By scraping hard enough, it might be possible to gather a few more remarks in contemporary sources about reactions to the poems; but the documentation will never permit anything comparable to modern opinion survey research. It remains irreduceably anecdotal, and the anecdotes come inevitably from the elite. Instead of attempting comprehensive coverage, therefore, I propose to take a close look at one source, however idiosyncratic, where opinions and the public are a major concern.

The journal of the marquis d'Argenson hardly offers an unclouded picture of the climate of opinion under Louis XV. True, the marquis was very well informed. As foreign minister from November 1744 to January 1747, he knew Versailles from the inside; and he continued to observe it as an insider while closely following events in Paris until his death in 1757. But he had strong opinions, which he vented openly in his journal and which colored his perception of events. As he indicated in his Considérations sur le gouvernement ancien et présent de la France, published posthumously in 1764, he sympathized with the ideas of the philosophes, especially Voltaire. In fact, he took such a hostile view of Louis XV and Pompadour that he saw the crisis of 1748-1749 as a confirmation of the argument about despotism that Montesquieu had just published in De l'Esprit des lois.¹¹² He hated Maurepas, "ce vil petit courtisan;"¹¹³ and he watched the growing ascendancy of his brother, the comte d'Argenson, minister of war, with a mixture of jealousy and apprehension. Consigned to the margins of power and waiting for things to deteriorate so badly that he might be called back to save them, he sounded more like a prophet of doom than a value-free chronicler of his time.

But allowing for its peculiarities, d'Argenson's journal can be taken as a guide to the flow of information that reached the political elite, week by week, in 1748 and 1749. With greater caution, it can also be taken as a record not only of events but also of what people were saying about events - ordinary people, for d'Argenson took pains to report remarks exchanged in market places, gossip from public gardens, rumors picked up in the street, jokes, songs, prints, and everything that he thought might indicate the mood of the public. He was informed, for example, of the talk that took place around the "tree of Cracow," a gathering place for public discussions in the garden of the Palais-Royal.¹¹⁴ He followed accounts of popular demonstrations to protest the treatment of Jansenists during the quarrel over the refusal of sacrements.¹¹⁵ And he noted the rumors among working people about children being abducted in the streets by the police - an extraordinary case of "bruits publics" that ignited "émotions populaires" or full-scale riots, flamed, he heard, by a myth about a massacre of the innocents to provide blood for a blood bath, which the king required in order to be cured of a disease that had been visited upon him for his sins.¹¹⁶

Already in December 1748, d'Argenson noted a wave of hostility to the government, which he attributed to the arrest of prince Edouard and discontent with the peace settlement:

Les chansons, les satires pleuvent de toutes parts... Tout offense le public... . Je vois, dans le public et dans les bonnes compagnies, des discours qui me choquent, d'un mépris ouvert, d'un mécontentement profond contre le gouvernement: l'arrêt du prince Edouard y a mis le comble."¹¹⁷

The songs and poems kept pouring out in January 1749, but at first they seemed too extreme to be taken seriously. Like Collé, d'Argenson attributed them to the Jacobite followers of the prince. By the end of the month, however, he observed that the discontent had spread everywhere. New verse was circulating in February, some of it so violent that, as mentioned, d'Argenson refused to accept copies of it. After the proclamation of the peace treaty, he noted great "fermentation dans le peuple", most of it directed against the government and Pompadour rather than against the king himself.¹¹⁸ By March, however, Louis no longer was spared: "Les chansons, les vers, les estampes satiriques pleuvent contre la personne du roi."¹¹⁹

Throughout the spring, as prices rose, taxes failed to fall, and the king lavished more and more on his mistress, the government could not do anything right in the eyes of the public: "Tout ce que l'on fait aujourd'hui a le malheur d'être désapprouvé du public."¹²⁰ When word spread about the vingtième and the parlements began to resist the Crown, d'Argenson detected signs of another Fronde. He noted the appearance of new songs about Pompadour and new verses to the old songs, some so seditious that they reminded him of the mazarinades that had fueled the uprising of 1648.¹²¹ "Poissonnades" he called them, alluding to their mockery of Pompadour's maiden name;¹²²and he took them seriously as a sign of incipient rebellion or even of an attempt on the king's life.¹²³ The revival of the Jansenist quarrels made the situation look even more combustible in April. By then d'Argenson saw a real danger of a "révolte populaire"¹²⁴ - not a French Revolution, which remained unthinkable in 1749, but a replay of the Fronde, because the parlements seemed to be mobilizing the people against the government, just as they had done a hundred years earlier. D'Argenson had no sympathy for the magistrates in the parlements. As tax-exempt landowners, they stood to lose a great deal from the vingtième. But by making their self-interest look like the defense of the common people, they could provoke a severe crisis: "Le parlement va se croire responsable devant le peuple de stipuler pour les intérêts nationaux en cette occasion. Le parlement est terrible quand il parle beaucoup pour le peuple et peu pour lui."¹²⁵

In retrospect, d'Argenson's fears look exaggerated. We know now that the Parlement of Paris caved in after some token remonstrances and that the resistance to the vingtième shifted to the clergy, which got it watered down in a way that eventually defused the crisis. But the structural instability of the state's finances would only get worse during the next four decades. And d'Argenson had detected the very combination of elements that would bring the state down at the end of that period: a crushing debt after an expensive war, an attempt by a reformist ministry to impose a radical new tax on all landowners, resistance by the parlements, and violence in the streets. He also had put his finger on the key element that would prove decisive in 1787-1788, though it did not tip the balance in 1749: public opinion.

True, d'Argenson did not use the word, but he came very close. He wrote about "les sentiments du public," "le mécontentement général et national contre le gouvernement," "le public mécontent," "le mécontentement du peuple," and "les sentiments et opinions populaires."¹²⁶ In each case, he referred to a palpable force, which could affect policy from outside Versailles. He attributed it to "le peuple" or "la nation," without defining its social composition; but vague as it was, it could not be ignored by the insiders who directed politics from the court, at least not during crises. At such times, d'Argenson observed, songs and poems constituted "remontrances de l'opinion et de la voix publique"¹²⁷ - remonstrances as important in their way as those of the parlements. For, as in England, politics also existed in a "political nation" outside the walls of institutional structures.¹²⁸ Like many of his contemporaries, d'Argenson took the English example seriously: "Le vent souffle d'Angleterre."¹²⁹ He noted moments when ministers adjusted policies to public demands. And as a former minister himself, he feared that their failure to make adjustments could lead to an explosion:

Mais le public, le public! Son animosité, ses encouragements, ses pasquinades, son insolence, les dévôts, les frondeurs, que ne feront-ils pas dans leur irritation contre la cour, contre la marquise!¹³⁰

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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