written word and for the expensive material on which it was set down.
An exception to this occurred after Napoleonâs defeat and his replacement by the Bourbon monarchy, when, for a few years, the records seem to have been kept by one Louis Vallet or Vaillet or Vallete who was also the mayor. This man, alone among his fellow-citizens then and for several decades, wrote a fluent, hurried, almost modern hand in correct French. When I first identified him I guessed (what I later found to be the case) that he, or rather his father, was one of those upper-class landowners who made themselves scarce during and after the Revolution but returned at the Restoration to resume something of their old place in society. Vallet may in the long run have profited from the turmoil, for he acquired a lot of land, some of which had previously belonged to the Church; in fact he became the largest landowner in the Commune. He seems to have been inclined to treat the place as his own fief and to have had little respect for new authority. He got into trouble with the Préfet (the figure of national command in distant Châteauroux) for cutting down trees on the highway and building his own watercourse without regard for others. After he ceased to be mayor in 1825 it was stated by the new mayor (Pirot) that le Sieur Vaillet was known to have made off at an earlier date with the silver vessels from the church; the Council ventured the opinion that he should be invited to return them. Vallet no doubt answered that he had taken the silver into protective keeping at the time when the Church was being dispossessed by the newly formed state and its priests driven into hiding. By the 1820s Chassignollesâ church was being repaired after years of neglect: rain and bird droppings had been coming through gaps in the wooden tiles of the roof.
Vallet must have made his peace with the others or simply been too prominent a person to ignore, for after a few years he was back again as a member of the Council. He continued, though, to cause occasional trouble. As late as 1845, when he was well into his fifties but apparently no more circumspect in his behaviour, the exasperated Council even took him to court in La Châtre âpour avoir fait enlever les terres provenant de la fosse publique appartenant à la Communeâ. The public ditch was a remnant of moat from the medieval church fortifications. Presumably the soil in it was valuable manure and he had refused to apologize. There is no mention in the Minutes of the time he pulled down an old farm building and discovered in its foundations a hoard of eighth-century silver and gold coins: I found that reference elsewhere, in the notes on the La Châtre region of a nineteenth-century antiquary. The village must have thought that was just Valletâs kind of luck. I wonder where those coins are now?
For many years, both before and after Valletâs reign, the Minutes seem not to have been kept by any formally appointed Secretary but by one or other of the handful of men in the Commune who could actually write. There was an Aussourd who filled this role at an early date. (Names beginning with âAlaâ or âAuâ, meaning âson ofâ â son of the deaf man, son of Georges, son of Our Denise â are very common in the Black Valley.) Later the books were kept by a François Charbonnier, born in 1799 â LâAn VIII. He was one of a proliferating Chassignolles family of Charbonniers (âcharcoal-burnerâ) all called François or Jean or Denis through several generations. By the time I reached the Minute books of the later nineteenth century I needed to remind myself that the Jean Charbonnier then signing as a councillor could hardly be the one who was already there by 1810. But literacy clearly ran in this able family; I was slightly disappointed when I established that the Charbonnier who was the first effective schoolmaster circa 1860 was not one of
An exception to this occurred after Napoleonâs defeat and his replacement by the Bourbon monarchy, when, for a few years, the records seem to have been kept by one Louis Vallet or Vaillet or Vallete who was also the mayor. This man, alone among his fellow-citizens then and for several decades, wrote a fluent, hurried, almost modern hand in correct French. When I first identified him I guessed (what I later found to be the case) that he, or rather his father, was one of those upper-class landowners who made themselves scarce during and after the Revolution but returned at the Restoration to resume something of their old place in society. Vallet may in the long run have profited from the turmoil, for he acquired a lot of land, some of which had previously belonged to the Church; in fact he became the largest landowner in the Commune. He seems to have been inclined to treat the place as his own fief and to have had little respect for new authority. He got into trouble with the Préfet (the figure of national command in distant Châteauroux) for cutting down trees on the highway and building his own watercourse without regard for others. After he ceased to be mayor in 1825 it was stated by the new mayor (Pirot) that le Sieur Vaillet was known to have made off at an earlier date with the silver vessels from the church; the Council ventured the opinion that he should be invited to return them. Vallet no doubt answered that he had taken the silver into protective keeping at the time when the Church was being dispossessed by the newly formed state and its priests driven into hiding. By the 1820s Chassignollesâ church was being repaired after years of neglect: rain and bird droppings had been coming through gaps in the wooden tiles of the roof.
Vallet must have made his peace with the others or simply been too prominent a person to ignore, for after a few years he was back again as a member of the Council. He continued, though, to cause occasional trouble. As late as 1845, when he was well into his fifties but apparently no more circumspect in his behaviour, the exasperated Council even took him to court in La Châtre âpour avoir fait enlever les terres provenant de la fosse publique appartenant à la Communeâ. The public ditch was a remnant of moat from the medieval church fortifications. Presumably the soil in it was valuable manure and he had refused to apologize. There is no mention in the Minutes of the time he pulled down an old farm building and discovered in its foundations a hoard of eighth-century silver and gold coins: I found that reference elsewhere, in the notes on the La Châtre region of a nineteenth-century antiquary. The village must have thought that was just Valletâs kind of luck. I wonder where those coins are now?
For many years, both before and after Valletâs reign, the Minutes seem not to have been kept by any formally appointed Secretary but by one or other of the handful of men in the Commune who could actually write. There was an Aussourd who filled this role at an early date. (Names beginning with âAlaâ or âAuâ, meaning âson ofâ â son of the deaf man, son of Georges, son of Our Denise â are very common in the Black Valley.) Later the books were kept by a François Charbonnier, born in 1799 â LâAn VIII. He was one of a proliferating Chassignolles family of Charbonniers (âcharcoal-burnerâ) all called François or Jean or Denis through several generations. By the time I reached the Minute books of the later nineteenth century I needed to remind myself that the Jean Charbonnier then signing as a councillor could hardly be the one who was already there by 1810. But literacy clearly ran in this able family; I was slightly disappointed when I established that the Charbonnier who was the first effective schoolmaster circa 1860 was not one of
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