The establishment of marriage sits on the intersection of the non-public and political like no different. No relationship is extra intimate; none is as vulnerable to the trimmings of fantasy. Few establishments have higher implications for social and financial stability; governments, spiritual organisations, and people have all fought to outline and management marriage for that motive.
These struggles change into significantly necessary during times of unrest. Few occasions of the fashionable period have been as disruptive because the French Revolution of 1789, which upended a millennium of monarchical rule in France, led to more and more radical experiments in governance, and triggered a sequence of wars lasting, with just a few pauses, from 1792 to 1815. The revolutionary authorities additionally applied quite a few modifications to French regulation, together with the secularisation of marriage (that’s, making it a civil ceremony) in 1791, buttressed by the legalisation of divorce in 1792. Jennifer Ngaire Heuer’s The Soldier’s Reward: Love and Struggle within the Age of the French Revolution and Napoleon examines romantic relationships and marriage at a time when many males of marriageable age had been going through a army service that will rip them from their households and romantic companions. The ‘reward’ of the e-book’s title refers back to the promise of marriage awaiting males after an (undetermined) interval of army service in defence of the nation. By 1793 the French had been at warfare with a lot of Europe, resulting in the mass mobilisation of citizen-soldiers in August of that yr (the well-known levée en masse). By 1815 greater than three million French males had fought within the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Lots of them didn’t return, and lots of of those that did had suffered grievous accidents. Common theatrical items, songs, and engravings celebrated the braveness and patriotism of the wounded, who, in these accounts, typically returned to a trustworthy potential spouse who was extra impressed by the heroism of her injured fiancé than by a suitor who had shirked his patriotic responsibility. Within the common play Rose and Aurèle (1794), the younger heroine chooses to marry her returning love, Aurèle, who has misplaced an arm and suffered harm to his face. She rejects as cowardly one other suitor, Lormeuil, who has averted army service resulting from being just a few months too previous, telling him that he ought to have fought no matter his age. Typically in these fanciful narratives a rich benefactor would even present the fortunate couple with monetary assist in recognition of the soldier’s sacrifice, as in The Guinguette, or Celebrations for the Peace (1801). The ‘actual’ man was the citizen who had fought for his nation.
However as Heuer’s spectacular analysis demonstrates, the disconnect between fantasy and actuality was profound. Peasant households wanted the labour of their sons, and infrequently sought to assist them evade army service. Many males getting back from the battlefield had been injured in ways in which made them undesirable companions, or perhaps a burden to a future spouse. The monetary ‘rewards’ that the state (or imaginary patrons) supplied to its citizen-soldiers had been meagre, or non-existent. Whereas theatrical productions valorised the person prepared to serve his nation (in addition to the younger ladies who missed disfiguration), actuality was extra sobering. The household economic system of the French peasant and concrete employee depended upon the labour of each spouses; the loss or impairment of a younger man may consign a complete household to poverty.
Reliant on conscription, the Napoleonic regime had a stake in selling the idea that love, honour, and monetary assist awaited the returning warfare hero. The state generally even organized marriages between veterans and appropriate younger ladies, together with government-provided dowries. These unions had been celebrated in public festivals. In 1803, shortly after the Peace of Amiens, the English author Anne Plumptre reported on a state-sponsored competition uniting 12 troopers with 12 younger ladies to rejoice the Feast of the Assumption; the federal government paid the price of the weddings and supplied dowries. As Heuer reveals, nonetheless, these state-authorised marriages didn’t all the time truly happen and the promised dowry typically remained unpaid.
Marriage was not only a reward for troopers; it may be a approach out of army service, particularly as, over time, fewer males had been prepared to sacrifice themselves for Napoleon’s warfare machine. Heads of households had been much less prone to face conscription, and so changing into one grew to become expedient. Whereas the levée en masse had inspired all males, married and single, to serve the Previous Regime, the Jourdan Legislation of 1798, which codified conscription, signalled a return to the expectation that younger, single males would dominate the army ranks. Nevertheless, a fast marriage was not all the time simple to rearrange, main at instances to wildly inappropriate ‘paper marriages’ between males within the prime of life and aged ladies as a approach of avoiding conscription. In November 1809 the prefect of the division of the Nord denounced 18 suspicious marriages between younger males and aged ladies, considered one of whom was 99 years previous. This in all probability appeared like an excellent possibility when divorce by mutual consent – enshrined within the 1792 regulation – made it potential to finish the wedding as soon as the hazard had handed. However the Napoleonic Code of 1804 made divorce considerably harder, whereas the Bourbon Restoration ended the chance altogether in 1816, leaving some {couples} unhappily certain for all times.
Napoleon’s closing defeat in 1815 and the return of the Bourbons introduced an finish to the fixed warfare that had formed French life for practically 25 years. Nevertheless, troopers had been returning to a really totally different nation, wherein capitalism and consumerism would play an more and more necessary position. Simply as warfare and revolution had triggered debates and new attitudes in the direction of romance and matrimony, so too did the imperatives of a contemporary city society. These modifications are explored in Andrea Mansker’s Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France. Mansker locations on the centre of her evaluation two marriage brokers, Claude Villiaume and Charles de Foy, who took benefit of the burgeoning press and print promoting within the first half of the nineteenth century to advertise their consumer-based approaches to courtship. Marriage was touted not solely as a reward for troopers (though returning troopers had been amongst Villiaume’s audience), however as the best of all French women and men. It was additionally a market, and the dealer may assist each women and men – particularly these of the rising bourgeoisie – higher place themselves within the competitors for appropriate spouses.
Like Heuer, Mansker is as within the fantasies that the matchmaking commerce generated as she is within the actuality of the enterprise itself, particularly since, within the case of Villiaume, the veracity of his tales – for instance, that of a younger, rich single mom, ‘Emilie’, who sought a sexless marriage to an ageing and financially needy nobleman – is as unclear to the historian because it was to up to date readers. A former soldier who served time in jail beneath Napoleon for his erratic behaviour (together with a suspected assassination try on Napoleon), Villiaume used his story-telling expertise to safe his launch from confinement. In his ads within the petites affiches (categorised advertisements), Villiaume wove narratives for women and men trying to find love, highlighting the ingredient of probability – ‘hasard’ – at play on the marriage market. To counter the sketchy fame of matchmakers, he emphasised that he was merely serving to to enhance his shoppers’ possibilities, bringing collectively two people whose alternatives in nameless city areas may very well be a lot improved by his help. Foy, much more than Villiaume, claimed the title {of professional} for himself, insisting on his competence, altruism, and experience in his ads, and proudly displaying the enterprise licence the French state had granted him (and for which he paid a yearly tax). In a sequence of court docket circumstances in opposition to shoppers who refused to pay his payment, he emphasised the added worth of his companies. Nevertheless, his emphasis on secrecy for his shoppers – in addition to his veiled threats to show those that denigrated his companies or refused to pay – hinted that his occupation was not as respectable as claimed.
Public dialogue of matchmaking companies within the nineteenth century highlighted questions concerning the which means of marriage – questions that the French Revolution had triggered. Was marriage merely a civil contract that may very well be dissolved if the events had been sad with the association? Who ought to organize marriages: mother and father and relations, or the spouses themselves? Was marriage a client good that conferred materials advantages because the custom of organized marriages among the many French elite instructed? Or was marriage a sacred union, whose main goal transcended the fabric?
These questions had been by no means totally resolved. Foy succeeded in quite a few lawsuits defending the validity of marriage brokerage contracts within the 1840s and 1850s, however a ruling by the Court docket of Cassation in 1855 amid a conservative backlash beneath the Second Empire asserted that marriage was certainly totally different from different contracts, particularly since, till its legalisation in 1884, divorce remained unattainable. Marriage brokerage continued to flourish, nonetheless, and dowries and materials assets continued to offer motivation for it even because the language of affection dominated.
A number of the modifications in attitudes in the direction of marriage that Heuer and Mansker emphasise in these fascinating books had been already underway within the 18th century, earlier than warfare and revolution upended all social, authorized, and political preparations: that’s, an emphasis on companionate marriage, particular person alternative, and the contractual nature of the connection. However marriage stays among the many most intricate and fraught of establishments due to its emotional and sensible issues. A profitable marriage guarantees pleasure and achievement; an sad one destroys lives. It’s no shock that the debates which surrounded the topic greater than two centuries in the past proceed to be fought right this moment.
- The Soldier’s Reward: Love and Struggle within the Age of the French Revolution and Napoleon
Jennifer Ngaire Heuer
Princeton College Press, 384pp, £38
Purchase from bookshop.org (affiliate hyperlink)
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Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France
Andrea Mansker
Cornell College Press, 282pp, £50
Christine Adams is Professor of Historical past at St. Mary’s Faculty of Maryland.
