“Charette and Jules Verne”

This is “Extraordinary Voyages, the Magazine of the North American Jules Verne Society”, Volume 31, Number 2, February 2025

It includes my article about  “Charette and Jules Verne.” You might find its French history and the relationship to Kentucky of interest!

                       

                    “CHARETTE AND JULES VERNE”

It was an interesting question that no one was asking.  That is until the North American Jules Verne Society [NAJVS]published an article wondering if they had ever met.  And it is interesting to me because of the additional questions raised by the answer.

            Was Jules Verne [1828-1905] a Royalist?  A supporter of the French Monarchy?  Did Jules Verne believe in the divine right of Kings?

            Charette did.

            “Hah!” you say, Verne was an adventurer and flew in balloons and strange ships, probed the ocean depths in submarines and blasted his characters into space!  He was the creator of Captain Nemo and Robur the Conqueror.  And besides, his publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel [1814-1886], was a liberal Republican and an atheist!

            But there was more to Jules Verne than Hetzel would publish.  And so we dive into NAJVS archives and their fabulous Palik Series of early Jules Verne translations edited by Brian Taves [1959-2019].  And here, I specifically reference the first-time-in-English translation of Jules Verne’s The Siege of Rome found in the NAJVS compilation of Verne’s early work entitled Bandits and Rebels, published in 2013.[1]

            The Siege of Rome involved the Italian Wars of Unification [the “Risorgimento”] led by Giuseppe Garibaldi[1807-1887] and others.  The war ultimately focused on the secular power which the Catholic Pope exerted from Rome over the Central Italian, “Papal States.”  That “Italian question” heated up in 1848, finally concluding with the capitulation of Rome and the Vatican in 1870.

            In 2011, NAJVS published in English for the first time, Jules Verne’s The Count of Chanteleine.[2]  This 30,000-word story was originally printed in three issues of Musee Des Familles in late 1864.  When offered by Verne to his publisher in book form, Hetzel refused to print it.

            The Count of Chanteleine was set amidst the great Catholic and Royal Counter-Revolution in Western France known, in part, as the “War in the Vendee.”  It began in 1793 as local resistance to restrictions on Catholic priests and a national conscription effort to draft 300,000 new French soldiers.  It ended with the execution in Nantes of the guerilla leader, General Francois de Charette [the first Charette of four referenced herein] in 1796.

            There is a dispute as to when Jules Verne may have written these two works.  Their geneses may have started as early as 1853.  Jules Verne was then living in Paris, managing the Theatre Lyrique and writing plays.  He had abandoned his legal training and would soon become a stockbroker to earn a living.  He would marry Honorine Anne Hebee Deviane [1829-1910] in 1857, adopt her two children, and, in 1861, father his own and only child, Michel Verne [1861-1925].

            The “wide” century surrounding the 1800s was a remarkably unstable period in French history.  Numerous political upheavals would impact all French families, including those of Verne and Charette.[3]  In 1852, Napolean III had declared himself the new Emperor of France [the “Second Empire”].

            In these younger years, Jules Verne was exploring different forms in his writing.  He was impressed by the success of Alexander Dumas [1802-1870] and his works of historical fiction, including The Count of Monte Cristo and The Man in the Iron Mask.  And Verne eagerly read Charles Dickens’ [1812-1870] A Tale of Two Cities, which had just then been translated                           into French.  Verne was also aware of Honore de Balzac [1799-1850] and his successful novel, entitled The Chouans [published in 1829], which dealt with the revolts in Brittany.

             The Siege of Rome and The Count of Chanteleine were Verne’s initial explorations in the writing of similar forms of historical fiction.  And whether as the narrator, or in the voice of a character, Verne could speak to the reader about what the author himself was then thinking.  And what he was thinking back then is of interest to me.

            Though set fifty years after the time described in Chanteleine, I think The Siege of Rome was written first.  And I think Verne’s statements within the text of the book tell us much about his more youthful thinking.  Here are some examples.[4]

“If the Liberal powers were falling on all sides, it was because of the very excess of their institutions.’” [“Chapter I – Historical Background,” Page 53]

 “Liberty in principle and liberty in fact are mutually exclusive.  Wherever the principle is proclaimed aloud, the fact no longer exists.”  [“Chapter I – Historical Background,” Page 53]

 “The fact is that true liberty can only live under a solidly based and immovable power, a power whose stability is not at the mercy of disastrous elections or possibly successful coups de main.”  [“Chapter V – Capitulation and Conclusion,” Page 114]

“When all mad ambitions are given complete freedom, and not held in check by the great and solid principle of heredity, which opposes their endeavors, anarchy reigns in the country, liberty is throttled by its own hand, and dictatorship comes striking heavy blows.”  [“Chapter V – Capitulation and Conclusion,” Page 114][5]

            The Siege of Rome was set more than 50 years after the beginning of the counter-revolutionary War of the Vendee in 1793.  So let us now look at this earlier time as described in Verne’s The Count of Chanteleine.

             In that book, his protagonist joins in support of the English supported Royalist invasion of Brittany just north of Nantes in 1795.  The local guerilla leader, Francois de Charette [1763-1796], was to be an integral part of the invasion plans.  He had been designated by the comte de Artois [the future French King Charles X, and younger brother of the beheaded Louis XVI] as a General of the “Catholic and Royal Army.”

                  As Artois was preparing a force to invade Western France, Charette advised him not to land his invasion force on the south coast of Brittany at Quiberon, but rather land to the south of Nantes in the Vendee region where his men could form up in support.  Regardless, three to four thousand British and French Royalist Troops landed at Quiberon.

                 Poorly planned, the local “Chouan” reinforcements were unable to resist Republican counterattacks.  The comte de Artois, himself, did not come, and Charette didn’t cross over the Loire from the south with his men.  Within a month, the Catholic and Royalist forces were routed and retreated.  Their repulse, and the resulting military impact, formed the background for The Count of Chanteleine.[6]

                After the defeat of the Royalist Forces there, Francois de Charette was hunted down south of the Loire River by Republican General Lazare Hoche [1768-1797].  French General Jean-Pierre Travot [1767-1836] captured a wounded Charette at the “Bois de Chabotterie” on March 23, 1796.  Charette was executed by firing squad in the Place Viarme in Nantes on March 29, 1796, and his body was dumped into a common grave.  Only a small plaque now denotes his place of death on the square [see the Musee Dobree in Nantes].  He was 32 years old.

But what did this local history mean to Jules Verne, who was born in that French city?

                NAJVS editor Brian Taves described the protagonist in The Count of Chanteleine as a “man who incarnates the expected virtues of aristocracy.”  [“Introduction: Verne’s Forgotten Swashbuckler,” Page 5].  Taves continues, suggesting that Verne’s intent was “… misread by Hetzel as implying a political agenda.”  [“Introduction: Verne’s Forgotten Swashbuckler,” Page 7].[7]

                 Hetzel would refuse to publish The Count of Chanteleine as a book.  It would wait more than 100 years to be so produced.  As Taves would conclude in the first English translation, “… for him [Chanteleine] … the divine and the potential justice of the Monarchy are intertwined [“Introduction: Verne’s Forgotten Swashbuckler,” Page 13].[8]

            Today, Verne’s The Count of Chanteleine seems to have generated renewed interest.  It was recently republished in French by Stephane Chene, illustrated by Gerard Berthelot, at the Musee Jules Verne au Lude.  The work appears to be a faithful rendition of the original French text [with, perhaps, the spelling of some words updated].  It was significant enough in publication to attract Herve de Charette [1938-], the former Foreign Affairs Minister of France [1995-1997]under French President Jacques Chirac, to write the preface.  Herve de Charette is also descended from the brother of Vendean General Francois de Charette, as well as the comte de Artois [King Charles X of France].

           Napoleon [1769-1821] also studied the Vendee War.  During his second banishment on the Island of St. Helena in 1815, he was surreptitiously interviewed by a biographer.[9]  Here is part of what was recorded:

“Charette was the only individual to whom the Emperor attached particular importance.  ‘I have read a history of La Vendee,’ said he, … Charette was the only great character, the true hero, of that remarkable episode of our Revolution … Charette impressed me with the idea of a great character.  I observed that he on several occasions acted with uncommon energy and intrepidity.  He betrayed genius.”

           The interviewer, Emmanuel comte de Las Cases [1766-1842], had served with young Francois Charette aboard ship in the French Navy.  He recorded his own thoughts of Charette’s character as he spoke with Napoleon:

“I mentioned that I had known Charette very well in my youth; had been in the marines together at Brest, and for a long time we shared the same chamber, and messed at the same table.  The brilliant career and exploits of Charette very much astonished all who had formerly been acquainted with him.  We looked upon him as a commonplace sort of man, destitute of information, ill-tempered, and extremely indolent; and we all, with one accord, pronounced him to belong to the class of insignificant beings. … The cutter lost her mast; … The weather was very stormy.  Death seemed inevitable; and the sailors … refused to make any effort to save themselves.  Charette, notwithstanding his extreme youth, killed one of the men, in order the compel the rest to make the necessary exertions. … the vessel was saved.”

 Napoleon responded as follows:

“’You see,’ said the Emperor, ‘true decision of character always develops itself in critical circumstances.  Here was the spark that distinguished the hero of La Vendee.  Men’s dispositions are often misunderstood.  There are sleepers whose waking is terrible.’”

              The life of the Vendean General Francois de Charette, and his death by a firing squad in Nantes in 1796, would have been well known to Pierre Verne [1799-1871], who would later practice law in that city.  His son Jules would be born there in 1828.

              The Verne family in this Atlantic port city would have worked through the same upheavals in French culture and history as were faced by the Charette family.  For the Charette ancestral estate, La Maison de Charette de la Contrie, was [and still is] just 20 miles [32 kilometers] upstream on the Loire River from the town square in Nantes [La Place Viarme] where Charette was executed.

             The families of Charette and Verne were spinning in different directions, but with joint cultural crossings and curious connections.  Some lead to you and some lead to me.  For in 1881, Jules Verne would come face to face with another famous Frenchman, the Baron General Athanase de Charette, leader of the Papal Zouaves and hero of the 1870 charge at Loigny-la-Bataille.  That Charette was the grandnephew of the executed Vendean leader, Francois de Charette.

First, a brief history for context.

              In order to understand the Vendee uprising, it is important to note that the deposed and guillotined French King Louis XVI had two brothers who successfully fled the French Revolution.  After the defeat of Napoleon in 1814, the French Monarchy would be restored.  The elder brother, the comte de Provence, returned and became King of France as Louis XVIII, reigning from 1755 to 1824.  When he died in 1824, his younger brother, the comte de Artois, became the King of France as Charles X, reigning from 1824 to 1830.  It was Artois who promoted the invasion of Brittany described by Jules Verne in The Count of Chanteleine.

            Artois and his family fled France three days after the “Storming of the Bastille” in Paris [July 14, 1789].  In Germany, Artois supported royal resistance and set up a French Court-In-Exile to support it.  In 1792, the Revolutionary French Army began engaging in battle with the remaining royal families of Europe.  Artois fled again, this time to England and the financial support of British King George III.  From 1805 to 1814, he lived at 72 South Audley Street in Mayfair, London, near Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace.

            Artois’ younger son, Charles Ferdinand [1778-1820], was given the noble title of “Duke de Berry,” representing the Duchy of Berry in Central France around Bourges.  He fought in the royal “Émigré Army of Conde” against French Revolutionary forces from 1792-1797.  In England after 1801, Berry took a common law English wife, Amy Brown [1783-1876], with whom he had two daughters, Charlotte Marie Augustine de Bourbon [1808-1886, later the comtesse D’Issoudun, who would marry Ferdinand de Faucigny-Lucinge] and Louise Marie Charlotte de Bourbon [1809-1891, later the comtesse de Vierzon, who would marry Athanase Charles Marin de Charette de La Contrie (1796-1848), the nephew of Francois de Charette, the executed Vendean General].

            Artois returned to France in 1815, during the Second Bourbon Restoration.  His son, the Duke of Berry, was assassinated there in 1820 by a Bonapartist.  To honor him, both of the Duke’s daughters were then elevated to royal peerage by the King.  Louise Marie became the comtessa de Vierzon.  In 1827, she married Athanase Charles Marin de Charette de la Contrie, who himself, as nephew of the Vendean General, had also been elevated to peerage as the first Baron of La Contrie and a “Pair de France” [a member of the French nobility as a “Peer of France”] with an inheritable title.

            Verne’s The Siege of Rome was historical fiction during Garibaldi’s War of Italian Unification against the Papal States which began in 1848.  Verne’s story deals with the earlier period of this “Roman Question.”  Perhaps unknown to Verne when he wrote the story, but certainly known to him thereafter, was the entrance into the service of the Pope by the second Baron de la Contrie, Athanase Charles Marie de Charette [1832-1911], then a Colonel and soon-to-be leader of the Papal Zouaves.  He was the eldest surviving son of the first Baron Charette, the “Pair de France,” and the same man whom Verne would later meet face to face!

             His father, the “Pair de France,” Charles Athanase Marin de Charette [nephew of the Vendean General], married the comtessa de Vierzon [daughter of assassinated Duke of Berry] in 1827.  Her grandfather, Artois, had ascended the throne of France as King Charles X only three years earlier.  Three years later, in 1830, the “July Revolution” would force Charles X to abdicate, and Louis Phillippe of the House of Orleans would be proclaimed King [1773-1850 (reigned 1830-1848).  Louis Phillippe spent time in Kentucky during the French Revolution].

            The first Baron Charette fervently opposed the overthrow of the Bourbon King, Charles X.  Along with the Duke of Berry’s royal wife, Marie-Caroline [1798-1870, married to the Duke of Berry in 1816], he plotted a failed counter coup to overthrow the new King, Louis Phillippe.  It was to begin at Nantes in 1832.  Marie-Caroline’s son by the Duke of Berry, Henri [1820-1883], was considered by Bourbon loyalists to be the “Legitimist Pretender” to the throne as King Henry V.

            The first Baron Charette was tried in his absence for the failed rebellion and sentenced to death for the plot to overthrow the new King, Louis Phillippe.  Hiding out in Nantes, his wife, the comtesse de Vierzon, gave birth to a son, Athanase Charles Marie Charette de La Contrie [1832-1911].  Fearful of being discovered, the infant Athanase was lowered in a basket from an upper story back window to a woman waiting below, and spirited away.

            This child would receive the Baronage at his father’s death in 1849, and would go on to achieve fame on his own as a military leader, eventually reaching the rank of General.  Sent away to military training outside of France in Savoy, in 1860 he offered his services to the Catholic Pope in Rome, fighting to retain the Papal States.  There he became leader of the Papal Zouaves, a colorful corps outfitted in the style of North African Berber fighters.  In that role, he distinguished himself in the battles of Castelfidardo [September 18, 1860] and Mentana [November 3, 1867].

                   After the Prussian invasion of France and the encirclement of Paris in 1870, Charette and his men received permission from the Pope to go to the aid of France.  There, at the Battle of Loigny-la-Bataille [December 2, 1870], he and his Zouaves achieved lasting fame in their fateful, courageous charge into Prussian lines.

                  The Bishop of Nantes, Felix Fournier, proposed the building of a Basilica in atonement for the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.  To be called the “Sacre Coeur” [Sacred Heart], it was to be built on the hill of Montmartre in Paris.  One of the effort’s leaders was the Baron General de Charette, who would be prominently painted on the church ceiling waving the banner of Sacre Coeur, which he led into battle.  Construction on the Sacre Coeur was begun in 1875.

                 So when Jules Verne met up with Baron General de Charette in 1881, both people were famous, well known and well-loved figures in France.  That meeting between the two is described through research generously provided by Verne scholar, Valletoux Philippe.

                On July 13, 1881, Verne’s steam yacht, “St. Michael III” was moored in the small harbor of Dinard on the North Brittany coast near St. Malo.  During a storm, the St. Michael III slipped anchor and collided with another yacht, the “Mayfly.”

                On the later boat rode the Baron General Athanase de Charette and his family.  This Charette was the famous leader of the Papal Zouaves [see the time period of Verne’s The Siege of Rome] and the hero of the 1870 Zouave charge at Loigny-la-Bataille in France during the Franco Prussian War.  After the boating accident, Verne wrote to the Captain of the Mayfly:

“I receive, captain, the repair bill for your boat, … It is customary that in the event of force majeure … this damage is shared, and everyone remains responsible for their own.  I will therefore only owe you half of the difference that may exist between your damage and mine, as I told General de Charette when I was on board. … Your devoted Jules Verne.”

Publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel was also then on board the St. Michael III with Jules Verne.  Hetzel would die five years later as Verne was entering into a darker period of his journey in writing.

                On the boat with Charette was his American wife from Columbia, Tennessee, Antoinette Van Leer Polk [1847-1919, Charette’s first wife, Marie Antoinette Fitz-James, died in Rome in 1865 at the age of 27].  Antoinette had just given birth to a son, Charles Antoine “Tony” de Charette [1880-1947], who would become the Baron General’s only heir.  It is probable that he was also on the boat with his mother and was possibly introduced to Verne.[10]

                Tony would be the only child of the Baron General Athanase de Charette de la Contrie to survive and have a child.  And Tony’s father [the Second Baron] was the oldest surviving son of the “Pair de France” [the First Baron].  Tony’s father was the great-grandson of Charles X, King of France [reigned 1824-1830], as well as the grandnephew of Francois Athanase Charette de la Contrie [1763-1796, sometimes referred to as the “King of the Vendee”], who was executed at Nantes.

                The Baron General Charette’s son, Tony, like his father, would also seek out an American wife.  She was Susanne Meriwether Henning [1888-1964] from Shelbyville, Kentucky, whom he met in New York City and married in 1909.  They would have one child, a girl born in Paris on April 12, 1915.

              That child’s name was Susanne de Charette.  She was the daughter of Susanne Henning [1888-1964] from Kentucky and Charles Antoine [“Tony”] de Charette de la Contrie [1880-1947] of France.  Her father would have been that two-year-old child on the Mayfly when Verne’s boat collided with it.  And she was my mother.

               Susanne de Charette died in 2000 at her mother’s ancestral home in Shelby County, Kentucky, where I now live.  For two generations, she and her father were the only heirs of the legacy of Baron General Athanase de Charette.  From my mother, there are now 16 additional descendants.  In the Vendee, we are called the “Charette Americans.”  And thanks to the research of NAJVS and Valletoux Philippe, we know that our family was entwined with that of Jules Verne.

              But back to the questions that started this essay.  Was Jules Verne a supporter of the Catholic Royalists?  His life and beliefs are best explored in more scholarly treatises.  But we do know that Verne became concerned with more worldly issues as his health failed later in life and his pessimism grew.  And he was, perhaps, not as religiously observant in his later years.  His writings seemed to become more serious and somber.

                Perhaps when he was younger, his interest in the “Ancien Regime” could have been a reflection of his family’s desire for more stability in a French nation so violently wracked by Revolution.  Perhaps we should look to his “Extraordinary Adventures” to see the true emotional future he embraced and came to believe in.  It would be different than that which went before, and one where he thought change would be integral to social progress.  Brian Taves opined as much in his preface to the 2014 republication of Jules Verne’s William J. Hypperbone or the Will of an Eccentric.[11]

“Over a third of Verne’s novels featured the United States, her citizens, or the American Continent.  The United States was the land of Yankee ingenuity, inventiveness, and industrialization, part of the technological wave that formed the undercurrent for his series of “Extraordinary Journeys.”  The lack of tradition and belief in individual initiative appealed to the young Verne.” [“William J. Hypperbone or the Will of an Eccentric,” preface pages 5 and 6]

            I am pleased to continue my exploration of his life and writings as a member of the North American Jules Verne Society.

  

[1] The Siege of Rome by Jules Verne, translated by Edward Baxter and Anne T. Wilbur in Bandits & Rebels.  Introduction by Daniel Compere, and edited by Brian Taves for the North American Jules Verne Society [NAJVS.org].  Bear Manor Fiction, 2013.  The brilliant and productive scholar, Brian Taves [1959-2019] himself becomes a worthy subject of study.

[2] The Count of Chanteleine: A Tale of the French Revolution, by Jules Verne, translated by Edward Baxter, notes by Garmt de Vries-Uiterweerd, afterword by Volker Dehs, edited and with an introduction by Brian Taves for the North American Jules Verne Society [NAJVS.org], BearManor Fiction, 2011.

[3] 1) “Ancien Regime,” almost 400 years of Royal Rule ends by the storming of the Bastille in 1789; 2) French Revolution, 1789-1799; 3) War in the Vendee, 1793-1796; 4) First French Republic, 1792-1804; 5) Napoleon’s First Empire, 1804-1814/1815; 6) First Bourbon Restoration, 1814-1815; 7) Second Bourbon Restoration, 1815-1830, Louisville XVIII, 1815-1824, Charles X (comte de Artois), 1824-1830; 8) Second Revolution (July Revolution), 1830; 9) July Monarchy, Louis-Phillippe, 1830-1848; 10) Revolution of 1848, Second French Republic, 1848-1852; 11) Second French Empire, Napoleon III (Napoleon’s nephew), 1852-1870; 12) Third French Republic, 1870-1940; 13) Vichy Government, 1940-1944; 14) Fourth French Republic, 1946-1954; 15) Fifth Republic (Charles de Gaulle), 1954 to present.

[4] Verne, Jules, The Siege of Rome, in Bandits & Rebels, North American Jules Verne Society [NAJVS.org], BearManor Media, 2013.

[5] In Footnote No. 3, Editor Brian Taves directs the reader to this chapter “for similar political views.”

[6] This failed counter revolutionary invasion also interested English writer, C.S. Forester.  It figures prominently in his novel, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower.

[7] Verne, Jules, The Count of Chanteleine, BearManor Media, 1864.

[8] See Footnote No. 2, Supra.

[9] Emmanuel, comte de Las Cases (1766-1842), “The Memorial of Saint Helena,” 1823, available online.

[10] The Charette family was then living at their farm estate outside of Chateauneuf – D’llle-et-Vilaine, called “La Basse Motte.” Being only eleven miles from Dinard, it is also possible that Tony was at La Basse Motte in the care of a nanny.

[11] Verne, Jules, William J. Hypperbone Or The Will of An Eccentric, compiled by Camille Cazedessus II, preface by Brian Taves, ReAnimus Press, 2014.