‘More Savage than White Bears’: The Diplomatic Etiquette of Revolutionary France

Abstract

The revolutionary leaders in France challenged Europeans' assumption of a common diplomatic culture, of a universal diplomatic language, and most basically, an international diplomatic community. But rather than rejecting the old ways completely, they re-emphasised the importance of ritual and gesture, not just as assertions or reflections of ideology, but as tools in the reconstruction of their world and the diplomatic system. Diplomatic protocol and ceremony became a symbolic battleground on which the struggle between the old and the new order was enacted. This article, based largely on archival material including the private correspondence of many diplomats, notably James Harris, Baron Malmesbury, demonstrates how a new etiquette, both more republican and more militaristic, replaced the old one.

Notes

1 Letter of 9 December 1797 from Metternich to his wife, Memoirs of Prince Metternich, 1773–1815, Richard von Metternich, ed. (New York, 1880), vol. I, pp. 350-51.

2 From the memoirs of Louis XIV, quoted by Norbert Elias, The Court Society, Edmund Jephcott, trans. (New York, 1983), p. 117.

3 Charles-Alexander Geoffrey de Grandmaison, L'Ambassade française en Espagne pendant la Révolution (1789–1804) (Paris, 1892), p. 165.

4 Antoine Pecquet in 1737, quoted in Hamish Scott, ‘Diplomatic Culture in Old Regime Europe', in Hamish Scott and Brendan Simms, eds., Cultures of Power in Europe During the Long Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 59-60.

5 Ibid., p. 83.

6 Raymond Cohen, Theatre of Power: The Art of Diplomatic Signalling (New York, 1987), p. 109.

7 See Linda Frey and Marsha Frey, ‘“The Reign of the Charlatans is Over”: The French Revolutionary Attack on Diplomatic Practice', Journal of Modern History, vol. 65, no 4 ( December, 1993), pp. 706-44.

8 Ibid., p. 707.

9 David Cannadine, ‘Introduction: Divine Rites of Kings’, in David Cannadine and Simon Price, eds, Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, l987), p. 1.

10 Quoted in Frans De Bruyn, ‘Theater and Countertheater in Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France', in Steven Blakemore, ed., Burke and the French Revolution: Bicentennial Essays (Athens, GA, 1992), p. 28.

11 Jeroen Duindam, Vienna and Versailles: The Courts of Europe's Dynastic Rivals, 1550–1780 (Cambridge, 2003), p. 181. See also Ute Daniel, ‘Uberlegungen zum höfischen Fest der Barockzeit', Niedersächisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 72 (2000), pp. 45-66; Benjamin Marschke, ‘“Von dem am Königl. Preußischen Hofe abgeschafften Ceremoniel”: Monarchical Representation and Ceremony in Frederick William I's Prussia', in Randolph C. Head and Daniel Christensen, eds, Orthodoxies and Diversity in Early Modern Germany (Boston, 2007), pp. 227-52; Milos Vec, Zeremonial-Wissenschaft im Fürstenstaat: Studien zur juristischen und politischen Theorie absolutischer Herrschaftsrepräsentation (Frankfurt am Main, 1998); and Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, ‘Zeremoniell, Ritual, Symbol: Neue Forschungen zur symbolischen Kommunikation im Spätmittelater und Früher Neuzeit', Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 27 (2000), pp. 389-405.

12 Cannadine, ‘Introduction: Divine Rites of Kings', p. 3.

13 Edmund Burke, ‘A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly in Answer to Some Objection to His Book on French Affairs', in Works of Right Honourable Edmund Burke (1791; reprint London, 1855), vol. II, p. 537.

14 Elias, The Court Society, pp. 86-7.

15 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The First and Second Discourses, Roger D. Masters, ed. (New York, 1964), p. 36.

16 Ibid., p. 37.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid., pp. 39 and 37.

19 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of Inequality among Men (New York, 1971), p. 180. See also Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees or Private Vices, Publick Benefits (Oxford, 1957), vol. I, p. 349. ‘It is impossible we could be sociable Creatures without Hypocrisy.'

20 Patrice Higonnet, Goodness Beyond Virtue: Jacobins during the French Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 1998), p. 80.

21 Napoleon to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Rastatt, 30 November 1797, quoted in J. M. Thompson, ed., Napoleon Self-Revealed (New York, 1934), pp. 52-3.

22 Quoted by Robert Darnton ‘The French Revolution: Intellectuals and Literature', lecture at the University of Montana, 1 June 1989.

23 Edmund Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. IX, William B. Todd, ed. (Oxford, 1991), ‘Fourth Letter on a Regicide Peace', p. 14.

24 Letters of 9 December and 12 December 1797 to his wife, Memoirs of Prince Metternich, vol. I, pp. 350-51 and 353.

25 Edward Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1997), p. 125.

26 Archives des Affaires Etrangères, Correspondance Politique [henceforth AAE, CP], Etats Unis, vol. 54, part 2, fol. 92, Pichon, Georgetown, 26 pluviôse, an X.

27 Edmund Burke, ‘Letters on a Regicide Peace’, in Works, vol. V, p. 208.

28 Gerald W. Chapman, Edmund Burke: The Practical Imagination (Cambridge, MA, 1967), p. 202.

29 Burke, ‘Letter to a Member of the National Assembly', p. 537.

30 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, (Harmondsworth, 1968), p. 172.

31 Burke, ‘Letter to a Member of the National Assembly', p. 537.

32 Bertrand Barère, Memoirs of Bertrand Barère Chairman of the Committee of Public Safety During the Revolution, De V. Payen-Payne, trans. (London, 1796) vol. I, pp. 309-10. Perhaps unconsciously, he echoed Fénelon's warning that two things endanger ‘the government of peoples'. The first, unjust authority, could be checked even if by a coup, but luxury, ‘which corrupts manners', was ‘almost incurable'. Kings could be corrupted by excess authority, but luxury ‘empoisons a whole people'. Quoted in Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton, 2007), p. 106.

33 Richard Stites, ‘Russian Revolutionary Culture: Its Place in the History of Cultural Revolutions', in Paul Dukes and John Dunkley, eds. Culture and Revolution (London, 1990), p. 139; Crane Brinton, A Decade of Revolution: 1789–1799 (New York, 1934), pp. 142-50.

34 Elias, The Court Society, pp. 117-18.

35 Ibid., p. 55.

36 Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven, 1992).

37 Elias, The Court Society, pp. 71, 207.

38 Ibid., pp. 207-08.

39 Agrippa d'Aubigné, Les aventures du Baron de Foeneste, cited in ibid., p. 231.

40 Cited in Marc Belissa, ‘La Diplomatie et les traités dans la pensées des Lumières: négociation universelle ou école du mensonge?', Revue d'histoire diplomatique, 113/3 (1999), p. 297.

41 François de Callières, Letters (1694–1700) of François de Callières to the Marquise d'Huxelles, Laurence Pope, ed. (Lewiston, NY, 2004), p. 228.

42 Quoted in Cannadine, ‘Introduction: Divine Rites of Kings', p. 1.

43 Belissa, ‘La Diplomatie et les traités dans la pensée des Lumières', p. 306.

44 Comte F.-G. de Bray, Mémoires du comte de Bray (Paris, 1911), p. 103.

45 Ibid., pp. 109, 111, 120. 

46 Derbyshire Record Office, Papers of Alleyne Fitzherbert, D/239M/F12338, Letter to his sister from St. Petersburgh [sic], 23 August 1785.

47 Robert Oresko, ‘The House of Savoy in Search for a Royal Crown in the Seventeenth Century', in Robert Oresko, G. C. Gibbs and H.M. Scott, eds, Royal and Republican Sovereignty in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1997), p. 274.

48 T. C. W. Blanning, ‘Frederick the Great and German Culture', in Oresko, Gibbs and Scott, eds, Royal and Republican Sovereignty, pp. 529-30.

49 For a vivid discussion see Lucien Bély, ‘Souveraineté et souverains: la question du cérémonial dans les relations internationales à l'époque moderne', Annuaire-bulletin de la Société de l'histoire de France 130 (1993), pp. 27-43.

50 Scott, ‘Diplomatic Culture in Old Regime Europe', p. 62.

51 Jacques-Pierre dit Brissot de Warville, Discours sur l'office de l'Empereur du 17 février 1792 et dénonciation contre M. Delessart, ministre des Affaires étrangères prononcé à l'Assemblée nationale le 10 Mars 1792 by J.P. Brissot, député du département de Paris (Paris, n.d.), p. 28.

52 Barthélemy, Papiers de Barthélemy, ambassadeur de France en Suisse, 1792–1797, Jean Kaulek, ed. (Paris, 1887), vol. II, p. 417.

53 Arno Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War (New York, 1981), p. 136.

54 Lucien Bély, La Société des princes: XVIe - XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1999), pp. 406 and 396.

55 Bély, ‘Souveraineté et souverains', pp. 43 and 28.

56 Ibid., pp. 28 and 35. See also Daniel ‘Uberlegungen zum höfischen Fest der Barockzeit', pp. 45-66; and Stollberg-Rilinger, ‘Zeremoniell, Ritual, Symbol’, pp. 389-405.

57 Bély, La Société des princes, p. 10.

58 David A. Bell, The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680–1800 (Cambridge, MA, 2001), p. 148.

59 Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, p. 120.

60 François, duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maximes suivies des réflexions diverses (Paris, 1967), p. 68, no 260.

61 Ibid., p. 67, no 260; p. 93, no 393; p. 29, no 100; p. 89, no 372. Also see La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (Baltimore, 1959), introduction and pp. 68, 83, 47, 81.

62 Jon R. Snyder, Dissimulation and the Culture of Secrecy in Early Modern Europe (Berkeley, 2009), p. 47. Interestingly enough, Callières, who wrote the foundational text on ancien régime diplomacy, argued in 1696 that this very bel esprit, the manners and wit of the court, ‘makes people ill-suited to the conduct of public business’. Callières, Letters (1694–1700), p. 14. See François de Callières, Du bel esprit (Amsterdam, 1695), p. 151.

63 Hagley Museum and Library (Wilmington, DE), Winterthur Manuscripts, Group 3, Victor Du Pont, series A, Correspondence, Box 1, W3-171, Victor Du Pont to his father, 28 May 1788, New York.

64 Shakespeare, Cymbelline, I, i, 84, quoted in Snyder, Dissimulation and the Culture of Secrecy, p. 33.

65 Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture, p. 5.

66 Condorcet (Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, marquis de), Oeuvres de Condorcet, ‘Revision des travaux de la première législature, janvier, février, avril et juin 1792' (Paris, 1847), vol. X, pp. 399-400.

67 Quoted in Stanley J. Idzerda, ‘Inconoclasm during the French Revolution', American Historical Review 60 (July 1955), p. 15.

68 Quoted in Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution (Los Angeles, 1984), p. 29.

69 William Augustus Miles, The Correspondence of William Augustus Miles on the French Revolution, 1789–1817, Charles Miles Popham, ed. (London, 1890), vol. I, p. 159, Miles to Lord Rodney, Paris, 23 August 1790.

70 Great Britain, Historical Manuscripts Commission, The Manuscripts of J. B. Fortescue, Esq., Preserved at Dropmore (London, 1894), vol. I, pp. 608, 610. See also British Library [henceforth BL], Add. Mss. 58910, letter to Grenville, Paris, 27 September 1790, fol. 142.

71 Paul Bailleu, ed., Preussen und Frankreich von 1795 bis 1807: diplomatische Correspondenzen (Leipzig, 1881-87), vol. I, p. 37, Paris, 10 December 1795.

72 Cohen, Theatre of Power, pp. 90-91.

73 James Der Derian, On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement (Oxford, 1987), p. 179.

74 Geoffroy de Grandmaison, L'Ambassade française en Espagne, pp. 37, 50, 51.

75 Ibid., pp. 39-43 and 53.

76 Henri Stroehlin, La Mission de Barthélemy en Suisse (1792–1797) (Geneva, 1900), pp. 23 and 56.

77 BL, Add. Mss. 36813, letter from Bute to Grenville, Madrid, 30 April 1796. Pérignon, who had been in the military since 1780 and promoted to general in 1794, also served in the Legislative Assembly and subsequently in the Council of Five Hundred.

78 Louis-Gabriel Michaud, Biographie universelle (Graz, 1966), vol. II, pp. 576-7.

79 Dictionnaire de biographie française, J. Baltau, Michel Prevost and Roman d'Amat, eds (Paris, 1933- ), vol. VI, p. 843.

80 Bailleu, ed. Preussen und Frankreich, vol. I, pp. 429-30, report of Caillard from Berlin, 1 November 1795.

81 Ibid., vol. I, p. 457, report of Caillard from Berlin, 28 March l797.

82 Archives parlementaires 52:314, 4 October 1792.

83 Archives Nationales, D, XXIII, carton 2, dossier 34, Society of the Friends of the Constitution at Cherbourg to the Diplomatic Committee, 2 September 1792.

84 Jacques-Pierre Brissot, Discours de J. P. Brissot, député sur les dispostions des Puissances étrangères, relativement à la France, et sur les préparatifs de guerre ordonné par le Roi (Paris, l79l), p. 43.

85 Thomas Iiams, Peacemaking from Vergennes to Napoleon: French Foreign Relations in the Revolutionary Era, 1774–1814 (Huntington, NY, 1979), p. 59.

86 Public Record Office [henceforth, PRO], FO 27/59, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, Paris, 26 November 1801.

87 Raymond Guyot, Le Directoire et la paix de l'Europe, des traités de Bâle à la deuxième coalition (1795–1799) (Paris, 1911), p. 670.

88 Raymond Koechlin, ‘La Politique française au congrès de Rastatt', Annales de l'école libre des sciences politiques, 1 (1886), p. 404.

89 G. Pallain, ed., Correspondance diplomatique de Talleyrand. Le Ministère de Talleyrand sous le Directoire (Paris, 1891), pp. 211-12, Talleyrand to Treilhard, 27 February 1798.

90 Guyot, Le Directoire et la paix de l'Europe, pp. 672-3.

91 Ibid., pp. 671-2.

92 Ibid., p. 671.

93 Koechlin, ‘La Politique française au congrès de Rastatt', p. 404, letter of 25 December 1797.

94 Brendan Simms, The Impact of Napoleon: Prussian High Politics, Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Executive 1797–1806 (Cambridge, 1997), p. 93.

95 Golo Mann, Secretary of Europe: The Life of Friedrich Gentz, Enemy of Napoleon (New Haven, 1946), p. 45.

96 Bailleu, ed. Preussen und Frankreich, vol. I, p. 214, fn.1.

97 Armand-François, comte d'Allonville, Mémoires tirés des papiers d'un homme d'état sur les causes secrètes qui ont déterminé la politique des cabinets dans les guerres de la révolution (Paris, 1832), vol. VI, p. 179.

98 John Harold Clapham, The Abbé Sieyès: An Essay in the Politics of the French Revolution (London, 1912), pp. 206-07.

99 Guyot, Le Directoire et la paix de l'Europe, pp. 716-17.

100 Mann, Secretary of Europe, p. 45.

101 Clapham, The Abbé Sieyès, p. 210.

102 Guyot, Le Directoire et la paix de l'Europe, pp. 717-19; and Mann, Secretary of Europe, p. 45.

103 Guyot, Le Directoire et la paix de l'Europe, pp. 717-19.

104 Bailleu, ed. Preussen und Frankreich, vol. I, p. 234, Graf Haugwitz to Graf Finckenstein, Berlin, 25 August 1798.

105 Finckenstein quoted in Lothar Kittstein, Politik im Zeitalter der Revolution: Untersuchungen zur preussischen Staatlichkeit 1792–1807 (Wiesbaden, 2003), p. 142.

106 Clapham, The Abbe Sieyès, p. 208.

107 Bailleu, ed. Preussen und Frankreich, vol. I, pp. 500-01, report of Sieyès to Talleyrand, Berlin, 24 May 1799.

108 J. Holland Rose, William Pitt and the Great War (1911; reprint Westport, CT, 1971), p. 79.

109 Frank L. Kidner, Jr., ‘The Girondists and the ‘Propaganda War' of 1792: A Reevaluation of French Revolutionary Foreign policy from 1791 to 1793' (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1971), p. 396.

110 BL, Add. Mss. 59051, fols 34-7, letter to Dorset, Paris, 16 March 1792.

111 Before the Revolution, Mangourit had served as magistrate at Rennes but lost his position because of his attempt to abuse a young girl. His revolutionary credentials had been burnished, however, by the public burning of some of his pamphlets. Grandmaison, L'Ambassade française en Espagne, pp. 118-23.

112 Ibid., pp. 116-23.

113 Jacques-Pierre dit Brissot de Warville, Rapport fait au nom du comité de défense générale sur les dispositions du gouvernement britannique envers la France, et sur les mesures à prendre (Paris, s.d.), p. 3.

114 Malmesbury Papers, Merton College, Oxford, F3.3 (3) 86, letter of 16 August 1794.

115 See for example, BL, Add. Mss. 36813, Bute to Grenville, 2 April 1797, fol. 220, private ‘arrogance of the French mission at Madrid'.

116 Hampshire Record Office [henceforth HRO], Wickham Papers, 38M 49/1/1/15, Auckland to Wickham, 12 April 1796.

117 PRO, FO 27/50, Malmesbury, Lille, 11 September 1797.

118 Jean-François-Eugène Robinet, ed., Dictionnaire historique et biographique de la Révolution et de l'Empire, 1789–1815 (Paris, 1899), vol. II, pp. 791-2.

119 James Harris, earl of Malmesbury, Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris, First Earl of Malmesbury (London, 1844), vol. III, p. 555, 13 September 1797.

120 Clemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar, Fürst von Metternich, Mémoires, documents et écrits divers, laissés par le Prince Metternich, chancelier de cour et d'état, Richard de Metternich, ed. (Paris, 1881), vol. I, p. 354, letter to his wife, 22 December 1797.

121 Hamish M. Scott, The Birth of a Great Power System, 1740–1815 (New York, 2006), p. 279.

122 Jeremy Black, ‘From Pillnitz to Valmy: British Foreign Policy and Revolutionary France 1791–1792,' Francia: Forschungen zur westeuropäischen Geschichte vol. 21 (1994), p. 141.

123 Quoted in Norman A. Graebner, Ideas and Diplomacy: Readings in the Intellectual Tradition of American Foreign Policy (Oxford, 1964), p. 36.

124 Frederick Jackson Turner, ed. Correspondence of the French Ministers to the United States, 1791–1797 (New York, 1972), vol. I, pp. 68–9, Ternant to Montmorin, Philadelphia, 13 November 1791.

125 Hagley Museum and Library, W3-261, Victor Du Pont to the family, 28 June 1795.

126 Joseph Fauchet, Mémoire sur les Etats-Unis d'Amérique, C. L. Lokke, ed. (Washington, DC, 1938), pp. 85-123.

127 Hagley Museum and Library, W3-261, Victor Du Pont to the family, 28 June 1795.

128 Guyot, Le Directoire et la paix de l'Europe, pp. 688 and 720. On another occasion Napoleon voiced the belief that the old etiquette would collapse by its ‘old age'. Napoléon Bonaparte, Correspondance de Napoléon I, vol. III, p. 73, Napoleon to Directory, 8 prairial, an V (27 May 1797).

129 Correspondance inédite de Marie Caroline, reine de Naples et de Sicile (Paris, 1911), vol. I, p.533, 1798, and p. 534, 1798.

130 Armand-François d'Allonville, Mémoires tirés des papiers d'un homme d'état (Paris, 1835) vol. IX, p. 360.

131 Lord Granville Leveson-Gower (first Earl Granville), Private Correspondence 1781 to 1821, Castalia, Countess Granville, ed. (New York, 1916), vol. II, p. 279, letter of 1807.

132 Bailleu, ed. Preussen und Frankreich, vol. I, p. 519, Beurnonville to Hauterive, Berlin, 1 February 1800.

133 Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker, baroness de Staël-Holstein, Ten Years' Exile, or Memoirs of that Interesting Period of the Life of the Baroness De Staël-Holstein (Fontwell, Sussex, 1968), p. 39.

134 François Guizot and Henriette Guizot de Witt, The History of France from the Earliest Times to 1848 (Boston, 1885), vol. VI, p. 443.

135 Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life (New York, 2014), p. 149.

136 Hermann Hüffer, ed., Quellen zur Geschichte des Zeitalters der französischen Revolution (Leipzig, 1901), p. 323, Gallo, Merveldt, Degelmann to Thugut, Udine, 1 September 1797. See also Albert Sorel, L'Europe et le Révolution française (Paris, 1903), vol. V, pp. 245-8.

137 Hüffer, ed. Quellen zur Geschichte, p. 458, Cobenzl to Thugut, Udine, 14 October 1797.

138 Vincent Cronin, Napoleon Bonaparte (New York, 1972), pp. 142-3.

139 Roberts, Napoleon, p. 148.

140 Cronin, Napoleon Bonaparte, p. 143.

141 Roberts, Napoleon, p. 150.

142 Hüffer, ed., Quellen zur Geschichte, p. 445, Cobenzl to Thugut, 10 October 1797.

143 Florimond-Claude, comte de Mercy-Argenteau, Briefe des Grafen Mercy-Argentau K. K. Bevollmächtigen Minister in den Österreichischen Niederlanden an den K. K. Ausserordentilichen Gesandten zu London Grafen Louis Starhemberg, von 26 December 1791 bis August 1794, A. Graf Thurheim, ed. (Innsbruck, 1884), p. 84, Brussels, 26 May 1793.

144 François-Alphonse Aulard, ed., Recueil des actes du comité de salut public, avec la correspondance officielle des représentants en mission et le registre du Conseil exécutif provisoire (Paris, 1889-1951), vol. IV, pp. 185-6.

145 Scott, The Birth of a Great Power System, p. 278.

146 Guyot, Le Directoire et la paix de l'Europe, pp. 91-2.

147 Michaud, Biographie universelle (Graz, 1970), vol. XLIII, p. 223.

148 Frédéric Clément-Simon, Le premier ambassadeur de la République française à Constantinople: le Général Aubert du Bayet (Paris, 1904), pp. 6-10; AAE, CP, Etats Unis, vol. 47, part 1, fol. 111; Le Rédacteur, no 443, 13 ventôse, an V.

149 Edmund Burke, ‘Four Letters on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory of France', in Burke, Select Works, E. J. Payne, ed. (Oxford, 1894), p. xxxviii.

150 HRO, 631/3/3, Malmesbury to his wife, 16 October 1796.

151 Malmesbury, Diaries and Correspondence, vol. III, p. 266, letter to Grenville, Paris, 23 October 1796.

152 HRO, 631/3/8, Malmesbury to his wife, Calais, 18 October 1796.

153 HRO, 631/3/9, Malmesbury to his wife, 21 October 1796.

154 François-Alphonse Aulard, Paris pendant la réaction thermidorienne et sous le Directoire (Paris, 1898-1902), vol. III, p. 542.

155 BL, Add. Mss. 59130, fols 6-10. Draft of instructions for Malmesbury, 1796.

156 HRO, 631/3/11, Malmesbury to his wife, Paris, 27 October 1796.

157 HRO, 631/3/10, Malmesbury to his wife, 25 October 1796.

158 HRO, 631/3/12, Malmesbury to his wife, Paris, 31 October 1796.

159 Malmesbury Papers, Merton College, Oxford F3.3 (3) 13, letter of 23 October 1796.

160 PRO, FO 27/46, fol. 231, Malmesbury to Grenville, 28 November 1796. Along similar lines, Joseph Bonaparte told Charles Cornwallis after the latter had presented his full powers and asked for his in return, that he (Joseph) ‘did not see the necessity of them'. (PRO, FO 27/59, Cornwallis to Hawkesbury, Amiens, 23 January 1802). This corresponds to Cornwallis' assessment of Joseph as a ‘very sensible, modest, gentlemanlike man, totally free from diplomatic chicanery, and fair and open in all his dealings'. Correspondence of Charles, first Marquis Cornwallis, Charles Ross, ed. (London, 1859), vol. III, p. 413, Cornwallis to Major-General Ross, Amiens, 15 December 1801.

161 Malmesbury, Diaries and Correspondence, vol. III, p. 353, Malmesbury to Grenville, Paris, 20 December 1796.

162 Ibid., vol. III, p. 269. Malmesbury to Grenville, Paris, 27 October 1796.

163 Edmund B. D'Auvergne, Envoys Extraordinary: The Remarkable Careers of Some Remarkable British Representatives Abroad (London, 1937), pp. 73-4.

164 Bailleu, ed. Preussen und Frankreich, p. 104, letter from Sandoz-Rollin, Paris, 14 November 1796.

165 Malmesbury, Diaries and Correspondence, vol. III, p. 266, Malmesbury to Grenville, Paris, 23 October 1796.

166 Ibid., vol. III, p. 484, 27 August 1797.

167 Malmesbury Papers, Merton College, Oxford, F3.3 (1) 166, letter of 3 July 1799.

168 Ibid., F3.3 (1) 167, letter of 5 July 1797.

169 PRO, FO, 27/49, fol. 206, 29 June 1797.

170 HRO, 631/4/13, Malmesbury to his wife, 20 September 1797.

171 Malmesbury, Diaries and Correspondence, vol. III, p. 521, 31 August 1797.

172 PRO, FO 27/50, fols 316-17, 19 September 1797.

173 Malmesbury, Diaries and Correspondence, vol. III, pp. 539 and 592, 11 and 29 September 1797.

174 Ibid., vol. III, p. 560, 17 September 1797.

175 Ibid., vol. III, p. 527, Lille, 11 September 1797.

176 Malmesbury Papers, Merton College, Oxford, F3.3 (3)29i, letter of [1797?].

177 Leveson-Gower, Private Correspondence, vol. I, p. 174, letter to Lady Stafford, 21 September 1797.

178 HRO, 631/5/5, Malmesbury to his wife, 1800.

179 National Archives (Washington, DC), General Records of the Department of State [henceforth NA, GRDS], RG59, Diplomatic Despatches, France (34), vol. 4, James Monroe to the Secretary of State, Paris, 15 August 1794. See also AAE, CP, Etats Unis, vol. 41, part 4, fols 276- 89, commissar of foreign relations to Committee of Public Safety, 22 thermidor, an II.

180 NA, GRDS, RG59, Diplomatic Despatches, France (34), vol. 4, James Monroe to the Secretary of State, Paris, 25 August 1794.

181 Moniteur, 21, p. 496, #329, August 1794. See also AAE, CP, Etats Unis, vol. 41, part 4, fol. 280, commissar of foreign relations to Committee of Public Safety, 22 thermidor, an II.

182 Moniteur, 21, p. 496, #329, August 1794.

183 AAE, CP, Etats Unis, vol. 47, part 6, fol. 409, M. Otto, Considération sur la conduite du gouvernement des Etats Unis, 1789–1797.

184 Moniteur, vol. 24, pp. 292-3, 23 April 1795, Meeting of 4 floréal, Merlin de Douai.

185 John Goldworth Alger, Paris in 1789-1794: Farewell Letters of Victims of the Guillotine (London, 1902), pp. 98-9. Worsley in Venice noted that Guerini was received ‘with every possible mark of distinction and joy'. Lincolnshire Record Office, Papers of Sir Richard Worsley, 14, fol. 17, Sir Richard Worsley to Grenville, Venice, 14 August 1795.

186 Edmund Burke, The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, vol. IX, part 1, May 1796–July 1797, R. B. McDowell, ed. (Chicago, 1970), pp. 101-02, Burke to Earl Fitzwilliam, 30 October 1796, fn. 7.

187 Guyot, Le Directoire et la paix de l'Europe, p. 91.

188 NA, GRDS, RG59, Diplomatic Despatches, France (34), vol. 5, 17 November 1796.

189 NA, GRDS, RG59, Diplomatic Despatches, The Netherlands (M42), vol. 3, W. V. Murray, The Hague, 4 February 1798.

190 See Vec, Zeremonial-Wissenschaft im Fürstenstaat, for a discussion of ceremonial as a staging of power.

191 Edmund Burke, The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke (Boston, 1866), vol. IV, p. 433, October 1793.

192 Edmund Burke, The Speeches of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke in the House of Commons and in Westminster Hall (London, 1816), vol. III, p. 456.

193 Friedrich Gentz, Fragments Upon the Balance of Power in Europe (London, 1806), p. 93.

194 BL, Add. Mss. 59041, fol. 106, Grenville to Stahremberg, Cleveland Row, 2 December 1797.

195 Edmund Burke quoted in Gerald Chapman, Edmund Burke: The Practical Imagination (Cambridge, MA, 1967), p. 186.

196 Metternich, Memoirs, vol. II, p. 235.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Linda Frey

Linda Frey and Marsha Frey, currently professors at the University of Montana and Kansas State University, specialise in eighteenth-century international relations and international law. They have in tandem co-written, co-edited and co-annotated numerous books and articles including The History of Diplomatic Immunity, The Treaties of the War of the Spanish Succession, and ‘Proven Patriots’: The French Diplomatic Corps, 1789–1799. The duo are currently completing a monograph on the culture of French Revolutionary diplomacy and another on the Revolutionary challenge to international law.

Marsha Frey

Linda Frey and Marsha Frey, currently professors at the University of Montana and Kansas State University, specialise in eighteenth-century international relations and international law. They have in tandem co-written, co-edited and co-annotated numerous books and articles including The History of Diplomatic Immunity, The Treaties of the War of the Spanish Succession, and ‘Proven Patriots’: The French Diplomatic Corps, 1789–1799. The duo are currently completing a monograph on the culture of French Revolutionary diplomacy and another on the Revolutionary challenge to international law.