In 1788, the anonymous author of a book entitled Tableau du nouveau Palais-Royal asked in a concluding chapter: âIs it for himself, is it for me, I asked myself, that the Prince has erected this superb monument?â.1 What was described in the 76 chapters and over 400 pages of this book, which was probably written by the actor and playwright Francois-Marie Mayeur de Saint-Paul (1758â1818) in the style of Louis-Sébastien Mercierâs Tableau de Paris, was astonishing indeed: in a few years, Louis-Philippe-Joseph (1747â1793), duc de Chartres from 1747 to 1785 and duc dâOrléans from 1785 onwards, had created a new centre of urban life right in the middle of Paris.2 The design of the new palace complex was unique: the duke had adjoined to his residence, which had been built by the Cardinal de Richelieu in the first half of the seventeenth century and modified several times since, dozens of buildings which were visually integrated into one ensemble of great architectural coherence and elegance around the palace garden (Figures 2.1 and 2.2). In the west, north and east, houses in regular neoclassic design (Figures 2.3 and 2.4) stood now above arcades and galleries, and hosted boutiques, cafés, restaurants, clubs in the basement, ground floor and first floor.
Floor plan of the Palais-Royal at the beginning of the 1780s
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Victor Louisâ floor plan of the new Palais-Royal
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In the south, a wooden gallery with a kind of bazaar enclosed the main palace courtyard. Everyday thousands of people flooded to the Palais-Royal to have a stroll, meet acquaintances or make new ones, buy luxury goods, eat ice cream, drink alcohol, play chess or billiards, hear music, see theatre plays, meet prostitutes, find a job, exchange new gossip or discuss political issues.3
Historians have clearly tended to the second interpretation. Under the influence of Habermasâs famous theory, they have long been searching for the origins of a âbourgeois public sphereâ, which they contrasted with the ârepresentative public sphereâ of court society.4 They considered the Palais-Royal as one of the birthplaces of a new, socially more fluid society based on commercial exchanges, articulated around public spaces, and shaped by a new public sphere that put into question the rigid social hierarchies and the absolutism of the Ancien Régime. The Palais-Royal has been sometimes termed an âanti-Versaillesâ, and it is also well-known as a place that played a major role in the outbreak of the French Revolution.5
This view is correct, to be sure, but it captures only a part of the logic behind the creation and the activities of the Palais-Royal, as this chapter endeavours to show. Recent scholarship has questioned seriously the Habermasian dichotomy between the âbourgeoisâ and the âcourtlyâ public spheres, and this chapter indeed holds that the commercial, cultural and political activities
In recent decades, studies on political journalism and pamphleteering have begun to link the public sphere more tightly with the history of the French court.7 Old reflexes remain lively, however. The idea that politically radical
Victor Louisâ project for the facades of the arcades in the Palais-Royal garden
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The garden of the new Palais-Royal after the realisation of Victor Louisâ project
COPPER ENGRAVING IN ANONYMOUS, TABLEAU DU NOUVEAU PALAIS-ROYAL, 2 VOLS., VOL. II (LONDON [PARIS?]: S.N., 1788, UNPAGINATED)
This chapter, by exploring the history of the Palais-Royal, casts some light on the political role played by a specific group of actors in the French monarchy, namely âprinces du sangâ (princes of royal blood). While court history has been exploring the political role of dynastic relatives and the resulting âconstellation of courtsâ more in depth, eighteenth-century French princes du sang have been neglected until very recently, due to an insistence on state building and âabsolutism.â11 Arlette Jouannaâs posthumous monograph, published in 2023, enables us to grasp better how the duc dâOrléansâs political activities in the 1780s stood in a long tradition reaching back to the late Middle Ages. Jouanna explains why princes of the blood played a particularly important role in the French kingdom, and also why the contest for authority was greater within the Capetian dynasty than among the Austrian Habsburgs, as Jeroen Duindam has noticed. Contrary to the narrative according to which princes of the blood were marginalised by Louis XIV, Jouanna shows that they were major political actors in the eighteenth century. Their relative political disengagement in the decades after the Fronde seems rather to be the exception in pre-modern French political history.12
By studying how Parisian commercial, cultural and political institutions, as well as practices, were intertwined with a princely court, this chapter also aims at contributing to the ongoing widening of court history. In the past decades, historians have enlarged very much our gaze on early modern European courts. They have shown the political significance of court ceremonies and festivities, explored the âeconomy of honourâ creating hierarchies at the very
1 The Palais-Royal Court
In 1788, the Palais-Royal had already a long and colourful history. A property of the French royal family since Richelieuâs donation to King Louis XIII in 1636, it belonged to the apanage of the Orléans branch of the Bourbon dynasty since 1692.19 In 1715, when Philippe dâOrléans, uncle of young Louis XV, became the regent of the kingdom, the Palais-Royal turned for about eight years into Franceâs very political centre and the most important meeting place for elites. Not only in this period, but also during the whole eighteenth century, the Palais-Royal was extended and redesigned, often in an innovative manner, for example when neoclassical interiors were created in the 1760s and 1770s or when a new opera house was built in the 1760s.20
To grasp the significance of the Palais-Royal, it is necessary to understand that eighteenth-century France had inherited medieval political structures that were still alive in the years before the French Revolution. Still in the eighteenth century, the French monarchy paid only relatively modest pensions to the
These structures meant that France had not only a princely court in Versailles, but at least two further in Paris: Orléansâs at the Palais-Royal and Provenceâs at the Palais du Luxembourg. Of course, the government and the court of the duc dâOrléans were tiny in comparison to the royal apparatus. The administration of the duc dâOrléans comprised only one Council and two
2 Commerce and Entertainment in the Backyard of a Princely Court
Among the petty merchants under the arcades of the Palais-Royal, there was one selling hot chestnuts who bore the title âPrivileged Chestnut Seller of His
Naming the Palais-Royal an âanti-Versaillesâ means forgetting that the French royal palace in Versailles had something of a shopping mall in the eighteenth century: it was surrounded by hundreds of wooden barracks held by privileged merchants, and some dozens were even situated within the castle itself.29 Like the Palais-Royal, the Versailles palace complex was open to virtually everyone â indeed it may have been even more permeable that the Palais-Royal as even poorly dressed visitors could enter freely the royal bedroom â and was a major touristic destination.30 The Versailles garden had very much the character of a public garden in the eighteenth century, and many sellers were active here too.31 Versailles was also not only a palace: it was a bustling city of some 60,000 inhabitants where many traders unfolded commercial activities extending far beyond the court, as for example the history of fabric commerce shows.32
Much as in Versailles, the fashionable Parisian public spaces were shaped by the reigning dynasty. Indeed âla Villeâ was in the eighteenth century often perceived as a creation of the royal court, and for this reason was both praised as a space of monarchical representation and criticised as a place of courtly luxury and leisure.33 The places royales, the Tuileries garden and its prolongation the Champs-Ãlysées had not been laid down by city magistrates but by the Bourbon princes and their entourages. It thus does not come as a surprise
The garden of the old Palais-Royal
COPPER ENGRAVING IN : ANONYMOUS, TABLEAU DU NOUVEAU PALAIS-ROYAL, VOL. 1 (LONDON 1788)
The building of the new âarcadesâ, shops and performance halls of the Palais-Royal by Louis-Philippe-Joseph, first duc de Chartres and then duc dâOrléans, was then less a break with the norms and practices of court society than the resolute development of established institutions and practices. In a sense, Louis-Philippe-Joseph was introducing a greater order into commercial activities that in Versailles took place in a quite anarchic way and in the chaotic ensemble of wooden barracks. When writing a regulation for the ânewâ Palais-Royal garden, the Orléans administration was clearly endeavouring to create a representative location. For this reason, it not only ensured an exemplary lighting and sweeping service for which the shop keeper had to pay high sums, but forbade all handicraft activities, commercial signs on the arcades, shop names with wordplay, livestock, inappropriate dress, or flowerpots and vases on the façades.34
Though this feature is barely visible nowadays, the Palais-Royal gardens and arcades created by Louis-Philippe-Joseph were a place of both patriotic and dynastic representation. The Tableau du nouveau Palais-Royal notes that the new buildings were designed to look as if they were a part of the residence of the First Prince of the Blood.36 The garden displayed Bourbon dynastic grandeur: Under each tree, there was a statue of a âgreat manâ âwho has made France gloriousâ and in the middle stood the founder of the Bourbon dynasty, King Henri IV.37
The logic behind the construction of the ânew Palais-Royalâ was not merely financial. Historians have usually assumed that the main rationale for the duc de Chartres to build the arcades and the shops was to make money to settle the debts he had accumulated as an heir to the apanage. As it did not yield the financial benefits that could have been expected, they considered the whole real estate operation as a failure.38 Yet this view may be too simplistic, because it does not take into consideration two further, closely intertwined logics: that of rank representation and that of patronage. Both induced enormous costs. The first one explains not only the lavish architecture of the arcades or the lighting, but also that the duc de Chartres respectively dâOrléans fought hard to keep the right to host the opera house and, after this plan had failed because of the resistance of the city of Paris, struggled to locate another theatre in the palace complex. He succeeded with the Théâtre des Variétés, which opened in 1787 in a provisional wooden building before moving in 1790
A second reason why the duc dâOrléans did not maximise his profits with this enormous real estate operation was that he sold a part of the âarcadesâ (that is of the houses surrounding the garden, whose width was counted in the number of arcades they had on the ground floor) to clients at a reduced, and sometimes even astonishingly low price. The houses around the garden were sold for an average price of 138,051 livres per arcade. By comparison, Louis-Philippe-Joseph sold a three-arcades house to his First Medical Doctor (âPremier médecinâ) for 187,500 livres (62,500/arcade), that is 45 % of the average price (that was already lower than the market price), and even a seven-arcades house to his Chancellor the marquis du Crest (1737â1793) for 37,500 livres (5357 livres/arcade), that is 4 % of the average price. The duc dâOrléansâs trusted friend the duc de Lauzun received the usufruct of a four-arcades house for the sum of 100,000 livres (25,000/arcade; 18 % of the average price), and his former maître dâhôtel, the baron de Ponddens, the âjouissance à vieâ of an arcade for free. Other buyers who were given preference, and accorded a reduced price, came from the apanage or from regions where the duc dâOrléans had his properties. Jean-Antoine Brondes the younger, owner of an important cotton manufacture between Orléans and Blois (around 2000 employees) could buy a three-arcades house for 262,500 livres (87,500/arcade), 63 % of the average price, and Louis Charles Gaudron Fauvin the younger, trader in Blois, and Guillaume Pascal Coquin, President of the Rouen Salt Storehouse, both paid 187,500 for a three-arcade house (62,000/arcade), 45 % of the average price.41
The attractiveness of the Palais-Royal for shopkeepers and entertainment institutions, and even for prostitutes, was directly linked to the fact that this place was a princely palace. To conduct commercial activities in the apanage of a Bourbon prince offered patronage and protection, and brought prestige. Since until the Autumn of 1787 royal police officers were not permitted to enter the Parisian âenclosâ under the jurisdiction of princes du sang, these also offered space for illegal activities. Notwithstanding the many dubious businesses conducted in the Palais-Royal, contemporaries underlined the âdignity of the placeâ that impacted directly on the kind of commercial activities that took root in the Palais-Royal complex: as all courtly settings, it was a place of luxury and fashion. Most shops were selling exclusive goods at a very high price: clockworks, glassware, jewellery, art works, among others.45 All the cafés but one were luxury âboutiques de limonadiersâ selling exquisite drinks in a lavish decor. The Café de Foy, for example, served ice cream in silver dishes (the silver spoons were often stolen). The restaurants were very expensive. In those
The courtly setting of the Palais-Royal impacted cultural practices as well. The transfer of the Théâtre des Variétés to the Palais-Royal implied a change in its repertoire, which became âdignifiedâ by the place.48 The Théâtre des Comédiens de M. de Beaujolais staged children who gave the illusion that they were speaking and singing while professional actors and singers did the job behind the scene. While this kind of spectacle may seem trivial to our modern eyes, it was clearly an upper-class theatre: the author of the Tableau du nouveau Palais-Royal notes that âthe price of the entry has kept the petit peuple awayâ â sources indeed confirm that admission was kept deliberately expensive because Gardeur considered it suitable to an establishment protected by a Prince of the Blood â and that the orchestra was one of the best in Paris. None other than Christoph Willibald Gluck wrote music for the plays staged in this theatre.49 The Chinese shadow theatre also had an excellent reputation.50
3
Clearly, while the gardens and especially the wooden gallery hosted often chaotic entertainment, the duc dâOrléans did not create a fair, but rather a prestigious fashionable public space that functioned in some ways as an extension of his court. Describing the Palais-Royal with the term âbourgeois public sphereâ ignores the fact that this public space was imbedded symbolically, legally and socially in ancien régime structures. If the Palais-Royal complex soon became indeed the most important place in Paris for political discussions, it was not despite, but precisely because it was a princely palace. It was not a space disconnected from court society. Elite sociability and political activities went hand in hand, and it is often hard to distinguish between the two. In a courtly setting, being a âfriendâ with someone was political, and this was often true as well for the milieu surrounding courtiers, including the Enlightenment philosophes.51 Again, the logics of patronage and representation inherent to a princely house shaped the profile of the Palais-Royal in a decisive manner.
As is well-known, the new Palais-Royal was a place where several booksellers traded in unauthorised literature: âworks by our best writersâ but also âvenomous pamphletsâ and âscandalous and forbidden worksâ for âlibertinesâ, as the Tableau du nouveau Palais-Royal puts it.52 Less famous are the numerous societies and clubs that occupied a significant part of the first (and sometimes the second) floors of the houses around the garden.53 These clubs mixed elite sociability, the cultivation of the arts and of learning, and politics. The Tableau du nouveau Palais-Royal mentions that there was a âcharming masonic lodge, decorated with great tasteâ, which, as the duc dâOrléans was the Grand Master of the main branch of freemasonry in France, is not surprising. In eighteenth-century Paris, freemasonry had a strong âmondainâ character and followed largely the established ranks in society. Masonic lodges often developed at courts in eighteenth-century Europe.54 The Tableau du nouveau Palais-Royal of 1788 lists six further âclubs or societiesâ: the âSociété olympiqueâ, a para-masonic club whose activities evolved around music (its orchestra was led by the Chevalier de Saint-George, a famous violinist and intimate of the duc dâOrléans);55
With the elections to the General Estates approaching, the Palais-Royal strengthened its position as the most important centre of political activism in France. Very little is known about pre-revolutionary political clubs and scholarly publications mention them only in passing, referring mainly to allusions in memoirs written years later (usually during the Restoration). We cannot say much about where the so-called âclub des enragésâ met, when it disappeared, who its members were, which rooms, rules and practices it had, whether its members had a coherent political programme beyond the idea that the National Assembly should vote a part of the budget, or indeed how far this club was institutionalised at all.58 The second club with a strong political focus, the Club de Valois, is somewhat better known thanks to a print entitled Almanach du Club de Valois (1790). According to this source, this club was founded on 11 February 1789 as a gathering of all âpatrioticâ oppositional forces in the Estates General (to be convened on 5 May). The members, the Almanach says, met in a house above the arcade no. 177, in rooms that belonged to two men called Frestel and Menneville, who can be identified as Jean Gaspard Frestel, âmaître paumier of His Serenissime Highness Monseigneur the duc dâOrléansâ (that is his master in the jeu de paume), and Louis Marie François Pocholle de Menneville, a trader.59
The Palais-Royal clubs were expressly modelled on the London clubs for MPâs. The Club de Valois occupied four rooms. One of the rooms was devoted to reading and writing. It housed the clubâs library, which subscribed to 29 French and four English weeklies as well as three monthly periodicals. It also provided desks, ink, paper and quills. In this room, it was forbidden to speak loudly. The three further rooms were âsalons dâassemblée et de conversationâ, where members gathered, conversed, dined and played chess, checkers, or card games. A librarian read aloud new publications. The list of members was impressive: beneath the members of his own court (among others, the comte de Genlis-Sillery, the duc de Lauzun-Biron, his chancellor Latouche de Tréville, his secretary Choderlos de Laclos and his âPremier médecinâ Johan Geoffroy Saiffert), the duc dâOrléans obviously was able to gather around himself many progenies of the most influential French families (and of some foreign ones).61 This club,
4 An Enlightenment Printing House
Hosting bookshops or creating political clubs in the Palais-Royal in the late 1780s were only two instruments among others that the duke and his entourage used to influence high politics. As important was the publication of political writings. In 1785 and 1786, the marquis du Crest, a favourite and (since November 1785) Chancellor of the duc de Chartres respectively dâOrléans, created a new printing house, the Imprimerie polytype. He had a five-story building erected in the rue Favart, on the site of the former Hôtel de Choiseul in the vicinity of the Palais-Royal. It comprised four office rooms, 31 rooms dedicated to the production of prints, as well as storage areas and lodgings for workers. There were several printing presses and between four and six intaglio presses (that is press for engravings).63 The Imprimerie polytype was thus among the big printing houses in Paris. Its directors were Joseph Hoffmann and his son Francois-Ignace-Joseph (1730â1793), Alsatians from the dyeing industry without any experience as printers.
The construction of a new big printing house was an astonishing achievement in the rigid system of privileges created under Louis XIV, which limited the number of printing houses and excluded any newcomer. That the Imprimerie polytype could have a legal existence was made possible by both the support of the duc de Chartres respectively dâOrléans, who wrote several letters to the Crown Chancellor, and the invention of a kind of stereotypy that the Hoffmanns named âpolytypieâ. In 1784, protected by both the Directeur des bâtiments du roi the marquis dâAngiviller and the duc de Chartres, the Hoffmanns had been able to secure a privilege for this printing technique for 15 years, and in January 1785, a further privilege for a newspaper that was to be produced with this technology. In this year, they managed to obtain the status of imprimeurs for the commercial exploitation of the âpolytypie.â Yet soon the Chambre syndicale (that is the corporation of printers and booksellers), the
With a delay of almost a year, the Hoffmanns launched the new newspaper for which they had obtained a privilege in January 1785, the Journal polytype des arts et des sciences. Their original plan was ambitious and innovative. The Hoffmanns planned to print a daily newspaper65 that would provide illustrations, at least 26 for each yearly âvolumeâ, that is roughly one illustration every two weeks.66 According to the memorandum they submitted to secure a privilege, the new gazetteâs aim was not to comment on new scientific or artistic developments but rather to quickly inform the public on them by producing images of âdiscoveries, events that took place the day before, the façade of a new house, the project of a skilled artist, the sketch of a painting, the portrait of a famous man, the costume of an actress, the most interesting scene of a tragedy, trends in fashion, new jewellery, instruments used in physic or in architecture, the design of a piece of furnitureâ.67 The official prospectus took over this list and added pieces of music, of natural history and of sculpture. In a further prospectus, the Hoffmanns underlined the contribution to progress that their newspaper would bring by announcing that it would include reports on every event that could foster the happiness of humanity; every new action and institution that is grounded in benevolence; detailed descriptions of all new and of many ancient inventions that are still not widely known; analyses of new theatre plays; images of every worthy monument. Furthermore, the
This Enlightenment project was not the result of a capitalist venture. While the Imprimerie polytype was on paper an independent company, it was in fact a co-creation of the marquis du Crest, and so was its Journal polytype. Du Crest most probably funded partly the publishing house.69 That he, and not the Hoffmanns, piloted the whole enterprise is also shown by his correspondence with Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville (1754â1793). In the years after his liberation from the Bastille in September 1784, Brissot â who was to play a major role in the French Revolution some years later â was a protégé of Mme la marquise de Sillery, better known as Mme la comtesse de Genlis (1746â1830), mistress of the duc de Chartres respectively dâOrléans and sister to Du Crest. Brissotâs wife Félicité Dupont had worked as a sous-gouvernante (deputy governess) of the duc de Chartresâs children (and thus of future king Louis-Philippe) under the direction of Mme de Genlis (who had the âgouverneurâ title in the masculine form) and from some of Félicitéâs letters, it appears that already in those years, Brissot was frequenting the salon of Mme de Genlis, though the marriage project of Mlle Dupont and Brissot was kept secret.70 When Brissot was imprisoned in the Bastille, it was Mme de Genlis who got him released from jail, as Brissot acknowledged in a letter to Du Crest in Autumn 1784, and again in a letter to the marquis de Chastellux in August 1787.71 Some months later â probably in December 1784 â, Du Crest asked him to work for him as a journalist for the Journal polytype he intended to create soon. On 5 January 1785, the affair was already settled (even if it would take more than a year to launch the newspaper). Strikingly, Brissot still did not have any contact with the Hoffmanns at this point. It was Du Crest alone who recruited Brissot as the main collaborator of the newspaper, without taking the Hoffmannsâ opinion into consideration. This shows that, if the Hoffmanns were nominally the directors of the Journal and the Imprimerie polytype, in reality Du Crest was heading this enterprise â and using it to achieve political ends.
5
The activities of the Imprimerie polytype were not limited to producing a newspaper and books with the new âpolytypieâ technique. Even if the Journal polytype and other productions via the stereotypy technique may have been important to Du Crest and Orléans because they helped them to present themselves as promoters of technical and moral progress â like the numerous âphilanthropical societiesâ that Du Crest created with Brissotâs help72 â, Vidaud de La Tour and Miromesnil had been right in assuming that these legal activities functioned also as a cover for printing with conventional printing presses, something the Hoffmanns had no privilege for. Indeed, a major raison dâêtre of the Imprimerie polytype was apparently the publication of political pamphlets.
We have a unique documentation concerning these illegal pamphleteering activities because in September 1787, while the conflict between the royal couple and their distant cousin the duc dâOrléans escalated, the State Council published on 4 September an arrêt authorising the Chambre syndicale, which was responsible for the control of book production and trade, to enter the properties of the princes of the royal family.73 The Imprimerie polytype was closed down and its facilities inspected with great care. The protocol describes the different rooms of the building and lists all the prints and printing plates found. It shows also that the owners of the printing house had tried in great haste to destroy as much compromising material as possible. Nonetheless, the police were able to confiscate two registers with orders. While the most radical prints may not appear in those registers and the police found many items burned in the chimneys, we may be better informed about the activities of the Imprimerie polytype than about any other illegal printing press in eighteenth-century France.74 Combining information from the confiscated registers, the protocol of the perquisition by the police, and an arrêt of the Royal
Can we discern a coherent ideology or political line in the publications of the Imprimerie polytype or did its printing activities mirror a range of opinions? In the framework of this chapter, it is not possible to give a precise analysis of the content of Imprimerie polytype prints, and only some tentative general outlines will have to suffice here. An analysis of the identifiable Imprimerie polytype pamphlets suggests that they do not offer any ideological coherence over the period of the publishing houseâs existence. However, if one looks precisely at the dates in which the individual pamphlets were written and published, and correlates the political opinion expressed in it with partisan games, it appears clearly that the Imprimerie polytype was an instrument in the contest between court factions. In other words, it is possible to detect changes in political orientation that may have corresponded with turnabouts in the political positioning of Du Crest and the duke of Orléans, changes that were themselves conditioned by partisan struggles.
Until the first Assemblée des notables (February 1787), the Imprimerie polytype published a range of pamphlets supporting finance minister Charles Alexandre de Calonne and his projects, and attacking his rival Jacques Necker: one praised Calonne for convening the Assemblée des notables and the dukeâs Président du Conseil, abbé Nicolas Baudeau, attacked harshly Necker and his partisans in a series of pamphlets (whose publication might have continued after Calonneâs fall).76 The Imprimerie polytype published physiocratic writings by Baudeau and presumably by Lemercier de La Rivière.77 In tune with the physiocratsâ political ideas, it supported absolute monarchy in this period through several pamphlets, including a reprint of Pierre-Louis-Claude Ginâs Les vrais principes du gouvernement français
Despite the continuous support for Calonneâs endeavours to raise taxes on the clergy, a reorientation towards political radicalism is palpable in February 1787: the three pamphlets that were condemned by the Conseil royal on 15 February and that prompted the Hoffmannsâ loss of their privilege, claimed that ânational assembliesâ (the Estates General) are an essential and necessary part of the French political system.80 Yet the Hoffmanns were able to win their privilege back on 10 March, and published some days after 18 March an anonymous pamphlet entitled Lettre dâun Anglois à Paris, which provided strong support for Calonneâs plan to introduce taxation on the clergy.81 This renewed supports for Calonne might have been necessary to win the ministerâs indulgence.
Thanks to their privilege, which they used as a cover, the Hoffmanns (and the Palais-Royal administration behind them) were able to continue with the production of pamphlets. After Calonneâs fall on 8â10 April 1787, a reorientation in the political positions of the Imprimerie polytype publications is discernible again. In the pamphlets of the following months, Calonne is presented as a most dishonest minister, and his ministry as a catastrophe for France.82 His close friend Lenoir (the former Lieutenant général de police) was now
Besides this hostility to Calonne and Lenoir, the political position of Imprimerie polytype publications was in this period rather ambiguous. The Imprimerie polytype became more moderate for some months. In March 1787 Ange Goudarâs Réponse à M. le comte de Mirabeau appeared, a publication hostile to Mirabeauâs political radicalism. Baudeau published Charles V, Louis XII et Henri IV aux François, which endorsed typical physiocratic ideas, including the ideal of paternalist absolute monarchy.84 With the nomination of Brienne to the position of finance minister in May, the Imprimerie polytype did not turn into a machine supporting the new ministry but did not criticise the new minister overtly either. In May, Lettre à M. de Brienne mixed praise for the new minister with an exhortation (and a warning) not to adopt Calonneâs fiscal plans. In the following month, Mirabeauâs Lettre remise à Frédéric-Guillaume defended much more radical ideas, among others a restriction of the nobilityâs privileges, though this radicalism was very much mitigated by the fact that these ideas were presented in the guise of advice to the new Prussian king, and thus not as a critique of the French government, or indeed as a position taken in French debates. In July 1787, the Imprimerie polytype printed Lettre au comte de *** ou Considérations sur le clergé, which might have been penned during the first Assemblée des notables and defended the clergy against Calonneâs taxation plans that Brienne had in the meanwhile made largely his own.85
August 1787 seems to have experienced a turnabout in the Imprimerie polytypeâs publication policy. This month saw a new clash between the Parlement de Paris and a French finance minister, this time Brienne, over the introduction of new taxes. Shortly after 13 August, Observations dâun avocat, sur lâarrêté du parlement de Paris, du 13 août 1787 came out of the press of the rue Favart. It vehemently supported Brienneâs fiscal projects and even attacked leading parlementaires
These repeated turns in the Imprimerie polytypeâs political line occurred within only nine months. They reflect largely the duc dâOrléansâs and Du Crestâs policies. Whereas the âFirst Prince of the bloodâ had no conflict with Calonne for most of the latterâs ministry, and some people of his entourage like Brissot even directly worked for the finance minister, he went into opposition during the first Assemblée des notables, largely boycotting its sessions. Instead of attending the sessions of the Assemblée, he provocatively organised a deer hunt on the Place Louis XV.90 In the summer, the Palais-Royal went into covert opposition to Brienne. Brissot penned for Du Crest a memorandum proposing to support the parlementaires to foster opposition and thus take the lead of
After the August intrigue failed, the Palais-Royal intensified its opposition policy until on 19 November the duc dâOrléans publicly accused the king of acting illegally when he was forcing the Parlement to accept a new state loan. The following day, the First Prince of the Blood was exiled. At this moment, the Imprimerie polytype had already been shut down for two months (15 September). In December Du Crest, and with him Brissot, lost their positions in the Chancellerie dâOrléans, probably sacrificed in the framework of the duc dâOrléansâs negotiations with Louis XVI.
6 Conclusion
The closing of the Imprimerie polytype, the exile of the duc dâOrléans and Du Crestâs or Brissotâs loss of employment did not mean the end of the Palais-Royalâs oppositional policy and pamphleteering activities, as shown by the pamphlets that Laclos and Sieyès penned for the duc dâOrléans in 1789, before and during the campaign for the Estates General elections.94 Revolution was coming, the outbreak of which is barely conceivable without the new public spaces, sociability and media that the duc dâOrléans had created as an extension of his court.
Tableau du nouveau Palais-Royal, 2 vols. vol. II (London [Paris?]: s.n., 1788) 186.
Tableau du nouveau Palais-Royal is usually attributed to Mayeur de Saint-Paul, and while stylometric analyses (see annexes) suggest a certain kinship with Mercierâs Tableau de Paris, they identify a closer relationship between Tableau du nouveau Palais-Royal and other books in prose attributed to Mayeur de Saint-Paul, that deal with other topics.
Overview of many activities in Robert M. Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy. Popular Entertainment in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Oxford 1986) 219â249.
Jürgen Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: an Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge 1989; German original, 1962). Synthesis of scholarship influenced by Habermas: Tim Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture (Oxford 2006).
Darrin M. McMahon, âThe Birthplace of the Revolution: Public Space and Political Community in the Palais-Royal of Louis-Philippe-Joseph dâOrléansâ, French History 10, 1 (1996) 1â29 (term âAnti-Versaillesâ on p. 20); Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy, 217â249. The âAnti-Versaillesâ topos is present in a range of popular histories: René Héron de Villefosse, LâAnti-Versailles ou le Palais-Royal de Philippe-Ãgalité (Paris 1974); Tom Ambrose, Godfather of the Revolution. The Life of Philippe Ãgalité, Duc dâOrléans (London 2008) 47. A famous letter about the unrest in the Palais-Royal garden: Camille Desmoulins, Correspondance, M. Mahon, ed. (Paris 1836) 21â29.
See, among others, the chapters in Thomas Biskup et al., eds., Enlightenment at Court. Patrons, philosophes, and Reformers in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Liverpool 2022).
Jeremy Popkin, âPamphlet journalism at the end of the old regimeâ, Eighteenth-Century Studies 22, 3 (1989) 351â67; Simon Burrows, Blackmail, Scandal, and Revolution: Londonâs French Libellistes, 1758â1792 (Manchester 2006). Underlining and exploring the impact of governments on prints: Keith Michael Baker, âPolitique et opinion publique sous lâAncien Régimeâ, Annales ESC 1 (1987) 41â71; Louise Seaward, The French Goverment and the Policing of Extra-Territorial Print Trade, 1770â1789 (Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Leeds 2013); Andreas Gestrich, âThe Public Sphere and the Habermas Debate,â German History 24, 3, 413â430. On the impact of courtly patronage on the life and writings of philosophes: Andreas PeÄar, Damien Tricoire, âDiderot the Courtier? Philosophers and the World of the Court in Enlightenment Europeâ, in: Thomas Biskup, Benjamin Marschke, Andreas PeÄar, and Damien Tricoire, eds., Enlightenment at Court. Patrons, Philosophes and Reformers in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Liverpool 2022) 33â68; Tricoire, âEine Staatsangelegenheit.â Patronage und Voltaires politische Stellungnahmenâ, in: Norbert Campagna, Rüdiger Voigt, eds., Das Jahrhundert Voltaires. Vordenker der europäischen Aufklärung (Baden-Baden, 2020) 159â189; Damien Tricoire, âRaynalâs and Diderotâs Patriotic History of the two Indies, or The Problem of Anticolonialism in the Eighteenth Century,â The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 59, 4 (2018) 429â448. Popkin and Burrows seem to have had a certain influence on Robert Darnton, Poetry and the Police. Communication Networks in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Cambridge 2010), in that Darnton insisted that courtiers provided gossip for libellistes.
Influence of the Grub Street thesis is palpable in Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution (Durham 1991); Christophe Cave, âPréfaceâ, in: C. Cave, ed., Le Règne de la critique. Lâimaginaire culturel des Memoires secrets (Paris, 2010) 7â25; Yves Beaurepaire, Ãchec au roi. Irrespect, contestations et révoltes dans la France des Lumières (Paris 2015). Even if in Poetry and the Police. Communication Networks in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Cambridge 2010), Robert Darnton considers the court to be the origin of much gossip, he does not fundamentally develop a new narrative of the conditions of production of pamphlets and repeats claims about the marginality of pamphlet journalists like Mairobert that had been proven wrong.
For example in Léonard Burnand, Les Pamphlets contre Necker. Médias et imaginaire politique au XVIIIe siècle (Paris 2009); Marie-Laure Legay, Finance et calomnie. Lâabbé Terray, ministre de Louis XV (Paris 2021).
Older view that sees pamphlets as commercial products printed abroad and smuggled into France: Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Bestsellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York 1995). On the efficacy of the late ancien régime police, the suppression of the most virulent pamphlets, and the evidence that pamphlets were mostly printed in France: Simon Burrows, Blackmail, Scandal, and Revolution. Londonâs French libellistes, 1758â1792 (Manchester 2006) 147â170; Simon Burrows, The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe II: Enlightenment Bestsellers (London 2018) 126, 132â134.
René Vermeir et al., eds., A Constellation of Courts. The Courts and Households of Habsburg Europe, 1555â1665 (Leuven 2014). Scholarship on secondary courts in France: Jonathan Spangler, âWider kinship networks,â in Erin Griffey, ed., Early Modern Court Culture (London, 2022) 55â66; Matthieu Lahaye, Le Fils de Louis XIV. Monseigneur le Grand Dauphin, 1661â1711 (Seyssel 2013). Example of a study of a minor court: Paul Beckus, Hof und Verwaltung des Fürsten Franz von Anhalt-Dessau (Halle 2015).
Arlette Jouanna, Le sang des princes. Les ambiguïtés de la légitimité monarchique (Paris 2022); Jeroen Duindam, Vienna and Versailles. The Courts of Europeâs Dynastic Rivals (Cambridge 2003) 249â251. See also Jonathan Spanglerâs study of the brothers of the kings, although it does not explore in detail their political activities after the Fronde: Jonathan Spangler, Monsieur. Second Sons in the Monarchy of France, 1550â1800 (London 2021).
The newest synthesis edited by Erin Griffey gives a good overview of many of these historiographical achievements: Erin Griffey, ed., Early Modern Court Culture (Abingdon 2022).
Norbert Elias, The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford 1983); German original: Die höfische Gesellschaft. Untersuchungen zur Soziologie des Königtums und der höfischen Aristokratie, (Neuwied 1969). Reconsiderations: Jeroen Duindam, Myth of Power. Norbert Elias and the Early Modern European Court (Amsterdam 1994); Ronald G. Asch, âHof, Adel und Monarchie: Norbert Eliasâ Höfische Gesellschaft im Lichte der neueren Forschungâ, in: Claudia Opitz, ed., Höfische Gesellschaft und Zivilisationsprozess. Norbert Eliasâ Werk in kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive (Köln, 2005) 119â141; Leonhard Horowski, âHof und Absolutismus. Was bleibt von Norbert Eliasâ Theorie?â, in: L. Schilling, ed., Absolutismus, ein unersetzliches Forschungskonzept? (München 2008) 143â171; Leonhard Horowski, Die Belagerung des Thrones. Machtstrukturen und Karrieremechanismen am Hof von Frankreich, 1661â1789 (Ostfildern 2012). An excellent overview of fairly recent trends in scholarship: Jeroen Duindam, âRoyal Courtsâ, in: Hamish Scott, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350â1750, vol. 2: Cultures and Power (Oxford 2015) 440â477.
Comparative perspectives: Duindam, Versailles and Vienna; Jeroen Duindam, Dynasties. A Global History of Power, 1300â1800 (Cambridge 2016); idem, ed., Royal Courts in Dynastic States and Empires: a Global Perspective (Leiden 2011).
Duindam, âRoyal Courtsâ (section âCourt and City: Nobles, Commoners, and Interactionâ); Jeroen Duindam, âPalace, City, Dominions: The Spatial Dimension of Habsburg Ruleâ, in: Marcello Fantoni, Georges Gorse and R. Malcolm Smuts, eds., The Politics of Space: European Courts, ca. 1500â1750 (Rome 2009) 59â90; Marcello Fantoni, âThe City of the Prince: Space and Powerâ, in: idem, 39â57; Robert O. Bucholz, Joseph P. Ward, London. A Social and Cultural History, 1550â1750 (Cambridge 2012) 101â118; John P. Spielman, The City and the Crown. Vienna and the Imperial Court, 1600â1740 (West Lafayette 1993) esp. 101â122, 185â203. See also the chapters in Susanne Claudine Pils and Jan Paul Niederkorn eds., Ein zweigeteilter Ort? Hof und Stadt in der Frühen Neuzeit (Innsbruck 2005) and in Werner Paravicini and Jörg Wettlaufer, eds., Der Hof und die Stadt. Konfrontation, Koexistenz und Integration in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Ostfildern 2006).
Alisha Rankin, âScienceâ, in Erin Griffey, ed., Early Modern Court Culture (London 2022) 447â461; Jerôme Lamy, âLa science à la cour de Versaillesâ, Cahiers dâhistoire. Revue dâhistoire critique 136 (2017) 71â99.
Boris Bove, Murielle Gaude-Ferragu, Cédric Michon, âIntroductionâ, in: Paris, ville de cour, XIIIeâXVIIIe siècles (Rennes, 2017) 7â20. See also Laurent Lemarchand, âà lâépoque moderne: Paris, ville de cour ?â, in: idem, 69â84.
Overview about the history of the Palais-Royal and its owners: Archives nationales, R4/289, âRapport général sur le Palais-Royalâ. See an original copy of the âlettre patenteâ giving the Palais-Royal to the duc dâOrléans as a part of his apanage in Archive nationales, R4/294.
Victoire Champier, Le Palais-Royal, dâaprès des documents inédits (1629â1900), 2 vols. (Paris 1900), vol. I: Du cardinal de Richelieu à la Révolution, 383â391.
Benoît Carré, Pensions et pensionnaires de la monarchie. De la grâce royale au système de redistribution de lâÃtat au XVIIIe siècle (Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Lille, 2018) 77.
Jouanna, Le sang des princes, 32â33.
Béatrice Fry Hyslop, LâApanage de Philippe-Ãgalité, duc dâOrléans, 1785â1791 (Paris 1965).
Spangler, Monsieur, 31.
Parts of the interior decoration is being installed in the Hôtel de Rohan, a part of the Archives nationales.
Archives nationales, Z 1a 518, âÃtat général de la maison des ducs dâOrléansâ.
Archives nationales, Z 1a 518, âÃtat général de la maison des ducs dâOrléans.â Further research in the series 300AP of the Archives nationales might help to solve this question.
See the chapter by Jeroen Duindam in this volume.
Jacques Levron, Les inconnus de Versailles. Les coulisses de la cour (Paris 2009); William Ritchey Newton, Dans lâombre de la cour. Les baraques autour du château de Versailles, le Nouveau Marché, lâhôtel de Limoges (Paris 2015).
Mathieu Da Vinha, Au service du roi. Dans les coulisses de Versailles (Paris 2015) 13.
Gabrielle Boreau de Roincé, âLes jardins de Versailles au XVIIIe siècle. Théâtre de privilèges et lieu de divertissementâ, Bibliothèque de lâÃcole des chartes 170, 1 (2012) 155â182, here 181.
F. Evrard, Le Commerce des étoffes à Versailles avant la Révolution (Versailles 1930).
Claire Hancock, âVille et espace public : la théorie habermasienne et le cas de la capitale française à la fin du XVIIIe siècleâ, Espaces et Sociétés 86 (1996) 127â143.
See Archives nationales, R4 288, âOrdonnance de SAS Mgr le duc de Chartres concernant le Palais-Royal, 3 mai 1782. Pour la police des locataires des maisons que lâon construit actuellement au pourtour du jardin du Palais-Royal et qui auront vue tant sur le Palais-Royal que sur les passages qui seront parallèles aux rues des Bons Enfants, Neuve, Petits-Champs et Richelieu.â The owners paid in average 42 livres per arcade per year for lightening and cleaning works to the duke, that is between 126 and 294 livres depending on the size of the house, as we see in the sales agreement in Archives nationales, R4 284â286.
See Archives nationales, R4 288, âProjet dâétablissement dâune administration de police pour le Palais-Royal et son jardinâ and âOrdonnance du duc de Chartres rendue à cet égard (1782)â.
Tableau du nouveau Palais-Royal, vol 1.
Tableau du nouveau Palais-Royal, vol. II, 90.
Amédée Britsch, La maison dâOrléans à la fin de lâAncien Régime : la jeunesse de Philippe-Ãgalité (1747â1785) (Paris 1926), 301â351; Evelyne Lever, Philippe Egalité (Paris 1996) 186â189.
Files on the Théâtre des Variétés: Archives nationales, R4/298 and 299. On the opera and the Variétés: Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy, 221, 228â230.
See Archives nationales, R4 288, âCirqueâ and sale agreement in R4 287; Magaly Piquart, âLe cirque du Palais-Royal: le Wauxhall réalisé par Victor Louisâ, in Eléonore Marantz, ed., LâAtelier de la recherche. Annales dâhistoire de lâarchitecture (Paris 2019), http://hicsa.univ-paris1.fr/documents/pdf/PublicationsLigne/Actes%20Marantz%202019/03_Magaly%20PIQUART_1.pdf; Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy, 237â238. See also the description in Hardyâs journal, 21 August 1788.
See the selling agreements in: Archives nationales, R4 284â286.
See the letters around this theatre in the file in Archives nationales, R4/89 and Tableau du nouveau Palais-Royal, vol. I, 79. For the General inspector see âProjet dâétablissement dâune administration de police pour le Palais-Royal et son jardinâ in Archives nationales, R4 288.
Tableau du nouveau Palais-Royal, vol. I, 81â84, vol. II, 168â169; Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy, 225â228.
Patricia Bouchenot-Déchin, La Montansier. De Versailles au Palais-Royal: une femme dâaffaires (Paris 1993) 193â195.
Overview in Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy, 238â239.
Tableau du nouveau Palais-Royal, vol. I, 39â62; Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy, 240â245. On the Parisian cafés, or rather âboutiques de limonadierâ, as a luxury places see Craig Koslofsky, âParisian Cafés in European Perspective: Contexts of Consumption, 1600â1730â, French History 31, 1 (2017) 39â62.
Tableau du nouveau Palais-Royal, vol. II, 124â138. On polygeny and polyandry: Pascal Firges, âThe Tacit Rules of Female Adultery. Framing Marital and Extramarital Relationships in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century French Court Societyâ, in C. Zum Kolk, K. Wilson-Chevalier, eds., Femmes à la cour de France. Statuts et fonctions, Moyen Ãge â XIXe siècle (Lille 2018) 293â302.
Olivier Dautresme, âHors la cour, au-delà de la foire: les spectacles du Palais-Royal à Paris à la fin du XVIIIe siècle,â in Robert Beck and Anna MadÅuf, eds., Divertissements et loisirs dans les sociétés urbaines à lâépoque moderne et contemporaine (Tours 2005) 177â194; Tableau du nouveau Palais-Royal, vol. I, 86â89.
Tableau du nouveau Palais-Royal, vol. I, 82â84; Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy, 226.
Tableau du nouveau Palais-Royal, vol. I, 76â78; Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy, 232â233.
See for the seventeenth century: Christian Kühner, Politische Freundschaft bei Hofe. Repräsentation und Praxis einer sozialen Beziehung im französischen Adel des 17. Jahrhunderts (Göttingn 2013).
Tableau du nouveau Palais-Royal, vol. I, 189â190.
Overview in Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy, 236â237.
Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire, LâEspace des Francs-maçons. Une sociabilité européenne au XVIIIe siècle (Rennes 2003).
Claude Ribbe, Le chevalier de Saint-George. Biographie (Paris 2004) 178.
Tableau du nouveau Palais-Royal, vol. II, 63â65.
On the âClub des enragésâ: [Emmanuel Sieyès,] Notice sur la vie de Sieyès, membre de la première Assemblée nationale et de la Convention (s.l.: s.n., 1795) 20â21. See further Kenneth Margerison, Pamphlets and Public Opinion. The Campaign for a Union of Orders in the Early French Revolution (West Lafayette 1998), 95; McMahon, âThe Birthplace of the Revolutionâ, 25.
Some information about the place (a location belonging to a certain Massé) and the political programme are given in a handwritten news: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Manuscrits Français, Nouvelles acquisitions françaises 17275, âNouvelles à la main, 16 October 1788â9 December 1789â, folio 15.
Augustin Challamel, Les Clubs contre-révolutionnaires. Cercles, comités, sociétés, salons, réunions, cafés, restaurants et libraires (Paris: Cerf, 1895), 33. On Frestel and Menneville: Archives nationales, MC/ET/LXXI/88, Minutes de Denis André Rouen, 19 novembre 1788, âBail dâun appartement aux nouvelles arcades du Palais-Royal, par Jean Demaix, marchand limonadier, et Victoire Klotz, son épouse, tous deux y demeurant, à Louis Marie François Pocholle de Menneville, négociant à Boulogne-sur-Mer, et Jean Gaspard Frestelâ; MC/ET/LXXI/91, 23 mai 1789, âBail dâune boutique sous les arcades du Palais-Royal, par Jean Gaspard Frestel, maître paumier, et Louis Marie François Pocholle de Menneville, négociant, à Joseph Lambert Van Roosmalen, dit La Rose, marchand de gaufres au Palais-Royal, et Marie Anne Konincks, son épouseâ.
Challamel, Les Clubs contre-révolutionnaires, 31â33. On Sieyès: Jean-Denis Bredin, Sieyès. La clé de la Révolution française (Paris 1988) 93. On the Instructions: George Armstrong Kelly, âThe machine of the Duc dâOrléans and the New Politicsâ, The Journal or Modern History 51, 4 (1979) 667â684, here 678â682.
Challamel, Les Clubs contre-révolutionnaires, pp. 31â66. On Laclosâ membership in this and other clubs: Ãmile Dard, Le général Choderlos de Laclos, auteur des Liaisons dangereuse (Paris 1905) 162; Georges Poisson, Choderlos de Laclos ou lâobstination (Paris 1985) 265.
In his memoirs, Ãtienne-Denis Pasquier insists on the diversity of opinions within the club: Challamel, Les Clubs contre-révolutionnaires, 32. This testimony should be treated with caution, though, because Pasquier had a strong interest to appear as a âmonarchisteâ and someone who was not supporting political radicalism.
André Jammes, LâImprimerie polytype. Une officine expérimentale et clandestine au service du duc dâOrléans (1783â1787) (Paris 2012) 23.
Newberry Library, Case Wing Z 311.H673. For the support by the duc de Chartres, see in this file among others his letter to Chancelor Miromesnil of 8 April 1785, in which he supported the Hoffmannsâ demand for a full privilege as printers. See also, Jammes, Imprimerie polytype, 9â22.
Newberry Library, Case Wing, Z 311.H673, âMémoireâ (document no. 12).
Newberry Library, Case Wing, Z 311.H673, âProspectus du Journal Polytype des Arts et Sciencesâ.
Newberry Library, Case Wing, Z 311.H673, âMémoireâ (document no. 12).
Newberry Library, Case Wing, Z 311.H673, âProspectus du Journal Polytype des Arts et Sciencesâ.
Jammes, Imprimerie polytype, 34.
See Brissotâs correspondence with his fiancée Félicité Dupont in Archives nationales, 446AP/1.
Archives nationales, Fonds Brissot, 446AP/4, letter to Du Crest, undated [before 5 January 1785]; 446AP/4, letter to Chastellux, 17 August 1787.
Archives nationales, Fonds Brissot, 446AP/4, âDiscours à la Société philanthropique dâOrléans sur lâesprit public, Novembre 1786â, letter by Lepetit from Nemours, 26 February 1787; anonymous letter, 21 May 1787; and above all 446AP/8, correspondence with Jérôme Pétion.
Jammes, LâImprimerie polytype, 37.
Protocol of the perquisition by the police: Newberry Library, Case Wing, Z 311.H673, no. 51, âReconnaissance et levée des scellés apposés sur lâimprimerie Polytype des sieurs Hoffmann, rue Favart, le samedi quinze Septembre 1787. Commissaire Bertonâ (also largely transcribed in Jammes, LâImprimerie polytye, 59â67); registers with orders: Newberry Library, Case Wing, Z 311.H67.
André Jammes identified a further title: Jammes, LâImprimerie polytype, 54. On the arrêt from 15 February 1787: idem, 36â37.
Pierre-Jean-Jacques de Bacon, Esprit et précis historique des assemblées de notables, convoqués [sic] dans les différentes époques de la monarchie (Paris: s.n. [Imprimerie polytype], 1787); Nicolas Baudeau, Idées dâun citoyen presque sexagénaire sur lâétat actuel du royaume de France, comparées à celles de sa jeunesse, 6 vols., (Paris: s.n. [Imprimerie polytype], 1787).
[Lemercier de La Rivière,] Lettre sur les Ãconomistes (s.l. [Paris]: s.n. [Imprimerie polytype], December 1786).
Pierre-Louis-Claude Gin, Les vrais principes du gouvernement français, démontrés par la raison et par les faits. Par un François (Genève [Paris]: s.n. [Imprimerie polytype], 1787); Baudeau, Idées dâun citoyen, vol. I, 18â20; vol. III, 17â39.
Les Coups de patte du frère Nicolas, ou Le Réformateur françois, première estafile. Par M. L. B. D. B. de plusieurs académies (Gattières [Paris]: s.n. [Imprimerie polytype], 1787).
Instructions sur les Assemblées nationales, tant générales que particulières, depuis le commencement de la Monarchie jusquâà nos jours. Avec le détail du cérémonial, observé dans celle dâaujourdâhui (Paris: s.n., 1787); Objets proposés à lâAssemblée des Notables par de zélés citoyens (Paris: Imprimerie Polytype, 1787); Essai historique et politique sur les assemblées nationales du royaume de France, Depuis la Fondation de la Monarchie jusquâà nos jours (Londres [Paris], s. n. [Imprimerie polytype], 1787). In addition, one publication celebrated the convocation of the Assemblée des notables and praised the will of the beneficent monarch to reform his kingdom: Pierre-Jean-Jacques Tacon, Comte du Bacon, Esprit et précis historique des Assemblées des Notables, convoquées en different temps, par les rois (Paris: Desenne [Imprimerie polytype], [February] 1787).
Lettre dâun Anglois à Paris (London [Paris]: s.n. [Imprimerie polytype], 1787).
Lettre à M. de Brienne, archevêque de Toulouse, chef du Conseil des finances (s.l. [Paris]: s.n. [Imprimerie polytype], s.d. [May 1787], 3â8; [Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville], Point de banqueroute ou Lettre à un créancier de lâÃtat sur lâimpossibilité de la Banqueroute nationale (Londres [Paris]: s.n. [Imprimerie polytype], 1787) 16, 22â23, 30, 101â111; Baudeau, Idées dâun citoyen, vol. VI.
Observations du sieur Kornmann en réponse au Mémoire de M. Lenoir (s.l. [Paris]: s.n. [Imprimerie polytype], 1787); Archives nationales, Fonds Brissot, 446AP/8, Correspondence between Jérôme Pétion and Brissot.
Nicolas Baudeau, Charles V, Louis XII et Henri IV aux François: projet raisonné dâun bureau dâadministration à lâusage des souverains (Paris: chez les marchands de nouveautés [Imprimerie polytype], 1787).
Lettre au comte de *** ou Considérations sur le clergé (s.l. [Paris]: s.n. [Imprimerie polytype], s.d. [1787]).
Observations dâun avocat, sur lâarrêté du parlement de Paris, du 13 août 1787 (s.l. [Paris]: s.n. [Imprimerie polytype], 1787).
Extrait des registres du Parlement de France-Comté. A la séance du 30 août 1787 (s.l. [Paris]: s.n. [Imprimerie polytype], s. d. [1787]).
Brissot, Point de banqueroute, first part, 26â44.
Le coup manqué ou Le retour de Troyes ou Réflexions sommaires sur le dernier arrêté du parlement de Paris, du 19 Septembre 1787 (S.l. [Paris]: s.n. [Imprimerie polytype], 1787); Motifs et résultats des assemblées nationales tenues depuis Pharamond jusquâà Louis XIII, avec un précis des harangues prononcées dans les Ãtats généraux et les assemblées des notables, par ordre de date (Paris: Imprimerie polytype, 1787); Dissertation sur le droit de convoquer les Ãtats Généraux, tirée des capitulaires, des ordonnances du royaume,, des autres monumens de lâhistoire de France (S.l. [Paris]: s.n. [Imprimerie polytype], 1787).
Lever, Philippe-Ãgalité, 246â248.
Lever, Philippe-Ãgalité, 257.
Archives nationales, Fonds Brissot, 446AP/4, nos. 25â27, Three letters by Du Crest, 12 August, 18 August 1787 and undated.
His friend Clavière reproached him for supporting Du Crestâs intrigues: Archives nationales, Fonds Brissot, 446AP/7, no. 49, Clavière to Brissot, 15 August 1787.
Kelly, âMachine,â 678â684.