Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert's Secret State Intelligence System (Cultures of Knowledge in the Early Modern World)

the

Information Master

The Information Master jean-baptiste colbert’s secret state intelligence system

Jacob Soll

The University of Michigan Press / Ann Arbor

Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2009 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-free paper 2012

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Soll, Jacob, 1968– The information master : Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s secret state intelligence system / Jacob Soll. p. cm. — (Cultures of knowledge in the early modern world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-472-11690-4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-472-11690-8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Colbert, Jean Baptiste, 1619–1683. 2. Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 1619–1683—Political and social views. 3. Public administration— France—History—17th century. 4. Government information—France— History—17th century. 5. Knowledge management—France—History— 17th century. 6. Records—Political aspects—France—History—17th century. 7. Archives—Political aspects—France—History—17th century. 8. France—Politics and government—1643–1715. 9. France— Intellectual life—17th century. 10. Statesmen—France—Biography. I. Title. DC130.C6S68 2009 944'.033092—dc22 2008051142

ISBN13 978-0-472-02526-8 (electronic)

This book is dedicated to the memory of the reading room of the old Bibliothèque Nationale de France, with its arches, pillars, domes, and smell of wood and old books. This temple of learning was built on the foundations laid by Jean-Baptiste Colbert in 1666, across the street from his house. Those who knew and loved this place miss it.

Andromaque, je pense à vous! Ce petit ›euve, Pauvre et triste miroir où jadis resplendit L’immense majesté de vos douleurs de veuve, Ce Simoïs menteur qui par vos pleurs grandit, A fécondé soudain ma mémoire fertile, Comme je traversais le nouveau Carrousel. Le vieux Paris n’est plus (la forme d’une ville Change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d’un mortel). . . . —Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal, “Le Cygne”

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istorians are often nagged by the suspicion that they could have spent more time studying their subject. The French scholar Prosper Boissonnade noted with no irony that he had studied Jean-Baptiste Colbert for thirty-six years “without overlooking any source of information.” He expressed fears that his work was “super‹cial” and that he had not had enough time to research. Indeed, it would be possible to spend decades analyzing all of Colbert’s correspondence, for he wrote it for hours on end, with the help of teams of secretaries, research assistants, and agents. Yet it is hard to assess whether spending a lifetime on a project or ‹nishing it within a few years is the best approach. Both have their merits. Having spent only six years studying Colbert, I share Boissonnade’s concerns. Although I read through thousands of pages of printed and manuscript sources, I cannot make the claim of having the ambition or the capacity to make a total, four-decade study. I thus gratefully followed the footsteps of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholars such as Pierre Clément, Léopold Delisle, Georges Depping, René Memain, Boissonnade, and others who believed that studying seventeenth-century government was important enough to dedicate their lives to it. They used research teams to catalog, organize, and reprint the massive archives of early modern government. Their work has guided my trek through the giant and sometimes uncharted archival forest of Colbert’s paperwork.

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To handle and interpret such a massive set of sources, I have also relied on the aid of my colleagues. While some works of scholarship are written in seclusion, this has been, from the beginning, a collaborative effort. I am privileged to say that this book is the product of their work and learning as much as mine. I ‹rst discussed the project with Ted Rabb, over lunch at Palmer House at Princeton. It was here that we worked out the initial concept of the book. Ted has since read countless versions of the text and aided me with his remarkable ability to see the big historical picture and to explain it in the clearest terms possible. His is a rare and disappearing art to which I can only aspire. Anthony Grafton has never wavered in his friendship and generosity. He offered to this project his unparalleled scope of knowledge, mixed with his careful scienti‹c spirit of analysis. His in›uence has shaped this book as well as my own belief in the primary importance of the culture and tradition of research. Ann Blair also worked with me from the beginning, helping to hone and tighten various versions, and offering her rich erudition and advice. Peter Burke’s work inspired this book, and I am grateful for the time he spent with me discussing it. He has never stopped being my thesis advisor. Roger Chartier has been a constant source of inspiration and support, for which I am ever grateful. Margaret Jacob has given unwavering support and the power of her learning to the project. Her emails from all corners of Europe at all hours kept me going through the hard days of writing and revising. Christian Jouhaud, Richard Kagan, Peter Miller, Barbara Shapiro, Justin Stagl, and Peter Stallybrass read early drafts, gave useful advice, spent much time discussing the project and writing letters recommending it, for which I am very grateful. Enzo Baldini has been a great help, discussing and circulating news of the project in his wide network in the republic of letters. From beginning to end, Keith Baker and Dan Edelstein have helped and inspired me to develop the central ideas of the book, and have managed to do so with wine present at all times. Randolph Head and Orest Ranum worked very patiently with me to pull together the ‹nal draft. Jean Boutier, Pierre Burger, Marc Fumaroli, Antoine Lilti, Paul Nelles, Diogo RamadaCurto, Emma Rothschild, and J. B. Shank generously read drafts of the book and offered priceless commentary. I am particularly grateful to Richard Dunn and the American Philosophical Society, who ‹rst showed interest in this project and gave it funding. Their generous Franklin Grant got the book off the ground. A fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities allowed me to spend a year working on the book. Without this funding, I would

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not have been able to do the project. I am also grateful for the support of my colleagues at Rutgers Camden and New Brunswick, as well as at the European University Institute in Florence. Many thanks go to Benjamin Bryant for his skilled editing of the bibliography, and for his loyal friendship. Thanks to my parents and in-laws for babysitting. Thanks to my father as always for helping to support my research and helping me to purchase the necessary computers. Special thanks go to Chris Hebert and the team at the University of Michigan Press. They supported this book from its earliest beginnings and have patiently and skillfully worked with me toward a ‹nal project. It goes without saying that without the aid of librarians, this book would never have been done. Special thanks to the conservateurs of Salle des Manuscrits of the Bibliothèque Nationale; the Archives Nationales; the Archives du Quai d’Orsay; the Bibliothèque Mazarine; the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal; Rutgers University Library, and in particular the Paul Robeson Library in Camden; the Firestone Library at Princeton; Cambridge University Library; the Archivio di Stato di Torino; and the Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze. Thanks also to the journals French Historical Studies and Archival Science. Finally, I would like to thank John Pollack and the librarians of the Annenberg Rare Books Room of the University of Pennsylvania’s Van Pelt Library. John has made their reading room my base laboratory, helping to ‹nd documents, offering useful analysis, and tracking down and copying texts and images. They make the access to information easy and collaborative, providing ideal research conditions. Thanks also go to Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Richard Bonney, Gianfranco Borelli, Harald Braun, Arndt Brendecke, Paul Cohen, Robert Darnton, Robert Descimon, Francesco Di Donato, Vitorio Dini, Paul Dover, Marcus Friedrich, Susanna Friedrich, Tim Harris, Lynn Hunt, Matt Jones, Ben Kafka, Marie-Pierre La‹tte, Donald Kelley, Kirstie McClure, Martin Mulsow, Geoffrey Parker, John Pocock, Aysha Polnitz, Laurence Pope, Sophus Reinert, Antonella Romano, Rob Schneider, Phil Scranton, Will Slauter, Paul Sonnino, Erik Thomson, Filippo di Vivo, Wolfgang Weber, Richard Yeo, and Cornel Zwierlein. I would like to make special mention of those who provided intellectual, moral, and culinary support over the years, essential to the writing of this book. As they know, I see research and intellectual activity as inextricably intertwined with la gourmandise. Thanks to Manu Barrault and Anne Rohart for making their spare couch my base for research, Vespa riding and late-night eating in Paris. Françoise Choay generously

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housed me in Paris on many occasions, thus making possible my research. Thanks to Alessandro Arienzo for his interest in my work, discussions, intellectual and soul empowering powwows and feasts in Naples, singing with Borelli and passing long evenings at the Enoteca near Gesù Nuovo. Bill Connell has been a sturdy rock of support and a true friend in research, conferencing, and dinners at home and across the world. John McCormick seems to show up at key moments offering advice, support, and an inspiring con‹dence in the link between very good wine and intellectual activity. Roger O’Keefe has been a constant source of wisdom on my own work, international law, and the biological origins of Vaudeville. He appeared miraculously both in Amsterdam for a memorable feast of wonderful ›at, round Dutch barrier oysters, and in Florence for a Christmas notable for the six hours spent in the emergency room of the children’s hospital, as well as for a memorable tortelli in brodo and pork stewed with fennel in Poppi. Thanks to Carrie Weber for all the friendship, late-night emails, pep talks, inspiration, and the brilliant, hard work on the manuscript, without which I could not have ‹nished it; and to Tom Stegeman for unwavering moral support, discussions about the merits of accounting, marathon feasts in New York, Paris, and Philadelphia, and a truly inspiring pancetta- and Sangiovese-fueled, and possibly cardiac-threatening, culinary odyssey through Tuscany that ended in the valley of Rignana, with a ‹reworks of Tuscan eggs, fresh truf›es, and olive oil washed down with Chianti Classico. Maurie Samuels was always there, at all hours, to discuss the project and keep the boat of scholarship a›oat. He is a true comrade in arms. I must thank Colin Hamilton for frankly critiquing and discussing my work, as he has done since we were in high school, which now seems to be a century ago, as well as for an inspiring voyage through Italy highlighted by a boat ride in Venice jusqu’au but de la nuit, and a grand pranzo at the Diana in Bologna. Thanks to Richard Serjeantson for therapeutic brainstorming and feasting expeditions in Paris at the Grand Véfour, and at the Zygomates under the care of Patrick Frey; as well as in Burgundy, the Perigord, and lastly Piemonte, where, buoyed by a wave of Barolo from 1981, we reached for the gourmet sky. A special thanks and farewell goes to Alexander Lippincott for fueling this project when it ran out spiritual of steam, on the wintry Thursday evenings in Philadelphia, with bottles of Bordeaux and slabs of restorative steak from North Dakota. Colbert liked Rhine valley white wines; but this book was fed with red, most notably from Lippincott’s

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once endless streams, which ran upward from Château de La Huste, to Léoville-Las Cases, Mouton Rothschild, Palmer, Vieux Château Certan, Cos d’Estournel, Château Pavie, Cheval Blanc, Margaux, and onward to Petrus. His cellars, once a liquid library, are now dry and those days are over. This book stands in memory to Eat Club in Philadelphia. Most of all, this book owes an enormous debt to Ellen WaylandSmith. She supported its research and writing; discussed it over and over again to the point of humoring me; read and reread it; and lived through the pressure of its constant deadlines and related travel engagements, all during the very active early youth of our marvelous daughters Sophia and Lydia. During the last days, we ‹nished the book together in Florence, in the house of the Bartoli family on the via Fra Paolo Sarpi, correcting drafts, roasting truf›ed pork with bread crust and sage, and taking care of the children between trips up the hill to Fiesole to the villa Schifanoia, walks to the Biblioteca Nazionale, lunch at Il Giova, jaunts on the byways of Chianti and through the clouds of the Val d’Aoste, and Sundays spent together at the mercato Saint’Ambrogio, and at the court of the Ramada-Curtos at the Teatro del Sale. They have been happy days for which I am grateful. Rien sans la belle Hélène. Studying dusty archives can be both lonely and tedious. Yet if they happen to be situated in the lands of the former Roman Empire, and if they give up their treasures, there is nothing more satisfying than lea‹ng through parchment, reading lost texts, solving old mysteries, and then walking home to dinner through ancient streets, with the smell of cool old stone, hungry from the knowledge gained from a hard day’s work. The world changes, but from what I can tell, this pleasure has remained a constant.

Contents 1. Between Public and Secret Spheres the case of colbert 1 2. Colbert’s Cosmos the expert and the rise of the modern state 3. The Accountant and the Coups d’État

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4. Royal Accountability louis xiv and the golden notebooks 5. The Rule of the Informers

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6. Managing the System colbert trains his son for the g reat intendancy

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7. From Universal Library to State Encyclopedia colbert’s house of solomon 94 8. Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Republic of Letters the state control of knowledge 120 9. The Information State in Play archives, erudition, and the affair of the régale 10. The System Falls Apart, but the State Remains

Notes

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Bibliography Index

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Illustrations following page 146

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chapte r 1

Between Public and Secret Spheres the case of colbert

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n 1698, the Cambridge-trained naturalist and royal physician Martin Lister wrote an account of his trip to Paris.1 Lister described birds, hedges, ›agstones, housing materials, architectural and antiquarian treasures, and French traditions, clothing, and diet.2 He measured the wheels of carriages, “not above two Foot and a half Diameter; which makes them [carriages] easie to get into.”3 He visited museums and the workshop of the great gardener of Versailles, André Le Nôtre.4 Most of all, Lister visited libraries. Part book and manuscript collections, part antiquarian and natural history museums, Parisian libraries were famed storehouses of erudition and science, and thus obligatory stops on any grand tour.5 Among the libraries he visited was that of Louis XIV’s famed minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–83). A block from the Royal Library, on the rue de Richelieu, it was still the ‹nest private collection in Paris. Here Lister found something unique among the Parisian collections. Colbert had died in 1683, and his son, the marquis of Seignelay, had followed his father to the grave in 1690, but their old family librarian, Étienne Baluze, still stood guard over the collection.6 Once the hub of Colbert’s administration, the library was now slowly turning into a private museum. With Baluze as his guide, Lister toured the library:

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I saw the Library of the late Monsieur Colbert, the great patron of Learning. The Gallery, wherein the printed Books are kept, is a Ground-Room, with Windows on one side only, along a ‹ne Garden. It is the neatest Library in Paris, very large, and exceedingly well-furnish’d. At the upper-end is a fair Room, wherein the Papers of State are kept; particularly those of the Administration of Cardinal Mazarin, and his own Accounts, when he was in Employment. These make up many hundred Folio’s, ‹nely bound in Red Maroquin and Gilt. The Manuscript Library is above-stairs, in three Rooms, and is the choicest of that kind in Paris: It contains 6,610 Volumes. The Catalogue of them Monsieur Baluze shewed me: which he said was designed shortly for the Press.7

Entrance to Colbert’s library had once been guarded, for his ‹nancial registers held extensive accounts and administrative papers of Louis XIV’s France, the largest European state of its time.8 For almost thirty years (1654–83), Colbert had built his own private library in tandem with the semipublic royal collection, creating one of the biggest libraryarchives in Europe.9 It was an encyclopedia of the state.10 What Martin Lister saw during his tour was the nerve center of Colbert’s immense administrative project. On the ‹rst ›oor, Colbert kept a humanist library with classical works, ancient Bibles, medieval manuscripts, rare editions, prints, scienti‹c texts, and naturalist collections. Upstairs, in ‹nely bound double-book accounts, he kept his internal government reports, administrative correspondence, state statistical reports, and the information of industry and administration, such as reports on the quality of cloth, and sketches of winches and sails.11 Colbert had consciously integrated a traditional humanist library and practical state and industrial administrative archive on a large scale on a single site, with one catalog, and one primary librarian.12 Colbert believed that all knowledge had practical value for politics. Though himself a relentless man of affairs, he believed antiquarian and classical learning to be as important as engineering and accounting. He was convinced that a ruler or minister of state could learn essential lessons from the most unlikely of sources, such as the price lists of nails, astronomical mathematical research, or studies on Ciceronian poetry. Fusing the cultures of library and archival management, the world of natural science, ‹nance, merchant learning, and industrial technology, he began asking questions basic to encyclopedists and archival and library managers, as well as to Google information technicians today: how to compile, copy, and store a mass of eclectic documents and render them

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searchable for topics.13 He managed his multifaceted administration through his library, developing a system to use archives, state research institutes, internal reports, and trained teams of specialists to develop high policymaking in areas of colonial expansion and diplomacy, as well as to micromanage industrial production and matters as mundane as the policing of intellectuals, book printers, prostitutes, and the butcher’s guild. The object of this book is to bring to light the traditions that Colbert harnessed for government, and how he did it. It seeks to go beyond the debate over Colbert’s mercantilist, centralized model of state regulation, and to examine in detail the intellectual tools he used as the patron of the Grand Siècle, the builder of Versailles, and the architect of Louis XIV’s administrative state.14 The rise of the modern administrative state has long been associated with Max Weber’s teleology of rationalization, secularization, and the rise of bureaucracy. Louis XIV’s government has been seen by historians as a rational form of state administration, inspired by Cartesianism and the Scienti‹c Revolution.15 Yet the building blocks of Colbert’s intelligence system and administration were neither modern nor purely secular. Although Colbert believed in Louis XIV’s claims to absolute monarchy, Colbert’s approach to learning for government grew neither from theory, nor from pure mercantilist ideology, nor from scienti‹c tradition, but rather from his own brand of curiosity and an astute recognition that myriad traditions of knowledge that had roots in humanist, ecclesiastical, ‹nancial, military, and naval culture could be used to build a state.16 In editing Colbert’s papers in the nineteenth century, Pierre Clément described them as not simply an archive, but as a testament to Colbert’s obsession with the mastery of information and its connection with government, noting the “excessive care with which Colbert conserved the documents relative to his administration and the attention he applied to correct himself in the margins of all his own letters.”17 Philippe de Champaigne’s famous 1655 portrait of Jean-Baptiste Colbert shows him early in his career, as Cardinal Mazarin’s personal accountant, dressed in black, holding a folded piece of paper (see ‹g. 1). Oddly, Colbert is smiling, or at least smirking. What was it that made an obsessive ‹nancier— a man apparently never happier than when ‹lling out account ledgers— develop the astonishing view that all knowledge was useful for political affairs? From the accounts we have of Colbert, and from his own humorless and often brutal correspondence, this smile is quite remarkable, for he was not known for joviality. Madame de Sévigné famously called

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him “Le Nord,” or the north, for his cold demeanor.18 It was Colbert’s ‹rst biographer, Courtilz de Sandras, who recognized both Colbert’s stern disposition and his interest in using information to govern: “He spoke rarely, and never responded to questions immediately, wanting to be further informed by reports [before doing so].”19 Ezechiel Spanheim (1629–1710), the German antiquarian and diplomat who had visited Louis XIV’s court, described Colbert’s “rigor” and “austerity,” and was also sensitive to Colbert’s particular reliance on possessing and handling information. He reveals a clue as to Philippe de Champaigne’s portrayal of Colbert smiling with a piece of paper in his hand:20 He never was content, as were those who preceded him in this direction, to learn about high government business, and then to avail himself of the commissioners, intendants, controllers, or other people of ‹nance that were customarily employed; he wanted to take it all on himself, to enter into every detail, as much in regard to income as to expenditure, as well as the expedients to furnish these funds in the future, wanting only to depend on his own skills, precise information that he collected, and in relation to them, to develop methods for handling this information, in exact and particular registers that he kept himself.21

Files, correspondence, reports, historical documents, account books, legers, and paperwork in general made the otherwise cantankerous Colbert happy, not least because he recognized them as a source of power, but also, as we shall see, because he simply reveled in the various activities involved in handling paperwork, which others often found dull and even odious. Adam Smith, who warned against mercantilism, recognized Colbert’s aptitude for informing himself: “Mr. Colbert, the famous minister of Lewis XIVth, was a man of probity, of great industry and knowledge of detail; of great experience and acuteness in the examination of publick accounts, in short, every way ‹tted for introducing method and good order into the collection and expenditure of the publick revenue.”22 Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie (1751–72) mixed political criticism and calls for scienti‹c reason and political liberty with a revolutionary valorization of practical, everyday knowledge.23 It is, therefore, not surprising that it called Colbert a “great statesman” and “le grand Colbert.” It painted him as an innovator and the able builder of the learned holdings of the Royal Library.24

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Diderot and his enlightened collaborators credited Colbert with building the state’s ‹nancial, industrial, and colonial apparatus and, at the same time, with developing basic research and learning. In their eyes, Louis XIV’s minister was a glorious genius, for he established the Enlightened ideal of practical knowledge while also systematizing the old world of scholarship. The Encyclopédie’s entries under “Inspector,” “Taxation,” “Loan,” “Subsidy,” “Luxury,” “Measure,” “Iron,” “Grains,” “Paper Industry,” “Cloth Dying,” “Engraving,” and “Tapestry,” as well as “Académie Française,” “Académie Royale des Sciences,” “Académie de Peinture,” “Archival Diplomatica,” “Cabinet of Natural History,” “Letters,” and “Library,” all discuss Colbert. Indeed, the Encyclopédie contains 143 references to him. This is an impressive showing. Louis XIV has 614 mentions, Richelieu 120, Newton 783, Descartes 506, Voltaire 313, Pierre Bayle 274, Spinoza 200, Francis Bacon 172, and John Locke 116. Colbert is present in all ‹elds of the Encyclopédie: artistic, learned, scienti‹c, political, ‹nancial, industrial, and legal. Colbert was not an encyclopedist, but the philosophes recognized in him a precursor to their own interest in harnessing and mixing both formal learning and practical knowledge. The most detailed entry in the Encyclopédie on Colbert is that on libraries, and describes how he made the Royal Library and the Académie Royale des Sciences a world center of learning and erudition.25 Colbert may not have been a Latin scholar, but he built the Latin holdings of the library. Vision and even pretension count for something if they inspire curiosity and innovation. Colbert was no scholar, but rather a political administrator who did not hesitate to trample France’s ancient constitution. Yet he was, in his own way, a major ‹gure in the history of learning. Echoing the Encyclopédie, the Cambridge Modern History notes: “We stand amazed at the different subjects which came under the survey of Colbert and at the minute attention which he was able to bestow on them.”26 A century earlier than Diderot, Colbert grew up in a merchant household and trained on the shop-room ›oor. Though neither encyclopedist nor scholar, he saw before Diderot many of the elements that would characterize the new practical learning of the eighteenth century. Studying with the Jesuits and as an accountant, and then working as a ‹nancial manager and military contractor, he saw the connection between these cultures and their usefulness for state administration. Humanist encyclopedic scholars, churchmen, state administrators, and accountants had much in common: they categorized subjects and devel-

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oped methods of data collection and assessment.27 Colbert recognized and bridged these cultures and integrated them into his governmental system. Ernest Lavisse remarked that Colbert’s education was as “mediocre as his birth,” and yet Colbert was able to see new applications for disciplines outside the respective ‹elds. Rather than a paragon of rationality or Cartesianism, Colbert often sounded more like a medieval Italian banker, or an enlightened, harddriving Scottish merchant manager.28 “My natural inclination to work is such,” stated Colbert, “that every day . . . it is impossible for my spirit to support leisure and moderate work.”29 Colbert was a Jesuit-trained accountant and state administrator, whose education had its roots in medieval ‹nancial culture and Counter-Reformation pedagogy, and as such he was skilled in methods of data gathering and practical learning.30 His state information system shows that curious learning and encyclopedism are not necessarily critical and corrosive to autocratic political authority. Indeed, political absolutism and methods from critical scholarship could, under particular circumstances, mutually serve each other. Louis XIV and Colbert may not have succeeded in instituting complete absolute government, yet the early decades of Louis’s reign show the extent to which an able minister such as Colbert could use administrative and ‹nancial tools not only to dominate France’s politics, society, and culture, but also to build his centralized state information system, a feat impossible in the days of more balanced constitutional power-sharing.31 Louis XIV claimed the innovation of the “métier du roy”: governing his large kingdom himself. Yet he relied on the administrative techniques and methods of learning and information handling designed by Colbert. Louis gave the orders, but he depended on Colbert to build an administrative machine and show Louis how to use it. Colbert’s biographer Pierre Clément insists on this point: Louis le Grand was trained by the Grand Colbert.32 The abbé de Choisy points out Colbert’s role as Louis XIV’s personal informant and teacher: He presented to the King, every ‹rst day of the year, an agenda in which his revenues were marked down in detail; and each time the King signed laws, Colbert made him remember to write them in his agenda, so that he could see when it pleased him how many funds he had left (as opposed to past times when he [Louis XIV] could never know how much he had).33

Without Colbert, Louis XIV, the most powerful king in Europe, had not the slightest knowledge of how his ‹nances worked. Louis XIV

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credited his minister with the feat of directing the royal ‹nances, noting that he trusted him with the “register” of state funds.34 He needed not only a minister who could inform him about his kingdom, but also a technical instructor to help him build and use his innovative, absolutist state apparatus. Colbert showed Louis how he could dominate and use the world of learning not only as a source of public propaganda, but also as a tool of secret government. As much as mercantilism, this was Colbert’s contribution to state governmental culture. With the resources of a nation-state at his disposal, Colbert the bibliophile administrator, accountant, and founder of academies amassed enormous libraries and state, diplomatic, industrial, colonial, and naval archives; hired researchers and archival teams; founded scienti‹c academies and journals; ran a publishing house; and managed an international network of scholars.35 By Colbert’s death in 1683, the Royal Library, which became in part a state archive, contained around 36,000 printed books and 10,500 manuscripts, and Colbert’s own collection numbered some 23,000 printed books and 5,100 manuscripts.36 It was one of the largest collections in the world. Aside from scholarly curiosity and the advancement of the cultural prestige of the French monarchy, the focus of this new collection was to defend national interests in the con›icts over the Dutch annexations, the régale, and Spanish rights; to compete with Dutch and English trade; and to assert royal prerogative over the parlements.37 Colbert thus set out to create a national, legal, and ‹nancial database. He sent his agents to the various document depots of France—charterhouses, parliamentary registries, monasteries, and episcopal archives—to copy and often seize literally tons of documents for both the royal and his own policy archives.38 Colbert sought to become a scholar of state learning: not simply a bureaucrat but an expert. With the help of his librarian Étienne Baluze (1630–1718), he created reference systems, as well as series of extracts and glossaries designed to connect catalog headings to collections of excerpts and summaries of documents. In some cases, excerpts of referenced documents were strung together in thematic narratives, and crossreferenced with call numbers, but also with search codes, which cross-referenced related documents. In hindsight, these book catalogs paired with glossaries and textual extracts look like primitive, though effective, computing techniques or Google search engines.39 Church scholars had long used glossaries and reference systems, but Colbert used them for daily, practical political use. Thus Colbert’s practices constituted a scholarly, systematized approach to administering the state. In his

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history of Louis XIV, Ernst Lavisse describes how Colbert used his collection to govern: For each subject, he composed “a portfolio,” a dossier as we say today. Here he classed his data by “species.” In relation to an ocean ship accident, he listed all preceding accidents, and, he said: “I then immediately wrote them down.” In the same fashion, he listed all the abuses, all the faults that he observed, examining causes, determining remedies. Then, for all order of questions, he looked for historical antecedents, to understand their raison d’être and the force of resistance to one thing or another, that offended or bothered him. Thus informed, he set himself to “think with re›ection,” to “continually think,” to “think well and meditate,” with “application,” and “penetration.” These words are his, and he repeated them often. As soon as he saw matters clearly, he took to his pen and paper.40 Colbert’s personal archive and the collections he acquired for the Royal Library continue to comprise the very heart of the manuscript collection of the modern Bibliothèque Nationale, as well as numerous other state archives.41

Colbert was not “the man who knew everything.”42 But he could ‹nd someone to give him answers and provide reports on a wide range of topics, drawing on his massive state library and on archives, as well as on networks of scholars and agents. As the founder of the learned, scienti‹c, artistic, and technical academies, as well as of Cassini’s Royal Observatory in Paris, Colbert the government minister asked many of the same questions about research posed by scientists and scholars such as Galileo, Robert Cotton, Francis Bacon, Paolo Sarpi, Jacques-Auguste de Thou, and Athanasius Kircher. With the help of Christian Huygens, the Dutch mathematician and clockmaker, he sponsored research projects that led to the creation of the pendulum clock, and the team of Cassini, Picard, and La Hire created a machine to establish longitude.43 Colbert conceived of these state research projects. He followed and directed their progress, organized research groups, found funding for them, and pushed them to fruition. Whether such projects would have happened in France without Colbert’s patronage is impossible to surmise. In certain cases, such as that of the colonies, Colbert’s and perhaps Louis’s lack of curiosity held them back. Whatever limitations Colbert’s system had, his ministerial heirs would not share his global vision of knowledge and his personal involvement in these manifold administrative, bibliophilic, literary, and scienti‹c endeavors.44

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In this light, it is striking that there is no intellectual biography of Colbert. Indeed, aside from studies of the English statesman and inventor of experimental method, Francis Bacon (1561–1626), there are few intellectual biographies or histories of government and administrative ‹gures.45 Yet politicians and state administrators were, and still are, the very ones who could, and can, hinder or drive learned endeavor. In the case of government ministers, the task of intellectual biography is daunting. Whereas scholars create de‹ned bodies of work, a minister like Colbert, working with teams of secretaries, scribes, scholars and agents, produced entire archives’ worth of material. Unlike of‹cial scholarly works, much of this state writing—ferreted away in personal ministerial collections—was not meant to be studied or at least to be seen in the context of scholarship. It does not constitute a clear corpus. Indeed, Colbert wrote few formal works de‹ning his actions as minister and as an information handler. In his groundbreaking study of Philip II of Spain’s state paperwork, Geoffrey Parker was one of the ‹rst scholars of politics to study the relationship of high state policy to archival information-handling practices.46 Parker had his eye on politics and Philip’s “grand strategy”; he stopped short of situating Philip within a larger context of learned culture. In spite of Parker’s work, there has been very little attention paid to the convergence between traditional learning and ‹nancial and administrative state culture, or what is called in German Staatenkunde.47 The great nineteenth-century French archivist Arthur de Boislisle (1835–1908), looking for a word to characterize learning at the service of state administration, called it érudition d’État, or state erudition. English does not have a term for state erudition or learning. Michel Foucault called this genre of knowledge “le savoir de l’État,” or state knowledge. Trying to connect formal learning with the state, some historians of science have compared the “little tools of knowledge” used by scholars, scientists, and administrators alike.48 And yet aside from works by James E. King, Kevin Sharpe, R. J. W. Evans, and Blandine Barret-Kriegel, historians of scholarship and knowledge have not generally examined the nature of early modern state knowledge culture.49 Thus a biography of Colbert opens the door to a new history of knowledge and politics.50

Knowledge, Secrecy, and Government There are reasons that intellectual and cultural historians have not studied the intellectual history of the state. Following the work of the Ger-

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man sociologists Reinhard Koselleck and Jürgen Habermas, historians of information have predominantly studied the concept of the “public sphere” of information and opinion.51 Studies of the public sphere focus on journalism, clandestine literature, and printing; as well as sites of sociability, such as academies and the Republic of Letters, public and private communication networks, art markets, salons, learned societies, Masonic lodges, societies, coffeehouses, and lending libraries. These social and cultural phenomena are often used as illustrations of a civic, bourgeois opposition and counterbalance to arbitrary, secretive absolute monarchy and its modes of censorship during the eighteenth century.52 An enormous corpus of scholarship on the public sphere has emerged. Stéphane Van Damme has identi‹ed as least 12,112 articles concerning the public sphere in the eighteenth century alone.53 In spite of the plethora of works on the public sphere, few scholars have examined the relationship between the public sphere and the state.54 Indeed, in the schema focused on the public sphere, the state has been reduced to an almost impotent actor, trying and failing to turn the inexorable, teleological tide of public information, opinion, and political liberty.55 And yet the history of information is more complex than a tension between the public sphere, bourgeois private secrecy, and absolutist states. Civil society not only had secret elements, but it was also highly in›uenced by the state, which often sought to enlighten and politically repress at the same time.56 Institutions such as salons and the Republic of Letters are now seen as less in›uential motors of civil society than previously thought. Salons often worked as motors of aristocratic class domination over more humble social groups like the scholars of the Republic of Letters.57 The state also played a more important role in in›uencing the public sphere than historians have recognized. Enlightened despots such as Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo of Tuscany (1761– 90) abolished capital punishment and torture, sponsored the world of learning and salons, and gave lessons in science to the general populace of Florence, while also strictly policing learning and public life.58 Public life and learning could foster, but did not necessarily mean political freedom. Furthermore, the Republic of Letters itself was neither a truly public entity, nor was it always polite and run by clear rules.59 It was a world of esoteric knowledge, with its own codes of conduct, learned languages, and elite networks, and of course, strong ties to various states and noble patronage networks.60 Thus to understand the Republic of Letters and the emergence of a civil society in France, and indeed, in Austria, En-

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11

gland, the German and Italian states, Portugal, Sweden, Spain, and others, the role of the state must now be taken into account. In the case of France, the world of learning set the foundations for civil society yet, paradoxically, provided the cultural building blocks for the French absolutist monarchy. And the absolutist monarchy in turn built and controlled many institutions of civil society. Colbert is a key to untangling this paradoxical process of civilization. What his case reveals is the extent to which the public sphere not only competed with the secret state sphere of learning and information circulation; it was sometimes the product of it, as learned state agents used classi‹ed document troves to create public propaganda. Secrecy existed in private, among citizens, but it also existed within the state and its large, in›uential bureaucracy.61 The state kept semipublic libraries, closed collections, massive archives, and information networks while also trying to control the public world of knowledge and opinion. Therefore, to understand the history of information, the public, and the state, it is necessary to study the history of state secrecy. In an article entitled, “Removing Knowledge,” Peter Galison has argued that the modern “classi‹ed universe” of information is “much larger than the unclassi‹ed one.”62 Galison claims that open societies paradoxically create vast realms of classi‹ed state documents, and this secret sphere of information is bigger in sheer volume than the public world of information. Thus open societies do not have completely open archives, nor are their governments completely open. In nineteenthcentury republican France, manipulated state paperwork played a central role in false accusations of treason against the Jewish army of‹cer Alfred Dreyfus. The Dreyfus Affair spectacularly illustrated that state secrecy would be a key problem for democratic government. In 1955, Edward Shils called the tension between democratic society and state security apparatuses “the torment of secrecy.”63 Today, high-level lawsuits brought by Congress against the of‹ce of the president and vice president of the United States, and numerous arguments within the branches of American government, in the press, and in academe about the extent of executive state secrecy, attest to the continuing centrality of the secret state sphere even in an age of mass public information and the Internet.64 Prominent historians, such as Robert Dallek, have recently testi‹ed before Congress, and the American Historical Association has brought a lawsuit against the executive branch, both claiming that contrary to the Freedom of Information Act (1966), the Presidential Records Act (1978) has become “the Presidential Secrecy Act,” expressing the concern that

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concealing state records skews historical understanding and public debate, a point denied by the executive branch.65 Whether good or bad, the fact is that only 10 percent of the records from Ronald Reagan’s presidency have been released, and Bill Clinton’s presidential archives remain in great part inaccessible.66 Open state information is not a given of democratic government. Indeed, to be effective, government must rely on a certain degree of secrecy. The question remains, how much? England only voted a Freedom of Information Act in 2000, and in France, presidential documents were not collected systematically by the national archives until 1974 and are sealed for sixty years.67 Even in the age of the Internet, the rise of a complex public sphere driven by multiple forms of media and communication has not resolved the challenges posed by state secrecy. Major American policies stumble as internal secret bureaus such as the CIA and FBI fail to communicate internally and externally, or collect bad intelligence.68 If anything, the relationship between public and private has become more complex, and the stakes of the state’s intelligence management and information handling ever greater. Colbert’s story is thus one of an unprecedented entrepreneur and innovator of state intelligence and information handling, who harnessed many of the techniques of scholars, churchmen, and merchants and systematically applied them to government. Colbert was an accountant, a merchant and industrial manager, a policeman, and a master librarian. He trained with Jesuits, lawyers, merchant ‹nanciers, accountants, military out‹tters, religious scholars, and state administrators. He closely examined the bureaucratic and legal workings of the church, conversed with architects, mathematicians, and humanist and ecclesiastical scholars. At the same time, he was un homme de con‹ance: in practice, Louis XIV’s personal valet, guarding royal family secrets and even raising Louis’s bastard children in his own home. The case of Colbert’s information system shows the extent to which a public sphere and Republic of Letters coexisted in a symbiotic and competitive relationship with the growing sphere of state information and knowledge. It also shows the growing role of experts and how the state played a central and innovative, as well as repressive, role in the growth of modern information culture.69 A well-informed state could wield great power, but with this power came dangers and limitations. Most of all, it shows that open modern societies, with their governments integrated with state and ‹nancial intelligence and research systems, have lessons to learn from Colbert’s absolutist project.

chapte r 2

Colbert’s Cosmos the expert and the rise of the modern state

T

he ancien régime was just that: a government born of myriad ancient and often disparate traditions, knotted together like ivy so old it is impossible to discern the original root. The French government had no manual or single written constitution. It was the sum of layers of legal sediment that manifested itself in the stacks of feudal charters found in churches and monasteries, royal and parliamentary charterhouses, ‹les of diplomatic correspondence, and the charter room of each feudal manor. The French monarchy had grown from the deep soil of feudalism, the ancient constitutions of Germanic kingship, the organization of the Catholic Church, and administrative traditions from northern Italy and Spain. Louis XIV and Colbert set out to transform the ancient monarchy of France, and to do so, they shook these traditions. As radical as their quest for political absolutism was, it was not the revolutionary break from tradition of 1789, when the giddy apostles of the modern age ended feudalism and its authority, founded in the parchment records of chivalric vassalage. Louis and Colbert instead not only maintained the feudal constitutions that they altered, but looked to other preexisting traditions to drive their absolutist reforms. Thus before examining Colbert’s state information and intelligence system, we must ‹rst become familiar with his cosmos and the building blocks of his cultural universe. Max Weber 13

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pointed out that state paperwork engendered the need for bureaucracy, which he de‹ned as “the exercise of control on the basis of knowledge,” and impersonal government through the “rule of of‹ce.”1 In reality, the emergence of administrative government did not work in this simple schema. If we are to understand Colbert’s role in the rise of bureaucratic government and the evolution between feudalism and centralized administration, we must ‹rst take a voyage through the traditions of government, expertise and the administration of state information. To centralize a government, one ‹rst had to identify and centralize its archives. From the Middle Ages onward, power was about the mastery of paperwork.

Scribes and Rulers: Archives and the Rise of the Medieval State Archives have always been synonymous with administrative government. From antiquity through the Middle Ages, archival specialists in the form of ecclesiastical scholars, lawyers, and merchants managed decentralized banks of information and records essential to state-building. These included formal libraries, archives containing legal and historical records, and ‹nancial, census, tax and proto-industrial information. In many cases, those who managed the information vital to states were not one-dimensional bureaucrats, but rather elites, part of the great hierarchical chain of medieval government, and their power was often linked to a corporative body such as the church or a court of law. Thus state paperwork and archives were part of a complex relationship of states to multiple traditions of learning and information collection and management. And yet the interests of the scholars and bureaucrats who managed state archives did not always match those of their nominal rulers. As the Roman Empire crumbled and its rubble became the foundation for the Catholic Church, the church took over what had been state administration, becoming the center of knowledge and record-keeping in the West. During the Carolingian Renaissance (circa 790) that followed the chaos of the Frankish invasions and violent Merovingian rule, Charlemagne founded the Aachen palace scriptorium and monasteries, sometimes connected to libraries, which became storehouses of the remnants of ancient knowledge, preserving classical and theological works and of‹cial capitularies, that is, imperial legislative and administrative acts. State and church archives were inseparable, and information circulated between monastic archives and other centers of early medieval

Colbert’s Cosmos

15

learning in Fulda and Northumbria. In spite of the central role of the church, Charlemagne nonetheless asked ecclesiastical scholars such as Alcuin to draw on capitularies and canon law to negotiate questions of authority with the papacy. This tradition of legal negotiation and polemic through legal documents continued, forming the basis of late eleventh-century investiture crises that pitted secular kings against the authority of the pope.2 Here was the Weberian germ. As church archives grew, so did the skilled staff trained to manage them. The church and its network of monasteries collected the knowledge of both the ancients and the fathers of the church in sites such as Fulda and Cluny.3 The bases of monastic library archives such as Fulda, scriptoria were multifunctional sites of information collection in which knowledge was preserved (and often altered), and then stored.4 Attached to palaces, cathedrals, and monasteries, they were writing and information-gathering centers, libraries, and ‹nancial archives. However, the copyists who reproduced texts were neither philologists nor linguistic historians. Medieval archives preserved information, yet at the same time they altered it by producing inaccurate texts and proliferating forgeries. Learning from the ecclesiastical government and from the tradition of feudal land contracts, secular rulers also began to collect documents that concerned their interests. The Doomsday Book (1086) most dramatically represents this legal, feudal tradition of recording lists of property rights, legal privileges, obligations, and ecclesiastical rights. Kings often required records of duties and dues from the vassals and bishops, and of course the monarchies kept copies of treaties. M. T. Clanchy has outlined what he calls the “proliferation of documents” in medieval England: charters and chirographs, certi‹cates, letters, writs, ‹nancial accounts, ‹nancial surveys and rental contracts, legal records, yearbooks, chronicles, cartularies (feudal and ecclesiastical deeds), registers (legal or administrative, often held by courts and parliaments), learned and literary works.5 With ever more regularity in the fourteenth and ‹fteenth centuries, the English monarchy, like its French, Spanish, and central European counterparts, kept watch over records that concerned its interests. While the feudal monarchies kept records of lands, privileges, and dues, they were less apt to keep large archives than were church institutions. State documents were kept not only in chancelleries, but also in legal and parliamentary charterhouses, where they were more open to consultation by lawyers.6 Records had long been kept of conciliar and synodic meetings. Beginning in the twelfth century, with revival of Ro-

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man law, Inquisitorial records sat alongside taxation documents, parish records of births, deaths, and marriages, legal archives and libraries, and the theological collections of the scriptorium.7

Humanists and Bureaucrats: The Renaissance of Paperwork Between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, the documentary cultures of canon law, administrative and diplomatic of‹ces of the church, and, increasingly, urban governments slowly evolved into complex administrative and legalistic statecraft that would form the underpinnings of humanist governmental culture. All administrative minutes as well as ‹nancial, legal, and diplomatic documents were kept in the central chancellery archives of central and northern Italian cities. Inspired not only by commerce and internal administration, but also by relations with the church, chancery, diplomatic, legal, and state records were stored in the halls of civic administration: Signorias, podestás, chancelleries, senate houses, or doge’s palaces located in the central squares of cities such as Florence, Milan, Sienna, Genoa, and Venice. Cities across Europe had kept central archival banks since the Middle Ages.8 In these Italian civic centers during the Quattrocento, a historical expertise emerged out of a convergence of bureaucratic, diplomatic, and ecclesiastic archival management with the epistolary arts and philological Latin—creating new cultural links between governing and historical, scholarly knowledge.9 The rebirth of Rome—the humanist, classical Renaissance—began in great part in the Vatican, and in the chancelleries and diplomatic corps of northern Italy during the Middle Ages.10 The proliferation of of‹cial forms of documentation in medieval and early Renaissance Europe had produced a world of learned bureaucrats, Francesco Petrarch (1304–74) foremost among them.11 They were diplomats, scribes, record keepers, and secretaries who had to know Latin prose, religious literature, poetry, legal procedure, clerking, and accounting.12 Not bureaucrats in a modern sense, many of these learned clerks, secretaries, and ambassadors would become the pioneers of philology and the classical Renaissance. The Renaissance was neither simply the ideal of the classical rebirth of Rome, nor a political ideology. Latin philology—the collation and establishment of de‹nitive, accurate versions of biblical, legal, and classical texts—was also about information collection and management beyond the scholastic learned traditions and the early scholarship of canon law.13 For the great diplomat, classical humanist pioneer, and book hunter Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459), this meant ‹nding ancient texts, copy-

Colbert’s Cosmos

17

ing them, collating them for errors and inconsistencies, creating script, ‹nding copyists, and then creating authoritative editions, collections, and libraries.14 Figures like Poggio were not simply interested in ancient philosophy and canon law. They were also interested in the forms of writing and paperwork. They pioneered the use of Roman script copied from stone engravings, and also copied ancient Latin style for their own of‹cial correspondence. Rome was also the European center for diplomatic training, which entailed learning the structures of of‹cial letter-writing, reports, and ciphers, and managing documents and communication networks. Much of this culture was developed by humanists who created a Renaissance Latin philological culture within the diplomatic corps.15 Thus humanist philology and bibliophilia were tightly linked with the medievalist paperwork and information culture of the chancelleries.16 With the growth of northern Italian civic culture between the late Middle Ages and the Quattrocento, erudite bureaucratic expertise became ever more fundamental.17 Notable among early humanist secretaries were the Simonetta brothers, Giovanni (d. 1491) and Cicco (1410–80), who served the Sforza dukes of Milan, in particular, Duke Ludovico il Moro (1480–1500).18 Trusted to manage the diplomatic Consiglio Segreto of Milan, they helped to formulate policy and administer the Sforza state. This consisted of managing the paperwork of the state: overseeing copyists, ordering secretarial assistants and scribes to copy and dispatch secret diplomatic correspondence, making and breaking ciphers, and keeping accurate records, ‹les (or ‹lza), and well-ordered diplomatic and legal archives in order to use them as tools of negotiation and propaganda.19 “The secretary,” writes Gary Ianziti, “was the assembler of his master’s right to wield power, levy taxes, grant ‹efs, raise armies, wage war, form alliances.”20 Even more, these chancellors, diplomats, and secretaries used state documents to write histories and developed the “Renaissance sense of the past,” that revived secular consciousness, as well as an interest in the scholarly veri‹cation of biblical, patristic, and papal authority.21 It was this tradition that produced the most famous of Florentine chancellors, Niccolò Machiavelli (1459– 1527), who, like Coluccio Salutati and Francesco Guicciardini, managed state documents and used them to write his History of Florence, The Discourses, and The Prince.22 Guicciardini and Machiavelli showed that historical scholarship was not only the basic act of political prudence; it was also that of state administration.23 Thus the early humanism of Salutati, Poggio, Guicciardini, Bartolomeo Scala, and Machiavelli was based not only on the mastery of classical Latin, but equally on the management of

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historical, legal, administrative, and diplomatic paperwork. Renaissance learning was also Renaissance state administration.

Merchants and Scholars: The Learning of Finance The church and civil government were not the only centers of information and archival innovation during the Renaissance. The rise of the Medici family illustrates the close links between international banking, civic administration, learned humanism, and bibliophilia. Cosimo de’ Medici (1389–1464) not only controlled the chancellery; he made the patronage of humanist art, literature, philology, and book collecting into a tool of political prestige and politics by personifying the humanist ideal of the scholar-statesman.24 This mix was the particular culture of Italian government. Cosimo’s own great library was a representation of his knowledge and authority. Along with his personal fascination with learning and bibliophilia, Cosimo used the tools of banking to maintain political power. Like Vatican diplomats, Medici bankers maintained a wide European network. They maintained ‹nancial as well as semidiplomatic paperwork, and were leading book collectors.25 Medici power thus emerged from several traditions: international banking; the papacy and diplomacy; the administrative tradition of Salutati; the historical humanism of Guicciardini; and of course, from civic artistic and artisanal life in Florence. From the late Middle Ages to the sixteenth century, humanism, international trade and banking, and civic administration developed together. From Florence, Venice, and Genoa, to Paris, Lyon, Seville, Castille, Flanders, Holland, England, and the German cities, merchant houses grew, and with them grew a rich culture of accounting and record-keeping.26 While few outside Italy and the Holland had the opportunity to build governments, merchants also kept legal archives, bills of exchange, and the various forms of paperwork necessary for doing business.27 To aid in the management of international trade, merchants created books of ars mercatoria—guides to merchant work, travel, currency, shipping, roads, and international forms of legal and merchant paperwork.28 They also kept ‹nancial archives necessary in double-entry bookkeeping. Like church of‹cials, they carried with them numerous formularies, but also their inventory, stock and capital archives, notebooks, journals, account books, registers, agendas, and ledgers.29 As merchants evolved into civic leaders, they brought this culture of ‹nance and record-keeping with them into the public administration of cities

Colbert’s Cosmos

19

and with it began building early apparatuses of central government as they managed public debt, kept records private declarations of wealth and property, and collected taxes.30 By the sixteenth century, the Fuggers of Augsburg emerged as the foremost banking family in Europe, and their merchant house, a great center of book and information collection. To manage their international operations, the Fugger family created an information and news bureau and archive, housed alongside its humanist library in their house on the Maximilianstraße in Augsburg.31 The Fuggers received daily newsletters, learned works, and technical reports from their trading empire across the globe. The Fuggers also had a massive accounting of‹ce. As bankers, they needed to be able to respond to volatile ‹nancial and trade markets. Like the Medici, they had their branches all over Europe. And as they invested in Spanish imperial enterprises, they sent along scholars and naturalists with the banking missions. As great humanist patrons, but also as traders in an age of discovery, their business ventures were also knowledge missions. When Anton Fugger’s son Jakob traveled to Lisbon in 1563, he was accompanied by the great Dutch humanist Carolus Clusius, who bought books and looked for natural specimens as trophies, and even possible investment opportunities for the Fugger business. Rare books, manuscripts, plants, shells and other objects found their way back to the libraries, archives, and museums of the Fugger Haus in Augsburg. This brought prestige and satis‹ed Jacob Fugger’s humanist curiosity, but it also brought ‹nancial advantages, as the Fuggers got the ‹rst reports of plants and goods from around the world—essential commercial information with which they could make decisions about major investments.32

Innovation and Decline in the Early Information States: Spain, Venice, and Rome The Fuggers were sophisticated in their information collection and centralization, but they could not match the sheer volume of information collected by their masters in Spain. City states and merchant houses could innovate in ‹nance, government, and record-keeping, but they could not maintain the scale of centralized information acquisition of a major nation-state. By the sixteenth century, only the church, northern Italian states such as Venice, Florence, and Milan, and Philip II’s Spain had come close to creating large-scale, semicentralized and systematized information states. Under Philip II (1527–98), imperial Spain, the pri-

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mary client of the Fuggers and the ‹rst grand-scale model of a centralized state, had gorged itself on administrative paperwork under the principle that Philip, el rey papelero, or “the paperwork king,” could, in secret, handle, read, and sign every document of a planet kingdom.33 Philip II was the ‹rst hands-on bureaucrat king of a massive empire and certainly the forerunner of his Bourbon heirs in France. His information system was so vast, so intricate, and in some cases so ef‹cient, that even the Venetian ambassador sent his relazioni back to Venice via Spanish royal messenger posts. Yet this Planet King, on whose empire the sun never set, was not a traveler, but rather inhabited his own virtual world, enclosed in the halls of his monastery palace, the Escorial, which he ‹lled with mountains of dispatches and reports. To house his paper empire, he created massive archives, most notably in the walled castle of Simancas, as well as in a rapidly expanding imperial trade and industry archive in Seville, the Casa de Contratacíon.34 The Escorial was a cavernous center of power, at once a monastery and library, from which the king worked at his desk, trying to read and respond to every report written from his international network of agents.35 It was a week’s ride away from Simancas. In the end, Philip’s information system was as cumbersome as the empire it tried to manage. He was the king of a composite monarchy, comprising semiautonomous states and regions over which he did not always exercise direct control.36 Even more, his dominion was so large that it sometimes took seven years for him to respond to correspondence from such far-›ung posts as the Philippines.37 Studies of Spanish administration show the frustration engendered by one man’s control of too many minutiae.38 Philip managed to keep general control over his system, but there were many issues and projects to which he could not give his attention. He issued his immense program of relaciones topográ‹cas, ‹nancial, statistical, institutional and cultural surveys, but local of‹cials often did not answer them correctly or quickly. And he himself read the responses, often keeping them secret from his government once they had made the long journey back to his of‹ce in the Escorial.39 He once claimed to have 100,000 documents on his desk that he needed to process.40 As Geoffrey Parker illustrates, without a managerial system of delegation, and without a personal interest in cataloging systems, Philip was overwhelmed by the in‹nite strands of his imperial worldwide web.41 His innovative information system was hampered by his penchant for secrecy and his obsessive personal centralization. At the same time, Philip did not directly manage the state archives. Although he did have anti-

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21

quarian scholars, such as Ambrosio de Morales, write historical reports and relaciones, and the polymath Benito Arias Montano worked as his learned librarian and diplomat during the Dutch Revolt, Philip II did not effectively install a team in the Escorial for the processing of state information for his use.42 The oldest of the centralized secular states, the republic of Venice, had set the standard for modern state archives with its library of records at San Marco, containing senatorial minutes and ambassadorial dispatches, and whose ef‹ciency was admired by all of Europe. By the sixteenth century, Venice had long been the merchandise entrepôt between East and West, and the information exchange and book-printing center of Europe.43 The Venetian republic kept strict historical, diplomatic, and political archives in the Biblioteca San Marco.44 It developed an international network of spies and political information gatherers and a system of ambassadorial reports called relazioni, which, like newsletters, came in from wherever the Venetians sent ambassadors or spies.45 The Biblioteca San Marco contained a mix of legal, historical, and administrative archives. Venice’s state archive was a propaganda weapon in the battle over papal authority during the Interdict crisis of 1606, when the cleric, legal scholar, and scientist Paolo Sarpi, representing the republic as a de facto information minister, published historical documents from the republic’s archives to bolster Venice’s case against Rome in public international opinion.46 It was an extraordinary moment, for it showed how a state archive could be organized and used for political and administrative ends when a scholar was a leading state minister. Sarpi harnessed the archives not only to extract useful documentary propaganda, but also to write his History of the Council of Trent (1619), which attacked the political motivations of the church.47 Needless to say, Rome, guided by pope Paul V, responded in kind, sponsoring Cardinal Sforza Pallavicino to use church archives against Venice in this virulent and ultimately pyrrhic battle over the Interdict.48 Philip II’s debacle of the Spanish Armada (1588), and the consequent decline of Iberia, paralleled the period of Venice’s decline into the beginning of the seventeenth century. Remarkably, while the political fortunes of Italy and Spain sunk, the Vatican became a center of bureaucratic and state innovation.49 The Catholic Church had long used its legal archives not only for canon law, but also in the battle over conciliar rights and doctrine. The church was assailed from all sides during the Reformation, and its defenders and its critics mounted an information arms race. For example, English Henrician reformers of the 1540s, such

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as John Bale and Matthew Parker, used antiquarian archives to formulate historical claims over the independence of the English church.50 The German Protestant Mathias Flacius’s archival research team made heavily documented attacks on church rights with its massive anti-Catholic historical work The Magdeburg Centuries (1559–74).51 The Vatican librarian and historian Cardinal Caesar Baronius (1538–1607) responded in kind, fending off Protestant claims with his own archivally based Annales ecclesiastici (1588–1607).52 Baronius and those involved with the historical battle over church rights worked from an ancient tradition of sourcebased defenses that had begun in late antiquity with ecclesiastical philological scholars such as Origen (184–254 CE), and emerged again during the Renaissance in works by scholars and antiquarians such as the Benedictine Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516).53 International law and relations grew out of ecclesiastical archives.54 To defend its old rights, the church needed to modernize its ancient archives. Between the papacies of Paul V and Urban VIII (1605–44), the church was the leading center of state information gathering, organizing, and handling.55 At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the church’s state information system and governmental structure was in many ways the most centralized and systematized in the world.56 A Borghese and a canon lawyer, Paul V responded to Sarpi by creating a centralized and secret Archivio Segreto at the heart of the Vatican, in 1609 commissioning Michele Lonigo da Este to create the ‹rst central catalog of the Vatican collections, making data organization innovations one year before the Venetians made a ‹rst catalog of their own secret archives. These were necessary reforms in the wake of the legal and propaganda battles of the Venetian Interdict, but also of the claims made by French scholars about Gallican monarchical rights over church lands and the appointment of bishops. After Paul’s death in 1621, Gregory XV, a Jesuit, founded the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, the central information organ of the church, regulating all questions pertaining to foreign missions.57 Urban VIII, a learned Barbarini with a bibliophile nephew, set out not only to create the greatest humanist library in the world in the walls of the Vatican; he also speci‹cally led a charge in the collection of eastern manuscripts, the stuff of ancient learning and the ammunition for ideological wars inside and outside the church.58 Jesuit-trained in the Collegio Romano (an information center in its own right), Urban VIII continued Paul V’s reform of the Vatican library and archives, but also reformed the internal workings of the state information system and the Secretariat of

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Briefs. More consciously than Paul, he linked formal learning with practical administration.59 On his death in 1644, the Vatican—the seat of the Index librorum prohibitorum, the Inquisition, and the Archivio Segreto— was also the greatest existing collection of information, books, manuscripts, and antiquities. It was the nerve center of the world empire of the church with its information missionaries, the Jesuits, masters of pious reading and information-handling techniques, who meticulously composed empirical “relations” that they sent back to their headquarters in Rome.60 Indeed, the Jesuit Order had formed in 1540 not only to counter the teachings of Protestants and to evangelize, but also to train Catholic leadership and bureaucracy in both technical skills and morals.61 Jesuit learned culture in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was situated between piety, techniques of power, and knowledge management, and trained generations of the Catholic elite to read and write, master Latin, take notes, write formularies, and make commonplace books.62 Books such as Francesco Sacchini’s De Ratione libros cum profectu legendi libellus, deque vitanda moribus noxia lectione, oratio Francisci Sacchini (Sammieli: F. Du Bois, 1615), or, according to its French title, How to Read Fruitfully, showed students the techniques of reading, information collection, formulation, categorization, handling, and management. As Ann Blair has shown, it was not only naturalist philosophers, but often ecclesiastical scholars who honed the techniques of early modern archiving and information management.63 Polyhistors, encyclopedists, and naturalists such as Conrad Gesner (1516–65) used lexicons, indexes, and reading aids to write books that not only compounded knowledge, but also helped readers master large amounts of information through reading, note-taking and commonplace techniques, and by designing ‹ling and drawer systems—scrinium literarum, or literary ‹le chests—to hold notes and data.64 More often than not, this information management technology was invented or used by members of the church. At the very moment that the church was losing its grip on earthly political power, it had achieved a symbolic dominion over the world and the disciplines of knowledge in its meticulously locked cabinets, vast libraries, and guarded secret corridors. Embodied by the grandiose encyclopedic project of Athanasius Kircher, Rome emerged as the museum of the past and the present, the temporal embodiment of all the knowledge in the world. The papacy had great archives, but how centralized and accessible they all were, and to what extent archives, such as that of the Jesuits, were proactively used by the papacy has not yet been conclusively established.65 And although

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Rome was still a center of learning, the execution of Giordano Bruno (1600) and trials and punishments of Galileo (1633) there showed that it would not long dominate splintered Christendom, and a world of knowledge increasingly focused on the natural sciences; practical, empirical learning; and merchant empires.

Information Exchange In spite of the different size and relative centralization of states such as Rome, Venice, and Spain, they were all in decline by the mid-seventeenth century. Indeed, it was Holland that grew not into the premier economic power of this period and became the world’s most important information exchange. Economic historians have placed Holland, and in particular, Amsterdam, at the center of the world economic system.66 With the Dutch stock exchange and the East India Company as its motors, reports to merchant and imperial trading houses ›owed in from across the world, assessing political climates, trading routes, the price ›uctuations of commodities, and works of scholarship.67 Amsterdam and The Hague were at the center of a local civic information web. Both of‹cial and unof‹cial information ›owed in from all of Holland as well as its neighbors in England, France, Germany, and the Baltic states. Amsterdam was not just the center of civic administration and business in Holland. It also ruled world trade by warehousing, which meant that much of the world’s merchandise—even that of its close neighbors— was carried by Dutch ships and passed ‹rst through Holland before being resold or processed.68 Information ›owed in this massive, global market as merchants traded in goods, and also in information. Holland’s wide-ranging trading operations produced masses of correspondence as merchants sent form letters back to their main branches listing political information, trade routes, and the prices of commodities.69 Dutch consuls from around its world trading empire sent reports from Dutch whale oil factories in the Arctic, the West Indies, Europe, Brazil, Surinam, Manhattan, and Arden. The Dutch printing industry exploded as information ›owed into Holland. With its religious tolerance and freer censorship policies, Amsterdam supplanted Venice as the world printing capital.70 While merchant and political information ›owed into Amsterdam and The Hague, printers started producing mass runs of pamphlets and books disseminating this information—from exchange rates to secret court intrigues. As opposed to centralized states such as Spain and Venice, the Dutch state

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was fragmented and basically federated.71 This had rami‹cations in information ›ow and archiving. The Dutch state did not have tight control over state information. Many Dutch archives were in the hands of the Spanish, who were their nominal lords.72 At the same time, the sheer volume of information passing through Holland added to its in›uence and its potential to threaten the interests of other countries. In short, Holland had a public sphere and it affected the rest of Europe. The Dutch state had a very effective system of international diplomatic reporting, yet it was not particularly secretive as a result of a relatively open government culture.73 Information collected by embassies quickly found its way into the Amsterdam information exchange. The same happened with its colonial trade companies, the East India Company and the Directorate of Levant Trade. The reports from their own communication networks quickly made their way to the stock exchange and print shops. Thus both its central position and porousness made Amsterdam a diplomatic capital, for if a government wanted to know what was going on, it did not simply rely on its own diplomatic intelligence. Foreign states also sent special ambassadors to Holland to collect information in the open marketplaces of the Dutch ‹nancial and information exchange.74

Antiquarians and the Information State While monarchs had long employed lawyers, diplomats, theologians, and historical chroniclers, Renaissance government saw the emergence of the antiquarian scholar as a major participant in Western governmental culture. Rather than bureaucrats simply being scholars as they were in Italy, a tradition emerged in which rulers sought scholars—medieval legists and classical humanists—not only as ornaments to their courts and aids in learning, but also to work as freelance state researchers and experts who used antiquarian skills to ‹nd legal and historical documentation to legitimate state undertakings. The Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II (1552–1612) created a remarkable environment of scholarly activity around his throne in Prague. Humanists from Holland, Italy, Germany, and France ›ocked to his court, which became a center of literary, historical, medical, and natural humanism.75 While scholars such as the Hungarian János Zsámboky (Sambucus) and the Italian Octavio Strada wrote antiquarian histories defending Rudolph’s claims, the emperor never created an of‹ce of historical research for political purposes.76 Many state archives were local, held in various imperial seats across its semifederated, provincial em-

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pire.77 The Hapsburg Empire had always been an odd mix in terms of information culture. It had a massive humanist imperial library, but its state archives were kept in national capitals such as Prague, Brussels, or Budapest. This was the heritage of Charles V’s pan-European dynastic web. Italian scholars and Belgians would, therefore, often have to track down the origins of Hapsburg rights that spanned from Belgium, Holland, the Franche-Comté, Spain, Bavaria, and Italy, to Austria, Bohemia, and Galicia. In a world of competing feudal and ecclesiastical rights, historical culture—both ancient and medieval documentary antiquarianism—became a pillar of legitimizing authority. From religious to secular and colonial governments, states sought scholars not only to ‹nd or produce historical documentation proving their rights, or their interpretation of the Scriptures; they also sought historians who would help them understand the political, religious, and natural history of their domains.78 Scholars could become ministers or major administrators, such as Ambrosio de Morales, who was Philip II’s royal chronicler, a church administrator, and also the author of ecclesiastical, antiquarian relaçiones of Spain.79 With its “mixed” constitution, the English monarchs had archives and scholars, but also worked with allies in Parliament. In terms of state information culture, England stood somewhere between monarchical Spain and the freer, decentralized Holland. Neither the English monarchy nor Parliament had a monopoly on information. There were various government secretarial of‹ces, depots, stores, and libraries, but not a central archive.80 The English crown certainly maintained troves of secret information from the cabinet, from Privy Counsels, and from spying networks and diplomatic correspondence.81 However, the ability of the crown to collect massive and all-encompassing stores of state information was limited by the constitution of mixed government. Both the crown and Parliament had their secret domains within the state, as Parliament sought to keep its discussions secret from the king and the public.82 Both branches of government competed to ‹nd and keep political secrets. Parliament in turn not only had archives, which could be consulted by opposing forces, but also relied on legally trained members who placed considerable store by careful record-keeping. A case in point is the lawyer, parliamentarian, and organizer of the Virginia colonies, Sir Edwin Sandys (1561–1629), who led the move to create a daily journal of proceedings in the House of Commons and to have it checked by a special committee.83 If Sandys worked in the legal tradition of state ser-

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vice, Sir Robert Cotton (1586–1631) is also a revealing example of how antiquarian scholars served the English state. Cotton was a leading scholar and ancient and medieval manuscript collector.84 He was a freelance state scholar and also a state expert.85 He was the great English correspondent of the French and Dutch Republics of Letters, in which information and rare documents were circulated. Yet Cotton was not just a scholar; like his correspondents in France, such as the Dupuy brothers, Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc, and Jacques Auguste de Thou, or Grotius in Holland, Cotton also served the state in various bureaucratic modes.86 He was a state administrator, and he used his collections to solve state problems and write reports. As a legal of‹cer, he wrote reports at the direct request of members of Parliament. In the end, he never worked exclusively for the crown. When he died, his collection of manuscripts and books, seen as essential to government, was preserved as a parliamentary archive. Mixed government meant mixed interests. In a world of medieval constitutions, scholars could work for the state without necessarily serving the crown itself.

The French Information Entente: The Republic of Letters and the Royal Library It is here that we cross the threshold into Colbert’s world. More than in England and Holland, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the French state played an increasingly central role in the sponsorship and organization of antiquarianism. Under Colbert’s institutional stewardship, Louis XIV would continue what centralizers such as Henry IV and Richelieu had begun. Yet the early seventeenth-century monarchy relied on outsiders to manage its archives and information. It did not yet have an internal bureaucracy to the extent of the church. One reason sixteenth and early seventeenth-century monarchs sought to hire scholars to serve the state was the old tradition of Gallicanism, a continuation of the conciliar con›icts of the Middle Ages and a cultural element of the Reformation. Gallican legal historians had long claimed French royal precedence over the powers of the papacy and worked in earnest against the legal edi‹ce of ultramontane church powers. In simple terms, this meant matching document with document in a historical propaganda war, and in legal and diplomatic wrangling, most of which was done not by clerics, who were sometimes lukewarm to secular claims, but more often by protonationalist, Gallican magistrates.87 From the mid-sixteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth century,

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the Gallican movement had coalesced around a group of legal scholars, librarians, prelates, and historians such as René Choppin, Pierre de Marca, Gilles Le Maistre, Charles Dumoulin, Théodore Godefroy, Pierre Pithou, and the Dupuy brothers. The most notable work to emerge from this tradition was Pithou’s Les libertez de l’Église gallicane (2 vols., Paris, 1639), later reedited by the Dupuy brothers, based on their rich archival research and document collection and their work as royal librarians. They were independent scholars, members of the parliamentary magistracy and the Republic of Letters who, by an ancient tradition of service to the crown worked to defend the monarchy with their legal and historical expertise and used their great document collections and learned networks to defend Gallican and royal rights.88 Cotton, Grotius, and Heinsius drew their inspiration from the French Gallican scholars, who formed a remarkable corps of state scholars around the French crown and Parlement.89 Far beyond Cotton and Heinsius’s freelance state service, French antiquarians of‹cially built the Royal Library, managed propaganda and diplomacy, and laid the foundations of a sophisticated and relatively open state information culture. They created a more systematized form of state erudition and scholarly political service. With an ancient monarchy, numerous parlements, great centers of church culture, and a massive feudal framework, France had a long and complex tradition of legal scholarship that acted as an inspiration to the Republic of Letters at large. While France did not have a clear-cut mixed constitution like England, the crown and Parlement worked together in a politique arrangement left over from the Wars of Religion.90 With the advent of the seventeenth century, however, the Parlement was increasingly unable to de‹nitively maintain its independence vis-à-vis the absolutist ambitions of the monarchy.91 Thus, in this massive European entity of twenty million subjects, an entente emerged in which parliamentarian legal scholars converged around the absolutist crown and served it as state scholars, librarians, archivists, historians, and diplomats. Although Medici queens had brought with them some Italian governmental traditions, in particular ‹nancial advisors and book-collecting traditions, sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century France lacked the central administrative entities found in Italy and Spain. France had neither a Biblioteca San Marco, a Simancas, a Casa de Contratación, nor an Archivio Segreto. Government information was dispersed in various depots: the Trésor des Chartes, the Chambre des Comptes, the archives of the Conseil du Roi, parliamentary registers, privately held ministerial

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29

archives, local feudal documents and patents, and monastic ecclesiastical bene‹ces were all scattered throughout the kingdom.92 State ‹nancial information remained in the hands of ministers such as Henry IV’s state intendant, Sully, who, following administrative tradition, kept the ‹nance records from his ministry—the “Papiers Sully”—which became the basis for his heirs’ work on state ‹nance, Oeconomies royales (1638).93

State Information and the Ancient Constitution Owing to their role in the ancient constitution of France, most legal documents and state archives were kept by parliamentarians or by ecclesiastics. The crown did not have a large internal archival bureaucracy. Royal secretaries had existed since the Middle Ages, evolving from the more personalized of‹ces of the “king’s clerks,” or the “king’s notaries.”94 Medieval French kings developed a relatively complex bureaucracy around their courts (curia regia).95 Saint-Louis and Philip the Fair employed secretaries, clercs du secret, who handled private royal papers and correspondence.96 By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the of‹ces of the secretary of state emerged, and the functions of the secretaries expanded. They were still responsible for handling state secrets: sealing documents and guaranteeing secret correspondence.97 They kept Richelieu in contact with various parts of the government and helped him in the decision-making process.98 The secretaries of state’s job had been to work for the chancellor to write all royal edicts and pronouncements and issue charters, while also keeping secret and diplomatic correspondences. They had the rights over various seals and stamps.99 They managed the king’s papers in the chancery, but they were not scholars per se. Independent nobles still dominated state administration and kept the paperwork from their ministries. Even under Richelieu, France did not produce a state bureaucracy in the Weberian sense: a large, internal cadre entirely devoted to state service, whose administrative papers belonged to the state and not to the individual of‹ceholder.100 The great ministers of the early seventeenth century—Sully, Richelieu, de Brienne, and Mazarin—all kept personal possession of their ministerial archives, as did their families after their death, until the ministries of Colbert and Louvois partially brought them back into the permanent state archives. This hampered the centralization of administrative government in the northern Italian or Spanish style. Indeed, for all its absolutist rhetoric, the administration of the six-

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teenth- and early seventeenth-century French monarchy was remarkably diffuse and personal, considering the monarchy claimed absolute prerogative. Culture had not yet caught up to ideology. The Parlement of Paris was supposed to uphold absolute royal legislation, but not to legislate. It could inform, criticize, ratify, and even reject royal law, yet all the while it was subject to the king’s ultimate authority. With a relatively weak monarchy, the Parlement was able to use its right of remonstrance for negotiating purposes, such as in the case of the Edict of Amboise (1563), which restored some rights to Protestants. Parliament also attempted to expand its own rights during the minority of Charles IX, as well as the rights of Protestants.101 To the bene‹t of the monarchy, a bridge formed between it and the Parlement in the realm of state information management. The monarchy depended on semi-independent legal scholars who worked for the crown, keeping royal registers, while also organizing the royal charterhouse and publishing historical propaganda. While royal secretaries handled secret daily correspondence, the royal archives—the Trésor des Chartes—were managed by magistrate archivists such as Jean Du Tillet, a parliamentary secretary (gref‹er).102 From Guillaume Budé’s organization of François I’s library in 1520 to the administration of the Dupuy brothers from 1635 to 1656, a venerable line of Gallican scholars—legal defenders of the monarchy’s rights over the French church—served the crown as librarians, of‹cial historians, and propagandists.103 Inspired by the mutual interests of civil peace, French nationalism, and Gallicanism, scholars such as de Thou served both power and the ethics of scholarship; or as Donald Kelley puts it, they balanced “‹delity to truth” with “civic humanism.”104 Jean Du Tillet, Jacques-Auguste de Thou, Pierre Pithou, Nicolas Rigault, the Dupuy brothers, Théodore Godefroy, and the ubiquitous Bignons were all lawyers, or were closely aligned with the milieu of the Robe, the Harlay, Seguier, and de Thou families. They were famed for their libraries, as well as their role in learned societies and the elite Republic of Letters, connected by the epistolary network of Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc.105 In thus serving the crown, these parliamentarians set aside many of the traditional constitutional claims to counter royal power to help the monarchy manage its library, archives, and information apparatus with the goal of stabilizing a state wracked by religious and civil war. The ‹rst to catalog the royal charterhouse was the secretary of the Parlement of Paris, Jean Du Tillet the elder (?–1570). During the same period, Jean Bodin (1520–96) acted as the theoretician of the parliamen-

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tarian entente with absolutism, insisting on a strong, well-informed monarchy served by legal scholars such as himself.106 By the reign of Henry IV (1589–1610), the tradition strengthened, with leading scholars from prominent families managing the royal libraries and archives. A president of the Parlement, famed scholar and book collector JacquesAuguste de Thou (1553–1617) used his documentary skills as a diplomat and a legist for the crown. From 1593 to 1656, he and his family served as Gardes de la Librarie royale.107 He personi‹es the entente, for he was relatively independent vis-à-vis royal power: a person of great prestige, a leader of the Putean Academy, a central hub for the international Republic of Letters, an internationally renowned scholar, and one of Europe’s leading book and manuscript collectors.108 Although a servant of the state, and not above politics, de Thou was a wealthy, in›uential public ‹gure in his own right and a parliamentarian. With de Thou, the Dupuy brothers Pierre (1582–1651) and Jacques (1591–1656), created the academy—the Cabinet Dupuy, or Putean Academy—which operated from de Thou’s library as the French central point of the Republic of Letters and erudite scholarly life.109 Though connected to the crown, the academy was relatively independent, forming a news and information bank, and producing daily nouvelles, or newsletters for its members.110 Sanctioned by the state, yet independent within the strictures of the Republic of Letters, this academy was the precursor to of‹cial scienti‹c academies. The Académie Française had to report to, and work under the supervision of, crown ministers. The Putean academy, on the other hand, was relatively independent, it did, when requested, serve the interests of the crown and even foreign powers, such as the papacy, the Dutch, and the English. It also aided German and Italian scholars and scholarly bureaucrats. While running their academy, Pierre Dupuy—formerly the archivist of the Parlement of Paris—and his brother Jacques also managed the Royal Library, building the collection through their network of contacts in the Republic of Letters and the Parlement of Paris. Thus there was a formal link between the learned institutions of the Republic of Letters and those of the crown. They assembled works on French royal precedence and Gallican rights, collaborating with a number of French jurists who worked for the Royal Library such as Pierre Pithou and Théodore Godefroy (1580–1649).111 The Dupuys even bequeathed their own massive collection to the Royal Library.112 They echoed sixteenth-century legists such as Du Cange who claimed that in the ancient constitution, the law courts, or parlements, represented the interests of the crown: cu-

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ria representat regem.113 Pierre Dupuy cited this precedent in 1639 in his Traité des preéminences du Parlement de Paris. Yet there was a deep contradiction in the relationship between the monarchy and these scholars, members of a Parlement that contentiously claimed the right to revise, ratify, or even reject royal laws.114 Under Richelieu, the crown had taken steps to wrest the control of of‹cial information and news management away from the Parlement. While Cardinal Richelieu did have a sophisticated policy for harnessing arts and letters and using scholars as propagandists, he never created a central, secret state archive, under his control, to be used to produce works of policy and propaganda. Through the founding of the Académie Française in 1634, he sponsored historians to write propagandistic works to bolster claims of absolutist prerogative.115 He outsourced information collection and propaganda to Théophraste Renaudot’s (1586–1653) Bureau d’Adresse (1629), which acted as the base for his Gazette (1631), a protonewspaper comprised of “relations,” or eyewitness reports, which supported the positions of the crown. This was an irritation to the Parlement of Paris, which, according to constitutional practice, considered the circulation of news in the capital as one of its prerogatives.116 Richelieu understood the power of propaganda. In response to the ›urry of antigovernment pamphlets, he sponsored a campaign of publishing responses, news reports, and literary, political, and historical works that bolstered the policies of the crown.117 While many scholars worked for Richelieu, the cardinal himself did not personally oversee the actual historical research that was at the basis of legal negotiation and propaganda.118 Richelieu neither enacted a serious campaign of censorship and literary oppression, as Colbert later did, nor worked to create a large secret archive so that he could micromanage propaganda, in spite of his penchant for secrecy. Indeed, while many of Richelieu’s propagandists were part of his clientele network, key legal and Gallican scholarship still often came from the ranks of semi-independent parliamentarian scholars. Gallicanism aligned the interests of the parlements with the increasingly absolutist monarchy. There occurred between these competing though complimentary powers an entente in the sphere of information management. Such was the nature of feudalism and the separation of powers of the ancient constitution in the budding absolutist state. Legal, ecclesiastical, and feudal document management was one of the primary functions of the parlements, the primary service provided to the crown

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by Gallican scholars. Figures such as Jean Du Tillet and the Dupuy brothers not only kept royal registers, they used them as sources for defense in national and international disputes over precedence, tax rights, and dominion.119 Remarkably, the crown allowed elements of foreign policy, propaganda, and legal policies to be managed by independent scholars from the ranks of the magistracy—a corps that often resisted and rebelled against royal authority. While the Parlement worked with the monarchy during crises such as the Wars of Religion, it did not work for the monarchy completely subservient as a branch. Even as these scholars worked for the crown, they still insisted on their own freedoms, and therein lay a potential con›ict. How could independent members of the Republic of Letters and the parlements serve an increasingly authoritarian crown? There was a deep contradiction in the relationship between the monarchy and these scholars, members of the Robe, who worked for the crown but sympathized with the parliamentary claim of the right to revise, ratify, or even reject royal laws, and who were arbiters of both public and secret spheres of information.120 In the end, these traditional scholars were not fully suited to serve as chief state information masters in an age when power lay increasingly in trade and empire. With the noble and parliamentarian rebellion of the Fronde (1648–53), the constitutional and information entente collapsed.121 The control of state archives by legal scholars had become incompatible with the interests of the rising absolutist state.122 After Mazarin crushed the Fronde, he and Louis XIV moved to subject the parlements to royal authority, and Colbert was the man in charge of what was effectively a coup d’état. Disarming the parlements meant depriving them not only of political authority, but also of the very legal and political information through which they wielded and de‹ned it. For this, a new kind of information master was needed.

chapte r 3

The Accountant and the Coups d’État

I

n another time and place, the Colberts might have been patricians in the mold of the Medicis.1 Jean-Baptiste Colbert came from a merchant banking family from Reims, the great cathedral and cloth town, and capital of the Champagne region. Seventeenth-century France, however, was not Renaissance Italy, and bourgeois patricians did not become the princes of their cities. In a culture dominated by wealthy nobles, and increasingly by a centralized monarchy, the primary avenue of social ascension for an ambitious ‹nancier or merchant was through service to a great aristocrat, or, inevitably after the failed noble rebellion of the Fronde, to the crown.2 Colbert’s father began his career not as a simple cloth merchant, as the cliché goes, but as a négociant: an international wholesale merchant and ‹nancier. Part of the international world of Reimois and Lyonnais ‹nance and trade, the Colberts were connected to the in›uential Franco-Italian banking family, the Particelli, into which Colbert’s sister married.3 Colbert himself trained to be a négociant. He attended the Jesuit school in Reims. Taking the pretheological cycles of the curriculum, Colbert did not receive a full classical education, but rather the rudiments necessary for international trade. Aside from grammar, humanities, and rhetoric, Jesuit pedagogy focused on skills useful for a merchant: mathematics, reading comprehension, note-taking, ‹ling, and the formal organization of one’s reading and lecture notes into notebooks.4 With the rise of geography in the Jesuit curriculum, Colbert was also ex34

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posed to the new Jesuit focus in practical and natural science, as well as in the writing of natural description and reports—all skills useful for a budding merchant trader or banker.5 After the Jesuits, he followed a typical itinerary for a member of a high merchant family. In his midteens, Colbert apprenticed in the Lyon of‹ce of family associates, the Italian banking family, Mascranni, where he not only learned international banking, but also some Italian.6 He then went on to take a clerkship at the Parisian accounting house, “l’étude Chappelain,” and at the law ‹rm of Biterne, where he learned ‹nancial law.7 Work in merchant houses and accounting ‹rms provided speci‹c sorts of training. First, an apprentice would learn the ars mercatoria, or mechanics of running a ‹rm. These methods had not changed drastically since the Middle Ages, though the use of double-entry book accounting had become more prevalent and was the basis of ‹nancial and mercantile management.8 In order to manage a trading house, the merchant would need constantly to inventory both stock and all exchanges. This meant diligent record-keeping at all levels. As for actual trading itself, it required a mastery not only of merchandise—from cloth, metals, plants, and spice to slaves—but also of its evaluation and measurement. Merchants carried with them reference books, but many personally made notebooks that contained currency exchanges; customs forms and rules; the translation of basic ‹nancial terms in major European languages; a schedule of tides, sunsets, and sunrises; merchandise descriptions; and maps, navigation information, and city descriptions.9 As shall become clear, Colbert was particularly skilled in paperwork handling, the laws and procedures of exchange and trade, and administrative archiving. Colbert’s initial training opened the way to his purchase of a position in 1639 under the great builder of Richelieu’s army, Sublet de Noyers, in the Ministry of the Army.10 This was his ‹rst position in royal administration, and it was as a commissary (commissaire ordinaire des guerres) that he traveled across France, writing administrative reports and managing regimental ‹nance.11 Working under the next army minister, Michel Le Tellier, a distant cousin, between 1643 and 1648, his job was to collect information on troop numbers and supplies.12 Decades earlier, this might have been the end of the story: Colbert would have remained a wealthy bourgeois ‹nancier, or simply a bureaucrat. But he arrived on the scene at a propitious moment. In 1650, Le Tellier posted Colbert as his intendant to Cardinal Mazarin during a military stage of the Fronde. This meant Colbert was Le Tellier’s administrative assistant in Mazarin’s en-

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tourage and army. His stated job was to decipher Le Tellier’s daily correspondence, read it to the cardinal, and then take his responses.13 Monseigneur, this morning I showed Mgr the Cardinal the two articles in code from your memo yesterday. On the second, His Eminence ordered me to write you. . . . For the surplus of orders that it has pleased you to send me by your letters and memos from yesterday, His Eminence has given me until this evening or tomorrow morning [to respond]. I will hurry as much as I can to resolve everything, and to let you know [the responses] as soon as I can.14

Colbert was not just responsible for decoding—which he probably learned on the job—writing, and communicating; he also collected various correspondence and documents. He would often make copies, ‹le them and then present them as organized packets to Le Tellier or Mazarin.15 In the role of an administrative secretary, Colbert was Le Tellier’s eyes and ears, an archiver and ‹ler. But more than that, he also maintained an intraministerial secret news and intelligence bureau. He was to inform Le Tellier in coded letters of the events concerning Mazarin’s court and army. His letters to Le Tellier were accompanied by formal news reports, which he called mémoires or relations, detailed descriptions of battles or important political meetings. He would summarize other correspondence sent to Mazarin by various important persons.16 In many cases, he would analyze and clarify both reports and events that took place around him, to explain them in detail.17 In spite of Colbert’s proximity to power and his skill at accounting and managing information, his position was technically still quite modest. Indeed, Colbert complained to Le Tellier in 1650 about his salary, which was supposed to be 3,000 livres, of which only 1,700 livres were actually paid.18 This was a decent sum for those who had outside income, such as Louis XIV’s gentlemen of the chamber, that is, dukes and counts who earned between 2,000 and 3,500 livres, but who had vast personal fortunes. Colbert’s salary was more than that of a simple secretary, but it was equal to that of the court dancing master, and much lower than that of the court mathematician, who made 4,500.19 Colbert’s ambitions were ministerial, and for that, he needed more money. He made a shrewd marriage to Marie Charron, daughter of a member of the king’s council, from a large family of wealthy military contractors. It brought with it a dowry of 100,000 livres tournois.20 While he complained to his masters that he had no money, Colbert nonetheless ad-

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mitted to his in-laws that he had amassed 50,000 livres himself.21 Through his management of Mazarin’s funds, he had secretly, and in some cases illegally, begun investing in agricultural schemes, tax farming, and monetary speculation.22 Not only a collector of books and manuscripts, Colbert was to prove very good at collecting money. The meeting of Colbert and Mazarin brought together two complementary spirits. Mazarin had amassed a colossal fortune, functionally larger than that of the crown, but he did not have the expertise to manage it. Colbert, on the other hand, had spent his entire youth training to manage large fortunes, but he did not have one. Instead, he was now getting ever closer to the largest fortune in France. The cardinal’s cellars were ‹lled with treasures, a massive collection of artworks, antiquities, and jewels.23 Even more, Mazarin’s wealth was contained in enormous and unorganized piles of feudal contracts and deeds to various sorts of landholdings, industries, and dubious ‹nancial schemes.24 Mazarin stated frankly that he had no idea how much wealth he actually had, or how much he could raise to fund his armies. In any case, as the Fronde drew on, Mazarin needed ever more funds. Thus he needed a good accountant not only to put his ‹nances in order, but also to raise money quickly for the war effort. Colbert’s persistence was boundless and he began the hard job of ingratiating himself to the cardinal and rendering his services indispensable to the de facto ruler of France. As Mazarin’s ‹nancial needs became more pressing in 1650, Le Tellier recommended his skilled intendant as the permanent manager of Mazarin’s household. Colbert began to sit in Mazarin’s archives, pouring over the mounds of paperwork and feudal deeds; ‹nding untapped revenue and unpaid debts; managing industrial projects, and illicit sources of income, along with his massive ecclesiastical landholdings.25 During the years 1650–53, the detailed correspondence between the two men reveals the extent to which Colbert managed Mazarin’s affairs. In a report on the cardinal’s ‹nances, dated September 31, 1651, Colbert informs his master that he has indeed received “all the papers” and that he is working to “terminate the dif‹culties” in bringing order to the cardinal’s ‹nances.26 In 1652, working with the queen’s treasurer, Jacques Tubeuf, president of the Chambre des Comptes, Colbert was still trying to obtain all of Mazarin’s papers and bring to term the cardinal’s various business ventures. I must work one of these days with Monsieur Tubeuf to ‹nish the accounts that he must give to Your Eminency. According to my calcula-

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tions that I have made with the documents that I have collected, which are quite trustworthy, I have found that your debt has been reduced to four hundred thousand pounds and the business in Auvergne and Longuedoc included, he [Tubeuf] is basically in agreement, the latter for two hundred thousand pounds, and that Your Eminency is owed one hundred thirty nine thousand ‹ve hundred and eighty three pounds, as well as and above the thirty-six thousand pounds that Your Eminency has already received and a promise from Mssrs the [farmers general] of the gabelles of twenty thousand pounds that I will take out and we must ‹nd a way to have them paid promptly; I beg you to believe that I have not made any notable errors. [Marginal note]: It will be necessary that the Cardinal has a search made of all the papers and memoirs of Mr. Tubeuf; the only dif‹culty in clearing them up concerns an error of twenty thousand pounds for the rent of your houses, an error that is to the advantage of the Cardinal.27

More than just handling masses of papers, Colbert made contacts and worked with all the ‹gures involved in the Mazarin’s ‹nancial dealings, such as the queen regent, Ann of Austria, the wealthy Tubeuf, the duke de Guise, the cardinal’s Roman agent Elpidio Benedetti, the cardinal’s household and military agents Euzenat, Bartet, and de La Vieuville, as well as the his librarian and archivist, Gabriel Naudé.28 He also had to run industrial projects and negotiate with those to whom the Mazarin owed money, and vice versa.29 He even guarded his valuable jewels. At every step, using strong-arm tactics when necessary, he extracted wealth from the cardinal’s holdings: I have the pearls in my hands, more or less in the condition which I described to you. Monsieur Ménardeau did not ask for any interest on his money, and Monsieur Tubeuf did not want to ‹nish the business that he had started before on the eighteenth, which comes out to 4,128 pounds 17 sols, and the principal 62,220, bringing everything to 66,348 pounds 17 sols. . . . This is going to require patience. I have sent a man expressly to the Limousin to force Tabouret to pay; I hope to get something out of this, because of the way I handled the affair.30

Although he had initially found Colbert vulgar and presumptuous, Mazarin now wrote Colbert complimentary letters.31 Within a year, he had become indispensable. Even more, Colbert’s work bore fruit. In 1658, after the Fronde, Mazarin had 8 million livres in cash. By the time of the cardinal’s death in 1661, Colbert had turned this sum into

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35 million, a great part of which would be Mazarin’s legacy to Louis XIV.32 As much as Colbert succeeded in building and managing Mazarin’s fortune in the 1650s, he nonetheless remained a household servant. As the favorite’s accountant, he was close to the center of the new royal state, but he was not yet a part of it.33 If he were to realize his ambitions, which were often the subtext of his imploring letters to Mazarin, he would need to rise above his household servant status. The opportunity would soon present itself. Remarkably, the road from accountant to statesman led through Mazarin’s library.

The Fall of the Humanist In 1649, Cardinal Mazarin faced a crisis. As ‹rst minister, Mazarin’s authority was challenged by nobles and the cardinals during the Fronde. The cardinal, however, had other problems besides simply war and money. He was assailed by a barrage of negative political pamphlets— the Mazarinades—which both ridiculed him and questioned his and the crown’s legal prerogatives.34 Losing the propaganda war, Mazarin had to respond to these dangerous attacks. To take on the parlements, which fueled the constant ›ow of pamphlets, Mazarin turned to his librarian, the internationally renowned humanist Gabriel Naudé (1600–1653), to formulate a propaganda response. Naudé was the sort of man the Italian cardinal would trust. Naudé claimed expertise in the late humanist, libertine Machiavellian art of prudence, or reason of state. Naudé’s Considérations politiques sur les coups d’état (1639) drew on passages from the Roman historian Tacitus and the Dutch humanist Justus Lipsius’s Politica, with the express intention of teaching the art of statecraft through political secrecy and dissimulation.35 He was thus a proponent of neostoicism and an idea to which Cardinal Richelieu and much of Europe’s educated elite subscribed. Strong states were built with the political wisdom afforded by reason of state, or the art of mastering political expediency through prudence based on experience and the knowledge of historical precedent.36 Educated in Italy, where he had studied medicine and worked as librarian to the Cardinal Bagni, Naudé had written a tract against political pamphlets, Le Marfore (1620); a famous work on library management and theory, Advice on Establishing a Library (1627); and a list of books necessary for the knowledge of politics, his Bibliographie politique (1642).

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Naudé was doubtless an expert on reason of state, but how good was he at applying his methods of statecraft in the arena of real politics? Indeed, was the old culture of reason of state up to the task presented by the crises of the Fronde? As the head of Mazarin’s library, the ‹nest in France, Naudé had become the state’s top information expert, and established himself as the heir to the long line of legal scholars who worked for the crown as librarians, archivists, and historical and legal propagandists.37 But with the advent of the Fronde, Naudé found himself ‹ghting the Parlement, which had once supplied librarians, scholars, and propagandists to the monarchy and formed the backbone of the Republic of Letters. How could he now serve the interests of scholarship and the Republic of Letters, while remaining loyal to the crown? The old entente between legal humanists and the crown, the very cement of the French Republic of Letters, was collapsing. A self-styled expert in secrecy, Naudé recommended Mazarin sponsor a publishing campaign against the Frondeurs. He published his own long-winded response to the pamphlets, Le Jugement de tout ce qui a esté imprimé contre le Cardinal de Mazarin (Paris: anon., 1650), but still the ›ow of Mazarinades did not abate.38 In a letter to Mazarin, dated July 15, 1651, Naudé complained that the cardinal had let his enemies occupy the sphere of public discourse and opinion.39 He begged him to respond by writing public responses, and to muster his literary friends to work to “detromper le peuple.”40 Most of all, he suggested that publishing veritable documents from the cardinal’s own archives would prove the Cardinal’s “good intentions” to the public. Ten days after Naudé wrote his letter, the cardinal directed him to consult with Colbert to obtain the necessary papers.41 Perhaps because he himself had come from a family of low-level ‹nanciers, Naudé did not like Colbert, and resented having to deal with him, perhaps because his social origins were even lower.42 This paragon of the Republic of Letters and the universities, librarian to princes, and friend to the pope, mocked Colbert’s apparent bourgeois vulgarity, making fun of his merchant’s collar, calling him “Berticol.”43 Colbert came from the tradition of family business, loyalty to one’s patron, double-entry book accounting, warehouse inspections, backrooms, and lockboxes.44 This was no noble man of letters. Indeed, he hardly knew Latin, the lingua franca of humanists. When Naudé met Colbert in 1651, the latter was deep in Mazarin’s accounts, looking for new sources of income for this embattled minister now at war.45 Yet at one level, Naudé

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and Colbert did have something in common: they both served the state as information masters. The humanist managed Mazarin’s semipublic library with its books, manuscripts, and political pamphlet collections, while the accountant managed the cardinal’s private archive, that of his ‹nancial papers. From the beginning, Colbert expressed doubts about Naudé’s idea of publishing secret documents: I will furnish to Mr. Naudé all that he demands. However, on this subject, I am obliged to tell you that not all of your friends and servants believe that anything should appear in public, it being absolutely necessary for you to let be the humor of our nation. Which is of the greatest inconsistency in its hates and its friendships, and when the object of which is absent, it does not excite itself. The disorders and the civil wars in which we are falling will indubitably play into your hands; and if you continue your behavior in the same manner as in the past, we have some real hope. . . . It is true that one must always prepare papers, which can be taken from the general state of your accounts, which is a convincing piece; but again, one must neither stir things up, nor publish anything before the hatreds of the public are dampened.46

Naudé, in turn, insisted that the cardinal ignore Colbert’s advice. Colbert was forced to give in, rendering a trove of secret ‹nancial documents.47 Although initially rebuffed, Colbert continued whispering his philosophy of state secrecy into the cardinal’s ear.48 He also treacherously claimed to the cardinal that Naudé was stealing from him.49 In this con›ict, Naudé would ‹nd himself the loser. Civil war had changed not only the state, but also the world of learning. The rebellion of the Fronde was waged on the battle‹eld of books and libraries as the Parlement took over Paris, and attacked the institutions controlled by Mazarin. Naudé watched helplessly, clutching a few last books, as the magni‹cent library he had created for his master was dismantled and gleefully auctioned off by members of the Parlement of Paris. After this traumatic loss, Naudé went on to lose the cardinal’s con‹dence and his job. Although he hoped to get his position back, Naudé died like Descartes and Grotius, en route back from Sweden, where he too had answered the siren call of the ever-curious Queen Christina.50 He was the last of‹cial court humanist in France, and his failure marked the end of the entente between the semi-independent scholars and the crown. The self-styled master of secret state maneuvers had been beaten handily

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at his own game.51 Naudé the great scholar failed, while Colbert the accountant rose to power. Thus it was that in 1653, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the son of a failed ‹nancier with no scholarly training, became head of the French Royal Library. In a matter of months, Colbert bought back much of Mazarin’s library restoring it to its past glory. In a report to Mazarin, Colbert noted not only the ‹nancial aspects of rebuilding the collection, but also his methods in putting pressure on those who had bought the cardinal’s books at a low price. “They will give up their books without dif‹culty,” mused Colbert ominously, “but they will pay dearly for it.”52 Colbert liked books, and with them, a keen taste for repressing the very world that produced them. Colbert outlined his strategies in dealing with collectors and book dealers. Colbert knew how the world of the book worked, with its hiding places, false bookkeeping, and inaccurate catalogs. He knew the principal book dealers and had a sense of where the missing books had gone.53 From the registers of the sale, Colbert also knew which parliamentarians had obtained the most books. Police were duly sent to the houses of the parliamentarians Pithou, Peteau, and Portail to “make an exact search of their libraries and other places in their houses for all the books that were in Your Eminence’s library . . . to take all that is recognized to have been part of the library of Your Eminence.”54 The Pithou family had once been a pillar of the world of royal scholarship, but they took sides against the crown during the Fronde. Now their family library was ransacked by Colbert’s men. Colbert had shown that he not only knew the world of books and learning, he also knew how to put it under the boot of royal power. Mazarin was convinced that this was the man to run not only his library, but that of the king as well. In 1654, Colbert’s brother became guardian of the Royal Library, under Colbert’s control. It was a remarkable occurrence; for it was the ‹rst time a nonscholar and a man of such low social rank had risen to such a prestigious post. But it was more than just prestige that appealed to Colbert. As we shall see, he would use his new central position in the world of learning as a basis for political power that lay in the old legal, ‹nancial, and diplomatic documents that sat on shelves of archives.55 Colbert controlled Mazarin’s ‹nances and library, as well as the Royal Library, and was essentially the information minister of the administration. Now his multiple talents would come into play as Mazarin and Louis XIV moved to grab power and build a new royal state.

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The Mechanics of an Information Coup: The Crushing of Fouquet and the Muzzling of the Parlement As early as 1654, at the head of the state’s censorship and information apparatus, Colbert began a campaign to take control of vital political information held by the parlements.56 When in 1656, the Parlement of Paris argued that the king did not have the authority to use évocations to overturn lawsuits, Colbert lamented to Mazarin that the Parlement controlled the legal archives with which to make such arguments, and was thus a threat to royal power: A number of counselors have already sought in their registers examples and reasons which can serve their interests. . . . I have thought that perhaps Your Eminence would agree if I did my own research on what has been said on this matter, from the same legal documents used by the Parlement of Paris, which the kings have never really kept, and which they use to justify their enterprises, and never provide remedies to help with the projects of kings, and thus keep them unknown. I would be happy if my little research into the archives could be agreeable to Your Eminence. . . . I could on numerous occasions render this service.57

The cardinal replied to Colbert that he was puzzled that no one had ever “kept a register of what kings have done to repress the enterprises of the Parlement of Paris . . . as well as the clergy,” and directed Colbert to go the archives and ‹nd the documents to rebut the Parlement.58 Colbert acted immediately, writing a secret, internal report: “Considérations sur l’Arrest du Parlement de Paris, du 18 aoust 1656, concernant les évocations,” in which, with the aid of an assistant, probably JosephNicolas Foucault, he provided a series of archival documents proving the king’s right to overturn decisions of Parlement.59 This legalistic, historical text on the history of évocations is based on archival materials starting from the time of François I. As Colbert moved against the parlements, he showed himself to be a key player in the establishment of royal power after the Fronde. Louis XIV wanted to take power from the parlements, and with his knowledge of paperwork, law and government, Colbert was to be the architect of this policy. Mazarin saw Colbert as an indispensable asset, both ‹nancially and politically. In his last will and testament, made on his deathbed, Mazarin recommended Colbert to the young monarch. Now in personal control of government, Louis XIV would not take a prime

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minister. But as shall become clear, Colbert helped Louis conceptualize the mechanics of his new state. In 1661, as the king and his minister worked to form their ‹rst government, Colbert wrote to Louis on how to organize and manage the Royal Council. The ‹rst lines of this secret memo to Louis give a clear sense of the driving principle behind Colbert’s idea of government: You must require all to make individual pledges of loyalty and secrecy. The King must declare that he wants secrecy rigorously observed; . . . and that he will absolutely expel anyone at all who would be capable of this weakness.60

Louis evidently agreed with Colbert’s advice, for he allowed Colbert to draft his ‹rst speech to be read at the opening of the Council of Finances. Louis read the words of Colbert to his new cabinet of ministers: The ‹rst thing I desire from you is secrecy; and as I consider it important and necessary for the sound management of my affairs, I am at ease telling you that if I learn that someone has dared tell anyone anything at all that has happened here, I will ‹nd out the origin of this leak, and I will expel from my council him who has been capable of this weakness. . . . Once I have taken the resolution to give an order, it must be executed and supported with resoluteness, sincerity, and secrecy.61

Secrecy meant not only the discretion of ministers and secretaries; it also meant keeping state information within royal control. To do this, Louis and Colbert had to disarm potential noble factions, and undermine the power of the Parlement.

Fouquet: Information Casualty Essential to this plan was the overthrow of Mazarin’s and Louis XIV’s early superintendent of ‹nances, Nicolas Fouquet. By all accounts, he was brilliant, dashing, greedy, and paranoid. Madame de Sevigné, libelists, and modern historians alike have painted Fouquet as the victim of Colbert’s ambition, and of Louis XIV’s dictatorial tendencies.62 But Fouquet was presumptuous. He made the infamous mistakes of assuming that Louis XIV wanted and needed a prime minister, and thinking that he would ‹ll that role. In August 1661, at the moment Louis had taken personal rule after the death of Mazarin, he threw an ostentatious party at his chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte. Louis was humiliated by his

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minister’s sophisticated opulence and patronage of high society and culture. Vaux was grander than any abode Louis possessed. Like all intendants of ‹nance before him, Fouquet pilfered money from royal funds; this was an understood advantage of the position.63 Not only did Fouquet steal, however; he managed royal funds badly, and he made the error of using them to outshine the king, whose personal ‹nances were still shaky after the Fronde.64 Had Fouquet only spent his money on culture and parties, perhaps Louis might not have been so bent on destroying him. But Fouquet also used massive sums to maintain a small army and to fortify his Island of Belle-Isle off the southern coast of Brittany, which protected the mouth of the Loire River and thus was the key to controlling western France. With the help of his cousin, Colbert de Terron, Colbert had placed a spy dressed as a ‹sherman off the coast of Fouquet’s island, who provided a detailed map of the island, as well as a report that detailed ‹fteen hundred laborers, two hundred garrisoned soldiers, four hundred canon, and “munitions for six thousand men.”65 Even more, du Terron reported that Fouquet had made plans to take over the Caribbean island of Martinique and to use his own coastal island to receive all the goods produced there.66 In short, Fouquet was building a miniature kingdom and a small empire. With strong ties to the Parlement, Fouquet possessed all the elements of a Frondeur, becoming an independent and wealthy noble, with an army and fort held outside of royal authority. In September 1661, Louis and Colbert moved to arrest Fouquet and exile his family and friends. Colbert wrote several detailed plans for the arrest.67 Colbert’s main interest was executing the coup with secrecy, so that no documents could be removed. All of Fouquet’s of‹ces would be sealed, and state lawyers would invest the premises and con‹scate all papers. Colbert’s memo reads: Do everything to observe secrecy, so that all news comes from the King, to take all the necessary precautions. For this effect, send three or four loyal musketeers on the two roads to stop all ordinary or extraordinary couriers from passing without orders from the King, countersigned by Monsieur Le Tellier. At the same time as the arrest, also arrest all the [Fouquet’s] assistants and put seals on overything, while also blocking all visits.68

Colbert insisted that maitres des requêtes be present not only to seal documents, but to rush them back to his own of‹ce:

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It is necessary to assign to this task a maître des requêtes to seal all the cassettes and to put them in a safe place; likewise, he should do an exact research of all the papers that are found in the house and seize them. Order another of‹cer to arrest all the assistants and make sure that no papers are transported. If there are two maîtres des requêtes, we could send one with the commissary to seal the papers. With all these orders executed, it is necessary to work to speed up the couriers.69

Unprepared and outmaneuvered, Fouquet was stunned by the coup. He made no moves to destroy his personal archives, which could be used either to defend or to indict him. Fouquet’s brother, the abbé Fouquet, considered destroying the archive by burning down Fouquet’s chateau at Saint-Mandé, but this, it was thought, would bring further retribution from Louis XIV.70 As the captain of the king’s musketeers, Charles d’Artagnan led the arrest of Fouquet and the following search of his house. Directing the operation was Colbert. Fouquet’s friends noticed a disturbing thing: Colbert was meticulously collecting Fouquet’s papers. The conseiller d’État de la Fosse wrote to Chancellier Seguier that he was concerned that Colbert, Fouquet’s obvious enemy, was collecting papers to use politically.71 There was reason to worry. Fouquet had been trying to win over Louis’s friends, family, and mistresses with gifts and bribes. As a letter from one of the queen’s ladies in waiting to Fouquet surfaced, Colbert began to smell the scent of ammunition to use against his foe. De la Fosse writes, “I am pained and I tremble as I write you this, and I believe we must take this letter very seriously, that M. Poncet has separated to show to M. Colbert.”72 The letter, he warned, had to be destroyed before it reached the king. This was, however, impossible. Colbert and his agents were now in Fouquet’s library and archives, with the letter in their possession. Poncet and his commissaries ransacked Fouquet’s of‹ce. Behind his armoire, they found a massive, bound folio notebook, the Cassette of Fouquet. This compilation of manuscripts revealed Fouquet’s plans, and Colbert intended to use them as evidence and as propaganda against him.73 With the Cassette, Colbert had the key to Fouquet’s system. It contained Fouquet’s correspondence with various ladies who served as lovers and informants, as well as information pertaining to payments, gifts, and bribes.74 It also listed all of Fouquet’s agents and spies, many in the royal court and administration, and revealed his ‹nancial dealings, as well as his plans and ‹nances for building his fortress in Belle-Isle. Among his other papers were plans for a civil war in the case that Louis

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XIV evicted him from power—the “Plan de Saint Mandé”—along with a number of testimonials of loyalty from various ‹gures, such as the parliamentarian Maridor, in case of such an event.75 Colbert had hoped that these documents would help indict Fouquet and impose a death sentence. Even more, Colbert had expected that the revelation of this secret cache of plans and purloined letters would sway public opinion in favor of the crown. However, with the irregularities of the trial, reluctant judges, and the suspicions of the Parlement of Paris and public, convincing the public was harder than expected.76 In 1663, Colbert’s powerful uncle, the judge Pussort, shocked the magistracy by leading an “extraordinary” proceeding, which was, in spite of the legitimately damning documents, an ominous and procedurally illegal show trial.77 Colbert asked the president of the Parlement, Malesherbes de Lamoignon, to decide Fouquet’s fate before the termination of proceedings, to which the indignate magistrate replied with an epigram: “Un juge ne dit son avis qu’une fois et sur les ›eurs de lys.”78 Colbert was rightfully perceived by the public as acting in secret, pulling the strings of the trial behind the scenes, giving new meaning to his family crest’s symbol, the couleuvre, a climbing snake.79 Echoing the disgust of public sentiment, Lamoignon noted the “ferocity” of the Colbert family to his friend, Mme de Sevigné.80 Even if the trial did not convince the public of Fouquet’s guilt, it made clear the intention of the crown to act above the law. It also revealed something essential about Colbert: he thought about power in terms of information. Colbert rightly saw the keys to power in Fouquet’s Cassette, which revealed his network, his ‹nances, and all his plans. Colbert tried to in›uence public opinion by leaking the incriminating documents, but his actions more or less back‹red.81 In spite of protests and public opinion, in what was truly a coup de théâtre, Louis and Colbert got their man. They imprisoned Fouquet in solitary con‹nement for the rest of his short, miserable life, and perhaps more importantly, showed to all that the crown had full authority over powerful nobles, legal procedure, and the Parlement itself.

Legislating Secrecy In the 1660s, Louis and Colbert continued their assault, acting to neutralize the Parlement’s information arsenal by copying its archives of registers of legal codes.82 As the site where laws were registered, the Parlement controlled part of the state’s archive of state legal and ‹nancial information. Colbert saw the Parlement’s documentary arcana juris, or

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secret knowledge of legal affairs, as potential arcana imperii, or state secrets, outside the grasp of the monarchy. The idea that the Parlement held secret knowledge was unacceptable to Louis’s totalizing concept of royal power. The ancient constitution of France had to be undermined. In a memo dated October 1, 1665, unambiguously entitled, “Means for putting the Parlement in the state where it should naturally be, and to take away once and for all the maxims with which this Company has undertaken to trouble the State, by taking over its administration,”83 Colbert recommends “making a declaration to ban them from ever having access and knowledge of State documents.”84 He then attempted to remove vital administrative and legal documents from parliamentary hands, by rewriting the legal code himself. In a 1664 “Mémoire” to Louis XIV on judicial reforms, he notes that “secrecy is necessary in these grand plans,” to avoid obstacles, gain glory, overcome opposition, and “bring the project to perfection without anyone realizing it is happening.”85 These are not the words of reform, but of a constitutional coup d’état, and a frontal assault to control the political public sphere and classify legal information.86 Here drawn out were the steps to the path to power. In 1667, Colbert and his uncle Pussort set about secretly codifying the legal system, which has quite rightly been seen by historians as one of the great achievements, though un‹nished, of Colbert’s centralizing project.87 It stamped out legal corruption and centralized procedure, but at the same time, it placed strict limits on the parlements’ rights of remonstrance against royal legislation.88 It was also a continuation of the antiparliamentary assault of 1663. In a series of notebooks, Le Procès Verbal de l’Ordonnance de 1667, Colbert’s loyal agent, Nicolas Foucault, transcribed the extraordinary proceedings of their rewriting of the legal code, essentially a disputation between the Colberts and Lamoignon, ever resisting their plans, whom the king had allowed to participate in the Colbertian conclave. On one side, the Colberts tried to institute closed interrogations, remove the testimony of witnesses, and pare down procedure and “unduly long” trials, while on the other, Lamoignon protested against closed trials and lack of legal procedure.89 Lamoigon’s efforts were to no avail, and Colbert managed to have his way. He began to institute his new legal code with the goal of rendering the Parlement a simple stamp for royal legislation. It represented a success for institutional absolutism, and sealed the rupture between the old information masters and the crown. Colbert had shown that controlling

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information was an essential element in undermining the ancient feudal constitution of France and the establishment of Louis XIV’s more aggressive form of royal absolutism. Yet his project was not just about removing or controlling existing knowledge. Colbert now sought to make this innovative though sinister culture of political information-handling the basis of a new royal statecraft.

chapte r 4

Royal Accountability louis xiv and the golden notebooks

I

n 1663, Colbert gained the of‹cial title of controller of ‹nances. In this period of peace between 1662 and 1671 Colbert reformed ‹nancial administration, increasing state revenue by more than one-third and managing to keep de‹cits slightly above revenue.1 He began improving revenue through the royal Chambre de Justice, tax reforms, and ‹nancial reorganization of the kingdom. Fouquet had been imprisoned, and the parlements humbled. With income ›owing in, Louis could focus on pleasure, culture, building, and his absolutist, administrative reforms. His powers consolidated in his superministry, Colbert set out on his own projects, building his personal library along with that of the king, and founding his royal academies. With a great part of the resources of France under his control, Colbert was one of the most powerful ‹gures in the world. He organized the building of Versailles, as well as France’s industrial, colonial, and architectural projects.2 It was a period of achievement for both Louis and Colbert, who worked in concert.3 Louis gave broad policy goals; Colbert would work out their mechanics and then Louis would go over the administrative and political blueprints. It was an opportunity for the young king to learn from his skilled accountant and minister. It was also the moment in which Louis and Colbert worked to transform the culture of statecraft, making archival and managerial cultures from accounting central to kingship. 50

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Colbert was Louis’s most important con‹dant and the keeper of his secrets. Indeed, he helped Louis write two major sections of the Mémoires for the Instruction of the Dauphin (1665). Louis entrusted his minister with raising Mlle de Blois and the count de Vermandois—his bastard children by Louise de La Vallière—in his own house, caring for them when they were sick.4 In 1667, when Louise ›ed to a convent in jealousy and fear over Louis’s infatuation with Mme de Montespan, Colbert was the go-between, sent to bring her back to Versailles. Colbert also looked after the royal family, and mediated between Louis and his extravagant brother, Philippe d’Orléans.5 He was careful to take care of personal business for Louis, just as he had done for Mazarin. Thus he became indispensable at all levels. Colbert literally kept an agenda that “set the king’s days.”6 A nonchalant note from Louis to Colbert in 1661 illustrates how his services combined the of‹cial and the personal: As I believe there is nothing pressing today, I will not do any work. Bring the papers we were to discuss this evening to tomorrow’s council of ‹nance, so I can ‹nish up what needs to be done before Mass. The Queen doesn’t want the ruby box; she has nothing that ‹ts it. If anything urgent comes up, let me know. LOUIS 7

In his Mémoires for the Instruction of the Dauphin, Louis stated that he would rule without a prime minister.8 Yet Colbert’s status partially contradicts this claim, as does the fact that he helped write the Mémoires. Louis noted to the Dauphin that his undertakings had been so grand that he had not been able to do everything himself. “I was personally often relieved in this work by Colbert, whom I entrusted with examining things that required too much discussion and into which I would not have had time to go.”9 Colbert did not make ‹nal policy, and he had to share power with the foreign minister, Hugues de Lionne, and the minister of war, Le Tellier. He was, nonetheless, the leading minister during the ‹rst two decades—arguably the most glorious—of Louis’s reign. Louis made policy decisions, but he did so with Colbert’s advice. How could he do otherwise? It was Colbert who received all the reports of the intendants and managed much of the workings of the state. Louis could not master ‹nancial and other complex policy without a guide through the labyrinth of his medieval administration and the new insti-

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tutions created by his forebears. Thus Colbert emerged as Louis’s teacher in the workings of ‹nance and government. Colbert created, in essence, what was an ongoing course in administration and information handling for Louis that continued until his death in 1683. Breaking with French royal tradition, Louis XIV did not hire court humanists as advisors, as Henry IV and Richelieu did. Instead, scholars were simple servants in his library, working under Colbert. Louis preferred that his personal accountant serve as his learned advisor in most branches of statecraft. Colbert not only controlled the Royal Library and culture complex; as Louis’s information master, he also took over the role of chief royal counsel and teacher in nonspiritual affairs. In addition to the sections he contributed to the Instructions for the Dauphin, he wrote numerous other pedagogical guides for Louis’s heir.10 This had formerly been traditional activity for humanists such as Guillaume Budé. Louis asked Colbert for reports and instructions on questions necessary to the management of the state. What emerged was a unique training course in government administration that re›ected Colbert’s system of information gathering. Colbert’s program was a departure from the ancient tradition of royal pedagogy. If Cardinal Richelieu had preached political science in his Political Testament (1624), Colbert’s approach represented the rise of a new technical type of governmental expertise.

What Kings Need to Know to Rule Old Italian mercantile, administrative culture had fostered humanism, and it was steeped in an ethic of technical expertise. Humanist engineers mastered the learning of the ancients to literally rebuild Rome, and merchants and artisans developed double-entry bookkeeping, managed city government, sponsored erudite projects, and also wrote their own histories and memoirs using their commercial registries and archives as sources of memory.11 At the same time, as humanist traditions evolved, they had less and less mercantile content. What had been a merchant and bureaucratic-inspired tradition of learning became increasingly literary and scienti‹c as humanist philologists translated ancient texts and copied their content. Humanist political theory became grounded in ancient history and legal scholarship. Yet at the very moment that Tacitist humanists claimed that statecraft could be learned through classical ethics and history, it became increasingly clear that these forms of political learning were not suf‹cient for managing a large, industrial, colonial, and militarized state.

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In his Political Testament, Richelieu wrote his own work of Machiavellian, Tacitist maxims, paired them with essays on Christian morality, and made references to medical culture.12 Richelieu the Catholic prelate practiced reason of state: he mastered secrecy, built his administration, and even made secret treaties with Protestants against Rome and Spain.13 To survive in the world of religious strife and the horrors of the Thirty Years War, civic politics, as Justus Lipsius had said, was an ethic unto itself, and reason of state and the learning of history were thus seen as methods for survival. This was the culmination of Counter-Reform princely prudence, steeped in Jesuit moral casuistry and historical maxims necessary in the fallen world of shattered Christendom in which one sought the dif‹cult balancing act of crushing one’s enemies, while at the time, as the Spanish Jesuit Balthasar Gracián recommended, “remaining saintly.”14 As sophisticated as late humanist political culture was, it did not encompass all forms of practical learning. Erasmus had insisted that kings become scholars, and Henry IV’s doctors recommended they be systematic empiricists; however, these humanists did not ask their kings to become experts in the minutiae of state administration and ‹nance.15 This was left to ministers like Sully and Richelieu. Sully pioneered many of the budgetary, statistical, industrial, and military reforms later taken up by Colbert, and, although there is no evidence he ever learned doubleentry bookkeeping, he kept state account books.16 Yet he never taught his craft to Henry IV. Richelieu took an active role in ‹nancial management and taxation through his superintendents of ‹nance, but he never attended a meeting of the Counsel of Finances. He admitted to his superintendent of ‹nances, Claude de Bullion, that he had “no knowledge of ‹nances [but] sought the advice of those to whom the King has given their direction.”17 Machiavellians and Tacitists such as Bodin, Botero, and Richelieu recognized that money was the “sinews of power.” At the same time, they did not seek to study the artisanal and mercantile traditions of early humanism that had ›ourished in the banks and workshops of Florence.18

Double-Entry Bookkeeping, Archiving, and the Political Economy of Statecraft In the 1590s, the Dutch mathematician and engineer Simon Stevin (1548–1620) became both tutor and advisor to Prince Maurice of Nassau. The author of works on mathematics, physics, nautical mechanics,

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language, and music, Stevin represents a branch of humanism different from that of literary philologists and lawyers like Erasmus, the late humanist political historian Lipsius, and Jacques-Auguste de Thou.19 Grotius, whose father was a friend of Stevin, was said to have admired both his theories and his nautical inventions, so crucial for the existence of a nation that survived below sea level, and from seaborne trade.20 Stevin would go on to be state engineer, superintendent of ‹nances, and chief of the all-important Dutch waterworks. As a scholar, Stevin descended from Florentine mathematicians, inventors, and engineers in the tradition of Brunelleschi, Leon Battista Alberti, and Leonardo da Vinci. While he wrote works on formal learned subjects such as language and mathematics, he mostly focused on engineering and practical learning. This was re›ected in his work on mathematics, which, following old Italian tradition, considered accounting and double-entry bookkeeping a branch of the mathematical sciences. Stevin tutored Prince Maurice in the art of double-entry bookkeeping and kept a journal of his interactions with the prince. The idea of a prince learning accounting was an anathema in a world of Christian, chivalric, and courtly princes. It is impossible to imagine the Neoplatonist, elitist Castiglione recommending that a courtier, or his friend the emperor Charles V, learn the minutiae of keeping account and receipt books.21 It would be hard to keep one’s sprezzatura while toiling over balance sheets. Yet Stevin taught Prince Maurice exactly these skills. He explained to him credits, debits, capital, and entry keeping. The prince noted how dif‹cult it was to understand.22 The basic principle of double-entry bookkeeping is the veri‹cation of two calculations made in relation to the sum of capital. Credits are a plus value to the capital, while any purchase is both an addition of goods, but also a debit to capital used to pay for them. Comparing the credits and debits and coming up with the same sum for ‹nal capital holdings ensures proper management of the general account of capital. Prince Maurice was an apt pupil, for he understood that the most complex concept within double-entry bookkeeping centered on capital and its double relationship to credits and debits: “The entries stand in my ledger as debits and credits. Which of these two stand to my advantage and which to my disadvantage?”23 Stevin had based his own writings and pedagogical program on the founding work on accounting, the famous Tuscan Franciscan mathematician Luca Pacioli’s Summa de Arithmetica (Venice, 1494), in which is found the treatise “The Particulars of Accounting and Their Record-

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ing.” Immortalized in a portrait by Jacopo de’Barbarbi (1495) now in Naples, a possible translator of Piero della Francesca’s writings on perspective, and a collaborator of Leonardo, Pacioli (1445–c. 1517) was certainly not the ‹rst to understand double-entry bookkeeping. There is evidence that a branch of the Medici family under Averardo di Francesco di Bicci used double-entry bookkeeping at their bank branch in the 1390s.24 However, Pacioli was the ‹rst to explain the mechanics of accounting in a printed book, which would become the basis of literature on accounting therewith. One reason Maurice of Nassau found the concept of capital—or household or business inventory—complex was because inventorying and capital assessment entailed a massive archival undertaking. To understand his accounts, a king would have to understand his records, and this took a certain level of archival skill to keep track of capital. Pacioli’s treatise focuses primarily on accounting the forms of recordkeeping necessary to management of inventorying. Double-entry bookkeeping is based on the keeping of three primary books: Immediately after the Inventory, you need three books to make the work proper and easy. One is called Memorandum (Mémoriale), the second Journal (Giornale), and the third Ledger (Quaderno).25

The memorandum book is a “scrap book, or blotter.”26 In this book, all transactions are kept in real time, as they happen, and original records are ‹led. Paccioli insists that this record-keeping is the basis for accounting. Indeed, it was the foundation of the ars mercatoria. Everything must be recorded: hours and dates, as well as measurements and types of currency. The memorandum could be huge, and a business would have numerous ones for different parts of the business: household expenses, acquisitions, sales, and different branches of the business. Indeed, for a large business, memoranda could number into the dozens per month. The memoranda would have to be summarized and transferred to the journal.27 Once all three books are ‹lled out, they must be taken to civil of‹cials to be veri‹ed. The clerk who veri‹es should make a written record of veri‹cation and mark it in the account books.28 Thus the merchant had to be skilled in handling numbers, books, inventories, and archives. In this Journal, which is your private book, you may fully state all that you own in personal or real property, always making reference to the

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inventory papers which you or others may have written and which are kept in the same box, or chest, or ‹lza, or mazzo, or pouch, as is customary and as is usually done with letters and other instruments of writing.29

To record all inventory was a massive undertaking: houses, lands, stores, commercial inventory, cash, receipts, and promissory notes. The inventory for one large house alone could entail numerous record books.30 To handle this information, the merchant needed to master the discursive and indexing tools necessary for writing, summarizing, and making accounts accessible for easy reference. In the chapter entitled “Summary of the Rules and Ways for Keeping a Ledger,” Pacioli lists all the rules for writing and keeping records necessary to create a ledger book.31 He describes abbreviations, shorthand markings, and other note-taking tools necessary for navigating large rolls of accounts.32 Pacioli’s book had a wide impact throughout Europe, inspiring accounting books called “Merchant’s Mirrors” by John Mellis, Richard Dafforne, Jan Ympyn, and Stevin.33 With the rise of bookkeeping came merchant writing: travel reports and narratives, family and urban histories, as well as genres of ars mercatoria handbooks, which could be printed or personal manuscript notebooks listing rates of exchange, the schedule of tides, and legal paperwork for trade in various nations. Standard merchant training entailed complex archival and note-keeping skills. In his manuscript ars mercatoria notebook, Robert Williams, a seventeenthcentury English merchant, recommended traveling with a trunk full of twenty-one different forms of notebooks and account books. His manuscript “Notes Concerning Trade 1632–1654” contains “A Catalogue of ye Bookes necessary for ye punctuall Marchant to Keepe Acco[un]ts” for a long merchant voyage: 1. A Cash-booke 2. A Write or Acquittance Booke 3. a booke for charges Merchandize 4. a Coppie booke of Letters 5. a Remembrance or Note Booke 6. a ffreight booke 7. a booke of Inv[en]toires sent 8. a booke of Inv[en]toires received 9. a Coppie-booke of Acco[un]ts sent 10. a Coppie booke of acco[un]ts rec[eive]d 11. a bill of lading booke 12. a booke of orders given & rece[ieve]d 13. a Cates-booke for household exp[enc]es 14. a Wast or day booke 15. a Journall 16. a Lidger 17. a Quadaranecra [quadernàccio, a rough workbook] of Goods rec[eive]d & cons[igne]d 18. a Custome-house booke 19. a booke of Cargoes of ships arrived & dep[ar[ted 20. a Month booke 21. a booke et Coppie in partitos.34

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This was in essence a traveling business archive inspired by the Italian tradition, revealing Williams’s formal knowledge of accounting tradition, by now standardized throughout trading nations by the circulation of Pacioli’s work. Note-taking, bookkeeping, and archiving were common for traveling merchants as well for any merchant or naval ship.35 At this time, being a successful merchant meant being a ‹nancier, an archival manager, and a record-keeper, as well as something of a naturalist who observed and collected. Stevin was able to make the Dutch state use double-entry bookkeeping. It is said that he made the same recommendation to Sully, who did not take his advice.36 In the 1650s, Jean Roland Mallet kept single-entry bookkeeping, simply comparing revenue and expenditure.37 But there is no evidence of royal involvement in bookkeeping. Indeed, Jacques Savary’s Le Parfait Négociant ou Instruction générale pour ce qui regarde le commerce (1679), commissioned by Colbert, discusses double-entry bookkeeping and the handling and archiving of commercial paperwork, but only in the context of private business, not for state administrators (see ‹g. 4). In France, the ars mercatoria would take longer to enter into royal culture. In 1615, Antoine de Montchrétien dedicated his Treatise on Political Economy (1615) to the regent, Marie de Medici, and her son, Louis XIII. Addressing the monarchs, he begged the Queen Mother to teach her son the technical side of manufacturing, as well as about merchandise and new natural products from the colonies. The king would need to understand shipbuilding, metalworking, manufacturing, and even how to run a forge.38 He would also have naturalist knowledge about sandalwood, materia medica, tobacco, and rhubarb.39 Montchrétien cited medical theory, and called for the kind of knowledge from the marketplace associated with Petrus Ramus, traveling medical humanists such as Garcia da Orta, Jesuits travel writers, and the older artisanal humanism of Brunelleschi, Alberti, and da Vinci.40 Late humanism, both Erasmian and Tacitist, relied on rhetoric, history, and law. Montchrétien was demanding additions to the royal curriculum that included the basic elements of the ars mercatoria. He insisted that the king acquire a working knowledge of ‹nance. He would have to study indendants’ reports, understand the tax codes, and try to reform corruption. Doing this entailed an understanding of how ‹nances worked and the making of “a true revenue account,” the keeping of a royal ledger.41 In spite of the economic works of Bodin, Laffemas, and Montchrétien, and in spite of Marie de Medici’s personal connections with banking families, she did not heed Montchrétien’s advice. Financial and in-

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dustrial training never entered into Louis XIII’s pedagogical program, designed by the humanist doctor Jean Hérouard.42 Louis XIII would never have studied account books. He might have looked at the pictures in Conrad Gessner’s Historia animalium, but as Hérouard complained, the young prince did not really read the traditional humanist books he recommended to him.43 Equally, while industrious and reforming ministers such as Sully and Richelieu were deeply in›uenced by the mercantilist and absolutist ideas of Bodin and Montchrétien, there is little evidence that these ministers sought to understand the mundane workings of accounting.44

Royal Accountability Due to the tumult of the Fronde during the ‹rst decade of his life, Louis XIV’s formal education was neglected.45 In 1650, Mazarin and Anne of Austria ‹nally found an odd set of tutors for the young king.46 His primary teacher was the skeptical philosopher François de La Mothe Le Vayer (1588–1672). La Mothe Le Vayer was an heir to Montaigne and Pierre Charron—indeed, he owned a part of Montaigne’s library. By the 1630s, he had already written essays on skepticism and pyrrhonism, questioning the Cartesian system and the very possibility of knowledge itself.47 Along with Naudé, he was a pioneer of the radical skepticism that would open the doors for ‹gures like Spinoza.48 He would go on to write The Lack of Certitude There is in Historical Works (1668), and later dialogues on skepticism. From a parliamentary family, Le Vayer created for Louis a series of pedagogical works concerning sciences necessary for statecraft: Géographie, Rhétorique, Morale, Economique, Politique, Logique, and Physique du prince (1651–58). These royal manuals of pedagogy stand out as examples of the sort of late humanism of libertines like Gabriel Naudé. They are historical and ethical, with ample references to classical sources, yet are dry and offer little practical advice. His essays on ‹nance and economy discuss the historical and ethical role of the prince in taxing fairly. Considering the rise not only of political economy but also of Cartesianism, it is remarkable that Louis received formal training neither in ‹nance nor in mathematics. His other tutor was the churchman Hardouin de Péré‹xe, the abbé of Beaumont, who taught the young king statecraft some Latin and Italian. In his catechisms and Institutio principis ad Ludovicum XIV (Paris: A. Vitré, 1647), Péré‹xe set out the pious Latin maxims that Louis would

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copy by hand in a notebook now at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.49 In the ‹rst lines, Louis exhorted that “the ‹rst duty of a Christian prince is to serve God,” and “I wish to render honor to priests.” Whatever the libertine La Mothe Le Vayer thought of this, he did not say. Although he never played a political role, Le Vayer continued publishing skeptical works and was given a good pension by Louis. Along with a thin bookish education and the pious exercises of his religious preceptors, Louis learned Spanish piety, etiquette, and elaborate Spanish court ceremonial from his mother, Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip III and granddaughter of Philip II of Spain. Added to this, Cardinal Mazarin gave his young godson Louis another sort of education. He allowed him to sit in on council meetings, including those of ‹nance.50 Louis learned the workings of the state and its multifarious institutions. To sit in council was to receive reports, discuss war and taxation, and to learn how to digest the paperwork that ›owed to the summit of the state.51 The cardinal would test the young king, asking him to make decisions based on the reports received in council.52 While his humanist education was poor, his formation as a prince was extensive. Louis thus learned the métier of being king, and he gained a taste for it. When Louis took power in 1661, he had been well trained by Mazarin in ruling by a state council of ministers. There is ample evidence in the Instructions that Louis had read Machiavelli and Justus Lipsius. He had learned the basic lessons of reason of state.53 At the same time, he knew his own de‹ciencies in his knowledge of the workings of the government and its most detailed aspect: its ‹nancial apparatus. Like his pupil, Mazarin had no formal training in accounting. This is why he hired Colbert as his personal accountant. It was as a young man that Louis met Colbert, his stepfather’s accountant. On his deathbed, Mazarin not only left Louis as his legacy most of the thirty million pounds Colbert helped him acquire; he also quite literally left him Colbert.54 In his will, of which Colbert and Fouquet were executors, Mazarin simply states, “I ask the king to hire him [Colbert], for he is trustworthy.”55 In the Instructions of 1665, Louis XIV boasted to his heir that successful kingship lay in being informed of everything, listening to the lowliest of my subjects, always knowing the number and character of my troops and the condition of my strongholds, constantly issuing orders for all their needs, dealing directly with foreign envoys, receiving and reading dispatches, drafting

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some of the replies personally and giving the substance of the others to my secretaries, regulating the collections and the expenditures of my state, having those whom I place in important positions report directly to me, maintaining greater secrecy in my affairs than any of my predecessors, distributing graces as I choose, and keeping my servants, unless I am mistaken—although showered with graces for themselves and their families—in modesty far removed from the loftiness and from the power of prime ministers.56

Although Louis clearly set out the problem of managing his large-scale administrative state, the Instructions hardly give the technical knowledge needed to manage the state administration. Indeed, Louis’s own early education did not prepare him to take on this new government. How then did Louis conceive of and manage a large-scale administrative state? Louis exhorted his son never to trust a prime minister, except in questions of ‹nance, where kings need experts. “I took the precaution of assigning Colbert . . . with the title of Intendant, a man in whom I had the highest con‹dence, because I knew that he was very dedicated, intelligent, and honest; and I have entrusted him then with keeping the register of funds that I have described to you.” Along with sections of the Instructions for the Dauphin, Colbert also wrote manuscript instructions for Louis’s heir that contain information pertaining to ‹nances.57 In them, he discusses the need to master ‹nance through the handling of account books and the “disposition of registers.”58 Colbert recommended to the young prince that he “note by hand all the accounts in the state ‹nancial registers of funds at the beginning of each year, and also the registry of spending from the past year. He should go over and sign with his hand all the roles of Savings, all the accounting reports, and all the status claims that have been veri‹ed.”59 He should never stop doing this work, for it is so delicate, warns Colbert, that it can be left to no other. In short, Colbert felt it necessary that, to be king, the young prince learn the basics of accounting and inventory management. What Colbert wrote to the Dauphin in 1665, he had already taught Louis in 1661. The “registers” mentioned by both Louis and Colbert were not just traditional account books. Instead, they represented an extraordinary step in the counsel of kings. If Louis claimed that he knew all things about his kingdom at all times—accounts, troop numbers, diplomatic information—it was because twice a day for more than two hours, he went over dispatches and reports.60 His chief reporter was Colbert,

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who presented his summaries to the king more than twice a week, but most importantly, on Friday, when he presented an overview of all the information he had received.61 From their correspondence, it is clear that Louis asked Colbert not only to take care of his personal and extraordinary business; he also asked Colbert speci‹c questions about how the state worked. It was staggeringly arcane—a feudal web of laws and taxes. Colbert was the master of the internal report, of the dossier. Colbert’s henchmen set about writing explanations of how the state worked: the history of law, tax relations with the church, and how Louis could gain power over the parlements.62 At Louis’s request, in 1666, Colbert wrote a historical and legal history of how the crown ‹nanced and out‹tted its household troops. Colbert quoted not only ancient texts in this historical report, but also legal documents from the time of François I and Henry IV.63 The same is the case in his “Mémoire sur le règlement des taxes pour la décharge de la Chambre de Justice” (1661–62).64 Finance and taxes were historical and legal questions that were illuminated not only by current data, but also by historical research into the archives of the kingdom. In 1663, Colbert began writing a history of royal ‹nance entitled “Mémoires sur les affaires de ‹nances de France pour servir à l’histoire.”65 There is only one copy of this text, written in Colbert’s hand. Un‹nished, it is Colbert’s longest and most detailed single work, and it functioned at several levels.66 It was meant to inform Louis of ‹nancial precedent of past kings. Its detail of royal accounts suggests it was meant for Louis alone. A biased pedagogical text, it both explains to the king how to manage his ‹nances, and celebrates royal achievement, opposing it to the crimes of Fouquet, while, with studied understatement, pointing out the modest, hard work of Colbert himself. The text explains the functions of the intendants; how much kings such as Henry IV taxed; and how much revenue they earned.67 Colbert begins his essay by noting that royal ‹nances had constantly been mismanaged, to the point where past kings were only con‹rming ‹nancial policy that had been done by their ministers.68 He went over past errors and “pernicious maxims” that had driven royal ‹nances into bankruptcy.69 He also discusses institutional history, such as the role of Parlement, the indendants, and the Chambre de Justice.70 Colbert’s system of intendants and agents permitted him to write this history. He had at his disposal up-to-date ‹gures on royal ‹nances, taxes, manufacturing, and seaborne trade.71 Thus Colbert could inform the king while also furthering his own interests. He produced ‹gures from royal accounts dur-

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ing the time of Fouquet to illustrate the fallen minister’s errors and “dissipation.”72 He discussed the methods of handling ‹nance, explaining to the king the best way to manage his accounts through a Council of Finances, with Colbert at its head.73 Colbert’s history of royal ‹nance exposes the in›uence of the culture of accounting and how Colbert presented and taught it to Louis, the ‹rst French king to learn the mechanics of accounting. In a long passage that comes from Pacioli, the minister describes the practices of the accountant king he has trained: Then, His Majesty will have delivered the reports of the state of ‹nances, including the [tax] farms as well as the general receipts, in which there will be found an in‹nity of considerable examples that the corruption of past centuries has established, and which consumed a great part of the most evident revenues of the king. Beginning with the ‹rst council, His Majesty had ordered that an exact register be kept of the entire receipts of expenditure of the State for each year; and as this had not been done by the preceding administration, and as those books that had been kept before were extremely confused, it was impossible to keep them in a way that was clear and intelligible. But as His Majesty had them [the registers] presented to him every eight days, and as he gave his orders to reform them so that he could perceive any error they contained, he managed, in ‹ve or six months time, to make them so clear and so sure as to what was put in them, that this method covered any possibility of theft or dissipation, not only during his reign, but as long as these orders will be given. The ‹rst [of these registers] is called the Journal, in which are written all the orders that are signed day by day, and, in the margin, the funds from which they have been allocated. The ‹rst council after the end of the month, His Majesty has this register brought to him, and has all the recent expenditures of which it contains records, and has the accounting of funds done in his presence and signed with his hand. The second is the Register of funds, in which is recorded, by separate chapters, all the funds, that is to say all the receipts of the State, which are written on the back (verso) of the page; and on the front (recto) the entire con‹rmation, which is to say the payments made to the Savings fund or the expenditures that are allocated from these funds. And, from time to time, at the opening of this register, His Majesty veri‹es the funds and con‹rmation, which he calculates and signs with his own hand. The third is the Register of expenditures, in which is recorded all

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the expenditures of the State; and in the margins, are the funds from which they have been allocated. And from time to time, at the opening of this register, His Majesty veri‹es the nature of expenditures, such as extraordinary ones made for war, royal houses (buildings and others), sees all the funds from which they have been taken, and has them calculated in his presence, and signs them with his hand. These three registers each contain that which the others contain, and can be easily veri‹ed one by the other. In the Journal that contains expenditures, the allocation is in the margins and [also] the page where the article of expenditure and the allocation have been written in the two registers of funds and expenditures, which are classi‹ed. The same thing [happens] in the Register of funds, that is to say the record of expenditures that have been allocated and that have the reference number of the register-journal and [of the register] the expenditures which have been mentioned. The same [is true] for the Register of expenditures; so that all three of these registers serve to control each other and so that there can be no fault in one that cannot be justi‹ed by another. By this clear and easy method, His Majesty has placed in himself all his own security, and has reduced his reliance on those who have the honor to serve him in this function.74

There is evidence that Louis took a strong interest in state accounts at the instigation of his accountant minister. In 1661, Louis wrote to his mother, “I have already begun to taste the pleasures to be found in working on ‹nances myself, having, in the little attention I have given it, noted important matters that I could hardly make out at all, but no one should doubt that I will continue.”75 Louis and Colbert corresponded constantly on questions of ‹nance, with Colbert sending the king requests to be authorized.76 Colbert would leave half the page of his letters to the king empty so that he could respond on them. Louis remained interested in ‹nancial minutiae into the 1670s, such as when he wrote in response to a letter from Colbert complimenting the king on forcing the provinces to pay extraordinary taxes, “It is very agreeable to hear you speak of my ‹nances in the way you do.”77 Colbert and Louis discussed ‹gures and speci‹cs. Louis veri‹ed and signed, but it is clear that in the end, he deferred to Colbert. In matters of ‹nance, Louis mostly responded to Colbert in the margins of his letters, “It is for you to judge what is best.”78 Though at times Louis gave direct orders, his

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correspondence with Colbert shows that he mostly left the details of ‹nance to his minister.79 In spite of the fact that true double-entry bookkeeping was not done at an of‹cial level, the veri‹cations of the “États de la Dépense et Recette du Trésor” (1662–81) show that a sophisticated form of state accounting emerged during the ministry of Colbert. Louis, Colbert, and other ministers of the Council of Finances—Séguier, Villeroy, D’Aligre, and de Sève—signed off on the tallied account books. If these ‹nal accounts were tallied in the presence of the king and his council, the more complex preliminary bookkeeping and veri‹cation was clearly done by Colbert for Louis. In any case, Colbert set up the books so that they would be easy to verify. These account books thus represent an ideal of kingly ‹nancial information handling that Colbert used not only to sell his talents, but also to exhort Louis to become a roi comptable, which, to a certain extent, Louis did.

The Price of Monarchy: Louis XIV’s Golden Notebooks Colbert’s balancing act of reforming administration, informing himself and the king while also cementing his own power, was based on his giving the king the sense, real or not, that Colbert was helping him master the dossiers of state. Colbert had to collect information, but he then had to ‹nd a way to present it to the king. If Colbert kept state account books and one hundred, thematic administrative scrapbook folios, it was not simply to master information, but also to show to Louis that he could do his job of recording data, tallying it, and making ‹nal reports.80 Louis sometimes wanted to see Colbert’s various compendia, but more often, he wanted the ‹nal report. As a good accountant, Colbert kept vast inventories, scrapbooks, journals, and ledgers for each tax farmer, region, different tax, and different royal expenditure. He maintained ledgers of state accounts, but he did not simply have Louis verify them. What Colbert does not mention in his history of ‹nance is that he also created a new pedagogical and practical tool never before used in the history of royal counsel. Colbert created for Louis pocket notebooks, which contained state ledgers and explanations of how accounts worked.81 Colbert made and kept the accounts and he presented them to Louis in an easy-to-use, pocket form. These notebooks are the most dramatic manifestation of how Colbert’s handling of information turned into reports and pedagogical, administrative tools for Louis XIV.

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The Bibliothèque Nationale has thirty notebooks under the headings “Carnets de Louis XIV.”82 During or after each ‹scal year, one or two were made for Louis, summing up various accounts and giving the ‹nal budget tally for the year. They are bound in red maroquin, with gold titles, and held closed by two gold pop clasps. They measure one hundred by seventy ‹ve millimeters (four by three inches), and were made to be kept in Louis’s pocket for easy reference. In the ‹rst edition from 1661 the manuscript writing is standard, on paper. However, it is clear that these simple ledgers were distasteful to Louis’s sense of personal grandeur. If Louis were going to carry account ledgers on him, he was going to do so in a manner be‹tting the Sun King. Colbert appears to have sought the aid of Nicolas Jarry and his workshop in creating new vellum notebooks with illuminations (see ‹gs. 5 and 6). Starting in 1669, the notebooks contain richly adorned illuminated frontispieces. One 1670 notebook has ›eur-de-lys on the spine of the binding. By the late 1670s, even after Jarry’s death in 1674, the notebooks are illuminated, and even simple accounts are written out in gold and colored paint and decorated with ›owers reminiscent of Jarry’s 1641 masterpiece, the Guirlande de Julie. Thus Colbert created ledgers ‹t for the Sun King, themselves treasures, which Louis kept in his pocket and probably consulted during meetings with counselors and secretaries, as well as while going through state dispatches and intendant reports. It was through Colbert’s “abridgements” of ‹nance and reports on state matters that Louis had found his method of delegating the management of government and state information. Like his predecessors, Colbert kept account books, summaries from the Chambre des Comptes, comprising revenue and expenditure books as well as inventory registers of the king’s wealth and holdings.83 He also kept scrapbook-style books like those described by Pacioli. Colbert’s folio scrapbook cataloged under the title “Recueil de Finance de Colbert” is ‹lled with brouillons, or scraps of various information: revenues, receipts, texts of feudal tax law, the revenue of overseas companies, loan and expenditure receipts, all apparently thrown together in real time.84 As described by Lister, most of the major account books were located in the same library complex as Colbert’s more formal collections. Colbert’s information collection played directly into his creation of account books for the king. Only Colbert’s collection was larger and more complex, as were his ‹nancial and industrial enterprises. Bigger business and bigger government meant more money, thus more information. The notebooks were called different names, though they all meant

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the same thing: Abrégés, or “Agendas de Finance,” as Colbert called them, or “registers,” to use Louis’s term. They only listed expenditures and earnings, and they also detailed and compared the income from each tax-farmer.85 They gave ‹nal single-entry tallies of spending as compared with cash on hand.86 They gave comparisons, such as tax-farmer income between 1661 and 1665, so Louis could see change over time. For example, the Abrégé of 1680 compares revenue between 1661 and 1680.87 They would list all the revenue, and all the names of the local accountants who produced accounts in a given provincial capital or pays d’état. Some of the agendas contain inventories of purchases, such as the “State of Acquisitions” from the Abrégé of 1671 (fol. 26r.). Many of the data tables of Pacioli’s accounting schemas formed the basis of Colbert’s pocket reference books. While humanist kings made commonplace books of Tacitist and Livian maxims in their pockets, Louis kept in his pocket Colbert’s ledgers with their golden, illuminated calligraphy. What is signi‹cant here to the history of knowledge and royal pedagogy is that the notebook and archiving culture of accounting moved ever closer to the central practices of royal statecraft. Louis mixed his traditional, late humanist education with the practical and legal knowledge that Colbert and his house scholars, intendants, and agents provided him. Humanist education was clearly useful, but it was not enough to run a state effectively. Diderot was not yet born. However, it was here, in the administrative project of Louis XIV and Jean-Baptiste Colbert that emerged the idea that practical knowledge from the shop-room ›oor, and ‹nancial expertise, were as useful as classical learning, and that, indeed, they could be used together.

chapte r 5

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cholars of the early modern state such as Ernest Lavisse and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie have long painted Colbert as the inventor of a modern type of government in which one minister centrally managed various branches of government.1 Colbert could order that a massive factory be built in a swamp, and it happened. He could micromanage religious life in Canada and sponsor scienti‹c projects in Paris, while overseeing garden sculpture at Versailles. To do this, Colbert needed to be well informed. He thus worked to create a corps of bureaucratic informers: the state intendants. To rein in the power of the parlements and reform the legal system, Colbert began bolstering the of‹ce of the intendant, an of‹ce born from ancient feudal ‹nancial administration. The intendants were offspring of feudal ‹nancial and legal administration, as well as merchant traditions. They applied royal law, managed the ‹nancing of troops, and regulated taxes. They traveled, took notes, kept account books, and sent reports back to the central of‹ce. In the middle ages, centralizing monarchs such as Philippe-Auguste (1165–1233) continued the administrative traditions of the English in establishing inventories through inquisitiones, or enquêtes, which sought, much like the Doomsday Book, to register feudal and ecclesiastical rights and property, while establishing royal authority and regulating abuses.2 In the sixteenth century, the French parlements provided lawyers, 67

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maîtres des requêtes, from the Cour des Aides, part of the provincial administration of the royal treasury, who would receive commissions as inspectors to oversee taxation, such as the implementation of the taille, and to pay troops and oversee military funding.3 In essence, they were venal missi domini, or traveling royal representatives, who purchased their position and whose principal function was to oversee taxes and to stamp out abuses. As such, they were despised by local powers. Richelieu expanded the function of the intendants, ‹rst to be permanent state representatives, but also to evolve from inspectors to statistic gatherers and record keepers. In 1634, he issued the reforms of Ef‹at, which established the permanent role of intendants to write enquêtes. These questionnaires were in the same administrative spirit as Philip II’s relaciones topográ‹cas of the mid-1500s. Intendants wrote reports on population size; architectural, industrial, and natural resources; political and religious institutions; and the number and status of their of‹cers.4 The intendants also acted as representatives of royal justice and as such came into con›ict with the jurisdiction of the Parisian and provincial parlements. During the Fronde, with the power of the crown weakened, the Parlement of Paris looked to regain its prerogatives and abolished the of‹ce of intendant on July 4, 1648.5 With the return of Mazarin and his assistant Colbert in 1653, the intendancy was effectively reestablished, giving the maîtres des requêtes— state tax lawyers—new of‹ces of intendancy to reestablish royal power and crush the Frondeurs.6 As Colbert’s control over the ‹nancial administration grew, the intendants came under his jurisdiction. Indeed, they would quickly become not only his principal administrative tool, but also an essential element in his attempts to create a state information system.7 Although the intendants were not formal or recognized scholars, Colbert intended them to be information masters in their own right. Daniel Dessert has meticulously traced what he calls “the Colbert lobby,” a web of familial, social, and professional connections that allowed Colbert to rise to power, and to hold it.8 Colbert maintained an extensive network of ‹nanciers and ‹nancial agents who informed him, helped him in business ventures, and helped him undermine enemies such as Fouquet. As Colbert’s power grew, he assigned his loyal friends and contacts to major posts in justice, tax collecting, and administration. Indicative of this pattern is his choice of intendants, who often came from his family, or his old network of associates.9 These trained, loyal representatives formed a corps of information collectors and informants answerable to Colbert. In terms of major ques-

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tions, such as taxation, the legal reforms took power away from the Parlement and placed it with the intendants. They worked to apply his administrative codes, which centralized legal practice and stamped out costly local corruption. Colbert’s reforms also required new of‹cial paperwork, much of it written or managed by intendants. Local of‹cials were to send registers of baptisms, marriages, and deaths to the censustaking intendants, much of it in duplicate.10 Many of these reforms rendered the royal legal process more secretive.11 In September 1663, Colbert wrote the “Instruction pour les maîtres des requêtes, commissaires départis dans les provinces,” a text that was in fact a formulary in which he outlined the information that commissaries, maîtres des requêtes, and intentants would have to collect for the great enquête begun the following year.12 They would ‹rst have to collect maps and information about their various regions.13 They were then to take notes, collect documents, and write reports on four main topics of ecclesiastical, military, legal, and ‹nancial government. They had to research bishops’ rights and bene‹ces; military government, the state and ‹nancing of troops; justice and local law enforcement; ‹nances, including detailed reports on taxes such as the taille and gabelle; and royal revenue and debts owed to the crown in general. They wrote reports on crown lands and the general geographical and natural state and wealth of each province, and on commerce and manufacturing; the state of the navy, army, roads, canals, forage areas; and ‹nally, on counterfeit money. These statistical reports and geographical studies predated William Petty’s great project of Political Arithmetic (1690). Colbert assigned the intendants to reform the nobility by con‹rming their titles and regulating their activities and abuses. This required collecting all paperwork having to do with their feudal rights and genealogical claims. Colbert wrote regular memos to the commissaries and intendants, and to each, he wrote particular orders concerning how they were to regulate law, taxes, industry, and culture.14 They were also ordered to regulate and control the parlements. Colbert noted that the king himself asked that they “carefully examine” each sovereign company, “in general and in detail, and those who compose them.”15

From Scholar and Scientist to State Informer Colbert and his intendants relied on humanist traditions that mixed natural observation and state management, thus blurring the lines between scholarship and state expertise. One of the most potent tools of learning

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across the professional and ideological spectrum of early modern Europe was the mix of travel, observation, and description. Indeed, this tripartite practice, which Brian Ogilvie calls “the science of describing,” would form one of the central elements of natural learning and serve as the foundation of modern science.16 Colbert would turn the cultures of traveling and describing into an arm of informing and state intelligence collection that would be the driving force of his method of government. From the time of the Italian Renaissance in the 1400s, and with the ‹rst discoveries in the New World in 1492, European scholars, diplomats, explorers, and missionaries had taken basic statistics and written natural and national descriptions. Situated between traditions of learning and politics, the art of writing travel descriptions was central to the development of early humanism and the Republic of Letters.17 Diplomats wrote empirical observations of the states they visited, and collected information and intelligence. Inspired by the Venetian diplomatic relazioni, or relations, ambassadors would describe the political life of the courts they visited, as well as military, economic, and geographical situations.18 Jesuits were known for writing descriptions of their trips—of people, plants, places, buildings, and government.19 Artists began painting not just allegories but also realistic studies of nature and life.20 Building on the technical literature and travel reporting of the Middle Ages, humanist scholars developed the ars apodemica (the art of knowledgeable travel), and the prudentia peregrinandi (the prudent voyage) from the peregrinatio academica. What had begun as tours of the visiting various universities turned into a formal method of learning from travel and observation.21 Encyclopedic scholars like the Swiss Theodore Zwinger (1533–88) and Hugo Blotius (1575–1608), a Dutchman living in Vienna, recommended travel as a form of learning for personal and religious development. Indeed, the ideal traveler was to keep several notebooks: one to write everything notable as the traveler saw it and another to organize these notes into useful commonplaces or facts.22 In his method of travel, the Methodus apodemica in eorum gratiam qui cum fructu in quocunque tandem vitae genere peregrinari (1577), Zwinger mixed moral development with geographical description, providing information on geography, history, antiquarian knowledge, and the comparative history and description of great cities.23 Others, such as Sebastian Münster, mixed geography with proto-political economy and ethnography and developed a method for writing local or national surveys in his ongoing work, the Cosmographia (1544). Learned travelers, such as Montaigne, now wrote journals of

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their travels. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, travel literature became ever more technical. In his Six Books of the Republic (1576), the great humanist and legal polymath Jean Bodin (1530–96) discussed political and legal theory alongside geographic, climatic, natural, statistical, and monetary information.24 Making reference to ancient geography and medical scholarship, Bodin considered it necessary for rulers to make surveys of their peoples as well as their natural and industrial wealth.25 The growing interest in geography, politics, and political economy, as well as in the natural sciences, produced the genre of chorography. It was a genre, writes Barbara Shapiro, that combined history, geography, topography, natural history, antiquities, and genealogy with socioeconomic, political, and cultural description of a particular region. Typically, it followed a preexisting pattern of topics that included soil, climate, agricultural products, manufactures, rarities, monuments, architecture, and remains of antiquity and thus tended to focus on “things” available to the eye both of human and natural origin.26

Chorographs proliferated in the seventeenth century. General works, such as Pierre d’Avity’s Les estats, empires, et principautéz du monde (1614), discussed geography, ethnography, and economic information. In the realm of education, there was an explosion of geographical manuals distributed by the Jesuits.27 Technical and naturalist travel logs focused on local and foreign description and data collection. Universities, libraries, and Kunstkammern, or cabinets of wonders, became sites of recording and collecting information and objects—often exotic or antique—from travel. Great kings such as Philip II of Spain, the Holy Roman emperors in Prague and Vienna, and merchants such as the Fuggers, kept humanist staff, libraries, gardens, and Kunstkammern as sites of prestige, to illustrate their mastery over the historical, religious, and natural world.28 Aside from the Jesuits, ambassadorial corps, and spies, however, no state had ever formed a centralized, internal corps of professional state observers whose writings would have concrete results.29

Mapping Power To create a functional state information system, Colbert could not rely on outside informants. It was necessary to build an internal cadre of

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agents whose job was to collect information related to government and report it only to him. Rather than rely on external informers, he ordered intendants, inspectors, and geographers to collect systematically natural, economic, and cultural data while traveling through their provinces. Indeed, it became a primary element of their of‹cial functions. Scholars worked for Colbert, who integrated them into his administration. To his cartographer, the chevalier de Pène, Colbert wrote, After having made observations of the entire length of the Seine River up to Le Havre, His Majesty wants him to continue the same reconnaissance until Tréport, his intention being to have, from la Hogue to Tréport, very exact maps of all the sinuosity of the banks and all the openings of rivers, with precise remarks and measurements of all the places, without telling anyone of the ‹ndings; of all the protected bays, high- and low-water marks of the tide, dunes, cliffs, estuary openings, and inlets, and all the possible places where enemies might be able to attack if they are strong enough to make a landing; with speci‹c designs of each place where they would be able to it, and plans and copies of all the works that could be made [concerning them].30

Colbert micromanaged the work of cartographers; integrating it into the larger project of the intendants was to transform the state into a giant collector of economic, historical, legal, natural, political, and religious data. Rather than simply training bureaucrats, or simply collecting data, Colbert was integrating different traditions of learning into the internal system of the state apparatus. The originality of Colbert’s reestablishment of the of‹ces of intendancy was that he insisted that they use many of the same empirical practices as scholars. He transformed their function from provincial taxcollectors, into professional observers, statistic-takers, and, as Anette Smedley-Weill calls them, “informers.”31 The intendants were trained observers whom Colbert told to take notes only on what they had seen with their own eyes, and not rely on the accounts of others.32 Philip II of Spain sent his formularies, the relaciones, to untrained local of‹cials. They thus often went unanswered, or were unclear. Even if his provincial administrators, the Corregidores, collected information for the relaciones, they were not trained speci‹cally to be observers and enforcers of centralized royal power.33 Colbert’s innovation was to expand the duties of the intendants, making them primary agents and managers in his state data-gathering project, giving them many functions of learned and curious merchants and scholars.

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As it was for Philip II, the result of Colbert’s program of professional observers and report-writers was a massive bank of information that the crown could use not only for reform and state-building, but also for strengthening its own power in the long struggle against the independent power of traditional nobles and the parlements. With Colbert’s project of intendants’ enquêtes and reports, his ministry became a secret central of‹ce for collecting such information at the summit of the French state. The intendants also collected legal, historical, and economic information, which had once been the purview of the parlements, and as we have seen, was used to demand extraordinary taxation and verify rights.34 Colbert received detailed information on population numbers; the extent of holdings of church lands, as well as church buildings and schools; militias, troop numbers, and their cost; lists of local seigneurial rights, titles, courts, and feudal seats of justice. Finally, he received massive lists of crown landholdings, debts, industries, companies, the production numbers for speci‹c mills, and the enormous amount of information concerning various taxes. Detail even extended to counting the number of cows in a given locale, or the types and number of fruits and trees.35 From his maritime intendants, Colbert de Terron and Arnoul, as well as resident informants such as Courtin in Stolkholm, he received merchandise lists, port records, and even shipping schedules.36 One of Colbert’s main interests was the port of Rochefort.37 It was his pet project at the center of building the royal navy and colonies. Rochefort was a massive information undertaking to which he assigned his trusted cousin, the intendant Colbert de Terron. Rochefort was a giant industrial encyclopedia where all the information was recorded on how to build and manage a fort and industrial city. This included detailed building plans and managerial instructions for various factories, shipyards, housing, a chateau, and formal gardens.38 A map from 1688 shows an entire planned grid city within walls, its massive factories spanning miles down the Charente River.39 While it is arguable whether the industrial project to compete with the Dutch and English navies embodied by Rochefort was successful or not, the scale of Colbert’s project is impressive even today. As intendant, Terron’s job was daunting. First, he had to master all state regulations and administrative laws. Then he had to organize all the paperwork for industrial production—giant inventories, from factories and shipbuilding, to the paperwork for the maintenance of sailing ships. A steady stream of dispatches went to Colbert.40 Agents would collect

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records from churches, industries, local record-keepers, and ships’ logs. Many of these reports accompanied ships and merchandise back and forth between port depots, such as Rochefort. At this point, one of Colbert’s close agents would intervene and write a summary report of information, and collate it with records by the scribes of the port. This report would then be sent to Colbert, who would often rewrite it, send it back, or integrate it into a bigger ‹le or report that he would use, whittle down into an account or an inventory, or perhaps eventually show the king. Finally, all reports were ‹led with a call number system. Those that he thought he would use regularly appear to have been placed in his personal policy archive, as I shall show in chapter 7. As with all his administrative correspondence, Colbert, like the king, would respond in the margins of dispatches with reactions, or simply “bon.” In the summer of 1671, he sent out form letters to the intendants of the Royal Marine ports of Rochefort, Toulon, and Brest, and to his brother, Colbert de Croissy, now ambassador in London. He asked all to inspect boats—French and English—to understand construction techniques, so that the king could understand the costs of shipbuilding. In order to give him this information, it is necessary to examine how much wood enters into the construction of ships of each class, formulate the price according to that of the ordinary cost, do the same with iron and all the materials that go into the construction; examine ‹nally the number of days of all the workers and their price; and ‹nally make the calculation from all this as to what is the cost of the construction of the hull of the ship. Then do the same with all the rigging, apparatuses, masts, ornaments, artillery and generally of all that which makes up a ship and places it in a state of readiness for the sea.41

In his “Mémoire sur le règlement à faire pour la police générale des arsenaux de marine,” from October 1670, Colbert outlined not only all the aspects of industrial production and knowledge necessary for a port, but also the necessary information collection and management.42 He lists all the aspects that will have to be measured and recorded: merchandise, wood, arms, ammunition, magazines, constructions, all industry involved in making the port, and then the products made by the port, such as iron, rope, sales, anchors, cannon, and so forth. Beyond simple inspections, Colbert established a system of information collection and record-keeping within his ports and industrial projects. In particular, naval intendants such as de Terron and Arnoul employed large num-

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bers—often twenty per port—of “magazine writers,” or scribes of naval inventory. Here was Colbert’s system in action. The intendants managed naval ports through internal foremen of‹cers, and masters of inventory, the garde-magazin, or the guardian of the magazine. The job of the garde-magazin was to take inventories of all the magazines of the port. The 1670 of‹cial papers of commission of the sieur Tanguy Ellez, a garde-magasin, describe him as being responsible for knowing everything in the port and managing the information gathering and archiving of the port.43 To ful‹ll his functions, the guardian had an internal system of scribes: The garde-magasin is assigned the care of all the general and particular magazines, and to have writers [écrivains] under him who are charged by him [to keep records of] all the particular magazines of each vessel, as well as the powder magazines, those of rope, the forges, the sails, the barrels and generally all that he cannot do himself. And the writers, who will be necessary to him for all these functions, must keep books that relate to his large daybook kept in double-entry.44

Thus the “writers,” or écrivains, were scribes, accountants, and inspectors of the magazines of the port.45 They kept “registers” of all the merchandise necessary to construct a boat, as well as the “roles,” or books of employees, their place in factories, their functions, production, and wages.46 There were around twenty “writers” in a port, and eight ready to work on board ships.47 The chain of information led to ships, where roles of sailors were kept in books, and an inventory of the ship’s goods was kept by the ship’s commissary, who was responsible for reviewing and recording inventory.48 As de Terron reported to Colbert, these record keepers were assigned to ships to manage them as small companies: The establishment of writers strongly contributes to keeping the captains in order, and to ensure the outcomes of their intentions, you must please on all occasions that present themselves, let the captains know that the establishment of the writers is agreeable to the King and that His Majesty wants them to be able to carry out their duties to their full extent, and with complete liberty.49

Thus Colbert oversaw the complete chain of information, from his own long lists of rules and guidebooks and technical plans, to the direction of

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the intendants, inventory collectors, scribes, accountants, mapmakers, and archivists.50 This then led to Colbert’s virtual management of sites such as Rochefort through correspondence with his intendant, who would summarize and make packets of all the internal paperwork of the port in regular dispatches that took three days to reach Paris, Saint-Germain, or Versailles. They would then be annotated by Colbert, summarized or presented to the king, then be put into archival registers, or destroyed.51 Colbert’s information system was not simply about learning; it also was a powerful, concrete tool of industrial production and political power.

The Mastery of State Information: Techniques and Pitfalls The writing of massive enquêtes required numerous skills. Intendants would have to know geography, history, law, and the paperwork involved with the administration of royal authority and taxation, as well as ecclesiastical versus royal rights and the feudal labyrinth of genealogical archives. They were also supposed to verify old maps themselves. The information they sent back to Colbert would be shared with Sanson and Cassini, who were leading an innovative national mapmaking survey.52 The work of the intendants thus intertwined with the work of Colbert’s scienti‹c academy and archives. As surveyors of the kingdom, intendants were required to have a familiarity with industry, ‹nance, and trade and to work alongside Colbert’s industrial inspectors, who had many of the same functions.53 Colbert wrote to his agent, the in›uential Inspector General of Manufactures, Francesco (or François) Bellinzani, that during his visits to factories in Meaux and La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, he should “observe” if the company was useful, well run, and better than those in Flanders.54 Bellinzani would have to “verify” the number of different kinds of artisans, the number of male and female workers, and if the factories were following new state rules.55 Like a naturalist or explorer, Colbert uses the terms observe and examine. His agent would have to compare “intelligence” with local royal of‹cials to try to make these cloth factories work at a higher standard than Dutch competitors, as well as organize an entire distribution network.56 At the same time, this inspector would have to do other more sinister tasks for Colbert: he was asked to discreetly mark down the number of Protestants working in each factory: “Observe at the same time, secretly, if Catholics and Huguenots are allowed to work without differentiation in this factory.”57

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Colbert sent his questionnaires with trained observers and information collectors, such as Nicolas-Joseph Foucault, who had helped Colbert understand the arcane mechanics of state administration. In the case of Colbert’s brother, Charles Colbert de Croissy (1629–96), between 1653 and 1663, Colbert meticulously trained him to write enquêtes, and thus to prepare him for future state administration.58 Croissy was “Intendant en pays et armée de Provence et de Catalogne,” and “Conseiller au Parlement de Metz” in 1656. He would go on to have numerous hands-on administrative positions: commissary, maitre des requêtes, and intendant of provinces such Lorraine et Metz Touraine (1663), Anjou et Maine (1663), Amiens et Soissons, and Flanders. In 1668 he began his diplomatic work, which led to him becoming ambassador to Berlin, Rome, and London and ‹nally foreign minister following the disgrace of Pomponne in 1679. Following the outlines of Colbert’s “Instructions,” in 1665 Croissy wrote one of many enquêtes, or mémoires, about Bretagne. In it he described geography, the state of ecclesiastical power, and the state of the nobility, and he was to “stop at all important houses in the province,” examining “justice, ‹nances, forti‹cations, and forests.”59 Even more detailed were his mémoires on Alsace Lorraine, which he compiled with the help of assistants.60 Colbert trained his family for high state of‹ce through travel and practice in collecting information and writing state reports and formularies. The intendants were supposed to be expert in triaging information. This way, Colbert helped the master of Versailles avoid Philip II’s information overload. Intendants were not supposed to make important decisions themselves, but rather to decide what was important and inform Colbert and Louis.61 Colbert could not personally handle all the raw materials they collected to do their research. He ordered the intendants to summarize and to guarantee the quality and regularity of the information ›owing toward the center. When verifying noble rights in local charterhouses, parlements, and treasuries, intendants were to go over all the legal historical documents and make a manageable packet out of them, which was to be sent back to Colbert. The enquêtes and other of‹cial correspondence had to be well written, for not only did Colbert need to go through them quickly and easily, he sometimes showed them to Louis XIV, who would respond himself, or more often through Colbert.62 Although Louis would insist on seeing reports himself, intendants were the ones who collected what information they could, and Colbert rewrote, polished, and summarized the reports before sending them to the king.63

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Even Colbert’s closest friends and most skilled agents were not exempt from his stinging critiques, for indeed, Colbert had to answer for the quality of their work to Louis. He constantly demanded that his cousin, Charles Colbert de Terron (1618–84), send him reports more quickly.64 And he berated him for sending faulty merchandise account calculations, which he himself had to verify.65 Colbert admitted that this failure by a member of his own family had “touched” him in the strongest possible way. “Think of your part in all this, as I think of my own,” he admonished de Terron.66 He passed on Louis’s criticisms of an enquête written by the ever loyal Foucault in 1682: I have communicated to the King the memoir you sent me concerning the tour of your administrative county; but as you do not describe it electoral borough by electoral borough, it is in fact a generalized mémoire. His Majesty is not satis‹ed, his intention being that you take your time to visit each borough of your county, and that you explain to him in detail the state in which you ‹nd it according to the points contained in my dispatches.67

Colbert’s orders were curt: ‹nish all your accounting, ‹nish the maps, and “take care that it is [all] very exact.”68 Colbert told Foucault that he would write him back in detail when he received a proper enquête. Louis’s dissatisfaction did not mean that Foucault lost his job or fell out of favor; he would go on to have a long and successful career in royal service. Louis and Colbert coldly and simply tried to control the quality of the information they received. To the inspector Moulinet, Colbert dryly complained, “You must make sure to write in large letters, or to have your dispatches transcribed, because I am having a lot of trouble reading them.”69 Colbert chafed at bad paperwork and did not hesitate to reprimand work he saw as shoddy. Thus, when masses of disorganized, unreadable documents or reports landed on his desk, he was furious. It should be noted that Colbert’s closest collaborators, Foucault and Baluze, had remarkably clear handwriting, while Colbert himself scrawled his orders in illegible shorthand. There were more pitfalls. Colbert’s system of professional informers often foundered on the mediocrity of his agents, many drafted through loyal family networks and nepotism. A frequent victim of Colbert’s impatience was the incompetent son of his trusted intendant of galleys, Arnoul, known as “Arnoul ‹ls, Naval Intendant.”70 Colbert’s regular complaints to the young intendant reveal his desire for clarity, punctuality, and regular news reports. Colbert tells Arnoul that he is stunned that

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he has not reported basic news of ship and personnel arrivals, and that Arnoul must make weekly reports.71 Later that same summer, he berates Arnoul for exaggerations and expresses the king’s displeasure with his incompetence.72 “I always ‹nd, whenever I have time truly to examine what you do, that your lack of exactitude throws us into great embarrassment.”73 Like Louis, Colbert cross-checked reports to ‹nd errors. Colbert warned Arnoul that he was verifying his reports himself.74 Determining that he was sending bad information on a regular basis from Rochefort, Colbert reprimanded the young Arnoul: You yourself must see that rather than speaking clearly in your letters and telling the real state of things, you have caused the King to reprimand a high of‹cer who did not deserve it; and, as I have already given you an in‹nity of warnings on this subject, make sure that this is the last one; reread your dispatches and learn to explain yourself so clearly and so truthfully that I am not forced to search for the truth by comparing your letters to others.75

He not only insisted that intendants’ reports be detailed, but at the same time that they be summarized to save him time. He insisted to Rouillé, intendant at Aix, that his letters be broken down into three separate subject headings concerning each topic he was supposed to examine.76 Colbert complained to de Marle, the intendant of Riom, that he had not properly triaged his reports, and thus had caused unnecessary extra work: But I beg you, once and for all, to avoid forcing me to write you such long letters to teach you the full extent of your job and your responsibilities, because assuredly, the quantity of work that I have makes it really impossible for me to take the trouble to write such long letters.77

Colbert’s managerial style was concise and to the point. The intendants were powerful and often learned. However they worked not for the sake of learning, but in strict service to the state, and Colbert dealt with them as such. Thus Colbert tried to make the intendants’ reports easy to manage as they ›owed to his central archive and, in many cases, on to Louis XIV.

Learning, Paperwork, and the Culture of Political Power Intendants were not simply administrators. They often climbed the administrative ladder from the ranks of the merchant class, ‹rst training as

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tax lawyers, or maîtres de requêtes, becoming administrative masters of legal paperwork. They could work in tandem with, or in opposition to, local parlements. Some intendants, such as Foucault and the former maître des requêtes La Reynie, knew both canon and civil law and thus could deal with heresy, sedition, taxes, industry, and Parlement, all at the same time. Their collecting of information was meant to help assert royal authority over nobles and parlements. Indeed, the intendants were both informers and informants. Early in his ministry, Colbert gave the intendants a special task. They were to write a personality pro‹le of each member of Parlement in their respective circumscriptions. The political ambitions of absolutist policy are evident in these ‹les. The “Secret Notes on the Personnel of all the Parlements and Courts of the Kingdom” is essentially an archive of ‹les to be used to put pressure on magistrates.78 The most detailed and the most important of these ‹les is the dossier concerning the Parlement of Paris. Each parliamentarian was characterized in terms of personality, political docility, and fortune. Colbert was apparently trying to further his own ambitions, for the report on Lamoignon, his antagonist in the trial of Fouquet, was little more than a smear: LAMOIGNON , through the affectation of great morality and great in-

tegrity, hides a great ambition, and for it, he cultivates wide-ranging liaisons with all the dévots of all possible scheming parties and cabals.79

Clearly trying to weaken Lamoignon’s hand, the report claims that he is a part of the various intrigues that irritated Louis early in his reign. The report lists Lamoignon’s contacts and friends and notes that he has acquired his wealth honestly. In the case of de Longueil, the report notes that he is openly ambitious and has “little conscience,” likes to gamble and has friends who use him for their own interests.80 Here, in its early form, beyond traditional spy reports, could be perceived the germs of modern totalitarian government growing into webs of informants and ‹le-systems. Weaknesses were always noted, as they could be of use in pressuring or manipulating magistrates. DOUJAT , makes a good show on the outside, but is fundamentally nothing; weak, timid, he is a slave to the court and self-interested; Monsieur de Maupeou, his son-in-law, has great power over him; Herbinot, a high bailiff, governs him.81

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Those who were perceived to serve the interests of the crown, such as Catinat, were characterized as men “of honor, very capable, without ulterior motives, etc.”82 These sinister ‹les on every parliamentarian could lead to major policy. In his report, the intendant Pellot at Montauban considered the Cour des Aides there so corrupt and incompetent that Colbert purged it.83 Louis XIV never truly succeeded in wielding absolute power, relying on local elites in the provinces to wield power.84 Yet the king now had the political advantage and Colbert was using the intendants to press royal authority over the parlements. Although there were severe limits on the crown’s ability to collect taxes, the commissaries and intendants were often successful at demanding funds from localities. Colbert wrote to his brother, commissary in Brittany, to make the local estates, or representatives, accept the “impositions” that the crown was demanding and pay their taxes.85 Colbert later told his brother that the king was “surprised” that the estates had agreed to give the king a “free gift,” but that it would be a “bonne affaire” for them in the long run.86 However, forest foraging and transport rights still needed to be negotiated. There were refusals, subterfuges, and uprisings, as in Provence, where the bishops used pastoral meetings to organize resistance with the deputies of the estates and parliamentarians against the intendants’ attempt to impose a 500,000-pound annual gift to the crown.87 This was fairly typical and nothing new, though Louis’s demands for large “gifts” and “extraordinary donations” became ever more frequent as the crown needed more funds. They inspired popular revolts, such as in Bordeaux in 1675, when a rebellion occurred against the intendant d’Aguesseau and the Parlement, which had to agreed to his tax measures.88 Colbert had to count on intendants like Foucault to put down such uprisings and to use violence if necessary.89 He also needed the cooperation of the parlements when he could get it, and noted that, when possible, care should be taken not to alienate the magistrates. In 1672, Colbert told the intendant of Rouen, de Creil, neither to overstep openly the jurisdiction of the Parlement nor to show his motives.90 This was a delicate game of power. It was not just taxation that caused political strife. The collection of noble genealogical information caused discontent, even unrest.91 Colbert’s program of information collection was absolutism in action, digging into the once private ‹nancial ‹les of nobles and thus curtailing their ancient liberties. It was a powerful tool of control, and Louis’s revenge for the noble treason of the Fronde. He was not just trying to coopt nobles into a court system that made them into ›atterers rather than

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independent warriors and potential rebels. He was also using Colbert’s prowess at organizing administrative research campaigns and archives, thus harnessing massive amounts of paperwork to destabilize the nobles by making their authority predicated on royal veri‹cation. Such meddling from the crown, and from a minister of questionable ancestry, infuriated the nobility, but also divided it, as high nobles were exempt from such humiliating controls.92 The intendant De Marle caused a furor by demanding too many genealogical documents from local nobles and Colbert was forced to back off.93 In accordance with the reform of the legal code, Colbert was looking to verify the legal justi‹cations of nobility, and their tax-exempt status.94 In 1666, Colbert wrote a long memo to the intendants concerning the usurpation of noble titles and privileges.95 Continuing the veri‹cations that embodied the Grands Jours d’Auvergne, Colbert explains how to do archival research to verify titles.96 Each noble claiming exemption was to produce documented titles, which were to be crosschecked in parish archives as well as in the Cour des Aides. Once the research done, the intendant was to make an abridged inventory, containing the quality of each act and its contents, with the date, and the quality and names of those who are mentioned. This inventory should be made of separate notebooks that should be organized by call numbers according to bailiwicks, and at the head of each should be put: “Such and such, of such and such bailiwick, has appeared on the given day, and declares himself of such and such a house, and carrying such and such arms, recognizes such and such branches of his own family, and has produced the following documentation of titles . . .” And to proceed with the inventory of documents, one must begin by the one that justi‹es the ‹liation of the party in question, so as to verify it by degrees, to the oldest document. If one does not have the liberty of making this inventory in the ‹eld, one should keep the title documents to work with them leisurely, and one will give the party a date to come and retrieve them, after having heard the pronouncements and signing the inventory. … It would be good to make copies of all these inventories, organized by bailiwicks and to send them to … [the Royal Library] signed Monsieur the Intendant, to put them in order and to make genealogies in which will be attached reports made from other acts that will serve to justify their quality in the form stated above, and it will be written at the top of each inventory: “Such and such resident in such and such city, as above.”97

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Colbert ordered the intendants to make a documentary, genealogical ‹le on each noble. Even more, he wanted to create a central archive on all nobles to be held within the Royal Library: Once all this has been put in order, we will make very interesting compilations for the Royal Library in which one will see all the nobles of the kingdom, their arms and true genealogies, adding the research made by all interested parties.98

In response to the disgruntlement such machinations inspired among the nobility, however, Colbert was forced to tread more lightly. In 1670, Colbert cautioned the intendants not to make charges without ‹rst doing “research,” and con‹rming it with the king.99 Although he angered too many notables and was forced to abandon the full implementation of his reform in 1679, Colbert complained that there were as many “false nobles as real ones,” and his central genealogical archive continued to grow.100 With the help of the d’Hozier family of royal genealogists, Colbert’s assistants began the task of centralizing genealogical data within the Royal Library. Many of these reports, along with enquêtes and Colbert’s enormous administrative correspondence, found their way into the library complex, described by Lister, that Colbert had started building in 1666. At every step of his rise to power, Colbert had focused on the collection and organization of formal information: archives, ‹les, and reports. What he needed, however, was a system to harness all this information for daily government. The closest thing he enunciated to a blueprint for how to manage his information system would be the training course in administration he designed for his son.

chapte r 6

Managing the System colbert trains his son for the g reat intendancy

I

n 1670, Colbert sent his eighteen-year-old son, the marquis de Seignelay, to the port of Rochefort. There, alone with his father’s cousin, Colbert de Terron, the intendant of the port, Seignelay was to complete an apprenticeship in administering a naval port. Like an intendant, he possessed a set of written orders from his father: work from dawn till dusk; spend three hours early in the morning reading all naval codebooks, rules, and treatises. Having acquired the “general knowledge” found in these books, he was to “descend into the particulars” of the construction and maintenance of ships.1 He was to make a “survey plan” of the arsenal, visit and make a list of all the ships, sketch different parts of ships and munitions, write the names of all the of‹cers and their responsibilities, and take down the measurements of each ship (see ‹g. 7). He was to visit the munitions magazine and look at all the inventories in the presence of the manager. Finally, he was to write his own inventory and make a list of all merchandise. He had to do the same with each workshop: the rope factory, the drying rooms, the foundries, and the shops of sail-making, caulking, carpentry, barrel-making, gun powder, and so forth.2 Colbert ordered his son to learn hydrography, navigation, piloting, the drawing up of maritime routes, and the reading of ocean maps. Showing his empirical bent, Colbert ordered his son to “observe,” “examine,” and “see.” In a 84

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response dated August 8, Seignelay assures his father that he has indeed seen all, and that he has begun to transform his notes and his inventories into an “article” that he will be able to keep “in his pocket” as a guide to naval affairs and administration.3 Colbert’s son thus collected information, took notes, and boiled them down into personal manuals, or “memoirs,” as Colbert called them. The trip to Rochefort was rough on Seignelay, who fell ill. The climate of the salt marsh, the long hours, and the dif‹cult work conditions apparently contributed to the fever of the young apprentice. This was typical training for most professional administrative families, but Seignelay was not the son of a typical minister. Though Seignelay recovered, Colbert expressed concern that the Rochefort apprenticeship was possibly too much for a young man accustomed to Parisian life.4 It was certainly an unusual event in Seignelay’s privileged existence. We are left with the striking image of the son and heir of Louis XIV’s great minister—one of the most powerful men in the world, at the summit of his in›uence—Seignelay, future husband to a cousin of the king, already in possession of a great fortune, far from the glories of the court, now sick, covered in dust, struggling to take notes and write reports in a storehouse (see ‹g. 3). This is a stark contrast to the common image of power and privilege in the grand court society presided over by Louis XIV, with its prudent, powdered, and politically impotent courtiers.5 Colbert was training his son to take his place, and for this, the younger man would have to dirty his hands on the workshop ›oor of Rochefort. The complexity of this culture is evident in the paintings of Colbert’s son. Colbert was always represented in black, but his son wore the bright ribbons of an aristocrat.6 In the best-known portrait of Seignelay, by Marc Nattier the Elder (1673), he is depicted dressed as a Louis-quatorzian courtier, at a writing desk, quill in hand, writing of‹cial dispatches. If ministers and high of‹cials had long trained their progeny to follow in their professional path, Seignelay was an extreme case. He was a notable personage at court, an administrator, and an information master in training. The goal of this tough training was not simply to place him in a high government position, but rather in that of Colbert. Much as he trained his brother, and even the great engineer Vauban, Colbert closely oversaw Seignalay’s education, in effect creating a decade-long course to prepare his succession as the great intendant of the state.7 To become the king’s foremost minister, Seignelay would have to learn to be the kingdom’s chief informer. In dozens of letters, Colbert outlined his vision of the skills needed to govern, and of the very essence

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of government itself. What emerges from this father-son correspondence is a blueprint of how to create, use, and control a state information system. Colbert imagined his governmental creation as a virtual machine. He saw the state as sets of lists and documents collected by his agents, which would form a practical tool for the governing of the kingdom of France and its new colonial empire. It will become clear that when he thought of political action, he thought in terms of the mechanics of state paperwork and his information system.

The Merchant’s Book In June 1679, Jacques Savary dedicated his book Le parfait négociant, ou Instruction générale pour ce qui regarde le commerce to Colbert, who had commissioned it. The frontispiece shows a man sitting in front of a desk, in the middle of a maritime port, with an account book in front of him, a quill in one hand, taking a piece of paper from the hand of another man. Under the image is the title, “The Perfect Negociant.” The merchant world offered many technical tools to the Colbert family, and the Savary frontispiece gives some impression of the world Seignelay inhabited in Rochefort. Savary made his fortune serving the king under Fouquet, and then he de‹nitively quit all ‹nancial management to write an of‹cial “Merchant’s Code” in 1670 under Colbert’s orders. The code was to be basis of his book. The Parfait Négociant is a compilation of documents, which show how to function as a merchant. It contains copies of formularies, registers, rules and regulations, banking notes, currency exchange, and lending papers. Savary also outlined the proper education for a business career. He recommended above all that the négociant know how to write well.8 From the age of seventeen years old, children would have to do the following professional exercises for this profession; “that is to say, to write well, have a good knowledge of Arithmetic, and to keep Books, in double and simple.”9 Furthermore, the young merchant would have to learn how to travel and do business in foreign countries.10 Thus he would need to write clearly and vividly, in many cases about his travels, which were related to investment and trade. As Savary described, medieval and early modern merchants traveled to make contacts and establish relationships, if not of loyalty, at least of trust, as well as to discover foreign products, goods, technologies, and the working of states and economies. They kept notes in special-made

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and often manuscript notebooks that contained agenda-like sections for foreign weights and measures, currencies, daylight times, and the regularity of tides.11 In doing business, a merchant would have to carry his account books with him. If one followed the recommendations of Savary, then much of a merchant voyage would be taken up by various forms of paperwork: describing foreign merchandise, keeping account books, ‹lling out bills of exchange, and noting weights and currency rates. As the apparent heir to Colbert, Seignelay’s educational needs would be complex. Like princes of the royal blood, and even Molière before him, Seignelay attended the Jesuit Collège de Clermont (later Louis-leGrand). He did a thesis in natural and military mathematics.12 As his son’s personal preceptor, Colbert chose the Jesuit rhetorician, the père Bouhours, who, after having been tutor to the children of the duke de Longueville, had become chaplain to the Dunkirk garrison. Colbert chose Bouhours neither for his poetic prowess, nor for his erudition, but rather due to his expertise in geographical description.13 The Jesuit had written a description of the port of Dunkirk, precisely the sort of text Colbert would send his son to write in Rochefort. Thus at the Collège de Clermont, Seignelay would come in contact not only with the traditional humanist curriculum of the ratio studiorum, but also with the new Jesuit focus on the description of nature, navigation, and geography.14 Jesuits were known for writing descriptions of their trips, “relations” of people, plants, places, buildings, and government.15 If his trip to Rochefort had concerned naval and industrial information, Seignelay’s following trips mixed merchant, ambassadorial, and learned, antiquarian traditions of traveling.16 In 1671, Colbert sent his son to visit Italy. He wanted Seignelay to examine governmental structure, shipbuilding, art, and architecture and to write a “relation”—the same as a mémoire—of his trip. The young Colbert was to meet the pope, visit the palaces, observe neoclassical architecture and art, learn the constitutions of the old city-states, and visit Venice’s Arsenale. In a set of instructions to his son, Colbert outlined his expectations for the trip: Seignelay was to observe and write a relation much in the style of an enquête. In each place, Seignelay was to look at, principally, the city, its situation, its military forces, the number of its peoples, the greatness of the state, the number and size of cities, towns, and villages, the quantity of the peoples that compose the whole; the form of State government, and if it is aristocratic, he will

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inform himself of the names and the status of noble families that have taken or will take part in governing the Republic; their different functions; their general and particular councils; who represents the State, in whom the sovereign power lies and who resolves peace and war, who makes laws; etc.: the number and names of all who have the right to enter [into government deliberations?]; and in what manner propositions are made; the suffrages collected and the results taken and pronounced; the particular councils for the militia, the admiralty, justice, for the city and for the rest of the State; the laws and the customs under which they live; in what consist the militias meant to guard the main square; idem for the maritime forces. Visit the public works, maritime and on ground, all the palaces, public houses, and generally all that is remarkable in the said city and in all the State.17

At one level the marquis de Seignelay, son of the ‹rst minister of the king of France, traveled in the style of a young prince, meeting heads of state and witnessing the workings of government and power; at another, he traveled as learned gentleman, or antiquarian, capable of reading ancient inscriptions and describing rare plants, beautiful paintings, and Renaissance doorways; and at third level, Seignelay’s trip was the training mission of an industrial merchant, who carried his books with him, writing down names and inventories and inspecting factories.18 Yet whereas authors such as the antiquarian Ezechial Spanheim, author of a famous 1690 relation on court life at Versailles, sought a certain notoriety from their published relations, Seignelay’s goal was to keep his knowledge and expertise secret for his father and his family’s bene‹t.

Managing a Paperwork Palace Colbert kept an almost daily correspondence with his son, the driving theme of which was writing style and descriptive technique. Indeed, the exchange of letters between father and son resembles more that of a teacher and student, for Colbert covered his son’s letters with corrections and criticisms. At the end of the year 1671, Colbert dictated a new set of instructions that Seignelay dutifully wrote down. It was the nineteen-year-old’s ‹rst royal assignment, as designed especially by his father. Looking over his son’s shoulder, Colbert corrected the dictation, making marks on the page, and even writing criticisms in the margins of his son’s manuscript. For Colbert, governing was about writing clearly and organizing writing into easy-to-use notebooks. The evolving humanist

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culture of the commonplace notebook and the Jesuit schools, along with mercantile book keeping, now became the basis of governmental pedagogy.19 Colbert’s “Instructions to my son for following me in my charge as minister” (1671), is the closest thing we have to a blueprint of Colbert’s vision of how to govern. In his memoirs, Louis XIV remarked that he learned to govern by sitting in on Mazarin’s councils. Seignelay too would be exposed to Royal Council meetings at a young age. But as we have seen, his apprenticeship was technically more hands-on, and more oriented toward the functions of intendancy. Along with his princely education at the Collège de Clermont, there was much about his education that resembled that of a négociant, or an intendant. Colbert insisted that his son travel across France and Europe, but also required that he spend many hours behind his desk, learning the textual practices that controlled the machinery of the state. If Seignelay were to follow Colbert as superintendent of ‹nances and industry, he would have to master his own information network, and to do this, he would have to learn how to handle the paperwork machine invented by his father. The “memoirs,” “registers,” “lists,” “‹les,” and “agendas” that Colbert ordered his son to write were not just memorization exercises. These lists of of‹cers, cities, nobles, laws, rights, ports, and ships were to be kept on hand, and carried in the pocket for practical use. The French government, with its arcane and often unwritten rules, was complicated. There were neither guides nor maps to the functioning of the royal household. Thus the notes taken by Seignelay and put in Colbert’s register books were to be guide maps of the internal workings of Louis’s kingdom and government. In 1670, Colbert commissioned a series of manuscript books from trusted jurists for the education of his son. These bound folios, found in the manuscript collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale, are entitled “Mémoire sur les Ordonnances en general de Mr. Colbert,” and appear to date from 1670.20 On the binding is written “Manuscrit Originel du Cour des Hautes Études du Fils de Colbert.” The ‹rst of three volumes contains legal texts concerning Gallican rights. The third volume contains a section entitled “Traité des états” that contains the lists of royal custom taken in great part from compilations by Jean Du Tillet and Théodore Godefroy. Most fascinating is an anonymous chapter called “Du Conseil du roy,” which is a description of how this institution works, outlining the function of each member. With the expectation of inheriting his father’s positions, Seignelay

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would have to defend the rights of the monarchy and guarantee the smooth functioning of governmental of‹ces. For this, he would need to learn the minutiae of arcane state institutions, and learn the speci‹c paperwork needed for each governmental function. Volume 4 contains a chapter by Nicolas-Joseph Foucault, called “Il y a différence entre Loix, Ordonnances, et Edits.” Foucault’s text is a glossary of every type of government paperwork. It resembles Savary’s compilation for businessmen; however, this manuscript was for Seignelay’s eyes only. Foucault’s treatise explains how to write and properly sign documents. It lists types of documents, of‹cial seals, and the documentary practices and responsibilities of each of‹cer. Next to the section on seals, in the margin, Foucault writes an exercise for the young marquis: Assignment for Monseigneur. Write a succinct memoir of all the different forms of chancellery letters, their forms and the essential clauses of their distinctions from which all the different names and letters which are sent under each form. For example. Patent letters. . . . Declarations, commissions, . . . arrests.21

Each exercise concerned a speci‹c type of of‹cial document. With this training manual, Seignelay became an expert in paperwork. Seignelay would understand every sort of document that made up the machinery of state. This facilitated Seignelay’s ability not only to understand how the state worked and to manage it, but to serve the king effectively and inform him. Volume 4 of the “Ordonnances” also contains a study of the Chambre des Comptes, the ‹nancial archival administration of the kingdom, which was a documentation center for accounting orders and receipts. Once again, it is a workbook that explains each sort of of‹cial document. What is a “Comptant”: It is a receipt in Parchment, signed by the King’s hand, of the End of the Month accounts which have recently been paid to him by the Savings Treasury and of which no mention is made of the Cause of expenditure.22

Seignelay memorized the names and styles of documents and copied them as practice. He wrote lists, inventories, and reports. His father corrected this work, making him rewrite. Seignelay could not afford an error in his own paperwork, for the ‹nished product—the boiled-down extracts and reports—would, in

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many cases, go before the king.23 Colbert reminded his son that every Friday morning, each of‹cial report would have to be ‹nished and polished, for that was when Louis took the time to read his ministers’ reports and dossiers. The information that Colbert collected was a virtual representation of the kingdom. It was the embodiment of his family’s competency and usefulness of the services they offered. Therefore, the ‹nal preparation of documents for the king was a complicated process. Colbert writes, As soon as I have seen all the dispatches, if they have arrived on time, I will send them to my son for him to see them, and promptly and exactly take extracts, which will be written on the back of each letter and returned at the same time to my table; I will write a word with my hand on each article of the extract, containing the response that should be made immediately; my son should write responses with his own hand, and then show them to me so that I can correct them, and when everything is ready, on Friday we shall bring to the King all the letters, we will read him the extracts, and at the same time the responses; if His Majesty orders any changes, it will be done; otherwise, the responses will be cleaned up, signed, and sent out. And so, in observing these orders with exactitude, without ever departing from them, it is certain that my son will put himself in a state to acquire esteem in the King’s opinion.24

Here was a solution to information overload, and the presumptive roadmap for Colbert’s family legacy within the state. Seignelay learned each link in the chain of information: the choice of subject, the collection, the writing, the organization, and the presentation to the king. Even more, he would have to oversee archival management and the general functioning of the state paperwork machine, assisting his father in his massive task. Thanks to his father’s political and social ascent, Seignelay was one of the richest men in the kingdom, with a famous art collection, a privileged place in Versailles, and the respect of even Saint-Simon, yet his life often resembled that of a beleaguered Dickensian clerk. His father’s letters are ‹lled with scathing critical tirades, sometimes lasting for pages, such as this virulent passage: “One sees rather clearly that you never write minutes of your dispatches, which is, between us, something absolutely shameful, and which denotes a negligence and a default of application that cannot be excused, or even expressed.”25 Here is the raw grit with which Colbert mercilessly trained his son, destroyed enemies

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such as Fouquet, held off the Le Tellier family as long as he could, and tried to concentrate power for himself and his family. In 1671, Seignelay wrote an exercise aptly titled “Memoir on that which I propose to do every week to execute the orders of my father and to make me more capable of relieving his worries,” in which he concedes his shortcomings and assures his father he will apply himself to the management of his paperwork: I will make myself copy down the records Tuesday; after dinner, I will ‹le them after having read them, and I will write on the side the minutes written by my father. Above all, I will not fail, when I have to send of‹cial correspondence, of whatever nature it might be, to search in the register books of my father that which has been done in a similar occasion, and I will give myself the time to read and examine the said registers, in order to form my style by that of my father. I will visit every night my table and my papers, and I will expedite, before going to bed, that which I can, or I will put aside and send later, before marking, in my agenda that I will keep exactly on my table, the affairs that I will have sent out [to my correspondents], so as to be able to hold them accountable if they take too long in responding. I will write all my current affairs in the aforementioned agenda, and I will cross them out when each of‹cial letter has been sent. ... In making my principal points, I will write them all with my own hand, and I will make notes on the side of the points that I must address in my letter, and I will attempt to follow the style of my father, in order to save him the trouble, where possible, of having to correct and redo these letters, even entirely, which happens quite often. Saturday morning will be spent examining and signing ordinary letters, to be sent to the Friday council, and working on current affairs. Saturday after dinner, I will not fail to examine the agenda, and look in the register of ‹nances to see if there are any new funds that have been omitted from the register of orders given to the treasurer; if I have omitted none, during the week, I should record those that have been given; and I will apply myself to be so exact in the keeping of the said agenda, that I will not need to have recourse to the treasurer to know what funds he has in his hands.26

One did not have to be Protestant to have a serious work ethic. While contemporaries admired Seignelay as a hard worker, Colbert was never satis‹ed. Indeed, it appears that Seignelay lacked his father’s

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obsession with organization and ‹ling. In 1676, after almost a decade of training, Colbert was furious to ‹nd his son’s desk in disorder. Had all his lessons been in vain? You must still take care to look after your papers, particularly the important ones, which you should keep under lock and key, such as all the treaties and memoirs I asked you to do, and which I still do every day, for you, and which I now ‹nd rolled in a desk, in the worst state of ‹lth, in spite of the fact that they contain the quintessence of the spirit of the most accomplished people in the kingdom; Your portfolios; The Decrees, by call numbers and dates; All the treatises, the books, the instructions and all that concerns the fundaments and the maxims taken, that you should know perfectly. Take care that all your memoirs and letters are well organized by reference numbers. That none escape your attention, that there are none that you miss, that you examine, and that you give orders on that which they contain. . . . That neither any paper passes through your hands, nor letter, without seeing and examining them and giving your resolution, and without asking about what you do not perfectly understand.27

Was Seignelay’s messy desk a sublimated ‹lial rebellion? In 1674, in the margins to his “Instructions,” Colbert had expressly reminded his son, “You must put call numbers on all your sheets, divide these maxims by date and by chapter, and only make a precise extract.28 Observation and note-taking were not enough. Seignelay needed the skills of an accountant and archivist to handle the register books made from notes and reports, and only by these means, assured his father, would he never have to worry about information overload. Thus, as chief intendant, Seignelay would have to master the information arcana of the state, data collection through industrial management and accounting, as well as archiving. It was this ‹nal task that Colbert considered essential, for keeping a well-organized administrative archive and library were the basis of Colbert’s managerial method. Through the reports of his son, intendants, and agents, Colbert was in the process of creating a new sort of state library the likes of which Naudé had never imagined, as well as a new ideal of royal government.

chapte r 7

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n 1666 Colbert found a new home for the itinerant and neglected Royal Library. A block from his house on the rue Vivienne, Colbert bought the Hôtel Beautru.1 It was here that he settled the Royal Library.2 In the Plan Turgot of 1739, Colbert’s house on the corner of the rue de Richelieu and the eponymous rue Colbert is clearly visible.3 He regularly sent archivists to retrieve books and manuscripts from the king’s library.4 In reality, he completely controlled the Royal Library. Louis, whose library it was supposed to be, would make only one symbolic visit there in 1681.5 The creation of this dual library was an act of great signi‹cance. Colbert physically brought the library under his control and connected it to his own. What this meant was that the Royal Library was neither an extension of the Republic of Letters, nor of a wider, semipublic world of learning, as it had been. It was now a part of Colbert’s administration. Where famed scholars had once managed the royal collection, Colbert now not only oversaw new acquisitions, but tightly controlled the hiring of personnel for both libraries, placing his brother, the abbé Nicolas Colbert (1628–76), later archbishop of Luçon (1661), at the head of the Royal Library upon Jacques Dupuy’s death in 1656.6 Once in control of the state library complex, Colbert set out to cre94

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ate a collection designed for the needs of politics and state administration. Not only would his library contain the formal works of learning outlined in Naudé’s Advice on Establishing a Library, but also like Philip II of Spain, Colbert kept the papers of the colonial administration: navigational papers, maps, trade routes, and treaties.7 Intendant’s reports, surveys, and account books came back to Colbert’s central archive to be veri‹ed and ‹led.8 But whereas Philip took no interest in ‹nancial matters, Colbert, the merchant ‹nancier, also kept price lists of nails, winch designs, hand-drawn pictures of rope types, ships’ cargo logs, and arsenal inventories. This is how Colbert managed not just learning, but also the military and industrial sector of the state from his library. Colbert singlehandedly directed the building of the Ludovician Louvre and Versailles, and he therefore kept sketchbooks of arches, doorways, fountains, ceiling molding, architecture models, and garden perspectives.9 He also kept a vast archive of state account books, mentioned by Martin Lister, called États de ‹nances, or États de la recepte et despense.10 In this grand-scale library complex, Colbert had brought the charterhouse, the humanist legal library, and the state administrative archive together with the accounting of‹ce.11 It had a call-number system and was easily accessible to the librarians and to Colbert. While independent, Colbert’s library could draw on the wealth and even the funding of the Royal Library. A documentary collection based on the interests of administering the state, it had many of the practical characteristics that fascinated philosophes and physiocrats, and would later characterize Chambers and Diderot’s great encyclopedic projects.

From the biblioteca selecta to the House of Solomon Paragons of the Republic of Letters such as Peiresc and de Thou saw their libraries and their research as extensions of themselves, manifestations of personal virtue. Theirs were biblioteca selecta: carefully chosen treasures, which represented the scholarly, individual virtuosity of their owner to a public of friends and trusted scholars.12 The idea that a wellchosen library was a mark of the learned, well-bred honnête homme was the basis for private collecting for scholars, political ‹gures, and dilettantes alike.13 When Hugo Blotius began building the Austrian Imperial Library (1575–1608), he not only envisioned it as an extension of the public world of learning; he also looked to create a formal, universal library beyond the lines designed by Conrad Gesner in his Biblioteca universalis (1545), which attempted to list and categorize all extant books.

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For Blotius, this meant formal works of learning from various disciplines, along with uncataloged state papers, news reports, and gazettes.14 Even more, Blotius had hoped to create an encyclopedic museum on knowledge, politics, the arts, and sciences. In a letter from 1575, Blotius outlined his revolutionary project of mixing formal and informal, technical knowledge: At the end of December I ‹nally decided to write a booklet which will contain an idea I have dreamt about for some years, that is to establish a library and a museum of the human being. If the Emperor, as I hope, will support my project and if I live another twenty years, then I will be able to af‹rm that I was the creator of the most important world’s institutions, which will ‹nally outstrip the Vatican, the Florentine or the French libraries. And this because I am not going just to establish a universal library, which will contain all kinds of books—in Jewish, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, German, English, Croatian, Muscovite, Bohemian, Turkish and in all the languages I can ‹nd— but also a Universal Museum, which will contain portraits of emperors, nobles, musicians, poets, men of learning, namely portraits of us as we will be in the future. I will gather the clothes of all the populations of the world, the measures and weights, the ancient and modern coins, weapons, means of transport, ships, buildings, instruments used by all the populations, in every period of the history (wood, iron or paper’s tools).15

While he succeeded in creating one of the largest and best-cataloged collections in Europe, Blotius never realized his own ideal and make his library more than a storehouse of formal, selected information.16 The Austrian library was a center for learning about politics, yet it was not the all-encompassing archive of ethnography, administration, and industry that he had originally envisioned. Rather, the model of the biblioteca selecta remained the model of a political library. While the Swedish chancellor Axel Oxenstierna (1583– 1654) created a personal library, he did not connect it to the Swedish state policy archives. Like Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642), Oxenstierna kept a limited number of great books of formal learning from which he extracted commonplace books of political maxims.17 Both conscious of a hierarchy of knowledge, Oxenstierna and Richelieu neither sought massive, universal collections, nor united their great books with the paperwork of the state.

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This was Colbert’s great innovation. In creating his state information system, Colbert sought to do something that no administrator of a largescale state had attempted: he built his interdisciplinary library and state information archive together, from the ground up, in response to his policy needs. Obviously, a biblioteca selecta—even a political one—would not do for Colbert. Built from a merchant’s hunger for monopoly and practical knowledge, his universal library would go beyond existing concepts of formal knowledge. It went beyond Blotius’s encyclopedic universal library, resembling more a state research institute of the kind discussed by Francis Bacon in his New Atlantis (1627). The former English chancellor and inventor of the experimental method, Francis Bacon had suggested that the sort of information collected by scholars, scientists, bureaucrats, and industrialists could be formalized within the state itself. Bacon envisioned the state as a center of research and collection, which constantly acquired new information by discovery and experiment. Like Thomas Hobbes, Bacon believed that the monarch should rule over knowledge. What Bacon envisioned was not simply formal, university learning or a library, but rather a state-controlled depot of information of all sorts, constantly renewed, and potentially secret, which gave the state the monopoly on the information of politics, trade, and science. It was a physical theory of worldly sovereignty that he spelled out in his utopian vision of a state based on knowledge and trade in his New Atlantis. He called this depot of state learning “Solomon’s House,” and Solomon was James I of England: You shall understand (my dear friends) that amongst the excellent acts of that king [of the New Atlantis], one above all hath the preeminence. It was the erection and institution of an Order or Society, which we call “Solomon’s House”; the noblest foundation (as we think) that ever was upon the earth; and the lantern of this kingdom.18

Bacon’s House of Solomon was a research institution dedicated to the collection of various sorts of knowledge for the well-being of the state, collected from all over the world. The king ordered that Every twelve years there should be set forth out of this kingdom two ships, appointed to several voyages; That in either of these ships there should be a mission of three of the Fellows or Brethren of Salomon’s House; whose errand was only to give us knowledge of the affairs and

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state of those countries to which they were designed, and especially of the sciences, arts, manufactures, and inventions of all the world; and withal to bring unto us books, instruments, and patterns in every kind.19

Solomon’s House was a “college”: a center for the compilation of information, historical and scienti‹c inquiry, natural experiments, and the creation of miraculous cures, but also for the invention of industrial products such as weapons, new sorts of clothing material, paper, glass, and food.20 The Brethren of Solomon’s House were technical experts in each ‹eld, who could travel, and collect information, but also manage information and create new knowledge.21 Anthony Grafton has called this the ‹rst model of a research institute of arts and sciences.22 It would be a great store of wisdom and creative capacity to “join humanity and policy together,” bringing great prosperity to Atlantis.23 There was a decidedly mercantile character to this project, created by a king, maintained by the state, and dedicated to learning, but also to industry. It would also serve the production of arms and munitions, which were one of the primary scienti‹c and industrial interests of states at this period of new military growth. Thus Bacon envisioned an encyclopedic policy, scienti‹c, industrial military research institute. By the mid-seventeenth century, no state in Europe had followed Bacon’s model, though Florence, Spain, and the Vatican, in disparate ways, almost did. Spain was in decline and the Vatican was less and less interested in the New Science that Galileo had shown could be so threatening to religious orthodoxy. In spite of the advances made by Mersenne, or by the Jesuits, the Vatican never connected formal research labs with its library complex into a single institute-like entity. In England, scholars began meeting to discuss Bacon’s scienti‹c ideas in a society formed in the 1640s that evolved into the Royal Society of 1660, privately founded by prestigious scientists as a “Colledge for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning,” and supported by a royal charter in 1663. As remarkably successful as this society was—it created the basis of modern science—it did not match the scope of Solomon’s House. The English state was neither capable of, nor willing to, create a centalized state-controlled learned, scienti‹c, industrial complex. Nor did it create a true House of Solomon—a central data bank and research institute on all things for the use of the state. This would be Colbert’s ambition.24

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The Library as Research Institute: From the Republic of Letters to the State Academies Colbert’s public patronage of the arts and letters is well known. He in›uenced the Republic of Letters with the creation of French state academies and research centers. In 1663, Colbert named his own librarian, the mathematician Pierre de Carcavy (1600–1684), royal librarian, consolidating the link between his collection and the Royal Library.25 This was a departure from tradition, since Carcavy, while a book collector and a former counselor to the Parlement of Lyon, was the son of an Italian banker and not issued from the old world of Gallican historians. Still, as a friend of leading scientists and mathematicians such as Descartes, Pascal, Fermat, and Huygens, Carcavy was a useful liaison between the library, the Republic of Letters, and the world of the natural sciences.26 Carcavy was not an independent librarian, as, for example, Leibniz would become several decades later, when he became head of the Wolfenbüttel Library and oversaw its reorganization and rebuilding.27 Colbert was the builder of the library, and Carcavy’s job was to follow Colbert’s orders to run the tandem collections as a machine of public administration. Colbert also hired famous international scholars, and scientists such as the astronomer and geographer Giovanni Domenico Cassini. He was interested in the sciences and their application to his plans. Cassini ran the Royal Observatory that Colbert founded in 1666, and helped collect not only astronomical, geographical, and other scienti‹c data, but also information that could be used for mapmaking and hydrography, ‹elds essential to Colbert’s maritime projects.28 Colbert hired the Dutch mathematician, physicist, astronomer, and clockmaker Christian Huygens (1629–95), who developed the pendulum clock and a “table of cumulative equality” based on measuring the sun’s passage by the running of the clock. Huygens’s table was not only a mathematical work of paramount importance; it could also be used as a navigation device to ‹gure longitude, and thus had important mercantile rami‹cations.29 Colbert corresponded with Huygens and even appeared to understand his work, personally annotating some of Huygens’s data on gunpowder, force, and vacuums, and asking the scientist pointed questions.30 He asked the French ambassador to Rome to personally look into a telescope there and describe what he saw.31 With Carcavy, Huygens, and Cassini, Colbert had brought to France

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major scienti‹c ‹gures both to run his library and observatory and to lead the Royal Academy of Sciences, founded with the library in 1666 as a major research center for natural sciences, astronomy, mathematics, and mapmaking.32 The same year, Colbert founded the Royal Gardens—a site of botanical and natural learning as well as public experiments—under the aegis of the Academy of Sciences.33 Colbert founded other academies, such as the Petite Académie, or Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Médailles (1663), which would later become the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, a center for antiquarian scholarship. He controlled the Academies of Beaux-Arts, Painting and Sculpture and the Académie Française, and was the patron of numerous provincial academies. He founded the royal academies of music and dance; and he founded the Royal Academy of Architecture (1671) as he personally took over the royal projects of building the Louvre and Versailles. To harness Italian artisanal and artistic expertise, Colbert corresponded with Bernini and founded the French Academy in Rome (1666). Indeed, with the help of Bernini and through a detailed correspondence in which plans and descriptions were exchanged, Colbert and the great baroque architect began the project to build the Louvre in 1668.34 Colbert’s assiduousness did not always guarantee success, and culturally, he was a neophyte, as his failure to build Bernini’s plans for Louvre illustrate.35 His project was to bring the world of learning under the control of the French state, and his library complex was central to this aim. Beginning in the sixteenth century, the French academies had been the center of late humanist learning and the Republic of Letters.36 The founding of the Académie Française (1634) represented Richelieu’s attempt to make humanist eloquence serve the interests of the state in a systematic way. Colbert’s project was a massive expansion of Richelieu’s own imitation of Italian, papal, and Spanish cultural patronage. It was an unparalleled, mercantilist state academic program, which brought scholarship, science, and the arts under the control of the state. Integrated with the expansion of his library, it changed the relationship of the state to learning, science, and culture. In 1663, with the fears of the Fronde still in mind, Colbert banned non-state-sanctioned academies—an unthinkable act in the days of Peiresc and Dupuy. Colbert tried to in›uence and ultimately control the public market of ideas and scholarly work. Beyond academies, Colbert helped found the Journal des Savants in 1665, with the help of his loyal scholars Denis de Sallo and the abbé Jean Le Gallois. Its goal was to occupy the sphere of

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public scholarly discussion and advertise the discoveries and work of his academies and learned allies: “That which goes on in the Republic of Letters.”37 The public dimension of Colbert’s project operated at several levels, producing work, publishing academic ‹ndings, but also regulating the world of learning through reviews. It would inspire independent major journals of the Republic of Letters, the Acta Eruditorum (1682) and Pierre Bayle’s counterjournal, the Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres (1684), which discussed science, but criticized politics rather than working as a branch of propaganda.38 Colbert sought to control the Republic of Letters in France and wherever he could, not just by hiring the best scholars, but also by giving pensions to foreign scholars, such as German erudite Herman Conring.39 The poet and academician Jean Chapelain (1595–1674) became Colbert’s agent, searching for scholars, both French and foreign, willing to take Colbert’s money in return for royal service, and possibly propaganda.40 Chapelain proposed that Conring write panegyrical history for the king.41 Even more, Colbert had hoped that Conring would scour German archives to ‹nd legal and historical documents that could be used as state propaganda to bolster French dynastic claims against the Hapsburgs.42 Colbert did not hesitate to get involved personally with the recruitment of foreign scholars. He corresponded with the PolishLithuanian Protestant astronomer Johannes Hevelius (1611–87), telling him that he would receive a cash gift from Louis XIV on the merit of his work alone. This was unprecedented international ‹nancial enticement to serve and honor the patronage of the French crown.43

The Universal State Archive Colbert’s librarian, Baluze, outlined the concept of Colbert’s new collection in his Histoire des capitulaires des Rois François (1677), essentially a history of royal archival administration. In this work, Baluze claims that a complete sampling of the archives makes his royal legal science more sound.44 Closely tied to Mabillon and the Benedictine scholars of St. Germain, Baluze insisted on a new approach to archiving, seeking the mass management of diplomatica.45 Colbert and his librarian understood the rami‹cations of having, or claiming to have, the most complete document bank in Europe, which could be used in questions of international law, precedence, ecclesiastical rights, and theology.46 Colbert sought to build up the Royal Library’s book collection and manuscript archives, to bring it to the level of the Wolfenbüttel Library, or the Im-

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perial Library in Vienna, both of which contained more than 100,000 books and manuscripts.47 He went about building his collections in a new way. Book and manuscript collection was a gentlemanly practice, based on the commerce of ancient manuscripts between learned and powerful people through letter-writing and trading. Once the currency of the Republic of Letters, the trade and interest in manuscripts and books had driven humanist relationships since the days of Poggio Bracciolini and Niccolò Niccoli in Quattrocento Florence.48 For Peiresc and his circle, the search for rare historical manuscripts was the action that de‹ned their learned friendships, but also brought them patronage and income. It was a semipublic exchange of knowledge and information. Colbert sometimes looked at his manuscripts with the personal warmth of a bibliophile; but mostly he perceived them in the cold light of reason of state. They were means to an end: chips on the bargaining tables of international relations and internal power grabs, and the currency of his own power. And for the most part, they were to remain secret. Here was a major tension in the internal logic of the Republic of Letters, which was somehow supposed to serve disinterested learning and politics at the same time. Colbert had no time for the formalities of the Republic of Letters, such as openness and the ethics of information exchange. His collecting techniques both disregarded the integrity of individual collections and were devoid of ethics in acquisition. Indeed, he offered to buy the Wolfenbüttel Library outright, but the Brunswicks cannily refused this offer.49 He bought other entire collections for the Royal Library, 10,000 books at a time. In 1668, Colbert essentially robbed the Bibliothèque Mazarine, proposing an “exchange” of books in which Colbert sent his book agents, two royal printers, Frédéric Léonard and Sebastien Marbre Cramoisy, to choose the choicest books and manuscripts possible. In particular, Colbert coveted a number of Oriental manuscripts and precious books once owned by Peiresc, Naudé, and Du Tillet.50 The exchange amounted to a theft from Naudé’s library, which Colbert himself had reconstituted after the Fronde.51 In 1667, with no little irony, Colbert sent the new royal librarian, the mathematician Pierre Carcavy, to purchase a large chunk of Fouquet’s impressive manuscript collection (his library in the Chateau de Saint-Mandé numbered more than 30,000 printed books and 1,050 manuscripts). It was the trophy of a kill. The royal printer Frédéric Léonard helped to direct the Fouquet auction, and Colbert’s scholarly agent, Denis II Godefroy, annotated a copy of the Fouquet catalog.52 Carcavy later acquired Trichet du Fresne’s large col-

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lection of Italian manuscripts for well under their fair value.53 Although in 1669, Colbert missed the chance to buy de Thou’s library, now 30,000 books strong, he obtained for the king and for himself a string of prominent humanist collections. He directed the purchases of the library of the humanist doctor and rhetorician Jacques Mentel, whose 10,000book collection specialized in works on eloquence, a number of which were inherited from Gabriel Naudé, as well as the medieval manuscripts of Alexandre Petau.54 He managed to acquire Gaston d’Orléans’s magni‹cent collection with its rare botanical prints. Colbert sought not only books, but also policy archives that shed light on the workings of government. Colbert’s interest in the archives of Henri-Auguste de Lomémie (1594–1666), count de Brienne, known as the “Collection Brienne,” illustrates the political aspect of how he viewed archives. Brienne’s father, Antoine de Loménie, a counselor of state under Henry IV and Louis XIII, had sent Pierre Dupuy into the Trésor des Chartes and to other major legal and administrative archives where he was to make a choice of useful documents to be copied for the collection, resulting in a massive collection of 358 folio volumes of compiled documents on mostly contemporary state history. The collection was envisioned as a pedagogical tool for his son, Henri-Auguste: “J’ay donné à mon ‹lz tous les livres manuscriptz et papiers contenus en ce présent inventaire, par un contract de donation du XIXe jour de l’année 1627.”55 The mastery of diplomacy entailed being a ‹ne connoisseur of diplomatic and political records.56 However, the papers were seen as so important to the state that Richelieu forced the younger Brienne to sell them back to him in 1638 for 36,000 pounds.57 When the Parlement of Paris sold off Mazarin’s collection in 1652, under the helpless watch of Naudé, the Brienne papers were not dispersed because they belonged to the king, and, to his great pleasure, Mazarin recuperated the documents at the end of the Fronde, in yet another bibliophilic revenge.58 Fouquet had made his own copy of the papers, but under Colbert, the papers and Fouquet’s copy ‹nally ended up in the Royal Library. The Brienne Collection was seen to be so valuable that the archduke of Brunswick managed to obtain a full copy for his library at Wolfenbüttel, as did the king of Prussia. Above all, Colbert was careful to make his own copy, along with several copies of the collection’s catalog.59 By Colbert’s death in 1683, the royal collection had tripled in size, containing around 36,000 printed books and 10,500 manuscripts.60 Colbert’s personal collection, some of it pilfered from the Royal Library, or pur-

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chased with state funds, numbered around 23,000 printed books and 5,100 manuscripts, not including his administrative correspondence and archives.61 Colbert was able to do something that humanist encyclopedists such as Kircher could not dream of: to quickly build a practical library of tens of thousands of books and manuscripts in just a few years, and digest the great French bibliophile tradition into the vast entrails of the state.

Power in the Archives Colbert not only collected more than others; he also used the power of the state to collect in ways that scholars could not.62 For scholars like Peiresc, book collecting entailed a strict ethos of learning and honesty. For others, learning was competitive business, and collecting could be addictive. For example, Sir Henry Wotton simply stole the books he wanted while visiting Vienna.63 Colbert had little of Peiresc’s old ethic of learning. He purchased, seized, or copied what he needed. In 1665, Colbert sent Jean de Doat to the Languedoc region nominally to copy, but in reality to collect systematically, every pertinent feudal or ecclesiastical document he could ‹nd.64 With Carcavy directing Colbert’s orders, Doat and his assistants copied, bought, cajoled, and sometimes took books, making doubles of the documents of many of the ancient southern archives of monasteries, cities, and parlements. They shipped these documents back to Paris by the ton, by which, in some cases, as Léopold Delisle notes, many rare works were saved from destruction or provincial oblivion.65 Colbert’s initial approach was aggressive, and Doat was frequently barred access to archives, such as at the abbey de Gimont, where a monk refused to use his key to open the door.66 Local nobles, rightfully fearful of encroachments on their privileges, rioted, and Doat’s secretary was murdered in the street outside his window in Carcassonne.67 The fact that Colbert assigned great importance to these acquisitions, giving them the status of an affair of state, illustrates the crown’s sense of absolutist prerogative. Colbert’s archival interests were related to concrete political goals.68 Doat’s mission partly pertained to Louis’s sovereignty over the Pyrenees. Colbert ordered him to ‹nd documents concerning the royal domain and ecclesiastical bene‹ces in what amounted to potentially huge sums of income for Louis XIV.69 During wars with German states and Spain, Colbert employed Denis II Godefroy and Baluze to ‹nd documents that backed Louis’s dynastic claims.70 For Peiresc, nothing had been more central to his own antiquarian project than the quest for Eastern, or Oriental manuscripts. They were

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particularly rare, and often the fruit of archeological and ethnographic missions to the East, in which scholars traveled in camel trains and rummaged through the ancient rolls of the shelves of Orthodox and Coptic churches, mosques, and synagogues.71 He was proud of his ability to procure them through his web of contacts in the ambassadorial corps.72 It was the ability to travel to the East and return with marvels and treasures of learning that had made the names of the Flemish antiquarian, diplomat, and Austrian imperial librarian, Ogier Ghislain de Busbecque (1522–92), and Athanasius Kircher. If the quest for Eastern manuscripts was elemental to humanists, it was the same for state librarians. Before Peiresc, Jacques-Auguste de Thou had used his contacts to obtain them for the Royal Library.73 This trend continued, and there were always contacts between scholars in the East and the Royal and Mazarine libraries. Colbert received reports on the riches, laws, and political structures of India and Asia in 1668 from François Barnier, naturalist and doctor to the Moghul emperor.74 With not only a large web of contacts, Colbert also had more power and money than past collectors. Most of all, he coveted ecclesiastical documents from the East.75 He asked Baluze to use his contacts to search for ecclesiastical documentation on sancti‹cation to regulate the observation of saints’ days, on heresy, and on Louis XIV’s con›ict with the papacy over the appointment of bishops, and for documents pertinent to arguments over Protestantism and Jansenism.76 Colbert always asked French ambassadors to the East to procure him rare manuscripts, and he used his knowledge of diplomatic reports as well as his power to pressure or pay churchmen to give up rare manuscripts: You know the curiosity that I have for good manuscripts to enrich my library, and I am very persuaded, by the friendship that you have for me, that, during all the time you will be at Constantinople, you will take care to search for them and send them to me; let me know, now and then, what you spend for this, so that I can have you repaid. Furthermore, I am happy to inform you that the sieur Sauvan, Consul on Cyprus, has written me that the archbishop of Cyprus, who is presently at Constantinople, had quite beautiful manuscripts that one might be able to acquire from him. See if I am right about this and if you can turn this into something, at the same time, without making any commitments.77

In the 1660s, Colbert commissioned the great linguist Charles du Cange (1610–88) and Jean-Baptiste Cotelier (1629–86), the cataloger of

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Greek manuscripts in the Royal Library and future professor of Greek at the Collège Royal, to create a state formulary, not unlike those for the intendants, to systematize the research, assessment, and purchasing of Greek manuscripts. In what is a perfect example of the bureaucratization of scholarship, it explains how to spot fakes, and how to date manuscripts by looking at writing and the presence of Latin in the text.78 This analytical guide recommends rejecting nonecclesiastical works if they do not have “marks of antiquity,” and that copies of the Old Testament were rare, and thus better to procure than New Testaments. Above all it warns, “You must not let escape any historical book, or any book on civil or ecclesiastical law, that is to say the canons.”79 Working with his trusted agent, Arnoul père, the intendant of galleys in Marseille, Colbert out‹tted and helped organize the Jesuit Orientalist antiquarian Johann Michael Wansleben’s four-year expedition (1671– 75) to Egypt, the Greek islands, and Constantinople.80 Arnoul would also collect the manuscripts on their arrival and send them to Colbert.81 Wansleben was not simply required to ‹nd rare manuscripts. He was also to make an intendant-style enquête of his journey, noting political and religious structures, geography, architecture, wealth and trade, outlined in an antiquarian version of Colbert’s “Instructions to the Intendants,” entitled, “Instructions pour M. Vanslèbe s’en allant au Levant,” dated March 7, 1671.82 He was to ‹nd rare books and manuscripts, by slipping into churches and mosques, while also collecting naturalist information: He should look for all things that can be used in the composition of the natural history of each country, such as animals of all species, minerals and marcasites, particularly those which have extraordinary qualities, such as mineral fountains and other waters, plants, fruits, that grow in the countryside as well as in gardens, observing those which grow more easily in one country than another.83

Colbert asked Wansleben to bring back specimens and any other curiosity.84 When reading Wansleben’s descriptions, it is understandable why Colbert took the time to respond to Wansleben personally on numerous occasions: the German did his job well, and described his trip in good administrative detail, while ‹nding masses of rare documents. Colbert was con‹dent about the information Wansleben collected. Colbert sponsored a long string of missions and agents in the East.85 The leader of missions in the 1670s, the père Besson wrote a “Design for an illustrious Library composed on ancient Oriental manuscripts” in

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1673 that Colbert read and annotated.86 Besson had been chosen to lead the royal expedition after wisely giving Colbert seventy long Hebrew and Arab manuscripts as a gift.87 His “Design for a Library” outlined the reasons for such an Eastern manuscript collection. Besson noted its usefulness in acquiring ancient and religious knowledge. In the spirit of Counter-Reform humanism, he noted his methodology would serve scholarship and philology and help correct textual errors and decipher the Bible. Most of all, it could be used as a tool of religious authority: I have written these re›ections, in spite of ‹nding them hardly useful to accomplish a design, the execution of which will contribute much to the honor of the Gallican Church, to con‹rm namely against the heretical sects the Catholic truths of the Eucharist, concerning the priesthood, the sacri‹ce of the Mass, the Reality and the Transubstantiation, prayers for the dead, purgatory, the visible head of the Church and the primacy of the Roman Church, and similar points that the eastern Church has in a thousand places in her ancient manuscripts.88

As it had been from the time of the Renaissance, antiquarianism remained at the center of questions about political authority. However, with his research teams, massive archive, and policy of secrecy, Colbert had made something new: a centralized system of information for international relations and political legitimacy.

A State Information Archive: Colbert’s Policy Portfolios Considering the size of Colbert’s library, it is impossible to know what he did and did not read. What is possible to discern, however, is what information he thought was essential for government. Colbert collected legal, political, and economic information on the major states of Europe. From shipbuilding, canon-making, and trade in Venice, Holland, and England, to the constitutions of Poland and the wealth and landholding of Spanish peers, Colbert tried to teach himself the workings of Europe. He collected documents on diplomacy, trade, and treaty making. Colbert called his document compilations “portfolios,” or “registers,” which contained on average seven hundred folio pages.89 Each portfolio comprises numerous texts, some copies, some originals, of documents Colbert deemed useful. They are cataloged in the modern Bibliothèque Nationale as the “Mélanges Colbert” and the “Cinq-Cents Colbert,” part of which were sold to the crown by Colbert’s grandson, the third

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marquis of Seignelay. The rest were con‹scated during the Revolution under what appears to be some duress, in retribution for Colbert’s perceived thefts from the Royal Library.90 The “Mélanges Colbert” contain not only Colbert’s extensive correspondence, organized chronologically, and his medieval document collection, but also one hundred portfolios that were compiled speci‹cally to suit daily administrative needs, which Colbert referred to as the “registres concernant mes affaires.”91 On the back of each document, Baluze and sometimes Colbert himself wrote its title, in some cases adding, “Extremely Important,” “bon,” or other notes.92 Colbert and Baluze added to each compilation regularly, keeping them up to date, and adding useful texts.93 In part, this collection looked like a vastly expanded version of parliamentary archives and the old ministerial libraries, such as that of earlier ministers, Sully and Brienne, or of great parliamentarians such as Harlay, de Mesme, and Molé.94 It contained standard charters and treaties of law, government, and foreign affairs. Colbert had extensive collections of medieval charters;95 ‹les on French royal and parliamentary history and rights;96 foreign affairs;97 and church matters.98 The library also contained portfolios with secret histories, reports, and document compilations, such as those by Baluze and Bourzeis on current affairs, negotiations over royal marriages, lists of secret code keys, and a collection of different forms of royal panegyrical poems.99 Along with typical royal and legal documents, Colbert shelved documents of state administration: administrative formularies—the enquêtes—designed by Colbert, and carried out by his agents, as well as the administrative reports he commissioned, such as one written by the abbé de Bourzeis on legal reforms, to which Colbert attached his own notes.100 He also kept ‹les concerning the parlements, provincial rights, and the assemblies of the clergy and estates. He furthermore collected the papers of former ministers, like Sully.101 Part of Colbert’s totalizing ambition was his collection of library catalogs, of his own library and any other he could obtain. If he couldn’t own a collection, he wanted to know what was in it for reference and collation.102

State Information in the Public Sphere Like Naudé, Colbert saw the natural sciences as an open-ended source of useful information, constantly expanded by the discoveries brought by experiment.103 But he went further than Naudé, connecting the

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learned library, the administrative, ‹nancial, and industrial archive, to the library of the natural sciences. New information was discovered by experiment, and thus Colbert founded the Académie Royale des Sciences on site in 1666, to have their experiments and archives in the Royal Library.104 The Petite Académie, later the antiquarian Académie des Belles Lettres et Inscriptions, met across the street, in Colbert’s library, or in his Chateau at Sceaux.105 Colbert kept ‹les of mathematical treatises,106 as well as the astronomical data from the observatory that Colbert founded and hired Cassini to run. This was part of a more general program of favoring subjects with practical and ‹nancial interest to the state and centralizing them in his archive.107 While many of Colbert’s archives were used in the secret of internal ministerial and familial deliberations, other document collections and research projects were destined for publication, in an attempt to have the French state occupy the public sphere of learning. There was thus a symbiotic tension between the secret sphere of state information collection, and the world of learning, diplomacy, and propaganda. The practical, naturalistic, and industrial focus of Colbert’s collection and research program was re›ected in his sponsorship of public scholarship. Colbert controlled the Royal Press at the Louvre, and through it, he printed and published works that re›ected the interests of his own projects, academies, and libraries. The Royal Press no longer published political history, or even philological, classical humanist scholarship, but rather panegyric works and works on the natural sciences and industry, and royal propaganda.108 This re›ected Colbert’s interest in the natural and technical sciences, and possibly a distaste for the traditional humanism of scholars such as Naudé. From 1640 to 1661, the Royal Press at the Louvre published traditional late humanist works—scholarly editions of classical authors, such as Terence and Suetonius, and of eastern and mostly Byzantine manuscripts, and antiquarian medievalism, such as works by Jean Chif›et (1646). It also reedited standard religious texts, such as psalm books and St. François de Sales’s Instruction à la vie dévote (1641). Led by Sublet de Noyers, it published the works by Richelieu on religion (1642), and Philip de Commines’s histories of the reigns of Louis XI and Charles VIII (1649). In 1666, at the moment Colbert took over and began in earnest his cultural program, a striking change took place. The old works of classical philology and scholarship disappeared. The Royal Press now favored in-house, naturalist scholars and engineers from the Royal Academy, such as Claude Perrault, whose works included Mémoires pour servir à

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l’histoire des animaux (1676) and Observations sur les eaux minérales de plusieurs provinces de France (1675). Also published were Denis Dodart’s Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des plantes (1679) along with works by Cassini and Picard. It was not only works of science that replaced the old literary humanism. The press became a site of Louis and Colbert’s theatrical propaganda. In 1679, along with Richer’s description of his travels, the press published André Félibien’s Les plaisirs de l’isle enchantée, describing Louis XIV most splendid party at Versailles. Indeed, more than 50 percent of the books appearing during the 1670s concerned Versailles, the king’s collection of artworks, or parties. What had once been a top humanist press was now a mouthpiece for the state. During Colbert’s tenure, no literary works appeared, and only historical works that served direct political interests were published. In 1677, along with Le labyrinthe de Versailles the press published Colbert’s Édits, déclarations, règlemens et ordonnances du roi Louis XIV sur le fait de la marine. When works of scholarship appeared, they were directly related to political questions, such as Louis’s claims to dynastic rights, in Lecointe’s serial historical project, the Annales francorum. Outside the con‹nes of the Royal Press, Colbert sponsored both directly and tacitly the publishing of works that resembled the practical chapters that would ‹ll Diderot’s Encyclopédie, many of them by intendants and commissaries: F. Dassié’s L’Architecture navale, contenant la manière de construire les navires, galères et chaloupes et la dé‹nition de plusieurs autres espèces de vaisseaux (1677); François Blondel’s Traité de l’art de jeter les bombes (1683); Jacques Savary’s Parfait Négociant (1670); Philippe Barrême’s Les comptes faits ou Le Tarif Général de touttes monnoyes (Avignon, 1762); also Les Tarifs et comptes faits du grand commerce où l’on y fait les changes d’Angleterre, d’Hollande, de Flandre, d’Allemagne etc. (Paris: chez l’auteur, 1670).109 In essence, Colbert was helping to create works to ‹ll ideal libraries on the topics he felt most useful for the state, in terms of propaganda and public knowledge. It is hard to measure the effects of this program. What is clear though is that, from this point on, in order to govern, a new curriculum was necessary. Those who wanted to govern would have to know what Colbert knew. If one wanted simply to understand the state, it was clear that it was necessary to be expert in multiple ‹elds: medievalist legal scholarship, library sciences, the natural sciences, administrative and industrial information management, navigation, architecture, rhetoric, and shipbuild-

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ing. This new naturalist vision of state knowledge is outlined in a memo written to Colbert by his uncle Pussort in 1663: The Latin colleges have created procurers, clerks (gref‹ers), sergeants and clerks for the palace of justice, priests and monks. If we could convert some of these places into colleges of commerce, of marine mapmaking, piloting, hydrography, etc., the kingdom would be in no time as knowledgeable in naval affairs and in long-range voyages, in commerce and liberal arts, as it already is in chicane [legal harangues and long trials].110

Colbert followed through, opening hydrography schools and fostering natural sciences and mercantile studies.111 Colbert’s library, and its mirror in a new state curriculum, would change the nature of library collections. The biblioteca selecta of the honnête homme or of the gentleman scholar still existed. But the collections of professionals increasingly re›ected the technical functions of the state. Colbert’s brother Charles de Croissy’s library re›ects the evolution toward technical, practical libraries for state administrators. Croissy’s personal library was a direct product of his technical training and positions in state administration and diplomacy. Of the books it contained, 30 percent were on law and political science, and customs books; 50 percent were on history, mostly that of France, with a distinct focus on Middle Eastern history, which possibly re›ected an antiquarian bent.112 Only 10 percent concerned classics and religion. Croissy’s library was a biblioteca selecta, but one for state administration. Administrators such as Vauban created technical and political libraries for themselves and their children as tools of their state functions.113 These were personal erudite appendages of the larger state archives created by Colbert and other ministers.

Using the Archive for Politics The collection of documents and management of the library were directly linked to external political concerns. Colbert’s policy archive was used in daily government and kept up to date. Colbert insisted that Baluze be certain of what was in the library at all times, and that all papers and maps be well ‹led, ready for quick consultation.114 He warned Baluze never to lend his books, or let anyone in the library without his “express orders.”115 In 1672, he asked Baluze to ‹nd him a ‹le of French-English trade treaties with his own notes:

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In my library there must be a portfolio in which are found the treaties made between our kings and England, with diverse memoirs written in my hand on these treaties and on commerce. I beg Monsieur Baluze to ‹nd me this portfolio and to send it to me; in the case that he does not ‹nd it, he must nonetheless send me all the treaties concerning England.116

Papers in Colbert’s thematic portfolios, such as the one dedicated to English treaties, would be used to write policy papers.117 As Colbert had made clear to Baluze, these were policy dossiers and had to be both secret and in order for ready consultation. The dossier contained historical documents, past treaties, of‹cial studies, such as a report on the “balance of trade between France and England,” as well as of‹cial correspondence and internal memos.118 On the back of a memo outlining the project of a new trade treaty with England, Colbert wrote, “To Monsieur Baluze, to guard with the greatest of care.”119 Colbert’s “Projet du traité de commerce entre la France et l’Angleterre, October 9, 1669,” contained an exchange of annotated commentary between Colbert and his brother, de Croissy, ambassador to London.120 I will closely examine the project for a commerce treaty that you have sent me, and I will then let you know my sentiments concerning each of the articles that compose it. . . . It would please me to see the remarks that you have made about the treaty project in relation to the advice you have taken from the most skilled French negotiants who are in England; and with the manuscripts and mémoires that I sent you before, you will learn how to carry out the discussions of the articles of this treaty.121

Once he worked out the project and veri‹ed it with the archival dossier, Colbert wrote a report to Louis on the trade treaty, along with the offers made by the English, which Louis XIV in turn could read with Colbert’s report, and then copiously annotate, correct, and corroborate.122 A summary of his work with de Croissy, the report to the king contained information from Colbert’s English trade portfolio. Following royal con‹rmation of the project and the parameters of trade negotiation, a string of negotiations with the English followed with demands, responses, and the ‹nal treaty, copies of which would become part of the portfolio.123 Thus Colbert’s manuscript collections allowed him to personally lead major negotiations with England, rather than relying on

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outside scholars and diplomats, while also enhancing the capacity of the French state to deal with its northern neighbor.

Seeing Like an Archive: Colbert’s Collection and the Colonies While Colbert’s library and research facilities produced knowledge and appeared to be practical, they also created constraints on Colbert’s government. One of the most revealing elements of Colbert’s policy archive are the ‹les concerning colonial enterprises.124 Colbert’s interest in France, Italy, Holland, England, and the East far outweighed his curiosity in the New World, for while he certainly kept his large colonial administrative correspondence, he did not integrate it into his archival system for daily government. This undermined his ability to effectively manage his Canadian policy. Colbert’s lack of interest in information from the New World seems striking for a man after whom the Mississippi was named the “Colbert,” and the Ohio River, the “Seignelay.” Why would one so interested in information ignore many aspects of the riches of his colonial empire? Indeed, the French colonies were small, yet Colbert invested not only great administrative effort in them: he also invested his own money. Colbert could not comprehend a world without ancient laws and charters. He saw the world in terms of traditional paperwork, and in his eyes, America had none.125 In 1669, Colbert wrote a set of orders to his agent leaving to Canada, the sieur Gaudais. Once at his destination, Gaudais was to write a descriptive relation, providing statistical, industrial, political, and social information.126 In the style of administrative formularies, such as Philip II of Spain’s relaciones topográ‹cas, he asked Gaudais to collect geographic details, the length and effects of the seasons, the perceived possibilities for agriculture, the number of inhabitants, the amounts of industrial production and trade, lists of charters that had been established, and what food was fed to children.127 Gaudais was charged with making a plan for deforestation and the maintenance of the colonies.128 Even more, Colbert asked Gaudais to devise a plan to protect inhabitants from the Iroquois, who have “had no trouble in cutting their throats.”129 Aside from this last gory detail, Colbert’s orders to Gaudais look much like his other administrative orders to intendants in France. They were dry and technical. Remarkably, Gaudais received no instructions to consult local experts or collect local artifacts and treasures. Where Philip

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II sent out his formularies to be ‹lled in by locals with varying results, Colbert trained his information collectors to produce standardized reports.130 This worked quite well in France; but the strict framing of information collection in the colonies limited what Colbert learned about the lands he was trying to develop for trade. Colbert’s primary job was to inform Louis XIV and to carry out his orders. Neither Louis nor his minister saw local, eyewitness knowledge of the Americas as an essential tool for administration, and this, in turn, limited Colbert’s administrative effectiveness in the colonies.131 In examining his correspondence with colonial administrators such as de Baas, governor and lieutenant general of the French West Indies; Jean Talon, intendant of Canada; and the directors of his colonial companies, it becomes clear that, although it was limited, Colbert did have a colonial policy.132 Certainly in Canada, he had trouble carrying it out, though he was able to achieve industrial feats in the sugar and slavery depot of the West Indies. But Colbert neither really invested himself in the project nor built a suf‹cient administrative apparatus to manage such a complex project. This appears to be due in part to a lack of curiosity about the colonies themselves. Thus it was not simply mercantilism, or problems with royal government, that undermined his colonial efforts. It was a problem of perception. Throughout Colbert’s colonial correspondence, his lack of curiosity in local knowledge is marked. Colbert received reports from the West Indies, maps and navigational calculations, and even a minimalist enquête from Souchu de Rennefort that discussed local inhabitants and customs. He also received reports from the governor-general of Canada, but he never corresponded with La Salle, or kept a working ‹le with his agent’s observations of the New World. These reports amounted to less information than he received from the port of Rochefort.133 Why is it that Colbert, famed for his curiosity, expressed minimal interest in knowing his colonies? The Portuguese, Spanish, English, Dutch, French Jesuits, German merchants, and other explorers had made an industry of local, ‹rsthand reports and expertise. Curiosity and the ars apodemica were ‹rmly linked with the interest in the marvels of the New World.134 In the mid-sixteenth century, the Portuguese relied heavily on explorers’ accounts and Arab and Indian contacts to organize their geographic charts and colonial enterprises. In the sixteenth century, Juan de Ovando created information collection projects for New Spain, and Fernandez de Oviedo wrote a natural and ethnographic history of the Spanish colonies with a particular curiosity for local knowledge.135

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During the 1680s, Robert Boyle, head of the English East India Company, made active use of ‹rsthand naturalist and ethnographic accounts of the East.136 In the French context, there was no lack of local information about Canada. The Jesuits sent numerous eyewitness reports back to France.137 They were an essential tool of administration. Why then didn’t Colbert use local knowledge as an administrative tool in the Americas, as he did in France and the East? For Colbert, it was not a question of making the New World conform to the authority and history found in ancient texts, as Juan de Sepúlveda had done. The New World did not inspire the same level of interest as did France, Asia, or the Levant. There was no attempt to make connections between the Bible, Rome, and new peoples, or, indeed, to look for Montaigne’s noble savage. Once his royal colonial charters were established, Colbert did not treat the New World as new or separate from Europe. If all authority emanated from ancient Frankish kingship, Rome, the church, and monarchies, then there was no original authority in the New World. Indeed, authority could only be established once charters were established, “seigneuries” founded, and legal codes brought into force. The paperwork generated by placing the New World in the context of European and French authority made it real. Thus there was a truly virtual character to this New World that could not exist until it was enshrined in French legal paperwork. Colbert spoke of the New World as connected to England, Holland, Spain, France, and their colonial holdings and concessions. In his eyes, legally, this is what they were. Colbert never describes the colonies as part of the “Atlantic” or constituting a “world” unto itself. Rather, these territories came to life in documents of authority and sources of wealth inserted into the ancient constitutions of Europe. In his study of Australian and aboriginal treaties, the bibliographer Donald McKenzie showed that Australian aboriginals had neither a concept of property nor of textual authority.138 When they signed treaties giving away their land, there was no cultural context in which this oral, physical tradition could comprehend what was a textual act de‹ning the possession of property. The treaties, argue McKenzie, had to be held null and void. For Colbert, we must turn this model around. For him, oral, aboriginal knowledge could have no authority and no connection to his traditions of authority unless bestowed by legal and diplomatic measures by Europeans. If Colbert viewed the New World as devoid of intrinsic authority—authority based on dominion over land, law, and holy writ spelled out in of‹cial charters—how then did this affect his

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colonial policy? In all of Colbert’s colonial correspondence, there are no detailed questions about local knowledge.139 Colbert’s working ‹les on the colonies pertain mostly to European questions of treaties and rights.140 Colbert’s biggest ‹le on the colonies is the “Recueil des relations et mémoires sur l’Espagne (1606–1666), les Indes Orientales (1628–1669), l’Amérique (1624–1669), les Antilles (1668–1671).”141 This large portfolio of 639 pages contains texts on Spanish dynastic rights; texts and treaties concerning international relations between France, Spain, England, and Portugal; works concerning the founding of businesses and factories in the colonies; as well as several different eyewitness accounts by Spaniards of the Antilles, the River Plata, and the Peruvian Amazon. It has two memoirs by French governors in the Antilles. Finally, the compilation contains translations of two English relations: one by Thomas Modifort, governor of Jamaica, and another a manuscript translation of George Gardiner’s Description of the New World, or Islands and continents of America, as they were in the year 1649 (London, 1651). Colbert also assembled three portfolios on international trade, with Girard Malynes’s Lex mercatoria (1622);142 charters accorded by the king of England to English merchant companies in Holland and Turkey; and a collection of “Chartes des privilèges aux Compagnies de Navigation par les rois d’Angleterre en anglais (1555–1670)”;143 as well as a collection of the royal English charters of the American and West Indian colonies.144 Finally, he kept collections concerning French trade treaties with England and Holland, and documents about the navy, including two original captain’s journals.145 Colbert valued certain ‹rsthand accounts, especially those made by people who worked for him. He valued trade route reports and maritime maps, and owned manuscript maps made by ship captains. For example, he kept a hand-drawn map of “India Oriental” by the Portuguese explorer Damiao Vieira (c. 1668).146 Yet in his personal portfolios, there are few manuscript maps of his colonies, and no accounts of marvels, wonders, or treasures. Colbert did write to the director of the West India Company asking him to “always send me all that you ‹nd in these islands that is rare and extraordinary in plants, animals, wood, and other things.”147 Yet this was not systematic. There are few ‹rsthand accounts of natural or cultural information, compared to his administrative reports. In all his letters to Jean Talon and the intendant Bas, there is no mention made of trying to ‹nd artifacts or to actively acquire series of histories or accounts of local peoples and traditions. Baluze, an ecclesiastical medievalist, ran his library. Thus in

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discussions about the library and the collection of information, no mention is ever made of new peoples or new lands. Colbert left most details of administration in the hands of his colonial companies and governors. If his colonial governors had local contacts and sources of information, they did not discuss them with Colbert. His training of those who were supposed to manage the colonies was based primarily on the mastery of French law and administration. While Colbert hired ship captains for their expertise and intendants such as Bellinzani for their knowledge of ‹nance and industry, his choice of colonial managers was not based on their ‹rsthand knowledge of the terrain. To prepare directors of his colonial companies, he told them to examine the papers of the companies to ‹nd out what had happened in previous colonial administration.148 He did not require them to read geographical or natural histories. Colonial agents had to master the knowledge of production, merchandise, and shipping.149 They were to study complaints and uprisings; but neither knowledge of indigenous peoples nor ‹rsthand accounts from nongovernmental agents were required. In his quest to create a legal framework in the colonies, Colbert ordered his agents to establish traditional noble patents, and urban, monastic, and guild charters. He wanted to create the paperwork and legal documentation missing from this new world—from religious and feudal charters to the Code Noir—so that he could perceive his colonies in the papers in his hands. In a letter to the Jesuit-educated Jean Talon (1625–94), intendant of Canada in 1671, Colbert writes that he has received the “portfolio” of administrative reports and correspondence and that he and the king have gone over them. Their sole interest is the establishment of commerce. Colbert responds that he wants to know more about the business of the colony: its inhabitants and products; the con‹rmation of titles of nobility; the transport of prostitutes to raise population; new livestock, deforestation, and agriculture; and the conversion of native populations.150 In spite of his interest in the establishment of Catholic institutions, Colbert showed none of the interest in historical learning that is present in his administrative correspondence with agents in Europe and the Orient. For each of his European projects, Colbert created parallel scholarly studies. The New World did not have the formal antiquarian information of the old. And yet, as Jefferson’s great collection of Americana and Native American maps showed one hundred years later, there was a host of local information that Colbert could have collected for his project of imperial domination. Innovative though he was, Colbert was set in his

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formal ways. There was little or nothing he saw worthy for his library from the colonies, besides European-made maps, natural histories, and the new European paperwork his agents designed for the colonies. It was the enterprising Talon who read, approved, and out‹tted the Jesuit explorer La Salle’s expedition down to western North America, which would claim the Mississippi as the “Colbert” in 1682.151 Talon had local knowledge and read La Salle’s reports, but there is no evidence that Colbert was interested in what, with hindsight, seems essential. When one considers the amount of correspondence Colbert had with Wansleben, the antiquarian, as opposed to the discoverer of the Mississippi, it exposes the dramatic limitations of how Colbert conceived the New World and its importance. Unlike Thomas Jefferson, the local, ethnographic collector, or the Jesuits, Colbert only wanted intendant reports about French things in America—population, products, and cities.152 In spite of his Jesuit education, he had no sense of ethnography. He appears to have resisted the realities of the empire he tried so hard to build. Despite all protestations from his agents in Canada, he applied his mercantilist policies, forcing French traders to limit their business to the French colonies only, in essence boycotting the English so that they would not receive French goods and gold. This was a fatal policy, for there were only around 2,000 French colonialists and around 150,000 inhabitants in the Thirteen Colonies.153 In spite of Colbert’s repeated attempts to ship prostitutes to Canada, the colony’s population dwindled with its inbred economy. European mercantilist regulation did not work in the dynamic, dangerous, and freer world of North America, though it did produce results in the Caribbean’s slave-fueled sugar factories. Colbert was Louis’s lens to the kingdom and empire. He saw the world through paperwork, and paperwork was either ancient, from the East, holding the authority of the church and antiquity; or it was ecclesiastical, medieval and feudal. In collecting paperwork, curiosity played a central role. Colbert had a mercantilist hunger for information that aided him in his grandest achievements. In this sense, mercantilism was an effective tool. Yet the essential desire for information was missing from his colonial policy. This perhaps helps explain why Colbert created an extraordinary enterprise, but one that was fundamentally ›awed.154 For Colbert, there was no Atlantic world, only the weak re›ection of ancient Europe, its laws and its hierarchy of power and knowledge, all of which was seated in paperwork and archives.155 In the end, as with Philip II, paperwork took a certain toll on Colbert. While he used his archives to build and create state ventures with great success in many

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‹elds, his archives both re›ected and limited his vision of the world. It was not simply French government and mercantilism that kept Colbert from fully engaging with his colonial project. Colonial policy was also was rooted in a particular vision of what constituted the proper knowledge for government. Colbert’s paperwork system was effective when used in certain realms. No doubt the system had glitches, blind spots, and unintended consequences. However, when Colbert did not use his information system, and when he did not apply his curiosity to state administration, he was certainly less effective in his government.

chapte r 8

Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Republic of Letters the state control of knowledge

T

he fact that Colbert mixed the worlds of state administration and scholarship so closely makes it hard to de‹ne exactly what he created. Were his intendants and agents bureaucrats in a modern sense? Or were they subservient versions of the humanist secretaries that had ‹lled the ranks of papal and Italian administrations since the late Middle Ages? What becomes clear is that Colbert was creating a new sort of agent loyal only to the state. He actively trained information managers who could ‹nd, copy, catalog, and bring him documentation as he needed it for his day-to-day affairs. In other agents, he sought scholars to teach him how better to handle the historical materials he used for government. They were masters of that little understood phenomenon of learning: the internal government report. By the late 1660s, he had created a cadre of in-house, state scholars who worked only for him. Colbert preferred above all churchmen for their expertise in medieval charters and, perhaps, for their discretion. Whereas Rudolph II of Bohemia had surrounded himself with scholars and librarians who had semi-independent literary careers based on patronage, Colbert preferred those with institutional loyalty. Colbert did not want his scholars looking for patrons; he wanted them as permanent employees of his administration. He found the skills of the Benedictines particularly appealing. These churchmen were expert textual handlers 120

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who saw it as their responsibility to organize ecclesiastical archives. In particular, Colbert sought out the services of the famous archivist and librarian, Don Jean Mabillon (1632–1707), who had developed a methodology of “Diplomatics,” a critical approach to authenticating documents and exposing spurious ones.1 Working with a number of lay scholars in his Société de Saint Germain, Mabillon’s dedication to conscientious methods of critical philology worried some in the church because of his rationalizing approach toward authoritative church documents. Yet Mabillon’s fame and in›uence only grew. Mabillon’s skills of ecclesiastical erudition had a profound effect on Colbert’s approach to learned administration. Mabillon’s masterwork of documentary analysis, De re diplomatica (1681), not only won him Colbert’s admiration, numerous state pensions, and support for the monastery; the following year, Colbert sent Mabillon to Burgundy to search for documents relative to royal rights.2 In 1683, Colbert sent Mabillon through Switzerland and Germany to look for documents relative to the rights of the Gallican church, which were central to fortifying Louis’s power and claims over ecclesiastical bene‹ces. Mabillon trained a number of highly accomplished document gatherers and critics, experts in ancient languages, among them Baluze and Robert Cotelier.3 One of the ‹nest bibliophiles and archivists of his time, the former secretary to Archbishop Pierre de Marca, the Jesuittrained Étienne Baluze helped manage both the Colbertine and Royal libraries, as his massive personal collection of manuscripts copied from both libraries illustrates.4 Baluze ran the day-to-day workings of the library. He managed its ‹nances, acquisitions, and staff, down to the purchasing of reams of paper (the greatest expenditure besides books, used for copying, the main process of manuscript acquisition), as well as brooms, maps, locks, coal, rags, rugs, cabinets, armoires, maps, globes, curtains, and most importantly, repairs on the clock, for Colbert, trained as an accountant, liked all his employees in both his and the king’s library to clock their hours.5 It is hard to imagine the old royal librarians punching in and out on a work clock; but Colbert liked ef‹ciency. Baluze stood midway in the evolutionary chain between scholar and expert bureaucrat. Colbert hired him not only because his erudition was internationally renowned, but also, as Colbert mentions himself in his correspondence, because of the skills he had honed with the Jesuits and Mabillon. Baluze was a quick copyist with good handwriting, a master cataloger, and a capable handler of account books.6 And clearly, he was

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trustworthy. He answered to Colbert’s ethic of scholarship and his logic of bureaucracy and state secrecy.7 The library and the administrators who worked for it constituted a quasi-bureaucracy of letters, and Colbert’s orders were its modus operandi. Baluze’s main responsibility was to manage historical documentation for Colbert’s daily political uses.8 Like the Fuggers before him, Colbert insisted his collection be up-to-date. Baluze was to acquire all new publications and archival discoveries, in particular in relation to topics of immediate concern, such as Jansenism.9 The library’s organizational and retrieval system was facilitated by large cataloging projects, organized by Baluze and Nicolas Clément in the Royal Library. Colbert mostly operated through Baluze’s personal familiarity with the collections, and his own collection of textual extracts that Baluze used to handle vast numbers of documents, often copied from outside Colbert’s collection.10 Baluze authored numerous internal reports: secret histories and reading and archival guides to help Colbert not only master historical and legal policy questions, but also handle his own archives.11 Baluze went beyond scholars such as Mabillon who worked outside the state administration, and refused direct payment for his work for Colbert.12 Baluze was not an independent ‹gure of learning, but rather a state scholar on a salary, and Colbert employed others like him. An early member of the Académie Française and former secretary to Richelieu, the abbé Aimable de Bourzeis (1606–1672) was another Colbertian state scholar trusted to handle secret papers of state relative to Louis XIV’s claims to the inheritance of the Spanish Netherlands. He, too, produced secret internal histories and legal reports for Colbert, such as his giant ‹le on the inheritance rights of Louis XIV’s Spanish wife, Marie-Thérèse, relative to the Dutch War. The ‹le is ‹lled with secret historical reports, useful documents, and the fruits of a wide scholarly correspondence concerning the crown’s claims over Spanish Netherlands.13 Bourzeis’s secret ‹le for Colbert also contained information that remained secret: reports by ambassadors, legal memos, and minutes of strategy discussions, such as “Designs that his Majesty has to take parts of these countries, over which he has rights,” as well as collections of legal evidence and arguments backing the French royal case.14 Bourzeis informed Colbert about legal questions, Spanish responses, and general strategy. Parts of this ‹le were eventually uni‹ed into a work of public propaganda. While delicate internal memos and diplomatic reports remained secret, Bourzeis’s Traitté des droits de la Reyne tres-chrestienne sur divers Estats de la monarchie d’Espagne is a discussion of legal documents

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Colbert saw ‹t to publish on the Royal Press at the Louvre in 1667, to backing the French crown’s claim.

The Foucault Files: Power, Information, and Archeology The emblematic ‹gure of Colbert’s information system was neither a churchman, nor a librarian, although he had essential training in ecclesiastical scholarship. Nicolas-Joseph Foucault (1643–1721) was an erudite maitre des requêtes and of‹cial whose career spanned and oven outlasted Louis XIV’s reign.15 Foucault began his career as Colbert’s secretary, compiling a legal and administrative manual for Colbert’s son, a glossary of state paperwork and of the archives that allowed him to learn the mechanics of state administration. He helped in the trial against Fouquet and led the acquisition campaign for both libraries, ‹nally rising to the powerful post of intendant of Montauban, where he implemented repressive measures against Protestants.16 As Baluze evolved from scholar to bureaucrat, Foucault grew from lowly tax collector, to grand state intendant, writer of enquêtes, and noted erudite and antiquarian, founder of the Académie des Belles Lettres de Caen. By the end of his life during the regency of the duke d’Orléans, Foucault was a celebrated antiquarian and archaeologist. Foucault straddled both the strong-arm politics of Louis’s regime and the world of erudition. Foucault’s father, Joseph Foucault (1612–?), was a secretary of the Chambre des Comptes, and a protégé of Colbert. He went on to be a clerk in the Parlement of Paris and wrote the of‹cial report of the proceedings of Fouquet’s arrest.17 Nicolas-Joseph was educated by the Jesuits. He was ‹rst in his class (empereur) several times and won the ‹rst prize in prose at the Collège de Clermont, where Colbert’s sons would later attend school.18 Foucault studied philosophy and obtained the degree of maître des arts. In 1662, he studied theology for a year, was con‹rmed, received the tonsure, and was going to receive a position in the clergy. However, his father and Colbert decided that he should study law, and in 1664, he received a degree in canon and civil law at Orléans. Colbert named him secretary in 1665. He now had the prerequisite skills to become one of the leading ‹gures in Colbert’s administration. He was trained in classical studies, ecclesiastical history, and canon and civil law.19 Colbert had plans for his skilled protégé. Foucault entered royal administration with a venal commission as a procurer general of genealogical research. His ‹rst job was thus to work as a support to Colbert’s

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project of pressuring the nobility to prove their ‹nancial rights. In 1674, he became a maître des requêtes, the road to being an intendant. In 1678, Colbert found a new use for his talents. He made Foucault part of Baluze and Doat’s manuscript gathering operation. Working with Baluze, Foucault went to the abbey of Moissac and noted that Doat had missed many documents relevant to asserting royal, secular power over the church. With the help of the abbé de Fouillac, Foucault went through the manuscripts and had Fouillac make a catalog for Baluze.20 Concerning their discoveries, Foucault wrote to Baluze, Monsieur, I did not want to respond to the last letter that you took the trouble to write me, as I was not yet able to send you the catalog of manuscripts that are in the abbey de Moissac. To examine them, I relied on the aid of Monsier Fouillac, canon of Cahors, who spent seven days just to go over a part of them, the archives of this monastery being in such a great confusion and the majority of its papers rotten or eaten by rats. Monsieur le président Doat quickly looked over them, and there is a large number of books and cartularies that he did not see. It will be possible to ‹gure out what is in this abbey with the help of the above mentioned sieur Fouillac, who is very able in these matters, and under whose eyes nothing will escape that merits to be noticed. But as he will lose his revenue as canon during the time he will do this research and although he has offered to work for free, it would be, Monsieur, necessary to give a royal commission to the chapterhouse of Cahors for him while he works on this search. It would be a way to gain a total knowledge of that which is of interest in the churches of this province, and you would be, Monsieur, informed on all that you desire to know. Monsieur the Bishop of Cahors is in Paris for a lawsuit he is making against the University, and I am persuaded that he will not refuse you the manuscript of Radulphe, archbishop of Bruges, which you have made clear you need.21

Here Foucault explains that he has found a learned priest without an income who will essentially raid the archives and write a catalog so that Baluze and Colbert can assess which documents needed to be copied. No member of the abbey of Moissac was willing to do so. Foucault also points out that the bishop of Cahors was having legal problems, and if Colbert helped him, he might be able to use this pressure to obtain a rare manuscript. Nicolas-Joseph Foucault is not considered an erudite author, although his works are varied and substantial. He wrote major parts of the

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Ordonnances (c. 1670), or legal and administrative lessons for Colbert’s son Seignelay; he was Colbert’s and Lamoignon’s scribe during the legal reforms, writing the Le Procès Verbal de l’Ordonnance de 1667, the internal minutes of Colbert’s legal reforms. He wrote the of‹cial description of the arrest of Fouquet.22 He wrote a secret, internal history of the functions of the royal secretaries, also for Seignelay, to once again describe the workings of state administration.23 He prepared drafts of his own intendant’s enquête on Caen for the Mémoires sur les Généralités collected to instruct Louis XIV’s grandson and erstwhile heir, the duke de Bourgogne, in 1698.24 He wrote numerous enquêtes, letters to Colbert, as well as a set of Mémoires, not published until the nineteenth century. He also worked as a scholar, writing numerous speeches for both the Académie des Belles-Lettres de Caen, and the Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, which made him an honorary member in 1701.25 During this same period, Foucault and the famed antiquarian and Orientalist translator of One Thousand and One Nights, Antoine Galland, sent a “relation” of their ‹ndings from their archeological dig of the ancient cities of Alauna and Viducassiens to the Académie des Inscriptions.26 Montfaucon eulogized Foucault in the preface to his founding work of antiqurianism, L’antiquité expliquée et représentée en ‹gures (1719–24). He considered Foucault to be one of the greatest archaeologists of the age, whose position as an intendant gave him advantages that he applied toward learning: Monsieur Foucault, Counselor of State, has furnished me with more antique pieces than any other. The charge of intendant, which he exercised in several provinces, gave him the means to discover [many pieces] that would have been destroyed had they fallen in other hands. As he has marvelous taste, he has created one of the most beautiful [antiquities] cabinets in the kingdom, and perhaps all of Europe. Always attentive to please learned people, he keeps those who work on antiquity informed, and, like another Peiresc, he has offered them with pleasure, all that he has collected for public utility.27

Montfaucon’s comparison of Foucault to Peiresc shows how much had changed since the beginning of the seventeenth century. Foucault was learned, and shared his ‹ndings with the world of the Republic of Letters, but only in his retirement. In the days working for Colbert, Foucault did not share information among public scholars. In fact, he was known for seizing books, and for the coerced conversions of Protestant nobles.28

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Indeed, Foucault could be seen as the antithesis of Peiresc, for he was erudite, but he used his learning to advance his administrative career and enforce Louis XIV’s aggressive absolutist policy. In the affair of the régale, in which the bishop of Pamiers refused to obey royal orders, and which we shall examine in more detail in chapter 9, Foucault seized documents, sequestered charterhouses, and produced numerous reports and document packets that he sent back to Baluze and Colbert.29 He searched the papers of the renegade priest, Pére d’Aubarède, the vicar general of Pamiers, and found a secret journal about the régale, and found names of churchmen involved in the ecclesiastical rebellion.30 He worked with the loyal archbishop of Toulouse, who looked over papers for him and veri‹ed the names of conspirators. The very same year, 1680, Foucault also sent Colbert substantial administrative reports concerning politics, legal reform, church affairs, and tax collection in Montauban, as well as making a map of the area.31 In all cases, he used his scholarly expertise to assert absolutist royal authority. Colbert asked Foucault to mix his duties as intendant with his scholarly service. He was also a hands-on governor and administrator. In the same letter in which he asks Foucault to “inform yourself always on all that concerns commerce, manufacturing, and the feeding of livestock,” he also asks him to continue his state scholarly activity: “In the different visits that you have made all over your districts, you would give me pleasure if you would look in the churches, cathedrals, and in the principal abbeys to see if there are considerable [collections] of manuscripts, and, in this case, to look for the means to have them without using the heavy hand of authority, but rather with sweetness and by purchasing them.”32 Clearly Colbert had learned lessons from the problems encountered by his aggressive document hunters, although he never hesitated to apply state pressure to acquire his desired papers. He regularly asked intendants, commissaries, ambassadors, and agents to ‹nd him materials for his library and archives. To the intendant Tubeuf he wrote, I have heard that the Messieurs [the monks] of the chapter of Saint-Gatien were thinking of sending me some of their manuscripts to put in my library. Please tell them for me, when you see them, that I would be much obliged by this present, as I take great pleasure in collecting manuscripts that might serve as the basis for literary projects that I have undertaken on [Louis XIV’s] reign.

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I also ask that you let me know what you have done to get a copy of the manuscript entitled: Gesta Aldrici, which belongs to the chapter of the cathedral of Le Mans; and in the case that you have been able to acquire it, you will please sent it to me as quickly as possible.33

There were numerous cases of intendants making contact with religious institutions, and asking for manuscripts, rare works, and veri‹cations.34 Colbert also asked the ambassador to London to scour the London book markets, looking for new editions for his personal collection.35 Colbert drafted ‹gures of international humanism for his sometimes public, sometimes secret information hub.36 The academician Jean Chapelain (1595–1674) became Colbert’s agent, searching for scholars willing to take Colbert’s money in return for royal propaganda. A man who once kept a correspondence with other members of the Republic of Letters for his own interests now used his address book for Colbert. Chapelain wrote Conring, asking him to work for the French crown by assembling historical documents that could be used as French propaganda.37 He did the same with Heinsius, whom he ›attered by listing other great scholars, such as J. G. Vossius and Huygens, who had accepted royal service.38 Chapelain ›attered Vossius by telling him that Louis XIV himself had taken a personal interest in his works.39 Chapelain also proposed his own services in developing a form of panegyrical history for the king of a sort that would not reveal political secrets to the king’s enemies.40 The object here was blatant propaganda. Chapelain explained that he understood Colbert’s project of keeping documented political history secret: History should serve only to conserve the splendor of the King’s enterprises and to detail his miracles. At the same time, history is like a fruit that is not good out of season. For if it does not analyze the motives of the things it explains, and if it is not accompanied by prudent commentaries, then it is nothing but a pure, undigni‹ed relation. . . . However, this sort of history should not be used during the reign of the Prince who is the subject of the history, for if one were to write this history, it would render public the secrets of the Prince’s Cabinet; it would warn his enemies, nullify his policy, and betray those who work with him in secret and in the shadow of a profound silence. Therefore, I think that we should produce a history in a manner that the work is kept hidden until no inconvenient remarks can be used against his Majesty and his allies.41

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Colbert’s agent understood that his job was not to write serious documented history. The royal archives were to remain closed. When Denis II Godefroy, Colbert’s agent in the stacks of the Chambre des Comptes at Lille—an archive essential for documents pertaining to Louis’s claims to the Netherlands—asked Colbert if he could write a history with the documents he was collecting under Colbert’s orders, Colbert told him that he paid him to keep his medieval documents for the state, not to publish them.42 He told the disappointed Godefroy to stick to his secret, archival task.43 When one of the assistants in the Royal Library, Antoine Varillas, revealed to Colbert that he was using the documents of the royal collection to write a Secret History of the House of Medici—“I leave off where Machiavelli began,” he imprudently boasted—Colbert was horri‹ed, and ‹red him and evicted him from his lodgings at the library.44 When Colbert’s brother protested that Varillas had nowhere to go, Colbert retorted that he had found Varillas “insupportably ugly” (“une mine plus désavantageuse qui se puisse voir”), and that he didn’t care.45 He showed the same businesslike impatience with the old Royal historiographer, François-Eudes de Mézéray.46 When the latter published a passage in his history that was in contradiction with Colbert’s claims of royal tax prerogatives, Colbert ‹red him as well, ignoring the entreaties of a long-serving old man with a family to support.47 These scholars misunderstood their role, which was closer to that of Foucault, the intellectual policeman. With the Foundation of the Petite Académie, later the Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Colbert organized a historical research team for political propaganda.48 The team, which included Chapelain, François Charpentier, Claude Perrault, the Président de Périgny, and later, Paul Pellison-Fontanier, had begun by helping formulate Louis’s Instructions for the Dauphin, and had corrected works of propaganda. The team wrote Latin inscriptions for public buildings and medals, and took part in writing collective works of propagandistic history.49 The most illustrious of this group was Charles Perrault, the great author of fairy tales, who acted as permanent secretary for the Petite Académie. Perrault writes in his Mémoires that he had Charpentier write down the work of the group in a small notebook (cahier), which would be sent to Colbert, who would write his comments on it, much as he did with the reports of his son and the intendants.50 Colbert had tested Perrault for the position of secretary by having him write a description of a naval siege. Perrault’s job was then to record Louis XIV’s utterances into a register, so that sententiae and great phrases of the king could later be

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quoted. Colbert also dictated the entire story of the fall of Fouquet, which Perrault diligently wrote down in the register.51 However, there were problems with Colbert’s historical research team. Perrault notes that the team worked not from primary historical documents, but rather from of‹cial gazettes and public sources.52 After Charpentier approached Colbert, asking for secret memoranda with which to write his histories, the minister rebuffed him, not wanting to open the royal archives. Charpentier resigned. When Pellison began writing his history of the War of Devolution, he also asked for direct access to Louis XIV and state archives. He got access to the king, but apparently not to state papers. They were two separate things. Louis did not reveal secrets, but his papers did. Colbert wanted Pellison for the same reasons he hired Chapelain: to write panegyric, not to do revealing research.53 Thus, Pellison was commissioned to write about Louis’s Dutch Wars, and followed Louis on his military campaign, writing observations and a purely descriptive history that could be used as propaganda. One scholar who pleased Colbert was Benjamin Priolo, a former spy and adventurer who had worked for Mazarin, and who, in 1661, proposed to write a history of the ministry of Mazarin in the style of Tacitus or Livy in exchange for payment.54 He even asked Colbert for documents for his history, and Pierre Bayle claimed that Colbert had given him access to information concerning rival ministers.55 Whether or not Colbert actually gave Priolo sensitive documents to bolster his claims, Priolo’s history clumsily attacked Colbert’s rivals and praised Mazarin. Describing Mazarin’s last will and testament, Priolo noted, “At this time especially he recommended by particular Character Jean Baptiste Colbert, in whom as he possessed many qualities, so especially his faithfulness and his industry, and with his most piercing Judgement, sincerity unknown to the most of men.”56 Priolo noted that Colbert could never be deceived, nor deceive anyone, and he lamented that his book was both ridiculed and disdained. Colbert may not have liked base ›attery, but he did like political loyalty, and Priolo received payments and kept his pension. If he supported propaganda and suppressed critical histories, Colbert also sti›ed and controlled the publication of genuine historical documents if they did not serve the strict role of propaganda. In 1666, the parliamentarian Guillaume Ribier complained of the rising tide of state secrecy and government control over state documents, in which more and more historical documents were deemed “secret intelligence.”57 It

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was dangerous for historians, Ribier noted, to publish historical documents with political signi‹cance,58 where one discovers the secrets of the Court of a Prince, the mysteries of the Cabinet, the power and authority of the Favorites, the jealousies and competitions of the Grands etc. . . . Even now it is considered an attack against the well-being of the state, & the Honor of Princes and their Ministers, to give the means to Strangers and Enemies of the State to use our documents (adresses) & to know our most secret intelligence.59

Secrecy and censorship had always existed in government affairs. It was now clearer than ever that this secrecy was extending in new ways into the world of learning. This did not just mean keeping secret archives and manipulating the public world of learning; it also meant creating a vast censorship campaign. It was precisely the sort of policy that was missing during the Fronde. Colbert, in contrast, used his state agents to identify and repress information deemed threatening to Louis’s royal power monopoly.

Policing the Republic of Letters: Nicolas de La Reynie and Information Crackdown As a minister who made his career during the days of the Fronde, libels, clandestine street literature, and printing were of primary concern to Colbert. Here was another aspect of the world of information and of the Republic of Letters that he wanted to control. Throughout his ministry, Colbert wrote to his Lieutenant general of police, the intendant GabrielNicolas de La Reynie (1625–1699), of the king’s and his own concern with libels.60 Colbert saw libels as a direct threat to royal authority. He wanted not only to punish printers of libelous tracts and banned books with stays in the Bastille or in the galleys; he also sought to create a system to tightly control printing throughout France. In 1661, at the beginning of Louis’s reign, Colbert sought to strengthen the state’s control over the printing of books in France. There had long been a system of royal “permissions” that printers needed to publish a given work, that followed the “approbation” of the royal censor, called the approbation du roy.61 Colbert wanted to expand this by bringing print shops themselves under state control. In 1666, Colbert created the Council of Police and asked them to

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come up with a system for controlling the book trade.62 Working under La Reynie, with the assistance of the erudite police commissary Nicolas Delamare, the council designed a mercantilist plan to reduce the number of printers to only a sanctioned few. Colbert helped the council design a familiar system of controlled visits, much like those of intendants. La Reynie and Delamare were not simple policemen, but rather prestigious, former maîtres de requêtes, and La Reynie was technically an intendant himself. The position of lieutenant general of police in Paris was a newly created post, a high of‹ce that was tantamount to a ministry of the interior, though focused on Paris. It brought La Reynie into daily contact with Colbert and often Louis XIV. The job of the police was to visit print shops and verify that they were following regulations and only publishing sanctioned books. La Reynie would list all material in each print shop to make sure the state could account for each printing press.63 He wanted lists of workers in the printing industry, and lists of those who made and distributed movable type. In 1667, Colbert closed thirteen of the seventy-nine existing print shops in Paris for not complying with state regulation.64 The decision was taken to limit the number of royally sanctioned printers to thirty. They would receive mercantilist monopolies and advantageous contracts to publish royal materials, from books to legal codes, and of‹cial announcements that were posted on walls. It was a lucrative business. In order to maintain their privilege, printers would have to pass each book through La Reynie’s censorship of‹ce to receive an of‹cial stamp of approval. Failure to do so would incur corporal punishment.65 While favored state-sanctioned printers prospered—Frédéric Léonard became a millionaire with his royal and church printing monopolies—small independent printers and bookbinders slowly went out of business. Colbert’s state regulation succeeded in strangling the once great Parisian book industry. However, censorship is always a tricky game. Printing in nearby Holland ›ourished even more, outside of Colbert’s control, and royal printers, such as Frédéric Léonard, often printed subversive works on foreign presses, smuggling them back to Paris for pro‹t.66 Gabriel-Nicolas de La Reynie was not a Parisian by birth. Born in Limoges in 1625, from an important parliamentary family, his grandfather was president of the Parlement of Burgundy and a member of the Royal Council. He received a Jesuit education and went on to study philosophy, theology, and canon and civil law. At the age of twentyone, he became a president of the Parlement of Bordeaux. During the Fronde, he became intendant to the duke d’Épernon, and, although

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wealthy himself, went on to manage the d’Épernon family fortune and household in Paris.67 In 1661, having had the support of Mazarin, La Reynie was able to purchase the important position of maîtres des requêtes for the considerable sum of 320,000 pounds. With good political connections, he was on the path to an intendancy. From a distinguished legal family, La Reynie was cultivated. His marriage contract reveals the valuable contents of his library of 1,537 volumes in the early 1660s.68 His library was ‹lled with works of literature and eloquence, theology, history, canon and civil law, philosophy and the natural sciences, as well as a considerable collection of eighty-one volumes of prints. Here was the perfect agent for Colbert: cultivated, professional, with legal and ecclesiastical expertise, and loyal to the crown. La Reynie was not only a well-educated and rich lawyer; he also chose the right side in the Fronde. Best of all, he aimed to serve. As a test of his skills, Colbert had him write several reports on trade and tax farms, and also asked him to manage a system of informers and to report their ‹ndings.69 La Reynie passed the tests, and soon after, Colbert had him write a report supporting royal authority over ecclesiastical courts.70 In 1667, Colbert appointed La Reynie the ‹rst lieutenant general of police in Paris, in a move to take policing away from the Parlement of Paris, transferring this power to the crown, and to Colbert’s ministry.71 La Reynie’s responsibilities were multiple. He was to police Paris and guarantee security in the city. He was to manage the city itself—from lighting and ‹re‹ghting to signs, water distribution, and ›ood management. He was to handle vagabonds, hospitals, prisons, abandoned children, and prostitutes, as well as oversee health and the management of the medical profession, hygiene, and epidemics in the capital. He also managed commerce in the city and regulated the guilds, from butchers to wig-makers. Finally, he was to police moeurs: roughly put, morals, which also meant ideas, learning, and printing.72 He was essentially the mayor of Paris and manager of all that went on in this capital of the Republic of Letters. Colbert had asked La Reynie if it would be possible to completely ban the importation of foreign books and pamphlets. The astute and ever realistic La Reynie pointed out the dif‹culties in controlling clandestine and foreign literature. In 1664 he wrote Colbert that high and low of‹cers of customs make everything confused, by the license they take to give to booksellers, before they have been visited

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‹rst by the Collège Royal, by the syndics of the printing trade, the books they receive in boxes in their of‹ces [from outside France]. . . . It is useless to constrain the king’s subjects to obedience, if foreigners are free to ‹ll the kingdom with scandalous doctrines. It is in this way that kings and governments have been slandered in the past.73

La Reynie tried various methods of searching incoming packages from Holland, and even though he was slowing down illicit traf‹c, he knew that banned books were still making it through.74 The bookseller Ribou was caught with a reading room with a stock of banned, seditious religious works on Protestantism and Jansenism, and was sent to the galleys. On his return, he was caught selling more banned books, and this time Delamare wrote La Reynie that he would threaten him with a life sentence in the galleys if he were caught again.75 Censorship had once been the purview of the university, but during the reign of François I, the crown took over censorship from the church, as well as the Parlement, which delivered the approbations to publish legal texts. Colbert and La Reynie now tried to use their control over the book trade to sti›e the wave of antigovernment pamphlets, placards, and factums, printed descriptions of trials and legal proceedings, as well as seditious songs.76 After nearly twenty years in power, La Reynie complained to his old friend, Étienne Baluze: I do not understand how it is possible that there are still people insolent and stubborn enough to compose and sing in public such extravagant things. We have imprisoned many of these miserable people, seized all their papers, and have also threatened all these small printers.77

La Reynie had the authority to censor and repress, but it was not enough to control sedition completely. Nonetheless, the state played a larger role than ever both in›uencing and repressing the public world of knowledge, learning, and politics.

Policing Radical Enlightenment La Reynie was not simply worried about popular culture and pamphlets. He was also concerned about the world of formal learning, and Baluze helped him in his quest to repress philosophical, political, and most of all, religious sedition.78 Almost half of the books seized by the police in seventeenth-century Paris concerned theology and canon law.79 During

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this period, which some would later call the Radical Enlightenment, Colbert and the king saw a major threat in the undermining of royal authority through Protestantism, Jansenism, papal authority, and atheism.80 In 1672, La Reynie sent a report to Baluze concerning the anonymous book Le Tombeau des Controverses ou le Royal Accord de la Paix avec la Piété (Amsterdam: J. Lucas, 1672): The author of this treatise claims that the king wants to unite the two religions, that it is in his interest to tolerate one single [religion], and that he has the authority to do so. He makes reference to several important examples, from which he draws extraordinarily strong conclusions, that it would be dangerous to authorize and that it is perhaps not prudent to condemn, as they express certain truths, which are important to the king and the kingdom.81

Note La Reynie’s subtle reading of the Tombeau de Controverses. He remarks that since the book favors bringing Catholicism and Protestantism together, it might be used to the advantage of the monarchy, and, in spite of being published in Holland, might be well received by Rome.82 However, in his following letter to Colbert, La Reynie explains that he has done a closer reading of the book. He now realizes that the book means not to show the path to reunited Catholicism and Protestantism, but rather is a critique of Catholicism. The owner of the bookshop where the book has been found must be brought to trial.83 La Reynie had his ‹nger on the pulse of intellectual life. He was especially concerned about the circulation in France of Richard Simon’s Histoire critique du Vieux Testament (Rotterdam: Ranier Leers, 1685). After a raid on the bookshop of Billaine where the book was found, La Reynie recognized the danger of this key book that examined the Old Testament according to veri‹able, historical criteria, bringing the Scriptures into the realm of historical veri‹cation. If the Scriptures were not immutable, but rather open to historical and rational interpretation, this undermined the fundaments of religion, and divine right monarchy. La Reynie took immediate action, tracing the itinerary of the book; seizing it; and making sure copies were procured for the Royal Library: How many copies of this book have been printed? Does he have a royal privilege? Find out. Seize all the copies, see if copies have been

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sold to other bookstores. Which ones? How many? Find out who is the author of this work. Keep three bound copies if possible. Put the seized works in sealed packages. Destroy the pages currently being printed.84

During his search of the shop of the book dealer, the widow Savreux, on June 6, 1673, La Reynie found an inventory of all the books the shop had printed or sold.85 In order to ‹gure out which of the large number of ecclesiastical, historical, and philosophical works on their list were forbidden, La Reynie sent the catalog to Baluze, asking for his analysis. While I have not found Baluze’s response, this letter reveals that Colbert’s state scholars and police worked in concert. Colbert himself wrote La Reynie, asking him to obtain and read books that he suspected were seditious. He asked him to obtain a copy of an Italian history of Mazarin’s ministry in order to decide if it should obtain a privilege to be printed. He asked La Reynie to mark the passages that seem important so that after showing them to His Majesty, he can take the action he judges most advantageous for him; but if they are not yet printed, you can delay the printing until our return to Paris.86

La Reynie duly obtained and annotated the book in question, pointed out passages that could be considered critical, and sent them to Colbert. Colbert then went over these annotations and presented them to the king, who made a ‹nal decision about whether the book should be published. Louis XV’s famous philosophe censor (later the ill-fated defender of Louis XVI), Lamoignon de Malesherbes (1721–94), did not repress subversive authors. He is famous for reading the authors of the Enlightenment, and using his powers as royal censor instead to protect them.87 His predecessor La Reynie also knew his authors, but he did not want to protect them. He served the crown without question. It was not just works on religion that worried La Reynie and Colbert. Well-documented, historical works and even translations of classical authors were of major concern. La Reynie was well read enough not only to be familiar with most historical and political authors, such as Paolo Sarpi; he also recognized editorial tricks, such as when Amelot de La Houssaye translated passages by Tacitus to disguise his own proto-republican philosophy.88 A sophisticated reader, La Reynie was also realistic about his

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own powers, and he knew that if authors such as Amelot were prosecuted too much, they would ›ee to Holland, and would be much more dangerous there. It was in Holland that authors such as Pierre Bayle began using scholarly journalism to attack religious and political authority. La Reynie had long been aware that the bourgeoning world of clandestine journalism was a threat to the attempted royal monopoly on news and the Republic of Letters. He worried that rogue newspapers and gazettes would threaten the monopolies of the Renaudot family, and Denis de Sallo’s Journal des Savants.89 The descendant of Théophraste Renaudot, Jacques Renaudot, who still owned the state monopoly to publish the Gazette de France, complained that many printers were opening reading rooms in direct competition to the Bureau d’Adresse, and in them, they were circulating nonsanctioned books, journals, and news sheets.90 La Reynie worked to protect state-supported news sources, as well as Colbert’s academic journals. La Reynie managed to repress a number of clandestine Parisian journals and gazettes that were particularly seditious.91 But the competition from Holland was getting ever more threatening. I received this afternoon the letter you did me the honor of writing me along with the letter from the comte d’Avaux. This letter con‹rms that the judgment concerning the man named Bayle was just in all its considerations. His Lettre sur les Comètes, Critique du Calvinisme, and the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres testify to his skill, but the ‹nesse and delicacy of these same works do not render them less suspect and, even though the author was forced to restrain himself in his Journal to have them received in France, he was nonetheless unable to hide his ill will and design so well that Monseigneur the Chancellor was not able to perceive it and its printing was stopped on his orders. Finally, Monsieur, if this man has more esprit and discretion than others, this makes him all the more dangerous, as does the place where he lives in the Hague, the esteem he enjoys from the Prince of Orange, and the fact that his father and brother are ministers of the so-called reformed religion in France, must render his actions suspect.92

La Reynie worked tirelessly, but he had a sense of the philosophical and scholarly threat that was posed by the growing implantation of a relatively freer Republic of Letters in Holland. For the moment, however, Colbert’s team of learned police had the upper hand. By the 1680s, Colbert deputized his son, Seignelay, to work with La Reynie on policing the world of learning.93 He clearly saw this as neces-

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sary training for his heir. His team of scholarly police continued work even after the death of Colbert in 1683. La Reynie and Baluze would work together during the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), when Seignelay was in charge of religious affairs, supported by his father’s loyal information agents, as well as Nicolas-Joseph Foucault.94

Internal Communications La Reynie was not just Colbert’s information man in the sense that he managed intelligence and information in France; he and Colbert also had an advanced communication system of their own. The police archives of the ancien régime were kept in the Bastille.95 On July 14, 1789, when the Bastille was raided, many of these archives were burned or thrown out into the street. What is left of La Reynie’s correspondence is found scattered throughout the Parisian libraries and archives, and other archives throughout the world.96 A large corpus of correspondence between Colbert and La Reynie is found in the special collections at the University of Pennsylvania, which were acquired from a German provenance. It contains seventy-nine unpublished letters, mostly by Colbert to La Reynie, and reveals the workings of Colbert’s police state.97 Certainly not a complete set, for responses and letters are clearly missing, the set is rich enough to show how Colbert communicated with La Reynie on a daily basis, sometimes even twice a day.98 The correspondence reveals how La Reynie worked with Colbert and Seignelay not simply to police and regulate the guilds of Paris, but also to act as a censor and policeman of the world of letters. The king also entered into discussions now and then, as Colbert sought to micromanage the all-important Paris, in which French intellectual life and political power were relatively centralized.99 Letters ›ew back and forth on economic questions, policing, and diplomatic and philosophical questions, usually within the same day. During the spring and summer of 1675, letters 7–20 show daily communication between the minister and his police chief. Some of these letters are small, handwritten by Colbert, containing no more than a scrawled paragraph—he was writing quickly—and were folded to a size of 3.5 by 1.5 inches (89 mm × 38 mm) (see ‹g. 8). These small orders, memos, or dispatches could be held in the cuff of a jacket (see ‹g. 9). They contain simple orders, such as letter 19, on August 7, 1675, in which Colbert asks La Reynie to bring papers to be stored at the Bastille. An undated letter from 1675 orders the annulment of the publishing privilege of the père

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du Certre: “Reformed Jacobite [monk] for the book that he composed a short time ago on the history of the Antilles islands of America, which I forbade him to do.”100 Colbert could not have his colonies converting to Protestantism. Other letters, often written by Colbert’s secretaries, then annotated by him in the margins, are larger, folded to 4.5 by 2 inches (11 cm × 5 cm). They are usually more formal and saved as unof‹cial lettres de cachet, such as those written on on December 6, 1675, in which Colbert con‹rmed the embastillement of the printer “Rou” and the annulment of his publishing privilege. In a letter dated June 22, 1678, we see how the king would communicate to Colbert his displeasure with an author— probably brought to his attention by Colbert or the king’s confessor, the père Lachaise—and then Colbert would send the order directly to La Reynie: “Order to put the named Jaillot in the Bastille, the King wants you to act so as to surprise the man, so that when you get him, it is possible to seize all his papers.”101 La Reynie would create packs of documents for Colbert, in this case not only subversive writings, but seized of‹cial government minutes, copies of which a group of clandestine book dealers had been selling: I opened the seals that had been put on the papers of the writers who were arrested last Friday night, and there was found, particularly in those papers of the named Thubeuf and Pigeon, a very large number of manuscript pieces, and in general all that has been written without exception during the past few years of the most infamous and slanderous nature. It would be dif‹cult to decide at present if they are the authors or not, or of some of these writings; but as there is skill and learning and among their manuscripts there are certain that appear to be original copies, and as in addition, the criminals admit to having sold several copies, the suspicions against them do not appear to be baseless.102

Colbert thus read for himself the con‹scated materials, formulating his own readings and comparing notes with La Reynie. The king and Colbert were clearly aware of the detailed methods of censorship and policing. On the twenty-eighth, a following order was sent telling La Reynie to ‹nd papers that proved Jaillot was printing libels. The personal involvement of Colbert in the policing of intellectual life is evident in the letter of August 29, 1678, in which he asks La Reynie for a list of all Paris printers who know Greek or Latin. He orders La Reynie that no further printing apprentices will have the right to be trained in languages with-

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out his being informed ‹rst. As the cases of the Bible critic Richard Simon, or of Amelot de La Houssaye showed, scholars, translators, copyists, and print-shop correctors could be dangerous agents of subversion. The information chain could lead from Grub Street to La Reynie, Colbert, and all the way to Louis XIV himself. It is important that I inform His Majesty of all the reasons and of all the documents that you can bring in order to halt, by a decree, the disorders that these privileges have caused up till now for the police. As there were only ‹ve or six arrests based on speci‹c facts joined to your reports, you will take the time to examine if there are not any other documents that you might add to those you have already given me, and if you have any more reasons to add to those already contained in your report.103

In the end, the job of censorship never stopped. La Reynie complained about sedition until the end of his career. And yet Colbert’s thought police were, to a certain extent, effective.104 La Reynie shut down the circulation of much of the libelous pamphletry that circulated in Paris, and was even successful in muzzling authors such as Amelot de La Houssaye, who either had to hide their intentions or ›ee to Amsterdam. More than stopping Parisian subversive printing, Colbert changed the French Republic of Letters, damaging its traditions. Part of the world of scholarship and philosophy moved to Holland, where Pierre Bayle would lead the clarion call of Radical Enlightenment. Those who stayed, and had their freedoms curtailed, no longer felt the nationalist and monarchist loyalties that had driven Peiresc and de Thou. Colbert still had his world of bureaucrat scholars, but this splintered the relationship between scholarship and the state in France. Some accepted the choice posed by Colbert and worked for the state. Other members of the Republic of Letters refused, and found themselves adversaries of the monarchy.105 By the 1670s, Colbert’s machine for collecting, producing, managing, and policing information was in place. He had his archives, his agents, and his librarians and information managers. He could now effectively use his information in the arena of high policy.

chapte r 9

The Information State in Play

archives, erudition, and the affair of the régale

I

n 1679, Nicolas-Joseph Foucault, now the intendant of Montauban, went to the town of Pamiers, in the County of Foix on the edge of the Pyrenees in France, to censor the local bishop, François-Étienne Caulet, who had refused to recognize the royal régale.1 In 1673, Louis XIV had made his declaration of the right of régale the culmination of the long Gallican movement against the powers of the papacy. In it, Louis declared that he had the right to collect revenues from vacant bishoprics, and that only he, and not the pope, had the right to name bishops: The right of Régale has been judged inalienable, imprescriptable, and owed to us in all the archbishoprics and bishoprics of our kingdom, lands, and regions bound to us; and our intention being that our right be universally recognized.2

These prelates of the church would have to make an oath of ‹delity to the king.3 Whether the clergy liked it or not, the king and his parlements—which had voted the king the right of régale in 1608—had temporal control over the French church. From the time of Charlemagne and the later twelfth-century investiture crises, there had been open disagreement about how much author140

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ity secular rulers had over the church in their lands.4 The question centered on papal claims of the right to grant imperium and royal authority; claims of legal jurisdiction over the church in lands outside the Vatican states; and the right to appoint bishops, who could collect tithes, which represented huge revenues. When Philip the Fair (ruled 1285–1314) challenged these jurisdictions in France, Boniface VIII responded with the bull Unam Sanctum (1302), which claimed church authority over the spiritual and secular “swords.”5 This in turn inspired Marsilius of Padua’s foundational work on secular authority, Defensor pacis (1324), the ‹rst detailed legal defense of secular royal rights of imperium. In 1438, Charles VIII made the Pragmatic Sanction of 1438, insisting that kings in›uence the nomination of bishops and collect bene‹ces from vacant of‹ces. One hundred years later, during the Reformation, the same issues helped inspire the German princes to follow Luther (1525), and also sparked Henry VIII to break England from the authority of Holy See (1531). By the reign of Louis XIV (1643–1715), the papacy still wielded legal and feudal rights, as well as great moral authority, but it could not exert true political or military power. Only the bishops of Pamiers and Alet resisted Louis XIV’s claim to the right of régale, and Pope Innocent XI had few concrete means with which to defend these holdouts of ancient papal power. The régale was a point on which the crown and parlements worked together. Bowing to royal pressure, the French clergy, during its assemblies, voted their fealty to the French monarch and his magistrates in these earthly questions of the workings of the church. Even Bossuet downplayed the régale, calling it “légère dans son fond.”6 In spite of the intervention of the activist pope Innocent XI, elected in 1676, the French monarchy had managed a cold war with the papacy, quibbling over rights, but avoiding schism. Foucault was in Pamiers because in 1677 the formerly Jansenist bishop Caulet had sent a letter to Louis asserting his own rights and papal authority over his bishopric. Drawing on a list of documentary legal and historical justi‹cations, Caulet questioned Louis’s understanding of the canons of the church and the legality of the régale.7 Yet Caulet was helpless to resist Foucault. In 1679, Innocent XI put Caulet under his special protection, sent a number of briefs to Louis asserting his rights, threatened excommunication, and waited for the French king’s response. The divinely anointed Louis disingenuously remarked that he had no rights in spiritual matters, but where the temporal powers of his crown were concerned, he was forced to assert his legal, Gallican rights.8

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Of course he would refuse the pope. But he needed to do so with the appearance of respect and legality, providing unassailable documentation so as to avoid open con›ict. This is where Colbert’s information agents came into play. In the giant battle over the régale, which had raged for centuries, the crown now took the advantage using the information system created by Colbert to assert central royal authority beyond what had been possible before. Colbert sent Foucault to the County of Foix, which since the time of medieval Catharism had been a hotbed of resistance to religious and royal authority.9 With his well-honed methodical approach, Foucault immediately sequestered the episcopal chapterhouse and all the papers and correspondence of the bishop and his allies. He annulled their administrative acts and took control of the diocese’s ‹nances, leaving the bishop nearly starving.10 The violent seizure of his bishopric apparently took a physical toll on Caulet, who published a scathing “libel” entitled Traité de la Régale (Pamiers, 1680) and then died.11 In September 1680, Foucault returned to Pamiers, arrested the printer of the Traité, and arrested clergy loyal to Caulet with lettres de cachet.12 Foucault had ‹red his public volleys and reaf‹rmed royal authority. Now he got down to what he was trained to do: the real work of defending the crown’s prerogatives against Rome. This meant sending all the relevant paperwork and literature back to Paris so that Colbert could formulate a legal framework to respond to the church.13 The weight of divine right rested on legal tradition and the dusty shelves of episcopal and legal archives. In the end, imperium and the constitutional bases of statehood were rooted not in the word of God, but in authentic legal deeds, historical documents, and of course, military might. The question of the régale, therefore, required a legal information apparatus for collecting authentic documents to negotiate with Innocent’s canon lawyers. Tracing the paperwork trail and the archival apparatus designed by Colbert and his agents, librarians and archivists reveals how Colbert used his archives, information system, and trained agents as tools of political power and government. The régale was only one subject among many in the state archives, yet it left a particularly rich trove of documents and correspondence about archival management. Indeed, from the beginning of Louis’s administration, it was a primary source of concern for Louis and his chief minister. The régale illustrates the political importance of manipulating documentary evidence for public polemics about political authority. It reveals the interaction between Colbert and his ecclesiastical antiquarian archivists, who worked with the minister, matching

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their expertise to his to build a state administrative apparatus.14 This mixture of administrative, ‹nancial, and ecclesiastical learned culture developed into a state science of information-handling techniques necessary for collecting, ‹ling, and retrieving up-to-date information in a massive state policy archive to be used for day-to-day political operations and rapid political response.

Étienne Baluze and the Mechanics of Searching for Information in a Policy Archive It was precisely for his mastery of the documents pertaining to the régale that in 1666 Colbert hired Étienne Baluze as his chief librarian. Baluze had worked as the secretary of Bishop Pierre de Marca. A Gallican par excellence, de Marca was from an old legal family, versed in ecclesiastical erudition. He was president of the Parlement of Pau, in the Protestant Béarn region on the Pyrenees, where he worked against the Reformed faith with such zeal that Richelieu appointed him royal intendant of the region in 1631. Louis XIII and Richelieu had asked de Marca, an expert in canon law, to defend Gallican claims. He became a member of the Conseil d’État in 1639 and ‹nally bishop of Couserans in 1641 and archbishop of Toulouse in 1652. In 1641, he published his learned defense of regalian rights and an explanation of the relations between the church and the French state, the Concordia sacerdotii et imperii seu de libertatibus ecclesiae gallicanae, which formed the basis of Louis’s future Gallican declarations. De Marca was not only politically astute, rising through the ranks of Parlement, the church, and royal hierarchy; he was also an avid collector of manuscripts, which he used to formulate his historical and ecclesiastical treatises, a necessity in the litigious world of Counter-Reformation theological and legal sniping, as well as to negotiate episcopal landholdings. De Marca hired Baluze to manage his papers and help him compose his works. When de Marca died in 1662, Colbert hired Baluze to bring the papers and his expertise to the service of Colbert’s burgeoning information apparatus in the new library complex.15 Baluze had helped write de Marca’s Concordia sacerdotii et imperii, doing the archival labor for the great prelate, and managing his library and papers.16 It was this work that caught Colbert’s eye. The book bore Baluze’s erudite mark, and mustered detailed documentary evidence, clear textual references, and citations of capitularies, charters, and eastern and Hebrew manuscripts in defense of royal rights. This was precisely

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the sort of legal and historical scholarship that Louis XIV needed to defend his rights. When Baluze did it for de Marca, it was ecclesiastical antiquarianism. When he used it to organize Colbert’s policy archive, it became what Arthur de Boislisle called “erudition d’État,” or state erudition: the methods and practices of antiquarian historical philology now tailored for state administration.17 Colbert needed Baluze to do for him what he had done for de Marca on a much larger scale and in the context of practical government. He needed Baluze to carry out document searches in the archives to assure that French documentation of claims was superior to all others. He also needed internal inventories and secret histories, glossaries, and reading guides that would not only inform Colbert in his negotiations and reports to the king, but which also allowed him to weed through the tons of ecclesiastical diplomatica in his new archives.18 Actively overseeing Baluze and his research assistant, the abbé Gallois, Colbert became relatively skilled in ecclesiastical law and history, and wrote Louis XIV’s Déclaration pour la Régale in 1673 with the aid of his assistants. In short, Colbert was learning from these ecclesiastical scholars, transforming their practices into tools that he could use for government. Colbert organized his library into an up-to-date information and propaganda machine.19 Like the Fuggers, he insisted his collection be up-to-date. The library was to acquire all new publications and archival discoveries, in particular in relation to topics of immediate concern, such as Jansenism.20 Baluze’s job was to be familiar enough with this library to ‹nd documents at short notice.21 But there were glitches. Colbert became angry when documents he needed were not readily available. And he railed at Baluze when books were not on their place on the shelves.22 “Every three months, reprimanded Colbert, “you must give me a memoir of all the books that have left my library.”23 He then asked Baluze to track every book and manuscript that had left his library, even those lent to his brother, the ambassador to England. Colbert even put a carriage at Baluze’s disposal to expedite the project.24 The demand that the collection be constantly intact was mixed with the desire for totality. If Colbert was to create the most complete and up-to-date information archive, it had to be usable, and total. Therefore nothing could be missing and all references had to be immediately accessible. Colbert sent Baluze to ‹nd relevant legal documents that pertained to speci‹c religious and legal questions, such as in 1672, when

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Colbert sent Baluze document hunting in two of the richest monastic archives in Paris to ‹nd materials for Foucault: I beg Monsieur Baluze to research with care all the papal bulls and letters of patent from the two congregations of Sainte-Geneviève and Saint-Maur, and put them in my library. I will send him those that I already have, so he can look for similar ones, and when he ‹nds them, he will give them to Monsieur Foucault.25

Baluze’s mission was different from past Gallican document collectors working for the crown. Figures such as the Dupuy brothers had created large collections. Colbert, however, did not want to farm out the administration of state information to extraroyal institutions and scholars. Indeed, to his bane, in the realm of ‹nance, Colbert was obliged to rely on external and unreliable tax-farmers.26 In the realm of the state archives, however, he could impose direct ‹eld administration. He wanted a total collection controlled and sealed by the state; and he wanted the scholars to answer directly to his orders. If Colbert could not possess papers, he asked Baluze to go ‹nd the documents, copy, or catalog them. In 1677, when Baluze published his study of medieval royal capitularies, History of the Capitularies of the French Kings of the First and Second Dynasties, he boasted about the new totality of the collection that outstripped the efforts of earlier Gallican scholars, listing all the libraries and archives he had visited to research, and explaining how he veri‹ed and collated as many documents as he could.27 He only complained that the Austrians had not let him into the Imperial Library of Vienna, which is not surprising considering their con›icts with Louis and their obvious awareness of Colbert’s archival project.28 Baluze used this mastery of the archives to enter into a long historical argument, attacking the great defender of papal authority, the Vatican librarian and historian, Cardinal Caesar Baronius. Working for the Catholic French king, Baluze now represented the antiquarian tradition of ecclesiastical scholarship that had once been dominated by the great Gallicans, such as Pierre Pithou and the Dupuy brothers. Using the methods of medievalist philology, he attacked Baronius and justi‹ed the claims of the régale while insisting that the publication of laws was the secular prerogative of princes.29 He also clearly enunciated a point about historical information, one that had become clear in the struggle around the Magdeburg Centuries: capitularies, he maintained, were the legal

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essence of imperium, the arms with which to win such disputes, and therefore had to be preserved by kings in response to the archival mastery of the papacy.30 The legal and historical information arms race sparked by the Reformation and Counter-Reform had now evolved into the basis of modern state administration and a cornerstone of state archival systems. This is precisely the reason Leibniz, on becoming head librarian in Wolfenbüttel, visited Baluze in 1690; to learn his methods of ‹ling, cataloging, and document retrieval.31 Once Baluze found the necessary documents, he would ‹rst verify them, then either have copies made by the Benedictine scribes, or copy them himself. He was a master scribe with mercifully impeccable handwriting, which Colbert, who read his thousands of extracts, copies, and letters, must have appreciated (in a ‹tting dialectic, Colbert wrote in illegible shorthand).32 But more than that, Baluze had a method to collect this information. If he was not allowed to make a full copy, or did not have the time, he would make “extracts” of the useful sections.33 The Order that we have always kept for the registers of the Trésor des Chartes is that we mark in the margin of each register the pieces that we consider worth being copied. In the past, when I followed the order that Monsieur de Carcavy had established, I marked down the ennoblements, the Marriage Contracts between the Great Lords, the Treaties of Peace or alliances, the concessions and donations made by our kings to the families of the popes, the privileges accorded to the foreign merchants dealing in the kingdom, the privileges accorded to Churches, provinces, cities, and to diverse professions, and ‹nally the remission where there was some considerable clause, and some legitimations of bastards of which the names and the families were known. I still observe the same order, but with more moderation, since the time Monseigneur [Colbert] did me the Honor of explaining to me the subject.34

Baluze the erudite and scholar followed Colbert’s orders. Colbert had not only to direct the negotiations concerning the régale, he also had to report to Louis XIV. This meant that he had to be informed. This is why he organized a massive, personal archive. Before he could understand the régale to manage state and foreign affairs, he ‹rst needed to understand and master his archive. As a librarian and a historian, Baluze was not in a position to analyze documents in the secret context of state matters, although he too needed a huge personal archive to master these questions. He had to collect, organize, and make these documents available for Colbert’s instant access, understanding, and use.

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Fig. 1. Jean-Baptiste Colbert by Philippe de Champaigne, 1655. At the beginning of his career as the household intendant of Cardinal Mazarin, Colbert (1619–83) reveals a smile while holding a folded letter in his hand. The paper resembles the folded correspondence found in the manuscript collection of the University of Pennsylvania Library, and reproduced in fig. 8. (By permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

Fig. 2. Claude Lefebre, d’après Marc Nattier, père, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, marquis of Seignelay, ministersecretary of state of the navy, c. 1683. Colbert’s son, Seignelay (1651–90), poses, like his father before him, with official dispatches and correspondence. While Colbert always kept to his rather bourgeois costume in black, Seignelay, who was married to a cousin of Louis XIV, dressed as a high aristocratic courtier. The contrast of the high noble posing with the tools of professional activity is notable. (Courtesy of the Musée de Versailles et de Trianon, Réunion des Musées Nationaux/ Art Resource, New York.)

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Smith Collection, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania.)

Fig. 3. Charles-Nicholas Cochin père, c. 1760, copy of a 1698 engraving by Sebastien Leclerc, L’Académie des Sciences et des Beaux Arts. The house that Colbert built. This engraving of the Academy of Sciences and Beaux Arts gives a sense of the multiple learned activities that took place in Colbert’s Royal Library. Note the central place of antiquarianism and genealogy. In the background is the entrance to the book stacks under the topic of theology. (Courtesy of the E. F.

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Fig. 4. Jacques Savary, Le parfait négociant, 2 vols. (Paris:Veuve Estienne & fils, 1749), vol. 1, p. xxxv. The box on which the “perfect merchant” is writing might not be simply decorative. It could very well be a merchant archive of receipts, bills of exchange, and account books. The ideal activity of a “perfect” merchant appears to be handling paperwork and correspondence. (Author’s private collection.)

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Fig. 5. Cahiers de Louis XIV, MS Fr. 6782, fol. A: adorned title page of the “Abrégé des finances du roy de l’Année 1680.” Colbert had these small notebooks containing figures made for Louis XIV by the finest calligraphers in France. (Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.)

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Fig. 6. Cahiers de Louis XIV, MS Fr. 6782, fol. 8. This is the first page of the “Project of State Expenditures for the Year 1680,” from the “Abregé des finances du roy de l’Année 1680,” which lists sums for each project such as “The King’s Personal Funds,” “Buildings,” and “Swiss Guards.” (Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.)

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Fig. 7. Mélanges Colbert 84, fol. 11v. Drawing by Colbert’s son, the marquis de Seignelay, from his reports from the port of Rochefort in 1671. This drawing is accompanied by further sketches of sails, winches, and anchors, as well as magazine accounts and lists of officers. (Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.)

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Fig. 8. A letter dated June 13, 1677, from Colbert to Gabriel-Nicolas de La Reynie, the lieutenant général du Châtelet, or chief of police of Paris. This letter concerns the regulation of “académies publiques de jeux,” or gambling dens. This letter was part of the daily correspondence sent by Colbert to La Reynie. (MS Coll 578, courtesy of Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania Library.)

Fig. 9. The same letter folded. It does not contain a seal and appears to have been sent by a personal courier. All of Colbert’s working correspondence with La Reynie was folded into small squares for easy delivery and possibly to be kept in the large cuff of a seventeenth-century jacket. (MS Coll 578, courtesy of Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania Library.)

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Fig. 10. MS Mélanges Colbert 3, fol. 5v. “De la Régale,” written by Étienne Baluze for Colbert between 1681 and 1683, is a glossary of arguments concerning the French crown’s rights over certain ecclesiastical appointments and benefices. The letters in the margins refer to textual, archival references related to each argument. Colbert used this text as a tool to master his archives and apply them according to political need. (Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.)

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Fig. 11. MS Collection Baluze 177, fol. 262r. This document, entitled “Right of Régale over Monasteries,” is a crib sheet in Colbert’s hand from 1675 with arguments for and against (“pour et contre”) French royal authority. This document appears to have been used by Colbert for memorization or for quick reference. (Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.)

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Baluze performed a number of functions that permitted Colbert to search his archive and understand its contents. First, Baluze cataloged; or more precisely, he made registers, rudimentary lists of manuscripts, some for Colbert’s medieval manuscript collection, and some for his own archive.35 If Colbert could not purchase a collection, he wanted a copy of its catalog.36 Indeed, he showed a great interest in catalogs. With his assistant, the abbé Gallois, Baluze also made catalogs of printed or secondary works on the régale. For example, Colbert requested a small bibliography on all writers who had studied the question, and Gallois produced a reference sheet, which Colbert copied in his own hand, and kept in his working ‹le on the régale.37 Colbert would come to Baluze and Gallois with demands for them to search for speci‹c materials. He asked the abbé Gallois for a series of documents pertaining to speci‹c points about the régale. He wanted textual references pointing to the most clear and useful passages that he could go to directly for reference: If there is any trace of the right of régale that was established in England before the conquest, cite the authors and the passages in which it is discussed. You must bring me all the memoirs I have written you with all the responses. Above all, you must see if there are proofs of this right [of régale] in the ‹rst and second dynasties [of kings]. You must ‹nd some examples of bishops and priests who have served the kings of the two ‹rst dynasties in their armies. . . . You must learn for which subject the parlement of Paris made remonstrances to King Louis XI for the right of régale. You must search in the ‹rst book of Capitularies of Louis le Debonnaire chapter LXXXIV. . . . Examine in the memoirs of the clergy if, around the year 1644, the clergy did not ask the king to make a declaration for the granting of dependent bene‹ces of vacant abbeys.38

Colbert was speci‹c in his orders. In one letter to Baluze, entitled “Points of Exemptions to Examine,” he listed the kind of documents he wanted, the precise questions he wanted answered by these documents, and the places where Baluze should look for speci‹c documents.39 In response, Baluze and Gallois often corresponded, helping each other ‹nd documents.40

The Mechanics of a Political Information War Room Baluze and Gallois created long registers of medieval documents for Colbert, who looked at and even marked them. Certain texts were made

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part of the working ‹le Colbert kept at all times on the clergy, which had to be kept up-to-date and in good working order.41 Colbert insisted that Baluze be certain of what was in the library at all times, and that all papers and maps be well ‹led, ready for quick consultation: I return to you the memoir written in your hand. Let me know if the copies of these titles have been sent to me or if it is only an extract of an inventory of which I have no copy, so that I can ask for them from Godefroy. Keep with care the piece that I sent you: you must put it in the ‹rst volume of manuscripts that you will have bound. On the list of marriage contracts, you must keep a good [inventory] of all the contracts that I have in my library, and in time research all those that I don’t have to obtain them. You must do the same thing for the testaments.42

In the end, Colbert saw he could generalize his requests and Baluze could still cope with them, providing detailed documentary overviews on generalized topics. Colbert asked Baluze to start writing topical summaries of documents, based on bibliographical inventories: I beg Monsieur Baluze to write me a succinct summary of all that concerns the sancti‹cation of the Saints. . . . By which authority the principal Saints have been recognized; by universal consent; councils; or by the authority of the popes. . . . What is necessary for this, and which documents are concerned?43

Following orders like this, Baluze set about writing a number of extensive reading and archival guides that would allow Colbert to navigate the documents on a given subject. Baluze wrote a number of histories on questions pertaining to the régale, such as the remarkable document entitled “De la Régale,” in which, probably with the help of Gallois, Baluze wrote a point-by-point description of the régale and its histories (see ‹g. 10).44 It contains a glossary of thematic headings such as “Where one sees the guard of vacant churches given in the ‹rst instance to kings.”45 In the margin next to this heading is the letter Z. Throughout the text, wherever the subject of medieval kings arises, a Z is in the margins next to a series of references to documents as well as citations ( preuves), containing call numbers from Baluze’s registers. This way, Colbert could look up a topic, ‹nd the relevant documents, while also having the topic contextualized in a historical narrative that more or less explained the documents. Another similar document is a short, heavily

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footnoted historical work by Baluze entitled “Mémoire sur les differens entre la cour de Rome et la Cour de France.”46 This key document— clearly for Colbert’s eyes only, and never published—is a play-by-play of relations between the papacy and the crown during the contentious period spanning 1680–81. In the style of legal scholarship, it is a guide and summary of all relevant documents in chronological order. Baluze created the same sort of document on the question of parliamentary documents, again written in the form of a succinct history, with full document references in the margins.47 Baluze also created a series of abridged reading notes from longer Latin texts, so Colbert could read them quickly, with Baluze focusing on the points requested by Colbert. Colbert’s personal ‹le on the régale contained drafts of of‹cial statements, with marginal reference notes, and further historical treatises covered with marginal references to documents in the Colbert collection.48 Baluze was Colbert’s reader: he would read Latin works, such as Caulet’s Traité de La Régale, or long treatises, translate them into French, and cut them down to passages, describing each chapter, numbering the chapters and often noting corresponding documents, which could then be veri‹ed.49 Baluze and Gallois worked together, ‹nding references to put in the margins of texts to make them useful for Colbert. In a letter from Baluze to Gallois on August 2, 1675, Baluze explains to Gallois what they both need to be looking for in the archives: the rights of bishops and abbots; the rights of ecclesiastical visitation; and most of all, rights of royal exemption. Baluze gives his own list of examples and of‹cial acts and documents. In response, in the margins of the letter, Gallois gets immediately to work providing ample references illustrating royal rights.50 These annotations helped him form his response, and he ‹led it among texts that were prepared for Colbert.51 When in 1682 the Assembly of the Clergy produced their “Declaration Concerning Ecclesiastical Power,” Baluze made a copy for Colbert with French explanations of the Latin passages, which also contained historical explanations and references to primary documents.52 Baluze translated many of the of‹cial correspondences between the French court and Rome, such as the pope’s ‹nal con‹rmation of the clergy’s “Declaration.”53 Indeed, Colbert’s ‹le on the régale was rich with documents and reports prepared by Baluze. In one report, Baluze suggests that Colbert increase the pay of the Sorbonne professors whose ultramontane sentiments were a form of revenge for low salaries.54 Baluze then provides a policelike list of loyal and disloyal professors with sum-

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maries of their opinions. But mostly, this information management ‹le served as a key to the archives. It contains lists of reports on how to ‹ll vacant bishop’s seats, parliamentary decrees and documents, and reports on Rome’s reactions. Colbert was not simply dependent on his scholars for knowledge. He learned from them and used them to master the dossier of the régale, which he did quite impressively for someone without formal training as a scholar. Colbert had become an erudit d’état: a master of legal and historical information and scholarship pertaining to the French state and European constitutional matters. He would go on to write his own work notes as well as detailed reports to Louis XIV on the régale. These reports would eventually be published as of‹cial policy. In 1675, exactly the date of much of the previously mentioned correspondence between Colbert, Baluze, and Gallois, Colbert wrote a crib sheet on the régale in his own hand, entitled “Droit de Régale sur les Abbayes.” The document contains a list of points “pour et contre” the régale (see ‹g. 11). Each point is paired with document references, so that if Colbert needed to make a point, he had the argument and the proof handy. He might have used this thematic and documentary guide when going over papers, writing reports and proclamations, or drawing up his reports for the king. In 1675, Colbert wrote the detailed “Mémoire au roi sur le Régale,” which was the fruit of the work he had done with his assistants that year. This was basically a report to Louis XIV not only on the history of the régale, but also on the work Colbert and his team had done, as well as the importance of archival collections in such work.55 He provides to the king a reading summary of all the opinions and documents supporting the right of régale, listing the opinion, the author, and document: The king Philip de Valois, in the ordinance of 1334, principally bases the régale on this possession [the principle of long possession], and Choppin follows in part his opinion.56

He mentions documents that he requested from the abbé Gallois, now presented as ‹ndings that would form the foundation of of‹cial policy: The eighth opinion uni‹es all the others and leads us to believe that the right [of régale] comes from the sovereignty of guard, patronage, and possession of a ‹ef altogether. . . . There are a large number of proofs of this in Gregory of Tours and in the compilation of formula-

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ries of Marculphe. It is the opinion of Monsieur Dupin and of father Sirmond in the preface of a Collection of ancient formularies concerning elections. It says that Louis le Débonnaire was the ‹rst king who restored to the Church the power to elect its pastors, and that the ordinance is found in the ‹rst book of his Capitularies, chap. LXXXIV [which should be read].57

Colbert goes on to list the documentary and historical justi‹cations of the régale in great detail. He even notes that if “His Majesty” would like more “justi‹cations,” they could be found in the archives of the Chambre des Comptes.58 This was certainly a hint that more funds would be needed for more research. But here, boiled down in clear historical reports were the ‹ndings of Colbert’s research team’s efforts from 1673–75 made for Louis XIV. In the following years, until his death late in 1683, Colbert had many occasions to use his knowledge of the régale, and his quick and easy access to ‹nding justi‹cations.59 With the help of the archbishop of Rouen, François de Harlay de Champvallon III, Colbert negotiated with the pope, and led the campaign to organize the Assembly of the Clergy of 1682. With the help of the famed Bishop Bossuet and Champvallon’s brother, Achilles de Harlay, the procurer general of the Parlement of Paris, he cajoled and threatened French prelates into adopting the Four Articles of the Gallican Church, often using legal arguments and references to documents.60 He forced them to issue the 1682 Edict of Régale, which Colbert not only helped write, but also micromanaged through its reception, obliging the recalcitrant faculty of the Sorbonne to comply.61 Thus Colbert showed that a central state apparatus could formulate policy from within the state, not counting on outside scholars and lawyers. Bossuet himself noted that Colbert and his henchmen had all but drawn up the Four Articles and that “above all since [the ministry of] Monsieur Colbert, there has been this policy of humiliating Rome, and to impose [France’s rights] against her, and that all of the Council had this attitude.”62 Colbert’s agent, the former parliamentarian legist and intendant of Soissons, Roland Le Vayer de Boutigny, made a defense of the Four Articles, Le Droit des souverains touchant l’administration de l’Église (1682) clearly written from Colbert’s archive with the aid of Baluze.63 Le Vayer was an expert in the documentation of taxation; using a plethora of medieval documents, he made a strong case for royal rights.64 Thus at the moment when the crown needed to act, Colbert’s information ma-

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chine began turning: informing the king, providing ammunition for bullying and organizing the Assembly, and providing the tools for negotiating at various levels, censoring, and drawing up policy and propaganda. If events called for documents, Colbert and his research team could quickly produce them. In the end, Colbert’s information machine worked. He built his reference system from various sources and had his librarians catalog them and render them accessible. He then could manage the system himself on the stage of politics, appearing knowledgeable, and able to write policy in a legalistic and historical context. Through his autodidactic system, Colbert had become an antiquarian of the state. Colbert’s state information system had translated into political power and prowess. But was it to last?

chapte r 10

The System Falls Apart, but the State Remains

J

ean-Baptiste Colbert fell ill on August 20, 1683, in great pain and with a fever, and died September 6. While some rumored that a partial disgrace had led to his illness, his autopsy revealed a “giant stone” in his kidney, blocking his ureter.1 No one expected him to disappear from the scene so suddenly. Indeed, he himself had not made immediate political plans for his own death, aside from placing his family and friends in as many key positions as he could. If he had any long-term view as to how his archive was to work in relation to the state, he did not say. He clearly expected it to be used by his son and family. As Colbert’s health worsened, Seignelay dutifully did the job his father taught him, keeping Louis informed of his father’s state. On September 2, he sent a letter to the king concerning the seriousness of his minister’s condition. He promised to keep Louis XIV appraised of Colbert’s illness and imminent death.2 While Louis was clearly upset to lose an old friend and his closest political con‹dant, he had become increasingly irritated with this harbinger of bad news, and his all-too-clear information updates on the state of French politics, ‹nance, and industry. For almost a decade, Colbert had complained to Louis about his wars and expenditures as they bankrupted the ‹scal state Colbert had built through his accounting and strong-arm tactics. Louis had grown tired of Colbert’s nagging and the unbalanced ‹gures in the notebooks in his pocket. 153

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Louis did not choose to replace his chief informer. The notebooks stopped. He broke up Colbert’s grand ministry centered in the Ministry of Finances and the Royal Library. With this move, Louis undermined the development of a true state apparatus to emerge beyond his personal control. “L’État c’est moi” was quite literal and in stark opposition to the Weberian ideal of the impersonal centralized state. Louis ultimately saw a well-oiled state bureaucracy and central archive as a threat to his personal power monopoly. More than he wanted to be informed, Louis wanted to have the sense that he was in control. By closing down Colbert’s central of‹ce within the state, and the information state that supported it, Louis could divide and rule his ministers. After Colbert’s death, no minister under Louis XIV would again have as much power and as much information. The limits of absolutist government were, in part, the limits imposed by Louis himself. Indeed, Louis XIV did not leave his heirs a centralized state, but a very messy set of strong, competing ministries, with no single administrative core. By breaking Colbert’s system, Louis hobbled the French state in the long run. The endless failures of eighteenth-century French governments were due not only to the secrecy and folly of royal ‹at and terrible ‹nancial management, but also to Louis’s splintering of the state apparatus. It helps explain why with all its possibility, genius, and might, France stalled and began to crumble, while small neighbors, and former client states like Savoy, prospered and grew.

The Breakdown of Colbert’s Information System As soon as Colbert died, Louis took the management of the Royal Library away from his family and agents, and gave it to their adversaries, the Louvois family. In doing so, Louis XIV showed that he understood how Colbert’s system worked and that he wanted it shut down. The collapse of Colbert’s information system hampered the effective administration of the state, as the Colbert and Louvois clans tried to undermine each other’s abilities to govern. Colbert and the Le Telliers had competed during his lifetime, but the government more or less functioned. Now interministerial con›ict hindered the workings of the government. Colbert’s all-powerful post of controller general of ‹nances did not go to his son or to his nephew Nicolas Desmaretz, who both had access to the family archive. Instead, it went to Claude Le Pelletier, a member of the Le Tellier–Louvois family circle.3 Against this counter-Colbertian coup, the great minister’s heirs now used the family archive as a defen-

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sive weapon. Saint-Simon recounts that Desmaretz had received orders from Colbert’s brother, Édouard François Colbert, count de Maulévrier (1633–93), to keep family information out of the hands of the Louvois lobby: When they [the Louvois family and Le Pelletier] ask you in particular for a clari‹cation on the nature of a speci‹c matter, the opinion of Monsieur de Croissy and myself is that you respond to them with good grace. But, concerning general information on royal ‹nances, we think you can dispense with them.4

Le Pelletier in turn complained to Louis XIV that he was unable to understand the state’s ‹nancial workings, for Colbert had kept them secret, and the family was not forthcoming with information: I realized that Monsieur Colbert had enclosed in his very self the direction of ‹nances, and that there was no one initiated in these affairs or in a state to instruct me. . . . I had thought that the registers in which your majesty wrote would surely teach me the precise state of the Royal Treasury; but I found that the relations between the registers and the Royal bank were not exact. And in the papers of Monsieur Colbert, neither could I ‹nd the instruction that I needed, nor would anyone give me more papers or explanations.5

Thus began an information arms race. On one side, Colbert’s son Seignelay began a furious program of state enquêtes, to collect administrative information to be stored in his ministry of the navy, as well as in the foreign ministry run by Colbert de Croissy.6 He continued to make use of the collection: for example, the dossier on religious affairs continued to grow as he managed the legal aspects of Louis XIV’s Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, adding new documents to his father’s old, but still useful, compilations.7 Colbert’s brother, Colbert de Croissy, worked as an intendant, and became minister of foreign affairs from 1680 to 1696.8 A year before becoming foreign minister, under Colbert’s orders, he began the ‹rst systematic foreign affairs archive, the ‹rst of‹cial, nonpersonal depot for diplomatic correspondence and historical archives.9 He personally showed his assistants how to write diplomatic minutes and instructions, and in many cases rewrote their communiqués before they were presented in the Royal Council. Above all, he oversaw and organized all diplomatic correspondence.10 It was said that he insisted that all papers pass through his hands. Croissy used Colbert’s man-

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agement system through techniques of information collection, recording, and organization. In creating the ‹rst systematic archive of diplomatic documents, Croissy was essentially reproducing on a smaller scale what his older brother had done in the family and state archives and Royal Library. While much of the new archive consisted of traditional diplomatic documents, Croissy reformed it by keeping all minutes and correspondence, as well as by obtaining the personal archives of ministers and ambassadors. Croissy’s son, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the marquis de Torcy, foreign minister from 1696 to 1715, continued the Colbertist tradition, strengthening the diplomatic archives by creating an independent Dépot des Archives at the Louvre in 1709, and moving to create a “corps of professional historians,” administrative experts trained in the organizing and analysis of historical documents.11 These miniature Colberts were educated in a school funded within the ministry of foreign affairs, called the Académie Politique. While the Académie Politique did not last, de Torcy’s organization of the French diplomatic archives and its staff made it one of the most important central sites of French government. Most signi‹cantly, Louis also removed the Ministry of Finance from the Colbert family, breaking their hold on the central of‹ce of state administration. The Ministry of Finance was not only the source of funding other ministerial projects—Colbert would have had a hard time funding his naval ministry without it—but it was also the seat of the intendancy and largest information collection apparatus of the state. The Colberts still had ministerial power, but not the central seat in government. Without the complementary set of ministries—‹nance, the navy, building, industry and culture—Colbert’s encyclopedic state information system could not continue. Seignelay could not effectively run the navy without control of the purse strings of the state. Without ‹nancial records and reports and without the means to purchase and copy information on a grand scale, he could not continue his father’s program of being the best-informed man in the kingdom. The Colbert library now only received documents from Seignelay’s ministries of the navy and religious affairs, as well as from Baluze’s continuing scholarly activity within what was now the Colbert family library. Seignelay’s heirs would hold no government of‹ce, nor show any real interest in the library they inherited. It was widely known that Colbert had purchased many of his books and manuscripts with royal funds, or had just plainly stolen them from the royal collection he managed. In 1728, when Colbert’s grandson asked the crown for 600,000 pounds

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for the collection, Louis XV simply responded by saying, “Good. 300,000.”12 The second marquis Colbert de Seignelay grumbled, but after ‹ve years of negotiation, handed over cartloads of manuscripts for half of his asking price.13 Louis XV was eager to retrieve the bibliophilic riches he considered rightfully his. Yet the bulk of Colbert’s administrative papers remained in the hands of the Colbert family. In an ultimate irony, Colbert’s state papers sat untouched until the Revolution, when during the fury of the Terror, most were con‹scated and brought to the central storehouse of the Jacobin state, to become a pillar of the collection of the new Bibliothèque Nationale, built on the foundations of the Royal Library laid by Colbert.14 With the death of Colbert, the Louvois family was now the leading ministerial faction in Louis’s splintered government. François Michel Le Tellier de Louvois (1641–91) was the son of Colbert’s old patron and rival, Michel Le Tellier. With Louis’s clear blessing, Colbert and Louvois had fought each other as the two rival clans within the French government. Louis allowed Louvois to try to implicate Colbert in the Affaire of the Poisons, which ended with the disgrace of Louis’s mistress and Colbert’s friend and ally, Madame de Montespan, in 1682. With the rise of Louis’s war machine, Louvois’s military information system took on new proportions. Louvois controlled the much coveted and ever more powerful post of the secretary of state of war, and the French postal system.15 With Colbert dead, the war ministry became the central administrative of‹ce of the state. If Colbert had represented Louis’s early ambitions, Louvois, now chief among his ministers, represented his new ones. His speed and ability at industrial management and the movement of information and goods surpassed that of Colbert.16 Even more, he moved not the goods of industry, but rather those of war, which so thrilled Louis.17 Louis’s military advisor, the marquis of Chamlay, also became a major information manager, collecting intelligence, writing military reports and propaganda, and organizing military campaigns, reforms, and diplomatic missions.18 The Louvois military machine created massive armies and supply lines, but it did not always win wars or formulate successful policy, as Louvois’s active support and implementation of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and his military and humanitarian ‹asco in the Palatinate in 1688–89 so dramatically illustrate.19 As de Croissy and de Torcy created the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Louvois built new permanent state archives in the Invalides in the 1680s. Le Pelletier continued Colbert’s work of taking royal accounts and administrative paperwork away from parliamentary

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control by creating a central archive of all feudal lands controlled by the king. It became the “Dépôt général des Terriers de la couronne” under the Pontchartrain ministry in 1691, continuing the progression of permanent ministerial archives.20 Indeed, Pontchartrain started his own network and information system, though on a smaller scale than that of Colbert.21 While Louvois was a master administrator, he overlooked the Royal Library and its trove of historical documents as potential tools of government. He gave the direction of the library to his nine-year-old son, the future abbé de Louvois.22 Librarians and agents such as Carcavy and the Godefroys were unceremoniously ‹red.23 The abbé de Louvois would emerge as an erudite and able librarian, but without Colbert’s vision of constant expansion, few new acquisitions were made in the decade after Colbert’s death.24 Even more, he did not use his control of the library as part of Louvois’s military program. Colbert’s project had been predicated on a vision of encyclopedic, universal knowledge of the state. Louvois was a master of the information of war, and he saw his system through the lens of the military. He did not use scholarship or the world of learning as primary, integrated tools of government. He certainly paid for propaganda and sought sympathetic scholars, but he did not seek to occupy, control, and use the world of scholarship. His control of the Royal Library and his own ministerial information bank were not integral pieces in a larger information system, but rather distinct bases of power and prestige.25 The possible danger of mixing learning and political power might have been evident to Louvois, or perhaps he believed he could run his war machine with his own system. Or perhaps he simply did not understand Colbert’s grand project. The ministerial archives that under Colbert had been relatively centralized were now dispersed among what Arthur de Boislisle called the ministerial archival dépôts.26 Indeed, a massive nineteenth-century archival project sought to catalog and centralize these disparate ministerial archives of the ancien régime.27 In 1874, Boislisle, an undersecretary of the Ministry of Finances, great bibliophile, and author of the founding work on the French state archives, noted that to follow the administrative history of a given province of the kingdom, one had to, and indeed, one must still today successively address one’s self to the archives of War, those of the Navy, those of Foreign Affairs, without even speaking of those of the ministries, who have no curator, or representative, and of which the papers have been dispersed with out rule or reason.28

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Boislisle had hoped to show the “genius” of France’s government, but inadvertently revealed how decentralized the Bourbon archives actually were. Although after Colbert’s death, Louis XIV’s ministers were collecting more information than before, the motive behind the collection was clearly not the rational, centralized functioning of the state, but rather a complex set of competing interests between various ministerial lobbies, which had been, to varying degrees, the nature of European state administration since the Middle Ages. In any case, while often managed by experts, Louis XIV’s state was not effectively centralized.

Public versus Secret Spheres: Financial Information, Trust, and the Crisis of Civil Society In 1698, a group of reformers around Fénelon, the duke de Chevreuse, and the duke de Beauvilliers—all connected to the Colbert lobby— implicitly recognized the monarchy’s dif‹culty in making use of the administrative information in the enquêtes when they produced the Tables de Chaulnes, a new, practical education for the son of the Dauphin, Louis’s grandson, the duke de Bourgogne.29 It was a true founding act of enlightened despotism. They commissioned a massive series of state enquêtes to teach the young prince administration and the handling of state reports.30 As pragmatic as this project was, it was based simply on showing the presumptive heir a set of enquêtes and legal and historical documents. While it was a step to bring back the in›uence of Colbert’s state information system under the intendants, it did not represent a signi‹cant return to Colbert’s style of informationdriven government. As limited as Fénelon’s project was in comparison to that of Colbert, and as reformist as it was in its intentions, it nonetheless sparked the ire of parliamentary critics, emboldened by their reinstated authority under the regent, Philip d’Orléans (ruled 1715–23). State secrecy and the dangerous competition between ministerial information banks was the driving complaint of the count de Boulainvilliers’s L’état de la France, written in 1701, but only published after Louis XIV’s death in 1727. A leader of noble critics of absolute rule, Boulainvilliers pointed out that competing ministers, with their troves of administrative enquêtes, usurped public power, and went against the interest of the state, and even of the prince: “The spirit of servitude is generally spread through these Writings [enquêtes],” he insisted. “Passions have mystery and secrets; a legitimate Government has none.”31 Boulainvilliers describes a secret sphere

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of state knowledge within the royal res publica, which threatened noble, parliamentarian power, and even the authority of the prince.32 In his Histoire de l’ancien governement de France (written 1701, published Amsterdam, 1727), Boulainvilliers argued not only that the intendants were unconstitutional, but that their secrecy and stranglehold on information destroyed the ability of the state and nation to administer its ‹nances. Thus Boulainvilliers was a prophet of the concept of public state accountability and an early critic of enlightened despotism. Who would critique incompetent or dishonest administrators if only one minister and the king read his reports? How could reform occur without an open discussion of state administrative and status reports? Good policy, he insisted, was based on open discussion and assessments of state documents. With moving passion, he called the mission of the intendants to secretly gather the vital information of the state “morally impossible.”33 Without public supervision, they would only serve their own interests, and indeed, create an internal culture of incompetence. He insisted that the secret, internal writings of “servile” ministers needed to be exposed to public criticism and irony to show how “absurd” they could be.34 State secrecy destroyed both method and political science.35 Even more, it hampered the effective creation of a ‹nancial credit market in France. If the state kept its ‹nances secret, how could investments be made in trust? This mismanagement meant that the state itself had no credit system, and this in turn hampered investment in state projects. The crisis of French ‹nancial trust was made worse by the terrible failure of John Law’s attempt to create a French royal Banque Générale with the authority to issue unchecked paper currency based on a colonial investment pyramid swindle. As it came crashing down in 1720, so too did French trust in government ‹nance, and the project of a French national bank died—indeed, the term bank was long distrusted in France after this—thus hampering its industrial development. In 1781, during the ‹nancial torments that preceded the French Revolution, even Jacques Necker—minister of ‹nance and an admirer of Colbert—effectively conceded that the secret state knowledge system had undermined governmental effectiveness and stunted economic growth. For the ‹rst time in history, he published a version of the French state’s ‹nances. Lauding the open, constitutional government of England, he suggested that France follow its model and publish the state’s yearly budget: But another cause of the great credit of England, is, and we do not doubt it at all, the public notoriety to which is submitted the state of

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its ‹nances. Each year this report is presented to Parliament, it is then printed; and all creditors thus regularly know the proportion maintained between revenues and expenditures; they are never troubled by these suspicions, false fears, and maneuverings behind the scenes. In France, we have made a constant mystery of the state of our ‹nances; or, if they have been discussed, it has been in the preamble to edicts, and always at the moment that one sought to take loans; but these words, though different, were too often the same, and therefore necessarily lost their authority, and men of experience no longer believed in them, except with the guarantee . . . of the moral character of the minister of ‹nances.36

Necker’s eloquence, however, was in vain. Many accused him of not only acting too late; they didn’t believe his ‹gures. As he himself had pointed out, how could there be con‹dence in a state that had operated outside its constitution, by royal ‹at and lettres de cachet, for more than one hundred years?

State Information Crisis: Redux As royal authority crumbled in the eighteenth century, the old constitutional rivalry between the monarchy and the Parlement of Paris reemerged. And so did the old battle over the authority of state information. Following Boulainvilliers and Le Laboureur, the parliamentarian scholars of the mid-eighteenth century, Sainte-Palaye, Durey de Meinières, and Louis-Sébastien Le Paige took up many of the complaints of the Fronde. They would show that the old historical, legal documents so coveted by the Dupuys and Colbert, but ignored later by Louis XIV’s later ministers and their heirs, were indeed essential tools of governance, legitimacy, and propaganda, and that they proved the Parlement’s right to regulate the monarchy.37 In the 1750s and 1760s, led by Malesherbes de Lamoignon—the grandson of Colbert’s parliamentary nemesis, future censor and defender of Louis XVI—the Parlement of Paris waged a relentless information campaign against the monarchy, in‹ltrating Colbert’s old institutions and undermining absolutism with the publication of medieval, feudal legal documents as ideological propaganda.38 The crown had no information policy, and parliamentary of‹cers such as Lamoignon were not co-opted by the state, but remained free to use their scholarly and informational skills to attack its authority. In one tragic irony after the next, the crown not only attempted

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to ban the pro-Colbertist Encyclopédie; it lost its opportunity to harness and focus encyclopedic knowledge, which Colbert had seen as essential to his own modernizing state apparatus. In the end, without a trained corps of medievalist archival agents, the crown was helpless in the face of the parliamentarian onslaught of published historical remonstrances. Royal authority was undermined by the proliferation of documents plucked from the archives and used as propaganda to prove historical parliamentary rights. Whereas, from the Fronde onward, Colbert had worked for decades to crush the Parlement’s ability to wage information war against the crown, Louis XV found himself with no effective political archive and no information masters to press his case. He would have to turn to the parliamentarian scholar Jean-Jacob Moreau to re-create Colbert’s arsenal of manuscripts. The French state had come full circle, back to the old information masters. But it was too late. Colbert’s secret sphere had crumbled, and the antiquarians, with all their might of historical legitimacy, were now on the side of the Parlement. It was Colbert’s nightmare come true.

Enlightened Despotism and Information Management While Colbert’s absolutist government and information system failed in France, this did not mean that it was an impossible dream. Across Europe in the eighteenth century, enlightened despots used Colbert’s method of government by experts and the centralized administration and collection of information by intendants. From Frederick the Great’s Prussia, Bourbon Spain, and Hapsburg Austria and Tuscany, to Portugal under Pombal and Russia under Peter the Great and Catherine II, many built comparable systems of mercantilism, centralization, and information collection.39 Even in the more open system of England, empire would increasingly demand the central and encyclopedic sort of archives developed by Colbert.40 Colbert’s legacy was not necessarily mercantilism, but rather his vision of learned administration. Louis XIV’s grandson, Philip V of Spain (ruled 1700–1746), brought with him not only the system of the intendants, but also a French taste for bibliophilia, and set in motion the creation of a new Spanish Royal Library along French lines.41 Similarly, in the decades following Colbert’s death, the kingdom of Savoy would create a permanent state library and archive apparatus that looked like a small-scale, ideal version of what Colbert had tried to achieve. Although Savoy had kept well-or-

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ganized, centralized state archives since the Middle Ages, its interactions with the bellicose French inspired it to create a defensive state archival system.42 Under constant threat of annexation by France, Savoy not only managed to build an effective ‹scal and military apparatus to defend itself from Louis XIV’s aggression; it also built on the scholarly administrative tradition and achieved something France never did.43 By 1720 Victor Amadeus II had managed to take over parliamentary and legal archives and bring them under the central control of the state in a massive Archivio di Stato in Turin that was housed in the same building as the Royal Library, linked to the royal palace by a long hallway, and managed by state scholars.44 In this case, the bureaucratic tradition based on a centralized information state aided the Francophone Savoyards in their long conquest of the Italian peninsula.

The Information Master: A Despot of Letters under the Shadow of Republics More than anything, however, what remained of Colbert’s legacy was not a permanent state information system or even tradition. Rather, Colbertism should be de‹ned as the idea that a large-scale state would need to centralize and harness encyclopedic knowledge to govern effectively, and that all knowledge, formal and practical, could be used together in one archival system to understand and master the material world. At ‹rst glance, this seems pioneering, and, to a certain extent, it was. Modern states, both democratic and despotic, centralize information, and hire internal teams of experts to sift through, manage, and use information for government. Indeed, the questions Colbert asked about information handling—in terms of collection, organization, and searching for information within a system—were visionary in their concept and application. His mixing of formal and practical knowledge and data predated the ›owering of the Enlightened encyclopedic tradition. Indeed, Colbert can be roughly compared to Bill Gates in his prescient harnessing of existing traditions of information culture for large-scale industrial projects. Colbert’s administrative and cultural model of learned enlightened despotism is, in some ways, still applicable not just to governments, but also to modern corporations, with their internal, secret research and information collection programs. Even more, institutions such as the intendancy, while still a site of state secrecy until the Revolution, would, in the eighteenth century, produce ambiguous ‹gures such as Jacques Turgot (1727–81): a philosophe critic

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of Colbert’s mercantilism, but also an advocate of state-imposed free markets and the kind of economic observational administration championed by Colbert. His Éloge de Gournay (1759), which inspired Adam Smith, assailed the Colbertist model, complaining of “these rules, inspectors, and of‹ces” that sti›e trade and add pointless cost to merchandise.45 Yet Turgot had taken a tour of France with Vincent de Gournay, examining the countryside in a style that Colbert would have admired. In 1761 Turgot, a former maître des requêtes, became the intendant of Limoges, and designed state programs to spur industry. Philosophically, he was against mercantilism, but culturally and practically he was an heir to Colbert: a state expert, gatherer of information, and economic planner. There were inherent contradictions in Colbert’s project. In creating his information state from the world of learning and trying to fuse the two, Colbert was a product of the mercantile world, state administration, and the culture of the Republic of Letters. As much as he tried to make the state intellectually independent, he relied on exterior traditions of learning and information handling. Many of the glories of learning associated with the French state were appropriated in from the Republic of Letters. As the British Royal Society showed, learning could use state legitimacy, but it neither needed state funding nor state control. Colbert sought to crush the very world from which he drew his power and which fascinated him to the point that he thought obsessively about books and questions of state erudition. Had Colbert truly succeeded in controlling the Republic of Letters more than he did, he might have sti›ed his own state projects. In any case, his policies of repression fed republican Holland and constitutional England, which became the sites of exile and of the radical Enlightenments that would challenge despotism and provide and dynamic political countermodel. Thus Colbert built parts of what would be the modern governmental tradition, but he misunderstood the nature of his own project. Learning and government were intertwined, but repression could have a dangerous effects. A balance would have to be sought, and Colbert never revealed that he considered this balance. If the Republic of Letters set the model for early civil society— through its ethos of discussion across national and religious lines—Colbert, as a major arbiter of the Republic of Letters, shows that the absolutist state played a central role in in›uencing the emergence of civil society. This does complicate the telos of progress without taking away

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from the value and importance of civil society. Indeed, it shows the fragility of the balance between effective government, civil freedoms, and repression. Colbert developed many institutions that furthered learning and that worked to expand the world of learning and communication. At one level, they could be used for political repression. At another, making the state a center of learning linked it to possibly independent elements of civil society. Many of the institutions that Colbert created—from his academies to the of‹ce of the state censor—became sites of antiabsolutism in the eighteenth century. Under Louis XV and XVI, administrative archives expanded, but the secret royal sphere atrophied into the world of spying, failed ‹nance, and despotic ‹at. The king stored his secret ‹les in a casketlike secret armoire, which was spectacularly opened during Louis XVI’s trial in 1792 to reveal the moribund politics of the former monarchy. In what is now a permanent wake of French monarchy, it sits open to all viewers in the Musée Carnavalet in Paris. This archival trophy of the Revolution was not the great royal state information and intelligence system Colbert had envisioned. Revolutionaries discredited the king by exposing his armoire, but real royal government was still in the ministerial archives that the Revolution appropriated. The secret sphere of state power would rear its head again during the police states of the Terror and Napoleon and nestle itself into the administrative republics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It was the world of state paperwork and the bordereau—military and industrial intelligence, state correspondence, and secret evidence—that produced the Dreyfus Affair and, elsewhere in Europe, the world of secret police and the Stasi. Crimes of state are not always dramatic, but often take place in the mundane ‹le rooms and archives of governments. Yet, as mundane and as sinister as state paperwork can appear, a lack of paperwork poses other threats. In October 1793, Saint-Just, the apostle of the Terror, pointed out that true political terror took place optimally under a total dictatorship with no paperwork. In his call for the dictatorship of the Committee of Public Safety he made a plea for curtailed bureaucracy and an unfettered executive power: The ministry is a world of paper. I don’t know how Rome and Egypt governed without this resource; one thought a great deal and wrote little. The sheer volume of the government’s correspondence and orders is a sign of its inertia; government is impossible with too many words.

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Representatives of the people, generals, administrators, are surrounded by of‹ces like former men of the palace; nothing is done, and expenditure is nonetheless enormous. Bureaucracy has replaced monarchism; the demon of writing makes war on us, and government stops.46

Any slowing of government by bureaucracy, he warned, “will be punished as a crime against liberty.” And so it was: with too much paperwork government stops, or becomes a self-serving machine; and without it, things fall apart and terror can take the place of institutions.

Conclusion What conclusions can we then draw from this odd story of innovation, originality, great achievement, and ultimate failure? Colbert shows the extent and limits of the early modern governmental sphere of information, both public and secret, and how they interacted. While the public sphere grew, elements of Colbert’s secret sphere of institutional information also ›ourished. They interacted and competed, creating a tense symbiosis present to this very day. While some modern governments claim to eschew Colbert’s mercantilist, centrally controlled form of economics, they do not hesitate to maintain vast, centralized, encyclopedic, powerfully digital, and sometimes dysfunctional information systems. Even in an age of computers, cell phones, satellites, and massive public and secret stores of information—accurate and inaccurate—individuals and states are capable of great feats. Yet they are often remarkably misinformed, and thus, in some realms, capable of greater achievements and grander follies than those of Philip II and Louis XIV. The stage of politics and ‹nance is now truly the globe. Rulers and governments need central and secret archives for daily government, and yet few willingly call for more secret archives or for “more red tape.” And thus with the rise of the public sphere also comes Colbert’s legacy, the remnants of the system he created, a monumental realization of Machiavellian culture, a mercantile dark shadow of humanism and the Enlightened world of knowledge. Modern society is still left with the unresolved problem that even for the most open of democracies, the culture of state secrecy is necessary and potent, but at the same time, in its very essence, perverse and dangerous. How will we resolve the conundrum that Colbert helped create for the modern state? In 1822, as political absolutism returned in Europe and some doubted the

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American republic, James Madison described the tension between government and knowledge as a dramatic struggle: A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.47

In an age when society and economy are increasingly dependent on computerized information technology and on giant governmental entities and global corporations and banks, this struggle seems ever more relevant and dauntingly complex. It is not only a question of the public being well informed and aware of the workings of the state and ‹nance. A well-informed expert, curious and open government seems preferable to the mysteries of the secret sphere.

Notes

c hap te r 1 1. Jérôme Delatour, “Le Cabinet des frères Dupuy,” Sciences et Techniques en Perspective 9 (2005): pp. 287–328. 2. Martin Lister, A Journey to Paris in the Year 1698, ed. Raymon Phineas Stearns (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967). For introductions to the history of travel literature and learning see Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), in particular chaps. 1 and 14. Also see Justin Stagl, Eine Geschichte der Neugier: Die Kunst des Reisens 1550–1800 (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1983), English translation: A History of Curiosity: The Theory of Travel, 1550–1800 (Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic, 1988), pp. 1–90; and Barbara J. Shapiro, A Culture of Fact: England, 1550–1720 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 63–85. 3. Lister, Journey to Paris, pp. 2–13. 4. Ibid., p. 37. On the places and people visited by Lister see Alice Stroup, A Company of Scientists: Botany, Patronage, and Community at the Seventeenth-Century Parisian Royal Academy of Sciences (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990). 5. Denise Bloch, “La Bibliothèque de Colbert,” in Histoire des bibliothèques françaises, ed. Claude Jolly, 4 vols. (Paris: Promodis, 1988), vol. 2, pp. 156–79. 6. Charles de La Roncière and Paul-M. Bondois, eds., Catalogue des Manuscrits de la Collection des Mélanges Colbert (Paris: Éditions Ernest Leroux, 1920), introduction, p. xv. 7. Lister, Journey to Paris, p. 128. 8. Ibid., pp. 108–13. Lister was, however, disappointed when the librarian produced a magni‹cently bound copy of an early, incomplete copy of his history of conch snails, the Synopsis Conchyliorum (1685). Lister promised to send the library an

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up-to-date edition. Simone Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale des origines à 1800 (Geneva: Droz, 1988), pp. 74–75; Roger Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scienti‹c Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971); John Milton Hirsch‹eld, The Académie Royale des Sciences, 1666–1683 (New York: Arno Press, 1981), pp. 168–69; Denise Bloch, “La Colbertine,” in Colbert 1619–1683 (Paris: Ministère de la Culture, 1983), pp. 401–26; “La bibliothèque de Colbert”; Stewart Saunders, “Public Administration and the Library of Jean-Baptiste Colbert,” Libraries and Culture 26 (1991): pp. 283–300. 9. And it continued to grow after his death, though at a much diminished rate. See Léopold Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale, 2 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1868), vol. 1, p. 440. 10. It is not easy for the modern historian to characterize Colbert’s practices or how exactly he saw his library and archives, for he never wrote a treatise about them in any analytical way. In his letters to his son and to his agents, he constantly insists that they “observe,” “examine,” “see,” and then “inform” him through clear “reports” and “memoirs.” Richelet’s Dictionary of 1685 de‹nes the term intelligence, among other things, as political wisdom: “is said also of a great man, who through his talents and his wits [lumières] is above all others (he was the intelligence of the Council, of the State).” This wisdom could be gained by “secret Communications,” meaning spying, or simply being well informed. The term information derived from the Latin term erudire, to enlighten or instruct, and from legal usage. Richelet also de‹ned it as meaning to learn about something, for example “commerce,” or the “court.” Thus intelligence and information system seem the most accurate modern terms we can use to describe the system Colbert built. 11. See Roncière and Bondois, Catalogue des Mélanges Colbert, ‹les 1–100. On the importance of Colbert and the connection between practical industrial knowledge and the natural sciences see Margaret C. Jacob, Scienti‹c Culture and the Making of the Industrial West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 47–50, 165–86. 12. The literature on the history of libraries, their ambitions, forms, and content is extensive. For a synthetic overview, see Roger Chartier, L’ordre des livres (Aix-enProvence: Alinea, 1992). On the history of knowledge, information, and government see Peter Burke, A Social History of Knowledge from Gutenberg to Diderot (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), pp. 116–48. 13. On the persistence of methods for searching for information see Anthony Grafton on the concepts of Google, “Future Reading: Digitization and Its Discontents,” New Yorker, November 5, 2007, pp. 50–55. 14. For critiques of Colbert and “Colbertism,” see Daniel Dessert, Colbert ou le serpent venimeux (Paris: Éditions Complexe, 2000). For more recent and less historically accurate criticisms of economic Colbertism, see The Economist’s editorials, December 1996: “After Thomson: the long, slow death of Colbertism in France is being accompanied by worrying bouts of xenophobia and indecision; but it is dying nonetheless,” December 2006 and “The State as Owner: Re-bonjour, Monsieur Colbert,” October 2008. 15. This is the thesis of James E. King’s Science and Rationalism in the Government of Louis XIV, 1661–1683 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1949). 16. On the innovations of the absolutist state see Robert Descimon and Alain

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Guery, “Un État des temps modernes?” in Seuil Histoire de la France. La longue durée de l’État, ed. Jacques LeGoff (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2000), vol. 1, pp. 209–503. Also see James B. Collins, The State in Early Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 17. Pierre Clément, Histoire de la vie et de l’administration de Colbert (Paris: Guillaumin, 1846), p. ix: “Pour ceux qui connaissent le soin excessif avec lequel Colbert conservait les documents relatifs à son administration et l’attention qu’il avait de viser lui-même en marge la copie de toutes ses lettres.” 18. Madame de Sévigné, Lettres, ed. M. Monmerque, 14 vols. (Paris: Hachette, 1862), vol. 3, p. 331. Guy Patin called him the vir marmoreus, or “the man of marble.” Guizot cites this commonplace in his History of France, trans. Robert Black (Boston: Aldine, 1886), vol. 4, p. 511. Author of a long portrait of Colbert, the abbé de Choisy noted his “naturally sullen face” and “austere expression.” François-Timoléon, l’abbé de Choisy, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Louis XIV par feu M. l’abbé de Choisy de l’Académie française suivis de Mémoires de l’abbé de Choisy habillé en femme, ed. Georges Mongrédin (Paris: Mercure de France, 1966), p. 68. Choisy uses the terms “renfrogné” and “mine austère.” 19. Gatien Coutilz de Sandras, La vie de Jean-Baptiste Colbert, ministre d’état sous Louis XIV (Cologne, 1695). 20. Ézéchiel Freiherr von Spanheim, Rélation de la cour de France en 1690, ed. Charles Shefer (Paris: Libraries Renouard, 1882), p. 174. 21. Ibid., p. 175. 22. Adam Smith, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols. (London: W. Strahan, 1777), vol. 2, p. 533. 23. Robert Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie, 1775–1800 (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1979); Kathleen Hardesty, The Supplément to the Encyclopédie (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1977); Hardesty, “L’Encyclopédie méthodique et l’organisation des connaissances,” Recherches sur Diderot et sur l’Encyclopédie 12 (1992): pp. 59–69; Hardesty, “The Yverdon Encyclopédie,” Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 315 (1994): pp. 85–116; John Lough, Essays on the “Encyclopédie” of Diderot and d’Alembert (London: Oxford University Press, 1968); Raymond F. Birn, Pierre Rousseau and the Philosophes of Bouillon, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 29 (Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1964). 24. Denis Diderot, ed., Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisinné des sciences des arts et métiers, par une société de gens de letters, 17 vols. (Neufchâtel: Samuel Faulche, 1765). See the articles “Gloire,” and “Homme d’état.” 25. Ibid., see the entry “Bibliothèque.” 26. A. J. Grant, “The Government of Louis XIV,” in The Cambridge Modern History, ed. Lord Acton, 13 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), vol. 5, p. 15. 27. On the humanist encyclopedic tradition see Francis A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966); Cesare Vasoli, L’enciclopedismo del Seicento (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1978); Fritz Machlup, Knowledge: The Branches of Learning (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981). For an overview of Italian Renaissance encyclopedic and naturalistic culture see Giuseppe Olmi, L’in-

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ventario del mondo: Catalogazione della natura e luoghi del sapere nella prima età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992). On late-Renaissance encyclopedism see Ann Blair, The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); and her special issue of the Journal of the History of Ideas on the concept of the “Early Modern Information Overload,” 64 (2003); Richard Serjeantson, “Introduction,” in Meric Casaubon, Generall Learning, ed. Richard Serjeantson (Cambridge: Renaissance Texts from Manuscript, 1999), pp. 1–80. Robert Darnton has illustrated the decline of theology and the rise of practical knowledge in the eighteenth-century Encyclopédie: “Philosophers Trim the Tree of Knowledge: The Epistemological Strategy of the Encyclopédie,” in The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Vintage, 1984), p. 198. Richard Yeo also traces the rise of natural and practical knowledge in the eighteenth-century encyclopedic movement, connecting earlier tradition and Enlightenment: Encyclopedic Visions: Scienti‹c Dictionaries and Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 3, and his “John Locke’s ‘New Method’ of Commonplacing: Managing Memory and Information,” Eighteenth-Century Thought 2 (2004): pp. 1–38. On the encyclopedism and the smaller scale data-bank aspect of the humanist library, see William H. Sherman, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amherat: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), pp. 29–52. On the uses and evolution of the library in France, see Jolly, Histoire des bibliothèques françaises, vol. 2, in general; and Roger Chartier, Lectures et lecteurs dans la France d’Ancien Régime (Paris: Seuil, 1987), chap. 5. 28. Ernest Lavisse, Louis XIV. Histoire d’un grand règne (1908; rpt. Paris, 1989), pp. 131–32. 29. Ibid., p. 131. 30. Robert Bireley, The Counter-Reformation Prince: Anti-Machiavellism, or Catholic Statecraft in Early Modern Europe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980). 31. For an overview of the limits and successes of French absolutism as well as the extensive historiography on the topic see Guy Rowlands, The Dynastic State and the Army under Louis XIV: Royal Service and Private Interest, 1661–1701 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 1–31. 32. Pierre Clément, “Avertissement,” in Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Lettres, instructions et mémoires, ed. Pierre Clément, 7 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1861–70), vol. 1, p. ix. 33. Choisy, Mémoires, pp. 68–69: “Une application in‹nie et un désir insatiable d’apprendre lui tenaient lieu de science: plus il était ignorant, plus il affectait de paraître savant, citant quelquefois hors de propos des passages latins qu’il avait appris par coeur, et que ses docteurs à gages lui avaient expliqués. . . . Il présentait au Roi, tous les premiers jours de l’an, un agenda où ses revenus étaient marqués en détail; et à chaque fois que le Roi signait des ordonnances, Colbert le faisait souvenir de les marquer sur son agenda, a‹n qu’il pût voir quand il lui plairait combien il lui restait encore de fonds (au lieu que dans les temps passés il ne pouvait jamais savoir ce qu’il avait).” 34. Louis XIV, Mémoires for the Instruction of the Dauphin, trans. and ed. Paul

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Sonnino (New York: Free Press, 1970), p. 34; Madame de Maintenon, Lettres (Paris: Léopold Collin, 1806), p. 286. 35. Encyclopédie, “Bibliothèque”: The Encyclopédie recognized Colbert’s foray into the world of learning and antiquarianism: “It was not only in Paris and in neighboring countries that Monsieur Colbert ordered the purchase of books for the King; he ordered the ‹nest ancient manuscripts in Greek, Arab, Persian, and other Oriental languages be sought in the Levant. He established correspondents in different courts of Europe by which this vigilant minister procured treasures of all kinds for the King’s library.” 36. On the relationship between Colbert’s library and the Bibliothèque Royale see Jean Boivin, “Mémoire pour l’histoire de la Bibliothèque du Roy,” 1687–88, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (hereafter BNF) MS Fr. 22571, fols. 438–91; Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale, pp. 71–145; and Denise Bloch, “La bibliothèque de Colbert.” The most nuanced study of Colbert’s library and its relationship to policy is Saunders, “Public Administration.” 37. It should be noted that England and Holland never established large, central, secret state archives. Whether or not this was bene‹cial, ‹gures such as Samuel Pepys watched the growth of Colbert’s state archival apparatus with some envy. On the English royal administration and the limits of centralization and secrecy, see Jonathan M. Elukin, “Keeping Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern English Government,” in Das Geheimnis am Beginn der europäischen Moderne, ed. Gisela Engel, Brita Rang, Klaus Reichert, Heide Wunder, and Jonathan Elukin (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2002), p. 126. Still the ‹nest source on the topic is Peter Fraser, The Intelligence of the Secretaries of State and Their Monopoly of Licensed News, 1660–1668 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), p. 10. 38. On the centralization of administrative archives see Nico Randeraad, ed., “Formation and Transfer of Municipal Administrative Knowledge,” Yearbook of European Administrative History 15 (2003), in particular, Wolfgang Weber, “Herrschaftsund Verwaltungswissen in oberdeutschen Reichsstädten der Frühen Neuzeit,” pp. 1–29. 39. These reference documents are found in BNF MS Baluze 177. On advanced library catalogs connected to laboratories as a precursor to computing see Alex Wright, “The Web That Time Forgot,” New York Times, June 17, 2008, pp. F1, F4, on the Belgian Paul Otlet’s “Mundaneum” information catalog and network. 40. Lavisse, Louis XIV, pp. 131–32. 41. See Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 440. 42. Paula Findlen, “Introduction. The Last Man Who Knew Everything . . . or Did He? Athanasius Kircher, S. J. (1602–80) and His World,” in Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything, ed. Findlen (New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 5. 43. Michael S. Mahoney, “Christian Huygens: The Measurement of Time and of Longitude at Sea,” in Studies on Christian Huygens, ed. H. J. M. Bos (Lisse: Swets, 1980), pp. 234–70. 44. Stroup, A Company of Scientists, p. 51.

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45. On Bacon’s many facets see, for example, Markku Peltonen, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Francis Bacon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). The most recent intellectual studies focus on learning and ‹gures of learning. See Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983); Grafton, Cardano’s Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999); Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the Renaissance (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000); Sherman, John Dee; Nancy Siraisi, The Clock and the Mirror: Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); Blair, The Theater of Nature; Casaubon, Generall Learning; Peter N. Miller, Peiresc’s Europe: Learning and Virtue in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); most recently, J. G. A. Pocock has painted a detailed tableau of Gibbon’s world, in›uences, and uses of tradition in his ongoing study, Barbarism and Religion, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999–2003). Also see Michael Hunter, Archives of the Scienti‹c Revolution: The Formation and Exchange of Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Europe (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1998); and Jacob Soll, ed., “The Uses of Historical Evidence in Early Modern Europe,” special issue of the Journal of the History of Ideas, 23 (2003). Also see Peter Burke, “A Social History of Knowledge Revisited,” Modern Intellectual History 3 (2007): p. 524. 46. Geoffrey Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). 47. On the term Staatenkunde see Hans Erich Bödeker, “On the Origins of the ‘Statistical Gaze’: Modes of Perception, Forms of Knowledge, and Ways of Writing in the Early Social Sciences,” in Little Tools of Knowledge: Historical Essays on Academic and Bureaucratic Practices, ed. Peter Becker and William Clark (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), p. 172. Michel Foucault uses the term le savoir de l’état in Il faut défendre la société: Cours au Collège de France. 1976 (Paris: Hautes Études/Seuil/Gallimard, 1997), cours du 11 février, p. 113. 48. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, eds., The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 92–93. On practices of governmental knowledge see Becker and Clark, Little Tools of Knowledge, pp. 19–24. For a reading of the preceding texts in the context of Swiss cantonal records, see the pioneering work by Randolph Head, “Knowing Like a State: The Transformation of Political Knowledge in Swiss Archives, 1450–1770,” Journal of Modern History 75 (2003): pp. 745–82. 49. King, Science and Rationalism; Kevin Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton, 1586–1631: History and Politics in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 3–8. R. J. W. Evans has studied Rudolf II as an intellectual patron, but not as a state information manager, in Rudolf II and His World: A Study in Intellectual History, 1576–1612 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973); and see Blandine Barret-Kriegel, Les historiens et la monarchie. Jean Mabillon, 4 vols. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1988). 50. The history of research is now emerging in works such as William Clark’s Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 51. For the paradigmatic concept of the public sphere, see Jürgen Habermas,

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The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), pp. 51–56. On news, information, and public opinion in the sixteenth century see Brendan Dooley, A Social History of Skepticism: Experience and Doubt in Early Modern Culture (Baltimore: Johhs Hopkins University Press, 1999). For France in particular see Jean-Pierre Vittu, “Instruments of Political Information in France,” in The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe, ed. Brendan Dooley and Sabrina A. Baron (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 160–77. 52. Habermas, Structural Transformation, pp. 51–56. The bibliography on Habermas and the public sphere is too large to list here. For a reading of Habermas’s theory in the eighteenth-century French context see Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), pp. 20–37. An early overview of the Habermasian paradigm can be found in Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992). For a recent overview, see Stéphane Van Damme, “Farewell Habermas? Deux décennies d’études sur l’espace public aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” in Questions posées à l’espace public, ed. Patrick Boucheron and Nicolas Offenstadt (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne), forthcoming. The exception to this rule is in the ‹eld of colonial history, which has produced a number of signi‹cant studies of state information systems. Historians of later colonialism have studied the history of such systems, though oddly, without examining their European origins. See C. A. Bayley, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); and Bernard S. Cohen, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 3–15. 53. Van Damme, “Farewell Habermas?” This sub‹eld has its own recently founded journal, Public Culture (Duke University Press). On the journal Public Culture see the Times Literary Supplement, November 3, 2006, pp. 23–24. Richard Sennett’s work parallels Habermas’s schema of the decline of the public sphere: The Decline of Public Man (New York: Vintage, 1978). 54. James van Horn Melton has recognized this dialectic, or symbiotic relationship, referring to it as “secrecy and its discontents,” or “opacity and transparency.” James van Horn Melton, The Rise of the Public in Enlightened Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 45–77. While it hardly rivals the interest in the public sphere, there is a rich and old tradition of the study of secrecy in the study of reason of state. See Louis Marin, “La logique du secret,” Traverses 30–31 (1984): pp. 60–69; Robert A. Schneider, “Disclosing Mysteries: The Contradictions of Reason of State in Seventeenth-Century France,” in Engel et al., Das Geheimnis am Beginn der europäischen Moderne, p. 176; and no discussion of learning in the early seventeenth century can ignore the persistence of elitist Neoplatonic attitudes, and their in›uence on neo-Stoic philosophy. Also see Rosario Villari, Elogio della dissimulazione: La lotta politica nel seicento (Rome: Editori Laterza, 1987); A. Enzo Baldini, ed., Aristotelismo politico e ragion di stato (Florence: Olschki Editore, 1995), in particular the chapters by Enzo Baldini, Gianfranco Borelli, Vittorio Dini, and Diego Quaglioni. On the paradoxical nature of reason of state, as an art of secrecy and a method of unmasking see Anna Maria Battista, “Morale ‘privée’ et utilitarisme

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politique en France au XVIIe siècle,” in Le pouvoir de la raison d’état, ed. Christian Lazzari and Dominique Reynié (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992), pp. 208–14; Peter Burke, “Tacitism, Scepticism, and Reason of State,” in The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450–1700, ed, J. H. Burns and Mark Goldie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 479–98; Vittorio Dini, Il governo della prudenza: Virtù dei privati e disciplina dei custodi (Milan: Franco Angeli Editore, 2000); Marcel Gauchet, “Létat au miroir de la raison d’état: La France et la chrétienité,” in Raison et déraison d’état: Théoriciens et théories de la raison d’état aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles, ed. Yves-Charles Zarka (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), pp. 195–97; Christian Jouhaud, ed., “Miroirs de la raison d’état,” special issue of the Cahiers du Centre de Recherches Historiques 20 (1998); Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, Dis/simulations. Jules-César Vanini, François La Mothe Le Vayer, Gabriel Naudé, Louis Machon et Toquato Accetto: Religion, morale et politique au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002), pp. 231–40; Schneider, “Disclosing Mysteries,” pp. 162–64; Jacob Soll, “Healing the Body Politic: French Royal Doctors, History and the Birth of a Nation 1560–1634,” Renaissance Quarterly 55 (2002): pp. 1259–86; this is also the general theme of Soll, Publishing “The Prince”: History, Reading, and the Birth of Political Criticism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005). 55. Hélène Merlin has shown that there is a deep ambiguity in the historical notion of the word public, which often described the state—the res publica—that ideally worked for communal good. Hélène Merlin, Public et littérature en France au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1994), pp. 90–105. For pan-European history of public information, see Dooley and Baron, Politics of Information. For the context of public information in France see Vittu, “Instruments of Political Information.” Also see Dooley’s study of public information in early modern Italy, A Social History of Skepticism. Robert Darnton has made a pathbreaking study of both secret and public information networks, “Philosophy under the Cloak,” in his The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York: Norton, 1995), pp. 3–21. On the public sphere see his “An Early Information Society: News and the Media in Eighteenth-Century Paris,” American Historical Review 1 (2000): pp. 1–35, which does not examine the role played by secret state information in society, as he does in his early work on the topic: “A Police Inspector Sorts His Files: The Anatomy of the Republic of Letters,” in Darnton, Great Cat Massacre, pp. 145–89. James van Horn Melton has claimed that this scholarly embrace of Habermas’s narrative of Enlightened progress through the rise of a critical public stems from a late-twentieth-century optimism about open society. Van Horn Melton, Rise of the Public, pp. 9–10. 56. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979). 57. For the most important critique of the idea that salons and the Republic of Letters were connected and, therefore, a driving force of a proto-civil society, see Antoine Lilti, Le Monde des salons. Sociabilité et mondanité à Paris au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 2005). 58. On Pietro Leopoldo’s program of enlightened reforms and political control see Simone Contardi, La Casa di Salomone a Firenze: L’Imperiale e Reale museo di ‹sica e storia naturale 1775–1801 (Florence: Olschki, 2002); and Emmanuelle Chapron, “Bibliothèques publiques et pratiques bibliophiliques au XVIIIe siècle: La collection

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d’incunables de la bibliothèque Magliabechiana de Florence,” Revue Française d’Histoire du Livre 118–21 (2004): pp. 317–33. 59. On the limits of openness in the Republic of Letters see Noel Malcolm, “Private and Public Knowledge: Kircher, Esotericism, and the Republic of Letters, in Findlen, Athanasius Kircher, p. 299. On secrecy, rules, and bad behavior in the Republic of Letters see Marian Füssel, Gelehrtenkultur als symbolische Praxis. Rang, Ritual und Kon›ikt an der Universität der Frühen Neuzeit (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006); and Martin Mulsow, Die unanständige Gelehrtenrepublik. Wissen, Libertinage und Kommunikation in der Frühen Neuzeit (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007). 60. On the complexity of the Republic of Letters see Delatour, “Le Cabinet des frères Dupuy”; Schneider, “Disclosing Mysteries,” p. 176; and Hans Bots and Françoise Waquet, La République des letters (Paris: Belin, 1997). On the relationship between political power and the world of learning, see Christian Jouhaud, Les pouvoirs de la literature: Histoire d’un paradoxe (Paris: Gallimard, 2000), chap. 3. 61. On private secrecy see Michael McKeon, Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005); and Margaret Jacob, Strangers Nowhere in the World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), chap. 4. 62. Peter Galison, “Removing Knowledge,” Critical Inquiry 31 (2004): p. 1. 63. Edward Albert Shils, The Torment of Secrecy: The Background and Consequences of American Security Policies (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1955). 64. On the Freedom of Information Act and its numerous exemptions, see the useful website kept by the National Security Archive: http://www.gwu.edu/ ~nsarchiv/nsa/foia.html. It contains the act and its amendments, as well as related works. Britain enacted its own Freedom of Information Act in 2000. See www.foi.gov.uk. On the secrecy policy of the Bush administration in relation to war, see John C. Yoo, “The President’s Constitutional Authority to Conduct Military Operations Against Terrorists and Nations Supporting Them,” Memorandum Opinion for the Deputy Counsel to the President, September 25, 2001: “Constitutional Structure. Our reading of the text is reinforced by analysis of the constitutional structure. First, it is clear that the Constitution secures all federal executive power in the President to ensure a unity in purpose and energy in action. ‘Decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch will generally characterize the proceedings of one man in a much more eminent degree than the proceedings of any greater number.’ The Federalist No. 70, at 392 (Alexander Hamilton). The centralization of authority in the President alone is particularly crucial in matters of national defense, war, and foreign policy, where a unitary executive can evaluate threats, consider policy choices, and mobilize national resources with a speed and energy that is far superior to any other branch. As Hamilton noted, ‘Energy in the executive is a leading character in the de‹nition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks.’ Id. at 391. This is no less true in war. ‘Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction of war most peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand.’ Id. No. 74, at 415 (Alexander Hamilton).” In relation to the secret formulation of U.S. energy policy

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by Richard Cheney, the vice president, see the Government Accounting Of‹ce Report to Congressional Requestors, Energy Task Force: Process Used to Develop National Energy Policy, August 2003. On secrecy and the Bush administration and the sustained interest of the U.S. press in this question see Mark Danner, The Secret Way to War: The Downing Street Memo and the Iraq War’s Buried History (New York: New York Review of Books, 2006); New York Times, op-ed, December 23, 2005, “Mr. Cheney’s Imperial Presidency,” and New York Times, op-ed, June 24, 2007, “White House of Mirrors.” 65. This term was used by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and cited by Lee White, “Scholars Present Testimony to House Subcommittee on Presidential Records,” Perspectives 45 (2007): p. 11. In the same issue also see Barbara Weinstein, “Let the Sunshine In: Government Records and National Insecurities,” Perspectives 45 (2007): pp. 3–6. 66. On secrecy in the Clinton Presidential Archives see Michael Isikoff, “Papers? I Don’t See Any Papers. He says he’s ‘pro-disclosure,’ but Bill has kept Hillary’s White House ‹les under wraps,” Newsweek, October 29, 2007. 67. Michel Duchein, “La communication des archives contemporaines: Droit a l’information ou droit au secret?” Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire 8 (1985): pp. 123–25. 68. Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA (New York: Anchor, 2008). 69. For the most informative overview of the culture and functioning of the state in early modern France see the encyclopedic and authoritative overview by Descimon and Guery, “Un État des temps modernes?” For a view of the early modern state as small and generally dysfunctional, see John Brewer and Eckhart Hellmuth’s thoughtful, Rethinking Leviathan: The Eighteenth-Century State in Britain and Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); and Hullmuth’s analysis in “Enlightenment and Government,” in Martin Fitzpatrick, Peter Jones, Christa Knellwolf, and Iain McCalman, The Enlightenment World (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 442–54.

c hap te r 2 1. Burke, Social History of Knowledge, p. 24. 2. Francis Oakley, The Conciliar Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church, 1300–1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), chap. 1. 3. Sidney L. Jackson, Libraries and Librarianship in the West: A Brief History (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), pp. 52–99. Also see Jolly, Histoire des bibliothèques françaises, vol. 2, Les bibliothèques médiévales du VIe siècle à 1530; Sebastien Barret, La mémoire et l’écrit: L’Abbaye de Cluny et ses archives (Münster: Lit, 2004). 4. Mary A. Rouse and Richard H. Rouse, Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval Texts and Manuscripts (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), pp. 409–24; Jean Favier, Les Archives (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1965), pp. 12–18. 5. M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), pp. 2–87.

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6. See Robert-Henri Bautier’s chapter concerning “Chancellerie et culture au moyen age,” in his Chartes, sceaux et chancelleries: Études de diplomatique et de sigillographie médiévales, 2 vols. (Paris: École des Chartes, 1990), vol. 1, pp. 47–75. 7. Oakley, The Conciliar Tradition, pp. 13–21; R. W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (London: Penguin, 1970), pp. 98–169; Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error, trans. Barbara Bray (New York: Vintage, 1979), p. xvii. 8. Randolph Head has studied the long-term archival practices of the Swiss cantons in “Knowing Like a State.” 9. Isabella Lazzarini, “Materiali per una didattica delle scritture pubbliche di cancelleria nell’Italia del Quattrocento,” Scrineum 2 (2004): pp. 1–77. 10. Gary Ianziti, “A Humanist Historian and His Documents: Giovanni Simonetta, Secretary to the Sforzas,” Renaissance Quarterly 4 (1981): pp. 491–516. 11. Petrarch and Poliziano’s sense of the past went beyond that of medievalists who had already begun to question textual authenticity. See Anthony Grafton, Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450–1800 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 42–75. 12. On humanism, history, archives, and civic consciousness in Florence see Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965); and Gary Ianziti, Humanistic Historiography under the Sforzas: Politics and Propaganda in Fifteenth-Century Milan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). For more general detail see Marcello Simonetta, Rinascimento segreto: Il mondo del segretario da Petrarca a Machiavelli (Milan: F. Angeli, 2004). For an extensive bibliography and analysis of chancellery archives see Lazzarini, “Materiali per una didattica.” 13. On the transformation of canon law into humanist legal philology see Jacques Cujas, Paratitia in libros IX. Codicis Iustiani repetitæ prælectionis (Paris: Jean Jost, 1541); and Tribonian, Iustiniani perpetvo avgvsti institutionum iuris ciuilis compositarum per Tribonianum virum magni‹cum & exquæstore sacri Palatij, & Theophilum & Dorotheum viros illustres & antecessores Libri Quatuor (Lyon: Gulielmum Rouillium, 1571). For the speci‹city of humanist scholarship as opposed to scholastic scholarship see L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Litterature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); and Ian Maclean, Interpretation and Meaning in the Renaissance: The Case of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 14. See in general Poggio Bracciolini, Two Renaissance Book Hunters: The Letters of Poggius Bracciolini to Nicolaus de Niccolis, trans. and ed. Phyllis Walter and Gordan Goodhart (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974). 15. For an overview of diplomatic and paperwork practices, see Lazzarini, “Materiali per una didattica,” pp. 15–38. On diplomatic paperwork, see Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (London: Jonathan Cape, 1955), pp. 108–11. 16. Anthony Grafton, “Teacher, Text and Pupil in the Renaissance ClassRoom: A Case Study from a Parisian College,” History of Universities 1 (1981): pp. 37–70; Paul F. Grendler, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), pp. 199–475. For studies of the pan-disciplinary humanist practices of the commonplace see Ann Blair, “Humanist Methods in Natural Philosophy: The Commonplace Book,” Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (1992):

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pp. 541–51; Francis Goyet, Le sublime du “lieu commun”: L’invention rhétorique dans l’antiquité et à la Renaissance (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1996); Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); and Jan Waszink, “Inventio in the Politica: Commonplace-Books and the Shape of Political Theory,” in Lipsius in Leiden: Studies in the Life and Works of a Great Humanist, ed. K. Enenkel and C. Heesakkers (Voorthuizen: Florivallis, 1997), pp. 141–62. On the centrality of Erasmus to humanist learned culture see Lisa Jardine, Erasmus, Man of Letters: The Construction of Charisma in Print (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983). 17. Alison Brown, Bartolomeo Scala, 1430–1497, Chancellor of Florence: The Humanist as Bureaucrat (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979). 18. Ianziti, “A Humanist Historian,” p. 500. 19. Ibid., pp. 494–96; Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy, p. 248. 20. Ianziti, “A Humanist Historian,” p. 501. 21. Peter Burke, The Renaissance Sense of the Past (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1969). 22. Nicolai Rubenstein, “The Beginning of Niccolò Machiavelli’s Career in the Florentine Chancery,” Italian Studies 9 (1956): pp. 72–91. 23. On the connection between historical political prudence and state administration see the pioneering work on political antiquarianism by Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton, pp. 3–8. 24. Mark Jurdjevik, “Civic Humanism and the Rise of the Medici,” Renaissance Quarterly 52 (1999): p. 1000. 25. On the innovative business practices as well as the pan-European web of the Medici bank see in general Raymond de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397–1494 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963); and de Roover, Business, Banking, and Economic Thought in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Julius Kirshner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), pp. 260–74. 26. On the pan-European web of merchant banking in the sixteenth century see Richard Ehrenberg, Capital and Finance in the Age of the Renaissance: A Study of the Fuggers and Their Connections, trans. H. M. Lucas (Fair‹eld, NJ: Augustus M. Kelley, 1985). 27. Ibid., chap. 3. 28. On early modern merchant handbooks, both manuscript and printed, see Jochen Hoock and Pierre Jeannin, eds., Ars Mercatoria: Handbücher und Traktate für den Gebrauch des Kaufmanns, 1470–1820 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1991). Also see de Roover, Medici Bank, pp. 39–119. On merchant culture see Daniel Roche and Franco Angiolini, eds., Culture et formation négociantes dans l’Europe moderne (Paris: Éditions EHESS, 1995). 29. On double-entry bookkeeping see Lucas Pacioli’s treatise as well as other technical works in John B. Geijsbeek, Ancient Double-Entry Bookkeeping (Denver: J. B. Geijsbeek, 1914). I will discuss this topic in more detail in chapter 4. 30. Anthony Molho, “The State and Public Finance: A Hypothesis Based on the History of Late Medieval Florence,” Journal of Modern History 67 suppl. (1995): p. 112. 31. See Victor von Klarwill, ed., The Fugger News-Letters, trans. L. S. R. Byrne,

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2 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1926). On the remarkable humanist Fugger library and its network see Paul Lehmann, Eine Geschichte der alten Fuggerbibliotheken (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1956). Johannes Kleinpaul, Die Fuggerzeitungen 1568–1605 (Walluf bei Wiesbaden: M. Sändig, 1972). For an outline of the giant Fugger network, see Ehrenberg, Capital and Finance; Mark A. Meadow, “Merchants and Marvels: Hans Jacob Fugger and the Origins of the Wunderkammer,” in Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe ed. Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen (New York: Routledge, 2002), 182–200. Also see the light but useful compilation, George T. Matthews, ed., News and Rumor in Renaissance Europe: The Fugger Newsletters (New York: Capricorn Books, 1959). 32. On the Fugger knowledge and information network and commerce, see Hermann Kellenbenz, Die Fugger in Spanien und Portugal bis 1560: Ein Großunternehmen des 16. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Ernst Vögel, 1990). 33. Philip II also maintained royal archives in Barcelona as well as in Rome. See Parker, Grand Strategy, pp. 21–66; Burke, Social History of Knowledge, p. 119. For a very brief study of the organization and cultural practices within the Spanish royal library see Fernando Bouza Álvarez, “Leer en palacio. De aula gigantium a museo de reyes sabios,” in El libro antiguo español, ed. María Luisa López-Vidriero and Pedro M. Cátedra (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1996), pp. 29–42; on Simancas, its origins, and its organization see José Luis Rodríguez de Diego and Francisco Javier Alvarez Pinedo, Los Archivos de Simancas (Madrid: Lunwerg Editores, 1993); and Rodríguez de Diego, ed., Instrucción para el gobierno del archivo de Simancas (año 1588) (Madrid: Dirección General de Bellas Artes y Archivos, 1989), and “La formación del Archivo de Simancas en el siglo xvi. Función y orden interno,” in López Vidriero and Cátedra, pp. 519–57. Also see Fernando Bouza Álvarez, El escribano a la biblioteca: La civilizacíon escrita europea en la alta Edad Moderna (siglos XV–XVII) (Madrid: Síntesis, 1992), pp. 71–93; Richard Kagan, “Arcana Imperii: Mapas, Sabiduría, y Poder a la corte de Felipe IV,” in El atlas del Rey Planeta, ed. Fernando Marías and Felipe Pereda (Madrid: Editorial Nerea, 2002), pp. 49–70. In spite of Juan de Ovando’s theories, Philip’s approach to information handling was more reactive than proactive. I am grateful to Ted Rabb for this point. See Juan de Ovando, Ordenanzas para la formacion del libro de las descripciones de Indias (1573). See Stafford Poole, Juan de Ovando: Governing the Spanish Empire in the Reign of Phillip II (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004). On information and industry in Spain see David C. Goodman, Power and Penury: Government, Technology, and Science in Philip II’s Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), chap. 4. 34. Philip II also maintained royal archives in Barcelona as well as in Rome (Parker, Grand Strategy, p. 66). 35. Ibid., p. 21. 36. J. H. Elliott, “A Europe of Composite Monarchies,” Past and Present 137 (1992): p. 60. 37. Ibid., p. 50. 38. Goodman, Power and Penury, chap. 4. 39. Kagan, “Arcana Imperii,” p. 29. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid., p. 41.

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42. Sebastián Sánchez Madrid, Arqueología y Humanismo: Ambrosio de Morales (Córdoba: Universidad de Córdoba, 2002); Aubrey F. G. Bell, Benito Arias Montano (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922); and B. Rekers, Benito Arias Montano, 1527–1598 (London: Warburg Institute, 1972), pp. 1–12. 43. Peter Burke, “Early Modern Venice as a Center of Information and Communication,” in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City State, 1297–1797, ed. John Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), pp. 389–419. 44. Filippo de Vivo, Information and Communication in Early Modern Venice: Rethinking Early Modern Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). On the Venetian archives and their uses see Armand Baschet, Les Archives de Venise: Histoire de la Chancellerie secrète (Paris: Henri Plon, 1870). 45. Donald E. Queller, “The Development of Ambassadorial Relazioni,” in Renaissance Venice, ed. John R. Hale (London: Faber, 1974), pp. 174–96. The great printed collection of relazioni is found in Luigi Firpo, ed., Relazioni Ambasciatori Veneti (Turin: Fondazione L. Firpo, 1975). 46. Filippo de Vivo, “Le armi dell’ambasciatore: Voci e manoscritti a Parigi durante l’Interdetto di Venezia,” in I luoghi dell’imaginario barocco, ed. Lucia Strappini (Naples: Liguori Editore, 1999), pp. 189–201; and “La publication comme enjeu polémique: Venise au début du XVIIe siècle,” in De la publication, ed. Christian Jouhaud and Alain Viala (Paris: Fayard, 2002), pp. 161–75. 47. Venice also mixed administrative information and mapping in its archives. See Camillo Tonino and Piero Lucchi, Navigare e descrivere. Isolari e portulari del Museo Correr di Venezia XV–XVIII secolo (Venice: Marsilio, 1997). 48. William J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), chaps. 6–10; Paolo Prodi, The Papal Prince: One Body and Two Souls; The Papal Monarchy in Early Modern Europe, trans. Susan Haskins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 172. 49. On the church as the origin of the administrative information state see Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, chap. 2. Peter Burke places the church at the center of a history of the modern information state: Social History of Knowledge, pp. 120–23. Also see his earlier “Sacred Rulers, Royal Priests: Rituals of the Early Modern Popes,” in Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 168–82; Jean Delumeau, “Rome: Le progress de la centralization dans l’État ponti‹cal au XVIe siècle,” Revue Historique 226 (1961): pp. 399–410; Wolfgang Reinhard, Papst‹nanz une Nepotismus unter Paul V. (1605–1621): Studien und Quellen zur Struktur und zu quantitativen Aspekten des päpstlichen Herrschaftssystems (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1974); Peter Partner, The Pope’s Men: The Papal Civil Service in the Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 40–46. Also see Prodi, The Papal Prince, pp. 1–16. 50. Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton, pp. 7–9. 51. Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 160. Also see Gregory B. Lyon, “Baudouin, Flacius, and the Plan for the Magdeburg Centuries,” Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003): pp. 253–72.

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52. On the uses of humanist philology and history in defense of Anglican rights see Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton. 53. Anthony Grafton and Megan Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesaria (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 1–7. 54. On history and antiquarianism as political weapons, see Anthony Grafton, What Was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 55. Baschet, Les Archives de Venise, pp. 178–81. On Paul V’s government see Birgit Emich’s ‹nely documented Bürokratie und Nepotismus unter Paul V. (1605–1621): Studien zur Frühneuzeitlichen Mikropolitik in Rom (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 2001); the original source on the Archivio Segreto is Gaetano Marini, “Memorie istoriche degli archivi della S. Sede,” in Monumenta Vaticana, ed. Hugo Laemmer (Freiburg: Herder, 1861), pp. 433–53; for a basic history see M. Gachard, Les Archives du Vatican (Brussels: C. Muquardt, 1874); for the ‹rst catalog of the Archivio Segreto and the ‹nest primary source bibliography on its conception see Franceso Gasparolo, “Constituzione dell’Archivio Vaticano e suo primo indice sotto il ponti‹cato di Paolo V. Manoscritto inedito di Michele Lonigo,” Studi e Documenti di Storia e Diritto 8 (1887): pp. 3–64; also see Louis Guérard, Petite Introduction aux Inventaires des Archives du Vatican (Rome: Libreria Spithöver, 1901); for a ‹ne catalog of catalogs see Karl August Fink, Das vatikansche Archiv. Einführung in de Bestände und ihre erforschung (Rome: W. Regenberg, 1951); for a light but informative overview of information, libraries, and the papacy see Maria Luisa Ambrosini, The Secret Archives of the Vatican (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969). For the most recent overview on the foundations and holdings of the Archivio Segreto see Terzo Natalini, Sergio Pagano, and Aldo Martini, eds., Archivio Segreto Vaticano (Florence: Nardini Editore, 1991); Ludwig, Freiherr von Pastor, History of the Popes, trans. Dom Ernest Graf, 40 vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952), vol. 27, pp. 129–53; on Jesuit ideology and information see Harro Höp›, Jesuit Political Thought: The Society of Jesus and the State c. 1540–1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 23–52. On the learned information bank of the papacy see Anthony Grafton, ed., Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1993). On Urban VIII’s government see Pastor, History of the Popes, vols. 28–29; Judith Hook, “Urban VIII: The Paradox of a Spiritual Monarchy,” in The Courts of Europe: Politics, Patronage and Royalty 1400–1800, ed. A. G. Dickens (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977); and Laurie Nussdorfer, Civic Politics in the Rome of Urban VIII (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). On the Barbarini library, papacy, and relations with the Dupuys and the Republic of Letters, see the detailed and important work by Jérôme Delatour, “Abeilles thuaniennes et barberines: Les relations des savants français avec les Barberini sous le ponti‹cat d’Urbain VIII,” in I Barberini e la cultura europea del Seicento (Rome: De Luca Editor, 2007), pp. 155–72. 56. Peter Burke has studied the church in the context of a history of the modern information state. See “Rome as a Centre of Information and Communication,” in From Rome to Eternity, ed. Pamela Jones and Thomas Worcester (Leiden:

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Brill, 2002), pp. 253–69, and The Social History of Knowledge, pp. 120–23. Also see his earlier “Sacred Rulers, Royal Priests: Rituals of the Early Modern Popes,” in his Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 57. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 27, pp. 129–53; on Jesuit ideology and information see Höp›, Jesuit Political Thought, pp. 23–52. 58. Grafton, Rome Reborn. 59. On Urban VIII’s government see Pastor, History of the Popes, vols. 28–29; Hook, “Urban VIII”; and Nussdorfer. 60. Burke, “Rome as Centre.” 61. The notable case of Balthasar Gracián, author of L’Homme de cour (1647), shows the casuistical methods of how Catholic princes could rule effectively. See Robert Bireley, SJ, The Counter Reformation Prince: Anti-Machiavellism or Catholic Statecraft in Early Modern Europe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980). 62. Francois de Dainville, L’éducation des Jesuites XVI–XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1978); Grafton, “Teacher, Text and Pupil”; Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, “Studied for Action: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy,” Past and Present 129 (1991): pp. 30–78; Ann Blair, “Humanist Methods,” and “Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload ca. 1550–1700,” Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003): pp. 11–28. On the general concept of the commonplace see Moss, Printed Commonplace Books, p. 7; Goyet, Le sublime; Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977); Jean Céard, “Les mots et les choses: Le commentaire à la Renaissance,” in L’Europe de la Renaissance: Cultures et civilizations, ed. Jean-Claude Margolin and Marie-Madelaine Martinet (Paris: J. Touzot, 1988), pp. 25–36; Nancy Streuver, The Language of History in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and Historical Consciousness in Florentine Humanism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), pp. 82–143; and Paul Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300–1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). 63. Blair, “Information Overload,” p. 17. 64. Ibid., p. 20. 65. On early seventeenth-century Rome as an information bank and on Jesuit knowledge, see Delatour, “Abeilles thuaniennes et barberines.” Also see Anthony Grafton, “The Ancient City Restored: Archeology, Ecclesiastical History, and Egyptology,” in Anthony Grafton, with Nancy Siraisi and April Shelford, New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 1–10, 87–124; Ingrid D. Rowland, The Culture of the High Renaissance: Ancients and Moderns in Sixteenth-Century Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Paula Findlen, “Scienti‹c Spectacle in Baroque Rome: Athanasius Kircher and the Roman College Museum,” in Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters, ed. Mordechai Feingold (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), pp. 224–84; Daniel Stolzenberg, “Egyptian Oedipus: Antiquarianism, Oriental Studies, and Occult Philosophy in the Work of Athanasius Kircher,” Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 2003, chap. 2; and for more early context see Charles L. Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome, 3rd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), pp.

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282–91. On the closed, Jesuit nature of Kircher’s learning see Malcolm, “Private and Public Knowledge,” p. 299. On Jesuit travel and church information culture see Steven J. Harris, “Mapping Jesuit Science: The Role of Travel in the Geography of Knowledge,” and Dominique Deslandres, “Exemplo aeque ut verbo: The French Jesuits’ Missionary World,” in The Jesuits: Culture, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773, ed. John W. O’Malley, Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Steven J. Harris, and T. Frank Kennedy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), pp. 212–40, and 258–73. 66. Fernand Braudel, Civilisation materielle, économie et capitalisme, XV–XVIIIe siècle, 3 vols. (Paris: Armand Colin, 1979), vol. 2, p. 80; Woodruff D. Smith, “The Function of Commercial Centers in the Modernization of European Capitalism: Amsterdam as an Information Exchange in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of Economic History 154 (1984): p. 986. 67. Michel Morineau, “Or brésilien et gazettes hollandaises,” Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 25 (1978): pp. 3–30. 68. Braudel, Civilisation, vol. 2, pp. 75–80. 69. Smith, “Function of Commercial Centers,” p. 992. 70. Peter Burke, Venice and Amsterdam: A Study of Seventeenth-Century Elites (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), p. 66. 71. On Holland’s federated form of government, without a true information center, see Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477–1806 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 725. Also see Burke, Social History of Knowledge, pp. 157–68. 72. Geoffrey Parker, Guide to the Archives of the Spanish Institutions in or concerned with the Netherlands, 1556–1706 (Brussels: Association des Archivistes et Bibliothèquaires, 1971). 73. Smith, “Function of Commercial Centers,” pp. 985–96. 74. Ibid. 75. Evans, Rudolf II, chap. 4. 76. Ibid., pp. 123–30. 77. Walter Goldinger, Geschichte des österreichischen Archiwesens (Vienna: Druck und Verlag Fernand Berger, 1957). 78. The founding work on the history of state building and antiquarianism is J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957). On this topic see Miller, Peiresc’s Europe, chap. 3. 79. Ambrosio de Morales, Viage de Ambrosio de Morales por orden del Rey D. Phelipe II. Para reconocer Las Reliquias de Santos, Sepulcros Reales, y Libros manuscritos de las Cathedrales y Monasterios (Madrid: Ediciones Guillermo Blázquez, 1985). 80. England and Holland were also less centralized in terms of state information. On state information in England before the Restoration see Elukin, “Keeping Secrets,” p. 126. Still the ‹nest source on the topic is Fraser, Secretaries of State, p. 10. Also see Steve Pincus, “From Holy Cause to Economic Interest: The Study of Population and the Invention of the State,” in A Nation Transformed: England after the Restoration, ed. Alan Houstein and Steve Pincus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 272–98. On Holland’s federated form of government, without a true information center, see Israel, The Dutch Republic, p. 725. Also see Burke, Social History of Knowledge, pp. 157–58.

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81. Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy, p. 66; Burke, Social History of Knowledge, p. 123. During the period of the Civil War, the Parliament sent out its own ambassadors. See James Westfall Thompson and Saul K. Padover, Secret Diplomacy: Espionage and Cryptology, 1500–1815 (New York: Frederick K. Ungar, 1963), p. 93. 82. Elukin, “Keeping Secrets,” pp. 124–25. 83. See Maurice F. Bond, “The Formation of the Archives of Parliament 1497–1691,” pp. 118–29, and Thomas G. Barnes, “The Archives and Archival Problems of the Elizabethan and Early Stuart Star Chamber,” pp. 130–49, in Prisca Monumenta: Studies in Archival and Administrative History Presented to Dr. A. E. J. Holloender (London: University of London Press, 1973). On Sandys see T. K. Rabb, Jacobean Gentleman: Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561–1629 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). 84. Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton, pp. 17–47. 85. On the political role of historians in seventeenth-century Britain see Philp Styles, “Politics and Historical Research in the Early Seventeenth Century,” in English Historical Scholarship in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. Levy Fox (Oxford: Dugdale Society and Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 49–72. 86. Miller, Peiresc’s Europe, pp. 77–81. 87. One exception to the rule is the Gallican archbishop of Toulouse, Pierre de Marca, who will be discussed in further detail. William F. Church, Constitutional Thought in Sixteenth Century France (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1941); Franklin Ford, Robe and Sword: The Regrouping of the French Aristocracy after Louis XIV (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962). On Gallicanism see Jotham Parsons, The Church in the Republic: Gallicanism and Political Ideology in Renaissance France (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004); and Donald Kelley, “Historia Integra: François Baudouin and His Conception of History,” Journal of the History of Ideas 25 (1964): pp. 35–57, “Jean Du Tillet, Archivist and Antiquary,” Journal of Modern History 38 (1966): pp. 337–54, and “Fides historiae: Charles Dumoulin and the Gallican View of History,” Traditio 22 (1966): pp. 347–402; and J. H. M. Salmon, “Clovis and Constantine: The Uses of History in Sixteenth-Century Gallicanism,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 41 (1990): pp. 584–665. 88. For the most detailed study of the mechanics of the Republic of Letters and its service to the state and Gallican causes under the Dupuy brothers see Delatour, “Le Cabinet des frères Dupuy.” 89. Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton, pp. 101–3. 90. Michel de Waele, Les relations entre le parlement de Paris et Henri IV (Paris: Publisud, 2002), pp. 191–248; Sylvie Daubresse, Le parlement de Paris, ou la voix de la raison 1559–1589 (Geneva: Droz, 2005), pp. 21–24. 91. John Hurt, Louis XIV and the Parlements: The Assertion of Royal Authority (London: Palgrave, 2002). 92. Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale, pp. 54–55. 93. David Buisseret, Sully and the Growth of Centralized Government in France, 1598–1610 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1968), p. 93. 94. Anon., “Mémoires de l’establissement des Secrétaires d’Estat et des Clercs, Notaires et Secrétaires du Roy et Secrétaires des Finances qui faisoient le fonction des Secrétaires d’Estat, avant l’establissement desdicts secrétaires d’Estat en titre

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d’of‹ce, et leur reproduction au nombre de quatre faitte par le roy Henry 2 en l’année 1547. Avec la suitte des Secrétaires d’Estat selon la datte de leurs provisions et receptions, depuis ladicte année 1547 jusques à present 1647,” BNF MS Cinq-Cents Colbert 136, fols. 347 ss. and MS Fr. 18236, fols. 87 ss. I am using a transcription made by Patricia M. Ranum and edited by Orest Ranum in 2006, found on their website: http://www.ranumspanat.com/secretaries_intro.htm. See Ranum’s detailed introduction and bibliography. Also see Adolphe Chéruel, Histoire de l’administration monarchique, 2 vols. (Geneva: Slatkine-Megariotis Reprints, 1974), vol. 2, p. 116. 95. On the evolution of French secretaries of state see Chéruel, Histoire de l’administration monarchique, vol. 1, p. 147. Also see Chéruel’s De l’administration de Louis XIV (Geneva: Slatkine-Megariotis Reprints, 1974), pp. 122–23. For an overview of histories of the French administration see Donald Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), p. 212. One major original source on institutional history is Vincent de la Loupe, Premier et second livre des dignitez, magistrats, & of‹ces du royaume de France (Paris: Guillaume Le Noir, 1556). 96. “Mémoires de l’establissement des Secrétaires d’Estat & des clercs, notaires et Secrétaires du roy,” BNF MS Cinq-Cents Colbert 136, fols. 347 ss., fol. 349r, fols. 483r–485v. 97. On the secretaries of state see Orest Ranum, Richelieu and the Councillors of Louis XIII: A Study of the Secretaries of State and Superintendents of Finance in the Ministry of Richelieu 1635–1642 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 45–99. On state paperwork in the sixteenth century and the role of the secrétaires see Hélène Michaud, La Grande Chancellerie et les écritures royales au XVIe siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967), pp. 127–63. On the role of the secretaries see Nicolas Schapira, “Occuper l’of‹ce. Les secrétaires du roi comme secrétaires au XVIIe siècle,” Revue d’Histoire moderne et contemporaine 51, no. 1 (2004): pp. 36–61; and “Les secrétaires particuliers sous l’Ancien Régime: Les usages d’une dépendance,” in Cahiers du Centre de Recherche Historique, October 2007, pp. 111–25. 98. Ranum, Richelieu, p. 96. 99. Ibid., fols. 375–77. 100. On the beginnings of state bureaucracy in France see Ranum, Richelieu; also see Robert Descimon, Jean-Frédéric Schaub, and Bernard Vincent, eds., Figures de l’administrateur: Institutions, réseaux, pouvoirs en Espagne, en France, et au Portugal, XVIe–XIXe siècle (Paris: EHESS, 1997); and Erik Thomson, “Commerce, Law, and Erudite Culture: The Mechanics of Thédore Godefroy’s Service to Cardinal Richelieu,” Journal of the History of Ideas 3 (2007): pp. 407–27. 101. Daubresse, Le parlement de Paris, pp. 65, 127–31. 102. Du Tillet was the ‹rst to catalog the royal charters. Elizabeth A. R. Brown, “Jean Du Tillet et les archives de France,” Histoire et Archives 2 (1997): pp. 29–63; Jean Du Tillet, Sieur de la Bussière, Recueil des roys de France, leurs couronne et maison, 2 vols. (Paris: Jean Houzé, 1607), vol. 1, pp. 1–2 of dedication. Also see Du Tillet’s Pour la majorité du roi treschrestien contre les escrits des rebelles (Paris: G. Morel, 1560). On Du Tillet see Kelley, “Jean Du Tillet,” p. 348. 103. On legal scholarship and politics also see Donald Kelley, “Legal Humanism and the Sense of History,” Studies in the Renaissance 13 (1966): pp. 184–99. On

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Gallicanism see “Historia Integra,” p. 41; “Guillaume Budé and the First Historical School of Law,” American Historical Review 72 (1967): pp. 807–34; “The Rise of Legal History in the Renaissance,” History and Theory 9 (1970): pp. 185–92; and ‹nally the Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship. On the role of legal scholars in the Royal Library, see Simone Balayé, “La naissance de la Bibliothèque du Roi, 1490–1664,” in Jolly, Histoire des bibliothèques françaises, vol. 2, pp. 78–79; and Jérôme Delatour and Thierry Sarmant, “La charge de la bibliothèque du roi aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 2 (1994): pp. 465–75. On the history of the Parlement of Paris as the archival body of the monarchy, see Daubresse, Le parlement de Paris, pp. 21–24. 104. Donald R. Kelley, “History as a Calling: The Case of La Popelinière,” in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, ed. Anthony Molho and John Tedeschi (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1971), p. 781; Jean Bodin, Les six livres de la République, ed. Gérard Mairet (Paris: Livres de Poche, 1993), book 3, chap. 4, pp. 280–83; book 6, chap. 2. 105. On Peiresc’s network, see in general Peter N. Miller’s authoritative Peiresc’s Europe. Also see René Pintard, Le libertinage erudite dans la première moitié du XVIIe siècle (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1983), pp. 88–99; Marc Fumaroli, “Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc: Prince de la République des Lettres,” in IVe Centenaire de la naissance de Gassendi. Conference organisée par l’Association Pro-Peyresq dans la maison d’Erasme à Anderlecht le mercredi 3 juin 1992 (Brussels, 1993), pp. 22–26; HenriJean Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société à Paris au XVIIe siècle, 2 vols. (Geneva: Droz, 1969), vol. 2, pp. 924–25. 106. Bodin, Les six livres, book 3, chap. 4, pp. 280–83; book 6, chap. 2. 107. Jérôme Delatour, “Abeilles thuaniennes et barberines,” p. 171: “À ce niveau hiérarchique supplémentaire s’ajoutait en France une tendance à la transmission héréditaire des charges et à la vénalité des of‹ces. Transmise de Jacques-Auguste de Thou à son ‹ls en 1617, la charge de grand maître tendait à devenir héréditaire; vendu par Nicolas Rigault aux frères Dupuy en 1645, l’of‹ce de garde tendait à devenir vénal. Dans ces conditions, le roi perdait la plus grande part de son contrôle sur la Bibliothèque. Pendant toute la période de leur administration, les de Thou et leurs clients, les Rigault et les Dupuy, purent agir sur la Bibliothèque à leur guise, conformément à la parrhêsia.” 108. On de Thou’s library and career in the Republic of Letters and politics see Delatour, “Abeilles thuaniennes et barberines,” in general; Ingrid A. R. de Smet, Thuanus: The Making of Jacques-Auguste de Thou, 1553–1617 (Geneva: Droz, 2006); Samuel Kinser, The Works of Jacques-Auguste de Thou (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966); Grafton, The Footnote, chap. 5; Soll, Publishing “The Prince,” pp. 41–43; and the important work by Antoine Coron, “‘Ut prosint aliis’: Jacques-Auguste de Thou et sa bibliothèque,” in Jolly, Histoire des bibliothèques françaises, vol. 2, pp. 101–26. 109. Miller, Peiresc’s Europe, pp. 68–70; Harcourt Brown, Scienti‹c Organizations in Seventeenth-Century France, 1620–1680 (New York: Russell and Russell, 1934), pp. 1–16; Also see Delatour, “Le Cabinet des frères Dupuy,” pp. 288–94. 110. Delatour, “Le Cabinet des frères Dupuy,” pp. 301–2. 111. Pierre Pithou, Les libertez de l’Église gallicane, 2 vols. (Paris, 1639); Pierre

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Dupuy, Traité de la majorité de nos rois et des régences du royaume, avec les preuves tirées tant du Trésor des chartes du roy que des registres du parlement et autres lieux; ensemble un traité des prééminences du parlement de Paris, par M. Dupuy (Paris: chez la Vve Du Puis et Edme Martin, 1655); Théodore Godefroy, Traitez touchant les droits du roy très chrestien sur plusieurs estats et seigneuries possédées par divers princes voisins et pour prouver qu’il tient à juste titre plusieurs provinces contestées par les princes estrangers. Recherches pour monstrer que plusieurs provinces et villes du royaume sont du domaine du roy. Usurpations faites sur les trois éveschez, Metz, Toul, Verdun, et quelques autres traitez concernant des matières publiques . . . Par M. Dupuy et T. Godefroy (Paris: A. Courbé, 1655). Godefroy also worked as a diplomat and wrote Le cérémonial françois . . . contenant les cérémonies observées en France (Paris: S. Cramoisy et G. Cramoisy, 1649). 112. Pierre Dupuy’s 1651 Testament, in which he donates his books to the king, is found in Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 263. 113. Pierre Dupuy, Traité de la majorité de nos rois et des regences du royaume avec les preuves tirées, tant du Tresor des Chartes du Roi, que des Registres du Parlement, & autres lieux, et un Traité des preéminences du Parlement de Paris, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: Jansons à Waesberge, 1722), vol. 2, p. 421: “Ce Parlement conserve en soi la dignité Royale, & si quelqu’un a à chercher la Majesté Royale en quelque lieu, il ne la peut rencontrer qu’en cette Compagnie, qui defend la reputation du Roi contre ses ennemis, qui les fait punir comme rebelles.” The idea that the Parlement represented the king is found in numerous texts and ordonnances. See Daubresse, Le parlement de Paris, p. 46; Jacques Krynen, “Qu’est-ce qu’un Parlement représente le roi?” in Excerptiones iuris: Studies in Honor of André Gouron, ed. Bernard Durand and Laurent Mayali (Berkeley: Robbins Collection, 2003), p. 356. 114. Church, Constitutional Thought; Gaston Zeller, “L’administration monarchique avant les Intendants, Parlements, et gouverneurs,” Revue Historique 197 (1947): pp. 180–215; Roland Mousnier, “Comment les français du XVIIe siècle voyaient la constitution,” XVIIe Siècle 29 (1955): pp. 9–36, and also his Institutions of France under the Absolute Monarchy, 1598–1789, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), vol. 1, chaps. 4 and 6; Monique Cubells, “Le Parlement de Paris pendant la Fronde,” XVIIe Siècle 35 (1957): pp. 173; Albert N. Hamscher, The Conseil privé and the Parlements in the Age of Louis XIV: A Study of French Absolutism (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1987); and Daubresse, Le parlement de Paris, p. 65. 115. Etienne Thuau, Raison d’État et pensée politique à l’époque de Richelieu (Paris: Armand Colin, 1966). For the relationship of the French crown to Tacitism and reason of state scholarship and propaganda under Henry IV and Richelieu see Jacob Soll, “Amelot de La Houssaye and the Tacitean Tradition in France,” Translation and Literature 6 (1997): pp. 186–98; and “Healing the Body Politic,” pp. 1269–72. 116. For an example of the early news pamphlets or relations from the Bureau d’Adresse, see Théophraste Renaudot. Pièces Historiques contenant les Couriers, Mercures, Relations, et autres semblables Observations curieuses sur l’Estat et gouvernement de France, comme il est en la présente année, 1649. C’est comme une notice générale pour servir de fondement à toute l’Histoire du temps (Paris: Sebastien Martin, 1649). On Renaudot see Howard M. Solomon, Public Welfare, Science, and Propaganda in Seventeenth Century France: The Innovations of Théophraste Renaudot (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-

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versity Press, 1972); and Kathleen Wellman, Making Science Social: The Conferences of Théophraste Renaudot,1633–1642 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003). 117. Orest Ranum, Artisans of Glory: Writers and Historical Thought in Seventeenth-Century France (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), pp. 149–96; and Nicolas Schapira, Un professionel des letters au XVIIe siècle. Valentin Conrart: Une histoire sociale (Seyssel: Editions Champ Vallon, 2003), p. 81. 118. Jouhaud, Les pouvoirs de la literature, pp. 191–217. On Richelieu’s lack of direct involvement with the actual scholarship of state itself see Jacob Soll, “Empirical History and the Transformation of Political Criticism in France from Bodin to Bayle,” Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003): pp. 308–9. 119. See Delatour, “Abeilles thuaniennes et barberines,” in general. 120. Even more, the crown lost faith in de Thou and the Dupuys when their friends and family were implicated in the Cinq-Mars conspiracy. 121. Ford, Robe and Sword, pp. 93; A. Lloyd Moote, The Revolt of the Judges: The Parlement of Paris and the Fronde, 1643–1652 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 364. 122. Joël Cornette, La mélancolie du pouvoir: Omer Talon et le procès de la raison d’état (Paris: Fayard, 1998), p. 344.

c hap te r 3 1. On Colbert, see Dessert, Colbert, p. 44. On the Colbert family’s slow rise to power, see Jean-Louis Bourgeon, Les Colbert avant Colbert: Destin d’une famille marchande (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1973); on the rise of the Le Tellier family see Louis André, Michel Le Tellier et Louvois (Geneva: Slatkine, 1974). For a modern overview of Colbert across various spectrums see Roland Mousnier, ed., Un nouveau Colbert (Paris: SEDES, 1985). For biographies of Colbert, see Inès Murat, Colbert, trans. Robert Francis Cook and Jeannie Van Asselt (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1984), which contains research on family documents never before seen; and Jean Meyer, Colbert (Paris: Hachette, 1981). Aside from these standard modern biographies, Pierre Clément’s classic work remains useful, Histoire de la vie et de l’administration de Colbert. For the ‹nest work on Colbert’s government see Daniel Dessert and Jean-Louis Journet, “Le lobby Colbert,” Annales 30 (1975): pp. 1303–29. Also see Colbert 1619–1683, the compilation of documents and references in the catalog of the exposition celebrating the tercentenary anniversary of Colbert’s death. The major studies of Colbert’s industrial and colonial policies ignore his information apparatus. See Stewart L. Mims’ classic Colbert’s West India Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1912); René Mémain, La marine de guerre sous Louis XIV. Le matériel. Rochefort, arsenal modèle de Colbert (Paris: Hachette, 1937); Charles Woolsey Cole, Colbert and a Century of French Mercantilism, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), vol. 1, pp. 356–532, and French Mercantilism: 1683–1700 (New York: Octagon, 1971). Philippe Minard examines the question of information culture, but only later, as Colbert’s heritage in the eighteenth century: La fortune du colbertisme: État et industrie dans la France des Lumières (Paris: Fayard, 1998). On the importance of Colbert’s bureaucracy of observers, see Daniel Roche, La France des Lumières (Paris: Fayard, 1993), pp. 15–37.

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2. Douglas Clark Baxter, Servants of the Sword: French Intendants of the Army, 1630–1670 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976). 3. Dessert, Colbert, p. 43. 4. Grafton, “Teacher, Text and Pupil”; Blair, “Information Overload,” pp. 14–15; Soll, Publishing “The Prince,” pp. 97–99. 5. de Dainville, L’éducation des Jesuites, pp. 315–22. 6. Dessert, Colbert, pp. 44–45. 7. Ibid., p. 45. 8. See Geijsbeek, Ancient Double-Entry Bookkeeping. This topic will be discussed in detail in chapter 4. 9. Pierre Jeannin, Merchants of the Sixteenth Century, trans. Paul Fittingoff (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), pp. 91–103; Braudel, Civilisation, vol. 3. 10. On the role of ‹nancial managers and families such as the Particelli in the new French army see David Parrott, Richelieu’s Army: War, Government, and Society in France, 1624–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 370–75. 11. Murat, Colbert, p. 8. 12. Ibid. 13. Colbert to Le Tellier, June 23, 1650, Lettres, vol. 1, p. 14. 14. Ibid., Colbert to Le Tellier, June 12, 1650, p. 12: “Monseigneur, j’ay fait voir ce matin à Mgr le Cardinal les deux articles en chiffre de vostre mémoire du jour d’hier. Sur le second, Son Eminence m’ordonne de vous écrire. . . . Pour le surplus des ordres qu’il vous plaist me donner par vos lettres et mémoires du mesme jour d’hier, Son Eminence m’a remis à ce soir ou demain matin. Je la presseray autant que je pourray de résoudre le tout, pour vous le faire savoir aussytost.” 15. Ibid., Colbert to Mazarin, February 17, 1651, p. 66: “Monseigneur, j’envoye à Vostre Éminence un inventaire de tous les papiers que M. Longuet m’a remis entre les mains depuis don départ, et luy rends compte en mesme temps de tout ce que j’ay pu faire jusqu’a présent pour ce qui regarde les affaires dont Vostre Éminence m’a chargé.” 16. Ibid., Colbert to Le Tellier, April 19, 1650, p. 8: “Monseigneur, je crois n’avoir rien à ajouter ce que je me suis donné l’honneur de vous écrire par mes précédentes, touchant l’affaire de Brisach, n’ayant rien appris de nouveau depuis ce temps. Celle-cy sera seulement pour vous donner avis de la capitulation de Bellegarde, comme vous verrez par la relation cy-jointe, et de ce qui s’est passé de principal et en quoy vous pouvez avoir quelque inérest, depuis quelque temps, dans la chambre de Mgr le Cardinal.” 17. Ibid., Colbert to Le Teller, August 9, 1650, pp. 24–26. 18. Ibid., Colbert to Le Tellier, August 29, 1650, p. 38. 19. These numbers come from the État de la France en 1658, reedited in the Lettres, vol. 1, p. cv. 20. Dessert, Colbert, p. 49. 21. Ibid., p. 48. 22. Jean Villain, La fortune de Colbert (Paris: Ministère de l’Économie, 1994), pp. 65–72. 23. Jean Villain, Mazarin, homme d’argent (Paris: Club du Livre d’Histoire, 1956).

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24. Gabriel-Jules, comte de Cosnac, Mazarin et Colbert, 2 vols. (Paris: Plon, 1892), vol. 1 in general; Murat, Colbert, pp. 22–25. 25. Dessert, Colbert, p. 52; J. A Bergin, “Cardinal Mazarin and His Bene‹ces,” French History 1 (1987): pp. 3–26. 26. Colbert to Mazarin, September 31, 1651, Lettres, vol. 1, p. 132. 27. Colbert to Mazarin, September 14, 1652, in Cosnac, Mazarin et Colbert, vol. 1, p. 324: “Je dois travailler l’un de ces jours avec M. Tubeuf à terminer les comptes qu’il doit rendre à Votre Éminence. Je trouve par le calcul que j’en ai fait sur les mémoires que j’ai recueillis, qui sont assez sûrs, que sa dette réduite à quatre cent mille livres et les affaires d’Auvergne et de Languedoc comptées pour achevées comme il en demeure en quelque sorte d’accord, la dernière pour deux cent mille livres, il devra de reste à Votre Éminence la somme de cent trente-neuf mille cinq cent quatrevingt-trois livres, outre et par-dessus les trente-six mille livres que Votre Éminence a déjà reçues et une promesse de MM. des gabelles de vingt mille livres que je retirerai et qu’il faudra trouver moyen de faire payer promptement; et je la supplie de croire que je ne peux pas m’être mescompté notablement. (marginal note) Il serait nécessaire que le Cardinal fît la recherche de tous les papiers et mémoires de M. Tubeuf; la seule dif‹culté à éclaircir concerne une erreur de calcul de vigt-cinq mille livres pour le loyer des maisons, erreur qui serait au pro‹t du Cardinal.” 28. It should be remembered that Mazarin and Ann of Austria were secretly married. 29. Colbert to Mazarin, September 31, 1651, Lettres, vol. 1, pp. 128–240. 30. Ibid., Colbert to Mazarin, December 11, 1651, p. 178: “J’ay les perles entre les mains, moyennant les conditions que je vous ay écrites. M. Ménardeau ne vouloit pas d’intérests de son argent, et M. Tubeuf n’a pas voulu terminer l’affaire qu’il n’en ayt pris au denier dix-huit, ce qui s’est touvé monter à 4,128 livres 17 sols, et le principal 62,220, revenant le tout à 66,348 livres 17 sols. . . . Il faut donner un peu de patience. J’ay envoyé un homme exprès en Limousin pour obliger Tabouret de payer; j’en espère quelque chose, de la manière dont j’ay tourné l’affaire.” 31. Ibid. On Mazarin’s spat with Colbert see Mazarin to Le Tellier, June 5, 1650, and Colbert’s explanation and apology from June 23, p. 14 n. 3. On de La Vieuville’s “dif‹culties in working with” Colbert, see pp. 130–38. 32. Daniel Dessert, Argent, pouvoir, et société au Grand Siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1984), p. 294. 33. Ibid., Mazarin to Colbert, July 27, 1654. 34. On the Mazarinades, see Celestin Moreau, Bibliographie des Mazarinades, 3 vols. (Paris: Renouard, 1850–51); Christian Jouhaud, Les Mazarinades: La Fronde des mots (Paris: Aubier, 1985); Pierre Barbier, La Fronde et des Mazarinades (Paris: Gallimard, 1956); Hubert Carrier, Les Mazarinades, 2 vols. (Geneva: Droz, 1989–91); Roger Chartier, “Pamphlets et gazettes,” in Histoire de l’Édition Française, ed. Roger Chartier and Henri-Jean Martin, 2 vols. (Paris: Fayard/Promodis, 1989), vol. 1, pp. 501–26. 35. Like Pierre Charron, Naudé discusses passages on Lipsius’s ideas of prudence and dissimulation from the Politica in his Considérations politiques sur les coups d’Estat (Rome, 1639), pp. 55–59. 36. This de‹nition of reason of state comes from Maurizio Viroli, From Politics

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to Reason of State: The Acquisition and Transformation of the Language of Politics, 1250–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 4. On the history of reason of state see Friedrich Meinecke’s classic, Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d’État and Its Place in Modern History, trans. D. Scott (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957). For a useful overview see Burke, “Tacitism, Scepticism”; and see Michael Stolleis, “Machiavellismus und Staatsräson: Ein Beitrag zu Conrings Politischem Denken,” in Hermann Conring (1606–1681): Beiträge zu Leben und Werk, ed. Michael Stolleis (Berlin: Dunker & Humblot, 1983), p. 208. Most studies of Machiavellian political theory do not examine the second half of the seventeenth century. Etienne Thuau’s important work, Raison d’État et pensée politique à l’époque de Richelieu, stops after the reign of Louis XIII, as does René Pintard. Other relevant contextual literary histories such as Jean Jehasse’s La Renaissance de la critique: L’essor de l’Humanisme érudit de 1560 à 1614 (Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, 1976); William F. Church’s Richelieu and Reason of State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973); and Marc Fumaroli, L’âge de l’éloquence (Paris: Albin Michel, 1980), also ignore the later part of the seventeenth century. Also see Anna Maria Battista’s Alle origini del pensiero politico libertino: Montaigne e Charron (Milan: Giuffrè, 1966). From the Cambridge school of the history of political thought, Q. R. D. Skinner’s The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), also stops before the reign of Louis XIV, as does Viroli’s From Politics to Reason and Richard Tuck’s Philosophy and Government, 1572–1652 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). For a history of libertine thought during the reign of Louis XIV see J. S. Spink, French Free-Thought from Gassendi to Voltaire (London: Athlone Press, 1960). Also, see Lionel Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV: The Political and Social Origins of the French Enlightenment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 385. 37. On Naudé’s problematic position as a humanist at the end of a period of traditional political humanism, as well as on the birth of a new style of royal library, see Paul Nelles, “The Library as an Instrument of Discovery: Gabriel Naudé and the Uses of History,” in History and the Disciplines: The Reclassi‹cation of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, ed. D. R. Kelley (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1997), pp. 41–57; Jacques Revel, “Entre deux mondes: La bibliothèque de Gabriel Naudé,” in Le pouvoir des bibliothèques. La mémoire des livres en Occident, ed. Marc Baratin and Christian Jacob, (Paris: Albin Michel, 1996), pp. 243–50. On Naudé’s own readings see Estelle Bœuf, La Bibliothèque parisienne de Gabriel Naudé en 1630. Les lectures d’un libertin erudit (Geneva: Droz, 2007). 38. On Naudé’s dilemma, as a master of secrecy engaged in publishing, see in general Louis Marin’s authoritative study, “Pour une théorie baroque de l’action politique,” in Gabriel Naudé, Considérations politiques sur les coups d’état, ed. Frédérique Marin and Marie-Odile Perulli (Paris: Éditions de Paris, 1988), pp. 1–64; Cavaillé, Dis/simulations, pp. 16–31. Naudé had long complained of popular political pamphletry in his early and prescient Le Marfore ou Discours contre les libelles (Paris: Louys Boulenger, 1620), pp. 1–3: “Puisque contre la nature d’une populace laquelle le plus souvent s’abandonne à autant d’opinions que la mer est agitée de diverses bourasques et tempestes, chacun conspire maintenant à coucher la médisance [p. 2] sur le papier des nouveautez, pour l’ampraindre plus facillement ès esprits de

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ceux qui allechez par ce miel de curiosité ne recognoissent le venin de ces pernicieux effets qu’au préalable ils ne taxent leur peu de iugement et mecognoissent leur trop grande inconsistence; sans toutefois que personne jusque à presnt se soit ontré pour faire boulevart et resistance à ce torrent de callomnie, ou qui ait eu la hardiesse, s’armant de la raison, de s’opposer à ceste multitude de libelles, et à eslever un phare, lequel conduisant au port de la verité, dissipât les tenebres de l’ignorance, soubs la faveur desquelles ces escrips medisans croians savoir. . . . [p. 3] Je romperay mon silence, et pour n’estre veu asymbolos & sans dicton parmi ceste multitude d’escrivains, ou comme disoit Diogène: Inter tot operarios cessator, courant au plus prompt remède qui est la plume, ‹delle messagère de nos conceptions, ie prepareray un remede cordial & antidote pour résister au souf›e de ces basilics, lesquels s’accommodant à nos passions comme le polype et cameleon font aux couleurs, ou les feus folets au mouvant de nostre corps, nous conduisent en ‹n dans des abismes de folles opinions et maximes eronees.” Also see Robert Damien, Bibliothèque et état: Naissance d’une raison politique dans la France du XVIIe siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995), p. 308. 39. Naudé to Mazarin, July 15, 1651, in Considérations politiques sur la Fronde. La correspondance entre Gabriel Naudé et le Cardinal Mazarin, ed. Kathryn Willis Wolfe and Phillip J. Wolfe (Paris: Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature, 1991), pp. 38–40: “le silence si obstiné des ministres qui se laissaoient accabler, et l’estat avec eux, soubs mesdisance et soubz la calomnie sans se justi‹er de vive voix ny par escrit, au lieu que les ennemis du public tiroient de grands avantages et mettoient tousjours les peuples de leur costé par le dernier de ces moyens là.” 40. Ibid., p. 40: “Mais, Monseigneur, outre ces deux moyens qui requiert les plumes et l’attention de V. E., il faudroit encore employer celles de tous les amis de V. E. qui ont le don d’escrire, a‹n de faire paroistre son innocence en diverses façons, soubz divers jours, par plusieurs moyens pour detromper les peuples le plus qu’il seroit possible et sinon par tels et tels livres, au moins par tels et tels autres, dequoy si vous pouviez venir à bout il n’y auroit plus ny princes ni parlementaires qui vous pussent prejudicier ny mesme qui osa songer à le faire.” 41. Ibid., Mazarin to Naudé, July 25, 1651, pp. 51–52: “Je suis plus persuadé que jamais qu’il faudrait escrire et j’imprimeré continuellement pour desabuser les peuples des fausses impressions que par ce mesme moyen on leur donne. . . . Cependant je vous conjure de conférer avec Mr. Colbert sans en parler à d’autres et de faire travailler au lieu où vous estes par des personnes affectionnées et capables, et ce qu’il faudra pour la despense, ledict sieur Colbert le fournira avec ponctualité et secret. Je vous ay desja escrit conformement depuis peu. Certains feuillets volants fouron bon effect parmy le peuple.” 42. Pintard, Le libertinage erudite, p. 156. 43. Naudé to Mazarin, July 15, 1651, in Wolfe and Wolfe, Considérations politiques, pp. 38–45. 44. Jacques Savary, Le parfait négociant, ou Instruction générale pour ce qui regarde le commerce, 2 vols. (Paris: Veuve Estienne & Fils, 1749), vol. 1, p. 30. 45. On the ‹nancial and political context of the period see Julian Dent, “An Aspect of the Crisis of the Seventeenth Century: The Collapse of the Financial Administration of the French Monarchy (1653–1661),” Economic History Review 20

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(1967): pp. 241–56; and “The Role of Clienteles in the Financial Elite of France under Cardinal Mazarin,” in French Government and Society 1500–1850: Essays in Memory of Alfred Cobban, ed. J. F. Bosher (London: Athlone Press, 1973), pp. 40–69; Meyer, Colbert, p. 164; and Richard Bonney, The King’s Debts: Finance and Politics in France, 1589–1661 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 242–71; and his Political Change in France under Richelieu and Mazarin, 1624–1661 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). 46. Colbert to Mazarin, July 28, 1651, in Colbert, Lettres, vol. 1, pp. 109–10: “Je fourniray à M. Naudé ce qu’il demandera. Mais, sur cela, je suis obligé de vous dire que tous vos amis et serviteurs ne sont nullement d’avis de faire quoy que ce soit qui paroisse en public, pour vous, estant absolument nécessaire de laisser agir l’humeur de nostre nation. Qui est de la dernière inconstance en ses haynes et en ses amitiés, quand l’objet en est absent, et qu’on ne l’excite point. Les désordres et les guerres civiles où nous allons tomber indubitablement travaillent pour vous; et pourvu que l’on change la conduite que l’on a tenue par le passé, on doit avoir quelque espérence. [Je ne sçais pas si ce discours est fondé sur la raison; mais je sçais bien qu’une très-faschuese expérience, et pour vous, en vostre particulier, et pour tous vos amis, et pour la Reine encore plus, le justi‹e fort.] Il est vray qu’il faut toujours préparer les matières, ce qui se peut faire par le moyen de l’estat général de vos avances, qui est une pièce convaincante; mais il ne faut rien remuer ni publier que la hayne publique ne soit amortie.” 47. Naudé to Mazarin, August 19, 1663, pp. 62–63; and September 9, 1663, in Wolfe and Wolfe, Considérations politiques, p. 78. 48. Colbert had long emphasized secrecy in his relationship to Mazarin. See Colbert to Mazarin, June 9, 1651, in Lettres, vol. 1, pp. 87–88: “Je ne fais aucune dif‹culté de vous écrire toutes ces choses qui regardent la disposition de vos affaires, avec une sincérité toute entière, croyant bien que Vostre Éminence me fera la grâce de tenir la chose très-secrète et que qui que ce soit n’aura connoissance de ce que je luy écris, soit en cette occasion, soit en tout autre.” 49. Ibid., Colbert to Mazarin, July 28, pp. 111–12. In this letter Colbert explains that he will not only take over the management of Mazarin’s papers, but he will keep them in more secrecy than his predecessor, Euzenat. Even more, he demands secrecy in his interactions with the Cardinal himself: “il est bon que vous sçachiez que celuy qui travailloit avec ledit sieur Naudé à vostre bibliothèque (et tous vos domestiques disent assez haut qu’il en a détourné une très-grande quantité, dont il a composé une bibliothèque particulière pour luy, et qu’il pretend cacher ce vol en avouant qu’il en a détourné quelques-uns des meilleurs, crainte que vostre palais ne fust pillé) a toujours esté dans des sentimens très-contraires à vos intérests, et qu’il prétend par son industrie, vous obliger à fonder un revenu pour l’entretien de vostre bibliothèque. Vous verrez s’il y a de la vraysemblance à cela.” There is no existing evidence that Naudé stole books from Mazarin, though this letter implies that Colbert has his own evidence that he will reveal to the cardinal. Colbert often demands secrecy from his correspondents. See Colbert to Loménie de Brienne, June 8, 1682, in Lettres, vol. 6, p. 170. 50. Jack A. Clarke, Gabriel Naudé, 1600–1653 (Hamden, CN: Archon, 1970), p. 129.

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51. On Naudé’s concept of the coup d’état and secrecy see Marin, “Pour une théorie baroque,” pp. 31–41; and Cavaillé, Dis/simulations, pp. 199–265. 52. “Mémoire de Colbert pour le Cardinal de Mazarin,” March 3, 1654, in Cosnac, Mazarin et Colbert, vol. 1, p. 450. 53. Ibid., p. 451. 54. Ibid. 55. James E. King was the ‹rst to examine knowledge culture and politics during the reign of Louis XIV in his pioneering work, Science and Rationalism in the Government of Louis XIV. Also see Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV, pp. 124–233. 56. For examples of Colbert’s functions as Mazarin’s paperwork master, see his letters to Mazarin, September 16 and October 7, 1651, Lettres, vol. 1, pp. 128–40. On Colbert reconstituting and managing Mazarin’s library, see Colbert to Mazarin, March 3, 1654, pp. 215–17. Though not a true modern police state, the effectiveness Colbert’s censorship campaign and its long-term rami‹cations for the book trade should not be underestimated. See Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société, vol. 2, pp. 667–762; David T. Pottinger, The French Book Trade in the Ancien Régime, 1500–1791 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958); Anne Sauvy, Livres saisis à Paris entre 1678–1701 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972), pp. 8–9; Joseph Klaits, Printed Propaganda under Louis XIV: Absolute Monarchy and Public Opinion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 35–55; Bernard Barbiche, “Le régime de l’édition,” in Histoire de l’édition française, vol. 1, pp. 457–71; Jean-Dominique Mellot, L’Édition rouennaise et ses marchés vers 1600–vers 1730 (Paris: École des Chartes, 1998), pp. 388–90. Although Colbert and La Reynie were not completely successful in regulating the book trade, he and La Reynie aggressively prosecuted pamphleteers, sometimes sending them to the galleys. See “Lettre de M. Colbert à M. de La Reynie, 25 avril, 1670,” in Lettres, vol. 6, pp. 28–29: “Sa Majesté désire que vous continuez de faire une recherché exacte de ces sortes de gens et que vous passiez punir sévèrement ceux que vous avez fait arrester, estant très-important pour le bien de l’Estat d’empscher à l’avenir l;a continuation de pareils libelles.” Also see note 5 on the same page. As in many domains, Colbert followed in the footsteps of the church: Paul F. Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540–1605 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977) and his collection of essays, Culture and Censorship in Late Renaissance Italy and France (London: Variorum Reprints, 1981). 57. Colbert to Mazarin, August 30, 1656, in Lettres, vol. 1, pp. 251–52: “plusiers conseillers recherchent desjà dans leurs registres les exemples et les raisons qui peuvent les servir sur cette matière. . . . J’ay cru que peut-estre Vostre Éminence ne désagréeroit pas que je ‹sse une recherche de tout ce qui a esté fait et dit sur cette matière, tant par les mesmes ordonnances qu’en ce qui s’est fait dans le parlement de Paris, à quoy les roys ont toujours ce qu’il a mal fait et s’en sert pour autoriser la suite de ses entreprises, et n’allègue jamais les remèdes que les roys y ont apportés, qui souvent demeurent inconnus. Si j’étois assez heureux que cette petite recherche pust agréer à Vostre Éminence, je m’estimerois bien récompensé du tempts que j’y employeray, et, en d’autres occasions, je m’efforcerois de rendre le mesme service à Vostre Éminence.” 58. Ibid., p. 252. Mazarin to Colbert, September 9, 1656: “Je vous conjure de faire travailler à la recherche que vous me proposez; elle sera fort utile, et je vous

Notes to Pages 43–46

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seray obligé. Il est étrange qu’on n’ayt jamais pris le soin de tenir un registre de ce que les roys ont fait pour réprimer les entreprises des parlemens, a‹n d’avoir de quoy les confondre quand ils apportent des exemples de ce qu’ils ont fait. Il en est de mesme du clergé, qui ne met dans les procès-verbaux qui se font chaque assemblée que ce qui luy plaist.” 59. Ibid., pp. 253–58. Colbert took special interest in obtaining parliamentary registers for himself. BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 32 contains a number of Colbert’s documents on this subject, most notably, “Registres secrets du parlement de Mets, depuis son establissement de 1633 jusques au mois d’aoust 1672 (fol 216),” with a manuscript note in Colbert’s own hand: “Pour ma bibliothèque.” 60. Colbert to Louis XIV, “Au Roi. Pour le Conseil Royal,” in Lettres, vol. 2, part 1, p. cci. 61. Ibid., “Discours de Louis XIV à l’ouverture du Conseil des Finances (Minute autographe de Colbert), 1661, p. cciii. 62. See Mme de Sevigné’s letters to Pomponne between November 17 and December 10, 1664, in Mme de Sevigné, Lettres, ed. M. Suard (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1846), pp. 44–67. 63. Dessert, Arget, pouvoir et société, p. 300. 64. Ibid., pp. 210–37. 65. Cited in Murat, Colbert, p. 61. 66. Ibid., p. 63. 67. Jean-Baptiste Colbert, “Arrestation de Fouquet; Mésures préparatoires,” 1661, in Lettres, vol. 2, pp. clxxxix–cxcix. 68. Ibid., p. cxc: “Disposer toutes choses pour observer du secret, et que les premières nouvelles viennent du Roy pour empescher toutes les précautions. Pour cet effet, envoyer tois ou quatre mousquetaires ‹dèles sur les deux routes pour empescher qu’aucun courrier ordinaire ou extraordinaire de passe sans un ordre du Roy, contre-signé de M. Le Tellier. Dans le mesme temps de l’arrest, arrester aussy tous les commis et sceller partout, et empescher visites.” 69. Ibid., p. cxcvi: “Il faut joindre à cet exempt un maistre des requestes pour sceller les cassettes et les mettre en seureté; comme aussy qu’il fasse recherche exacte de tous les papiers qui se trouveront dans la maison pour les saisir. Ordre à un autre exemt pour arrester les commis et prendre garde qu’aucuns papiers ne soyent transportés. S’il y a deux maistres des requestes, on pourra en envoyer un avec les commis pour sceller les papiers. Tous ces ordres donnés et exécutés, il faut travailler à depescher les courriers.” 70. De la Fosse to Seguier, September 23, 1661, in A. Chéruel, ed., Mémoires sur la vie publique et privée de Fouquet, Surintendant des ‹nances. D’après ses lettres et des pièces inédites conservées à la Bibliothèque Impériale, 2 vols. (Paris: Charpentier Éditeur, 1862), vol. 2, pp. 272–74. 71. Ibid. 72. Ibid., p. 277. 73. A table of contents of the Cassette is found at in the annexes of Chéruel (Mémoires, vol. 2, pp. 481–576), with a number of transcriptions. The original papers of the Cassette are now found in the manuscript collection of the BNF, Collection Baluze 149–50.

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74. Chéruel, Mémoires, vol. 2, p. 489. 75. Lettres, vol. 2, part 1, pp. xxvi–xxx. 76. Albert Borowitz, A Gallery of Sinister Perspectives: Ten Crimes and a Scandal (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1982), pp. 62–73. 77. To understand the basis of the “Chambre de Justice,” as an extraordinary body to maintain royal dominance over issues of taxation see Jean Bourgoin, La chasse aux larrons, ou avant-coureur de l’histoire de la Chambre de Justice. Des livres du bien public, et autres oeuvres faits pour la recherche des ‹nanciers, & de leurs fauteurs (Paris, 1618), as well as his report to Marie de Medici, Les desirs du peuple françois pour le bien de l’Estat. Et les moyens pour reprimer les abus, & les Mal-Versations qui se commettent au maniement des Finances (1625). 78. See M. Gaillard, Vie de M. le Premier Président de Lamoignon, in Vie ou Éloge Historique de M. de Malesherbes (Paris: Xhrouet, Déterville, Lénormant et Petit, 1805), p. 170. 79. Dessert, Colbert, p. 34. One anonymous poem characterizes Colbert this way: “Ministre avare et lâche, esclave malheureux, / Qui gémis sous le faix des affaires publiques, / Victime dévoué aux changrins politiques, / Fantôme respecté sous un titre onérique; / Vois combine des gandeurs le comble est dangereux! / Contemple de Fouquet les funestes reliques; / Et tandis qu’à sa perte en secret tu t’appliques, / Crains qu’on ne te prepare un destin plus affreux.” Colbert, Lettres, vol. 7, anon., p. cxcvi. 80. Gaillard, Vie ou Éloge, p. 170. 81. The papers from Fouquet’s Cassette are preserved, like a trophy, in the Baluze manuscript collection of the BNF, MS Baluze 149–50. For a detailed catalog of the Cassette as well an account of Colbert’s role in the trial, see Chéruel, Mémoires, vol. 2, pp. 253–440, 481–86. On the public’s reaction to Colbert’s illegal procedure see pp. 386–440. Also see Joseph Foucault’s parliamentary notes on the trial: BNF MS 500 Colbert, 235–45. The parliamentarian and memorialist Olivier Lefèvre d’Ormesson documents the trial of his friend, Fouquet, and his own reactions and interactions with Colbert and Pussort in volume 2 of his Mémoires, 2 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1861). Also see Stewart Saunders, “Politics and Scholarship in Seventeenth-Century France: The Library of Nicolas Fouquet and the Collège Royal,” Journal of Library History 20 (1985): pp. 13–19; and Dessert, Colbert, p. 34. 82. In 1673, he had Carcavy copy seventy-three large register books of documents for his own library. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 440. 83. Colbert, Lettres, vol. 6, p. 15: “Moyens de parvenir a remettre le parlement dans l’estat où il doit estre naturellement, et luy oster pour toujours les maximes sur lesquelles cette Compagnie entrepris de troubler l’Estat, en voulant prendre part à l’administration d’iceluy.” 84. Ibid.: “Faire une déclaration pour leur interdire à jamais la connoissance des matières d’Estat.” 85. Ibid., pp. 3–4. In Colbert’s “Mémoire” to Louis, October 22, 1664, he recommends a strategy to initiate long-term legal reforms. 86. David Parker, “Sovereignty, Absolutism, and the Function of the Law in

Notes to Pages 48–53

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Seventeenth Century France,” Past and Present 122 (1989): pp. 36–74. On the connection between scholarship, antiquarianism, and the functioning of the French ancient constitution, see Miller, Peiresc’s Europe, pp. 92–95. 87. See Marguerite Boulet-Sautel, “Colbert et la legislation,” in Mousnier, Un nouveau Colbert, pp. 119–32. 88. Hamscher, Conseil privé, p. 158. 89. BNF MS Fr. 7216, fol. 240r: “Proces Verbal de l’Ordonnance de 1667.” On Lamoignon’s horror in reaction to Colbert’s plan see Colbert, Lettres, “Plan de la Chambre de Justice et des principales affaires qui s’y traitent,” vol. 7, p. 213. On Colbert’s attempt to exclude Lamoignon from the legal reforms see Lefèvre d’Ormesson, Mémoires, vol. 2, p. 27; also see the document in Colbert, Lettres, part 1, vol. 2, p. 56. At Lamoignon’s request, Louis XIV allows Lamoignon into the secret Colbert meetings: “M. Colbert emploie actuellement M. Pussort à ce travail; voyez M. Colbert et concertez vous ensemble.” Gaillard, Vie ou Éloge, pp. 191–92. For Colbert’s personal papers on the procedural reform, see BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 33, “Recueil de mémoires formé par Colbert sur la Réforme de la Procédure (1665–1679).”

c hap te r 4 1. By the time of the War of Spanish Succession (1702–14), the de‹cit would run 371 percent. On Colbert’s tax collection see Bonney, Political Change, 424–7; and on royal expenditures see Bonney, The King’s Debts, p. 325, table 11. Also see Richard Bonney, “The Secret Expenses of Richelieu and Mazarin, 1624–1661,” English Historical Review 91 (1976): p. 834. 2. On Colbert and the early period of Louis XIV’s reign, see Dessert, Colbert, pp. 1–20. 3. Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 49–59. 4. Murat, Colbert, p. 84. 5. Ibid., p. 85. 6. Ibid., p. 70. 7. Unpublished document cited in Murat, Colbert, p. 78. 8. Louis XIV, Mémoires for Instruction, p. 64. 9. Ibid., p. 65. 10. See Paul Sonnino’s introduction to the Instructions, p. 5. 11. Christian Bec, Les marchands écrivains: Affaires et humanisme à Florence 1375–1434 (Paris: Mouton, 1967), p. 51. 12. Armand du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu, Testament Politique, ed. Françoise Hildesheimer (Paris: Société de l’Histoire de France), p. 253. 13. Gerhard Oestreich, Neostoicism and the Early Modern State, ed. Brigitta Oestreich and H. G. Koenigsberger, trans. David McLintock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 2–9. 14. Baltasar Gracián, L’Homme de cour, trans. and ed. Abraham-Nicolas Amelot de La Houssaye (Paris: Veuve Martin and Boudot, 1684). The ‹nal chaper is entitled “En‹n, être saint.” Also see Bireley, The Counter-Reformation Prince.

200

note s to pag e s 53 – 58

15. Soll, “Healing the Body Politic.” 16. Buisseret, Sully, pp. 74–86. 17. Cited by Ranum, Richelieu, p. 136: “aucune cognoissance des ‹nances [mais] il s’en rapportoit à ceux ausquels le Roy en avoit donné la direction.” Also see Richard Bonney, “Louis XIII, Richelieu and the Royal Finances,” in Richelieu and His Age, ed. Joseph Bergin and Laurence Brockliss (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 99–133; Bonney, Political Change, p. 8. 18. On the relationship of scholarly, philological humanism to technical, artisan culture, see in general Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti. 19. On Stevin see Simon Stevin, Principal Works, ed. Ernst Crone, E. J. Dijkterhuis, R. J. Forbes, M. G. J. Minnaert, and A. Pannekoek, 5 vols. (Amsterdam: C. V. Smets and Zeitlinger, 1966). See vol. 5 on engineering. 20. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 3–6. 21. Peter Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), p. 29. 22. A transcript of Stevin’s journal and discussion with Prince Maurice is found in Geijsbeek, Ancient Double-Entry Bookkeeping, pp. 15–16. 23. Ibid., p. 15. 24. De Roover, Medici Bank, pp. 37–38. 25. Cited in Geijsbeek, Ancient Double-Entry Bookkeeping, p. 89. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid., p. 39. 28. Ibid., p. 41. 29. Ibid., p. 43. 30. Ibid., p. 78. 31. Ibid., p. 77. 32. For more examples of discursive record-keeping tools, see p. 45. 33. Ibid., p. 9. 34. The notebook in question is a personal, manuscript journal, or agenda found in the Rare Books Collection of the University of Pennsylvania, MS Codex 207: Robert Williams, “Notes Concerning Trade 1632–1654.” Special thanks to Peter Stallybrass who helped me decipher this list. 35. On the rise of information culture in the sphere of merchant, church, and state culture, see Burke, Social History of Knowledge in general. On naval information see Mémain, La marine de guerre, pp. 502–13. 36. Buisseret, Sully, p. 85. 37. Bonney, The King’s Debts, pp. 304–5. In his appendix 2, pp. 297–325, Bonney provides an extraordinary reproduction of account balances for the seventeenth century. 38. Antoine de Montchrétien, Traicté de l’oeconomie politique (Rouen: J. Osmont, 1615), pp. 11–51. 39. Ibid., pp. 323–24. 40. Ibid., p. 18. 41. Ibid., p. 358. 42. On Louis XIII’s education see Soll, “Healing the Body Politic,” p. 1279. 43. Ibid.

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44. Cole, Colbert, vol. 1, p. 138. Franklin Charles Palm, The Economic Policies of Richelieu (1922; reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint, 1970). On Montchrétien’s in›uence on Richelieu and his milieu see Thomson, “Commerce, Law, and Erudite Culture,” p. 421. 45. On Louis XIV’s education see John B. Wolf, Louis XIV (New York: Norton, 1968), pp. 56–82. 46. Ranum, Artisans of Glory, pp. 265–67. 47. Pintard, Le libertinage erudite, pp. 595–612. 48. Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modern Modernity 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 15. 49. Cited in Wolf, Louis XIV, p. 58. Also see BNF MS Fr. 4926. 50. Robert Lacour-Gayet, L’éducation politique de Louis XIV (Paris: Hachette, 1898). 51. Wolf, Louis XIV, p. 70. 52. Ibid. 53. The following passage from the Instructions (p. 30) is typical of the prudential and reason-of-state topos of the king as an all-seeing eye. For a passage that has strong echoes of the introduction to Lipsius’s Politica, see p. 24: “Disorder reigned everywhere. . . . People of quality, accustomed to continual bargaining with a minister who did not mind it, and who had sometimes found it necessary, were always inventing an imaginary right to whatever was to their fancy; no governor of a stronghold who was not dif‹cult to govern; no request that was not mingled with some reproach over the past, or with some veiled threat of future dissatisfaction. Graces exacted and torn rather than awaited, and extorted in consequence of each other, no longer really obligated anyone, merely serving to offend those to whom they were refused.” 54. Ibid., pp. 152–55. 55. Murat, Colbert, p. 55. 56. Louis XIV, Instructions to the Dauphin, pp. 35–36. 57. See Paul Sonnino’s introduction to the Instructions to the Dauphin, p. 5. 58. Colbert, “Mémoire pour l’instruction du Dauphin,” manuscript in Colbert’s hand, 1665, in Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Lettres, vol. 2, part 1, p. ccvx. 59. Ibid., p. ccxvii. 60. Louis XIV, Instructions to the Dauphin, p. 29. 61. Also see Richard Bonney, “Vindication of the Fronde? The Cost of Louis XIV’s Versailles Building Programme,” French History 21 (2006): p. 12. 62. See Jacob Soll, “The Antiquary and the Information State: Colbert’s Archives, Secret Histories, and the Affair of the Régale 1663–1682,” French Historical Studies 31 (2008): pp. 3–28. 63. Colbert, “Mémoire au Roi,” July 22, 1666, in Lettres, vol. 2, part 1, pp. ccxvii–ccxxvi. 64. Colbert, “Mémoire sur le règlement des taxes pour la décharge de la Chambre de Justice,” 1661–2, in Lettres, vol. 2, part 1, sec. 2, pp. 1–3. 65. Colbert, “Mémoires sur les affaires de ‹nances de France pour servir à l’histoire,” 1663, in Lettres, vol. 2, part 1, sec. 2, pp. 17–68. 66. See Dessert’s analysis of this text in Colbert, pp. 17–37.

202

note s to pag e s 61 – 6 8

67. “Mémoires sur les affaires,” p. 19. 68. Ibid., p. 19. 69. Ibid., p. 20. 70. Ibid., p. 23. 71. Ibid., p. 51. 72. Ibid., pp. 30–32. 73. Ibid., p. 40. 74. Ibid., pp. 44–45. 75. Louis to Anne of Austria, 1661, cited by Murat, Colbert, p. 69. 76. For this correspondence see Lettres, vol. 2, part 1, pp. ccxxvi–cclvii. 77. Ibid., Louis XIV, marginal notes on letter, May 24, 1670, Colbert to Louis XIV, May 22, 1670, p. ccxxviii. 78. Ibid., Colbert to Louis XIV, May 24, 1673, with Louis’s undated marginal responses in parentheses, p. ccxxxii. 79. Ibid., Colbert to Louis XIV, August 1, 1673; Louis’s response in the margins, August 3, p. ccxxxiv. 80. For Colbert’s administrative folios, see the Catalogue des Manuscrits de la Collection des Mélanges Colbert, pp. 1–100. 81. On the genealogy of the personal agenda and notebook, see Peter Stallybrass, Roger Chartier, J. Franklin Mowrey, and Heather Wolfe, “Hamlet’s Tables and the Technologies of Writing in Renaissance England,” Shakespeare Quarterly 55 (2004): pp. 379–419. 82. BNF MS Fr. 6763–92. The ‹gures from the notebook for the year 1680 are reproduced in the Lettres, vol. 2, part 2, pp. 771–82. 83. See BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 311–17. 84. BNF MS Fr. 7753, “Receuil de Finance de Colbert.” 85. “Abrégé des ‹nances 1665,” BNF MS Fr. 6771, fols. 4v–7r. 86. “Abrégé des ‹nances 1671,” BNF MS Fr. 6777, ‹nal “table.” 87. Lettres, vol. 2, part 2, pp. 771–83, contains all the ‹gures from the agenda of 1680, yet with no mention of their remarkable decoration.

c hap te r 5 1. For Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s excellent synthesis of Colbert’s contribution to French government, see The Ancien Regime: A History of France, 1610–1774, trans. Mark Greengrass (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 1998), pp. 126–79. 2. Daniel Nordman and Jacques Revel, “La formation de l’espace français,” in Histoire de La France, ed. André Burguière and Jacques Revel, 5 vols. (Paris: Seuil, 1989), vol. 1, p. 108. 3. Edmond Esmonin, Études sur la France des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964), p. 25. 4. Louis Trénard, “Les enquêtes statistiques au XVIIe siècle origine de L’Enquête des Intendants,” in Les Mémoires des Intendants pour l’Instruction du Duc de Bourgogne (1698), ed. Louis Trénard (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1975), p. 12. 5. Esmonin, Études sur la France, p. 33. On the intendants during the Fronde, see Bonney, Political Change, chaps. 2 and 3.

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6. Esmonin, Études sur la France, p. 35. 7. Bonney, Political Change, pp. 424–32. 8. Dessert and Journet, “Le lobby Colbert”; Dessert, Argent, pouvoir et société, pp. 322–35; and Dessert, Colbert, pp. 85–92. 9. See Bonney, Political Change, pp. 72–73. Among the most powerful intendants, Colbert placed his brother, Charles Croissy de Colbert, as intendant of Brittany; his cousin Colbert du Terron became intendant of Rochefort and Toulon, major naval ports; the ubiquitous Joseph Foucault became intendant at Montauban; Bezons became intendant at Toulouse; Pellot, intendant at Bordeaux and Montauban; Bouchu, intendant at Dijon; Arnoul, intendant at the massive naval galley operation; and d’Herbigny, intendant at Moulins. 10. Michel Nassiet, La France du second XVIIe siècle 1661–1715 (Paris: Belin, 1997), p. 51. 11. Hamscher, Conseil privé, p. 158; BNF MS Fr. 7216, fol. 240r: “Proces Verbal de l’Ordonnance de 1667.” On Lamoignon’s horror in reaction to Colbert’s plan see Colbert, Lettres, “Plan de la Chambre de Justice et des principales affaires qui s’y traitent,” vol. 7, p. 213. On Colbert’s attempt to exclude Lamoignon from the legal reforms see Lefèvre d’Ormesson, Mémoires, vol. 2, p. 27; also see the document in Colbert, Lettres, vol. 2, part 2, p. 56. At Lamoignon’s request, Louis XIV allowed Lamoignon into the secret Colbert meetings: “M. Colbert emploie actuellement M. Pussort à ce travail; voyez M. Colbert et concertez vous ensemble.” Gaillard, Vie du premier président, pp. 191–92. For Colbert’s personal papers on the procedural reform, see BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 33, “Recueil de mémoires formé par Colbert sur la Réforme de la Procédure (1665–1679).” 12. Colbert, “Instruction pour les maîtres des requêtes, commissaires départis dans les provinces,” in Lettres, vol. 4, pp. 27–43. On the transformation of intendants from tax collectors to state observers see Esmonin, Études sur la France, p. 25; and Trénard, “Les enquêtes statistiques,” p. 12. It was rumored by Jacques Savary that Colbert had learned of the enquête formularies in the papers he con‹scated from Fouquet. See Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV, pp. 160–61 n. 45. This seems unlikely in the face of Colbert’s early knowledge of state paperwork and correspondence with maitres des requêtes. 13. Esmonin, Études sur la France, p. 28. On the relationship of the royal mapmaker with the intendants see Josef W. Konvitz, Cartography in France, 1660–1848: Science, Engineering and Statecraft (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 2. 14. For the most extensive collection of orders to the commissaries and intendants see BNF MS Mélanges de Clairambault, 426–33. F. Baudry reproduces many of them in his compilation, “Dépêches de Colbert à Foucault et aux Intendans du 1er janvier 1679 au 19 août 1683,” in Nicolas-Joseph Foucault, Mémoires, ed. F. Baudry (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1862), pp. 409–501. 15. “Instruction pour les maîtres des requêtes, commissaires départis dans les provinces,” p. 31. 16. See Brian Ogilvie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 17. See Stagl, A History of Curiosity, in general.

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18. Antoine Furetière’s Dictionary of 1690 de‹nes relation as observations made by a voyager; or as a testimony made by a public ‹gure, or in a court of law. 19. On the proliferation of literary knowledge genres such as the relation, see Shapiro, A Culture of Fact, pp. 63–85. For reproductions of Jesuit relations see Alan Greer, ed., The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North America (London: Bedford / St. Martin’s Press, 2000). 20. Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 21. Shapiro, A Culture of Fact, p. 70. 22. Ibid., p. 79. 23. Ibid., p. 58. 24. Bodin, Les six livres, book 6, chaps. 2 and 3. 25. Ibid., book 5, chap. 1. 26. Shapiro, A Culture of Fact, p. 65. 27. De Dainville, L’éducation des Jesuites, pp. 442–62. 28. Evans, Rudolf II, pp. 125–31; Stagl, A History of Curiosity, pp. 112–47; Anthony Grafton, “Believe It or Not?” New York Review of Books, November 5, 1998, pp. 14–18; Also see Meadow, “Merchants and Marvels.” 29. Even the French proto-journalist Théophraste Renaudot’s state-sponsored Bureau d’Adresse never amounted to a truly systematized state information of‹ce, though it had some of those qualities. 30. Colbert, “Instruction au sieur de Pène, Ingénieur géographe, pour faire les cartes des côtes de la Normandie,” February 5, 1678, in Lettres, vol. 3, part 1, addition, p. 78. “Après avoir fait des observations sur toute la rivière de Seine jusqu’au Havre, Sa Majesté veut qu’il continue les mesmes reconnoissances jusqu’à Tréport, son intention estant d’avoir, depuis la Hogue jusqu’à Tréport, des cartes fort exactes de toutes sinuosités de la coste toutes les entrées des rivières, avec les remarques exactes et prises sur les lieux sans s’en ‹er au rapport de personne, de toutes les rades, hauteurs et bassesses de la mer, dunes, falaises, anses, et entrées dans les terres, ensemble de tous les lieux où les ennemis pourroient aborder s’ils estoient assez forts pour faire des descentes; avec des desseins particuliers de chacun endroit où ils peuvent les faire, et des plans et devis de tous les ouvrages qui pourroient estre faits.” 31. Esmonin, Études sur la France, p. 71. Anette Smedley-Weill, Les intendants de Louis XIV (Paris: Fayard, 1995), pp. 133–54. Also see Jacob, Scienti‹c Culture, pp. 47–50. 32. Colbert to the chevalier de Pène, p. 78. 33. When Louis XIV’s grandson became Philip V of Spain, he replaced the corregidores with the administration of French-style, centralizing intendentes on July 4, 1718. See Fabrice Abbad and Didier Ozanam, Les intendants espagnols du XVIIIe siècle (Madrid: Ediciones Casa de Velázquez, 1992); and François-Xavier Emmanuelli, Un mythe de l’absolutisme bourbonien: L’Intendance, du milieu du XVIIeme siecle a la ‹n du XVIIIeme siecle: France, Espagne, Amerique (Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence, 1981). 34. Colbert’s correspondence (1663–70) with Claude Bouchu and other royal representatives in Burgundy is reproduced in William Beik, Louis XIV and Abso-

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lutism: A Brief Study with Documents (Boston: Bedford / St. Martins, 2000), pp. 130–46. 35. For the most detailed analysis of the enquêtes, as well as the reproduction of major examples albeit dating from after Colbert’s death, see Arthur de Boislisle’s introduction to the Mémoires des Intendants sur l’État des généralités (Paris: Imprimérie Nationale, 1881). 36. Colbert to Courtin, August 18, 1662, in Lettres, vol. 2, part 2, p. 413. Colbert asks Courtin to verify Dutch merchandise in Sweden. 37. Mémain, La marine de guerre, pp. 271–93. 38. Ibid., pp. 77–260. 39. Ibid., p. 258. 40. Ibid., p. 291. 41. Colbert to Terron, Matharel and Seuil, in Lettres, vol. 3, part 1, p. 373. I take this translation from King, Science and Rationalism, p. 111. 42. Colbert, “Mémoire sur le règlement à faire pour la police générale des arsenaux de marine,” October 1670, in Lettres, vol. 3, part 1, pp. 287–90. 43. Cited by Mémain, La marine de guerre, p. 502: “Se faire rendre un compte exacte par les escrivains préposés aux corderies, fonderies et forges, à la réception des bois, masts et autres marchandises et munitions, et à la garde des agrès sur nos vaisseaux qui seront dans le port, pour sçavoir en tout temps l’estat de nos magasins, et estre toujours prest à nous informer.” 44. Colbert, “Mémoire sur le règlement à faire pour la police générale des arsenaux de marine,” p. 287: “Le garde-magasin doit avoir le soin de tous les magasins généraux et particuliers, et avoir des écrivains sous luy qui soyent chargés envers luy de tous les magasins particuliers de chacun vaisseau, ensemble des magasins à poudre, de la corderie, estuve, fonderie, voilerie, fustailles et généralement de tout ce qu’il ne pourra pas faire par luy-mesme. Et les écrivains qui luy seront nécessaires pour toutes ces fonctions doivent tenir des livres qui ayant rapport à son grand livre de raison en partie double.” 45. Mémain, La marine de guerre, pp. 506–7. 46. Such responsibility led to cases of corruption among the “writers.” Ibid., p. 511. 47. Ibid., p. 509. 48. Ibid., p. 289: “Le commissaire doit faire ses revues fréquentes et les envoyer de tous les endroits d’où il pourra avoir communication avec la terrre.” Mémain has a chapter on the “écrivains entretenus,” La marine de guerre, pp. 502–13. 49. De Terron to Colbert, April 25, 1669, in Mémain, La marine de guerre, p. 512: “L’establissement des escrivains contribue fort à tenir les capitaines en règle, et pour assurer l’essort des vos intentions, il faut s’il vous plaist que dans toutes les occasions qui se présenteront vous fassiés connoistre aux capitaines que cet establissement d’escrivains est agréable au Roy et que sa Majesté veut qu’ils fassent leur fonction dans toute son estenduë, avec toute liberté.” 50. On Colbert’s massive production of naval rules and regulations see Mémain, La marine de guerre, pp. 263–82. 51. Ibid., pp. 287 and 1005. Colbert’s naval dispatches are found in the series B2 of the Archives de la Marine.

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52. See the section “Cartes” in Colbert’s “Instruction,” p. 28. 53. “Mémoire pour M. Bellinzani, Inspecteur Général des Manufactures,” October 8, 1670, in Lettres, vol. 2, part 2, pp. 560–63. 54. Ibid., pp. 560–61. 55. On Ballinzani and his mission, see Cole, Colbert, vol. 2, pp. 416–17. 56. Ibid., p. 562. 57. Ibid., p 561. 58. Jean Kerhave, François Roudot, and Jean Tanguy, eds., La Bretagne en 1665 d’après les rapport de Colbert de Croissy (Brest: Centre de Recherche Bretonne et Celtique, 1978). For a sense of Croissy’s remarkable library and archive see “Inventaire des biens de feu Monseigneur de Croissy, Ministre et Secrétaire d’Etat du 7 août 1696,” Archives Nationale de France (hereafter AN) Minutier Central, étude CXLIII, liasse 20. This library shows de Croissy’s technical training and interest in state administration: 30 percent law and political science, including works by Cujas, and customs books; 50 percent history, French, foreign, with an oriental bias. Only 10 percent concerned classics, and religion only a small portion of his various other books. 59. Ibid., p. 23. 60. See BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 6, fols. 38–47. 61. Ibid., pp. 155–56. See Colbert’s memo to the intendants of June 15, 1682. For one of the more insightful accounts of the information role of the intendants see King, Science and Rationalism, chap. 4. 62. On Louis’s close reading of the intendant’s correspondence see Colbert to Bezons, intendant at Toulouse, February 6, 1671, in Lettres, vol. 4, p. 53. 63. On Louis insisting to see reports even before they are sent to Colbert see the tripartite correspondence between Louis, Colbert, and the colonial lieutenant governor of the Isles of America, M. de Bass, in Lettres, vol. 3, part 2, pp. 453 and 590–91. 64. Colbert to de Terron, December 11, 1671, in Lettres, vol. 3, part 1, p. 408. 65. Ibid., Colbert to de Terron December 26, 1671, p. 409. 66. Ibid. 67. Colbert to Foucault, intendant at Montauban, July 14, 1682, in Lettres, vol. 2, part 1, p. 199. 68. Ibid. 69. Colbert to du Moulinet, July 3, 1682, in Lettres, vol. 2, part 1, p. 98: “Vous devez observer d’écrire en plus gros caractère ou de faire transcrire vos dépesches, parce que j’ay beaucoup de peine à les lire.” 70. King, Science and Rationalism, pp. 112–13. 71. Colbert to Arnoul ‹ls, June 21, 1676, in Lettres, vol. 3, part 1, addition, p. 18. 72. Ibid., Colbert to Arnoul ‹ls, July 4, 1676, pp. 24–25. 73. Ibid., Colbert to Arnoul ‹ls, September 18, 1676, p. 73. 74. Ibid., Colbert to Arnoul ‹ls, December 28, 1675, p. 574. 75. Ibid., p. 574–75: “Vous voyez bien que, faute de parler clairement par vos lettres et de dire véritablement l’estat auquel sont les choses, vous estes cause que le Roy fait une réprimande à un of‹cier principal ne la mérite pas; et, comme je vous

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ay desja donné une in‹nité d’avis sur ce sujet, prenez garde que ce soit icy le dernier; relisez vos dépesches et apprenez à vous expliquer si clairement et si véritablement que je n’aye pas la peine de rechercher la vérité par la comparaison des autres lettres avec les vostres.” 76. Colbert to M. Rouillé, December 23, 1672, in Lettres, vol. 4, p. 84. 77. Colbert to M. de Marle, intendant à Riom, September 23, 1672, in Lettres, vol. 4, pp. 75–76 at 75: “Mais je vous prie, une fois pour toutes, de m’éviter la peine de vous faire d’aussy grandes lettres pour vous apprendre l’estendue de vostre employ et ce que vous y devez faire, parce que, assurément, la quantité d’affaires que j’ay ne convient point avec le peine qu’il faut prendre pour faire d’aussy grandes lettres.” 78. “Notes secrètes sur le personnel de tous les parlemens et cours des comptes du royaume, envoyées par les Intendans des provinces à Colbert, sur sa demande, vers la ‹n de l’an 1663,” in Correspondance administrative sous le règne de Louis XIV, ed, G. B. Depping, 2 vols. (Paris: Imprimérie Nationale, 1851), vol. 1, pp. 33–132. 79. Ibid., pp. 33–34: “LAMOIGNON, soubz l’affectation d’une grande probité et d’une grande intégrité, cache une grande ambition, conservant pour cet effet une grande liaison avec tous les dévots de quelque party et caballe que ce soit.” 80. Ibid., p. 34. 81. Ibid., p. 36: “DOUJAT, a de l’extérieur et est de peu de chose au fonds; foible, timide, dévoué entièrement à la cour, intéressé; M. de Maupeou, son gendre, a grand pouvoir sur luy; Herbinot, huissier de la cour, le gouverne.” 82. Ibid., p. 37. 83. Ibid., Pellot to Colbert, April 25, 1664, pp. 135–36. 84. William Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France: State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 85. Colbert to Charles Colbert de Croissy, August 10, 1663, in Lettres, vol. 4, pp. 16–19. On the limits of the royal tax administration see Richard Bonney, “Le secret de leurs familles: The ‹scal and social limits of Louis XIV’s dixième,” French History 7 (1993): pp. 383–416; and “Les intendants de Louis XIII et Louis XIV: Agents de la réforme ‹scale?” in L’administration des ‹nances sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris: Comité pour l’histoire économique et ‹nancière de la France, 1996), pp. 197–217. 86. Ibid., Colbert to de Croissy, September 17, 1663, Lettres, vol. 4, p. 26. 87. Ibid., p. 63 n. 2. 88. On anti‹scal revolts during the reign of Louis XIV see Pierre Clément, L’Histoire de Colbert et de son administration, 2 vols. (Paris: Guillaumin, 1846). vol. 1, chap. 11: “Les émeutes en province”; William Beik, Urban Protest in SeventeenthCentury France: The Culture of Retribution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 146–59. For the correspondence with Colbert concerning the uprisings inspired by the Bordeaux revolts see BNF Clairambault 796. 89. Colbert to Foucault, August 25, 1674, Lettres, vol. 4, p. 109. 90. Colbert to de Creil, intendant at Rouen, December 23, 1672, Lettres, vol. 4, p. 85. 91. The historian Jean Le Laboureur wrote to Colbert in August 1665 to complain about these researches, noting that unrest would stop when honest nobles were no longer harassed. See Lettres, vol. 6, p. 369.

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92. Ibid., p. 23. 93. Ibid., p. 76: “J’ay reçu les lettres que vous m’avez écrites les 12 et 14 de ce mois. . . . À l’égard des péages, je vous répéteray encore ce que je vous ay dit beaucoup de fois, que vous avez trop envie de faire des recherches générales dans vos emplois, et que ces grandes recherches ne tendent qu’à vexer les peuples, les faire venir du fond des généralités où vous servez vous apporter leurs papiers dans vostre greffe, et vous charger d’une in‹nité de papiers et de discussions qui ne peuvent jamais convenir au bien du service du roy ni au soulagement des peuples. . . . Je vous avoueray franchement mesme que je ne puis croire ce que vous dites, que tous les seigneurs particuliers lèvent des péages dans leurs terres. Ce seroit un trop grand abus, et une négligence qui ne pourroit estre pardonnée aux of‹ciers des justices royales, joint qu’il est impossible de croire que la Chambre des grands jours eust laissé impunie une vexation sur les peuples aussy considérable que celle-là.” 94. Genealogical veri‹cation was a major element of legal code of 1665. See Lettres, vol. 6, p. 377. 95. Ibid., Colbert to the intendants, April 30, 1666, 6, pp. 22–24. 96. On the justice reforms of noble abuses see Esprit Fléchier, Mémoires sur les Grands-Jours d’Auvergne, ed. Yves-Marie Bercé (Paris: Mercure de France, 1984). 97. Colbert to the intendants, pp. 22–23: “Un inventaire par abrégé, contenant la qualité de chaque acte et son énoncé, avec la date, la qualité et les noms de tous ceux qui y sont mentionnés. Cet inventaire se fera par cahiers séparés qui seront cotés par bailliage, et à la teste d’iceux sera mis: ‘Un tel, d’un tel baillage, est comparu le tel jour, lequel se dit estre de telle maison et porter telles armes, reconnoistre telles et telles branches pour estre de sa mesme famille, et a produit les titres suivants. . . .’ Et pour procéder à l’inventaire des pieces, il faudra commencer par celuy qui jusiti‹e la ‹liation de la partie appelée, et ainsy remonter les degrés jusqu’au plus ancien. Si l’on n’a pas le loisir de dresser cet inventaire sur-le-champ, on retiendra les titres pour y travailler avec plus de loisir, et on donnera jour à la partie pour les venir retirer, après avoir ouÿ la lecture et signé l’inventaire. . . . Il sera bon de faire des copies de tous ces inventaire rangés par baillages et de les envoyer à . . . signées de M. l’intendant, pour les faire mettre par ordre et pour en dresser des genealogies où l’on joindra la connoissance qu’on en a par d’autres actes qui serviront pour en justi‹er de leur qualité en la forme cy-devant énoncée, et il sera dit en teste de l’inventaire: ‘Un tel résidant dans une telle ville, comme dessus.’” 98. Ibid., p. 24: “Et de tout cela mis en ordre, on fera des recueils trèscurieux pour la bibliothèque du roi, où l’on verra toutes les noblesses du royaume, avec leurs armes et genealogies véritables, en y ajoutant les recherches de tous les curieux.” 99. Ibid., Colbert to the intendants, December 1, 1670, vol. 2, part 1, pp. 77–78. 100. Ibid., Colbert to Rouillé, intendant at Aix, August 17, 1679, p. 113.

c hap te r 6 1. Jean-Baptiste Colbert, “Mémoire pour mon ‹ls sur ce qu’il doit observer pendant le voyage qu’il va faire à Rochefort, Saint-Germain, 11 juillet, 1670,” in

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Lettres, vol. 3, part 2, p. 2. The original manuscripts of Colbert and Seignelay’s correspondence, as well as Seignelay’s “relations,” are found in the manuscript collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Mélanges Colbert, 84. Unless otherwise stated, I will refer to the printed versions in Clément. 2. Ibid., p. 3. 3. Ibid., p. 8. 4. Ibid., pp. 18–19, Colbert to Terron, August 29, 1670. 5. This is certainly not the image given by Norbert Elias in his classic The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Pantheon, 1983), in which he describes courtiers as principally concerned with a struggle over symbolic prestige. 6. For the classic painting of Colbert dressed in a black suit with a white collar see Claude Lefebvre’s 1666 portrait at Versailles. See Marc Nattier the Elder’s painting, Le marquis de Seignelay, 1673, in the collection at Versailles. Seignelay is also dressed in gilded Louis quatorzian garb while working at an arsenal in JeanBaptiste de La Rose’s painting, Le marquis de Seignelay et le duc de Vivonne général des galères et amiral de la marine du Levant, visitant la Galère Réale en construction à l’arsenal de Marseille en 1679, also found at Versailles. 7. Colbert helped train Vauban in his early days. See Michèle Virol, “Les carnets de bord d’un grand serviteur du roi: les agendas de Vauban,” Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 48 (2001): pp. 50–76. On the wider context of Vauban and the Colbertian knowledgeable state see Virol, Vauban: De la gloire du roi au service de l’état (Paris: Champ Vallon, 2003), pp. 130–50. 8. Savary, Le parfait négociant, vol. 1, p. 29. 9. Ibid., p. 30. “Dès l’âge de sept à huit ans, dit-il, il faut “apprendre [aux enfants] les exercices nécessaires pour cette profession; c’est à dire, à bien écrire, bien sçavoir l’Arithmétique, à tenir les Livres en partie double & simple.” See pp. 297–99, and vol. 2, p. 73, for descriptions of how to keep books. 10. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 30: “Je voudrauis encore dans les heures où ils ne sont point employés à ces sortes d’exercices, leur faire lire les Histoires, tant de France, qu’Etrangères, & les Livres qui traitent des Voyages & du Commerce; parce que ces sortes de lectures forment merveilleusement le jugement des jeunes gens; & ils y apprennent par théorie, ce qu’ils doivent pratiquer quand ils feront le Commerce dans les Pays étrangers; car ils apprendront les moeurs & les coutumes des Peuples, avec lesquels ils auront à traiter.” 11. On early modern merchant handbooks, both manuscript and printed, see Hoock and Jeannin, Ars Mercatoria. 12. Not listed in any bibliography, a copy of this text is found in the Bibliothèque Mazarine, call number A. 1544018e: Positiones mathematicae de mundi systemate/Positiones mathematicae ex architectura militari (Paris: Anon., 1668), essentially a simple set of mathematical, astronomical exercises set in Latin. 13. Laurent Dingli, Colbert, Marquis de Seignelay. Le ‹ls ›amboyant (Paris: Perrin, 1997), p. 24. 14. On the rise of geography in seventeenth-century Jesuit pedagogy, see Dainville, L’éducation des Jesuites, pp. 25–150, 427–63; and Antonalla Romano, La Contre-Réforme mathématique: Constitution et diffusion d’une culture mathématique jésuite à la Renaissance (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1999), chap. 9.

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15. On the proliferation of literary knowledge genres, such as the relation, see Shapiro, A Culture of Fact, pp. 63–85. 16. On ambassadorial practices and spying see Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy, pp. 111–18; and Lucien Bély, Espions et ambassadeurs au temps de Louis XIV (Paris: Fayard, 1990), pp. 235–88. On the functions and responsibilities of Venetian ambassadors see Donald E. Queller, Early Venetian Legislation on Ambassadors (Geneva: Droz, 1966). 17. “Instruction de Colbert au marquis de Seignelay pour son voyage d’Italie, January 31, 1671,” in L’Italie en 1671. Relation d’un voyage du marquis de Seignelay, ed. Pierre Clément (Paris: Didier et Cie., 1867), pp. 96–99: Il verra principalement la ville, sa situation, sa force, le nombre de ces peoples, la grandeur de l’État, le nombre et le nom des villes, bourgades et villages, la quantité des peoples dont le tout est composé; la forme du gouvernement de l’État, et comme il est aristocratique, il s’informera des noms et de la qualité des familles nobles qui ont ou qui peuvent avoir part au gouvernement de la republique, distinguant l’ancienne d’avec la nouvelle noblesse; de toutes les dignités de la République; leurs différentes functions; leurs conseils tant généraux que particuliers; celui qui représente l’État, dans lequel le pouvoir souverain reside et qui résout la paix et la guerre, qui peut faire des lois, etc: les nombres et noms de tous ceux qui ont droit d’y entrer; par qui et de quelle façon les propositions en sont faites; les suffrages recueillis et les resultants pris et pronounces; les conseils particuliers pour la milice, pour l’amirauté, pour la justice, tant pour la ville que pour le reste de l’État; les lois et les coutumes sous lesquelles ils vivent; en quoi consistent les milices destinés pour la garde de la place; idem pour les forces maritimes. Visiter tous les ouvrages publics, maritimes et terestres, ensemble les palais, maisons publiques, et généralement tout ce qui peut être remarquable en ladite ville et dans tout l’État. 18. Seignelay’s trips to Holland and England were much more of the industrial sorts, and the reports he wrote for his father are less formal than the relation of the trip to Italy, and resembled more the work he did in Rochefort. 19. On commonplace books see note 17, chap. 2. 20. There are two different editions of the “Mémoire sur les Ordonnances en general de Mr. Colbert.” The ‹rst, BNF MS Fr. 7213, contains only two volumes. The second, MS Fr. 7497–7500, not mentioned by Pierre Clément, contains four volumes. 21. “Ordonnanes,” vol. 2, fol. 471: “Mémoire de Monseigneur. Faire un Mémoire succinct de toutes les formes différentes des letters de chancellerie, leurs formes et leurs clauses essentielles de leur distinctions duquel mémoire de tous les différents noms et letters qui s’expédient sous chaque forme. Par exemple. Lettres patentes. . . . Declarations, commissions, . . . arrests.” 22. Ibid., vol. 3, fol. 175: “Qu’est ce qu’un Comptant: C’est un acquit en Parchemin, signé de la main du Roy des Derniers qui luy ont été payee nouvellement par le Tresorier de l’Epargne et auquel n’est fait aucune mention des Causes.” 23. Colbert to Seignelay, April 17, 1672, Lettres, vol. 3, part 2, p. 80.

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24. Ibid., p. 62: “Instruction . . . ma charge,” “Aussytost que j’auray vu toutes les dépesches, à mesure qu’elles arriveront, je les enverray à mon ‹ls pour les voir, en faire promptement et exactemen l’extrait, lequel sera mis de sa main sur le dos de la letter et remis en mesme temps sur ma table; je mettray un mot de ma main sur chaque article de l’extrait, contenant le réponse qu’il faudra faire aussytost; il faudra que mon ‹ls fasse les réponses de sa main, que je les voye ensuite et les corrige, et quand le tout sera dispose, le vendredy nous porterons au Roy toutes les letters, nous luy en lirons les extraits, et en mesme temps les réponses; si Sa Majesté y ordonne quelque changement, il sera fait; sinon, les réponses seront mises au net, signées et envoyées. Et ainsy, en observant cet ordre régulier avec exactitude, sans s’en départir jamais, il est certain que mon ‹ls se mettra en estat de s’acquérir de l’estime dans l’esprit du Roy.” 25. Ibid., p. 80, Colbert to Seignelay, April 17, 1672. Colbert’s tirade goes on for three pages. For the rest of his life, into Seignelay’s thirties, Colbert continued to regularly harass his son in his letters. 26. Ibid., Seignelay to Colbert, pp. 71–74: Je me feray représenter les enregistremens le mardy, après le disner, je les coteray après les avoir lus, et marqueray à costé les minutes de la main de mon père. Surtout, je ne manqueray pas, lorsque j’auray quelque expédition à faire, de quelque nature qu’elle soit, de chercher dans les registres ce qui aura esté fait en pareille occasion, et je me donneray le temps de lire et examiner lesdits registres, a‹n de former mon style sur celuy de mon père. Je visiteray tous les soirs ma table et mes papiers, et j’expédieray, avant de me coucher, ce qui pourra l’estre, ou je mettray à part et enverray, avant de marquer, sur l’agenda que je tiendray exactement sur ma table, les affaires que je leur auray renvoyées, a‹n de leur en demander compte en cas qu’ils les différeraient trop longtemps. Je mettray sur ledit agenda toutes les affaires courantes, et je les rayeray à mesure que leur expédition soit achevée. J’employerai le mercredy à travailler aux affaires courantes, que je n’auray pu achever le mardy, et en cas qu’il y eust quelques affaires pressées, dont il fallust donner part dans les ports de Brest et de Rochefort, j’écriray par l’ordinaire qui part ce jour-là. Je liray toutes les lettres à mesure qu’elles viendront, feray moi-mesme l’extrait des principales, et enverray les autres au commis qui a le soin des dépesches. [Colbert writes in the margin: “Il faut lire et faire l’extrait des principales lettres, et, à l’égard des autres, l’extrait des principaux points.”] Je prendray le mercredy après le disner pour examiner tous les portefeuilles, ranger les papiers suivant l’ordre mis à costé par mon père, y remettre les nouvelles expeditions qui auront esté faites, et les maintenir toujours dans l’ordre prescrit par mon père. Je feray le jeudi matin un mémoire des orders à demander à mon père sur les dépeches de l’ordinaire, a‹n de commencer ensuite à y travailler. Je travailleray le soir au conseil, feray les extraits des affaires auxquelles

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il y aura quelques dif‹cultés, a‹n d’estre en estat d’en render compte le lendemain matin à mon père. Je feray en sorte d’achever dans le vendredy toutes les dépesches de l’ordinaire. En faisant les principales, que je feray toutes de ma main, je mettray à costé les points desquels je dois parler dans le corps de la letter, et tascherai de suivre le style de mon père, a‹n de luy oster, s’il est possible, la peine de les corriger ou de les refaire mesme tout entières, ainsy qu’il arrive souvent. Le samedi matin sera employé à examiner et à signer les letters de l’ordinaire, à expédier le conseil du vendredy et travailler aux affaires courantes. Le samedy après le disner, je travailleray sans faute à examiner l’agenda, à voir sur le register des ‹nances s’il n’y a point de nouveaux fonds qui ayent esté omis sur le register des orders donnés au trésorier; si je n’ay point omis, pendant la semaine, d’enregistrer ceux qui ont esté donnés; et je m’appliqueray à ester si exact dans la tenue dudit agenda, que je n’aye pas besoin d’avoir recours au trésorier pour sçavoir les fonds qu’il a entre les mains. J’enregistreray aussy le samedy toutes les ordonnances sur le register tenu par le sieur de Breteuil. Le dimanche matin sera employé à veri‹er la feuille des lieux où sont les vaisseaux, et à travailler aux affaires qui seront à expédier. J’auray toujours l’agenda des vaisseaux, des escadres et des of‹ciers dans ma poche. Je feray surtout en sorte d’exécuter ponctuellement tout ce qui est contenu dans le mémoire cy-dessus, en cas qu’il soit approuvé par mon père, en de faire mesme plus sur cela que je ne luy promets. 27. Ibid., pp. 172–73, Colbert to Seignelay, October 24, 1676: Vous devez encore prendre garde à bien conserver vos papiers, particulièrement les importans, que vous devez garder sous vostre clef, comme tous les traités et les mémoires que j’ay fait faire et que je fais faire encore tous les jours pour vous, que je trouve à présent roulés dans un bureau et estant dans la dernière saleté quoyque ce soit la quintescence de l’esprit des plus habiles gens du royaume; Vos portefeuilles; Les Arrests, par cotes et par dates; Tous les traités, les livres, les instructions et tout ce qui concerne les fondemens et les maximes des prises, que vous devez sçavoir parfaitement. Prendre soin que tous vos mémoires et lettres soyent bien cotés. Qu’il n’y ayt aucun qui s’échappe que vous ne voyiez, que vous n’examiniez, et que vous ne donniez vos ordres sur ce qu’il contient. . . . Qu’il ne passe jamais aucun papier par vos mains, ni aucune lettre, sans les voir, les examiner et donner vostre résolution, et sans demander ce que vous ne sçaurez pas parfaitement.

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28. Ibid., p. 64, “Instructions”: “Il falloit coter les feuillets, diviser ces maxims par date et par chapitre, et faire seulement un extrait précis et s’appliquer à en executer quelque partie ou quelque article.”

c hap te r 7 1. Boivin, “Mémoire pour l’histoire de la Bibliothèque du Roy,” fol. 491; for original documents on this purchase see Colbert, Lettres, vol. 7, pp. ccii–cciii; and Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale, pp. 80–81. 2. Colbert had written to Bernini about plans to build a grand royal library, which never materialized. Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale, p. 83. 3. Balayé, “La bibliothèque du Roi,” p. 209. 4. BNF MS Baluze, 362, fols. 60–281. When he was refused access by the Achille de Harlay III, the procurator of the Royal Archive and a parliamentarian, he had Carcavy copy seventy-three volumes of documents for his own library. BNF MS Baluze 100, fol. 8v; Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 440; Saunders, “Public Administration,” p. 289. 5. Boivin, “Mémoire pour l’histoire de la Bibliothèque du Roy,” fol. 491; Balayé, “La Bibliothèque du Roi,” p. 209. After Colbert’s death, there were public complaints that he had stolen many materials from the public library, and a pamphlet written denouncing Carcavy and Baluze for working against the public interest. See S. Solente, “Nouveaux détails sur la vie et les manuscrits de Pierre de Carcavy,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 111 (1953): pp. 136–39. Published anonymously in 1683, the pamphlet is entitled, “Mémoire concernant la Bibliothèque du Roy.” It was met by responses by both Carcavy and Baluze. See Bloch, “Bibliothèque de Colbert,” p. 175. 6. Old Jérome Bignon had long since stopped working for the library, though he retained the title of “Maître de la Bibliothèque Royale.” BNF MS Baluze, 297. Also see Jean Boivin, another of Colbert’s library technicians, whose manuscript history of the Royal Library is the most revealing source on its inner workings: “Mémoire pour l’histoire de la Bibliothèque du Roy,” fol. 469. On Colbert de Luçon’s activities and Gallican interests see BNF MS Baluze 362, fols. 22–31, 349; MS Baluze 297, fol. 7r. 7. Numerous sketches and inventories are found in the correspondence from Seignelay [83–84]. [62] “Recueil de pièces sur la Marine de Guerre (1640–1683). “Journal de pilotage du vaisseau la Force, envoyé dans l’Océan Indien (1668–70).” [31] “Recueil de relations et mémoirs sur l’Espagne (1606–1666), les Indes Orientales (1628–1669), l’Amerique (1624–1669), les Antilles (1668–1671),” containing “Propositions pour faire une compagnie en France pour les Indes Occidentales,” “Discours sur le passage des gallions et des ›otes de la Nouvelle Espagne dans l’Amérique et sur leur retour en Europe,” “Une tradition anonyme, [double from the royal collection MS Fr. 19032] G. Gardyner, Description of the New World, or Islands and continents of America, as they were all in the year 1649 (London, 1651).” [34] “Recueil de documents annotées par Colbert pour un traité de commerce avec l’Angleterre et pour le création de la Compagnie des Indes (1667–1674).

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Traduction française de la Lex mercatoria de Girard Malynes (1622).” [38–40, 48] Trade with England and Holland. [53] “Chartes de fondation des Colonies Anglaises en Amérique et dans les Indes Occidentales, en anglais et en latin (1620–1670).” 8. On the centralization of natural knowledge and reports see Lettres, vol. 3, part 2, p. 66. To Seignelay on what the intendants are supposed to do with information. 9. [55] “Receuils de motifs d’Architecture et de pièces sur le Cabinet des Médailles et sur la Navigation ›uviale en France.” 10. [177–343]. 11. Henri-François, comte Delaborde, Les Archives royales depuis la mort de saint Louis jusqu’à Pierre d’Étampes (Nogent-le-Rotrou: Daupeley-Gouverneur, 1908), and Étude sur la constitution du Trésor des Chartes (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1909). 12. On the biblioteca selecta and its evolution, see Jean Viardot, “Livres rares et pratiques bibliophiliques,” in Roger Chartier and Henri-Jean Martin, Histoire de l’édition française, 3 vols. (Paris: Fayard, 1984), vol. 2, pp. 583–614; Helmut Zedelmaier, Bibliotheca Universalis und Biblioteca Selecta: Das Problem der Ordnung das gelehrten Wissens in der frühen Neuzeit (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1992), pp. 119–21; and Neil Kenny, “Books in Space and Time: Bibliomania and Early Modern Histories of Learning and ‘Literature’ in France,” Modern Language Quarterly 61 (2000): pp. 253–86. 13. Jean-Marc Chatelain, La bibliothèque de l’honnête homme: Livres, lecture et collections en France à l’Âge classique (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 2003). 14. On Blotius and the Imperial Library, se Paola Molino, “Hugo Blotius: From a Universal Project to the Establishment of the Imperial library,” European University Institute, June Paper, 2005, pp. 15–19. 15. Ibid., p. 28. Cited and translated by Paola Molino: Hugo Blotius to a friend, Vienna, August 8, 1575, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, HSS, Cod. Ser. Nov. 363, fols. 27r–28v. 16. Molino, “Hugo Blotius,” p. 41. 17. Erik Thomson, “Axel Oxenstierna and Books,” Sixteenth Century Journal, 38 (2007): pp. 705–29. 18. Francis Bacon, New Atlantis, in Francis Bacon, A Critical Edition of the Major Works, ed. Brian Vickers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 471. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid., pp. 484–89. 21. R. W. Serjeantson, “Natural Knowledge in the New Atlantis,” in Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, ed., Bronwen Price (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), pp. 82–105. 22. Anthony Grafton, “Where Was Salomon’s House? Ecclesiastical History and the Intellectual Origins of Bacon’s New Atlantis,” in Die europäische Gelehrtenrepublik im Zeitalter des Konfessionalismus/The European Republic of Letters in the Age of Confessionalism, ed. Herbert Jaumann (Harrassowitz Verlag/Wolfenbütteler Forschungen: Wiesbaden, 2001), p. 21. 23. New Atlantis, pp. 467, 471.

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24. While there is no concrete evidence that Colbert read the New Atlantis, he knew who Bacon was. 25. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, pp. 439–40. 26. Pierre Héliot, “Nouveau details sur la vie et les manuscripts de Pierre de Carcavi,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 111 (1953): pp. 124–39. 27. Leibniz was in›uenced by his visit to the French loyal library, where he met with Baluze and Clément. See W. Leibniz, “Suggestions for the Perfection and Extension of the Far-famed Library at Wolfenbuttel,” in L. M. Newman, Leibniz (1646–1716) and the German Library Scene (London: Library Association, 1966); A. L. Clarke, “Leibniz as a Librarian,” The Library 3 (1914): pp. 140–54. 28. For Colbert’s correspondence with Cassini and Charles Perrault, see Lettres, vol. 5, especially the notes by Perrault about Colbert’s role in its building, p. 515. Also see Charles Joseph Étienne Wolf, Histoire de l’Obervatoire de Paris de sa fondation à 1793 (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1902), which contains original documents and shows Colbert’s involvement in the minutiae of founding the observatory; Stroup, A Company of Scientists, pp. 43–45. 29. Alice Stroup, “Christian Huygens et l’Académie royale des Sciences,” La Vie des Sciences: Revue de l’Académie des Sciences 4 (1996): pp. 333–41; also see Stroup on Colbert’s shadow republic of letters: “Nicolas Hartsoeker, savant hollandais associé de l’Académie des Sciences et espion de Louis XIV,” Cahiers d’Histoire des Sciences et Techniques 47 (1999): pp. 201–23. 30. Christian Huygens, “Note de Huygens avec des Observations de Colbert,” ca. 1670, in Colbert, Lettres, vol. 5, p. 523. 31. Colbert, Lettres, vol. 5, p. lxvi. 32. See Hahn, Anatomy of Scienti‹c Institution; and Hirsch‹eld, Académie Royale des Sciences, pp. 168–69. 33. On the program of public experiments to be performed at the Royal Garden, see Colbert, Lettres, vol. 5, p. 545, “Déclaration du roi pour la continuation des leçons au Jardin Royal des plantes,” January 20, 1673; Stroup, A Company of Scientists, pp. 38–39. 34. For Colbert’s correspondence with Bernini and the preliminary plans for Versailles see Lettres, vol. 5, pp. 452–82. 35. Hillary Ballon, Louis La Vau: Mazarin’s Collège, Colbert’s Revenge (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 128–30. 36. Frances Yates, The French Academies of the Sixteenth Centuries (London: Warburg Institute, 1947). 37. Denis de Sallo, Le Journal des sçavans (Paris: J. Cusson, 1665), p. 1. On the founding of the Journal des Savants and its connection to the Petite Académie, see Hirsch‹eld, Académie Royale des Sciences, pp. 6–7. 38. Eugène Hatin, Histoire politique et littéraire de la presse en France, 2 vols. (Paris: Poulet-Malassis rt de Broise, 1859), vol. 1, pp. 152–82. 39. On Colbert’s creation of a parallel Republic of Letters, see volume 5 of his Lettres, which contains his correspondence with cultural ‹gures. On Chapelain’s relationship with Colbert see Soll, Publishing The Prince, pp. 48–50. On Huygens in France see Stroup, “Christian Huygens.”

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40. George Collas, Un poète protecteur des lettres au XVIIe siècle, Jean Chapelain, 1595–1674 (Paris: 1912); Ranum, Artisans of Glory, pp. 188–96. 41. Jean Chapelain, Lettres, ed. Philippe Tamizey de Larroque, 2 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1880–83), vol. 2, p. 275. 42. Chapelain to Colbert, November 1662, in Colbert, Lettres, vol. 5, p. 619. 43. Ibid., Colbert to Hevelius, June 20, 1663, pp. 239–41. 44. Étienne Baluze, Histoire des Capitulaires des Rois François sour la première et seconde Race sur l’édition de 1677 (The Hague, 1755), p. 144. 45. Jean Mabillon worked for Colbert as a state medievalist, through his close relationship with Baluze. See for example BNF MS Baluze 214, fol. 10. Émile Fage, Étienne Baluze: Sa vie, ses ouvrages, son exil, sa defense (Tulle: Crauffon, 1899), p. 91; Emmanuel de Broglie, Mabillon et la Société de L’abbaye de Saint-Germain des Près, 2 vols. (Paris: Plon, 1888), vol. 1, pp. 55–57; Barret-Kriegel, Les historiens et la monarchie, vol. 1, pp. 52–54. 46. Colbert to Baluze, October 13, 1673, in Lettres, vol. 7, p. 73. 47. The correspondence concerning acquisitions for both libraries is found in BNF MS Baluze, 364–66, with records kept by Baluze. 48. The classic documents on the origins of scholarly sociability and manuscript hunting is found in Walter and Goodhart, Two Renaissance Book Hunters. 49. Chapelain to Colbert, February 11, 1667, in Colbert, Lettres, vol. 5, p. 620. 50. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale, vol. 1, pp. 279–85; Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale, p. 89. 51. Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale, p. 89. On Colbert’s quick and thrifty reconstitution of the Bibliothèque Mazarine see Colbert to Mazarin, March 3, 1654, in Lettres, vol. 1, pp. 215–17. 52. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 274. See the “Mémoire des manuscripts de le bibliothèque de M. Fouquet, qui se vendent à Paris chez Denys Thierry, Frédéric Léonard, Jean Dupuis, rue Saint-Jacques, et Calude Barbin, au Pallais,” Bibliothèque de l’Institut, MS AA 1862. 53. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, pp. 270–74; Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale, p. 87. 54. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 286. 55. Cited by Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 215. 56. On the younger de Brienne’s central place in politics during three reigns, and on the secret royal state “cahiers,” and the registers kept by Parlement see Henri-Auguste de Loménie de Brienne, Mémoires, 3 vols. (Amsterdam: JeanFrédéric Bernard, 1719), vol. 1, pp. 21–25. 57. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 215. 58. Ibid., p. 216. 59. Ibid. 60. Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale, pp. 100–101. 61. Bloch, “La Colbertine,” p. 403. 62. On the constitution of the royal manuscript collection, see Delisle Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, in general. For a general history of the Bibliothèque Nationale see Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale, pp. 71–145. For a history of the state archives, see the introduction to Boislisle, Mémoires des Intendants, vol. 1, pp. i–lix.

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63. On Wotton the book thief, see Molino, “Hugo Blotius,” p. 19. 64. Foucault, Mémoires, pp. cxviii–cxxi; Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale, p. 91. Baluze worked with Foucault on these document hunts, which Colbert closely oversaw. See Baluze’s 1680 memo to Foucault: “Mémoire sur les livres à retirer de l’Abbaye de Moissac,” in Colbert, Lettres, vol. 6, pp. 377–78. Henri Omont, “La Collection Doat à la Bibliothèque nationale, documents sur les recherches de Doat dans les archives du Sud-Ouest de la France de 1663–1670,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 77 (1916): pp. 286–336; Lothar Kolmer, “Colbert und die Entstehung der Collection Doat,” Francia 7 (1979): pp. 463–89; Jean-Loup Le Maitre, “Les catalogues médiévaux et le pillage des bibliothèques languedociennes,” in”Livres et bibliothèques XIIIe–VIe siècles,” ed. Jean-Louis Biget, in Cahiers de Fanjeaux 31 (Paris: Privat, n.a.), pp. 36–40. 65. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, pp. 440–42. 66. Omont, “La Collection Doat,” p. 292. 67. Ibid., pp. 290–93 and 307. The threat to nobles was real. One of Colbert’s plans was to form a register of noble titles to combat noble tax fraud, or what was called the “recherche et punition de faux nobles,” which was one of the speci‹c responsibilities of the intendants and an element of Colbert’s judicial reform. See Colbert’s “Orders to the Intendants,” April 3, 1666, in Lettres, vol. 6, pp. 22–24. Although it initially failed under strong opposition, this project inspired Clairambault’s genealogical registers. 68. Saunders, “Public Administration,” pp. 293–96. 69. “Note de Carcavy sur les recherches de Doat en Béarn, Guyenne et Languedoc,” in Omont, “La Collection Doat,” p. 327. 70. Colbert to Godefroy, October 19, 1668, and January 11, 1669, in Lettres, vol. 5, pp. 274–76; Saunders, “Public Administration,” pp. 291–92. 71. On Peiresc’s orientalist antiquarianism and Kircher see Peter N. Miller, “Copts and Scholars: Athanasius Kircher in Peiresc’s Republic of Letters,” in Findlen, Athanasius Kircher, pp. 133–48. For the speci‹c description of riding in a camel train and rummaging in the archives of various Eastern houses of prayer see the remarkable correspondence of the Jesuit Johann Michael Wansleben, or “Vansleb” in French, with Pierre Carcavy and Colbert in which a remarkable adventure of learning is described. 72. See Peiresc to Holstenius, July 27, 1630, in Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc, Lettres, ed. Tamizey de Larroque, 7 vols. (Paris, 1888–98), vol. 5, pp. 350–51. 73. Henri Omont’s Missions archéologiques en Orient aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1902), p. ix. Omont reproduces de Thou’s correspondence concerning Eastern manuscripts with the ambassador to Constantinople, Harlay de Sancy, a fellow erudite (pp. ii–ix). 74. François Bernier, “Lettre à Monseigneur Colbert sur l’étendue de l’Hindoustan, circulation de l’or et de l’argent pour venir s’y abîmer, richesses, forces et cause de la décadence des États d’Asie,” in his Voyage dans les États du Grand Mogol, ed. France Bhattacharya (Paris: Fayard, 1981), pp. 143–76. 75. See Henri Omont’s rich source collection, which contains all of Colbert’s correpondence on the topic: Missions archéologiques en Orient, p. 101. Also see Pierre Burger, “‘Quand il en trouve qui savent quelque chose. . . .’ Sur les informateurs

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orientaux en Europe aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” in Les orientalistes sont des aventuriers: Guirlande offerte à Joseph Tubiana par ses élève et ses amis, ed. Alain Rouaud (Paris: INALCO, 1999), pp. 55–60. 76. See Colbert to Seignelay, April 17, 1672, Lettres, vol. 3, part 2, p. 80. 77. Colbert to M. de Guilleragues, ambassador to Constantinople, April 4, 1680, in Lettres, vol. 7, p. 104: “Vous sçavez la curiosité que j’ay d’avoir de bons manuscrits pour l’ornement de ma bibliothèque, et je suis bien persuadé, par l’amitié que vous avez pour moy, que, pendant tout le temps que vous serez à Constantinople, vous prendrez quelque soin d’en faire chercher et de me les envoyer; faitesmoy sçavoir, de temps en temps, la dépense qu’il faudra faire pour cela, a‹n que j’y puisse pourvoir. Cependant, je suis bien ayse de vous donner avis que le sieur Sauvan, consul de Chypre, m’écrit que l’archevesque de Chypre, qui est à présent à Constantinople, a d’assez beaux manuscrits que l’on pourroit peut-estre tirer de luy. Vous verrez si cet avis pourra produire quelque chose, sans toutefois rien hasarder ni vous commettre.” 78. Jean-Baptiste Cotelier, “Remarques sur les manuscrits grecs,” ca. 1667, in Omont, Missions archéologiques en Orient, pp. 30–32. The original is found in BNF MS Latin 18610, fols. 65–66. 79. Ibid., p. 31: “Il ne faut point laisser échapper aucun livre historique, ny aucun livre de loix civiles ou ecclésiastiques, c’est à dire canons.” 80. For Colbert’s correspondence with Arnoul concerning the out‹tting of the expedition see Colbert to Arnoul, April 1, 1671, in Omont, Missions archéologiques en Orient, p. 63. 81. Ibid., p. 250. 82. Ibid., pp. 58–63. 83. Ibid., p. 61: “Il remarquera tout ce qui peut entrer dans la composition de l’histoire naturelle de chaque pays, comme des animaux de toutes espèces, des minéreaux et des marcassite, particulièrement de ceux qui ont quelque chose d’extraordinaire, des fonteynes minéralles et autres eaux, des plantes et fruits, tant de la campagne que de celles qui se cultivent dans les jardins, observant ce qui croît plus facilement en un pays qu’un autre.” 84. Ibid., p. 62. 85. See Omont for later missions, Missions archéologiques en Orient, pp. 222–50. 86. Ibid., pp. 224–27. 87. Ibid., p. 228. The catalog of this batch of manuscripts is found in BNF MS Latin 9363, fols. 90–99v. 88. Besson, in Omont, Missions archéologiques en Orient, p. 227: “J’ay escrit ces ré›exions, bien que je m’estime peu habile pour servir à l’accomplissement d’un dessein, dont l’exécution contribueroit beaucoup à l’honneur de l’Église gallicane, pour con‹rmer nommémant contre les sectes hérétique les véritéz catholiques de l’Eucharistie, touchant le sacerdoce, le sacri‹ce de la Messe, la Réalité et la Transubstantiation, les prières pour les morts, le purgatoire, le chef visible de l’Église et la pimauté de l’Église romaine, et semblables poincts que l’Église orientale confesse en mille endroicts de ses anciens manuscrits.” 89. Richelet’s 1686 Dictionary de‹nes portfolio, or portefeuille: “C’est un ouvrage de Relieur, composé de deux ais de carton, couverts de parchemin, de veau,

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de mouton, ou de maroquin, avec quelques enjolivements de doreur sur la couverture.” Register or, registre, is de‹ned as “C’est un livre qui n’est pas pas imprimé, où sont enregistrez les actes publics & autres choses. Coucher sur le registre. C’està-dire, écrire sur le registre. Tenir le registre. Garder le registre.” 90. The crown managed to retrieve many of the Colbertine manuscripts bought at its expense during the reign of Louis XIV. In 1728, when Colbert’s grandson, the comte de Seignelay, tried to sell Colbert’s state manuscripts on the open market, the king intervened. Seignelay demanded 600,000 pounds for the entire collection. In the margins of his letter to Louis XV demanding this sum, the king noted with his own hand, “Good. 300,000,” half of the value assessed by the appraisers. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 485. 91. Colbert, January 5, 1673, Lettres, vol. 7, p. 71. The current bound folios were organized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but appear to correspond to Colbert’s original thematic portfolios. 92. For an example see BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 33, fol. 5. 93. I have not been able to ascertain to what extent he removed documents from these notebooks. 94. All the following reference numbers refer to the BNF MS Mélanges Colbert. 95. [46–47]. 96. [12] “Recueil de pièces sur l’Histoire de France: Description du royaume (1607), traités, états de la maison royale, protocole au temps de Henri IV, Chancelliers de France, hôpitaux de Paris, titres du duché d’Alençon, etc.” [14] “Documents divers, relatifs au règne de Louis XIII (1611–1643).” [15] “Mélanges sur l’Histoire de France, pendant les règnes de Louis XIII et Louis XIV,” containing documents such as the “Pièces relatives au rôle du Parlement, lors de la Fronde (1648–1649),” and “Les crimes du Cardinal,” et autres pièces pour ou contre Mazarin, pami lesquelles des actes et des délibérations des Cours souveraines.” [27] “Recueil de mémoires et instructions donnés par Louis XIII aux lieutenants généraux des armées de terre et de mer, aux amdassadeurs et envoyés de la France à l’étranger (1640–1643).” 97. [5] “Recueil de pièces relatives aux relations de la France avec la Turquie, Alger, et Italie,” containing documents such as “Affaire de la Valteline: traités de Madrid, signé par François de Bassompièrre, 25 avril 1621, et d’Occagna, 1622 en Italien (fols. 62–75).” [8] “Recueil de pièces, traités et correspondances orginales d’ambassades sur les rapports entre la France, la Pologne et la Suède (1627–1683),” containing contemporary documents such as the “Instruction du Roy au sieur Colbert [de Croissy] s’en allant de la part de sa Majesté en la court de Vienne (fol 688).” [10] “Recueil de mémoires et de lettres originales sur l’Allemagne (1554–1664).” [11] “Recueil de pièces diplomatiques, la plupart en copies, sur les rapports de la France avec le Danemark, les Pays-Bas espagnols (1499–1655) et hollandais (1597–1657), l’Angleterre (1215–1654), l’Écosse (1295–XVIIe siècle et l’Irlande (1624).” This portfolio contains a long subcollection on English law, court, Parliament, and French relations, starting at fol. 288 with a French original of the Magna Carta, “Grande charte des libertés anglaises, en français, 1215.” [13] “Copies de Corrspondances diplomatiques, relatives à l’histoire de France, des XVIe et XVIIe

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siècles.” [16–26, 28] More diplomatic correspondance from the time of Henri II–IV. 98. [2–4, 7], [85]. 99. [29] “Receuil de mémoires sur les droits de la reine Marie-Thérèse d’Autriche à la succession d’Espagne et des Pays-Bas espagnols.” [30] “Recueil de mémoires, formé par l’abbé Amable de Bourzeis et remis à Colbert sur les droits de la Reine Marie-Thérèse d’Autriche à la succession des Pays-Bas, et sur la nullité de sa renonciation successoriale (1664–1667).” [37] “Recueil d’odes et de poèmes latins, français et italiens composés à la louange du règne de Louis XIV, par boileauDespréaux, l’abbé de Bourzeis, Cl. Boyer, l’abbé Jacques Cassagnes, Jean Chapelain, François Charpentier, Thomas Corneille, l’abbé Cotin, Jacques Cousinot, etc.” [54], fols. 1–94, “Clefs d’écritures secrètes.” [54]. “Mélanges relatifs à l’Histoire Littéraire, oraisons funèbres, épitaphes, lettres, etc, XVIe et XVIIe siècles.” 100. [56] “Receuil de lettres pouvant servir de modèle de style épistolaire, tiré de la correspondance de secrétaires d’État, entre autres de Richelieu, d’ambassadeurs, etc. (1617–1625).” [35] “Escrit sur les Ordonnances du royaume, par l’abbé Amable de Bourzeis.” [36] “Escrit sur les Ordannances du royaume, par Bourzeis.” 101. [32] “Recueil de pièces relatives aux Parlements et à la Justice, aux Coutumes de Metz et Verdun, etc. Réponse du surintendant Fouquet à l’acte d’accusation de D. Talon,” in which, “Droictz appartenans à la grande chambellanie de France, avec une note de Colbert adressée a M. Baluze.” [33] “Recueil de mémoires formé par Colbert sur la Réforme de la Procédure (1665–1679).” [64] “De la Loy Salique,” anonymous report made for Colbert. Notable among Colbert’s antiparliamentarian ‹les are the “Notes secrètes sur le personnel de tous les parlemens et cours des comptes du royaume, envoyées par les Intendans des provinces à Colbert, sur sa demande, vers la ‹n de l’an 1663,” in Depping, Correspondance administrative, vol. 1, pp. 33–132. This gives an earlier though less sophisticated sense of what Robert Darnton discusses in “A Police Inspector Sorts His Files: The Anatomy of the Republic of Letters,” in Great Cat Massacre, pp. 145–89. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Henry IV’s minister, Sully, meticulously collected economic data and kept a large historical archive, which remained in the hands of his family. Sully’s famous work, part memoir, part compilation of economic data and documents, is Mémoires des sages et royalles oeconomies d’Estat, domestiques, politiques et militaires de Henry le Grand, l’exemplaire des roys, le prince des vertus, des armes et des loix et le père en effet de ses peuples françois: et des servitudes utiles, obéissances convenables et administrations loyales (Amsterdam: Jacques Bouquet, 1632). On this work and on his use of economic information see Buisseret, Sully, pp. 17–20, chap. 3. 102. BNF Mélanges Colbert 61, “Mélanges relatifs à différentes bibiothèques et à l’Histoire ecclésiastique au XVIIe siècle,” is ‹lled with inventories and catalogs. [81] “Recueil d’analyses de Titres scellés, avec la description des sceaux (XIV–XVIe siècle). [88–100] “Catalgus librorum bibliothecae illustrissimi domini D. Jacobi Nicolai Colbert,” “Catalgue des manuscrits de la Collection Dupuy,” “Catalgue de la collection formée sur les affaires étrangères et l’administration de la France, par Antoine de Loménie de Brienne.” “Inventaire des Chartes du Thrésor du Roy estant en la Saincte Chapelle du Palais à Paris, faict par Messieurs Dupuy et Godefroy,

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advocats en Parlements, suivant l’arrest du Conseil d’Estat de sa Majesté, du 21e may, 1615.” 103. Gabriel Naudé, Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque (Paris: Rolet Le Duc, 1644), pp. 163–64; Pintard, Le libertinage erudite, 168–74; Chartier, L’ordre des livres, pp. 71–73. On Naudé’s library as a site of new knowledge see Nelles, “Instrument of Discovery,” pp. 41–57; also Damien, Bibliothèque et état, pp. 301–6. On Naudé’s library project and the new philosophies of the universal library see Jonathan Israel’s chapter, “Libraries and Enlightenment,” his Radical Enlightenment, pp. 119–41. 104. Hirsch‹eld, Académie Royale des Sciences, pp. 168–69. On Colbert and the Académie des Sciences see Stroup, “Christian Huygens,” in general. On Colbert’s personal collection see Bloch, “La Colbertine”; also see Bloch, “La bibliothèque de Colbert”; Saunders, “Public Administration,” pp. 283–99. 105. Brown, Scienti‹c Organizations, pp. 135–60; Claude Gros de Boze, Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 3 vols. (Paris: H-L Guerin, 1740), vol. 1, p. 2. Also see David S. Lux, Patronage and Royal Science in Seventeenth-Century France: The Académie de Physique de Caen (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 105–25; Barret-Kriegel, Les historiens et la monarchie, vol. 3, pp. 171–301. 106. BNF Mélanges Colbert 58–60, “Recueil de différents traités de Mathématiques et d’Astronomie,” “Geometricorum elementorum Euclidis libri I–VI, avec ‹gures à l’encre . . . ,” “Recueil de Tables Astronomiques.” 107. Auguste Bernard, Histoire de l’Imprimerie Royale du Louvre (Amsterdam: Verlag P. Schnippers, 1966), pp. 123–54. This work contains a very revealing catalog of published books. During Colbert’s lifetime and after his death, the press focused mainly on ‹ndings by the Académie Royale des Sciences. Also see Brown, Scienti‹c Organizations, pp. 185–207. 108. See the catalog, which speaks for itself, in Bernard, Histoire de l’Imprimerie Royale, pp. 123–63. 109. A list is in Prosper Boissonnade, Colbert. Le Triomphe de l’Étatisme. La Fondation de la Suprématie industrielle de la France. La Dictature du Travail 1661–1683 (Paris: Marcel Rivière, 1931), p. 32. 110. Colbert, Lettres, vol. 6, pp. xxv–xxvi n. 2. On this citation and Colbert’s attempts at educational reform, see Dainville, L’éducation des Jesuites, p. 38. 111. H. Didier-Neuville, Les établissments de l’ancienne marine (Paris: BergerLevrault, 1882); Dainville, L’éducation des Jesuites, pp. 219, 315–22; François Russo, “L’hydrographie en France aux XVIIe et XVIII siècles. Écoles et ouvrages d’enseignement,” in Roger Hahn and René Taton, Écoles techniques et militaires au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Hermann, 1986), pp. 419–40. 112. For the catalog of Croissy’s library see Archives Nationales Minutier Central, étude CXLIII, liasse 20: “Inventaire des biens de feu Monseigneur de Croissy, Ministre et Secrétaire d’Etat du 7 août 1696.” 113. For Vauban’s reading catalog for his son’s library see Virol, Vauban, annex. 114. Saunders, “Public Administration,” p. 292. 115. Colbert to Baluze, July 1672, in Lettres, vol. 7, pp. 63–64. 116. Colbert to Baluze, March 23, 1672, in Lettres, vol. 7, p. 59. This request was related to the legal, historical minutiae of trade negotiations with England in

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1672. See the “Demandes faites pas les commissaires de la Grande-Bretagne pour le traité de commerce, et réponses du Roy de France,” Lettres, vol. 2, part 2, p. 828. For Colbert’s correspondence with Baluze concerning bibliographical references see BNF MS Baluze 362, fols. 60-282. 117. BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 34. 118. Ibid., fols. 82v–84r. Also see the corresponding ‹le on English documents concerning their colonies and their charters: BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 40. 119. Ibid., fol. 9. 120. The portfolios Colbert refers to are BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 11, fols. 288–55; 34, 38, 39, and 40. The “Projet du traité de commerce entre la France et l’Angleterre, avec les remarques de l’ambasssadeur de France à Londres et quelques notes de Colbert, October 9, 1669,” is a working copy of the trade treaty written from these documents, in Lettres, vol. 2, part 2, pp. 803–32. Also see Colbert’s letter to de Croissy, January 3, 1670, pp. 815–16. 121. Colbert to Colbert de Croissy, September 26, 1669, in Lettres, vol. 2, part 2, pp. 492–93. “J’examineray exactement le projet de traité de commerce que vous m’avez envoyeé, et je vous feray sçavoir ensuite mes sentimens sur chacun des articles dont il est composé. . . . Je seray bien ayse de voir les remarques que vous ferez sur ce projet de traité en conséquence des avis que vous prendrez des plus habiles négocians français qui soyent en Angleterre; et comme les manuscrits et mémoires que je vous a cy-devant envoyés vous instruiriront de la conduite que vous aurez à tenir dans la discussion des articles de ce traité, vous pouvez sans dif‹culté les garder pour vous servir de règle dans tout ce qui concernera le bien du service du roy et l’avantage de ses sujets.” The portfolios to which Colbert refers are BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 11, fols. 288–55; 34, 38, 39, and 40. The “Projet du traité de commerce entre la France et l’Angleterre, avec les remarques de l’ambasssadeur de France à Londres et quelques notes de Colbert, October 9, 1669” is a working copy of the trade treaty written from these documents, in Lettres, vol. 2, part 2, pp. 803–41; for Colbert’s correspondence with Baluze concerning bibliographical references see BNF MS Baluze 362, fols. 60–282. 122. For Colbert’s report and Louis’s annotations see “Mémoire au Roy servant de réponse au Projet de traité de commerce entre la France et l’Angleterre mis entre les mains di sieur Colbert, ambassadeur de Sa Majesté près de la Grande-Bretagne, par mylord Arlington,” in Lettres, vol. 2, part 2, pp. 816–18. 123. Ibid., pp. 818–32. 124. For Colbert’s “Correspondance à d’Arrivée en Provenance du Canada,” see AN Col. C11A 1–4. 125. On how internal cultural practices of government affect and warp policy see James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Bödeker, “Origins of Statistical Gaze,” pp. 165–72; and Head, “Knowing Like a State.” 126. “Colbert to the sieur Gaudais,” May 1, 1669, in Lettres, vol. 3, part 2, pp. 443–48. 127. Ibid., 444. 128. Ibid. 129. Ibid., p. 445.

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130. On Philip’s formularies see Kagan, “Arcana Imperii,” pp. 49–70. 131. See Mims, Colbert’s West India Policy; Mémain, La marine de guerre; and Cole, Colbert, vol. 1, pp. 356–532, and French Mercantilism: 1683–1700 (New York: Octagon Books, 1971). Also see Glenn J. Ames, Colbert, Mercantilism, and the French Quest for Asian Trade (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996). On Colbert’s mercantilist Canadian failures see Kenneth J. Banks, Chasing Empire across the Sea: Communication and the State in the French Atlantic, 1713–1763 (Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2002), pp. 24–25; and James Pritchard, In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas 1670–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 234–37. 132. See in general Colbert, Lettres, vol. 3, part 2. 133. One of the most useful sources on Colbert’s colonial enterprises is Ernest Benoît, Recherches sur la politique coloniale de Colbert (Paris: A. Pedone Éditeur, 1902). It includes this small enquête (pp. 120–24). 134. Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Ogilvie, The Science of Describing; James Delbourgo and Nicholas Dew, eds., Science and Empire in the Atlantic World (London: Routledge, 2007). 135. Kathleen A. Meyers, ed., Fernandez de Oviedo’s Chronicle of America: A New History for a New World (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007). 136. Miles Ogborn, Indian Ink: Script and Print in the Making of the English East India Company (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); also see Miles Ogborn and C. W. J. Withers, “Knowing Other Places: Travel, Trade and Empire, 1660–1800,” in A Concise Companion to the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, ed. Cynthia Wall (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 14–36. 137. Greer, The Jesuit Relations. 138. Donald McKenzie, Oral Culture, Literacy and Print in Early New Zealand: The Treaty of Waitangi (Wellington, NZ: Victoria University Press, 1985). 139. AN Col. C11A 1–4. 140. See New World ‹les in note 7. 141. BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 31. 142. Ibid., fol. 38. 143. Ibid., fols. 39–40. 144. Ibid., fol. 53. 145. Ibid., fol. 71. 146. Ibid., fol. 299. 147. Colbert to Pélissier, Directeur de la Compagnie des Indes Occidentales, November 4, 1671, in Lettres, vol. 3, part 2, p. 527: “Envoyez-moi tousjours tout ce que vous trouverez de rare et d’extraordinaire dans les isles, en plantes, animaux, bois, et autres choses.” 148. Colbert, “Mémoire pour les directeurs de la Compagnie des Indes occidentales envoyés en amérique,” February 26, 1670, in Lettres, vol. 3, part 2, p. 472. 149. Ibid., p. 474. 150. Colbert to Talon, February 11, 1671, in Lettres, vol. 3, part 2, pp. 512–15. 151. Francis Parkman, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West: France and England in North America (Williamstown, MA: Corner House, 1980), p. 15.

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152. John W. Olmsted, “The Voyage of Jean Richer to Acadia in 1670: A Study of the Relations of Science and Navigation under Colbert,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 104 (1960): pp. 612–34. 153. Benoît, La politique coloniale de Colbert, p. 208; Cole, Colbert, vol. 2, pp. 122–31. 154. Cole, Colbert, vol. 2, p. 131. 155. On the importance of historical language and the perception of empires see Emma Rothschild, “Language and Empire, c. 1800,” Historical Research 78 (May 2005): pp. 208–29.

c hap te r 8 1. Jean Mabillon worked for Colbert as a state medievalist through his close relationship with Baluze. Broglie, Mabillon, vol. 1, pp. 55–57; Barret-Kriegel, Les historiens et la monarchie, vol. 1, pp. 52–54. 2. On Mabillon’s in›uence on English political scholarship and English political antiquarianism see H. A. Cronne, “The Study and Use of Charters by English Scholars in the Seventeenth Century: Sir Henry Spelman and Sir William Dugdale,” in English Historical Scholarship in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. Levi Fox (Oxford: Society and Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 73–91. 3. On Mabillon’s relationship with Baluze and Colbert see BNF MS Baluze 214, fol. 10. On his relations with Baluze see Fage, Étienne Baluze, p. 91. 4. Lucien Auvray and René Poupardin, Catalogue des Manuscrits de la Collection Baluze (Paris: Éditions Ernest Leroux, 1921), p. XVII. 5. BNF MS Baluze 100, fols. 1–57. 6. Boivin, “Mémoire pour l’histoire de la Bibliothèque du Roy,” fol. 443; Saunders, “Public Administration,” p. 290. In BNF MS Baluze, 100, fol. 8v, Baluze explains to Colbert how he extracted material according to Colbert’s orders. Delisle remarks that the library registers still contain the marks made on them by Baluze and Colbert. Much of the Baluze collection is comprised of “extracts”—copied portions of documents from the royal collection. See MS Baluze 63, “Extraits de manuscripts de la Bibliothèque du Roi.” For an example of Colbert demanding quick extract copying, see “Colbert à Baluze,” August 12, 1675, in Lettres, vol. 7, pp. 80–81. On Baluze’s function as an erudite administrator see his correspondence with Colbert in the same volume, pp. 371–78, in particular Baluze’s progress report to Colbert, April 14, 1671, pp. 374–75: “Le travail qu’on fait présentement ne consiste quasy que dans la continuation des copies des registres du Trésor des Chartes, dont on verra bientost la ‹n.” Also see Colbert’s letter to Baluze, August 19, 1675, Lettres, vol. 7, p. 81. On Baluze managing state account books see Lettres, vol. 7, p. 52, “Colbert à Baluze,” March 16, 1671. 7. On Colbert’s creation of a parallel Republic of Letters, see volume 5 of his Lettres, which contains his correspondence with cultural ‹gures. On Chapelain’s relationship with Colbert see Soll, Publishing “The Prince,” pp. 48–50. 8. Saunders, “Public Administration,” pp. 290–97. 9. Colbert to Baluze, October 18, 1673 in Lettres, vol. 7, p. 73: “Je prie M. Baluze de veri‹er si j’ay dans ma bibliothèque tous les livres qui ont esté annoncés

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par le Journal des Savans, depuis cinq ou six ans, et de m’en envoyer un mémoire bien exacte Je serais ayse aussy d’avoir une copie du catalogue de tous les livres qui sont dans ma bibliothèque qui ont esté faits pour et contre le Jansénisme, avec un mémoire de tous ceux qui me manquent, en cas qu’il le sçache.” 10. On the philosophical in›uences on the movement of mass cataloging and collecting, Baluze and the Benedictines, see Barret-Kriegelm, Les historiens et la monarchie, vol. 2, pp. 205–25. Also see Claude Jolly, “Les bibliothèques bénédictines,” in Jolly, Histoire des bibliothèques françaises, vol. 1, pp. 29–39. 11. For examples of Baluze’s internal histories and reports see BNF MS Colbert 3, in general. For speci‹c examples of Baluze’s internal reports and secret histories see “Mémoire sur les differens entre la cour de Rome et la Cour de France (fol’s 1–4),” and his “Traité de la Régale (fol’s 9–41).” 12. Payments of some sort were probably made to his order. Paul Nelles, “L’érudition ecclésiastique et les bibliothèques de Paris au XVIIe siècle. Étude de catalogage et de classi‹cation,” Revue française d’histoire du livre 104–5 (1999): pp. 227–52. 13. BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 30. 14. Ibid., fols. 1–311, 326–34, 547. 15. On Foucault see the excellent biography by F. Baudry, in Foucault, Mémoires, pp. i–clxxvi. On the paperwork functions of a maitre de requête, see the “Procès-Verbal des conférences tenues devant Louis XIV pour la réformation de la justice,” September 25, 1665, in Colbert, Lettres, vol. 6, p. 371; Mousnier, The Institutions of France, vol. 2, pp. 140–43. Also see François Bluche, ed., Dictionnaire du Grand Siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1990), p. 945. 16. On the rather unique career of Foucault see Antoine Schnapper, Le géant, la licorne at la tulipe: Collections et collectionneurs dans la France du XVIIe siècle (Paris: Flammarion, 1988), pp. 297–301. 17. Baudry, in Foucault, Mémoires, p. xii. 18. Ibid., p. xv. 19. Ibid., pp. xv–xvi. 20. Ibid., pp. cix–cxx. Reproduced by Baudry. 21. Foucault to Baluze, February 9, 1678, in Foucault, Mémoires, p. cxviii: “Je n’ai point voulu, Monsieur, faire réponse à la dernière lettre que vous avez pris la peine de m’écrire, que je n’aie été en état de vous envoyer le catalogue des manuscrits qui sont dans l’abbaye de Moissac. Je me suis servi pour les examiner de M. Fouillac, chanoine de Cahors, qui a demeuré sept jours à en parcourir seulement une partie, les archives de ce monastère étant dans une très-grande confusion et la plupart des actes pourris ou mangés des rats. M. le président Doat y a passé assez légèrement, et il y a beaucoup de livres et de cartulaires qu’il n’a point vus. Il est aisé de connoître parfaitement ce qui est renfermé dans cette abbaye, par le moyen dudit sieur Fouillac, qui est très-habile en ces matières et aux yeux duquel rien n’échappera de tout ce qui mérite d’être relevé. Mais, comme il perdroit le revenu de canonicat pendant le temps qu’il travailleroit à cette recherche et qu’il offre d’y travailler gratuitement, il seroit, Monsieur, nécessaire d’avoir une commission du roi qui enjoignît au chapitre de Cahors de le tenir présent pendant qu’il seroit occupé dans sa perquisition. Ce seroit u moyen d’avoir une connoissance entière de tout ce

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qu’il y a de curieux dans les églises de cette province, et vous serez, Monsieur, d’abord éclairci de tout ce que vous voudrez savoir. M. l’évèque de Cahors est à Paris à la poursuite d’un procès qu’il a contre l’Université, et je suis persaudé qu’il ne vous refusera pas le manuscript de Radulphe, archevêque de Bruges, dont vous marquez avoir besoin.” 22. BNF MS Cinq-Cents Colbert, 235–45. Also see the appendix in Adolphe Chéruel, Histoire de L’Administration Monarchique depuis l’avènement de Philippe-Auguste jusqu’à la mort le Louis XIV, 8 vols. (Paris: Dezobry, 1855), vol. 2. 23. See Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5298. 24. Baudry, in Foucault, Mémoires, p. xcvii. This enquête is reproduced in Henri, Comte de Boulainvilliers, État de la France, 7 vols. (London: T. W. Wood and S. Palmer, 1737), vol. 4. Also see the modern edition, Nicolas-Joseph Foucault, L’Intendance de Caen en 1700 . . . pour l’instruction de M. le duc de Bourgogne, ed. Pierre Gouhier (Paris: Éditions du CTHS, 1998). 25. See Joseph-Nicolas Foucault, Lettres patentes avec les statuts pour l’Académie des belles-lettres établie en la ville de Caen. (Janvier 1705.)—Discours de M. Foucault à l’ouverture de la première séance, le 2 mars 1705.)—Réponse de M. le président de Croisiles . . . au discours de M. Foucault (Caen: A. Caveller, 1705). Also see Gros de Boze, in particular see his “Éloge de M. Foucault,” in Histoire, vol. 1, pp. 223–42, 239–41. 26. Gros de Boze, Histoire, vol. 1, p. 240. 27. Bernard de Montfaucon, L’antiquité expliquée et représentée en ‹gures, 5 vols. (Paris: F. Delaulne, 1719–24), vol. 1, p. xix: “M. Foucault, conseiller d’état, m’a plus fourni de pièces antiques que nul autre. La charge d’intendant, qu’il a exercée dans plusieurs provinces, lui a donné moyen d’en decouvrir beaucoup qui auraient peutêtre péri si elles étioent tombées en d’autres mains. Comme il a un goût merveilleux, il a fait un des plus beaux cabinets du royaume, et peut-être de l’Europe. Toujours attentif à faire plaisir aux gens de lettres, il a prévenu ceux qui travaillaient sur l’antiquité, et, comme un autre Peiresc, il leur a offert avec plaisir ce qu’il n’avoit ramassé que pour l’utilité publique.” 28. Baudry, in Foucault, Mémoires, p. cliii. 29. Foucault, Mémoires, pp. 57–64. 30. Ibid., p. 62: “J’ai trouvé parmi les papiers du P. d’Aubarède un mémoire en forme de jounral de ce qui s’est passé au sujet de la régale depuis le 12 janvier 1680. . . . Il y est fait mention de deux évêques que M. l’archevêque de Toulouse assure être MM. de Rieux et de Lectuore, étant les seuls évêques qui fussent à Toulouse le jour marqué dans ledit journal.” 31. Ibid., Colbert to Foucault, July 25, 1680, p. 453. 32. Colbert to Foucault, December 12, 1680, in Foucault, Mémoires, p. 459: “Dans les différentes visites que vous faites dans l’étendue de votre généralité, vous me ferez plaisir de rechercher dans les églises, cathédrales et dans les principales abbayes s’il y auroit quelques manuscrits considérables, et, en ce cas, chercher les moyens de les avoir sans y employer aucune autorité, mais seulement par douceur et par achat.” 33. Colbert to Tubeuf, intendant at Tours, February 3, 1679, in Lettres, vol. 7, p. 84:

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J’ay appris que Messieurs du chapitre de Saint-Gatien de Tours avoient dessein de m’envoyer quelques-uns de leurs manuscrits pour mettre dans ma bibliothèque. Tesmoignez-leur, s’il vous plaist, en mon nom, lorsque vous les verrez, que je leur seray fort obligé de ce présent, prenant un grand plaisir de ramasser des manuscrits pour servir aux ouvrages de littérature qui sont entrepris pour illustrer ce règne. Je vous prie aussy de me faire sçavoir ce que vous avez fait pour tirer copie du manuscrit intitulé: Gesta Aldrici, qui appartient au chapitre de l’église cathédrale du Mans; et en cas que vous l’ayez fait tirer, vous me ferez plaisir de me l’envoyer le plus tost que vous pourrez. 34. See Colbert’s request to Bouchu, Intendant at Dijon regarding the manuscripts of the abbey of Fontenay, March 9, 1679 (Lettres, vol. 7, p. 87). 35. Colbert to Barillon, ambassador to London, May 16, 1682, in Lettres, vol. 7, pp. 134–35. 36. On Colbert’s creation of a parallel republic of letters, see volume 5 of his Letters. On Chapelain’s relationship with Colbert see Soll, Publishing “The Prince,” pp. 48–50. 37. Chapelain to Colbert, November 1662, in Colbert, Lettres, vol. 5, p. 619. 38. Chapelain to A. M. Heinsius, June 1, 1663, in Chapelain, Lettres, vol. 2, p. 305. 39. Chapelain to J. G. Vossius, July 31, 1665, ibid., pp. 406–7. 40. Ibid., p. 275. 41. Chapelain to Colbert, September 18, 1662 in ibid.: “Je viens à l’histoire qu’avec beaucoup de raison vous avez jugée, Monsieur, un des principaux moyens pour conserver la splendeur des entreprises du Roy et le détail de ses miracles. Mais il est de l’histoire comme de ces fruits qui ne sont bons que gardés et pour arrièresaison. Si elle n’explique point les motifs des choses qui y sont racontées, si elle n’est pas accompagnée de ré›exions prudentes et de documents, ce n’est qu’une relation pure, sans force et sans dignité. De les y employer aussy, durant le règne du Prince qui en est le sujet, cela ne se pourroit sans exposer au public les ressorts du Cabinet, donner lieu aux ennemis de les prévenir ou de les rendre inutiles, et trahir ceux qui auroient des liaisons avec luy, lesquelles ne subsistent que par le secret et à l’ombre d’un profond silence. Ainsi, j’estime que si vous faites travailler à l’histoire de Sa Majesté en la manière qu’elle doit estre que pour tenir l’ouvrage caché jusques à ce que les inconvénients remarqués ne puissent préjudicier à ses affaires et à ses alliés.” 42. D. C. Godefroy-Menilglaise, Les savants Godefroy: Mémoires d’une famille (Paris: Didier, 1875), pp. 112–13. For a full archival bibliography concerning this relationship see Soll, Publishing “The Prince,” pp. 52–56. 43. Colbert to Godefroy, March 6, 1669, in Lettres, vol. 5, p. 274. 44. Varillas to Colbert, October 17, 1663, in Boivin, “Mémoire pour l’histoire de la Bibliothèque du Roy,” fols. 476 and 479. The original documents concerning literary disputes between Colbert and Varillas, as well as his literary correspondance with Godefroy and Chapelain are in BNF MS Baluze 362, fols. 38–59. Varillas published his book and many others drawn from his privileged knowledge of the royal and Colbertian manuscripts only after Colbert’s death: Antoine Varillas, Les Anec-

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dotes de Florence, ou l’Histoire secrète de la maison de Médicis (The Hague: chez A. Leers, 1685). 45. Boivin, “Mémoire pour l’histoire de la Bibliothèque du Roy,” fols. 476–78. 46. Steve Uomini, Cultures historiques dans la France du XVIIe siècle (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998). 47. On Colbert’s sanctioning of Mézéray for implicitly criticizing Colbert’s tax policies see Ranum, Artisans of Glory, p. 222; and Soll, “Empirical History,” pp. 297–98. 48. Ranum, Artisans of Glory, pp. 259–64. 49. Ibid., pp. 260–61. 50. Charles Perrault, Mémoires (Paris: Librarie des Bibliophiles, 1878), p. 27. 51. Ibid., p. 26. 52. Ibid., p. 27. 53. Ranum, Artisans of Glory, pp. 262–64. 54. Priolo to Colbert, June 4, 1661, in Benjamin Priolo, Lettres inédites, ed. Tamizey de Larroque (Tours: Bouserez, 1877), p. 3. 55. Ibid., p. 6, Priolo to Colbert, June 6, 1661. 56. Benjamin Priolo, The History of France under the Ministry of Cardinal Mazarine, trans. Christopher Wase (London: John Starkey, 1671), p. 419. 57. Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV, pp. 195–212; Lynn Wood Mollenauer, “Justice versus Secrecy: Investigating the Affair of the Poisons, 1679–1682,” in Engel et al., Das Geheimnis, pp. 179–205. 58. Guillaume Ribier, Lettres et Mémoires d’Estat, des Roys, Princes, & Ambassadeurs (Paris: François Clouzier & la Veuve Aubouyn, 1666), p. 5 of the preface. 59. Ibid. 60. For a model letter see Colbert to La Reynie, April 25, 1670: “J’ay rendu compte au Roy du contenu de la lettre que vous m’avez écrite sur le sujet des gazettes à la main. Sa Majesté désire que vous continuiez de faire une recherche exacte de ces sortes de gens et que vous fassiez punir sévèrement ceux que vous avez fait arrester, estant tres-important pour le bien de l’Estat d’empescher à l’avenir la continuation de pareils libelles.” Colbert would continue writing this same sort of letter to La Reynie and the intendants until his death. For a later example from 1682 see Lettres, vol. 6, p. li. 61. Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société, vol. 2, p. 691. 62. Pierre Clément, La Police sous Louis XIV (Paris: Didier & Cie., 1866), pp. 73–79; and Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société, vol. 2, p. 679. 63. Ibid., p. 695. 64. Ibid., pp. 678–82. 65. Ibid., p. 683. 66. On Léonard’s clandestine printing see Jacob Soll, “The Hand-Annotated Copy of the Histoire du gouvernement de Venise, or How Amelot de La Houssaye Wrote His History,” Bulletin du Bibliophile 2 (1995): pp. 279–93. 67. On La Reynie see Jacques Saint-Germain, La Reynie et la police au grand siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1962), p. 19. 68. The reference to La Reynie’s library catalog is found in ibid., p. 22: A copy

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of La Reynie’s marriage certi‹cate is in the Bibliothèque Mazarine, Fonds Tralage, Catalogues T3 ZZ 379, fol. 97. 69. BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 132, fol. 188r: “J’ai appris que, pour ménager du temps bien plus que pour votre soulagement, vous permettez à vos serviteurs de vous informer par écrit des choses dont ils doivent vous rendre compte. Et comme je dois prétendre que vous m’avez fait l’honneur de me mettre en ce rang, après tant de témoignages de votre protection, je prends la même liberté et, si elle vous est agréable, je me donnerai l’honneur de vous expliquer par la même voie ce que je pourrai penser sur quelques matières importantes, où il vous a plu de me donner quelque part. . . . Je vous envoie un mémoire des fermiers du roi, dans lequel vous verrez leur contestation beaucoup plus nettement que je ne l’ai expliqué et sur lequel votre justice pourra beaucoup plus nettement s’assurer.” 70. Saint-Germain, La Reynie, p. 25. 71. Orest Ranum, Paris in the Age of Absolutism: An Essay (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1968), pp. 272–92. 72. Saint-Germain, La Reynie, pp. 26–27. 73. La Reynie to Colbert, May 21, 1664, in Lettres, vol. 6, pp. 28–29 n. 5: “Les of‹ciers et commis de la douane mettoient toutes choses en confusion, par la licence qu’ils prenoient de rendre aux libraires, avant qu’ils eussent esté préalablement visités au Collège Royal, par les syndics de l’imprimérie, les livres qui arrivoient emballés a leurs bureaux. . . . Il est inuntile de contenir les sujets du roy dans l’obéissance, si les estrangers ont la liberté de remplir le royaume de doctrines scadaleuses. C’est par ce moyen que les rois et les gouvernemens de l’Estat ont esté calomniés par le passé.” 74. Saint-Germain, La Reynie, pp. 161–62. 75. Cited in ibid., pp. 166–67. 76. La Reynie and his assistant Delamare’s folio ‹les of seditious materials are found in massive folios at the Bibliothèque Nationale. See BNF MS Fr. 21626 and 21742. On La Reynie’s role in providing material for and helping write the Traité de la Police see Saint-Germain, La Reynie, pp. 38–39. In his Traité de la Police, 4 vols. (Paris: M. Brunet, 1719–38), book 1, title 12, chap. 6), which La Reynie helped him write, Nicolas Delamare wrote of the police commissaries of the book trade who worked on the rue St. Jacques: “Ils font recherche de tous les livres ou libelles imprimez contre la Religion, ou ceux même sur cette matière qui ne sont que suspects, pour avoir été imprimez sans approbation des Docteurs, et sans privilège ou permission. Ils les font saisir; et après que sur leur rapport le Magistrat en a ordonné la suppression, ils les font déchirer en mettre au pilon, c’est à dire, livrer à un Cartonnier qui le jette en leur présence dans une cuve d’eau, où il les pile pour en faire du carton./Pour faire cette découverte et celle des autres mauvais livres, ils visitent les Imprimeries. S’il s’en trouve quelques uns de cette qualité sous la presse, ils en dressent un Procès-verbal, font saisir les formes et les exemplaires; et en certains cas graves, ou en matière de fréquente récidive, ils ont quelquefois d’of‹ce fait emprisonner l”imprimeur, l’ont interrogé, et ont informé contre lui; mais ordinairement ils en réfèrent d’abord au Magistrat, qui ordonne, sur leur Procès-verbal, la procédure extraordinaire, ou renvoye à l’Sudience, selon que la matière s’y trouve disposée./S’ils

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découvrent les auteur de ces mauvais livres, ils en réfèrent au Magistrat. Et à l’égard des distributeurs, comme ce sont ordinairement gens vils et don’t l’évasion est à craindre, ils les font arrêter, les interrogent, en informent contre eux.” 77. La Reynie to Baluze, January 17, 1684, BNF MS Collection Baluze 180, fol. 141r–v: “Je ne comprends pas comment il se peut encore trouver des gens assez insolents et hardis pour oser entreprendre de faire et de chanter en public de pareilles extravagances. On a emprisonné plusieurs de ces misérables, on a saisi toutes leurs feuilles et on a aussi menacé tous ces petits imprimeurs.” 78. See La Reynie’s catalog of seized books and general lists of seized books in seventeenth-century Paris in Sauvy, Livres saisis à Paris, pp. 23–30. 79. Ibid., pp. 11–14. 80. Sergio Bertelli, Rebelli, libertini, ortodossi nella storiogra‹a barocca (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1975); Paul Hazard, La crise de la conscience européenne (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 1961); Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons, and Republicans (London: Allen and Unwin, 1982); and Israel, Radical Enlightenment. 81. BNF MS Collection Baluze 336, fol. 82: “L’auteur de ce petit traité prétend insinuer que le roi veut réunir les deux religions, qu’il est de son intérêt de n’en souffrir qu’une, et qu’il a autorité et droit de la faire. . . . Il se sert de plusieurs exemples considérables, d’où il tire des conséquences extraordinairement fortes, qu’il serait dangereux d’autoriser et qu’il n’est peut-estre pas aussi à propos de condamner à cause des quelques vérités qu’elles enferment, qui sont importantes au roi et au royaume.” 82. Ibid. 83. Ibid., fol. 86v–r. 84. BNF MS Fr. 21743, fol. 172: “Combien a-t-il tiré d’exemplaires de ce livre? A-t-il un privilège: le voir. Saisir tous les exemplaires. Savoir s’il en a été vendu à d’autres libraires. Lesquels? Combien? Savoir qui est l’auteur de l’ouvrage. Prélever trois exemplaires reliés si possible, sinon en blanc. Mettre les ouvrages saisis en paquets scellés. Détruire les feuilles en cours d’impression.” 85. BNF MS Collection Baluze 367, fols. 137–47. 86. Colbert to La Reynie, June 29, 1671, in Depping, Correspondance administrative, vol. 2, pp. 561–62: “de marquer les endroits qui vous ont paru de conséquence, af‹n qu’après en avoir rendu compte à S. M., elle puisse prendre la résolution qu’elle estimera plus advantageuse pour son service; mais en cas qu’il ne soit point encore imprimé, vous pouvez en faire retarder l’impressoin jusques à notre retour a Paris.” 87. Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment, pp. 9–13. 88. On La Reynie, Seignelay, and the censorship of the works of Amelot de La Houssaye, see Soll, Publishing The Prince, pp. 18–19. Also see Pierre-François Burger, “Deux documents sur Amelot de La Houssaie,” Dix-Septième Siècle 131 (1981): pp. 199–202. 89. See Seignelay to La Reynie, November 27, 1676, in Lettres, vol. 6, p. 46: J’ay rendu compte au Roy du mémoire que vous avez donné à mon père au sujet du journal des Affaires de Paris que le nommé Colletet s’est ingéré de faire imprimer.

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Sa Majesté m’a ordonné de vous dire qu’elle veut que vous en défendiez le débit et l’impression. 90. Cited in Saint-Germain, La Reynie, p. 166. 91. Ibid., p. 184. 92. La Reynie to Louvois, 1685, cited from the Archives de la Guerre in SaintGermain, La Reynie, pp. 179–78: “J’ay reçu cette après-dinée la lettre que que vous m’avez fait l’honneur de m’écrire avec celle de M. le comte d’Avaux. Cette lettre justi‹e en‹n que l’avis donné touchant le nommé Bayle était juste en toutes ses circonstances. Sa Lettre sur les Comètes, la Critique du Calvinisme, et les Nouvelles de la République des Lettres peuvent bien faire jusger de son habilité, mais la ‹nesse et la délicatesse de ce mêmes écrits ne les rendent pas moins suspects et, bien que cet auteur se soit beaucoup contraint dans son Journal pour le faire recevoir en France, il n;a pu cependant si bien cacher sa mauvaise volonté et son dessein que Mgr le chancellier ne s’en soit apreçu et que le débit n’en ait été ici arrêté par ses ordres. En‹n Monsieur, si cet homme a plus d’esprit et de discrétion que les autres, il en est un peu plus dangereux et le lieu où il loge à La Haye, la considération où il est auprès du prince d’Orange, et son père et son frère qui font actuellement la profession de ministres de la religion prétendue réformée en France, doivent rendre sa conduite suspecte.” 93. For further examples of Seignelay and La Reynie repressing rogue printers see Seignelay to La Reynie, February 12, 1676, in Lettres, vol. 6, p. 43. 94. Saint-Germain, La Reynie, pp. 161–62. 95. Clément, “Introduction,” Lettres, vol. 6, p. li. 96. Some were collected by Russian nobles who thought they might be important, and thus sent them to St. Petersburg. Had this correspondence survived, La Reynie would perhaps be more famous today. 97. University of Pennsylvania Rare Books, MS Coll 578, 6 folders: 1667 (10 letters), 1672 (4 letters), 1675 (28 letters), 1677 (9 letters), 1678, 1 (18 letters), 1678, 2, (10 letters), for a total of 79 letters. 98. There are two letters from August 5, 1675. 99. For reproductions of the remnants of this correspondence see Saint-Germain, La Reynie, in general; Lettres, vol. 6, pp. xlix–li; and Depping, Correspondance administrative, vol. 2, pp. 561–71. 100. University of Pennsylvania, MS Coll 578, Colbert to La Reynie, June 22, 1678, “Jacobin reformé pour le livre qu’il a composé depuis peu de l’histoire des isles Antilles de l’Amérique que je luy avois fait deffence de poursuivre.” 101. “Ordre pour faire mettre le nommé Jaillot à la Bastille, le Roy veut que vous fassiez ensorte que l’on surprenne cet homme la, ensorte que l’on trouve s’il est possible de saisir tous ses papiers.” 102. Ibid., p. xlix, La Reynie to Colbert, April 23, 1670: “J’ay levé le scellé qui avoit esté mis sur les papiers des écrivains qui furent arrestés la nuit de vendredy dernier, et il s’est trouvé, particulairement dans ceux des nommés Thubeuf et Pigeon, un très-grand nombre de pièces manuscrites, et en général tout ce qui a esté fait sans exception d’infâme et de meschant depuis quelques années. Il seroit dif‹cile de juger présentemet s’ils en sont les auteurs on non, ou de quelque partie; mais

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comme ils on de l’esprit et quelque estude, et qu’entre leur maunscrits il y en a qui ressemblent extrêmement à des minutes originales, et qu’avec cela les malheureux demeurent d’accord d’en avoir vendu plusieurs copies, le soupçon qu’on peut aussy à cet égard contre eux n’est pas sans fondement.” 103. Colbert to La Reynie, April 1, 1680, in Lettres, vol. 6, p. 62: “Il est important que j’informe Sa Majesté de toutes les raisons et de toutes les pièces que vous pouvez avoir pour porter à empescher, par un règlement, les désordres que ces privilégiés ont causés jusque’à present dans la police. . . . comme il n’y avoit que cinq ou six arrests sur des faits particuliers joints à vos mémoires, vous preniez la peine d’examiner s’il n’y a aucunes autres pièces que vous puissiez joindre à celles que vous m’avez desjà données, et vous n’aviez rien à ajouter aux raisons contenues dans vos mémoires.” 104. Sauvy, Livres saisis à Paris, p. 5. 105. Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société, vol. 2, pp. 732–56.

c hap te r 9 1. On Foucault’s role in the régale, see his Mémoires, pp. 57–73, which contain his notes and correspondence concerning the affair. 2. Louis XIV, Déclaration pour la Régale, February 10, 1673, registered in the Chambre des Comptes de Paris, July 27 of the same year, in Lettres, vol. 6, pp. 339–40: “le droit de Régale auroit esté jugé inaliénable, imprescriptable, et nous appartenir dans tous les archeveschés et éveschés de nostre royaume, terres et pays de nostre obéissance; et nostre intention estant que nostre droit soit universellement reconnue.” 3. Ibid., p. 340. On the Régale see Charles Gérin, Louis XIV et le Saint Siège, 2 vols. (Paris, 1894). 4. On the general question of the church’s rights see Oakley, The Conciliar Tradition, chap. 1. 5. Boni‹ce VIII had erected a monastery in Pamiers in an attempt to assert papal control of the city in opposition to Philip the Fair. Thus the bishopric was of symbolic value in the ancient con›ict of jurisdiction. Pierre Dupuy, Histoire du différend d’entre le pape Boniface VIII et Philippes le Bel roy de France (Paris: Sebastien et Gabriel Cramoisy, 1655), pp. 627–66; and Georges Digard, Philippe le Bel et le SaintSiège de 1285–1304, 2 vols. (Paris, 1936), vol. 2, pp. 49–51. For a detailed literary history of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century French Gallicanism see Parsons, Church in the Republic. 6. Cited by Lavisse, Louis XIV, p. 384. 7. Caulet’s 1679 letter to Louis XIV is cited in Charles Gérin, Recherches historiques sur l’Assemblée du clergé de France de 1682 (Paris: Lecoffre, 1869), pp. 47–49: “d’ailleurs l’étude que vous avez faite des saints canons qui défendent, sous les dernières peines, aux prelates qui sont à la cour des princes de causer aucun préjudice non-seulement à leurs confrères, ou à leurs églises, mais encore aux ecclésiastiques inférieurs, ce que l’on peut voir en termes exprès dans le 25e canon du concile d’Avignon tenu en l’an 1326 par le pape Jean XXII, renouvlé par le 30e du concile tenu en la meme ville l’an 1337 sous le pape Benoît XII, sont des motifs as-

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sez puissants pour vous obliger à embarasser le parti de l’Église, nonobstant tous les intérêts et les respects humains qui pourrait vous en détourner.” 8. Ibid., p. 386: Louis XIV to his ambassador to Rome, the duke of Estrées, March, 1678: “Je témoigne au nonce combien j’étais surpris que le Pape entrât avec moi sur une matière qui était purement des droits de ma couronne; que dans toutes celles qui regardent l’Église et la religion, j’écoutais toujours ce qui me venait de lui avec un profond respect, mais que je ne pouvais rien entendre sur ce qui touchait mon État et ma couronne, qu’ainsi je n’avais aucune réponse à lui rendre sur une affaire dans laquelle je ne pouvais entrer.” 9. The famous account of the Inquisition and its archival holdings in Pamiers is Le Roy Ladurie’s Montaillou. 10. Nicolas-Joseph Foucault, Mémoires, pp. 57–58. Caulet wrote Louis, begging for food and food to be distributed to the poor. 11. Foucault calls this work a libel. Ibid., 59. 12. Gérin, Recherches historiques sur l’Assemblée, pp. 59–62. When the pope appointed the père Cerles as vicar general, a temporary successor to Caulet, Foucault had the Parlement of Toulouse condemn him to death in absentia, and he was forced to escape and go into hiding. With the fervor used to persecute Protestants, Foucault applied regalian rights to excommunicate renegades such as Antoine Charlas, preceptor to the Caulet family and author of an attack on the régale, who promptly ›ed to Rome and stayed for the remainder of his life, vociferously defending the pope’s rights against those of his king. See Colbert’s letter to the Chancellier LeTellier, ‹rst president of the Parlement of Toulouse, seeking to repress Cerles, March 13, 1681, in Depping, Correspondance administrative, vol. 4, pp. 131–32. Also see Antoine Charlas, Causa regaliae penitus explicata (Toulouse, 1679). Charlas became a leading anti-Gallican theologian, and died in Rome in 1698. 13. Foucault, Mémoires, p. 58. Foucault lists the documents he is sending back and how he is using them to make his case against Caulet. 14. On the use of documentary evidence for politics see Miller, Peiresc’s Europe, p. 85. 15. A few de Marca documents are found in the Colbert collection, but the rest are in the Collection Baluze. It is clear that Baluze used his collection integrally with that of Colbert as long as he worked for the Colbertine until the death of Seignelay in 1691. In BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 3, fols. 310 onward are documents from the time of Seignelay. 16. He makes detailed reference to it on a number of occasions. See Colbert, “Mémoire au roi sur la Régale,” 1675, in Lettres, vol. 6, p. 105. 17. Boislisle, Mémoires des Intendants, vol. 1, pp. xxi–xxii. 18. Colbert, “Mémoire au roi,” in Lettres, vol. 6, p. 116. 19. See Saunders,”Public Administration,” in general. 20. Colbert to Baluze, October 18, 1673, in Lettres, vol. 7, p. 73: “Je prie M. Baluze de veri‹er si j’ay dans ma bibliothèque tous les livres qui ont esté annoncés par le Journal des Savans, depuis cinq ou six ans, et de m’en envoyer un mémoire bien exacte Je serais ayse aussy d’avoir une copie du catalogue de tous les livres qui sont dans ma bibliothèque qui ont esté faits pour et contre le Jansénisme, avec un mémoire de tous ceux qui me manquent, en cas qu’il le sçache.”

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21. Colbert to Baluze, March 23, 1672, in Lettres, vol. 7, p. 59. 22. Colbert reprimands Baluze for lending manuscripts to Colbert’s son Seignelay without express permission and without noting this fact. Colbert to Baluze, July 1672, Lettres, vol. 7, p. 63: “Vous jugerez vous-mesme assez facilement qu’il faut qu’une bibliothèque périsse avec le temps, si elle n’est pas mieux et plus soigneusement conservée.” 23. Ibid., note 2. 24. Ibid., p. 64. 25. Ibid., p. 62, Colbert to Baluze, June 14, 1672: “Je prie M. Baluze de rechercher avec soin toutes les bulles et lettres patentes des deux congrégations de Sainte-Geneviève et de Saint-Maur, pour les mettre dans ma bibliothèque. Je luy envoye celles que j’ay, pour en chercher de pareilles; et quand il les aura trouvées, il rendra celles-cy à M. Foucault.” 26. Cole, Colbert, vol. 1, p. 425; Dessert, Argent, pouvoir et société, pp. 325–38. 27. Étienne Baluze, Capitularia regum Francorum (Paris, 1677). I refer to the translation: Histoire des Capitulaires des Rois François sous le premier et seconde race sur l’édition de 1677 (The Hague, 1755), pp. 164–65: “Manuscrits des Bibliothèques du Roi, du Vatican, de Colbert, de Thou, Bigot, Mazarin, du Tillet, Alby, Poitiers, Corbye, Moissac, St. Lomer, St. Gal, S. Vincent de Metz, S. Vincent de Laon, S. Remi de Reims, des Monastères d’Aniane et de Rivipullensis, de Philibert de la Marre, Conseiller à Dijon, du Collège de Navarre à Paris, de l’Académie d’Helmsted, de laquelle Hermand Conringius, Joachim, Jean Maderes ont ces varietés, et m’en ont grati‹é, j’ai disséqué plusieurs excellens Manuscrits du Collège de Louis le Grand; j’ai pro‹té de ceux de Pierre Pithou et Jerôme Bignon; l’exemplaire de ce dernier avait d’abord appartenu à Jean-Antoine l’Escure et acheté de ses heritiers par Claude d’Expilli: plusieurs passages de du Tillet décélent qu’il lui a été fructueux, son habitude étant d’écrire de sa main au dessus des lignes les corrections qu’il substituait au texte. J’ai en‹n mis au jour et purgé les Réglemens de Charlemagne et Louis le Debonnaire, accordés aux espagnols à l’aide d’un Manuscrit antique qui repose dans les Archives de Narbonne.” 28. Ibid., 168. 29. Baluze, Capitulaires, pp. 39–44. 30. Ibid., 97. 31. Clarke, “Leibniz as a Librarian,” pp. 140–54. 32. On the humanist reading and note-taking methods for handling enormous amounts of information, see Blair, “Information Overload,” pp. 11–40. 33. On Baluze’s extracts see in general the Catalogue des Manuscrits de la Collection Baluze. Also, on the philosophical in›uences on the movement of mass cataloging and collecting, Baluze, and the Benedictines, see Barret-Kriegel, Les historiens et la monarchie, vol. 2, pp. 205–25. Also see Jolly, “Les bibliothèques bénédictines,” pp. 29–39. 34. Baluze to Colbert, February 17, 1671, BNF MS Baluze, 100, fol. 8v: “L’Ordre qu’on a toujours tenu pour les copies des registres du Thresor des Chartes est que l’on marque à la marge de chaque registre les pieces qu’on croit valoir la peine d’estre copiées. Autrefois, lorsque je suivois l’ordre de M. de Carcavy y avoit estably, je marquois les ennoblissments, les Contrats de Marriages entre les Grands, les

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Traictez de Paix ou d’alliances, les concessions & dons faits par nos Roys aux parens des Papes, les privilèges accordez aux Eglises, aux provinces, aux villes, & à divers mestiers, & en‹n les remissions où il se trouvoit quelque clause considerable, & quelques legitimations de bastards dont les noms & familles estoient connus. J’observe le mesme ordre, [fol. 9r] mais avec plus de modération depuis que Monseigneur m’a fait l’Honneur de s’expliquer à moy sur ce sujet.” Delisle remarks that the library registers still contain the marks made on them by Baluze and Colbert (Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 440). See also “Extraits de manuscripts de la Bibliothèque du Roi,” BNF MS Baluze 63. 35. Catalogue des Manuscrits de la Collection Baluze, p. xvii. This catalog comprises an immense amount of “extracts” made from Baluze’s archival research. Colbert’s medieval manuscript collection is today called the “Cinq-Cents Colbert.” 36. For Baluze’s inventories of Colbert’s and other libraries, see BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 88–100. For example, Baluze made an inventory of the Trésor des Chartes de Paris (Mélanges Colbert, 92–100). 37. Colbert’s ‹le on the régale is found in BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 3. For the list prepared by Gallois but written by Colbert see “Liste des auteurs qui ont traité de la Régale,” 1675, BNF MS Baluze, 177, fol 268. For Colbert’s request to Gallois, see fol. 14. They are reproduced in Colbert, Lettres, vol. 6, p. 441. 38. Colbert to the abbé Gallois, 1675, BNF MS Baluze, 177, fol. 16. Also see Lettres, vol. 6, p. 103: “S’il y a quelque trace que le droit de régale fust estably en Angleterre avant cette conqueste, citer les auteurs et les passages qui en parleront. Il faut me rapporter tous mes mémoires avec les réponses. . . . Il faut surtout examiner s’il y a des preuves de ce droit dans la première et dans la seconde race. Il faut avoir quelques exemples des éveques et abbés qui ont servy les rois des deux premières races dans leurs armées. . . . Sçavoir pour quel sujet le parlement de Paris ‹t des remonstrances au Roy Louis XI sur le droit de régale. Il faut chercher le premier livre des Capitulaires de Louis le Débonnaire, chapitre LXXXIV. . . . Examiner dans les mémoires du clergé si, environ l’an 1644, le clergé ne ‹t pas instance au roy de donner une déclaration pour la collation des béné‹ces dépendans des abbayes vacantes.” 39. Colbert to Baluze, August 1, 1675, Lettres, vol. 6, pp. 114–15: “Points des Exemptions à Examiner. Par quells termes de bulles, constitutions et autres, les évesques sont empeschés d’entrer dans les églises exemptes avec leurs crois et autres marques de leur dignité, donner la bénédiction au peuple, of‹cier ponti‹calement. . . . Examiner les privilèges de la juridiction quasy épiscopale à l’égard des cathédrales, des abbayes et autres qui pourvoyent à des curés sujettes à cette juridiction. . . . Véri‹er par quel édit ou ordonnance, à cause des troubles à la religion et des pillages des églises et abbayes, les ecclésiastiques ont esté dispensés de rapporter leurs titres.” 40. Baluze to Gallois, August 2, 1675, BNF MS Baluze 177, fol. 25v. 41. The ‹le is BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 3. 42. Colbert to Baluze August 12, 1675, in Lettres, vol. 7, pp. 80–81: “Je vous renvoye ce mémoire écrit de vostre main. Faites-moy sçavoir si les copies de ces titres m’ont esté envoyées ou si c’est seulement l’extrait d’un inventaire dont je n’ay point les copies, a‹n que je puisse les demander à M. Godefroy. Gardez avec soin la pièce que je vous envoye: il faudra la mettre dans le premier volume de manuscrits

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que vous ferez relier. Sur la liste des contrats de mariage, il faudroit en faire une fort exacte [inventaire?] de tous les contrats que j’ay dans ma bibliothèque, et rechercher avec le temps tous ceux que je n’ay point pour les avoir. Il faudrait aussy faire la mesme chose des testamens.” 43. Colbert to Baluze, November 25, 1672, Lettres, vol. 6, p. 98: “Je prie M. Baluze de me faire un agrégé succinct de tout ce qui concerne la sancti‹cation des Saints, sçavoir: L’usage de la primitive Église sur cette matière, les sentimens des Pères et des quatre premiers conciles généraux; En quel temps les festes des Saints ont commencé; Par quelle autorité les principaux Saints ont esté reconnus; si par le consentement universel; par les conciles; ou par l’autorité des papes; En quel temps les papes ont commencé de sancti‹er. Qu’est-ce qui est nécessaire pour cela, et quels en sont les mémoires?” 44. BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 3, fols. 9–41. 45. Ibid., fol. 36v: “Z—L’on voit la garde des églises vacantes con‹ée en 1er lieu aux roys.” 46. Ibid., fols. 1–4. 47. Ibid., fol. 81. 48. Ibid., fols. 81 to 96 contain short heavily referenced histories of the régale. Fol. 105 contains what looks to be the draft of a royal proclamation, covered with marginal reference letters so it could be dissected and used quickly. 49. Ibid., fols. 97–103 are a summary of a treatise on the régale, with chapter summaries and text references. 50. BNF MS Baluze, 177, fol. 25v. 51. Baluze might have sent this back with his own set of questions and document queries for Colbert (ibid., fol. 71). 52. BNF MS Mélanges Colbert 3, fol. 139. 53. Ibid., fol. 114. 54. Ibid., fols. 153–56. 55. Colbert, “Mémoire au roi sur la Régale,” Lettres, vol. 6, p. 104: “Et comme, en toute sorte de droits, on recherche toujours le titre et la possession . . . c’est-àdire ce qui peut avoir attaché ce droit à la couronne de Vostre Majesté, ç’a esté, Sire, la matière de la recherche et de la curiosité des plus habiles hommes du royaume depuis plusieurs siècles.” 56. Ibid., p. 105: “Le roy Philippe de Valois, dans son ordonnance de 1334, fonde principalement la régale sur cette possession [principle of long possession], et Choppin a suivy en partie cette opinion.” 57. Ibid., pp. 106–7: “La huitième opinion rassemble toutes les autres et croit que ce droit vient de la souveraineté de garde, de patronage, de possession de ‹ef tout ensemble. . . . Il y en a des preuves certaines en grand nombre dans Grégoire de Tours et dans le recueil des formules de Marculphe. C’est l’opinion de M. Dupin et du Père Sirmond en la préface d’une Collection d’anciennes formules concernant les élections. Il dit que Louis le Débonnaire fut le premier roy qui restitua à l’Église la puissance d’élire ses pasteurs, et que son ordonnance se trouve au premier livre de ses Capitulaires, chap. LXXXIV [à lire].” 58. Ibid., pp. 112–13. 59. He also used his knowledge of the literature on the régale to help him cen-

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sor works. See Colbert to the Lieutenant of Police, Le Reynie, May 25, 1682, in Depping, Correspondance administrative, vol. 4, p. 119. 60. Aimé-Georges Martimort, Le Gallicanisme de Bossuet (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1953), pp. 361–516. 61. See the “Declaration du Clergé de 1682,” in Documents relatifs aux rapports du clergé avec la royauté de 1682 à 1705 ed. Léon Mention (Paris: A. Picard et ‹ls, 1893–1903), pp. 27–31. Colbert personally oversaw the organization of the Assembly of the Clergy and made sure that his intendants would crush any opposition (see Colbert’s orders to the intendants in Gérin, Recherches historiques sur l’Assemblée, pp. 125–27). On Colbert’s management of the clergy’s reception of the edict of 1682, see Colbert’s “Mémoire” on the edict in Depping, Correspondance administrative, vol. 4, pp. 126–31. See Colbert’s letters to the duke of Estrées, ambassador to Rome between 1677 and 1680 in Gérin, Recherches historiques sur l’Assemblée, pp. 182–83. See Colbert to d’Estrées, bishop of Laon, March 8, 1682, in Lettres, vol. 6, pp. 160–61 and his letter to Harlay of March 20, on the following pages, 161–62. On Colbert’s involvement with the negotiation with the papacy see his letters to the papal ambassador, Gérin, Recherches historiques sur l’Assemblée, pp. 184–86. While negotiating with the pope, Colbert also manages to get the pope to grant his son an of‹ce in the church. 62. François, abbé Ledieu, Mémoires & Journal sur la vie et les ouvrages de Bossuet; publiés pour la première fois d’apres les manuscrits autographes, et accompagnés d’une introd. et de notes par M. l’Abbé Guettée, 4 vols. (Paris: Didier, 1856–57), vol. 1, p. 161: “surtout depuis M. Colbert, on avait eu cette politique d’humilier Rome, et de s’af‹rmer contre elle, et que tout le conseil avait suivi ce dessein.” Joseph de Maistre insists on this point in his ultramontane defense, De l’Église gallicane dans son rapport avec le souverain Pontife (Louvain: Vanlinthout et Vandenzande, 1821), p. 96. Also see Gérin, Recherches historiques sur l’Assemblée, p. 16. 63. Colbert had corresponded with Le Vayer concerning documentation on religious matters in 1682, Lettres, vol. 6, p. 174. 64. Ibid., vol. 2, part 1, p. 207.

c hap te r 10 1. Clément, in Lettres, vol. 7, p. xxxviii. 2. Seignelay to Louis XIV, September 2, 1683, in Lettres, vol. 7, pp. xxxviii–xxxix. 3. Colbert’s reasons for choosing Desmaretz as his ministerial successor were clearly complex. He was known to be lazy, was despised by Seignelay, and Colbert apparently disavowed him on his deathbed. Saint-Simon, Mémoires, 41 vols., ed. A. de Boislisle (Paris: Hachette, 1890), vol. 7, p. 132. 4. Ibid., pp. 513. Cited in Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV, pp. 212–13: “Quand ils vous demanderont en particulier quelque éclaircissement sur quelque nature d’affaire particulière, l’avis de M. de Croissy et le mien est que vous leur donniez de bonne grace. Mais, pour les instructions générales sur les ‹nances, nous croyons que vous vous en pouvez dispenser.” 5. Claude Le Pelletier, “Mémoire présenté au Roi par M. Le Pelletier, après

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avoir quitté les ‹nances, par lequel il rend compte de son administration,” June 1691, in Correspondance des Contrôleurs Généraux des Finances avec les Intendants, ed. Boislisle, 3 vols. (Paris, 1874–97), vol. 1, p. 544: “Je reconnus que M. Colbert avoit renfermé en luy-mesme toute la direction des ‹nances, et qu’il n’y avoit personne qui fust dans la suite des affaires et en estat de m’en instruire. . . . Je crus que les registres sur lesquels V. M. écrivoit m’apprendroient sûrement et précisément l’estat du Trésor royal; mais je trouvay que le rapport n’estoit pas exact entre les registres et la caisse du Trésor royal. Je ne rencontray pas non plus dans les papiers de M. Colbert que l’on me remit toute l’instruction dont j’avois besoin, et je ne pus me faire donner ni plus de papiers ni plus d’éclaircissemens.” 6. Lionel Rothkrug describes this interministerial con›ict in detail: Opposition to Louis XIV, pp. 212–25. Mémain shows explicitly that after the death of Colbert, Seignelay was unable to effectively manage naval industrial projects without the control and cooperation of the ministry of ‹nance (La marine de guerre, p. 265). 7. See Lister, Journey to Paris, p. 128. 8. Colbert brie›y managed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1679 to 1680. 9. Croissy’s archival ‹les look just like Colbert’s document compilation notebooks. See Armand Baschet, Histoire du Dépot des Archives des affaires étrangères (Paris: Plon, 1875), pp. 75–82. 10. Kerhave, Roudot, and Tanguy, La Bretagne en 1665, p. 23. 11. Baschet, Dépot des Archives des affaires étrangères, p. 83; Jean Baillou, ed, Les Affaires étrangères et le Corps Diplomatique Francais, 2 vols. (Paris: CNRS, 1984), vol. 1, p. 109; Guy Thuillier, La première école d’administration: L’Académie Politique de Louis XIV (Geneva: Droz, 1996). The Académie Politique was disbanded after the death of de Torcy. Also see Klaits, Printed Propaganda in general on de Torcy’s secret information system and its relationship to propaganda. On the espionage information network during the ministry of de Torcy see Bely, chap. 2. 12. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 485; La Roncière and Bondois, Catalogue des Mélanges Colbert, introduction, p. iii. 13. La Roncière and Bondois, Catalogue des Mélanges Colbert, pp. xv–xxii. 14. What remained is held in four boxes in the Luynes Family collection discussed by Inès Murat. 15. John A. Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army, 1610–1715 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 16. Thierry Sarmant and Mathieu Stoll, “Le style de Louvois. Formulaire administratif et expression personnelle dans la correspondance du secrétaire d’État de la guerre de Louis XIV,” Annuaire-bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France (1999): pp 57–77. 17. Boislisle, Correspondance des Contrôleurs Généraux, vol. 1, p. iv. 18. Ronald D. Martin, “The Marquis de Chamlay, Friend and Con‹dential Advisor to Louis XIV: The Early Years, 1650–1691,” Ph.D. diss., University of California at Santa Barbara, 1972; and Jean-Philippe Cénat, “Le Marquis de Chamlay,” Mémoire de DEA, Université de Paris I. 19. Andé Corvisier, Louvois (Paris: Fayard, 1983), pp. 235–40, 326–31. 20. Charles Frostin, Les Pontchartrain, ministres de Louis XIV. Alliances et réseau

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d’in›uence sous l’ancien régime (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2006); Barret-Kriegel, Les historiens et la monarchie, vol. 4, pp. 104–6. Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis, XIV, chap. 3, describes this process. Italian states had a tradition of insisting that ministerial documents remain the property of the state, as in the case of the Venice, where ambassadors and ministers had to give their papers to archives. State documents were also readily available on the black market. On the career of a Venetian diplomat and his state papers see Aidée Scala, Girolamo Rorario: Un umanista diplomatico del Cinquecento e i suoi Dialoghi (Florence: Olschki Editore, 2004), pp. 25–41. 21. Frostin, Les Pontchartrain. 22. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, pp. 298–301. 23. Godefroy-Ménilglaise, Les savants Godefroy, p. 165. 24. Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits, vol. 1, p. 293. 25. Ibid., pp. 298–301. 26. Boislisle, Correspondance des Contrôleurs Généraux, vol. 1, p. iii. 27. Pim den Boer, History as a Profession: The Study of History in France, 1818–1914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 78–85; Jennifer Milligan, “Making Archivists: History and the State in the Archives of the Second Empire,” Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 2007. On the culture of the French archives and Bibliothèque Nationale see Lara Moore, The Ecole des Chartes and the Organization of Archives and Libraries in France, 1820–1870 (Duluth, MN: Litwin Books, 2008). 28. Boislisle, Correspondance des Contrôleurs Généraux, vol. 1, p. xx. 29. Fénelon, Écrits et lettres politiques publiés sur les manuscrits autographes, ed. Ch. Urbain (Paris: Éditions Bossard, 1920), pp. 101–5. 30. Madelaine Danielou, Fénelon et le duc de Bourgogne. Étude d’une éducation (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1955). 31. Boulainvilliers, État de la France, vol. 1, p. 54: “L’esprit de servitude est généralement répanduë dans ces Escrits; mais au fond qu’entendoient-ils, ces Intendans, par le nom vague de Secret de l’Etat? Ce terme peut être d’usage par raport à une négociation & à une entreprise, qui sont des secrets, mais le Gouvernement n’en a point, & n’en peut avoir; les ressorts en sont connus de tous les hommes; en est-il d’autres que l’Etablissement des Loix & leur observation? Le pouvoir & l’obéissance? L’amour ou la crainte? Les passions ont des mistéres & des secrets; un Gouvernement légitime n’en connoit point; mais si les Ministres pillent, s’ils ont des intérêts particuliers, j’avouërai pour lors qu’il y a des secrets inconnus dans le Gouvernement, & qu’ils ont une espèce de raison d’employer & la force & le mistére pour en dérober la vûë autant au Prince qu’aux sujets, également intéressez à ceux qu’il n’y en ait point.” 32. Ibid., p. 49: “les ambitions et les mouvemens intriguans, de ces pratiques secretes qui conduisent à la fortune par des routes justement suspectes; en‹n ceux [les Intendants] qui se ›attent d’une plus grande protection.” 33. Henri, Count de Boulainvilliers, Histoire de l’ancien governement de France (Amsterdam: Aux Dépens de la Compagnie, 1727), p. 20. 34. Ibid., p. 17: “C’étoit une nécessité indispensable de redresser de tels Mé-

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moires, tantot par le changement du texte & des matiéres, tantot par une réfutation sérieuse des erreurs qu’ils contiennent, tantot par la voye de l’ironie & de la réduction à l’absurdité: métode la plus aisée à l’égard de tels Ecrivains, qui ont abusé ordinairement des notions les plus communes pour faire servilement leur cour.” 35. Ibid., p. 21. 36. Jacques Necker, Compte rendu au roi, (Paris, 1781), pp. 3–4: Mais une autre cause du grand credit de l’Angleterre, c’est, n’en doutons point, la notoriété publique à laquelle est soumis l’état de ses ‹nances. Chaque année cet état est presenté au Parlement, on l’imprime ensuite; et tous les préteurs connaissent ainsi regulièrement la proportion qu’on maintient entre les revenues et les dépenses, ils ne sont point troublés par ces soupçons et ces craintes chimériques, campagnes inséparables de l’obscurité. En France, on a fait constamment un mystère de l’état des ‹nances; ou si quelquefois on en a parlé, c’est dans des préambules d’édits, et toujours au moment où l’on vouloit emprunter; mais ces paroles, trop souvent les mêmes pour être toujours variés, ont dû nécessairement perdre de leur autorité, et les homes d’experience n’y croient plus que sous la caution, pour ainsi dire, du caractère moral du minister des ‹nances. 37. On the emergence of royal opposition and even radical philosophy in the world of parliamentary scholars see Lionel Gossman, Medievalism and the Ideologies of the Enlightenment: The World and Work of La Curne de Sainte-Palaye (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1968). On the monarchy’s attempts to reorganize its chartes, see Dieter Gembicki, Histoire et politique à la ‹n de l’Ancien Régime: Jacob-Nicolas Moreau 1717–1803 (Paris: Nizet, 1979). On the archival con›ict between the Parlement and the monarchy, and the essential point that feudal legal documents were a source of political ideology, see Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 31–85. On the parliamentarian use of medieval legal archives as a source of secret knowledge to be used against the monarchy and the rise of eighteenth-century constitutionalism, see the essential work by Francesco Di Donato, L’ideologia dei robins nella Francia dei Lumi: Constituzionalismo e assolutismo nell’esperienza politico-instituzionale della magistratura di antico regime 1715–1788 (Naples: Edizioni Scienti‹che Italiane, 2003), and his “Constitutionnalisme et idéologie de robe: L’évolution de la théorie juridico-politique de Murard et Le Paige à Chanlaire et Mably,” Annales HSS 4 (1997): pp. 821–52. On the status of legal culture in the eighteenth century, see David Avrom Bell, Lawyers and Citizens: The Making of a Political Elite in Old Regime France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). Also on the same dynamics in England, see Alessandro Arienzo, Alle origini del conservatorismo politico inglese: Geore Savile e la Retaurazione Stuart (Florence: Centro Editoriale Toscano, 2004). 38. Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment, pp. 9–13. 39. On enlightened despotism and its ever paradoxical role in the rise of modernity see Fritz Hartung, “Der aufgeklärte Absolutismus,” Historische Zeitschrift 180 (1955): pp. 15–42; John G. Gagliardo, Enlightened Despotism (New York: Harlan

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Davidson, 1967); Leonard Krieger, An Essay on the Theory of Enlightened Despotism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975); Charles Ingrao, “The Problem of ‘Enlightened Absolutism’ and the German States: Politics and Society in the Holy Roman Empire, 1500–1806,” Journal of Modern History 58 suppl. (1986): pp. 161–80; Hamish Scott, ed., Enlightened Absolutism: Reform and Reformers in Later EighteenthCentury Europe (London: Macmillan, 1990). 40. See Bayley, Empire and Information. 41. On the in›uence of Colbert’s Intendants in Bourbon Spain see Abbad and Ozanam, Les intendants espagnols; and Emmanuelli, Un mythe de l’absolutisme bourbonien. On the emergence of a French-style royal library and system of scienti‹c academies within it in eighteenth-century Spain see Fernando Alvarez Bouza and Elena Santiago Páez, eds., La Real Biblioteca Pública 1711–1760 de Filipe V a Fernando VI (Madrid: Biblioteca Nacional, 2004), p. 48. 42. Marco Carassi and Isabella Massabò Ricci, “Gli archivi del principe. L’organizzazione della memoria per il governo dello Stato,” in Il Tesoro del principe. Titoli, carte, memorie per il governo dello Stato, ed. Marco Carassi, Angela Griseri, Isabella Mossabò Ricci, and Elisa Mongiano (Turin: Archivio di Stato di Torino, 1989), pp. 21–39. This article also contains the ‹nest description of how, reacting to the French state, Victor Amadeus II built his state archives. See p. 21 for Victor Amadeus’s enunciation of his new centralized archival policy: “Nous marquons la con‹ance que nous avons en vous, en vous commettant la garde et la direction de nos Archives Royalles qui sont le depôt des Chartres et papiers principaux de nôtre Couronne, étant persuadé que vous observerez non seulement une ‹delité inviolable dans la garde de ce trésor mais aussy une attention toute particulière à bien conserver les papiers, Bulles, Brefs, Diplomes, Investitures, Traittés, Contracts de mariage, Testaments et autres titres qui sont contenus dans les dictes Archives et qui y seront remis de tems à autre.” On the mingling of a printed book library as a management tool for the state archive see in the same work, Francesco Malaguzzi, “La Biblioteca Antica,” pp. 40–48. Also see Chris Storrs, War, Diplomacy, and the Rise of Savoy, 1690–1720 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 177 43. Geoffrey Symcox, Victor Amadeus II: Absolutism in the Savoyard State, 1675–1730 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1983). For the use of medieval charters, historical consciousness, and an administrative archive in Piedmont, see Giuseppe Ricuperati, Le avventure di uno stato “ben amministrato”: Rappresentazioni e realtà nello spazio sabaudo tra Ancien Régime e Rivoluzione (Turin: Editrice Tirrenia Stampatori, 1994), chaps. 1–2; “Carlo Emanuele I: Il formarsi di un’immagine storiogra‹ca dai contemporanei al primo Settecento,” in Politica e cultura dell’età di Carlo Emanuele I, ed. Mariarosa Masoero, Sergio Mamino and Claudio Rosso (Florence: Olschki, 1999), pp. 3–22; and Lo stato sabaudo nel settecento: Dal trionfo delle burocrazie alla crisi d’antico regime (Turin: UTET Libreria, 2001), p. 121. 44. Symcox, Victor Amadeus II, p. 57. 45. Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Éloge de Gournay, in Turgot, Oeuvres, ed. Eugène Daire, 2 vols. (Osnabrück: Otto Zeller, 1966), vol. 1, p. 274. 46. Saint-Just, “Report to the Convention on Behalf of the Committee of Public Safety, October 10th, 1793,” in The Old Regime and the French Revolution, trans.

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Caroline Ford, ed. Keith Michael Baker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 360–61. 47. James Madison, “Letter to W. T. Barry,” August 4, 1822 in The Writings of James Madison, ed. Gaillard P. Hunt (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910), vol. 9, p. 103.

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Index Aachen, 13 Absolutism, 12 Académie d’Architecture, 100 Académie des Beaux-Arts, 100 Académie des Belles-Lettres de Caen, 123–24 Académie des Inscriptions et BellesLettres, 100, 109, 128 Académie des Inscriptions et Médaillons, 100 Académie des Sciences, 100, 109 Académie Française, 31 Académie Française de Rome, 100 Académie Politique of de Torcy, 156 Accounting, 18, 34, 36, 54–58; and Louis XIV, 60–66 Agendas, 6, 18; made for Louis XIV, 51–66; of Seignelay, 89 D’Aguesseau, Henri de, intendant, 91 Alberti, Leon Battista, 54, 57 Amelot de La Houssaye, AbrahamNicolas, 54, 57 American Historical Association, 11 Amsterdam, 24–25 Ancient Constitution, the, 13, 29, 31, 49 Ann of Austria, Queen of France, 38, 58 Antiquarianism, 25–33; and government,

152; information management, 143–52; and politics, 142 Archives, 7, 11; archival pillages, 101–8, 126; de Brienne archive, 103; Colbert and archives, 37, 104–12; colonial archives, 113–19; Dutch archives, 24; ecclesiastical archives, 103–6; Fouquet’s archive, “la Cassette de Fouquet,” 46; French parliamentary archives, 43–44, 108; French state archives, 28–30, 101–8; Fugger family archive, 19; genealogical archives, 182–83; medieval archives, 14–15; nineteenthcentury centralizing state archives, 158–59; openness and archives, 166; and Orientalism, 105–7; permanent state archives, 158; Renaissance archives, 16; and royal authority, 162; searchable archives, 158; and secrecy, 166; Spanish Archives, 19–21 Archivio di Stato di Torino, 163 Archivio Segreto del Vaticano, 22, 28 Arnoul, Nicolas, intendant, 73–74, 106 Arnoul, Pierre, ‹ls, intendant, 78–79 Ars apodemica, 70–72 Ars mercatoria, 18, 35 Atlantic World, lack of concept of, 115, 118

269

270 d’Aubarède, Vincent, Père, 141 Augsburg, 19 d’Avity, Pierre, 71 Bacon, Francis, 5, 8, 9, 97 Bagni, Nicola Guidi di, cardinal, 39 Bale, John, 22 Baluze, Étienne, 1, 7, 101, 108; administers Colbert’s library, 111–13; manages information for the Affair of the régale, 143–52; and New World archives, 116; serves Seignelay, 156; trains with Mabillon, 121–14; works with La Reynie, 133 banking, 18, 24 Barnier, François, 105 Baronius, Cesar, cardinal, 22, 145 Barret-Kriegel, Blandine, 9 Bastille, the prison of, 130, 138 Bayle, Pierre, 101, 136, 139 Beauvilliers, Paul, duke de Saint-Aignan et de, 159 Bellinzani, Francesco, 76, 117 Benedictines, 120, 146 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo, 100 Besson, Joseph, père, 106–7 bibliophilia, 17–18, 102, 104, 162 Bibliotheca San Marco, 21, 28 biblioteca selecta, 95–97, 111 Bibliothèque Mazarine, 40–43 Bibliothèque Nationale, 8 Bicci, Averardo Francesco di, 55 Biterne, Law Firm of, 35 Blair, Ann, 23 Blois, Françoise-Marie de Bourbon, mademoiselle de, 51 Blondel, François, 110 Blotius, Hugo, 70, 95–97 Bodin, Jean, 30 Boislisle, Arthur de, 9 Bookkeeping, double-entry, 18, 35, 53–58; naval, 74–76 Boniface VIII, Benedetto Caetani, pope, 141 Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne, bishop, 151 Botero, Giovanni, 55 Bouhours, Dominique, père de, 87 Boulainvilliers, Henri, comte de, 159–60

i nde x Bourgogne, Louis, ‹ls de France, duke de, 125, 159 Bourzeis, Aimable, abbé, 108, 122 Boutigny, Roland Le Vayer de, intendant, 151 Boyle, Robert, 115 Bracciolini, Poggio, 16, 17 Brienne, Antoine de Loménie, comte de, 103 Brienne, Henri-Auguste de Loménie, comte de, 29; archive of, 103 Brunelleschi, Filippo, 54, 57 Bruno, Giordano, 24 Budé, Guillaume, 30 Bullion, Claude de, 53 Bureaucracy, 3, 11; Colbert’s reforms of the intendancy, 67; Foucault’s training for, 123–26; Jesuit, 23, 29, 31; and scholarship, 106; Spanish, 20; and the Terror, 166 Busbeque, Ogier Ghislain de, 105 Call numbers, 93 Cambridge University, 1 Cambridge Modern History, 15 Canada, 113–19 Carcassonne, 104 Carcavy, Pierre, 99 cartography, 71–72, 76 Casa de Contratacíon, 20, 28 Cassini, Giovanni Domenico, 8, 76, 99 Castiglione, Baldessare, 54 Castille, 18 catalogs, 146 categories, 5 Catherine II, the Great, Tsarina of Russia, 162 Catinat de Vaugelay, Pierre, Président de, 81 Caulet, François-Étienne, bishop, 140–42, 149 censorship, 130–39 the church, and paperwork, 13–14, 16; scholars of, 120–23 Central Intelligence Agency, 12 Chambers, Ephraïm, 195 Chambre des Comptes, 28, 123, 151

Index Chamlay, Jean-Louis Bolé, marquis de, 157 Champaigne, Philippe de, 4 Chapelain, Jean, 101, 157; family accounting ‹rm of, 35 Charlemagne, 14, 140 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, 54 Charles VIII, King of France, 109, 141 Charles IX, King of France, 30 Charron, Pierre, 58 Chevreuse, Charles Honoré d’Albert, duke de Luynes, de Chaulnes et de, 159 Choppin, René, 28 chorography, 71 Christina, Queen of Sweden, 41 Cicero, 2 Clanchy, M. T., 15 Clément, Nicolas, 122 Clément, Pierre, 6 clerks, 30 Clermont, Collège de, 87, 89, 123 Clinton, William Jefferson, 12 Cluny, 15 Clusius, Carolus, 19 Coffee Houses, 10 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste: and accounting, 34, 36, 50, 60–66; and archives, 7, 107–12; book collector, 101–8, 126–27; and bookkeeping, 35; collapse of his ministry, 156; and colonial policy, 113–19; correspondence of, 137–39; death, 153; education of, 34–36; family, 34; and ‹nance, 34; and ‹nancial management, 38; fortune of, 36–37; and Foucault, 123–26; his son, 88–93; and historiographical culture, 127–29; information management, 7; information management, blueprint for his system of, 86; information management, collapse of his system, 154–59; information management, cross-checking, 78; information management and intendants, 68–73; information management and navy, 73–75; information management systems, 12, 41; innovations, 163–65; and Jesuits, 34; and La Reynie, 133–39; legacy of, 163–65; li-

271 brary of 1–3, 95–119, 121, 145; library, sale of, 156; lobby of, 68; and Louis XIV, relationship to and education of, 51–52, 59–64; and Louis XIV, reports to, 91; and Mazarin, 35–40; and Mazarin’s library, 40–43; and merchant culture, 34–35; and Gabriel Naudé, 39–42; original name of Mississippi River, 113; and paperwork, 4, 6, 8, 36; and the Paris Parlement, 43, 47–49; Paris Parlement, con›ict with, 80–81; Paris Parlement, regulation of, 69; and the Republic of Letters, 127; reputation and historical image, 3–5; rise to power, chap. 3; Royal Library, 4, 42, 94–101; and science, 98–104; secrecy of, 44, 47–48 Colbert, Édouard François, comte de Maulévrier, 155 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, marquis de Seignelay, education, 84–88; makes enquêtes; and note-taking, 89–93; policy letters, 138–37; takes over from his father, 153 Colbert, Marie Charron, 36 Colbert, Nicolas, archbishop, 84 Colbert de Croissy, Charles, intendant, Ambassador, 74, 77, 81, 111–12 Colbert de Terron, Jean, intendant, 45, 73–74, 79, 84 Colbert de Torcy, Jean-Baptiste, foreign minister, archive and information system of, 156–57 collecting, 19, 101–8, 127 Collegio Romano, 22 colonies, 113–19 Commines, Philippe, de, 109 Committee of Public Safety, 165 Communication Networks, 10 Congress of the United States, 11 Conring, Herman, 101, 127 Corregidores, 72 Cotelier, Jean-Baptiste, 105 Cotton, Robert, 8, 27–28 Council of Finances, 53, 60 Counter, or Catholic Reform, 53, 143 Cour des Aides, 81–82 Courtilz de Sandras, Gatien, 4

272 Cramoisy, Sébastien Marbre, 102 credit, 160–61 Creil, Jean de, intendant, 81 curia regia, 29 curiosity, 19; Colbert’s lack of in the New World, 114, 119 Dafforne, Richard, 56 D’Alembert, Jean Le Rond, 4 Dallek, Robert, 11 D’Artagnan, Charles de Batz-Castelmore, 46 Dassié, F., 110 data, management, 23; search, 146–52 de’Barbari, Jacopo, 55 Delamare, Nicolas, 131, 133 Descartes, René, 3, 5, 41 Desmaretz, Nicolas, 154–55 Dessert, Daniel, 68 Diderot, Denis, 4–5, 95, 110 diplomatica, 101, 121 Diplomats, 17–18, 70–71 Doat, Jean, Président de, 104 Dodart, Denis, 110 Doomsday Book, 15 Doujat, Jean, 80 Dreyfus, Alfred, 11, 165 Du Cange, Charles du Fresne, sieur, 31, 105 Dumoulin, Charles, 28 Dupuy Academy, 31 Dupuy, Jacques, 27–28, 31, 94, 100, 145, 161 Dupuy, Pierre, 27–28, 31–33, 100, 145, 161 Durey de Meinières, Jean-Baptiste François, 161 Du Tillet, Jean the elder, 30, 33, 89, 102 East India Company (VOC), 24–25 Eastern manuscripts, 104–6 Ecclesiastical scholars, 120–23, 144 Edict of Nantes, 155 Encyclopédie, 4–5, 95, 110, 161 encyclopedism, 94–101, 104 England, 18, 21; government and information, 26–27; treaties with, 111–13

i nde x enquêtes, 67, 69, 77; Seignelay trains to write them, 155 d’Épernon, Bernard de Nogaret de La Valette, duke, 131 Erasmus, Desiderius, 57 Escorial, el, 20 Evans, R. J. W., 9 Federal Bureau of Investigation, 12 Félibien, André, 110 Fermat, Pierre de, 95 Fernandez de Oviedo, Gonzalo, 114 Files, 17, 23; Colbert’s ‹les, 116, 122; Colbert’s ‹le on the régale, 147; of police, 80; Seignelay’s ‹les, 89–93, 108 ‹nance, 18, 34; and openness, or transparency, 159–61 Flacius, Mathias, 22 Florence, Italy, 10, 16–19, 98 Foucault, Joseph-Nicolas, marquis de Magny, 43, 48, 78, 80, 90, 123–28, 137, 141–42 Foucault, Michel, 9 Fouillac, Antoine Raymonde, abbé de, 124 Fouquet, Nicolas, marquis de Belle-Isle, vicomte de Melun et Vaux, 43–47; Cassette, or archive of, 46–47; library, 102 François I, King of France, 30 Frederick II, the Great, King of Prussia, 162 Freedom of Information Act, 11 Fronde, the, 35, 40, 130, 131 Fugger, Anton, 19, 144 Fugger, Jakob, 19 Fulda, 15 Galileo, 8, 24 Galison, Peter, 11 Galland, Antoine, 125 Gallicanism, 22, 27–32, 107, 123–25, 140–42, 145, 151 Gallois, Jean, abbé de 144, 147–50 Gardiner, George, 116 Gates, Bill, 163 Gaudais-Dupont, Louis, 113 genealogy, policy of, 82

Index Genoa, 16, 19 geography, 71–72 German states, 18 Gesner, Conrad, 23, 58, 95 Godefroy, Denis II, 128 Godefroy, Théodore, 29–31, 89, 102, 104 Google, 2, 7 government; and paperwork, 6, 22, 60; and antiquarianism, 25–33, 69 Gracián, Balthasar, 53 Grafton, Anthony, 99 Grands Jours d’Auvergne, 82 Gregory XV, Alessandro Ludovisi, pope, 22 Grotius, Hugo, 26, 28, 41, 54 Grub Street, 139 Guicciardini, Francesco, 17–18 Guise, Henri II, duke de, 38 Habermas, Jürgen, 10 Hague, the, 24 Hapsburg, empire, 25 Harlay, Achilles de, 151 Harlay de Champvallon, François de, 30, 108, 151 Heinsius, Nicolas, 28, 127 Henry IV, King of France, 29, 52–53, 103 Henry VIII, King of England, 141 Hérouard, Jean, 58 Hevelius, Johannes, 101 history, and politics, 127–29 Hobbes, Thomas, 97 Holland, 18; Dutch Revolt, 21; Dutch Wars, 122; French competition with, 76; radical books from, 136–39; trade empire, 24–25 d’Hozier, Charles-René, 83 humanism, 16–19; Colbert’s distaste for, 109; decline of political humanism, 39–40; and political pedagogy, 52; practical humanism and accounting, 54–55 Huygens, Christian, 8, 99, 127 Ianziti, Gary, 17 information, 6; Amsterdam, 24–25; Colbert’s orders concerning, 77; Colbert’s system of, 97; collection, 68; and colo-

273 nial affairs, 114; cross-checking, 79; and genealogy, 82; handling and management of, 23, 41, 52, 56, 62–66; and ministry of foreign affairs, 156; and navy, 73–76; networks, 10, 12; overload, 77; and the Parlement, 161–62; and politics, 144–52; retrieval of, 146; war room, 148–52 informants, political, 80; religious, 15, 76 informers, 69, 72 Innocent XI, Benedetto Odescalchi, pope, 141 Intelligence, 12, 68, 72, 80; and historical documents, 129; scienti‹c, 99 intendants, 67; and enquêtes, 77; as informers, 72; and navy, 73–76 investiture crises, 140–41 James I, King of England, 97 Jansenism, 105, 121, 133–34, 144 Jarry, Nicolas, 65 Jefferson, Thomas, 117–18 Jesuits, 5, 6, 12; and bureaucracy, 23; and education of Colbert’s son, 89–93; and New World, 114, 117, 118; and science, 98; and travel, 70–71 Journal (Giornale), 55–56, 62 Kelley, Donald, 30 King, James E., 9 Kircher, Athanasius, 8, 23, 104–5 Koselleck, Reinhard, 10 Kunstkammern, 71 Laffemas, Barthélemy de, 57 La Fosse, Conseiller de, 46 La Hire, Philippe de, 8 Lamoignon, Guillaume de Malesherbes, Président de, 47 La Mothe Lavayer, François de, 58–59 La Reynie, Gabriel-Nicolas, lieutenant général du Châtelet, 8; education, 131; governing Paris, 132; policing of letters, 130–39; works with Baluze, 133 La Salle, Jean-Baptiste, chevalier de, 114, 118 Lavisse, Ernst, 6, 8, 67 Law, John, 160

274 Lecointe, Charles, 110 ledgers, 54–58 Le Gallois, Jean, 100 Legal reforms, 47–49 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von, 146 Le Laboureur, Jean, 161 Le Maistre, 28 Le Nôtre, André, 1 Léonard, Frédéric, 102 Le Paige, Louis-Sébastien, 161 Le Pelletier, Claude de, 154–55, 157 Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel, 67 Le Tellier, Michel, 35–36, 45; family, 154–55 libraries: and the Encyclopédie, 5; Mazarine library, 102; and science, 1, 98–104. See also Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, library Library, Royal, 1, 7, 8, 28, 83, 94–107; and Louvois family, 158; taken from Colbert’s control, 154–56 library science, 7 Lionne, Hugues de, 51 Lipsius, Justus, 39, 53–54 Lister, Martin, 1–2, 95 Livy, 129 Locke, John, 5 longitude, 8 Longueil, René de, 80 Longueville, Henri II d’Orléans, duke de, 97 Louis, Grand Dauphin de France, 50, 60 Louis XI, King of France, 109 Louis XIII, King of France, 103, 143 Louis XIV, 5, 6, 12, 13, 33, 39, 43, 44, 47–49; breaks up Colbert’s ministry and system, 154–59; and clandestine literature, 139; and colonies, 114; education, 58–65; Friday morning reports from Colbert, 91; patronage, 101, 104; reading enquêtes, 77; relationship with Colbert, 50–52; and the right of régale, 140–43 Louis XV, 135; purchases Colbert’s books, 157, 165 Louis XVI, 135, 161, 165

i nde x Louvois, Camille Le Tellier, abbé de, 158 Louvois, François Michel Le Tellier, marquis de, 157–58 Louvre, palais du, 95; and the royal press, 109 Luther, Martin, 141 Lyon, 18 Mabillon, don Jean de, 101, 121–23 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 17 Malesherbes, Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de, 135–61 Mallet, Roland, 57 Malynes, Girard, 116 maps, 71–72, 76, 95; Native American, 117 Marca, Pierre de, archbishop, 28, 121, 143–44 Maridor, Jean, Président de, 47 Marie-Thérèse d’Espagne, Queen of France, 51, 122 Marle, Bernard-Hector de, intendant, 79, 81 Marsilius of Padua, 141 Mascranni, banking house, 35 Mason Lodges, 10 Maurice of Nassau, 53 Mazarin, Cardinal Jules de, 3, 29, 33; and Colbert, 35–39, 43–44, 51; and education of Louis XIV, 89, 129; library of, 40–43, 102 McKenzie, Donald F., 115 Medici, bank, 18, 54; family, 34 Medici, Cosimo de’, 18 Medici, Marie de’, Queen of France, 57 Mellis, John, 56 Mercantilism, 3, 7, 164 Merchants, 18; culture of, 34–35, 62–66; code of, 86 Merovingians, 13 Mesme, Henri, président de, 188 Mézéray, François-Eudes, 128 Milan, 16–18 Ministry of Finance, 154; falls out of control of Colbert family, 156 Mississippi River, originally called the Colbert River, 113

Index Modifort, Thomas, 116 Moissac, Abbey de, 124 Montaigne, Michel de, 58, 115 Montano, Benito Arias, 21 Montchrétien, Antoine de, 57–58, 70 Montespan, Françoise-Athénaïs, marquise de, 51, 157 Montfaucon, Bernard de, 125–26 Morales, Ambrosio de, 21, 26 Moreau, Jean-Jacob, 162 Münster, Sebastian, 70 Napoléon, Bonaparte, 165 Nattier, Marc, the elder, 85 Naudé, Gabriel, 39–42, 58, 95, 102, 108–9 navy, French, record and information systems, 73–76 Newton, Sir Isaac, 5 Niccoli, Niccolò, 102 Northumbria, 15 notebooks, 18, 48, 54; of Charles Perrault, 129; of intendants, 82; Louis XIV (Carnets de Louis XIV), 64–66; of Seignaly, 89 note taking, and accounting, 54–58; and the Jesuits, 23; and Seignelay’s training, 84–93 Observatory, Royal, 8 Ogilvie, Brian, 70 Openness, ‹nancial, 159–61 Orientalism, 105–7 Origen, Adamantius, 22 d’Orléans, Philippe, duke de, 51 d’Orléans, Philippe, duke de, Regent of France, 123 Orta, Gracia da, 57 Ovando, Juan de, 114 Oxenstierna af Södermöre, Axel Gustafsson, Chancellor of Sweden, 96 Pacioli, Luca, 54–57 Pallavicino, Sforza, 21 Pamiers, 140–42 paperwork, 8, 14; and colonies, 113–19; and the Italian City States, 16; in Spain, 20; and secrecy, 45, 59, 79;

275 Seignelay’s guide to state paperwork, 89–90 Parker, Geoffrey, 9 Parker, Matthew, 22 Paris, 1, 18 Parlement of Paris, 28–33, 43–44, 67–68, 80–81; and information, 161–62; and censorship, 133 Paul V, Camillo Borghese, pope, 21–23 Pedagogy, 6, 52–54, 57; merchant, 86–87; project for the duke de Bourgogne, 159 Peiresc, Nicolas Fabri de, 27, 30, 95, 100, 102, 104–5, 125–26, 139 Pellison-Fontanier, Paul, 128 Pellot, Claude, intendant, 81 pendulum clock, 8 Péré‹xe de Beaumont, Paul-Philippe, 58 Perrault, Charles, 128–29 Perrault, Claude, 109 Petrarch, Franceso, 16 Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia, 162 Petty, William, 69 Philip the Fair, King of France, 141 Philip II of Spain, 9, 19–21, 26, 68, 71; compared to Colbert, 73, 77, 95, 113–14, 166 Philip V, King of Spain, 162 Philippe-Auguste, King of France, 67 philology, 17 Picard, Jean, 9 Pietro Leopoldo, Grand Duke of Tuscany, 10 Pithou, Pierre, 28, 30–31, 145 policing, of letters, 130–39; of Parlement, 80 politeness, 10 Pombal, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, conde de Oeiras, marques de, 162 Pontchartrain, Jérôme Phélypeaux, comte de, 158 portfolios, 8 The Pragmatic Sanction, 141 Presidential Records Act, 11 printing, 24; regulation of Paris printers, 131–39 Priolo, Benjamin, 129

276 Propaganda, 128 Protestants, 92, 105; policing of, 133–34 Public Sphere, 10–11 publishing, 41 Pussort, Henri, 47–48 radical Enlightenment, 133, 164 Ramus, Petrus, 57 Reagan, Ronald, 12 record keeping, 16–18, 56–58, 74, 107–9, 121–23 reference system, 143–52 Reformation, 21–22, 141 regal, royal right of, 126, 140–51 registers, of state funds, 7, 28, 60–63, 89; parliamentary, 43 reims, 34 relaciones topográ‹cas, 20, 26, 68, 71, 113 relations, 87 relazioni, 20 Renaudot, Jacques, 136 Renaudot, Théophraste, 32, 136 reports, government, 27, 61; cross-checking of, 79; of intendants, 69, 73; of Seignelay, 85 Republic of Letters, the, 10, 27–28, 30; Colbert’s control of, 127, 163–64; and libraries, 102; policing of, 133–39; and royal academies, 100 research, 97–104, 151 Revolution, the French, 108, 151, 160, 163 Ribier, Guillaume, 129–30 Richelieu, Armand du Plessis, Cardinal de, 5, 29, 31, 34, 52–53, 58, 96, 100, 143 Richer, Jean, 110 Rigault, Nicolas, 30 Rochefort, port of, 73–76, 84, 87, 114 Roman script, 17 Rome, 16, 17 Royal Press, 109–10, 123 Royal Society, 98 Rudolph II of Bohemia, Holy Roman Emperor, 25, 120 Sacchini, Francesco, 23

i nde x Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, 22 Sainte-Palaye, Jean-Baptiste de La Curne de, 161 Saint Just, Antoine Louis Léon de Richebourg de, 165–66 Sales, St. François de, 109 Sallo, Denis de, 100, 136 salons, 10 Salutati, Coluccio, 17–18 Sandys, Sir Edwin, 26 Sanson, Nicolas, 76 Sarpi, Paolo, 8, 135 Savary, Jacques, 57, 86, 90, 110 Savoy, 162–63 Scala, Bartolomeo, 17 science, 98–104 Scienti‹c Revolution, 3 scribes, in the navy, 74–75, 146 scriptoria, 13, 16 search engine, 7 secrecy, and archives, 107, 129–30; criticism of, 159–60; and the French monarchy, 47; and government reports and memos, 80; and modern government, 9–12, 29, 39, 44–45 secret sphere, 33, 168 Secretaries, 29, 36, 44 Séguier, Pierre, duke de Villemor, Chancellier de France, 30, 46 Sepúlveda, Juan Ginés de, 115 Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de, 3 Seville, 18, 20 Shapiro, Barbara, 71 Sharpe, Kevin, 9 Shils, Edward, 11 Sienna, 16 Simancas, 20, 28 Simon, Rochard, 134–35 Simonetta, Cicco, 17 Simonetta, Giovanni, 17 Smedley-Weill, Anette, 72 Smith, Adam, 4 Souchu de Rennefort, Urbain, 114 Spain, 20–21, 98; and the Dutch archives, 29 Spanheim, Ezechiel, 4

Index Spinoza, Baruch, 5 Staatenkunde, 9 Stasi, the, 165 state information system, 22; Colbert’s design for, 96; collapse of, 154; criticism of, 159; managing of, 60, 67 state secrecy, 9–12, 29, 39, 44–45, 80 statistics, 72–73, 118 Steven, Simon, 53–55 Strada, Octavio, 25 Sublet de Noyers, Françoise de, 35 Suetonius, 109 Sully, Maximillien de Bethune, duke de, 29; archives of, 108 Tacitus, 39, 53, 57, 129, 135 Talon, Jean, 117–18 Taxation, 68, 126 Terence, 109 The Terror, 165 The Thirty Years War, 53 Thou, Jacques-Auguste de, 8, 54, 95, 105, 139 travel, 70–72; as an element of Colbert’s training of Seignelay, 87; in the New World, 114 Trésor des Chartes, 28 Trichet du Fresne, Raphaël, 102 Trithemius, Johannes, 22 trust, 160 Tubeuf, Jacques, intendant, 37–38, 126 Turgot, Ann Robert Jacques, Baron de Laune, 163–64 University of Pennsylvania, 137

277 Urban VIII, Maffeo Barberini, pope, 22 Vallière, Louise de, 51 Van Damme, Stéphane, 10 Varillas, Antoine, 128 Vatican, 17–18, 22–23 Vauban, Sébastien Le Prestre, marquis de, 85, 111 Vaux-le-Vicomte, 44–45 Venice, 16, 18; ambassadors, 20, 21; Interdict, 21–22; archival catalog, 22 Vermandois, Louis de Bourbon, comte de, 51 Versailles, 3, 67, 95, 100; publications about, 110 Vice President of the United State of America, Of‹ce of, 11 Victor Amadeus II, duke of Savoy, 163 Vieira, Damiao, 116 Vinci, Leonarda da, 54, 57 Vossius, J. G., 127 Wansleben (Vanslèbe), Johann, Michael, pere, 106 Wars of Religion, 28 Weber, Max, 3, 13, 15, 154 West Indies, 24 Williams, Robert, 56 Wolfenbüttel Library, 99–103, 146 Wotton, Sir Henry, 104 Ympyn, Jan, 56 Zsámboky, Janos (Sambucus), 25 Zwinger, Theodore, 70