SOURCE: John R. Iverson. “Voltaire, Fontenoy, and the Crisis of Celebratory Verse.” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 28 (1999): 207-26.

[In the essay which follows, Iverson discusses the response of other poets to Voltaire's celebratory poem La Bataille de Fontenoy, suggesting that the many parodies intended merely to mock Voltaire actually worked to destabilize the genre of celebratory occasional verse overall. Iverson maintains that Voltaire found himself unable to strike back without lowering himself to the level of his detractors, but that Voltaire perceived the threat to both poetry and national honor.]

Le plus aimé des rois est aussi le plus grand.

—Voltaire, La Bataille de Fontenoy, poème

Le plus aimé des rois est le plus mal chanté.

—La Capilotade, poème ou tout ce qu'on voudra

Voltaire's Bataille de Fontenoy is a perplexing document for the modern reader. In the midst of the philosophe's vast output, it seems to reveal an ambitious minion of the court, a poetizing flatterer who feverishly revised and republished—repeatedly—a somewhat mediocre text as he attempted to gain official favor. From this perspective, the poem poses a number of questions about the poet's desire and ability to manipulate the literary institutions of his time, and part of our concern in the following pages will be to address the issue of his motivations in writing and rewriting this curious, apparently atypical, work. But the interest of La Bataille de Fontenoy also extends far beyond Voltaire's personal machinations. For when the leading writer of the age dedicates himself to the composition of a lengthy épinicion, or chant de victoire, his actions naturally attract great national attention.¹ In celebrating the exploits of the king, he performs an important public function; the work becomes a national literary monument, erected to the glory of Louis XV. At the same time, Fontenoy sets off a tremendous outpouring of rival works that challenge the authority of Voltaire's poem and throw into question the very idea of celebratory poetry. As the two lines of our epigraph—one from Voltaire and the other a parody of his text—suggest, the political event also gives rise to a poetic crisis. On the one hand, the philosophe tries to inscribe himself in literary tradition; on the other, the parodist asserts that the poetry of his age is completely inadequate to fulfill this role. From this perspective, the episode provides valuable insight into the peculiar modalities of literary exchange in eighteenth-century France and the breakdown of models from the past.

The triumph of the French army on 11 May 1745 was the most brilliant moment of Louis XV's reign.² After assuming personal control of the government in 1743, the young king led a successful military campaign in 1744. His recovery from serious illness at the end of that summer brought him the title “le Bien-Aimé.” Thus, he was already at the height of his glory at the time of the battle. Added to this, the actual conditions of the victory at Fontenoy redoubled popular enthusiasm. In an age when open battles were a rather rare occurrence, France defeated its arch-rival England in a prolonged and bloody encounter; and at a time when most kings no longer accompanied their troops to the front, the presence of Louis XV made the affair even more remarkable.³ Voltaire himself declared this “la journée la plus glorieuse depuis la bataille de Bovines” and later devoted a lengthy chapter of his Histoire de la guerre de 1741 to a detailed description of the engagement.⁴ Of course, from a modern perspective, we know that this enthusiasm did not last long; even before the end of the war, the king's reputation suffered terribly.⁵ But, at least for a brief moment, Louis appeared willing and able to fulfill the heroic role of a triumphant, clement monarch. The victory at Fontenoy seemed to confirm French dominance on the continent.

Along with the importance of the military event, revival of court life gave Fontenoy even greater significance. As the preeminent poet of the age, Voltaire was particularly aware of the changing ambiance at Versailles and benefited greatly from it. With the d'Argenson brothers receiving ministerial appointments, the duc de Richelieu taking charge of cultural affairs, and madame de Pompadour gaining official favor, his fortunes at the court rose steadily. In 1744, Richelieu called on him to compose a comédie-ballet for the dauphin's wedding in February 1745. Following performances of this work, La Princesse de Navarre, he was named royal historiographer and given the title “gentilhomme ordinaire de la chambre.”⁶ Following the victory at Fontenoy, he received a second commission. Le Temple de la gloire, an allegorical glorification of Louis XV as Trajan, was included at the end of the year in a series of celebratory spectacles. The worldly nature of these activities has led many critics to denounce the ambitious side of Voltaire's character and to lament his willingness to demean himself as a courtier.⁷ In judging him in these terms, however, such assessments completely ignore the outburst of State-sponsored literary activity at this time. Undoubtedly, Voltaire was attracted by the prospect of official titles and the security they offered; but he also responded to a wide-reaching program that hearkened to the policies of the Sun King. In the new environment at court, he could feel that he really was participating in a rebirth of the cultural brilliance of the seventeenth century. As described by Jean-Louis de Cahusac in a lengthy Encyclopédie article, “Fêtes de la Cour,” the festivities of 1745 are inscribed in a long line of court spectacles in France. Cahusac identifies the early years of Louis XIV's reign, “l'époque de la grandeur de cet état, de la gloire des Arts, & de la splendeur de l'Europe,” as the apogee of this tradition, but he devotes the greatest portion of his article to the period 1745-47, including detailed descriptions.⁸ The splendor of these events appears with wonderful clarity in the images produced by Charles-Nicolas Cochin, father and son, which depict performances of La Princesse de Navarre.⁹ Their engravings, embracing the entirety of the theatrical space, both stage and audience, capture the glory of the French nation, substantiated by military victory, transposed and sublimated in the refinement of extravagant artistic creation.

It is within this general context that Voltaire's response to Fontenoy must be situated. The monarchy's renewed support for artistic and literary activity, compounded by popular enthusiasm for the victory, virtually obligated a poet in his position to compose a celebratory work. Commentary from the period indicates that many of his contemporaries found it appropriate that he, the author of La Henriade, should sing the praises of Louis XV. His recent honors at the court reinforced these expectations.¹⁰ In fact, just days after the event, he received a long letter from the marquis d'Argenson who described the battle in detail. Given the circumstances in which it was written and the respective position of the two correspondents, this letter seems to present a sort of prescriptive outline for a poem.¹¹ Commenting on the sort of pressure that the victory created for poets, Voltaire's rival, Alexis Piron, later remarked that, “un poëte par état eût alors passé pour un mauvais citoyen, s'il se fût tu. …”¹²

Already the previous year, Voltaire himself had argued that poetry was an essential element in national glory. In his Discours en vers, sur les événements de l'année 1744, which appeared in the Mercure de France, he expressed the nation's joy over recent victories and the king's miraculous recovery. At the same time, he lamented the low quality of the poetic response:

Paris n'a jamais vu de transports si divers,
Tant de feux d'artifice, et si peu de bons vers.

(M 9: 430)

Rather than resulting in a condemnation of poetic activity, however, this complaint led him to argue for renewed literary effort. In part, this poem was a request for royal patronage. But, beyond the element of self-interest, it defined a coherent cultural politics characterized by the complementarity of royal virtue and poetic encomium. In particular, Voltaire cited the model of the grand siècle, an era when poetry figured at the very center of national vitality. Here, and in many other texts of the period, the legacy of the reign of Louis XIV stood as a challenge to eighteenth-century poets.¹³ The extraordinary events of 1744-45 created an opportunity for them but also a burden. Their greatest hope was to equal the accomplishments of their illustrious, already-canonized, predecessors. In many ways, they, like the monarchy, felt compelled to try to reconstitute the poetic environment of the previous century. In these conditions, the new celebratory works became the object of intense scrutiny.

This conception of the role of poetry obviously informs the first lines of La Bataille de Fontenoy. In summoning his compatriots to admire the king, Voltaire alludes to the most famous celebratory poem of the previous century, Boileau's fourth epistle:

Quoi! du siècle passé le fameux satirique
Aura fait retentir la trompette héroïque,
Aura chanté du Rhin les bords ensanglantés,
Ses défenseurs mourants, ses flots épouvantés,
Son dieu même en fureur, effrayé du passage,
Cédant à nos aïeux son onde et son rivage:
Et vous, quand votre roi dans des plaines de sang
Voit la mort devant lui voler de rang en rang,
Tandis que, de Tournay foudroyant les murailles,
Il suspend les assauts pour courir aux batailles;
Quand, des bras de l'hymen s'élançant au trépas,
Son fils, son digne fils, suit de si près ses pas;
Vous, heureux par ses lois, et grands par sa vaillance,
Français, vous garderiez un indigne silence!

(M 8: 383)

The opening thus has a dual mission. On the one hand, it conveys a great sense of excitement about the victory. The exclamatory “Quoi!” and the tremendous length of the first sentence are remarkably effective in creating a feeling of breathlessness. The king's noble actions accumulate in an impressive cadence that ends by stridently rebuking the mute French. On the other hand, by accepting the celebratory task, Voltaire casts himself as Boileau's successor, thereby amplifying the significance of his poem. Building on this association, he manages to construe his work as an expression of national sentiment, not simply as a spontaneous song of joy, but also as part of France's most noble poetic tradition. This link to the past is a grandiose rhetorical gesture; it also reflects the seriousness with which Voltaire later pursues revision of the work. Throughout this period his correspondence speaks of his desire to produce a text that will be a “monument” to French glory. In accordance with his ideas about the complementary relationship between power and poetry, he vows to refine his poem until it reaches a state worthy of the event: “Sans doute je corrige mon ouvrage et je le corrigeray. Je voudrois pouvoir le rendre digne, et du Roy qui l'a honoré de son aprobation, et de ma patrie à la gloire de la quelle il est consacré. …”¹⁴ He sets himself a goal that far surpasses the limits of courtly flattery; his ambition is to elevate poetry and make it a worthy heroic vehicle.

Written with such high expectations, La Bataille de Fontenoy became what must surely be one of the most intensively revised and edited poetic works ever. Eager to display his zeal and to satisfy public interest in the event, Voltaire first issued his poem within days of the victory. Then, as new information about the battle reached the capital, he corrected and expanded it, working quickly to incorporate further details. On 31 May, in a note to his friend Cideville, he describes his most recent changes, produced during a sleepless night.¹⁵ This highly evocative letter conveys a sense of the amazing rapidity, but also the persistence, with which the entire work was written, revised and reprinted. In fact, the poet continued to labor over the text until late that summer. Eventually, more than thirty editions appeared, presenting nearly a dozen different states of the text. Finally, Voltaire garnered considerable official recognition for his Bataille; he was first granted permission to dedicate it to the king and then obtained the honor of having it printed at the Imprimerie Royale.

The poet did not exaggerate, then, when he stated that “ce qui n'était d'abord qu'une pièce de cent vers est devenu un poëme qui en contient plus de trois cent cinquante,” for La Bataille de Fontenoy was completely transformed during the course of his revisions (M 8: 375). It would be impossible to review all of the changes here, but they can be grouped in five categories that reflect their general impact.¹⁶ First, in several cases, Voltaire added details that probably reached Paris more slowly than the news of the victory. Thus, for example, the four lines that describe a series of assaults by enemy forces at the beginning of the engagement were not introduced until quite late in the revision process.¹⁷ Also, at this same level of detail, Voltaire corrected inaccuracies concerning the conduct of certain individuals. Frequently, he added footnotes to include this type of information. Secondly, he improved the narrative flow of the poem and gave it a more stately quality. In the poem's final version, the fine tableau of the allied army serves as an effective prelude to the action sequences (M 8: 384-85). Absent in the third edition, bits of this passage were inserted in the sixth edition, before the final text appeared in the Imprimerie Royale edition. Thirdly, Voltaire altered his text to make Louis XV's role more prominent. After the exordium (quoted above), early versions quickly shifted focus to the commanding general, Maurice de Saxe, as the poet led his readers directly to the battlefield.¹⁸ In the definitive text, he introduced an invocation that articulated the primary goal of the poem, the glorification of the king:

O vous, Gloire, Vertu, déesses de mon roi,
Redoutable Bellone, et Minerve chérie,
Passion des grands coeurs, amour de la patrie,
Pour couronner Louis prêtez moi vos lauriers.

(M 8: 383)

The later versions also expanded the conclusion of the poem to include a call for peace. Only the Bien-Aimé's clement grandeur, the poet claimed, could reestablish European harmony. Fourth, Voltaire responded to specific points of criticism from his contemporaries. In some cases, this entailed replacing a word or finding a new rhyme. In others, this led to explicit rebuttals. In response to protest over a reference to English “férocité,” he cited the testimony of a battle participant in an expanded note: “On m'a écrit que, lorsque la colonne anglaise déborda Fontenoy, plusieurs soldats de ce corps criaient: No quarter, no quarter! Point de quartier!” (M 8: 391). Finally, the poet updated his text to incorporate events that took place after the battle of Fontenoy. The capture of Oostende was such a case (M 8: 393). This process continued even while the work was being printed at the Louvre.¹⁹

Considered as a group, these revisions are remarkably comprehensive, and there can be no doubt that the later versions greatly improve on the earlier ones. Although longer, the text has greater coherence; it better conveys a sense of movement in the battle. The enhancement of the king's role gives the work greater political resonance. Changes in wording and rhythm give it a highly polished feel; of the many Fontenoy poems, it is certainly the most readable. But the ongoing process of correction and expansion also became an embarrassment for Voltaire. It revealed that the first editions had been issued long before the poem had reached perfection. Further emphasizing this fact, the title pages of the various editions became increasingly complex as printers sought to publicize the constant improvements. The sixth Parisian edition bore the indication, “Sixième édition, considérablement augmentée, conforme à la septième faite à Lille.” As we will see, this convoluted formula proved to be an easy target for parodists. In addition, as the number of editions mounted steadily, Voltaire was accused of making slight modifications in the text in order to sell more copies. Thus, even as he moved closer to his goal of creating a worthy monument to French glory, his editorial procedures compromised the dignity of the poem.

To counteract this negative effect, Voltaire added other changes to explain why the new editions were necessary. He was forced to admit that the first version was woefully flawed, but he justified himself by claiming that public interest had demanded such hastiness. In the third edition, he remarked that he simply had not had time to gather complete information: “On n'a pû nommer les autres Lieutenans Généraux, dont les noms sont célébrés ailleurs, ou dont on a reçu la liste trop tard. … D'ailleurs, si on avoit pû rendre justice à tous ceux qui le méritent, il eût fallu louer tous les Officiers de l'Armée, & mettre un an à composer un ouvage qu'il a fallu faire en moins de deux jours.”²⁰ Beginning with the sixth Parisian edition, he included a substantial “Discours préliminaire,” in which he responded to several of the most common points in the criticism of his poem. In this more prominent position, he again addressed the question of the multiple printings: “Ce poëme fut composé presque le même jour qu'on apprit à Paris la victoire que le roi avait remportée à Fontenoy; et depuis on ajouta plusieurs traits à la pièce, à mesure qu'on savait quelque circonstance de ce grand événement, et qu'on faisait une nouvelle édition de l'ouvrage” (M 8: 375). The event was, in the poet's opinion, so spectacular and so popular that it required immediate celebration, yet it was also so significant that it merited an accomplished rendering. Caught between these contradictory considerations, Voltaire struggled to establish his Bataille as the definitive Fontenoy account.

As the editions succeeded one another, the progress of the work was also reflected in a series of paratextual reconfigurations. Again, it would be impossible to review all of them here, but the printing at the Louvre provides the most striking example of how the modifications in the poem's appearance strengthened its monumentality. The Imprimerie Royale edition is remarkable for its majestic title page. Eschewing the lengthy indications of edition number common in the earlier versions, this one simply announces its prestigious place of printing, with the words “Imprimerie Royale” dominating the lower portion of the page. A lovely ornament reinforces the connection with the monarchy. The image of the laurel-crowned king and dauphin, who stand proudly in the chariot of victory, replicates the commemorative medallion that was struck for the occasion. In addition, an epigraph taken from the Aeneid offers the poem as a lesson of virtue. Like the medallion, it alludes to the dauphin's presence at the battle and Louis's desire to educate his son in the duties of kingship. Most importantly, this edition gives the work a new title. La Bataille de Fontenoy, poëme is now Le Poëme de Fontenoy, implying that this text supersedes all other Fontenoy poems. Of course, some of these modifications may not have resulted from direct intervention by Voltaire, but his correspondence indicates that he did play an active role in overseeing the printing of the work and made several suggestions in this area.²¹

The poet's correspondence further reveals the significance he attached to this printing: “On va faire une septième édition à Paris, et peut-être la fera-t-on au Louvre; elle est dédiée au roi; et la bonté qu'il a d'accepter cet hommage, met le sceau à l'authenticité de la pièce.”²² After obtaining authorization for this edition, he negotiated for a larger print run than usual, sent a series of additional corrections and asked that copies be distributed to prominent individuals. Exasperated by these demands, the minister Maurepas eventually exploded: “Vous n'avez pas eu intention, après trente-sept editions, et bientôt trente-neuf, de multiplier uniquement les exemplaires: votre objet est que la beauté de ceux de l'imprimerie royale engage à les conserver et à les déposer dans les bibliothèques” (D3172, 9 July 1745). This exchange reveals that both men were quite aware that the transformation in the appearance of the poem was linked to its survival for posterity. Although Maurepas rejected this particular request, he was, in fact, sympathetic to Voltaire's perspective.²³ Indeed, when he first wrote to the king about this edition, he spoke of the advantages of printing the work on the royal presses: “Je ne crois pas qu'il y ait d'inconvénient à lui accorder la grâce qu'il désire, son objet n'étant que de faire des présents dans les pays étrangers du poème sur la bataille de Fontenoy, d'une édition plus belle et plus digne d'être envoyée.”²⁴ By granting the poem official protection, the monarchy thus consecrated a work devoted to its celebration, crystallizing the French victory in literary form. In the end, Voltaire's efforts finally paid off; his Bataille became, in effect, the official version of Fontenoy.

In part, his persistence in revising the text can be explained by his desire to defend his poem against hostile critics.²⁵ As we have seen, he made numerous changes in the text and eventually added the “Discours préliminaire” in order to justify his characterization of the enemy, the work's long lists of names, and its failure to use allegorical figures. But, all in all, these points seem rather insignificant and hardly provide adequate grounds for Voltaire's obsessive revisionary efforts. To understand why he felt it was so important to bring his poème de circonstance to a state of perfection, we must return, rather, to his attachment to the idea of public poetry as a vital element in national glory.

In the remaining portion of this essay, I would like to argue that the tailoring of La Bataille de Fontenoy was informed by the publication of an abundant body of ephemeral literature both before and after the victory.²⁶ As mentioned previously, a deluge of poems greeted Louis XV when he returned to Paris at the end of 1744. Scores of poets felt compelled to express the nation's joy; writers of all ranks glorified the king's accomplishments in numerous odes, idylls and epistles. Commonly these works were short texts, written and printed in haste, issued individually, often on relatively low-quality paper. Many copies were undoubtedly distributed by the poets themselves to patrons and influential members of the court. We have seen that Voltaire counted heavily on this practice to obtain readers. At the same time, however, these works were sold by street vendors and circulated widely in the general reading public. In the case of La Bataille de Fontenoy, one of the Président Bouhier's correspondents, Jean-Bernard Michault, noted that this was the case: “Les colporteurs vendent la cinquième édition. Cela se débite avec le jubilé, les prières des 40 heures, les sentences à mort du Châtelet, le croquet, le muguet, etc. Le poète Roy dit que c'est vendre les muses au litron.”²⁷ Further augmenting the visibility of these works, in at least one case, several poems were gathered to form a regular anthology; the Parisian printer David issued a Recueil de pièces choisies sur les conquêtes & la convalescence du roy, enhanced by a Cochin engraving.²⁸ More frequently, the various pieces of this literary explosion were gathered by individuals and bound together to form recueils factices. Even today, many of these collections of ephemeral materials survive, combining poetic works, battle accounts, engravings of fireworks displays and episcopal decrees.²⁹ The abundance of this celebratory literature and the care with which it was collected confirm the idea that poetry held a particularly important place in the year's glorious events.

Yet this literature was clearly haunted by a sense of failure. In its most banal form, this sentiment dictated poems in which poets despaired of adequately capturing the king's incomparable virtues. This gesture might, of course, be dismissed as simple rhetorical modesty. But other writers confirmed this idea in a number of ways. Critics issued harsh essays condemning some of the more notable works; Fréron, Gresset and Piron were all victims of such attacks. Other commentators reflected on theoretical matters, particularly the technical difficulty of the French ode.³⁰ In some cases, worried patriots summoned the members of the Académie Française to fulfill their official celebratory duties.³¹ These observers believed that the glory of the moment was tarnished by the profusion of bad poems written by individuals who had no identifiable poetic authority. One writer cursed the “fièvre poétique” that had infected the country, while a self-proclaimed “dénonciateur du mauvais goût” spoke of collective embarrassment: “Quelle prodigeuse quantité de Vers, & d'insipides Vers! Quelle fatalité pour les Lettres! Quelle honte pour le siècle où nous vivons!”³² Thus, Voltaire was not alone in complaining of “si peu de bons vers”; this lament formed a general chorus. Indeed, the compelling need to celebrate national glory created a widely shared feeling of poetic crisis.

Intensified by the extraordinary nature of the victory at Fontenoy, the same dynamic reproduced itself in 1745.³³ Again, huge numbers of poems congratulated the king on his successes; and again, critics deplored the low quality of these works. The noise surrounding Voltaire's poem aggravated the situation; because of his fame and the speed with which he composed his poem, his text in particular colored many of the subsequent pieces. In these circumstances, a number of writers chose to compose parodies and satirical texts; rather than glorifying the victory, they instead turned their attention to the farcical insufficiencies of contemporary literary production. In this way, they undermined the process of poetic celebration. Not that their works were subversive in an ideological sense—they typically lauded Louis XV's virtues and praised the victory—but they cast Fontenoy in a humorous light much different from the dignity Voltaire sought to communicate in his poem. These were certainly not works that could be considered “monuments” to national glory.

Even a brief examination of this body of poems reveals that they generated much of their humor by pointing out the short-comings of the more serious poems, most prominently Voltaire's. For example, they poked fun at his editorial strategies, creating endless variations on this theme. In some cases, the gesture remained simple; the Lettre longuette à m. de Voltaire included the comment, “Derniere Edition. Sans corrections, sans augmentation, & parfaitement semblable à la premiere.”³⁴ In other cases, the tone became more biting: “77^me édition, revue, corrigée & augmentée de deux syllabes & de trois notes prises sous l'arbre de Cracovie.”³⁵ Likewise, many of these writers included prefatory statements to justify their compositional practices. The “curé de Fontenoy,” for example, directly parodied Voltaire's excuses for his over-hasty work: “Si sa Pièce paroôt trop courte ou trop négligée, c'est parce qu'il n'a été que trois heures à la composer, la revoir, la corriger, & l'écrire.”³⁶ Hostile literary theorists also discussed the multiple editions, but the effect was much different in these entertaining poems.³⁷ Working by allusion rather than denunciation—it was up to the reader to recognize the references to Voltaire's poem—these writers created doubts about the sanctity of the poetic process in general. (This was easy to do given the number of really awful poems produced at the time.) More than simply attacking Voltaire in a personal way, their works seemed to suggest, in a broader sense, that poetry had become an endless repetition of meaningless, metered phrases, written only to produce profits for printers.

The parodists also exploited La Bataille de Fontenoy's opening exclamation, “Quoi!”³⁸ The word in itself provided an ideal starting point for more fun. One “natif de Lille en Flandre” centered his entire “Discours préliminaire” around this “Quoi!” and then used it at the beginning of the first three stanzas of his poem.³⁹ “Le grand Thomas” played on its sonority:

Quoi! restant comme un Iroquoi,
Je ne chanterois pas le ROI,
Tandis que tout le monde piaille!(40)

Others cribbed straight from Voltaire's text, creating humorous pastiches:

Quoi du siècle présent le plus fameux Poète
Aura pris dans ses mains l'héroïque trompette. …(41)

The “maître d'école de Fontenoy” used the interjection to launch a complete review of Voltaire's literary machinations:

Quoy du Siecle present l'Auteur Tragi-comique,
Epique, Politique, & Critique & Lirique,
Anglois pendant trente ans par inclination,
Redevenu François depuis la Pension,
Trouve bon que le ROY remporte une Victoire,
Aux Chefs comme aux Soldats fait leur part de la Gloire;
Ses Vers vendus un jour, refondus l'autre nuit,
Dans sa bourse sept fois ramenent leur produit,
Et je me tais encor!(42)

In returning persistently to this device, the parodists created a circle of interconnected works and drew La Bataille de Fontenoy into a poetic game over which Voltaire had no control.

A second string of associations further complicated the situation. Along with the “maître d'école de Fontenoy,” figures like the “barbier de Fontenoy” and the “fossoyeur de Fontenoy” established a connection between Voltaire's poem, from which they borrowed the exclamatory “Quoi,” and an ever-expanding group of works authored by fictional residents of the battle-torn village. The “curé de Fontenoy” instigated the cycle when he formulated his Requête au Roy, seeking compensation for the services he had performed for the thousands of victims. Written in the characteristic octosyllabic lines of the burlesque genre, this work went through a number of printings. The easy technique subsequently attracted many imitators; assuming the identity of other members of the Fontenoy community, they commented on the poems of their fellow village poets. As the circle expanded, the texts increasingly had less and less to do with the victory; ingeniousness became an end in itself. The goal of these works—much different from the elevated intentions of serious works like La Bataille de Fontenoy—was simply to prolong the dialogue, drawing material from every possible facet of the ongoing celebration of the victory.⁴³

The problem for Voltaire was that he had no means of responding to these works, even though they often mocked him and his poem. Thus, he complained about one of these texts, attributing it to his enemy, the poet Pierre-Charles Roy:

Il a fait une petite satire dans la quelle il dit de moy:

Il a loué depuis Noailles
Jusqu'au moindre petit morveux
Portant talon rouge à Versailles.

On débite cette infamie avec les noms de M^r Dargenson, Castelmoron et Daubeterre en notes.⁴⁴

Voltaire hoped that his friends would denounce this vile work to the Queen, but he himself could not descend to the level of satire to fend off the attack. He could only argue that a celebratory poem should name prominent individuals and that his text distributed praise equitably. In effect, this was one of the points he made in his “Discours préliminaire.”

But the terms in which Voltaire objected to the mistreatment of his poem suggest, in a more general sense, that he was profoundly disturbed by the levity of Roy and the other hack poets. For the injury they did was not limited to him alone; in lampooning his celebration of national heroes, they attacked French honor itself. In the mind of the poet who tried to promote his own text as a contribution to monarchical glory, these low-style parodies and contentious critiques failed to accord proper respect to public poetry. In response, Voltaire drafted the curious Lettre critique d'une belle dame à un beau monsieur de Paris, in which he ridiculed the comments of his critics.⁴⁵ Adopting the voice of a frivolous noblewoman, he eagerly showed that the commentaries betrayed an absence of concern for important national matters. The “belle dame” complains that,

L'auteur du poëme prétend que nous avons beaucoup d'obligation au roi de gagner des batailles en personne, et de prendre des villes, afin que nous jouissions tranquillement à Paris du fruit de ses travaux, et des dangers où il s'expose. Quelle sottise! J'aimerais bien savoir si les dames de Londres se réjouissent moins parce que le duc de Cumberland a été bien battu.

The same attitude carries over into her assessment of the contents of the poem: “Que m'importe, à moi, que quatre ou cinq officiers de l'état-major aient été blessés? j'ai bien affaire qu'on me les nomme!” She is interested only in amorous intrigue, performances at the opéra-comique, and gambling. (She closes her letter, “Adieu, monsieur, le cavagnole m'attend.”) As Voltaire makes these charges, he implies that they reflect the frivolity of a considerable sector of the nation. Apparently this was the attitude that spawned the perpetual stream of poetic rubbish littering the literary space of 1745. Of course, he could not publish this text, it would have compromised his role as author of the officially recognized Bataille de Fontenoy. But in its satirical verve, this letter conveys a sense of the importance he attached to his poem and the frustration he felt when others undermined his efforts to celebrate and perpetuate French glory.

The poetic history of Fontenoy thus yields two sorts of lessons. As far as Voltaire is concerned, his initial text and subsequent revisions reflect an extremely important characteristic of his literary practice. Throughout his career he demonstrated a fondness and a talent for reshaping works—to respond to critical commentary, to ward off threats of censorship, or to integrate new material. The intensity with which he modified and improved La Bataille de Fontenoy highlights certain of these mechanisms; in this respect, the text provides an excellent case study. In addition, the Fontenoy episode shows Voltaire attempting to position himself within a complex cultural context. Although it may seem an unusual position for this figurehead of the philosophical movement, the events of 1745 led him to believe, at least for a moment, that a return to the artistic policies of Louis XIV's reign was possible and that he himself might contribute to cooperation between a flourishing literary culture and a reinvigorated monarchy. As it happened, the vision was a fleeting one. When he was asked to celebrate a new French victory, in 1747, he performed a more typical Voltairean pirouette. In his poem on the battle of Laufeldt, he again evoked the memory of Boileau. This time, however, he sought to distinguish himself from his model:

Je dirai tout, car tout est à sa gloire.
Il [Louis XV] fait la mienne, et je me garde bien
De ressembler à ce grand satirique,
De son héros discret historien,
Qui pour écrire un beau panégyrique,
Fut bien payé, mais qui n'écrivit rien.(46)

Disgruntled with his experience as celebratory poet, Voltaire vowed that henceforward he would devote his attentions to historical writing. Although La Bataille de Fontenoy had in many ways been a great success, he would never again attempt such a work. If the symbiosis of power, literary creation and national glory were still to take place, it would not be in the form of celebratory verse.

To understand why this was so, we have moved beyond the scope of Voltaire's individual reaction to Fontenoy and looked at the tremendous outburst of celebratory and parodic literature at the time. This copious body of poetry first responded to the victory and then fed off its own momentum to sustain public interest for several months. It might be said that the literary exchange overtook and subsumed the military event. At some point in the endless cycle of poems, interest shifted definitively from what was said about the battle to how it was said. At its most extreme, this literature became a commentary on itself, almost entirely effacing the battle. In this way, it completely violated a traditional model of celebratory poetry. Voltaire's comments on his ambitions for La Bataille de Fontenoy make it seem as though his task will be achieved if only he can revise his text sufficiently. Based on the example set by Boileau, his idea of the literary “monument” implies a sort of heroic model of literary reception: the brilliance of his corrected text should eventually compel all readers, even in the future, to accept the truth it conveys, the message of French glory. The complex literary field of eighteenth-century France did not, however, permit such a simplistic development. Public reaction and the quick pens of rival poets were less easily controlled than the newly appointed royal historiographer was willing to admit.⁴⁷ Even as he labored to bring his own text to full perfection, a myriad of other writers busily undermined the notion of poetic dignity and grandeur.

Notes

1. The Encyclopédie contains a short article, “Epinicion,” by the Abbé Mallet: “L'épître de Boileau, le poëme de Corneille sur le passage du Rhin, celui de M. Adisson sur la campagne de 1704, & celui de M. de Voltaire sur la victoire de Fontenoy, sont de ce genre. Le poëme d'Adisson a pour objet la bataille d'Hocstet; c'est un des plus beaux ouvrages de cet illustre auteur; celui de M. de Voltaire ne mérite pas moins d'être lu; la préface que l'auteur y a mise contient des réflexions judicieuses sur ce genre de poëme, & sur l'épître de Despréaux.” Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers par une Société de Gens de lettres, ed. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert, 23 vols. (Paris, 1751-73), 5: 808.

2. For more extensive commentary on the historical conjuncture and the particular significance of these years in Louis XV's reign, see Michel Antoine, Louis XV (Paris: Fayard, 1989), chap. 8.

3. The most recent account of the battle is Jean-Pierre Bois, Fontenoy, 1745: Louis XV, arbitre de l'Europe (Paris: Economica, 1996). Fontenoy long upheld the glory of French arms. Horace Vernet's monumental painting assumed a prominent position in the Galerie des Batailles at Versailles during the Restoration; see Thomas Gaehtgens, Versailles als Nationaldenkmal (Berlin: Frölich & Kaufmann, 1985). The battle also appeared in a variety of literary settings; it is mentioned, for example, by Diderot in both Les Bijoux indiscrets (1748) and Jacques le fataliste (1771) and by Rousseau in La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761). Perhaps the most striking reference to the battle and Louis XV's magnanimous conduct occurs in the conclusion of the abbé de Prades's article “Certitude” in volume 2 of the Encyclopédie (1752).

4. Quotations from Voltaire's works refer to Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, ed. Louis Moland, 52 vols. (Paris: Garnier, 1877-85). References are abbreviated as (M volume: page). “La journée la plus glorieuse” is found in the “Discours préliminaire” of La Bataille de Fontenoy (M 8: 375); see also chap. 15, “Siège de Tournai. Bataille de Fontenoy,” Histoire de la guerre de 1741, ed. Jacques Maurens (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1971), 131-54. Howard Weinbrot discusses the very different tenor of the English response in “William Collins and the Mid-Century Ode: Poetry, Patriotism, and the Influence of Context,” in Martin Price and Howard Weinbrot, Context, Influence and Mid-Eighteenth-Century Poetry (Los Angeles: W. A. Clark Memorial Library, Univ. of California, Los Angeles, 1990), 1-39.

5. For accounts of Louis XV's precipitous fall from public favor, see Arlette Farge and Jacques Revel, The Vanishing Children of Paris: Rumor and Politics before the French Revolution, trans. Claudia Miéville (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1991); and Thomas E. Kaiser, “The Drama of Charles Edward Stuart, Jacobite Propaganda, and French Political Protest, 1745-1750,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 30 (1997): 365-81.

6. For a full account of these events, see René Vaillot, Avec madame du Châtelet, 1734-1749, vol. 2 of Voltaire en son temps, ed. René Pomeau (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1988-94), 193-258.

7. Much critical interest in Le Temple de la gloire has centered on the anecdote concerning Voltaire's question to the King, “Trajan est-il content?” See, for example, R. S. Ridgway, “Voltaire's Operas,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 189 (1980): 119-51.

8. Encyclopédie, 6: 580-85. As librettist, Cahusac participated in the creation of many of these spectacles.

9. Several of the Cochin images are reproduced in the exposition catalogue, Voltaire et l'Europe (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1994), 72-76.

10. His friend Cideville informed him that, just as Homer immortalized Achilles, it was his task to perpetuate Louis XV's sublime exploits: “Voltaire, pour suffire à peindre sa grande ame, / Il faloit vos talens: Poëte, Historien, / Excitez votre esprit que le sublime enflâme; / Homere trouve Achille, il ne leur manque rien.” A Monsieur de Voltaire, Historiographe de France, par Monsieur de ***. de l'Académie des Sciences, des Belles-Lettres, & des Arts, de Roüen, in Les Voltairiens, 2^èmeSérie, Voltaire jugé par les siens, 1719-1749, ed. Jeroom Vercruysse, 7 vols. (Millwood, New York: Kraus International, 1983), 6: 24.

11. D3118, 15 May 1745. All quotations from Voltaire's correspondence refer to Correspondence and Related Documents, ed. Theodore Besterman, 51 vols. (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1968-77). Besterman notes that the poet had issued the first version of his poem before this missive reached Paris; it cannot, therefore, be considered the “source” for the work. The letter does, however, suggest that d'Argenson wished to furnish him with ample material. His letter emphasizes the King's conduct: “Le vray, le sûr, le non flatteur, c'est que c'est le Roy qui a gagné luy mêsme la bataille, par sa volonté, par sa fermeté.”

12. Alexis Piron, “Anecdote comique et littéraire au sujet des deux pièces précédentes,” in Oeuvres complètes illustrées, 10 vols. (Paris: F. Guillot, 1928-31), 8: 217; cited by Sylvain Menant, La Chute d'Icare: La crise de la poésie française, 1700-1750 (Genève: Droz, 1981), 289.

13. For discussion of expectations surrounding serious poetry, see Menant, La Chute d'Icare, 273-79. Menant particularly emphasizes the importance of Boileau's episitle on the Rhine crossing as a model for eighteenth-century poets.

14. D3131, 31 May 1745, to Cideville. Voltaire relayed the story of the King's reception of the work to several of his correspondents: “J'avois mandé à M. le maréchal de Noailles que j'ofrois un bien petit tribut, que c'étoit là un petit monument de la gloire du roy. Il m'a fait l'honneur de m'écrire que le roy avoit dit que j'avois tort, que ce n'étoit pas un petit monument” (D3142, 13-15 June 1745, to the président Hénault). See also D3147, D3149, D3168 and D3187.

15. One morning he urged Cideville to come “chez Prault” where he was to oversee the printing of a new edition: “Après avoir travaillé toute la nuit mon cher amy à mériter vos éloges et votre amitié, par les efforts que je fais, après avoir poussé notre bataille jusqu'à près de 300 Vers, y avoir jetté un peu de poésie, fait un discours préliminaire et ayant surtout proffité de vos avis, il faut prendre du Caffé, et c'est en le prenant que je vous rends compte de tout ce que je fais. Je viens de recevoir du roy la permission de faire imprimer l'Epître dédicatoire dont je luy avois envoyé le Modèle” (D3139, 31 May 1745).

16. Unfortunately, the volume that will contain the “Bataille de Fontenoy” has not yet appeared in the ongoing critical edition of the Complete Works of Voltaire (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1968).

17. “Dans un ordre effrayant trois attaques formées / Sur trois terrains divers engagent les armées. / Le Français, dont Maurice a gouverné l'ardeur, / A son poste attaché, joint l'art à la valeur” (M 8: 385-86). These lines were still absent from the sixth Parisian edition by Prault pere.

18. “Aux Champs de Fontenoy, volez, accourez tous; / Voyez ce fier Saxon qu'on croit né parmi nous. …” La Bataille de Fontenoy, Poëme. Troisième edition, plus correcte & plus ample que les précédentes (Paris: Prault père, 1745), 4.

19. Voltaire writes to the printer at the Louvre, Jacques Anisson-Duperron: “Il est bien juste monsieur de ne pas oublier Ostende dans l'énumération des conquêtes du roy, je vous suplie d'ordonner qu'on insère le morceau suivant à la page 27” (D3175, [15 July 1745]).

20. The comment appeared in a footnote to the third edition, page 5. In later editions, this note disappeared since Voltaire made the same point in the “Discours préliminaire.”

21. Notably, he wrote to Anisson-Duperron concerning the ornament: “Vous me feriez un sensible plaisir de faire mettre à la tête du poème, le côté de la médaille qui représente Le Roy” (D3204, [?25 August 1745]). The change of title also seems to have originated with Voltaire: “Je vous prie de mettre Le poème de Fontenoy en titre au frontispice, et en titre courant” (D3179, [20 July 1745]).

22. D3149, 17 juin 1745. This letter was addressed to the comte de Tressan, a participant in the battle who, like Voltaire, wrote a poem to celebrate Fontenoy.

23. Two weeks after scolding Voltaire, Maurepas notified Anisson-Duperron: “Vous ferés tirer, Monsieur, 800 exemplaires du Poëme de Fontenoy et vous les remettrés à M. de Voltaire; il souhaite que dans ce nombre il y en ait 200 reliés en veau et en maroquin. Comme je suis persuadé que le Roy ne désaprouvera pas cette deppense, vous voudrés bien vous charger de faire faire ces relieures; Je crois que M. de Voltaire sera content et je le désire” (D3181, 25 July 1745).

24. Lettres de M. de Marville, lieutenant général de police, au ministre Maurepas, 1742-1747, ed. A. de Boislisle (Paris: Champion, 1886-1905), 2: 93; cited by Besterman, D3150, [c. 18 June 1745].

25. Several of these critical works are reprinted in Les Voltairiens, vol. 6, including Desfontaines's Avis sincères à m. de Voltaire. Au sujet de la sixième édition de son poème sur la victoire de Fontenoi, Dromgold's Réflexions sur un imprimé intitulé “La bataille de Fontenoy, poème,” and the anonymous Apologie du poëme de M. de V**** sur la bataille de Fontenoy.

26. Pierre Conlon registers a substantial jump in the number of works produced in 1744 and 1745 compared with previous years; in later years, the totals again drop considerably. Le Siècle des Lumières. Bibliographie chronologique, 17 vols. to date (Geneva: Droz, 1975), vol. 5.

27. “NE 2, 2 June 1745,” in Lettres de l'abbé Bonardy (1726-1745) et de Jean-Bernard Michault (1745), ed. Henri Duranton (Saint-Etienne: Université de Saint-Etienne, 1977), 139.

28. This collection includes Voltaire's poem Sur les événements de 1744 and his Nouvelle épistre au roy, présentée à Sa Majesté au camp devant Fribourg, le premier novembre 1744. The engraving is reproduced in Voltaire, Histoire de la guerre de 1741.

29. On the interest of such collections, see Albert Labarre, “Sur l'éminente dignité des pièces,” Revue française d'histoire du livre 84-85 (1994): 335-40. While discussing in a general way the preservation of ephemeral print materials, Labarre mentions specifically the copious Fontenoy production.

30. La France consolée, ode. Par monsieur l'abbé Pellegrin. Avec un discours sur l'ode (Paris, 1744); and the Epître au Roy, au retour de sa campagne; avec un discours sur la critique, ou critique des critiques, par monsieur Néel (Paris, 1744).

31. For example, Plainte à messieurs les auteurs de l'Académie françoise (Metz, 1744).

32. Epître au public par un méchant poète tant en son nom, que comme portant la parole pour ses confrères, qui sont en très-grand nombre (Paris, 1744), 2; Le Dénonciateur du mauvais goût, et observations critiques sur l'ode de l'abbé Pellegrin (Paris, 1744), 3.

33. Like David the previous year, the Lillois printer Panckoucke issued a Recueil de pièces choisies sur la bataille de Fontenoy à la louange de Sa Majesté (Lille, 1745), which he claimed was intended to satisfy “l'empressement des François pour conserver les monuments précieux de la victoire et des illustres conquêtes de notre monarque pendant cette année 1745” (verso of the title page). As in many of the recueils factices, Voltaire's text came first, followed by a mixture of other pieces. For general discussion of the poetic response to Fontenoy, see Menant, La Chute d'Icare, 285-96; and Michel Gilot, “Le Souvenir d'une belle bataille,” in L'Histoire au dix-huitième siècle. Colloque d'Aix-en-Provence; 1-3 mai 1975 (Aix-en-Provence: EDISUD, 1980), 307-28.

34. In Les Voltairiens, 6: 191. For general analysis of imitative modes of writing and particularly of the burlesque genre, see Gérard Genette, Palimpsestes, la littérature au second degré (Paris: Seuil, 1982), 78-88.

35. [F. Z. Pourroy de L'Auberivière de Quinsonas], La Capilotade, poème ou tout ce qu'on voudra, in Les Volairiens, 6: 265.

36. [Jean-Martin Marchand], Requête du curé de Fontenoy, au Roy, in Recueil de pièces choisies, item 8: 2.

37. “C'est-à-dire que vous avez fait votre Poëme en un ou deux jours, & que vous l'avez ensuite grossi de toutes les nouvelles vrayes ou fausses que l'on vous disoit. Mais est-ce là ce qu'on appelle composer un Poëme? N'est-ce pas travailler, comme on dit, au jour la journée?” [P. F. G. Desfontaines], Avis sincères à m. de Voltaire. Au sujet de la sixième édition de son poème sur la victoire de Fontenoi, in Les Voltairiens, 6: 25.

38. Literary critics, too, attacked Voltaire's first sentence, since it suggested that imitation of Boileau (rather than celebration of the victory) was the poem's primary motivation: “C'est comme si quelque Poëte, sous l'Empire de Titus, eût invité tous les Romains à faire des vers à la louange de cet Empereur, parce qu'Horace avoit célébré Auguste; & cette invitation auroit été sans doute très-conséquent & très-spirituelle. …” Apologie du Poëme de M. de V**** sur la bataille de Fontenoy, in Les Voltairiens, 6: 4.

39. [A.-J. Panckoucke], La Bataille de Fontenoy, poëme héroïque en vers burlesques, par un Lillois, natif de Lille en Flandre (Lille, 1745).

40. Le Galamathias, poesies du tems, héroïques, critiques, epiques, lyriques & comiques, in Recueil de pièces choisies, item 9: 50.

41. Epître au Roi par un Manceau (1745), 3.

42. [P. H. Robbé de Beauveset], Epitre du sieur Rabot, maître d'école de Fontenoy, sur les victoires du roi, in Les Voltairiens, 6: 15.

43. The président Bouhier's correspondence registers the vogue of comic Fontenoy poetry: “Je ne vous parlerai point, Monsieur, de toutes les brochures poétiques dont nous sommes inondés sur la bataille de Fontenoy. Le comique a mieux réussi que le sérieux. La requête du curé de Fontenoy a remporté la palme. Elle a été faite par Mr Marchand, avocat, qui est fort de mes amis.” “XXIII. 13 July 1745,” in Lettres de l'abbé Claude-Pierre Goujet (1737-1745), ed. Henri Duranton (Saint-Etienne: Université de Saint-Etienne, 1976), 83.

44. D3148, 16 June 1745, to Moncrif. Like many of the other parodies, the offending poem employed the opening exclamation to strengthen its ties with Voltaire: “Quoi! je serai silencieux, / Comme une huitre dans son écaille, / Lorsque la fameuse Bataille, / Met en train jusqu'aux vielleux, / Et que chacun rime ou rimaille? / Ai-je donc peur qu'on ne me raille, / D'oser faire une strophe ou deux, / Après ce Chantre si fameux, / Qui célèbre depuis Noailles, / Jusqu'au moindre petit morveux, / Portant talon rouge à Versailles?” Vers sur la bataille de Fontenoy. par P.**, in Recueil de pièces choisies, item 6: 1-2.

45. Lettre critique d'une belle dame à un beau monsieur de Paris sur le poëme de la bataille de Fontenoy (M 8: 397-400). This text was first published in the Kehl edition in 1785; the manuscript, in Voltaire's hand, is held at the Institut et Musée Voltaire in Geneva. I thank Professor Christopher Todd, who is editing this work for the Complete Works of Voltaire, for this information.

46. Epître à S.A.S. madame la duchesse du Maine, sur la victoire remportée par le Roi, à Lawfelt (M 10: 341-42). On Voltaire's transition from poetry to history, see J. D. Leigh, “Patriotism and peace: Voltaire's responses to the War of the Austrian Succession,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 347 (1996): 643-45.

47. Of course, in other situations, Voltaire himself masterfully exploited the techniques that he deplores in the other Fontenoy poets, and with more explicit subversive intention. His adoption and simultaneous destruction of religious modes of speech is just one example of this practice. For a discussion of the monarchy's attempts to channel information and control public response to the events of the War of the Austrian Succession, see Michèle Fogel, Les Cérémonies de l'information dans la France du XVIe au milieu du XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1989).