Once again a classic opener, the séance de la flagellation of 1766 and its robust definition of absolute monarchy – opening the way for discussion of the nature of ‘absolutism’ as ideology rather than system, claim rather than structure. Considering whether there had been any significant change since the heyday of Louis XIV, and whether absolutist claims still had life, or rested like a dead hand on politics. The opposing discourses, rooted variously in forms of aristocratic particularism and Jansenist/Gallican conciliarism, reveal the contested truth of the absolutist claim; while the vexed question of exactly how far parlementaires could thwart the royal will in these decades exposes the complexity of any thorough appreciation of monarchic power under the old regime.
Room here also for a sidelight on the kinds of discourse discussed by Shovlin and Sonenscher; between patriotism and fear of despotism, the fraught reflections of at least some contemporaries on what kings could do, and what they should. Slide from fairly abstract debates to the brewing of the ‘pre-revolution’, and the aspects of debate there that recapitulate old problems and begin to pose new ones. Monarchy vs. ‘nation’ in all its potentially-divisive aspects.
Think about some time-honoured exponents of views on government – Montesquieu, Rousseau, Mably – and how/if they featured in thinking in the early months of the National Assembly. Whether politicians were simply following well-established models in shunning republicanism so violently in 1791, for example, and what effect the evolving politics of revolutionary Paris itself might have had on such judgments.
Reflections on the theory of monarchy on display from Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in the last 3 years of their lives – did it acknowledge any movement from 1766?
Conversely, addressing the near-pathological suspicion of executive power after 10 August 1792, the extent to which this itself was a significant factor in the acceleration of the Girondin/Montagnard split towards civil war. Democratic theorising vs. factional practices. The logic of ‘revolutionary government’ and national sovereignty. Defining the boundaries of the ‘sovereign’, and their porosity.
Living without a ‘head of state’ in the Terror and after. A sidenote on the obsession with kingship that enters into the post-thermidorian denigration of Robespierre, the magic of monarchy still alive. Directorial schemes and their working in practice. The descent to a ‘politics of coup’, and the extent to which that reflected a gulf between a ‘sovereign people’ and the ‘heads’ of the state – what is a Republic for?
Napoleonic rise and mutations – a very great deal could be written on the public and private justifications for the conversion of the Republic steadily into an Empire, and thereafter into something ever-more closely approaching the model of a traditional European monarchy (with megalomaniacal features). Need to concentrate on the aspects related to sovereignty, and to distinguish, as far as possible, between shared and rational approaches to the problems made clear by the later 1790s, and the pathological impact of personality. Does the Napoleonic experiment leave behind anything for the future, beyond a mythology?
By contrast, the debates of the Restoration, and the July Monarchy, touch very clearly on the nature of monarchy itself under a constitution, and in the move to revolution in both 1830 and 1848 make many of the questions of sovereign initiative in relation to the body-politic highly explicit. From the ‘granting’ of the 1814 constitution to its steady intensification of restrictions, and through the oddly parallel process from 1830 to 1835, the question of whether monarchs serve their people, or vice versa, played out in the shadow of republican alternatives, and the chapter will end with consideration of what republicans meant by a republic as a state or as a body of citizens.
Citizen,
I like the idea of starting each chapter with a ‘classic opener’: it should ease the reader into the analysis, especially if you embellish a little with detail (what was it like to be at the ‘flagellation session’?). My main comment about Chapter 2, however, is this: since it is on ‘Head of State’, would this be the place to discuss the physical space/geography of executive government in France? I mean, for example, the physical shift of the monarchy from Versailles to Paris; the relationship between Paris and the provinces in terms of the transmission of the executive will to the latter, but also the idea of ‘Paris reconquering its King’ – exploring the relationship between the executive and the turbulent capital city (not least in 1792, 1830, 1848)…Robert Tombs, as you’ll know of course, has a chapter in his book on nineteenth-century France which discusses these sort of issues. I think the place of the capital as the seat of national government is a subject which has some resonance today, both in France and elsewhere…Just a thought!