1791 Tobacco Huber
Géricault Life
1795 Portrait of Monsieur Sériziat (detail) Jacques Louis David, Louvre.
Introduction
Théodore Géricault’s family moved from Rouen to Paris ‘a dozen years’ prior to the death of Théodore’s mother in March, 1808. In Paris, Géricault’s father Georges Nicolas Géricault found employment in the family tobacco business based at the Hôtel de Longueville. Very little has been written about Géricault’s family in Paris during this time. Nor have scholars produced much information about the Robillard-Caruel tobacco concernt at the Hôtel de Longueville.
In this article we examine the impact of the dissolution of the French royal tobacco monopoly on Théodore Géricault and his family. At the center of this discussion we find Pierre Antoine Robillard and his nephew Jacques Florent Robillard. Pierre Antoine Robillard was married to the maternal aunt of Géricault’s mother. Jacques Florent Robillard worked for the royal tobacco monopoly in Paris. Pierre Antoine held a senior position at the royal tobacco manufactory in Dieppe.
In September of 1791, Jacques Florent Robillard signed a nine-year lease granting him control over the palace of the Hôtel de Longueville, and the right and responsibility to manage the tobacco manufactory located in adjacent buildings. The September contract details the terms of the property lease, but tells us almost nothing about the Robillard tobacco company.
Drawing upon archival sources and standard scholarship we can now construct a much clearer portrait of the structure of the Robillard tobacco firm at the Hôtel de Longueville in 1791 and the original partners.
Huber – Monneron
We begin with three letters from English merchant James Bourdieu to Paris banker Barthelemey Huber in which the impending dissolution of the royal tobacco monopoly is discussed. The “M. Monneron” mentioned in the Huber-Bordieu correspondence is likely Augustin-François Monneron, inspecteur (general manager) of the manufacture de tabac (tobacco manufactory) at the Hôtel de Longueville.
N° 12, James Bordieu to Barthelemy Huber? (undated)
“We have not yet received M. Monneron’s letter. You will have observed by our last, we thought there was room for a company to be formed to purchase of the Farmers, their Manufactories of Snuff, to be worked by the same hands as they employed, as it appears to us, this would give a decided superiority to a company over any competition that might start up; have everything to build, ? to form ? We wish some of their friends may have taken up those ideas…” (doc. 432, Archives Nationales, Paris, T 38)
N° 17, London, James Bordieu to Barthelemy Huber – 1791, 18 March.
“Dear Sir, We wrote you last post. We have since received your favour of the 10th only, tho we have had one of the 14th. You will have seen that M. Monneron has pastly informed us of the Subversion of the Tobacco sistem. It is no doubt a very great misfortune to us, after we had brought matters seemingly to nearly a happy issue; the comfort is, que nous n’avons riens a nous reprocher (that we have no reason to reproach ourselves). Many events may yet happen that may perhaps not render our labours infru? hereafter. It is impossible for such a sistem to be of a long duration. It is also no small alleviation to know that the Junto are still more disappointed than we are. We should be glad to know whether Tobacco will be admitted direct from England, under the present duties by French, or English ships. Will no company, think you, form itself, to purchase the Farmers’ manufactories? Their Emplacements and workmen must give them great advantages over other competition…” (doc. 535, AN T 38)
N°18 London, James Bordieu to Barthelemy Huber – 1791, 25th March.
“Dear Sir, We wrote you the 22d, since which we have had the pleasure to receive yours of the 21st. M. Monneron has since given us pretty full information of the Decrees respecting Tobacco in one received today of the same date as yours. He advises us of the decree just passed for the granting of 9 year leases of the national manufactories, and specifying that the Tobacco remaining in them shall be paid by the lessee on his taking possession at the rate … he further obligingly says, that as they perceive several of their friends have notions of Plans on that head should anything be done, they will recommend us. We mention this, hoping that on your side you will be attentive to what may happen, to endeavor to secure us some good Comms. (commissions). Tobacco never was so cheap as it is now in Virginia, M. Ch must ? on the market here. In our last you will have found a letter of introduction to M. Doumerc…” (doc. 536, AN T 38)
James Bordieu was one of many merchants keen to continue to profit by supplying tobacco to the French market once the royal monopoly ended in the spring of 1791. Documents 432 and 535 make clear that Bordieu envisioned the formation of a company to purchase and take over all the state-owned tobacco manufactories, keeping in place the existing machinery and expertise. Under the old royal monopoly, the tobacco tax farmers, or fermes de tabac, controlled a vast organization across France dedicated to managing the importation, manufacture, sale, and taxation of tobacco in France. The national decrees of March 1791 ended that monopoly and granted municipal governments control of the administration of the tobacco manufactories within their jurisdictions, according to guidelines set out by the national government. In document 536 dated the 25th of March, 1791, Bordieu discusses the M. Monneron’s report on the ‘granting of 9 year leases of the national manufactories’ and that ‘several of their friends have notions of Plans on that head …” What might these be?
Historian of the French tobacco trade, Jacob Price, offers a clue:
“…To the end of the ancien régime all leases of major fermes were in the name of straw men who had nothing to do but lend their names and sign everything put in front of them. They were generally persons of modest means who had little to lose and were pretty well paid for their trouble…The important question for each farm lease is not who was the adjudicataire (nominal lessee), but who were the interessés in his ferme, the men who signed his lease as sureties or bondsmen (cautions), but were really the principals, the men who put up the risk capital, who bore the losses or realized the profits from the gamble that revenue farming was…”
(France and the Chesapeake Vol.1, 1971, pp. 22-23)
Price also provides useful context on the tobacco manfacturing establishments:
“… A final authoritative list of 1790 dropped Marseilles and showed ten establishments: seven general (Paris, Dieppe, Le Havre, Morlaix, Tonnenins, Cette, Valenciennes), two for smoking tobacco only (Toulouse, Nancy), and one for snuff only (Arles). Each of these manufactures was in charge of an inspector or works manager assisted by one or two contrôlleurs. At Morlaix in 1729, the inspecteur received 2,000 l.t (livre tournois) and the contrôlleurs 1,200…There appears to have been considerable stability in the higher managerial ranks of the works, and in at least one case, Desmarest of Dieppe, a veteran manager (inspecteur) of a manufactory was rewarded by promotion to a farmer-generalship.
The workers in the manufactories had less cause for satisfaction. The women, children, and unskilled laborers employed were poorly paid but caused relatively little trouble. Far more truculent were the better paid, skilled adult male workers. In quiet times, they seem to have been constantly if imperceptibly usurping various perquisites in pay, working conditions, and ‘samples.’ Periodically, the company would find itself forced to tighten discipline and retract some of these concessions, sometimes provoking strikes, always provoking labor unrest among these skilled workmen. It was they, not the less skilled, who in 1790 petitioned the National Assembly against the rules, discipline, and pay of the monopoly.
Probably the oldest manufactory was that of Dieppe…By 1715, that establishment was employing 1,000 – 1,100 workers and was having the serious labor trouble described in Chapter 7. Because of these labor troubles, or the inconveniences arising out of the location and character of the port and other difficulties, the restored monopoly of 1720’s seemed disenchanted with Dieppe…When the Indies Company took over the monopoly in 1723, they wanted to move the entire manufactory to the more convenient port of Le Havre. The local magistrates fought this proposal vigorously, pointing out that the works by then employed 1,500 persons in the town and that its removal would create grave social problems. They were successful in preventing the move, though a separate manufactory was soon thereafter established at Le Havre…
When the united farms took over in 1730, a new spirit of even more efficiency led to a steady rise work norms. Worker grumbling became so pronounced that troops were summoned in 1733 to check a threatened riot before it started. Several of the ringleaders were dismissed and the new work norms confirmed. It was therefore possible to maintain output at Dieppe with a reduced workforce. A detailed report of survey in 1738 showed only 615 workers in place of the 1,000 – 1,500 a generation earlier.” (Price, Vol. 1, pp. 412-413)
Robillard Tobacco Concern
Which leads us back to Jacques Florent Robillard, one of perhaps two controllers at the royal tobacco manufactory at the Hôtel de Longueville. Jacques Florent Robillard was not even the first, (premier) controller at the Hôtel de Longueville. How do we explain J.-F. Robillard, alone, signing the lease for control of the palace and tobacco manufactory under the title of Entrepreneur de la Manufacture de tabac that September?
I have located one notarized contract in the national archives from late 1791 which identifies Jean Baptiste Carruel (sic), Jean Marie Chapelain, Pierre Antoine Robillard (oncle), and Alexandre Pierre Le Riche de Vandy as co-associates in the new tobacco concern based at the Hôtel de Longueville. Recall that only the name of Jacques Florent Robillard appears on the actual lease. Another notarized contract dated later allows us to add the names of Etienne Carvoisin, Charles Biancour, and Augustin François Monneron to the list of the first Entrepreneurs de le Manufacture de tabac at the Hôtel de Longueville.
The names of Caruel, Chapelain, P.-A. Robillard, Biancour, and Monneron are known to Gericault scholars. Jacques Florent Robillard had lived and worked alongside Augustin Monneron, inspecteur of the Paris manufactory. Monneron, was one of a family of brothers deeply involved in commerce of all kinds, including tobacco and the East India trade. Pierre Antoine Robillard, the uncle of Jacques Florent Robillard, had been the inspecteur of the royal tobacco manufactory in Dieppe, an establishment we know to be of considerable importance. Alone, Jacques Florent Robillard would have had great difficulty amassing the capital required to purchase the existing stock of tobacco at the Hôtel de Longueville, as the decrees of March 1791 stipulated the lease holder of the national property must.
As Price remarked: “To the end of the ancien régime all leases of major fermes were in the name of straw men who had nothing to do but lend their names and sign everything put in front of them.” (p.22) That formulation fits well with the evidence we now possess regarding the foundation of the Robillard tobacco firm at the Hôtel de Longueville in late 1791.
Jacques Florent Robillard probably did serve as something of a straw man for the group of Entrepreneurs de le Manufacture de tabac when the company first formed in the summer and fall of 1791, but did so bringing real skills in the tobacco trade to the role, skills to complement those of Pierre Antoine Robillard, his uncle, and those of Augustin François Monneron, both former inspecteurs of large tobacco manufactories.
James Bordieu, in his letter to Barthelemy Huber of March 18, 1791, envisioned just such a firm: “Will no company, think you, form itself, to purchase the Farmers’ manufactories? Their Emplacements and workmen must give them great advantages over other competition…” (doc. 535). The Hôtel de Longueville had served as the headquarters for the tobacco tax farmers and had a large tobacco manufactory on site with hundreds of experienced workers already in place. Jean Baptiste Caruel, a trusted family member (Gericault’s uncle) and a lawyer, would take care of legal affairs and sub-leases. Chapelain, Carvoisin, Biancour, and Le Riche de Vandy likely provided capital and business connections. Others may have been involved. Augustin Monneron, in addition to his expertise in the tobacco trade, possessed connections and capital of his own. We will consider the question of how the co-associates of Jacques Florent Robillard managed to place control of the Hôtel de Longueville in the hands of their own man in subsequent issues.
We conclude by noting that the structure of the partnership changed over the course of the nine-year lease. During this period, Jacques Florent Robillard and the entrepreneurs de tabac at the Hôtel de Longueville became very rich. This community at the Hôtel de Longueville had a profound influence upon Théodore Géricault, not least because the actions and efforts of the patners provided Théodore Géricault with great personal wealth, and the freedom and connections to pursue his career as an artist.