On flying tables....

The flying table at Lunéville

The famous mechanical dining table or table volante is one of the most evocative relics of the lost Court of Lorraine.  Both ingenious and, at the same time absurd, it  occupies an uncertain imaginative space on the cusp between Baroque love of  novelty and the newer 18th-century values of privacy and domesticity. 

A "machine pour servir à manger" was first installed by the Duchess Élisabeth-Charlotte as early as  1705-6 in her private dining room in the south wing of the old château, overlooking her kitchen garden. 

An ingenious system of beams, pulleys and counterweights allowed the table to be raised and lowered directly into the basement below, where it could be set and cleared out of view.  It would disappear seemingly of its own accord and reappear, fully laden, as if by magic. As well as providing a pleasing novelty, this contrivance avoided the intrusion of servants into the intimacy of the private dining room.  

The mechanism was probably designed by Philippe Vayringe (1684–1746),  known in his lifetime as the ‘Archimedes’ of Lorraine,  who was ‘machiniste’ to the Duke (designing, for instance,  a hydraulic pump for the gardens at Lunéville), and later professor at the Académie de Lunéville.

Duke Leopold's mistress

"The Duc de Lorraine seems  very fond of  my daughter.  If only this love could endure, they will both be very happy.  "But alas there is no such thing as eternal love", as they say in Clélie..... "

So wrote the Princess Palatine, in  November 1698, shortly after her daughter Élisabeth-Charlotte d'Orléan's marriage to Leopold of Lorraine. Her insights were to prove all to perspicacious, for only a few years later the Duke acquired a mistress. It was this woman, the attractive and spirited Princess de Beauvau-Craon, rather than the long-suffering Duchess, who was to  prove the enduring love of his life.  

Anne-Marguerite de Ligniville, Princess de Beauvau-Craon, aptly depicted as Venus, in a portrait by Pierre Gobert from about 1709, which was  vigilantly snapped up by the Musée du Château de Lunéville from an auction in Monaco in 2014. [On Wikimedia]

Élisabeth-Charlotte, Duchess of Lorraine

Élisabeth-Charlotte d'Orléans, Duchess of Lorraine.
School of Pierre Gobert, Château de Versailles MV3690 [Wikimedia]

One result of the explorations of  Lorraine's place in the wider European dynastic history - a  "major axis" of recent research - has been a  reassessment of the role of Leopold's consort, the Duchess Élisabeth-Charlotte. 

The following is (mostly) summarised from a paper by  Francine Roze, former director of the Musée Lorrain in Nancy, delivered to the Académie Stanislas  in 2005.

Perhaps because little of her own voice survives,  the Duchess has tended to be viewed primarily through the eyes of her mother, the inimitable Princess Palatine, and  portrayed simply as a  devoted wife and mother, beset by family troubles, reticent in manner, self-effacing and constrained by her situation.   Francine Roze, however, emphasises her standing as a French princess, her personal determination and intelligence, and the important political position she occupied after 1729 as Regent to her son, the Duke Francis III. 

A wedding at Lunéville

 

Claude Jacquart, Marriage cortège of the prince de Lixheim in the courtyard of the palace of Lunéville, on 19th August 1721.

Oil on canvas; 72cm x 121cm.   Lunéville, Musée du château. 

The marvellous painting, by Claude Jacquart, was acquired for the collections of the Château de Lunéville in 2015.  It is  a unique visual memory of a grand ceremonial occasion at the Court of Duke Leopold, in this case the wedding on 19th August 1721 of  Henri-Jacques de Lorraine, Prince de Lixheim, a distant cousin of the Duke's, and Anne-Marguerite-Gabrielle,  second daughter of the Prince de Craon , Leopold's "favori en titre".   

Lunéville - the palace of Duke Leopold [cont.]

LIFE OF THE COURT

Grand ceremonies and festivals

In addition to the splendour of his palace, and his imposition of courtly ritual, Leopold sought to project power and strengthen his dynastic pretensions through public display, in festivals, ceremonial and entertainments. The grand fêtes which punctuated the life of the Court are discussed in a lecture which  given at the Château in 2020 by Caroline Loillier, from the Municipal Archives in Lunéville (video available on Vimeo or Youtube), from which this section is summarised.

0.22. Fêtes in the service of princely power:  Leopold's arrival at Lunéville and entry into Nancy

Entrée de Mr le Duc et de Madame la Duchesse de Lorraine à Nancy le 10e Novembre 1698 (anonymous engraving) Bibl.nationale.  https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8407304x?rk=107296;4

In 1697, following  the War of the League of Augsburg, the Treaty of  Ryswick restored the exiled Duke Leopold to his hereditary lands.  He left the Imperial court on 11th May 1798, having delayed his entry into Nancy until after the departure of the last French troops.   During his progress, the  nobility who had remained faithful to the House of Lorraine joined the cortège. It was three days later, on 14th May, that he made his entry into  Lunéville. The 19th-century historian Gaston Maugras describes the rejoicing which attended his appearance:  

The citizens of the town, organised into companies d'honneur,  rushed up from all directions; the country folk, dressed in their best, arrived from the furthest points and filled the streets with their exuberant cries.  Joy became delirium when the sumptuous cortege of riders and carriages was sighted.   At its head, on a splendid horse,  rode the young duke of Lorraine, Leopold, who was at last taking possession of his hereditary lands.....Long acclamations greeted his passage;  the crowd pressed around him; they took his hands..... 
Gaston Maugras La Cour de Lunéville au xviiie siecle (1904), p.1-3.
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k2057422/f11.item

The procession impressed and dazzled the inhabitants of Lunéville, particularly the horses, which had been captured from the Turks, and the brilliantly caparisoned camels, animals which the people had never before encountered. 

On the occasion of his formal entry into Nancy on 10th November the Duke received the keys of the town from his chief minister and former tutor, the Earl of Carlingford, with the magistrates and officials in attendance.

Lunéville - the palace of Duke Leopold

One would not believe one had changed location when one passes from Versailles to Lunéville 
Voltaire.

Un peu d'histoire......

In Lorraine, the dawn of the 18th-century truly marked a new beginning since.  After years of French occupation, the duchies of Lorraine and Bar were restored to independence by the Treaty of Ryswick. On 10th November 1698 the young Duke Leopold and his French bride, Élisabeth-Charlotte d’Orléans, made their solemn entry into Nancy.  Despite limited financial means,  Leopold was determined to assert to his place on the European stage as a independent sovereign.  Fundamental to this, was the establishment of  his Court in a suitably splendid formal setting.  As the American historian Jonathan Spangler notes, "Printed books, pamphlets, and portraits, and even a grand palace and gardens loaded with political symbolism, were still considerably cheaper than a standing army, and were effective weapons of "cultural capital" (Spangler, 2022, p.133).

Lunéville - rebirth of a palace

"Like a phoenix, our château is reborn from its ashes"

Marie-Danièle Closse, president of the association Lunéville château des Lumières

Quoted in Le Figaro, 26.05.2024.

Once the centre of a glittering court, the Château at Lunéville, the former palace of the Dukes of Lorraine, is currently the object of the most ambitious French state renovation project outside Paris. 

The"Versailles lorrain" has not been treated kindly over the years.  For once Revolutionaries are not to  blame.  It was Louis XV who began the depredations in 1766 when the duchy of Lorraine fell to the French crown after the death of the its last duke, the deposed King of Poland, Stanisław (Stanislas) Leszczyński .  In the years which followed the gutted building became barracks to the elite Gendarmes rouges - earning Lunéville prestige as "la cité cavalière"  but scarcely ensuring careful stewardship.  Above all the palace has been the victim of fire - so much so  that it has gained a reputation for uncanny bad luck. There have been no less than thirteen blazes since 1719, and King Stanislas himself died after his dressing gown was accidentally set alight.  According to one fanciful theory, the Court dwarf Bébé   laid a curse on the palace because Stanislas had frustrated his hopes for marriage.

The last, cataclysmic, fire took place in 2003. The damage to the building was heartbreaking  but there was some consolation in the revived interest which the catastrophe inspired, and the extensive restoration work which has subsequently been funded.  In May of this year, Le Figaro reported that  €43 millions has been spent to date on the reconstruction of the palace, with a further  €14 millions projected by 2028.  The ultimate aim is to  to develop a "un parcours muséal" which will recreate the château as it was at the time of the last dukes. 

The Robespierre-Danton duel reconsidered

How do modern historians view relationship between Danton and Robespierre?  

Here is a translation/ summary of Hervé Leuwers's article, "Danton et Robespierre: le duel réinventé", published in Biard & Leuwers (ed): Danton: le mythe et l'Histoire (2016).  A close reading of the evidence suggests that there was no profound conflict between the two men and that Robespierre moved against Danton only reluctantly, when he felt that the  elimination of factions was "necessary to the Revolution."

Hervé Leuwers - like Colin Jones in The Fall of Robespierre (2021) - moves away from the idea of Robespierre as the victim of personal neurosis or emotional pressure.  Instead  we see the dedicated Revolutionary who was both an idealist and a skilful and calculating political player.  This Robespierre is more human, but perhaps all the more formidible. 

"Even unto death" - Robespierre's letter to Danton

In March of last year an iconic piece of Revolutionary history went under the hammer when the Versailles auction house Osenat offered for sale the original manuscript of Robespierre's famous letter of 5th February 1793 to Danton.  Heavy with the resonances of betrayal to come, Robespierre offers his condolences for the death of Danton's wife and expresses his friendship and love "even unto death".

5 February 1793. If, in the troubles that can shake a soul like yours, the certainty of having a tender and devoted friend can offer you some consolation, I offer you this. I love you more than ever and unto death. In this moment, I am yourself. Do not close your heart to the accents of friendship that feel all your pain. Let us cry over our friends together, and let us soon show the effects of our deep sorrow to the tyrants who are the originators of our public misfortunes and our private misfortunes. My friend, I have sent you this letter from my heart to Belgium; I would have come to see you, if I had not respected the first moments of your just affliction. Embrace your friend.  Robespierre
ROBESPIERRE (Maximilien de). Autograph letter... - Lot 18 - Osenat

Oeuvres de Maximilien Robespierre, vol.III-1, p.160.
https://archive.org/details/oeuvrescomplte03robe/page/160/mode/2up?view=theater

Robespierre - what's new?

May 2022 saw the publication of Volume 12 of the critical edition of the works of Robespierre, containing - among other items - the long awaited transcripts by Annie Geoffroy of the Le Bas manuscripts acquired by the French state in 2011. [On which see my post of 15.05.2015]

The event was marked on 8th February 1793 with a lecture by Hervé Leuwers, given at Arras as part of a series hosted by the ARBR-Les Amis de Robespierre. Here is a summary/English translation of his talk which has been made available on YouTube.  As always, it is a great pleasure to rediscover that the foremost French expert on the Incorruptible is such a cheerful and unassuming scholar.

Professor Leuwers  begins by reviewing briefly the background to the present publication.  The work of editing the complete works was begun by the Société des Études Robespierristes as long ago as 1910.  Ten volumes were eventually published, followed in 2007 by a supplementary volume edited by Florence Gauthier. Until the unexpected discovery of the Le Bas collection in 2011, it was thought that the Robespierre corpus was more or less complete.

A little-known heroine of the Nancy Affair

It is a curious footnote to the story of Désilles to discover that a second person was credited with heroism the "Nancy Affair" - and that this was a woman, indeed a "woman of the people":  the wife of the Concierge at the Porte Stainville.  Here she is in Le Barbier's painting, serving the cause of peace by determinedly pouring a bucket of water over one of the cannons:

Le Barbier's "Heroic courage of Désilles"

Le Barbier, Heroic courage of the young Désilles (1794) - detail

The making of an artist

The career of Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier is a revealing case study of  how professional artists made a living in late 18th century France - and of the strategies they employed to weather the storms of the Revolutionary years.

André Désilles - forgotten Revolutionary hero

Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier (1738, Rouen - 1826, Paris)
Le Courage héroïque du jeune Désilles, le 30 août 1790, à l’affaire de Nancy
1794
Huile sur toile
H. 317 ; L. 453 cm
Inv. 512
Dépôt par le Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy au Musée de la Révolution française, Vizille

https://musee-lorrain.nancy.fr/les-collections/les-oeuvres-majeures/oeuvre-majeure/le-courage-heroique-du-jeune-desilles-1

This imposing canvas by Le Barbier, now displayed in the Museum of the French Revolution in Vizille,  was once intended to hang in the hall of the National Assembly as a pendant to David's Tennis Court Oath. The scene which it depicts is an all but forgotten episode from the early Revolution, the heroic action of the young lieutenant, André Désilles, who sacrificed his life in an attempt to prevent bloodshed during the mutiny in Nancy in 1790.

As Jean-Clément Martin notes,  Desilles's heroism, like that of Bara and Viala,  excited great popular acclamation at the time, but his reputation was rapidly overtaken by the evolution of Revolutionary politics: 

The example of the chevalier Désilles gives pause for thought concerning such posthumous glory  In the Spring of 1790 the garrison in Nancy mutinied and rose up against its officers, but quickly capitulated to the marquis de Bouillé, who was charged by the Assembly with re-establishing order. However, a number of the mutineers threatened Bouillé's army with their cannons.  At this point a  young officer, Lieutenant Desilles placed himself in front of the cannons to prevent them from being fired and was mortally wounded.  The incident was followed by brutal repression: 22 men were hanged, one broken alive on the wheel, 41 condemned to the galleys in Brest.  Desilles attracted immediate  nationwide glory.  His action was popularised in engravings, sculptures and theatre productions; his name was given to streets throughout the country and his bust was crowned with oak leaves in the National Assembly.   Two years later,  following the flight to Varennes, Bouillé had become a  reviled counter-revolutionary. The rebels of Nancy were amnestied in September 1791 and rehabilitated in 1792. The Assembly welcomed the former galley slaves, who paraded through Paris in their red bonnets, whilst the memory of Desilles became odious to the Revolutionaries and was soon forgotten.  Adulated for a short time, then scorned - this would seem to be the fate of such heroes, tied in as they were with the vicissitudes of political events.

Jean-Clément Martin, "Bara, de l'imaginaire révolutionnaire à la mémoire nationale".  In : Révolution et Contre-Révolution en France de 1789 à 1989  (1996)

 https://books.openedition.org/pur/17398