In order to study contemporary reaction to the poems, one must consult the journals and memoirs of the time, but they were not written to satisfy the curiosity of modern researchers. They usually mention events rather than responses to verse. But the events themselves triggered responses, producing inadvertently a kind of propaganda of the deed, which spread at first by word of mouth and then through poetry and songs.

Consider the event that produced the most versifying in 1748-1749, the abduction of prince Edouard. Barbier, the Parisian lawyer whose journal provides a sober assessment of public sentiment, reported it immediately as a major "événement d'Etat." He described the prince's arrest at the Opera in great detail, noting how word of it spread in ripples from the epicenter of the occurence:

Cette nouvelle s'est répandue sur-le-champ dans l'Opéra, où le monde était alors arrivé, et par ceux qui y voulaient arriver dans le moment et qui ont été arrêtés dans la rue, et cela a fait le sujet de bien des raisonnements, non seulement dans tout le spectacle, mais dans tout Paris; d'autant qu'on aimait et respectait généralement ce prince malheureux.⁹⁹

Barbier remarked that newspapers, even the French-language gazettes of Holland, printed only the briefest account of the incident, presumably because of pressure from the French government, which, he claimed, feared a popular uprising in support of the prince.¹⁰⁰ But the news continued to travel by word of mouth, fueling the "mauvais propos" for which people were arrested during the following weeks. Detailed reports, in the form of "bruits publics" and "on dits," kept Paris buzzing for two months, until the peace was officially proclaimed on February 12, 1749. By then indignation, both at the treatment of the prince and at the humiliation of the peace settlement, had reached the humblest levels of the population. The common people refused to shout "Vive le Roi!" during the elaborate ceremonies to celebrate the peace, according to Barbier:

Le peuple en général n'est pas bien content de cette paix dont cependant il avait grand besoin, car quelle ressource aurait-on été obligé de prendre si la guerre avait continué. On dit que dans les Halles, les harangères en se querellant se disent: Tu es bête comme la paix. Ce peuple a son raisonnement. L'aventure du pauvre prince Edouard lui a déplu.¹⁰¹

The "menu peuple" found plenty of ways to express their discontent. According to d'Argenson, they refused to dance at the peace celebrations and sent the musicians packing.¹⁰² They piled into the Place de la Grève to see the fireworks display, but in such numbers that the crowd got out of hand and a dozen or more were trampled to death.¹⁰³ This disaster was taken as an omen, diffused by further rumors and "mauvais propos":

On attribue tout mal, toute fatalité aux fautes du gouvernement: cette tuerie de la Grève, le jour des réjouissances pour la paix, est attribuée à la faute des magistrats, au manque d'ordre et de prévoyance... . On ne laisse pas que de donner dans la superstition et dans les augures, comme faisaient les paiens; on dit: "Qu'est-ce qu'annonce une telle paix, célébrée avec de telles horreurs générales?" ¹⁰⁴

Other media also spread the discontent. A burlesque poster, written in the form of a proclamation by George II, commanded Louis, as the errand-boy of the English, to capture prince Edouard and deliver him to the pope in Rome.¹⁰⁵ A popular print caricatured Louis's humiliation in foreign affairs: bound and tied with his culotte pulled down, he was being whipped on his rear by Maria Theresa, while George ordered, "Frappez fort!" and the Dutch called out, "Il vendra tout."¹⁰⁶ This caricature corresponded to the theme of other posters and canards and even to some seditious talk reported four years earlier by a police spy. A group of artisans drinking and playing cards in a tavern got into a dispute about the war. One of them called the king a "jean-foutre," adding, "Laissez faire, laissez faire, la reine de Hongrie donnera le fouet à Louis XV, comme la reine Anne l'a donné à Louis XIV."¹⁰⁷

This outpouring of protest - in poems, songs, prints, posters, and talk - began in December 1748 and continued long after the fall of Maurepas on April 24, 1749. In trailing one poem, the "Ode sur l'exil de M. de Maurepas", the police tapped a vast reservoir of discontent that had little to do with Maurepas himself and that covered a great many issues. All the documentation, fragmentary as it is, suggests two conclusions: The poems turned up by the police formed only a small part of a huge literature of protest, and the network of the Quatorze constituted only a tiny segment of an enormous communication system, which extended through all sectors of Parisian society. But a crucial problem remains: how were those poems understood?

In many ways, no doubt - most of them beyond the reach of research. To catch at least a glimpse of them, one must consult the few contemporary accounts that have survived. Three stand out. Each refers to the poems about the abduction of prince Edouard, "Quel est le sort des malheureux Français" and "Peuple jadis si fier, aujourd'hui si servile". Charles Collé, the songster-playwright, generally limited his journal to comments on the theatre; and when he mentioned politics, he showed no sympathy for popular protests. The poems offended both his political views and his professional sense of proper versification:

Il a couru, ce mois-ci, des vers contre le roi, qui étaient bien méchants et bien mauvais. Ils ne peuvent être que du Jacobite le plus outré. Ils sont si outrés pour le prince Edouard et contre le roi, qu'ils ne peuvent partir que de quelque cerveau brûlé de son parti. Je les ai vus; ce n'est ni un poète, ni un homme qui ait l'habitude de faire des vers qui en soit l'auteur; c'est sûrement un homme du monde.¹⁰⁸

Barbier, the lawyer who also sympathized with royal policy, quoted the poems at length, commenting only that they were "très hardis" and expressed powerful public discontent.¹⁰⁹ The marquis d'Argenson, an insider in Versailles who took a critical view of the government, also considered the poems shocking and attributed them to the "parti jacobite." But he explained that this faction actually spoke for all the discontented in the country and that it expressed a rising tide of public protest. Everyone around him, he claimed, had memorized "Quel est le triste sort des malheureux Français", all 84 lines; and he cited the lines that were quoted most often:

Chacun sait par cœur aujourd'hui la série de quatre-vingt-quatre vers qui commence: "Quel est le triste sort". Chacun en répète les principaux vers: "Le sceptre au pied de Pompadour"; "Nos pleurs et nos mépris"; "Tout est vil en ces lieux, ministres et maîtresse"; "Ministre ignorant et pervers", etc.¹¹⁰

Of course "everyone" to the marquis d'Argenson probably meant nothing more than the elite of the court and the capital. But anti-royalist pamphleteers echoed his view in the 1780s, when they looked back on the reign of Louis XV and identified the poems as symptomatic of the moment when the king began to lose his hold on the allegiance of his subjects:

... C'est proprement à cette époque honteuse [the arrest of prince Edouard] que commença à se manifester pour le souverain et sa maîtresse, le mépris général qui ne fit que s'accroître jusqu'à la fin ... . Ce mépris éclata pour la première fois dans des vers satyriques sur l'outrage fait au prince Edouard, où l'on disait à Louis XV, en parlant de cet illustre proscrit:

"Il est roi dans les fers; qu'êtes-vous sur le trône?"

et apostrophant la nation:

"Peuple, jadis si fier, aujourd'hui si servile,

Des princes malheureux vous n'êtes plus l'asile!"

L'empressement du public à rechercher ces pièces, à les apprendre par cœur, à se les communiquer, prouva que les lecteurs adoptaient les sentiments du poète. Madame de Pompadour n'y était pas oubliée. Par un parallèle non moins humiliant on la comparait à Agnès Sorel... . Elle ordonna les perquisitions les plus sévères des auteurs, colporteurs et distributeurs de ces pamphlets, et la Bastille fut bientôt remplie de prisonniers.¹¹¹

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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