Pierre-François Tubeuf, 18th century capitalist industrialist, pioneer of Cévennes mines

Pierre-François Tubeuf, an 18th century businessman, died as he lived: dangerously. A pioneer of the coal industry in the Alesian basin, he ended up emigrating to the United States and becoming a planter, while remaining hopeful of making his fortune by extracting coal from the Appalachian massif. No time: he was murdered.

I had the misfortune of being hit by a stone thrown with so much force that it broke three of my teeth and made an opening below my eye which I lost shortly after.

Flashback: at the beginning of the 1760s, this Norman native attempted an adventure in Aveyron, in the heart of what would become the Decazeville coal basin. He’s already making enemies: “Peasants on horseback, who wanted to chase away this foreigner whom they called “the Englishman” and whom they treated as a “thief”, chased him for more than an hour!“, report Annie and Richard Bousiges in a fascinating biography of the character.

Many years later, on the heights of La Grand-Combe, the henchmen of the Marquis de Castries threaten Tubeuf to kill him and make him blind in one eye. “I had the misfortune of being hit by a stone thrown with so much force that it broke three of my teeth and made an opening below my eye which I lost shortly after“, writes Tubeuf in his correspondence.

Devious, even corrupting

In the meantime, he had prospected near Pont-Saint-Esprit and Avignon. It is from the Rhône that he intends to ship this coal and that which he has just spotted, in 1770, he the seeker of black gold, to the north of the Gard: the Alesian subsoil, full of coal, extends its arms to him. “We would ship this mixture to Marseille, Toulon and other seaports, and we would compete with English coal“, he sold to the intendant of Languedoc, Saint-Priest. Patatras. Avignon and Comtat Venaissin were returned to the Pope by royalty. Tubeuf lost the concession he had obtained in 1770. 100,000 pounds swallowed up: he fell into debt, liquidated his wife’s dowry. Fortunately, the State compensated him. He started again in Alès, gets into debt again.

Pierre-François Tubeuf believes in his lucky star. He puts the means into it and knows how to be “twisted“, specify Annie and Richard Bousiges. Even corrupting: he fills a car with meat and wine to get the audience drunk and convince them but “none wanted to eat or drink, much less sell or settle their mines“. In 1780, he agreed to pay 3,600 pounds to the maid of Madame Victoire, the daughter of Louis XV, so that she would slip in a word in his favor.

“Capitalist industrialist”

Trained mineralogist, “he had the temperament of a dynamic and determined captain of industry”underline Annie and Richard Bousiges. “By resorting to a form of joint stock company, Tubeuf presents itself as a capitalist industrialist ahead of its time.contrasting with the conservatism of local notables, insist the authors.
Described by the historian Marcel Bruyère as “first major miner in our country“, he was at the origin of the modern exploitation of the Cévennes basin which would become one of the largest mining centers in France.

Poor financial? Too ahead of its time? Prevented by too many obstacles?

And yet, the ambitious man broke his teeth on the Cévennes rock. “Poor financier? Too ahead of his time? Hindered by too many obstacles?”questions the Bousiges couple. A bit of all that.
But above all one against all, one could say, as the stewardship of Languedoc, the Church, the local barons, the communes and the small owners joined forces to make it fail. Not to mention the multiple about-faces of the monarchy… By a decree of 1744, it had monopolized the subsoil of the country to better supervise the fledgling mining exploitation and avoid accidents.

Thirty years later, in 1774, a Council decision granted Tubeuf this authorization over a good part of Gard, and for a period of thirty years. He discovered artisanal mines in the Cévennes.operated without any order or abandoned“, he wrote. He promised to compensate the owners, created wells (including the Tubeuf well, almost a hundred meters deep), galleries, installed rails and wagons. To avoid the all too frequent landslides, he planned to evacuate the water.

National assets

The farmers are up in arms. Until now, they recovered the coal that was exposed to the surface on the plots belonging to them. Or operated crude mines. For them, this Norman, despite his grand exterior, is just a “stranger” who takes the coal out of their mouths.

The powerful are also angry with him. Monsieur, brother of the king, defends his rights over the viscounty of Portes. The Marquis de Castries, who bought the local lordship from the Prince of Conti, did not want to be dispossessed of the subsoil. Having become Marshal of France and minister, he obtained a share of the cake from the king in 1788… which he did not benefit from. He fled the Revolution, heading to Germany.

Pierre-François Tubeuf, for his part, is no safer. On July 13, 1789, he wrote to a correspondent: “Paris is at this moment in a very unfortunate situation; the whole populace is under arms and indulges in very frightening excesses”. Deprived of his concessions which had become national property, he left for America in 1791, at the age of 60. Tireless.

Regarding his end of American life, let’s start at the end… His violent death in May 1795, four years after his installation in Virginia. Killed by “redskins”“a horde of wild Indians“, historians have long reported. This is the story, moreover, of his son and his niece, seriously injured. A servant had drowned while crossing the Clinch River to call for help.

On their return to France, it is this version that they give, specifying that Tubeuf “was looking for minerals in the mountains”. The Bousiges couple relays another thesis, supported by American researchers: two men, probably of multi-ethnic origin, having “probably the appearance of Indians“, would have attacked the planter, at his home, to better rob him.

One thing is certain: its exploitation was on the border between settler and Indian territories. “This border was located on the southwest slope of the Appalachians, writes the Bousiges couple. It was the hunting and fishing grounds of the Shawnees and Cherokees.“

The man to kill

He was the man to kill in the Cévennes. He would ultimately be shot down in Virginia, in an equally hostile context. The French were looked at with a bad eye. Tubeuf did not speak English.

He wanted to establish a colony in Russell County, Virginia, on the banks of the Clinch River. He convinces around ten families to follow him. He only leaves with his eldest son. His wife and his youngest son (who later joined him) remained in France while preparing the ground. Tubeuf, again, thinks big. There is plenty to do: we can plant tobacco, corn, wheat, cotton, sugar cane… And explore the subsoil of the Appalachians to extract coal!

What projects have they carried out there? We’ll probably never know. No written record has survived. Did he, for example, use black slaves, a prized labor force in Virginia at the time? We know much more, however, about his crossing of the Atlantic: Tubeuf’s logbook is very rich. We discover life on a sailboat at the end of the 18th century: seasickness, bad weather, strong winds, fights on board, fishing, the flirtation of his niece with the captain… And finally the promised land on August 15, 1791. “Everything is very beautiful there […] and everything breathes an air of ease which is the greatest pleasure to see. Not a poor person.”

Everything remains to be done. But as we have seen, Pierre-François Tubeuf did not have time to follow his dream to the end.