A King's Ransom: The Life of Charles Théveneau de Morande, Blackmailer, Scandalmonger and Master-Spy (review)

In this intriguing book Simon Burrows plunges with élan into the seedy side of life in eighteenth-century Paris and London. His pages are filled with a seemingly endless procession of rogues and villains: blackmailers, murderers, pornographers, pimps, writers of scandalous pamphlets, card sharps, and other assorted riff-raff. At the centre is the extraordinary figure of Charles Théveneau de Morande, a man Burrows acknowledges to be brutish, brutal, and untrustworthy, whose stock-in-trade is blackmail and extortion, and who demonstrates indefatigable energy in the pursuit of his own pecuniary advantage, to the misfortune of virtually anyone who crosses his path. Burrows evokes Morande's varied career with great skill, describing his progress from petty criminal to fully fledged renegade, his contributions as founder and principal writer to the scurrilous Gazetier cuirassé, and his subsequent activities as government agent, police spy, and revolutionary journalist. Given the nature of the world in which Morande moves, much is uncertain and contradictory: false accounts and rumours abound and witnesses are unreliable, not to say treacherous, but Burrows sifts through a mass of complex and often elusive detail with a sure touch. He writes with commendable clarity on Morande's inflammatory allegations concerning Mme du Barry, Louis XV, and the Duc d'Aiguillon, and on his numerous and persistent quarrels and lawsuits, involving, among others, Beaumarchais, Brissot, Mirabeau, Calonne, and the notorious Chevalier d'Éon (whom Morande sees as another possible source of income through wagers on his gender). Burrows remains even-handed in his portrait of a complex, dangerous but fascinating man who, if he possesses few, if any, redeeming personal qualities, expresses virulent and apparently sincere criticisms of despotism as a system of government and roundly denounces the corruption he sees at the heart of the French court and political world. In respect of Morande's improbable incarnation as a French government agent in London for seven years and later as a police spy, Burrows credits him with demonstrating enormous energy and resourcefulness in the service of his country, describing him as one of the master spies of his age. As a committed and forceful opponent of the Republican drift of the Revolution, he is considered by Burrows to be the creator of a radical new form of newspaper journalism. The man who was once, to use one of the author's more memorable phrases, a 'rakish smutmonger' (p. 141) has become the stout defender of the principles of patriotic reform and constitutional monarchy. Throughout the book Burrows provides a compelling narrative and is adept at creating an atmosphere of suspense. On occasion, and fittingly, he adopts the language of the roman noir: we find pay-offs, sting operations, and international scams; 'Béranger's cover is blown' (p. 65), 'Once again, Morande was on the case' (p. 153), 'Count Nicolas de la Motte fenced the gems' (p. 155). The overall liveliness of approach serves well an entertaining, informative, and thoroughly researched counterbalance to more traditional political and social histories of the period.