Page 46 - Revolution Republique Empire Restauration

one of the most illustrious in France, Pierre Riel had for her and her perfect conduct and the touching
risen to the highest rank from very modest origins.
Born in 1752, the son of wheelwright from
Champignolle, Reil was a good example of the
Bonapartist legend that every footsoldier had a mar-
shal’s baton in his knapsack, even if Riel actually
received his from Louis XVIII. While stationed on
the Island of Reunion in 1778, he married
Geneviève Gillon de l’Etang, a lady of slightly high-
er station, and the widow of an Anglo-Irish mer-
chant named Macfields.When he returned to France
she refused to accompany him and they were
divorced without issue.
In 1789 the citizens of Riel’s home town decided to
honor him with the gift of the small property of
Beurnonville, for which he nevertheless paid them
the sum of 200 francs, almost the entire value of the
land. Henceforth he was known as Pierre Riel de
Beurnonville, then under the republic, Citoyen
Beurnonville, eventually ending his career as a
hereditary Marquis-Peer. It was as a Lieutenant-
General and Senator of the Empire that he married
the young Mlle. de Durfort, a marriage arranged
with her widowed mother.Years later, Félicité said to
some young cousins, “women are so unfortunate, we
are married very young to worn out men, without
heart, without love, without strength, whom we do
not choose”. As youthful and pretty as Félicité evi-
dently was, she had no fortune to speak of, and was
therefore in no position to choose her husband. She
and Pierre had no children when he died in 1821.
Her husband remembered her tenderly in his will as
‘my dear Wife, for whom the tender love that I had
2.To whom he left an annual pension charged on the estate of 12,000 francs and also his Hôtel Particulier at 51 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, of which,
however, he gave his widow the right to occupy one half.
signs that she never ceased to demonstrate during
our marriage.’ He left her the usufruct of almost his
entire estate, with the eventual reversion to his
nephew, Etienne Martin, Baron de Beurnonville2
Despite the high rank he held in French freemason-
ry, the Marshal evidently retained his allegiance to
the Church, asking this his widow establish a dona-
tion for prayers for the repose of his soul to be said
in perpetuity at their parish church in Paris and at
their Château of Balincourt.
Now a wealthy widow, the Maréchale fell in love with
a retired officer nine years her junior, Joseph Marie
Frémiot, a former infantry captain, the son of a reg-
imental musician. As a mark of the favor in which her
husband had been held, her second husband received
from the King the personal title of Baron (18 May
1825). In 1827, despite her age, she gave birth to a
son, Henri, who sadly predeceased both parents,
dying in 1868. Félicité died two years later at their
Paris home. Joseph followed her two years later.
Pierre’s nephew now inherited the splendid Château
of Balincourt, where the portrait hung until his
death, when it passed to his cousin the Count de
Reiset.
After an apprenticeship at the Dihl et Guerhard
porcelain factory in Paris, where he was trained by
Etienne Leguay (1762-1846), in 1802, Blondel
entered the studio of Jean-Baptiste Regault.The fol-
lowing year, he was awarded the Prix de Rome for
his composition Enné portent son père Anchise (Paris,
École Nationale Supérieure des Baux-Arts) but did
46