WEBVTT

NOTE Philippe Egalité: Power and Corporate Welfare in the French Revolution

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.000
This paper is a consideration of an important figure of the old regime France,

2
00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:15.000
Philippe duc d'Orléans, the Duke of Orleans,

3
00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:19.000
who like so many other old regime notables at the time of the French Revolution,

4
00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:23.000
made their way into the revolutionary elite apparently seamlessly.

5
00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:27.000
And as with many others who entered that elite,

6
00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:34.000
There were many aristocrats among even the radical revolutionaries.

7
00:00:34.000 --> 00:00:44.000
As with many others who entered that elite, the Duke's bid for what we might call a new political economic order failed when the revolution turned against him and guillotined him.

8
00:00:44.000 --> 00:01:04.100
Yet, in a sense, the order which Philippe d'Orléans hoped to shape and define did succeed, as did his related quest to displace the senior line of the House of Bourbon, or the House of Bourbon, and gain the throne for the House of Orléans.

9
00:01:04.100 --> 00:01:10.400
This denouement, of course, took place only 37 years after the duke's head was chopped off,

10
00:01:10.400 --> 00:01:17.400
When his son and heir, Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, was proclaimed King of France as a result of the Revolution of 1830.

11
00:01:17.400 --> 00:01:21.400
I want to look at the goals and the means of Philippe d'Orléans.

12
00:01:21.400 --> 00:01:32.400
And I want to argue that the House of Orléans leads us to one of the most important subplots of the French Revolution and indeed of modern times.

13
00:01:32.400 --> 00:01:36.560
The French Revolution is, among other things, a collection of family histories.

14
00:01:36.560 --> 00:01:42.240
Bourbons, Hoppsburgs, Lafayettes, Neckers, Rowlands, Jeffersons, and countless others.

15
00:01:42.240 --> 00:01:48.960
Surely one of the strangest of these family histories is the family that we might call Orléans.

16
00:01:48.960 --> 00:01:56.480
The cadet line, or the sub-line of the House of Bourbon,

17
00:01:56.480 --> 00:02:02.320
founded basically by the bizarre brother of Louis XIV in the late 17th century.

18
00:02:02.320 --> 00:02:21.320
This openly bisexual prince, Monsieur, as he was called at court, seems to have squabbled with and schemed with his brother, Louis XIV, almost from infancy and certainly until his death, which occurred in 1701, occurring a few hours after his last really violent argument with his brother.

19
00:02:21.320 --> 00:02:37.320
Over generations, the Orléans' relatives maintained a rivalry to the rule of their cousins, and this tension was often marked by the Orléans' connections with the Paris underworld, the world of crime, poisoning, prostitution, gambling, and so forth.

20
00:02:37.320 --> 00:02:53.320
Indeed, many rumors from Monsieur's life, the life of the first one, the brother of Louis XIV connected him with the well-known poison trade, which was as much a feature of the Paris pharmacopoeia as the sale of love potions.

21
00:02:53.320 --> 00:03:00.320
In the struggle between the two royal branches, the Orléans branch lost some and won some.

22
00:03:00.320 --> 00:03:16.320
The son of Monsieur gained the upper hand temporarily from 1715 to 1723 when Philippe II of Orléans served as regent because Louis XIV's great-grandson gained the throne at the age of only five.

23
00:03:16.320 --> 00:03:24.320
This eight-year regency generated an intensive development of what we might call Orléanist policy.

24
00:03:24.320 --> 00:03:33.320
Indeed, at the same time that the duke of the time, the duke of Orléans, of course, generation after generation, they were always the duke of Orléans,

25
00:03:33.320 --> 00:03:46.320
but at the time that that duke regent was in power, he made sure of training the adolescent king in what can only be called sexual addiction.

26
00:03:46.320 --> 00:03:50.320
At the same time that he began to shape the Orléans' program of the future,

27
00:03:50.320 --> 00:04:04.120
The Duke appeared in some ways to be a reformer, but his reforms were aimed at discrediting

28
00:04:04.120 --> 00:04:10.200
the old Bourbon regime and establishing himself as a new kind of ruler with a base in the

29
00:04:10.200 --> 00:04:11.200
masses.

30
00:04:11.200 --> 00:04:16.920
In fact, it was this Duke of Orleans who sanctioned the inflationary debacle associated with John

31
00:04:16.920 --> 00:04:22.000
John Law, going beyond the inefficiencies of mercantilism to produce a much broader and

32
00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:25.080
more efficient theft of wealth.

33
00:04:25.080 --> 00:04:30.520
He too, it was, after whom New Orleans was named, when it was founded by the Banque Generale

34
00:04:30.520 --> 00:04:39.360
du Veil, that's John Law's inflationary engine, and it's worth noting, I don't know the causality

35
00:04:39.360 --> 00:04:43.220
here, but it's worth noting that New Orleans would be marked by many of the same characteristics

36
00:04:43.220 --> 00:04:56.940
Under domestic mercantilism, old regime France was a picture of staggering burdens, layer

37
00:04:56.940 --> 00:05:02.940
upon layer, of inequitable taxes, tributes, payoffs and rules, and at the top of the structure,

38
00:05:02.940 --> 00:05:09.780
rent seeking and patronage stamped the whole economy and the bureaucracy grew.

39
00:05:09.780 --> 00:05:15.900
The only relief was that the system was so inefficient that many in France prospered anyway,

40
00:05:15.900 --> 00:05:21.940
especially during the corrupt but genial reign of Louis XV up to 1774.

41
00:05:21.940 --> 00:05:29.660
Actually, his grandson and successor, Louis XVI, showed great promise, appointing as his

42
00:05:29.660 --> 00:05:35.700
Comptroller General and First Minister the great Jacques Turgot, the proto-Austrian economist

43
00:05:35.700 --> 00:05:40.260
to coin the expression laissez-faire as a prescriptive economic policy.

44
00:05:40.260 --> 00:05:50.660
Unfortunately, Turgot's reforms made him many enemies as he valiantly butted heads with stock-jobbers and rent-seekers of all varieties.

45
00:05:50.660 --> 00:06:01.140
His time in office lasted only 20 months, ending in fact with his inveterate opposition to plans for French intervention in the American War for Independence.

46
00:06:01.140 --> 00:06:07.580
None of his successors could master the fiscal puzzle that France presented, and it was indeed

47
00:06:07.580 --> 00:06:11.300
this puzzle that led directly to the revolution in 1789.

48
00:06:11.300 --> 00:06:14.380
Meanwhile, what of the House of Orléans?

49
00:06:14.380 --> 00:06:21.340
Well, the new duke, grandson of the regent, the one that was the regent, this duke, born

50
00:06:21.340 --> 00:06:25.420
in 1747, became duke in 1785.

51
00:06:25.420 --> 00:06:30.340
And this is the guy I want to talk most about, who would become Philippe Egalité.

52
00:06:30.340 --> 00:06:36.420
This is a man who, you might say, lived out the Orléans lifestyle and expanded upon it.

53
00:06:36.420 --> 00:06:43.400
Personally amoral, a carouser with the low of every rank, the new Duke of Orléans was

54
00:06:43.400 --> 00:06:48.540
positioned to acquire every benefit that patronage and privilege could bestow.

55
00:06:48.540 --> 00:06:55.300
He used the mercantilist order to his advantage, becoming manufacturer and real estate developer,

56
00:06:55.300 --> 00:06:58.580
working his government connections to great advantage.

57
00:06:58.580 --> 00:07:04.580
Indeed, his business approach seems at times more 20th century than 18th.

58
00:07:04.580 --> 00:07:11.080
Early on, the young Philippe, not quite yet Duke, even clashed with the great Turgot.

59
00:07:11.080 --> 00:07:19.040
A few years after acquiring some property in a shady manner, I think,

60
00:07:19.040 --> 00:07:25.520
Philippe applied to the great Comptroller General Turgot for permission to set up a scheme

61
00:07:25.520 --> 00:07:30.320
in which all the merchandise brought to the market of a town called Lievli,

62
00:07:30.320 --> 00:07:34.160
today the town is called Lievli-Gargeon,

63
00:07:34.160 --> 00:07:37.520
have all the merchandise brought to this market

64
00:07:37.520 --> 00:07:41.200
taxed with the proceeds going to the Duke, so the

65
00:07:41.200 --> 00:07:45.360
process is supposed to be the state taxes them, the state provides the security,

66
00:07:45.360 --> 00:07:49.120
the collectors, and then the proceeds are handed over to the Duke because it's

67
00:07:49.120 --> 00:07:50.120
is His Town.

68
00:07:50.120 --> 00:08:01.440
Turgot's period in office was marked with a flood of such applications, and that was

69
00:08:01.440 --> 00:08:05.280
the lifeblood of mercantilism at the local level.

70
00:08:05.280 --> 00:08:11.240
As with many others, Turgot turned this one down, explaining briefly to Philippe of Orléans

71
00:08:11.240 --> 00:08:16.520
that the state would no longer provide legal backing to subsidize private profits.

72
00:08:16.520 --> 00:08:20.720
At times like this, the Duke of Orléans was frustrated with mercantilism, but only because

73
00:08:20.720 --> 00:08:23.840
he desired to gain more from it.

74
00:08:23.840 --> 00:08:27.520
Yet, Philippe had a more ambitious vision than just making money.

75
00:08:27.520 --> 00:08:32.640
In fact, he set up a management team to carry out a program, which would soon be called

76
00:08:32.640 --> 00:08:37.840
Orléanism, in which politics would play an even more crucial role than previously in

77
00:08:37.840 --> 00:08:39.720
the family designs.

78
00:08:39.720 --> 00:08:44.700
I do not mean to take up here the possibility quite widely discussed in 1789 that the Duke

79
00:08:44.700 --> 00:08:51.000
Philip d'Orléans was at the base of a vast conspiracy that caused the revolution.

80
00:08:51.000 --> 00:08:54.940
His actions certainly helped cause the revolution and there are concrete connections we can

81
00:08:54.940 --> 00:08:59.380
make between the duke's employees and definite events in the revolution.

82
00:08:59.380 --> 00:09:04.940
But the revolution was many-sided and hugely complex and we just don't have all the evidence

83
00:09:04.940 --> 00:09:08.980
needed to draw any real conclusions about this, I think.

84
00:09:08.980 --> 00:09:14.380
What we do know is that the team of Philippe d'Orléans ran an integrated operation to

85
00:09:14.380 --> 00:09:19.580
influence business in favor of Orléanist policies and influence politics in favor of

86
00:09:19.580 --> 00:09:21.700
Orléanist wealth.

87
00:09:21.700 --> 00:09:27.840
The duke's machine relied on public relations and the appearance of sympathy with the masses.

88
00:09:27.840 --> 00:09:34.040
The mercantilism of the old regime was bad enough, but the House of Orléans went mercantilism

89
00:09:34.040 --> 00:09:39.480
has won better by selling this manipulation to the masses.

90
00:09:39.480 --> 00:09:44.640
As a modern historian George Armstrong Kelly has put it, this machine mastered, quote,

91
00:09:44.640 --> 00:09:50.000
the massive use of wealth, research and propaganda for the purpose of forming public opinion

92
00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:53.240
and swaying public policy.

93
00:09:53.240 --> 00:09:59.280
Those goals almost certainly included gaining the throne for the Orléans branch, but they

94
00:09:59.280 --> 00:10:05.280
were clearly intertwined with a new kind of democratic socialist politics. In many accounts

95
00:10:05.280 --> 00:10:11.480
of the revolution, the duke is called a liberal, but his attitudes had nothing in common with

96
00:10:11.480 --> 00:10:18.360
proto-liberals like Turgot. The only liberalism in his program consisted of a kind of insistent

97
00:10:18.360 --> 00:10:23.680
urge for personal gratification and a tendency to criticize the authoritarian aspects of

98
00:10:23.680 --> 00:10:53.680
Louis XVI's reign. Indeed, in the end, Orléans would support the confiscatory policies of the revolution, the rising influence of rent-seeking entrepreneurs, the boondoggles of the national projects, and the horrible inflationary measures, some of which were the duke's ideas, and which were crusaded for by politicos in his employ. And, of course, the violence, a good deal of which the duke himself helped to stage. We might say in this group,

99
00:10:53.680 --> 00:10:58.640
that's assembled here that Orleanism was something like Hamiltonianism with a

100
00:10:58.640 --> 00:11:06.000
human face or would it be Hamilton without the charm? I don't know. You know I

101
00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:09.760
tried to put more jokes in here especially after Gerard Casey's talk

102
00:11:09.760 --> 00:11:13.320
last night but there just aren't that many French Revolution jokes going

103
00:11:13.320 --> 00:11:22.880
around these days. Anyway, this Orleanist machine was headed by aristocratic and middle class

104
00:11:22.880 --> 00:11:28.560
The best bureaucrats who lived large by their wits in planning for the Orléans' future.

105
00:11:28.560 --> 00:11:34.060
There was a Chancellor, an Intendant of Finances, this is a private fortune, right, the Intendant

106
00:11:34.060 --> 00:11:35.060
of Finances.

107
00:11:35.060 --> 00:11:41.140
Among the counselors was the Duke, was the Abbé Sabatier, one of the principal promoters

108
00:11:41.140 --> 00:11:48.520
of the idea of calling the Estates General in 1787, as well as Madame de Jean-Li, Orléans's

109
00:11:48.520 --> 00:11:51.520
The Duke's former mistress and tutor to his children.

110
00:11:51.520 --> 00:11:54.020
And of course her husband was on the staff too.

111
00:11:54.020 --> 00:11:56.020
Fair is fair, after all.

112
00:11:56.020 --> 00:12:00.020
In 1788, Orléans brought in a new strategist.

113
00:12:00.020 --> 00:12:05.020
This was Chaudelot de Laclo, the author of Dangerous Liaisons,

114
00:12:05.020 --> 00:12:08.520
if you remember that great movie based on the original book,

115
00:12:08.520 --> 00:12:10.520
which is pretty much what the movie was.

116
00:12:10.520 --> 00:12:16.520
And the author of that was brought in to be the principal strategist for the house of Orléans.

117
00:12:16.520 --> 00:12:27.220
It is likely that either Laclo, that author, or Madame de Jonly, the former mistress, created the brand name for the Orléanist vision. They called it Orléanisme.

118
00:12:27.220 --> 00:12:35.320
On the lower level, the machine included a host of journalists, politicos, criminals, and whatnot.

119
00:12:35.320 --> 00:12:44.220
One of the machine's creatures, Jean-Pierre Rousseau, later leader of the Riesel 10 faction of the revolution and still later fodder for the guillotine,

120
00:12:44.220 --> 00:12:47.120
left a description of their work before he died.

121
00:12:47.120 --> 00:12:54.820
My work, he says, consisted of examining all the projects that the prince could carry through with his immense fortune.

122
00:12:54.820 --> 00:13:01.260
We wanted to attach the intellectuals to us, to patronize the arts and the learned societies.

123
00:13:01.260 --> 00:13:05.720
Thus we gave pensions to the farmer and provided aid for new research.

124
00:13:05.720 --> 00:13:13.920
We created a load of philanthropic societies in the apanage of the prince.

125
00:13:13.920 --> 00:13:17.920
in the properties of the Prince.

126
00:13:17.920 --> 00:13:25.920
In historian Kelly's view, George Armstrong Kelly, the evidence shows that the Duke and his machine were helping to create, as he says, a new kind of politics.

127
00:13:25.920 --> 00:13:32.920
Perhaps the best illustration of this new politics comes in the form of the Palais Royale, the palace, the Royal Palace.

128
00:13:32.920 --> 00:13:35.920
It was called an urban real estate project.

129
00:13:35.920 --> 00:13:42.920
The Palais Royale was not quite a Palais and it was not quite Royale. It was something else.

130
00:13:42.920 --> 00:13:51.920
It was, in fact, a big house, a big palace, surrounded by buildings just north of the San River, right by the Louvre, if you know Paris at all.

131
00:13:51.920 --> 00:14:02.920
The buildings had ended up, by clever manipulation and pressure, in the ownership of the brother of Louis XIV this year, and the Orléans family, which had lived there off and on.

132
00:14:02.920 --> 00:14:10.360
off and on. But about 1780, the future Philip equality, as the Duke would be called, and

133
00:14:10.360 --> 00:14:15.400
his planners worked out the geography of a very modern phenomenon, a planned and more

134
00:14:15.400 --> 00:14:21.400
or less enclosed urban entertainment sphere. The centerpiece of the Palais Royaux was the

135
00:14:21.400 --> 00:14:27.640
Cirque, a garden surrounded by colonnades. Under and over the colonnades were retail

136
00:14:27.640 --> 00:14:37.640
There were retail stores of every variety, restaurants, cafes, drugsts and poison shops, brothels, book shops, clothing stores and much, much more.

137
00:14:37.640 --> 00:14:44.640
The central colonnades connected across the Rue Richelieu formed with further extensions of the same thing.

138
00:14:44.640 --> 00:14:49.640
There was dancing, there was music in the gardens under the colonnades, in the brothels.

139
00:14:49.640 --> 00:14:53.640
There were themed restaurants, the famous Café Mécanique,

140
00:14:53.640 --> 00:14:58.240
and dumb waiters that brought the wine up from the cellar right to your table.

141
00:14:58.240 --> 00:15:01.360
There were back rooms to back rooms.

142
00:15:01.360 --> 00:15:07.440
On the geographical edge of official Paris and in the less affluent arrondissement or

143
00:15:07.440 --> 00:15:12.300
districts in the northeast of the city, the Palais Weillard provided a literal meeting

144
00:15:12.300 --> 00:15:16.400
place for high society and the low underworld.

145
00:15:16.400 --> 00:15:20.400
Organized crime bosses held court without fear in the Palais Weillard because by royal

146
00:15:20.400 --> 00:15:24.200
While Grant the Duke had exclusive rights to police his own property and enforce his

147
00:15:24.200 --> 00:15:29.840
own idea of laws, standing geographically on the border between official Paris and the

148
00:15:29.840 --> 00:15:36.720
Paris of the dark masses in the third and fourth arrondissement, the Palais was a perfect

149
00:15:36.720 --> 00:15:40.640
twilight for coordinating the forces of the two worlds.

150
00:15:40.640 --> 00:15:45.520
When the revolution arrived in 1789, we know quite well that much of the cooperation between

151
00:15:45.520 --> 00:15:49.680
Between the dark crowds and their leaders, the sans-culottes would be planned in the

152
00:15:49.680 --> 00:15:55.720
Palais Royaux, the attack on the Bastille, the march to Versailles, and so forth.

153
00:15:55.720 --> 00:16:00.960
Censorship did not reach into the bookstalls of the Palais Royaux, and anti-Bourbon propaganda

154
00:16:00.960 --> 00:16:02.600
flowed freely.

155
00:16:02.600 --> 00:16:08.040
This was the great age of the proliferation of pornography in Europe, and not a few pornographers

156
00:16:08.040 --> 00:16:14.520
worked directly for the Duke of Orléans, portraying the duke's targets in whichever

157
00:16:14.520 --> 00:16:27.400
This went above all for the Queen. Marie Antoinette, dubbed the German whore by early honest journalists,

158
00:16:27.400 --> 00:16:33.880
was the star of myriad pornographic novels and illustrated stories. Much of the traditional

159
00:16:33.880 --> 00:16:39.080
public image that we still maintain today of Marie Antoinette arises from the propaganda

160
00:16:39.080 --> 00:16:46.980
The Revolution finally at hand, while the duke took part as a member of the third estate

161
00:16:46.980 --> 00:16:52.880
in the assembly at Versailles, back at the Palais Royale, Camille Desmoulins, an employee

162
00:16:52.880 --> 00:16:59.260
of the Orléans machine, climbed onto a table and cried to arms to set the crowds marching

163
00:16:59.260 --> 00:17:01.020
toward the best deal.

164
00:17:01.020 --> 00:17:06.120
As they marched, members of the crowd were given plaster busts of the duke of Orléans

165
00:17:06.120 --> 00:17:36.120
Philip equality, Philippe égalité

166
00:17:36.120 --> 00:17:42.660
Order of Democracy. That order included a process based on the old Red and Circuses

167
00:17:42.660 --> 00:17:48.520
philosophy of some similar Roman leaders, but it went much farther. By catering to the

168
00:17:48.520 --> 00:17:55.440
lowest, the most transient, the most violent of the population, the Orléanus machine developed

169
00:17:55.440 --> 00:18:01.040
extensive insights into controlling politics through manipulating the masses. As for the

170
00:18:01.040 --> 00:18:06.040
and the super-rich they could be catered to as well and stroked and brought into the fold.

171
00:18:06.040 --> 00:18:12.040
As Philippe Egalité's son would proclaim on becoming King of the French in 1830,

172
00:18:12.040 --> 00:18:19.040
enrich yourselves, hence a welfare state below and a welfare state above.

173
00:18:19.040 --> 00:18:30.040
In his memoir, Talleyrand, the wily diplomat who was a contemporary of the Duke and saw all this happen before his eyes,

174
00:18:30.040 --> 00:18:40.040
Talleyrand depicts the Duke of Orleans as a playboy not quite able to keep his attention on any one area, yet we can see something more.

175
00:18:40.040 --> 00:18:45.040
Here was a man of the super-rich by various rent-seeking processes.

176
00:18:45.040 --> 00:18:48.040
Here was a man not liberal but libertine.

177
00:18:48.040 --> 00:18:57.040
Here was a man preparing the way for a kind of new class to lead modern democracies, leadership by propaganda, you might say.

178
00:18:57.040 --> 00:19:04.000
And in the end, these goals were achieved only long after Philippe Egalité was guillotined.

179
00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:09.480
With the revolution of 1830, the senior Bourbon branch of French kings fell for good, and

180
00:19:09.480 --> 00:19:12.120
they fell amid calls for reform.

181
00:19:12.120 --> 00:19:18.360
And Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, the son of Philippe Egalité, Philippe Qualité, was

182
00:19:18.360 --> 00:19:25.080
on hand to become a reform king, a citizen king, as he called himself, to install the

183
00:19:25.080 --> 00:19:30.200
and the regime of a new class of politicians and entrepreneurs of national projects and

184
00:19:30.200 --> 00:19:37.200
stock jobbers and of well-connected bankers who enjoy the smiles of their political brothers.

185
00:19:38.200 --> 00:19:40.200
Thank you very much.