Life's a party game and my controller is disconnected

♢ Primary Sources

Correspondence and personal writings

Prieur's letter to Louis XVI on the importance of having a unified metric system in France

Prieur's letter to Guyton dated 10 Thermidor an II (28 July 1794)

Prieur's speech of 3 Germinal an III

Prieur's last written letter (to Simonne Frilley)

C.A. Prieur - Révelations sur le Comité de Salut Public (I plan to translate them all into English eventually)

Modern transcription of Prieur's first work on the metric system: Mémoire sur la nécessité et les moyens de rendre uniformes, dans le royaume, toutes les mesures d’étendue et de pesanteur

PNG Vector of Prieur's signature (by @senechalum)

Some excerpts from Prieur's first work on the metric system: 1. On the benefit of using the decimal scale 2. Conclusion of the memoir (summary of Prieur’s proposal)

Prieur's speech on the occasion of his admission to Dijon's Academy of Science

CSP decrees written and/or signed by him

Copy of the Letter of the Committee of Public Safety to the Directory of the District of Valence dated 19 Pluviôse [Year II]

♢ Secondary Sources

Camille Richard - Le Comité de Salut Public et les fabrications de guerre sous la Terreur, Rieder Ed., Paris, (1922) (A very interesting book on the warfare during the Terror (93-94), explaining Prieur, Carnot and Lindet's duties and contributions.)

Bertrand Barère on Prieur

Paul Arbelet on Prieur

Paul Arbelet - La jeunesse de Prieur de la Côte-d'Or, Revue du dix-huitième siècle (1916)

Bulletin de la Sabix - n°8 (décembre 1991) (it's a small journal written in French with some articles about the founding of the Polytechnic School and Prieur's role in it)

♢ Posts

Prieur's personality: an introduction by @saintjustitude

Various portraits

Quotes (by him and on him)

Prieur's baptism certificate

Prieur's family crest

On Prieur's family

On Prieur's daughter (some additions by @nesiacha)

On Prieur's disability

Charles Bossut on Prieur's school perfomance at the École de Mézières

On Carnot and Prieur’s friendship (1, 2, 3, 4)

Prieur was never named Compte de l'Empire by Napoléon

On the mutual dislike between Prieur and Bonaparte

Historical inaccuracies in Arte's documentary Un mètre pour mesurer le monde

Prieur's contributions to the establishment of a new unified metric system

How Prieur and Carnot were elected members of the Committee of Public safety

Prieur's duties and contributions as member of the CSP

Prieur's contributions in the foundation and political defense of the École Polytechnique

Prieur's attendance at the CSP

Prieur's depiction in media

The two met in 1785, when he was 22 and she was 29; yes, she was seven years older than him! The former moved to Dijon both for military duty and to assist Louis-Bernard Guyton in his scientific works. The young officer needed a place to stay and one of the rooms of the Vétu family house revealed itself to be the most suitable for him. Bouchard guesses that the two might have become close very soon, allowing Prieur to eat and sleep there for free since his low salary at the time wouldn't have allowed him to always pay the rent. (1) Not a far-fetched speculation, considering that Catherine’s lively character and active participation in the management of her husband's grocery store; at that time managing a business implied a minimum of education and both a strong dedication and commitment to work; qualities that Prieur appreciated and admired in a person. On the other hand, Catherine, despite the age gap, must have been impressed by Prieur's reserved, hardworking character and polite manners, something that her husband seemed to be lacking. (2)

In 1785 Catherine already had two children, Pierre, 9 years old and Bernard, 7 years old; three years later, her last one, Claudine was born. Prieur was chosen as godfather, or offered to be. Here's the child's baptism certificate I managed to find in the Cote-d'Or archives:

[Source: Archives de la Côte-d'Or, Registres paroissiaux et état civil, XVIe siècle-1938 (sous-série 2 E). Collection communale 1579-1792, Toutes paroisses, FRAD021EC 239/095, Vues 0252-0317 : Paroisse Saint-Jean, Baptêmes et Mariages, janvier 1788-décembre 1788, vue 279]

Claudine-Denise, fille du Sr Joseph Vétu, marchand épicier et demoiselle Catherine Joly son épouse, est venue au monde et a été baptisée ce jourd'hui 2 mai 1788, son parrain, M. Claude-Antoine Prieur Duvernoy, écuyer, officier au corps royal du génie, représenté par le Sr Jean-François Boiteux, épicier, et sa marraine, dame Claudine-Denise Couturier, veuve du sieur Bernard Joly, son aïeule maternelle. (3)

EN: Claudine-Denise, daughter of Joseph Vétu, grocery merchant and of Catherine Joly, his spouse, was born and baptized on this day 2 May 1788, her godfather being M. Claude-Antoine Prieur Duvernoy, esquire, officier in the Corps Royal du Génie, represented by Sr. Jean-François Boiteux, grocer, and her godmother dame Claudine-Denise Couturier, widow of Monsieur Bernard Joly, her maternal grandmother.

As mentioned before, the supposition that Claude-Antoine might have been more than a simple godfather stems from some facts that for Arbelet and Bouchard are pretty emblematic: In Prieur's personal notes, there's a date written down by him and another one right next to it, which not only corresponds to Claudine's birthday, but it's curiously nine months distant from the first date. I’m not an expert on 18th century customs, but it’s not unlikely that men wrote down the date in which they had an intercourse with a woman to know if they were the father of the child that would have later been born. When Claudine was 17, Prieur arranged a marriage between her and a friend of his, Drappier, to whom he later associated the business the former was running at the time; at the time these engagements for a girl were her father’s or her guardian’s duty. When Prieur wrote his testament, he left quite a sum of francs to Claudine's son as inheritance and lastly, there's also a letter from an old garrison fellow of Prieur, in which there's written "I wish good morning to you and your women". (4) I’d also wish to add that from the bits of their correspondence shared by Bouchard and the overall treatment Prieur reserved for her throughout her life, the two seemed to be pretty close, linked by an intimacy that goes beyond the one between a woman and an old family friend. He was always there for her, sent her various gifts and helped her financially. This further confirms the hypothesis that Claudine was his real daughter.

Why did he never adopt her, not even after Joseph Vétu’s death? It’s a question that those who wrote about Prieur never asked themselves, but that I personally wonder. The only thing I can think of right now, given my limited knowledge, is that he didn’t want to give her his surname and cause her to be persecuted. Despite never being the target of slander, he had been part of the revolutionary government responsible for the Terror and not a normal one, but a member of the “bloodthirsty Committee of Public Safety of Year II”: so was the view of the CSP during the Napoleonic Era and Restoration. It’s Prieur himself that in a letter dated 1814 to General Marescot reveals he resigned from public life at the beginning of the century because he foresaw the persecution the members of the government prior to the Consulate would have endured. (5) His concern towards her daughter was also a legitimate one: for instance, Sadi Carnot couldn’t advance in the army, despite deserving it, and was denied some positions, because of the surname he bore.

References

G. Bouchard, Prieur de la Côte-d’Or, 1946, p. 54-58.

P. Arbelet, La jeunesse de Prieur de la Côte-d’Or, Revue du dix-huitième siècle, 1916, p. 38-51

Notes

On page 56 of Prieur’s biography, Bouchard affirms with confidence that the date of Thursday 1 December 1785 which Prieur wrote in his “Tableau du temps... depuis 1782 jusqu'en 1792.” - a sort of list of the main events of his life - corresponds to the latter’s unofficial engagement with Catherine. Considering that Prieur arrived in Dijon in August, it means it took them four months to fall in love with each other. Though, except for a vague remark on “a certain number of coincidences that would be too long to report”, Bouchard doesn’t explain in specific how he got to that conclusion.

From some letters and papers that Prieur kept, Joseph Vétu appeared as a “lousy and insignificant man” (G. Bouchard, p. 56).

Transcription by Bouchard (p. 58 of his biography)

Letter from Andréossy to Prieur (G. Bouchard, p. 361).