Madame de Pompadour's Protege: Henri Bertin and the Collapse of Bourbon Absolutism c. 1750-1792

Abstract

Gwynne Lewis, Emeritus Professor of History at Warwick University, describes the collapse of French absolutism through the distinguished administrative career of Henri Bertin, reformer, sometime économiste, intendant, contrôleur-général des finances (1759–63) and ultimately secretary of state (1763–80). Lewis asserts that Bertin rose to such heights thanks to the patronage of Madame de Pompadour and stayed there because of his vital role in both overseeing and covering up Louis XV’s illicit sex life. Organised in mostly chronological fashion in six substantive chapters and a lengthy conclusion, Lewis takes his readers on a whirlwind tour of a number of important topics. Although Lewis claims that he will ‘record and evaluate Bertin’s significant contribution to the ideological, political and economic reforms that were introduced following the disasters of the Seven Years’ War’, he spends remarkably little time discussing either the content or nature of the reforms themselves or detailing Bertin’s role in them even in the three chapters ostensibly devoted to those subjects (Chapters 4–6). Instead, readers learn about the rise of the Bertin family of Périgueux to become robe nobles, the displacement of the oldest son and heir, the comte de Fratteaux and Henri’s assumption of the mantle of leadership and his simultaneous assimilation to the group surrounding Madame de Pompadour. Lewis goes out on a limb to assert that Pompadour, Bertin and Louis XV formed a ‘royal “triumvirate”’ in 1754 that lasted nearly until Pompadour’s death in 1764 that was based on overseeing and then covering up Louis XV’s extramarital affairs. Lewis frequently over-emphasises the impact of Louis XV’s sex life on the waning authority of Bourbon absolutism. For this reader, these assertions required much more evidence to be convincing. This part of the book also highlights the significance of the Seven Years War in weakening French absolutism as well as making tantalising but vague references to Louis XV’s secret diplomacy. Unfortunately the linkages among these factors are not clarified or explored sufficiently to understand the basis of Lewis’s arguments.