JEAN AUDUBON AND HIS FAMILY 27 



for months the very existence of the infant Republic 

 was threatened. This spirit of revolt to the newer order, 

 the Chouanerie, as it came to be called, was stamped 

 out for the time, but a few smoldering embers always 

 remained, ready to burst into flame at the slightest 

 provocation; recrudescent symptoms of this tendency 

 had to be suppressed even as late as 1830, when Charles 

 X, the last Bourbon king, lost his crown. Pierre Audu- 

 bon's family, no doubt, shared many characteristics of 

 their Vendean and Breton neighbors, but as the sequel 

 will show, one at least did not approve of their political 

 course, for he took up arms against them, and presum- 

 ably against many of his own kith and kin. 



Jean Audubon was born at Les Sables on October 

 11, 1744, and was christened on the same day, his god- 

 father being Claude Jean Audubon, in all probability 

 an uncle after whom he was named, and his godmother, 

 Catharine Martin, presumably an aunt. Twenty-one 

 children, according to the naturalist, blessed the union 

 of Pierre Audubon and his wife, and were reared to ma- 

 turity. Whether this statement is strictly accurate, or 

 what became of so large a family cannot now be ascer- 

 tained. 4 



4 Jean Audubon had a brother Claude, and on February 27, 1791, he 

 wrote to him, asking for 4,000 francs, which he needed for the purchase 

 of a boat. It was probably this brother who lived at Bayonne, and left 

 three daughters, Anne, Dominica, and Catherine Francoise, who married 

 Jean Louis Lissabe, a pilot (see Vol. I, p. 263). If this inference be correct, 

 and the sum referred to was demanded in payment of a debt, it may 

 explain a statement of the naturalist that his father and his uncle were 

 not on speaking terms. 



Another brother is said to have been an active politician at Nantes, 

 La Rochelle and Paris from 1771 to 1796, when he dropped out of sight 

 for a number of years. When heard of again he was living at La 

 Rochelle in affluence and piety. This was ajjparently the Audubon to 

 whom the naturalist referred in certain of his journals and private letters 

 as one who, possessing the secret of his birth and early life, had done 

 both him and his father an irreparable injury (see Vol. I, p. 270). 



A sister, Marie Rosa Audubon, was married in 1794 to Pierre de 



