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

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POWER AND POLITICS IN OLD REGIME FRANCE

culture are allowed to include everything then the problem of singling out causes

and effects remains unsolved—and perhaps insoluble. The problem of intentionality

is neatly but unsatisfactorily sidestepped by making individuals into discursive

constructions. This is relevant in the present context because two distinguished

historians, Furet and Baker, both appeal to the notion that the inherent

contradictions in the discourses provide the key to understanding the origins and

development of the Revolution.

There are two problems with this. The first is that

such a view tends to make the discourses into the principal actors in the historical

drama, which undervalues the complexities of political struggles. Second, it is

important to ask whether contradictions in the discourses were really responsible

for the shape of politics—was politics not, for example, really ‘about’ political

management, family strategies and patronage and clientage?

The concept of ‘public space’ is currently finding favour with historians of

politics and language, particularly with those involved with public opinion,

journalism and political theory, all of which are touched on in the present work. To

the Hegelian distinction between family, civil society and the state (which have long

been employed by some sociologists and political theorists to structure their

reflections) Habermas added a fourth organisational category of modern society,

the bourgeois public sphere, which first emerged during the eighteenth century.

According to Habermas, in contradistinction to the (public) sphere of absolutist

authority, a realm emerged in which ‘private’ bourgeois individuals employed their

critical reasoning. Within this sphere, composed of cultural institutions such as

salons, cafés and the printed matter, all of which were potentially independent of the

state, newly politicised discussions could take place. ‘Bourgeois’ representations of

the world sought ‘transparency’, that is to portray and organise it as it really was.

Although many historians draw upon Habermas’ basic model, there are several

different readings of him and some major disagreements.

The idea of a space or

sphere is certainly helpful in suggesting that statements or texts need a forum in

which to become effective, a ‘space’ in which they can legitimately be presented,

and of course that space has recognised boundaries. It has its as yet only partly

written history: elements of this history include the improvement of

communications, and especially of printing, which led to a great expansion in the

accessibility of information, particularly of scientific, literary and political

information within a developing urban society, comprising new cultural

institutions.

In this way, the sphere of life concerned with public events greatly

expanded, and by the mid-eighteenth century intellectuals in France appear to have

become aware of it. At this point, the idea of public opinion emerged in a more

structured way and it has recently attracted the attention of historians.

In an influential contribution, Baker has traced the evolution of public opinion

from a manipulable mixture of rumours and opinions in the 1750s to its

characterisation as an imaginary tribunal, that is, an authority replacing the

traditional monarchical authority as the ultimate arbiter in society.

For him, it

appears to have been not so much the creation of a sociological group, such as the

bourgeoisie, as ‘a political invention’, the product of ‘a new politics of contestation’.

INTRODUCTION

Baker’s theory of a politics of contestation presupposes the concept of political

culture, and it suggests that ideology was at stake in political struggles between the

crown and the parlements from the 1750s onwards. But Baker’s interpretative

framework is drawn from sociology and philosophy, and is not based on a detailed

study of judicial politics in any preceding period. Three chapters in the present

work will argue that what could well be called a politics of contestation appeared in

its essential characteristics in the 1730s, during the struggle over Jansenism, and that

the 1750s saw an extension of these earlier themes. So, if a politics of contestation

existed earlier, then why did it not produce ‘public opinion’ earlier? In fact, several

historians would give an earlier date for the formation of public opinion, thus

making the 1750s less of a turning point. Potentially much more damaging than

chronology to the link between a new politics of contestation and public opinion, is

the argument that such a politics may not have existed in the sense Baker

understands it (his position is not simply that politics is contestation, but that it was

ideological contestation). In contrast to his position, it will be argued that

jurisdiction, and not political ideology (in his senses of either justice or will), was

more of an issue for magistrates—around whom the debate has focused—from 1730

to 1770.

This raises the question of how important public opinion was in politics in

that period. Are we dealing with an intellectual construction alone or a genuine

political force? There is no denying that the concept of public opinion as a tribunal

was used to legitimise both the participation of outsiders in politics and opposition

from existing players, but how far it made any difference to the course of events

before late 1788 may be questioned. Was it just a rhetorical justification? At issue in

the debate is the significance of some conceptual categories used by people involved

in politics, and the extent to which the nature of politics before the Revolution had

been transformed by any such developments. Both of these problems are relevant to

the present study. The detailed study of political practice suggests that ‘public

opinion’ was far from transparent right up to the 1780s and that much of it was

generated by the occult activities of Jansenists, courtiers and ministers.

DEFINING POLITICS IN ANCIEN REGIME FRANCE: AN

UNSOLVED PROBLEM

Notwithstanding the emergence of a conceptual public sphere, politics in the ancien

régime was still basically occult, courtly, and conducted by nobles whose notions of

a separation between public and private were decidedly blurred. As Elias has

suggested, the activities of courtiers cannot easily be said to fit into the public

sphere, and even magistrates who were well aware of the distinction often entered

into opposition for private reasons such as familial advancement. Several chapters

of the present work try to give substance to the view that political life, as revealed by

practice under the ancien régime, was sufficiently different from the ideas of it

presupposed by the present notion of public space, to raise serious questions about

precisely how the notion of the public sphere is to be applied to the political culture

POWER AND POLITICS IN OLD REGIME FRANCE

of that time. As with public opinion, this is not to deny that this fourth dimension

was being invented within the Enlightenment and was to have a subsequent

importance in revolutionary politics. The eighteenth century was a great age of

beginnings, of antecedents. These criticisms are not intended so much to invalidate

the notion of public space as, by revealing it to be an interaction of many perhaps

neglected elements, to point out the difficulty in locating it.

To a considerable extent, therefore, the new intellectual history of the ancien

régime has not yet risen to its own challenge of its wide definition of discourse,

because the evidence is still taken overwhelmingly from theoretical works and legal

texts. Texts are not put in the context of prevailing practices and social texts are

rarely studied.

Within this seductively all-embracing theory of discourse, it is

necessary to remain constantly on guard against the temptation to assume that a

given political discourse truly reflected an individual point of view, without fully

considering the use to which the rhetoric was put and the activities of the

participants. Often the discourses were employed in a deliberately mystificatory

way by highly sophisticated rhetoricians. It is therefore vital to study closely the

process by which the language used in the public sphere was generated.

When the study of ‘political’ disputes is undertaken, the extent to which

arguments took place in a language which did not truly reflect the main concerns

of one set of participants is striking. For example (and this is an aspect explored at

length in Chapters 11 and 12), was the parlementary crisis of 1730–2 really

‘about’ constitutional thought, as Carcassonne and his successors have assumed—

even though there is overwhelming evidence of manipulation by a religious clique

and the exploitation of very real jurisdictional concerns?

The Jansenist

magistrates’ recourse to the language of constitutionalism in the 1730s, and more

so in the 1750s, on the face of it suggests constitutional motivation, when in fact

their main aim was, arguably, religious salvation and they employed similar

factional methods to their Jesuit opponents.

This is one of the few areas in which

the intentions behind the language can be clearly elucidated. To use Quentin

Skinner’s phrase, the problem of what the theorists were doing has in this case

been solved.

Thus, in the same way as for institutional history, too often there is

a failure to use informal documentation or the evidence of day-to-day politics in

all its forms, with the result that its extraordinary complexities are far from being

fully appreciated. It is indeed ironic that studies of discourse implicitly seek to

explain the political culture without concentrating on ‘the facts of political life’.

They thus come dangerously close to defining political culture by the works of

those on its margins, commentators like journalists and nouvellistes, rather than

those at the centre who were engaged in making decisions and managing

competing interests.

A theory of discourse that would have been more familiar to contemporaries is

rhetoric. Every educated person in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had

been taught the principles of rhetoric, that is the use of the proper structure for a

persuasive argument in a given context. Naturally, rhetoric had to be suited to the

time and place, and this place was usually the public sphere. Works on rhetoric

INTRODUCTION

focused particularly on eloquence for the clergy and lawyers. We shall see that the

recognition of contemporary attitudes towards rhetorical positions is important for

an understanding of certain aspects of political conflicts, particularly in the sphere of

the parlementaires’ jurisdictional politics.

Undoubtedly, any study of politics must now take into consideration the

prevailing forms of political expression. However, this study should not be confined

to theoretical texts alone. Ceremonies such as the lit de justice and the royal funerals

were vehicles for political conceptions and have been studied as such with great

profit.

It is important to explore the practices, events and structures in order to

understand the sets of values and assumptions articulated by the players in the

game. These assumptions make up a language of politics, again in its widest sense.

It is necessary to deal not just with the legalist, jurisprudential, formal language, but

with the wider range of discourses or rhetorical forms.

The way of speaking about

political situations in private correspondence, with its insight but also with its set of

expectations and contemporary priorities, should be studied, together with the

differences visible from our own perspective. Often ‘actions speak louder than

words’, and this kind of ‘discourse’ can best be excavated by studying the activities

of courtiers as much as, or perhaps more than, their writings, be these ephemera or

attempts at analysis like La Bruyère’s.

Of course, their activities are only recoverable through extant texts or

monuments, whether letters, memoirs or dwellings. For such a study even

historical memoirs—on which so much political history has been based, often

without further recourse to correspondence that might corroborate or refute their

assertions—are another problematic category of evidence. They represent a

particular vision of politics, they define its boundaries by exclusion and inclusion.

In many cases, their narrative is about the significance and valour of the actors in

a game of personal and family advancement and honour. But when we confront

the memoirs with the sort of material that lies in the archives of the authors’

families we have a very different perspective. Political documentation is dwarfed

in volume by the often dozens and sometimes hundreds of volumes of papers

relating to investments in land, the operation of the family as a major creditor to

clients and investments in financial schemes. It becomes clear that financial

dealings at court are almost left out of the memoirs, except where the desire for

riches, knowing no bounds, leads to excess by others, even breaching the lax

codes of conduct that prevailed then. Noble participation in politics did not

therefore correspond to the public image put forward, and if the court was, on the

one hand, a theatre of civility it was, on the other hand, a rather more sordid

centre for the seeking of place and the preservation of fortune. Much has been

written about the former, little about the latter.

A second point is that a certain view of causation is enshrined in memoirs and

court history in general—and it is usually a naive view. Their authors reveal a very

strong tendency to reinterpret with hindsight the actions of courtiers or politicians

as if all their actions were pre-planned and scheming. We do know that courtly

behaviour required an exceptional degree of self-control, and this would no doubt

POWER AND POLITICS IN OLD REGIME FRANCE

have added to the impression of planning and clearly cabals did form over many

issues. It is also possible that family and factional strategies were much more clearly

articulated then than now. But when major events that are extremely complex to

unravel are attributed simply to faction, the historian should beware.

Another element is the anti-female bias in the texts, where it is easy to attribute

certain démarches to the wily schemes of women exploiting their sexual charms.

Mistresses are often described in stereotypical ways, as undermining monarchical

virtue, as leading the monarch astray, as more selfish and ambitious than the male

courtiers. Too much political influence is attributed to them as individuals in the

historical memoirs—because that corresponded to the gender bias against clever

women and to the contemporary sense of causation. They are over-played as

individuals and underplayed as the representatives of the powerful courtly factions,

which were advising them and also forcing them to provide a constant supply of

patronage.

Memoirs or journals, such as those of d’Argenson, and nouvelles by such

as Pidansat de Mairobert, often attribute too much to what they saw as the trivial

and pernicious influence of seduction and guile.

To accept their assessments would

be to accept their classical republican discourse that was anti-courtier and very

much pro-virtue.

There is a courtly discourse constructed by men and women wearing masks.

In this, women of course played an important role, not simply as royal

mistresses—and here it was not the sexual act that was the most important aspect

of their role, but their intimate friendship with the King, and therefore access to

the source of patronage and favour. The female heads of the aristocratic clans, the

indomitable dowager duchesses wielded great ‘political’ influence, if politics is

defined, as it was for them, as faction and the ability to acquire favours, pensions,

control over ministerial posts, by pressure or persuasion. Women also acted as go-

betweens in the game of influence and patronage, exploiting their civility which

society chose to locate principally in their gender.

For most participants,

eighteenth-century politics was about career, clan, family, honour, prestige, the

money for this lifestyle and the influence needed to acquire and protect it.

Becoming involved with the King’s business was itself a means to acquire honour

and dignity, and preserve previous gains.

Each branch of history has a tendency to believe that its explanatory

framework is pre-eminent. As with Marx and economic determinism, thus with

Elias and his social psychology, and so too with intellectual history and its theory

of inherent contradictions in the discourses. Moreover, it is surely unwise to limit

ourselves to ‘political’ languages, to the exclusion of the social discourses, such as

images of the people, of feudalism or history, as if they can be separated from the

political in this period. It is particularly revealing of the problems raised by this

approach that a further language, extremely widespread and evident in the same

period—that of classical republicanism with the enormous importance it attached

to the concept of both social and political virtue—is still often overlooked even

though it is to be found in the texts.

Religion, so important in the preceding two

centuries, was still an extremely important political issue at the time. The close

INTRODUCTION

link in the mid-eighteenth century between religious ideology and politics has

been emphasised by Van Kley in several works. He stresses the contribution of

the Jansenists to destabilising the regime in the 1750s, but even he regards their

arguments as dating from the 1750s.

But what if their arguments can be traced back directly to the 1720s, certainly to

the parlementary crisis of 1730–2, a period that was obviously not devoid of those

‘contestatory’ features only visible a generation later? Perhaps these ideas are better

understood in the context of the rather obviously contestatory ideologies (and

practices) of the Jansenists in the seventeenth century and the Protestant opposition

to Louis XIV?

It is therefore necessary to ask whether the parlementary

opposition to royal policy in the 1750s and 1760s was the product of a new

contestatory state of mind, inherent in the new ‘political’ discourses, or was it very

much in the line of the seventeenth century? Are the discourses of the 1750s and

1760s really ‘new’ or are they reformulations of concepts already identifiable in the

sixteenth century—ideas perhaps secularised from their religious context?

It seems

as if modern historiography may have played down the continuities and labelled as

new what was deeply rooted in a long past, in order to emphasise the kind of

rupture that is necessary if a modern view of the origins of ‘revolution’ is held. To

do this is to suppress the fascinating question of how old wine in new bottles retains

its potency.

If some of the ideological aspects of the late ancien régime reveal continuities, what,

then, of the long-term socio-political features of that same regime? Was the regime

fundamentally stable, or was it liable to frequent crisis? Were there not also

structural problems inherent in the regime that date back much further, and which

are certainly essential, and perhaps the most important, elements of the crises of the

1780s? Historians have indeed long recognised that there were. Fiscally, these have

been identified as an unequal tax distribution that exempted the wealthy and

weighed most heavily on the poor, together with a financial bureaucracy that

through corruption and venality cost the government too much of its receipts.

Socially, tensions lay in a rigid social stratification that allowed access to nobility by

the wealthy, but was at its upper levels nevertheless too closed for the increasing

numbers of aspirants. Politically, the uneasy relationship between the pays d’états and

the centre that helped widen a political battle at the centre into a national crisis, can

be traced back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries at least; work on Brittany,

Provence and Dauphiné has re-emphasised the provincial origins of the Revolution,

in terms that would have been familiar in an earlier period. An interesting recent

case study of the corporate institutions of the Lille region from Louis XIV to the

Revolution, locates the universalist rhetoric of the magistrates in the struggles to

defend privilege against royal fiscalism.

For the institutions of government at the centre, though, such long-term elements

have not been adduced. It is necessary to know whether the court politics of the

1780s was so very different from that of the 1760s, the 1730s or the 1640s. And if it

was, in what ways? Was the breakdown of crown-parlement relations in 1787–8 the

product of a new attitude among the magistrates; was it a similar phenomenon to

POWER AND POLITICS IN OLD REGIME FRANCE

the frondeur disputes; or was it perhaps even causally similar to the experience of

the Lillois financial officers? Only a study that draws out the essential characteristics

of political conduct over a long period will be able to test the arguments. The lack of

detailed examination of the 1720s, 1730s and 1740s has prevented us both from

observing continuities and from situating within those decades any of the new

developments. This has only increased the tendency to regard the 1750s as a period

of political rupture or reformation, and to consider the end of the regime in isolation

from its own political history.

This book, as a reflective analysis of the codes and

conduct of the King’s business in the time of Fleury, will reveal continuities that call

this perspective into question.

STUDIES OF CRISIS WITHIN THE SOCIO-POLITICAL

SYSTEM

For generally valid conclusions to be reached, political conduct must be studied

over the longer term. The norms of conduct and the normal processes can thus be

revealed. But it is equally important to try to understand how collapse could occur.

One way to come to grips with this problem is to focus on points of tension, by

investigating political crises and the way they occur in the political system. Since the

Paris parlement was the key focal point of tensions during the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries, it is particularly instructive to consider in detail its relationship

with the ministry during the crisis of 1730–2. The way tensions were generated, and

then contained, can reveal a great deal about the nature of the regime. Much too

can be learnt about the role of ideology (which perhaps untypically came to the fore

during confrontations) and the regime’s problems in dealing with it. The difficulty

of preventing the escalation of differences into a confrontation out of all proportion

to the gravity of the issues is a notable feature of the socio-political system, as major

points of principle could be raised by apparently trivial cases. It may be that the

system of dialogue between institutions such as council and parlement was good at

reconciling sectional interests but not very well suited to the management of issues

of principle or ideology. To avoid anachronism, it is important to try to understand

what contemporaries thought was at stake. Any modern tendency to rationalise

their behaviour by assuming that ideological motives played an important part—as

in the history of the Maupeou coup or the origins of the Revolution itself—must be

avoided. The late twentieth-century tendency to see things in terms of ideology is as

distorted as was that of the nineteenth century. The study of the parlement is once

again instructive here, for, with the exception of a small group of judges who were

clearly manipulating the situation, it is difficult to attribute clear motives to most of

the opposition. Confrontation and crisis may have been as much a question of

mismanaged processes as of ideological or constitutional issues.

There has at the very least been a tendency to accept the rhetoric of the

opposition to the regime and see the crisis of 1787–9 as the collapse of a despotism

under assault from new ideas. Without for a moment denying the force of the new

INTRODUCTION

ideas in the rebuilding of the collapsed regime according to a different image, from

1789 to 1794, it may be suggested that the last crisis of the regime was just that, the

last in a series of crises whose structure and causes were similar to several others that

preceded it. Thus the Revolution would have grown out of the crisis without the

crisis itself necessarily being ‘revolutionary’ in a determinist sense.

There are now so many new approaches to set against the orthodox bureaucratic

and administrative interpretation of politics. Individually, they have shown us

intendants who failed to dominate provincial society; ministers who operated

through family and patronage networks; faction sometimes wielding enormous

influence over policy; members of the courtly higher aristocracy who retained the

trust and confidence of the King; regal ceremonial employed as an influential and

persuasive discourse; a fiscal system that continued to be insufficient and corrupt,

linked to the court nobility and the provincial elites; a provincial nobility that

retained much of its power and privileges through a compromise with the

monarchy; a bureaucracy in which loyalties and advancement still operated in a

highly personalised way; and discourses that both unconsciously shaped

perceptions and were knowingly manipulated to further traditional goals. Taken

together these multifarious aspects do not just provide evidence for a much revised

image of the monarchy, but also prompt a new range of historical questions.

Inevitably, one major implication of the new approaches has been to raise a

question mark over how politics is to be conceptualised and how the regime is to be

interpreted. A new history of politics is needed, one that is painstakingly detailed, as

in the past, but new because it should be aware of the wide range of recent

approaches; and it should be one that includes all those aspects so often excluded

from politics by virtue of a modern definition.

Part 1

POLITICS IN A COURT

SOCIETY