Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction: culture and power during the long eighteenth century
- 2 When culture meets power: the Prussian coronation of 1701
- 3 Military culture in the Reich, c. 1680–1806
- 4 Diplomatic culture in old regime Europe
- 5 Early eighteenth-century Britain as a confessional state
- 6 ‘Ministers of Europe’: British strategic culture, 1714–1760
- 7 Confessional power and the power of confession: concealing and revealing the faith in Alpine Salzburg, 1730–1734
- 8 The transformation of the Aufklärung: from the idea of power to the power of ideas
- 9 Culture and Bürgerlichkeit in eighteenth-century Germany
- 10 The politics of language and the languages of politics: Latin and the vernaculars in eighteenth-century Hungary
- 11 ‘Silence, respect obedience’: political culture in Louis XV's France
- 12 Joseph II, petitions and the public sphere
- 13 The court nobility and the origins of the French Revolution
- 14 The French Revolution and the abolition of nobility
- 15 Foreign policy and political culture in later eighteenth-century France
- 16 Power and patronage in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte
- 17 Between Louis and Ludwig: from the culture of French power to the power of German culture, c. 1789–1848
- Index
11 - ‘Silence, respect obedience’: political culture in Louis XV's France
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction: culture and power during the long eighteenth century
- 2 When culture meets power: the Prussian coronation of 1701
- 3 Military culture in the Reich, c. 1680–1806
- 4 Diplomatic culture in old regime Europe
- 5 Early eighteenth-century Britain as a confessional state
- 6 ‘Ministers of Europe’: British strategic culture, 1714–1760
- 7 Confessional power and the power of confession: concealing and revealing the faith in Alpine Salzburg, 1730–1734
- 8 The transformation of the Aufklärung: from the idea of power to the power of ideas
- 9 Culture and Bürgerlichkeit in eighteenth-century Germany
- 10 The politics of language and the languages of politics: Latin and the vernaculars in eighteenth-century Hungary
- 11 ‘Silence, respect obedience’: political culture in Louis XV's France
- 12 Joseph II, petitions and the public sphere
- 13 The court nobility and the origins of the French Revolution
- 14 The French Revolution and the abolition of nobility
- 15 Foreign policy and political culture in later eighteenth-century France
- 16 Power and patronage in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte
- 17 Between Louis and Ludwig: from the culture of French power to the power of German culture, c. 1789–1848
- Index
Summary
In the early hours of the night of 19–20 January 1771, president Louis-François de Paule Lefèvre d'Ormesson de Noiseau of the Parlement of Paris, who along with his colleagues was on judicial strike, was woken by the sound of two musketeers hammering at his door. They presented him with a royal lettre de cachet, which when opened contained the following orders:
Sir, I send you this letter to inform you that it is my intention that you should resume the functions of your office and carry out the duties that you owe to my subjects for the dispatch of their affairs … and that you should make clear in writing to the bearer of the present [letter] without humming and hawing or beating about the bush, by a simple declaration of yes or no, your willingness to submit to my orders, informing you that I will consider a refusal to explain yourself and to sign as disobedience.
More than 150 of d'Ormesson's colleagues received a similar visit on this remarkable night. The majority replied negatively and they were exiled the next evening, and their remaining colleagues who had initially written ‘yes’ quickly recanted and soon suffered the same fate.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Cultures of Power in Europe during the Long Eighteenth Century , pp. 225 - 248Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007