L'IMMEUBLE DE LA PLACE DE RETZ

The first church in Sainte-Pazanne, whose roof was blown off by a hurricane on 3 June 1401, was still standing when the Vendée wars broke out. It was still standing, but somewhat dilapidated, as the episcopal authorities visiting the parish noted.

September 1793: the church was used as barracks and a fodder shop by visiting Republican troops, such as General Beysser's troops. It is said that in that month, a woman from the village of La Bazonnière deliberately set fire to some chairs piled up in the church. A more likely version is that it was the fodder, a particularly flammable material, that accidentally caught fire and largely destroyed the church.

What was left of it, i.e. the ruins, as well as the cemetery that surrounded the church, was sold to the citizen René Nau. René Nau, right-hand man of the sinister Carrier Nau, born in Sainte-Pazanne on 17 March 1750, married Marie Rondeau in 1771 and had six daughters and two sons. He settled in Nantes in 1780, where he became associated with the shipowner Louis Drouin, who traded with the West Indies. In 1793, as a member of the Nantes National Guard, he was appointed quartermaster of the Marat company and, above all, became Carrier's right-hand man, infamous for the "Nantes drownings". Between November 1793 and February 1794, thousands of people (priests, men, old people, women and children), suspected in the eyes of the Republic, were drowned in the Loire on the orders of Jean-Baptiste Carrier. In June 1794, on suspicion of counter-revolutionary sentiments, René Nau was arrested and imprisoned.

Acquitted, he resumed his commercial activities with Drouin in 1795. The following year he retired to Sainte-Pazanne.

That same year, 1796, he bought the ruins of the church and cemetery for 630 pounds to build his house, which is now the Crédit Agricole building and previously housed the notary's office. René Nau was mayor of Sainte-Pazanne from 28 April 1798 to 29 April 1800, and for a time chaired the canton's executive board before his death on 23 January 1821.

Source: The Historical Society