Földvári Books

Emanctipation in the Army

Mentor, Étienne

Dernier mot d’Étienne Mentor, Représentant du Peuple, a Étienne Bruix, Ministre de la Marine et des Colonies. [Paris, 21 ventôse an VII.]

(Paris): (S.n.), (1799). First edition. Published unbound. 15, (1) p. In good condition.

Mentor’s speech on behalf of the “black and colored” soldiers of the French army. An important stage of the emancipation.

In May 1798 Baron Étienne Bruix, the Minister of the Colonies ordered to create segregated military units for the “black or colored” soldiers who served already in the French army in different parts of Europe. They were required to regroup into new units on the island Ile d’Aix. Many of the officers were demoted and they turned to Étienne Mentor who represented Saint-Domingue in the Parliament, and asked him to intervene on their behalf to end “their humiliating separation from the whites”. Mentor took up the case in the Parliament and attacked Bruix and his order of the formation of such battalion. This brochure is the printed version of this speech that was held on “21 ventôse an VII” (March 11, 1799). Mentor’s intervention was convincing, Bruix’s order was retract and soon after Bruix was relieved of his functions.

Étienne Victor Mentor (1771–1806) was an homme de couleur from Martinique who became an officer in Saint-Domingue and reached the rank of Adjutant General. He served in the French parliament between 1797 and 1799, representing Saint-Domingue. In the Council of Five Hundred Mentor held speeches expressing the attachment of the negro population to the Republic and the fidelity to the Constitution of Year III, and he spoke up for the abolition of slavery. As a result of the coup of 18 Brumerie that brought General Napoleon Bonaparte to power as First Consul of French Mentor had to leave France and sailed to Haiti and became aide-de-camp to Jean-Jacques Dessalines the leader of the Haitian Revolution. Mentor was executed on 24 October, 1806 together with Boisrond-Tonnerre, the mulatto Haitian writer and historian and the author of the 1804 Independence Act of Haiti.

[Bibl.: Dubois, L.: Citizen Soldiers. Emancipation and Military Service in the Revolutionary French Caribbean. In: Brown, Ch. L., Morgan, Ph. D. (ed.): Arming Slaves. From Classical Times to the Modern Age. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. pp. 233–254.]

Not in Sabin.

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Price: €2,500.00