Love letters resurface from doomed La Pérouse expedition, shedding light on Louis XVI maritime mystery
A trove of rare personal letters written by a scientist on the ill-fated La Pérouse expedition has resurfaced, offering an intimate glimpse into the 1785 voyage and the emotional turmoil of one of its members. The correspondence, penned by Jean-André Mongez, was found hidden inside a 19th-century book of engravings that was being examined for auction. Experts describe the discovery as a “miracle,” given that most surviving documents from the expedition are purely scientific.
The letters were addressed to Louise Victoire Le Cloustier, the married daughter of a minor noble family from Rouen, Normandy. Ludovic Miran, a book and manuscript expert for the auctioneers, said the find is exceptional. “We have a certain number of documents from the expedition but they are almost all scientific, so these personal letters are extremely rare,” he said. “They throw a completely new light on what is in France an extraordinary scientific and historical event.”
A doomed voyage and a royal obsession
The expedition, led by naval officer and navigator Jean-François de Galaup, count of Pérouse, was dispatched by Louis XVI in 1785 on a round-the-world scientific mission intended to rival the voyages of Captain James Cook. Two ships, La Boussole and L’Astrolabe, sailed from Brest on 1 August 1785 with 225 crew, officers and scientists aboard. After leaving Botany Bay, Australia, in March 1788, the vessels vanished. Their wrecks were not formally identified until 2005, and the exact circumstances of their loss remain a mystery.
The journey was fraught with danger. During a stopover in Samoa, the captain of L’Astrolabe and 11 men were killed. The last reports from the expedition had been sent from various points including Alaska, California, Asia, Russia and Samoa. By the time of Louis XVI’s execution on 21 January 1793, no news had been received for nearly five years. The king reportedly asked before the guillotine: “Is there news of Monsieur de la Pérouse?”
Veiled love and hidden anguish
Mongez, a scientist and church canon who directed a prestigious science revue, used the letters to express his unhappiness at Le Cloustier’s marriage and to repent for his previous behaviour. “He writes several times: ‘I will be back, I will be another man, a better man’,” Miran said. The expert suggested that Mongez may have joined the perilous expedition partly because of this emotional relationship, noting that the scientist already had scientific glory and a good career, and would have known the dangers from reading Cook’s works.
The letters, which appear to have been read and reread, were likely hidden by Le Cloustier from her husband. Auctioneer Benoît Derouineau, who discovered them in an “unremarkable” book of engravings, said: “I didn’t realise what they were at first. They had clearly been carefully saved and hidden. Perhaps because they were a kind of love letter and the recipient didn’t want them seen. But she hadn’t thrown them away or burned them.”
The correspondence also provides rare insight into the harsh realities of the voyage. Mongez recounts the massacre of a friend and others at one stop, and in his last letter he writes that the expedition has taken a sad turn and he now only wants to come home, his unhappiness not compensated by meagre scientific results. Le Cloustier died in 1821, unaware of the fate of Mongez or the expedition. The letters are valued at €30,000–€50,000 and will be sold as one lot by Daguerre at Hôtel Drouot in Paris on 17 November.
