Tracing the Shadow of Secrecy and Government Transparency in Eighteenth-Century France Nicole Bauer Tracing the Shadow of Secrecy and Government Transparency in Eighteenth-Century France Nicole Bauer Tracing the Shadow of Secrecy and Government Transparency in Eighteenth-Century France Nicole Bauer University of Tulsa Tulsa, OK, USA ISBN 978-3-031-12235-4 ISBN 978-3-031-12236-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12236-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa- tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland For my parents Acknowledgments It is no secret that the historian, no matter how solitary her labors and habits, could not complete such a project without the aid and support of a network of mentors and friends. I have been incredibly lucky on many fronts. I am grateful to the University of Tulsa for financial support, the extremely helpful time provided during my junior sabbatical, and for a collegial atmosphere that helped foster my scholarship and craft as a writer; thank you especially to Kristen Oertel and Joli Jensen at the University of Tulsa. I would also like to thank the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Yale University, and the Institut français d’Amérique for generous research support. I am very grateful to Jay Smith for being a great mentor, sounding board, role model, and friend. I would like to thank Lloyd Kramer for “bouncing back” whenever I came into his office to bounce ideas off of him, and Donald Reid for his innumer- able pep talks, confidence-boosting encouragement, and active listening. I owe much to William Reddy for getting my mind tangled in knots over modernity or culture, and to Ellen Welch for her always supportive and helpful feedback and comments. I would also like to thank Lisa Jane Graham, who provided invaluable help in understanding lettres de cachet. Thank you also to John Merriman for being a supportive mentor from the beginning. He will be missed. I also received the kind assistance from archivists at the Arsenal library, a branch of the Bibliothèque Nationale; the Archives de Paris, the Biblio- thèque historique de la Ville de Paris, the Archives des Jésuites. The vii viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS librarians at Catholic University, George Washington University, and Georgetown University were all immensely helpful and generous. I would also like to thank my friends who have been so selfless, enthu- siastic, and helpful. I am especially grateful to the members of my French history writing group: Sarah Griswold, Peter Soppelsa, Jennifer Davis Cline, Melissa Byrnes, and Jess Pearson. Completing this project would not have been the same without Michelle Coates who took me out for drinks when I was first published, or Lindsay Ayling who often listened to me work through my argument and who provided colorful anecdotes about Robespierre. Molly Barnes was an invaluable friend through all my stages of graduate school. Scott Krause read many drafts, and both he and Gregory Mole showed me what beautifully-written scholarly prose could look like. Zardas Lee, Bethany Keenan, Julia Osman, and Sara Shurts have been so warm and helpful in my research. Last but not least, I would like to thank my family, especially my parents, who provided all the different forms of support a family could give, always encouraging me during this long journey through all its surprises, joys, and rough patches. Contents Introduction 1 Creatures of Infamy: Lettres de Cachet, Family Honor, and the Uses of Secrecy 15 The Fate of Secrets in a Public Sphere: The Comte de Broglie and the Demise of the Secret du roi 51 Those Who Know Your Secrets: Jesuit Secrecy and the Proto-nationalism of the Jansenists 81 “I Promise Never to Speak to Anyone”: Police Practices and the Bastille 115 Desire, Dread, and the Grateful Dead: The Bastille, Its Cadavers, and the Revolutionary Gothic Imaginary 149 The Marat of Versailles: Advocates of Transparency During and After the Terror 175 Conclusion 201 Bibliography 209 Index 225 ix Introduction In his Testament politique, intended to guide Louis XIII in statecraft and to ensure a strong monarchy, Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Riche- lieu, emphasized the importance of doing “whatever is necessary to bring about the execution of that which we have rightly resolved to accom- plish.” The cardinal added, “It is this which obliges me to speak here of secrecy and diligence, both of which are so necessary to the success of affairs as to dwarf all other attributes. Both experience and reason make it evident that what is suddenly presented ordinarily astonishes in such a fashion as to deprive one of the means of opposing it, while if the execu- tion of a plan is undertaken slowly, the gradual revelation of it can create the impression that it is only being projected and will not necessarily be executed.”1 Making a surprisingly similar argument over a century later, though in a radically different tone, Jean-Paul Marat wrote in 1774: “It is not therefore by open attacks princes first attempt to enslave the people, they take their measures in secrecy, they have recourse to craft, it is by slow but constant efforts, by changes almost imperceptible, by innovations of which it is difficult to observe the consequences, and such as are scarcely 1 Armand Jean du Plessis and Cardinal Richelieu, The Political Testament , trans. Henry Bertram Hill (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1961), 75. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1 Switzerland AG 2023 N. Bauer, Tracing the Shadow of Secrecy and Government Transparency in Eighteenth-Century France, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12236-1_1 2 N. BAUER taken notice of.”2 Richelieu and Marat both understood the profound connection between secrecy and power, yet only Marat could say what had changed between 1638 and 1774 to create fertile ground for his hostility towards both princes and secrecy. Marat chose not to expound on that point, however, and instead devoted his book to decrying the despotism of kings, including an entire chapter on secrecy and its evils. Writers and thinkers, however, had not always held such an intense suspi- cion for government secrecy, as figures like Richelieu demonstrate. In the early modern period, most political actors saw secrecy as the sine qua non of statecraft, but in the eighteenth century, attitudes had shifted, and understanding this shift is central to understanding the shift from early modern to modern. One occurrence early in the French Revolution shows in macabre and spectacular fashion the public attitude towards government secrecy at the end of the eighteenth century. In the summer of 1790, a year after the storming of the Bastille, the French press reported that so many cadavers were being found in the ruins of the fortress that the accumulation of remains was beginning to get in the way of demolition work. Workers were being bribed by curious onlookers, eager for a glimpse of the long- hidden victims of the despotism of the royal regime. Speeches were given to commemorate the dead who had been killed in secret but were now finally honored in public, and hundreds attended the parade carrying the human remains to a cemetery. This event and the curiosity it garnered reflected both the suspicion of secrecy and the association of secrecy with power by the time of the Revolution. Ordinary people and the jour- nalists who wrote for them feared the putative horrors of a despotic regime and interpreted those cadavers as a sign of unchecked, despotic power, but one which also revealed an undeniable fascination and hunger for spine-chilling tales. This book explores the strange and unexpected path secrecy took in eighteenth-century French culture and the surprising forces that led to the emergence of the notion of government transparency. By looking at a broad range of sources including police files, private letters, reli- gious pamphlets, and Gothic literature, I attempt to trace the evolution of the early modern French attitude towards secrecy (a nebulous term that could cover many domains of public and private life) and to identify the 2 Jean-Paul Marat, The Chains of Slavery (London: J. Almon, Richardson, and Urquhart, 1774), 4.