78 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 
engaged in revolutionary business during most of this 
interval: his name begins to appear in the written rec- 
ords of Nantes and of the department of the Lower 
Loire in January, 1798, and existing documents’ show 
that he was engaged as a commissioner and member of 
the Department and as a member of the Council of the 
Navy until the twenty-fifth of June, when he enlisted for 
active service in the navy of the Republic. Jean Audu- 
bon served also on various republican committees, his 
duties comprising the enlistment of recruits, organizing 
the National Guard, soliciting funds and food supplies 
for Nantes, finding cannon and other military or naval 
materials, posting proclamations, administering the oath 
of allegiance, and watching the movements of loyalist 
troops in the district. We have seen that the father 
of the naturalist was a game and determined fighter, and 
there is ample written testimony to prove that in the 
commune of Nantes he was regarded as an ardent 
patriot, who could be relied upon to act with tact, and 
if necessary with force. 
Having been appointed a Civil Commissioner by the 
Directory of the Department on January 17, 1793, Citi- 
zen Audubon was sent to Savenay, a town of some im- 
portance twenty-five miles to the northwest of Nantes. 
His instructions on this mission were to gather useful 
5 The unpublished documents of this Department are preserved in the 
archives of the Préfecture at Nantes, and through the courtesy of their 
custodians I was enabled to examine them freely. These documents 
deal with all the revolutionary changes in church and state consequent 
upon the breaking down of the old régime, and with the enrollment of vol- 
unteers and the dispatch of armed forces to centers of disturbance 
throughout that district. The present manuscripts are said to represent 
but a fraction of those which originally existed, the archives having been 
subjected to repeated raids, thefts, and wanton destruction by fire and 
other means. The most important have been listed and published by the 
Government in summary form under the title, Les Archives du Département 
de la Loire Infériewre, 1790-1799, Série L. (Nantes, 1909). 
