The Generation Before the Revolution part 1: Isaac de Veckenring
Hey friends, it’s been a long and solid while. There’ve been a bunch of reasons for this: spending ~6 months doing the reading and writing for an article certainly put a bit of a hold on the reading/writing process that I’ve generally put into Lords of France, but beyond that the new stuff I have going on--activism, my job, an actually active social life--have combined to make the kind of writing I used to routinely do with Lords of France seem infeasable. This doesn’t necessarily mean that LoF is done, rather that the kind of moving across perspectives and dealing with like local history without necessarily moving the story along isn’t really something I’m able to do anymore. I’ve been writing this AAR for five years and I’ve had my idea for what the French Revolution in this timeline would be like for three, and I just can’t keep waiting on this. So I’m going to move a bit quicker. France was doing very well the last time I wrote an entry, and while her slow decline from predominance (or rather inability to keep up with Prussia and Britain) is something that will be in the background, it’s not something I’m particularly interested in talking about directly, partially because I’ve done that story so many times. Instead I’m going to start focusing on the buildup to the Revolt of Min, which is the first in a chain of events that gets us to the Revolution, while talking about the mentors of the people who would become key players in the Revolution. I hope you enjoy!
Armand de Villeneuve. The name immediately brings a series of deeply conflicting feelings. The scourge of Europe, the father of nationalism, a figure just as hated in Europe as he is adored in the New World. Save perhaps Napoleon or Wellington, he was the greatest general of a generation, but he was also far more than that. He escalated war to a whole new meaning, changing the potential goals of war from the mere taking of land to the complete destruction of the foe’s societal structure. This said, the popular idea of the man is still very much shrouded in myth, a shrouding which is as much the fault of Villeneuve himself as it is the attempt by the counter-revolutionary powers to cast him as a ‘barbarian’. But skilled as he was, he was merely the last in a long line of generals starting with Cortez, who developed a particular style of warfare in the colonies in order to counteract the inferiority of European numbers against their foes. And his mentor, Comte Isaac de Veckenring, was one of the foremost masters of this craft.
The Veckenrings had been one of the major noble families of Lorraine, and during the Duchy’s few decades of independence were some of the major power brokers of the realm, owning nearly all the land north of Metz at their peak. Isaac’s grandfather, Reynault, had been the Treasurer to the Duke, and had used his money to build a luxurious estate on the Moselle centered around a massive mansion built in the Classical style. Shortly before the Franco-Dutch war this estate employed nearly 200 servants and had 20 acres of gardens, curated forests, and pools.
The war ended the family’s fortunes however, as their loans to the Duchy were annulled and much of their lands were sold off to newly ennobled officers. The Veckenring Estate that Isaac was born in was a shadow of its former self, its gardens and forests overgrown, its pools hives for mosquitos and flies. Despite their change in fortunes, or perhaps because of it, the family remained loyal to the idea of the Duchy of Lorraine, and continued the austere Huguenot faith the country based itself on.
A portrait of the young Isaac shortly before the War of Prussian Succession
With his family nearly impoverished and their best lands long gone, the Veckenrings did what any poorer noble family did and sent their children to the Army. And so, in 1748, the 14 year old Isaac gained a captaincy in the 2nd Lorrainer Hussars, a position his parents bought. This remained a profitable venture: although the army had faced intermittent reforms through the early 18th century, officerships were still bought and sold as property, and captains were still expected to do their own recruiting as they had since the Middle Ages.
This naturally led to corrupt practices. Isaac was given a 500 livre salary and was expected to raise 200 horsemen, although we know from his diaries that his company rarely broke 150. This was a common practice and in fact Isaac was far from the worst in this regard; we know for a fact that the 4th Lorrainer Rifles was a regiment which existed merely on paper for the enrichment of its officer.
Like most companies in an era of near constant warfare, the 2nd Lorrainer was comprised mostly of older veterans, and though Isaac faced continual issues garnering the respect of his troops it seems clear that he gained an adequate knowledge of strategy and horsemanship during this time, and by 1742 he had gained the respect of his men and was able to conduct weekly drills, showing promise in his command skills.
These skills would be tested in the War of Prussian Succession, which started when Frederick II von Hohenzollern died without any adequate heir*, and left his lands to Maria Joseph, Grand Duchess of Saxony, in his will. This was accepted by the Electorate of Brandenburg and was supported by Britain but was opposed by the Duchies of Silesia and Prussia, leading to a civil war which rapidly escalated into a war which brought nearly all of Europe into it. The 2nd Lorrainer was immediately and constantly deployed through this conflict and served well despite the incompetence of the stock of French generals during the period and the discipline and sheer size of the reformed Saxon Army.
Over the five years of the War the 2nd Lorrainers would continually be used as skirmishers, scouts, and raiders, and proved exemplary in this role. This further protected them from the brutal casualties other French companies faced during the war. One of the only engagements the company actually served in was at the Battle of Limburg, which saw the Armee du Rhein under the Duc du Fountigny facing a coalition force which included British, Dutch, and Saxon units led by Generalfieldmarschall von Schwerin. The battle went horribly due to lack of preparation and supreme overconfidence by the French general, and within 2 hours the French forces were in full retreat. The 2nd Lorrainer, which had been placed in reserve, was now a part of a desperate rearguard, and with officers dying left and right, Isaac found himself leading the fight.
This was the moment when the boy Isaac became the General de Veckenring. Faced with a horrid situation, Veckenring reestablished control over the officer’s camp and adopted a strategy of a fighting retreat, with cavalry picking at the charging coalition forces as the French retreated across the Lahn river. Despite the battle being an abject failure, with 7,000 frenchmen dead or captured at the days end out of a force of nearly 50,000, de Veckenring’s intervention likely saved the lives of thousands.
The War ended in 1747 with one of France’s first losses since the 17th century. Prussia was integrated into Saxony, France lost her trading rights over the Ohio valley, the Rhenish Republic was cut into half with the areas around Cologne being annexed by the Netherlands or placed under Saxon puppets, and French slaving rights were sold off to a conglomerate of Dutch and English traders. Last of all France was to pay an indemnity of 3,000,000 livres, a cost which came atop a series of defaults by French allies on their loans. This dealt a massive blow to French finance, and the monarchy would only pay off the indemnity in 1754. Until then the costs of the payment, as well as a brutal depression caused by the collapse of the French colonial stock market, were mostly levied on the poor and the army, which was reduced from 300,000 men to 180,000 in a three year span.
As for de Veckenring, he returned to his family estate to find his own personal tragedy. Two of his brothers had died in the war, and during the siege of Metz his family’s estate had been raided. With nothing left, he spent the next year in Paris doing what was traditional for younger officers after a war: he lobbied at Versailles for an audience in order to attain a non-commissioned officership, which would guarantee an income to a man who was on the edge of becoming a member of the new class of ‘working aristocrats’**.
However he soon found that his competence and record on the field were wholly unimportant in the world of Versailles politics. For in order to even argue for a non-comissioned officership he would have to be presented to either the Minister of the Army or the King himself, which required connections. This intersected poorly with an era when Jesuits and other pious Catholics had taken positions at the heights of the mansion, and de Veckenring spent six long months barely getting by as he constantly tried to scale the wall of bigotry.
The Salon de Terraut, one of the major ‘libertine’ salons of the 1750s, was created by Mme de Terraut in 1743 with de Veckenring as one of its first participants.
It was at this time that de Veckenring discovered Parisian Salon Culture. Although we will go into further detail in later chapters, the ‘Salon Politique’ (as opposed to the Salon littéraire) was popularized by the parliamentarians who were scattered after the suppression of the Moulins revolt. Attempting to keep up the public life they had as parliamentaires, the exiles created organizations in their homes where ‘the republic of letters’ could be discussed with, and this was the new aspect, relation to their place as failed revolutionaries. This created a whole new kind of Salon, one where discussion of politics was not just allowed but was the focus. In a country marked by war and a changing economy which was leaving many regions desolate, this model proved hugely popular, attracting not only notables but guildmen, lawyers, students. This quickly led to the ‘Salon Laws’ which required that a Sallonaire register themselves and that all official Salons have a King’s Representative present at all meetings.
Although most of the Salons were either closed by the police or pressured into becoming purely ‘literary’ affairs concerned with contemporary literature and cultural matters, the Salon de Terraut was rare in Paris in that its clientele, which included members of the highest ministries, allowed it a degree of freedom (although it banned commoners). De Veckenring, intrigued by this, found himself in the second meeting, which began a series on Machiavelli’s works (which were still banned but which were supplied by the Comte di Crocera, the undersecretary of the Navy).
These meetings changed de Veckenring. No longer aimlessly angry, he began to view his situation as one part of a systemic issue. To quote him:
”A good government, a just and worthy government, would not allow the continuation of bigotry, poverty, would not forcibly silence its people as it has. But a competent kingdom, arranged as it is today, needs to allow these problems. Machiavelli is not describing, in the Prince, the ideal way to run a government. He is describing government as it is run today
De Veckenring took to these sessions with gusto, and within a few months had given up on going to Versailles. But in these salons he found what he had been looking for: a patron. The Comte di Crocera was undersecretary for the Navy and a large part of the reason that the salon survived as long as it did without infiltration, but just as importantly he was one of the major shareholders of the Royal East India Company. And the Comte soon took a liking to Isaac, given that he himself had a hard time rising past his station as an Italian. It is through this friendship that de Veckenring found himself governor of French Travancore, France’s poorest and most rebellious colony.
Southern India in 1752, as de Veckenring was given the governorship of Travancore
So that’s gonna be the way the next couple entries are going to go. I have 2 other people who will be subjects of their own biographical sections (one’s Madame de Terraut, the other’s a guildman) with some discussion of what’s going on in the Colonies. I hope you guys like the biographies because this is going to let me discuss the world in a more manageable way, while also taking your perspective away from the King’s view of how the country is doing. Anyways, happy 4th of July readers, I’m back!
*Frederick III had been executed along with his lover, a Prussian hussar, a year before.
**A class which Jacob de Boheme was born into.
