#exile imprisonment or death: the politics of disgrace in bourbon france

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"They were unhappy with my refusal"

It was Louis XIV's good fortune that the early years of his personal reign coincided with the end of nearly a century of intermittent civil strife. Condé's crushing defeat during the Fronde was a lesson few would forget, and it underlined, if that were necessary, that the loss of favour or dissatisfaction with those in whom the monarch placed his trust was no longer a justification for plots or rebellion. Cold steel had played the dominant part in that transition, but it was accompanied by changing attitudes among the elites who had also suffered grievously from these violent struggles and both the monarchy and the nobility needed time to adjust to the new realities of power. Yet for all his advantages, Louis XIV was still confronted by the often-inflated ambitions of his relatives, who were constantly hoping for military commands, governorships, or other offices, and he could never forget that they were liable to interpret any refusal as a personal rebuff. In his memoirs the king had described the court early in his reign as an agitated forum where habits of negotiation with ministers had created a climate where favour was "demanded and snatched rather than awaited, always having repercussions from one to another, no longer obliging anyone, only good for mistreating those whom one wished to refuse." The challenge for the young monarch was to educate the grandees in the need for patience and to convince them that he would reward loyalty and obedience. To achieve that aim, he needed to show a capacity to impose order on his own family, which in many ways set the tone for the rest of the court, and even for a monarch as charismatic and conscientious as Louis XIV it was impossible to satisfy everyone. He was constantly challenged by the demands or actions of others, and the reality of court life was very different from the serene façade that is often portrayed.

In his memoirs the king referred to an incident in 1666 when his brother, Philippe duc d'Orléans, known by his title of Monsieur, had requested the governorship of Languedoc. Well aware that this populous and wealthy province had been the springboard for previous revolts the king had already refused the same request in 1660, and he again disappointed his brother arguing that he did not wish to see "the great governorships in the hands of the sons of France, who for the good of the state, must never have any other refuge than the court nor other place of safety than in the heart of their brother." While that argument might seem prudent, Monsieur had no choice other than to insist in order to uphold his own rank and prestige because, although the precedent might not help his case, the recently deceased Gaston d'Orléans had once held that governorship. The king's rebuff was keenly felt, and, according to Louis XIV, his brother and his wife, Henriette d'Angleterre, egged on by the

"fine words of some troublemakers, displayed in various ways that they were unhappy with my refusal. For my part, without giving any sign of having perceived anything untoward, I left them the time to think better. And, in fact, coming back to themselves soon afterward, they both asked me to forgive them for the hot-headedness that they had shown."

Louis XIV's equanimity had stood him in good stead because, as with their father and Gaston, the potential for serious conflict between the royal brothers was always present. As recently as the spring of 1658, when the king had fallen gravely ill while on campaign, rumours had been circulating of aristocrat malcontents flocking to Monsieur in the hope of toppling Cardinal Mazarin.

According to one scholarly account, a desire to avoid a repetition of the struggles between Louis XIII and Gaston had led first Mazarin and subsequently Louis XIV to follow a conscious policy designed to crush the personality and ambitions of Monsieur. It is true that despite living most of their lives in close proximity the brothers were never intimate, and Monsieur was clearly forced to accept a subordinate position. Some of the latent political tension was defused by the birth of a dauphin in November 1661, which created a buffer between the younger brother and the throne, even if it could not prevent regular and sometimes angry disputes. Yet the idea of the king systematically undermining Monsieur is far from compelling.

Julian Swann- Exile, Imprisonment, or Death: the Politics of Disgrace in Bourbon France

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A minister's credit

Bourbon monarchs did not inhabit a private world of Olympian detachment. Instead, they were constantly bombarded by the appeals, entreaties, and recriminations of rival ministers, their queens or mistresses and sometimes both, other members of the extended royal family, not to mention courtiers and their cabals and the representatives of the myriad corporate interests that made up the kingdom. To make sense of an individual instance of ministerial disgrace requires painstaking detective work, and even then there is no guarantee that the historian will discover the proverbial smoking gun.

Ministerial relationships with Bourbon monarchs were complex and in the case of Louis XIV the bonds between master and servant were also overlain by the memories of familial service which by the turn of the eighteenth century spanned several generations. Knowledge of these ties must have been invaluable to tired and harassed ministers whose official and personal lives were spent in a court where gossip and rumour, whether well founded or not, continually swirled around like a fog, and where their respective hoards of "credit" with the king were scrutinized on a daily basis. As the reign passed by, it became apparent that Louis XIV was a patient, largely indulgent master, although that did not stop the court cabals from seeking to undermine ministers or from speculating on how a change of favour might transform the scene. The ministerial clans were themselves part of these factional groupings, having been absorbed into them by marriage and ties of kinship, growing social prestige, and the raw reality of power, and they too contributed to the speculation about their own positions.

It should not, therefore, come as a surprise that the potential implications of ministerial disgrace were a constant topic of conversation or that references to it abound in the diaries and correspondence of the time. Ministers worried about their own "credit", and when they feared that it was slipping could not always rely on receiving a warning message from the king as Barbezieux and Colbert had done. In such circumstances, the options for beleaguered ministers were relatively limited.

Julian Swann- Exile, Imprisonment, or Death: the Politics of Disgrace in Bourbon France

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The Fall of Fouquet

Of those who sat in Louis XIV's council in March 1661, Nicolas Fouquet was beyond a shadow of a doubt the most charismatic and flamboyant. His background was typical of the upwardly mobile noblesse de robe, and his family like so many others had invested a fortune accumulated as drapers merchants in ennobling office. Fouquet’s grandfather and his father, François, had both served as judges in the Parlement of Paris, and his mother, Marie de Maupeou, was herself a member of another rising robe clan. The family had acquired an impressive reputation for piety, and its links to Saint Vincent de Paul, the parti dévot, and the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement had opened additional doors to the powerful. All six of Marie’s surviving daughters entered the religious life, as would three of her five sons. Nicolas, on the other hand, was destined for a career in royal service, joining first the Parlement of Metz, and then, following the route trekked by countless aspiring young robins, by purchasing the office of maître des requêtes and serving as an intendant, attracting the attention of Mazarin in the process. In 1650, he had bought the prestigious office of procureur général in the Parlement of Paris, and having proved himself scrupulously loyal to Mazarin he was rewarded with the post of surintendant des finances in 1653.

As surintendant he was responsible for government fiscal policy in the aftermath of the Fronde and was charged with finding the funds needed to prosecute the seemingly endless war with Spain, proving remarkably able and helping to secure a French victory consummated in the Peace of the Pyrenees of November 1659. Anyone capable of surviving for long in the cut-throat world of seventeenth-century finance was, almost by definition, talented, and no less certain to become fabulously rich. Fouquet was no exception, and by 1661 he had added prodigious wealth to an already substantial family fortune that was made manifest in the construction of the beautiful château of Vaux-le-Vicomte, only a few miles from the royal palace of Fontainebleau. Designed by the architect Louis Le Vau and with its interiors decorated by Charles Le Brun, Vaux-le-Vicomte was an aesthetic triumph set within majestic gardens, created by André Le Nôtre, complete with ornamental fountains that have rightly been seen as an inspiration for Versailles. A man of taste and refinement, Fouquet forged a reputation as a generous artistic patron, and, amongst others, Molière, Pierre Corneille, Jean de La Fontaine, and Paul Pellisson benefitted from the surintendant’s largesse. Despite his family’s impeccable dévot credentials, Nicolas moved in eclectic and heterodox intellectual circles, and, much to his mother’s chagrin, his reputed good looks and genuine charm had given him an established reputation as a gallant.

(Fouquet on the left, Louis XIV on the right)

Rich, self-confident, and having proved himself to be an able and loyal servant of the crown, Fouquet, at only forty-six years of age, had every reason to suppose that a long and profitable career stretched before him. His actions in the months following the cardinal’s death were certainly not those of a man harbouring any inner self-doubts. In August 1661, he agreed to sell his office of procureur général in the Parlement to his friend Achille de Harlay, presumably confident that his interests in the court would be well served as he also had close ties with its first president, Guillaume de Lamoignon. More dramatically, on 17 August 1661, Fouquet threw one of the most notorious parties in French history. Using the magnificence of Vaux-le-Vicomte as the setting, the guests, who included large swathes of the French governing elite, were treated to a sumptuous fête, with a theatrical performance directed by Molière, fireworks, and other entertainments all ostensibly in honour of the king. Popular tradition, reinforced by numerous literary and cinematic productions, maintains that Louis XIV, furious at being upstaged by a mere minister and convinced that such lavish display could only be at his own expense, swore revenge. Fouquet had undoubtedly been tactless as the interior of the château boasted a lavish state bedroom, complete with railed bed, which had been prepared as if the monarch was intending to be a regular guest of his munificent minister. Those aristocrats present were horrified that a mere robin should be so presumptuous and the king almost certainly shared their prejudices. If this was the case, he was nevertheless careful to conceal his fury and neither Fouquet nor contemporary witnesses interpreted events in quite the dramatic fashion of later commentators, and the minister continued to work almost daily with the king.

At the end of August, the monarch and his entourage began a tour of Brittany, timed to coincide with the assembly of the provincial estates. By now, the surintendant had received a number of quite explicit warnings about threats to his position and he was growing anxious. Despite his misgivings, he travelled to Nantes and while he was suffering from a fever the king had sent for news of his health, which must have helped to allay his fears. If Louis-Henri de Loménie de Brienne, who was present on the scene, is to be believed, Fouquet even had hopes that it would be Colbert who would be arrested and that his position was secure. On 5 September, the surintendant was well enough to work as normal with the king, but as he left the audience he was accosted by Charles d’Artagnan and a detachment of musketeers. D’Artagnan promptly arrested an astonished Fouquet, who is said to have exclaimed that ‘he thought that he held a higher place in the king’s esteem than anyone else in the kingdom’. If that was indeed the case, then it was a monumental misjudgement because he had just plunged into the most profound disgrace.

D'Artagnan (left) arrests Fouquet (right)

Almost immediately it became apparent that the fall of Fouquet was no momentary loss of favour. Instead it had been carefully premeditated over several months by Louis XIV and Jean-Baptiste Colbert, another aspiring robe noble who had made his fortune as the steward of Mazarin’s private fortune. Colbert not only replaced Fouquet at the head of government finances, but he also directed a trial that was intended to conclude in a death sentence against his imprisoned rival. Fouquet’s brothers, his wife, mother, and close associates were either arrested or exiled, his papers seized in circumstances that made a travesty of the law, and he was brought before a specially convoked commission, not the Parlement of Paris as would have been his right had he not sold his office to Achille de Harlay only a few weeks before. Fouquet had seriously undermined his own political position, and recent precedents were grim. Had Richelieu been directing affairs, Fouquet would have been fortunate indeed to escape the block. However, Colbert seems to have been determined to use Fouquet as a scapegoat for the endemic corruption that both men had profited from, and which had been one of the defining features of Mazarin’s ministry. Fouquet was therefore accused of péculat, an elastic term encompassing a wide range of financial misdemeanours. While burrowing around in Fouquet’s château of Saint-Mandé, the investigators also stumbled across some secret documents from 1658 outlining a strategy for revolt in the event of his arrest. Although it was clear that they were intended for use against Mazarin, not the king, it was decided to add the capital charge of lese-majesty to the existing accusations against the prisoner.

(Fouquet vs Colbert, there will be only one)

Raking up all manner of supposed earlier misdeeds against a disgracié was common practice. On this occasion it proved counterproductive, and had the government moved quickly it could conceivably have obtained a rapid judgement and the desired death sentence. Instead, it tried to dig up more and more evidence and the trial proper did not commence until 3 March 1662. Confronted by a complicated mass of financial accusations and with Fouquet putting up a spirited and effective defence of his actions, the case dragged on for over two years. Colbert and the king grew increasingly frustrated, meddling with legal procedure, seeking to intimidate judges and witnesses alike and making it clear that while they wanted to give the impression of a fair trial it should not be at the expense of a guilty verdict. Fouquet’s family and his many friends and admirers gradually recovered from the shock of his arrest and began an energetic campaign on his behalf, convincing a substantial part of public opinion that he was the victim of a vendetta. When the verdict was finally announced in December 1664, the judges did find the accused guilty of péculat, but rather than impose the death penalty as the government intended they voted by a small majority in favour of banishment and a substantial fine.

[..]

Fouquet’s spectacular fall is arguably the most dramatic and poignant example of the potentially calamitous consequences of ministerial disgrace. The first great political crisis of Louis XIV’s personal rule, it cast a long shadow and yet in many ways it marked the end rather than the beginning of a chapter as the age of the minister-favourite gave way to that of the secretary of state. Although Fouquet had escaped with his life, his draconian punishment was very much in the tradition of Louis XIII and Richelieu and arguably of late medieval monarchy. Rather than simply dismiss Fouquet and banish him from court, as a master would discard an unsatisfactory servant, Louis XIV had treated him as a criminal who had stolen from his treasury and plotted against his authority. It was a very political trial, one that brings to mind the treatment of Claude Barbin, following the murder of Concini, or that of the maréchal de Marillac, in the aftermath of the Day of Dupes. Indeed, Fouquet’s miserable existence in Pignerol almost bears comparison with that of cardinal Jean Balue, who according to popular legend was locked in an iron cage in the château of Loches after falling foul of Louis XI. The harsh treatment of Fouquet’s family and the confiscation of their property as well as the persecution of his friends and clients was again consistent with earlier practice, echoing in milder form the attacks on the Concini in 1617.

Julian Swann- Exile, Inprisonment or Death- The Politics of Disgrace in Bourbon France.

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More than just a monopoly of legitimate force

Over the course of the century separating the disgrace of Marie de Medici in 1617 and the death of Louis XIV, the world of the French court had been transformed. For the first half of the period, royal authority had been constantly challenged and Louis XIII had struggled to maintain the loyalty of his closest relatives, whose spirit of disobedience had infected large swathes of an aristocracy that still cherished notions of political and military independence. In such a climate, conspiracies and revolts were endemic both in the pursuit of power and as a reaction to the loss of favour. Determined to make the great aristocrats participate in the construction of a strong monarchy, rather than continually undermine its foundations, Louis XIII, aided and abetted by the indomitable Richelieu, had pursued a determined and far from easy policy designed to show that disgrace had consequences. Turning a stony face to appeals for pardon from those who had committed treasonable acts on the grounds of a "king deceived", or out of misplaced loyalty to Gaston or Marie de Medici, did much to create a climate in which collaboration with the monarchy rather than resistance to it could prosper.

Not even the protection of the heir to the throne had been enough to save Ornano or Montmorency, and during the Fronde the Grand Condé had courted with disaster. Political will combined with the gradual transformation of military organization and technology had by the late 1650s made armed revolt impossible. Louis XIV's personal reign had dawned in these relatively auspicious circumstances, but it took more than just a monopoly of legitimate force to manage the court. Success in the craft of kingship depended upon the ability to project power by other means, and within this context, a new culture of disgrace emerged, which, when used effectively, was a potent weapon capable of reaffirming the king's position at the head of the social hierarchy. By the end of the seventeenth century, Louis XIV had therefore succeeded in bringing his relatives to heel. While Monsieur, his son, and the prince de Conti might fume in private about the king's refusal to grant offices or military commands that they believed were their due, disfavour was now to be borne submissively when compared to the rebelliousness of their fathers and grandfathers.

A successful monarch also needed to live up to the expectations of his role at the head of the Bourbon dynasty and of aristocratic society. The court was first and foremost the royal household and the king, like any father, needed to defend his own patriarchal authority. That meant managing his siblings and other close relatives, while ensuring that the court was not allowed to become unduly debauched or disorderly. Ritual, etiquette, and patronage could all be used to assist in this task, but it was the power to disgrace which epitomized the essence of personal monarchy. Like an angry father, the king could chastize his children and servants, whether through harsh imprisonment or simply a cold and reproachful look. A particularly successful and charismatic monarch such as Louis XIV was, in effect, benefitting from something of a virtuous circle. The appeal of his person and attractiveness of his court only heightened the sense of loss for those who incurred his displeasure, and the careful manipulation of his favour was one of the most striking and impressive features of his rule.

Julian Swann- Exile, Imprisonment, or Death: the Politics of Disgrace in Bourbon France

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"The Imitation of M. de Beaufort"

During the Fronde, the buccaneering cleric, Jean François Paul de Gondi, cardinal de Retz, was arrested. His colourful memoirs recounting these events, while hardly an impartial account of his political machinations, do contain many thoughtful and informative musings about the nature and meanings of disgrace. He described how minutes before his arrest, one of his friends had heard that he was to be seized and had rushed to inform him. The cardinal later commented ruefully: "He could not find me, although he only missed me by a few seconds and those seconds would without doubt have preserved my liberty." For a prince of the Church there was clearly nothing dishonourable about fleeing should the opportunity present itself. The contrast with Bassompierre's passivity is striking, and personal temperament and political context were undoubtedly significant. The maréchal believed himself to have been disgraced by his master- Louis XIII, whereas Retz and the Condé, in both 1616 and 1650, had fallen foul of the queen regent or her ministerial favourite. They were, therefore, in possession of a certain amount of leeway when it came to justifying their acts of disobedience. An angry prince de Condé had made the distinction very clear in a quarrel with Marie de Medici in the presence of Louis XIII in February 1615. When the king sought to intervene, the prince had interrupted declaring: "You are my master, I would shed the last drop of my blood in your service, but as for the queen, I cannot say the same."

For those who were prepared to resist arrest or flee to avoid it, the logical next step was to consider escape once in custody. In February 1614, César de Vendôme, the adventurous illegitimate son of Henri IV, had achieved such a feat, setting a family precedent. On the night of 31 May 1648, César's own son, François de Vendôme, duc de Beaufort, who had been imprisoned in Vincennes since the failure of the "cabale des importants", five years earlier, thrilled the public with a daring escape. In a scene worthy of Dumas, he had overpowered his guards and despite suffering a heavy fall from a rope suspended from the château walls secured his freedom. His success inspired others, and when the Grand Condé was asked what books he wished to read while a prisoner, he memorably replied: "The imitation of M. de Beaufort."

The cardinal de Retz was another to follow that illustrious example, and he late recounted his various escape attempts in some detail. Of these, that designed by his ingenious physician was particularly eye-catching. According to Retz, the doctor had the idea of filing ‘the bar of a small window which was in the chapel where I attended Mass, and to attach some sort of mechanical contraption with the aid of which I could, in truth, have been lowered quite easily from the third floor of the keep’. Unfortunately this would only take him half way down the walls of Vincennes, and the intrepid scheme had to be abandoned. Another no less imaginative plot involved the cardinal hiding in a ‘hollow’ on top of a tower which had been filled with various bits of broken masonry. Once there a friendly guard, who had previously been bought off, would attach cords to the side of the wall where Beaufort had escaped. The guard would even produce a blood-stained sword as proof that he had wounded the fleeing prisoner and as the other jailers rushed to the walls they would see a group of horsemen in the distance waiting to welcome the fugitive. As a final coup de theâtre, cannons would be fired several days later at Mézières where Retz was known to have supporters as if to signal his safe arrival. During all of this commotion, the cardinal was to be snugly hidden in the tower, fortified with supplies of bread, wine, and patience until calm was restored. With the help of the corrupted jailer and his accomplices, he would then quietly slip out of the prison dressed as a woman, a monk, or in some similarly unobtrusive disguise.

Alas all too often the best-laid plans come to naught, and an unexpected change of guard led to the blocking of a stairwell that had been crucial to the plan. Undaunted Retz had continued to scheme and when he was transferred to the fortress of Nantes his opportunity finally came. One of his servants plied the guards with drink, and the cardinal escaped after a vertiginous descent of a bastion. His celebrations were marred by an accidental pistol shot, which led to him being thrown in mid-gallop from a startled horse, fracturing, or possibly dislocating, his shoulder and leaving him free albeit in excruciating pain. To conclude his truly memorable adventure, Retz eventually made his way by ship to San Sebastián in Spain from whence he began the journey to Rome.

The cardinal could tell a good tale, but behind the derring-do there are some serious questions for the history of disgrace. On one level, his single-minded determination to escape reflects the peculiar circumstances of a Regency and especially of civil war, and Louis XIV’s later emphasis on the personal nature of his power and authority made such behaviour far more difficult to justify.

Julian Swann- Exile, Imprisonment or Death- the Politics of Disgrace in Bourbon France.

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To avoid disgrace- Forebodings.

In his memoirs, the maréchal de Bassompierre, himself a victim of political disgrace following the Day of Dupes, recalled an alleged conversation with Concini in 1616, not long after the death of the favourite's daughter. An emotional Concini had declared himself to be capable of overcoming such a loss, but not his own ruin and that of his wife and son, which he claimed to see "before me with my own eyes." His fears derived from his observation of life and human nature, and he had added that "man rises to a certain level of happiness after which he descends or falls, depending on how high and steep was his climb." Aware that his own good fortune had been immense, Concini was haunted by a premonition that the tide had turned and he had tried in vain to persuade his wife, the queen's long-time friend and companion Leonora Galigai, that they should make "an honourable retreat". Both would pay with their lives for the failure to act upon these forebodings, and Bassompierre remarked that his intention in telling this tale was to "show by this example how men, particularly those who fortune has favoured, have thoughts and premonitions of their [impending] misfortune; but not the will to act to avoid it."

These words were, of course, enriched by hindsight and a dash of personal animosity, and scholarly studies of the tragic couple suggest that if anyone was urging retreat from public was it was Leonora. Yet both Gracian the theorist and Bassompierre the political man of action had placed great weight not just on the fickleness of fortune, which was a commonplace of early seventeenth-century thought, but also the idea that a favourite or minister could extricate himself from the court by an act of will. In reality, as Bassompierre had perhaps unwittingly revealed, life was more complicated, and Concini was constrained by the attitude of his wife, or she by him, and both had to think of their future and that of their son. There is, it is true, some evidence that the couple considered flight back to their native Italy, and had even converted some of their assets into more readily transportable jewellery and cash. Unfortunately their titles, offices, lands, and pensions were in France and if they wished to preserve them that option was ruled out. To abandon worldly ambitions and make a noble retreat from public life was a lofty ideal worthy of any classical or Christian moralist, but to imagine Concini walking serenely away from the malicious court of Marie de Medici is hard indeed. Their status as "Italians", and as amongst the principal beneficiaries of the queen mother's largesse, had caused great resentment and they were an obvious target for the rapacious aristocratic cabals fighting over the spoils of the monarchical state. In such a ruthless world, there was much more to be said for trying to consolidate their position at the head of the government rather than take the risk of allowing power to pass into the hands of others. Where Concini erred was not in failing to heed those nagging doubts about the flightiness of the goddess Fortuna, but in needlessly antagonizing Louis XIII. Richelieu and Mazarin would learn by his mistakes, and both clung to power limpet-like until the bitter end, using the wealth and patronage at their disposal to entrench their families so deeply within the aristocratic networks of kinship and clientele that it proved impossible to dislodge them.

Julian Swann- Exile, Imprisonment, or Death- the Politics of Disgrace in Bourbon France.

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A turning point in political history

The image of the elderly Louis XIV wiping away the tears as he regretfully separated from Chamillart was a lifetime away from that of the brash young man who had boasted of his part in the arrest of Fouquet. Yet if the king had rarely appeared more human, even fragile, than in 1709, his authority was ultimately far stronger than in the halcyon days of his youth. As a child of the Fronde, Louis XIV had experienced at first hand the danger that over-mighty subjects could pose to the crown, and Mazarin had twice been driven from the kingdom despite enjoying the confidence of the queen mother, while would-be first ministers such as the prince de Condé or the cardinal de Retz raised armies or courted popular support to further their ambitions. As for Louis XIII, he had been obliged to sanction murder in order to establish his authority, and in tandem with Richelieu he had subsequently resorted to the prison cell or even the block as a means of settling the disputes amongst his ministers and favourites. In 1661, Louis XIV seemed posed to continue in the same vengeful and autocratic tradition. The arrest and intended judicial execution of Fouquet had much in common with earlier practice, and even if his life was eventually spared two decades imprisoned in Pignerol sent a blunt message.

Yet, grim as this punishment undoubtedly was, the breaking of Fouquet marked a turning point in political history. For the remainder of his reign, Louis XIV had established an unquestioned superiority over those who governed in his name, acting as the lynchpin of government in a manner that gave force to his claim to be his own first minister.

Julian Swann- Exile, Imprisonment, or Death: the Politics of Disgrace in Bourbon France