INTRODUCTION.
I, John Lebrenn, the son of Ronan, whose father was Alain, the last sonof Salaun Lebrenn the mariner, now take up the thread of our familyhistory, by writing the following narrative.
Thanks to God, Oh, sons of Joel! my eyes have seen the beautiful daypredicted to our ancestor Scanvoch the soldier by Victoria the Great,now more than fifteen centuries ago, and awaited from age to age by ourfamily. I have witnessed the solemn judgment, the expiatory punishmentof Louis Capet, called Louis XVI, the last of that line of Kings ofFrankish origin. Rejoice, ye shades of my ancestors--ye martyrs of theChurch, of the Nobility, and of Royalty! Rejoice, ye obscure soldierswho fought in the bloody conflicts that you engaged in from age to age,in resolute insurrections of the oppressed against the oppressors ofcenturies--of the sons of the conquered Gauls against the conquerorFranks! Rejoice! Old Gaul has recovered her ancient republican freedom!She has broken the abhorred yoke of the Kings, and the infamous yoke ofthe Church of Rome.
I am writing this narrative in the year II of the French Republic, oneand indivisible.
My great-grandfather, Salaun Lebrenn, died at Amsterdam in hisninety-first year, on December 20, 1715. His son Alain, born in 1685,was then thirty years of age. He worked in Amsterdam as a printer, oneof the most lucrative trades, in that the large number of books, thenbeing written against the Church and royalty, could be published only atGeneva, or in Holland, free countries in which the right of intellectualfree research was recognized and protected. My ancestor Alain sold in1715 the modest patrimony which he inherited from his father Salaun,left Holland, and settled down in France at the beginning of the Regencyunder Louis XV, the successor of Louis XIV. The freedom then enjoyed wasgreat compared with conditions at the period of Louis XIV. Beingexceptionally skilled at his trade, my grandfather secured the positionof foreman in the printing house of one of the descendants of the famousEstienne, in whose establishment our ancestor Christian was longemployed. Alain married the niece of his employer. Of that marriage wasborn, in 1727, my father Ronan. He followed my grandfather's trade. Thelatter died in 1751. My father had two children--my sister Victoria,born in 1760, and myself, John Lebrenn, born in 1766.
My grandfather's life was spent in peace and obscurity. But greatmisfortunes fell upon our family. As you will read in the course of thefollowing history, Oh, sons of Joel! it was not vouchsafed to my fatherto witness, as I did, the brilliant victory that crowned fifteencenturies of incessant, painful and bloody endeavor, thanks to which ourancestors--successively slaves, serfs and vassals--conquered, at theprice of their lives and of innumerable rebellions, step by step, one byone, the franchises that the French Republic has now confirmed andconsecrated in the face of the whole world, by proclaiming, in the nameof the Rights of Man, the downfall of Kings and the sovereignty of thePeople.
PART I.
FALL OF THE BASTILLE.