Introduction

Etienne-Francois de Stainville, Duc de Choiseul (pronounce it "shwah ZOOL" and you've come close), served as Louis XV's First Minister from December 1758 until December 1770. He was brought into power too late to stave off a stalemate in Germany and so was left bereft of means to bargain his way out of the consequences of debacle on the Canadian front during the Seven Years War. Yet, this was an impressive man. Choiseul was the architect of the policies that revived France as a great power and provided the means for victory in the American War of 1778-1783. He is also an interesting figure in that, once again, we confront the puzzle of how a nation so richly endowed with material resources and brilliant people as was ancien regime France could at the same time prove so dysfunctional.

These thoughts came to me once again as I recently read a biography of Choiseul. [16] This book is both exhaustive (Volume I is 1100 pages long and merely takes our hero to age 35, a full four years before attaining his ministry) and exhausting (the prose is affected and convoluted to the point of obscurity). However, the book presents among its many threads a narrative of considerable interest to this Journal's readers. Let me in the next few pages try to tease these out and to weave them lightly with other secondary material on this fascinating man and his age - and particularly on the military system he participated in actively.

Eastern Battles Lost

Before his political career, Choiseul had an interesting career as a young officer serving in the wars of mid-century. Enrolled at the age of eleven as a sub-lieutenant serving at half-pay in the Regiment Royal Allemand (as befit a lad from then-independent Lorraine where he was born in 1719), and later actually serving under the colors of the Regiment du Roi, young Choiseul first saw action in 1739 when he was twenty. His family having a long and continuing history of high level service as counselors to the rulers of Lorraine, he was seconded to the Austrian service, acting as aide-de-camp to Prince Charles of Lorraine, Maria Theresa's brother-in-law and later famously Fritz II's cat's paw at the battles of Chotusitz, Hohenfriedberg, Soor, Leuthen, etc., etc. In this capacity he participated in a brutal and fustratingly mismanaged Eastern War against the Ottomans which in a short summer's campaign succeeded in undoing the work of the previous generation under Eugene of Savoy.

After the war, rather than proceed home by way of Istanbul ("I have always had some regret at having had the prudence, which was not my dominant quality at that time, not to pursue the project of this voyage" [17] ), Choiseul went directly to Paris. Seeking preferment and advantage, Choiseul, like Maurice de Saxe before him, chose to improve his fortunes by tying them to those of Versailles and the French service rather than to those of Austria as his father had done when the house of Lorraine became tied by marriage to the Habsburgs. Lacking the clout at court to succeed in his quest for a regiment of his own, he was in Paris at the outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession. Choiseul returned to his captaincy and company in the Regiment du Roi.

Young Choiseul at War Etienne-Francois de Stainville 1719-1783

Introduction and Eastern Battles Lost
Bohemia and Disaster
First Brush with England