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This is the first complete study of Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes, one of the most distinguished diplomats and statesmen of eighteenth-century France. Vergennes represented France as a diplomat in Germany, Constantinople, and Stockholm, and was Louis XVI's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Orville Murphy traces Vergennes' career as he steadily rose from the provincial nobility of the robe to the ranks of the court aristocracy; from the post of an obscure diplomat to the lofty position of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Murphy, however, has written much more than an interesting biography. The book develops a link between diplomatic personalities, the foreign policies of the French kings Louis XV and Louis XVI, and the contemporary social, economic, and political problems during much of the eighteenth century. Indeed, Vergennes and his policies are central to any study of the American Revolution, the underlying causes of the French Revolution, and of the subsequent "Age of Revolutions" in Europe.
Preface
Part I. The Initiation
1. War of the Austrian Succession
2. A King of the Romans
3. The Congress at Hanover
Part II. The Turkish Equation
4. Constantinople
5. Ceremony and Debts at the Court of the Sultan
6. 1755— Turkish Declaration to Russia
7. The Diplomatic Revolution
8. 1761— Trade Treaties with the Porte
9. Matters of Prestige
10. 1764— The Election of the King of Poland
11. War
PART III. In and Out of Retirement
12. Recall
13. To Stockholm
14. Coup d'état
15. From Stockholm to Versailles
Part IV. The War That Changed Everything
16. The Past, Present, and Future in 1774
17. The Spanish Temptation
18. The Revolution in America
19. Gates and Washington: Saratoga and Germantown
20. The Decision to Intervene
21. Spain Enters the War
22. Dutch Neutrality: 1776–1782
Part V. The Master Juggler Performs
23. The Bavarian Crisis: I
24. The Bavarian Crisis: II
25. Mogilev
26. Peace Appears Trailing Clouds of Ambitions
27. The Crisis of 1783
28. The Vergennes Family
29. Gibraltar
30. The Right to Catch Fish
31. The Mississippi Boundary
Part VI. Eve of Disaster
32. The Legacy of the American War
33. The Scheldt River Dispute: 1780–1785
34. Relations with Italy: 1774–1787
35. Commerce and Diplomacy I: The Anglo-French Commercial Treaty of 1786
36. Commerce and Diplomacy II: The Franco-Russian Treaty of 1787 and Other Treaties
37. The Dutch Entanglement: 1783–1787
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index