Campbell P. Power and Politics in Old Regime France, 1720-1745

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POWER AND POLITICS IN OLD REGIME FRANCE

Bernard and Dodun, therefore remained the financial experts in favour. Dubois

had given his full support to the Pâris brothers in their attempts to settle the

disorders. In order to increase their authority he had wanted to revive for their

benefit the office of intendant des finances. Fearing the jealousy of other financiers,

they refused this offer but Pâris de Montmartel accepted the post of garde du trésor.

Despite their opposition to Law and their permanent hostility to schemes for a

state credit bank, it would be wrong to view any of these men as complete

conservatives. In their approach to the problems of state finance they were

reformers in the seventeenth-century mould, and they had a sound appreciation

of the abuses inherent in the financial system.

Their first operation involved an overhaul of the state accounting administration

in an attempt to root out and curtail the embezzlement of funds. In December 1723

Mathieu Marais noted: ‘Every single little area of fraud has been closed off.

Although this is an exaggeration, the attack on treasurer La Jonchère and on Le

Blanc at the notoriously corrupt war treasury was proof of their intentions. The fact

that a still more forceful policy was not implemented before 1724 is probably due

more to a preoccupation with the ‘visa’ than to the adoption of a different attitude as

a result of the change of ministry. In many ways the financial policies of the

Bourbon administration merely pushed to their conclusion policies whose origins

lay in the last two years of the previous government. It may well be that the Regent,

had he still been alive, would not have continued with these policies. If Bourbon

had had a better grasp of the potential power of court opposition he might not have

allowed or encouraged policies which were seriously to endanger his position by

antagonising several powerful interests at once. One of the most noteworthy aspects

of this period is the way in which the fiscal reforms and economies were connected

with the fall of the ministry.

In order to understand the extent of the unpopularity of the Bourbon

administration in 1726, it is necessary to consider the policy whose results were felt

by all sections of society. This was the deflationary policy which was begun in

August 1723 with a reduction in the value of specie as against the value of the

money of account, the livre tournois. While the first reduction in 1723 was only a

first step, undertaken partly in the hope of providing a better balance among the

various coins in circulation, the successive reductions in 1724 were wholly designed

to bring down prices and wages to the level at which they had been before the

inflation produced by the Law system.

The first two historians who examined the effects of this policy were lenient in

their judgement of its results.

On the other hand, some recent research has

demonstrated that the economic depression which created considerable distress

in France in the mid-1720s was largely the result of the deflationary policy.

Dodun and Paris Duvernay, who appears to have been the theorist responsible

for framing the policy, failed to see that the economic expansion which followed

the collapse of the Law system from 1721 to 1723 was directly linked to the

inflation produced by the system. Their policy was based upon the belief that

prices should fall in proportion to the reduction of the value of money, but the

THE MINISTRY OF THE DUC DE BOURBON, 1723–6

laws of the market upset their calculations. Instead of producing a notable fall in

prices, so that the artificial inflation of the Law system would be eradicated, the

policy had the opposite effect. Faced with a reduction in the value of coins, and

assuming that another was to follow, the seller would increase his prices to ensure

that he would receive in money the value of his goods after the next reduction, or

he would refuse to sell (with the result that money chased too few goods). The

buyer hastened to spend his coins for fear that he would need to pay more after

the next reduction. At the same time debts, kept in money of account and paid in

cash, were effectively increased. So the policy favoured rentiers and creditors, but

failed to bring about a significant drop in prices. The circulation of specie rapidly

dried up. The result was a commercial and industrial crisis of considerable

proportions in most areas of France. According to the calculations of Akabane,

the crisis took effect before the bad harvests of 1725 became a problem; but when

the crop failed the crisis was seriously aggravated.

Since in June 1725 it was not possible to realise the full extent of the crisis or to

predict the crop failure as a result of heavy storms, it was by bad luck rather than by

bad timing that extensive new tax proposals were decreed at that time. Bourbon,

over-confident now that he had a pliable Queen in the hands of his own party (for

her household was almost entirely composed of his friends such as Prie, Bernard

and Duvernay) began the necessary but disastrous reforms.

Foreseeing

considerable opposition, Bourbon had the tax edicts registered in the Paris

parlement in a lit de justice without waiting for their examination to produce the

inevitable protests. Of the edicts registered, that of 5 June creating a 2 per cent tax

on property was the most important.

Although this tax, known as the cinquantième, seems to have been mainly

inspired by the wartime dixième of 1710 and by the writings of Vauban, there were

some notable innovations. The most significant lie in the aim of the tax. A

memoir of June 1725 makes it clear that it was intended to be a universal tax on

proprietors with no exempt classes, unlike previous occasions.

Another

extremely important aspect of the tax was that it was intended to establish the

principle of royal taxation of the clergy, and it was hoped to discover from the

declarations how much property the clergy possessed. There is evidence too that

Paris Duvernay hoped to change the view that the King should make do with the

income that he could extract from traditional sources, by ensuring instead that

sufficient ordinary revenue would be at the disposal of the central government to

enable it to administer the state.

The royal declaration of the cinquantième emphasised that it was to last no more

than twelve years, which therefore seems to contradict this view. However, the

temporary nature of the tax was probably the result of the failure of the contrôleur

général to carry the full project through the council, where the majority of

members regarded the tax as a means of financing the expected war against Spain

and Austria.

In a memoir of 24 May 1726, the eldest Paris made it clear that he

regarded the provision of sufficient ordinary revenue as a fundamental precept for

the government. He believed that it was possible to set right the financial affairs

POWER AND POLITICS IN OLD REGIME FRANCE

and balance the expenditure and receipts without resorting to the methods of

England and Holland, namely the extensive use of credit. In its inspiration,

therefore, the cinquantième together with the other reforms—the attack on

corruption, the punctuality of payments, and the substantial reduction in

pensions—was more than a temporary reaction to financial difficulties. Taken as a

whole, the measures constituted an important essay in the reforming of the

finances that had begun in 1721.

Unfortunately, it has been impossible to discover how far the reforms were

motivated by a genuine desire for reconstruction and how far they were seen as a

way for the Pâris brothers to achieve power by setting themselves up as reformers in

opposition to the rival financiers who had supported John Law’s scheme. The

undisguised malice with which the financial administration from 1716 to 1720 is

attacked in the preamble to the edict on the cinquantième indicates that there was an

element of rivalry in their policy.

The history of French finances in the eighteenth century shows how difficult it

was to effect reforms. However, the cinquantième should not be dismissed as

impracticable and bound to fail from the start—the vingtième was to be forced

through in 1749 with at least mitigated success. A sweeping reform which ran

counter to the traditions of independence of the local treasurers and which attacked

the peacetime immunities of the clergy and the nobility was bound to arouse

opposition, but any result except total defeat for the government would still have

constituted an impressive step forward. Widespread evasions and false declarations

in the provinces would not have altered the fact that traditional exemptions had

been overcome and a precedent set, above all, for the clergy.

That is why the

opposition to the tax was so very tenacious, and why the important battlefield was

not, as in the past, just in the provinces where there was non-co-operation and

passive resistance, but at court, in the parlement, in the Assembly of Clergy and in

Paris. It was by resistance and propaganda in these places that public opinion of the

ministry could be influenced in the hope that the ministers responsible would be

dismissed. As might be expected, the factions opposed to Bourbon exploited this

situation.

For a number of reasons, the Paris parlement was on this occasion restrained in

its response. It had probably been impressed by the lit de justice and by the edict

which excluded from its general assemblies all counsellors who had not served for

ten years. Of this last edict Marais wrote that ‘it is a thunderbolt for the parlement.

The ministry is sure of most of the elders who need it with regard to the

advancement of their families, and it imposes silence on the younger magistrates

who like to speak out and learn. This is what they get for having declared M.Le

Blanc innocent!’

In the past the younger judges had been the inspiration of many

of the more vigorous attacks on the government.

On the other hand, no institution could have stated its opposition more clearly

and categorically than the church. Standing upon its traditional immunities, the

Assembly of Clergy put up the stiffest resistance to the tax, and when it was

disbanded the issue had not been resolved. In its intransigence the French church

THE MINISTRY OF THE DUC DE BOURBON, 1723–6

was supported by the papacy, whose attitude was encapsulated by Polignac, the

ambassador in Rome. ‘The maxims of the Roman curia are that the immunity of

ecclesiastics whether on property or on persons is by divine right and that

consequently no levy can be made on them except with their consent and that even

then they can only give it with the permission or on the order of the Holy See.’ The

opposition of such a powerful institution was bound to have an effect on the

stability of the ministry. A similar situation was to be replayed just as effectively in

1749–50—but with significant variations due to a vehement campaign of

constitutional arguments set forth in pamphlet literature.

And in 1788, the

Assembly of Clergy abandoned the monarchy in the light of its 1787 attempt to

abolish fiscal privileges and have a land registry.

The most vociferous outbursts against government policy were in the streets of Paris

and at court. Duvernay and Mme de Prie quickly became the two most hated

individuals in the realm. All the ills of France were attributed to their supposed evil

influence in the council. (One thinks of Mme du Barry and Maupeou in 1771 and

Marie-Antoinette in the 1780s.) During the summer and autumn of 1725 the gazetins de

police constantly detail the ‘mauvais discours’ which were made ‘with extraordinary

heat and with a great deal of bias’. The grain shortage and high prices only added to

their bitterness as the autumn wore on, and there were accusations of a famine pact

between the Pâris brothers, Samuel Bernard and Mme de Prie. The following extract

from a police report is a fairly typical example of the vehement calumnies.

The Pâris brothers await the return of madame de Prie with impatience to

help them get back with Mr le Duc who no longer knows what he is about,

and who has threatened to abandon them. Everyone knows that from the

huge quantity of grain they have had requisitioned, they have had it sent,

exceeding their authority, to foreign countries, so much are they in the habit

of pillaging. It’s madame de Prie who controls all the commissions for them

and who supports these monsters, and she too who is most guilty of

everything afflicting the public, and everyone knows that she is raking off

immense sums of money from everything through her fine quality of P…to

Mr le Duc.

The importance of ‘public opinion’ to the central government is a difficult question

to assess.

A reading of the reports of the police spies shows that the café society

constantly thirsted for news of politics and of the intrigues and events at court, and

formed opinions on every political move that was made. This public was extremely

well informed: nothing happened, no arrêt was issued, no policy formed without it

subsequently being discussed in detail in the Palais de justice, the café d’Ely, the café

Dupuis, the café de la Régence or in the Cordeliers, to name only a few of the

favourite haunts of the police ‘mouches’. It is difficult to identify the public whose

opinions were considered worth recording, for there have been no studies of the

café society in this period and Arlette Farge’s excellent work on public

consciousness deals almost entirely with the opinions of the common people.

Ye t

POWER AND POLITICS IN OLD REGIME FRANCE

there is surely some relationship between ‘public opinion’, for want of a better word,

and the fortunes of the ministry. The police reports were not kept just for interest,

nor mainly to preserve public order which was not usually at stake here, but, I

suggest, because rumours and political discussions could have an effect on the credit

of the ministry. Government decrees, ministerial correspondence and

administrative memoirs often made references to the opinion of the public. The fact

that factions like the cabal and Le Blanc spread rumours and had pamphlets written

proves that they considered public opinion of sufficient weight to be worth

influencing. It may be that, after the temporary move of the court to Paris and the

establishment of the court aristocracy in town houses, many of the political reports

are of the views of the office-holders and courtiers who frequented the gardens,

promenades and cafés of the capital—or of their clerks and lackeys.

At times, this

public certainly reflected or echoed the views of the court factions. In turn, whoever

the public was whose opinions have been recorded, those opinions would influence

the decision of courtiers to support or abandon a minister in his perpetual struggle

to retain power. Public discontent could be represented as a danger to the state, and

public distress could be represented as the failure of the ministry to fulfil the duty of

the paternalist monarchical ethic. In this indirect way the public outcry against

Mme de Prie and the Pâris brothers played a part in provoking the fall of the duc de

Bourbon.

THE DISGRACING OF BOURBON

A survey of the evidence; the rising tide of opposition; the disgrace of the duc de Bourbon.

A SURVEY OF THE EVIDENCE

Instead of simply asserting that the failure of policies led to the dismissal of a

minister, the historian of the ancien régime must try to explain how it was that, in the

arena of the court, the failure of policies was translated into the collapse of his power

and support. With the aid of the correspondence of the duc de Richelieu, and of

three sets of reports from particularly well-informed ambassadors, it is possible to

follow this process in detail for the duc de Bourbon. New light can be thrown on the

mechanism of court politics because the manœuvres can be reconstructed with

some precision.

Enough is known about Richelieu and his correspondents to warrant confidence

in the accuracy of their reports and the acuteness of their observation. Of the four

volumes of letters, those of the greatest interest are the letters written by Richelieu

from Vienna to the marquis de Silly, an intimate political associate, from 1725 to

December 1727.

Intermingled with these is a great deal of miscellaneous

correspondence, some letters from Fleury himself and a number of memoirs or long

letters from Chavigny in Germany. This collection is to be completed by some

letters from an unidentified duchesse, published by the anonymous but reliable

author of a biography of Richelieu, and by further letters published in 1791 and

1806 by the historian Soulavie, chiefly from the marquis de Silly to Richelieu.

Some doubt was once cast on the authenticity of these last letters by the historian

Boislisle who considered them to be forgeries. Soulavie was thought to have forged

some of his evidence for his scurrilous biography of Richelieu, but the reasons given

by Boislisle for considering these particular letters to be false are not convincing.

What seems to scandalise Boislisle, who is prepared to accept letters by Villars and

Louis XIV in the same collection, is that the Silly letters show the Orleanists

scheming for the succession. Boislisle was a monarchist and wrote at a time when a

restoration was not impossible. Without the originals it is, of course, impossible to

establish the exact wording of letters published at a time when it was not unusual for

POWER AND POLITICS IN OLD REGIME FRANCE

the editor to change the wording here and there in the interests of a ‘purer’

epistolatory style or personal views. Nevertheless, there are some positive reasons

for considering the Soulavie letters to be either genuine or based closely on the

originals. They contain a view of factional politics which can be substantiated both

in a general way and on some particular points by evidence not otherwise available

to Soulavie, and one letter accords well with a letter from Richelieu which might

therefore be a reply to it.

The tenor of these published letters is entirely in keeping

with that of the many letters written by Silly after June 1726. Finally, the whole story

of the ministerial intrigues which they allude to is sufficiently discreditable to the

regime for Soulavie—who during the Revolution made a literary career out of

tarnishing the old régime—to have rejoiced in printing the originals without

bothering to invent.

The fairest judgement on Soulavie’s publications on this period is that they are as

reliable a source on politics as many of the personal memoirs left by usually less

well-informed contemporaries. But there is no need to dwell further on the subject

of these few letters in the Pièces inédites because they do not provide any

interpretation that cannot be deduced from the rest of the correspondence: they are

of interest chiefly for the sake of completeness. The bulk of the correspondence

exists in its original form—and the letters are invaluable for their tone. The

collection reveals with unusual candour a certain attitude towards politics held by

not just one of the writers but all of them. It has value, therefore, as a more general

insight into the mind of the eighteenth-century noble politician. For this period it is

a unique source which analyses the situation from the perspective not of a foreign

ambassador but of an ambitious French courtier trying to chart his way.

To supplement these documents is another source which also appears to have

escaped the attention of historians. During these years of his embassy, throughout

the ministry of Fleury, and in the 1740s, Richelieu enjoyed a valuable relationship

with the duc de Noailles. Over a hundred letters from Richelieu to Noailles have

been preserved in a single volume, of which eighteen, signed, coded originals date

from the period of the Vienna embassy.

Reading the letters it is clear that we are

dealing with a close political friendship between the two dukes for the detail of the

letters parallels that in the letters to Silly. This is perhaps a reflection of the political

importance of Noailles at the court of France, even though he had no ministerial

post. His family was so large and well organised in politics that there was little that

escaped his notice.

However, the marquis de Silly was also one of the best informed men at court.

He was a Norman gentleman who had made a successful career in the army,

reaching the rank of lieutenant-general. ‘He attached himself as much as he could to

those who were most esteemed in the armies, and to the most brilliant company at

court’.

By attaching himself to the House of Condé he made a considerable fortune

from the Law system and was one of the few to receive the cordon bleu in the honours

of 1724. His sister held a salon and gave dinners much frequented by the political

aristocracy, and he himself was hand in glove with Morville. To judge from his

letters and from the lengthy assessment by Saint-Simon, he was extremely

THE DISGRACING OF BOURBON

intelligent, cultivated, and an acute observer. He became a conseiller d’état in 1725,

but he was never to satisfy his ambitions completely because he tied himself too

closely to the Bourbon ministry. His chances of becoming the next ambassador to

Spain were dashed when Bourbon fell. Fleury never trusted him and took care to

exclude him from politics after the change of ministry.

Most of the surviving letters were written by Richelieu himself and their main

interest lies in the reflections that he made on the events which his correspondents

recounted. Were it not for the existence of several valuable but less extensive

sources relating to the same period one would inevitably see the final stages of the

Bourbon ministry through the eyes of Richelieu. Born in 1696, at 29 Richelieu was

an extremely young ambassador. Despite the carefully annotated Boislisle edition of

the rough manuscript that was intended to be the text of his memoirs, his political

exploits have attracted far less attention than his amorous escapades. A close study

of his correspondence confirms the judgement of his first biographer, who thought

that he possessed all the vices of his century but was nevertheless a man of great

intelligence and culture.

His powers as a diplomat were highly praised both by

Bourbon and by Fleury, and his embassy to Vienna was an undoubted success. For

Richelieu personally it was a veritable triumph because his important diplomatic

role enabled him to shake off the reputation for frivolity acquired during a dissolute

youth and to lay the foundations of a creditable political and military career. From

his first acquisition of the embassy it was his burning ambition to do just this, and

therein lies the explanation for the enormous correspondence that he undertook.

While he was away from what he regarded as the centre of affairs, the court of

Versailles, he needed to be constantly informed of political developments in order to

plan his career and protect himself from enemies. The man who was superficially

no more than a libertine and the archetypal grand seigneur actually possessed a

political mind of great capacity.

Such a cache of documents is rare—although most ambassadors must have tried

to remain in touch in a similar way—but supplementary evidence of court politics is

to be found mainly in the ambassadorial reports of the period. Whereas the

dispatches of the British ambassador are sometimes misleading, because Walpole

gave too much credence to Fleury’s own version of events, those of the Prussian and

Bavarian ambassadors are much more reliable. Unlike Walpole, who appears to

have been less shrewd than they were, both of them had lived in Paris for several

years and had time to establish networks of contacts and informants. For example,

even when the court was in relative seclusion at Marly, count Albert of Bavaria had

an informant who sent him letters twice a day in January 1723. The reports of

Chambrier to Frederick William I are especially interesting for their analysis of the

development of Fleury’s position at court; those of count Albert are particularly

important for the period from the summer of 1725 until late 1726, providing several

very detailed accounts of the most important developments. Taken together these

sources fill the gap left by the missing letters of Silly before 1726 and provide

additional confirmation, from a different perspective, of the train of events. Neither

the Prussian nor the Bavarian sources have been used before for this period.

POWER AND POLITICS IN OLD REGIME FRANCE

A RISING TIDE OF OPPOSITION

There is, therefore, considerable evidence to show the way in which the duc de

Bourbon undermined his own power. Not only did he pursue unpopular policies—

albeit for the best of motives—which provoked resistance to his ministry both in the

provinces and at court, but he also displayed a blindness and an insouciance

towards the dangers and difficulties of court politics which left him vulnerable to

those whose opposition he had aroused. In court politics ministers do not simply fall

from power, they are pushed. They are often caballed out of office, or disgraced,

and failure to take adequate precautions encourages those who are waiting in the

wings, only too eager to exploit any weakness. This is precisely what happened to

Bourbon. In an environment where prestige and rank were important aids to the

retention of political power, it was becoming apparent that Bourbon had not the

command over affairs that he ought to have had. If he had not been a prince of the

blood, the loss of prestige which went with unsuccessful policies would probably

have led to a much more open attack on his power. An ordinary minister or

secretary of state would, like Chauvelin in 1737, be the subject of songs, verses and

pamphlets tending to discredit him in the public eye. It was a process designed to

encourage the courtly rats to abandon the sinking ship. The explanation for the

relative silence on Bourbon is probably that it was simply too dangerous to write

against the royal dynasty. It was therefore natural that ministers who were thought

to be responsible for the formulation of the unpopular policies should take the brunt

of the attack on the ministry.

Not that Bourbon remained totally unscathed by the campaign. The upsurge

of ‘mauvais discours’ against the government has already been noted in the

context of the discontent at the grain crisis. Just after the tax edicts in June 1725 a

pamphlet appeared which the lawyer Marais, who was an expert on such matters

because he collected them, thought had originated in high places.

The

government had undoubtedly made a number of unnecessary mistakes by which

it created trouble for itself. It had been a grave error to promulgate new taxes at a

time when the clergy, chief target for the cinquantième, was about to hold its

quinquennial general assembly. If Bourbon or Paris Duvernay seemed oblivious

to this fact, others were not so naive. Such tactical blunders as this, which led to a

chaotic and ungovernable Assembly of Clergy, could only create a bad

impression at court and abroad, with a corresponding increase in opposition.

Even a friend to Bourbon, the duc de Richelieu, was prepared to admit that there

was no firm hand at the rudder. ‘I think that the greatest weakness of our

government is having no political plan [système de politique] and going from day to

day’, he wrote in October. The result of the impression created of a growing

disorder in the affairs of state was, as Montgon saw it, that those who had at first

supported Bourbon, seeing the public censure, abandoned him in private, some

in the hope of rendering odious his ministry. ‘The duc de Bourbon thus found

himself surrounded by enemies and the object of an infinite number of intrigues

to bring about his fall.’

THE DISGRACING OF BOURBON

Reflections of a more detailed nature were sent to Richelieu by one of his

correspondents, the duchesse whose identity is not certain. Her letter contains

interesting details of both Fleury and Bourbon.

The bishop of Fréjus detests Mme de Prie and it is clear that he is

communicating his sentiment to his pupil, for the King received her very

badly a few days ago. I am sure that something is afoot against the bishop; but

unless M.le Duc makes haste to get in the final blow, I’ll bet that M.de Fréjus

will see him off. M.le Duc is trusting, he counts too much on his rank and

dignity as premier ministre; he believes himself above everything, that he has

nothing to fear; he acts accordingly.

To this princely over-confidence she contrasts the slow but sure method of Fleury:

‘He draws attention to all his rival’s faults; he speaks of them without any airs; he

appears disinterested, humble. He has cleverly made himself friends of all those

discontented by the reduction in pensions’.

From the autumn of 1725 Bourbon was clearly failing to control the situation at

court, and an interaction was beginning to set in between the failure of ministerial

policies and his position at court. To some observers it looked as if a trial of strength

was developing between Fleury and Bourbon.

On 30 November Silly reported that ‘the clamours are arising all over the

place’.

In this unfortunate state of affairs the premier ministre tried to strengthen

his hold on power by making a serious attempt to conduct political affairs directly,

and alone, with the King. As the above letter predicted, this amounted to an attack

on the position of Fleury which was based upon his unique and cherished privilege

of working alone with the King and of always being present during Bourbon’s

conferences with Louis. The motives that inspired Bourbon are not hard to guess;

in the past few months Fleury had emerged as independent critic both of his policies

(especially on religious issues), and of his associates Mme de Prie and the Pâris

brothers.

Walpole sent to England a long and valuable report of the court situation

at this time from which it is worth retaining the following description of Fleury.

The bishop was the only person of consequence that durst boldly and openly

oppose their [Prie’s and the financiers’] formidable power, which he has done,

not only to his friends, but also to the King, even to M.le Duc himself;

declaring freely to his highness that he looked upon Madame de Prie and

M.de Verney, as enemies to the state, and as authors of all the disorders,

weakness, and confusion, both in the finances and other matters, that

disgraced the present administration.

The subsequent attack by Bourbon on Fleury is more understandable because the

latter’s criticisms were so evidently untrue in their sweeping generalisations that

they must have been designed to court popularity. On 17 December 1725 Bourbon

had the Queen ask Louis if she could be present during the travail when normally