Constantin de Faucher

These Faucher brothers, whose story will be remembered, says a biography of contemporaries, had a common birth, life, glory, death, and destiny. Never, perhaps, will the world ever see again the phenomenon of a soul shared in some sort between two perfectly similar bodies; of two human beings, to whom it was given to have the same features, the same tastes, the same successes, the same misfortunes, in a word, the same physical and moral existence. "

In 1733, Etienne de Faucher had embraced the military and became a superior officer without acquiring much taste for the profession of arms. He was charge d'affaires of France near the Republic of Genoa, first secretary of embassy at the court of Turin and, following a disagreement with his chiefs, he asked for an administrative post in France. He was appointed Ordinary Commissioner of War in the Department of Bordeaux and Secretary to the Government of Guyenne.

“The Historical Archives contain numerous documents attesting to the services rendered by Etienne de Faucher in his duties at home. It was to reward him that the titles of counselor to the king and knight of the orders of Saint-Michel and Saint-Louis were conferred upon him. On November 26, 1759, Etienne de Faucher married, at La Réole, with Marie-Françoise-Constance Faugeroux, whose father had a notary's study at Floudès, a commune located three kilometers from La Réole, and owned properties in the surroundings. A few years later, his personal fortune, which was considerable enough, and the benefits of his office enabled him to buy the two privileged fiefs of Lesparre and Caplebrey, near Caudrot, ten kilometers from La Reole.

At the same time, Messire Durand de Laubessac sold him, in the southern part of La Réole, a land bordering the Rue de la Mar, on the banks of the Garonne, and on which he built a house where he lived, with his family until his death.

It is in this house that were born the two twins of La Réole, September 12, 1760. They were wounded the next day and baptized on September 16, 1762. Here is the copy of the pieces noting these two ceremonies: The registers of the clergy taking place, at this time, civil status, I thought it necessary to reproduce these two excerpts from those of the parish church of La Réole. It will be noted that the names Caesar and Constantine, with which the twins are always named in history, are not among those given to them at birth. It was indeed only later, during their studies and in intimacy, that the names Caesar and Constantine replaced the others: they had to remain to them.

I do not think it's useful to go into much detail about their childhood, their youth and their education. As well, it is in their conduct as citizens and soldiers, in their private and political life, that they must be judged, and it will suffice to know from their early years what could exert an influence on the acts of which they had the responsibility. Their father, very much in favor of the ideas advocated by the eighteenth-century philosophers on the best modes of education, submitted them early to a severe regime. For them, the hours and the nature of the occupations were subject to inexorable regulation; a large part was reserved for physical exercises, and some of these, considered by the father as both hygienic and recreational, were quite hard: this was how he made them take long walks, through fields and woods, lightly clothed, head and bare feet. For food, far from being treated as rich children, they had only very simple and very roughly prepared foods.

And yet, as often happens to twin children, Caesar and Constantine were of a feeble and sickly constitution. Constantine especially felt for a long time the difficulties which had surrounded the moment of their birth; his legs were ill-shaped and his parents had to apply an orthopedic appliance to his right up to grade eight. In their adolescence, perhaps because of the kind of physical education they were subjected to, the two twins became more robust and their father was able to require them to be more assiduous in their studies.

They were intelligent and laborious, and it was wrongly said that they had shown little taste for classical literature. No doubt the very severity of the regime imposed on them was little calculated to make their work attractive. But one only has to go through the many writings they have left to recognize that they had rather extensive and precise knowledge. Mythology and ancient history were familiar to them, and their correspondence and poems abound in quotations and reminiscences of antiquity.

They had wit, and if, at times, their conversation and style, generally correct, were more rudeness than elegance, if their ideas were exposed with more ardor than logic, that came from the rough system of their education and, later, the influence of the profession of arms, rather than their natural disposition.

Moreover, until the Revolution, they lived in an aristocratic society, and the influence of this aristocratic milieu, and the influence of this environment could not fail to exercise themselves in the turn of their minds. They had acquired what we agree to call the distinction of manners, a great urbanity in all their relations, and even a little research and affectation. It was only later, when they had lived in the camps, when they had been involved in events whose terrible shocks and dizzying speed did not always leave time for reflection and oratory precautions. Finally, when they had felt the attacks of calumny and hatred, a slight bitterness sometimes appeared in the expression of their thoughts.

And who would not have been embittered, more than they ever were, by the ingratitude of all those to whom they had done good, by the injustice of those to whom they had never done any harm? It is necessary to be in bad faith or blinded by the party spirit not to agree that, until the last moment of their life, even when it was no longer possible for them to preserve the slightest hope in the equity of their enemies the slightest illusion as to the fate reserved for them by the executioners who were their judges, they preserved the greatest calm, the most perfect serenity, and that, in their official or friendly correspondence, until the hour of their death, nowhere does it find the trace of the slightest bitterness, the least animosity which would have been very excusable, however.

It was early in the morning when they were enthusiastic about Voltaire's works, and from his business they particularly kept a little causticity in pointing out the faults and ridicule; which, in their little town, gave rise to petty and dull enmities. Those who never forgave them for having deserted the aristocratic class in which they were born, in the midst of which they had been brought up, to adopt the principles of the Revolution, did not fail to render them in solidarity with all the attacks of the great philosopher against society and religion. Not only were they accused of mobility, irreflexion, atheism, but they were also considered dangerous because they were passionate about new ideas whose realization threatened to ruin the old social edifice and, in hate who were born from it against them, we find already an explanation of those cowardly abandonments, of those words or perfidious silences which were to be lost, at the moment when the reaction triumphed.

On February 1st, 1771, Caesar and Constantine were admitted as cadets to the light horse of the guard, on the recommendation of General de Bonsol, a friend of their father, whose family lived in Esseintes, a town four kilometers from La Reole.

The two brothers, whose many benefits were so easily forgotten later by all who had been filled, remembered the friendship that had united their family with that of General Bonsol and the support that this last had given to their father to admit them to the light horse. When General von Bonsol was forced during the Revolution to hastily leave his native country, they did not abandon him, and, on the contrary, helped him with fidelity and discretion. At the time of the Terror, the brother of the general still lived in Esseintes: thanks to the protection of the two twins, he was not worried and it was only after their departure for the Vendée, at the head of the Children of La Réole that he had to flee the paternal house.

The father of the two cadets, by a very special favor, obtained to keep them with him, and it was not until August, 1780, that having been appointed officers to the Boufflers regiment of dragoons, they joined their body to enter active service.

Their passage to Boufflers' dragons was marked by no significant event. They were very much loved and listened to by their subordinates, for their gentleness and fairness, highly appreciated and valued by their leaders and comrades for their intelligence, their loyalty, the safety of their relations. In order to make themselves known to each other, they were obliged to wear a different flower to one of the buttonholes of their uniform, so much that resemblance which had often deceived their parents themselves was perfect. Later, when they reached their full physical development, Constantine was a little smaller than Caesar's and the features of the first became a little tougher than those of his brother, as well as his step a little steeper . But their resemblance, astonishing and rare even among twins, still persisted, especially in the gesture and tone of the voice. The monotony of the garrison life, the constant contact of officers, most of whom, carefree the next day, did not share their concerns, who did not see the coming storm, were not to develop in the two brothers the love of the profession of arms. So, in order to fill the great voids of an existence which was not in accordance with their tastes and hopes, they pursued special studies and worked law. Their progress was regular, and when they left the regiment in 1788 they were captains, a rank then highly envied, even by the sons of the most titled and most protected families.”

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