Nicolas Custer

Nicolas Custer (* 1766 in Luxembourg ; † November 13, 1800 in Vieux-Fort , St. Lucia ) was a Luxembourg Catholic priest who was deported to South America during the French Revolution and died on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.

Life

Nicolas Custer was born in Luxembourg in 1766. He spoke Luxembourgish and German. Custer was a Franciscan and lived as Father Albertin in the monastery in Namur until it was stormed by the revolutionary troops on December 8, 1796. Custer sought refuge with the Archbishop and Elector of Trier , Clemens Wenzeslaus von Sachsen , who sent him as a priest to the small village of Itzbach in Saarland , now a district of Siersburg .

As a priest loyal to Rome, Custer had not taken the oath on the civil constitution required by the National Assembly. Those who refused to take oath ("les réfractaires" = deserters ) were persecuted as opponents of the revolution and enemies of the state and were often executed. In 1793 the National Assembly decided to deport enemies of the state to the French colony of Guyana in South America.

On October 25, 1797, Nicolas Custer was sentenced to deportation , probably after denunciation , and arrested on November 17, 1797. From the prison in Metz he moved with a group of convicted priests and other delinquents across France to Rochefort in January and February 1798 to be embarked there.

Cooped up on the intermediate deck of the frigate Charente , they cast off on March 21, 1798. The very next day they were attacked by English ships and shot incapable of maneuvering. On April 23, 1798, the frigate La Decade took over the prisoners and brought them to Cayenne , where they entered on June 10, 1798.

The prison colony offered hardly any opportunities to survive. Custer decided to flee with three other prisoners. In June 1800 they managed to escape in a boat along the coast towards Suriname (Dutch Guyana).

Initially imprisoned as French spies in Fort Amsterdam, the priests were eventually released and taken to a Franciscan monastery in Martinique . Here Custer decided to stay as a priest in the Caribbean and was ordered to the neighboring island of St. Lucia.

As soon as he arrived in Vieux-Fort, Nicolas Custer fell victim to yellow fever , which he succumbed to on November 13, 1800.

literature

• Werner Klemm, Hans-Dieter Eggers: Nicolas Custer's involuntary trip to America. A Siersburg priest and the French Revolution. Conte Verlag, Saarbrücken 2007, ISBN 978-3-936950-48-9 .