The Betrayal of the Duchess

February 24, 2020
Samuels (The Right to Difference), a professor of French at Yale University, delivers a colorful history of the duchesse de Berry’s failed attempt to restore the Bourbon dynasty to the French throne in 1832. Arguing that the duchess’s betrayal by her adviser, Simon Deutz, “helped make antisemitism a key feature of right-wing ideology in France,” Samuels details her childhood among exiled royals in Sicily, her arranged marriage to the nephew of King Louis XVIII, her husband’s assassination, and the birth of her son, Henri, the only male heir to the Bourbon monarchy. When Louis-Philippe d’Orléans seized power in the Revolution of 1830, the duchess went into exile in Scotland. She later snuck back into France dressed as a peasant boy and rallied support for a “legitimist” rebellion to place her on the throne as regent until Henri came of age. Deutz, a Jewish convert to Catholicism, received 500,000 francs after revealing her location to the authorities, and the duchess was imprisoned before returning to Italy. She became a hero for “all those who saw themselves as victims of modernity,” according to Samuels, while Deutz was villified with racist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic stereotypes. The wealth of historical details sometimes slows the narrative, but Samuels delivers a spirited and comprehensive account of this lesser-known drama and draws insightful parallels to anti-Semitism within modern-day reactionary movements. Armchair historians will be delighted.

April 1, 2020

Treachery, disguise, capture, and imprisonment--the scandal surrounding an ill-fated 19th-century French insurrection--is all the more captivating in this factual retelling. In 1832, the mother of a deposed heir to the French throne attempted to overthrow her brother-in-law, Louis-Philippe of France. Lacking adequate funding or local support from right-wing allies, the Duchesse de Berry's rebellion came to a disastrous end when she was betrayed by one of her own emissaries. Popular opinion, rather than condemning Marie-Caroline for the aborted coup, quickly turned against her disloyal betrayer, Simon Deutz, the son of the Chief Rabbi of France. According to Samuels (Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French, Yale Univ.) the scandal launched an anti-Semitic backlash among French aristocracy and the French press, remnants of which can be seen in the Dreyfus affair at the turn of the 20th century, and even up to the present day. Based on memoirs, contemporary newspaper reports, archival documents, and secondary sources, this tumultuous but largely forgotten period of French history is effectively reexamined. VERDICT Recommended for readers of Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and 19th-century French history and literature.--Linda Frederiksen, formerly with Washington State Univ. Lib., Vancouver

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