A forgotten bundle of love letters sent to French sailors more than 260 years ago – but never before opened or read – has been discovered among British naval archives, revealing intimate details of 18th-century marital and family life.
The remarkable stash of more than 100 letters was discovered by chance at the National Archives in Kew by Renaud Morieux, professor of European history at the University of Cambridge, who asked archivists if they could be opened so he could read them for the first time.
Inside, he found deeply personal and often passionate messages intended for the sailors, who had been captured in 1758 onboard a French warship during the seven years’ war.
“I cannot wait to possess you,” wrote one naval wife, Anne Le Cerf, to her husband, Jean Topsent, a phrase that can be translated as “embrace” or “make love to you”. She signed her note “Your obedient wife Nanette”, an affectionate nickname. Topsent, a noncommissioned officer, was imprisoned in England and would never receive the letter.
Marie Dubosc, another correspondent, wrote to her husband, Louis Chambrelan, the first lieutenant of the captured warship: “I could spend the night writing to you … I am your forever faithful wife. Good night, my dear friend. It is midnight. I think it is time for me to rest.” The couple would never meet again, as she died the following year in Le Havre, almost certainly before he was released.
The letters were intended for the crew of the Galatée, which was sailing from Bordeaux to Quebec when it was seized by a British vessel and taken to Portsmouth, where they were imprisoned.
The French postal administration had been trying for months to deliver letters to the ship from the crew’s loved ones, sending copies to ports in France – as was common practice at the time – in the hope of catching the vessel before it sailed. When it heard the Galatée had been captured, it forwarded the letters to the admiralty in London, hoping they would be passed on to the prisoners.
Instead, after establishing the correspondence contained nothing of military value, the British authorities put the unopened letters in storage, where they would be forgotten for centuries until discovered by chance by Morieux.
“I only ordered the box out of curiosity,” said Morieux. “There were three piles of letters held together by ribbon. The letters were very small and were sealed so I asked the archivist if they could be opened and he did.
“I realised I was the first person to read these very personal messages since they were written. Their intended recipients didn’t get that chance. It was very emotional.”
As well as billets-doux between lovers, the archive offers rare insights into sometimes strained family relationships at a time of war. The mother of one young sailor, Nicolas Quesnel, wrote to him complaining that he wrote to his fiance more than to her. “Give my compliments to Varin [a shipmate],” she wrote. “It is only his wife who gives me your news.”
The bundle also contains a letter from Quesnel’s fiance, Marianne, asking him to send his mother a note and stop putting her in an awkward position. She later writes: “The black cloud has gone, a letter that your mother has received from you lightens the mood.”
Morieux, who carried out genealogical research on the sailors, discovered Quesnel survived his imprisonment and later joined the crew of a transatlantic slave ship in the 1760s.
With 59% of the letters written by women, Morieux said they “shatter the old-fashioned notion that war is all about men. While their men were gone, women ran the household economy and took crucial economic and political decisions”.
He added: “These letters are about universal human experiences, they’re not unique to France or the 18th century. They reveal how we all cope with major life challenges.”
His findings are published in the journal Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales.
