The Revolutionary Temper, page 3
The difficulty of determining who won the Battle of Lawfeld applied on a larger scale to the entire war. Parisians paid special attention to the fighting north of France’s border in the Austrian Netherlands. It conformed to warfare of the kind that had prevailed under Louis XIV—that is, sieges of fortresses and fortified cities combined with occasional, large-scale battles. The sieges required months of digging trenches and undermining redoubts until at last the enemy could be overwhelmed by an attack or forced to capitulate. The batailles rangées pitted densely packed rows of troops on both sides. Muskets took a long time to load (a soldier had to tear open a cartridge with his teeth, pour some powder in the pan of the flintlock, pour the rest down the barrel followed by a bullet, and tamp the bullet down with a ramrod before he could pull the trigger), and they had little accuracy (they could rarely hit a target at a distance of a hundred yards). Therefore, a line of musketeers in tight formation fired all at once at their officer’s command in the general direction of the enemy, reloaded while a line behind them fired, and advanced until ordered to stop and fire another volley. Then, when they closed in on the enemy, they charged with their bayonets and tried to win in hand-to-hand combat (the mêlée) or to force a retreat. It was this kind of fighting that made the French win (or lose) at Lawfeld and that produced such heavy casualties.
Nouvellistes under the Tree of Cracow in the Palais-Royal and at certain benches in the Luxembourg and Tuileries gardens discussed these tactics, claiming to have inside information from witnesses or military sources. They traced battle lines on the ground with their canes and debated questions of strategy on a continental scale. One self-appointed expert was known as the “abbé Thirty Thousand Men,” because he constantly argued that the French could take London if they shipped 30,000 troops across the Channel.10 Others held forth about troop movements in Italy and Germany. For the most part, however, the nouvellistes concentrated on campaigns in the Low Countries. The lines they drew in the dirt illustrated the advance of the main French forces under the maréchal de Saxe, year after year, fortress after fortress: Menin, Ypres, the great victory at Fontenoy (May 11, 1745), Tournai, Ghent, Oudenarde, Bruges, Dendermonde, Antwerp, the Battle of Rocoux (another victory, October 11, 1746), Liège, the Battle of Lawfeld (July 2, 1747), and Bergen op Zoom. By the end of the summer campaign in 1747, Saxe had conquered the Austrian Netherlands and seemed to have a clear road into the Dutch Republic. To those who followed the news in Paris, it made a gripping story, which raised the possibility of winning territory that Louis XIV had failed to conquer during nearly fifty years of fighting.
Yet Saxe’s campaigns occurred in only one sector, barely one hundred miles wide, in a series of conflicts that stretched over much of the globe, involved a dozen sovereign states, and extended from 1740 to 1748. “The War of the Austrian Succession,” as it came to be called, was a misnomer for a struggle that can be considered a world war—perhaps the first world war, unless the War of the Spanish Succession, 1701–1715, deserves that title. The dynastic aspect remained important, of course, and contemporaries talked about the fighting as if it pitted Louis of France and Frederick of Prussia against Maria Theresa of Austria and George of England along with their assorted allies.11 The personalization of the warfare made it seem comprehensible, as if it were a great game played on a chessboard the size of Europe, but that view looked archaic if seen from the perspective of the action on the high seas and colonies. In North and South America, the Atlantic and Pacific, the Mediterranean and Caribbean, the English Channel and the coast of India, fleets, convoys, and privateers waged constant battles. In the end, especially after the second Battle of Finisterre (October 14, 1747), the British established naval supremacy, laying the basis of a colonial and commercial empire.
Reports of the overseas warfare appeared in the gazettes, and café sophisticates discussed them, but most Parisians, if they followed foreign affairs at all, concentrated on the fighting nearby in the Low Countries, where Saxe scored his victories. They were appalled, therefore, as soon as they learned about the preliminaries to the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, to discover that Louis XV had agreed to return everything France had won at such expense and suffering. In exchange, he received virtually nothing. He got back Louisbourg, a fortress on Cape Breton Island, while he surrendered Madras, a greater prize, to the British. To ordinary Parisians with an uncertain grasp of geography, the global readjustment in the balance of power, insofar as they were aware of it, mattered less than the sacrifice of the fortresses in Flanders.12
Most Parisians, moreover, experienced the war as hardship inflicted on their daily lives in the form of increased taxes, scarcer goods, and higher prices. The dixième, a special tax levied since 1741 to support the war, fell on virtually all revenue, although the clergy negotiated an exemption (it paid a sizeable don gratuit or free gift to the Crown in order to maintain its privileges).13 Salaries were exempt; so, laborers did not suffer directly, but the dixième was a bitter blow to rentiers, merchants, artisans, and shopkeepers. Heavy tariffs were levied on consumer goods that entered Paris, and surtaxes were added to the tariffs in March 1745, October 1747, and March 1748, when the head tax (capitation) was also increased. Meanwhile, prices had risen, particularly on bread. In March 1748, Barbier noted in his journal, “Everything necessary to sustain life, food, wood, candles, upkeep, is generally unaffordable.”14
Peace did not bring immediate relief. By May 1748, Parisians knew the fighting had stopped, and the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, signed on October 18, 1748, formally brought the war to an end; but the king did not proclaim peace until nine months later. The proclamation, like many events under the Ancien Régime, was a theatrical affair acted out in the streets of Paris in a ceremony called “la publication de la paix”—publication being understood in the contemporary sense of “rendering public” or making something generally known.15
At dawn on February 12, 1749, cannonades from the Invalides, the Bastille, and the château de Vincennes summoned magistrates and guildsmen to assemble at the Hôtel de Ville dressed in their finest costumes and accompanied by drummers and flag bearers.16 They formed a cortege led by detachments of soldiers, some on horse, some on foot, interspersed by drummers and fife players. Next came several rows of magistrates and a large corps of musicians, carrying drums, fifes, trumpets, bugles, cymbals, oboes, and other wind instruments. At the heart of the procession, on magnificent horses, rode the Roi d’armes, a court official, and six royal heralds in livery and plumed hats. The lieutenant general of police and the prévôt des marchands (Paris’s chief municipal official) followed, outfitted in splendid uniforms, mounted on horses draped in velvet cloth with gold braiding, and accompanied by six lackeys wearing specially designed livery. After them marched a long cavalcade of municipal officers and guildsmen in two columns arranged by rank as ordained by a decree. A troop from the Watch (guet à pied and guet à cheval) brought up the rear, making a procession of eight hundred persons in all.
The cortege paraded through the city and stopped at thirteen appointed places, including the Halles, the Place Maubert, and other locations where the common people gathered. At each stop, fanfares alerted the neighborhood, and the musicians played. The Roi d’armes ordered a herald to read out the royal proclamation of the peace—not the text of the treaty, which ran to seventy-nine pages, but a declaration that hostilities had ceased and that safe travel and commerce were assured among the subjects of the former belligerents. Then a soldier summoned the people in the street to shout Vive le roi, and the cortege moved on to the next stop. After a long day of parading, the participants retired to a feast in the Hôtel de Ville set off by fanfares and cannonades.
On the following day, all shops were closed and a Te Deum was celebrated in Notre Dame. An “illumination générale” lit up Paris that evening. Every house was required to display a lampion, and candles burned in many windows. At eight in the evening, a fireworks display dazzled an enormous crowd crammed into the Place de Grève. When the spectators began to disperse, however, they got blocked in a bottleneck, panicked, and stampeded. A dozen persons were crushed to death. Despite this disaster, large groups piled into a dance hall built specially for the occasion on the Quai Pelletier near the Hôtel de Ville. Two orchestras played; wine flowed from four fountains; and sausages, cuts of turkey, mutton, and bread were distributed, all of it free and intended primarily for “the little people.” Dancing, drinking, and eating also took place at twenty-five other sites scattered through the city. For two days and nights, Parisians gave themselves over to celebrating the peace, but what did they make of it?
The most revealing commentary occurs in Barbier’s journal. During the parade, he noted, many people refused to cry Vive le roi. “The common people in general are not happy with this peace, which, however, they badly needed,” he explained. “It is reported that in les Halles, the market women say, when they quarrel with each other, ‘You are as stupid as the peace.’ ”17 Police spies picked up similar remarks. And the Marquis d’Argenson noted in his journal that the peace celebrations had backfired because so many people were trampled to death during the fireworks. Parisians blamed the tragedy on the government: “People revert to superstition and prophesies as pagans used to do. They say, ‘What is augured by such a peace, which was celebrated with such general horrors?’ ”18
The global conflict left no happy memories among Parisians in 1748, because the tide in the flow of information had turned against the government. Parisians did not enjoy any satisfaction at having won the war after the fighting stopped; and they sensed that they had lost the peace, despite the cannonading, parading, Te Deums, fireworks, dancing, and free wine and food offered them at the time of its “publication.” In fact, the very notions of winning and losing got lost in the fog of war, and the year ended in an atmosphere of discontent.
2
A Prince Is Mugged by Order of the King
IN ADDITION TO restoring the balance of power throughout Europe, the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was intended to solve a diplomatic problem embodied by a person: Charles Edward Stuart, later known as “Bonnie Prince Charlie” and already a legend among Parisians in 1748 as the most intrepid and dashing of the many royal personages occupying or claiming thrones. The throne he claimed was that of Great Britain, which, he maintained, belonged by right of succession to his father, known in France as Jacques III and in Britain as the Pretender. As the first-born heir to his father, he demanded to be acknowledged as the Prince of Wales and not, as the Britons put it, the Young Pretender. Parisians called him “le Prince Édouard” and celebrated him, both as a man-about-town and as the champion of a lost cause, who had dared against impossible odds to attempt the conquest of their English enemy in 1745. He posed a problem for the restoration of peace, because he refused to leave France.1
The treaty committed Louis XV to recognize the Hanoverian line as the legitimate rulers of Great Britain and therefore bound him to expel Prince Édouard from France, where he had been given asylum. To Parisians, or at least those who followed the rise and fall of monarchs, that provision was outrageous. The prince’s grandfather, James II of England and Ireland (also James VII of Scotland), had taken refuge in France after being driven out of his kingdom by the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Louis XIV had treated him with full honors as a fellow monarch, residing with his court in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. To be sure, France had recognized the Hanoverians in 1718 as part of the settlement following the wars of Louis XIV, but it supported Prince Édouard’s attempt to restore the Stuart line by invading Scotland in July 1745.
Parisians followed news of the invasion as best they could from the French gazettes published in the Netherlands and whatever they could pick up in cafés and salons. Judging from the entries in Barbier’s journal, they found the story riveting. Édouard set out with two ships, lost one, and landed in Scotland with only seven supporters. Two months later he had established himself with a force of 17,000 men in Edinburgh and had proclaimed his father king of Scotland and Ireland. Barbier expected the father to abdicate, so Édouard would become king; and in December, when his army was reported to be within thirty leagues (ninety miles) of London, it looked as if George II was doomed. A long silence followed. Word arrived that the Duke of Cumberland had left Flanders with 12,000 troops in a desperate attempt to save the Crown, and this diversion made it possible for the maréchal de Saxe to take Brussels on February 23, 1746. For several months Parisians struggled to sort out contradictory reports—some had Édouard retreating to the Highlands; some claimed relief was on its way from France; some even anticipated a Jacobite revolt in London. Finally, on May 17, Paris learned of a disaster: Cumberland had crushed Édouard’s forces on April 16 at Culloden, near Inverness.
For the next three months, various “bruits” (rumors) spread tales of spectacular episodes. Édouard was reported to be hiding in the Highlands and dashing from island to island in the Hebrides, just beyond the reach of his pursuers, sometimes alone, sometimes in disguise, and saved time and again by humble folk who refused to be tempted by the reward of 30,000 pounds placed on his head. He escaped at last on a small French frigate, and on October 28 he appeared to tremendous applause in the royal box of the Paris Opera. Although he had failed to conquer Britain, Barbier noted, Édouard had won the hearts of Parisians by his heroism, suffering, and “bravura.” “The public will be unhappy if this prince is sacrificed.”2
Yet the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle did sacrifice him. It could not do otherwise, because peace could not be restored unless France recognized the Hanoverian succession. Louis XV did what he could to soften the blow. According to the gazettes, he met privately with Édouard, offered advice about stoically accepting fate, and presented a gift of a table service worth 300,000 L. (At that time a semiskilled worker usually made one livre a day; the livre, which was the main unit of currency, is abbreviated here as L.; it contained 20 sous, and each sous was worth 12 deniers.) Édouard, however, would not be moved, although his father, who had retired to Rome, ordered him to submit to the peace settlement. In July 1748, Édouard produced a manifesto asserting that his father, as James III, was still king of Britain. All the events since 1688 made no difference, he claimed, speaking as “Régent de la Grande Bretagne,” because the passage of time had no bearing on legitimacy and the fundamental constitution of the state. The Paris police managed to confiscate the manifesto in the printer’s shop and to keep their intervention secret, because they worried about provoking a reaction among Édouard’s many supporters in Paris. But a second edition soon appeared, and the police learned that it had been read aloud in the café de Viseux, rue Mazarine, where it was available to everyone on the counter. In August 1748, as the diplomats neared agreement on the final terms of the treaty in Aix-la-Chapelle, Édouard had a notice printed and pinned to their doors, warning them to avoid any settlement that would violate his right to the throne of Great Britain.3
According to the gazettes that circulated in Paris, the French foreign minister, in the name of the king, requested Édouard to leave France in November. The prince refused, and then the king sent the Duc de Gesvres, a friend of Édouard’s and an important Court official, to make a personal appeal. According to rumors that spread through Paris, Édouard told the duke that he always carried two loaded pistols in his pockets. If anyone arrived with an order for his expulsion, he would shoot that person with the first pistol and kill himself with the second. The Dutch gazettes reported that Louis would have to resort to violence, and Parisians prepared themselves for a dramatic “event.” Meanwhile, Édouard cut quite a figure in Paris, along with a retinue of Scottish and English Jacobites who had survived the adventure of 1745. He appeared every day in theaters or at the Opera, and strolled conspicuously in the Tuileries gardens, much to the Parisians’ delight and perhaps, as some suspected, because he was courting popular support that could be turned against Versailles.
At 5 o’clock on December 10, soon after he descended from his carriage to attend a performance at the Opera, Prince Édouard was accosted by a major of the Gardes Françaises, who informed him that the king had ordered his arrest. Instantly, six soldiers, disguised as civilians, surrounded him. According to reports that circulated soon afterward, two of them grabbed his arms, and the others seized his legs, lifting him off the ground. While holding him in the air, they bound his arms to his body with silk ropes in order to prevent him from using his pistols. They carried him to an adjoining courtyard, removed the two pistols and his sword, then dispatched him in a carriage to the dungeon of Vincennes. A detachment of Gardes and the Mounted Watch (guet à cheval), which had been waiting nearby in the Place des Victoires, accompanied the carriage, and soldiers stationed all along the route held their muskets ready, bayonets attached. Three companions of the prince who had accompanied him to the Opera were taken to the Bastille. Another detachment of the Gardes Françaises surrounded the town house that served as the prince’s headquarters. They arrested thirty-three of his other retainers who also disappeared into the Bastille. More than a thousand soldiers participated in the operation. Everything was prepared carefully in advance and took place rapidly in order to avoid provoking a riot by Édouard’s many admirers.4
After five days of confinement in the dungeon, Édouard left for an unknown destination. An official escort took him as far as Pont de Beauvoisin at the border with Savoy, and then the prince disappeared. Some of the more savvy gossips known as “politiques” asserted he would set up court in Fribourg, Switzerland; others placed him in Rome or in Avignon, which was papal territory, but everyone agreed that he would have to take up residence outside France. In January 1749 he was given a hero’s reception in Avignon; he was later spotted in Venice; and he eventually settled in Rome, fading from the limelight, as Parisians shifted their attention to other subjects, including a rhinoceros, the first ever seen in France, which was exhibited at the foire Saint-Germain in March 1749.
