Anselme de Peellaert

Anselme de Peellaert initially held public office, albeit briefly, in 1790, as an alderman in Bruges. After his civic career had been cut short by the Austrians he took a growing interest in the French Revolution, visiting Paris several times during the early 1790s. He became a strong advocate for the "new thinking", and greeted with enthusiasm the arrival of French revolutionary troops in Bruges during November 1792. He became a leading force in the local Jacobin Club, and played a decisive role in the decision to remove all the statues that decorated the facade of the fourteenth century city hall, because these were symbols of the derided Ancien Régime. During the brief (and final) period of Austrian government in Flanders he kept out of politics, but the Austrians were again pushed out of Bruges by the revolutionary forces from France in June 1794.

By 1797 his politics had evidently become less radical. In April he was elected a member of the Bruges communal council. This was the first council since the French had taken over that was not simply nominated by the invaders, and the composition of the Bruges electorate was restricted to an essentially conservative group of notables. De Peellaert was nominated Commissioner of the Directorate in this new council. Six months later, however, in November 1997 the communal council and their commissioner, considered "too reactionary", were ejected, to be replaced by a group of uncompromising Jacobins.

De Peellaert was able to return to politics under the Consulate. Incorporation of the former Austrian Netherlands into an expanded French state had been followed by comprehensive regional government reform: Bruges had in 1795 become the administrative capital for the Department of Lys. In 1799 De Peellaert was appointed to the Lys regional council, becoming its chairman in 1806. From 1800 he was also president of the departmental electoral college.

In 1809 he took over as commander of the National Guard for Bruges. In May 1810 the city was honoured with a visit by Napoleon and his new empress. Anselme De De Peellaert commanded the Guard of honour. Later he was invited to dine at the emperor's table and promoted to the rank of Officer in the Legion of Honour. The encounter with the emperor must have gone well, because on 15 August 1810 he was appointed a Chamberlain to the Emperor. With his family he relocated to Paris where on 27 September 1810 he was further rewarded, under the new honours system, with appointment as a Count of the Empire.[3]

One condition stipulated for a Count of the Empire was that he should have an income of at least 30,000 francs. In France as in Britain, the increased use of various forms of paper money to fund the European War led to currency depreciation, which makes it particularly hard to impute a modern equivalent value to the requirement, but it does appear that in De Paellaert was enjoying a life style that he could not afford. This was a normal condition for many of Napoleon's courtiers: the endlessly devious Talleyrand himself was under financial pressure during this period. The assumption at court was that when the time came the emperor would help his loyal servants expunge their debts. However, for De Peellaert as for many others, when the time came it was the emperor himself who had problems. By now massively outnumbered on the battlefield by their enemies, the French surrendered Paris at the end of March 1814 and their emperor was exiled to Elba, off the coast of Tuscany.

De Peellaert returned, pursued by creditors, to Bruges, where he had more creditors. Here his home, the "House of Seven Towers" in the main street had been transformed at great expense into a small empire style palace.[2] Just outside the old city walls on the south side of town at Sint-Andries he was having a larger empire-style palace constructed where he had hoped to be able to receive The Emperor. He had made additional property purchases from sites taken over from the church, including the Saint Godelina Abbey at Gistel. He had already been forced by his indebtedness to dispose of the abbey in Gistel by the end of 1815.

Soon afterwards, at the start of 1817, Anselme De Peellaert died, aged just 52. His widow and children left town.