The Fortune of a Shipowner

This month, we continue our journey into the extraordinarily rich past of the Château de Maubreuil by telling you about the life of one of the illustrious families who became owners of the castle: the Cossin de Chourses family.

Félix Cossin de Chourses, was a merchant and privateer shipowner from an old lineage of the Poitevin nobility. He settled in Nantes in 1789. He practiced the slave trade and armed ships (the Volage or the Félicité, the Célestine, the Chéri, the Confiance) that he entrusted to captains such as the famous Captain Robert Surcouf.

As the first shipowner of Nantes, his fortune was important and he acquired several castles in the Nantes region. In 1815, a legal procedure allowed him to acquire the Château de Maubreuil and its six farms, for a mere pittance (171,000 pounds). Later, Jacques-Marie-Armand Guerry de Beauregard (known as Marquis de Maubreuil) accused him of having robbed his family.

But Félix Cossin de Chourses did not have the time to take advantage of this domain, because he died in Nantes in 1816. When he died, he left his son, who was only 18 years old, the largest fortune in the city of Nantes in the 19th century, a quarter of which was in real estate. The latter will follow the demolition and reconstruction of the Maubreuil castle that we know today. But it seems that the son did not have the negotiating skills of his father and was content to manage his immense properties or to divide them up for resale.

In 1822, Félix second of the name was 24 years old and had the exalted spirit of the nostalgic Empire. He joined the conspiracy of General Berton, one of the plots of the Charbonnerie aiming to overthrow the regime born of the Restoration. Like his leader, he was condemned to death but had a better fate than him by escaping the guillotine. The rest of his career was less adventurous. He was mayor and general councilor of Carquefou from 1830 to 1833, Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1831 and liberal deputy of the Loire-Inférieure for the district of Paimboeuf in 1837.

He died in 1854, without leaving any male descendants, and with him the Cossin family name died out. He nevertheless had 3 daughters, one of whom, Laure Félicie Cossin, married Albert-Louis Guillaume, Marquis de Dion. It is this couple who decorated and embellished the castle and the park of Maubreuil as we know it today. You can admire the stained glass portraits of the marquise and the marquis in the entrance hall of the castle.