ABSTRACT
Post-revisionist narratives of the origins of the French revolution, drawing heavily on the work of the German sociologist Jürgen Habermas, privilege the role of desacralization and/or oppositional politics as major forces undermining the monarchy within a burgeoning public sphere which extended well beyond established elites.2 In this paper I am going to outline an alternative narrative which draws on a key primary source, the unpublished memoirs of the Lieutenant-Général de Police de Paris, Jean-CharlesPierre Lenoir (1732-1807), and stresses that – at least in terms of strategies for using print – the French political elite was conducting business as usual right down to the late 1780s.3 The dominant medium for domestic political discussion remained the political pamphlet, and political pamphleteering was controlled by the elites. Episodic fl urries of pamphleteering, including the sustained campaigns of the Maupeou crisis of 1771-74, often depicted as a dress rehearsal for revolution, were conducted by factions within the elite and were essentially ephemeral in purpose. This is not to deny the importance
1 The archival research for this paper was funded with a Small Research Grant from the British Academy. I also thank the staff of the Médiathèque at Orléans for their kindness and help, and my wife, Andrea Kemp, for assisting my research and reading the manuscript.
