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.* 
*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 Lissabé, 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 apparently 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 
