LIEUT. AUDUBON, REVOLUTIONIST 77 



I saw shot on the place de Viarme at Nantes." This 

 virtually ended the war in the Vendee, but the Chouans, 

 under their intrepid chief, Dupre, the miller, called 

 'Tete-Carree," managed to furnish considerable excite- 

 ment, and raided Nantes in 1799. Dupre's followers 

 stole in secretly at three o'clock on the morning of Octo- 

 ber 19 and left before daylight, after liberating fifteen 

 royalists from the prison, which seems to have been their 

 chief purpose. The cannon of alarm was fired from 

 the Chateau ; the tocsin sounded, calling the city to arms ; 

 there was much street fighting, but it was too foggy and 

 darkto distinguish friend from foe, and when the Na- 

 tional Guard was finally assembled, the enemy had 

 vanished. This brief attack cost the city twenty-one 

 deaths and wounds for twice the number, 3 but it was 

 only a passing incident in comparison with events that 

 had gone before. Thenceforth the history of the town is 

 blended with that of the nation. 4 



We have only slight indications of Jean Audubon's 

 activities from the close of 1789, when, according to his 

 own statement, he was in the United States, to the period 

 of his service in the National Guard at Nantes in the 

 spring of 1792 ; he was then living in the house of Citizen 

 Carricoule, rue de Crebillon, and the lease of his "Mill 

 Grove" farm, which was renewed in October, 1790, was 

 dated at Nantes. We may safely assume that he was 



3 The mayor, Saget, at the moment he was crossing the Place Egalite 

 (the Place Royale of today) received point-blank a ball in his right thigh 

 and another in his left leg, and lost both limbs. 



*For the revolutionary history of Nantes I am chiefly indebted to 

 M. A. Gu^pin's excellent Histoire de Nantes, 3d ed. (Nantes, 1839); Hipp. 

 Etiennez, Guide du Voyageur a Nantes, et aux Environs (Nantes, 1861); 

 A. Lescadien et Aug. Laurent, Histoire de la Ville de Nantes, t.2 (Nantes, 

 1836); F. J. Verger, Archives curieuses de la Ville de Nantes et des 

 Departments de I'Ouest, t. 5 (Nantes, 1837-41); and to a scholarly mono- 

 graph by Dugast-Matifeux, entitled Carrier a Nantes: Precis de la Conduit e 

 patriotique et rdvolutionnaire des citoyens de Nantes (Nantes, 1885). 



