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Writing failure: aristocratic self-depiction in seventeenth-century France

Jonathan Dewald

University at Buffalo

Almost fifty years ago, Georg Misch described the French aristocratic memoir as

"die verbreitetste Form, in der sich die höfische-politische Gesellschaft aussprach."1 His

comment referred to the fact that in mid-seventeenth-century France, nobles from a

variety of milieux wrote out their life stories, and these attracted a wide readership.2 So

did closely-related forms of aristocratic writing: literary portraits, novels in which

aristocratic authors and their friends appeared in flimsy disguises, personal letters,

essays.3 Any account of seventeenth-century aristocratic culture has to come to terms

with this flurry of ego-writing, for it constituted the primary form of French nobles'

engagement in artistic endeavor.4

Antoine Furetière's 1690 dictionary seems to offer a straightforward way of

understanding the memorialists' enterprise, by underlining the place within the genre of

politics, power, and public life: "MEMOIRES, au pluriel, se dit des Livres d'Historiens,

1 Georg Misch: Geschichte der Autobiographie, IV, 2. Von der Renaissance bis zu den

autobiographischen Hauptwerken des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt a.M. 1969, p.

762.

2 Christian Jouhaud, Dinah Ribard, Nicolas Schapira: Histoire, Littérature, Témoignage.

Ecrire les malheurs du temps, Paris 2009, p. 44-45, on the vogue for memoirs after 1660.

3 Essential orientation is provided by Marc Fumaroli's three classic essays on the memoir

genre, repr. in Fumaroli: La diplomatie de l'esprit. De Montaigne à La Fontaine, Paris

1998, p. 183-281. On the close relationship between the aristocratic memoir and the

novel, see Roger Zuber and Micheline Cuénin: Littérature française 4. La classicisme,

Paris 1993, p. 187-213.

4 The genre also distinguished aristocratic culture in France from that of other European

societies: Fumaroli: La diplomatie, 1998 (see fn 3), p. viii, 189.



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escrits par ceux qui ont eu part aux affaires ou qui en ont esté tesmoins oculaires, ou qui

contiennent leur vie ou leurs principales actions." Memoir-writing thus concerned "ceux

qui ont eu part aux affaires," and, though it might include other aspects of their lives, it

usually dealt with "leurs principales actions."5 That subordination of personal to public

doings underlies a distinction still present in most histories of autobiography, between the

externalized self-depictions of the seventeenth century and the authentically

autobiographical writing that Jean-Jacques Rousseau pioneered a century later. In his

pioneering reflections on the genre, for instance, the French literary critic Philippe

Lejeune speaks of "l'écriture du moi qui s'est dévéloppé dans le monde occidental depuis

le XVIIIe siècle;" and he suggests that the modern concept of autobiography becomes

relevant only for works written after 1770.6 On this view, the memorialists' version of

selfhood expressed the values of a society of orders, in which both the legitimacy of self-

expression and the nature of the self being described derived ultimately from social

status. Only those who had significant deeds to present had the right to speak of

themselves, and only those of high social standing were likely to perform such deeds.7 At

the same time, speaking of oneself helped constitute and consolidate status. It

proclaimed the individual's public importance, as an actor whose deeds the public would

find interesting, while at the same time displaying mastery of the literary skills that the

seventeenth century increasingly prized.8

5 Antoine Furetière: Dictionaire universelle, 2 vols., Rotterdam 1690, unpaginated, s.v.

6 Philippe Lejeune: Le pacte autobiographique, new ed., Paris 1996, p. 7, 13-14.

7 Misch: Geschichte der Autobiographie, 1969 (see fn. 1), p. 777-778.

8 Nicolas Schapira: Un professionel des lettres au XVIIe siècle. Valentin Conrart, une

histoire sociale, Paris 2003, p. 14-17, 59, 71.



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This paper questions the apparently straightforward distinction between

seventeenth-century exteriority and late-Enlightenment introspection, by looking closely

at some of the ways in which aristocratic memoirs depict public action. I focus on the

central place within the genre of the narrators' own failures. Bassompierre, Retz, La

Rochefoucauld, Bussy-Rabutin, and other memoir writers organize their life stories

according to a basic pattern. The aristocratic actor-narrator begins his career with

significant advantages, considerable natural abilities, and reasonable hopes of an

important career; he plans well and acts intelligently. But in the end these efforts come to

nothing, and the narrator finds himself excluded from power and influence, and often

facing financial troubles and exile. The life story becomes a tale of unexpected decline,

from promising beginnings to a compromised authorial present. Scholars have typically

interpreted these failure narratives as essentially descriptive, reflecting the political

realities of the seventeenth century. Nobles often wrote about their careers during the

enforced leisure of political disgrace; even less dire circumstances might lead them to

efforts at narrative self-justification, in response to critics or royal ingratitude. The state's

growing monopoly on authority also led nobles to reflect on their place in society, and to

defend values that seemed out of touch with the new order. 9

Clearly such external circumstances mattered in shaping the memoir genre. But

in their emphasis on them, scholars have tended to neglect failure's narrative centrality, as

a theme around which aristocrats organized their self-depictions. La Rochefoucauld in

fact opens his memoirs by explaining that his youthful conduct "commença une longue

9 Fumaroli: La diplomatie, 1998 (see fn. 3), p. 190-193, 201; Jouhaud et al.: Histoire,

littérature, témoignage, 2009 (see fn. 2), p. 40-49, arguing that Bassompierre's memoirs

constitute a response to the developing trauma of imprisonment.



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suite de disgrâces, dont ma vie a été agitée;10 failure is here offered as the theme of a life

story, and the reader is immediately alerted to the fact. Bussy-Rabutin offers failure as

the explanation for his memoir's very existence; "les malheurs qui me sont arrivez,

pouvant laisser croire que je les meritois," he writes in the opening to his account, have

required that he explain himself to the public. 11 Understanding failure in this way brings

to the fore aspects of the memoirs that otherwise remain hidden. In reflecting on their

failures, the memoir writers necessarily reflect also on their troubled relationship to the

society in which they act, whose expectations they have somehow not met. The theme of

failure thus raises the theme of alienation, pointing as it does to the isolation within the

social order of even those in the highest social and economic ranks. Even they cannot

fully master society's codes. In this sense, their artistic efforts serve not to affirm their

place in society, but to underline its uncertainties.

I develop these interpretations through close examination of a specific case, that

of Henri de Rohan, a great Breton nobleman and Bourbon cousin. Born in 1579, Rohan

came from the high Breton nobility, and (by virtue of an early sixteenth-century

marriage) he was a cousin of Henri IV, who raised him to the eminence of duc et pair and

conferred on him other court favors. After the king's death, Rohan became the last great

political leader of French Protestantism. During the 1620s, he and his younger brother

the duc de Soubise led three Protestant rebellions in the south of France, finally agreeing

to a definitive treaty with the king in 1629, some months after the fall of La Rochelle. As

10 François de La Rochefoucauld: Maximes, mémoires, oeuvres diverses, Paris 2001, p.

872.

11 Roger de Rabutin: Les memoires de messire Roger de Rabutin comte de Bussy, 2

vols., Paris 1696, vol. 1, p. 1-2.



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part of that agreement, Rohan left France for exile in Venice, returning for only one brief

visit. But he remained in close touch with French affairs, partly through his wife, who

continued to reside mainly in Paris; and in 1634 Richelieu gave him an important military

position, leading a French-sponsored army charged with blocking the Alpine passes

against the Habsburgs. Rohan enjoyed some brilliant successes, winning a series of

battles against the imperial armies, but ultimately his mission proved a failure; his under-

paid Swiss allies rebelled and shifted their allegiance to the Empire. Having lost

Richelieu's trust and believing himself in danger of imprisonment, Rohan fled first to

Geneva, then to the army of Bernard de Saxe-Weimar; he died in 1638, of wounds

incurred while fighting as a private soldier in Bernard's army.12 His example is especially

worth considering because of the abundance of his other writings, formal and informal.

Throughout his life, he commented at length on events as they unfolded, and we can

often compare his retrospective accounts with what he thought at the time. His memoirs,

so the comparison suggests, expressed Rohan's stance toward politics from the very

outset of his career, not the disillusion of defeat and exile.13

* * * * * * *

12 Two solid biographies are available: Jack Alden Clarke: Huguenot Warrior: The Life

and Times of Henri de Rohan, 1579-1638, The Hague,1966; and Pierre and Solange

Deyon: Henri de Rohan: huguenot de plume et d'épée, 1579-1638, Paris 2000. For a

somewhat different perspective, Jonathan Dewald: "Rohan's World: A Political Culture

in Seventeenth-Century France," in: Jörn Leonhard and Christian Wieland, (Ed).: WhatMakes the Nobility Noble? Comparative Perspectives from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth

Century, Göttingen 2011.

13 This paper derives from two larger projects. In focusing on aristocratic memory and

self-depiction, it continues a line of inquiry that I began in my book Aristocratic

Experience and the Origins of Modern Culture: France, 1570-1715, Berkeley and Los

Angeles 1993; in focusing on Henri de Rohan, it builds on my current research, a book-

length study of the Rohan family in the seventeenth century.



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The memoir genre fascinated Rohan throughout his life. From childhood on, he

regularly reread Julius Caesar's Commentaries; late in life, while in exile in Venice, he

prepared his own summary of them, interspersed with advice for the contemporary

military leader.14 Soon after, while traveling in Switzerland, he arranged for the shipment

by mule of four boxes of his books, and these included the memoirs of Commynes, Du

Bellay, Monluc, Duplessis-Mornay, Villars, Villeroy, and others. The secretaries listed all

save Monluc's as "mémoires," suggesting that they constituted a coherent category within

his library.15 In keeping with this interest in others' self-depictions, Rohan himself wrote

two long memoirs of his own, the first dealing with his leadership of the Huguenot

movement, the second with his campaigns in the Valteline. One was published in the

decade after his death, and both apparently circulated widely in Parisian high society.16

Both texts fully conform to Furetière's definition of the genre, for they deal

exclusively with public events. Indeed, Rohan's self-narration only begins with the death

of Henri IV, the point at which he himself assumed a leading role in French politics.

14 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits Français 4107, La vie de Henri duc de

Rohan, f. 3 r-v; Charles Pradel, Ed.: Mémoires de J. de Bouffard-Madiane sur les

guerres civiles du duc de Rohan, Paris-Toulouse-Albi 1897, p. 75. The product of his

studies of Caesar, Le parfait capitaine, was published in 1636, two years before Rohan

died.

15 Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire, Geneva, Manuscrits Tronchin, 21: f. 47-48; the

secretaries adopted Monluc's own designation of his memoirs as Commentaires, in

imitation of Julius Caesar. Their terminology matters because of recent debate about the

coherence of the memoir genre: cf. Jouhaud et al.: Histoire, littérature, témoignage,2009 (see fn. 2), p. 25-40, who argue that the genre is chiefly a modern and artificial

creation.

16 The first was published in 1644, six years after Rohan's death, with further editions

beginning in 1646; the second was only published in the mid-eighteenth century. On

contemporary awareness of them, Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux: Historiettes, Ed.

Antoine Adam: 2 vols., Paris 1960-1961, vol 1, p. 621. Tallemant also uses the term

"Mémoires" to describe the work.



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Such a starting point, with the author already over thirty, precludes even posing the

fundamental question of Rousseauian autobiography, that of how the author became

himself, the finished personality now composing the work. 17 Nor does Rohan say much

about family or personal life. His wife, mother, and sister appear only when they too play

public roles. Even the personal emotions by which Retz and La Rochefoucauld so often

explain their own and others' behavior are entirely absent from Rohan's account. In the

same spirit, Rohan (following Caesar) avoids the first-person voice, while noting in

occasional asides his commitment to preserving the memory of great deeds, his own and

others'. Having described the heroic deaths of a small platoon of his soldiers, he

concludes: "les noms de ces pauvres Soldats meritent leur place dans l'Histoire, leur

action estant comparable aux actions plus (sic) memorables de l'Antiquité."18 By its

resistance to the crown, the city of La Rochelle "a acquis par sa constance une plus

longue vie dans la renommée des siecles à venir, que celles qui aujourd'huy prospèrent

dans le siècle present."19 His mother's constancy in prison "sera à la postérité un exemple

illustre d'une vertu sans exemple, & d'une piété admirable."20

Such stories of exemplary behavior place Rohan within an old tradition, that of

the historian as recorder of great deeds, writing with ancient examples in mind. But a

second theme in his memoirs creates more complicated effects. Throughout, instances of

17 It is worth noting in this context that Rohan would not have known Augustine's

Confessions, since a French translation appeared only after his death, in 1650; Fumaroli:La diplomatie, 1998 (see fn 3), 204-205.

18 Henri de Rohan: Memoires du duc de Rohan Sur les choses advenues en France

Depuis la mort de Henri le Grand, Paris 1665, p. 160.

19 Ibid., p. 300.

20 Ibid., p. 300.



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memorable virtue acquire some of their brilliancy from the dark context in which they are

set, a harsh social world in which bonds of community are weak and promises unreliable.

Rohan presents this theme in his memoir's first sentence: "Après la mort de Henri le

Grand chacun pensa à ses affaires." The queen-mother and the ministers sought to hold

on to power; "les autres Grands" sought "à se relever de l'abbaissement, auquel le règne

precedent les avoit soûmis. Parmi tout cela les haines s'exerçoient, et les plus habiles se

servoient de la passion des autres pour ruiner l'autorité de ceux qui diminuoient la leur."21

Through the remainder of the text, Rohan offers a long series of examples to

confirm these opening themes. Friends prove false; money and hopes of advancement

triumph over promises of loyalty; even religious commitments prove unstable. The effect

is the more chilling in that Rohan uncouples these self-interested betrayals from other

forms of social evaluation. A Protestant "Gentilhomme de qualité & de bon esprit"

betrays his erstwhile patron.22 Much higher in the social hierarchy, the maréchal de

Bouillon similarly combines personal excellence with villainy; "grand de courage &

d'entendement, capable de procurer à un Estat de grands biens & de grands maux,"23

Bouillon uses his abilities only to establish himself at the center of power, lying and

betraying his friends along the way. Similar judgments apply to Protestant elites at large:

Rohan finds arrayed against him "tous les Grands de la Religion de France, soit par envie

ou peu de zele, tous les Officiers du Roy à cause de leur avarice, & la pluspart des

principaux des villes, gagnez par les appas de la cour."24

21 Ibid., p. 1-2.

22 Ibid., p. 13-14.

23 Ibid., p. 3.

24 Ibid., p. 179-180.



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Ordinary people offer no counter-weight to the amorality of the notables. They

appear very often in Rohan's memoirs, for Protestant successes depended heavily on the

engagement of the urban crowd and middle classes. Such men are sincere in their faith,

Rohan emphasizes, but they lack the capacity to see events clearly and respond correctly

to them, and thus are easily swept into momentary enthusiasms. The citizens of La

Rochelle are typical, "peu iudicieux..., & suivant l'humeur des peuples, aussi insolens en

prosperité qu'abattus en adversite."25 "Les peuples... (he adds at a later point) sont faciles

à croire mal des gens de bien, & à croire bien des meschans, s'accordans volontiers avec

ces criards qui blasment tout & ne font rien, & qui cachent leur hypocrisie d'un zele

indiscret & seditieux à la Religion & à la liberté."26

Rohan himself cannot stand aloof from this pervasive ethical disorder; survival in

such an environment requires adaptation to it. Throughout his narrative, he remains loyal

to his own principles and to the real needs of the Reformed community— but defending

these requires its own forms of deception, manipulation, and brute force, often exercised

against his co-religionists. Faced with wavering in one of the cities that his forces

control, Rohan pretends to negotiate. But having "esprouvé diverses fois, comme sur ces

amusemens de negociation on avoit toujours tasché de le surprendre," he in fact

strengthens his "cabale" in the city and introduces a local gentleman "pour se mettre à la

teste de ses partisans;" eventually his cabale takes over. 27 The story is similar in the city

of Montauban. His designated lieutenant there "ayant pour ennemis non seulement ceux

25 Ibid., p. 163.

26 Ibid., p. 338.

27 Ibid., p. "173," in fact p. 169.



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qui avoient un dessein contraire au sien, mais aussi quelques rivaux qui sous main lui

rendoient de mauvais offices; il en surmonta une partie par prudence & dissimulation;

aux autres, il y fallut apporter la force & la severité." 28

Against such moments of political maneuvering, the narrative offers strikingly

few invocations of religious faith. Rohan notes (apparently with some amusement) the

Rochelais's belief that they might resolve their troubles by collective prayer;29 the

account of his second war concludes with the reflection that "quand nous serons plus gens

de bien, Dieu nous assistera plus puissamment."30 But such evocations of God's presence

are rare and ambiguous, and they almost never occur in the course of the action itself. In

the fallen world that he describes, God's influence rarely offers a plausible explanation for

the course of events, any more than aristocratic honor or popular loyalty.

In such a world, the narrative suggests, political failure is a likely outcome, for

even the most thoughtful analyst cannot fully understand its mechanisms or predict its

evolution. Hence Rohan repeatedly uses the terminology of incomprehensibility to

summarize the outcomes to which his own actions have led. Already in 1616, well before

his three major rebellions, he finds himself "haï en Cour, toutes choses lui ayant succedé

au contraire de son dessein."31 His second memoir, on the wars of the Valteline, similarly

emphasizes the disjuncture between insight and successful action. "Rohan ne voyoit pas

seulement l'appareil qui se faisoit contre lui..., mais même, par lettres interceptées ... étoit

informé bien particulièrement du dessein" of his enemies; "Mais ces lumières

28 Ibid., p. 260.

29 Ibid., p. 206-207.

30 Ibid., p. 18.

31 Ibid., p. 57.



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n'apportoient pas remède à la foiblesse en laquelle il se trouvoit."32 In the end the lesson

is again one of helplessness: "Le duc de Rohan, tournant par son esprit l'état auquel il se

trouvoit réduit, ne voyoit aucune ressource pour sortir du labyrinthe dans lequel il étoit

plongé."33 Here as throughout his accounts, failure derives less from a particular chain of

events than from the organization of society itself.

* * * * * * *

Can this dark social vision be viewed as more than a reflection of the

circumstances in which Rohan wrote? He composed each memoir in the aftermath of

defeat: the first, during his time of exile in Venice, following the final collapse of the

Huguenot movement that he had led; the second, after the failure of his leadership in the

Valteline had produced local rebellion and the threat of arrest if he returned to France. In

these situations, he like other aristocratic memoir writers had to reflect on the causes of

failure; viewing social actors as self-interested and political situations as illegible offered

one way of doing so. But in Rohan's case, more than for most memoir-writers,

comparison with earlier views is possible, for he had produced occasional political

analyses throughout his adult life. In about 1601, he composed a book-length account of

his grand tour through Europe, presenting his thoughts on the varied political situations

he had encountered; and after 1610, as he contended for leadership of the Huguenot

32 M. Petitot (Ed).: Mémoires du duc de Rohan sur la guerre de la Valteline, Paris 1822

(Collection des mémoires relatifs à l'histoire de France, vol 19), p. 87.

33 Ibid., p. 199.



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movement, there was a regular stream of "discours," describing the contemporary scene

and suggesting how his co-religionists might best respond to it.34

These earlier writings demonstrate the fundamental consistency of his views

throughout his political career, for from the outset he had presented self-interest and envy

as the main forces moving most political actors. In 1611, he comments that "nostre

lascheté est telle" that, rather strive to maintain the Huguenot movement intact, "nous

taschons de nous surplanter et portons plus denvie a ladvancement de nos freres qua

celuy de nos ennemys." In 1615, he describes the royal officials "couvrans leur interest

particulier sous le manteau du bien publiq."35 In 1617, he describes "l'esprit de lhomme"

as "insatiable, presomptueux, et envieux, qui bien souvent se fasche plus du bien et des

honneurs que son compagnon possede que de ce quil n'en jouit pas, mais cest selon la

force ou foiblesse de l'estat quilz le font plus ou moingz paroistre."36 Another discourse

of the same year opens by noting that "L'eloquence qui ne touche les interetz de ceux

quon veut persuader a ordinairement peu deffet envers eux...," and then reverts to the

theme of men's insatiable ambitions: "personne ne peut respondre de soy jusqu'ou la

convoitise, de commander souverainemt le peut porter sil ne la essayé." In 1618, he

worried about those "esprits inquiets" who, moved by "mescontantemens, envies ou

ambition ne peuvent se contanter de leur condition presente...." 37 Rohan's assumptions

about human nature and political action in fact changed little between 1611 and 1638.

34 Only some of these texts were immediately published, but they all circulated widely, assuggested by the numerous manuscript copies that survive.

35 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits Français 4101, Huit discours du duc

Henri de Rohan, p. 156, 175.

36 Ibid., p. 190.

37 Ibid., p. 179, 181, 196.



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Though primarily addressed to the Protestant community, Rohan's discourses also

present a world in which God's actions can rarely be detected. To be sure, in his 1622

discourse following the first of his wars, he emphasizes "la ferme résolution que Dieu m'a

donnée de m'employer tout entier au bien de son service... j'embrasserai toujours d'un

coeur franc la cause de Dieu, et réputerai à gloire de souffrir pour son nom."38 In the

discourse of 1611, composed soon after Henri IV's assassination, he similarly urges that

"cette mortelle vie ne se doit employer que pour acquerir l'Eternelle." Yet even this

invocation of religious purpose focuses on the need for individual action rather than on

God's provident arrangement of human affairs. While he lived, the discourse explains,

Henri IV had protected his former comrades in the Reformed movement; "Il faut a cette

heure que ce soit nostre vertu, Dieu la retiré afin que nostre recours ne fut plus en

luy....Quelle plus ambitieuse gloire pouvons nous recercher que de servir" God's cause?39

In this analysis, the religous character of his movement only serves to sharpen Rohan's

focus on the individual, now given the opportunity for heroic action in hostile

circumstances.

Divine providence counts for even less in his youthful account of his European

tour. The book consists mainly of naive, wide-eyed reports on the cultural monuments

that he and his companions visited, but Rohan adds to these his reflections on

contemporary politics and social arrangements as well. The work shows him already

rather detached in his religious commitments, warmer in his praise of Catholic Venice

and Munich than of the Protestant societies he visited. Italy as a whole seems to him

38 Ibid., p. 282.

39 Ibid., p. 154, 153.



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"plus civilisée, plus gentille, plus attrayante, non seulement que l'Allemande, mais

qu'aucune Nation que i'aye pratiquée."40 He notes the activity and wealth that he has

encountered in the Netherlands—but does not suggest any connection between these and

the region's Protestant commitments. Rather, religion appears in the text as mainly a

political problem: nations' religious unity is a key to their political strength, and religious

disunity inevitably produces weakness, though he also notes Scotland's good fortune in

combining religious unity with belief in the true religion, the Reform. Coming only a

few years after the Edict of Nantes, from the leader of a great Protestant family, this was

a strong statement of doctrinal indifference, with critical implications about the religious

minority to which he himself belonged.41 The text expresses an equally Machiavellian

commitment to political particularism: "autant de fois que vous changez de païs, autant

trouvez-vous de diverses humeurs, & par consequent diverses sortes de gouvernemens ...

ie vous dis qu'il y a une dissemblance tres-grande du gouvernement de chaque Royaume

ou Republique de la Chrestienté: ... & tel sera docteur passé pour les affaires du

gouvernement d'Espagne, qui ne seroit qu'un Asne du commencement venant en

France."42 No divine order accounts for this diversity. It results instead from the

multiplicity of human temperaments.

Rohan's circumstances after his 1629 defeat thus did not fundamentally reshape

his values, or even his political language. Their principal effect lay rather in encouraging

modes of thought that he had already pursued—and this less because of the experience of

40 Henri de Rohan: Voyage de monsieur le duc de Rohan Fait en l'An 1600, published

with the 1665 edition of the Mémoires (see fn. 38), separately paginated, p. 222-224, 365.

41 Ibid., p. 373.

42 Ibid., p. 342-343.



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failure than because of the new surroundings in which he chose to place himself.

Required by his treaty with the crown to leave France, he selected Venice as his

residence, dividing his time between a palace in the city and the nearby university town

of Padua. In one sense, the choice was unsurprising. He had long admired Italy and

Italian culture, and as a young man had found Venice especially delightful; in summing

up his visit there in 1600, he described the city as "un des cabinets des merveilles du

monde: duquel ie suis party aussi ravy & content tout ensemble de l'avoir veuë, que triste

d'y avoir demeuré si peu, meritant non trois ou quatre semaines, mais un siecle pour la

considerer à l'égal de ce qu'elle merite."43 In addition, Venice appealed because of its

political centrality. The city lay near one focal point of the Thirty Years War, and thus

offered at least the hope of military activity. Though he occasionally described himself in

these years as having withdrawn from political activity, in fact almost immediately after

arriving in Venice he had asked Richelieu to assist him in securing a position leading its

army.44 Establishing himself in Venice expressed Rohan's determination to stay at the

center of European international politics, despite the failure of the Huguenot movement.

But the choice also expressed Rohan's openness to receiving cultural influences

that accorded awkwardly with his Protestant beliefs. For all its liberalism, Venice of

course was Catholic, at a time of growing papal intolerance of intellectual deviation.

There had been the episode of the Venetian Interdict, not long after Rohan's first visit; the

Galileo affair would erupt soon after Rohan selected Venice for his exile. Of course there

was no lack of Protestant alternatives. His brother Benjamin, duc de Soubise, set himself

43 Rohan: Voyage (see fn.40), p. 224.

44 Pierre Grillon: Les papiers de Richelieu. Section politque intérieure, correspondance

et papiers d'Etat, 6 vols., Paris 1975-1985, vol. 4, p. 558, 579.



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up in England, and the family had connections elsewhere in Protestant Europe.45 The

choice of Venice displayed, yet again, the secular orientations of Rohan's outlook.

His stays in Padua expressed that secularism even more strongly, for its university

was known throughout Europe as a center of free-thinking. Yet so comfortable did Rohan

find this environment that he actually established two residences there, in addition to his

palace in Venice itself, the one a large house and gardens in the city, the other a small

villa outside it.46 Not surprisingly, intellectual engagement ensued: by 1631, Rohan had

fallen in with an extreme example of the Paduan outlook, Benjamin Priolo, a wandering

French intellectual who had traveled there to study medicine. Contemporaries described

Priolo as an intellectual adventurer, learned, brilliant, persuasive, and amoral.47 He soon

became Rohan's physician, then his principal secretary and advisor, and their association

continued to the end of Rohan's life. Some of Priolo's appeal was practical, for "ayant

une grande connoissance des langues et des principales affaires de l'Europe, [Priolo]

estoit capable de le servir par tout;"48 he served Rohan as emissary to the French court,

financial manager, and intimate political adviser. But above all he offered Rohan cultural

45 On the Europe-wide connections among Protestant aristocrats, Sonja Kmec: "'A

Stranger Born': Female Usage of International Networks in Times of War," in: Glenn

Richardson (Ed.): "The Contending Kingdoms." France and England 1420-1700,

Aldershot and Burlington 2008, p. 147-160. One of Rohan's sisters had married a

German prince; there had also been unsuccessful efforts to marry his youngest sister to a

prince of the Nassau house, and to marry Rohan himself to a Swedish princess.

46 Auguste Laugel: Henry de Rohan: son rôle politique et militaire sous Louis XIII

(1579-1638), Paris 1889, 425 (letter from Marguerite de Bethune to Catherine deParthenay, 7 January 1631).

47 M. E. Reveillaud (Ed): Véritables faits et gestes du seigneur Benjamin Prioleau, La

Rochelle 1909, p. 28, 30-44; on the extent of his influence on Rohan, p. 54-55. See also

Gustave Chéneau: Un agent secret de Mazarin: Benjamin Priolo (1602-1667), La

Rochelle 1908, p. 47, 52-53.

48 Reveillaud (Ed.): Véritables faits et gestes, 1909 (see fn. 47), p. 28.



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guidance. In 1631 Rohan had already written his mother about "une traduction qu'a faite

mon médecin (Priolo) de Lucain ... qui est la plus belle chose possible," 49 and he

continued to play this role thereafter; some scholars have claimed that Priolo actually

composed Rohan's memoirs on the Valteline campaign.50 Whatever the secretary's

specific contributions to the project, both of Rohan's memoirs were written with Padua

and Priolo in the background.

Such circumstances counted for more as Rohan composed his memoirs than the

recent experience of political disappointment. Indeed, it was at this point that

Machiavelli became an explicit influence on his thinking: alongside his collection of

memoirs, the list of his books shows, by the early 1630s he had acquired The Prince, The

Art of War, and the History of Florence, along with two works of Guicciardini.51

Machiavellian themes dominated his other major writing project from these years, De

l'intérêt des princes, his adaptation of Machiavellian principles of statecraft to

contemporary conditions.52 But even the influence of context, conversation, and reading

did not fundamentally redirect Rohan's thinking. Rather, they provided clarity and

intellectual legitimacy to beliefs that he had already expressed throughout his career:

about the imperfect fit between individual virtue and collective life, the difficulty of

assessing political forces, and the likelihood that able, astute actors would fail in the end.

49 Laugel: Henri de Rohan, 1889 (see fn. 46), p. 400-401 (letter to Catherine de

Parthenay, 14 May 1631).

50 C.-A. Sainte-Beuve: Causeries du lundi, 3rd edition, Paris n.d., p. 298-355, 344; .

Petitot (Ed).: Mémoires (see fn. 32), p. 3, arguing for Rohan's sole authorship.

51 BPU Geneva, MS Tronchin 21 (see fn. 25), ff. 47-48.

52 A recent edition provides an overview of the book's history and significance: Henri de

Rohan: De l'intérêt des princes et des Estats de la chrétienté, Christian Lazzeri (Ed).:

Paris 1995.



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Having worked with Priolo some years after Rohan's death, Mazarin himself speculated

on the direct of influence between them. Perhaps, he suggested, Priolo had learned his

capacity for "intrigue" from Rohan, "'qui était assez versé en ces matières.'"53

* * * * * * *

In looking back over his life, Henri de Rohan says almost nothing about most of

the topics on which Rousseau's Confessions center, but memoirs like his nonetheless hold

an important place in a history of modern selfhood. Their importance does not lie in the

aspects of himself that Rohan explored, but in the relation that he saw between himself

and his society. As he presents it, that relationship is essentially conflictual. In both his

memoirs and his earlier writings, Rohan describes his society as fundamentally

fragmented, lacking order and justice; the virtuous individual has no clear place in it. His

literary efforts thus do little to buttress his authority or social position. On the contrary,

they raise awkward questions about his performance of his social role.

Of course, Rohan believes firmly in the social distinctions of the Old Regime. He

never doubts that nobles should lead, ordinary people follow, and he observes aristocratic

"greatness of soul" in even his enemies. The disorder that he sees around him is ethical

rather than social, but the conclusions he draws from it are not vastly different from those

of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century theorists of social alienation. For Rohan as for his

successors, the individual is on his own, forced to define his own purposes and act on his

own terms. Even divine commandments have limited use in such a world, partly because

its conditions change so dramatically over space and time, partly because the virtuous

cannot avoid the harsh tactics of their enemies. Clearly Rohan did not understand

53 Chéneau: Un agent secret de Mazarin, 1908 (see fn. 47), p. 31.



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selfhood in modern terms. But he and other aristocratic memoir writers helped create the

space in which that idea of selfhood might develop, by creating a radical division

between the self and the society in which it acted.

dewald - self-depiction nobles xviith france (1)

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