The Marquis

by Laura Auricchio

  After less than a week: The bureaus completed their work on local assemblies on February 27. Mémoires secrets, 34:250, March 4, 1787.

  Lafayette also objected: On this point, though, he was willing to compromise in the interest of moving the proposal along. Whereas eight of his bureau’s members categorically rejected the idea, demanding that the provincial assemblies hew firmly to the principle of “one man, one vote,” Lafayette requested only that “the rich would never have more than three or four times” as many votes as their less wealthy neighbors. Egret, “La Fayette,” 6.

  “the most natural intermediate”: Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois (Geneva: Barrilot, 1758), book 2, chapter 4.

  “the people’s defense and the monarchy’s support”: Brienne, cited in Egret, “La Fayette,” 6.

  “the distinctions among citizens are necessary”: Egret, French Pre-Revolution, 7.

  size of the deficit: Gruder, The Notables, 41–42.

  Compte rendu: Jacques Necker, Compte rendu au roi, par M. Necker, directeur général des finances, au mois de janvier 1781 (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1781).

  to Lafayette’s embarrassment: “I have been much hurt to hear that the unpaid interest of the American debt was considered as a very uncertain revenue.” Lafayette to Washington, May 5, 1787, in Jared Sparks, Correspondence of the American Revolution; Being Letters of Eminent Men to George Washington, from the Time of His Taking Command of the Army to the End of His Presidency, 4 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1853), 4:171.

  carried on a torrid affair: Vigée-LeBrun, Souvenirs, 1:90–91.

  extravagant wardrobe: On the politics of Marie Antoinette’s wardrobe, see Caroline Weber, Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution (New York: Henry Holt, 2006).

  “Diamond Necklace Affair”: For a brief but thorough discussion of the scandal, see Sarah Maza, “The Diamond Necklace Affair Revisited (1785–1786): The Case of the Missing Queen,” in Dena Goodman, ed., Marie-Antoinette: Writings on the Body of a Queen (New York: Routledge, 2003), 73–97.

  “to make the king work at economies”: The archbishop of Aix, as quoted and translated in Gruder, The Notables, 42.

  “neither this Assembly”: Mémoires secrets, March 5, 1787, 34:253–54. For Castillon’s original discourse, see Egret, “La Fayette,” 8.

  “The object of the deliberation”: Egret, “La Fayette,” 8.

  “so useful to the nation”: Quotes in ths paragraph are from Mémoires secrets, 34:301.

  “a siege of illness”: Gottschalk, Lafayette Between the American and the French Revolution, 294.

  Jean Maury: Lafayette’s apothecary bills from 1787 to 1789 are found in LOC, reel 8, folder 102a.

  “with satisfaction that in general”: Procès-verbal de l’Assemblée de Notables, 114.

  seven separate réclamations: Ibid., 180–86.

  “an exact record”: Ibid., 181.

  avertissement: reprinted in Charles Alexandre de Calonne, De l’état de la France présent et à venir (London: 1790), 436–40.

  “nothing but the Avertissement”: Pierre Chevalier, ed., Journal de l’Assemblée des Notables de 1787 par le comte de Brienne et Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne, archevêque de Toulouse (Paris: Klincksieck, 1960), 43.

  “What could be the pretexts”: Calonne, De l’état de la France, 439.

  “misled the people”: Chevalier, Journal de l’Assemblée des Notables, 45.

  “highly disapproved”: Ibid., 44.

  “rigorous examination”: All quotes from Lafayette’s denunciation are from the copy published in Mémoires secrets, April 30, 1787, 35:59–62.

  “has been spoken about”: Mémoires secrets, 35:58.

  restore civil rights to French Protestants: My understanding of the Protestant cause in eighteenth-century France is indebted to Geoffrey Adams, The Huguenots and French Opinion, 1685–1787: The Enlightenment Debate on Toleration (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1991).

  hopeful that the Assembly: Lafayette to Washington, January 13, 1787, Mémoires, 2:191.

  memo: “Arrêté pris le 24 mai et présenté au roi,” Mémoires, 2:179–80.

  “a truly national assembly”: As quoted in Egret, “La Fayette,” 26.

  “got the King to make”: Lafayette to Washington, May 5, 1787, in Sparks, Correspondence of the American Revolution, 4:170.

  “slow”: Thomas Jefferson, “Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 6 Jan.–29 July 1821,” Founders Online, National Archives.

  “took the presence of the ceremonial”: Schama, Citizens, 263.

  “Government have employed”: Lafayette to Washington, May 25, 1788, Sparks, Correspondence of the American Revolution, 4:216.

  stoked by Orléans: See George Armstrong Kelly, “The Machine of the Duc D’Orléans and the New Politics,” Journal of Modern History 51, no. 4 (December 1979): 667–84.

  CHAPTER 12: RIGHTS OF MAN

  “first moments”: Lafayette to Washington, January 1, 1788, Sparks, Correspondence of the American Revolution, 4:198–200.

  made its way to Lafayette: Gottschalk, Lafayette Between the American and the French Revolution, 364.

  “keeping the good model”: Jefferson to Lafayette, February 28, 1787, Gilbert Chinard, ed., The Letters of Lafayette and Jefferson (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1929), 109.

  “political liberty”: Montesquieu, L’esprit des lois, book 9, chapter 6.

  twelve noblemen: Lafayette to Washington, May 25, 1788, PGWC, 6:295.

  “disgraced”: Jefferson to John Jay, August 3, 1788, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 13:463.

  “more to save appearances”: Jefferson to Madison, January 12, 1789, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 14:437.

  “I associate myself”: Mémoires, 2:183, as translated by Gottschalk, Lafayette Between the American and the French Revolution, 388.

  “try to exorcise”: As quoted in ibid., 416.

  “the advantage to work a new ground”: Lafayette to Jefferson [July 12, 1788?], as cited in ibid., 299.

  “a joy, mixed with uneasiness”: Gottschalk, Lafayette Between the American and the French Revolution, 427.

  “it contains the essential principles”: Jefferson to Madison, January 12, 1789, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 14:437.

  “Nature has made men equal”: Quotations in this paragraph from Lafayette’s early draft of the Declaration of the Rights of Man are as translated in Chinard, Letters of Lafayette and Jefferson, 137.

  “the first declaration”: The following discussion of the history of the various declarations of rights drafted in and before 1789 is deeply indebted to Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York: Norton, 2007), 113–36.

  Frenchmen drafting declarations: Condorcet offered a critique of various American declarations in his 1789 Idées sur le despotisme, à l’usage de ceux qui prononcent ce mot sans l’entendre, ed. Arthur Condorcet O’Connor and F. Arago (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1847), 168–70.

  faction of their own: My understanding of this faction is based on Daniel L. Wick, A Conspiracy of  Well-Intentioned Men: The Society of Thirty and the French Revolution (New York: Garland, 1987).

  modern-day political campaign: On the pamphlets produced by the Society of Thirty, see Kenneth Margerison, Pamphlets and Public Opinion: The Campaign for a Union of Orders in the Early French Revolution (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1998).

  “the slender stock of bread-stuff”: “Autobiography,” Ford, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 1:123.

  “I am in great pain”: Jefferson to Washington, May 10, 1789, PGWP, 2:260.

  On May 6, Jefferson: Jefferson to Lafayette, May 6, 1789, Chinard, Letters, 125.

  Jean-Baptiste Réveillon: Leonard N. Rosenband, “Jean-Baptiste Réveillon: A Man on the Make in Old Regime France,” French Historical Studies 20, no. 3 (Summer 1997): 481–501. These events have been treated in many sources with varying inflections. See David Andress, The French Revolution and the People (London: Hambledon and London, 2004)
, 98–101; George Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967); and Simon Schama, Citizens.

  “Blood flowed in the Faubourg St-Antoine”: Marquis de Ferrières, Correspondance inédite (1789, 1790, 1791) (Paris: Armand Colin, 1932), 37–38.

  “moderation”: Writing from Chavaniac when he was standing for election as a representative to the Estates-General, Lafayette had reported that he had “preached moderation” in preelection discussions with his would-be constituents. Lafayette [to Madame de Simaine?], March 8, 1789, Mémoires, 2:240.

  “a composite of great principles”: Louis Gottschalk and Margaret Maddox, Lafayette in the French Revolution Through the October Days (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 37.

  Estates-General would be stormy: Ferrières to Madame de Ferrières, between April 30 and May 4, 1789, Ferrières, Correspondance, 40.

  “The orders are neither in accord”: Ferrières to Madame de Ferrières, May 15, 1789, Ferrières, Correspondance, 47. On the divisions within each order in April and May 1789, see Timothy Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary: The Deputies of the French National Assembly and the Emergence of a Revolutionary Culture (1789–1790) (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), chapter 4, “The Creation of the National Assembly,” 119–48.

  As the Marquis de Ferrières described: The following description is based on Ferrières to Madame de Ferrières, May 6, 1789, Ferrières, Correspondance, 41–46.

  procession: This description is based on Ferrières, Correspondance, 42–45.

  “thro a double row”: Anne Cary Morris, ed., The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, 2 vols. (New York, 1888), 1:66.

  “Consort received”: Morris, Diary, 1:67.

  “the odious details”: Jules Michelet, Historical View of the French Revolution: From Its Earliest Indications to the Flight of the King in 1791, trans. C. Cocks (London: Bohn, 1864), 87.

  As early as May 6: Edna Hindie Lemay, Dictionnaire des constituants, 1789–1791, 2 vols. (Paris: Universitas, 1991), 2:694.

  On the one hand: Lafayette was hardly the only deputy grappling with this question, as discussed in Robert H. Blackman, “What Does a Deputy to the National Assembly Owe His Constituents? Coming to an Agreement on the Meaning of Electoral Mandates in July 1789,” French Historical Studies 34, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 205–41.

  For a time, Lafayette considered: Mémoires, 2:309–10. Morris, who dined with Lafayette on Tuesday, June 23, wrote that Lafayette “is determined to resign his Seat, which Step I approve of because the Instructions by which he is bound are contrary to his Conscience.” Morris, Diary, 1:121.

  “nineteen twentieths”: As quoted in William Doyle, Oxford History of the French Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 104.

  “nothing can prevent it”: July 22, 1789, Ferrières, Correspondance, 71.

  “At nineteen, I dedicated”: Mémoires, 2:308.

  “I have tried everything”: Ibid., 2:309.

  Tens of thousands: On May 27, Morris wrote in his diary, “Meet Monsr. de Durfort who tells me the Number of Troops in the Neighbourhood of Paris is to prevent Tumult if the States General are dissolved.” Morris, Diary, 1:93.

  “very serious Events”: Morris, Diary, 1:128.

  “the Soldiery in this City”: Morris to John Jay, July 1, 1789, Morris, Diary, 1:129. All quotes in this paragraph are from the same letter, Morris, Diary, 1: 129–31.

  “very humble address”: July 8, 1789, AP, 8:210.

  “the liberty and honor of the National Assembly”: Ibid.

  “the danger, Sire, threatens the tasks”: July 9, 1789, AP, 8:213.

  “caused the greatest stir in the Assembly”: Ibid., 8:212.

  relocated to a more remote town: Morris, Diary, 1:142.

  “are very angry with me”: Lafayette to Jefferson, n.d., Chinard, Letters, 135.

  “They tell me that the head”: Lafayette to Madame de Simiane [?], July 11, 1789, Mémoires, 2:313. In identifying letters as directed to Madame de Simiane, I am following the lead of Louis Gottschalk, who presumes that letters published with no recipient identified were edited by Lafayette’s descendants who wished to cleanse the historical record.

  thirty-man committee charged with determining: Lafayette was not a member of the committee. For the complete membership, see Lemay, Dictionnaire, Appendix II. 7 (a), 2:954–55.

  Jean-Joseph Mounier: Lemay, Dictionnaire, 2:703–5, esp. 704.

  “The goal of all societies”: AP, 8:216.

  “seize the favorable moment”: Ibid., 8:215.

  “to consider it again”: Chinard, Letters of Lafayette and Jefferson, 135.

  Annotations to a copy of the text: Gottschalk and Maddox, Lafayette in the French Revolution: Through the October Days, 89, note 52.

  Lafayette’s final copy jettisons: I am indebted to Gottschalk and Maddox, Lafayette in the French Revolution: Through the October Days, 90, for this interpretation.

  In earlier drafts: See Keith Michael Baker, “The Idea of a Declaration of Rights,” in The French Idea of Freedom: The Old Regime and the Declaration of Rights of 1789, ed. Dale Van Kley (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 162–63.

  “be the first to present them to you”: July 11, 1789, AP, 8:222.

  “incalculable”: Ibid., 8:223.

  gradual relaxation of censorship laws: In his classic study of the subject, Jeremy Popkin notes that the gradual liberation of the press began on July 5, 1788, when “Brienne lifted the censorship restrictions and encouraged all authors to publish their ideas about how the Estates-General should proceed,” and continued through July 1789. Jeremy D. Popkin, Revolutionary News: The Press in France, 1789–1799 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990), 25ff.

  “Its author speaks of liberty”: Journal de Paris (July 13, 1789): 875.

  American market: On French-American commerce in this period, see Peter P. Hill, French Perceptions of the Early American Republic, 1783–1793, Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 180 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1988). On American newspaper response to the events of 1789, see Beatrice F. Hyslop, “The American Press and the French Revolution of 1789,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 104, no. 1 (February 1960): 54–85.

  “M. Lally was so delighted with the speech”: “Marquis de La Fayette,” Massachusetts Centinel (September 30, 1789): 17.

  “to the Marquis de La Fayette”: “London, August 8,” ibid., 18.

  Thanks to an aide: The reading of Lafayette’s Declaration of Rights is described in Jean-Sylvain Bailly and Honoré Duveyrier, Procès-verbal des séances et délibérations de l’Assemblée générale des électeurs de Paris, réunis à l’Hôtel-de-Ville le 14 juillet 1789, 3 vols. (Paris: Baudoin, 1790), 1:166–67.

  CHAPTER 13: A STORYBOOK HERO

  “breaking open the Armorers’s Shops”: Morris, Diary, 1:145.

  waxworks gallery: David McCallam, “Waxing Revolutionary: Reflections on a Raid on a Waxworks at the Outbreak of the French Revolution,” French History 16, no. 2 (June 2002): 153–73.

  his carriage approached: On the lethal event that Morris happened upon, see Paul G. Spagnoli, “The Revolution Begins: Lambesc’s Charge, 12 July 1789,” French Historical Studies 17, no. 2 (Fall 1991): 466–97.

  every room, corridor, stairway: Bailly and Duveyrier, Procès-verbal, 1:184.

  “as trophies”: Ibid., 1:186.

  “a storybook hero”: Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, Mémoires de Condorcet, sur la Révolution française, extraits de sa correspondance et de celles de ses amis, 2 vols. (Paris: Ponthieu, 1824), 2:53.

  “I have already made known”: AP, 8:220.

  “I have nothing to add”: Ibid., 8:234.

  Paris electors were holed up: The electors’ rise to power is summarized in Henry E. Bourne, “Improvising a Government in Paris, July, 1789,” American Historical Review 10, no. 2 (January 1905): 284–89.

  “wearing on their face
s”: Bailly and Duveyrier, Procès-verbal, 266.

  the entire populace seemed ready: The following description of the events of July 14 are based on Bailly and Duveyrier, Procès-verbal, 271–381.

  “a countless multitude”: Bailly and Duveyrier, Procès-verbal, 271.

  “carts of flour, wheat, wine”: Ibid., 272.

  “perfidy”: Ibid., 313.

  “a deputation is no longer”: Ibid., 334.

  “Is it a revolt?”: Lemay, Dictionnaire, 2:536.

  “the cause of the people”: Mémoires, 2:55.

  “the defense of French liberty”: Bailly and Duveyrier, Procès-verbal, 422.

  around two in the afternoon: Details of the number of carriages and time of departure are given in Gottschalk and Maddox, Lafayette in the French Revolution: Through the October Days, 109. The names of all the deputies in the contingent are listed in Bailly and Duveyrier, Procès-verbal, 447–49.

  “filled with that eloquence”: Bailly and Duveyrier, Procès-verbal, 450.

  “congratulated the Assembly”: Ibid.

  “all the voices joined”: Ibid., 460.

  CHAPTER 14: “I REIGN IN PARIS”

  “I reign in Paris”: Lafayette to Madame de Simiane [?], July 16, 1789, Mémoires, 2:317.

  the queen had arranged: Madame Campan, Mémoires, 272.

  gang of vagabonds: Ferrières, Correspondance, 150.

  “I bring your Majesty”: As translated in European Magazine and London Review (July 1789): 81. English sources consistently place Bailly in the Hôtel de Ville at the time of the speech, but Bailly indicates that the speech was given at the first meeting place: Jean-Sylvain Bailly, Mémoires d’un témoin de la Révolution, 3 vols. (Paris: 1804), 2:58.

  two royal carriages: Bailly, Mémoires, 2:63.

  streets lined with tens of thousands: Morris, Diary, 1:152–53. Estimated numbers vary: Jefferson reported 60,000 men; Morris, 80,000; Bailly, 200,000; and Ferrières, an astonishing 500,000. Jefferson to John Jay, July 19, 1789, The Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States of America, from the Signing of the Definitive Treaty of Peace, 10th September, 1783, to the Adoption of the Constitution, March 4, 1789, 3 vols. (Washington, DC: Blair and Rives, 1837), 2:308; Morris, Diary, 1:171; Bailly, Mémoires, 61; and Ferrières, Correspondance, 1:151.