Campbell P. Power and Politics in Old Regime France, 1720-1745
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intendants and governors. Meetings were the travail with the King and ministers,
interviews with ambassadors, high ecclesiastics, and consultative discussions with
some leading courtiers.
The two areas in which he did assume a measure of responsibility for the
execution of policy were religion and foreign affairs. The success of the
ministerial policy on Jansenism was very much based on the personal activity of
Fleury, as is shown both by Hardy and by Part 2 of the present work. The
Cardinal maintained an immense correspondence with many of the bishops of
France, especially with those whose mandements threatened to disrupt his policy of
suppressing the manifestations of the quarrel over Unigenitus. In foreign affairs he
had already been in contact with the court of Spain and was to correspond with
Philippe V, the Pope, the Emperor and the Elector of Bavaria, either about crucial
issues or as a regular exchange of letters over a long period. In these spheres
therefore, his methods were largely personal, whereas for the general
administration of France he relied on structures which were already in existence
and which he did not attempt to alter.
Under these circumstances it would be idle to ask if Fleury controlled the
execution of policy in detail. Even at the centre, without considering the provinces,
it was far beyond the capacity of any one man to control the whole administration.
44
The vast system of bureaux headed by the premiers commis, under the authority of
the secretaries of state, was responsible for the huge volume of correspondence that
pertained to the implementation of decrees and decisions in council. What Fleury
could reasonably try to do was to control the formulation of policy.
Richer d’Aube was of the opinion that the key to the success of Fleury in
remaining in power from 1726 to 1730 was his control of policy combined with his
ability to avoid taking the blame for unpopular decisions. ‘He is always ready
enough to alter what he has done or ordered. [He] insists as little on the good as on
the bad when he feels particularly pressed, and throws responsibility for all that is
done and altered as much as he can on to the ministers, his subordinates, even
though it might usually be he who had wanted it, and he leaves each one of them as
little authority [as he can] in the affairs of their departments.’
45
It is therefore
appropriate to consider the relations of Fleury with each minister in turn.
First and foremost in the judicial monarchy was the office of Chancellor, which
was the first judicial post of the realm usually combined with the office of garde des
sceaux. However, the Chancellor had been deprived of the latter post in 1722 and
was not to regain it until 1737. The Chancellery sealed all documents containing the
royal will, the Chancellor drew up all legislation and sent it for due registration in
‘his’ courts, and acted as the spokesman of the King on ceremonial occasions. As
chief magistrate the Chancellor dealt with the judicial business of the courts and
was responsible for discipline in the courts, as well as recruitment to them. In the
case of a Keeper of the Seals who was not the Chancellor, as in the 1730s, the precise
division of duties is far from clear, because except in this period the division
occurred because of the exile of the Chancellor and therefore his effective
replacement by the garde des sceaux.
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There were five posts which were referred to by contemporaries as being ministères:
the four secretaryships of state which divided the business for the marine, the maison du
roi, war and foreign affairs, and to these must be added the contrôle général des finances.
The secretaries divided up the administration of the provinces between them. The
foreign secretary had the provinces of Guyenne, Normandy, Champagne, the
Lyonnais and the Berry. The secretary for war had the provinces on the north-eastern
frontier as far south as Dauphiné and Roussillon. The marine and the maison du roi
were held together, and with them went maritime commerce, the American colonies,
affairs of the clergy and the généralités of the Ile de France, Paris, Soissons, Orléans and
La Rochelle. The fourth secretary was responsible for the Protestant religion, the feuille
des bénéfices and the généralités of Languedoc, Provence, Burgundy, Brittany, the
provinces of the south-west, those to the north-east and south-east of Paris, and the
Massif Central. The secretaries of state played a leading role in the various councils of
state, attended the royal lever, and conducted the deputies from those parlements and
provincial estates that lay within their purview to audiences with the King. The fifth
ministère was the contrôle général, whose incumbent carried on the considerable task of
overseeing the complex fiscal system of the state, together with domestic and foreign
overland trade, as well as appointing the intendants (except in the pays d’états) with
whom he carried on a large correspondence. Finally, there is the case of the lieutenant-
general of police. Although strictly speaking he was not a minister, he actually worked
so closely with the cardinal de Fleury and performed such important functions that it
seems appropriate to include him in any analysis. He not only possessed very wide
powers of police in Paris but also oversaw the provision of political information to the
ministry. Since the present intention is more to reveal certain neglected aspects of a
system of government than to provide a full biographical analysis of all these
ministers, only those who held office over a considerable period are to be discussed
below.’
46
Henri-François Daguesseau the Chancellor was the son of Henri Daguesseau,
who had been an intendant in several provinces and then a councillor of state. After
having served as avocat général and then procureur général he was appointed Chancellor
in 1717. As has already been noted, by 1727 he was no longer an independent force in
politics. Neither his administration of the Chancery nor his preparation of the
monumental ordinances need concern us here, where his role in the making of policy
is of more significance.
47
As first magistrate of the realm, Daguesseau was necessarily
deeply involved in the affairs of parlements. His correspondence reveals him to have
been particularly useful to Fleury for the analyses which he was able to give of the
legal implications of events and for the predictions which he was able to make as a
former parlementaire. Boullée, his nineteenth-century biographer, emphasised his
importance in this field in the 1730s and attributes to him the success of the
negotiations for the recall of the exiled parlement in 1732.
48
However, the case study of
this episode in the following chapters reveals that the solution to this crisis involved a
complicated set of influences which went far beyond the personal role of the
Chancellor. Nevertheless, he took part both in the discussions in council and in the
private conferences held to resolve the crisis. It was possibly owing to the need for his
POWER AND POLITICS IN OLD REGIME FRANCE
140
presence that the discussion of religious affairs was transferred from the conseil de
conscience to the conseil des dépêches in 1730.
49
In the early stages of the parlementaire crisis
his views were often requested and acted upon. On 1 August 1730, Fleury wrote to
him about the activity of the courts: ‘Monsieur de Maurepas will have the honour of
seeing you this morning, and of explaining the King’s intentions. He will set out the
different means we have decided upon, and it is for you, Sir, to choose between
them’.
50
He was no less useful when confronting the order of barristers. In 1731, his
astute annotations to the consultation of the forty lawyers and his subsequent
commentary on the legal implications of their claims were valuable in helping Fleury
bring the affair to a face-saving compromise.
51
However, Daguesseau’s moderation and balanced judgement were also a
hindrance to the successful performance of his duties as Chancellor in such matters.
Toussaint’s pen portrait is acutely drawn, if in a harsh light:
Broken by age or by his meditations [on his exile], he was thereafter only a
very ordinary man, weak, indecisive, busying himself with formalities and
little details, not expediting affairs for the sake of wanting to examine them in
detail. [He was now] as discredited as he had once been honoured, too much
under the influence of his son whose precarious projects and violent counsels
made him risk compromising sovereign authority and the respect due his
office in the eyes of the [avocats au conseil].
52
Moderate words were to prove to be an insufficient way of dealing with the
problems and he therefore became of less and less consequence in the ministry. It is
even recorded that by 1732 he was sometimes treated with scant respect by Fleury
in moments of crisis.
53
We are fortunate in having a record of the confidential views of Fleury, which
amount to an appraisal of Daguesseau’s role in the ministry. In June and August
1741 Fleury wrote two letters to the cardinal de Tencin, whom he was then
considering appointing as his successor, which include the following extracts.
The Chancellor is certainly very competent and has great knowledge, but
because he has this he finds problems with everything and he was brought up
in fear of God and the Parlements. He thinks very satisfactorily on church
affairs, and this from conviction; his exile conferred this grace on him,
because he had the time to read and recognise the bad faith of the Jansenists;
but he is by nature indecisive, which is the cause of a great lack of expedition
in affairs that is very prejudicial to them.
54
The second letter expands on his lack of grip over the parlement of Paris:
He is a little too subservient to the parlements, and for fear of disputes gets a
little too involved. His excessive consideration should however be corrected,
for the Paris court often shows a lack of respect for him. He is unduly swayed
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141
by the solicitor general, who is much more subtle than he is, and who seeks to
gain credit at his expense.
55
The youngest of the secretaries of state and perhaps the most talented was
Maurepas, best known as minister for the marine and for his later ascendancy
under Louis XVI.
56
Coming from the family of Phélypeaux which had already held
the secretaryship of the marine for two generations, ‘he was made Secretary of State
virtually at birth’, and also held the maison du roi.
57
During the Polysynodie, all the
offices of secrétaire d’état were suppressed, including his own, therefore. After the
Polysynodie he fulfilled the duties of the maison du roi under the supervision of his
father-in-law La Vrillière and finally regained the marine in August 1723, when he
was 22 years old.
58
His effective independence in office dates from the death of La
Vrillière on 7 September 1725. He had thus acquired a good training and by 1730
was already the senior minister in the government. Saint-Simon thought that ‘he is
far and away the best [minister] the King has had in his council since the death of
Monsieur the Duke of Orleans’.
59
All the contemporary assessments of him concur
with the view of his merit.
60
Thanks in part to the pacific policy of Fleury, there was a significant upturn in
foreign trade and the beginnings of a period of internal growth in productivity.
According to Chambrier,
The French system of commerce has greatly changed, since the cardinal has
been conducting affairs, and they have tried to increase it as much as possible.
This has indeed been done, over the last ten years, in the towns of Bordeaux,
La Rochelle and the other seaports of the Kingdom that are in the department
of the comte de Maurepas, who, at the marine, does all he can to encourage
fundamentally the one and the other, [a policy] he considers to be of great
importance for the Kingdom.
61
He had vast responsibilities. At the marine he had special responsibility for
overseeing the Atlantic ports and all the western colonies, in addition to all the facets
of the administration of the navy from the repair and supply of wood and ships to
the preparations of strategic plans; furthermore he was charged with the foreign
trade of the kingdom.
62
At the maison du roi he had to countersign all edicts, and his
quarter of France comprised six provinces, including the Ile de France with its
capital city; to this was added the department of the clergy.
63
Maurepas was an intelligent man with a prodigious memory, ‘a clever and subtle
courtier’, and a good judge of men. His knowledge of the court, into which he had
been born, his charm and grace, all stood him in good stead. He exercised his
functions with great tact, knew ‘the art of satisfying by deeds and words all those
who had dealings with him [and had] the most amiable conversation’.
64
He did,
however, have an extremely frivolous sense of fun which led him to make up witty
verses to ridicule the foibles of fellow courtiers, a trait which damaged his crédit.
65
He
also possessed a keen sense of right and wrong and was at pains to be just. He made
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142
powerful enemies in his resistance to injustice and had subsequently, in order to
maintain his position, to limit his zeal to his own departments. ‘Two things have
great weight with him, on the one hand justice and reason, and on the other the
desire to maintain his position.’
66
Richer d’Aube has left a valuable description of
Maurepas in his role of provincial administrator, written in 1730:
As a magistrate in the greater part of his duties, M.de Maurepas has always
appeared to be imbued with the great principles of the magistracy and
disposed to deduce from them in order to apply them. His correspondence
with the provinces must be agreeable to all those with whom he conducts it.
He deserves the justice of bearing witness that he never asks for explanations
and opinions as one who has determined the issue, before having gone into it
in depth and having consulted, but [acts only as one] who is leaning towards
what seems to him to derive from principles and rules; that he appears to love
justice, and to maintain his authority; and that when he is the master, he
deploys and upholds his legitimate authority without authorising its abuse
and without abusing it himself.
67
Having a fertile brain, Maurepas was constantly devising projects to increase the
importance of the navy and further the interests of French trade. During the ministry
of Fleury he succeeded in persuading the Cardinal to endow the navy with greater
funds than it had received during the Regency; the figures show that he was more
successful in obtaining funds when Fleury was in control than he was from Orry after
the death of the Cardinal.
68
Between 1723 and 1738 the number of well-maintained
and seaworthy ships of the line rose from thirty to fifty, the arsenals were repaired and
the port at Cherbourg was entirely rebuilt. The number of memoirs on commerce to
be found in the Maurepas papers confirms the importance of trade in his thinking. In
a long memoir of 3 October 1730, the minister explained his views to the conseil de
commerce.
69
Filion, who has had access to the papers in America, writes that, ‘in this
commercial system, the colonies were not of secondary significance, they held pride of
place. It is appropriate to emphasise this idea, which was rarely shared by
contemporaries in France’.
70
However, Wilson has agreed with Chambrier’s report,
arguing that Fleury himself was also concerned about the furtherance of trade and
directed his foreign policy accordingly in so far as it was compatible with the
transcendent interest of the state.
71
Although Fleury did not regard commerce in the
same light of Anglo-French rivalry as did Maurepas, from 1737 on the secretary was
in greater favour and this worried the British ministers.
72
It would therefore seem that
Fleury controlled the direction of commercial policy in the sense that he retained the
power of veto but often encouraged Maurepas to implement his projects. The
increasing favour of the minister after 1737 would thus have reflected Fleury’s
approval of his policies. Even so, commercial considerations had to take their place
within the whole range of international commitments. For example, however much
Maurepas may have desired the letters patent of October 1737 on exclusive commerce
to France from the colonies, they had to have the agreement of Fleury and Orry.
73
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143
During the administration of Fleury, the affairs of the clergy were of
considerable importance and inevitably Maurepas was involved. His duties
required him to expedite the decisions of the conseil de conscience of which he was a
member, and of the conseil des dépêches when matters of religion were discussed.
Thus he wrote to bishops enjoining them to act in a less inflammatory manner, or
informing them of penalties to be imposed.
74
He it was who was responsible for
sending the circular letter of July 1731 on the status of Unigenitus.
75
Notwithstanding this involvement, neither the papers of Maurepas nor those in
the archives des affaires étrangères contain evidence that he played a part in the
formulation of religious policy; there is only one memoir by him on religious
affairs to be found.
76
As is revealed in greater detail in the following chapter, the
formulation of religious policy was the special preserve of Fleury. In this sphere
then, the secretary may be considered to have been a mere executor.
Maurepas was a trusted minister who was able to display considerable
independence in the affairs of the department of the marine, but much less so as a
secretary of state for the maison du roi. He did not interfere in the affairs of other
departments and he had soon learned to bend with the wind, even on matters of
policy where he felt the decision to be wrong. ‘He has concluded…that while acting
for the best in all that depends on him [alone], without being obliged to give an
account of it, for the conservance of his place he must, in all that does not depend
solely upon himself, not manifest too great an opposition to what he finds to be
unjust when his superior strongly wishes it.’
77
The comte de Saint Florentin was the one secretary of state without a special
department. The son of La Vrillière, he was a small and gentle man, who people
mistakenly thought could not possibly be a statesman. He was charming, possessed of
a welcoming manner and a fund of goodwill, with a precise mind and a good head for
affairs. Saint Florentin, who was to remain in office throughout the administration of
Fleury, appears to have confined his political activity to the affairs of his department
and to have given offence to no one. Richer d’Aube has left the most extended portrait
of this minister who figures so little in the documentary evidence:
I can say from experience that he knows how to enlighten and advance what
he knows to be right, [even] at the risk of attracting the hatred of those
persons in the Kingdom who have presently the greatest credit. Without
doing anyone an injustice, I think I can say that of all those in the ministry
who are obliged to obey what Monsieur the cardinal de Fleury orders,
Monsieur de Saint Florentin is the one who has the strongest dislike for what
he believes to be wrong. The provinces in his department are very well
governed with respect to what he is made aware of and which depends solely
or principally upon him.
78
The secretary of state for war, Bauyn d’Angervilliers came to his post in 1728 as as
one of Fleury’s appointees, and was made a ministre d’état in 1729. He is said to have
remained in office, in spite of the intrigues at court to discredit him, owing to the
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144
constant protection of the Cardinal himself. The intrigues seemed all the more
likely to succeed because he had a rather flippant manner of dealing with both
public and private audiences, with much ‘joking and badinage’, so that people
thought that he had not grasped their business. He did, in fact, have a fine mind
with a quick understanding.
79
Nevertheless, by his own admission and by the
testimony of Richer d’Aube, he was too deferential to Fleury in matters of
government. The abbé Millot concluded from his examination of the now lost
correspondence between d’Angervilliers and Noailles, that ‘the cardinal de Fleury
and the Keeper of the Seals made all the decisions, be it for peace or war.
D’Angervilliers only carried out their wishes; he was keenly aware of this weight of
dependency that had often been detrimental to military service’.
80
In support of this
view he quotes an important letter from the secrétaire to the maréchal in 1735: ‘I
agree that you have had to make war in every kind of difficult circumstance; my
hands have been tied on every point, and I am constantly obliged to write and act
against my better wishes. Let us rejoice at the end of the war’.
81
The following example of his correspondence would seem to be a typical
illustration of his method of work and the result of his travail with Fleury. He wrote
to the maréchal du Bourg, 26 March 1730:
I have reported to M.the cardinal de Fleury, Monsieur, that you did me the
honour of writing me on the twelfth of this month returning the anonymous
memoir addressed to His Eminence on the lease for the farm of the revenues
of the city of Strasbourg. His Eminence was very satisfied with the
explanations contained in your letter; but as there is no indication of unfair
dealings in what has happened, he does not think there is anything to be done
at present; he approves moreover that you and M.de Brou [the intendant],
should pay attention, in a general way, to the use that the city government
makes of its revenues, and desires that, if you notice anything against good
order, you inform His Majesty. I am Sir, etc.
82
He therefore seems to have played the role more of a responsible secretary to Fleury
than that of an independent minister for war and secretary of state. This is
confirmed by the Prussian ambassador’s assessment.
83
The ministry of the contrôleur général Orry is potentially more controversial, when
historians finally give it the attention it deserves. Although his administration has
never been studied in detail, surprisingly enough it has been praised on the
assumption that he must have been rather a good finance minister. For a long time
this period was regarded by historians as one during which a natural recovery took
place after the disasters of the wars of Louis XIV and the further upsets of the Law
system. Fleury aided the recovery by persuing a pacific foreign policy and by fixing
the value of the livre in 1726, or so it has been thought. However, a reassessment is
due because, as Bourde has written, ‘Works on the movement of prices in the
eighteenth century rightly place their point of departure in this period. Revealing
changes in the domain of industrial organisation and production, commerce, and
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145
communications make themselves felt after 1730’.
84
While Bourde points out the
necessity of a detailed study of the Orry administration, he tends to agree with
Carré, Gaxotte, Muret, Lhéritier and Marion that, although it was not a great
ministry, it was ‘nevertheless a “good” ancien régime ministry’.
85
This view should be questioned—not in the sense that the economic achievement
itself should be denied, but in the sense that it is possibly incorrect to attribute the
economic and commercial expansion to the initiative of Orry. Even conceding, with
Bourde, the importance of such subordinates as Fagon, intendant of commerce, and
Daniel Trudaine, it can be argued that the responsibility may lie in an altogether
different direction.
86
Government stimulation and concern has been shown to have
had a very limited impact on production, and in some cases was detrimental. It may
also be suggested, first, that Orry was an excessively traditionally minded finance
minister of the ancien régime and therefore unlikely to have thought up important
commercial policies at a time when he was content to implement badly calculated
financial policies; second, that in matters of policy he was kept in such
subordination to Fleury that Fleury and not he should take the credit, since the
cardinal displayed a real concern for commerce; and third, that since foreign trade
was a more important sector of the economy than internal trade according to the
terms in which national wealth was then calculated, Maurepas played at least as
important a role as Orry.
Mosser, who has studied the intendants of finance, concluded that
‘administrative and judicial business was decided upon by the controller general
and by the intendants of finance’, and that in Orry’s period the assemblies of the
intendants (from which other ministers were absent) were of great importance, as
was shown above.
87
Nevertheless, it remains true that neither she nor Antoine has
tackled the issue of the genesis of economic and financial policy and of the
relationship of the contrôleur général with the premier ministre. Antoine has shown
that of the 3,500 to 4,000 arrêts du conseil promulgated each year, more than two
thirds concerned finance. Of these, ‘it can be estimated that on average, out of eight
to ten arrêts de finance [financial rulings in council], only one was the result of an
examination in Council according to the appropriate forms…In finance, the council
was most often a fiction’.
88
The implications of these studies appear to be that in an administrative
monarchy (if indeed historians are correct in singling out administrative rather than
social processes as its most important characteristic) matters of finance tended to
escape the control of all but the contrôleur général himself. Statistically, this conclusion
would be well supported. But these inferences should be treated with caution. The
statistics do not show the relative importance of the individual arrêts du conseil and
that kind of precise evidence is lacking for this period, owing to the destruction of
the archives. So it is impossible to deduce from the statistics that the contrôleur général
made decisions on matters of policy alone or with his intendants, without
consultation with other ministers.
89
The fact that the conseil des finances met less and
less frequently may not necessarily mean that policy escaped the attention of Louis
XV and Fleury, only that as policy remained unchanged and unoriginal, there was
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146
no need to enter into discussion of the details of the routine execution of policy. In
support of this view, is evidence that at least three of the most important démarches in
policy were submitted to Fleury for approval or discussed in council.
For example, on the subject of putting the administration of the tobacco régie into
the hands of one secrétaire d’état and not with the various intendants, Tressan wrote
to Chauvelin on 31 August 1733: ‘M.the Controller General has reported to Msr
the Cardinal, on the project for a circular letter to the Intendants that I had the
honour of sending him by order of His Eminence, and has approved the letter and
has charged him to sign it and to send it to the Intendants’.
90
This would appear to reveal that even the details of the administration of finance
were dealt with at the highest level. The project for the dixième was discussed in
council in 1733.
91
The plan for discovering the economic ‘état de la France’ in 1730,
although directed by Orry, was neither his idea nor was it adopted without the
approval of Fleury, for it had originally been mooted by Le Peletier Desforts in
1727.
92
It may have been a necessary measure because the contrôleur général was
unable to provide the conseil de commerce with the same sort of information which
Maurepas possessed at the marine.
However, this sort of evidence, even produced in abundance, would not show
whether Fleury merely ratified decisions or actually controlled policy more than the
finance minister. It is therefore necessary to have recourse to two other types of
source which would be called anecdotal. A memoir entitled ‘State of the court’
written on 1 January 1732 included the following statement: ‘The controller general
remains in post because the cardinal leads him where he will, and he does nothing
without orders from His Eminence’.
93
When Chambrier, the Prussian envoy,
described the kingdom in a report of 1740 he singled out Fleury and Maurepas as
the promoters of commercial prosperity, not Orry.
94
The only eighteenth-century author to describe the financial policies of this
period in detail was Richer d’Aube, who devoted a great deal of space to them in his
manuscript ‘Réflexions’.
95
On the basis of his detailed evidence, it might be
concluded that Orry did not exploit his years of office to the benefit of France. It has
often been argued that Orry managed to finance two wars during his
administration and that therefore he was a good minister. The way he did it has not
hitherto been examined (except for his resurrection of the dixième in 1733 and 1741),
but a more detailed study would probably reveal that he was far from the ‘in some
ways radical finance minister’ he was recently described as having been.
96
In order
to finance the War of the Polish Succession, Orry increased the taille, reinstituted the
dixième (which was extremely badly organised), suspended the payment of state
pensions and other current expenditure, obliged the farmers general to make an
advance, and reinstituted a kind of rente viagère, the tontine. The last measure
involved the division of subscribers to the loan into classes according to age, with
the interest being paid until the death of the last member of each class. Richer
d’Aube calculated that for a 12 million livres loan the tontine would, on average,
cost the state 28 million livres besides the original 12 million in repaid capital. He
remarked that if the finance minister could not calculate, the public could: the loans
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147
were filled quickly, often by foreigners. Furthermore, Orry mishandled the supply
of corn to the armies, paying too much for grain and making a probable loss of 9
million livres.
97
By 1735 France was feeling the financial strain and neither Fleury
nor Chauvelin thought it wise to continue the war: ‘Three campaigns, although
sustained by the most onerous means, the like of which has not been seen, have
proved to us that a longer war was impracticable without increasing the already
exorbitant debts of the state.’
98
All these measures, like those at the beginning of Fleury’s ministry, were by then
the traditional expedients of a monarchy whose financial organisation was always
badly in need of reform. The policy followed by Orry was one of economy and not
of reform, and it suited the temperament of the Cardinal-minister. In 1747 when
looking back on this period, Richer d’Aube summarised the financial policy in the
following manner.
The cardinal de Fleury [not Orry be it noted] has carried out some
retrenchments, but not those that could have brought considerable help, and
I believe it would be impossible to cite a single abuse in receipts and
expenditure that he has suppressed. He has tolerated an increase in these
abuses, and in many respects their extension. He often rejects proposals for
expenditure on occasions when it might have been useful to agree to them
and he has at the same time had the King agree to, and has himself ordered,
at least indirectly, expenditure that there was great reason to avoid.
99
Chauvelin was not only secretary for foreign affairs but also the garde des sceaux,
which meant that he also had an important part to play in the administration of the
internal affairs of France. In 1727, presenting the new minister to d’Hoym, the
ambassador of Saxony-Poland, Fleury had said, ‘You can regard him as another
[version of] myself.
100
Richer d’Aube analysed the position of Chauvelin on a
number of occasions. In 1730 he considered that ‘no operation is decided upon
without him being consulted and having a great influence…It is in the operations of
his own department that the credit of the Keeper of the Seals is least impressive.
There are two reasons for this, the natural and extreme suspicion of M.the cardinal
de Fleury, and the [Cardinal’s] idea that he is himself more than capable of
conducting and concluding negotiations for foreign affairs’.
101
It is certainly true that he was involved in a great many areas of policy. In 1727 and
1728 we find him writing a number of memoirs on the financial administration.
102
In
the early 1730s he produced memoirs and letters on the religious problems with the
parlement, and was Fleury’s closest collaborator in the discussion of this affair.
103
He
supplemented the efforts of Fleury to encourage the bishop of Laon to tone down his
attacks on the Jansenists.
104
Moreover, he was constantly writing memoirs on foreign
policy for examination by Fleury and for discussion in the council.
105
On 1 April 1732,
Fleury wrote to all ambassadors formally recognising Chauvelin as an associate on
whose intelligence, energy and honesty he could rely. This was a clear reflection of his
trusted position and vast competence.