Can one speak of a whole public? The phrase sounds dubious enough today, and it may badly misrepresent the heterogeneity of the audiences reached by the poetry of the Quatorze. Three of the six poems, as mentioned, adhered to classical models in a way that would appeal to a public attuned to solemn oratory and serious theatre. One can imagine the abbés and law clerks among the Quatorze declaiming them to one another and Sigorgne dictating them to his students. But did they echo outside the Latin Quarter? Perhaps not. Alexandrines did not lend themselves to singing, unlike the traditional, eight-syllable chanson. The common people may have belted out "Qu'une bâtarde de catin" in taverns and guinguettes that lay beyond the range of the classical odes. But despite its links with several well-known tunes, that song might been composed originally by a courtier familiar with Horace; and there is no evidence about how deeply it penetrated into the population of Paris. No matter how revealing textual analysis may be, it will not yield firm conclusions about diffusion and reception.

The chansonniers provide some help with this problem, because they indicate how extensively topical songs were produced. Their sheer size was testimony in itself. The best-known chansonniers, those attributed to Maurepas and Clairambault, run to 44 and 58 volumes respectively.⁷⁹ One chansonnier in the Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris contains 641 topical songs collected between 1745 and 1752 and copied into thirteen fat volumes. The volume with the verse diffused by the Quatorze includes 264 songs, most of them hostile to the government and all of them composed between the last months of 1748 and the first months of 1750. That was a time when, as the marquis d'Argenson noted in his journal, "Les chansons, les satires pleuvent de toutes parts."⁸⁰ Far from being restricted to a sophisticated elite, the songs seem to have spread everywhere: thus the quip, years later, by Chamfort that France was governed by "une monarchie absolue tempérée par les chansons."

Anyone who wades through these volumes will be struck immediately by their variety. At one extreme, they contain some ponderous poetry, notably the three odes exchanged among the Quatorze, which were not meant to be sung.⁸¹ At the other, they included all sorts of drinking songs and popular ballads. But the same themes can be found everywhere - and they were identical to those in the repertory of the Quatorze: the abasement of the king, the unworthiness of Pompadour, the incompetence of the ministers, the decadence of the court, the humiliation of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, the dishonorable treatment of Prince Edouard, and the injustice of the vingtième tax. It would require a volume to do justice to the richness of the verse, but a few examples illustrate their character:

Riddles. The hearer had to identify the characters mocked in the verse:

Celui qui ne voulait rien prendre,

Celui qui prit tout pour tout rendre, [1]

Prit deux étrangers pour tout prendre, [2]

Prit un étranger pour tout rendre, [3]

Prit le Prétendant pour le prendre, [4]

Prit le Prétendant pour le rendre.

A key at the bottom helped those who could not master the guessing game:

1. Le roi par le traité de paix d'Aix-la-Chapelle rend toutes les conquêtes qu'il a faites pendant la guerre.

2. Les maréchaux de Saxe et de Lowend'hal. On prétend qu'ils ont beaucoup pillé.

3. M. le comte de Saint Séverin est d'une maison originaire d'Italie et ministre plénipotentiaire à Aix-la-Chapelle.

4. Le Prince Edouard.⁸²

Word games. In "Les Echos," the last syllable of the last line of a verse could be detached, creating an echo-effect, which was also a pun. A margin note identified the butt of this verse as the maréchal de Richelieu, a notorious roué:

Et de Vénus et de Bellonne

Egalement favorisé,

Près des belles qu'il empoisonne

Comment est maintenant ce courtisan rusé?... usé!⁸³

Mockery. This kind of cleverness cut closer to the bone:

Vers sur le régiment des Gardes françaises qui ont arrêté le Prétendant

Cet essaim de héros qui sert si bien son roi

A Malplaquet, Ettingen, Fontenoy,

Couvert d'une égale gloire,

Des Gardes en un mot, le brave régiment

Vient, dit-on, d'arrêter le Prétendant.

Il a pris un Anglais; O Dieu! quelle victoire!

Muse, grave bien vite au Temple de mémoire

Ce rare événement.

Va, Déesse aux cent voix,

Va l'apprendre à la terre;

Car c'est le seul Anglois

Qu'il a pris dans la guerre.⁸⁴

Jokes. Although the previous two examples appealed to a relatively sophisticated audience, the endless punning on Poisson, the maiden name of Pompadour, could be understood by anyone:

Jadis c'était Versailles

Qui donnait le bon goût;

Aujourd'hui la canaille

Règne, tient le haut bout;

Si la Cour se ravalle,

Pourquoi s'étonne-t-on?

N'est-ce pas de la Halle

Que nous vient le poisson?⁸⁵

The grosse blague. The simplest verse played on standard motifs, like cuckoldry, to make the general point about the king's abuse of power. Thus this quatrain to be sung or recited in the name of Pompadour's husband:

M. d'Etiole

De par le roi je suis cocu.

Peut-on résister à son maître?

Tel seigneur en rira peut-être

Qui le sera par le premier venu.⁸⁶

Popular ballads. Tunes that everyone knew lent themselves best to comments on public events. Because they were spread by street singers, especially at the Pont Neuf, which functioned as a nerve center for information at a popular level, they were often called Pont Neufs. A favorite, "Biribi," served as a vehicle to protest against the peace treaty and the vingtième tax:

Sur la publication de la paix qui se fera le 12 février 1749.

Sur l'air de Biribi

C'est donc enfin pour mercredi

Qu'avec belle apparence

On confirmera dans Paris

La paix et l'indigence,

Machault ne voulant point, dit-on,

La faridondaine, la faridondon,

Oter les impôts qu'il a mis

Biribis

A la façon de Barbari mon ami.⁸⁷

Burlesque posters. This verse may have accompanied actual notices posted at street corners and on public buildings. In any case, it, too, could be appreciated by anyone in the street:

Affiche au sujet du Prétendant

Français, rougissez tous, que l'Ecosse frémisse,

Georges d'Hanovre a pris le roi à son service,

Et Louis devenu de l'Electeur exempt,

Surprend, arrête, outrage indignement

Un Hannibal nouveau, d'Albion le vrai maître

Et qui de l'univers mériterait de l'être.⁸⁸

Burlesque Christmas carols (noëls). These, too, made the most of the best known tunes:

Sur le noël Où est-il ce petit nouveau-né?

Le roi sera bientôt las

De sa sotte pécore.

L'ennui jusques dans ses bras

Le suit et le dévore;

Quoi, dit-il, toujours des opéras

En verrons-nous encore?⁸⁹

Tirades. The most violent poems vented such anger and hostility that some collectors refused to copy them into their chansonniers. The compiler of the chansonnier Clairambault noted in the volume for 1749:

Il a paru dans Paris au mois de février de la même année [1749], une pièce de vers contre le roi après l'arrêt du Prince Edouard. Cette piece commençait par ces mots, 'Incestueux tyran, etc.' Je l'ai trouvée si infâme que je n'ai pas voulu la prendre.⁹⁰

But collectors with stronger stomachs added it to their arsenal:

Incestueux tyran, traître inhumain faussaire,

Oses-tu t'arroger le nom de Bien-aimé?

L'exil et la prison seront donc le salaire

D'un digne fils de roi, d'un prince infortuné;

Georges, dis-tu, t'oblige à refuser l'azile

Au vaillant Edouard. S'il t'avait demandé,

Roi sans religion, de ta putain l'exil,

Réponds-moi, malheureux, l'aurais-tu accordé?

Achève ton ouvrage, ajoute crime au crime,

Dans ton superbe Louvre, élève un échafaud,

Immole, tu le peux, l'innocente victime

Et sois, monstre d'horreur, toi-même le bourreau.⁹¹

The marquis d'Argenson also found this verse too violent to stomach: "Cela fait horreur."⁹² A few weeks earlier, on January 3, 1749, he noted that the songs and poems had gone beyond the bounds of decency:

Les derniers vers qui ont paru contre lui [Louis XV] ayant des expressions injurieuses à sa personne, ont été rejetés des plus mauvais Français, et chacun a eu honte de les garder.⁹³

On January 24, he was given a copy of a poem so hostile to the king and Pompadour that he burned it.⁹⁴ And on March 12, he came across some verse that outdid all the others. It threatened regicide:

Je viens de voir deux nouvelles satires contre le roi qui sont affreuses, les cheveux s'en sont dressés à ma tête; on n'y excite pas moins que des Ravaillac, des Jacques Clément.⁹⁵

This verse may have been too strong for the court, but it circulated in Paris and found its way into two of the chansonniers. In the first, it appeared as a blunt and brutal protest:

Louis le mal-aimé

Fais ton jubilé

Quitte ta putain

Et donne-nous du pain.⁹⁶

In the second, it was reworked in a way that made it read like an incitement to regicide:

Louis le bien-aimé

Louis le mal nommé

Louis fait ton jubilé

Louis quitte ta catin

Louis donne-nous du pain

Louis prend garde à ta vie

Il est encore des Ravaillac à Paris.⁹⁷

This survey can only begin to suggest the gamut of genres covered by the chansonniers, but it shows that they extended from the most sophisticated word-play to the crudest villification. All varieties of verse were used to diffuse the same themes as those in the songs and poems of the Quatorze. And some varieties were simple enough to appeal to an unsophisticated public. Although some of their authors probably came from the court, others belonged to the lower ranks of society. The greatest of them, Charles Favart, was the son of a pastry cook. His companions from the singing taverns and vaudeville theaters of Paris - Charles-François Pannard, Charles Collé, Jean-Joseph Vadé, Alexis Piron, Gabriel-Charles Lattaignant, François-Augustin Paradis de Moncrif - came from rather modest families. Their fathers were minor attorneys or tradesmen; and although they attained some recognition - Moncrif was elected to the Académie française, Lattaignant became a canon of Reims - they spent most of their lives among the common people of Paris - and most of their nights in taverns like the Caveau, a great source of songs, which set the pace for many "sociétés bachiques et chantantes" such as the Ordre du Bouchon, Confrerie des Buveurs, and Amis de la Goguette. Anyone could sing along to a drinking song and even improvise a verse or two, seasoned occasionally with a sharp allusion to current events.

The collective, popular dimension to the composition of songs does not show up in the archives, but there is one case in the police files that illustrates versifying among the petit peuple of Paris. It is the case of Mme Dubois. Her greatest burden in life was M. Dubois, her husband, a sales clerk in a textile shop and an insufferable lout. One day, after a particularly nasty quarrel, she resolved to get rid of him. She wrote a letter under an assumed name to the lieutenant general of police, saying that she had come upon a man reading a poem to another man in the street. They ran off as soon as they saw her, dropping the poem. She picked it up and followed the reader to his residence in the rue Lavandières - the apartment of M. Dubois. Mme Dubois had invented the story in the hope that the police would descend on her husband and throw him into the Bastille. After mailing the denunciation, however, she thought better of it. He was indeed a lout, but did he deserve to disappear down an oubliette? Seized by remorse, she went to the weekly public audience of the lieutenant general and threw herself at his feet, confessing all. He pardoned her, and the case was consigned to the files - along with the poem. It is not a great work of art, but it shows the kind of verse that was composed at a level near the bottom of the social hierarchy, and its theme is essentially that of the refrain from "Qu'une bâtarde de catin:"

Nous n'aurons point de jubilé.

Le peuple en paraît alarmé.

Pauvre imbécile, et quoi! ne voit-il pas

Qu'une p... guide les pas

[De Louis Quinze le bien-aimé?]

Le pape en est ému, l'Eglise s'en offense,

Mais ce monarque aveuglé,

Se croyant dans l'indépendance,

Rit du Saint Père et f.... en liberté.⁹⁸

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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