W. R. Newton, L'Espace du roi. La cour de France au château de Versailles 1682-1789, 2000 (J. Duindam)
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Autor / Rezensent Duindam, J.
Titel Untertitel Institut BSB digitale Bibliothek http://francia.digitale-sammlungen.de/Blatt_bsb00016343,00252.html Seiten 238-238 BSB Band-ID bsb00016343 BSB Seiten Anfang 00252 BSB Seiten Ende 00252 Lizenz DDC-BSB Geo-SW DDC-BSB Sach-SW DDC-BSB Zeit-SW Zeit-SW Geo-SW (GKD) Sachschlagwort (SWD) Personenschlagwort (PND) Fachgebiet OCR-Text 238 Rezensionen William Ritchey Newton, L'Espace du roi. La cour de France au château de Versailles 1682-1789, Paris (Fayard) 2000, 588 p. Notwithstanding the works of R. J. Knecht, D. Potter, Jacqueline Boucher, Jean- François Solnon, Hélène Himelfarb, and others, the early modern French court is a largely uncharted field. Or to be more précise: it is a thème too often dominated by a range of unveri- fied clichés, constructed by the enlightenment critique and >national< nineteenth-century historiography. Therefore, a detailed study of the appartments and their changing occu¬ pants in Versailles, ranging from Louis XIV's move to Versailles in 1682 to the révolution cornes as a welcome surprise. W. R. Newtons »L'Espace du roi« opens with a 70-pages introduction, and then changes into a collection of materials: a 420-pages topography linked to an 80-pages prosopography of Versailles. The corpus of Newton s work, a dossier of the logements, their structure, loca¬ tion in the various wings of the palace, and their changing owners, is intriguing and interest- ing; he frequently adds long quotes from archivai materials, or from the more familiär memoirs. Incidentally, Newton goes further, and draws conclusions from his material that allow us to glimpse the day-to-day realities of court life, the royal policy vis à vis the loge¬ ments, and the families' ingenious responses. Both his knowledge and his gênerai thesis seem strongly concentrated on the eighteenth Century. Newton connects the opposition of the princes du sang from the end of Louis XV's reign to the escalating shortage of suitable apartments in Versailles, caused by the number of enfants de France at court. His argument adds an interesting dimension to the familiär rivalry between the levels of the sang royal. When Newton discusses the policies of the Sun King, however, he repeats the worn clichés in a crude form. He finds it appropriate to cite »l'État c'est moi« (p. 19). More seriously, he states that the court was a means to control »the nobility«, citing a remark about the fils de France from Louis XIV's memoirs (p. 16). While it undoubtedly was the Sun King's policy to keep his dynastie rivais in check, we cannot equate them with »the« nobility. Nor would it be easy to force »the« nobles to attend court, as Newton suggests on the same page. He refers to Bluche's eighteenth-century based study about the »honneurs de la cour« and stresses that a »grande majorité« of nobles would hâve to seek présentation at court. How can Newton repeat the notion of domestication in this crude form, when he knows not only that the maison du roi was strongly reduced by the Sun King, but mainly that even the great project of Versailles could not house the numbers of nobles necessary to achieve this imagi- nary ambition. Consistency is not one of Newton's qualities, and he shows a poor know¬ ledge of the historiography. The defects may be forgiven in a work that shows great knowledge of a wide range of sources, and offers impeccable information about apartments and occupants. I am not so sure about the prosopographical détails. The uneven distribution of knowledge between the late seventeenth and the eighteenth Century is again evident, and this seriously undermines the usefulness of the prosopographical annex. Some of the entries for seventeenth-century grandees, such as the Conti princes, seem remarkably empty when compared with the lengthy descriptions of less notable figures from the eighteenth Century. Both in the topography and in the prosopography, I miss several important late seventeenth-century court officers, were they excluded because they were lodged elsewhere - or were they simply left out? Newton understandably concentrâtes on the allocation of apartments, but he could more profitably hâve used états and similar sources to explain omissions, and to provide more understanding of the gênerai patterns in the allocation of apartments. Moreover, in the few instances I felt compétent to judge the biographical data, the resuit was not wholly comfort- ing. Blainville, Colbert's fourth son, was not »introducteur des ambassadeurs«, but »grand maître des cérémonies«, nor did he obtain this charge in 1695, but a décade earlier. After Blainville's death in the battle of Blenheim, Dangeau (XI, p. 180) tells us, Louis XIV gave his logement in the grand commun to Sainetôt. By that time Sainetôt was »introducteur des Francia 28/2 (2001) Abstract
