Tidbits from the history of our ancestors. # 9 appendix
The Brézé.
One of the ships involved in transporting the Carignan-Salières Regiment in 1665.
last update : March 06, 1999 by Michel Robert
An old scale model of the BRÉZÉ hangs from the ceiling of the nave of the "Notre Dame des Victoires" chapel (built in 1688) in the Lower Town of Québec. Two photos included. The model is large, 1,5 m. (5 feet) in length. I don't know the story of this scale model. It is quite similar in workmanship and scale to the ones in the collection of the "Musée de la Marine" in Paris, the Navy museum of the French government. Many of the scale models in this collection were contemporaries of the actual ships they represented.
The BRÉZÉ was a large royal man-of-war of 800 tons, built about 1663. 36 cannons can be counted on the lower deck; so it might have had a total of close to 80 cannons on three decks. It had sailed in 1664 with the Terron, a slightly smaller man-of-war, from La Rochelle to the Antilles with the Marquis de Tracy and the four detached companies (Berthier, La Brisardière, La Durantaye and Monteil) to chase the English out of the colonies. After a successful campaign, they sailed to Canada in the spring of 1665 as planned. The Brézé anchored at Percé on the tip of the Gaspésie peninsula to transboard the troops to two smaller vessels, to ferry them up the Saint Laurent. The Brézé was thought to have too much draft to navigate the channels around Île d'Orléans. This perceived problem limited the sizes of the ships sent from France to Québec to less than about 350 tons.
The ship was named after ARMAND DE MAILLÉ - BRÉZÉ, DUKE OF FRONSAC (1619 - 1646). Maillé-Brézé, nephew of Cardinal Richelieu, was named admiral of the Atlantic fleet by the latter, at the age of 21 in 1640. He was a rather dull young man but a fighting leader of dash, and what he lacked in experience was easily compensated by his assistant the veteran captain Des Gouttes. He quickly imposed himself by his victory against the Spanish fleet in 1642. At the death of Richelieu in 1643, he was made Superintendent of the Navy, a title previously held by Richelieu himself. At the siege of Ortobello in May 1646, he was cut in two by an enemy cannonball, at the age of 27, while attacking the Spanish fleet. By coincidence the goal of this campaign was to free Naples from the Spanish domination and make Thomas of Savoie, prince of Carignan, the new king of the Napolitan kingdom. The Regiment of Carignan was at the siege, under the leadership of the prince himself. They had been transported by the fleet of Brézé from Genoa to Argentaro. The whole campaign fizzled out and failed.
The model in the nave of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires
Bibliograpy: "A History of the French Navy" - E.H.Jenkins, 1973, London ISBN 0 356 04196 4. Recommended.
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