Confidence capturing Kent, by Ambroise Louis Garneray • WIKIMEDIA COMMONS His parents hoped to make him a priest. But the young Robert Surcouf had something else in mind. Every morning, at daybreak, he roamed the outskirts of the west beach of Saint-Malo, at the head of a personal pack of mastiffs that he brought together with a whistle that belonged only to him. He was barely 13 years old. At the start of 1787, he had covered the seven leagues in the snow that separate Dinan, where he was a schoolboy, from Saint-Malo. About bite, he knew:he had just escaped from the college after biting a pawn on the calf who was trying to hold him back. Surcouf, the terror of English ships His mastiffs, that morning, threw themselves on English sailors who were trying to land. The incident caused a stir… We had been at peace for four years and the English sailors were among the most peaceful. As a result, the Surcouf parents found him a boarding place on Le Héron , a coaster heading for Cadiz. But the young teenager was from a good family. He had the right to be present at the captain's table. His father, Charles-Ange Surcouf, Lord of Boisgris, and his mother, Rose Truchot de la Chesnais, belonged to the good society of Saint-Malo, both descendants of illustrious Malouin families who owed their fortunes in armament and privateering. They were related to Duguay-Trouin and Porcon de la Barbinais, famous corsairs of the previous century. The young sailor's own grandfather, Robert Surcouf de Maisonneuve, had commanded a privateer at the beginning of the current century. Robert, who bore the first name of this ancestor, had three brothers:Charles, Nicolas and Noël. From February 1798, he took Nicolas, his senior by three years, into his races. He had become commander of a larger ship, owned by a Nantes shipowner, Félix Cossin. His boat, La Clarisse , weighed 200 tons, carried 20 guns and was manned by 100 crewmen. The legendary Surcouf aroused such fear that English mothers invoked it as the bogeyman to soothe their rascals. Surcouf often changed ships, not hesitating to take command of a building that he had just snatched from the adversary, most often English. But he found it very difficult to come into possession of the riches he took away. Thus, it was only after a very official approach to the Council of Five Hundred, in September 1797, that he obtained a return, in the manner of a “national gift”, for part of the amount of his catches. It was already a great fortune, reaching the sum of 660,000 pounds for an estimated catch of 1.7 million. Two actions, among others, made his glory. On January 29, 1796, in command of one of his prizes, Le Carter , a small brig armed with 4 guns and 19 crewmen, he seized an English vessel from the East India Company:the Triton , which was superior to it, armed with 26 12-pounders and manned by a crew of 150 men. Less than five years later, on October 7, 1800, while in command of the three-master La Confiance , he seizes the Kent , another East India Company vessel, carrying 36 guns, 200 sailors and as many soldiers. This made him a legend, to the point that English mothers, to overcome their rascals, invoked Surcouf like our bogeyman. Duguay-Trouin, captain of the King's ships Duguay-Trouin was family. Born in 1673, he had lived exactly a century earlier. He began his career as a sailor as a corsair. In his Memoirs , he tells how, during his first campaign "so rough and so stormy", a 16-year-old volunteer novice, he was "continually inconvenienced by seasickness". From a first meeting, he kept a horrified memory:"Our boatswain […] fell by misfortune between the two vessels, which, coming to join at the same moment, crushed in my eyes all its members, and made spill part of his brain onto my clothes". However, it was found that “for a novice, [he had] shown enough firmness”. He received his first letter of marque at the age of 18, and the command of the Danycan . But, in 1694, he was taken prisoner and taken to Plymouth from where he escaped with the complicity of a “very pretty merchant”. Returning to Saint-Malo, he continued the war of privateering on a ship of Magon de La Chipaudière, seizing, that year, 12 merchant ships and 2 English warships, while waiting to seize 3 ships india , ships of the Compagnie des Indes. In the service of the Crown of France, Duguay-Trouin crisscrossed the oceans by multiplying the exploits, such as the capture of Rio de Janeiro in June 1711. Having become rich and famous, Duguay-Trouin entered the Royal at the age of 24, in 1697, as captain of the King's vessels. During the War of the Spanish Succession (1703-1714), he multiplied the exploits, taking here, in Spitsbergen, a fleet of Dutch whalers, seizing, there, fishermen, frigates, vessels and merchant ships. He ran from the outskirts of England to Portugal, bringing his catches to Brest or Saint-Malo. In October 1707, he intercepted at the entrance to the Channel, between Land's End and Ouessant, a huge fleet bound for Lisbon:200 sails and 5 warships. He seized, as a privateer, 14 merchant ships and destroyed the English escort. In June 1711, he crossed the Atlantic to the Azores and, from there, with a squadron of 15 ships, 2,000 soldiers and 4,000 sailors, presented himself, in September, before Rio de Janeiro – Brazil being then a Portuguese possession. . Faced with the threats of the French, the 12,000 men of the garrison defiled and Rio was taken. The spoils were considerable, despite the loss of several ships on the way back. Returned to France 1.3 tons of gold and the 1.6 million pounds of two shipments that arrived later. For the Saint-Malo crews and shipowners, the expedition had brought in "92% profit" in Duguay-Trouin's own words in Mémoires , written between 1720 and 1722 and "controlled" by Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury, chief minister of the young Louis XV. Duguay-Trouin had become squadron commander in 1715. He was appointed lieutenant general of the naval armies in 1728. After an incursion into Libya in 1731 and the severe bombardment of Tripoli against Barbary pirates, then threats against those of Tunis and 'Algiers, he prepared to intervene to save Dantzig, during the War of the Polish Succession. He ended his life covered with honors in 1736, in Paris, as commandant of the port of Toulon. Several centuries of expertise These two giants should not make us forget the crowd of Malouins, who, from the simple sailor to the captain, distinguished themselves in the race. The corsairs of this time were less famous, but just as enterprising:the Cochets, Debon, Michel Garnier, Hénon, Legonidec, Leême, Lenouvel, Leroux, Durochette, Mallerousse, Niquet, Pagelet, Potier, Valton… not forgetting the intrepid Angenard and his bodyguard of tamed monkeys! The real time of the corsairs did not begin until the 15th th century, with a revolution in naval architecture:the generalization of the stern rudder. The Hundred Years War subsided in the middle of the century, the race had its extension in Brittany in the fight of François II against the King of France. The most effective periods for the race correspond to the two centuries of war against England, but also against Holland, Portugal or Spain. The enrichment of the corsairs was made on their shares. An example:during the Dutch war (1672-1677), the Malouins recorded the capture of “169 warships and 2,384 merchant ships”. During the Revolutionary Wars, the losses suffered by England amounted to "a billion pounds", including 40 million amassed by Surcouf alone! Wars were the best way to get rich for corsairs. However, the latter were also shrewd shipowners, knowing how to profit from the trade. Saint-Malo distinguished itself from the rest of Brittany by establishing a sort of republic of the bourgeois, "a commercial regime, where the interest of politics and the interest of trade merged, thus resembling that of the free cities of the Hansa" . In the following century, Saint-Malo should not have expected any other preoccupation than "the care of one's own thing". Joüon des Longrais, who thus comments on the Memoirs of Frotet de La Landelle, speaks of "the rise, at each period, of one or two families enriched by successful armaments" and lists "the Frotet, Trublet, Porée, Grout, Le Fer, Maingard and others", enriched "in the trade of Spain". Apparently, it was the wine and food trade which concealed another, "infinitely more lucrative, the currency trade". It was, for the Malouins, “a kind of closer Peru”. The shipowners had their ships built in Danzig or in England before going to sell the Breton goods in Spain or the Levant. They sailed on galleons – new, fast and maneuverable vessels. They were both sailors, merchants, shipowners, businessmen and bankers, who practiced, in short, throughout this period, what they themselves considered to be "a family man's business". Find out more Saint-Malo and the Malouine soul, R. Vercel, Albin Michel, 1948.History of Saint-Malo and the Saint-Malo country, A. Lespañol, Privat, 1984. Timeline 50 BC. AD The Gallic people of the Coriosolites occupy what will later become Clos-Poulet, with Aleth as their capital.507 AD. AD Saint Aaron retires to the rock of Kalnach, facing Aleth. He was soon joined by his friend Saint Malo.March 1590 50 young Malouins storm the castle and proclaim the Republic. The independence of the city will last four years.XVII e and XVIII th centuries The privateer-owners of Saint-Malo made their city rich, notably with the figures of Duguay-Trouin and Surcouf.1488 With the Treaty of Sablé (known as the “Treaty of the Orchard”), the Duke of Brittany lost Saint-Malo and could not marry his daughter without the agreement of the King of France.1944- 1948 The city is largely destroyed by American bombardments. It was rebuilt identically by the architect Louis Arretche. The discreet Malouinières A Breton legend wants the married man to preserve his independence by building a refuge at the end of the house, the penty . The Malouins made use of this habit, but in their own way:they left the narrow streets of their city enclosed in its ramparts and had country houses built where they could live freely, far from the inquisitive eyes of the neighborhood and the incursions of the tax authorities. This was the origin of the flowering of “malouinières”, strong buildings made of local stone – granite – but rendered with whitewash to be pleasant to the eye. The malouinières spread out to sea under their high, sloping roofs, with their rows of symmetrical windows. Most of them date from the second half of the 17th century. century, but they were built until 1750. Today there are 122, still inhabited, throughout the territory of Clos-Poulet, which owes its name to a deformation by the Franco-Breton language of the phrase "Pays d' 'Aleth'. The most admirable are the malouinière of the Ville Bague, those of the Chipaudière, of the Verderie... The rich history of a maritime city In the beginning, the rock on which Saint-Malo will be built was empty. Further south was the Gallic town of Aleth, on the site of what is now called Saint-Servan. It was then one of the capitals of the Coriosolites, a people of the Armorican Confederation. In the VII th century, the pious hermit Malo and his disciple Aaron settled on the rock of Kalnach, isolated from Aleth and the world by the sea at high tide, connected to the land by the Sillon mudflat at low tide. Soon, a small agglomeration is formed and develops until the middle of the XII th century, when the Bishop of Aleth chose to establish his residence there. The port is the subject of regular conflicts between the Duchy of Brittany and the Kingdom of France. At the end of the Middle Ages, for twenty years, Saint-Malo became French, then became Breton again until 1488, and again French after the Treaty of Sablé which gave the King of France possession of five Breton ports, including Saint-Malo. Bad. From March 11, 1590 to December 5, 1594, after young people stormed the castle, the Republic of Saint-Malo was proclaimed, with the motto Ni Français, ni Breton, Malouin suis . The following two centuries saw the cleansing of the Sillon and the blossoming of the power of the city, which was enclosed in solid fortifications. The English, on several occasions, will try in vain to seize or destroy it, as in 1693 with a ship loaded with gunpowder which ran aground before reaching its goal.
