Guide to the Maurepas collection,
1694-1749

Jean-Fréderic Phélypeaux, comte de Maurepas (1701-1781) was a powerful figure in France during the reign of Louis XV, overseeing the administration of both the Royal court and the French Navy during his extended terms as Secretary of the Royal Household (1715-1749) and Secretary of the Navy (1723-1749).

Born into a family of the highest nobility, Maurepas inherited these administrative positions almost as a birthright; they had been held by his grandfather, Louis de Pontchartrain (eventually Chancellier de Pontchartrain), and his father, Jérôme Phélypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain. Maurepas' career began during a "golden age" of French commerce. As Secretary of the Navy, his working philosophy was that the power and security of France depended on the state of its commerce. Accordingly, much of the Navy's activity under Maurepas was aimed at protecting and expanding French foreign and colonial trade. Maurepas' passion for foreign affairs in general, encouraged by his administrative jurisdiction over certain areas of diplomacy and colonial government, led him to overshadow the Foreign Secretary. By the mid 1740s, however, shrinking funds combined with years of war with England had greatly reduced French commerce and the Navy's ability to protect it.

The last ten years of Maurepas' term as Secretary of the Navy were dominated by efforts to manage the escalating English threat to France and her colonies, by the War of Austria Succession (1740-1748), and finally by official war with England (1744). The English threat nudged France into commercial and military co-operation with Spain, at war with England since 1739, and precipitated the involvement of France in the Stuart cause, the Navy planning two ultimately aborted expeditions to Scotland (1743-44) to aid "The Young Pretender". As a member of the Conseil d'en Haut, Maurepas carried his naval experience and agenda to the Aix-la-Chapelle peace negotiations that followed the War of Austrian succession, proposing that any treaty ought to protect France's commercial interests.

Maurepas' ministry promoted improvements in maps, navigation and shipbuilding, and directed expeditions with purely scientific motives to Greece, Peru and the Far East. As Secretary of the Royal Household, Maurepas acted as a patron of the arts, managing the affairs and settling the disputes of the Comédie Française and the Académie Royale. In the latter part of his career, as a minister under Louis XVI, Maurepas remained close to the court. He was responsible for appointing positions in foreign affairs, the royal household and the treasury. Among his nominees was Necker, whom Maurepas dismissed in 1781 for his reformist tendencies.

The Maurepas Collection consists of correspondence, reports, financial and official records, and other papers in French, Spanish and Italian drawn from the administrative files of the comte de Maurepas (1701-1781), Secretary of the Navy and of the Royal Household under Louis XV. The collection consists of 694 items covering the years 1694-1749, with most pertaining to the wartime years 1739-1749. The earliest items predate Maurepas and his ministry, and include a substantial group of letters between Maurepas' father and grandfather, both of whom were government ministers. The Maurepas Papers are divided into two series: letters and documents, with each series arranged chronologically. Letters that accompanied documents have been filed with the correspondence.

As naval minister and liaison to the king, Maurepas served as a clearing-house for a great quantity of often detailed information relayed from all over Europe and the Americas, from land and shipboard, and from men of diverse occupations, rank, and social status. Taken together, the papers document, often through firsthand accounts, the naval, commercial, colonial, and political history of France in the first half of the eighteenth century. Much of the incoming correspondence is concerned with ways to increase the strength and improve the operations of the Navy in a period of intense commercial and military competition with Britain, and with sounding out foreign territories and governments for possible acquisition or economic exploitation by France.

Major subjects include war with England; the War of Austrian Succession; France's support of the Jacobite cause in England, and other aspects of French foreign policy; the state and position of the French, British and Spanish navies; colonial expeditions to Louisiana and Canada; Navy finances; taxation; diplomatic relations and exterior trade with Spain, Portugal, Russia, the Levant, and others; colonial trade; South American expeditions; armaments; shipbuilding; navigation; cartography and hydrography; scientific expeditions; life at the court of Versailles; and the royal academies of the arts.

Documents include reports and memoranda on the military, navigational and engineering problems encountered by the French Navy; proposals for reform and innovation (marine law, methods of recruitment, fundraising); plans for inventions, such as a dredging machine; military and other campaign orders; illustrated instruction booklets on sailing and navigation; journals; royal ordonnances, some printed; inventories of ships, arms and provisions; personnel records; financial records; a letter of marque authorizing a privateer; and assorted requests for promotions, raises, and titles.

As Secretary of the Royal Household, Maurepas corresponded with members of the Comédie Française and Académie Royale de Musique, mostly concerning disputes between performers and directors. Personal papers include letters from Maurepas' aunt informing him of life and court politics at Versailles, and correspondence with his aristocratic friends.

Principal correspondents include Jérôme Phélypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain; Louis de Pontchartrain (Chancelier); his aunt Armande de la Porte Mazarin, marquise de Mailly-Nesle; Joseph Pellerin, First Clerk of the Navy; Voltaire; Louis XV; Charles Edward Stuart ("The Young Pretender"); King George II; Thomond; Louis François Armand, duc de Richelieu; Nicolas de la Rochefoucauld, duc d'Enville; Saint-Simon.

Jean V. Callahan
11 December 1995

The guide to the Maurepas collection was produced with funding provided by the United States Department of Education grant Title II-C, "Strengthening Research Library Resources": The French Revolution Collections at Cornell University: a Retrospective Conversion and Preservation Project.

Project staff included Jean V. Callahan, Peggy John, and Isabel Rivera. The Maurepas website (guide and exhibit) was conceived by Jean V. Callahan and implemented by Noni Korf Vidal.