Hervé Riel

(Published in the Corn hill Magazine , March 1871. Browning received £100 for it, which sum he gave to the Paris Relief Fund, to provide food for the starving people after the siege of Paris. Published in the Pac chia rot to volume in 1876.) The story told in the poem is strictly historical. Hervé Riel was a Breton sailor of Le Croisic, who, after the great naval battle of La Hogue in 1692, saved the remains of the French fleet by skilfully piloting the ships through the shallows of the Rance, and thereby preventing their capture by the English. For this splendid service he was permitted to ask whatever reward he chose to name. The brave Breton asked merely for a whole day’s holiday, that he might visit his wife, the Belle Aurore. Dr. Furnivall says: “The facts of the story had been forgotten, and were denied at St. Malo, but the reports of the French Admiralty were looked up, and the facts established. The war between Louis XIV. and William III. was undertaken by the former with the object of restoring James II. to the English throne. Admiral Turnville engaged the English fleet off Cape La Hogue, and thereby wrecked the French fleet and the cause of James. Apropos of Hervé Riel, Mr. Kenneth Grahame says ( Browning Society’s Papers , March 30th, 1883, p. 68*): ‘In Rabelais’ Pant a gruel , lib. IV., cap. xxi., Panurge says, ‘... quelque fille de roy... me fer a exiger quelque magnific que cenotaphe, com me feit Dido à son mary Sychee;... Germain de Brie à Hervé, le nauctrier Breton,’ etc. Then a note says, ‘En 1515, dans un combat naval, le Breton Hervé Primoguet, qui commando it la Cordelière , attach a son navire en feu au vai eau amiral ennemi la Regente d’Angleterre , et se fit sauter avec lui. Germain de Brie ou Brice ( Brixius ) qui celebra ce trait heroique dans un poeme latin, etoit un des amis de Rabelais.’ This was a forerunner of Browning’s hero. The coincidence of names, etc., is curious.”