BY Anand Moheeputh
It is said appearances can be deceptive sometimes. The Company Garden, commonly known as Jardin de La Compagnie nestled in the centre of Port Louis, exudes an aura of innocence calmness and serenity. Yet, behind the pleasant façade are hidden some of the least known historical events associated with the garden’s surroundings.
The Company Garden emerged from what was once a rugged and marshy land. The first French settlers called the place ‘L’Enfoncement’. That name was derived from the characteristics of the site which had steep surface. The Pouce river winding its way down to the sea caused overflowing due to rising tides slowing the river’s outflow in the sea. That was the time when the seaside stretched up to the area of La Chaussée (Marcelle Lagesse: Le Port Louis des premières années).
That low-lying part of Port Louis was not reclaimed from the sea yet. The ‘Compagnie des Indes’ initially intended opening a sea-port in the area. The project was abandoned because the Pouce river dumped in the sea muddy soil, stones and other debris, a situation that became worse whenever heavy rains lashed on the town (Luiger Bouvin, Les Annales Mauriciennes).
The submersion of the capital caused by the onslaught of torrential rains and flooding more so in the region of the Company Garden is not a new phenomenon.
According to Luiger Bouvin, during the French period, the Company Garden and its vicinity were “si souvent submergé par les inondations” that one of the worst floods that hit Port Louis occurred in 1793 when the Company Garden within minutes was submerged. “En quelques minutes”, writes Bouvin, “à la suite de pluies torrentielles, les lits des rivières débordèrent … et offraient l’aspect d’une immense arche flottant sur un lac…”
The first step taken to embark on a leisure garden project on the site of l’Enfoncement was to make acquisition of the land belonging to the “Compagnie des Indes”.
In fact, in 1790 Port Louis was raised to a municipal status following a resolution passed by the Colonial Assembly.
Under the mayorship of Thomas Esnouf “créole rempli d’honneur et de probité”, the municipality acquired “au nom des habitants de la ville”, all the lands that formed part of the ‘Enfoncement’. The municipal corporation paid cash for that acquisition (Lugier Bouvin).
The embellishment of the ‘Enfoncement’ began to take shape only then. During the administration of Governor Isidore Decaen (1803-1810), landscape upgrading moved a little faster than what it used to be.
Along with that transformation, another change occurred in 1803 though the name of the garden remained stuck to the original owner of the land. The name of the capital was replaced by that of “Port Napoléon” after Napoleon Bonaparte, the self-appointed Emperor of France, who was denounced by his detractors as an “authoritarian despot”. It was said of Decaen that he was a fervent Bonapartist!
Nonetheless, to the credit of Decaen could be attributed the transformation of the bare ‘Enfoncement’ land into a “promenade publique” that was enhanced to become the ‘Jardin de la Compagnie’. Under his administration, the courses of the Pouce river and the Butte à Tonniers were canalized to control the flow of water and trees planted all along the borders. Decaen encouraged the promotion of opera shows much in vogue in the world then and built a theatre hall – ‘salle de spectacle’- in the garden, at exactly the same place where the Fontaine Liénard was later to be placed.
According to Félix de Froberville, the hall, the first of its kind meant for public entertainment in the island, was much bigger than is today’s municipal theatre. Not only was it the venue for opera shows, but also became a favourite haunt for young people “tous galants, empressés auprès des dames et s’amusaient beaucoup plus qu’on ne le fait aujourd’hui ….”
In March 1818, a violent cyclone destroyed the hall which some years earlier Lord Moira, Governor-General of India visited.
Yet in its natural state, the ‘Enfoncement’ was even then quite a busy area. The Pouce river drew fishing enthusiasts and launderers for washing clothes. That could explain why a street running parallel to the Pouce stream was called till recently ‘Washerwoman’ street, reminiscent of a past era now obliterated by people who probably had no idea about the beauty of history.
Although the name of first French Governor (acting) of Isle de France, Julien Durongotier Le Toullec (1.12.1721 – 7.4.1722), according to Antoine Chelin, is very rarely mentioned in local history, he apparently first settled together with his accompanying team on the border of the Pouce river where he started vegetable gardening which in time was expanded and converted into a leisure garden.
The Pouce river divided Port Louis into two parts. On the western part was the Camp Creoles today known as the Ward IV; the Eastern part started from the Place d’Armes to the Trou Fanfaron.
But the two regions were disconnected. People moving from one border to the other could do so by stepping over rocks found in the river. In 1756, Governor René Magon tried to minimize that inconvenience by the construction of a bridge or what was then described as a “Chaussée”.
But Magon’s makeshift “Chaussée” could not resist for long the harsh weather. A growing pedestrian movement prompted Governor Souillac to build in 1782 a more robust, wider and higher than water-level Chaussée.
The new Chaussée was thus linked to the Rue du Rempart (today Edith Cavell street) on one side and the Place d’Armes on the other.
Souillac’s Chaussée made access within Port Louis easier and accelerated the development of the town. But the “Great Fire” of September 1816 dampened for a while the enthusiasm of the inhabitants. Followed two other devastating fires in 1877 and 1893. The ‘Univers Hotel’ situated exactly on the site of today’s Port Louis museum, opposite the Company Garden was completely gutted by the wild fire of 1877. The Port Louis main market, originally located in the proximity of the municipal theatre, was shifted to the site of the Company Garden and installed along the border of the rivulet on Poudrière Street.
Let it be known that a part of the Jardin de la Compagnie sits on a cemetery, formerly called The “Port Louis Cemetery”. It was closed on 15 December 1771 upon the order of Governor Desroches. Despite protests from the inhabitants amid a raging pestilence, corpses were exhumed and sent to the Cimetière de L’Ouest (Fort Blanc) at Les Salines for reburial. Still in 1800, while doing excavation works in some parts of the garden, workers came across parts of human remains and coffins apparently forgotten during exhumation by grave diggers in 1771.
If you imagine the ‘Temple de Douceur’ was an ice-cream parlour or a resting place to shake off tiredness from the Port Louis heat, you may be mistaken.
Instead, you get a cold shiver running down your spine. The ‘Temple de Douceur’ was where chopping off of heads was done. It was designed for the execution of maroon slaves. Executions could be watched live by the public.
Félix de Froberville’s terrifying account explains the execution process : “Au pied, étaient quelques soldats armés, un greffier, et après, un échafaud, une échelle, un billot, une hâche, tout l’appareil enfin de la mort, d’une mort épouvantable! Au patient qui restait debout, on présentait une coupe amère, bien amère et il la vidait jusqu’à la dernière goutte….”
The guillotine was dismantled on 1 March 1784. In 1794, during the ‘Reign of Terror’, the ‘Sans Culottes’ defying the Colonial Assembly erected another guillotine on the Place d’Armes to behead prisoners. Its effectiveness tested on a roaming goat proved it was fit for the job.
The ‘Sans Culottes’ were furthermore vociferous in their demand for “600 livres” of gunpowder, found to be a considerable amount. Governor Malartic, perhaps fearing his head might roll on the scaffold caved in meekly. But the Governor, nonetheless, cautioned the rebels to handle the explosives with care (!), “en faisant des recommandations de prudence aux utilisateurs’ (Raymond d’Unienville, Histoire politique de l’isle de France 1791-1794).
