Ancient history

Luce de Casabianca, the hero of Aboukir

This brief exposition owes much to one of our history doctoral students, Fleur de Casabianca, who defended a doctoral thesis on the hero of Aboukir, Luce de Casabianca de Vescovato (1762-1798) , fallen on board at the age of thirty-six in the company of his son Giocante, who "jumped into the air" at the age of eleven. Casabianca is a character on whom historians and students enjoy working, since his name is well known.

Six French naval vessels have borne the Casabianca name since 1798:a djerme used on the Nile from 1798 to 1801, a notice launched in Lorient under Napoleon III in 1859, and in use until 1877, a torpedo boat launched in 1895 in Bordeaux that exploded in June 1915 while laying mines off Smyrna during the Dardanelles expedition and a famous submarine that escaped the sinking of the French fleet in Toulon in November 1942 and that highlighted off the coast of Corsica between 1942 and 1943 under the command of Jean L'Herminier. Said ship had been launched in 1935 in the presence of the Councilor of State Casabianca with the name Casablanca in memory of the 1907 landing in Morocco, but it took the name of the famous sailor through the intervention of the Minister of the Navy Pietri, a former Corsican deputy. She was decommissioned in 1952. The name Casabianca was also carried by a destroyer escort launched at Bordeaux in 1954, rebuilt in 1970 and decommissioned in 1984.

The third nuclear attack submarine (SNA 72) launched in Cherbourg in 1981 is decorated with Luce's arms:“split shield; to the left, a field of gules with a silver tower crowned by a sentry box, with a golden cypress on the right; to the right, a golden field with a Sinople pine crowned by a silver dove”. The coat of arms is stamped with a county crown and supported by two lions, and its motto is:“In bello leones, in pace colombae ” (“lions in war; doves in peace”). The silver tower refers to the "white house" of the family.

The name Casabianca is also well known in literature from the memoirs of Major L’Herminier , published under the title Casabianca . Long before L'Herminier, however, the romantic imaginary was nourished by the double death of Luce and Giocante. Alfred de Vigny speaks of Giocante in his work Servitude et grandeur militaires (volume III):“I don't like that they take their children; I only allowed Casabianca and I was wrong." Lamartine, in his Vie des grands hommes (Les hommes de la Révolution , Paris, 1865, chapter IV, p. 351) devoted an ode to Luce and Giocante Casabianca. In England, the poet Felicia Dorothea Hemans composed, around 1875, several verses in memory of Casabianca – a poem that is still learned in schools today.

Casabianca is also reminiscent of a multitude of naive engravings related to the Abukir tragedy, both in France and in England. His odyssey has even given rise to a film:La prodigieuse aventure du sous-marin fantôme Casabianca (1951), produced by the Croix du Sud company, directed by Georges Péclet and in which Jean Villars plays the hero. And all this without forgetting the squares and streets that willingly bear the name Casabianca, both in Corsica and on the mainland. The residence of my Franceschi ancestors in Bastia, for example, is at 7 avenue Luce de Casabianca, former Route du Cap.

The family roots of the Casabianca (1440-1771)

The Casabianca are a historical family from Corsica. Some authors attribute Carolingian origins to them, while the Nobiliaire de l’Andalousie The ancestor of the Casabianca is Count Bianco, eldest son of Ugo Colonna, who lived around the year 800. Giovanni della Grossa (1388-1461) does not trace his genealogy beyond the 13th century, when the first Casabianca lived:Santuculo della Cappanulli, who, around 1220-1240, had the Torre della Casabianca built near Ampugnani, in the Castagniccia region. Luce's earliest known ancestor is more recent. This is Rinuccio della Casabianca, a contemporary in 1444 of Vincentello II of Istria and Canon della Casabianca, and who was ennobled by King Alfonso of Aragon in 1456.

he had two sons, Pietro (founder of the Casabianca of Venzolasca) and Nicroso (based in Vescovato). Within this family predominated – as in all Corsican lineages with a certain power – men of war, leaders of fratricidal struggles such as Teramo della Casabianca (captain of the Commun region in 1468), and also mercenaries of some importance to the service of the great European powers:Guglielmo della Casabianca, leader of the gangs of Naples in 1495, or Giocante della Casabianca, commander of the Savona square in 1522, during the youth of the condottiero Sampiero Corso. None of them can be said to be loyal and patriotic:Luzio della Casabianca, a contemporary of Sampiero, changed sides seventeen times.

The hero of Abukir came from the branch of the Casabianca of Vescovato. We know his ancestor Giocante, who married a Ceccaldi in 1625, and his great-grandfather Francesco, foreman of the parishes of Ampugnani and Valcerustia in 1690; to his grandfather Quilico, who held that position, in 1726, in the parishes of Moriani and Valcerustia, and especially to his father, Gio-Quilico, an opportunist who served all those who seemed to hold power on the island at one time or another. other. Thus, Luce de Casabianca's father was a staunch supporter of the short-lived King Theodore, a German adventurer who elevated him to count. After Teodoro's two expulsions (1738 and 1743), he played the French card and in 1748 he was in favor of the Marquis de Cursay, who was sent to the island –then a Genoese possession– to maintain order. After the assassination of the Corsican patriot Gio Petro Gaffori in 1753, Gio-Quilico entered the service of the Genoese and was part of the Bastia garrison. In 1760 he married a young woman with deep roots on the island, Maria-Francesca, daughter of Sebastiano Colonna-Ceccaldi di Vescovato, of the former lords of Omessa, and Julia di Gaffori, as well as the granddaughter of Gio Petro di Gaffori and Faustina Matra.

After the marriage, Gio-Quilico asked the patriotic leader Pasquale Paoli and his niece to be the godfather and godmother of the first child given by his wife. Both accepted by letter in February 1760. Gio-Quilico participated in Paoli's schemes against his wife's cousins, the Matras, who remained faithful to Genoa, he was one of the seven members of the Supreme Council of the Nation and fought against the French, in particular against Chauvelin's troops, defeated at Borgo in October 1768. However, after the Corsican defeat at Ponte Novu (May 8, 1769), Gio-Quilico aligned himself on June 23 with the French, who he was offered the rank of captain of the Corsican Legion. In 1773 he became lieutenant colonel of the Corsican Provincial Regiment, of which François de Gaffori was colonel. The following year he repressed without too much effort the insurrectionary movements that agitated the Niolo region (the Pasqualini revolt). Promoted to field marshal (rank equivalent to brigadier general) in 1782, he retired to Vescovato, where he died in 1793 at the age of seventy after having served all the regimes:Teodoro, Paolo, Genoa and France, always in distinguished positions. Luce Casabianca was thirty-one years old at the time and owed his father his education, his training and his fate at sea.

Formation and beginning of the career (1771-1789)

Luce de Casabianca was baptized along with his sisters in the parish church of San Martín de Vescovato, in Casinca, on January 31, 1763. The certificate details that he had been baptized urgency for her cousin, Dr. Don Paolo de Casabianca, the day he was born (February 7, 1762), as he had been "in danger of death", like many of his contemporaries, for whom childbirth was the first obstacle to overcome for existence. Pursuant to the promise made in 1760, Luce's godparents were Pasquale Paoli –represented by Gio-Batta (nicknamed Tito) Buttafuoco– and Luce's niece, represented by Teresa Casabianca.

During Luce's youth Raffaello de Casabianca and his brother Giuseppe, parish priest of Vescovato from 1770, lived with him in Vescovato, as well as many other relatives, such as Giuseppe-Maria, second lieutenant of the Royal Corse Regiment in 1761, captain of dragoons of the Corsican Legion in 1769 and lieutenant colonel of the same in 1772, as well as Viscount of Casabianca. Soon, however, Luce left the island to attend the Oratorians' school in Juilly, near Paris. In 1771, his father demonstrated his nobility in front of the Superior Council of Corsica and, having achieved the maintenance of said condition (June 4, 1771), Luce was admitted in 1772, at the age of nine, to the Collège royal de la Flèche, three years after Dupetit-Thouars, also a sailor. In 1775, Luce left La Flèche to enter the Collège royal militaire in Paris. He was then thirteen years old. In 1776, after the Comte de Saint-Germain's reform, he was assigned to the Collège d'Effiat, run by the Oratorians, where he arrived in May 1776. There he was a classmate of Auguste Jean Prévost de Traversay. Luce showed a somewhat gloomy character, but good and capable of applying herself to a continuous job. In January 1778 his family assigned him to the navy. On June 18 he received his midshipman candidate certificate and, on the 23rd, he left Effiat for Toulon .

On February 1, 1779, thanks to his good grades, Luce was appointed guard of the admiral's pavilion. In April he went to sea for the first time aboard the frigate Gracieuse on a mission escorting merchant ships against British privateering that lasted eleven months (Toulon, April 27, 1779, to Toulon, March 21, 1780) with stops in Bona, Tunis, Alexandria, Rhodes and Alexandretta. He then embarked on the ship Terrible, with which he spent nine months at sea (Toulon, June 2, 1780, to Brest, March 1, 1781) as part of the mission to Cádiz of the count d' Estaing to blockade Gibraltar in collaboration with the Spanish fleet. On March 2, 1781, he embarked at Brest aboard the Zélé, a member of the Comte de Grasse's squadron destined to transport troops to America to support Rochambeau. On April 29 he received the baptism of fire in the battle of Fort-Royal Bay. On September 5 he participated in the famous Battle of the Chesapeake , which led to the fall of Yorktown and the independence of the United States of America.

Promoted to ensign after Chesapeake (7 November 1781), Luce participated in the battles from January 25 to 27, 1782 against the island of San Cristóbal, which the Count of Grasse seized, and escaped the defeat of the Saints (9-12 November). April 1782), since the Zélé did not participate in it due to two successive collisions with the Jason and the Ville de Paris, Grasse's flagship. In these operations, Luce revealed himself, according to the captain of the Zélé, as a young “ensign […] known for his talent for properly recognizing ships and their forces.” Arriving at Lorient on January 9, 1783 aboard the Swift, he was at Bastia in May of that year. There he married Felice Raffali de Vescovato early in 1784 and went to Toulon in May. Until August he sailed through the Levant Mediterranean aboard the frigate Brune.

Promoted to lieutenant on February 16, 1787, Luce had been on leave in Corsica since 1784. Then his daughter Faustina (1785) and his son were born Giant (1787). He then embarked on the frigate Réunion (Brest, April 17, 1787, to Brest, January 17, 1788), and sailed to Lisbon and then to Port-au-Prince. His next destination was the brig Alerte (Toulon, January 18, 1788, to Toulon, February 23, 1788), brief, because shortly after he took a one-year leave, the first six months without pay. On his return from Corsica, he embarked on the frigate Alceste (Toulon, July 30, 1789, to Toulon, October 2, 1790), after which he obtained a new seven-month permit on November 14, 1790, in this occasion with salary.

Politician and sailor (1790-1798)

Luce took his civic oath in Toulon on March 14, 1792. On September 18, he was elected in Corsica popular representative in the National Convention with 216 votes out of 398. He then declared that I was thirty-five years old, when I was only thirty. On January 1, 1793, in parallel, he was promoted to sea captain. Although he was a Montagnard and had joined the Jacobin Club early in his term, Luce was a moderate revolutionary . He was a member of the Navy Committee and did not vote for the king's death. He explained his decision in these terms:“I don't think his death is necessary for the health of the French people. I vote for the detention, unless the Convention can take other measures according to the exigencies of the circumstances”. Sent on a mission to Corsica, he was not in Paris when the vote against Marat took place (April 1793). Dismissed on May 17 from his responsibility as a deputy to the Convention by a thousand Paolists furious at the arrest warrant issued against their leader by the Paris Assembly on April 2, he was back in Paris on June 16. Q>

In the meantime, Paoli, with British support, had taken control of the island. In Paris, Luce decidedly opted for a French Corsica and, on July 10, 1794, justified his opinion with Antoine Christophe Salicetti:1) the Corsicans were "too imbued with the local and family spirit"; 2) the republic will guarantee “justice for all without any bias”. For him, the revolution was a source of equality and justice. Thus he wrote on December 17, 1793:“ Deposuit potentos de sede et exaltavit humiles ” (a passage from the Magnificat:“He brings down the mighty from their thrones and lifts up the lowly”). That December 12, the Jacobin Society had excluded Luce, despite his protests, on the pretext that he had not voted "the death of the tyrant." Divorced on July 16, 1794, he settled in Paris with his son Giocante, at 6 Rue de la Michodière. His former wife would remarry Barthelemy Arena, who would die in Livorno after thirty years of exile because of his opposition to the coup of 18 Brumaire .

After the Thermidor Reaction , Luce intervened from August 2, 1794 in the Committee of Public Health in favor of "Corsican nobles and priests who remain faithful to the cause of France, but who have fled their country to escape the English and the Paolists". In the autumn of 1794, he voted for the execution of Carrier, responsible for the Nantes drownings. Elected a member of the new legislative body, the Council of Five Hundred, until May 20, 1798, he too returned to the Navy Committee. It was then that Luce, promoted to division chief, was given command of the flagship Orient. , of three bridges and one hundred and twenty guns, as flag captain to Admiral Brueys. On May 8, Bonaparte, although seasick, was on board, as was Giocante, Luce's eleven-year-old son, and part of the 167 scientists and artists embarked on the fleet that would lead to the Armée d' 'Orient to Egypt . On May 23, Luce lowered sail off Bastia. His son, accompanied by Berthier, disembarked to kiss his mother.

On August 1, the Battle of Abukir took place between Nelson's squad and Brueys's, which was anchored (see "The naval campaign and the battle of Abukir" in Desperta Ferro Historia Moderna #41:Napoleon in Egypt ). The Orient went up in flames. Casabianca, seriously injured in the head by a splinter, jumped into the water with his son and they stood on a collapsed mast in the company of the quartermaster of the fleet just before the explosion of the ship, which engulfed them in an overwhelming crash. Bonaparte wrote to the Directory:

Luce's daughter, Faustina, would receive a pension from the first consul at Les Invalides.

Michel Vergé-Franceschi He is a professor of Modern History at the University of Tours and has been director of the Laboratoire d'Histoire et d'Archéologie Maritime of the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) of the Université Paris IV-Sorbonne and the Musée de la Marine.