Ci-devant

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Ci-devant nobility (from the French, meaning "from before") were the French nobility of the ancien régime (the Bourbon monarchy) after it had lost its titles and privileges in the French Revolution; it may be compared to the English language term late, as it expresses the (figurative) death of the nobility. Even prior to the revolution, the term ci-devant was already a common expression to refer to "people or things dispossessed of their estate or quality."[1]

During the revolutionary era, the connotations of the term were strictly derogatory, and it was typically used by people hostile to the nobility. For instance, one could say "le ci-devant comte" ("the from-before count") about someone who was a count during the ancien régime, but was now, due to the Revolution, a mere citizen, or refer to les ci-devants de Coblence, Coblence (Koblenz) being the town where many exiled aristocrats had gathered to plot against the Revolution.

In French the term retains this negative connotation. In English, the matter is less clear. One might refer to ci-devant nobility simply to distinguish them from later nobility (of the First French Empire, the Bourbon Restoration, etc.); in French, if one wished to avoid negative connotation, one would use Vieille Noblesse ("Old Nobility").

In English the term has been somewhat reappropriated. For example, in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905), the aristocrat Baroness Orczy refers to "ci-devant counts, marquises, even dukes, who wanted to fly from France, reach England or some other equally accursed country, and there try to rouse foreign feeling against the glorious Revolution or to raise an army in order to liberate the wretched prisoners in the Temple, who had once called themselves sovereigns of France."[2] Similarly, Joseph Conrad in The Rover (published 1923, set during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic period) wrote of a "hunter of the ci-devants and priests, purveyor of the guillotine, in short a blood-drinker."[3]

After the period of the French Revolution, in English at least, the term continued to be used to refer to those who had in some way lost rank. In 1840's Two Years Before the Mast, a demoted former second mate was referred to as "Our cidevant second mate". In this work, the word occurs twice, once being spelled with a hyphen and once without a hyphen.

[edit] Notes and references

  1. ^ Ci-devant on les.guillotines.free.fr, accessed 16 April 2006. The French original of the quoted phrase is "…personnes et des choses dépossédées de leur état ou de leur qualité…".
  2. ^ Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905). The relevant passage was accessed online 16 April 2006.
  3. ^ Joseph Conrad, The Rover (1923), Chapter III, accessed online 16 April 2006.