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Jean-Baptiste Rveillon: A Man on the Make in Old Regime FranceAuthor(s): Leonard N. RosenbandSource: French Historical Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Summer, 1997), pp. 481-510Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/286854
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Jean-Baptiste Reveillon:A Man on the Make
in
Old Regime France
Leonard N. Rosenband
Jean-Baptiste Reveillon
had a fine house. Its
charming grounds
covered
nearly
five
acres,
and it contained a
library
of more than
fifty
thousand
volumes,
furniture
worth fifty
thousand
livres,
and
a
magnificent
wine
cellar. Parisians gossiped about it, strolled to the edge of the city
to see
it, and in April 1789 ravaged it.'
With
his house and the
wallpaper
works
that
occupied
the
ground
floor besieged, Reveillon took refuge in the Bastille. He was pained
and puzzled by the crowd's fury. After all, he was a good employer. He
paid high wages
and
kept
hundreds of
his
workers
on
the
books
dur-
ing the fierce winter of 1788-89, when no wallpaper could be made.2
From the
belly
of the
Bastille,
he cried out
for
justice
and
compensa-
tion. In
his
"Expose justificatif,"
the
pamphlet
he
penned
in his sanc-
Leonard N. Rosenband is an associate professor of history at Utah State University.
He is the
coeditor of The
Workplaceefore
he
Factory:
Artisansand
Proletarians,
500-1800
(Ithaca,
N.Y.,
1993).
For their comments and insights, the author would like to thank Sally Clarke, Michael
Dintenfass, James Farr, Anthony Grafton, Brad Gregory, Daryl Hafter, Jeff Horn, Christopher
Johnson, WilliamJordan, Eric Olsen,
Thomas
Safley,
and
Benjamin Weiss.
The author wrote this
essay at the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University and re-
vised it at the Dibner Institute
for
the History
of
Science and Technology
at MIT. He is
grateful
to both institutions.
1
The principal modern discussion
of
the Reveillon
riots is in
George
Rude,
The Crowd n
theFrenchRevolution
Oxford, 1959),
34-44. See also Charles
Tilly,
The ContentiousFrench:our Cen-
turiesof PopularStruggle Cambridge, Mass., 1986), 232-34;
Simon
Schama,
Citizens:
A
Chronicle
f
theFrenchRevolution
New York, 1989), 326-31;
and
Jacques Godechot,
The
Taking of
the Bastille:
July
14th,
1
789,
trans. Jean Stewart
(London, 1970),
133-51.
An earlier account is in Jean
Collot,
"LAffaire Reveillon, 27
et
28
avril
1789,"
Revue des
questionshistoriques 21 (1934): 35-55,
and
122
(1935): 239-54. Invaluable primary documents are found in Charles-Louis Chassin, Les Elections
et les cahiersde
Paris
en 1789, documentsecueillis,
mis en
ordre,
et
annot&s,
vols.
(Paris, 1889),
3:49-
142.
For
Reveillon's
own account
of the riots
(and
of his
rise
and
fall), seeJean-Baptiste Reveillon,
"Expose justificatif pour le sieur Reveillon, entrepreneur de la Manufacture royale de papiers
peints, faubourg St.-Antoine,"
in Memoires du
Marquis
deFerrieres, 3 vols.
(Paris, 1821),
1:427-38.
For the scale of
Reveillon's property,
see
431;
for the value of
his
furniture,
see
438;
and for R&
veillon's
library
and wine
cellar,
see
Godechot,
137-38.
2
Reveillon, "Exposejustificatif," 434-35.
FrenchHistoricalStudies,Vol. 20, No. 3 (Summer 1997)
Copyright
C
1997 by the Society for French Historical Studies
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482 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES
tuary, he claimed that he started out "by living from
the work of my
hands "3 He knew poverty: "After three years of apprenticeship
[to a
merchant-stationer], I found myself, for several days, without bread,
without shelter,
and almost
without clothing."
Rescued
by
a
friend, a
carpenter's son, and then nurtured by a "merchant"
who perceived
that
"misery
does not
always suppose misconduct," Reveillon
found his
footing.4 With a nimble mind, boundless energy, and a virtuous wife,
he
made a fortune. His story, as he scripted it in 1789,
was a bourgeois
parable.
The
crowd should have celebrated the
rise
of
one of its own,
rather than bring him to his knees.
Six years earlier, Reveillon had pursued the title of royal manu-
factory
for his
paper mill
at
Courtalin-en-Brie and
his wallpaper works
in the
faubourg Saint-Antoine
in Paris. He
directed
his petition to the
Council
of
State, the government agency that granted
such privileges.
Never at a loss for words, he evidently turned his request into auto-
biography, freighting
it
with detail
and
emotion;
certainly, the Council
of State document that retold
his
tale
was
rich in
both.5
In
fact,
this
extract
from
the council's registers is
a
catalogue
of
Reveillon's anger,
pride, resentments, and stubbornness. Not surprisingly, its theme and
tone
departed
from
Reveillon's appeal
from the Bastille. This
telling
of his rise
was laced with the
names of the titled and
well-placed, sug-
gested that his sensitivity and creativity
in
matters of
style and taste had
made
him
wealthy, and tempered
his tradesman's drives. Indeed, he
always
shared the
news
of his technical
advances, spreading
the
wealth
among
his
brother manufacturers.
He
was
a
man
of disinterested lu-
mieres,with
an
aristocrat's panache.
In
him,
the
great rivals
of the
Old
Regime, talent and rank, became one.
Reveillon's virtuous wife, bourgeois patron,
and devoted friend
are all absent from this
pre-Revolutionary
account
of
making good. My
purpose, however,
is not
to indict him for
duplicity.
Rather,
this
essay
explores
the
tactics of a
man
on
the
make in
a
society
of ranks.
As
he
threaded his
way
to fame and
fortune,
he
necessarily
fashioned and
severed
connections, remaking himself,
his
audience,
and his
story.
And he
made
enemies. Each
time the state looked
after
his
interests,
it circumscribed the latitude of the gens de metier, he men of the craft
communities.
This
paper
widens
the search for the sources of the
Re-
veillon
riots
beyond
the
price
of
bread and the
politics
of 1789. It
sug-
3
Ibid., 428.
4
Ibid., 429. In this quotation, and
throughout
the
passages quoted
from
Reveillon's
"Ex-
pose justificatif," I have dispensed with his italics
and selective capitalization.
5
Archives nationales (henceforth
AN),
F12
1477,
"Extrait des
registres
du Conseil d'Etat"
(henceforth "ER"),13Jan. 1784, unpaginated.
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JEAN-BAPTISTE
REVEILLON: A MAN
ON THE
MAKE
483
gests
that
the downfall of
his
house can also
be traced
to the means
he
used
to build
his
fortune.
Most historians learn about the destruction of Reveillon's house
from
George
Rude's classic,
The
Crowd n the
French
Revolution.
Rude
described
throngs and banners,
smashed glass
and torn
furniture,
and
then a massacre.
The repression
of the Reveillon
riots left
many dead,
perhaps
more than in any
of the Revolution's
risings
before the journee
of 10
August
1792, which
effectively
ended the
monarchy.6 Moreover,
this turmoil stoked
the passions
that led to
the sacking of
the Bastille
(from which
Reveillon
had already
fled)
eleven weeks
later.
For Rude, the real tinder for the bonfires lit in Reveillon's gar-
dens
was
not
paper
and
gum.
Instead,
it
was
the
perilously
high
cost of
the four-pound
loaf of bread,
the staple
in the diet of
Paris's working
poor.7
When
Reveillon
spoke
out about
inflated
production
costs
and,
evidently,
lamented the days
when
men
got by
on much
lower wages,
he incited the people's
anger.
The crowd hanged
him in effigy
and
took
its
revenge.
The
gutting
of
Reveillon's house
was
the natural
reaction
of men
whose
guts
ached
with
hunger,
of
women
whose
breasts ran
dry. "The Reveillon riots," Rude maintained, "areunique in the history
of the Revolution
in that they represent
an insurrectionary
movement
of
wage-earners."8
Though
the
political
atmosphere
was charged
and
the
people
chanted
"Vive
le
Tiers
Etat" while they
wrecked
Reveillon's
house,
"[t]he
primary
cause
of the disturbance,
as so often
in the riots
of the old
regime
-
and
of the Revolution
-
lay
in the
shortage
and the
high price
of
bread."
9
Reveillon's
fortune-hunting
and
his
wallpaper
works hardly fig-
ured in Rude's account of the riots. Yet the dynamism of both is
evident
in a
partial
roster
of the
craftsmen
he
employed:
base-coat
brushers,
carpenters,
chiselers,
designers, dyers,
engravers,
locksmiths,
painters,
paperhangers,
paperworkers,
printers,
sculptors,
and wall-
paper
makers. Equally,
the
privileged
status
he
sought
would
permit
him to
manufacture
and distribute wallcoverings
of
every
sort without
interference
by
the
interested
guilds.10
When
the craft
communities
tried
to
shorten
his reach and
seized
his
tools,
Reveillon's
powerful
friends in Versailles and Paris crushed their efforts. But his fine house
proved
no sturdier than
its foundations
in the Old
Regime.
6
Contemporary
estimates
of
the
death toll
varied
widely (see
n.
120, below).
For the com-
parisons with
10
August 1792,
see
Godechot,
The
Takingof
the
Bastille,
147.
7
Rude,
The Crowdn theFrench
Revolution,
42.
8 Ibid.,
39.
9
Ibid.,
44.
10
AN,
F12 1477, "ER."
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484 FRENCH
HISTORICAL STUDIES
In 1889, Charles-Louis Chassin published
a
collection of docu-
ments on the Reveillon riots. He offered only sparse
comments about
the wellsprings of the turmoil, but he did observe that certain craft
communities considered
"the
new industry of wallpaper
manufacture"
to be an interloper, a violator of immemorial privileges. In fact, the
evolution of wallpaper was complex, and several
guilds had already
sparred over the rights to produce its ancestors. If Chassin detected a
more promising line of inquiry when he reported Reveillon's conflict
with
the
paperworkers' association, he,
like
Rude, largely ignored
the
man and his
maneuvers.11
In 1741, Reveillon wrote from the Bastille, he began his career
"as
a
worker."
He had
spent
three
years
as
an apprentice
to a
papetier;
otherwise, Reveillon was silent about his toil during
this period. All he
got
out of his
indentures,
he
recalled, was
hard
times.
"It was a mat-
ter
of
having work," said
the
wealthy manufacturer about
his
luckless
start. He turned to
the
streets, where
he
was
reduced to "despair": "I
was
perishing,"
he
remembered,
"from
sorrow
and
starvation."
But he
had the
good fortune
to run into one of
his
friends,
a
young carpenter.
He, too, lacked money, but sold a tool so that Reveillon could eat. Re-
veillon, then, knew
the
virtues
of
solidarity
and
the
pain
of
a pinched
stomach:
'Ah the
man who has known misfortune
so
well,
can he then
forget
so
easily
the unfortunate?"
Still,
he
was
in
no condition to
pros-
per.
His disheveled state did not
inspire
confidence;
at
first,
the
mer-
chant
who
became his
patron pushed
him aside.
Finally,
his benefactor
agreed
to let
Reveillon stay
in his home for a
few days.
He
saw through
Reveillon's poverty, grew
attached to
him,
and
kept
him
around.
For
his part, Reveillon observed, "Iprofited from his lessons" -but not so
much,
in
the
beginning,
as he
would
have
liked.
When
he left the mer-
chant's
protection,
his
savings
amounted
to a mere
eighteen
francs.12
On the loose
again,
Reveillon
preferred
to
work
for
his
own
ad-
vantage.
He had "a natural
taste for
speculations."
13
His
early
ventures
were
not
very large,
but
quite satisfying.
He
loved
to recall
them,
as
well
as their
fruits: the first
silver watch
he
carried and
the first hundred
ecus
he
possessed.14
Next came a
wife, attracted,
Reveillon
boasted, by
his "steadyconduct" and the "sort of intelligence that one supposed of
me."
15
He became
a
paper
merchant and
his
success
in this
commerce
mirrored the
Weberian
virtues
that
brought
him a
spouse:
"Thrifti-
11
Chassin,
Les Elections
t
les
cahiers,
55.
12
RWveillon,
"Exposejustificatif,"
429.
13
Ibid.
14
Ibid.,
429-30.
15
Ibid.,
430.
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JEAN-BAPTISTEREVEILLON: A MAN ON THE MAKE
485
ness, cleverness, and exactness,
here were the first and already the only
means
I
employed."
6
And he displayed his attention to that classic
bourgeois virtue, punctuality, with style
-he
capped his rise from rags
to first riches with a timepiece.
His was the story of virtue rewarded,
humbled, and, Reveillon hoped, compensated once
more. It was a tale
fit to tug at
the
hearts
of
"les gens reflechis"
and the
purse strings
of
Necker.17And
it
was
somewhat off the mark.
Jean-Baptiste Reveillon was born in 1725, the son
of a man who
enjoyed the title of bourgeois
e
Paris.18
He completed his three-year ap-
prenticeship, which was
the standard term for a young mercer, in 1744,
probably with the small-time merchant-stationer Frantois Maroy.19Re-
veillon
may
have endured
some straitened
times because
of the
ap-
parent collapse
of his
parents'
marriage, but his journey to middling
prosperity was more direct
than he pretended.
In
1753,
he purchased
Maroy's tools,
merchandise,
and
signboard (enseigne). (At
the
time
of
this
transaction, Reveillon
and
his
mother were living
in Maroy's house
on the rue de la
Harpe.)
The
price was
4568
livres,
9
sous,
3 deniers.
Reveillon paid two thousand
livres
in
cash, agreed
to redeem the rest
in five annuities, and accepted an annual rent for the boutique of 369
livres.20A year later, he
married Maroy's daughter,
whose dowry of
eight
thousand livres erased
the
annuities
and
put
a
firm
prop
under
Reveillon's
Weberian
virtues.21
As a
mercer,
Reveillon
entered
a
commercial
world
of broad flexi-
bility. Many
of the
goods
he
bought
from
Maroy
reflected
his
station
as marchand
apetier,
or he
acquired ink, pens, pencils,
desks, scissors,
rulers,
and
writing paper
of
every type
and format. Typically,
in
the
jack-of-all-products orbit of the mercers, he also obtained wax, brooms,
mirrors, lanterns,
watch chains, snuffboxes,
and
spyglasses. Gaming
material had
played
a
part
in
his
father-in-law's
affairs,
since
Reveil-
ion
purchased dice,
checker-and-chess
boards,
and
an
omen of future
conflicts, playing
cards.22What Reveillon
did
not secure
was
the
right
to
manufacture
paper goods
in his
own
name.
Mercers,
as befitted
their
lofty rank,
were
to earn
their
livings
in
commerce,
not
by toiling
16
Ibid.
17
Ibid., 429.
18
Henri
Clouzot and
Charles
Follot,
Histoire
du
papierpeint
en France
Paris, 1935),
38.
19
On the mercer's
apprenticeship,
see
Pierre Vidal and
Leon
Duru,
Histoirede la
corporation
des
marchands
merciers
Paris, 1911),
113 and
171;
on the
probable identity
of
Reveillon's
patron,
see
Clouzot and
Follot,
Histoiredu
papier
peint
en
France,
40-41.
20
For the
details of this transaction, see
Clouzot and
Follot, Histoire du papier peint
en
France,41.
21
Ibid.
22
Ibid.,
42.
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486 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES
with
their hands. So
Reveillon acquired only a printing press and two
trimming presses from Maroy, which mirrored the prerogative of the
marchandmercier o refine products made by others.23Of course, enter-
prising mercers struggled to stretch these limits. For instance, in 1699
a judgment issued by the Parlement permitted the Parisian mercers
to
make use of
hammers, smoothstones,
and "other
tools" in ready-
ing their papers for sale, despite the complaint of the community of
papetiers-colleurspaper furnishers and hangers).24
Reveillon was drawn to manufacturing by the rage for flock paper.
Known
also as
papier
bleu
dAngleterre,
his
wallcovering
was
produced
by sprinkling powdered cloth, or flock, in a pattern defined in tacky
paper.
It
eclipsed
the
dominos,
he
printed
or
handpainted sheets that
portrayed religious and, later, secular themes and decorated the walls
of the
popular classes. Even more, it surpassed the papiers de tapisserie,
which,
as
their
name
suggests,
were
paper
imitations of
tapestry (and
brocades
and
leather)
and enlivened the walls of a
more
elevated
cli-
entele.
Most
notably, however,
the
stylishness
of flock
paper
rested in
large
measure on an
English innovation,
the
pasting together
of
indi-
vidual sheets into a roll before printing or flocking took place.25De-
signers were now
liberated from
the
"tyranny"
of the dimensions of a
single sheet
of
paper.
As
Anthony Wells-Cole put it,
the
production
of
paper
rolls meant that "fashionable
luxury
textiles came within reach
of imitation
by
the
paper-stainers."
6
Newly
freed from one sort of
boundary,
the flock
paper
manufac-
turers quickly
ran
afoul
of another.
Dominotiers, ngravers, painters,
and
printers
had
struggled tirelessly
over the
right
to fashion
colored and
printed images. Transformations in taste and technique blurred the
lines between
the various
crafts, thereby raising
the stakes. The
guilds
campaigned
for favorable
rulings by
the
state,
which
often took
the
form of
clarifying,
if
impractically,
the borders. One
pronouncement,
for
example,
held that
a
dominotier
ould
employ
his
press only
in the
presence
of a master
printer
or
his
deputy.27
Thus
Reveillon's
decision
to manufacture flock
paper
ensnared
him in
a
web
of conflicts.
According
to the Council of State's version
of
Reveillon's
rise,
Pari-
sians got their first look at flock paper in 1753, when the English am-
23
Ibid.
24Vidal and Duru,
Histoirede la
corporation esmarchandsmerciers, 18.
25
On
the evolution
of
wallpaper,
see Clouzot and
Follot,
Histoiredu
papier
peint
en
France;
Lesley
Hoskins, ed.,
The
PaperedWall
New York, 1994);
and
Francoise Teynac,
Pierre
Nolot,
and
Jean-Denis
Vivien, Wallpaper: History,
rans.
Morgan
and
Conway Lloyd (New York, 1982).
26
Anthony Wells-Cole,
"Flocks,
Florals,
and Fancies:
English
Manufacture
1680-1830,"
in
Hoskins,
The
PaperedWall,24.
27Teynac, Nolot, and
Vivien, Wallpaper,
8.
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JEAN-BAPTISTEREVEILLON: A MAN ON THE
MAKE
487
bassador to France imported some to decorate
the
home he rented in
Passy.28The fad was
on, but matching seams and mounting the
paper
proved difficult. Reveillon mastered the knack first, his trade swelled,
and he attracted the
right sort of customers -courtiers
and rich com-
moners. (Whereas probity and paternalistic
impulses were
Reveillon's
self-confessed virtues
in 1789, good taste, invention, and friends
in high
places
loomed larger five years earlier.) When
the
Seven
Years' War
put
an end to
his
supply
of flock
paper,
he fashioned his own at "prices
so much
lower
than those of English papers" that
he
drove
them from
French markets.29
Reveillon was not the first Parisian who made flock paper. At least
two engravers had mastered the art before
him; but Reveillon
was a
mercer and hence barred from the manufacture of goods in
his own
name. All of
this,
he knew, was not lost
on the interested guilds, such
as the cartiers-dominotiers card-and-domino
makers), imprimeursen taille-
douce
(copperplate
printers),
and
tapissiers
(tapestry-makers).
So
Reveil-
lon fled. 'Alarmed
by the conflicting demands [contradictions]
that a
multitude of guilds
in Paris could make him bear," Reveillon
moved
his shops to Laigle, in Normandy.30Expenses there exceeded revenues,
although
his
wares
rivaled those of the best English producers.
He had
to go
back
to the
center of fashion and luxury consumption,
Paris.
When
he returned to the
capital,
Reveillon
did not renew
the
lease
on the small
shop
on
the
rue de la
Harpe.
He had left the realm
of the
petty
mercer. He
opened
a
boutique
on the rue
de l'Arbre-Sec in the
Marais
and, judging
by
the ten
or
twelve workers
he
employed there,
a
modest
workshop
on the rue de
Charonne.31
His
flock
paper,
he remi-
nisced in 1789, was "very superior" to that of his French competitors,
yet
sold for half the
price.
He had combined
a craftsman's
scruples
with
a
businessman's
instincts. Soon
he
required space,
for his labor
force mushroomed
to
"40,
50,
60 and as
many
as 80
workers."32
And
he needed
protection.
Reveillon
sought "shelter,"
in
the
council's
words,
"from
every
explosion."33
Rather
than
pursue
membership
in
a
craft
community,
he
purchased
a
privilege,
or
particular right,
to exercise
the trade
of copperplate printer.34He obtained this legal entitlement from the
28
AN,
F12 1477, "ER."
29
Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31
For the number of
workers,
see
Reveillon, "Expose
justificatif," 430;
for the location of
his enterprises,
see
Clouzot
and
Follot,
Histoire
du
papierpeint
en
France,
44 and
46.
32
Reveillon,
"Expose
justificatif,"
430.
33
AN, F12
1477, "ER."
34
For Reveillon's
specific
privilege,
see ibid.
On
the
general
use of
privilege by large-scale
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488
FRENCH HISTORICAL
STUDIES
prevot de
l'hotel,also
known as the grand prevo^t
e France,
the official
charged with the
maintenance and security
of the court
and the king's
residences.35 Reveillon, then, drew closer to the legions who met the
needs
of the grand mondeof the
Old Regime.
He may have also
bought
himself
some trouble,
since the Parisian
guilds, which
entrusted the
resolution
of their legal
conflicts to the Chatelet,
squabbled
ceaselessly
with the provost's
court over matters
of
jurisdiction.
Reveillon's provocation
of
the copperplate printers
did not
end
with
his
purchase
of a
privilege
to
exercise their trade.
He also em-
ployed "the best designers
of the
Gobelins" tapestry
works, and
had
them set their patterns in copper.36The printers struck back. "Despite
[his] privilege,"
they
seized
Reveillon's
presses,
"with the noisiest
and
most
humiliating display."
A magistrate finally
stopped "this prosecu-
tion."
37
Emboldened by
the reach of
his
protection,
Reveillon decided
to
widen
his line. He
imported
printed English wallpaper
by way of
Holland
and imitated it
successfully. Still,
Reveillon grumbled
in 1789,
he had never imagined the "vexations"
(tracasseries)
mposed by
"the
jealousy
and
despotism
of the [craft]
communities." Several
guilds "pre-
tended" that "I was invading their rights," he lamented. One part or
another of
his
wallpaper works
was
invariably
a
"usurpation."38
"The
least idea
that
I
carried out,"
he fumed, "wasa theft
from the printers,
the
engravers,
the
tapestry-makers,
etc.,
etc."39
Meanwhile,
Reveillon
still
had to solve the
problem
of room for
his
booming
business.
In
1763,
he leased
a
large
site on the
grounds
of
the Folie
Titon,
and four
years
later became
the
proprietor
of this white
elephant.40
Titon
du
Tillet,
who
died
in
1762,
was
a financier
eager
to construct that parvenu's dream, a house that drew comments and
sightseers.
Its
pavilion
and
outbuildings
were
surrounded
by
a
box-
wood
maze,
an
orangery, stables,
and a
quincunx
adorned
with
statues.
Nearby
Titonville,
as this hamlet
within
the
city
was
known,
stood two
other
follies.41
Its
purchase
surely
enhanced
Reveillon's
visibility,
for
everyone
in the
first ranks of Parisian society,
at
least,
had heard of this
estate.
And Reveillon craved publicity
and the connections
it
brought,
manufacturers,
see Michael Sonenscher, Work
and
Wages:
Natural
Law,
Politics,
and the
Eighteenth-
Century rench
Trades
Cambridge,
1989), 216-18.
35
For the role and responsibilities
of the pr&v6t e
l'h6tel,
ee Marcel Marion,
Dictionnaire
des
institutionsde
la Franceaux XVIIeet
XV7IIe
i&les
1923; rpt.,
New
York, 1968),
453.
36
Clouzot and Follot,
Histoiredupapierpeint
en
France,
44-45.
37
AN, F12 1477, "ER."
38
Reveillon,
"Expose justificatif," 430.
39
Ibid.,
431.
40
For
the
leased property,
see Clouzot and
Follot,
Histoiredu
papier
peint
en
France,46;
for
the
date
of
purchase,
see
ibid., 47.
41
Teynac, Nolot, and Vivien, Wallpaper,
8.
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JEAN-BAPTISTEREVEILLON: A MAN ON THE MAKE
489
not only as a marketing edge
but also as a talisman against the craft
communities of the capital.
Like Reveillon's cramped shops on the rue de Charonne, Titon-
ville was located
in
the
faubourg Saint-Antoine, a vast expanse of sheds,
hangars, and workbenches at
the periphery of Paris. Work there
was
free, that is, conducted legally
outside of the framework of the guilds.42
Even in this enclave, however,
Reveillon
had reason to be wary. Many
of
the
capital's trade
communities attempted, time and again, to infringe
upon
the
quarter's liberty. They sent expeditions into the faubourg
in
search
of
shoddy work and
unqualified workers, and confiscated tools
and products. In particular, the community of card-, carton-, paper-,
and
tarot-makers threatened Reveillon, for they boasted
ofjurisdiction
over
both
"the
City
and
faubourgs
of Paris."43
After all,
the
producers
of
the
faubourg were
nominally
excluded
from
the
right
to sell or even
deliver
their
wares
to Paris
proper.
Nevertheless,
Reveillon's
rise,
as he
depicted it,
mimicked the
virtues
of the
man: both were
straightforward
and
swift.
"I
prospered,
I
was esteemed,
I
was
content,"
he remembered
wistfully.44
His
migra-
tion to the faubourg Saint-Antoine was timely, for the production of
wallpaper
was
drifting away
from its roots
in
the book
trade
and
par-
ticularly
the manufacture of
endpapers.
His
craft,
in
general, gravitated
toward
the
other
furnishing
trades
in
the
faubourg
Saint-Antoine.45
"Tapestry-paper,"despite
the
vogue
for flock
wares,
was
still
used
as
an
inexpensive
material for
cornices, moldings,
and
false
ceilings.
And
flock itself was soon
challenged by
the
new
trendsetter, papier
peint,
once
the
French turned to
prejoined
rolls and mastered the technical
problems associated with distemper, a mixture of water, pigments, and
a
binding agent.
Jean-Michel
Papillon,
the
engraver,
offered
an
engag-
ing description
of these
printed
"coloured
designs,"
rich
"with
flowers,
damask
patterns, ornaments,
etc.
in
different
colours,
all in
distemper
and
absolutely
matt,
like
stage
scenery."46
Not
surprisingly,
this
wallpaper
found a
ready
market. As bour-
geois
homes
were
divided into
functionally
different
rooms,
the broad
42 On the "sovereign" faubourg Saint-Antoine and its limits, see Steven Kaplan, "Guilds,
'False
Workers,'
and
the Faubourg Saint-Antoine," trans. John Merriman, in Edo and Paris: Urban
Life
and the State in the
Early
Modern
Era,
ed.
James McClain, John Merriman,
and
Ugawa Kaoru
(Ithaca,
N.Y.,
1994), 355-83.
43
Bibliotheque nationale (henceforth BN), MS. Collection Joly de
Fleury, 648,
fol.
128,
April 1766.
44
Reveillon, "Expose justificatif," 430.
45
Teynac, Nolot, and Vivien, Wallpaper, 8; see also Clouzot and Follot, Histoiredu papier
peint
en France,30 and 32.
46Jean-Michel
Papillon, quoted
in
BernardJacqu6,
"Luxury Perfected:
The
Ascendancy
of
French
Wallpaper, 1770-1870," in Hoskins, ThePaperedWall,56.
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490 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES
variety of designs in
papiers peints
proved to be a
perfect comple-
ment.47
With substantial profits to be made, the
corporate regulation
of wallpaper production in Paris sparked ceaseless, intricate conflict.
Beginning
in
1773, the community of papetiers-colleurs, the
imagiers
graveurs-enlumineurs
(colored print designers,
engravers-illuminators),
the
peintres en batiments
(housepainters), and the
maitrespeintres-artistes
of
the Academy of Saint-Luc protested and litigated
against "the liberty
of
the
manufacture
of
wallpapers."48
But the
industry's
leaders, above
all
Reveillon,
fashioned their
products
in
the
privileged liberty
of the
faubourg
Saint-Antoine.
Moreover,
the French state
had
legalized
the
manufacture of lightweight, printed cottons in 1759. As a result, "a
multitude of
artistes
and
foreign workers" engaged in the craft
migrated
to France. They were "employed indiscriminately," observed the Coun-
cil of
State,
in
shops
that
produced
chintz and in
those that made
wallpaper.49
So
Reveillon and the other
entrepreneurs who
turned to
the new
line
of
wallpaper
had
a
skilled,
mixed
work
force
at
their
dis-
posal
-a
flock
of artisans
beyond
the
grasp
of
the Parisian
guilds.
Reveillon was
fast
becoming
a
fixture
in the
"international
cir-
cuits," as Michael Sonenscher described them, "of designs and de-
signers, colours and chemicals, styles and fashions."50
In
this
elevated
company, which competed for the custom
of
courts
and
capital cities,
his
wares
had to be
flawless.
For
that,
he needed
better
paper.
Paper was made by hand during the Old Regime.51 It was pro-
duced
by
skilled
men,
but even
they
could
not rid it of all the
defects
of
its
origin
as discarded linen.
Though
the
rags
were
fermented to
weaken
the fibers and
then
pulped by hammers, partially
milled
strings
showed up in the paper. Knots, too, left their imprint, in the form of
unevenly
absorbent
patches.
Reveillon's
trade
was
threatened
by
these
blemishes:
"It
was
impossible
to obtain
papers
from the best mills in
which
the
pulp,
the
color,
the
consistency
were
exactly appropriate
to
conversion
into
wallpapers
and flock
papers."52Weary
of
depending
on
others,
Reveillon
bought
a
paper
mill in
Courtalin-en-Brie
(Seine-
et-Marne),
about
thirty-five
miles
from
Paris. He
purchased
the mill
from a
penurious widow and soon after rescued
her finances.53
Perhaps
47Jacque,
"LuxuryPerfected," 57.
48
Chassin, Les
Elections t les
cahiers,55.
49
AN,
F12
1477, "ER."
50
Sonenscher,
Work
nd Wages, 13.
51
For
the
technique
and
instruments
of
papermaking
in
Old
Regime
France,
see Nicolas
Desmarest,
"Papier (Art de
fabriquer
le),"
Encyclopedie
ethodique:
rtset
metiers
mkcaniques,
66
vols.
(Paris,
1788),
5:463-592.
52 AN,
F12
1477, "ER."
53
Reveillon,
"Expose
justificatif,"
431.
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JEAN-BAPTISTEREVEILLON: A MAN ON
THE MAKE 491
he
was bragging quietly about
his
ability
to spot a good deal and act
on it; certainly, he was trumpeting his
generosity, a persistent theme
in the pamphlet he wrote amid the ashes of Titonville. Whatever the
case, he lavished funds on his new mill: the acquisition
and refurbish-
ing of Courtalin cost him fifty thousand
ecus.54
With
his
purchase
of Courtalin, Reveillon also obtained labor
problems. Paperworkers were among
the most assertive skilled men in
Old
Regime Europe.
Their collective
strength
and
success in
imposing
their will had several roots. First, their
tasks had changed little since
European papermaking flowered in thirteenth-century Fabriano. Put
another way, their masters could not call on an alternative division of
labor to dilute the paperworkers' skills.
Second, the journeymen re-
stricted
access
to their craft.
Only
the offspring of worker dynasties
and
only
the
properly
initiated
need apply.
For
papermaking
was a
net of
family and friends,
skills
and slang, drunken debauche nd
cold
rainy nights on the road. Third, papermaking was a seasonal business.
An
entrepreneur eager
to take
advantage
of
storm-quickened
turns of
his millwheel hastily knuckled under to the workers' every demand.
Finally, the journeymen paperworkers of France relied on a potent
combination to maintain their
version
of the
proper
order
of the craft.
National
in
scope,
it
was
regional
in
effect.
It
made use
of
arson, fines,
walkouts, warnings,
and circular letters to
bring
recalcitrant manu-
facturers in
line,
and
added beatings
to
convince wayward
brothers.55
Small wonder that
one
contemporary
muttered that
the
paperworkers
had created "a little republican state
in the midst of the monarchy."56
Reveillon turned
the
monarchy
loose
on this
republic.
As
early
as
1671, the government had attempted to crush the workers' "seditious
police"
of the craft.57Above
all,
the state
sought
to
regulate tramping,
the sternest
test
of
the
paperworkers'
control over access
to their trade.
For
the
workers, hiring
and
departure
were times
of
joy
and
affirma-
tion,
enlivened
by
toasts and treats. For the
government, leave-taking
was
a time of
risk, creating
that most
dangerous sort,
the masterless
man.
Accordingly,
the state
required
paperworkers
to
notify
their
em-
ployers
six
weeks
before
they quit
and the
manufacturers to
observe
54
AN,
F
12
1477, "ER."
55
On
the sources and
nature
of
the
paperworkers'
assertiveness,
see
Leonard N. Rosen-
band, Managing
to Rule: TheMontgolfier aperMill,
1761-1805 (forthcoming),
chap. 2.
56
Quoted in Alexandre
Nicolai, Histoiredes
moulins
d
papierdu Sud-Ouest
e
la
France, 1300-
1800, 2 vols. (Bordeaux, 1935),
1:54.
57
For the quoted passage,
see 'Arrft du Conseil d'Etat du Roi,
qui condamne
en des amen-
des l'entrepreneur
de
la manufacture de papier 6tablie a
la
Motte pres
Verberie," (26
Feb. 1777).
The entire document is reproduced
in Desmarest, "Papier,"553-55;
the quoted phrase appears
on 553.
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JEAN-BAPTISTEREVEILLON: A MAN ON THE MAKE 493
places." But the fines it prescribed were collected slowly, "in the hope
that calm would
be
restored." Despite this indulgence, the journeymen
who had gathered at La Motte remained as mutinous as ever, and their
bravado was encouraged by their new boss, who pledged to have the
decree
annulled.
The
intendant
of
Paris,
Bertier
de Sauvigny, found all
of
this worrisome. He wanted to send the mounted constabulary (mare'-
chauss&e)
o La
Motte
to collect the fines without
delay.
"This
act
of
jus-
tice and firmness," he reasoned, was the only way to get the whip hand
over this "undisciplined tribe." A show of strength, he continued, might
produce ripples, for Bertier feared more than La Motte's rebels. "This
dangerous independence," he fretted, "has spread in other manufac-
tures." He had received "a good many complaints" about the impunity
"with which
[paperworkers] abandon,
without
permission
and
without
conge,
heir
shops and work already underway."
4
In
the end,
he
settled
for
the arrest
of
Roche, the foreman who had started it all by seducing
Reveillon's
workers
away
from Courtalin.65
Soon
after,
the
mare'chausse'e
tationed
at
Beauvais,
also
at the
out-
skirts of
Paris,
foiled a
conspiracy among
some
printed-cotton
workers.
These men toiled for a manufacturer named Baron, who had a "con-
siderable establishment" which
Bertier
claimed
merited
"every pro-
tection."
Baron's
workers
had
banded together with
the intention of
deserting
his mill
en
masse. Bertier
was
horrified,
and
quickly
drew
a
connection with
the
events
in
Reveillon's shops:
"He
[Baron]
has
just
suffered approximately
the same difficulties as the
entrepreneur
of the
paper
mill at Courtalin."
Fortunately,
Bertier
reported,
this
complot
was
smashed and its
leader
was seized and
imprisoned
for
eight days.
His
fellow workers returned to their tasks, although three later fled, with
the authorities
in hot
pursuit.
"This
type
of
worker,"
Bertier
under-
stood,
"is
very
much
like
those of the
paper mills,
at least those where
one
manufactures
papers
called
English papers
or
wallpapers."
There
was "much
to fear" if
familiarity
bred accord
among
these
workers;
they might become
more
dangerous
than "one
can
imagine."66
While
Bertier worried,
the
walls
shouted
Reveillon's name, portraying
him as
a man hostile to the
paperworkers' ways
and the
association that de-
fended them. One suspects that the indienne-workers, o near to the
wallpaper
makers and
to
Paris, whispered
the same
message.
Reveillon did
not mention
the
labor
troubles at Courtalin
in
his
"Expose justificatif." Instead, he boasted
that the
mill,
in his
hands,
64
AN,
F12
1478A,
Bertier
to
Blondel,
8
July 1777.
65
AN,
F12
1478A,
Bertier
to
Blondel,
22
Aug. 1777.
66
AN,
F12
1478A,
Bertier
to
Blondel,
23July 1777.
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494 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES
"regained vigor, and became one
of the best of the kingdom."
67
Echo-
ing
his
claims,
the
Council of State reported that Reveillon was free
"to harvest the most agreeable fruit of his observations, his experi-
ments, his expenses."
Reveillon's papers were "promptly and perfectly
imitated"
in
several mills. The shortage of paper
fit
for wallpaper and
flock
wares was over.
"All
would prosper," especially Reveillon, who
now had
a
vertically integrated system of supply and production.68
Almost
certainly
Reveillon's
improved product
was
papier vdin,
or
wove paper."
These sheets were free of the
crosshatched tracings that
marred most Old
Regime papers.
Papermakers
had tried
to
hammer
the marks out of their reams, but to no avail:the "raying"of handmade
paper was
its
birthmark.
Essentially,
a worker made this
paper by dip-
ping his mold, a rectangular wire sieve bounded by a wooden frame,
into a vat of warm, watery pulp.
He
then
lifted
the
mold, with the in-
fant
sheet clinging to it and gave it a series of
customary shakes. After
the
pulp
had
spread evenly
and the
water
had
drained
away, pressing
and
drying
would
fix the
imprint
of
the mold's
wires,
thick "chain-
lines" and
slender "laid-lines,"
in the sheets.
In wove paper, a fine brass screen, laced together on a loom,
replaced
the wires of a traditional mold. Rather than
sharp impres-
sions, this threaded brass left indistinct marks and sheets of a more
uniform thickness. The
advantages
of
vdin
were first
visible
in an
edi-
tion
of
Virgil published by
the
English printer John Baskerville
in
1757.69Across the Channel, the
issue
of
priority was tangled. Reveillon
claimed to
have woven
the first
brass molds
in
France,
as
did
his
friend
Etienne
Montgolfier,
who had
designed
the
wallpaper
works at Titon-
ville. Yet another paper manufacturer, the Johannot family, also took
credit for
this
advance.70(Once
collaborators,
the Johannots
and the
Montgolfiers,
located
in
the same
town
in
the
Ardeche,
had entered
into a bitter
rivalry
for
preferment
and
state
subsidy.)
Etienne Mont-
golfier probably
had the best
case,
but he was distracted
by
the
instal-
lation of Dutch
machinery
at his mill
and, perhaps,
hot-air balloon-
ing.71 Reveillon, characteristically,
moved forward
quickly, evidently
refining
his brass molds with mesh
imported
from
England.72
Never
shy
67Reveillon,
"Exposejustificatif," 431-32.
68
AN,
F12
1477,
"ER."
69
Dard Hunter,
Papermaking:
The
History
and
Technique f
an
Ancient
Craft 1947;
rpt.,
New
York, 1978),
125-28.
70
For the
Johannots' claim, see the
letters from
Didot to Blondel in
AN,
F12 2281.
71
For the
Montgolfiers' claim, see
Charles Gillispie, The
Montgolfier
Brothers nd the Inven-
tion of Aviation, 1783-1784
(Princeton, NJ., 1983), 82;
for
the
delay
and
Reveillon's
role,
see
Marie-Helne
Reynaud,
Les
Moulins
d
papier
dAnnonaya
l're
prg-industrielle,
es
Montgolfier
t Vida-
Ion
(Annonay, 1981),
123,
n.
121.
72
On the
imported brass mesh, see AN, F12
2281,
Didot to Blondel, June 1783.
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JEAN-BAPTISTE
REVEILLON:
A MAN ON THE
MAKE
495
about broadcasting
his achievements,
he turned
to informed friends
to spread
the word.
One explained
to
Blondel, the
intendant
of com-
merce charged with the oversight of papermaking, that the manufac-
ture
of vdin
at Courtalin constituted
"a discovery,
at
least for France."
73
In 1784,
the Council of State
maintained
that "Reveillon
has discov-
ered
the means to fabricate,
at
his
paper
mill
in
Courtalin,
papers of an
equal
thickness throughout
without
trace of laid
or rib
lines." 74
Basker-
ville,
even
the
Montgolfiers,
had
disappeared
from the story.
In
fact,
Etienne Montgolfier
understood the
rules
of the game
too.
He
turned
to
his own role
in the perfection
of wove paper,
among
other
innovations, to secure the title of royal manufactory for his family's
mill.75
n
the
circles traveled by
the
Montgolfiers
and Reveillon,
a repu-
tation
for
quality
and style,
and
the technical
mastery and daring
that
married
the
two,
attracted
the
right
clients. These
men
might
become
allies, even patrons
in the
pursuit
of a
privilege;
and the
possession
of
a
privilege
paid,
whether
in the form
of
protection
from
competitors
or the freedom
to
experiment
with
designs, colors,
and
chemicals.
In
this rarefied air,
Reveillon knew,
talent
and rank fused.
To further his ascent, Reveillon literally took to the air. He lent
the
vast
gardens
of Titonville
to
his comrade
Etienne
Montgolfier,
who
used
them,
in Charles
Gillispie's
phrase,
to build
a hot-air balloon
"fit
to float
above
a king."
76
Reveillon
had
gotten
in on
the
ground
floor of
the balloon craze,
an enthusiasm
that
gripped princes
and
craftsmen
alike.
The first
Parisian
balloon,
launched
from Reveillon's garden,
had
a
background
of azure with
ornaments
of
gold;
the
second,
which
rose from Versailles,
was
called
the
Aerostat
RNveillon;
later
balloon,
in
which Reveillon again had a hand, was the Marie-Antoinette.ean-Pierre
Montgolfier,
at home running
the
business,
counseled
his brother
to
turn
the
publicity
surrounding
the balloon
flights
into
coin
by
landing
a contract
to
supply
the India
Company
with
paper.77
Meanwhile,
Re-
veillon's
papiers
peints
hovered
above
Paris. To the
capital's
trade
com-
munities,
he must have
cast
an
oppressively
large
shadow.
Reveillon's
down-to-earth
business
continued
to take
off. He was
the dominant
figure
in
his
craft,
and
he fashioned
wares
of unsur-
passed beauty. So spectacular was the demand for papierpeintthat one
observer
blamed
it
for the hard times
endured
by
the
tapestry-paper
producers.
Wallpaper,
he
confided,
was
"within
the
reach of
tout le
73
AN, F12 1477, Anisson-Duperron
to Blondel,
10
Sept.
1783.
74 AN, F12 1477,
"ER."
75
Gillispie,
TheMontgolfier
Brothers,
2.
76
Ibid.,
37; and,
for the construction
and
flight of the first
Parisian balloons,
1478B, 25-66.
77
Ibid., 39.
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496
FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES
monde."Whereas three men, an engraver and two printers,
could make
three or even four thousand aunesof wallpaper per day, a whole
family
could fabricate only one piece of tapestry paper measuring thirty aunes
in
a month. As a result, the manufacture of wallpaper
soaked up the
supply of paper, rendered it
more dear, and
left
"an immense quantity
of
[tapestry-paper] workers without work," "a multiplicity
of pauvres
and brigands."78
Reveillon's own work force, however, swelled. With-
out formal
training
as
a designer, engraver, or chemist,
Reveillon was
schooling men to play these
parts.
More
precisely,
he
explained,
"I
en-
gaged them, by my
observations,
to
apply
their talents to the
perfection
of my works [manufacture]."79eveillon was comfortable with novelty
and technical
ferment, whether
in
the
form of
manned flight
or
experi-
ments with velin. But his
"new
successes"
and
his
visibility,
so
essential
to an arriviste,had their
risks.80Once again,
he
acted in a disinterested
fashion,
or
so
the Council of State
maintained.
He had aired the se-
crets of the manufacture of vdin
himself, "with the prayer to
spread
it
everywhere
that the administration judges it can be
useful."
1
After
Turgot's
liberal
experiment
crashed in
1776, Reveillon's
pri-
mary corporate adversarywas the newly combined company of relieurs,
papetiers-colleurset
en
meubles
(bookbinders, wallcovering
and
paper
fur-
nishers
and
hangers). They
were
unmoved by
his selfless
gesture
of
diffusing
the
procedures
for
making
vdin.
Instead,
Reveillon
stormed,
they
hatched
a scheme
"to
appropriate exclusively
the fabrication of
flock
papers
and
wallpapers."
He left the
particulars
of their
plan
un-
spoken, but
he
did note that the
painters
"raised the same
preten-
sion."82
In
1778,
the
community
of master
painters, sculptors, gilders,
and marble-cutters passed a resolution concerning ownership of the
designs
used
in
wallpaper
and flock
paper. Essentially,
this
action
be-
stowed a sort of
copyright
on the owners of the
patterns.
A
second
deliberation added that each roll of
wallpaper
must be embossed
with
the name of its
manufacturer, thereby imposing
the
system
of
corpo-
rate
marques
n
a
trade
that
had been
free of
them.
Worse
yet,
these
actions had been ratified
by
the lieutenant
general
of
police
in Paris.83
Reveillon
took all of this
personally.
He
poached
designs
and
techniques from friends and foes liberally, and counted on his wealth
78
AN,
F12
1478B,
"MImoire du
S[ieur] Paillieux 1'aln6
negociant a
Paris,"
24
Nov. 1778.
79
Reveillon,
"Exposejustificatif,"
432.
80
Ibid.
81 AN,
F12
1477,
"ER."
82 Ibid.
83
For a brief
account of
these
events,
see Clouzot
and
Follot,
Histoire du
papier
peint
en
France,50-52;
see also
AN,
F12
1477,
"ER."
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JEAN-BAPTISTEREVEILLON: A MAN ON THE MAKE
497
and influence to avoid any penalty.84Now, however,
Reveillon had to
endure more "seizures," as the wardens of the guild
of painters and
allied crafts marched into his shops and removed the tools of his many
trades.85
Reveillon
fumed that
the
tactics
of
the craft
communities were
"destructive of the
industry,
and did
irreparable
damage
to
me
above
all."86
He
responded by knocking
on familiar doors. Reveillon believed
that he had ended certain trials
by obtaining
a
privilege
from the pre-
vot
de
l'hotel
o exercise the trades of
"painter-gilder
and sculptor," but
this
grant
did not
stop
the
paperhangers
and their cohorts.87For that,
Reveillon
turned to Jean-Charles-Pierre Lenoir, the lieutenant general
of police in Paris. Lenoir's job description was deceptively simple: he
was to maintain order
in
the
city.
His
responsibilities,
however, were
extraordinarily diverse, ranging from the surveillance
of beggars and
the book trade to ensuring full granaries and proper observance of
Sundays
and fetes. The
welfare
of both
commerce
and the arts et me-
tiersalso
fell
under
his
charge. Reveillon owed
the restoration of the
"peace
[calme]"
he
required
to
prosper
to "the
protection
of
Monsieur
Lenoir," the council reported. Lenoir had journeyed
to Titonville, rec-
ognized the "importance" of Reveillon's works, and halted the appli-
cation
of the
guildsmen's resolution, putting
a
temporary
end
to
"the
effects of an insidious project."88
Yet Reveillon was not entirely reassured. The
newfound "tran-
quility"
he
savored
remained at the
mercy
of the
paperhangers
and
wallcovering
makers'
"enterprise." (By "enterprise"
Reveillon
evidently
meant a pattern
of
encroachment coupled with
the
legal
and
political
clout
to do
so.)
Nor
did the
numerous
"points
of contact" between the
production of flock and printed papers and a variety of trades comfort
Reveillon.
He
dreaded
a
future
of one
guild
after another rubbed raw,
of
overheated
displays
of the
corporations'
"bad
temper [humeur]"
nd
"vanity."
At
any moment,
he
might
have
to
contend with
"new
seizures,
new
legal proceedings."89
He had
already given
up
his business as a
marchand
papetierand,
with
that,
his
shop
on
the rue
de
l'Arbre-Sec.
He had ceded this concern to two
longtime employees,
sacrificing, by
his own account,
an annual revenue
of
twenty-five
to
thirty
thousand
livres. He did so, he claimed, to devote more time to his wallpaper
works.90
Left
unspoken
were
the
profits generated
by
Courtalin
and
84
For
a
suggestive
episode,
see Clouzot
and
Follot,
Histoire
du
papier
Peint
en
France,
67-68.
85
AN,
F12
1477,
"ER."
86
Reveillon,
"Expose
justificatif,"
432-33.
87
AN,
F12
1477,
"ER."
88
Ibid.
89
Ibid.
90
R6veillon,
"Exposejustificatif,"
431.
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498 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES
Titonville that permitted this gesture. And it is also plausible that
Re-
veillon's generosity
served
to
eliminate one
snare,
one
more
flashpoint
in his contest with the Parisian guilds. Nothing, however, could still
his "exertion"
or
"zeal"
for the
perfection
of his art. He
had persisted
in this course without financial support from the state. All he asked
was that
the
king
"shelter
[him]
from the trouble that the
members
of
the communities of arts et metierscould bring to
his
works."
91
He
there-
fore requested the title of royal manufactory for both his paper mill in
Courtalin and
his
wallpaper works
in the
faubourg Saint-Antoine.
Royal
manufactories
did
not
necessarily produce
for the court.92
Rather, they were textile and paper mills, forges and foundries, glass-
works
and salt refineries that merited
special
consideration.
Whether
valued
as
producers
of
strategic goods
or
dazzling luxury items, they
were
also
supposed
to be centers of
invention.
The
title is
generally
associated
with
a meddlesome
mercantilism,
but
that is too
confining,
since
entrepreneurs
across a wide
spectrum
of crafts
and
industries vied
for this distinction
throughout
the
eighteenth century.93
For
some,
the
principal
benefits of
this privileged perch were
cash
subsidies
and
cap-
tive markets; for others, the main reward was exemption from the dic-
tates
of
custom and prescription.94And,
for
Reveillon,
the
right to place
the
royal insignia above the "principal doorways"
of Courtalin and
Titonville would confirm that he had arrived. Reveillon knew precisely
what
he
wanted
from this
preferment
-freedom from the watchful
eyes
and
noisy trespass
of the
guilds.
He dreamed
of
closing
his
doors,
with-
out
trembling,
to the
gardes
and wardens
of the craft communities.
He
pursued
the
right
to
color, engrave, flock, paint,
and
print every
sort
of carton, cloth, leather, linen, paper, and skin, without interference.
Finally,
he
expected
to mark
his
products
with the
king's
armes.95Here
was
the one-time
outsider's vision
of insider
standing
-the
capacity
to
act
unilaterally
without
entanglement
in
the
prerogatives
of
others.
Well-placed
friends
helped
Reveillon
pull
the vital
strings.
For
example,
Lenoir
made
Reveillon's
case to
Blondel,
the
intendant
of
commerce. He ranged across Reveillon's achievements, from the dis-
covery
of
vdin
to the
number
"of
workers
of different
professions
that
91 AN,
F12 1477, "ER."
92 On the royal manufactories, see Pierre Deyon
and Philippe Guignet, "The Royal Manu-
factures
and
Economic
and
Technological Progress
in
France
before the Industrial
Revolution,"
Journal of EuropeanEconomicHistory
9
(1980): 611-32;
and Charles
Gillispie,
Scienceand
Polity
in
Franceat theEnd of the Old Regime Princeton, NJ., 1980), 388-478.
93
Deyon and Guignet, TheRoyal manufactures, assim.
94
For
the
advantages
associated
with the title
manufacture oyale and
of
privileged
manu-
facture
in
general), see Sonenscher,
Work
nd
Wages,216-18.
95
AN,
F12 1477, "ER."
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JEAN-BAPTISTEREVEILLON: A MAN ON THE MAKE 499
he employs." Despite Reveillon's privileges, Lenoir explained that he
"has been exposed to various seizures [of his tools] by syndics of the
communities of arts et metiers." s an employer of hundreds in diverse
trades, Reveillon was merely pursuing "the means to avoid troubles
prejudicial
to his
industry."96
Lenoir
must have
been
convincing, since
another of Reveillon's allies confidently observed, "I knew that M. Le
Noir had procured [for Reveillon] the title of royal manufactory for
the handsome establishment in the faubourg Saint-Antoine."
97
Reveillon got what he wanted. The wallpaper works at Titonville
became a
royal manufactory
in
July
1783;
five months
later,
the
paper
mill at Courtalin was graced with the same distinction.98 He received
the liberty to market and manufacture the broad range of products he
desired,
with
the
craftsmen of
his
choice.
He
was free to
conduct
his
enterprise
as he
wished, without reception
in
any of
the
interested craft
communities.
He
would
no
longer
be
troubled
by guild inspections,
much less the confiscation of his stock and tools. He possessed the pre-
rogatives
of the
conventionally incorporated, without
the
constraints.
He was, finally, free to construct a new pattern of social relations in
his shops.99
Work
at
Titonville was
done
by
hand within
an
extensive division
of
labor, much like that of other Old Regime manufactories. Nor did
Reveillon
take pains to conceal his inventive turns. On the contrary,
he
thirsted
for acclaim
and,
marveled
the Council of
State, "opens
his
shops
to
anyone who wants to draw knowledge there."
100
Yet Reveillon's
technical advantages remained considerable. Among
the most
impor-
tant
were
the
high quality
of the
paper
and
ink he
manufactured, which
translated into clear printing and fixed colors. He had been quick to
adapt
to rolls
of previously assembled
sheets.
Recognizing
that the con-
ventional
practices
for
printing
dominoswould
not work with
long rolls,
he turned
to the
style
of
the
indienne-workers, rinting
his
wares
from
a
block
placed
on
top
of the
paper
and
transferring
the
design
with
taps
from a mallet. He hired
the best artists
and
engravers,
and
copied
the
work of
the best he did not
employ.
He was
a
master
of the difficult
art of
hanging paper,
most
notably
of
integrating
it
with
the
complex
interior architecture of townhouses and chateaux.
The
breadth and
ordering
of
Reveillon's
work
force were
equally
distinctive.
His
shops
were
animated
by, among others,
indienne-
96 AN,
F12
1477,
Lenoir to
Blondel, 3
Dec.
1783.
97
AN,
F
12
1477,
Anisson-Duperron
to
Blondel,
10
Sept.
1783.
98
For the
dates, see
ibid., and AN,
F12
1477,
"ER."
99
AN, F12
1477,
"ER."
100
Ibid.
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500 FRENCH
HISTORICAL STUDIES
printers, men pirated from the Gobelins works, and children reared
amidst the
faux
(nonguilded)
workers of the
faubourg Saint-Antoine.
Bertier's nightmare had come to life in Reveillon's shops, an un-
licensed crush
of
workers sharing customs,
experiences, and quirks.
Some, probably
the
chintz printers, were Protestant.101
All fit
into a
classificatory
scheme
designed by Reveillon
himself.
After
Michael Sonenscher's
work
on the market relations that
honeycombed the craftmasters' shops of Paris, it is
difficult
to
speak
of traditional bonds
within these ateliers.102 till, Reveillon had
clearly
made
a conscious decision to
forge new
sorts of links
with
his
workers.
He sought bonds that did not take long to form and yet could last a
lifetime
and ties that
could
be
measured
in
livres
and
sous rather than
in
rituals of adoption and feasts. He paid
his
engravers and
designers
at
a
notably high level, depicted
them
as
"without
doubt, my
collabora-
tors rather than
my wage
earners
[gagistes]," yet
dictated their
training
as
well as their niches
in
his shops.103
He
was, he
believed, enmeshing
his workers in his interests; and he did so by
engineering tasks and
roles that
distanced
them
from the Parisian craft
communities. Re-
veillon employed men and women, the old and the young, the skilled
and brute laborers. He
declared that more
than three
hundred
people
toiled at
Titonville,
with
others, mostly paperhangers, employed
"in
town."
104
He
classified
his
hands by age, skill, workshop responsibility,
and
years
of
service; interestingly,
he made no mention of
gender-
specific
tasks. He
rewarded
his
most
valuable
employees,
those who
provided
him
with
wallpaper patterns, fabulously: Reveillon
offered
three
thousand livres
a
year plus lodging
to one man and a
base
salary
of twelve hundred livres a year to three others. His designers and en-
gravers pocketed fifty
to
one
hundred sous a
day,
the latter
figure
equivalent
to a
goldsmith's daily earnings.
Printers and
carpenters
shared
the
going
rate
for
their
work, thirty
to
fifty
sous
per day,
while
the
unskilled received
twenty-five
to
thirty sous,
or
five
to ten
more
than
their
counterparts
in other
shops commonly
obtained.
Youngsters
of
twelve
to fifteen
added
eight
to fifteen sous each
day
to
the
family purse,
learned
a
trade,
and
matured
in
Reveillon's community
of craftsmen.
He bragged that he paid at least 200,000 livres each year in wages.105
101
Reveillon,
"Exposejustificatif,"
434.
102
Sonenscher,
Work nd Wages,
9-243.
103
Reveillon, "Expose
justificatif,"
433.
104Ibid.,
and n. 1.
105
For
the total
wages
Reveillon
paid
and the schedules for individual crafts and
children,
see
ibid., 433-34;
for the
goldsmiths,
see
Rude,
TheCrowd
n theFrench
Revolution,
appendix
vii,
251;
for the
carpenters, see
Michael
Sonenscher,
"Work
and
Wages
in
Paris
in
the
Eighteenth
Century,"
in
Manufacture
n Townand
Countrybefore
he
Factory,
ed.
Maxine
Berg,
Pat
Hudson,
and Michael
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JEAN-BAPTISTEREVEILLON: A MAN ON THE MAKE
501
Skilled
Parisians,
like
craftsmen
everywhere
in
eighteenth-century
Europe, sometimes found work
and wages hard to come
by. They tight-
ened their belts, went hungry, and took to the road in search of a day
or two
of employment. Reveillon's
workers were spared this distress.
Compensation during downtime was common
throughout European
papermaking,
since the
workers kept their ranks thin and
threatened
to move
on
the
moment a frozen creek or a broken
millwheel disrupted
production. Reveillon retained his workers "without
exception" and
paid
their
full wages,
he
wrote, when the harsh
winter of 1788-89
pre-
vented the
coloring of
his
wares.106That invaluable
snoop, the book-
seller Simeon-Prosper Hardy, heard that elsewhere Reveillon claimed
to
have
paid
a
reduced rate of fifteen
sous per day to more than
two
hundred
of his
workers
during
this
trying
winter.)107
Reveillon
delighted
in the
public
esteem
generated by
this "act
of
charity."
108
His benevolence,
however, had more than one
purpose. At
most
paper
mills,
the
fabricant
discharged
his
workers when the paper-
making
season
closed.
Such
turnover did not
suit Reveillon's
plans
for
a
loyal
work
force;
most of his
workers,
he
gloated,
grew
old in his
shops. They stayed to obtain the annual bonuses that Reveillon be-
stowed
on the
basis
of
their stations
and
"zeal."
They
remained
because
"[e]ach
worker ... is
certain
of his advancement in
proportion
to his
intelligence and his zeal."
They lingered, Reveillon
believed,
secure in
the
knowledge
that he
would
care for
them
in
times
of
need and dis-
ability.109
is
firm, paternal
hand
knew no restraints. He
was
careful to
provide
his
youngest
workers with time for
religious
instruction,
and
he
allowed
Protestant workers to toil on feast
days.
Of
course,
he had
not neglected his own shopfloor concerns: "I knew how to establish
the
best
order and the most exact
discipline
in
the class
of
working
people,"
he
boasted. He
accomplished this,
he
professed,
without di-
minishing
his
workers'
"devotion" to him.110His
workers,
he
concluded,
had much to savor:
they
shared his contentment and "were fond of
me."
ll
His
world,
as he
depicted
it,
was
rich and
orderly.
The
years
before the Revolution were indeed sweet for
Reveillon.
Among
his
workers,
he
crowed,
there was no trace of
scandal, quarrels,
Sonenscher
(Cambridge, 1983),
152; and,
for
the
printers,
see Robert
Darnton,
The
Business
of
Enlightenment:A
PublishingHistoryof
the
Encyclopedie,
775-1800
(Cambridge,
Mass., 1979),
219.
106
Reveillon,
"Expose
justificatif," 434-35.
107
BN, MS. fr. 6687,
Simeon-Prosper
Hardy, "Mes loisirs, ou
journal
d'&v6nements
tels
qu'ils parviennent a
ma
connaissance,"
fol.
298,
27
Apr.
1789.
108
Reveillon,
"Exposejustificatif," 435.
109
On
stability
and its sources
in
Reveillon's
policies,
see
ibid.,
433-35.
110
bid.,
434.
111
bid.,
430.
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502 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES
indecency, or misconduct.112
He received a gold medal in 1785 from
the king
for his contribution to the
useful
arts,
a
parvenu's
dream.113
He had showrooms on the tony rue du Carrousel and at Titonville.114
(At
the
latter,
he
apparently
sold cheap
knockoffs as
well, which,
like
Wedgwood's "Queensware,"
benefitted from their connection to the
first
ranks of
society.)
His
only child,
a
daughter,
had married
in
1775
(the
contract
was
signed by
the
keeper
of the
seals, Miromesnil),
but
died after giving birth
to
Reveillon's granddaughter.115
His
son-in-law,
the offspring of a
negociant
from
Rouen, went unmentioned in both the
"Expose justificatif" and the
Council of State report. Instead,
Reveil-
lon rained attention on the sons of the widow La Garde, the mistress of
Courtalin. He was clearly pleased
with the supervision
of
his interests
there, and in La Garde's younger son Reveillon had found an estimable
heir. He had sent the young man
on a grand tour of the paper mills of
France and
Holland,
and
now
it gave him "great satisfaction" to think
of this well-schooled intimate becoming the proprietaireof Courtalin.116
Above all, Reveillon had received the title of royal manufactory
for
both his principal works for fifteen
years.117With the award of this
dis-
tinction, he recalled wistfully in 1789, "I really tasted happiness." He
was not
indifferent to "the
species
of
glory"
that
accompanied
"useful
works."
His
was
the
joy
of
"an
upright,
industrious
man
who cre