Document - Anonyme - L'Émigration dans la Marine sous la Révolution. - 1930

[ANONYME]. Emigration in the Navy during the Revolution. S.l., s.n., s.d. (circa 1930). Manuscript in-4, one title page, table of contents, 115 pages of typed text followed by a notebook of 19 pages of notes and clarifications with separate pagination, binding of the period in half-beige morocco leatherette, spine adorned with a title piece in red morocco gilt: “L'ÉMIGRATION DANS LA MARINE DE LA RÉVOLUTION”.

Unique, unpublished and unsigned copy: no author’s name appears on the examined sheets. The preface, which evokes as a memory already distant the erection of the monument to Danton in 1889, places the writing in the first half of the 20th century; the author, versed in naval history of the Ancien Régime and the Revolution, speaks as a connoisseur of the royal navy ordinances and ministerial archives.

The study unfolds in nine chapters: the state of the French Navy before the Revolution and the concern of Louis XVI (with Louis XV’s remark to La Tour on the absence of a navy), the beginnings of emigration in the country and the situation in the ports and squadrons, the growth of emigration in the Navy, the role of the minister Bertrand de Molleville (1744-1818), the unsuccessful attempts to fill the gaps caused by departures, emigration abroad, the disaster of Quiberon, the return of emigré officers, then a conclusion. A final notebook of Notes and Clarifications glosses the technical vocabulary: vaisseau de ligne, frégate, flûte, brûlot, gabare, boulet rouge...

Unique manuscript, apparently unpublished, on a topic that remained marginal in the historiography of emigration, almost always centered on the army and the land nobility rather than on the corps of ship officers. The contemporary binding of the text suggests a copy intended for library preservation rather than a working draft. No comparable copy has been found for sale or in a public library.