‘The Soldier’s Reward’ and ‘Matchmaking and the Marriage Market...’ review

The institution of marriage sits at the intersection of the personal and political like no other. No relationship is more intimate; none is as prone to the trappings of fantasy. Few institutions have greater implications for social and economic stability; governments, religious organisations, and individuals have all fought to define and control marriage for that reason.

These struggles become particularly important during periods of unrest. Few events of the modern era have been as disruptive as the French Revolution of 1789, which upended a millennium of monarchical rule in France, led to increasingly radical experiments in governance, and triggered a series of wars lasting, with a few pauses, from 1792 to 1815. The revolutionary government also implemented numerous changes to French law, including the secularisation of marriage (that is, making it a civil ceremony) in 1791, buttressed by the legalisation of divorce in 1792. Jennifer Ngaire Heuer’s The Soldier’s Reward: Love and War in the Age of the French Revolution and Napoleon examines romantic relationships and marriage at a time when many men of marriageable age were facing a military service that would rip them from their families and romantic partners. The ‘reward’ of the book’s title refers to the promise of marriage awaiting men after an (undetermined) period of military service in defence of the nation. By 1793 the French were at war with much of Europe, leading to the mass mobilisation of citizen-soldiers in August of that year (the famous levée en masse). By 1815 more than three million French men had fought in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Many of them did not return, and many of those who did had suffered grievous injuries. Popular theatrical pieces, songs, and engravings celebrated the courage and patriotism of the wounded, who, in these accounts, often returned to a faithful prospective wife who was more impressed by the heroism of her injured fiancé than by a suitor who had shirked his patriotic duty. In the popular play Rose and Aurèle (1794), the young heroine chooses to marry her returning love, Aurèle, who has lost an arm and suffered damage to his face. She rejects as cowardly another suitor, Lormeuil, who has avoided military service due to being a few months too old, telling him that he should have fought regardless of his age. Sometimes in these fanciful narratives a wealthy benefactor would even provide the lucky couple with financial support in recognition of the soldier’s sacrifice, as in The Guinguette, or Celebrations for the Peace (1801). The ‘real’ man was the citizen who had fought for his country.

But as Heuer’s impressive research demonstrates, the disconnect between fantasy and reality was profound. Peasant families needed the labour of their sons, and often sought to help them evade military service. Many men returning from the battlefield were injured in ways that made them undesirable partners, or even a burden to a future wife. The financial ‘rewards’ that the state (or imaginary patrons) provided to its citizen-soldiers were meagre, or non-existent. While theatrical productions valorised the man willing to serve his country (as well as the young women who overlooked disfiguration), reality was more sobering. The family economy of the French peasant and urban worker depended upon the labour of both spouses; the loss or impairment of a young man could consign an entire family to poverty.

Reliant on conscription, the Napoleonic regime had a stake in promoting the belief that love, honour, and financial support awaited the returning war hero. The state sometimes even arranged marriages between veterans and suitable young women, along with government-provided dowries. These unions were celebrated in public festivals. In 1803, shortly after the Peace of Amiens, the English writer Anne Plumptre reported on a state-sponsored festival uniting 12 soldiers with 12 young women to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption; the government paid the cost of the weddings and provided dowries. As Heuer shows, however, these state-authorised marriages did not always actually take place and the promised dowry often remained unpaid.

Marriage was not just a reward for soldiers; it could also be a way out of military service, especially as, over time, fewer men were willing to sacrifice themselves for Napoleon’s war machine. Heads of households were less likely to face conscription, and so becoming one became expedient. While the levée en masse had encouraged all men, married and single, to serve the Old Regime, the Jourdan Law of 1798, which codified conscription, signalled a return to the expectation that young, single men would dominate the military ranks. However, a quick marriage was not always easy to arrange, leading at times to wildly inappropriate ‘paper marriages’ between men in the prime of life and elderly women as a way of avoiding conscription. In November 1809 the prefect of the department of the Nord denounced 18 suspicious marriages between young men and elderly women, one of whom was 99 years old. This probably seemed like a good option when divorce by mutual consent – enshrined in the 1792 law – made it possible to end the marriage once the danger had passed. But the Napoleonic Code of 1804 made divorce significantly more difficult, while the Bourbon Restoration ended the possibility altogether in 1816, leaving some couples unhappily bound for life.

Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815 and the return of the Bourbons brought an end to the constant warfare that had shaped French life for nearly 25 years. However, soldiers were returning to a very different country, in which capitalism and consumerism would play an increasingly important role. Just as war and revolution had triggered debates and new attitudes towards romance and matrimony, so too did the imperatives of a modern urban society. These changes are explored in Andrea Mansker’s Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France. Mansker places at the centre of her analysis two marriage brokers, Claude Villiaume and Charles de Foy, who took advantage of the burgeoning press and print advertising in the first half of the 19th century to promote their consumer-based approaches to courtship. Marriage was touted not only as a reward for soldiers (although returning soldiers were among Villiaume’s target audience), but as the right of all French men and women. It was also a marketplace, and the broker could help both men and women – especially those of the rising bourgeoisie – better position themselves in the competition for suitable spouses.

Like Heuer, Mansker is as interested in the fantasies that the matchmaking trade generated as she is in the reality of the business itself, especially since, in the case of Villiaume, the veracity of his stories – for example, that of a young, wealthy single mother, ‘Emilie’, who sought a sexless marriage to an ageing and financially needy nobleman – is as unclear to the historian as it was to contemporary readers. A former soldier who served time in prison under Napoleon for his erratic behaviour (including a suspected assassination attempt on Napoleon), Villiaume used his story-telling skills to secure his release from confinement. In his advertisements in the petites affiches (classified ads), Villiaume wove narratives for men and women searching for love, highlighting the element of chance – ‘hasard’ – at play at the marriage market. To counter the sketchy reputation of matchmakers, he emphasised that he was simply helping to improve his clients’ chances, bringing together two individuals whose opportunities in anonymous urban spaces could be much improved by his assistance. Foy, even more than Villiaume, claimed the title of professional for himself, insisting on his competence, altruism, and expertise in his advertisements, and proudly displaying the business licence the French state had granted him (and for which he paid a yearly tax). In a series of court cases against clients who refused to pay his fee, he emphasised the added value of his services. However, his emphasis on secrecy for his clients – as well as his veiled threats to expose those who denigrated his services or refused to pay – hinted that his profession was not as respectable as claimed.

Public discussion of matchmaking services in the 19th century highlighted questions about the meaning of marriage – questions that the French Revolution had triggered. Was marriage simply a civil contract that could be dissolved if the parties were unhappy with the arrangement? Who should arrange marriages: parents and family members, or the spouses themselves? Was marriage a consumer good that conferred material benefits as the tradition of arranged marriages among the French elite suggested? Or was marriage a sacred union, whose primary purpose transcended the material?

These questions were never entirely resolved. Foy succeeded in numerous lawsuits defending the validity of marriage brokerage contracts in the 1840s and 1850s, but a ruling by the Court of Cassation in 1855 amid a conservative backlash under the Second Empire asserted that marriage was indeed different from other contracts, especially since, until its legalisation in 1884, divorce remained impossible. Marriage brokerage continued to flourish, however, and dowries and material resources continued to provide motivation for it even as the language of love dominated.

Some of the changes in attitudes towards marriage that Heuer and Mansker emphasise in these fascinating books were already underway in the 18th century, before war and revolution upended all social, legal, and political arrangements: that is, an emphasis on companionate marriage, individual choice, and the contractual nature of the relationship. But marriage remains among the most complicated and fraught of institutions because of its emotional and practical considerations. A successful marriage promises joy and fulfillment; an unhappy one destroys lives. It is no surprise that the debates which surrounded the subject more than two centuries ago continue to be fought today.
 

• The Soldier’s Reward: Love and War in the Age of the French Revolution and Napoleon
  Jennifer Ngaire Heuer
  Princeton University Press, 384pp, £38
  Buy from bookshop.org (affiliate link)
   

• Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France
  Andrea Mansker
  Cornell University Press, 282pp, £50

Christine Adams is Professor of History at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.