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Louis Brion de la Tour's Plea For Financial Support

A rare and poignant personal appeal to the French Government from Louis Brion de la Tour (c.1725–c.1809), the senior royal cartographer of the ancient régime, requesting restoration of a stipend reduced during a round of ministerial austerity.

Brion notes that the government had previously awarded him a monthly pension of 200 francs in recognition of his Carte élémentaire et statistique de l’Allemagne conformément au traité de Lunéville, a diplomatic map directly supporting the territorial terms of the treaty. The pension was granted under Minister Benezech but slashed to 125 francs under François de Neufchâteau, leaving the geographer “un vieillard, infirme, sans fortune,” at age seventy-eight, struggling to support a family that includes a son who has served without promotion in the 42nd demi-brigade since the outset of the Revolution. The aging mapmaker explains that his manual tremors now require the assistance of a copyist, and begs for reinstatement to the “maximum dont il jouissait.”

A powerful testament to the unstable fortunes of scientific specialists in post-Revolutionary France, whose contributions to the state, however valued, were subject to the shifting tides of policy and finance. Brion had held official appointments under both the monarchy and the Revolution, but this document shows the fragility of even long-established careers in the transitional period of the Consulate. He styles himself “le doyen des géographes,” and indeed his works, especially his engraved maps of France and Germany, were widely circulated in the last decades of the eighteenth century.

A rare first-hand record of the financial precarity faced by mapmakers, even those with government patronage and diplomatic relevance.

Transcription and Translation below

18 Vendemiaire, an 12.

Le cn. Brion père, ingenieur geographe (auteur de la
Carte elementaire et statistique de l’Allemagne conformement_
 au traité de Luneville &c.) fut gratifié par le Gouvernement
lors du ministere du cn. Benezech, de 200 francs par mois,
dont il a joui jusqu’au tems du cn. François de Neufchâteau, qui
le comprit dans une reduction, necessitée par une penurie des
finances; et cette reduction, de 200 f. à 125, la jetta dans une
detresse, bien penible pour un vieillard, infirme, sans fortune,
agé de 78 ans, ayant femme et enfans, dont le cadet est au
nombre des defenseurs de la patrie, depuis le commencement de la
revolution, dans la 42e demi-brigade, sans autre grade que
celui de caporal.

En vain ce doyen des geographes, encore animé par l’amour du
travail, au moyen d’un aide, qu’exige son tremblement de mains,
a reclamé jusqu’à present la grace d’être reporté au
maximum dont il jouissait, et qui lui est plus que jamais
necessaire.

Brion, rue de Tournon, n° 1151.

18 Vendémiaire, Year 12 (10 October 1803).

Citizen Brion the elder, engineer-geographer (author of the Elementary and Statistical Map of Germany in conformity with the Treaty of Lunéville, etc.) was granted by the Government, during Citizen Bénézech’s ministry, an allowance of 200 francs per month. He enjoyed it until the time of Citizen François de Neufchâteau, who, owing to a shortage of funds, included him in a budgetary reduction; and this reduction, from 200 francs to 125, plunged him into distress—a harsh fate for an old, infirm man of no means, 78 years of age, with a wife and children, the youngest of whom has been among the defenders of the fatherland since the beginning of the Revolution in the 42nd half-brigade, holding no rank other than corporal.

In vain has this dean of geographers, still inspired by love of work and obliged, because of the trembling of his hands, to employ an assistant, petitioned up to the present for the favour of being restored to the maximum allowance he once enjoyed, and which he now needs more than ever.

Brion, rue de Tournon, No. 1151.