Chapter 1.2.VIII: Printed Paper
Notes
Manuscript Newspapers (Nouvelles à la main) Nouvelles à la main were handwritten gazettes that circulated before there were widely published newspapers. Under the ancien régime newspapers were few and censored, but in the runup to the revolution they became widespread.
Bachaumont and his journeymen and followers may close those “thirty volumes of scurrilous eaves-dropping,” Louis Petit de Bachaumont was a French writer who has survived for his role in the (inhale) Mémoires secrets pour servir à l’histoire de la République des Lettres en France depuis 1762 jusqu’à nos jours (“Secret Memoirs Serving as a History of the Republic of Letters in France from 1762 until Our Days”, Our days = til 1787) which was basically gossip about the court and literary scene.
Courrier de l’Europe A biweekly periodical published in London for 1776 to 1792.
Linguet A conservative journalist who will be executed during the Revolution.
Abbé Raynal French man of letters and philosophe whose L'Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (“Philosophical and Political History of the Founding and Commerce of the Two Indies”) was burned by the public executioner.
with the amours and destinies of a young Mirabeau Mirabeau had gotten himself into trouble with his father, who pursued various courses of legal action to keep him locked in house arrest.
“Friend of Men,” Refers to Mirabeau’s father Victor de Riqueti, Marquis de Mirabeau, a physiocratic economist known as the Friend of Men after his work Ami des hommes
Or consider that unutterable business of the Diamond Necklace See long note to previous chapter.
Balsamo Cagliostro An Italian occultist of much fame, friend of Cardinal de Rohan, initially thought to have been involved in the Diamond Necklace Affair, but was acquitted after nine months. Louis XVI exiled him anyway.
The Epigrams henceforth become, not sharp and bitter; but cruel, atrocious, unmentionable. Marie Antoinette was accused of lesbianism, secretly running the government, and much else. One thing that was not known, but maybe somehow sensed, was that she was in fact passing quasi-treasonous notes to her brother emperor Joseph II, informing on French discussions in the run-up to a possible war between France and Austria.
Patibulary Related to the gallows; again in reference to the gallows from which the Flour War convicts were hanged.
as Chesterfield wrote, “all the symptoms I have ever met with in History!” Lord Chesterfield was a British diplomat who in 1753 wrote of France: “All the symptoms I have ever met with in history, previous to great changes and revolutions in government, now exist and daily increase in this country.”
Conqueror of a golden fleece, by giant smuggling; tamer of hell-dogs, in the Parlement Maupeou Referring to Beaumarchais’ role in supplying the Americans and the Goezman affair, respectively. See supra Chapter 1.2.IV.
cloaca A sewer