Madame Bardeaux

**Marie-Célestine Élisabeth Antoinette Bardeaux** (née **Vorentier**; 20 June 1744 – 4 November 1835), popularly known as **Madame Bardeaux**, was a slave-owning landowner on the island of Tahare. During her life, Bardeaux became one of the wealthiest people on the island of Tahare after inheriting the fortunes of both her father and husband, in addition to the wealth generated from the plantations she owned and managed.

Bardeaux is considered to be one of the most famous figures of colonial Tahare. While she has been cited as a successful example of a businesswoman in an era when women were almost entirely absent from the space, her name has become synonymous with the cruelty of slavery and she is remembered in Taharian culture as a cruel slave-owner who carried out extrajudicial executions of her slaves throughout her lifetime.

## Early life

Bardeaux was born on 20 June 1744 in Saint-Philippe, on the island of Tahare, to parents Antoine and Marie-Élisabeth Vorentier. She came from the wealthy *gros-blanc* Vorentier family, which owned a profitable coffee bean plantation in Saint-Philippe. The family owned reportedly more than 100 slaves who worked on the plantation. Like many other *gros-blancs*, Bardeaux was of mixed heritage, likely with Maronan, Tirian, and Papaguscan ancestry. She was raised on the Vorentier family estate, now located in the Les-Hauts-de-Vanille neighborhood of the city.

Bardeaux was the only child of her parents. When she was two years old, her mother died while giving birth to her younger sister Marie-Catherine, who later died as well two days later, leaving Bardeaux an only child. Her father later married Cymbeline Bayé in 1748, although the marriage was childless and Bayé later died of tuberculosis in 1755. Following the death of his two wives, Bardeaux's father did not remarry and accepted that Bardeaux would be his sole heir. Bardeaux was educated by private tutors at her home, where she received an upper-class lady's education.

## Marriage and family

When Bardeaux was 17 years old in 1762, she married Thomas Bardeaux of the Bardeaux family. The Bardeaux family were another *gros-blanc* family in Tahare which owned a coffee bean plantation in Saint-Philippe, and she left the Vorentier estate to reside with her husband at Bardeaux Plantation. In her teenage years, Marie-Célestine was a highly sought-after bachelorette, as it was expected that she would inherit her father's wealth and plantation upon his death, and it was highly uncommon at the time for women to be the sole heirs to their family fortunes. The marriage had been arranged by Thomas's mother, and Marie-Célestine's father accepted the proposal as the Bardeaux family was considered to be one of the wealthiest families on the island at the time.

Marie-Célestine and Thomas went on to have five children together who lived into adulthood: Thomasine (1765–1794), Antoine (1766–1834), Henri (1769–1837), Jean-Louis (1771–1817), and Marie-Catherine (1772–1858). She additionally gave birth to two children who died in infancy or childhood: Marie-Joséphine (1764–1770) and Pierre, who was born in 1770 and lived for three days. Bardeaux negotiated strategic marriages for each of her children in order to further develop the family's fortune and reputation.

## Slave-owner and landlady

In the immediate aftermath of her marriage, Bardeaux took on the usual duties of a young wife, as her father continued to manage the Vorentier family estate and her husband and father-in-law managed the Bardeaux family estate. Her father-in-law later died in 1765, which led her husband to inherit the family plantation and begin managing it on his own. Following the death of her father in 1770, Bardeaux inherited her family plantation; while most female heirs at the time would leave their inheritance in the possession of their husbands, Bardeaux rejected this idea and instead began managing the family plantation on her own, as she had been groomed by her father to inherit the family land since her childhood.

Bardeaux's husband later died in a failed slave revolt on the family's lands in 1774, after being killed in the scuffle. The incident had a grave impact on Bardeaux for the remainder of her life, and is credited with inspiring her particular cruelty to her slaves as a slave-owner. In the aftermath of his death, Bardeaux inherited the Bardeaux family lands as their children were too young at the time to be eligible for inheritance. Now the owner of both the Bardeaux and Vorentier family lands and plantations, Bardeaux had become one of the wealthiest people in colonial Tahare and the wealthiest woman on the island. Between the two estates, she owned more than 500 slaves who worked her coffee bean plantations. While Bardeaux once again became a sought-after bachelorette due to her immense wealth, she rejected all suitors and instead dedicated herself to the management of her family lands.

In 1776, Bardeaux decided to sell the Vorentier family lands for a large sum, and used the profit to greatly expand the Bardeaux family lands. By 1784, Bardeaux owned the entirety of the present-day Ville-Libre neighborhood (which was known from 1856 until 2004 as Les-Domaines-de-Bardeaux) in addition to other pieces of land elsewhere in the city, many of which she rented out to family members and *petit-blanc* farmers. During her life, Bardeaux was particularly known for her immense cruelty towards her slaves. Bardeaux openly kept a daily journal, and wrote frequently of the satisfaction she took from whipping and beating her slaves. She also regularly ordered the extrajudicial executions of her slaves for minor infractions such as speaking to her with what she considered to be improper language, as she had the wealth needed to replace any deceased slave at any moment. Bardeaux additionally commonly ordered her slaves to carry out executions of other slaves as a form of psychological torture. This image of Bardeaux's treatment of her slaves contrasted greatly with how she was written about by other *gros-blanc* contemporaries, who regarded Bardeaux as a kind, compassionate, and intelligent woman. Following the abolition of slavery in 1820, Bardeaux replaced her workforce with indentured servants from East Tarfica and Tiria, and writings from the time suggested that she treated her indentured servants in a more civilized manner than she did her slaves.

## Death and legacy

Bardeaux died in her sleep on 4 November 1835 at Bardeaux Plantation in Saint-Philippe, aged 91. The length of her life was considered incredibly long at the time, and was largely credited to her wealth. Of her five children that lived into adulthood, Bardeaux outlived all but two. Her only surviving son Henri thus inherited the entirety of the Bardeaux family lands, which he owned until his death just two years later.

At the time of her death, Bardeaux was venerated in the *gros-blanc* community and among some early feminists as a leader in the community and an example of a businesswoman who succeeded at a time where men dominated the space. However, she her death was celebrated by much of the Taharian community of former slaves, as she was seen as an evil and cruel slave-owner who inflicted extreme punishment and unnecessary force on her slaves. In 1856, the Bardeaux lands were incorporated as the *quartier* of Les-Domaines-de-Bardeaux within the city of Saint-Philippe, although after years of lobbying, the name was changed to Ville-Libre in 2004, in order to erase the veneration of the slave-owning family. In 1989, the former home of the Bardeaux family, Bardeaux Plantation, was sold to the government and opened as a museum.