The Galley Slave's Ring; or, The Family of Lebrenn

"What does it matter, my children," replied Lebrenn, "whether we actually witness or not the dawn, if we have the certainty that the sun of that beautiful day is bound eventually to shine over a regenerated world! The very disappointment of 1848 is a positive earnest that the prophecy of our ancestress Victoria the Great will be accomplished. Do you for a moment imagine that the lava is cold which, in 1848, ran boiling over such wide areas of Europe? No! No! Whatever appearances may be, whatever the present depression, revolutionary thought is at this very hour germinating under the soil. It is spreading and gaining in depth through a thousand underground rootlets. Sooner or later, its sudden and last irresistible explosion will be heard. Upon the ruins of the old social system a new social order will be established.

"There can be no doubt whatever, my children, regarding that great and crowning event. Progress is the law of humanity – for society as well as for the individual. Our plebeian narratives furnish the irrefutable proof. Our ancestors, subjected, first by the Roman and then by the Frankish conquest, to a most galling slavery, progressed by little and little towards freedom. Originally slaves and sold and exploited and treated like vile human cattle, they then became serfs, and, from serfs, vassals. Finally they revindicated and conquered their sovereignty, consecrated by the immortal Republic of 1792, and confirmed by that of 1848. When we see such progress traced across the pages of the centuries, how can we entertain any doubts as to what the future has in store?"

"A knowledge of the past," observed George Duchene, "imparts a firm faith in the future."

"How strange the emotions that come over one," remarked Velleda, "when the long procession of the personages of our ancient family files before our mind's eye in the living flesh, I may say, as if they emerged from the dust of the ages! Hena, the virgin of the Isle of Sen; Joel, the brenn of the tribe of Karnak; Sylvest, the Roman slave, and his sister Syomara; then Genevieve, who witnessed the execution of Jesus of Nazareth; Schanvoch, the soldier and foster-brother of Victoria the Great; then Ronan the Vagre, the intrepid insurgent against the Frankish conquest; Loysik the hermit laborer, who saw Brunhild die; Amael, Charles Martel's companion in arms, and appointed keeper of the last pitiful scion of the once redoubtable Clovis; Vortigern, the beloved of Thetralde, Charlemagne's daughter; Eidiol, the Parisian skipper, besides Gaëlo the Pirate and ancestor of the Prince of Gerolstein and companion in arms of Rolf, who became Duke of Normandy and son-in-law of the French King Charles the Simple; Yvon the Forester, an eye-witness of the death of Louis the Do-Nothing, the last scion of the Carlovingian dynasty, succeeded by Hugh Capet who enthroned his house with the aid of adultery and murder; Fergan the Quarryman, serf of the seigneur of Plouernel, and who, departing for Palestine, was present at the siege and capture of Jerusalem. His son Colombaik, one of the bold communiers of the city of Laon, who battled against their episcopal seigneur in the endeavor to emancipate the communes from the feudal yoke; Karvel the Perfect, done to death with his sweet wife Morise during the Crusade against the Albigensians; Mazurec the Lambkin, the husband of Aveline-Who-Never-Lied, daughter of William Caillet, the immortal chieftain of the Jacques; Jocelyn the Champion who witnessed the martyrdom of Joan Darc, the Maid of Gaul; Christian the Printer, whose daughter Hena was burned alive before Francis I; Antonicq, who battled intrepidly at the siege of La Rochelle by the side of Cornelia Mirant, his brave bride-to-be; Salaun, the mariner, one of the chiefs in the revolt of the vassals of Brittany who endeavored to impose the Peasant Code upon their seigneurs and bishops during the reign of Louis XIV. Finally, John Lebrenn, our own grandfather, whose sister Victoria was the victim of the lewdness of Louis XV – that John Lebrenn, who was commissioned as a guard over Louis XVI, but who, alas! did not live to hail the Republic of 1848! When so many members of our race and our blood rise before my mind from the vasty depths of the centuries that have rolled by, a vertigo seizes me as I climb the ladder from Age to Age up to the fountainhead of our family, in the days of the Republic of the Gauls."

Velleda's words were listened to with rapt attention by all the members of her family. Her father was the first to break the silence:

"My children, if indeed our family history is priceless, the reason lies in that that history is the history, not of a family merely, but, above all, of all the proletarians and all the bourgeois of Gallic extraction, of that Gallic race that was conquered and subjugated by the Franks, the dominant race, until 1789, the date of their final emancipation. The struggle of the Children of Joel across the ages with the Children of Neroweg, of whom the Count of Plouernel is a descendant, is a summary of the centuries-old struggle between the vanquishers and the vanquished, the oppressors and the oppressed. By imparting to us a knowledge and the consciousness of what our forefathers have undergone in order to regain their freedom and their rights, this history must render us all the prouder and more jealous of the boon that we have conquered at the cost of so many tears, of such untold privations, and of such torrents of blood. It must inspire us with the desire to defend it unto death."

THE END

1

"If the Gallic tongue has been in some part preserved by the bards, and by bards in possession of the druidic traditions, that could only have taken place in Armorica, that province which for so many centuries formed an independent state, and which, in spite of its annexation to France, has remained Gallic in physiognomy, in costume, and in language, down to our own day." – Ampere, History of Literature.

2

Villemarqué, in his excellent Popular Songs of Brittany, assigns this ballad, which is still heard among the strolling ballad-singers of that province, to the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Century.

3

Sounn ann dud Laour (The Song of the Poor), Villemarqué, Popular Songs of Brittany.

4

Popular Songs of Brittany, Villemarqué.

5

Villemarqué traces this chant, still very popular in Brittany, back to the Eleventh or Twelfth Century; hence for seven or eight hundred years it has been passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation.

6

It is above all for our brothers of the people that we wrote this history. In a form which we strove to render as fascinating as possible. We hope they have followed the notes, for these are, so to speak, the key of the chronicle, and the proof that under the form of romance one can find the most scrupulous history.

7

Gregory, Bishop of Tours, says of Clovis, the first Frankish King by Divine right:

"Having killed several other Kings besides, and even some of his closest relatives, Clovis extended his power over all the Gauls. Nevertheless, having one day assembled his men, he is reported to have spoken thus of the relatives he had himself caused to be executed and murdered: – 'Woe is me, I am left a wanderer among wanderers, and I have no relatives who, in case of need could come to my assistance.' Not that he was grieved over their death," adds the Bishop of Tours, "but he held this language to discover whether there remained anyone whom he could still put to death." – Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, book II, chapter XLII.

Still this Gallic bishop slurs over the terrible hypocrisy of the Frankish conqueror, sullied with thefts, murders, incest, and fratricide. He says:

"Thus each day God caused the enemies of Clovis to fall into his hands, and extended his kingdom, because he walked with a pure heart before Him, and did what was agreeable in the eyes of God." (book II, chapter XL).

On the character of some of the early bishops themselves, Gregory sheds this light:

"Salone and Sagitaire, Bishops of Embrun and Gap, once masters of their bishoprics, began to distinguish themselves with a senseless fury by usurpations, murders, adulteries, and other excesses." (book V, chapter XXI).

8

The White Terror, the massacre in the south of France, the executions without appeal which followed the first restoration of Kings by Divine right, are well known to all. It did not stop there.

On October 27, 1815, Monsieur Pasquler read in the Chamber a report on the projected law on seditious speeches and writings:

"We would pronounce," he declared, "the penalty of hard labor against all seditious slogans, speeches or writings if delivered individually.

"Death, if they are the result of concerted action.

"The same penalty as for parricide if they have any noticeable effect."

Another, Monsieur C – , rose, and in concert with two of his royalist colleagues proposed with great insistence that the penalty of death be made applicable to all who hoisted the tricolored flag.

9

This portrait of courage is justified by the heroic death of two young girls, about eighteen years old, who, their hair flowing to the winds, their arms bare, held their place on a barricade near St. Denis Street in June, 1848.

10

More than anyone else, we deplored the sad insurrection of June, 1848, and the blood that flowed both before and behind the barricades; but we are equally revolted by the abominable calumnies with which all the insurrectionists, without distinction, have been pursued. We call to witness brave General Piré, who, in a letter to the Representatives of the people, expresses himself as follows:

"Citizen Representatives, having entered first by force of bayonet behind the barricade on National St. Martin Street on the 23rd of June, I found myself for several minutes alone among insurrectionists animated by unspeakable exasperation. We fought on both sides to the last notch. They could have killed me; they did not do so. I was in the ranks of the National Guard, and an old General. They respected a veteran of Austerlitz and Waterloo. The memory of their generosity will never leave me. I fought them to the point of death. I found them brave, they spared my life. They were defeated – unhappy ones with whom I should have shared my bread, come what might.

"Piré."Lieutenant General."

We would also cite this passage from "L'Atelier":

"Three months have passed since the days of June, and now one can judge coolly of the cause of those terrible events. Doubtless there can be found, as always, men who exploit, for their ambition, public evils, men who would sacrifice the whole world to their hateful spirit of egotism. But the true mover, that which put guns in the hands of 30,000 combatants, was the desolating misery which deprives men of their reason. Fathers of families can alone judge of its sway.

"Here is the testimony of one whom the Council of War has just condemned to ten years at hard labor:

"'I had been hunting two days for work, and was unable to find any… I returned to my sick wife. She was lying on her bed without waist or vest, with a rag of cover thrown over her. For an instant I thought of suicide, but I rejected the idea when I saw at her side the little pink face of my Infant, who slept deep in such misery… My wife died. I remained alone with my two children. It was two days before the insurrection. My son, showing me the basket that he carried lunch in regularly to school, said to me, "Papa, haven't you given me anything?" Well, sir, that is why I listened to my unhappy comrades… I had suffered like them… When they came for me, I yielded, but I said: "I beg of you, by the memory of my poor holy mother: if we are defeated, I shall be thrown into a dungeon, I shall not complain, I shall not reproach you; but if we are the victors, – no vengeance, pardon to all, for this war among Frenchmen is horrible."' – Testimony of N. A., before the Council of War."

11

"The use of tanned skins for writing dates back to remote antiquity, and was common among the people of Asia, as well as among the Greeks, Romans and Gauls. At the Library at Brussels is a manuscript of the Pentateuch which is thought to antedate the Ninth Century B. C. It is written on fifty-seven skins sewed together, making a roll of about forty yards in length." – Ludovic Lalaune, Curiosities of Bibliography, p. 11.

12

"Antique geneologies, diligently kept by the bards, seemed to designate those who could pretend to the dignity of chiefs of a canton or family; for these words were synonymous in the tongue of the Gallic Breton, and the lines of descent were the basis of their social status." – Augustin Thierry, Social State of the Bretons, History of the Conquest of Britany, pp. 10, 11.