François Charles Hugues Laurent Pouqueville (; 4 November 1770 – 20 December 1838) was a French diplomat, writer, explorer, physician and historian, and member of the Institut de France.
He traveled extensively throughout Ottoman-occupied Greece from 1798 to 1820; first as the Turkish sultan's hostage, then as Napoleon Bonaparte's general consul at the court of Ali Pasha of Ioannina.
Through his diplomacy and writings, he became a prominent architect of the Philhellenism movement throughout Europe and contributed to the liberation of the Greeks and the rebirth of the Greek nation.
Youth: minister and revolutionary His uncommon talent as a writer revealed itself early in a lifelong correspondence with his younger brother, Hugues, and their sister, Adèle.
His detailed letters to his siblings are still a source of knowledge on the life of a world traveler, explorer, and diplomat during the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Empire, and the restoration of the French monarchy at the turn of the 19th century.
Pouqueville studied at the college of Caen before joining the Lisieux. He became a deacon and was ordained at 21. He then was vicar in his native Montmarcé.
Initially known as a young Royalist minister, he was protected and saved by his congregation from the massacres of aristocrats by revolutionary mobs in the Reign of Terror.
Like many young French aristocrats, he supported the rising democratic movement. When Le Merlerault adopted the new Constitution on 14 July 1793 (year 2 of the French Republic), Pouqueville was secretary of the assemblée primaire that approved it.
In 1793, he was assistant to the mayor; finding his vocation with the events of the French Revolution, he resigned from the clergy to become a teacher (1794) and a municipal assistant at Le Merlereault (1795). He remained a fervent Christian all his life.
However, his renunciation of the cloth, Republican speeches, and open criticism of the papacy made him the target of resurgent royalists in Normandy. He went into hiding (probably in CaenFrom my solitude 1795 – notes and journals of François de Pouqueville (unpubl.)) until the defeat in Quiberon by the army of the Republic led by Lazare Hoche of the royalist forces joined by Charette's chouans), as Bonaparte (nicknamed Captain Cannon) did at the Siege of Toulon, and later in Paris.
When Pouqueville returned to Le Merlerault, the town's physician, Dr. Cochin, who had been his colleague at the college of Caen, took him on as student-surgeon. He then introduced him to his friend, professor Antoine DuboisProfessor A. Dubois liked Pouqueville as his own son. However, years later, on 13 December 1810, François Pouqueville wrote to Ruffin: "We are crossed, like friends can be, because I left the robe for the sword...Dubois looked at me as his own glory, and he was furious, when he saw me renegade. You can't imagine his anger truly comical: "It takes twelve things to be a doctor. You have eleven. – And which one do I lack? – You don't know how to make money. – Abrenuntio(I give up!), I told him." Unpublished correspondence of François Pouqueville. Édouard Champion, Publisher, Paris 1921. of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris. Dubois was later the Empress Marie-Louise's doctor when she gave birth to Napoleon's only son, Napoleon II in 1811.
In 1797, Pouqueville left Le Merlerault for Paris. The following year, Pouqueville was one of the surgeons who accompanied then-general Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt. This was a crucial decision that affected the rest of his life.
Pouqueville embarked at Toulon with the ill-fated French Fleet under the command of Général Bonaparte as it sailed towards Egypt. On the way, he witnessed the taking of Malta,Having taken Malta, the French, in a typical magnanimous gesture, set free all the prisoners in the Maltese jails. Amongst those was Orouchs, a noted pirate who immediately went to the British Fleet to be rearmed, and resumed his criminal activities. It was him who, less than a year after being liberated in Malta, attacked the merchant vessel where Pouqueville was a passenger, took him prisoner and sold him to the Turks. Biographical notes François de Pouqueville (2009) and he spent the days of the crossing to Alexandria teaching the French soldiers and sailors the vibrant lyrics of La Marseillaise, the new French national anthem.
Egypt: Bonaparte, Nelson and pirates After the first battle of Aboukir in 1798, General Kleber entrusted Pouqueville with the negotiations for the exchange of prisoners with Admiral Nelson.
While meeting with leaders of the British Admiralty, he quickly developed a great respect for William Sidney Smith who spoke perfect French and proved to be courteous, human, and a man of honor. Conversely, his encounters with Nelson filled him with repugnance, for the Admiral's treatment of the French officers was both brutal and cruel. From that point, Pouqueville would only mention Nelson under the epithet "blood-thirsty cyclops."
Having caught a bad fever that prevented him from continuing his scientific researches, Pouqueville was advised by Kleber to return to France to receive better medical attention.
He boarded the Italian merchant ship La madonna di Montenegro in Alexandria. En route to Italy, the ship was attacked by Barbary Coast pirates near Calabria. Pouqueville was among those taken prisoner.
Prisoner of the Turkish sultan
Peloponnese: Pasha and physician
Pouqueville was first brought to Navarino and then to Tripolitza, the capital of the Peloponnese. The Ottoman Empire was at war with France at the time. He was remanded to the custody of the pasha of Morea, Moustapha.
Moustapha received him with some indifference, but he gave him decent lodging and protected him against the brutalities of the Albanian soldiers who guarded him.
Soon after, Moustapha was deposed and replaced by Achmet Pacha.17 years later, Pouqueville found Achmet Pacha banished in Larissa, and brought him some financial help, but the former pacha died of starvation a short time afterwards.An unpublished correspondence of François Pouqueville Henri Dehérain. Édouard Champion, Publisher, Paris 1921
Having learned that Pouqueville practiced medicine, the new pacha treated him well and, after seeing how successful Pouqueville was when healing some members of his entourage, named him official physician of his pashalic.
Pouqueville took advantage of his new situation by exploring the surrounding regions and by researching the sites of ancient Greece."One can read in Pouqueville an exact description of Tripolitza, capital of the Peloponnese." Chateaubriand, From Paris to Jerusalem He remained in Tripolitza through the harsh 1798 winter.
Constantinople: prisons and harems
In the spring, the Sultan ordered that he be transferred with his co-prisoners to Constantinople, where they were incarcerated for two years in the Fortress of Seven Towers, Yedikule.
While living in abject conditions, Pouqueville wrote that they encountered members of the French embassy to whom the Sultan, under pressure from the British who had appropriated the embassy, had refused the usual diplomatic nicety of being confined in the French embassy palace.
Pouqueville tried saving the life of the dying Adjutant-general Rose, but it was too late. Rose had been France's representative in Epirus and had fallen victim to Ali Pasha of Ioannina'sPage 94 The life of Ali Pacha of Jannina 2nd Edition, Lupton Relfe, London (1823) available online at Google Books cruel perfidy. A few years later, he would be replaced by Pouqueville himself in Ioannina.
While imprisoned, Pouqueville befriended French diplomat who had been held prisoner since the expedition of Egypt. Pouqueville attended to Ruffin's health, nicknaming him the Nestor of the Orient, with whom he perfected his knowledge of orientalism. The two men continued their correspondence long after their release until Ruffin's death.
Soon after arriving in Constantinople, Pouqueville gained some liberty of movement, as his jailers had learned about his medical skills. He succeeded in exploring the surroundings of the fortress, including the Sultan's private gardens at the Topkapı Palace. With the help of the Sultan's gardener, whom he had befriended, he even explored the garden of the Sultan's harem.
On occasions, he convinced his guards to let him travel through the City of Constantinople and along the Bosphorus all the way to the Black Sea. He sought to attend to other French prisoners who were gravely ill and held in a distant jail. At the time, the plague was still prevalent in the eastern Mediterranean region. Pouqueville was determined to find the proper medical method to fight the terrible disease. His thesis on his plague observations were later published in Paris upon his return and were highly regarded.
Pouqueville's written accounts of his time abroad were the first detailed description by a westerner of the Turkish megalopolis, its diverse inhabitants, and way of life, customs, and habits. These were received in Europe with great astonishment and curiosity because "The Gate of Asia" had previously remained practically unexplored by westerners since the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.
While in jail, Pouqueville studied modern Greek and translated Anacreon. He wrote several oriental pieces like: The Pariah, a short humorous poem, La Gueuseade in four chants and in sestets, and a few lighter poems dedicated to Rose Ruffin.
Throughout his captivity, Pouqueville kept a journal written in a secret code that he had devised. He managed to keep it hidden from his guards, leading them instead to find and confiscate unimportant writings on their occasional searches of his cell. It is from this journal that he was able to write the first two parts of his book"Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (MWS) was concerned to describe accurately the geography of the area; she wrote to Charles Ollier, the literary adviser for Henry Colburn, Mary's publisher: I am in great want of a book which describes minutely the Environs of Constantinople...you would oblige me if you would send it without delay(MWS letters I, 431). She would doubtless have received Colburn's publication of Pouqueville's Travels in the Morea, Albania and other parts of the Ottoman Empire...etc(1813, translated by Plumptre). Much of Mary's account of the geography and military history of the city could have been derived from Pouqueville's descriptions, maps and illustrations." afterwords by Joyce Carol Oates of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's The Last Man (Wordsworth Classics, 1826). (nearly 600 pages) that he published in 1805.
His writings brought him fame and fortune. Part three of his book (about 300 pages) was devoted to the astonishing adventures that his friends and brothers in arms encountered before and after their release from the fortress of seven towers. Those friends included future baron and general Jean Poitevin, future general Charbonnel, and future consul-general Julien Bessières.
The emergence of Philhellenism
Source:"...Philhellenism was a movement inspired from a love of classical Greece but was distinct from the equally popular antiquarian interest in the cultural products of classical antiquity. Philehellenism encompassed mobilization around the cause of the fate of modern Greeks, seen as the descendants of their putative classical progenitors, and included in its ranks Lord Byron and François Pouqueville." Umut Özkinimli & Spyros Sofos Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey Columbia University Press (25 April 2008)