Creatures of Infamy: Lettres de Cachet, Family Honor, and the Uses of Secrecy

Bauer, Nicole

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-12236-1_2

Nicole Bauer ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6857-4447²

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Abstract

In the 1720s, a nobleman by the name of François Riotte de la Riotterie submitted a request for a lettre de cachet (a secret order for arrest) for his son, who went by the same name.

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Notes

1.
Dossier du fils du Sieur François Riotte Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal (henceforth BA) MS 10895.
2.
Ibid.
3.
See Arlette Farge and Michel Foucault, Le Désordre des familles: lettres de cachet des Archives de la Bastille au XVIIIème siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1982).
4.
Lisa Jane Graham, “Scandal: Law, Literature, and Morality in the Early Enlightenment,” in The Interdisciplinary Century: Tensions and Convergences in Eighteenth-Century Art, History and Literature, 226. See also James Traer, Marriage and the Family in Eighteenth-Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980); Arlette Farge, “Familles: l’honneur et le secret,” in Histoire de la vie privée, vol. iii: De la Renaissance aux lumières, ed. Philippe Ariès (Paris: Seuil, 1985); and John Shovlin, “Toward a Reinterpretation of Revolutionary Antinobilism: The Political Economy of Honor in the Old Regime,” Journal of Modern History 72 (2000): 35–66.
5.
Michel Rey, “Police and Sodomy in Eighteenth-Century Paris: From Sin to Disorder,” in The Pursuit of Sodomy: Male Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe, eds. Kent Gerard and Gert Hekma (New York: Haworth Press, 1989).
6.
Dossier de prisonniers 1752 BA MS 11786.
7.
Ibid., August 1752.
8.
Ibid.
9.
Dossier de prisonniers 1754 BA MS 11874.
10.
Ibid.
11.
Ibid.
12.
See Arlette Farge and Michel Foucault, Le Désordre des familles: lettres de cachet des Archives de la Bastille au XVIIIème siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1982).
13.
Richard Mowery Andrews, Law, Magistracy, and Crime in Old Regime Paris, 1735–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 270, 293.
14.
Brian Strayer, Lettres de cachet and Social Control in the Ancien Regime: 1659–1789 (The University of Iowa: Proquest Dissertation Publishing, 1987), 36.
15.
See Sarah Maza, Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes célèbres of Prerevolutionary France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); also Family, Gender, and Law in Early Modern France, eds. Suzanne Desan and Jeffrey Merrick (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 2009).
16.
See Vincent Denis, Une histoire de l’identité: France, 1715–1815 (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2008).
17.
See René-Marie Rampelberg, Le ministre de la Maison du Roi, 1783–1788: Baron de Breteuil (Paris: Economica, 1975).
18.
Dossier du fils du Sieur François Riotte BA MS 10895.
19.
Ibid.
20.
Ibid.
21.
See Jeffrey Merrick, Order and Disorder Under the Ancien Regime (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007); Homosexuality in French History and Culture, eds. Jeffrey Merrick and Michael Sibalis (New York: Routledge, 2012); Robert Oresko, “Homosexuality and the Court Elites of Early Modern France: Some Problems, Some Suggestions, and an Example,” in The Pursuit of Sodomy: Male Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe, eds. Kent Gerard and Gert Hekma (New York: Haworth Press, 1989); Thierry Pastorello, Sodome à Paris: fin XVIIIème-milieu XIXème siècle: l’homosexualité masculine en construction (Paris: Creaphis, 2011); Michael Sibalis, “Homosexuality in Early Modern France,” Queer Masculinities, 1550–1800: Siting Same-Sex Desire in the Early Modern World, eds. Katherine O’Donnell and Michael O’Rourke (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); and Homosexuality in Early Modern France: A Documentary Collection, eds. Bryant Ragan and Jeffrey Merrick (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
22.
Dossier du fils du Sieur François Riotte BA MS 10895.
23.
Michael Sibalis, “Homosexuality in Early Modern France,” in Queer Masculinities, 1550–1800: Siting Same-Sex Desire in the Early Modern World, eds. Katherine O’Donnell and Michael O’Rourke (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 221.
24.
Dossier du fils du Sieur François Riotte 27 Aug. 1729 BA MS 10895.
25.
Ibid.
26.
Ibid., 27 Feb. 1730.
27.
Ibid., 28 May 1731.
28.
See Jonathan Dewald, Aristocratic Experience and the Origins of Modern Culture: France, 1570–1715 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
29.
Dossier du fils du Sieur François Riotte 27 Aug. 1729 BA MS 10895.
30.
Ibid., 7 July 1731.
31.
Ibid., 3 Feb. 1736.
32.
Ibid., 11 May 1736.
33.
Ibid., 8 May 1737.
34.
Ibid.
35.
Ibid., 14 Aug. 1736.
36.
Ibid., 21 Dec. 1740.
37.
Dossier de prisonniers Dec. 1725 BA MS 10895.
38.
Ibid.
39.
Ibid.
40.
Ibid.
41.
Ibid., 8 Dec. 1725.
42.
Ibid.
43.
Ibid.
44.
Ibid., 7 Dec. 1725.
45.
Ibid.
46.
Dossier de prisonniers BA MS 11504.
47.
Ibid.
48.
Ibid.
49.
Ibid.
50.
Ibid.
51.
Ibid.
52.
Ibid.
53.
Ibid.
54.
Graham, 236. See also Jennifer Vanderheyden, Moral Cupidity and Lettres de cachet in Diderot’s Writing (New York: Routledge, 2019).
55.
Dossier de prisonniers BA MS 11504.
56.
Ibid.
57.
Ibid., 16 Mar. 1741.
58.
Ibid.
59.
Ibid.
60.
For more on exotic animals in eighteenth-century Paris as status symbols, see Louise E. Robbins, Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots: Exotic Animals in Eigtheenth-Century Paris (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).
61.
Dossier de prisonniers BA MS 11504.
62.
Ibid.
63.
Dossier de prisonniers BA MS 12320.
64.
Ibid.
65.
Ibid., 7 Jan. 1768.
66.
Dossier de prisonniers 1773 BA MS 12432.
67.
Honoré-Gabriel de Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, Des Lettres de cachet et des prison d’état: ouvrage posthume, compose en 1778, Vol. I (Hamburg: [s.n.], 1782), xii. See also Barbara Luttrell, Mirabeau (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990); G. Chaussinand-Nogaret, Mirabeau (Paris: Seuil, 1982); and Georges Fray, Mirabeau: l’homme privé (Paris: Officine, 2009).
68.
Mirabeau, Des Lettres de cachet, xiv.
69.
Mirabeau, 226–231.
70.
Ibid., 297.
71.
Ibid.
72.
Ibid., 297–298.
73.
Ibid.
74.
Ibid., 300, 304.
75.
Ibid., 91.
76.
Ibid., 109–111.
77.
Ibid., 175.
78.
Ibid., 219.
79.
Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris, Vol. I (Amsterdam: s.n., 1783–88), 186–187.
80.
Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris, Vol. VII, 242.
81.
Ibid., 248–250.

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University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK, USA
Nicole Bauer

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Bauer, N. (2023). Creatures of Infamy: Lettres de Cachet, Family Honor, and the Uses of Secrecy. In: Tracing the Shadow of Secrecy and Government Transparency in Eighteenth-Century France. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12236-1_2

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12236-1_2
Published: 01 December 2022
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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