French Diplomacy and the Run-up to the Glorious Revolution (1688): A Critical Reading of Jean-Antoine d’Avaux’s Correspondence as Ambassador to the States General

Abstract

The purpose of the present research note is to offer a new reading of Jean-Antoine d’Avaux’s correspondence for the year 1688 and a more refined interpretation of the reasons why William III of Orange’s fateful crossing of the Narrow Seas in November 1688 caught the French Crown by surprise. In particular, it will shift emphasis away from a French-centered view toward a broader archival perspective on Louis XIV’s European policy in late 1688. It doing so, it will at least partly resolve the reasons behind the French Crown’s lack of military and naval intervention in November 1688. The considerable attention required by the war in the Rhineland and the potential conflict with the papacy brought about by the affair of Cologne have long been considered the main reasons for Louis’s inability to preempt William’s invasion of England. This article argues instead that the French Crown’s misreading of William’s intentions, informed as it was by d’Avaux’s reports from The Hague, was to have a fatal effect on the deployment of France’s military resources in the Low Countries. Working within the tradition of source criticism, the article uncovers for the first time some significant textual variations between d’Avaux’s