Chevalier Jacques Destouches de la Fresnaye, a Chouan from Granville

In Le Chevalier Des Touches, a historically inspired novel, Barbey d'Aurevilly took the liberties of a fiction writer. His hero, Jacques Destouches de la Fresnaye, was not born in Avranches, as the story implies, but in Granville, to an old Granville family. The young counter-revolutionary, a secret agent in the service of the nobility exiled to Jersey, was a true sailor. His arrest took place in a Granville mansion.