Marie de Sabreville is the villainess in two of Kenneth Roberts

Kenneth Roberts

Roberts graduated from Cornell University in 1908, where he wrote the lyrics for two Cornell fight songs, including Fight for Cornell. He was also a member of the Quill and Dagger society...

' Arundel novels--Arundel and Rabble at Arms (1929 and 1933). Conducting what we would now call Psyops together with various males in the British North America

British North America

British North America is a historical term. It consisted of the colonies and territories of the British Empire in continental North America after the end of the American Revolutionary War and the recognition of American independence in 1783.At the start of the Revolutionary War in 1775 the British...

n establishment, she very nearly causes the failure of the Thirteen colonies

Thirteen Colonies

The Thirteen Colonies were English and later British colonies established on the Atlantic coast of North America between 1607 and 1733. They declared their independence in the American Revolution and formed the United States of America...

' armed Independence movement in the 18th Century.

She was written somewhat in the mold of historical figures such as Amy Lyon (AKA Emma Hart)

Emma, Lady Hamilton

Emma, Lady Hamilton is best remembered as the mistress of Lord Nelson and as the muse of George Romney. She was born Amy Lyon in Ness near Neston, Cheshire, England, the daughter of a blacksmith, Henry Lyon, who died when she was two months old...

 and "Grietje" Zelle

Mata Hari

Mata Hari was the stage name of Margaretha Geertruida "M'greet" Zelle , a Dutch exotic dancer, courtesan, and accused spy who was executed by firing squad in France under charges of espionage for Germany during World War I.-Early life:Margaretha Geertruida Zelle was born in Leeuwarden, Friesland,...

, with a dash of femme fatale

Femme fatale

A femme fatale is a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. She is an archetype of literature and art...

 from the detective fiction

Detective fiction

Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...

 of Roberts' contemporaries.

Youth

She is originally named Mary and, like most of the major characters in the novel sequence, lives in the frontier seacoast village of Arundel in the Massachusetts Bay colony

Massachusetts Bay Colony

The Massachusetts Bay Colony was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century, in New England, situated around the present-day cities of Salem and Boston. The territory administered by the colony included much of present-day central New England, including portions...

’s district of Maine. Her father is the alcoholic widower Mallinson, an object of local contempt who may have abused her (“Where did you learn so much about kissing?", the narrator asks her when they are both little more than children.); in any case she hopes to escape him through male rescue.

In the waning days of the French and Indian War

French and Indian War

The French and Indian War is the common American name for the war between Great Britain and France in North America from 1754 to 1763. In 1756, the war erupted into the world-wide conflict known as the Seven Years' War and thus came to be regarded as the North American theater of that war...

 (or La guerre de la Conquête) Mary is casually abducted by a secret agent of Governor-General Vaudreuil

Pierre François de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnal

Pierre François de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnal was a Canadian-born French colonial governor in North America...

 of New France, who takes her up the Kennebec

Kennebec River

The Kennebec River is a river that is entirely within the U.S. state of Maine. It rises in Moosehead Lake in west-central Maine. The East and West Outlets join at Indian Pond and the river then flows southward...

. The abduction is facilitated by the Governor-General's network among the Abenaki people who inhabit the woodlands from the coast over the watershed to the Saint-François River

Saint-François River

The Saint-François River is a river in the Canadian province of Quebec.The Saint-François takes its source from Lake Saint-François in Chaudière-Appalaches, southeast of Thetford Mines...

 in Canada, New France. The agent is Henri Guerlac de Sabrevois, a seigneur and captain in the Béarn regiment, a "devil with the women" who watched Mary in Arundel with lascivious (and what we now call paedophilic) intent. She will eventually take his surname, though as he has a wife in France this is done through the fiction that she is his little sister.

With the British conquest, the couple attempt to get away to old France, but are arrested at sea and interned at Elizabeth Castle

Elizabeth Castle

Elizabeth Castle is a castle in Saint Helier, Jersey. Construction was started in the 16th century when the power of cannon meant that the existing stronghold at Mont Orgueil was insufficient to defend the Island and the port of St. Helier was vulnerable to attack by ships armed with...

 until the Treaty of Paris (1763)

Treaty of Paris (1763)

The Treaty of Paris, often called the Peace of Paris, or the Treaty of 1763, was signed on 10 February 1763, by the kingdoms of Great Britain, France and Spain, with Portugal in agreement. It ended the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War...

. Attracted by the conditions of the new British province of Québec under the peace, they soon return to America and Guerlac places Mary—now Marie—in a Montréal convent to learn, among other arts, astronomy. This may be how she makes the acquaintance of the director of the Saint-Sulpice Seminary (Montreal), who later proves to be a fanatically loyalist (anti-independence) spymaster, before Guerlac brings her back down to Québec City to resume their cohabitation.

Counter-revolutionary Work

In 1775, after twelve years of Peace, the situation on the continent is exactly as Guerlac prophesized when undercover in the roadhouse belonging the Arundel narrator—-to the consternation of its regulars:

• "The praying hypocrites in Massachusetts .. do they not intend .. to take Canada from the French ? And that being considered done .. what else will there be for you to do but fight England? ..You must have help; and the only help to be had will be that of the papist French, who will fight even on the side of the Boston bigots to be revenged on England."

The course of the rebels’ march on Quebec is made more arduous by Guerlac’s relentless disinformation (he poses as an advisor in correspondence with rebel leader Benedict Arnold

Benedict Arnold

Benedict Arnold V was a general during the American Revolutionary War. He began the war in the Continental Army but later defected to the British Army. While a general on the American side, he obtained command of the fort at West Point, New York, and plotted to surrender it to the British forces...

)—-especially a rumour of espionage which eliminates the rebels’ most valuable Abenaki guide.

Marie is discovered by Arnold’s own agents (the Arundel narrator and his townsfellow) in Guerlac's home, a large white house "with a curved roof such as Quebec folk build as protection against cannon shot—-a house sheltered among tall trees", to which "there's no man in Canada who is not honored to come .. officers and gentlemen!". The agents seize Guerlac and bind him but are nearly overcome themselves when Marie frees him. Finally he dies in a fall from the wall on New Year’s Day, 1776 (by the Gregorian calendar

Gregorian calendar

The Gregorian calendar, also known as the Western calendar, or Christian calendar, is the internationally accepted civil calendar. It was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII, after whom the calendar was named, by a decree signed on 24 February 1582, a papal bull known by its opening words Inter...

--always used in New France but new-fangled for the British and their insurgent colonials alike).

With the demise of her brother, Marie is left as the responsible aunt to Ellen Phipps. Ellen and her mother were among the British civilians captured at Fort William Henry

Fort William Henry

Fort William Henry was a British fort at the southern end of Lake George in the province of New York. It is best known as the site of notorious atrocities committed by Indians against the surrendered British and provincial troops following a successful French siege in 1757, an event which is the...

 and trafficked by the Abenaki—when Ellen was still only three—to Guerlac. When the mother died, the girl was placed in Marie's old convent in Montreal; Marie now moves her to the chateau of Moses Hazen

Moses Hazen

Moses Hazen was a Brigadier General in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Born in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, he saw action in the French and Indian War with Rogers' Rangers. His service included particularly brutal raids during the Expulsion of the Acadians and...

, athwart the rebel advance.

Marie is next seen in the opening scene of Rabble in Arms (1933; chronologically the second of the sequence)--at the great rotunda at Ranelagh Gardens

Ranelagh Gardens

Ranelagh Gardens were public pleasure gardens located in Chelsea, then just outside London, England in the 18th century.-History:The Ranelagh Gardens were so called because they occupied the site of Ranelagh House, built in 1688-89 by the first Earl of Ranelagh, Treasurer of Chelsea Hospital ,...

, in the spring of 1776. Meeting this novel's narrator and his brother, Arundel men, she pretends never to have heard of the town and recasts for their benefit the late Guerlac as having been her father, whose property she has come to England to dispose of. Marie, however, and her new escort—-her Canadian uncle Lanaudiere (AKA Mr. Leonard), another peripheral figure in British intelligence-—are here to see Lord Germain (later Viscount Sackville)

George Germain, 1st Viscount Sackville

George Germain, 1st Viscount Sackville PC , known as the Hon. George Sackville to 1720, as Lord George Sackville from 1720 to 1770, and as Lord George Germain from 1770 to 1782, was a British soldier and politician who was Secretary of State for America in Lord North's cabinet during the American...

.

Using such American code as lobsterbacks

Red coat (British army)

Red coat or Redcoat is a historical term used to refer to soldiers of the British Army because of the red uniforms formerly worn by the majority of regiments. From the late 17th century to the early 20th century, the uniform of most British soldiers, , included a madder red coat or coatee...

, Marie convinces her townsfellows of her likemindedness. But there is a romantic as well as political bewitchment afoot: the victim in Rabble is not the narrator but rather his Harvard-educated and rather Loyalist brother, Nathaniel, whom she easily gets to take to America details of the coming imperial counterinsurgency expedition under General (and playwright) John Burgoyne

John Burgoyne

General John Burgoyne was a British army officer, politician and dramatist. He first saw action during the Seven Years' War when he participated in several battles, mostly notably during the Portugal Campaign of 1762....

. His contact, and Marie’s second unwitting mule, is Ellen, at Hazen's chateau in Iberville, Quebec

Iberville, Quebec

Iberville was a city in the Montérégie region of Quebec, Canada, on the east side of the Richelieu River, across from Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. It was about 30 miles from Montreal, and about the same distance from the United States border at the head of Lake Champlain...

, where a close civilian eye may be kept on the rebels moving down the Richelieu

Richelieu River

The Richelieu River is a river in Quebec, Canada. It flows from the north end of Lake Champlain about north, ending at the confluence with the St. Lawrence River at Sorel-Tracy, Quebec downstream and northeast of Montreal...

 via Fort Saint John

Fort Saint-Jean (Quebec)

Fort Saint-Jean is a fort in the Canadian La Vallée-du-Richelieu Regional County Municipality, Quebec located on the Richelieu River. The fort was first built in 1666 by soldiers of the Carignan-Salières Regiment and was part of a series of forts built along the Richelieu River...

. Hazen’s loyalties are suspect (at least to Roberts’ characters, which is to say he may be loyal in fact to King George

George III of the United Kingdom

George III was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death...

 while receiving his salary from the Continental Congress

Continental Congress

The Continental Congress was a convention of delegates called together from the Thirteen Colonies that became the governing body of the United States during the American Revolution....

). Through such acts as the loss / surrender at the Battle of the Cedars

Battle of the Cedars

The Battle of The Cedars was a series of military confrontations early in the American Revolutionary War during the Continental Army's invasion of Quebec that had begun in September 1775. The skirmishes, which involved limited combat, occurred in May 1776 at and around The Cedars, west of...

 and the employment of the incompetent Timothy Bedel

Timothy Bedel

Timothy Bedel was a soldier and local leader prominent in the early history of New Hampshire and Vermont.Bedel was born in Amesbury, Massachusetts...

, Hazen has alienated rebel (and reader) sympathy.