In virtue of the power conferred upon us by the Central Committee, on the ninth of April we were transported to the parish of Couëron, where we arrived at seven o'clock in the morning. Proclamations were posted both at Couëron and at Port Launay close by, while some were sent across the river to Pellerin. We availed ourselves on this occasion of the services of two officers of a corsair, who demanded that we aid in removing from Pellerin four cannon with four-pound balls, and we succeeded in putting to flight a small barque and four men, who an hour later returned with cannon.... The parish of Couëron appears very tranquil, and is in a better mood than [at first] seemed to us.
A little later Jean proceeded to Paimbœuf on a similar errand. His letters to the citizen-administrators of that commune are dated at Nantes on the seventeenth of April and the fourteenth of May; in one of these he refers to "the sum of four hundred francs" due from the Administration "for one year's rent of my house in calle Rondineau (à la calle rondino), which you have taken for a corps de garde" (see [Vol. I, p. 32]).
In July and August of this second year of the Republic, Citizen Audubon was sent to his native town of Les Sables d'Olonne to follow the movements of the loyalist generals Westermann and Boulart,[66] a mission which could hardly have been agreeable if, as seems to have been the case, some of his own people were loyal to the old régime. Correspondence by sea between Les Sables and Nantes, which was open before the siege, was not broken at this time, for the royalists had named one of their representatives, Benoit, as a delegate "to fraternize with the citizens of Nantes, to invite the authorities to correspond, and beg them to send food if they had more than they required." Four of Jean's letters, dated at Les Sables on the fifth and eighth of July and the sixth of August, besides one from La Rochelle on the fourteenth of July, all addressed to the Administration of the Loire inférieure, have been preserved.
In the manuscript records of the Department for 1793 is found also a notice of Jean's appointment as Special Commissioner, with a memorandum of all the money paid to reimburse him for the expenses of his numerous journeys. Thus, it is noted that he had been paid 145 francs for a service of twenty-nine days, which would represent the modest allowance of a dollar a day. Another item shows that he had received 100 francs for a tour of ten days; a note which was added to this item to explain the Directory's sanction for the payment of another forty-five francs and ten sous reads as follows: "by its order of the sixth of March last, the Council had, in effect, named Citizen Audubon as its Commissioner, to visit the coasts and to secure signatures, with full power to treat with all people, to acquire materials for the navy and other objects of his mission; if this mission did not prove successful, it was solely through force of circumstances, and not from any lack of zeal on his part."[67]
On the twenty-fifth of June, 1793, while engaged in duties to which we have just referred, Jean Audubon was appointed, with rank of ensign, to command the Republican lugger named the Cerberus.[68] During this charge, which lasted until the twenty-second of November of the following year, he fought one of the stiffest engagements of his career. On the twelfth of July he encountered the Brilliant, an English privateer of fourteen cannon which had captured an American ship laden with flour; and after a desperate battle which lasted three hours, in the course of which Jean was wounded in the left thigh, the Englishman, beaten and obliged to surrender his prize, was glad to escape under cover of night. Jean towed the American into the port of La Rochelle, and afterwards sent to the Administration a full account of the engagement.[69] Ensign Audubon's next command was a dispatch boat called L'Eveillé ("The Awakened"), on which he served for nearly nine months, from November 23, 1794, to August 14, 1795. He was then detailed for port duty at La Rochelle from August 15, 1795, to January 24, 1797. His last ship was L'Instituteur ("The Institutor"), which he commanded with the rank of lieutenant de vaisseau, January 25 to October 3, 1797, while he was engaged in governmental business between the ports of La Rochelle and Brest.
The financial losses which Lieutenant Audubon sustained at Les Cayes in consequence of the revolution in Santo Domingo were a crushing blow to him; he never recovered his fortune, later estimated by his son-in-law at a sum which at that day would have been fabulous.[70] The business house in which he was interested failed; his plantations, refinery, houses and stores, the rents from which, as we have seen, in certain years after 1789, had yielded 90,000 francs, were presumably ravaged and partially destroyed. When the news of this misfortune reached him after 1792, his hands were tied by revolutions at home. Though he applied to his Government for relief, as undoubtedly did a host of other losers, he was eventually granted only a small indemnity, not exceeding 30,000 francs.
Friends of Jean Audubon at Nantes had made repeated demands of the Ministry of Marine that he be given a rank more in accord with his patriotism and efficient service to the State, and on October 11, 1797, he was commissioned lieutenant-commander (lieutenant de vaisseau),[71] one grade below that of captain. He held this rank for three years, during which he was engaged in vigilance service at Les Sables d'Olonne and in military duty at Rochefort, or until he was retired from the navy for disability, January 1, 1801 (le 11 nivose, an 9), at the age of fifty-seven.[72] He had served the State for over eight years, and his total period of active duty on sea and land when employed in the merchant marine and navy of France, as estimated from port to port, amounted to nineteen years, nine months and twelve days, while it had extended with interruptions over more than forty years.[73] After this long period of service, when, suffering from a pulmonary affection, he applied to his Government for a pension, he received the paltry annuity of 600 francs or $120.
CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE OF LIEUTENANT JEAN AUDUBON, FEBRUARY 26, 1801.
From a photograph of the original in the Lavigne MSS.