October 13, 2002



A French Visitor to the Court of Portugal’s King John V in 17291

During the period of the Enlightenment, the Age of Voltaire, what image did the French---and those many Europeans literate in French---have of Portugal? One source by an eyewitness that seems to have been overlooked is found in the Voyage de France, d’Espagne, de Portugal et d’Italie,2 shortened to simply Voyage in the lines that follow. The Voyage was authored by Etienne de Silhouette,3 future French Minister of Finances, a very high administrative position under the French Ancien Régime. He completed his Voyage manuscript in 1731 and dedicated it to French Foreign Minister Chauvelin,4 who had provided letters of introduction for use by Etienne and by his wealthy, well-connected father, Arnauld de Silhouette,5 during their “Grand Tour” of Southern Europe. Their short visit to Portugal November 4 through 17, 1729, occurred during a 1720-1740 gap in formal diplomatic relations between Portugal and France.6 Perhaps the Silhouettes arrived in Lisbon with a message from Chauvelin for John V and for his Minister, Corte-Real.7 Further research at the Quay d’Orsay and in the Silhouettes’ papers may one day provide an answer.

The reasons for the break in relations involved diplomatic precedence pursued perhaps a bit too seriously. However, as the Vicomte de Caix de Saint-Aymour reminds us, in 1724 Versailles had once again angered John V by refusing to seat Portugal’s envoy, le comte (o conde) de Tarrouca, to the Quadruple Alliance Congress at Cambrai on an equal footing with plenipotentiaries from Austria, England, and Spain.8 In May 1724 the influential and meddlesome Marquise de Prie,9 mistress of France’s putative ruler, the Duc de Bourbon, secured the appointment of the abbé de Livry10 as France’s new ambassador to Lisbon to replace the abbé de Mornay, who had departed Lisbon in 1720. Once in the Portuguese capital in September 1724, Livry began to experience difficulties with John’s Minister of State, Corte Real, regarding a question of precedence, who should visit whom first, previously alluded to in endnote 6. Add to the mixture the prideful petulance of two absolute monarchs, John V and Louis XV, and you have a nice recipe for a lengthy hiatus through 1740 in Franco-Portuguese relations. Livry was recalled to Versailles without accomplishing any of the detailed, written instructions he had carried with him.11 The absence of official ambassadorial relations, however, did not impede in the least the steady expansion of Franco-Portuguese trade as noted in Or du Brésil, Monnaie et Croissance en France au XVIIIe siècle.12 Despite the long break in relations at the ambassadorial level, a lower-level French consul or chargé d’affaires was present in Lisbon to look after the interests of France, especially those of a commercial nature.13 During the long reign of John V, 1706-1750, diplomacy---coupled with Brazilian gold and diamonds---for a while reaffirmed Portugal’s importance as a respected state among others, or such was very much the objective of Portugal’s King, strong-willed John V and his capable Minister, Corte Real, who on more than one occasion took strong action to ensure that Portuguese diplomats in foreign capitals were accorded equal rank to those representing Austria, England, France, and Spain. For example, John V also had a long dispute with the Vatican concerning the status accorded Portugal’s Nuncio to Rome.14

Fortunato de Almeida in História de Portugal (2004) cites various accounts of John V’s Portugal filed by various French diplomats.15 An authoritative source of such diplomatic reports remains the third volume of the Recueil des instructions données aux ambassadeurs alluded to earlier in various notes. Etienne de Silhouette’s impressions of Portugal as expressed in his Voyage thus provide additional details for the year 1729. In 1731 Silhouette provided handwritten, manuscript copies of his Voyage to his mentors, including Foreign Minister Chauvelin, the Foreign Minister and close associate of Cardinal Fleury,16 de facto ruler of France 1726-1743. The Maréchal de Noailles17 also received a copy. Perhaps due to mild criticism of Fleury and of French foreign policy contained therein, the work was not published in print during the author’s lifetime; it was published posthumously in four volumes in 1770, presumably by Silhouette’s heirs.18 The Voyage attests to Etienne’s uncommonly broad knowledge of history, contemporary politics, art, and aesthetic matters when just twenty years of age. As Chauvelin’s protégé, it appears that Silhouette was being groomed for a position of leadership in governmental, administrative office. This preparation included a long period of residence in London and Oxford. While officially a student, he also engaged in the purchase of tobacco for the French monopoly and served as secret observer of English politics and Parliament for Chauvelin and Fleury. In addition, Etienne de Silhouette had literary ambitions and came to play an important role in the noisy quarrel over deism19 as an accurate translator of some key English works into French, most notably Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man (1736) and Anglican Bishop Warburton’s published defense of Pope’s religious orthodoxy then being called into question by most other “men of the cloth” on both sides of the Channel.20

Silhouette entered Portugal via Seville and Badajoz at the beginning of November 1729. The first city in Portugal that he encountered was Elvas. He limited his observations concerning this city to its fortifications and water supply, presumably information of military significance intended for his readers, especially the notable Maréchal de Noailles, already well acquainted with the terrain in Spain both in a military capacity and as advisor to Philip V. At Vendas Novas Silhouette commented on a magnificent palace21 that John V had built for one use earlier in 1729 on the occasion of his trip to Caya at the Spanish-Portuguese border to meet Philip V and to witness a double marriage: that of the Spanish Infanta, Dona Marianne Victoria de Bourbon, to Dom José, son of John V, and Prince of Brazil, the future King known in English as Joseph I, and---the second wedding---joined the Portuguese Infanta, Dona Maria Bárbara, to Don Fernando, the prince of Astúrias, future ruler of Spain known in English as Ferdinand VI. Contemporary readers of Silhouette’s Voyage would certainly recall that the Spanish Infanta, beginning at age 11, had spent the years 1721-1725 in Paris while betrothed to future King Louis XV, only to be returned to Spain by the influence of the Marquise de Prie, mentioned earlier, resulting in the fifteen-year-old Louis’s marriage to the twenty-two-year-old daughter of exiled Polish King Stanislaus. Needless to say, Spain’s Philip V and Elizabeth Farnese had quite a negative reaction to Prie’s meddling.22

Silhouette boarded a barque to make the three league (approximately nine mile) trip from Aldeia Galega (today Montijo) to Lisbon on the other side of the Tagus River.23 The crossing, though common, was nevertheless dangerous since the river’s surface had become as rough as that of the open sea. From the river the pleasant view of Lisbon spread over seven hills (like Rome), which he compares to an amphitheater. This reality, however, changed to not so agreeable once inside the city, since dirty and uneven, hilly terrain made travel by horse-drawn conveyances difficult. Those who could afford it were carried about on sedan chairs or pushed in chairs with wheels. Frequent storms beset the port of Lisbon; in November 1724, five years earlier, eighty vessels of all types sank or were destroyed by the violent weather. Silhouette noted the Terreiro do Paço, a large square, but was not impressed by the exterior façade of the royal palace situated there. His reference is to a royal palace built by Philip II of Spain who had ascended to the throne of Portugal as Philip I of Portugal at the beginning of what the Portuguese refer to as the “Babylonian Captivity.” This palace was destroyed just twenty-six years later by the catastrophic earthquake, fire, and tidal wave that destroyed Lisbon November 1, 1755.

Silhouette pointed out that the Pope’s creation of a patriarchate in Lisbon in 1716 resulted in a city divided into two parts: one for the patriarch and the other for the archbishop. His account provided ample details concerning some rather significant administrative problems that this arrangement had produced. The patriarch’s seat was located in the king’s chapel where dignified and magnificent ceremonies took place. Silhouette observed that the patriarch was the “vrai singe du pape,” or the “Pope’s real monkey.” Apparently the author was aware that no one in the small circle of select persons for whom the Voyage was written would be offended by a remark perhaps worthy of a Montesquieu or a Voltaire. Silhouette praised the Manueline architecture of the Jerónimos Monastery in nearby Belém, which he qualified as “in the Arab style.” He reported briefly on the massive construction project underway at Mafra. He then turned his attention to his personal audience with the Royal Family.

According to Silhouette, John V’s appearance was impressive: handsome, happy, magnificently well dressed, though his character was not so easy to determine. King John was jealous of his throne’s dignity, and of his role as King. A sole Minister and Secretary of State, Diogo de Mendonça Corte Real was a man of wit, experience, and, according to our French observer, esteemed by all. The king required the Minister to keep him informed of the smallest details of the realm out of a genuine interest. Silhouette informed us that he was well received by the Minister’s son, also named Diogo,24 to whom he submitted a letter of recommendation, presumably from Chauvelin.

Silhouette pointed out that the King was both feared and loved by his people, he firmly and rigorously observed justice, and fostered the fine arts to flourish in his realm. However, Silhouette was critical of John V’s many purchases of works of art from outside Portugal as revealing the qualities of vanity, stubbornness, and caprice. John V loved excessively the ceremonies of the Church. He also loved many mistresses. Voltaire, in a reference to John V, would later comment that the “priest king,” preferred nuns as mistresses.25 Silhouette recounted a story that he had heard: on one occasion when a mistress had asked for a favor, John V replied that granting such a request was not the prerogative of her lover, but of the King!

The Queen, Maria Ana de Austria, was tall, her appearance very white, and she was not beautiful. Silhouette reported that his father and he were received in a distinguished manner by the royal couple, visited the Queen in her apartment, and then had a private meeting in the apartment of prince José and the princess. Silhouette commented that José spoke French well. (Please recall that the French always appreciate that!) He reported that the princess, a former resident of Paris during the Regency as noted earlier, had grown taller and was agreeable and very witty. (In Eighteenth Century France one had to show wit).26 Silhouette’s remarks concerning the princess led me to find that perhaps he had previously seen or had met her in at Versailles or in Paris.

John V had devalued the importance of Dom Dinis’s Ordem de Cristo by creating an excessive number of nobles so honored and without allocating sufficient funds to provide pensions for the new recipients, who must wait for an earlier recipient to die prior to receiving a pension.27 The authority of John V was absolute, and here Silhouette inserted an opinion that he attributed to the abbé de Vertot;28 the King knew how to use the Inquisition’s fearful Tribunal as a most useful political tool. In passing, I would also like to observe that the Portuguese Inquisition is featured in some of the early chapters of Voltaire’s Candide (1759), a key work of the Enlightenment.29

Following his personal impressions of John V, Silhouette commented on the immense Brazilian revenues coming to the Portuguese King, lauded the beauty of gold coins being struck,30 and found that Portuguese commercial activity had not regained the strength that it once had enjoyed prior to sixty years spent under Spanish domination. Silhouette further observed that the English dominated Portuguese commerce.

found that Portuguese commercial activity had not regained the strength that it once had enjoyed prior to sixty years spent under Spanish domination. Silhouette further observed that the English dominated Portuguese commerce.

As mentioned earlier in note 23, Silhouette used as one of his main sources in writing his Voyage de Portugal the anonymous Description de la ville de Lisbonne (1730), a detailed and generally useful work concerning Portugal, and especially Lisbon, twenty-five years before the cataclysm of 1755. Borrowing from an inaccurate passage he presented the Portuguese people as dark-skinned due to climate and mixture with African blood, and added that although the members of the Portuguese nobility did not share these physical traits, they were not very well educated.

Another of Silhouette’s sources, identified previously in note 28, was the abbé Vertot’s Histoire des révolutions de Portugal. Silhouette cited Vertot, according to whom the Portuguese were superstitious and attached to religion, closely resembling the people of Spain. Concerning the 1640 Revolution, the main subject of the Histoire des revolutions de Portugal, Silhouette cited passages that made it very clear that the Portuguese hated the Spanish. However, Silhouette interjected his own hopeful opinion that the recent double mariage of the Portuguese prince with a Spanish princess had lessened this antipathy, since out of self-interest Portugal and Spain now had reason to live in peace and understanding.

Silhouette ended Voyage de Portugal with the inclusion of a brief, and as we know, ludicrous, linguistic note on the Portuguese language contained in the anonymous Description de Lisbonne: the Portuguese language was but a dialect of Castilian Spanish, and it appeared to contain influence from the French tongue.

Etienne de Silhouette’s Voyage de Portugal was the work of a youthful but serious traveler. In some regards his account appears to be an “armchair adventure” since he made extensive use of borrowed material, chiefly from works, as we have seen, by some of the best contemporary sources outside Portugal on the topic of that nation, namely those by l’abbé Vertot and an anonymous author. However, Etienne de Silhouette, French visitor to the court of John V in 1729, did include in his Voyage de Portugal his own personal impressions of John V, his family and principal minister. Silhouette projected to his intended readership a respectful and positive image of the Portuguese king and of his court.

David A. Ross, Ph.D.

California State University, Fresno

davidro@csufresno.edu

Endnotes

1 This paper is an expanded, revised version of one delivered at the 29th Symposium on Portuguese Traditions held at UCLA, April 22-23, 2006. I am grateful to my colleague at UCSB, History Professor Dr. Francis Dutra, for his excellent recommendations toward the final completion of this article.

2 Etienne de Silhouette, Voyage de France, d’Espagne, de Portugal et d’Italie, 4 vols., in 2 vols. (Paris: Chez Merlin, 1770). For Silhouette’s report on his visit to Portugal see volume 4, 161-85. Castelo Branco Chaves included a brief mention of Silhouette’s Voyage in O Portugal de João V visto por três forasteiros (Lisboa: Biblioteca Nacional, 1983) 10.

3 See David A. Ross, “The Early Career of Etienne de Silhouette,” diss., UCLA, 1973. UMI (1973): 74-11, 567. Etienne de Silhouette (1709-67) evidently was an alert and ambitious young man who grew up in a favored milieu among powerful Frenchmen who encouraged him to prepare for a career in the service of the French government. He first studied law, and in Paris, probably during 1726-29, came under the influence of the Jesuit father Tournemine, who only accepted to instruct the very brightest students. Voltaire, for example, had been a pupil of Tournemine. Etienne served as secrétaire to the maréchal de Noailles and subsequently became chancellier to the Regent’s son, the duc Louis d’Orléans, a member of the royal family close to the King, and in Paris resided at the Palais Royal across the Boulevard Saint-Antoine from the east end of the Louvre Palace. Etienne de Silhouette became Contrôleur général, French Minister of Finance, for a brief period in 1759. He also unwittingly gave his name to the word “silhouette,” which unfortunately is the reason he is most often cited in brief and misleading, biographical entries. However, as a translator he deserves to be better known for the vital role he played as an invaluable trait d’union or link between England’s intellectuals and the French reading public on the Continent. Joseph François Michaud lists Silhouette’s published works in vol. 39, pp. 340-41, of his Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne (45 vols. 1843-65; repr. Graz:Akademische Druck u. Verlagsanstalt, 1966-70) as follows: (1) Idée générale du gouvernement chinois, Paris, 1729. (2) Réflexions politiques sur les plus grands princes et particulièrement sur Ferdinand le Catholique, Paris 1730, a translation from a Spanish work by Baltasar Gracián. (3) Lettre sur les transactions publiques du règne d’Elizabeth, contenant plusieurs anecdotes et quelques réflexions critques sur l’histoire de ce règne, London, 1736, a translation of a work in English by Rapin de Thoyras. (4) Essai sur l’homme, London, 1736, a prose translation of Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man. Reprinted many times. (5) Essai d’une traduction des dissertations, London, 1739, a translation of a work by Lord Bolingbroke. (6) Traité mathématique sur le bonheur, London, 1741, a translation of a work by Irenée Kranzovius. (7) Mélanges de littérature et de philosophie; Lettres philosophiques et morales, London, 1742, 2 vols. The Mélanges contain a translation of Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man, Essay on Criticism, Moral Essays, and a translation of William Warburton’s essays that he had contributed to The Works of the Learned, 1738-39, constituting a defense of Pope’s Essay on Man against the Examen de l’essai de M. Pope sur l’homme (1737) by Jean-Pierre de Crousaz. (8) Dissertation sur l’union de la religion et de la politique, 1742, an adaptation of William Warburton’s Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated on the Principles of a Religious Deist. (9) Mémoires des commissaires du roi et de ceux de Sa Majesté britannique sur la possession et le droit des deux couronnes en Amérique, Paris, 1755. (10) Voyage de France, d’Espagne, de Portugal et d’Italie par M. de S*** du 22 avril 1729 au 6 février 1730, 4 vols. (in 2 vols.) (Paris: Chez Merlin, 1770).

4 Germain Louis de Chauvelin (1685-1762), Garde des sceaux and secrétaire d’Etat au départment des affaires étrangères 1727-37. See Joseph François Michaud, Biographie, 8: 54-55. See also Arthur McCandless Wilson, French Foreign Policy during the Administration of Cardinal Fleury, 1726-1743; A Study in Diplomacy and Commercial Development (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1936).

5 See Ross, The Early Career of Etienne de Silhouette. Arnauld de Silhouette (1673-1754), a member of the noblesse d’office et de finance, the lesser nobility, held the offices of conseiller sercrétaire du roi et de ses finances, and receveur des tailles de Limoges, and as such was in charge of tax collection and finances in the Limousin, an area in central France. Arnauld was wealthy and also well-connected to some of the most prestigious and influential figures in French finances and politics at the time. He served as homme d’affaires of the maréchal de Noailles (1678-1766). On Noailles, see Joseph François Michaud, Biographie, 30: 621-26. Noailles belonged to the noblesse d’épée, had married the niece of Louis XIV’s wife, Madame de Maintenon, and had also served Louis XIV’s grandson, Philip V, King of Spain, first in a military role and then as a trusted advisor, during and after the War of the Spanish Succession (1703-13). Back in Paris the maréchal de Noailles (1678-1766) became president of the French Finances Council between 1715 through 1718 at the outset of the Regency of Philippe, duc d’Orléans. Cardinal Fleury (see note 16), unofficial Minister, was a friend of the maréchal de Noailles. Arnauld de Silhouette also had access to Fleury’s right-hand man, Germain Louis de Chauvelin, Keeper of the Seals and Foreign Minister, 1727-37, and to the chancelier, d’Aguesseau. It is perhaps worth adding that d’Aguesseau’s father had been intendant or chief government administrator of the Limousin, the Noailles family-owned property in the Limousin – where Arnauld de Silhouette was chief of finances.

6 On the break in relations between Portugal and France, see Maria Beatriz Nizza da Silva, João V (Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 2006) 267: “Um desses incidentes diplomáticos ocorreu em 1724 com o abade de Livry, embaixador de França, que se recusou a visitar o secretário de Estado antes de este o visitar, Diogo de Mendonça Corte Real mandou estudar a questão e verificou-se que não havia uma regra fixa e que ora havia uma rega fixa e que ora eram os secretários de Estado a visitar os diplomatas estrangeiros, ora estes que faziam a visita do cerimonial. De qualquer modo, foi com este pretexto que se cortaram as relações com a França.” The incident as just described was reported by Charles Frédéric de Merveilleux, a visitor to Lisbon at the time of the event, in his Mémoires instructifs pour un voyageur dans les divers états de l’Europe – contenant des anecdotes curieuses très propres à éclaircir l’histoire du temps, avec des remarques sur le commerce et l’histoire naturelle, Amsterdam: Sauzet, 1738. A translation by Castelo Branco Chaves into Portuguese of de Merveilleux’s lengthy Mémoires appeared in 1983 in O Portugal de D. João V visto por três forasteiros, Lisboa: Biblioteca Nacional. On the diplomatic break see pages 136-137, and 232-233. Useful information is also accessible in the Recueil des instructions données aux ambassadeurs et ministres de France depuis les traités de Westphalie jusqu’à la Révolution française sous les auspices de la Commission des Archives Diplomatiques au Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, vol. 3 Portugal, notes par Le Vicomte de Caix de Saint-Aymour (Paris: Alcan, 1886) 267-82. French diplomatic policy at the time sought to exclude Portugal since it was too closely allied to England, guarantor of its independence from Spain. Also see Douglas Wheeler, “Anglo-Portuguese Alliance,” Historical Dictionary of Portugal, 2nd ed. (Lanham, Md. and Oxford: Scarecrow, 2002) 9.

7 Diogo de Mendonça Corte Real (1658-1736), Secretário de Estado de João V 1707-1736. Recueil des instructions, 3: 268, note 3 identifies Corte Real as “ambassadeur en Hollande, puis en Espagne. Travailleur infatigable, il était entièrement dévoué aux Anglais et à la Maison d’Autriche.”

8 Recueil 3: 269, note 1: “Le comte de Tarrouca étant le fils cadet d’Allegrette, il était come son père, partisan de la maison d’Autriche et des Anglais.”

9 Jeanne Agnès Berthelot de Pleneuf, Marquise de Prie (1698-1727), mistress of the Duc de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, Premier Ministre 1723-26. See Ernst Lavisse, Histoire de France depuis les origines jusqu’à la Révolution, 9 vols. (Paris: Hachette, 1910-11), 8: 77-97. Basil Williams presented the glaring faults of Bourbon and Prie in “The Foreign Policy of England under Walpole,” The English Historical Review 15.58 (April 1900) 264. The Regent (Bourbon) grossly outraged Philip V “by his contumelious dismissal of the infanta” who had been betrothed to Louis XV. Williams added that Bourbon was subjected to “a greedy mistress, Madame de Prie, who with the unscrupulous financier Paris Duverney avowedly proceeded on the principle of making as much money as she could while her dupe’s power lasted.” Her ultimate demise was attributed to suicide.

10 François Sanguin, abbé de Livry (1677-1729). “Avant d’aller en Portugal, il avait été envoyé comme ambassadeur en Pologne, dont le roi Auguste lui avait accordé sa nomination au cardinalat; de Lisbonne il fut nommé en la même qualité à Madrid, où il se rendit en 1726. » Recueil, 3: 267, note 2.

11 See Recueil, 3: 267-82. These instructions included a mission to determine whether one of John’s sisters would make a suitable bride for the duc de Bourbon!

12 Christian Morrisson, Jean-Noël Barrandon, and Cécile Morrisson, Or du Brésil, monnaie et croissance en France au XIIIe siècle (Paris: CNRS, 1999). On the back cover of this book, there is a summary in English that includes this cogent assessment: “ … Together with New World silver, Brazilian and Columbian gold came into France as a result of trade surplus over Spain and Portugal. It allowed the money supply to increase substantially and favoured the take-off of French economy. Its monetised GDP increased ca. two times from 1726 to 1785. Without this increase in specie supply, France would not have achieved the economic performances it did over the period which Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie calls in his preface the “glorious sixty years” of the 18th century,” a deliberate comparison to Jean Fourastié’s influential commentary in Les trente glorieuses (Fayard, 1979) concerning the performance of the French economy during the period 1945-75.

13 Recueil, 3: 267, note 3. The French government was nearly always represented in Lisbon by “de silmples chargés d’affaires.” At the end of 1724 the representative from France was “le sieur de Montagnac, consul général de la nation française.”

14 A.H. Oliveira Marques, History of Portugal (New York: Columbia UP, 1976) 120. See also Fortunato Almeida, História de Portugal, 2nd ed. in 3 vols. (Lisboa: Bertand, 2003-04) 2: 477-81.

15 Fortunato de Almeida 2: 483, 697-700.

16 André-Hercule, cardinal de Fleury, évêque de Fréjus (1653-1743). Cardinal et minstre d’ Etat for 17 years (1726-43) under Louis XV, Fleury collaborated with his English counterpart, Horace Walpole, to ensure a period of relative peaceful relations. See A. M. Wilson, French Foreign Policy During the Administration of Cardinal Fleury: 1726-1743 (Harvard UP, 1936). See also Basil Williams, The Whig Supremacy: 1714-1760 (Oxford UP, 1962), especially pages 200-37. Concerning his adversary André-Hercule Fleury, Voltaire quipped epigrammatically that “il n’était ni Hercule, ni fleuri,” “neither was he Hercules nor covered with flowers!”

17 Noailles was identified in note 5.

18 Michaud 39: 340-42.

19 On the deistic controversy in England, see Basil Williams, The Whig Supremacy, 83-87. Deism influenced the Founding Fathers of the United States; see Brooke Allen’s Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers (Chicago: Doe, 2006) passim. The deist controversy is also well presented in Johnathan I. Israel’s Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man: 1670-1752 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006).

20 On Silhouette, Pope and Warburton, see the following studies: Richard Knapp, The Fortunes of Pope’s “Essay on Man,” (Geneva: Institut de Musee Voltaire, 1971) Vol. 82 of Eighteenth Century France, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (SVEC), 381 vols. to date, 1955- ; Maynard Mack, Alexander Pope: A Life (New Haven: Yale UP, 1985) 736-52; and Ross, The Early Career of Etienne de Silhouette, 366-545.

21 The exquisite Royal Palace at Vendas Novas was designed by master architect, Custódio Vieira. At present it is a military museum. February 11, 2007

22 Abbé Livry, mentioned earlier in this paper, was dispatched early in 1725 to Madrid to deliver a letter from Louis XV to his uncle, Philip V, in which Louis declared that he would not marry Philipe’s daughter, and that she would be returned to Madrid. The quality of Livry’s reception when the letter was ultimately read by Philip V and by Elizabeth Farnese is described by Alfred Cobban, A History of Modern France, 3 vols. (New York: Penguin,1990) 1: 28-29, and in Lavisse, Histoire de France 8: 87. Livry was expelled from Spain together with Mademoiselle de Beaujolais Orléans, a princess hitherto betrothed to Don Carlos. Two years later in May 1727 Louis XV announced his marriage to the daughter of deposed Polish king Stanislaus.

23 Silhouette, Voyage, 4: 165. On the next page Silhouette interrupted his presentation of Lisbon to identify an important source that he had used: “Il a paru en

1730 une description de la Ville de Lisbonne, imprimée à Paris sans nom d’Auteur, en un volume, in-douze. Cette description est fort exacte & fort justicieuse … J’en ferai un extrait fort sommaire.” The entire title of the anonymous work mentioned by Silhouette was given by Castelo Branco Chaves, O Portugal de João V visto por três forasteiros (Lisboa: Biblioteca nacional, 1983) 11: “Description de la Ville de Lisbonne où l’on traite de la Cour, de Portugal, de la Langue Portugaise, & des Moeurs des Habitans; du Gouvernement, des Revenus du Roi, & des Forces par Mer & par Terre ; des Colonies Portugaises & du Commerce de cette Capitale – A Paris – Chez Pierre Prault, Quay des Gesfres, au Paradis – MDCCXXX. » Silhouette’s report concerning his visit to Lisbon was more that a plagiarized “armchair adventure,” as some have suggested, especially since he provided us with his own personal observations of the royal family.

24 According to Joel Serrão, dir, Dicionário de História de Portugal, in 6 vols. (Porto: Figuierinhas, 1992) 1: 710, Diogo de Mendonça, illegitimate son, later formally recognized by his father for whom he was named, had been born during the period that Diogo, future Minister, represented Portugal in Spain at the Court of Carlos III. Beginning in 1722 the younger Diogo had represented Portugal in Holland. After 1755 he joined the nobility in opposition to Pombal and was banished.

25 Louis Moland, Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire, 55 vols. (Paris: Garnier, 1877-85). In vol. 9, p. 220, note 4, and in volume 36, p. 487, note 2, one reads that“Voltaire a dit de ce prince que ses fêtes étaient des processions, ses édifices des monastères, et ses maîtresses des religieuses.” Although the same comment concerning John V appears twice as I have indicated, the author of the note unfortunately did not identify his exact source in either place.

26 An excellent example of this rigid requirement to express wit is evident in the film, Ridicule: Screenplay by Waterhouse, Fessler and Vincent. Dir. Patrice Leconte. Perf. Fanny Ardant, Jean Rochefort, Judith Godreche, and Charles Behrling. Miramax. 1996.

27 As Francis Dutra has kindly indicated to me, the best study of the Order of Christ during this period is by Fernanda Olival, As Ordens Militares e o Estado Moderno: Honra, Mercê e Venalidade em Portugal (1641-1789) (Lisboa: Estar, 2001) 519: “Entre 1641 e 1789, o centro político tendeu, globalmente, a favorecer o aumento do número de cavaleiros.” See also Fernanda Olival, “The Military Orders and the Nobility in Portugal 1500-1800,” Mediterranean Studies 11 (2002): 71-88.

28 René-Aubert de Vertot (1655-1735) authored the Histoire de la conjuration de Portugal (1689), subsequently revised and reprinted through 1830 in more that thirty (30) editions under the title Histoire des révolutions de Portugal. It thus constituted a major source of information concerning the Portuguese Revolution of 1640 for those literate in the major cultural language of the times, French. Limited editions of a translations into English and other languages appeared. As a historian, Vertot was highly regarded by Voltaire (Moland 33: 223) and by others, for example, le chevalier de Jaucourt, wrote in the article “Révolution,” Dictionnaire Raisonné des Arts et des Sciences, commonly known as the Encyclopédie, vol 14 (1765), p. 237b, that “Révolution signifie un changement considérable arrivé dans le gouvernement de l’état … Il n’y a point d’états qui n’aient été sujets à plus ou moins de révolutions. L’abbé de Vertot nous a donné deux ou trois excellentes révolutions de différents pays; savoir les révolutions de Suède, celles de la république romaine, etc.” English literary critic Quentin Craufurd, who had long resided in France, wrote in Essais sur la littérature française, Paris: Michaud, 1815, p. 67, that “Quand l’Histoire des révolutions de Portugal parut, le père Bouhours disait qu’il n’avait rien vu dans la langue française qui, pour le style, fût au-dessus de cet ouvrage; et le père Bouhours était assurément connaisseur en ce genre. Vertot a une manière de narrer pleine d’agréments, et qui inspire en même temps de l’intérêt; cependant l’histoire des révolutions romaines est regardée comme le chef d’oeuvre de cet auteur. ” C. Volpilhac-Auger wrote in 1997 that, “Vertot peut-être considéré comme un esprit capable de mener des démonstrations historiques rigoureuses et fécondes, ” in “Mon siège est fait ou la méthode historique de l’abbé de Vertot, ” Cromohs, 2(1997) : 1-14. 1 Mar. 2007. . Vertot may have assisted Silhouette to prepare some portions of his Voyage manuscript that involve historical references since both worked for the Duc d’Orléans, son of the Regent. Both Vertot and Silhouette enjoyed the protection of the Noailles family. I hope to comment at a future time on the interest Vertot’s little book on the Portuguese Revolution of 1640 seemed to have enjoyed during at least two hundred years.

29 See the introduction to Ross, Candide, ou l’optimisme (Newark, Del.: European Masterpieces, Linguatext, 2007) p. 19, note 15: “The Inquisition or Holy Office was used by the Roman Catholic Church to investigate heresy. Trials were conducted secretly, torture of the accused was customary and notorious. In Spain and Portugal the heretics executed were mostly Muslims and Jews. To appreciate the ferocity of the Inquisition in Eighteenth Century France, view J.T. Azuley’s provocative film O Judeu (The Jew) concerning the fate of playwright António da Silva, found guilty of heresy and burned at the stake in Lisbon in 1739. Dr. Francis Dutra, professor of History at UCSB has stated that this film is in general historically correct. The last Pope, John Paul II, condemned “the acquiescence given, especially in certain centuries, to intolerance and even to the use of violence in the service of truth” (L’Osservatore Romano, June 23, 2004). He made those remarks on the occasion of the publication of L’Inquisizione, Atti del Simposio Internazionale (Città del Vaticano, 2003). This 900-page report contains information on the Portuguese Inquisition, pp. 217-50.”

30 For an example of the beauty of the coins, see the reproductions on the cover of Morrisson, Barrandon, Cécile Morrisson, Or du Brésil, identified earlier in note 12. In Balzac’s famous novel, Eugénie Grandet, an archetypical miser, Félix Grandet, maintained a custom of giving one such coin to his daughter as a gift on each of her birthdays.

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