The family politics of the Marquis de Bombelles

Abstract

The voluminous journal of Marc-Marie de Bombelles (1744-1822) provides abundant documentation of the cultivation of affective relations within the family as well as the connections between private and public affairs in the last years of the Ancien Regime. The marquis represented himself as a devoted son, brother, husband, and father who sought and found happiness en famille. He renounced certain attitudes and conduct traditionally associated with the aristocracy and regretted the fact that the king and queen did not set a good example for their subjects. He described Louis XVI as a good father who could not rule his feelings, his wife, or his realm; and Marie-Antoinette as a bad mother who neglected her children and abused her prerogatives. Bombelles expected the royal family, like his own family, to embody values that historians have commonly identified with the bourgeoisie.