The Clément de
Ris affair is a famous case involving the kidnapping of a senator in
1800 in which Auguste de Canchy was
implicated . It inspired the novel Une tenebreuse d'affaires à Balzac . In May
1800, France is beginning to emerge from the chaos into which the Directory had plunged it, but the situation is not
necessarily resolved: the West is still in the throes of unrest, despite the
submission of the royalist troops, and the South is assisting to the reconquest
of Italy by the Austrian armies. the May 6, 1800, at 2 o'clock in the
morning, Napoleon Bonaparte takes
his reserve army through Franche-Comté and Switzerland to Italy .
On the eve of the Battle of Marengo ,
which had a bad start for Bonaparte's armies, Joseph Fouché , Minister of Police at the time and future
Duke of Otranto, believed he could conspire on his own account against
Napoleon. In anticipation of an announced defeat , he surrounded
himself with legislators and police officers who were to share with him the
inheritance of defeated Bonaparte. The names of Bernadotte and Talleyrand were mentioned as being part of the
plotters. Senator Clément de Ris ,
former butler of the Queen under the Ancien Régime, described by Jacques Crétineau-Joly in
his book Histoire de la Vendée militaireas a man "of an
inoffensive nature and talent without brilliance", Fouche had been
promised third place in the new Republic. A long correspondence was
engaged between the minister and the senator, so that many papers which
seriously compromised Fouché in the eyes of the First Consul were in the
possession of Clément de Ris. Following an unexpected victory for Napoleon, at
the Battle of Marengo the June 24, 1800Fouché had to give up his plan for
a conspiracy. A letter written the same day by Lucien Bonaparte to his brother Joseph sums up the situation well: “The news of Marengo
has dismayed all the intriguers (…) as for us, if the victory had marked the
end of the First Consul in Marengo, at the time of this writing, we would all
be proscribed. " Informed of this attempted overthrow against his
person, Napoleon on his return to Paris on July 2, 1800, demanded Fouché
to provide him with the list of conspirators. Worried
to see his name appear in the archives of one of them, Fouché said, September
23, 1800, to kidnap Senator Clément de Ris in his castle of Beauvais by one of his secret
agents, Jean-Gabriel Gondé de La Chapelle, known as Gondé. At 5 p.m., six
armed men entered the castle, seized the senator and seized the compromising
documents he had entrusted to him, including posters of a proclamation for a
change of government and numerous letters, which they will immediately destroy. Far from appeasing the wrath of Napoleon,
concerned about internal order, this episode aroused his anger to the point
that the minister had to organize a fictitious release of Clément de Ris by his
agents during a transfer to the forest. According to the investigation reports
of the time, the name of Mr. de Bourmont ,
leader of the insurgents , is cited , who
would have promised to succeed in the research if he was entrusted with the
task of delivering Senator Clément de Ris. He surrounded himself for this
mission with four other insurgent leaders, "Arthur" Guillot de
la Potherie , Carlos Sourdat, Salabéry and
Robert Coutaud. The police report continues:
“On that same night of the 18th to the
19th, a private individual on horseback arrives at the Portail farm and talks
for about half an hour with the brigand guardian. The latter takes Senator
Clément de Ris out of his dungeon and makes him mount a horse. The farmer
still serves as a guide: he leads the senator, the brigand guardian and the
stranger in the forest of Loches. We stop for about a quarter of an hour
at the Pyramide des Chartreux. Three or four people on horseback arrive,
speak in low voices to the stranger and the guardian robber, and then withdraw
behind them. The guide, the senator, the brigand guardian and the stranger
continue their journey. After a quarter of an hour of walking, four
individuals come to horse race behind the travelers firing a pistol shot over
the head of Senator Clément de Ris. Immediately, the escort
disappears; the blindfold which covered his eyes is removed from the
senator and the liberators who surround him are Carlos Sourdat, Robert Coutaud
and Salabéry. With them wasGuillot de
la Potherie . "
A culprit was
imperatively needed and Fouché, remembering the existence of Auguste de Canchy and Jean de Mauduison whom a personal
dispute had raised against him and whose past of Chouan was an excellent pretext, had them
arrested. It is Gondé, the organizer of the kidnapping, who denounces his
"accomplices" before fleeing to England. Fouché therefore enjoins,
on 16 Nivôse, year IX ( January 6 , 1801), to the prefect of Eure-et-Loir, to
arrest, as stage thieves , the Sieurs de Canchy and de
Mauduison, from Nogent-le-Rotrou. The prefect of Eure-et-Loir is surprised by
the charge of thieves of stagecoaches: “In general,” writes the latter, “I
think these two young people are very inconsiderate in their words. But I
am far from believing them to be guilty of the crimes attributed to
them. The commander and the sub-prefect of Nogent, the squadron leader of
the gendarmerie and the lieutenant who reside there, have, on their account,
the same opinion as me. I await your orders to comply with
them. " But the minister's response is, "Keep them under
arrest." These two young people are certainly two of the brigands who
arrested Clément de Ris
At 3 rue du Paty [ archive ] in Nogent-le-Rotrou , at the Auberge de l'Épée Royale, two
friends are discussing: the Comte de Mauduison, described as "a handsome
and carefree teenager with a dark complexion" and the Marquis de Canchy,
"taller, older and more spirited than his comrade". The second
accuses the first of having set its sights on Rolande, the daughter of master
Benoit, the innkeeper. The conversation continues between the two young
people and Canchy exclaims "Long live the King", to which Mauduison
replies "Long live love". That's when a traveler enters,
ordering a glass of wine. He advises the innkeeper to change the name of
his ensign (the Royal Sword) but the latter does not answer him and recklessly
greets Canchy with his title of marquis. The client obtains the name of the two
young people from Rolande and offers the latter a cockade which should
"make her cuter in the eyes of her lover". He tries to hang the
cockade himself on Rolande's chest and, seizing her by the waist, kisses her
full on the lips. She defends herself and calls the man insolent as Canchy
and Mauduison pounce on the client and throw him out after having beaten him
up. This man who left the city of Nogent-le-Rotrou to go to Nantes , shortly after this incident, was called Joseph
Fouché. 30 Nivôse 1801 (Tuesday January 20, 1801), Madame de Mauduison
gives a party in her private mansion at 89 rue Dorée 4 in Nogent-le-Rotrou for the baptism of her grandson, one
year old Jean Charles Adolphe, son of Auguste du Moustier de Canchy, and de
Victoire, his daughter. Indeed, the young Marquis de Canchy had married in
September 1799 the daughter of the Count of Mauduison, Victoire, sister of his
friend, aged only 17 years. The ceremony took place at Notre-Dame, a few meters
from the Hotel Mauduison, and on the return of the procession, the police
commissioner Pierre-François Boulardière requests an interview with the Marquis
du Moustier de Canchy and his brother-in-law. Commissioner Boulardière was
a former French guard and
had, at the time, the father of the count to officiate. He esteems the son
very much and advises him to flee. As the two young people are astonished,
he answers them in these terms:
" Run away ! You are charged
with a diligence attack. "
Canchy and Mauduison laugh and refuse to
flee:
Canchy: “If it is only that, I am
completely reassured. "
Mauduison: “We are innocent, we will not move
from here! "
Commissioner
Boulardière represents himself for dessert to proceed, in spite of himself, to
the double arrest. The two young people were taken and imprisoned in the city
prison, the Château de Saint-Jean, before being taken the next day to Chartres . The Prefect of Calvados warned his
Minister of Police, Fouché, that he had just arrested a former insurgent for
theft of stagecoaches: Étienne Gaudin. Fouché asked him in these
terms: "Is he one-eyed?" If so, send it to me; if not,
detain him to have him judge the crimes of which he is guilty. A one-eyed
man was needed in the list of defendants because the guard who had watched over
Senator Clément de Ris for eighteen days was one-eyed. The real culprit
was a one-eyed man named Dubois whom his friends called Coclès. Gaudin had been
sought in vain since the arrest warrant issued against him on 26 Nivôse, and
signaling him as a highway robber, under sentence of a death penalty: he had
joined forces, in 1798, with Jean- Gabriel Gondé de La Chapelle and a few
Chouans to plunder the stagecoaches. The gang was arrested near
Caen. Gondé and Gaudin escaped and were condemned to death in absentia. After
the opening of the debates in Tours and several hearings, the court decided,
before ruling on the fate of the accused, to order 4 Thermidor 1801 (July 23)
that the accused be transferred to Paris to be there, in the presence of the
president of the criminal court of the Seine, confronted with Clément de Ris,
his wife and his son . But,
protecting himself by his status as ambassador, Clément de Ris refused the confrontation. Faced with
a formal defect, the Court of Cassation, by judgment of the following 7
Fructidor (25 august), quashed that decision and the proceedings in which it
had been rendered, and referred the case to a Special Court.