To pursue those questions, one must venter into the rococo world of politics in Versailles. It has a comic opera quality, which puts off serious historians. But the best informed contemporaries saw high stakes in the backstairs intrigues and knew that a victory in the boudoir could produce a major shift in the balance of power. One such shift, according to all the journals and memoirs of the time, took place on April 24, 1749, when Louis XV dismissed and exiled Maurepas.³¹

Having served in the government for 36 years, much longer than any other minister, Maurepas seemed to be permanently fixed at the heart of the power system. He epitomized the courtier style of politics: a quick wit, an exact knowledge of who protected whom, an ability to read the mood of his royal master, a capacity for work disguised beneath an air of gaiety, an unerring eye for hostile intrigues, and perfect pitch in detecting bon ton.³² One of the tricks to Maurepas's staying power was poetry. He collected songs and poems, especially scabrous ones about court life and current events, which he used to regale the king, adding gossip that he filtered from reports supplied regularly by the lieutenant general of police and his squads of spies. During his exile, Maurepas put his collection in order. It can be consulted today in the Bibliothèque Nationale, the "Chansonnier Maurepas", 42 volumes of ribald verse about court life under Louis XIV and Louis XV with some exotic pieces from the Middle Ages.³³ But his passion for poetry was also his undoing.

Contemporary accounts of Maurepas's fall all attribute it to the same cause: not a conflict over policy, nor ideology, nor issues of any kind, but poems and songs. Maurepas had to cope with political problems, of course - less in the realm of policy (as minister of the navy, he did an indifferent job of keeping the fleet afloat, and as minister of the King's Household and of Paris, he kept the king amused) than in the play of personalities. He got on well with the queen and with her faction in the court, including the dauphin, but not with the royal mistresses, notably Mme de Châteauroux, whom he was rumored to have poisoned, and her successor, Mme de Pompadour. Pompadour aligned herself with Maurepas's rival in the government, the comte d'Argenson, minister of war (not to be confused with his brother, the marquis d'Argenson, who eyed him jealously from the margins of power after being dropped as foreign minister in 1747). As Pompadour's star rose, Maurepas tried to cloud its luster with volleys of songs, which he distributed, commissioned, or composed himself. They were of the usual variety: puns on her maiden name, Poisson, a source of endless possibilities for mocking her bourgeois background; nasty remarks about the color of her skin and her flat chest; and protests about the extravagant sums spent for her amusement. But by March 1749, they came in such profusion that insiders smelled a plot. Maurepas seemed to be trying to loosen Pompadour's hold on the king by showing that she was publicly reviled and that the public's scorn was spreading to the throne. If confronted with enough evidence, in verse, of his abasement in the eyes of his subjects, Louis might turn her in for a new mistress - or, better yet, for an old one: Mme de Mailly, who was suitably aristocratic and beholden to Maurepas. It was a dangerous game, and it backfired. Pompadour persuaded the king to dismiss Maurepas, and the king ordered d'Argenson to deliver the letter that sent him into exile.³⁴

Two episodes stand out in contemporary versions of this event. According to one, Maurepas made a fatal faux pas after a private dinner with the king, Pompadour, and her cousin, Mme d'Estrades. It was an intimate affair in the petits apartements of Versailles, the sort of thing that was not supposed to be talked about; but on the following day a poem composed as a song set to a popular tune set off ever-widening rounds of laughter:

Par vos façons nobles et franches,
Iris, vous enchantez nos coeurs;
Sur nos pas vous semez des fleurs,
Mais ce sont des fleurs blanches.

This was a low blow, even by the standards of infighting at the court. During the dinner, Pompadour had distributed a bouquet of white hyacinths to her three companions. The poet had alluded to that gesture in a play on words that sounded gallant but really was galling, because "fleurs blanches" referred to signs of venereal disease in menstrual discharge (flueurs). Since Maurepas was the only one of the four dinner partners who could be suspected of gossiping about what took place, he was held responsible for the poem, whether or not he wrote it.³⁵

The other incident took place when Mme de Pompadour called on Maurepas in order to urge him to take stronger measures against the songs and poetry. As reported in the journal of the marquis d'Argenson, it involved a particularly nasty exchange:

[Pompadour:] "On ne dira pas que j'envoie chercher les ministres, je les viens chercher;" puis: "Quand saurez-vous donc les auteurs des chansons?"
[Maurepas:] "Quand je le saurai, Madame, je le dirai au roi."
[Pompadour:] "Vous faites, Monsieur, peu de cas des maîtresses du roi."
[Maurepas:] "Je les ai toujours respectées, de quelque espèce qu'elles soient."³⁶

Whether or not these episodes occurred exactly as reported, it seems clear that the fall of Maurepas, a major reconfiguration of the power system in Versailles, was provoked by songs and poems. Yet the poem that galvanized the police into action during the Affaire des Quatorze circulated after Maurepas fell: hence its title, "L'Exil de M. de Maurepas." With Maurepas gone, the political thrust behind the poetry offensive had disappeared. Why did the authorities act so energetically to repress this poem, and the others that accompanied it, at a time when the urgency for repression had already passed?

Although the text of "L'Exil de M. de Maurepas" has disappeared, its first line - "Monstre dont la noire furie" - appears in the police reports; and the reports suggest that it was a fierce attack against the king, and probably Pompadour as well. The new ministry dominated by the comte d'Argenson, a Pompadour ally, could be expected to crack down on such lèse-majesté. Berryer, the lieutenant general of police, who was also a Pompadour protégé, would be understandably eager to enforce d'Argenson's orders, now that d'Argenson had replaced Maurepas as head of the department of Paris. But there was more to the provocation and the response than met the eye. To insiders in Versailles, the continued villification of the king and Pompadour represented a campaign by Maurepas's supporters in court to clear his name and perhaps even a way for him to return to power, because the unabated production of songs and poems after his fall could be taken as proof that he had not been responsible for them in the first place.³⁷ Of course, the d'Argenson faction could reply that the poetastery was a plot of the Maurepas faction. And by taking energetic measures to stamp out the poems, d'Argenson could demonstrate his effectiveness in a sensitive area where Maurepas had so conspicuously failed.³⁸ By exhorting the police to pursue the investigation "aussi haut qu'il est possible,"³⁹ he might pin the crime on his political enemies. He certainly would solidify his position at court during a period when ministries were being redistributed and power suddenly seemed fluid. According to his brother, he even hoped to be named "principal ministre", a position that had lapsed after the disgrace of the duc de Bourbon in 1726. By confiscating texts, capturing suspects, and cultivating the king's interest in the whole business, d'Argenson pursued a coherent strategy and came out ahead in the scramble to control the new government. The Affaire des Quatorze was more than a police operation; it was part of a power struggle located at the heart of a political system.

A Conceptual Problem
Policing a Poem
A Communication Network
Ideological Danger?
Court Politics
Crime and Punishment
A Missing Dimension
The Larger Context
Poetry and Politics
Oral Communication
Chansonniers
Reception
A Diagnosis
Public Opinion

Appendix I: The Songs and Poems Distributed by the Quatorze
Appendix II: Texts of "Qu'une bätarde de catin"
Appendix III: Poetry and the Fall of Maurepas
Appendix IV: The Trail of the Quatorze

Notes

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