Begin with the notion of old-regime noble supremacy, literally embodied in the ideals of courtly behaviour and martial leadership – e.g. as Bell opens First Total War with discussion of Lauzun/Biron. Shift to ideas about ‘aristocratic reaction’, and then into subtler accounts by Smith, Blaufarb, etc of noble insecurities and efforts to reform while remaining distinctive. This opens up the question of what nobility was through what are now some well-worn paths – the Coyer/d’Arc exchanges, for example. All this evokes the complex position of late C18 nobility at the crossover between a whole series of value-systems – lineage and martial valour; intellectual distinction and state service; wealth and investment (in both seigneurial rights and state office); political power and centralised patronage; provincial autonomy and particularism. Important to recognise nobility as something one could still get into – if not an ‘open elite’, then at least a fluid one. [Doyle, Venality and Aristocracy on 2 sides of this.]
Nobility as high society, le monde – Lilti’s perspectives on what mattered to the elite audience, as opposed, e.g. to Goodman’s gendered narrative of salons [but defer some of this discussion to ‘culture’ chapter.] This as a transition to, firstly, the decline of a ‘court’ under Louis XVI, and the continuing sense of the necessary defence of privilege in, e.g., the 1787 Assembly of Notables. The complexity of noble positions shown by the rapid progression towards a caste-like attitude on display in the Estates-General elections, the defensiveness in the spring of 1789, and the transformation towards an acceptance, by some, of civic equality manifested in August.
The cultural war against nobility and perceived noble values, from the abolition of noble status in 1790 to the Terror. How far occasioned by an increasingly intransigent aristocratic opposition, how far the logic of new definitions of citizenship. Constructions of an ideological definition of ‘aristocracy’, and the extent to which it colours the experience of nobles. And the extent to which one could be born noble and still be a radical republican – Lepeletier, Hérault de Séchelles, Saint-Just; lesser figures such as Roux-Fazillac, even the sans-culotte Lazowski.
The further complications of post-thermidor, when we begin to be able to discuss what the nobility might have lost, materially, through the previous years, to biens nationaux and other confiscations, what they retained, and if they managed to claw anything back. How far the ideological chasms opened up in this period were held open specifically by nobles, or if they simply played a part alongside other groups attracted by royalist and Catholic politics. The detachment from any long-term questions of change visible in the vacillations of 1797-99: Higonnet’s climax of anti-nobilism versus the quest for social quiet of the Consulate: apparent ‘ideological’ decisions and the short-term promptings of social and political circumstance.
The extent to which Napoleonic plans for social and political stabilisation relied on an accommodation with the nobility to build his masses de granit, and the extent to which such an accommodation was achieved. Noble attitudes in 1814 and 1815; initial relative moderation, then the 100 days and Napoleon’s gestures towards radical populism, then the chambre introuvable scarcely weeks later: is the latter noble ‘true colours’ on display, or a literal reaction to an exceptional resurgent threat?
The extent to which politics under the Restoration are about the nobility. On one side the controversy over the émigrés’ billion, on the other a general participation in electoral politics as the wealthiest landowning class. Is there a ‘preservation’ of noble social power despite the previous quarter-century, or merely a delay in social-structural change keeping up with ideological evolution? Does 1830 mark a final turning-point when the politics of orders finally gives way to the politics of classes? How can we characterise the social role of a grouping that remains marked by relative wealth, and is increasingly identified by fixed reference back to pre-revolutionary ancestry, yet is slipping from collective significance both politically and economically? Need to be alert here to the capacities of individuals and networks of nobles to pursue income and influence flexibly, from engagement with the market for royal loans in the Old Regime to extractive and other industrial investments then and afterwards.
Here is the point to orient the reader the second half of the book through the lens of the shift from nobility to notability. From one explicit kind of connection between forms of mobility and immobility (the fact of individual ascent into nobility versus the myth of immemorial ancestry and historical legitimacy) to another (the slow-moving sociology of a still-rural country versus the revolutionary rise of the bourgeoisie). The various roles played out in old-regime society by the nobility – hobereau, seigneur, grandee – and their connections that created a fine-grained cascade of disdain, where both the disdain and its granular qualities mattered. What of that, culturally, the surviving and possibly thriving nobility tried to reimport into the new world clearly emergent by the 1840s, and the material challenge to their ability to affect the new order. In this context, and as example, some thoughts on the trajectory of Alexis de Tocqueville to the end of our period.
