Editing Lettres de cachet

{{Short description|Orders of the King of France, often arrest warrants}}
{{Italic title|reason=.}}
{{more citations needed|date=June 2010}}
[[File:Lettre de cachet (1703).jpg|thumb|A ''lettre de cachet'' of 1703 (reign of [[Louis XIV]]), opening ''De par le roy'' ("In the name of the King...")]]

'''''Lettres de cachet''''' ({{IPA|fr|lɛtʁ də kaʃɛ|lang}}; {{literal translation|"letters of the sign/signet"}}) were letters signed by the [[list of French monarchs|king of France]], [[countersign (legal)|countersigned]] by one of his ministers, and closed with the [[royal seal]]. They contained orders directly from the king, often to enforce actions and judgments that could not be [[appeal]]ed.

In the case of organized bodies, ''lettres de cachet'' were issued for the purpose of preventing assembly, or to accomplish some other definite act. The provincial estates were convoked (called to assembly) in this manner, and it was by a ''lettre de cachet'' (in this case, a ''lettre de jussipri''), or by showing in person in a ''[[lit de justice]]'', that the king ordered a ''[[parlement]]'' to register a law despite that ''parlement''{{'}}s refusal to pass it.

The best-known ''lettres de cachet'', however, were penal, by which a subject was imprisoned without [[trial (law)|trial]] and without an opportunity of defense (after inquiry and due diligence by the ''lieutenant de police'') in a state prison or an ordinary jail, confined in a [[convent]] or the [[General Hospital of Paris]], transported to the colonies, or expelled to another part of the realm, or from the realm altogether. The ''lettres'' were mainly used against drunkards, troublemakers, prostitutes, squanderers of the family fortune, or insane persons. The wealthy sometimes petitioned such ''lettres'' to dispose of inconvenient individuals, especially to prevent unequal marriages (nobles with commoners), or to prevent a scandal (the ''lettre'' could prevent court cases that might otherwise dishonour a family).

In this respect, the ''lettres de cachet'' were a prominent symbol of the abuses of the ''[[ancien régime]]'' [[monarchy]], and as such were suppressed during the [[French Revolution]]. In 1789 and 1790, all cases were reviewed by a commission which confirmed most of the sentences. Historian  [[Claude Quétel]] has interpreted these confirmations as indicating that the ''lettres'' were not as arbitrary and unjust as they have been represented after the Revolution,<ref>{{cite book |first=Claude |last=Quetel |title=Les lettres de cachet – une légende noire |trans-title=Letters of the Signet – A Black Legend |language=French}}</ref> and he hence speaks of a ''Légende noire''.{{efn|A black legend is set of historical exaggerations construed to darken the memory of a historical period.}}

==History==
[[Image:Bastille lettre 1759.jpg|thumb|''Lettre de cachet'' ordering [[Jean-François Marmontel]]'s detention at the Bastille, signed by [[Louis XV]] and [[Louis Phélypeaux, comte de Saint-Florentin|minister Louis Phélypeaux]] in 1759]]
The power to issue ''lettres de cachet'' was a royal privilege recognized by the French monarchic civil law that developed during the 13th century, as the [[House of Capet|Capetian monarchy]] overcame its initial distrust of [[Roman law]]. The principle can be traced to a maxim which furnished a text of the ''[[Digest (Roman law)|Pandects]]'' of [[Justinian I|Justinian]]: in their Latin version, "''Rex solutus est a legibus''", or "The king is released from the laws". "The French legal scholars interpreted the imperial office of the Justinian code generically and arrived at the conclusion that every 'king is an emperor in his own kingdom', that is, he possesses the prerogatives of legal [[Absolute monarchy|absolutism]] that the ''[[Corpus Juris Civilis]]'' attributes to the Roman emperor."<ref>{{cite book |author-link=Norman F. Cantor |last=Cantor |first=Norman F. |title=The Civilization of the Middle Ages |year=1993}}</ref>

This meant that when the king intervened directly, he could decide without heeding the laws, and even contrary to the laws. This was an early conception, and in early times the order in question was simply verbal; some [[letters patent]] of Henry III in 1576 state that [[François de Montmorency]] was "prisoner in our castle of the [[Bastille]] in [[Paris]] by verbal command" of the late king [[Charles IX of France|Charles IX]].

In the 14th century, the principle was introduced that the order should be written, and hence arose the ''lettre de cachet''. The ''lettre de cachet'' belonged to the class of ''[[letters close|lettres closes]]'', as opposed to ''[[letters patent|lettres patentes]]'', which contained the expression of the legal and permanent will of the king, and had to be furnished with the seal of state affixed by the [[chancellor]].

The ''lettres de cachet'', on the contrary, were signed simply by a secretary of state for the king; they bore merely the imprint of the king's privy seal, from which circumstance they were often called, in the 14th and 15th centuries, ''lettres de petit signet'' or ''lettres de petit cachet'', and were entirely exempt from the control of the chancellor.

==As a tool==
In addition to serving the [[forms of government|government]] as a silent weapon against political adversaries<ref name=mirabeau>{{Cite journal|title=Mirabeau, a Victim of the Lettres de Cachet
|journal=The American Historical Review|volume=3|number=1 |date=Oct 1897|pages=19–30|author=Fred Morrow Fling|jstor=1832806|doi=10.2307/1832806}}</ref> or controversial writers{{Citation needed|date=October 2014}} and as a means of punishing culprits of high birth without the scandal of a lawsuit, the ''lettres de cachet'' had many other uses. They were employed by the police in dealing with prostitutes, and on their authority lunatics were shut up in hospitals and sometimes in prisons.

They were also often used by heads of families as a means of correction, for example, to protect the family honour from the disorderly or criminal conduct of sons. The case of the [[Marquis de Sade]] (imprisoned 1777–1790 under a ''lettre de cachet'' obtained by his wealthy and influential mother-in-law) is a prominent example. Wives, too, took advantage of them to curb the profligacy of husbands, and vice versa.

In reality, the secretary of state had delegated powers, and could issue them at his own discretion, and in most cases the king was unaware of their issue. In the 18th century the letters were often issued blank, i.e. without containing the name of the person against whom they were directed; the recipient, or [[mandatary]], filled in the name in order to make the letter effective.

==Protests==
Protests against the ''lettres de cachet'' were made continually by the [[Parlement of Paris|''Parlement'' of Paris]] and by the provincial ''[[parlement]]s'', and also by the [[Estates General (France)|Estates-General]]. In 1648, during the [[Fronde]], the sovereign courts of Paris,{{efn|''Parlement'', ''Chambre des comptes'', ''Cour des Aides'', ''Grand Conseil'' together}} by their ''Arrêt d'Union'', procured their momentary suppression in a kind of charter of liberties which they imposed upon the crown, but which was short-lived.

It was not until the reign of [[Louis XVI]] that a reaction against the abuse became clearly perceptible. At the beginning of that reign [[Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes|Malesherbes]] during his short ministry endeavoured to infuse some measure of [[justice]] into the system, and in March 1784 the [[Louis Auguste Le Tonnelier de Breteuil|baron de Breteuil]], a minister of the king's household, addressed a circular to the intendants and the lieutenant of police with a view to preventing the most serious abuses connected with the issue of ''lettres de cachet''.

The [[Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau|Comte de Mirabeau]] wrote a scathing indictment of ''lettres de cachet'' while imprisoned in the dungeon of [[Vincennes]] (by ''lettre de cachet'' obtained by his father). The treatise was published after his liberation in 1782 under the title ''Les Lettres de cachet et des prisons d'etat'' and was widely read throughout Europe.

Besides the Bastille, there were thirty prisons in Paris by 1779 in which a person could be detained without trial.<ref>''The National Cyclopaedia of Useful Knowledge'', Vol.III, London (1847) Charles Knight, p.1,002</ref> Convents were used for the same purpose.

They were reported to have been openly sold, in the reign of Louis XV, by the mistress of one of his ministers.

In Paris, in 1779, the [[Cour des Aides]] demanded their suppression, and in March 1788 the ''Parlement'' of Paris made some exceedingly energetic remonstrances, which are important for the light they throw upon old French public law. The crown, however, did not decide to lay aside this weapon, and in a declaration to the States-General in the royal session of June 23, 1789 (art. 15) it did not renounce it absolutely.

==Abolition and reinstatement==
''Lettres de cachet'' were abolished after the [[French Revolution]] by the Constituent Assembly, but [[Napoleon]] reestablished their penal equivalent by a political measure in the decree of 8 March 1801 on the state prisons. This was one of the acts brought up against him by the senatus-consulte of 3 April 1814, which pronounced his fall "considering that he has violated the constitutional laws by the decrees on the state prisons."

==Victims of ''lettres de cachet''==
{{references needed|section|date=April 2024}}
* [[Charles Simon Favart]] (because a nobleman was interested in his wife)
* [[Luke Joseph Hooke]] (deprived of his academic chair in theology for awarding a PhD to a candidate without having read the (heretical) thesis.)
* [[Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau]] (several times, on request of his father, as protection against creditors and once to prevent a death penalty for kidnapping and eloping with a married woman)
* [[Marguerite Monvoisin]] (complicity in a [[Affair of the Poisons|poisoning affair]]. A ''lettre de cachet'' was used to avoid a scandal that might have affected [[Françoise-Athénaïs, marquise de Montespan]], a mistress of the King who was assumed to have been involved).
* [[Pigault-Lebrun]] (twice, for eloping with two successive young women)
* [[Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière]] (misconduct: sent away to an abbey by his father)
* [[Marquis de Sade]] (rape and torture. The ''lettre'' was petitioned by the marquis' wife, to avoid a court case)
* [[Comte de Sanois]] (domestic disputes and debt. His wife petitioned a Lettre, claiming her husband insane)
* [[Voltaire]] (once for slander, a second time for violent menaces against the Prince de Rohan)
* [[Jean-François Marmontel]], accused to be the author of a satire against the Duke d'Aumont. His account of his short stay in the Bastille contains a description of the food he received, the room he was imprisoned with his servant, and the goodwill shown to him.
* [[Giacomo Casanova]] (dueling)
* [[Marie-Anne de La Ville]] (practiced black magic. A scandalous trial was avoided by a ''lettre'')
* [[Jean-Baptiste Forqueray]] (request of his father)

==In literature==
* [[Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau|Honoré de Mirabeau]], [https://books.google.com/books?id=b1sGAAAAQAAJ&pg=PR1 ''Des Lettres de Cachet et des prisons d'état''] ([[Hamburg]], 1782), written in the dungeon at [[Vincennes]] into which his father had thrown him by a ''lettre de cachet'', one of the ablest and most eloquent of his works, which had an immense circulation and was translated into [[English language|English]]  in 1788.
* ''[[The Castle of Wolfenbach]]'', one of the "Horrid Novels" mentioned in ''[[Northanger Abbey]]'' by [[Jane Austen]], features a ''lettre de cachet'' as a major plot point when the main villain, the guardian of a young lady who has run away, tries to use a ''lettre de cachet'' to obligate her to be returned to him so he can force her into marriage.
* Doctor [[Alexandre Manette]], in [[Charles Dickens]]' ''[[A Tale of Two Cities]]'', was thrown into the [[Bastille]] prison by means of a ''lettre de cachet''. In addition, [[Charles Darnay]] suspected that his uncle, a marquis, would have used a ''lettre de cachet'' to put Darnay himself into prison had the Marquis not fallen out of favour with the royal court.

==See also==
{{Commons category|Lettre de cachet}}
* [[Bill of attainder]]
* [[Divine right of kings]]
* [[Fundamental laws of the Kingdom of France]]
* [[National Security Letter]]
* [[Firman]]
* [[Letters close]]

== Explanatory notes ==
{{Notelist}}

==References==
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[[Category:Law of France]]
[[Category:Legal documents]]
[[Category:Letters (message)]]
[[Category:Economic history of the Ancien Régime]]
[[Category:Law of the Ancien Régime]]