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

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provided by ministerial office. With the appointment of relatively new men of the

administrative nobility, the era of Fleury saw the return to the structure of politics

as it existed before the experiment of the Polysynodie, in which there was no

direct link between membership of the well-entrenched court aristocracy and the

holding of ministerial office.

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THE CONTROL OF PATRONAGE

AND POLICY

Louis XV; patronage; ecclesiastical patronage; a ‘third party’ in the church; forms of lay patronage;

the patronage of Languedoc; spheres of ministerial influence; Daguesseau; Maurepas; Saint-

Florentin; d’Anger villiers; Orry; Chauvelin; Amelot de Chaillou; Hérault and the police; religious

policy; influential nobles: the ducs de Noailles, d’Antin, d’Estrées; the comte de Toulouse; councils and

legal form; the travail.

The way in which the cardinal de Fleury established and reconstructed a ministry

against a background of factional conflict contributes an important element to the

understanding of politics in this period. A detailed study of the extent of the

power of the Cardinal-minister and the nature of its exercise is equally essential.

Such an investigation is long overdue, as the ministry has never been fully

examined.

Nevertheless, in the present state of research, even making full use of institutional

studies and political biographies, it is impossible to construct an entirely clear image

of the political processes. Certainly, some of the most basic information is available.

The origins and social status of the ministerial families are known and lists are

available of the membership of the various administrative bodies in the state.

Details on the spheres of activity of the various departments may be found in

general histories of the institutions, although these usually fail to record the

considerable overlapping of competences and lack of precise definition that made

conflict between ministers as much a feature as it was during the reigns of Louis

XIV and Louis XV.

Studies devoted specifically to the bureaucracy of this period

are only slowly becoming available, and much remains to be done. Moreover, none

of the ministers of Louis XV before the 1740s has yet been the subject of a

satisfactory biographical and administrative study. There are not even sufficient

studies to show whether or not they were competent in the performance of their

duties. The systematic remedying of these lacunae would probably be the labour of

a lifetime and is beyond the scope of the present study. It is, however, possible to

investigate the degree of individual influence wielded in the councils and the extent

of ministers’ administrative independence. Equally important, the question of non-

ministerial influences in the government can be addressed, especially the

significance of factions at court. The answers to such questions do not lie in any

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single fund of documents, and a much wider range of material must be examined

than is customary for more traditional institutional studies.

No study exists of six ministers whose functions embrace the administration of

finances, war, the police of Paris and most of the provinces of France: Orry,

Breteuil, d’Angervilliers, Hérault, Amelot and St Florentin. The only ones to have

emerged in any detail are Maurepas, Daguesseau and Feydeau de Marville.

Research on the first, chiefly by North American historians, has concentrated

upon his role as secrétaire d’état for the marine with responsibility for the western

colonies and commerce. As secrétaire for the maison du roi with heavy provincial

responsibilities, including Paris and the Ile de France, Maurepas remains obscure.

Unfortunately, Daguesseau emerges chiefly as the leading eighteenth-century

writer on jurisprudence, although, as Chancellor, he was in fact the first legal

officer of the realm.

Feydeau de Marville was to succeed Hérault as lieutenant-

general of police in 1740, and thanks to the survival of several volumes of

correspondence and the reports of his police spies, his share and range of activities

are tolerably well known.

The only other minister to be reasonably well known

is the garde des sceaux, Chauvelin, and this is ironic because his papers have never

been found.

Attention has been focused upon him by studies of French foreign

policy, yet his position as Fleury’s aide in internal affairs has been generally

ignored. Even in the restricted area that has been studied, many false assumptions

have long gone unchallenged and some glaring errors still prevail in assessments

of his role.

The careers of the other ministers of state—Tallard, d’Huxelles, d’Estrées and

d’Antin—have never been analysed. Nor has there been any discussion of those

men and women who possessed great influence in politics either directly as advisers

and prominent courtiers—such as the ducs du Maine, de Toulouse, de Noailles and

de Richelieu—or indirectly, as personalities at court controlling powerful aristocratic

houses. The households of the due de Bourbon, the due d’Orléans and the prince

de Conti richly deserved closer investigation.

But the three dowager duchesses of

Orléans, Bourbon-Condé and Noailles were all formidable ladies who wielded

immense patronage and were indefatigable defenders of their families and

influence—forces to be reckoned with even for Fleury. Others at court played a less

obvious part in politics, tireless writers of memoirs like the marquis d’Argenson

who wrote on the affairs of the parlement, or Silhouette on finances. In spite of the

loss of many of his papers in the fire in the Louvre it is surprising that d’Argenson

should not have found his historian. For the early period of his life there has been

scarcely any advance on the brief sketches of him by Sainte-Beuve, which do not

deal with his political role in the parlementaire crisis of 1732. Finally, although

studies are rapidly becoming available which reveal the connection between

financiers and ministerial politics in the seventeenth century, no work has been

done on this theme for the years of Fleury. In the following pages, therefore, instead

of entering into a large number of very detailed studies, I have tried to delineate the

nature and extent of the power of the cardinal de Fleury in relation to that of the

other participants in the political processes.

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For this, a wide range of ministerial papers has been used, from the formal and

informal records of the departments.

Evidence concerning the structure of power

is to be found not only in ministerial correspondence, but also in the personal

memoirs and the ambassadorial reports of the time. Particularly useful for the

later stages has been the correspondence of the various contenders for power

(Richelieu, Belle-Isle, Noailles and Tencin), only some of which has been

published. Research that has contributed to the earlier sections of this book, on

the social mechanisms of ascension, political attitudes and the development of

factions, provides an essential element of context without which the significance

of much of this information would have remained obscure. It is hoped that the

imperfect sketches presented here will encourage others to return to this

fascinating period.

These early years of the King are shrouded in obscurity. None the less, he was

far from being a cypher. Sixteen years old in 1726, 33 in 1743 when Fleury died.

Louis XV represented the sovereign authority invested in the monarchy of

France. During this period of his reign his power was more symbolic than real, in

the sense that although Louis embodied the power of the monarchy since all

decisions were attributed ultimately to his will, in practice he did not take

decisions on matters of government. The absence of reports of him ever

exercising his right of decision in the conseil d’état, when such an event would have

been worth recording, seems to indicate that he played a passive role at meetings.

Only after the death of Fleury are there records of his active particpation and

direction of policy. After the ministerial changes of 1726 he did begin to take a

more active interest in the conduct of affairs, especially foreign policy, and

continued to attend the councils assiduously. This attitude was short lived,

although to the end of his life he always attended the conseil d’état. By 1727, there

are reports of his lack of interest and by 1729, at an age when his predecessor

Louis XIV had been growing impatient to govern, he seems to have renounced

much of his active role in the ministry.

This was not due to a deliberate ploy by

Fleury to retain the maximum power in his own hands, as the Cardinal’s

detractors have claimed. On the contrary, in the early years of the ministry,

Fleury is reported to have been encouraging him to develop his interest in

government.

However, by the 1730s the function of Louis XV in decision-

making was limited to his giving assent to all that had been approved by the

cardinal de Fleury. It was not a glorious role but it was one which suited the

temperament of Louis who was both timid and pleasure-seeking. Since he had

not yet developed the sense of responsibility required of an active monarch, the

conduct of French policy was best left in the hands of a man of judgement and

experience.

Louis should perhaps be given the credit for recognising this.

Turning to another aspect of kingship, Louis must have appreciated the

importance of his own position as the ultimate source of patronage and crédit,

because he chose for many years to be absolutely unwavering in his support for

Fleury. Such constancy had a profound effect upon the complexion of politics at

court and on the policies of the state. By making his attitude to Fleury plain he

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ensured that the intrigues of the court factions were directed against the ministers

subordinated to Fleury, where there was some hope of success, and not at the

director of policy, where there was none. This led to a period of continuity in policy

that was unusual in the eighteenth century. Fleury was also able to retain those of

his advisers he wanted, without having to bow to factional pressure. It was only in

the late 1730s that Louis’ support for Fleury began to slacken slightly and not until

war broke out in 1741 that he became plainly ambivalent in his attitude to him. In

the first of these periods it was a case of granting the occasional favour through

channels of influence which sought to circumvent the Cardinal—sometimes against

his wishes; in the second, when Fleury’s foreign policy seemed to be in ruins, the

King was thought to be considering the recall of the intriguing, industrious, anti-

Austrian Chauvelin who had a faction at court which Louis favoured increasingly.

It took all the persuasive power of Fleury in 1742 to convince the King to renounce

this group. Even this wavering in his support did not represent an increase in the

active participation of Louis in the business of government. In 1742 Richer d’Aube

could write: ‘This prince has nearly reached the age of thirty-three having preferred

to do no more than attend some council meetings, without deciding on anything

important’.

Thus for the period of the ministry of Fleury it was the minister and

not the King who decided on policy and directed the government. Louis remained

at the centre of the political system—it could not have functioned without his active

participation—but more as the preserver of balance and the figurehead than as the

policy-maker.

As we have seen, Fleury, strengthened by the firm support of Louis XV, was able

to construct a ministry amenable to his own wishes. The control of appointments to

the ministry represents but one aspect of a vitally important dimension of the

political system of Fleury: the control of patronage. From 1726 Fleury acquired

complete power of decision over the distribution of all those graces which

theoretically depended upon the favour of the King. This naturally excluded the

appointments in the households of the Condé and the d’Orléans, and all those

offices subject to survivances or protocol, but even so comprised a vast domain.

The first important area was ecclesiastical patronage: the distribution of

benefices to all members of the clergy, from simple curés to archbishops, and of

pensions paid from ecclesiastical incomes, which were sometimes given to laymen.

Wielding the power of patronage, Fleury was able to exert considerable pressure

and ensure that his religious policy was followed by most of the clergy. In the case of

bishops and abbés this meant that he confined his appointments to those who were

likely to purify their sees of Jansenism in as discreet a manner as possible. Appolis

has shown that the Cardinal tended to favour the appointment of a ‘third party’ of

doctrinally moderate bishops, such as Claude Louis de la Châtre to Agde, Armand

Bazin de Bezons to Carcassonne, and J.G.de Souillac to Lodève.

The best example of the importance of selecting bishops and archbishops, whose

power was very wide within a strictly hierarchical church, is that of the designation

of a successor to the cardinal de Noailles as archbishop of Paris. After winning

something of a partial victory in 1728 by inducing the old cardinal to accept

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133

Unigenitus, it was vitally important to choose a successor who could carry on the

work of dampening down Richerist and Jansenist agitation among the curés of the

capital. Fleury therefore chose his old friend Charles Gaspard Guillaume de

Vintimille du Luc (1655–1746), the archbishop of Aix.

Le Dran, one of the

commis for foreign affairs, wrote in his extended memoir ‘Annales de l’Unigenitus’

that ‘The nomination of M.de Vintimille archbishop of Aix [to the archbishopric of

Paris] in May 1729…was seen in the council of state as a way of reducing in one

way or another, the curés of the capital’.

Vintimille was a moderate anti-Jansenist,

rather than a doctrinaire one, and was prepared to do his best to find a policy for his

archdiocese which would complement that of Fleury. The correspondence between

the Archbishop and the minister nevertheless reveals that Vintimille was by no

means a mere client executing the orders of Fleury, rather he was an ally who could

be intransigent if he thought he might be compromised.

As holder of feuille des bénéfices Fleury was theoretically responsible for the

choice of holders and conferment of all benefices. In practice he tended to take the

advice of certain confidants or colleagues. During the first few years of the

ministry these would have been the other members of the conseil de conscience: the

cardinal de Rohan, cardinal de Bissy and archbishop de Tressan especially. The

conseil seems to have ceased to exist at some time after 1733, although it is

mentioned in the Etat de la France for 1736, and therefore one of its functions as a

collective distributor of benefices must have ceased also. Perhaps before this, and

certainly later, he relied heavily on the recommendations of a confidant, the abbé

Couturier. He was the superior of the seminary at Saint-Sulpice, where Fleury

often resided, and although not the Cardinal’s actual confessor he was said to

govern his conscience. Bouffonidor claimed that Couturier ‘was at the head of the

department of all ecclesiastical affairs’.

His antechamber was always filled with

the grandees of the realm. This may be an exaggeration, but he was certainly an

important channel of favour and there is more than one letter extant which

reveals him in this role.

For the court nobility, as for wealthy bourgeois families, the church played an

important role in strategies of inheritance, standing and advancement. As Sicard

and Ravitch have shown, the 130 bishops of the higher clergy were almost

exclusively composed of members of the nobility.

Family strategies required the

placing of younger sons who could not be given a large inheritance either in the

church or the army. Not only were all the bishops noble, but almost all the

important sees that carried with them not only eccesiastical power but also secular

influence and administrative significance were also in the hands of the higher

nobility. Such bishoprics as those of Narbonne which held the presidency of the

estates of Languedoc, went to trusted clerics, usually from influential nobles with a

power base in the province. In Lyon the archbishop was a Villeroy, as was the

governor; the appointments by Louis XIV of Colbert, bishop of Montpellier, and

Noailles the archbishop of Paris had reflected the power and influence of their

respective clans at court. Lesser ecclesiastical benefices were numbered in hundreds,

such as that of vicar-general, which was so to speak the antechamber to the

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bishopric, of abbé with perhaps a respectable income, and almoner in the royal

household. These would be solicited in much the same way as Fleury’s office as

almoner had been, but now it was Fleury who had the final word.

The co-operation of noble families would no doubt have been encouraged by the

judicious withholding and according of benefices, or the refusal to consent to

translation, and such had been royal policy for a long time. But under Fleury,

ecclesiastical patronage formed an integral part of the implementation of religious

policy. The enormous importance of favour in the development of an ecclesiastical

career has already been demonstrated in the case of Fleury himself. The following

letter from the recalcitrant bishop of Castres to Fleury reflects the same

phenomenon from a very different point of view. The implication is that only by

giving up ambitions to further promotion could even a bishop sustain his

opposition to ministerial policy. The letter is also a good example of the limits of

ministerial control over independent bishops.

A Bishop who has nothing to reproach himself with, who likes his residence

and who has no ambitions at Court, has nothing to fear from anything Your

Eminence writes to him; as Cardinal I respect you, as Minister I ask you for

nothing, as Bishop I owe you nothing and I am your elder. As a Christian I

answer only to God alone, it is to his heavenly tribunal that I labour to find

favour, and we shall both soon appear before it; we should fear, Monseigneur,

not to receive the same favour as in the eyes of men.

By his recalcitrance, this bishop was an exception; most members of the higher

clergy, predominantly aristocratic in their origins, were sufficiently worldly to be

seriously concerned by the threats of the withdrawal of patronage and exile from

the court to comply with ministerial policy.

By virtue of his control over appointments, Fleury was able to influence the

decisions taken at the Assembly of Clergy in 1730. He had Vintimille strongly

advise the members of the Assembly to elect him president, so that he might explain

his moderate policy in the inaugural speech. By bringing the issues out into the

open with crystal clarity he prevented ambitious opportunists from exploiting an

ultramontane position in the hope of currying favour with Rome. Having set out

his programme and made it difficult for them to interfere with royal policy, Fleury

then left the management of the Assembly to Lavergne de Monthenard de Tressan,

the archbishop of Rouen and a close collaborator, who remained in touch with him,

counselling and informing the cardinal.

As a result of this careful management,

‘the deliberations of the Assembly took place in the greatest calm, and its

pronouncements remained in conformity with Fleury’s policy’.

Fleury similarly

was president of the extraordinary Assembly called to vote a subsidy for the war.

For the regular Assembly of 1735, care was taken to ‘have persons in place who are

friends of those of the first rank who are troublemakers, speak to them to

discourage their attendance, and then take steps to prevent them from commiting

any acts that might indispose the bishops that might be needed’.

The calculated

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opposition of Tencin was bought off with the promise of a cardinal’s hat and a

return to favour, while the bishop of Sens, a leading ‘constitutionnaire’ was

prevented from being elected by his province.

Fleury again made his moderate

speech and achieved the same satisfactory result.

If church patronage was an aid to the conduct of policy, lay patronage was for

Fleury an essential means of consolidating and demonstrating his power. As with all

forms of patronage, most of it has not been recorded because at court favours

tended to be requested and granted verbally in the antechambers. Nevertheless, of

the general correspondence of Fleury which has survived, a very high proportion

concerns the granting of favours. An immense number of letters reveal the nature

and extent of this system.

First of all, the control of patronage meant the control of access to the royal

person. This necessitated not only the appointment where possible of members of

the royal household whose functions involved regular attendance on the King, but

also the granting of royal audiences.

However, the choice was not always a free

one since survivances might have been granted or purchased or the prestige of a

courtier might make it difficult if not unthinkable to refuse a request without

delivering a snub and making an enemy. Patronage also meant the distribution of

rooms in the palace at Versailles and of lodgings during the frequent royal visits to

Marly.

Pensions too came under his control, to both courtiers and parlementaires

in Paris and the provinces. In addition to places at court Fleury was responsible for

appointments to posts in the administration, such as farmer general,

intendant,

governor,

conseiller du roi (the last mentioned conferring nobility

), including the

control of military and naval appointments both high and low. This meant that he

often controlled the favours which in other periods depended upon the various

secretaries of state whose influence could be felt both in their provinces and in their

particular department. Richer d’Aube noted that Maurepas tended to favour ‘men

of talent…as far as he could with a first minister who, in the promotions that are

made, wants to nominate them himself, even down to the ship’s ensigns, as if it were

possible for him to know the most deserving subaltern marines’.

The soliciting of favours took place either by letter—this was of course almost the

rule for provincials who failed to use a broker at court—or more likely by personal

request either directly, or through an intermediary, when in attendance on Fleury

himself.

Particularly opportune moments were at Versailles after ambassadorial

audiences, after council meetings or especially at the lever and coucher of Fleury.

Another route was by the intervention of a man who knew Fleury’s character,

foibles and desires really well, his valet de chambre Barjac: ‘he was the channel of all

the internal favours and chiefly those to do with finance, some of which flowed back

to him’.

However, the Cardinal was by no means prodigal with pecuniary favours;

he had a great reputation for economy which he practised even with close political

friends who requested pensions.

Often a great deal of insistence and preparation

were required if an aspirant was to be successful. In August 1737 Noailles wrote no

less than three letters to Fleury asking him to add the mastership of the waters and

forests of Saint-Germain to his captaincy of the hunt for the same area, as had

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formerly been the case. Six further letters were sent to Maurepas (the relevant

Secretary of State) and five to Orry with a memoir.

Another exceedingly

determined seeker of favours was the dowager duchesse de Bourbon. One example

will suffice to show the degree of preparation she considered necessary; when the

cardinal de Bissy fell ill on 17 July 1737 she wrote to ask Fleury for the revenue from

one of his abbeys for the comte de Clermont; on 25 July when Bissy was at his last

extremity she reiterated her request; Fleury replied with a mild refusal so she wrote

again the following day accusing him of favouring the princes légitimés over princes du

sang—her favourite argument; on 15 August she wrote to thank Fleury for the favour

which the King had granted.

Another way of obtaining favours was to ask Louis XV—although he would,

until the 1740s, invariably consult Fleury in the matter. The best time for such an

approach was during the visits to Marly and Rambouillet where the atmosphere

was informal and access to the King was relatively easy for those invited. The

Noailles, connected by marriage to Toulouse, to whom Rambouillet belonged, had

a great advantage there over other groups at court.

In addition to general patronage throughout the kingdom, Fleury took a special

interest in the province of Languedoc. In this he remained true to his origins and he

sustained that tradition of patronage links between the court and the province from

which he had himself benefited. Just as Villars when governor of Provence had chosen

his pages from Provence so Fleury had appointed as his valet de chambre a baron

from his province. His birthplace, the town of Lodève, was to benefit especially from

his rise to power. The prosperity of the town and its region depended almost entirely

on the manufacture of cloth. In 1727 an inquiry into the quality of Languedocian

cloth, instigated by the conseil du roi, praised those of Lodève. Fleury saw to it that the

army contracts went to the town, and the industry expanded greatly during the

second quarter of the eighteenth century.

The corporations of the province would

solicit his intervention in disputes and solicitations from the clergy of the province

made up a high proportion of the requests.

If most of the important favours were at the disposition of Fleury, other members

of the central administration had a significant share in this activity. The following

quotation from the memoirs of the due de Gäeté on the subject of the premiers

commis des finances in the 1770s will serve to explain this point.

M.d’Ailly was the first clerk of M.d’Ormesson, one of the intendants of

finance…For as long as M.d’Ailly was in place, I had always seen him

surrounded by numerous clients who appeared to be sincerely attached to

him. The instant he retired his eyes were opened. As soon as he was no longer

in a position to be useful, the crowd disappeared… The first clerks had an

influence over business, which was not without its inconveniences, but which

the extreme mobility of ministers, who were often unfamiliar from their

previous occupations with the branch of the administration they were called

upon to direct, rendered both inevitable and necessary, the more so to

maintain traditions. These functionaries, who were really permanent,

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naturally wielded the authority of both experience and the talent that had led

them to acquire the post—to which they generally had to limit their ambitions

in a regime that was essentially aristocratic. They were compensated for this

by the consideration that personal interest is ever disposed to show whoever

possesses the power to serve. The cabinet of a first clerk was often more

frequented, even by the highest members of society, than the audience of the

honorary head of the department to which he belonged. Whence the sort of

consideration I have just described, which in those days had to satisfy a

measured ambition.

These favours were largely pecuniary of course, and also consisted of rendering

service to courtiers and financiers in the preparation of affairs involving money. A

premier commis was an administrator of standing who ran one of several bureaux

attached to each secretary of state. He tended to remain in place for a long period, and

was in direct contact with both the provincial intendants and the secretary of state.

The decision of the intendant or minister would have been influenced by the artful

presentation of the case by the premiers commis. This explains why seekers of favour

in the provinces might first approach the premier commis. Given the difficulty office-

holders during the ancien régime had in distinguishing between the King’s finances and

their own, there was plenty of opportunity for the diversion of funds.

Ultimately, Fleury could never have succeeded in controlling all areas of

patronage in a political and social system which was so thoroughly imbued with

concepts of crédit, service and clientage. Similarly, one must expect his role in the

government to have been limited by the practicalities of the situation. Studies of

the intendants of finance and the conseil royal des finances have shown that relatively

few decisions on those financial affairs which ended up as arrêts du conseil were

actually discussed in council. Many decisions were taken by the controller-general

in consultation with his intendants of finances, or simply by these intendants

alone.

Probably many of these decisions would also have been influenced by

adroit preparation of the material by the premiers commis. The author of a recent

study of the bureaux of the department of foreign affairs laments the fact that

there has been no similar study of the bureaucrats of the other departments of

state.

Neither this book nor previous investigations have touched on the

question of the political influence of the premiers commis, although at times it

must have been considerable. Certainly a large proportion of the details of the

financial administration—which formed the most extensive part of the whole

governmental structure—escaped the attention and even the ultimate control of

the premier ministre.

By looking at the correspondence of the cardinal de Fleury it is possible to

delineate his sphere of political activity. Most of his correspondence was with the

ministers and influential persons at court, ambassadors and foreign heads of state,

members of the episcopate, the heads of religious institutions and the gens du roi in

the Paris parlement. Except on the vital occasions of the assembly of provincial

estates he did not spend his time writing to provincial administrators such as