Étienne-Laurent-Pierre Burnel

Étienne Laurent Pierre Burnel (22 May 1762 – 12 July 1835) was a French colonial administrator. He was governor of French Guiana.

Life

Étienne Laurent Pierre Burnel was born in Rennes, Brittany on 22 May 1762 to a bourgeois family of modest wealth. His father Pierre-Étienne Burnel was a magistrate who spent much of his career in Guiana..

On 16 November 1790, he arrived at the Isle de France (Mauritius), seeking fortune. On 1 January 1791 he founded the newspaper Le Journal politique et littéraire, editing it for 18 months. In 1791, Burnel was offered to be 'perpetual secretary' of the Colonial Assembly. In late 1792, he joined the bar at Port Louis. Burnel came to be general correspondent and 'avocat d'affaires' for the Colonial Assembly at Pondicherry. He became a member of the local directory in 1794. he had to face the landowners' hostility to the central government and the numerous deportees, victims of the Thermidorian reaction (Billaud-Varenne) and the coup of 18 Fructidor (general Pichegru, Tronsson-Ducoudray, Laffon-Ladebat, Barbé-Marbois and Job Aymé). Barbé-Marbois attacked him in letters to his close friends in France, published 36 years later under the title Journal d'un déporté.

Later life After 18 months as governor, he successfully requested a recall to France on health grounds. Arriving back in France after Napoleon's coup of 18 brumaire, he retired to private life. When Napoleon set up prefectures in 1800, some friends wished to put Burnel's name forward, but Burnel remained faithful to the Republic and opposed them. It was only during the French military disasters of 1812 and 1813 that he offered his services to Napoleon. He was rewarded with a pension of 6,000 francs. Denounced as a "former terrorist", a "septembriseur" and secretary to "Robespierre", he was convoked by the marquis de Vioménil, commander of the 13th military division, to whom he showed that the accusations were unfounded. He lived to see the July Revolution of 1830, before dying in Rennes on 12 July 1835 in Rennes.