Navigating the Emotional Storm of 1791: The Lamarque Family in Paris, the Landes, and Saint Lucia

Bridging the global and micro-historical approaches to the French Revolution, this chapter examines the experience of revolution during the pivotal year of 1791 through the case of a single family from south-western France named Lamarque, whose most famous member, Maximien Lamarque, was a Napoleonic general and liberal politician whose death provoked the riot of 1832 that figures in Les Misérables. Employing correspondence from three repositories (the Archives Nationales in Pierrefitte, the Archives Départementales des Landes in Mont-de-Marsan, and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA), the chapter triangulates the story of the revolution between Paris, the provinces, and the colony of Saint Lucia. Focusing on the tumultuous year of 1791, the chapter illuminates what I term the ‘emotional labor’ of revolution—in other words, the psychological effort required to ‘keep the peace’ and hold the extended family and community together amidst divisive political conflict. This ‘emotional labor,’ which was often undertaken by women, was not just represented in but often performed through letters with their family members; these ego-documents thus need to be read as tools of this labor.