Lost French love letters from the 1750s reveal what life was like during wartime : NPR

A number of French love letters from the mid-18th century have been published and studied for the first time since they were written.

This letter, sent by his wife, brother, and parents to a French sailor, never reached its intended recipient, but provides valuable insight into the lives of families affected by the war.

“I could spend the night writing to you,” Marie Dubosc wrote to her husband. “I am your eternally faithful wife. Good night, dear friend. It’s already midnight. I think it’s time to rest.”

Ms. Dubosc could not have known that her husband had been captured by the British and that her message would never be received. She died the year after she sent her letter, and she probably never saw him again.

Sent between 1757 and 1758 during the Seven Years’ War, these letters were primarily addressed to the crew of the Galate warship, and the French Post Office sent letters from port to port in the hopes of reaching the sailors. transferred. However, when the Royal Navy occupied Galate Island in April 1758, French authorities forwarded a bundle of letters to England.

They remained unopened for centuries until Cambridge University historian Renaud Moreu discovered them in the UK National Archives’ digital catalogue. Although he had no idea what he would find inside, he examined the box from the archives.

The box contained three packs of letters wrapped in white ribbons.

“I basically had to pull the strings like it was a Christmas present,” he told NPR.

“My heart started beating faster and I was like, ‘Wow, this looks like something really cool… There might be some secrets in there.'”

The 104 letters were written on thick, expensive paper, some with red wax stickers affixed to them. However, Morieu says that it contains the words of the common people, not the words of the aristocrats. These are voices that are often lost in historical records, such as the wives of sailors and fishermen.

“These letters tell us about how people from the lower classes coped with the challenges of war and the absence of relatives and loved ones, and how they overcame fears of distance and uncertainty. ,” says Moreu.

Moreu spent months deciphering the letter and published his findings in a French historical journal on Monday. Annares.history, social science.

In one letter, 61-year-old mother Marguerite Lemoine scolds her son Nicolas Quinel for not writing.

“On the first day of the year [i.e. January 1st] You wrote a letter to your fiance…I think of you more than you…In any case, I wish you a Happy New Year full of the Lord’s blessings. I think I should go to the grave, I’ve been sick for three weeks.Please praise Valin. [a shipmate], only his wife will inform me of your news. ”

Morieux told NPR that Lemoine’s charges reveal a “universal” family relationship.

“My son at sea is only writing letters to his fiancée, and his mother is really upset about that,” Morieux said. “And it feels like there’s some sort of…really long, ancient metaphor here about intrafamily tensions between a mother and a daughter-in-law.”

Morrieux said the letter also illustrates the difficulties of long-distance communication in the 1750s. Like Lemoyne, many of the senders were illiterate and likely dictated their messages to scribes.

Additionally, sending letters to ships that were constantly underway during the war was difficult and unreliable, and families often sent multiple copies of letters to different ports.

To maximize the chances of successfully communicating with loved ones, each letter contained multiple messages packed into paper, often from different families and addressed to multiple crew members.

“And it’s covered in ink, not just from top to bottom…The text is written from left to right, but it’s also written in the margins,” Moreu said.

For Morieux, this letter shows how communities can remain resilient in times of crisis.

“This is about the power of groups. It’s about how these people can only survive by relying on others.”

Christopher Intagliata and Gabriel Sanchez contributed to this report.