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Pattern for Nobility: The Comte de Brienne

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

James Doolittle
James Doolittle*
Affiliation:
University of Rochester, Rochester, N.Y.
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Abstract

The Comte de Brienne (1595-1666), soldier, bureaucrat, secrétaire d'Etat under Marie de Médicis, Louis XIII, Anne d'Autriche, and Louis XIV, wrote, ca. 1661, memoirs in which it appears (1) that he took seriously the principles of feudal polity, (2) that he sought to incarnate the ideal feudal vassal and expected his noble contemporaries to do so, and (3) that while such contemporary fictions as the heroes of d'Urfé and of Corneille were exemplified in fact, the fact was already an anachronism in morality and in politics.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 83 , Issue 5 , October 1968 , pp. 1313 - 1325
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1968

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References

1. Relatively recent studies have begun to remove the doubt. See, e.g., G. Couton, La Vieillesse de Corneille (Paris, 1949), esp. pp. 267–283. R. Jasinski, Molière el le Misanthrope (Paris, 1951), relates Molière to the social mythology of his time. The present study does not claim to blaze a trail, but to furnish details.

2. They occupy 172 pp. in the edition of Michaud and Pou-joulat, Nouvelle collection des Mémoires relatifs à l'histoire de France (Paris, 1866), Vol. xxvii. Page references in my text are to this edition. Its introductory Notice dates the composition of the Mémoires in 1663, without evidence. Brienne says he is writing after 38 years of marriage, which means 1661, and he makes no reference to any event subsequent to 1661.

3. Cf. Brienne's best biographer, Louis Lévêque, in “Le Comte de Brienne,” Revue historique, civ (1910), 40–57, 241–264. I refer to p. 48, where my text is confirmed; this is also the case in my subsequent references to this article. '

4. See Lévêque, p. 42.

5. See Lévêque, pp. 50–51, 254–255. Brienne's penury in his last decade or so was largely caused by the very great sums spent by his wife in the foundation and support of religious houses and in charitable works.

6. See Lévêque, pp. 254, 261, and n. 3.

7. Our chauvinistic vassal has a characteristic distrust of constitutional government, together with a scathing disdain for those who find commerce respectable. The English cannot be counted on to adopt a proper policy, he says, because “le commerce est l'idole à laquelle ces insulaires et les Hollandois sacrifient” (p. 161).

8. See Lévêque, p. 46.

9. Cf. Brienne himself: “Il faut se souvenir que les monarchies doivent être gouvernées par de justes lois; et comme l'exemple est la dernière [worst] des raisons, il n'établit jamais rien de soi, et ne doit être proposé que pour soutenir ce qui est juste” (p. 135).

10. One is reminded of another anachronistic nobleman, Alfred de Vigny, whose interminable Cinq-Mars attributes the destruction of the power of the nobility, and therefore the degradation of France, to the domination that Richelieu could not have exercised but for the pusillanimity of Louis XIII. Brienne, of course, has no such thesis; but he does share Vigny's sorrowful indignation at the subservience of the rightful master to unworthy or ignoble underlings. And I think he expresses it better, for he is not guilty of Vigny's gross oversimplifications. Vigny misses entirely the vibrant intensity of feelings and motivations which boils beneath the stately formality of passages such as this one of Brienne.

11. Cf. Louis XIV, Mémoires, ed. J. Longnon (Paris, 1933), p. 26: “Ni vous, ni moi, mon fils, n'irons pas chercher pour ces sortes d'emplois [ministries] ceux que l‘éloignement ou leur obscurité dérobent à notre vue, quelque capacité qu'ils puissent avoir. Il faut par nécessité se déterminer sur un petit nombre que le hasard nous présente, c'est-à-dire qui se trouvent déjà dans les charges, ou que leur naissance ou leur inclination ont attachés près de nous.” Louis’ memoirs written to instruct his son were set down ca. 1671; the passage quoted refers to 1661.

12. See Louis XIV, op. cit., pp. 29–30: “Le comte de Brienne … était vieux, présumant beaucoup de soi, et ne pensant d'ordinaire les choses, ni selon mon sens, ni selon la raison.”

13. Negotiated in 1661; registered by the parlement in 1662; never carried out.

14. Louis' view of this treaty nicely refutes Brienne. The king's arrangements, both royal and very down-to-earth, not to say Machiavellian, offer Lorraine the succession under conditions that Louis is sure will be rejected. See his pp. 101–105.

15. Louis XIV, p. 40 (one of many examples) : “Encore que sur les offenses, autant ou plus que sur tout le reste des choses, les rois soient hommes, je ne crains pas de vous dire qu'ils le sont un peu moins quand ils sont véritablement rois, parce qu'une passion maîtresse et dominante, qui est celle de leur intérêt, de leur grandeur et de leur gloire, étouffe toutes les autres en eux.”