FRANCOIS-PAUL DE LISOLA AND ENGLISH OPPOSITION TO LOUIS XIV

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Between the Restoration in 1660 and the Revolution in 1688 English public sensibility abandoned its century-long animus against Spain and began to identify France as its chief enemy. Historians often hold that the most significant intervention in shifting the balance of public opinion was the Dutch-inspired pamphlet, England’s appeal from the private cabal at Whitehall (1673), written by the Huguenot Pierre du Moulin. It is argued here that an immensely influential earlier intervention was made by François-Paul de Lisola’s Habsburg-inspired Buckler of state and justice (1667), which presented a rhetorically powerful body of arguments about the nature of the European state system at a critical juncture. A Catholic in the service of the Emperor, who spent nearly two years in England in 1666-8, Lisola was an accomplished and versatile diplomat and publicist. This essay interweaves diplomatic history with the history of geopolitical argument, tracing paths which led to Europe’s Grand Alliance against Louis XIV.