A Well-Staged "Coup de Theatre": The Royal "Lit de Justice" of 1718

Abstract

ON AUGUST 26, 1718, ONLY THREE YEARS AFTER LOUIS XIV DIED, the testament of this monarch who attributed the highest glory to the absolute monarchy was overturned at a royal Lit de justice. This important political ceremonial, discussed below, generally consists of an extraordinary assembly between the king and the Parliament of Paris, intended for solving important state matters. The 1718 Lit de justice, held at the Tuileries, was formally led by the five-year-old Louis XV, but conducted in reality by the Duke of Orl6ans, nephew of the deceased king and Regent of France. During this Assembly, Louis XIV's two legitimated sons-the Duke of Maine and the Duke of Toulouse-were deprived of the right to inherit the crown. This important political event, recorded in official archives and in several testimonies, was also the object of a vivid account by the Duke of Saint-Simon. This author of the famous Memoirs about the reign of Louis XIV and the Regency was both a witness and a participant. We will examine through his narrative the theatrical paradigm underlying political practice in early modern France, of which this ceremony can be taken as a perfect illustration. In the ancien regime, politics were related in many respects to literature, particularly to theater. Although works such as Machiavelli's Prince or Naude's Political Considerations on Coups d'Etat took a somewhat theoretical stance, as a rule, political ideas were shaped and expressed in plays or in historical writings more often than in abstract treatises. Corneille's tragedies served to justify or elaborate absolutist ideology, the Cardinal de Retz's La conjuration du comte de Fiesque has been interpreted as a manual for political conspiracy in the form of historical narrative, and most thinkers of the seventeenth century, including Pascal and Finelon, developed their political theories through fictional dialogues or in the form of advice to the prince. Moreover, royal authority was itself firmly grounded in ceremonial representation. Its ritual enactment reaffirmed its sacred character, on the one hand, and served to reduce the consciousness of its violent origin, on the other. Kingship was indeed seen as rooted in an