Campbell P. Power and Politics in Old Regime France, 1720-1745
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328
NOTES
PREFACE
1 This avenue of interpretation will be further explored in another volume arising from current
research, focusing on the relationship between ideology and the political crisis of the 1780s.
2 However, when this study was under way another study appeared with, to my relief, a very
different focus: B.R.Kreiser, Miracles, Convulsions and Ecclesiastical Politics in Early Eighteenth Century
France, Princeton, 1978.
3 For the suggestion that the middle years of the century were characterised by a politics of
contestation, see K.M.Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, Cambridge, 1990, Chap. 8; R.Chartier
draws together the arguments for a ‘new political culture’ in The Cultural Origins of the French
Revolution, trans. L.G.Cochrane, Durham, 1991, esp. Chap. 7. F.Furet sees the ministry of Turgot
as embodying the inherent contradictions of discourse in his Les révolutions. De Turgot à Jules Ferry,
Paris, 1989.
4 Over sixty years ago, two very thorough studies of foreign policy were published—but nothing
comparable yet exists on the internal history. Ecclesiastical politics, now seen as a vital facet of the
eighteenth century, has been dealt with recently only as a secondary aspect of the main theme of
fine books on miracles and the convulsionary movement of the 1730s. See Kreiser, Miracles,
Convulsions and Ecclesiastical Politics, op. cit.; C.L.Maire, Les convulsionnaires de Saint-Médard, miracles,
convulsions etprophéties à Paris au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1985. General histories of the Paris parlement
have traditionally never considered the ministerial side of the issues, and have therefore reached
rather partisan conclusions. Historians have generally divided into two camps, seeing them either
as a selfish oligarchical group undermining royal reform, or as the last defence of the nation
against despotism. See below, pp. 232–6, 238–9.
5 M.Antoine, Le conseil du roi sous le règne de Louis XV, Geneva, 1970.
6 The most recent and most thorough biography of the King, by Michel Antoine, Louis XV, Paris,
1989, devotes only forty-five pages to Fleury as first minister.
7 The life by Verlaque is drawn from the abbé de Ranchon’s manuscript biography of the 1750s
with little visible attempt at further research; the brief study by M.de Sars, Le Cardinal de Fleury,
Paris, 1946, makes no claims to treat his subject in depth. A.M.Wilson’s French Foreign Policy,
London, 1936, is a fine study, wider than its tide, but no longer authoritative on the career of
Fleury or ministerial politics.
8 M.Filion, Maurepas, ministre de Louis XV, 1715–1749, Montreal, 1967; idem, La pensée et l’action
coloniale de Maurepas vis-à-vis du Canada, 1723–1749, Montreal, 1972; R.Lamontagne, Ministère de la
marine. Amérique et Canada, d’après les documents Maurepas, Montreal, 1966.
9 Nineteenth-century French historians were preoccupied with the legacy of the French Revolution,
and, after 1870, with patriotic views of the past.
10 There are two unpublished theses on governors: J.Batt, ‘The military governors in eighteenth-
century France’, PhD thesis, University of Reading, 1987, and R.E.Smith, ‘A provincial
administration under the Bourbon monarchy: the government of Burgundy in the eighteenth
century’, PhD thesis, Ann Arbor, 1975.
11 Such was the tenor of the perceptive critique by Vicens Vives of the influential analysis of the
absolute monarchy by Hartung and Mousnier in 1955. See below, pp. 8–15.
NOTES
329
INTRODUCTION: APPROACHES TO POLITICS IN THE ANCIEN
REGIME
1 The concept of mentalité has usually been applied to those groups that left little written evidence,
but there is no reason why it should not suit the social elites, in so far as their world differed greatly
from our own, and many of the same questions may be asked. For the concept, see M.Vovelle,
‘Mentalités et idéologies’, in Mentalités et idéologies, and his introduction to De la cave au grenier. Un
itinéraire en provence au XVIIIe siècle. De l’histoire sociale à l’histoire des mentalités, Quebec, 1980. See also
M.Bloch, ‘Sur le passé de la noblesse française: quelques jalons de recherches’, Annales d’histoire
économique et sociale, VIII, 1936, pp. 366–78.
2 See the important historiographical article by B.Guénée, ‘L’histoire de 1’état en France à la fin du
moyen âge, vue par les historiens français depuis cent ans’, Revue hislorique, CCXXXII, 1964, pp.
331–60, trans. in P.S.Lewis, ed., The Recovery of France in the 15th Century, London, 1971, pp. 324–52;
W.F.Church, Louis XIV in Historical Thought, New York, 1976; and F.-X.Emmanuelli, Un mythe de
l’absolutisme bourbonien: l’intendance, du milieu du XVIIe siècle à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, Aixen-Provence, 1981.
3 Cf. his comments on the form that a history of the state should take in Annales d’histoire économique et
sociale, VI, 1934, pp. 306–7.
4 But see W.Doyle, The Old European Order, 1660–1800, Oxford, 1978 and P.Goubert, L’ancien régime,
2 vols, Paris, 1969–73, the latter significantly ending its coverage around 1750.
5 Often their authors were well aware of social and cultural factors, like patronage and clientage, which
still prevailed in their own period, but they took them for granted instead of explaining them.
6 A.de Tocqueville, L’ancien régime et la révolution, ed. G.Lefebvre, Paris, 1952. See the influential essay
by F.Furet on Tocqueville in Interpreting the French Revolution, Cambridge, 1978, pp. 132–63 and his
perceptive critique of Tocqueville’s views on administrative centralisation on pp. 142–6.
7 Tocqueville’s study is of course far too penetrating and stimulating to be equated solely with this
orthodox view and no more, but it is largely through his influence that challenges to it went
unheard.
8 Several generations of researchers, including the influential Georges Pagès, his distinguished
student Roland Mousnier and at present Michel Antoine in France and Richard Bonney in
England, appear to have accepted the broad lines of this view. See G.Pagès, La monarchie d’ancien
régime en France, Paris, 1941 and his ‘Essai sur l’evolution des institutions administratives en France
du commencement du XVIe siècle à la fin du XVIIe’, Revue d’histoire moderne, XII, 1932, pp. 9–57,
113–39; F.Hartung and R.Mousnier, ‘Quelques problèmes concernant la monarchie absolue’, in
Relazioni del X Congresso Internationale di Scienze Storiche, IV, Storia Moderna, Florence, 1955, pp. 1–55; R.
Mousnier, ‘The development of monarchical institutions and society in France’, in R.Hatton, ed.,
Louis XIV and Absolutism, London, 1976 and The Institutions of France under the Absolute Monarchy, 1598–
1789, 2 vols, Chicago, 1979–84; R.J.Bonney, Political Change in France under Richelieu and Mazarin,
1624–1661, Oxford, 1976.
9 P.de Saint-Jacob, Les paysans de la Bourgogne du nord au dernier siècle de l’ancien régime, Dijon, 1960 and
H.L.Root, Peasants and King in Burgundy: Agrarian Foundations of Absolute Monarchy, Berkeley and Los
Angeles, 1987. It must also be said that this policy is also evidence of the continued power of the
seigneurs, who generally won their cases in the parlements.
10 R.Mousnier, ‘La participation des gouvernés à l’activité des gouvernants dans la France des XVIIe
et XVIIIe siècles’, Schweizerische Beitrage zu allegemeine Geschichte, XX, 1962–3, pp. 200–19;
R.Harding, ‘Aristocrats and lawyers in French provincial government, 1559–1648’, in
B.Malament, ed., After the Reformation. Essays in Honour of J.H.Hexter, Manchester, 1980, pp. 95–127;
W. Beik, ‘Two intendants face a popular revolt: social unrest and the structure of absolutism in
1645’, Canadian Journal of History, IX, 1974, pp. 243–62.
11 This is the tenor of the works by R.Mettam, Power and Faction in Louis XIV’s France, Oxford, 1988;
W.Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-century France, Cambridge, 1985; and Emmanuelli, Un
mythe de l’absolutisme bourbonien, op. cit. Significant earlier critiques are E.L.Asher, The Resistance to the
Maritime Classes: The Survival of Feudalism in the Age of Colbert, Berkeley Cal., 1960 and J.Vicens Vives,
‘The administrative structure of the state in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, in H. J.Cohn,
ed., Government in Reformation Europe, 1520–1560, London, 1971—a reply to Hartung and
Mousnier’s influential 1955 article, ‘Quelques problèmes concernant la monarchie absolue’, op.
cit. My own The Ancien Regime in France, Oxford, 1988, makes use of most of the recent work to
provide a brief general critique of the old orthodoxy.
NOTES
330
12 Both R.Mousnier and R.Bonney have argued that absolute monarchy as a concept dates from
Roman times: see R.Mousnier, La monarchie absolue en Europe, du Ve siècle à nos jours, Paris, 1982 and
R.Bonney, L’Absolutisme, Paris, 1989; see also R.Folz, The Concept of Empire in Western Europe from the
Fifth to the Fourteenth Century, London, 1969.
13 As J.Vicens Vives wrote, ‘The history of institutions is not history properly speaking; it is the
description of the condition of the power apparatus at a given moment, a description which
ignores its genesis, and which in particular disregards the tumultuous reality contained in it’. ‘The
administrative structure of the state’, loc. cit., p. 60.
14 Pagès, ‘Essai sur l’évolution des institutions administratives’, pp. 117–39.
15 Vicens Vives, ‘The administrative structure of the state’, p. 59.
16 Thus Mousnier, whose first major work was on venality of office, and Bluche whose study of the
parlementaires did much to alter traditional views, still continued to produce overviews representingthe
old orthodoxy: Mousnier, The Institutions, op. cit. and R.Bluche, Louis XIV, Oxford, 1990.
17 M.Marion, Histoire financière de la France depuis 1715, 6 vols, Paris, 1914–26, vols I and II and more
recently, J.F.Bosher, French Finances 1770–1795, From Business to Bureaucracy, Cambridge, 1970.
18 F.Bayard, Le monde des financiers au XVIIe siècle, Paris, 1988; D.Dessert, Argent, pouvoir et société au grand
siècle, Paris, 1984; M.Brugière, Gestionnaires et profiteurs de la révolution: l’’administration des finances
françaises de Louis XVI à Bonaparte, Paris, 1986.
19 J.Dent, Crisis in Finance: Crown, Financiers and Society in Seventeenth-century France, Newton Abbot, 1973.
20 R.Bonney, The King’s Debts, Finance and Politics in France 1589–1661, Oxford, 1981.
21 Particularly interesting for the present author when beginning his research was H.H.Scullard’s
reconstruction of the politics of the second century BC largely in terms of prosopography: Roman
Politics, 220–150 B.C., 2nd edn, Oxford, 1973; R.Syme’s Roman Revolution, Oxford, 1939 and E.
Badian’s Foreign Clientelae, Oxford, 1958. Of course, the language of their sources was reflected in
that of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by all those educated in the classics. Such studies
first led me to conceive of the present work.
22 See, for example, W.T.MacCaffrey, ‘Place and patronage in Elizabethan politics’, in S.T.Bindoff,
J.Hurstfield, C.H.Williams, eds, Elizabethan Government and Society, London, 1961, pp. 100–10;
C.Coleman and D.Starkey, Revolution Reassessed. Revisions in the History of Tudor Government and
Administration, Oxford, 1986; D.Starkey et al., The English Court from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil
Wa r, London, 1987; G.R.Elton, ‘Tudor government: the points of contact. III. The court’,
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, fifth series, XXVI, pp. 211–28; L.L.Peck, ‘“For a king not to
be bountiful were a fault”: perspectives on court patronage in early Stuart England’, Fournal of
British Studies, XXV, 1986, pp. 31–61; K.Sharpe, ed., Faction and Politics, Oxford, 1978; on the
eighteenth century, see L.Colley,. In Defiance of Oligarchy: the Tory Party, 1714–1760, London, 1982
and L.B.Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, 2nd edn, London, 1957. For the
prosopographical approach in general, see L.Stone, ‘Prosopography’, in The Past and the Present
Revisited, London, 1987, pp. 45–73.
23 R.Mousnier, ‘Les survivances médiévales dans la France du XVIIe siècle’, Dix-septième siècle, CVI,
1975, pp. 59–79; Y.Durand, ed., Hommage à Roland Mousnier, clientèles et fidélités en Europe à l’epoque
moderne, Paris, 1981; R.Mousnier, ‘Les fidélités et les clientèles en France aux XVIe, XVIIe et
XVIIIe siècles’, Histoire sociale—Social history, XV, no. 29, 1982, pp. 35–46.
24 O.Ranum, Richelieu and the Councillors of Louis XIII…, Oxford, 1963; R.R.Harding, Anatomy of a
Power Elite: The Provincial Governors of Early-Modern France, New Haven, 1978.
25 See, for example, E.Schalk, ‘Clientage, elites and absolutism in seventeenth-century France’, French
Historical Studies, XIV, 1986, pp. 442–6, introducing a special issue on the subject.
26 S.Kettering, Patrons, Brokers and Clients in Seventeenth-century France, New York, 1986.
27 J.Boucher, La Cour de Henri III, Quest-France, 1986; R.C.Mettam, Power and Faction in Louis XIV’s
France, Oxford, 1988; S.Kettering, ‘Gift giving and patronage in early modern France’, French
History, II, 1988, pp. 131–51; ‘The patronage power of early modern French noblewomen’,
Historical Journal, XXXII, 1989, pp. 817–41; ‘Patronage in early modern France’, French Historical
Studies, XVII, 1992, pp. 839–62; ‘Friendship and clientage in early modern France’, French History,
VI, 1992, pp. 139–58.
28 R.Mousnier, ‘La mobilité sociale au XVIIe siècle’, Dix-septième siècle, no. 122, 1979.
29 K.B.Neuschel, Word of Honour: Interpreting Noble Culture in Sixteenth-century France, Ithaca N.Y., 1989.
30 M.Greengrass, ‘Noble affinities in early modern France: the case of Henri I de Montmorency,
constable of France’, European History Quarterly, XVI, 1986, pp. 275–311; Stuart Carroll, ‘Ceux de
Guise: the Guise family and their affinity in Normandy, 1550–1600’, unpublished PhD thesis,
NOTES
331
University of London, 1993; and S.Carroll, ‘The Guise affinity and popular protest during the
Wars of Religion’, French History, June 1995; S.Kettering, ‘Patronage and kinship in early modern
France’, French Historical Studies, XVI, 1989, pp. 406–35.
31 See A.Jouanna, ‘Recherches sur la notion d’honneur au XVIe siècle’, Revue d’histoire moderne et
contemporaine, XV, 1968, pp. 171–201, and her Le devoir de révolte; la noblesse et la gestation de l’état
moderne, 1559–1661, Paris, 1989.
32 Kettering, ‘Gift giving and patronage’, op. cit.
33 S.N.Eisenstadt and L.Roniger, Patrons, Clients and Friends, Cambridge, 1984, and A.Weingrod,
‘Patrons, patronage and political parties’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, VII, 1968, pp.
377–400; S.W.Schmidt, L.Guasti, C.H.Landé and J.C.Scott, eds, Friends, Followers and Factions,
Berkeley, 1976.
34 See, for example, the dissolution of the d’Epernon clientage network in the 1630s, as studied by
I.Crysafidou in Chapter 6, ‘Richelieu and the grands: the duc d’Epernon’, unpublished PhD
thesis, Sussex University, 1991—a thesis rich in detail on the formation, operation and dissolution
of a network in the first half of the seventeenth century. It surely deserves publication.
35 For the subdelegates, their historian notes, ‘At the end of the seventeenth century, the subdelegates
had become as it were the intendants’ “men”, in the feudal sense of the term’. See J.Ricommard,
‘Les subdélégués des intendants aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles’, 3 articles, L’Information historique,
1962, pp. 139–48, 190–5, 1963, pp. 1–7, quotation p. 146.
36 J.Rule, ‘The commis of the department of foreign affairs, 1680–1715’, Western Society for French
History, Proceedings, 8, 1980, pp. 69–80 and D.C.Baxter, ‘Premiers commis in the war department in
the later part of the reign of Louis XIV, ibid., pp. 81–9. It should be noted that this evidence is the
more telling in that the commis in these departments were not venal office-holders as they were in
the other ministries.
37 P.Lefebvre, ‘Aspects de la fidélité en France au XVIIe siècle: le cas des agents du prince de Condé’,
Revue historique, CCL, 1973, pp. 59–106.
38 A notable exception is the essay by E.Le Roy Ladurie, ‘Système de la cour (Versailles vers 1709)’,
in L’Arc, 65, pp. 21–35, translated and expanded as ‘Versailles observed: the court of Louis XIV in
1709’, in The Mind and Method of the Historian, Brighton, 1981, pp. 149–7 3 and the article by D.
J.Roorda, ‘Party and faction’, Acta Historiae Neerlandicae, II, 1967, pp. 188–222.
39 The best-known factions are those of the Colbert and the Le Tellier during the reign of Louis XIV.
See for the Colbert, J.L.Bourgeon, Les Colbert avant Colbert, Paris, 1973; R.Mousnier, ed., Le conseil du
roi de Louis XII à la Révolution, Paris, 1970; R.Mousnier, ed., Un nouveau Colbert, actes du collogue pour
le tricentenaire, Paris, 1985; J.Meyer, Colbert, Paris, 1984; D.Dessert, ‘Le lobby Colbert: un royaume
ou une affaire de famille?’, Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 1974, pp. 847–82; A.Corvisier,
Louvois, Paris, 1983.
40 Studies of individual families can make an invaluable contribution to our understanding: in
addition to the works cited in note 39 above, for the seventeenth century see J.L.Bourgeon, Les
Colbert, Paris, 1973; Mousnier, ed., Le conseil du roi; D.J.Sturdy, The d’Aligres de la Rivière: Servants of
the Bourbon State in the Seventeenth Century, Royal Historical Society Studies in History, 68,
Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1986, and C.Frostin, ‘La famille ministérielle des Phélypeaux: esquisse
d’un profil Pontchartrain’, Annales de Bretagne, 86, 1979, pp. 117–40; for the eighteenth century
see R.Forster, The House of Saulx-Tavannes. Versailles and Burgundy, 1700–1830, Baltimore, 1971;
P.Bisson de Barthélemy, Les Joly de Fleury, procureurs généraux au Parlement de Paris au XVIIIe siècle,
Paris, 1964.
41 See R.Mousnier, La vénalité des offices sous Henri IV et Louis XIII, Rouen, 1945 and Paris, 1971; D.
Bien, ‘Offices, corps, and a system of state credit: the uses of privilege under the ancien régime’, in
K.Baker, ed., The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture: Volume I, The Political
Culture of the Old Regime, Oxford, 1988, pp. 89–114; on the extent of office-holding in the eighteenth
century, see W.Doyle, ‘The price of offices in pre-revolutionary France, Historical Journal, XXVII,
1984, pp. 831–60.
42 On the role of an aristocratic lieutenant-general in the eighteenth century, see Forster, House of
Saulx-Tavannes, pp. 12–20.
43 See ‘Serviteurs du roi: quelques aspects de la fonction publique au XVIIe siècle’, special issue, Dix-
septième siècle, nos 42–3, 1959.
44 Emmanuelli, Un mythe de l’absolutisme bourbonien, pp. 44–5.
45 See R.Mettam’s chapter on the governing of Provence in ‘The role of the higher aristocracy in
France under Louis XIV, unpublished PhD thesis, Cambridge University, 1967; A.Babeau, Le
NOTES
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maréchal de Villars gouverneur de Provence. D’après sa correspondence inédite, Paris, 1892, F.-X.Emmanuelli,
Histoire de Provence, Paris, 1980, p. 190 ff.; see also the summary of Emmanuelli’s thesis by
P.Goubert in Provence Historique, 1972, pp. 499–501, in which the links with court families are
particularly emphasised.
46 C.Frostin, ‘L’organisation ministérielle sous Louis XIV: cumul d’attributions et situations
conflictuelles’, Revue historique de droit français et étranger, LVIII, 1980, pp. 201–26, p. 201.
47 C.Frostin, ‘Le chancelier de France, Louis de Pontchartrain, “ses” premiers présidents, et la
discipline des cours souveraines’, Cahiers d’histoire, 1982, pp. 9–34, p. 32.
48 N.Elias, The Court Society, trans E.Jephcott, Oxford, 1983. When it was first published in 1969 in
German, the references were not updated, and the text therefore reflects its era of composition. It
was really taken note of after its translation into French in 1975. Perhaps the timing of this
rediscovery is not unconnected with the move away from institutional history towards cultural
studies then gathering way.
49 N.Elias, The Civilising Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, trans E.Jephcott, 2 vols,
Oxford, 1978–82. For more recent views of civility, see R.Chartier, ‘From texts to manners. A
concept and its books: civilité between aristocratic distinction and popular appropriation’, in The
Cultural Uses of Print in Early Modern France, trans L.G.Cochrane, Princeton, 1987, pp. 71–109.
50 On Elias, see R.Chartier, ‘Social figuration and habitus. Reading Elias’, in Cultural History: Between
Practices and Representations, trans L.G.Cochrane, Ithaca, 1988.
51 Saint-Simon, Parallèle des trois premiers rois Bourbons, ed. J.de Bonnot, Paris, 1967, pp. 289–90. For a
more systematic treatment of civility in the service of the monarch, see O.Ranum, ‘Courtesy,
absolutism and the rise of the French state, 1630–1660’ Journal of Modern History, LII, 1980:426–51.
52 R.Giesey, ‘The king imagined’, in Baker, ed., The Political Culture of the Old Regime, op. cit., pp. 141–
60 and G.Sabatier, ‘Representare il principe, figurer l’Etat. Les programmes iconographiques
d’état en France et en Italie du XVe au XVIIe siècle’, in Genèse de l’état moderne: Bilans et perspectives,
Paris, 1990, pp. 247–58.
53 M.Magendie, La politesse mondaine et les théories de l’honnêteté en France au XVIIe siècle, 2 vols, Paris,
1925.
54 See below, pp. 27–9. J.Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a
Category of Bourgeois Society, trans T.Burger and F.Lawrence, Cambridge Mass., 1989.
55 For a critique of this kind of evidence and the way in which Elias has used it, see A.Bryson, The
Concept of Civility in Early Modern England, forthcoming, Oxford, Introduction. This important book
also contains a critique of Elias’ use of Freudian psychology in his history of the civilising process.
56 J.Bergin, Cardinal Richelieu: Power and the Pursuit of Wealth, New York and London, 1985; Dessert,
Argent, pouvoir.
57 The best studies are a collection of essays edited by R.Asch and A.M.Birke, Princes, Patronage and the
Nobility. The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, c. 1450–1650, Oxford, 1990, with an especially
fine introductory essay by Asch; J.Boucher, La cour de Henri III, Quest-France, 1986; R. Mettam,
Power and Faction in Louis XIV’s France, Oxford, 1988. See also H.Himmelfarb, ‘Versailles, fonctions
et légendes’, in Les lieux de mémoire, ed. P.Nora, II, La Nation, Paris, 1986, vol. 2, pp. 235–92 and
E.Pommier, ‘Versailles, l’image du souverain’, ibid., pp. 193–234; J.-F.Solnon, La cour de France,
Paris, 1987.
58 See D.La Capra and S.Kaplan, eds, Modern European Intellectual History. Reappraisals and New
Perspectives, Ithaca N.Y., 1982.
59 See also R.Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, Durham, 1991.
60 See K.M.Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, Cambridge, 1990, esp. Introduction, Chaps 1, 5 and
8; F.Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, trans E.Forster, Cambridge, 1981, Part I, e.g. p. 49: ‘The
revolution replaced the conflict of interests for power with a competition of discourses for the
appropriation of legitimacy’.
61 We might note in passing that much recent work on the Revolution is emphasising a search for
transparency.
62 See the articles by D.Gordon, D.Bell and S.Maza, in ‘The public sphere in the eighteenth century’,
a forum in French Historical Studies, XVII, no. 4, 1992, pp. 882–956. Bell’s argument that the sphere
was not exclusively bourgeois but was deeply influenced by both the French state itself and by
‘longstanding French political traditions’ (especially the judicial culture) seems to me to be
persuasive and to be supported by the present study. Since 1962 when Habermas wrote, much
work has been done on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century popular (i.e. urban) politics which
would suggest that reasoning on religion and politics was not so much absent in these periods as
NOTES
333
neglected by historians. Popular politics did not reflect elite politics; it was informed by it and
remained somewhat independent. See, for example, R.Descimon, Qui étaient les Seize? Mythes et
réalités de la Ligue parisienne, 1585–1594, Paris, 1983; B.Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and
Huguenots in Sixteenth-century Paris, Oxford, 1991. A pre-history of the bourgeois public sphere could
be written which might decidedly blur the eighteenth-century chronology. For a critical evaluation
of the debate over the public sphere, see A.J.La Vopa, ‘Conceiving a public: ideas and society in
eighteenth-century Europe’, Journal of Modern History, LXIV, 1992, pp. 79–116.
63 See, in particular, E.Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural
Transformations in Early Modern Europe, 2 vols, Cambridge, 1979, and D.Roche, Le siècle des lumières en
province: Académies et académiciens provinciaux, 1680–1789, 2 vols, Paris, 1978.
64 K.M.Baker, ‘Politics and public opinion under the Old Regime: some reflections’, in Press and
Politics in Prerevolutionary France, J.R.Censer and J.D.Popkin, eds, Berkeley, 1987, pp. 204–46,
reprinted in Inventing the French Revolution, Cambridge, 1990. See also M.Ozouf, ‘L’opinion
publique’, in Baker, Political Culture, pp. 419–34.
65 See below, Chapters 11, 12 and 14.
66 Two recent studies to make a notable departure from this are D.Garrioch, ‘Verbal insults in
eighteenth-century Paris’ and D.Outram, ‘Le langage mâle de la vertu: women and the discourse
of the French Revolution’, both in P.Burke and R.Porter, eds, The Social History of Language,
Cambridge, 1987.
67 A fine and complex example of such history is M.Fogel, Les Cérémonies de l’information dans la France
du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1989.
68 For the ‘constitutional’ view, see E.Carcassonne, Montesquieu et le problème de la constitution française au
XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1927, and most recently, J.Merrick, ‘Disputes over words and constitutional
conflict in France, 1730–1732’, French Historical Studies, XIV, 1986, pp. 497–520.
69 See D.K.Van Kley, The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits from France, 1757–1765, New Haven,
1975, and below, Chapters 11 and 12.
70 This problem and current approaches to the history of ideas are usefully discussed in J.G.A.
Pocock, ‘The state of the art’, in his Virtue, Commerce and History, Cambridge, 1985.
71 Baker is careful to avoid this error in his writings, in which he emphasises his search for the
discourses to be of significance later, in the Revolution.
72 On rhetoric, see M.Fumaroli, L’Age de l’éloquence: Rhétorique et ‘res literaria’ de la Renaissance au seuil de
l’époque classique, Geneva, 1980; P.France, Rhetoric and Truth in France, Descartes to Diderot, London,
1972; Fogel, Les Cérémonies de l’information.
73 S.Hanley, The lit de justice of the Kings of France: Constitutional Ideology in Legend, Ritual and Discourse,
Princeton, 1983; and R.E.Giesey, The Royal Funeral Ceremony in Renaissance France, Geneva, 1960; see
also R.A.Jackson, Vive le Roi! A History of the French Coronation from Charles V to Charles X, Chapel Hill
and London, 1984.
74 For example, on the discourse of the parlementaires in the seventeenth century, see Fumaroli,
L’Age de l’eloquence.
75 On women in politics, see the perceptive study by S.Maza, Private Lives and Public Affairs. The Causes
Célèbres in Prerevolutionary France, Berkeley, 1993, esp. Chap. 4.
76 For example, see M.-F.Pidansat de Mairobert, Memoirs of madame du Barry [1775], ed.
E.Cruickshanks, London, 1956.
77 The Journal of the marquis de Bombelles is especially rich in references to the Polignac court ladies
as intermediaries on personal and political matters.
78 Chartier does not mention it in his Cultural Origins of the Revolution, and Baker omitted it from his
tripartite categorisation of discourses at the accession of Louis XVI, although it was included in his
later collected essays in the form of a study of Guillaume Saige.
79 On the Jansenists in this context, see particularly, R.M.Golden, The Godly Rebellion, Chapel Hill,
1981.
80 The work of D.Carroll Joynes on ‘Jansenists and ideologues: opposition theory in the parlement
of Paris (1750–1775)’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 1981, would suggest it was
a question of what I have called elsewhere old wine in new bottles. Focusing on the realm of
ideology, Baker has argued that three main discourses of the later period were clearly visible in the
1770s—a discourse of will, of justice and of reason. But can we assume as he does that their
arguments were not visible in much the same guise (if perhaps in a slightly different language) in
the 1590s or in 1614? The Secretaries of State Bellièvre and Villeroy seem to have had much the
same debates then, over the issue of venality of office. See E.H.Dickerman, Bellièvre and Villeroy,
NOTES
334
Providence, 1971.Richet’s work on ideology at the time of the League is also revealing in the same
respect. The novelty of a new politics of contestation in the 1750s therefore becomes harder to
prove.
81 See G.Bossenga, The Politics of Privilege: Old Regime and Revolution in Lille, Cambridge, 1991. The
study does not however consider ways apart from the experience of institutional conflict that may
have contributed to the formation of a universalist rhetoric of resistance, for example, the office-
holders’ education in the classics or their involvement with the publications and learned societies
of the Enlightenment.
82 A notable recent exception is D.A.Bell, Lawyers and Citizens, The Making of a Political Elite in Old Regime
France, New York and Oxford 1994.
1 THE RISE TO POWER OF ANDRE-HERCULE DE FLEURY
1 D.Richet, ‘La formation des grands serviteurs de l’état’, L’Arc, 65, 1976, pp. 54–61.
2 The certificate of baptism is in the papers of cardinal de Fleury, B.N., N.a.f., 22404, and a copy of
this certificate with his date of birth is to be found in B.P.R., L.P. 434, no. 2.
3 F.A.Aubert de La Chenaye-Desbois, Dictionnaire de la noblesse, 3rd edn, 19 vols, Paris, 1863–76.
4 On the importance of cloth manufacture in Lodève, and the family of Fleury, see E.Martin, Histoire
de Lodève, Montpellier, 1900, vol. II, pp. 216–18 and E.Appolis, Un pays languedocien au milieu du
XVIIIe siècle, Le diocèse civil de Lodève, Albi, 1951, pp. 317–18, 481. For the family of Fleury, see also
M.de Sars, Le cardinal de Fleury, apôtre de la paix, Paris, 1946, pp. 12–15; for his immediate ancestors,
see A.Vitalis, ‘Fleury, les origines—la jeunesse’, Annales du midi, XVIII, 1906, pp. 40–62.
5 The holder of the post was required not simply to centralise the different sums sent by the tax
collectors of the local communities, but also to make advances on the receipts.
6 André-Hercule was not the only child of Jean de Fleury and Lucrèce de Rosset. His older brother
Gabriel inherited most of the family titles and became a councillor in the cour des comptes, aides et finances
of Montpellier. In 1674 the connection with the cour des comptes was strengthened when his sister
married jean Cordurier, the court’s avocat-général. Another sister married in 1680 Bernadin de Rosset,
a second cousin into whose hands fell the wealth of the Rosset, and it was his son who, in 1736, was
eventually to receive the dukedom of Rosset de Fleury created in recognition of André-Hercule’s
services to the state. Henry de Fleury, a second older brother and baron de Fozières inherited the
offices held by his uncle, the treasurer general. See Sars, Le cardinal de Fleury, op. cit., pp. 12–15.
7 The Dictionnaire de Morèri says that he presented theses in Latin and Greek in which he expounded
the principal dogmas of the Athenian philosophers. The papers of cardinal de Fleury, B.N., N.a.f.,
22404, reveal that he was already at the collège d’Harcourt in 1668 and had been in Paris in 1666.
8 Quoted in Sars, Le cardinal de Fleury, p. 20.
9 He took his four minor orders and subdiaconate at Béziers in 1674, all almost certainly through
the good offices of Pierre de Bonsy. See Fleury’s papers, loc. cit., certificates of 1668 and 1674 and
Saint-Simon, Mémoires, XI, pp. 138–45. For his licence and ordinations, see his papers, loc. cit.,
certificates of 11 July 1676 and 16 July 1676.
10 M.Magendie, La politesse mondaine et les théories de l’honnêteté, en France, au XVIIe siècle, de 1600 à 1660,
2 vols, Paris, 1925; C.Lougee, Le paradis des femmes: Women, Salons, and Social Stratification in
Seventeenth-century France, Princeton, 1976.
11 On Lamoignon (1609–77) see Saint-Simon, XIII, pp. 142–4 and notes and d’Ormesson’s
description of his Monday literary gatherings. The cardinal de Bouillon’s sister-in-law, the
duchesse de Bouillon, had the most important salon of the period and the hotel de Bouillon
became the centre of a society where high aristocrats mixed with some of the greatest literary
talents of the day. Mme de Sévigné, Mme de la Fayette, Corneille and Molière were often present,
together with a host of minor talents who on occasion included Fleury. During the 1680s and
1690s Fleury also frequented other salons and was received by Pomponne and Torcy, by the
maréchal de Villeroy and his wife, and particularly by the Noailles—see Ranchon, ‘Histoire…de
Fleury’, B.N., N.a.f., 2076, pp. 10–14 and idem, rough draft, B.N., N.a.f., 21795, pp. 14–15, and
Saint-Simon, VI, pp. 49–50 and VI, app. III.
12 His conversation was probably more literary than political, although Fleury may have been on the
very fringes of the circle of the due de Bourgogne. He was ‘en grande liaison et commerce de
lettres’ with Valincourt, the secretary to the comte de Toulouse. Valincourt, born in the same year
NOTES
335
as Fleury, first became known for his critique of La Princesse de Clèvea (1678). Later he succeeded his
friend Racine as a member of the Academy and royal historiographer. His patron was Mme de
Maintenon and, although Fleury was not to meet her until later, he probably already knew two of
her intimates, Mme de Lévis and Mme de Dangeau. Prominent among the mutual friends of
Valincourt and Fleury was Fléchier, the bishop of Nîmes, who was regarded at the time as a writer
of a talent to rival that of Bossuet.
13 The marquis de Castries (1611–74) was ‘highly regarded at court for his merit, his family
connections and his services’—Ranchon, ‘Histoire de Fleury’, B.N., N.a.f., 21795, pp. 5–6 (Ms
2076 makes no mention of these years). He too had benefited from the credit of Bonsy at court. In
1644 he had married that prelate’s sister, had inherited the governorship of Montpellier, and in
1668 he became one of the three lieutenants-general of Languedoc. Like Lamoignon he was much
esteemed—see Saint-Simon, III, pp. 325–8.
14 The powerful and influential Noailles family was another Languedocian connection: see R.
Mettam, ‘The role of the higher aristocracy in France under Louis XIV, unpublished PhD thesis,
University of Cambridge, 1967, art. on Noailles, Part II, Chap. 2 and on Noailles in Languedoc,
Part III, Chap. 4; abbé Millot, Mémoires politiques et militaires…de Noailles, 6 vols, Lausanne, 1778, III,
esp. pp. 253–4, 347–8. Fleury was fortunate enough to become an intimate, lifelong friend of the
maréchale, who was one of those powerful, intelligent and immensely influential women at the
court of Versailles.
15 Saint-Simon explains that Jean de Fleury ‘s’étoit fourré parmi les valets du cardinal de Bonsy, dont
il avoit obtenu la protection du temps de sa faveur à la cour et qu’il pouvoit tout en Languedoc’.
He presented his son, ‘qui plut tellement à cette éminence italienne qu’il en prit soin’, see Saint-
Simon, VI, pp. 46–7.
16 Each quarter of the year, two almoners served and Fleury’s quarter began in July (Etat de France, 2
vols, 1677). This was a post usually reserved for the best court families, and the haughty courtiers
raised their eyebrows when Fleury’s uncle was allowed to buy it for him, the son of a provincial
tax collector—Saint-Simon, VI, p. 49. This may explain the very high price paid, some 77,000
livres, when the normal price was 50,000 to 60,000 livres—Ranchon, 21795, pp. 12–13. A certain
abbé de Brou, born in the same year as Fleury and who became almoner in 1677, was appointed
bishop of Amiens in 1687 and apparently had only bought the office of almoner in the hope of
becoming a bishop—Saint-Simon, IV, p. 94.
17 ‘Fleury étoit connu et fort aimé de M.le cardinal de Bonsy, grand aumônier de la Reine. M.le
cardinal de Bonsy lui procura un canonical de l’église de Montpellier; peu de temps aprés il le fit
venir a la cour, ou il lui fit acheter une charge d’aumônier de la Reine, qui se vendoit alors’ Saint-
Simon, VI, p. 49.
18 He was close to the King both by virtue of his functions and his personal credit. As a member of
the House of Bouillon, foreign princes in France, he was near the pinnacle of the social pyramid.
During the 1670s and early 1680s the house was at the height of its greatness.
19 Queen Marie-Thérèse wrote to several bishops soliciting his deputation, see A.N., O
1
3714, fol. 89.
He later also attended the assemblies of 1700 and 1705.
20 Marquis de Lassay, Recueil de différentes choses, 4 vols, Paris, 1756, I, p. 301.
21 ‘La chapelle du roi était, pour les jeunes ecclésiastiques, une autre espèce de séminaire qui les
préparoit a entrer dans le monde, comme les mousquetaires étoient une seconde education pour
ceux qui se destinoient au service’, Mémoires de la duchesse de Brancas, suivies de la correspondance de Mme
de Châteauroux, ed. E.Asse, Paris, 1890. The offices were regarded as ‘the open road to benefices’:
Saint-Simon, XXVII, p. 127.
22 Saint-Simon claims that ‘II n’estimoit pas sa conduite et disoit qu’il étoit trop dissipé, trop dans les
bonnes compagnies et que trop de gens parloient pour lui’. He adds later that ‘le Roi n’avon pas
tort de n’y trouver rien d’ecclésiastique, et, quoiqu’il se conduisît fort sagement, il étoit difficile que
tout en fut ignore’. Given that Fleury was later a model of good conduct as a bishop, and that
Saint-Simon deliberately lied about his activities during the invasion of Provence in 1707, these
allegations may not have been true.
23 ‘Soil que le Roi le trouvât trop répandu dans le monde ou par quelque mauvais office secret, il ne
donna presque point de bénéfices et ne pouvoit se résoudre à le faire évêque’—P.Dangeau, Fournal,
ed. E.Soulié et al., 19 vols, Paris, 1854–60, (hereafter Journal) VI, pp. 452–3. A letter from Mme de
Maintenon to archbishop Noailles reveals that the promotion really was a mark of esteem for the
Noailles. ‘Je suis bien contente de la promotion, parce qu’il me semble que vous l’approuverés,
Monseigneur, et qu’elle marque la considération que le Roy a pour vous. Mr l’abé de Fleuri
NOTES
336
n’estoit pas, par luy seul, un personnage a estre systot Evesque’—Mme de Maintenon to Noailles,
22 November 1699, Correspondence générate, ed. La Vallée, 4 vols, Paris, 1865–6, IV
24 Villars was the governor of the province and he wrote to intendant Le Bret that he thought it ‘in
the interests of Provence that such a clever and respectable man as M. de Fréjus should play a
greater part in its affairs’. Fleury apparently refused the offer of this post which would have
meant that he became a member of the committee of eleven which dealt with provincial affairs
on behalf of the assembly between sessions. Villars to Le Bret, 15 August 1713, B.N., Mss fr.,
8959, fols 13–14.
25 There is little reason to believe the accounts by Voltaire and Saint-Simon of Fleury at Fréjus. The
dislike felt for Fleury by Saint-Simon is also exposed by his distorted account of the conduct of the
bishop during the War of the Spanish Succession. Saint-Simon, XXVI, pp. 85–6.
26 Correspondence published in Saint-Simon, XV, app. V, citation from p. 532.
27 He augmented the modest revenue of the diocesan seminary, and he made efforts to provide better
facilities for the parishes. At the annual meetings of the synod he tried to reform his clergy; indeed,
after his pastoral visit in 1703 he promulgated a synodal ordinance designed to remedy many
abuses. To judge by the terms of this ordinance, which was expanded in 1704 after the completion
of his tour of the diocese, Fleury was strict and dutiful. See H.Espitalier, Les évêques de Fréjus du XIIIe
siècle à la fin du XVllle siècle, 2 vols, Draguignan, 1898, II, pp. 295–372. Fleury’s first pastoral letter
urging acceptance of the condemnation of Fénelon’s Explication des Maximes des saints, is in
A.A.E.,Mém. et Doc., France, 1730, fols 231–4.
28 In one letter Fleury remarks that he had begun a critical examination of the Réflexions morales in
1706. An examination of the contents of the personal library of Fleury in his country house at
Issy reveals that almost all the books dated before the 1720s were the works of religious
exegesis, thus indicating a long interest in matters of dogma. It included several works by
Bossuet including his speech at the Assembly of Clergy in 1682; the Histoire ecclésiastique by
Claude Fleury, 1692; three books by Père Thomasin of the Oratory; two copies of the Aventures
de Télémaque by Fénelon, one dated 1699, the other 1717. Several books published between 1714
and 1720 are on grammar, education and languages. The overwhelming majority of books is on
theology ‘Catalogue de livres du cardinal de Fleury qui sont dans son appartement à Issy’, B.N.,
N.a.f., 1727.
29 Fleury to Noailles, 11 July 1711, ‘Correspondance du cardinal de Noailles’, B.N., Mss fr.
(23217 18), 23217, fols 34–5. See also 17 May 1711, ibid., fols 37–8, 16 December 1711, ibid.,
fols 41–3; and 4 May 1714, in L.Paris, Les papiers de Noailles de la Bibliothèque du Louvre…, 2 vols,
Paris, 1875, II, pp. 34–5. All are extremely difficult to read and are cited in extenso in Campbell,
thesis, pp. 41–6.
30 Fleury to Noailles, 17 October 1713, B.N., Mss fr., 23218, fol. 167.
31 See Espitalier, Les évêques, pp. 354–66, where he cites the mandement of 6 May 1714 at length.
32 In the summer of 1714 he related to Rohan how well received his publication had been, but
confided his disappointment that it had failed to have a favourable effect upon one of his old
friends, Colbert, bishop of Montpellier, who was at the forefront of the resistance to the Bull. With
his friendship with Colbert in jeopardy, Fleury was sorry to see such bitterness and dogmatism.
‘They consider all those who do their duty as men devoted to the court. If they were prepared to
confer and listen, I believe that some concessions could be made to avoid schism. But they go too
far and want to have the upper hand.’ See Fleury to Rohan, Montpellier, 26 July 1714, B.N., Mss
fr., 17748, quoted in V.Durand, Le jansénisme au XVllle siècle et Joachim Colbert, évêque de Montpellier,
Toulouse, 1907, p. 26.
33 See below, Chapter 9.
34 Saint-Simon, XXXIII, p. 403. On 11 June 1711 the Princess Palatine, mother of the future Regent
wrote: ‘There is perpetual war between the Jesuits and the Jansenists, but the Jesuits are upheld by
the King, which strengthens them very much. They torment the others in every possible way; and
here one cannot get on better than by taking part against them’.
35 The account by Saint-Simon (XXVI, pp. 87–9) is a fascinating portrait in detail of the way in
which a courtier would normally make use of his patrons; nevertheless, it errs from the truth on
one important point. Saint-Simon attributes great dissimulation to Fleury with the suggestion that
he adopted a religious stance purely to further his worldly career. The memorialist counted
himself a supporter of the Jansenist faction and he quite simply blackened the character of a man
he disliked by attributing to him undue ambition. In fact, Fleury did not suddenly manufacture a
religious cloak for his designs. The expression of his religious opinions in the private letters to
NOTES
337
Noailles in 1711 differs in no way from the attitudes which motivated his public activities in 1713
and 1714.
36 Sainte-Beuve, relying too heavily upon the reports to be found in the memoirs of d’Argenson and
Bernis, laid the blame on Fleury’s doorstep: Cauteries du lundi, 4th edn, Paris, 1883, II, p. 488. Both
of his sources had fallen foul of Fleury, the first for his connection with the disgraced minister
Chauvelin and the second for his indiscreet ambition, and they subsequently sketched him in an
unfavourable light. Bernis accused the preceptor of educating the King to suit his own ends, failing
to bring out his better qualities, with the exception of religious devotion, and made up a tale of
Fleury being discovered with the King putting paper curlers in his grey hair—F.J.Bernis, Mémoires et
lettres, ed. Fr.Masson, 2 vols, Paris, 1878, I, pp. 48–9. D’Argenson asserts that instead of working
Fleury entertained the King with card games and that a book lay open for six months at the same
page—Journal et mémoires, ed. E.J.Rathery, 9 vols, Paris, 1859–67, II, p. 259. A.M. Wilson, French
Foreign Policy During the Administration of Cardinal Fleury, 1726–1743, Cambridge Mass., 1936, repeats
these stories, pp. 25–6.
37 G.Dufresne de Beaucourt, ‘Le caractère de Louis XV’, Revue des questions historiques, III, 1867, pp.
172–217.
38 C.L.H.Villars, Mémoires du maréchal de Villars, ed. Petitot et Monmerqué, Collection des mémoires relatifs
à l’histoire de France, LXIX–LXXI, Paris 1825 (hereafter Villars, LXIX etc.) LXX, p. 111; anon,
Memoirs of the Life and Administration of Andrew Hercules de Fleury…By an Impartial Hand, London, 1743,
p. 7.
39 B.N., Mss fr., 1755–8, 2322–4; ‘Abrege de l’histoire des rois de France’, Bibliothèque de Cambrai,
Mss 743–5.
40 On Louis XV’s education see M.Antoine, Louis XV, Paris, 1989, pp. 52–92.
41 Dangeau, Journal, pp. 37, 86.
42 ‘M.le Regent ne pouvoit que se louer de la manière dont l’eveque de Frejus vivoit a la Cour. Ce
prelat comme nous avons deja dit n’entroit pour rien dans aucune intrigue, et ne se meloit des
affaires du gouvernement que lesquelles interessoit la religion, ou que les ministres le consultoient.
Cheri, respecte de toute la Cour, il avoit aussi la Confiance d’un grand nombre de Courtisans.’
Ranchon, ‘Histoire de Fleury’ (1 751), rough copy, B.N., N.a.f., 21795, p. 118.
43 The memorialist explains that they had met towards the end of the life of Louis XIV, at the house
of Mme de Saint-Géran. Much later, through Mme de Lévis, they became much better acquainted
and Fleury used to dine with Saint-Simon: XXXVIII, pp. 31–3.
44 See Wilson, French Foreign Policy, Chap. 1, and a more recent reassessment in J.H.Shennan, Philippe,
Duke of Orleans, London, 1979, Chap. III.
45 See A.Baudrillart, ‘Les prétentions de Philippe V à la couronne de France’, Revue des questions
historiques, XLI, 1887, pp. 96–147 and below, pp. 78–9, 116.
46 For this new view, see Richer d’Aube, ‘Réflexions sur le gouvernement de France’, B.N., N.a.f.,
9511, p. 286, confirmed by Dubois to Tencin, 25 June 1723, A.A.E., Mém. et Doc., Rome, 52, fol.
481–2 (more accessibly quoted in Campbell, thesis, p. 55).
47 Ranchon, ‘Histoire de Fleury’, 2076, pp. 202–7; A.A.E., Mém. et Doc., France, 139, fol. 194.
48 This paragraph is based primarily on the excellent study by M.Antoine, Le conseil du roi sous le règne
de Louis XV, Geneva, 1970, pp. 82, 86, 93, 94, 109–13.
49 G.Hardy, Le cardinal de Fleury et le mouvement janséniste, Paris, 1925, pp. 11–12. ‘Fleury domina tout de
suite dans cette Assemblée purement ecclésiastique. Son titre de précepteur du roi lui conférait une
autorité particulière; on le savait ami des Jésuites et “soutenu sous main” par le prince de Conti, le
due du Maine, le maréchal de Villars; son age, ses qualités diplomatiques, son ardeur a servir la
cause de la constitution le distinguaient de ses confrères, plus timorés, comme Rohan, moins
politiques, comme Bissy, ou trop intéressés, comme Dubois’—ibid., p. 12. If Fleury had been
supported by the prince de Conti or the due du Maine it would have been a noteworthy
disadvantage at court, for neither was highly regarded by either the Regent or Dubois, and Villars
actually feared for his exile alter the Cellamare affair—Villars, LXX, p. 80. Nor was Fleury a
particular friend to the Society of Jesuits, as has already been shown, and he did not support the
appointment of a Jesuit confessor for Louis XV in 1722—Dorsanne, Journal de I’abbé Dorsanne…
contenant tout ce qui s’est passé à Rome et en France dans l’affaire de la constitution Unigenitus…, 2 vols, Rome,
1753, II, p. 154.
50 Saint-Simon, XXXVIII, p. 235.
51 Quoted in P.de Raynal, Le mariage d’un roi, 1721–1725, Paris, 1887, p. 14.
52 Saint-Simon, XXXVIII, pp. 269–70.