Despotism Without Bounds

Despotism without Bounds: The French Secret
Police and the Silencing of Dissent in London,

1760 1790
SIMON
O
DESPOTISM
riginal
Article
BURROWS
WITHOUT
BOUNDS
Blackwell
Oxford,
0018-2648
History
HIST
4October
89
2004 The
UK
2004
Publishing,
Historical
Ltd.
Association
and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
SIMON BURROWS
University of Leeds
Abstract
Through an examination of the policing of dissident French refugees in London between
1760 and 1790, this article contends that recent historians have tended to over-emphasize
the reforming nature of the Bourbon government in the decades prior to the French
Revolution, especially under Louis XVI, and overlooked the more repressive and
despotic aspects of the regime. It reveals that the Paris police or French secret agents
adopted a variety of clandestine methods in their attempts to silence dissident exiles,
including attempts at kidnap, and allegedly murder. As much of this police activity was
reported in the British press and French printed texts, both before and during the French
Revolution, and several of the exiles were celebrated writers or future revolutionary leaders,
it was widely known among informed contemporaries. The article therefore contends
that the French revolutionaries allegations of despotism and suspicions of monarchic
conspiracies were more deeply rooted in experience than recent historiography has
tended to suggest. At the same time, reports of the attempts of the despotic French
government to suppress the activities of Frenchmen on British soil helped to reinforce a
British national identity based on the celebration of the liberties France lacked.
etween 1760 and 1790 the Bourbon government sponsored a

number of clandestine measures against the French exile community
in London, including kidnapping and attempted murder. 1 News of
these activities often leaked out and circulated widely among British and
Research towards this article was financed by the universities of Leeds and Waikato, a sabbatical
fellowship at the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University, and a Small
Research Grant from the British Academy. The article was completed during leave supported by
the University of Leeds Research Leave in the Humanities scheme and a Research Leave Award
from the Arts and Humanities Research Board. I am grateful to all these institutions. I would like
to thank Hannah Barker, Tom Kaiser, Andrea Kemp, Kevin Lynch, Roger Mettam, Munro Price,
Barry Shapiro, the anonymous readers for History, and members of the early modern seminar at
the Institute of Historical Research for suggestions and advice.
1 The nucleus of the French refugee community in London appears to have numbered several
dozen in the last decades before the revolution. In 1791, the procureur of the Paris commune,
Manuel, published the old regime police files on forty-one exiles, a significant proportion of them
writers, but his list was not comprehensive. See Pierre-Louis Manuel, La Police de Paris dvoile
(2 vols., Paris, lan II de la libert [1791]) [hereafter Manuel, Police], ii. 232 69.
2004 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
526
THE FRENCH SECRET POLICE IN LONDON, 17601790
French elites in newspapers and sensational publications. This article

examines these French secret police activities and their implications, and
argues that their public exposure was instrumental in shaping and reinforcing images of the Bourbon monarchy as a despotism that was not
constrained by geographical or moral boundaries. As several prominent
revolutionary leaders were victims or witnesses of the monarchys secret
agents, it contends, in opposition to recent historiography, that revolutionary phobias and distrust of the monarchy were based on both personal
experience and historical precedent. The revolution may have fed these
fears, but it did not create them. They were a direct result of the Bourbon
police state and the secret, unaccountable nature of court-based politics
under the ancien rgime.2
The opening passage from Le Diable dans un bnitier (1783), a sensational pamphlet written by a London exile, the Marquis Anne-Gdeon
Lafitte de Pelleport,3 is certainly indicative of an increasingly strident
critique of French despotism in the years preceding the revolution:
Despotism, which is angered and driven to despair by the smallest obstacle,
cannot abide the idea of the existence of liberty . . . the most sacred rights of
nature and of nations are in its eyes only ridiculous conventions: in order
to destroy them it employs force, trickery, money and calumny; it does not
disdain poison and murder as methods, and if it cannot succeed in its
sinister designs, at least it enjoys the anxiety that it seeks to sow in the hearts
of fugitives.4
In addition, Pelleports hyperbole hints that the paranoia of revolutionary opponents of the Bourbon monarchy, who saw conspiracies behind
every political coalition, and treachery and assassins daggers behind every
closed door, was shared by their exiled predecessors. Examples of this
attitude are easily found. For instance, in November 1763, after the
renegade French diplomat, the Chevalier dEon, fell ill while dining at the
French embassy in London, he alleged that the ambassador, the comte
de Guerchy, had drugged or poisoned him, intending to kidnap him. 5
Although dEons claims have sometimes been treated sceptically, he
clearly believed them. He was also apparently convinced that the sudden
deaths of two important allies, Lebel and Tercier, had been caused by
a rival, pro-Austrian faction at court, headed by the kings mistress
Madame de Pompadour, his chief minister, Choiseul, architect of the
Austrian alliance, and Choiseuls cousin and foreign minister, the duc de
2 The term court is problematic and ambiguous. It was apparently used by the dissidents studied
here to indicate variously the royal government; the totality of influential circles at Versailles; or the
social and geographic locus of power. As it attempts to show how the use of court as a conceptual
category stigmatized the regime, this article deploys the term in the same manner.
3 Further details on Pelleport (c.1755 1807), a cashiered soldier, pamphleteer and blackmailer, are
given below.
4 Anne-Gdeon de Lafitte de Pelleport [attrib.], Le Diable dans un bnitier, ou le Gazetier cuirass
transform en mouche (1783) [hereafter Pelleport, Diable], pp. 3 4.
5 DEon to Broglie and Louis XV, London, 18 Nov. 1763, in Frderic Gaillardet, Mmoires sur le
chevalier dEon (Paris, 1866), pp. 138 45.
SIMON BURROWS
527
Praslin.6 Thus, while Gary Kates is surely correct to see politics rather
than sexuality behind dEons subsequent bizarre gender transformation,
his aim was probably to marginalize himself politically and hence reduce
the risk of assassination rather than to escape a dead-end career, which
is the motive ascribed by Kates.7
The dEon case is not unique: between 1760 and 1790, French ministers,
ambassadors and secret police almost routinely considered using kidnap
and possibly murder, as well as money and calumny, to neutralize exiled
dissidents abroad. Although accounts of police actions frequently surfaced
in widely read contemporary publications, historians have paid them
little attention, believing them to be sensationalist and politically
motivated. Although scandalous works of the pre-revolutionary era have
been dissected in studies of the desacralization of the French monarchy,
scattered references to police activity have been largely overlooked. 8 In
part this is because recent historians argue that paranoia and conspiracy
obsession, while intrinsic to the revolutionary psyche and the driving
force of the revolution, were products of the revolutionary process. Lynn
Hunt and Franois Furet suggest that they emerged in the crucible of
revolution from a fusion of a utopian Rousseauist rhetoric of political
transparency and the sovereignty of the general will, which illegitimized
both secrecy and opposition in political life, with popular fears of grain
hoarding and patriot fears of a court plot.9 Furet further suggests that
such anxieties were later manipulated cynically by those who held power
and unmasked imaginary plots only in order to reinforce their own
position.10 In contrast, Timothy Tackett contends that fear of conspiracy
among the revolutionary elite was strongly grounded in events, first
emerging as a result of the crisis of July 1789, and then re-emerging after
a period of abeyance in June 1791 following the attempted flight of the
6 Archives du Ministre des Affaires Etrangres, Correspondance Politique Angleterre [hereafter
CPA], supplment 16, fos. 11112, annotation of dEon on Tercier to dEon, 27 Dec. 1763 (copy).
DEon also believed that the dismissal of his patron, the comte de Broglie, and the break-up of
Broglies secret intelligence network were the work of Pompadour and Praslins clique, which
sought to destroy the leading advocates of a traditional anti-Austrian policy. DEon frequently
refers to the conspiracy in later publications and his manuscript memoirs in the Brotherton Collection at the University of Leeds [hereafter ULBC, dEon papers], but they do not appear in the
recently published extracts from these memoirs in Charles-Genevive-Louise-Auguste-AndrTimothe dEon de Beaumont, The Maiden of Tonnerre: The Vicissitudes of the Chevalier and the
Chevalire dEon, trans. and ed. Roland A. Champagne, Nina Ekstein and Gary Kates (Baltimore,
2001).
7 Gary Kates, Monsieur dEon is a Woman: A Tale of Political Intrigue and Sexual Masquerade
(New York, 1995) [hereafter Kates, Monsieur dEon], p. xxiii and passim.
8 See especially Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-sellers of Pre-revolutionary France (1996);
Chantal Thomas, The Wicked Queen: The Origins of the Myth of Marie-Antoinette trans. Julie Rose
(New York, 1999) [hereafter Thomas, Wicked Queen]; Sarah Maza, Private Lives and Public
Affairs: The Causes Clbres of Prerevolutionary France (Berkeley, 1993) [hereafter Maza, Private
Lives].
9 Franois Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, trans. Elborg Foster (Cambridge, 1981) [hereafter Furet, Interpreting the Revolution], esp. pp. 53 6; Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture and Class in the
French Revolution (Berkeley, 1984), esp. pp. 38 44.
10 Furet, Interpreting the Revolution, p. 56.
528
royal family.11 Either interpretation allows post-revisionist historians

to dismiss pre-revolutionary allegations of despotism as mere rhetorical
devices and emphasize the reforming aspects of the French monarchy.
Dazzled by Alexis de Tocquevilles brilliant insight that the most dangerous moment for a bad regime is generally that in which it sets about
reform, they have over-emphasized the extent to which the old regime
abandoned despotic actions. 12 Hans-Jrgen Lsebrink and Rolf
Reichardt suggest, for example, that images of the Bastille as a terrible
dungeon are totally at odds with reality, and follow a long tradition in
highlighting the declining use of lettres de cachet.13 But in other areas of
police activity, especially attempts to silence exiled dissidents in London,
where exiled journalists, renegade diplomats, blackmailers and muckraking pamphleteers (libellistes) congregated, sheltered by British adherence to the rule of law and the most liberal press regime in Europe, there
was a sinister pattern of continuous repression.
The dEon poisoning is especially important in this respect because
dEon was the first of a string of refugees to claim that French ministers
had plotted his assassination. He went public with his allegations and
repeated them before a British court. However, the poison claim is
impossible to corroborate, and could be dismissed as the ploy of a
desperate man who, aware that his diplomatic career was over, sought
financial compensation for his services. Moreover, he resented the inexperienced Guerchy, having long coveted the post of ambassador for himself. Nevertheless, considerable circumstantial evidence supports dEons
testimony, especially as he was acquainted with secret service methods,
having served in Louis XVs clandestine diplomatic organization, the
Secret du roi, which, unknown to the official foreign ministry, conducted
a secret diplomacy orchestrated by dEons patron, the spymaster and
former French ambassador to Poland, the Comte de Broglie. In 1763, when
Louis XV decided to dismantle the Secret and abandon its agents, dEon
was in London, where he had been sent on a diplomatic mission, bearing
signed secret orders to draft plans for a French invasion. Furious and
frustrated, dEon defied a letter of recall, and attempted to blackmail
the French government, which feared he would sell his papers to the
British. In March 1764, he made the threat explicit by publishing his
Lettres, mmoires et ngociations, a carefully selected sample of his
diplomatic documents, which omitted anything which might seriously
compromise France.14 Was such behaviour sufficient reason for assassination or kidnap? DEon clearly thought so. Moreover, his suspicions
were not groundless. His political masters, Choiseul and Praslin, indeed
11
Timothy Tackett, Conspiracy Obsession in a Time of Revolution: French Elites and the Origins
of the Terror, 17891792, American Historical Review, cv (2000), 691713.
12 Alexis de Tocqueville, LAncien rgime et la Rvolution, ed. J.-P. Mayer (Paris, 1967), pt. 3, ch. 4,
p. 277.
13 Rolf Reichardt and Hans-Jrgen Lsebrink, The Bastille: The History of a Symbol of Despotism
and Freedom, trans. Norbert Schrer (Durham NC, 1997), pp. 27 8.
14 Kates, Monsieur dEon, pp. 57136 and passim.
SIMON BURROWS
529
sent an agent to London to investigate kidnapping dEon just prior to

Guerchys arrival,15 and Guerchy himself raised the possibility of a
kidnap with the British government.16 After the publication of the Lettres,
mmoires et ngociations, Louis XV authorized Praslin to proceed with
kidnap plans, if neither a libel conviction nor extradition could be
obtained.17 Furthermore, in October 1764, an adventurer named PierreHenri Treyssac de Vergy confessed that he was involved with Guerchy
and Praslin in a factional conspiracy to poison dEons wine, and had
subsequently refused Guerchys order to assassinate him. He repeated
these claims in court under oath and in print. There is reason to believe
Vergy as his allegations involved huge personal costs for little gain.
Moreover, dEon already suspected him at the time of the alleged plot. 18
The attorney-general considered the evidence against Guerchy strong
enough to lodge a bill of indictment against him for hiring Vergy to kill
and assassinate dEon, and when a Grand Jury found in its favour, he
refused to quash its decision with a noli prosequi, despite heavy pressure
from embarrassed British ministers.19
There is no such mystery about the methods used by Louis XVs
government to silence the London-based exile and blackmailer Charles
Thveneau de Morande.20 In 1772, Morande approached the court
through a soldier-of-fortune called Franois Benevent, threatening to
publish a scandalous biography of Louis XVs mistress, Madame du
Barry, entitled Mmoires secrets dune femme publique. Sovereign and
mistress were desperate to prevent publication, but initial negotiations
collapsed and Morande declared he was indifferent whether he received
a pay-off or published the biography, since both promised a good return. 21
Meanwhile, the foreign minister, dAiguillon, another of the works
targets, sounded out the British ambassador, Harcourt, remarking that
15 Correspondance secrte du Comte de Broglie avec Louis XV, 17561774 , ed. Didier Ozanam and
Michel Antoine (2 vols., Paris, 1959 61) [hereafter Correspondance secrte de Broglie], i. 238n.
16 CPA supplment 13, fos. 1323, Guerchy to Louis XV, London, 6 Nov. 1763 (copy).
17 Louis XV to Tercier, 10 April 1764, in Correspondance secrte indite de Louis XV, sur la politique
trangre, ed. Edgar Boutaric (2 vols., Paris, 1866), i. 320.
18 Pierre-Henri Treyssac de Vergy, Seconde lettre Monsigneur le Duc de Choiseul, in C.-G.-L.A.-A.-T. dEon, Suite des pices relatives aux lettres, mmoires et ngociations particulires du
Chevalier dEon (1764), pp. 19 62; Kates, Monsieur dEon, pp. 130 1. It should be noted, however,
that Vergy had a grudge against Guerchy, who broke a promise to employ him as a secretary and
abandoned him when he was thrown into a debtors prison.
19 For the text of the indictment see cuttings from the Gazette britannique, 8 March 1765; London
Chronicle, 29 Sept.1 Oct. 1767; or Political Register, Sept. 1767 in ULBC, dEon papers, file 58.
See also Kates, Monsieur dEon, pp. 133 6.
20 On Morande see Paul Robiquet, Thveneau de Morande, tude sur le XVIIIe sicle (Paris, 1882)
[hereafter Robiquet, Morande]; Gunnar and Mavis von Proschwitz, Beaumarchais et le Courier de
lEurope (2 vols., Oxford, 1990) [hereafter Proschwitz and Proschwitz, Beaumarchais]; Simon
Burrows, A Literary Low-life Reassessed: Charles Thveneau de Morande in London, 17691791,
Eighteenth-Century Life, xxii (1998), 76 94.
21 Public Record Office [hereafter PRO], SP78/285 fos. 207 8, [Morande] to Benevent, undated;
fos. 21011, [Morande] to Benevent, undated; fos. 212 13, [Benevent?] to dAiguillon, undated. All
three letters were enclosed in SP78/285 fos. 205 6, Harcourt to Lord Rochford, 20 May 1772. See
also Mmoires secrets, 24 Aug. 1775. On Benevent see Espion Anglais, ii. 14.
530
blackmail was a hanging offence in England. Harcourt replied that this

was true, but only if the victim also resided there. Nevertheless, he promised that the British government would do everything in its power to
oblige the French.22 This was typical of British platitudes when faced
with such demands: even when sympathetic to French declarations of
outrage, they felt obliged to follow due process, not least because they
feared popular demonstrations.23 However, the relatively inexperienced
dAiguillon, who had been in post for less than a year, may have taken
British promises as permission to proceed, for a usually well-informed
French underground newsletter, the Mmoires secrets, alleges the British
gave permission to seize Morande.24 In fact, in July 1772 Harcourt
warned his government to watch a potential kidnapper, the Chevalier de
Fontaine, a notorious sharper, jailbird and natural father of the Comte
du Barrys mistress, who had apparently been sent to London.25 Details
of Fontaines mission are hazy, but it is known that on arrival in London
he was taken to negotiate with Morande by Boissire, a Genevan-born
publisher-bookseller specializing in libelles and blackmail.26 However,
Harcourts suspicions appear to be corroborated by Morandes chance
remark eighteen months later when describing an encounter with two
would-be kidnappers, who appeared as artless as dear Fontaine. 27
This later kidnap attempt is much better documented and was sponsored by Louis XV, who having rejected other offers,28 commissioned
Bellanger, an ambitious officier aventurier,29 to kidnap Morande, and
provided him with a posse of police officers.30 However, Morande was
tipped off, possibly by correspondents at court, but also by an adventuress named Madame de La Touche de Gotteville, in whom the officers
confided en voyage. Arriving in London at the start of January 1774, two
of the agents met Morande in a tavern, where they lent him 30 guineas. 31
They hoped to have him seized for debt and delivered to them by corrupt
law enforcement officers, a method used in April 1752 against LouisMathieu Bertin, marquis de Fratteaux, who was surrendered to French
22
PRO, SP78/285 fos. 2056, Harcourt to Rochford, Paris, 20 May 1772.

For other examples of British ministers failure to act despite expressing sympathy, see CPA 450
fos. 1602, Guerchy to Praslin, London, 30 March 1764; CPA 497 fos. 17682, Garnier to dAiguillon,
London, 31 Aug. 1771; CPA 552 fos. 83 6, Adhmar to Vergennes, London, 25 Jan. 1785.
24 Mmoires secrets, 19 Feb. 1774.
25 PRO, SP78/285 fo. 293, Harcourt to Rochford, Compigne, 16 July 1772.
26 CPA 541 fos. 3469, Gozman to Vergennes, 4 April 1783.
27 CPA 503 fo. 374, Morande to dEon, undated. This letter is attributed to 1773, but internal
evidence suggests it was written on 3 or 4 Jan. 1774.
28 Manuel, Police, i. 266; CPA 498 fos. 378 9, Sartine to dAiguillon, Paris, 31 Aug. 1772.
29 Mmoires secrets, 5 Feb. 1774; Mathieu-Franois Pidansat de Mairobert (attrib.), Anecdotes sur
Madame la Comtesse Du Barri (1775) [hereafter Mairobert, Anecdotes], p. 315.
30 CPA 503 fo. 289, Soumission du S. (inconnu) [Sr Bellanger?], entre les mains de M. Le D[uc
dAiguillon], Versailles, 18 Dec. 1773.
31 Mmoires secrets, 19 Feb. 1774; Mairobert, Anecdotes, p. 315. Mme. Latouche de Gotteville,
Voyage dune franoise Londres ou la calomnie dtruite par la vrit des faits (1774) [hereafter
Gotteville, Voyage] denies involvement.
23
SIMON BURROWS
531
agents by a corrupt bailiff named Blaisdell.32 However, before they could

do so, their quarry warned them that he had smashed chairs over those
who thought that my hide would sell dearly in Paris, and began speaking
of pistols and Tyburn (Londons place of public executions). 33 Then he
contacted several London newspapers and incited a mob against them
in taverns and coffee-houses across the city.34 The officers fled in fear of
their lives,35 and Morande, exultant, wrote to dEon: I announce, in
what is known as soldiers language (en termes de Grenadiers), that I have
made two [ police] exempts, four archers and a ship which was waiting for
them in the Thames bugger off ( foutre le camp).36
Within days of this setback, the French ministry received further
worrying news from dEon, who had been asked to monitor events. He
had called on Morande and seen thousands of freshly printed books
stacked across all three floors of his house. Morande also told him of the
kidnap plot, attributing it to dAiguillon or the Comte du Barry, and
declared defiantly:
I dont give a toss [ je me fous] about poison and daggers, if I die in that
fashion. I will not have been hanged and it will dishonour only my poisoners
or assassins. If you like, you can tell the duke dAiguillon and his whole
clique that I really couldnt give a toss [ je me fous et me contre fous] about
him, the whole court and the entire army.37
Clearly there is much nervous bravado here, but are Morandes references
to poison and daggers coincidental? The former was probably an allusion to dEons allegations against Guerchy. But what of daggers? 38 The
answer may lie in a neglected nineteenth-century manuscript account of
Morandes life. It recounts how two assailants attempted to stab and
strangle him as he rode through London in a carriage.39 Morande, a very
large man, fought them off. Two aspects of the tale lend it authenticity.
First, the manuscripts author, Csar Lavirotte (17731865), a resident of
Morandes home town and distinguished savant and local historian,
32 On Fratteauxs kidnap see the partisan account of Comte dH***, Histoire de Mr. De Bertin,
Marquis de Fratteaux avec des claircissemens sur son enlvement de Londres, et les noms de ceux qui
y ont particip (Paris, 1753), esp. pp. 13776. Several newspaper cuttings from JuneJuly 1764 in
ULBC, dEon papers, file 58, refer to the incident.
33 CPA 503 fos. 3745, letter of Morande to dEon, undated [3 or 4 Jan. 1774].
34 Mmoires secrets, 5 Feb. 1774. See also Morning Chronicle, 5 Jan. 1774 and Public Advertiser,
6 Jan. 1774.
35 Mmoires secrets, 5 Feb. 1774.
36 Archives Nationales [hereafter AN], 277AP/1 fo. 145, Morande to dEon, 4 Jan. 1774 at 11 p.m.
There is a copy at CPA 504 fo. 20. Exempts and archers were lower-ranking police officers.
37 CPA 504 fos. 201, note of dEon [Jan. 1774].
38 A contemporaneous purported letter from Morande in Gotteville, Voyage, p. 60, also refers to
daggers and poison.
39 Csar Lavirotte, Notice sur M. de Morande, unpublished manuscript. I wish to thank
M. Bernard Leblanc, historian of Arnay-le-Duc, Morandes home town, for sending me a transcribed
copy of this manuscript, which was uncovered by Claude Guyot (1890 1965), mayor of Arnay-le-Duc,
among Lavirottes papers. In general Lavirottes manuscript seems reliable, except where the author
relied on erroneous published sources. Many episodes that it recounts from Morandes adult life
can be verified, several only from manuscript sources unavailable to its author.
532
befriended Morande there some time between 1792 and the latters death
in 1805. The story does not appear in any published source, so presumably
it came from Morande himself. Secondly, the tale bears a resemblance to
assassination methods allegedly used against another libelliste, the Comte
de La Motte. Nevertheless, differences of detail La Motte faced a single
assassin with a rapier make it improbable that Lavirotte is confusing
two events.40
By early January 1774, Morande had survived a variety of kidnap
attempts, and possibly assassins too, but his biography of the royal
favourite was ready for publication. The French court had run out of
time and was inclined to settle, although several previous negotiations
had failed, due to factional manoeuvring, negotiators acting at cross
purposes,41 and Morandes suspicions that some negotiators acted in bad
faith. This last category included Marie-Flix Guerrier de Lormoy, who
may indeed have been instructed to kidnap Morande by dAiguillon. 42
Thus, in March 1774, Louis XV gave a new agent, the playwright PierreAugustin Caron de Beaumarchais, full powers to arrange a financial
settlement with Morande through the banker Joshua Van Neck. 43 Beaumarchais rapidly negotiated a set of contracts by which Morande bound
himself to deliver his entire print-run for burning in return for 32,000
livres cash (approx 1,398 and 13 shillings) and a life-long annuity of
4,000 livres.44 He contracted separately to repay 32,000 livres if convicted
of producing further libelles.45 Morande also insisted that in the event of
his death, his wife should continue to receive half of his annuity, for he
claimed to anticipate dying unnaturally and to fear that she and their
children would die of hunger.46
Morandes success inspired a new generation of extortioners, aided
and incited by the bookseller Boissire.47 Among them was Lafitte de
Pelleport, reprobate eldest son of an equerry in the household of the
kings brother, the Comte de Provence.48 Pelleport, who faced ruin after
ill-judged speculations,49 attempted to restore his fortune by offering to
suppress a series of pamphlets attacking Louis XVIs Austrian-born
40
The attempt on La Motte is discussed below.

For example, dAiguillon apparently persuaded Madame du Barry to exclude dEon and Broglie
from any negotiations. See Broglie to Louis XV, Ruffec, 18 Nov. 1773, in Correspondance secrte de
Broglie, ii. 4646.
42 See AN, 277AP/1 fos. 1489, Morande to dEon, undated, received 17 Nov. 1773; CPA 503
fos. 312, Lauraguais to M. le comte [de Garnier?], 9 March 1774; fos. 258 62, dEon to de Broglie,
Stanton Harold, 12 Dec. 1773. For Lormoys account see Archives du Ministre des Affaires
Etrangres, Mmoires et Documents, France [hereafter MDF] 1398 fos. 176 81, de Lormoy to
Louis XVI, 1 July 1784.
43 Proschwitz and Proschwitz, Beaumarchais, i. 7.
44 For copies of the contract, dated 29 April 1774, see CPA 504 fos. 197200 (French); CPA 505
fos. 20811 (French); CPA 505 fo. 207 (English).
45 This contract, dated 29 April 1774, is in CPA 505 fos. 205 6.
46 CPA 503, fos. 30810, Morande to dEon, undated, received 21 Dec. 1773, at fo. 308.
47 CPA 541 fos. 346 9, Gozman to Vergennes, London 4 April 1783.
48 CPA 285 fos. 285 9, Compte rendu of Receveur to Adhmar, 22 May 1783.
49 L. Charpentier et al., La Bastille dvoile, 3e livraison (1789), pp. 66 7.
41
SIMON BURROWS
533
queen, Marie-Antoinette, including the Petits soupers de lhtel de Bouillon,

La Naissance du dauphin dvoile and the Passe-tems dAntoinette et les
amours du visir Vergennes.50 Quite possibly he was encouraged by
contacts in Provences circle, which appears to have promoted many of
the early libelles against the queen, but even so, he was prepared to sell to
the highest bidder.51
Despite being at war with Britain from 1778 to 1783, the French government was determined to control the London libelliste community, and
in 1781 sent an agent to London to suppress their activities and spy on
the British navy.52 This agent was the disgraced parlement magistrate,
Gozman, who forged good relations with printers and uncovered or
suppressed a series of Boissires libelles.53 However, Gozman soon
began to complain of financial problems and his nose for scandalous
works, such as La Naissance du dauphin dvoile, became more acute.54
The French authorities began to smell a rat. Nevertheless, they remained
anxious to protect Marie-Antoinettes reputation, especially given
widespread rumours that the king was impotent. Thus in March 1783,
after Gozman notified them of yet another scandalous pamphlet, they
sent a new police agent to London.55
This agent was Receveur, a veteran of the expedition against Morande,
a man of private means who was considered incorruptible and had
recently distinguished himself by detecting and extraditing libellistes from
the Netherlands and Brussels.56 Receveur rapidly confirmed that Gozman
appears to play-off [ jouer] both sides and had compromising links with
50
CPA 542 fos. 1516, Pelleport to de Moustier, Little Chelsea, 12 April 1783; fo. 81, de Moustier
to Vergennes, London, 21 April 1783; fos. 285 9, Receveur to Adhmar, Compte rendu, 22 May
1783. On Pelleports authorship of these libelles see also the memoirs of Lenoir, Mdiathque
dOrlans, MS 1422, p. 56, and Simon Burrows, The Innocence of Jacques-Pierre Brissot, Historical
Journal, xlvi (2003) [hereafter Burrows, The Innocence of Brissot], 843 71. Some primary sources
treat the Passe-tems dAntoinette as two separate texts.
51 Vincent Cronin, Louis and Antoinette (1974), pp. 197, 4025. On the anti-Marie-Antoinette literature
see Henri dAlmeras, Marie-Antoinette et les pamphlets royalistes et rvolutionnaires (Paris, 1907)
[hereafter Almeras, Marie-Antoinette et les pamphlets]; H. Fleischmann, Marie-Antoinette libertine:
bibliographie critique et analytique des pamphlets politiques, et obscnes contre la reine (Paris, 1911);
Thomas, Wicked Queen; Lynn Hunt, The Many Bodies of Marie-Antoinette: Political Pornography
and the Problem of the Feminine in the French Revolution, Eroticism and the Body Politic, ed.
Lynn Hunt (Baltimore, 1991), pp. 108 30. Vivian Gruder, The Question of Marie-Antoinette: the
Queen and Public Opinion before the Revolution, French History, xvi (2002) [hereafter Gruder,
The Question of Marie-Antoinette], 269 98, raises doubts concerning the influence and dissemination
of libelles against the queen prior to 1789.
52 CPA 542 fos. 285 9, Compte rendu of Receveur, 22 May 1783.
53 CPA 537 fo. 46, Gozman to Vergennes, London, 14 May 1782; CPA 543 fos. 108 9, Vergennes
to Adhmar, 25 June 1783, with appended copy of Boissires quittance dated London 31 July
1781. Another copy of the quittance is in CPA 544 fo. 213. It was published in Manuel, Police, i.
2378.
54 For Gozmans importuning, see his letters to Vergennes and Baudouin dated 14 May 1782,
2 Aug. 1782, 13 Aug. 1782, 4 April 1783 at CPA 537 fo. 46; CPA 538 fos. 8 and 31; and CPA 541
fos. 3469.
55 CPA 541 fo. 24, Baudouin to Vergennes, Paris, 19 Feb. 1783; fos. 50 1, [Lenoir] to [Vergennes],
24 Feb. 1783; fo. 61, Vergennes to Lenoir, 25 Feb. 1783.
56 CPA 541 fos. 501, [Lenoir] to [Vergennes], 24 Feb. 1783.
534
prominent British politicians including Lord Shelburne and Charles James

Fox.57 At the suggestion of the minister plenipotentiary, de Moustier,
Receveur also enlisted Morandes help.58 Meanwhile, de Moustier consulted several English lawyers hoping to discover means of legal redress
in Britain against the writers or distributors of libelles, including the
celebrated radical lawyer-turned-journalist Simon-Nicolas-Henri Linguet,
who had just published his sensational Mmoires sur la Bastille.59
Receveurs arrival put Londons French exile community into a
panic and rumours and disinformation began to fly. The future Girondin
leader Jacques-Pierre Brissot, in London to establish his ill-fated Lyce
de Londres, was so fearful that, egged on by other refugees, he wrote to
de Moustier to deny rumours of his involvement with the libellistes.
Receveur and the minister plenipotentiary, ignorant of these rumours,
were mystified and suspicious,60 but Brissot was almost certainly not
involved in the writing and publishing of libelles, and appears to have
discouraged his friend Pelleports involvement in the industry. 61
Receveur at once began negotiating the suppression of La Naissance
du dauphin dvoile and Petits Soupers de lhtel de Bouillon, but Pelleport demanded 700 Louis, twice what Receveur was authorized to pay. 62
Receveur wrote for new instructions, but as negotiations lengthened,
Pelleport grew uneasy and on 7 April 1783 circulated a broadside denunciation of Receveur, which claimed the latter intended to transport kidnap
victims to Dover in purpose-built carriages.63 The pamphlet failed to
frighten Receveur into fleeing,64 but he was unnerved and complained to
the new ambassador, Adhmar, that his life was in danger. 65 Meanwhile,
Boissire started carrying a pistol and insisted on dealing only with
Gozman.66 Receveur, forced to negotiate through this increasingly
suspect intermediary, eventually gave up and returned to France. 67
Furious that his hopes had been thwarted, Pelleport retaliated by publishing the Diable dans un bnitier, perhaps the most sensational of the
57 CPA 541 fo. 207, de Moustier to Vergennes, London, 19 March 1783; fos. 234 7, de Moustier to
Vergennes, London, 23 March 1783; fo. 305, de Moustier to Vergennes, London, 31 March 1783.
58 CPA 541 fos. 196 9, de Moustier to Vergennes, London, 16 March 1783; fos. 257 9, Vergennes
to de Moustier, 25 March 1783, approved the minister plenipotentiarys request. Unbeknownst
to de Moustier, Morande had been a spy for the naval ministry since 1781. See Proschwitz and
Proschwitz, Beaumarchais, ii. 1009 22; Morande to Montmorin, 28 April 1788 and passim.
59 See CPA 541 fo 224, [Lord Barrington] to [de Moustier], Cavendish Square, 22 March 1783
[billet]; fos. 2347, 239 40, letters of de Moustier to Vergennes, London, 23 March 1783; fos. 369 75,
Opinion of Thomas Evans, London, 7 April 1783; CPA 542 fos. 436, Case for . . . Mr Bearcroft.
60 CPA 542 fo. 81 billet [of de Moustier for Vergennes], London, noon 21 [April 1783]; fos. 187 8,
Lenoir to Vergennes, Paris, 4 May 1783.
61 For discussion of Brissots role see Burrows, The Innocence of Brissot, 853 60.
62 On the negotiations see CPA 5417 passim, especially CPA 542 fos. 285 9, Compte rendu of
Receveur, 22 May 1783.
63 For copies see: CPA 541 fo. 378, An Alarme Bell Against French Spies, or Pelleport, Diable, p. 78.
65 CPA 542 fos. 3735, Adhmar to Vergennes, London, 3 June 1783.
66 CPA 542 fos. 21720, [Gozman], Mmoire concernant les libelles, 9 May 1783.
SIMON BURROWS
535
London libellistes pamphlets, which accused the French government of

despotism and responsibility for several secret murders. Above all, it
offered a satirical account of Receveurs mission, alleging that the French
government had pursued three parallel strategies to suppress the libelles:
kidnap attempts, bringing a libel case, and putting pressure on the British
government to commit arbitrary acts. Moreover, the pamphlet exposed
Morande as Receveurs auxiliary. It also revealed that he was the author
of a plan for French-style policing of London, which had been presented
to the British government, and a memorandum on libelles and libellistes,
in which he advised disdain as the only means to control them. 68
Receveurs mission had another important consequence, for on 12 July
1784, while on a business trip to Paris, Brissot was arrested on suspicion
of composing the Diable dans un bnitier, following a denunciation by
Morande, which was accompanied by fabricated evidence. Both he and
Pelleport, who had been lured to France and apprehended a day earlier,
were taken to the Bastille and interrogated.69 Pelleport remained in
prison for four years, but Brissot answered very well under questioning
and convinced even the hardened Bastille interrogators of his innocence.
After several months and a concerted campaign by powerful protectors,
including the kings cousin and future regicide, the Duc dOrlans, he
was released on condition that he remained in France.70
Ironically, the French government always intended to pay off Pelleport
if no legal remedy could be found. Even after Receveurs return, the
long-serving foreign minister Vergennes rejected Adhmars advice to
kidnap Pelleport, arguing that libellistes needed salutary examples, but
kidnapping must needs be kept secret and had been tried unsuccessfully
before.71 However, the memoirs of another libelliste, the Comte de La Motte,
suggest that Vergenness resolve against kidnapping was not absolute.
La Mottes credibility is problematic, since he elaborates his allegations in a passage in his wifes scandalous memoirs, which were written
to extort the monarchy and differ in several details from his subsequent
autobiography.72 Moreover, he and his wife masterminded the Diamond
68
Diable, pp. 6172, 95 and passim. Morandes memoir on libellistes is in CPA 542 fos. 37 42;
CPA 541 fos. 1969, de Moustier to Vergennes, 16 March 1783.
On the conspiracy to ensnare Pelleport, see CPA 549 fos. 567, Adhmar to Vergennes, 22 June
1784; fos. 801, Adhmar to Vergennes, 1 July 1784; CPA 552 fos. 20 1, Buard to Vergennes,
10 Jan. 1785.
70 AN, 446AP/2, note [of Lenoir] pour le baron de Breteuil, 5 Sept. 1784.
71 CPA 545 fos. 134 8, Adhmar to Vergennes, London, 4 Oct. 1783; fos. 176 7, de Moustier to
Vergennes, Paris, 17 Oct. 1783; fos. 170 1, Vergennes to Adhmar, 16 Oct. 1783. Vergennes was
French foreign minister from 1774 until his death in February 1787.
72 Jeanne de Saint-Rmy de La Motte, Memoirs of the Comtesse de Valois de La Motte (Dublin,
1790) [hereafter Jeanne de La Motte, Memoirs], pp. 146 213; Marc-Antoine-Nicolas de La Motte,
Mmoires indits du Comte de La Motte-Valois sur sa vie et son poque, (1754 1830), ed. Louis
Lacour (Paris, 1858) [hereafter Marc-Antoine de La Motte, Mmoires indits], pp. 66 125. The
original edition of the comtesses memoirs appeared in 1789; her husbands memoirs were written
during the Restoration, suppressed in return for a tiny pension, and published posthumously. Some
authorities doubt their authenticity, but the narrative outline of the counts adventures in 1785 6
is similar to the version in his wifes memoirs.
69
536
Necklace Affair, the biggest confidence-trick of the eighteenth century.

This elaborate scam has still not been entirely unravelled by historians,
partly because the surviving documents were carefully weeded, possibly
to protect the cardinal de Rohan, the Grand Almoner of France, who
was implicated in the affair. Although Louis XVI was convinced of the
cardinals guilt,73 historians have usually followed the judgment of the
Paris Parlement and seen the cardinal as the La Mottes dupe. In this
version, the La Mottes convinced the cardinal that the queen wished him
to purchase a fabulous diamond necklace secretly on her behalf from
the court jewellers. Following a fleeting moonlit meeting at Versailles
between the cardinal and a prostitute impersonating Marie-Antoinette, a
contract was drawn up with the jewellers, the queens signature forged,
and the cardinal duly handed over the necklace to the comtesse, whose
husband pedalled the jewels around Europe. The fraud was discovered
when the first payment fell overdue and the jewellers demanded restitution from the king. The comtesse, who had stayed in France, presumably
calculating that the whole affair would be covered up, was arrested and
Louis XVI navely ordered a public trial to clear the queens name. 74
Unfortunately, the accused parties printed their trial briefs, hoping to
influence public opinion, and whipped up a fever of speculation, for the
case involved more than the fate of the cardinal and the princely house
of Rohan: the queens honour was also at stake.75 Although he made no
suggestion that she was involved, the cardinals defence was based upon
the claim that it was entirely reasonable for a courtier of his standing to
believe that Marie-Antoinette might initiate a secret midnight assignation and seek to acquire jewellery by clandestine means. Thus to acquit
the cardinal would be to condemn the queen.
La Motte alleges that three attempts were made on his life and liberty
between his wifes arrest and the judgment. The first was the attempt to
assassinate him in a hackney carriage, to which a brief reference has
already been made. This incident presumably occurred in late August or
early September 1785, just after La Motte reached London. According
to the comtes account, his assailant boarded his carriage by grabbing the
servants handles and broke a window with his umbrella. The umbrella
hit La Motte on the head, causing him to flinch just in time to evade the
sword-thrust of his would-be assassin, who ran away.76 Thereafter, the
comte fled to Ireland incognito on the advice of the exiled journalist
73
Louis XVI to Vergennes, 16 Aug. 1785, in Louis XVI and the Comte de Vergennes: Correspondence, ed. John Hardman and Munro Price (Oxford, 1998), p. 376.
74 For the traditional version see: Frances Mossiker, The Queens Necklace (1961) [hereafter
Mossiker, Queens Necklace], pp. 130 46; Colin Jones, The Great Nation. France from Louis XV to
Napoleon, 17151799 (2002), pp. 336 48; Maza, Private Lives, pp. 183 5, which also covers the
trial briefs, pp. 190205. On the storys inconsistencies see Munro Price, Preserving the Monarchy.
The Comte de Vergennes, 1774 87 (Cambridge, 1995) [hereafter Price, Preserving the Monarchy],
pp. 1802.
75 On the trial briefs see Maza, Private Lives, pp. 190 205.
76 Jeanne de La Motte, Memoirs, pp. 1589. See also Marc-Antoine de La Motte, Mmoires
indits, pp. 678.
SIMON BURROWS
537
Linguet, an Irish priest (probably Morandes indiscreet associate, the

defrocked clergyman Perkins MacMahon), and the Franco-Irish capuchin
Macdermott, former almoner to the French ambassador, who promptly
informed the embassy of La Mottes movements.77 In Ireland, La Motte
stayed with Macdermotts relatives, but thought he had been recognized
by the lord lieutenant, the duke of Rutland.78 Shortly afterwards he was
struck down with an illness which prevented him performing the most
natural and indispensable functions of nature.79 He now fled to Scotland, where the questions of specialist doctors convinced him that he had
been poisoned. He spent the next seven or eight months in Edinburgh,
convalescing in bed or confined to his apartment.80
The third attempt involved a complex plot to kidnap the comte from
South Shields near Newcastle, orchestrated by the French ambassador,
Adhmar, and his secretary, Aragon, under instruction from Vergennes.
Their efforts were seconded by two Parisian police officers, Quidor and
Grandmaisons; a further boatload of police officers commanded by
Surbois, who were sent to Newcastle posing as coal merchants; and La
Mottes new travelling companion, an elderly language teacher called
Costa, whom his servant had encountered in an Edinburgh tavern. This
Costa proved to be none other than Morandes old associate Benevent, 81
who offered to betray the comte for 10,000.82 La Mottes account of this
plot is a tortuous tale of double-dealing, for after La Motte uncovered
Benevents plans, they teamed up to inveigle advances from the French
government. Moreover, by now La Motte had determined to return to
France to testify against the cardinal, assuming he could obtain a safeconduct. Thus Benevent helped to convince Surbois that a kidnapping
was not feasible from South Shields, and offered instead to bring the
comte to London. However, La Motte learned from Benevents wife that
Aragon had given Benevent a sleeping draft, in case the chance to poison
him arose. He later discovered that Aragon and Benevent had discussed
other expedients to capture him, including finding someone to swear to
a debt, and bribing the officer sent to arrest him. In either case, they
planned to smuggle him aboard a ship and eventually drop him overboard. 83
To prevent such duplicity, La Motte arranged a meeting with Adhmar in London, where he revealed his willingness to go to Paris if given
proper guarantees. Adhmar replied that the court was unwilling, fearing
that his revelations might harm the queen. However, on learning that La
Mottes evidence would be entirely favourable to her, Adhmar revealed
77 Jeanne de La Motte, Memoirs, pp. 15960. For MacMahons relations with Morande see
Proschwitz and Proschwitz, Beaumarchais, i. 29 30.
78 Jeanne de La Motte, Memoirs, p. 183. The comtes Mmoires indits (p. 90) instead say he was
recognized by the duke of Portland, lord-lieutenant of Ireland from April to September 1782.
79 Jeanne de La Motte, Memoirs, pp. 164 5.
80 Ibid., p. 166.
81 Ibid., pp. 1668. The comte says Benevent /Costas real name was Mus.
82 Ibid., p. 177.
83 Ibid., pp. 1719.
538
his devotion to Marie-Antoinette, coached La Motte in what to say and

confessed that the initial attempts on his life were ordered by the court,
fearing that he favoured the cardinal. Having learned otherwise, it refused
Rutlands offer to seize him, believing they had sufficient evidence. Only
when events swung in the cardinals favour did the court decide it needed
him. Thus Adhmar would write to Vergennes, requesting him to ask the
king to summon La Motte. However, Vergennes who was secretly
working for the Rohans responded by expediting the trial: sentence was
passed the very day Aragon arrived with the letter.84
Some aspects of La Mottes story, such as Adhmars willingness
to compromise himself, seem improbable, and the narrative is predicated
on the claim that Madame de La Mottes mendacious allegations of a
sexual affair between queen and cardinal are true. Nevertheless, his broad
outline of events between his departure from Edinburgh and the judgment against his wife and the cardinal can be confirmed from documentation in the French foreign office, including the ambiguous roles of
Benevent and his wife, Macdermott and the actions of Aragon and the
police officers.85
Munro Price, Vergenness most recent biographer, sees the kidnap
attempt as part of the foreign ministers efforts to ensure Rohan was
exonerated. The plot was thus part of Vergenness attempts to round up
key players in the Necklace Affair who had fled abroad, above all the
forger Rtaux de La Villette and the prostitute Guay dOliva, who was
accused of impersonating Marie-Antoinette. 86 This interpretation is
erroneous. It was Marie-Antoinette who was keen for the comte to return,
along, presumably, with the king.87 In effect, by sending Benevents letter
of 20 March 1786, which offered to deliver La Motte, directly to the
queen, Adhmar outflanked Vergennes, probably unintentionally. 88 When
Marie-Antoinette forwarded the letter to Vergennes, the minister had little
alternative but to concur with the kings desires and order the kidnap. 89
However, there is considerable circumstantial evidence to suggest that
Vergennes tried to sabotage or delay the mission. If so, his determination
must have increased in early May, when Benevent informed him:
I will not tell you any of the disgusting words that Mr. [La Motte] tells me
the cardinal spoke on the subject of the queen. They are such that my pen
refuses to report them and, even though I am not a French subject, I
would have strangled him myself, regardless of risk, if I had had any part
in such conversations.90
84
Ibid., pp. 18990.

These documents can be found in MDF 1400; CPA supplment 18 and CPA 556.
86 Price, Preserving the Monarchy, pp. 178 80.
87 See CPA 556 fo. 2823, Adhmar to Vergennes, London, 1 June 1786.
88 MDF 1400 fos. 75 6, Benevent to Adhmar, Edinburgh, 20 March 1786.
89 See MDF 1400 fos. 8990, Vergennes to Adhmar, Versailles, 4 April 1786.
90 CPA 556 fo. 100, Benevent to [Aragon], Edinburgh, 29 April 1786. A copy is in MDF 1400 at
fo. 141.
85
SIMON BURROWS
539
Was it coincidence that in early May, instead of heading north, the police
inspectors Quidor and Grandmaisons arrived at the ambassadors house
in London, claiming to have misunderstood their orders? Were they
playing for time when they told Adhmar that they were duped into
accepting the mission and insisted he summon Surbois to Newcastle
by boat?91 There were further delays even after Surbois left Dunkirk on
16 May, for he had still not arrived on 20 May, when Quidor concluded
that South Shields was totally unsuitable for their ambush. 92 Thus, by
the time La Motte and Benevent reached London it was almost too late.
Yet Vergennes failed to counsel haste, and Adhmar was unaware that a
verdict was imminent on 30 May 1786, the day he met La Motte and
advised Vergennes that as his [i.e. the comtes] deposition would be very
valuable, do you not think, monsieur, that being so close to the denoement, it would be advantageous to delay the judgement by several days.
I am certain that you would thereby be doing something agreeable to the
queen.93 Vergennes was clearly dissembling when he replied to Adhmar,
reporting the judgment against the Comtesse de La Motte on 31 May,
and added: the cardinal has been totally acquitted on all charges. People
in general are surprised at this and no one more so than I. 94
Although the kidnap plan is well documented, it is less clear whether
anyone attempted to kill La Motte. However, in the light of other similar
incidents, it is surely conceivable that either the Rohan faction or government agents tried to do so. The speed with which the London incident
followed the comtes arrival is surprising, but not incompatible with
agents or adventurers acting on their own initiative or prior instructions.
Nor would La Mottes presence in London have long remained secret,
given the confidence he placed in Perkins MacMahon. And perhaps
Benevent really was given poison or a sleeping potion by Aragon or the
police agents, possibly on the orders of Vergennes, who briefed them prior
to departure?
The sensation caused by the Diamond Necklace Affair did not end
with the Parlements judgment, for in August 1787 the comtesse de La
Motte escaped from La Saltpetrire, rejoined her husband in London,
and announced her intention of publishing her memoirs, which would
include copies of a secret amorous correspondence between Rohan and
the queen.95 Clearly she hoped both to negotiate a large suppression fee,
and to whet the public appetite. The memoirs finally appeared only in
early 1789, because the disgraced, self-exiled, former minister Calonne,
desperate to return to favour, made a long and futile attempt to prevent
91 CPA 556 fos. 148 53, Adhmar to Vergennes, London, 10 May 1786. See also MDF 1400
fos. 1823, Aragon to Adhmar, London, 13 May 1786; fo. 143, Envoy dInspecteurs de police en
Angleterre.
92 CPA 556 fos. 2249, Adhmar to Vergennes, London 23 May 1786. Quidors report on his journey
to England is in MDF 1400 fos. 226 7.
93 CPA 556 fo. 275, Adhmar to Vergennes, 30 May 1786.
94 CPA 556 fos. 2945, Vergennes to Adhmar, Versailles, 5 June 1786.
95 Jeanne de la Motte, Memoirs, pp. 269 312.
540
their publication.96 The court, having learned its lesson too well, declined
to suppress the one libelle with real power to harm it.97
The comtesses memoirs were a tissue of lies, but pandered to existing
stereotypes of the queen. They alleged that the queen detested the cardinal, but had seduced him both to procure the necklace after her husband
forbade her to buy it, and to fulfil the orders of her brother, Emperor
Joseph II, to advance the cardinal at court because he was an Austrian
agent. Nevertheless, she intended ultimately to destroy him. 98 This tale is
supported by the fabricated love-letters, which the comtesse claimed to
have copied while acting as their go-between.99 The comtesse also gave a
tortuous justification of her own role and hinted that she, too, had been
seduced by the queen.100 She thus emerges from her own sentimental
narrative as innocent but resourceful, faithful yet betrayed. The queen is
cold-hearted, vindictive, ruthless, grasping, fickle, false, unfaithful, and
sacrifices Jeanne to protect her good name and condemn the cardinal.
The narrative is told seductively, but the reader is invited to believe in the
essential innocence of a self-confessedly libertine comtesse who candidly admitted intercepting the queens correspondence with her lover
and attempting to sell her silence. Nevertheless, against the background
of the monarchys financial problems and political turmoil, the memoirs
were political dynamite, and their revelations provided standard themes
and stock characters for revolutionary political pornography. The
monarchy saw the danger too late and in May 1792 paid 14,000 livres to
purchase the entire French edition of a second version of the comtesses
life story, which was burned in a kiln at the Svres porcelain works.
Unfortunately the auto da f was discovered, fuelling popular suspicions
that the memoirs contained damaging truths, and in 1793 a new edition
was printed under the auspices of the Committee of Public Safety, from
a volume that escaped the flames.101
The fall of the Bastille in July 1789 did not end the exiles fears of
the monarchy. Until her dying day, the comtesse de La Motte lived in
terror of royal vengeance and her paranoia contributed to her death. In
96 On Calonnes entanglement see Calonnes letters to the Duchesse de Polignac in PRO, PC1/129
pieces 151, 155, 156, 157, 159, 160, 163, 164; Alphonse Joseph de Serres de La Tour, Appel au bon
sens (1788); Jeanne de La Motte, An Address to the Public (1789); idem, Detection or a Scourge for
Calonne (1785); Robert Lacour-Gayet, Calonne, financier, rformateur, contre-rvolutionnaire, 1734
1802 (Paris, 1963), pp. 248 74.
97 Gruder, The Question of Marie-Antoinette, suggests that prior to 1789, Louis XVIs government
successfully contained the circulation of pornographic libelles against the queen.
98 Jeanne de La Motte, Memoirs, pp. 25, 30, 33 4, 76 8, 83.
99 Ibid., pp. 289. The letters are appended, pp. 269 312.
100 Ibid., pp. 1142. Allegations of lesbianism became more explicit in the comtesses Seconde
Mmoire justificatif de la Comtesse de La Motte-Valois, published in October 1789. On MarieAntoinettes portrayal as a lesbian see Elizabeth Colwill, Pass as a Woman, act like a Man: MarieAntoinette as Tribade in the Pornography of the French Revolution, Marie-Antoinette: Writings
on the Body of a Queen, ed. Dena Goodman (New York, 2003), pp. 139 69.
101 Key primary references concerning this incident are reproduced in Almeras, Marie-Antoinette
et les pamphlets, pp. 377 8. See also Mossiker, Queens Necklace, pp. 560 7.
SIMON BURROWS
541
June 1791, when bailiffs called at her London lodgings, she fled to a
neighbouring house fearing a trick or kidnap attempt and, when pursued,
jumped from an upper-floor window, hit a tree, and was injured in a
manner too terrible to relate. Miraculously, she survived and began to
recover, but on 21 August she suffered a terrible relapse, brought on,
according to contemporary accounts, by eating a bowl of mulberries, and
died.102 Within a year, the monarch, whose reputation she had besmirched,
was also dead.
Much of the significance of these tales of French secret police activity
stems from their entry into the contemporary public domain. In Britain,
newspaper coverage of attempts to silence or extradite dissident writers
reinforced images of France as Britains continental antithesis and thus
contributed to emergent British national identity at a key period in its
development.103 Whereas freeborn Britons enjoyed a free press and parliament and lacked a continental-style police, Frances absolute government had a police and censorship so despotic that it even seemed intent
on extending its influence over Frenchmen in England and suborning
British liberties. Linda Colley has argued that the military threat posed
by France across the entire long eighteenth century was, together with
Protestant solidarity, instrumental in shaping a British national identity.
British press discourse suggests, however, that the peacetime ideological
and practical threat represented by French police activities also played
a role, by offering concrete examples of French despotism and hostility
to fundamental British laws, values and institutions.104 It also supports
Colin Kidds challenge to Colleys view of British exceptionalism. Kidd
contends that in spite of the universal francophobia of the press, the
English at least viewed themselves as part of a brotherhood of originally
free Germanic peoples and believed that continental absolutism derived
from historic accident: thus the British critiques of Bourbon despotism
were very specific and did not extend to a blanket condemnation of the
French people.105 This was certainly the case with British newspaper discourse on French police activity. By separating the French people from
the acts of their government and demonizing only the latter, it left ample
scope for British rejoicing when the French regained their liberty in 1789.
In contrast to Britain, where reports concerning police and libellistes
appeared in numerous newspaper articles, printed accounts of police
activities could only reach the French public prior to the revolution via
102 Jeanne de La Motte, The Life of Jane de Saint-Remy de Valois (Dublin, 1792), ii, appendixsupplement, pp. 335.
103 On the importance of newspapers in the creation of imagined national communities, see Benedict
Anderson, Imagined Communities (1983).
104 Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 17071837 (New Haven, 1992). Between 1763 and
1793 Britain and France were at peace with the exception of the period from 1778 to 1783.
105 Colin Kidd, British Identities before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic
World, 16001800 (Cambridge, 1999), esp. pp. 211 16, 234 5. For other critiques of Colley see,
for example, Murray G. Pittock, Inventing and Resisting Britain: Cultural Identities in Britain and
Ireland, 16851789 (1997 ), which particularly questions the existence of Protestant solidarity in
the period.
542
clandestine publications. To be sure, horror stories concerning the fate

of dissidents pre-dated the campaigns against the London libellistes. One
legendary victim, the journalist-blackmailer Dubourg, author of a periodical called lEspion chinois, was kidnapped by French police in Frankfurt in 1745 and taken to Mont Saint-Michel, where he was confined
suspended in an iron cage until he died a year later. 106 However, the
pursuit of the London libellistes in the decades before the revolution was
much better publicized than earlier incidents, and occurred at the very
time a strident critique of despotism was emerging in Frances increasingly robust public sphere.107
The most publicized incident involving libellistes was probably the
dEonGuerchy affair. It excited intense speculation in British newspapers
and French underground publications following the publication of dEons
Lettres, mmoires et ngociations in early 1764, which accused Guerchy
of leaving no stone unturned [a emploi le verd (sic) et le sec] to have me
kidnapped from London.108 This allegation was elaborated in further
publications between 1764 and 1767. Moreover, the British decision to
allow dEon to be tried for libel, following French pressure, ensured that
the case was a cause clbre even before Vergy went public with his
sensational revelations concerning the poison plot. These events made
dEon a celebrity and a hero of the Wilkesite opposition, who, drawing
parallels between French persecution of dEon and ministerial persecution of John Wilkes, helped to organize the mobs that lionized dEon
and accompanied him everywhere to protect him.109 Nor did the story
quickly disappear. As late as 1777, when Beaumarchais finally purchased
dEons papers, the Morning Chronicle wrote, Notwithstanding the
cabals of M. Le Duc de Praslin, who supported M. le compte [sic] de
Guerchy, no one is ignorant that the Chevalier has now carried his point
with France.110
Tales of the attempts to silence Morande enjoyed a similar longevity.
Bellangers aborted mission was reported in French underground publications within weeks: the Mmoires secrets give details as early as
5 February 1774.111 Details of Morandes pay-off, negotiated the following
106
On Dubourg see Eugne Hatin, Les Gazettes de Hollande et la presse clandestine aux XVIIe et
XVIIIe sicles (Paris, 1865), pp. 68 75.
107 Numerous works have addressed the French public sphere since the path-breaking study by
Jrgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger
(Cambridge, Mass., 1989), first published in 1962. See, for example, Mona Ozouf, Public Opinion
at the End of the Ancien Regime, Journal of Modern History, lx supplement (1988), 121; and for
a comparative perspective see Press, Politics and the Public Sphere in Europe and North America,
17601820, ed. Hannah Barker and Simon Burrows (Cambridge, 2002).
108 C.-G.-L.-A.-A.-T. dEon, Lettres, mmoires et ngociations (1764), pp. xxxxxxi. The phrase
emploi le verd et le sec is a punning allusion to Guerchys alleged poisoning of dEons wine.
109 Kates, Monsieur dEon, p. 126.
110 Morning Chronicle, 6 Aug. 1777. The paragraph was purportedly lifted from a periodical entitled
Nouveau Journal franois, italien et anglois.
111 Mmoires secrets, 5 Feb. 1774; see also 19 Feb. 1774. Gotteville, Voyage, also appeared in 1774.
Some sources spell Bellangers name as Beranger.
SIMON BURROWS
543
April, emerged in August 1775.112 The negotiation and kidnap plot also
feature in Imberts Chronique scandaleuse (1783)113 and several anonymous
bestsellers of the corpus attributed to Pidansat de Mairobert, including
the Anecdotes sur Madame la Comtesse Du Barry (1775),114 LEspion
anglais (in various editions from 17778)115 and the Lettres originales de
Madame la Comtesse Dubarry (1779).116 Morandes success in the negotiation is also flaunted in a letter appended to later editions of his Gazetier
cuirass (originally published in London in 1771) which tells how the
miasma from the burning embers of Morandes Mmoires secrets dune
femme publique wafted across the English Channel to Versailles where it
precipitated Louis XVs final illness. These works were far from obscure:
if Robert Darntons table of best-sellers is representative, the titles
mentioned here accounted for over 6 per cent of Frances massive trade
in illegal books between 1769 and 1789.117 Furthermore, under the ancien
rgime such literature was required reading for even the most sober
follower of politics.118 Nor was Morandes story short-lived: details
resurfaced in the Diable dans un bnitier (1783) and several revolutionary
works, including Manuels influential Police dvoile (1791), which claimed:
almost all of Europe knows that some officers of the constabulary were
sent . . . to seize him [Morande] from London; and that having failed in
their attempt, the government began negotiating the suppression of the
libelle with him.119 They also appear in Dutenss Mmoires dun voyageur
qui se repose (1806).120
In Britain, Morandes story was widely reported in newspapers and
satirical prints. Although some prints portray Morande as an ass,
elsewhere he was presented as a hero struggling against French despotism. A letter from Franois in the Public Ledger of 2 September
1776 argues:
112
Mmoires secrets, 25 Aug. 1775.

Chronique scandaleuse ou mmoires pour servir lhistoire de la gnration prsente, 3rd edn.
(4 vols., Paris, 1788), i. 33.
114 Mairobert, Anecdotes, pp. 314 17, 325 8.
115 LEspion anglais, nouvelle dition revue, corrige et consideralement augmente (10 vols., 1785), ii.
1617. Although early editions appeared under the title LObservateur anglois, this work is usually
referred to as LEspion anglais.
116 Lettres originales de madame la Comtesse Dubarry (1779), pp. 178 82.
117 The five most popular of these titles accounted for 1,831 out of 28,212 clandestine book sales
by the Socit Typographique de Neuchtel. My figures are derived from Robert Darnton, The
Corpus of Clandestine Literature in France, 1769 1789 (New York, 1995). On the scale of the illegal
sector of the book trade see Roger Chartier, Book Markets and Reading in France at the End of
the Old Regime, Publishing and Readership in Revolutionary France and America, ed. Carol Armbruster
(Westport, Ct., 1993), pp. 11736. Chartier notes ( p. 125) that only 40% of 1,548 known titles published in French in 1764 had received formal legal permission to publish, though others may have
received oral consent.
118 For example, Bibliothque publique de Neuchtel, MS 1178 fo. 53, Mallet du Pan to the Socit
typographique de Neuchtel, 15 June 1776, shows that even the austere Genevan journalist Mallet
du Pan ordered Mairobert, Anecdotes.
119 Manuel, Police, ii. 251.
120 Louis Dutens, Mmoires dun voyageur qui se repose (3 vols., 1806), ii. 39 40.
113
544
Monsieur de Morande, is, I find, a gentleman of abilities, respectability and

honour. He actually hath made the French ministry so much his enemies,
that it would be dangerous for him to set his foot on French Ground. He
is not playing a double game [the implied contrast is with dEon], nor acting
in a sinister method, unbecoming of a man.121
Two days later, The Ghost of Guerchy even justified Morandes sale of
the Mmoires secrets dune femme publique as his property, the fruit of
much observation and the result of a thorough insight into the affairs
of his country.122 Although Morande and his allies undoubtedly penned
many such letters, they fitted into a more general media discourse which
condemned despotic France and celebrated Britains liberties, especially
press freedom and the security of the person. This discourse permeated
the London press, and numerous examples can be found. Among them
are the following five examples, taken from a random sampling among
newspapers from the period 1 August 1786 to 1 January 1787, and drawn
from reports on a wide variety of subjects. The first three come from
the Morning Post, which had a reputation as something of a scandal
sheet, and employed exiles of several nationalities. The first appeared on
1 August 1786, and read:
There is something about a generous and manly mind, to hear of the
frequent imprisonments in the Bastille of noble and literary characters,
upon the most trifling suspicions. Yet to France we are ever willing to fly,
though every day carries with it a fresh conviction of the dangers of residing
in that country. When will Englishmen learn to justly estimate their own
happiness!
The same point was reinforced satirically, using the language of the body
politic, on 23 September:
The Bastille is the Sovereign remedy in France for all complaints affecting
the Constitution, and the state quacks of that country have found it to be
an infallible prescription for all disorders of a secret nature. It is also a preventative more efficacious than any hitherto discovered. It differs, however,
from all other nostrums in this, that it requires confinement.
On 4 August, the attempted assassination of George III by Margaret

Nicholson allowed the paper to offer a concrete example of these differences in practice, alluding to the case of Damiens, who had attempted to
assassinate Louis XV with a pocket-knife and been broken on the wheel
as a punishment. The paper commented that where the British monarch
attributed Nicholsons actions to insanity and ordered for her to be kindly
treated, had a similar outrage been committed on a GALLIC DESPOT,
the foreign prints would, ere this, have been replete with RACKS,
WHEELS, MOLTEN LEAD and all the other ACCESSARIES [sic] of
AGONY. The more respectable sections of the press also made frequent
121
122
A cutting is preserved in the British Library, Additional Manuscript 11340, fo. 16.
Public Ledger, 4 Sept. 1776.
SIMON BURROWS
545
contrasts between Britain and France. Commenting on the Eden trade

treaty agreed between England and France several weeks earlier, the
Morning Herald of 1 November reported: We hear that the French
noblemen and gentlemen in this metropolis, who have fled from the
prosecution of the French court, the Bastille and lettres de cachet, are all
against Sieur Raynevals commercial treaty, which they wittily style Guy
Fauxs Union.123 In a similar vein, the Morning Chronicle of 1 January
1787 reported from Paris, with some rhetorical exaggeration: A pamphlet
is circulated here, attributed to the Count de L, intituled [sic], Reflections of an honest Man on the criminal Jurisprudence of France which
will assure to the author, if discovered, a certainty of being hanged.
The existence of this discourse made possible both Morandes and
Pelleports use of the British papers to denounce the police agents sent
against them in 1774 and 1783 respectively, and also facilitated the
Wilkesite oppositions ability to mobilize London mobs to protect dEon
in the mid-1760s. On that occasion, fearing that dEon would be kidnapped in the same manner as the marquis de Fratteaux, the London
press published numerous articles and letters celebrating Britains
liberties and the rule of law, and making stated or implicit contrasts with
France. Among them was a letter from Publicus reading:
Hear this ye who know not the value of known and salutary laws, and the
miseries you thereby are protected from, therefore may all offenders
against them meet with the justly incurred infamy and execration that
most abandoned villain Blazdell [Blaisdell] has done, for being the vile
instrument of such misery to a deserving but unhappy gentleman [i.e. the
marquis de Fratteaux].124
A letter from Britannicus was more explicit about the contrast between
Britain and France, and celebrated his countrys role as a refuge for the
persecuted:
They [the French] are the slaves of a despotic power; we a free people
whose country is the asylum of the oppressed; to violate it is a breach of
public liberty and a crime against our country: let us never, therefore,
suffer a stranger who flies to us for shelter, to be a sacrifice to a misguided
fury or the horrors of the Bastille.125
Such rhetoric was also a powerful weapon in the hands of the British
opposition, allowing it, as during the Wilkes affair, to portray perceived
breaches of customary liberties by the British government as French-style
despotic behaviour.126
123
Guy is a reference to William Eden, the British treaty negotiator, whose Christian name is
rendered in French as Guillaume. Joseph-Mathias Grard de Rayneval was the French commissioner
at the negotiations.
124 Public Advertiser, 4 July 1764. A cutting is preserved in ULBC, dEon papers, file 58, pp. 23 4.
125 Public Advertiser, 29 June 1764. A cutting is preserved in ULBC, dEon papers, file 58, p. 14.
126 See Kates, Monsieur dEon, pp. 1247; Anna Clark, The Chevalier dEon and Wilkes: Masculinity
and Politics in the Eighteenth Century, Eighteenth-Century Studies, xxxii (1998), 19 48.
546
Similar themes recurred after 1783 in French coverage of Receveurs

abortive mission. They emerge in the Diable dans un bnitier and again in
chroniques scandaleuses and underground nouvelles la main including
Imberts Chronique scandaleuse,127 the Correspondance littraire secrte,128
the Mmoires secrets,129 and, apparently, satirical prints.130 The mission
is also treated at length in Manuels Police dvoile.131 Nor did such
works leave implicit the critique of Frances system of government. For
example, the Mmoires secrets summarized the afore-cited opening
passage of the Diable dans un bnitier:
The libelliste begins by establishing the means by which our government,
annoyed to see any free country on the face of the earth, came to corrupt
and enslave every other [country] except England. Not that it has not
several times made new attempts against the latter . . . but they have never
succeeded.132
In early 1789 this discourse on French despotism was given fresh impetus
by the publication, in English and French, of the memoirs of the
comtesse de La Motte, replete with its tales of courtly machinations to
suppress her memoirs and murder her husband.133 If some contemporaries
were unwilling to believe such tarnished witnesses, many of their doubts
were dispelled by the Bastille archives, which were ransacked after its
fall by opportunist publishers. Compilations like Charpentiers rapidly
assembled La Bastille dvoile (1789), which sold in cheap instalments,
or Manuels more systematic La Police dvoile (1791), compiled from
police archives after he became procureur of the commune of Paris, confirmed the extent of police activity among the London exile community.
By the time Manuel published, Morande had resurfaced in Paris to
lead a defamatory newspaper and pamphlet campaign against Brissots
election to the Legislative Assembly. Morandes efforts appear to have
taken a heavy toll, for although Brissot enjoyed the highest public profile
of any radical candidate and was their chief hope, he lost the first eleven
ballots by which Pariss twenty-four deputies were elected. He finally
scraped together a majority in fortuitous circumstances in the twelfth
and became only the fourth out of eight radicals to be elected. Brissots
difficulties can in part be attributed to the existence of a moderate majority
in the 964-member electoral assembly, but many contemporaries saw
things differently. An address from the Jacobins of his home town of
Chartres attributed his tribulations to calumny, while his election was
controversial enough to occasion a schism and mutual recriminations
127
Chronique scandaleuse, i. 33 5.
Correspondance littraire secrte (19 vols., Neuwied, 1774 93), xvi. 94 7.
Mmoires secrets, 11 and 17 Oct. 1784.
130 Ibid., 17 Oct. 1784.
131 Manuel, Police, i. 236 56. This volume also contains a chapter entitled De la police sur les
libelles, pp. 13656.
132 Mmoires secrets, 11 Oct. 1784.
133 The comte made allegations concerning the kidnap attempts as early as December 1786. See
Morning Chronicle, 29 Dec. 1786.
128
129
SIMON BURROWS
547
between the moderate majority and radical minority in the electoral

assembly, who thereafter discussed candidates in separate clubs. 134
Brissots victory had decisive consequences, for within weeks he was
leading calls for war in the Legislative Assembly, motivated not least by
a desire to force the monarchy to declare its hand. However, Brissots
deep suspicion and hatred of the monarchy was part of a wider
phenomenon. Where Robert Darnton famously believed that Brissots
hatred of the ancien rgime stemmed from degradation and defeat by
the entrenched forces of a closed cultural and political elite, this article
draws attention to Brissots first-hand knowledge of the scheming of
spies, police agents and courtiers.135 He and his peers knew about the
machinations of the Bourbon court and its agents from bitter experience.
While Brissot stands out, other prominent future revolutionaries and
celebrated opposition figures had suffered similarly. Morande alone
had a string of important victims while working as a French agent. He
conducted a long vendetta against Mirabeau in his Courier de lEurope
newspaper on behalf of the French ministry and his patron, Beaumarchais, culminating in an outspoken newspaper campaign to discredit him
during the election campaign of 1789;136 defamed Linguet and publicly
spat into his face in Piccadilly;137 exposed the identity and charlatanism
of the magician Cagliostro in print, with information forwarded by the
Paris police;138 and forced Calonne to buy the Courier de lEurope in April
1789 to silence his attacks.139 By the 1780s Morande was so notorious
that he had become an object of curiosity for French travellers, including
Madame Roland, whose description of him combines horrified awe with
hints of sexual frisson.140 In some revolutionary and pre-revolutionary
tracts he even stands alongside the lieutenant of police, Lenoir, as a symbol of the worst excesses of despotism and the depravity of its agents. 141
Thus, underground publications had familiarized a generation of
educated Frenchmen with their governments arbitrary acts of power. The
French regime under Louis XV and especially Louis XVI was indeed
134
On the Parisian elections to the Legislative Assembly see Etienne Charavay, Assemble electorale
de Paris (3 vols., Paris, 1890 1905), vol. ii, pp. ixlii, 51238. Brissots victory occurred just after he
drafted a formal protest against the violation of the electoral assembly by an officer intent on
arresting one of its members: Charavay (p. xxix) suggests that the two events were probably connected.
135 Robert Darnton, The Grub Street Style of Revolution: J.-P. Brissot, Police Spy, Journal of
Modern History, xl (1968), 30127. See also Burrows, The Innocence of Brissot.
136 See for example Courier de lEurope xxv (22), 18 March 1789; letters of Morande to Beaumarchais dated 12 Dec. 1785, 10 and 20 March 1789, in Proschwitz and Proschwitz, Beaumarchais, ii.
916, 1037, 1041. Hostilities between Beaumarchais and Mirabeau stemmed from their support for
rival syndicates that were bidding for the contract to supply water to Paris.
137 Morande to Beaumarchais, 3 Oct. 1784, in Proschwitz and Proschwitz, Beaumarchais, ii. 853 5;
Mmoires secrets, 3 April 1785.
138 Robiquet, Morande, pp. 189 205.
139 Simon Burrows, French Exile Journalism and European Politics, 17921814 ( Woodbridge, 2000),
pp. 19, 88.
140 The Works of Jeanne-Marie Phlipon Roland, ed. L. A. Champagneux (1800), p. 218.
141 See for example Pelleport, Diable; Manuel, Police, i. 24250, 265 7; ii. 250 3 and passim; Andrea
de Nerciat [attrib.], Julie philosophe (2 vols., Paris, 1791), ii. 6 11.
548
liberalizing, but when exposed to the scrutiny of the public, their remaining despotic acts whether ordered by the kings council or competing
ministries appeared all the more intolerable. The rhetorical accusation of despotism that arose following the purging of the parlements
in the Maupeou coup of 1771 was reinforced in succeeding years by
public awareness of clandestine police actions that not only proved the
allegation, but showed how an unfettered court was capable of behaving.
These, in turn, were reinforced by denunciations of aspects of the
despotic machine in celebrated works such as Linguets Mmoires sur la
Bastille (1783) and Mirabeaus Des Lettres de cachet et des prisons de
ltat (1782).
The siege mentality and fear of conspiracy that affected so many
leading revolutionaries was not merely a product of the revolution. To a
large degree, they were based on the experience of the revolutionaries
whether personal or through the print media and a realistic awareness
of the governments actions in several celebrated instances from the
recent past represented the continuation of historical practices of repression. The French court, whose politics depended on factional manoeuvrings, must indeed have seemed to be a centre for conspiracy against
liberty. The events of the early revolution punctuated and driven by
real and imaginary conspiracies reinforced these fears. It was natural
for the revolutionaries to look to the features of the British constitution
that had protected the London dissidents, a free press and popular
checks on government, as the antidote to the secret manoeuvres and
conspiracies of the court, and to place them at the heart of the revolutionary programme of 1789.

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Despotism without Bounds: The French Secret

Police and the Silencing of Dissent in London,

etween 1760 and 1790 the Bourbon government sponsored a

THE FRENCH SECRET POLICE IN LONDON, 17601790

French elites in newspapers and sensational publications. This article

2004 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

2004 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

THE FRENCH SECRET POLICE IN LONDON, 17601790

royal family.11 Either interpretation allows post-revisionist historians

sent an agent to London to investigate kidnapping dEon just prior to

2004 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

THE FRENCH SECRET POLICE IN LONDON, 17601790

blackmail was a hanging offence in England. Harcourt replied that this

PRO, SP78/285 fos. 2056, Harcourt to Rochford, Paris, 20 May 1772.

2004 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

agents by a corrupt bailiff named Blaisdell.32 However, before they could

2004 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

THE FRENCH SECRET POLICE IN LONDON, 17601790

The attempt on La Motte is discussed below.

2004 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

queen, Marie-Antoinette, including the Petits soupers de lhtel de Bouillon,

THE FRENCH SECRET POLICE IN LONDON, 17601790

prominent British politicians including Lord Shelburne and Charles James

2004 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

London libellistes pamphlets, which accused the French government of

2004 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

THE FRENCH SECRET POLICE IN LONDON, 17601790

Necklace Affair, the biggest confidence-trick of the eighteenth century.

Linguet, an Irish priest (probably Morandes indiscreet associate, the

2004 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

THE FRENCH SECRET POLICE IN LONDON, 17601790

his devotion to Marie-Antoinette, coached La Motte in what to say and

Ibid., pp. 18990.

2004 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

2004 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

THE FRENCH SECRET POLICE IN LONDON, 17601790

2004 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

2004 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

THE FRENCH SECRET POLICE IN LONDON, 17601790

clandestine publications. To be sure, horror stories concerning the fate

Mmoires secrets, 25 Aug. 1775.

2004 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

THE FRENCH SECRET POLICE IN LONDON, 17601790

Monsieur de Morande, is, I find, a gentleman of abilities, respectability and

On 4 August, the attempted assassination of George III by Margaret

2004 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

contrasts between Britain and France. Commenting on the Eden trade

THE FRENCH SECRET POLICE IN LONDON, 17601790

Similar themes recurred after 1783 in French coverage of Receveurs

2004 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

between the moderate majority and radical minority in the electoral

THE FRENCH SECRET POLICE IN LONDON, 17601790

2004 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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