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Debating the Ecole Militaire: The School as an Institutional Solution to the Predicaments of the Nobility

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The École Royale Militaire

Part of the book series: War, Culture and Society, 1750 –1850 ((WCS))

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Abstract

As a prominent national project and symbol, the Ecole militaire provoked and elicited a range of discourses on its nature, purpose, utility, and other aspects inherent to such a signal institution. This was particularly so given the contentious nature of its principal funding mechanisms, based on gambling, and the open question of what constituted the best possible education for both impoverished nobles and future officers. For if, as Grimm noted in 1763, ‘they have not ceased writing on education’, the field of military education was hardly less active with the work of reformer-minded thinkers debating pedagogical improvements. Before broaching the issue of the contributions to the debate on socio-educational reform of figures such as Fénelon, Rollin, d’Alembert, Rousseau, Helvétius, and others, it is worth noting the diversity of projects for military reform which were linked to efforts to improve the knowledge and culture of the officer corps. From circa 1728, we find a project for the creation of a corps of cadets inspired by Mazarin’s Collège des Quatre Nations labelled the ‘Compagnie des Quatre Nations’, followed in 1734 by the abbé de Saint-Pierre’s sketch of an ‘Académie Militaire’ drawn up along the lines of the académies savantes. In 1752, the Académie royale de Pau issued a call for verse submissions on the topic of the utility of an ‘Académie militaire’, the most notable entry being a prose essay entitled ‘Utilité d’une Ecole et d’une Académie Militaires’ by guerrilla war theorist Jean-Jacques, comte de Beausobre. A military philosophe like Lancelot Turpin, comte de Crissé et de Sanzay might then champion a Beausobre’s proposals and weave them into his own 1761 critiques of the Paris Ecole militaire or the écoles d’équitation, critiques eventually reflected to some degree in actual institutional developments. Interestingly, a short-lived military académie savant was created in Besançon in 1753, the Abbé de Sérent’s Société Littéraire-Militaire, which was then suppressed by that city’s Académie des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts. That case may perhaps be taken to exemplify the tensions aroused by tentative innovation in the field of military intellectualism. Be that as it may, the purpose of this chapter is to present the opinions of the founders and backers of the Ecole militaire in their intellectual milieu. It specifically analyses their views on its objectives and purpose in the general context of wider debates on both education and noble-military reform, and how they conceived the contribution that the new institution would make by regenerating the impoverished nobility. It then closes by considering the tax on playing cards and how it affected general perceptions of the school.

I see everywhere immense establishments, where youths are raised at great expense to learn all things, except their duties.

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discours Qui A Remporté le Prix à l’Académie de Dijon, en l’Année 1750…, 45

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Letter of 15 April 1763 in Grimm and Diderot’s Correspondance littéraire, philosophique, critique, adrressée à un souverain d’Allemagne, depuis 1753 jusqu’en 1769 (Paris, 1813), vol. 3, 349.

  2. 2.

    Service Historique de la Défense, Vincennes (subsequently SHD), 1 M 1781 Mémoires Ecoles Militaires 1736–1784, Projet de l’établissement d’une compagnie de 2000 cadets de quatre différentes nations appelée Compagnie des Quatre Nations, circa 1728; Abbé de Saint-Pierre, Ouvrajes Politiques de Mr. l’Abbé de St. Pierre, Charles Irenée Castel, de l’Académie Françeze. Sur le Ministère des Finances. Sur le Ministère des Affaires avec les Etrangers. Sur le Ministère de la Guerre avec les Etrangers. Projet pour parvenir à la Paix (Rotterdam, 1734), vol. 8, 235–241. He also championed cadet companies.

  3. 3.

    The Académie royale de Pau’s call for submissions is in Ms 995 of the Bibliothèque municipal de Dijon, while Sandrine Picaud-Monnerat discusses Beausobre’s submission in La petit guerre au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 2010), 556.

    While eschewing criticism of the Ecole militaire, he nonetheless doubted its utility without a parallel école plébéienne for soldiers. The essay is appended to Beausobre’s Commentaires sur La Défense des Places, d’Æneas le Tacticien, le plus ancien des auteurs militaires ; avec quelques notes. Le Tableau Militaire des Grecs du mesme temps, les Ecole Militaires de l’Antiquité, et quelques autres pièces (Amsterdam, 1757), 273–329.

  4. 4.

    Turpin de Crissé, Mémoires de Montecuculi, Généralissime des Armées, & Grand-Maître de l’Artillerie de l’Empereur (Paris, 1761), vol. 3, 92–97, 320n. His main suggestion was splitting the school into two sections, as happened in 1764.

    Sources of inspiration for reform included the Turks, as he called for provincial Académies de guerre ‘à l’imitation des Janissaires du Serrail, où l’on instruirait aux exercices militaires les orphelins, les bâtards, les mendiants & les pauvres…’ Ibid., 32. Both Turpin de Crissé’s brother-in-law (François Xavier Joseph de Lowendal) and his son Lancelot attended the Paris Ecole militaire.

    Other proposals for some sort of ‘Académie militaire’ similar to the Abbé de Saint-Pierre’s include François-Antoine Chevrier’s apocryphal Testament politique du maréchal-duc de Belle-Isle (Amsterdam, 1761), 100–101 and a 1776 plan by Pierre Bragouse de Saint-Sauveur in SHD Ya 164 Académies Royales Militaires – Plan Général de leurs établissements.

  5. 5.

    A brief historical overview of Sérent’s Société is given in the Mémoires de la Société d’émulation du Doubs (Besançon, 1889), vol. 3, 73–74. After its suppression, the Société remained extant on paper for a number of years.

  6. 6.

    A significant, if often overlooked influence on Coyer, was Vauban, specifically his project for the ‘dîme royale’. La noblesse commerçante (London, 1756), 30–31, 51–53, 66–71, and 105.

  7. 7.

    See Jay M. Smith, Nobility Reimagined: The Patriotic Nation in Eighteenth Century France (Ithaca, NY, 2005), 37, 41–49.

  8. 8.

    Carolyn C. Lougee, ‘Noblesse, Domesticity, and Social Reform: The Education of Girls by Fénelon and Saint-Cyr’, History of Education Quarterly 14 (1974), 96.

  9. 9.

    Fénelon, ‘Examen de conscience sur les devoirs de la royauté’, in Œuvres, éd. Aimé Martin, 3 vols (Paris, 1882), III, 346, in ibid., 94.

  10. 10.

    Lougee, ‘Noblesse, Domesticity’, 96.

  11. 11.

    Odile Cassou-Mounat, ‘Les Demoiselles de Saint-Cyr, une approche de la noblesse pauvre sous l’ancien régime’, mémoire de maîtrise (Université Paris IV-Sorbonne, 1982), 35.

  12. 12.

    Lougee, ‘Noblesse, Domesticity’, 99.

  13. 13.

    Fénelon’s opinión of the court was that ‘the non-noble and newly-ennobled ministers, had usurped the political authority which rightfully belonged to the ancient nobility’, while arguing ‘that agriculture was the basis of national prosperity’. The girls of Saint-Cyr were to be taught, among other things, ‘the broader areas of estate management’. Ibid., 96, 90, 92.

  14. 14.

    L’Esprit de l’Institut des filles de Saint Louis (Paris, 1699), 22 in ibid., 97. ‘Elles doivent propager dans la noblesse … une morale diamétralement opposé aux vertus héroïques de loisir et de magnificence qui demeurent la figure de proue de la haute société’. Cassou-Mounat, ‘Les Demoiselles’, 35.

  15. 15.

    For their parallels in the field of social selection, see Haroldo A. Guízar, ‘Entering the Ecole militaire: Proofs of nobility and the example of the girls’ school at Saint-Cyr’, Ex Historia 7 (2015), 37–60.

  16. 16.

    Mézières’s creation is sketched in Janis Langins, Conserving the Enlightenment: French Military Engineering from Vauban to the Revolution (Cambridge, MA & London, 2004), 94–98. On the adoption of proofs of nobility, see Roger Chartier, ‘Un recrutement scolaire au XVIIIe siècle: l’Ecole royale du Génie de Mézières’ , Revues d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 20 (1973), 353–375.

  17. 17.

    Emmanuelle Chapron, ‘Des livres “pour l’usage de l’Ecole royale militaire”: choix pédagogiques et stratégies éditoriales (1751–1788)’, Histoire, économie & société 33 (2014), 4.

  18. 18.

    Charles Rollin, Traité des Etudes. De la manière d’enseigner et d’étudier les Belles Lettres, par rapport à l’esprit et au cœur (Paris, 1805), vol. 3, 68, in Smith, Nobility Reimagined, 54–55.

  19. 19.

    Oeuvres completes de Rollin (4 vols, Paris, 1805), vol. 4, 433–434 (Gill’s emphasis) in Natasha Gill, Educational Philosophy in the French Enlightenment: From Nature to Second Nature (Farnham, UK and Burlington, VT 2010), 91.

  20. 20.

    Smith, Nobility Reimagined, 60. This was the Considérations sur le gouvernement ancien et présent de la France (Amsterdam, 1765).

  21. 21.

    The ‘false aristocracy’ was composed ‘not of a pure aristocracy of the nobility but an aristocracy of ministers, court grandees, financiers, and the rich’. D’Argenson, Considérations, 175, 191 in Smith, Nobility Reimagined, 61–62.

  22. 22.

    The marquis d’Argenson, Considérations, 310–311 in ibid., 64.

  23. 23.

    Commenting on the publication of the Mémoires de Sully, he praised that minister’s qualities, observing: ‘Sully n’aimait pas les manufactures, mais l’agriculture, et que, par une marche contraire, Colbert a dépeuplé les provinces et introduit le luxe destructeur’. Marquis d’Argenson, Mémoires et Journal (Paris, 1858), vol. 5, 103.

  24. 24.

    The marquis commenting on the Apologie de l’Esprit des lois, ou Réponse aux observations de l’abbé Delaporte of 1751 in ibid., 118–119.

  25. 25.

    Kenneth Lawson, ‘Introduction: The Concepts of “Training” and “Education” in a Military Context’ in The Educating of Armies, ed. Michael D. Stephens (London, 1989), 3.

  26. 26.

    Dictionnaire de l’Académie Françoise , 4th edition, vol. 1, s.v. ‘Education’.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., 767.

  28. 28.

    Even in contemporary usage, education is sometimes taken, if not as synonymous with training, then at least grouped with it in some studies of military affairs. See the entry ‘Education’ which redirects the reader to the entry on ‘Training’ in A Dictionary of Military History and the Art of War, ed. André Corvisier, trans. John Childs (Oxford, 1998), 214, 810–817.

  29. 29.

    Smith makes mention of émulation in The Culture of Merit in the context of what he sees as a shift in the meanings and standards of merit under the monarchy. His argument does not directly touch on the issues broached here, but it has been thoroughly critiqued by David C. O’Brien. He argues persuasively that Smith’s ‘counterposing of old and new virtues, is in fact an artificial product of the interpretative scheme itself and its sharply honed antithesis’, and instead posits ‘a point that is surely beyond argument: that the French soldier, in becoming more professionally accomplished, was not expected to become any less faithful, zealous and brave’ (what O’Brien describes as the ‘traditional’ military virtues).

    Smith , The Culture of Merit: Nobility, Royal Service, and the Making of Absolute Monarchy in France (Ann Arbor, 1996), 216; David C. O’Brien, ‘Traditional Virtues, Feudal Ties and Royal Guards – The Culture of Service in the Maison du Roi’, French History 17 (2003), 45–46.

  30. 30.

    Smith, Culture of Merit, 216.

  31. 31.

    Dictionnaire, 3e éd. vol. 1, s.v. ‘Emulation’, 574. Although the Forum on Emulation in France 1750–1800 published by Eighteenth-Century Studies in 2003 is a helpful introduction to the topic, it does not address the intersection of reflection on the noble, military, and pedagogic spheres considered here.

  32. 32.

    The idea of ‘total institution’ is defined in Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Garden City, NY, 1961), 6.

  33. 33.

    Charles-Léopold Andreu de Bilistein, Institutions Militaires pour la France, ou Le Vegece François, 2 vols (Amsterdam, 1762), vol. 1. De Bilistein was a former lawyer who was called to serve as a secretary to Crémilles by the comte de Gisors.

  34. 34.

    The influence of Helvétius on Bilistein was first pointed out by Arnaud Guinier in L’honneur du soldat: Ethique martiale et discipline guerrière dans la France des Lumières (Ceyzérieu, 2014), 242–244. For the partial adoption and implementation of Bilistein’s ideas for reform, see pages 342–345.

  35. 35.

    Bilistein, Institutions Militaires, xii–xiii: ‘l’homme sensible pour lui seul, indifférent pour les autres, n’est ni bon, ni méchant, mais prêt à être l’un ou l’autre, selon qu’un intérêt commun le réunit ou le divise’. This is Helvétius’s statement of the concept: ‘Or, pour composer de pareilles lois, il faut connaître le cœur humain; & … les hommes, sensibles pour eux seuls, indifférents pour les autres, ne sont nés ni bons ni méchants, mais prêts à être l’un ou l’autre, selon qu’un intérêt commun les réunit ou les divise…’ This passage is from Chapter 24 of Discours II, titled ‘Des moyens de perfectionner la morale’ in De l’Esprit (Paris, 1758), 238.

  36. 36.

    Bilistein, Institutions Militaires, 77: Jean-Baptiste Pâris de Meyzieu’s view was that ‘Il est bien rare de voir de grandes richesses et de grands talents dans le même sujet; l’émulation a un objet de moins. Si l’intérêt est un mobile si puissant, que ne doit-on pas attendre de la nécessité? Elle est la mère de l’industrie et de la prudence; elle rend les hommes capables des plus grandes choses, et lorsque l’honneur l’accompagne, elle les mène toujours dans le chemin de la vertu’. Lettre d’un ancien lieutenant-colonel françois à M***. sur l’Ecole royale militaire (London, 1755), 77.

  37. 37.

    In the context of the Maison royale, the administrative body of the school took on the mantle of the legislator. SHD Ya 148 Discours préliminaire: Enseignement tel qu’il se pratique aujourd’hui dans cette Maison, 1785.

  38. 38.

    The last part of the quotation in the original reads: ‘Il n’est pas indifférent que le peuple soit éclairé’. Montesquieu, Préface, De l’Esprit des Lois in Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu avec des notes de Dupin, Crevier, Voltaire, Mably, Servan, La Harpe, etc. etc. (Paris, 1838), 189.

  39. 39.

    Helvétius, subheading to Chapter I of Section X in On Man, His Intellectual Faculties and his Education. A Posthumous Work of M Helvétius, trans. W. Hooper (London, 1777), vol. 2, 392; Archives Nationales (subsequently AN) K 149, 11 January 1750, no1, Mémoire sur l’utilité de l’établissement d’un Collège Academique pour la jeune Noblesse de France, 7.

  40. 40.

    AN O1 1605-283, Mémoire que présentent à nosseigneurs du Conseil de l’Ecole royale militaire les Inspecteurs des Etudes, 19 October 1764.

  41. 41.

    AN MM 679, Lettre de Choiseul au Conseil de l’Ecole royale militaire à Compiègne, 11 August 1764.

  42. 42.

    AN MM 674, Mémoire, 22 September 1776, 11.

  43. 43.

    François-Hugues Pepin du Montet, Requête au Roy, tendante à obtenir la confirmation de l’établissement d’une petite Ecole militaire pour les pauvres enfans nobles de France… (Paris, 1752). This pamphlet is interesting as the earliest known call for the creation of a system of preparatory military schools for the children of indigent noble families preparing for eventual entry to the Ecole militaire.

  44. 44.

    The Bibliothèque Universitaire Droit-Lettres de Poitiers (subsequently BUP) holds manuscript drafts of de Meyzieu’s Encyclopédie article and the Réflexions in the Fonds d’Argenson P 40.

  45. 45.

    Réponse de Duverney, 3 March 1753 in Correspondance du Cardinal de Bernis, ministre d’état, avec M Paris-du-Verney (London, 1790), 31.

  46. 46.

    Saint-Germain à Duverney, 19 October 1753 in Correspondance particulière du comte de Saint-Germain (London, 1789), vol. 1, 55–56.

  47. 47.

    Marcel Grandière, L’Idéal pédagogique en France au dix-huitième siècle (Oxford, 1998), 174, 181.

  48. 48.

    AN K 149 no 7, Mémoire secret, 24 April 1750, 2.

  49. 49.

    AN K 149, no 1, Mémoire sur l’utilité de l’établissement d’un Collège académique pour la jeune Noblesse de France, 11 January 1750, 1.

  50. 50.

    Ibid., 2.

  51. 51.

    A modernised pedagogy called for the reduction of Latin to make room for the study of French and other modern languages. The practice, as well as the study, of Latin at the time is described as follows: ‘ils la parlaient constamment au collège, du moins dans les classes supérieures (syntax, poetry, rhetoric), en toutes circonstances et même en récréation’. J. Javaux et al., Les Jésuites inaugurent place du XX-Août le 30 avril 1582 (1982) in Cécile Bertrand ‘Le Latin des Jésuites Wallons de Liège au 17e siècle: Analyse Factorielle’, Revue, Informatique et Statistique dans les Sciences humaines 1/4 (1984), 26.

  52. 52.

    He listed the five subjects of public education, namely Humanités, Rhétorique, Philosophie, Mœurs, and Réligion. These, in turn, were the preparatory subjects for the Trivium (Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic) and Quadrivium (Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, Astronomy) of the Studia Generalia, and further advanced studies in faculties of theology, philosophy, and law. D’Alembert, ‘Collège’ in Encyclopédie, vol. 3, 636. Liliane Alfonsi further notes that in the eighteenth century the Quadrivium ‘est bien souvent, faute de personnel compétent, sacrifié à la Théologie’. Liliane Alfonsi, ‘Les mathématiques au XVIIIe siècle dans les manuels d’enseignement: Du “Pourquoi?” au “Comment?”’, Images des Mathématiques (2012) http://images.math.cnrs.fr/Les-mathematiques-au-XVIIIe-siecle.html (09 August 2014).

  53. 53.

    Robert Granderoute, ‘La fortune de l’article Collège dans le discours pédagogique (1753–1789)’ in Recherches sur Diderot et sur l’Encyclopédie 5 (1988), 58.

  54. 54.

    AN K 149, no 1, Mémoire sur l’utilité de l’établissement d’un Collège Académique pour la jeune Noblesse de France, 11 January 1750, 6.

  55. 55.

    Ibid., 4–5.

  56. 56.

    AN K 149, no 61, Mémoire, 24 April 1750, 1–2.

  57. 57.

    De Meyzieu, Lettre, 41.

  58. 58.

    Ibid., 42.

  59. 59.

    Du Montet, Requête, 4.

  60. 60.

    Ibid.

  61. 61.

    Ibid.

  62. 62.

    Essay sur le Service Militaire, pour l’instruction d’un jeune Seigneur Francois (Paris, 1754), 154–155.

  63. 63.

    Réflexions sur l’Ecole royale militaire (No place, undated), 2.

  64. 64.

    Ibid.

  65. 65.

    Ibid., 2–3.

  66. 66.

    Ibid., 3.

  67. 67.

    Essay, 151–152. This author stressed that ‘la noblesse est incapable de dégénérer’, a statement reminiscent of the conception of nobility which had legal force in Brittany: ‘dans la province … la noblesse ne s’y perd jamais par prescription ni par dérogeance’. Acte de notoriété du barreau du Parlement de Rennes, April 1715, Arlette Jouanna, ‘Dérogeance’, in Dictionnaire de l’Ancien Régime: Royaume de France, XVIe–XVIIIe siècle, ed. Lucien Bély (Paris, 1996), 399.

  68. 68.

    Essay, 170–171.

  69. 69.

    Ibid., 151–152.

  70. 70.

    Ibid., 165–166.

  71. 71.

    Ibid., 167–168.

  72. 72.

    De Meyzieu, Lettre, 75.

  73. 73.

    Ibid., 74–77. Whatever the case may have been for the army in general, the opposite to what de Meyzieu asserts was the case with military engineers: some 53, a sixth of that corps’ manpower, died on campaign 1744–1748, either in action, from their wounds, or due to fatigue. Anne Blanchard, Les Ingénieurs du ‘Roy’ de Louis XIV à Louis XVI: Etude du corps des fortifications (Montpellier, 1979), 190–192.

  74. 74.

    De Meyzieu, Lettre, 40.

  75. 75.

    Ibid., 15. The complete list reads, ‘la tactique, le génie, l’artillerie, les campements, les fourrages, les marches, les retraites, les détachements, les convois, les embuscades, les surprises, les ordres de batailles’. This is evidently a list of strictly military disciplines, not a curriculum for the school.

  76. 76.

    Ibid., 15–17.

  77. 77.

    Smith has suggested that the requirement that the nobility perform military service ended with the final feudal levy called by Louis XIV in 1674, after which the ban et arrière-ban continued to be a theoretical obligation for the nobility but never again utilised. Nobility Reimagined, 34; John Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army, 1610–1715 (Cambridge, 1997), 369–371.

  78. 78.

    De Meyzieu, Lettre, 18. ‘Ce fut alors que ce monarque reconnut que la noblesse n’avait plus pour la guerre qu’un goût impuissant’.

  79. 79.

    Ibid., 18–19. A mémoire of 1728 considered the extended period of peace positively dangerous for the quality of the officer corps: ‘Une assez longue paix qui ne laissait pas même, pour s’instruire, la ressource de la pratique … qu’il était important de se précautionner contre l’ignorance totale, dont le corps des officiers était menacé si l’on ne prenait aucun soin d’instruire la jeune noblesse…’ SHD Ya 145, Mémoire sur la nécessité de reduire les six compagnies de cadets …, December 1728.

    Coyer condemned such attitudes, incredulous that because ‘on se plaint tous les jours du petit nombre de débouchés pour les familles nobles… on va jusqu’à désirer la guerre’. La noblesse commerçante (London, 1756), 93.

    D’Arcq in turn was careful to avoid any warmongering, preferring to emphasise the respect that a strong military brought to a prince and his state both in peace and war. La noblesse militaire, ou le Patriote François (Paris, 1756), 14–15.

  80. 80.

    De Meyzieu, ‘Ecole Militaire’ in Encyclopédie, 307.

  81. 81.

    De Meyzieu, Lettre, 36–37. This was probably as close as he came to a Helvétian statement on education’s powers.

  82. 82.

    Ibid., 57.

  83. 83.

    Such connections remained important until the end of the ancien régime: Only six colonels of the 109 at the head of an infantry regiment were non-titled nobles. Albert Duruy, L’Armée royale en 1789 (Paris, 1888), 84.

  84. 84.

    De Meyzieu, Lettre, 57.

  85. 85.

    Ibid. Heuristic pedagogy is discussed in the introduction to the following chapter.

  86. 86.

    Ibid., 44.

  87. 87.

    Réflexions, 3–4; on noble exhaustion see André Corvisier, ‘Aux approches de l’Édit de Ségur: le cas du sieur de Mongautier, 1779’, L’Actualité de l’histoire 22 (1958), 10–11.

  88. 88.

    De Meyzieu, Lettre, 13–14.

  89. 89.

    Réflexions, 9. These are namely the loss of productivity to the state and decrease in the birth-rate due to the number of unmarried men in the army, which would have been less of a problem if the officer corps was populated by nobles, as younger sons had lower marriage rates.

  90. 90.

    Ibid., 9–10.

  91. 91.

    De Meyzieu, Lettre, 13–14.

  92. 92.

    The new proclamation simply intended, ‘en y statuant de nouveau par une loi expresse, renfermer cette grâce dans de justes bornes’. It was furthermore framed in terms of not desiring to increase the burden on the king’s ‘sujets taillables’, through the fiscal privileges accorded to the nobility, a disposition reinforced by provisions of the declaration which followed two years later clarifying the edict. Edit du Roi, portant création d’une Noblesse Militaire, Fontainebleau, November 1750, 2; Déclaration du roi, en interprétation de l’Edit du mois de novembre 1750, portant création d’une Noblesse militaire, Versailles, 22 January 1752, 1–2.

  93. 93.

    Réflexions, 7. This is pointed out in footnote five.

  94. 94.

    F. Bluche, P. Durye, L’anoblissement par charges avant 1789, 40–42 in Gibiat, Hiérarchies Sociales et Ennoblissement – Les commissaires des guerres de la Maison du roi au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 2006), 238.

  95. 95.

    As articulated by Christy Pichichero, for instance, ‘a few immediate reforms reflected some level of egalitarian thinking – such as the creation of a noblesse militaire’, in ‘Le Soldat Sensible – Military Psychology and Social Egalitarianism in the Enlightenment French Army’, French Historical Studies 31 (2008), 576.

  96. 96.

    Ralph F. Croal, ‘The Idea of the Ecole Spéciale Militaire and the Founding of Saint-Cyr’, PhD thesis (University of Arizona, 1970), 117. This seems something of an exaggeration next to the figures provided by David Bien, showing that for the period 1750–1789, roturiers only accounted for 5.2% of those eligible for ennoblement at the rank of maréchal de camp or above, and never more than 7.9% in any given decade. These numbers, in turn, are below the percentage of roturiers listed among the newly arrived officers in the aristocratic Mousquetaires (10.5%) and Chevaux-légers (11%) for the period 1750–1780. David Bien, ‘Caste, Class and Profession in Old Regime France: the French Army and the Ségur Reform of 1781’, St. Andrews Studies in French History and Culture, ed. Guy Rowlands (2010), 36–37; Bien, ‘La réaction aristocratique avant 1789: l’exemple de l’armée’, Annales: E.S.C. 29 (1974), 518–519.

    Finally, there is the obvious point that none of the authors discussed here was a noble; they instead seem to typify the attitude of being ‘more royalist than the king’.

  97. 97.

    Réflexions, 10.

  98. 98.

    Rafe Blaufarb, The French Army, 1750–1820: Careers, Talent, Merit (Manchester, 2002), 20. A later measure which benefited new nobles serving in the military, an edict dated April 1771, stated that the children and descendants of those anoblis who were ennobled after 1715 either from charges and offices granting noblesse transmissible au premier degree or graduelle, as well as those anoblis who served in the army or navy at the time of the enunciation of the edict, were exempted from paying the droit de confirmation stipulated by that edict for other anoblis. ‘Anoblissement’, in Dictionnaire Raisonné des Domaines et Droits Domaniaux, des Droits d’Echanges, & de ceux de Contrôle des Actes des Notaires & sou Signatures privées… (2nd edn, Rennes, 1782), vol. 1, 221.

  99. 99.

    Guízar , ‘Entering’, 44.

  100. 100.

    Croal sees the nobility’s request to the Regent for the imposition of proofs of four degrees of nobility from prospective officers as evidence of noble reaction. Croal, ‘The Idea’, 96. This seems unlikely though. See the previous footnote. Views such as Croal’s are likely to be nuanced by the forthcoming doctoral thesis by Aude Mayelle, ‘La noblesse militaire au XVIIIe siècle en France’, Thèse de doctorat (University of Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne Paris-I).

  101. 101.

    Bien, ‘La réaction aristocratique’, 23–48, 505–534; Bien, ‘The army in the French Enlightenment: Reform, Reaction, and Revolution’, Past and Present 85 (1979), 68–98.

  102. 102.

    Réflexions, 11. ‘C’est par elle (l’Ecole militaire) que les choses avec le temps rentreront dans leur ordre naturel. Elle repeuplera insensiblement notre militaire de noblesse, et elle en écartera sans violence ceux qui ne sont pas faits pour cet état… enfin toutes les fonctions civiles en seront mieux remplies’.

  103. 103.

    Ibid., 11, footnote seven. Not all youth abandoned the law, however. On the apparently ‘numerous “boy magistrates”’, see Franklin L. Ford, Robe and Sword – The Regrouping of the French Aristocracy after Louis XIV (Cambridge, Mass, 1953), 116–118.

  104. 104.

    AN K 149 no 27, Plan de Constitution pour l’entretien et l’éducation, de cinq cent élèves, 5 August 1761, 5–6.

  105. 105.

    Jouanna , ‘Preuves de noblesse’, Royaume, 1013.

  106. 106.

    Patrick Clarke de Dromantin, Les Réfugiés Jacobites dans la France du XVIIIe siècle: L’exode de toute une noblesse pour cause de religion (Pessac, 2005), footnote 80. The preuve testimoniale’s gradual abandonment is one reason Dromantin sees Irish genealogies as carrying little weight with French genealogists.

  107. 107.

    Ibid., 77. Antoine d’Hozier described the process of proving one’s nobility in Great Britain and Ireland in 1770.

    The cadets-gentilshommes continued to apply the requirement which d’Hozier had labelled as lapsed to their German candidates after 1776. Guízar, ‘Entering’, 52.

  108. 108.

    SHD Ya 147, Projet d’établissement d’études de géométrie, dessein, fortifications, artillerie, et tactique pour le militaire, 3–4.

  109. 109.

    Ibid., 3. The author’s historical example was the establishment by the Chinese Emperor Taizu of Song (whom he labelled ‘Tsai-Fsou’) in the year 964 of an examination for the gens de guerre resembling that already extant for the men of letters; he claimed that from that time on they were obligated to prove their ability by the compositions they made on the military art, and by the exercises prescribed by regulations.

  110. 110.

    They were only to be required to provide such proof if they were candidates for the cross of Saint Lazare. AN K 149 no 27, Plan, 5 August 1761, 8.

  111. 111.

    Ibid., 9–10.

  112. 112.

    This phrase is a clear echo of the phrase quoted above by the author of the Réflexions, ‘des hommes qui payent de leur sang l’avantage’ and which carried connotations of the ennobling quality of military service; however, the two authors’ arguments were at counter purposes, the Réflexions seeking to exclude all non-nobles in order to rehabilitate the destitute nobility, while the ‘Plan’ desired the recognition of those who had made the ultimate sacrifice in the king’s service, whatever their social category.

  113. 113.

    AN K 149 no 27, Plan, 5 August 1761, 10–11.

  114. 114.

    AN MM 678, Lettre écrite par d’Argenson à M. de Tourny, 7 May 1754, 24–25. The letter was written in response to Tourny’s inquiry concerning the Fars de Fosselandry brothers, admitted to the Ecole militaire in the spring of 1754 despite their father being well-off enough to grant them all an inheritance. However, as this only came to 200 livres each, d’Argenson considered that sum inadequate for the provision of a suitable education.

  115. 115.

    AN MM 665, Conseil d’administration, 5 March 1760, 180–181.

  116. 116.

    Déclaration du roi, concernant l’Ecole Royale Militaire, Article VII, 24 August 1760, Recueil des édits (Paris, 1782), vol. 1, 21.

  117. 117.

    Ibid., Article IX; SHD Ya 145 Edit du Roi, 22 January 1751, 9.

  118. 118.

    Règlement concernant les nouvelles Ecoles Royales-militaires, Titre II, Article VI, 28 March 1776 in Recueil des Edits, vol. 1, 87.

  119. 119.

    SHD AG A1 3446, Lettre de Ségur à Pajot, Intendant de Grenoble, 27 January 1781, 84. The rest of the letter reads, ‘Je joins… une copie de l’article 6 du titre 2 du même règlement (28 March 1776), concernant la fortune de parents … Je vous prie de vouloir bien en donner connaissance aux subdélégués de votre département’.

  120. 120.

    This comment was with regards to the students deciding to dye their breeches. They also requested hair powder and mirrors, which Dupont de la Motte could not provide. See the entries for 23 May and 7 July 1776 in the Journal, 9th cahier, 26 March–30 September 1776. He had already noted on 12 February 1775 that ‘l’argent n’est plus rare parmi les élèves’ of La Flèche. Journal, 6th cahier, 5 December 1774–19 April 1775.

  121. 121.

    Réflexions, 11–12.

  122. 122.

    Essay, 153.

  123. 123.

    Robert D. Kruckeberg, ‘The Wheel of Fortune in Eighteenth-Century France – The Lottery, Consumption, and Politics’ PhD thesis (University of Michigan, 2009), 97–101. The same analysis can be found in his article ‘The Loterie de l’Ecole Militaire: Making the Lottery Noble and Patriotic’, Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 37 (2009), 85–97.

  124. 124.

    Kruckeberg, ‘The Wheel of Fortune’, 95.

  125. 125.

    The first reference to the Ecole militaire’s place in the 1750s debates exemplified by the Coyer-d’Arcq ‘conflit idéologique’ is probably in Roger Chartier et al., L’Education en France du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1976), 218.

  126. 126.

    AN K 149 no 161, Mémoire Collège Académique 6 July 1750, 9. He ended the mémoire by acknowledging that ‘l’aliénation propose n’a jamais rien valu’; he clearly believed that leveraging its future revenues via the 2 million livre loan would be sufficient for all capital costs and initial expenses.

  127. 127.

    De Meyzieu, Lettre, 22; BUP FA, P 40, Lettre par d’Argenson à Pompadour (undated).

  128. 128.

    De Meyzieu, Lettre, 25. This squeeze on royal finances justified the use of an innovative finance mechanism. It was attitudes like his that the comte d’Argenson referenced in a letter, wryly noting that ‘on a trouvé alors un si grand avantage à tirer de néant une affaire négligée … et à former un aussi grand établissement du produit d’un droit qui ne rapportait presque rien’. BUP d’Argenson P 40, lettre par d’Argenson à Pompadour (undated).

  129. 129.

    De Meyzieu, Lettre, 27, 29.

  130. 130.

    Règlement Général pour les Elèves de l’Ecole Royale-militaire, Article CXXXV, 13 December 1759, Recueil des Edits, 262. This prohibition was reiterated in later ordinances.

  131. 131.

    Marquis d’Argenson, 19 December 1750 and 27 January 1751, Journal et Mémoires du marquis d’Argenson, ed. Rathery, (Paris, 1864), vol. 6, 316, 346.

  132. 132.

    Duc de Luynes, 28 January 1751, Mémoires du duc de Luynes sur la cour de Louis XV (1735–1758) (Paris, 1863), vol. 11, 11.

  133. 133.

    Grimm , 1 April 1755, ‘De l’Ecole Militaire’ in Correspondance inédite de Grimm et de Diderot, et Recueil de Lettres, Poésies, Morceaux et Fragmens retranchés par la Censure Impériale en 1812 et 1813 (Paris, 1829), 10. Unimpressed, he proposed instead education in garrisons. With his project, ‘nous ne verrions pas à Paris un beau et vaste bâtiment avec l’inscription: Ecole militaire; mais l’exécution de mon projet épargnerait au roi quelques millions, et au lieu de cinq cents particuliers … toute la noblesse du royaume aurait part aux soins du monarque, et serait élevée convenablement’. Ibid., 9, 10.

    A similar claim was that double the amount of officers could be trained for much lesser sums while additionally join practice to theory. 19 March 1752, Journal du marquis d’Argenson (Clermont-Ferrand, 2005), vol. 8, 256.

  134. 134.

    A letter by Duverney to a supplicant seeking employment for two friends shows that the lottery was being discussed years before its adoption. BUP FA P 36, Letter by Duverney, 2 February 1755.

  135. 135.

    Dominique Schalck-Pommellet, ‘L’Ecole Royale Militaire de Paris et la “Révolution” du comte de Saint-Germain, 1751–1776–1793’, thèse pour le doctorat d’état (Université de Paris, 1968), 94–96.

    In early 1777, the Bureau d’administration presented Saint-Germain and Montbarey with three mémoires arguing that if ‘l’on mettrait ce droit en ferme’, that ‘il serait perdu pour l’Ecole Royale militaire, dont il fait la principale ressource’. AN MM 670, Bureau d’Administration, 27 January 1777, 26.

  136. 136.

    AN MM 669 Conseil de l’hôtel 11 February 1772, 32.

  137. 137.

    Mignonneau, Considérations Intéressantes sur les Affaires Présentes Par M*** (London, 1788), 165–166; the anonymous author also specifically dismantled several of the 1787 Règlement’s articles. Mémoire sur la suppression de l’Hôtel de l’Ecole royale militaire (Paris, 1788), 1–14.

  138. 138.

    Jacques Necker, Mémoire (Paris, 1787), 41; SHD Ya 155, Letter by Necker to an unknown party on 6 April 1790, fo 22: ‘… supposant que le rétablissement du local soit autorisé, pour leur instruction élémentaire…’

  139. 139.

    Madame du Hausset, Mémoires de Madame du Hausset, femme de chambre de madame de Pompadour, avec des notes et des éclaircissements historiques (Paris, 1824), 98.

  140. 140.

    Coyer , Développement et défense du système de la noblesse commerçante, Première partie (Amsterdam, 1757), 194–195.

  141. 141.

    D’Arcq, Noblesse Militaire, 191–193.

  142. 142.

    D’Arcq, ‘Discours Préliminaire’, Histoire Générale des Guerres, Divisée en Trois Epoques; La Première depuis le Déluge jusqu’à l’Ére chrétienne, la seconde depuis l’Ère chrétienne jusqu’à la chûte de l’empire d’Orient; La troisième depuis la chûte de l’empire d’Orient jusqu’à l’année 1748; avec une Dissertation sur chaque Peuple, concernant son origine, la situation du pays qu’il habite, la forme de son gouvernement, sa religion, ses loix, ses mœurs, ses révolutions, &c. (Paris, 1756), vol. 1, xlvi.

  143. 143.

    Shovlin comments in a footnote of his 2006 book that ‘Coyer may have written La noblesse commerçante at the behest of the administration (the Contrôle-générale )…’ to fill ‘the need for some propaganda favourable to the project because a trading nobility had been criticized by Montesquieu in 1748…’ If so, this may partly explain why Coyer avoided any attack on the Ecole militaire in the short mention he made of it when comparing it to the Venetian Republic’s commercial ‘Ecole pour leurs enfants et un germe de prospérités…’ However, even in 1770 Coyer maintained a largely neutral stance on it in his treatise on education, simply mentioning its buildings as a model of spaciousness highly beneficial for physical education.

    Shovlin , The Political Economy of Virtue: Luxury, Patriotism, and the Origins of the French Revolution, (Ithaca, NY, 2006), 59; Coyer, La Noblesse commerçante, 103–104; Plan d’éducation publique (Paris, 1770), 17.

  144. 144.

    Dominique Picco, ‘La perception de l’éducation reçue à Saint-Cyr (1686–1719)’, Dix-septième siècle 249 (2010), 746.

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    Haroldo A. Guízar

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Guízar, H.A. (2020). Debating the Ecole Militaire: The School as an Institutional Solution to the Predicaments of the Nobility. In: The École Royale Militaire. War, Culture and Society, 1750 –1850. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45931-4_3

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