bridge, financed equally by the State and the city. He thus takes up an old idea envisaged by the intendants of the Ancien Régime. Originally supposed to save time for soldiers leaving for Spain, the work was stopped for lack of money. The bridge will not be put into service until... 1822. Many projects will indeed remain without a future: "These projects are beautiful but too vast for the time", the lawyer Bernadau will rightly say in his Tablets.
Through his announcements, Napoleon hoped to demonstrate his concern and win hearts. Initially, a very warm welcome was reserved for the soldiers who paraded in 1808. We admired them before cursing their incessant coming and going between France and Spain: 350,000 men crossed Bordeaux between 1807 and 1810. Their passage then becomes a source of hassle and expense. The mayor must recruit, feed and house soldiers and horses, to avoid violence and disorder. The wounded from Spain flock to a city poorly equipped to receive and care for them. All of this is very expensive. The municipality in turn had to draw most of its resources from the grant rights abolished at the start of the Revolution and reestablished at the gates of the city in 1798. Added to this great disappointment were the economic difficulties due to the blockade. Unemployment is rampant while rebels (endemic in the South-West) and deserters multiply. Napoleon then became synonymous with war, ruin, and misery.
Bordeaux the rebellious
At the end of 1813, defeats weakened the Empire. The Napoleonic troops are driven out of Spain and pursued by the Anglo-Portuguese army which invades the national territory. However, Bordeaux will not have to suffer from military operations. In the Legislative Body, Lainé, deputy for Gironde, complained of the “odious scourge” of conscription. “Commerce,” he continues, “is destroyed, industry is dying and there is not a Frenchman who does not have his fortune or his family a cruel wound to heal […]. It is time for nations to breathe. » Napoleon, furious, adjourned the assembly and called Lainé a “bad man”.
In the spring of 1814, the imperial regime aroused a feeling of rejection among many Girondins. After years of hope, the paralysis of trade and the war did little to reverse the trend. This discontent is exploited by the royalists who play the pacifism card. The journalist Edmond Géraud, a former “red cap of 93” who switched to royalism out of hatred of war, sums up, with a witticism in the Bordeaux Memorial, the feeling of his fellow citizens: “The city of Bordeaux, above all, was worked of discontent as deep as it is legitimate. »The royalists are in fact more and more numerous because the public spirit is more and more favorable to them. They set up a paramilitary organization, the Philanthropic Institute, which contacted the representatives of Louis XVIII in London for the capture of the city. There are other offshoots like the secret society of the Knights of Faith. Propaganda is becoming more and more active within the bourgeoisie.
Lynch, aware of what was going on secretly among the royalists, was careful not to inform Napoleon. Remained loyal to the old dynasty – isn’t its motto Semper Fidelis? –, his links were strengthened by his association with royalist circles in Paris and by the deterioration of the situation in France. Now playing a double game, he still ensured on January 20, 1814, the unwavering loyalty of the people of Bordeaux. After the defeat of Marshal Soult at Orthez (February 27) and his withdrawal towards Toulouse, the road to Bordeaux was opened. In a disillusioned city, a group of men devoted to the Bourbons took advantage of the incompetence, discouragement, and resignation of the authorities to convince Wellington and the Duke of Angoulême to direct troops towards the city, assuring them that they would be well received. The National Guard has also been infiltrated.
On March 12, Lynch and Lainé went to meet the English troops to present themselves to General Beresford. With the white flag of the monarchy raised, the Duke of Angoulême enters without having fired a shot. This event was not without influence on the support that the allies agreed to provide to Louis XVIII, whose return did not arouse unanimous enthusiasm among Napoleon's adversaries. As for the Bourbons, they will never cease to honor this “faithful city” at the origin of their restoration.
After this "revolution", the Duke of Angoulême and his supporters tried to instill in people's minds, via the press, a context of "Great Fear", highlighting these "soldiers of the empire" who were sweeping through the countryside. to sack and pillage, to better highlight the need to establish a political authority, that of the Bourbons. But this campaign has little resonance in popular circles. Wanting to reassure the bourgeoisie which was able to benefit from the change, Angoulême and Lynch decreed on March 13 the general amnesty, the abolition of conscription, that of combined rights, the assurance that the purchasers of national property would not be worried, the freedom of conscience.
The episode of the Hundred Days did not change anything in its disaffection with the Empire, even if the city quickly abandoned the royal cause, the Duchess of Angoulême having tried in vain to organize resistance there. However, there are many rebellious and refractory people. Abstention is recorded during the plebiscite for the Additional Act. The nobles refused to serve. General Clauzel may have maintained the tricolor flag on the Château-Trompette until July 22, 1815, but the return of Louis XVIII was recorded since Waterloo...
In the end, the twenty-five years of Revolution and Empire broke the spectacular urban expansion of the Age of Enlightenment while revealing old structural weaknesses, in particular of an economy very exposed to the economic situation. Eliminated from the large colonial and slave markets, the folding of Bordeaux maritime trade into the national framework is now established. These years also profoundly modified the social balance by ruining a part of the parliamentary society that dominated the city, even if the city almost regained its pre-1789 population under the Empire. Despite the meritorious efforts of certain politicians and traders, Bordeaux will not succeed, after 1815, in restoring the prosperity of its former colonial economy.
Intellectual and artistic life
Intellectual life is trying to regain its rights. This is run by the Society of Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts founded in 1791, and by the Museum (1801) which was replaced in 1808 by the Philomatic Society. Between 1802 and 1803, fourteen private schools became secondary schools and the high school opened its doors. But the collections of the natural history cabinet and the antique depository have been reduced to little. In 1805, the municipality was even forced to sell 7,000 volumes from the public library. As for artistic life, it is dominated by the work of the Bordeaux painter Pierre Lacour who founded the Museum of Fine Arts (1801). This gallery of paintings wanted by the government hardly offers any major works. To enrich it, forty-four paintings were taken from the state collections between 1803 and 1805. But the curator Lacour describes them as “miserable copies given for originals, or even more miserable originals”. The people of Bordeaux had the reputation of having little interest in art...
A social crisis
This chaos had major social consequences: a report underlined that at the end of the Empire, 12,000 individuals (out of nearly 90,000 inhabitants) had recourse to public assistance while "most were formerly employed in the exploitation of wines and in works relating to armaments”. A social crisis is brewing in the city. Conversely, large traders are not impacted by these daily difficulties because they have more “flexibility”, immobilizing their business while they wait, they emigrate, or transferring their capital to more favorable regions or sectors.
An influential masonry
It is a veritable masonry of notables that the imperial regime is putting in place, merging elites from the most diverse backgrounds within the same workshops while diverting them from political action, at least we hope. Of the 1,868 Bordeaux masons recorded between 1800 and 1815, 1,215 belong (unsurprisingly) to small trade, despite a few consuls and big names in international trade. Next comes the military (211), another Masonic force. Mayor Lynch is also a Mason. But this "official" masonry, supposed to be a pillar of the regime, tends to follow political vagaries: if on September 18, 1806, the L'Anglaise lodge was delighted to receive the portrait of Napoleon which it exhibited in its large room, May 19, 1814, she lost no time in giving a banquet to celebrate "the happy return of the Bourbons to France", without knowing that the fall of the Empire would lead to that of masonry.
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