Marquis de Rays

Charles Marie Bonaventure du Breil, Marquis de Rays (2 January 1832 – 29 July 1893) was a French nobleman who had ambitions of starting a great French colony in the South Pacific. He led four European expeditions to establish colonies in a place he called New France which is the island now referred to as New Ireland in the Bismarck Archipelago of present-day Papua New Guinea.

Charles was born on the family estate Quimerc'h in Brittany, the son of Charles du Breil and Mari Prevost. As a child in 1838 he succeeded his father as marquis and spent his youth in fortune-seeking but ineffective adventures abroad: in the United States, Senegal, Madagascar, and Indo-China. He eventually returned to France, where, on 22 September 1869, he married Emilie Labat, who gave him five children, including one known son: Eugène Paul Emile.

It was the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War and the readings he made of some navigators' journals that prompted de Rays to embark on further adventures for the glorification of France and the Roman Catholic Church. The theatre for his ambitions was to be the South Pacific, where in 1877 he was self-proclaimed "Charles, King of New France" (''La Nouvelle France''), an imaginary Oceanic empire covering territories as yet unclaimed by any European powers. Through advertisements, word of mouth, and a journal of his own publishing, ''Nouvelle France'', de Rays brought to public attention his plans for converting and then colonising the South Pacific, which he claimed abounded in fertile soil. Specifically, de Rays planned to start a colony, "Colonie Libre de Port Breton", at Port Praslin.He had been inspired ''Voyage Autour du Monde'' (Paris, 1839) by R. P. Lesson, an account of the 1823 exploration of southern New Ireland by Louis Isidore Duperrey. His ideas were universally rejected by governments, but enough people believed his wild predictions to support an expedition.

The third of his expeditions, often referred to simply as the de Rays Expedition, in 1880 is most famous for its absolute failure. Aboard the ships ''Chandernagore'', ''Gentil'', ''Nouvelle Bretagne'', and ''India'', a motley group of 570 ill-prepared colonists, in the main French, German, and Italian, arrived at Port Breton. The marquis is widely believed to have deliberately misled the colonists, distributing literature claiming a bustling settlement that did not exist, near present-day Kavieng, which had numerous public buildings, wide roads, and rich, arable land. This port was further purported to be capital of a great empire, his "Kingdom of New France". In fact, the site was an extremely poor choice: supplies were difficult to get through and malaria was unavoidable. The high death rate convinced most colonists to soon flee to Australia, New Caledonia, and the Philippines.

De Rays himself did not visit his colony and was arrested for fraud in Spain in July 1882. He was extradited to France and sentenced to six years in prison for criminal negligence, but his career as an adventurer was not over. He died in a French asylum near Rosporden
* New Caledonia
* French Polynesia

References

Bibliography

*Laracy, Hugh
"Rays, Marquis de (1832–1893)."
''Australian Dictionary of Biography'', Online Edition. Australian National University: 2006, ISSN 1833-7538
Daniel Raphalen "L'Odyssée de Port-Breton ou le rêve océanien du marquis de Rays" éditions les Portes du Large France 2006

External Links

* Blog
La Nouvelle France: Nineteenth century propaganda
State Library of Queensland.

La Nouvelle France : journal de la colonie libre de Port-Breton, Oceanie
1879- 1881 - digitised Journal issued to advertise the enterprise launched by the Marquis de Rays.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rays, Marquis de
1832 births
1893 deaths
French marquesses
French fraudsters
People extradited from Spain
People extradited to France
French prisoners and detainees
19th-century French businesspeople