The Betrayal of the Duchess by Maurice Samuels

Author:Maurice Samuels [SAMUELS, MAURICE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2020-04-14T00:00:00+00:00

IT WAS AT this moment of political indecision that Deutz arrived back in Paris for the first time since 1828, when he had departed for Rome. Not having received any response to the two letters he sent to Montalivet from Spain and Portugal, the would-be double agent decided to present himself to the minister in person. According to Deutz’s self-justifying memoir, published three years after the events, Montalivet claimed not to have received his letters but eagerly took him up on his offer to betray the duchess, promising any recompense for his services that Deutz might demand.

“I am acting out of conviction and not self-interest,” Deutz supposedly responded with umbrage. “I want to save the country from civil war, but I will not sell myself.” His vanity and grandiosity on full display, the convert professed shock at the insinuation that he wanted money in exchange for his services. “Be advised that if I wanted to sell myself, you would not be rich enough to buy me,” he reports telling the minister. He then supposedly went on to stipulate that had he been tempted by honors or wealth, he would have remained in the “Carlist camp,” where his fortune and future were assured. “Thus you see, this is not an affair of interest but of devotion.” Of course, the duchess’s fortunes had taken a decided turn for the worse at that point, and Deutz realized his own fortune was anything but assured if he remained in her service.10

According to the right-wing journalist Alfred Nettement, Montalivet was not very eager to take Deutz up on his offer of betraying the duchess, fearing the political difficulties that would ensue from the duchess’s arrest. Not a skilled politician and aware of his own limitations, Montalivet did not want to risk making a bold move that might backfire. But on October 11, shortly after the meeting between Deutz and Montalivet, Louis-Philippe reshuffled his cabinet, and the liberal Adolphe Thiers became the new minister of the interior.11

Thiers saw the affair differently from his predecessor. He was eager to put an end to the troubles in the Vendée once and for all. And to do this, he needed to arrest the duchess. “It was necessary to find a traitor to deliver up Madame,” Nettement writes in his retrospective account. “It must be said that to the honor of our loyal France, it was not a Frenchman who sank to the level of that infamous task. To find such a felon, whom they intoxicated with gold and shame, they had to go looking for a Jew”—his words offering more evidence of the kind of antisemitism that became commonplace in political discourse as a result of the betrayal of the duchess.12

Barely five feet tall, Thiers made up for in ambition what he lacked in stature. He had begun his career as a historian and journalist: his protests against Charles X’s curtailment of press freedom helped spark the so-called “Three Glorious Days” of street fighting that brought Louis-Philippe to power.

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