personage. It has been calculated that from the Parisian press
alone there came sufficient Mazarinades to fill 150 quarto volumes
each of 400 pages. Eight hundred were published during the siege
of Paris (Feb. 8 to March 11, 1649). A collection of satirical
pieces was entitled Tableau du gouvernement de Richelieu, Mazarin,
Fouquet, et Colbert (1693). Pamphlets dealing with the amours of
the king and his courtiers were in vogue in the time of Louis XIV.,
the most caustic of them being the Carte géographique de la cour
(1668) of Bussy-Rabutin. The presses of Holland and the Low
Countries teemed with tracts against Colbert, Le Tellier, Louvois
and Père Lachaise. The first of the ever-memorable Provinciales
appeared on the 23rd of January 1656, under the title of Lettre de
Louis de Montalte à un provincial de ses amis, and the remaining
eighteen came out at regular intervals during the next fifteen months.
They excited extraordinary attention throughout Europe. The Jesuit
replies were feeble and ineffectual. John Law and the schemes of
the bubble period caused much popular raillery. During the long
reign of Louis XV. the distinguished names of Voltaire, Rousseau,
Montesquieu, Diderot, D’Alembert, D’Holbach, Helvetius and
Beaumarchais must be added to the list of writers in this class.
The preliminary struggle between the parliament and the Crown gave rise to hundreds of pamphlets, which grew still more numerous as the Revolution approached. Linguet and Mirabeau began their appeals to the people. Camille Desmoulins came into notice as a publicist during the elections for the states-general; but perhaps the piece which caused the most sensation was the Qu’est ce que le Tiers État (1789) of the Abbé Sieyès. The Domine salvum fac regem and Pange lingua (1789) were two royalist brochures of unsavoury memory. The queen was the subject of vile attack and indiscreet defence (see H. d’Almeras, Marie Antoinette et les pamphlets, 1907). The financial disorders of 1790 occasioned the Effets des assignats sur le prix du pain of Dupont de Nemours; Necker was attacked in the Criminelle Neckerologie of Marat; and the Vrai miroir de la noblesse dragged the titled names of France through the mire. The massacre of the Champ de Mars, the death of Mirabeau, and the flight of the king in 1791, the noyades of Lyons and the crime of Charlotte Corday in 1793, and the terrible winter of 1794 have each their respective pamphlet literature, more or less violent in tone. Perhaps the most complete collection of French revolutionary pamphlets is that in the Bibliothèque Nationale; the British Museum possesses a wonderful collection formed by John Wilson Croker. Under the consulate and the empire the only writers of note who ventured to seek this method of appealing to the world were Mme de Staël, B. Constant and Chateaubriand. The royalist reaction in 1816 was the cause of the Pétition of Paul Louis Courier, the first of those brilliant productions of a master of the art. He gained the distinction of judicial procedure with his Simple Discours in 1821, and published in 1824 his last political work, Le Pamphlet des pamphlets, the most eloquent justification of the pamphlet ever penned. The Mémoire à consulter of Montlosier attacked the growing power of the Congregation. The year 1827 saw an augmentation of severity in the press laws and the establishment of the censure. The opposition also increased in power and activity, but found its greatest support in the songs of Béranger and the journalism of Mignet, Thiers and Carrel. M. de Comenin was the chief pamphleteer of the reign of Louis Philippe. The events of 1848 gave birth to a number of pamphlets, chiefly pale copies of the more virile writings of the first revolution. Among the few men of power Louis Veuillot was the Père Duchesne of the Clericals and Victor Hugo the Camille Desmoulins or Marat of the Republicans. After 1852 there was no lack of venal apologies of the coup d’état. The second empire suffered from many bitter attacks, among which may be mentioned the Lettre sur l’histoire de France (1861) of the Duc d’Aumale, Propos de Labiénus (1865) of Rogeard, Dialogue aux enfers (1864) of Maurice Joly and Ferry’s Comptes fantastiques d’Haussmann (1868). In more recent times the Panama prosecutions and the Dreyfus case gave occasion to an immense pamphlet literature.
Germany.—In Germany, the cradle of printing, the pamphlet (Flugschrift) was soon a recognized and popular vehicle of thought, and the fierce religious controversies of the Reformation period afforded a unique opportunity for its use. The employment of the pamphlet in this connexion was characteristic of the new age. In coarse and violent language the pamphlets appealed directly to the people, whose sympathy the leaders of the opposing parties were most anxious to secure, and their issue on an enormous scale was undoubtedly one of the most potent influences in rousing the German people against the pope and the Roman Catholic Church. In general their tone was extremely intemperate, and they formed, as one authority has described those of a century later, “a mass of panegyric, admonition, invective, controversy and scurrility.” Luther was one of the earliest and most effective writers of the polemical pamphlet. His adherents quickly followed his example, and his opponents also were not slow to avail themselves of a weapon which was proving itself so powerful. So intense at this time did this pamphlet war become that Erasmus wrote “apud Germanos, vix quicquam vendibile est praeter Lutherana ae anti Lutherana.”
A remarkable feature was the coarseness of many of these pamphlets. No sense of decency or propriety restrained their writers in dealing either with sacred or with secular subjects, and this attracted the notice of the imperial authorities, who were also alarmed by the remarkable growth of disorder, attributable in part at least to the wide circulation of pamphlet literature. Accordingly the issue of libellous pamphlets was forbidden by order of the diet of Nuremberg in 1524, and again by the diets of Spires in 1529, of Augsburg in 1530 and of Regensburg in 1541, while in 1589 the emperor Rudolph II. fulminated against them.
The usual method of selling these pamphlets was by means of hawkers. J. Janssen (History of the German People, Eng. trans., vol. iii.) says these men “went about in swarms offering pamphlets, caricatures and lampoons for sale; in the larger towns vendors of every description of printed matter jostled each other in the street.”
The controversies of the earlier period of the Thirty Years' War, when this struggle was German rather than international, produced a second flood of pamphlets, which possessed the same characteristics as the earlier one. In the disturbed years also which preceded the actual outbreak of war attempts were made in pamphlets to justify almost every action, however unjust or dishonourable, while at the same time those who held different opinions were mercilessly and scurrilously attacked. The leading German princes were among the foremost to use pamphlets in this connexion, especially perhaps Maximilian of Bavaria and Christian of Anhalt.
Literature.—An excellent catalogue by W. Oldys of the pamphlets in the Harleian Library is added to the 10th volume of the edition of the Miscellany by T. Park; and in the Biblioteca volante di G. Cinelli (2nd ed., 4 vols. 4to, 1734–1747) may be seen a bibliography of pamphlet-literature, chiefly Italian and Latin, with notes. See also Cat. of the three collections of books, pamphlets, &c., in the British Museum on the French Rev., 1899; Cat. of the Thomason books, pamphlets &c., 1908, 2 vols. A few of the more representative collections of pamphlets in English may be mentioned. These are: The Phenix (2 vols. 8vo, 1707); Morgan’s Phoenix britannicus (4to, 1732); Bishop Edmund Gibson’s Preservative against Popery (3 vols, folio, 1738, new ed., 18 vols. sm. 8vo, 1848–1849), consisting chiefly of the anti-Catholic discourses of James II.’s time; The Harleian Miscellany (8 vols. 4to, 1744–1753; new ed. by T. Park, 10 vols. 4to, 1808–1813, containing 600 to 700 pieces illustrative of English history, from the library of Edward Harley, earl of Oxford); Collection of scarce and valuable tracts [known as Lord Somers’ Tracts] (16 parts 4to, 1748–1752, 2nd ed. by Sir W. Scott, 13 vols. 4to, 1809–1815), also full of matter for English history; The Pamphleteer (29 vols. 8vo, 1813–1828), containing the best pamphlets of that day; and Arthur Waugh, The Pamphlet Library (4 vols. 8vo, 1897–1898), giving examples of political, religious and literary pamphlets from Wyclif to Newman, with historical essays.
For the derivation of the word pamphlet consult Skeat’s Etymological Dict.; Pegge’s Anonymiana; Notes and Queries, 3rd series, vol. iv. pp. 315, 379, 462, 482, vol. v. pp. 167, 290; 6th series, vol. ii. p. 156; 7th series, vol. vi. pp. 261, 432; Murray’s New English Dict. vol. vii. The general history of the subject may be traced in M. Davies, Icon libellorum (1715); W. Oldys, “History of the Origin of Pamphlets,” in Morgan’s Phoenix Brit., and Nichols’s Lit. Anecdotes; Dr Johnson’s Introduction to the Harleian Miscellany; D’Israeli, Amenities of Literature; Revue des deux mondes (April 1, 1846); Irish Quart. Review, vii. 267; Edinburgh Review (Oct. 1855); Quarterly Review (April 1908); The Library, new series, vol i. 298; Huth’s Ancient Ballads and Broadsides (Philobiblon Soc.); W. Maskell, Martin-Marprelate Controversy (1845); E. Arber, Sketch of Marprelate Controversy (1895); W. Pierce, Hist. Introd. to the Marprelate Tracts (1908); T. Jones, Cat. of collection of tracts for and against Popery—the whole of Peck’s lists and his references (Chetham Soc, 1856–1865); Blakey’s Hist. of Political Literature; Andrews, Hist. of British Journalism; Larousse, Grand Dict. Universel; Nodier, Sur la liberté de la presse; Leber, De L’état réel de la presse (1834); Moreau, Bibliographie des mazarinades (1850–1851); Bulletin du Bibliophile Belge (1859–1862); Nisard, Hist. des livres populaires (1854); A. Germond de Lavigne, Des Pamphlets de la fin de l’empire, &c. 1814–1817, Catalogue (Paris, 1879); Paris, Bibl. nationale, catalogue des Factums, etc., anterieurs à 1790, by A. Corda, Paris, 1890; A. Maire, Répertoire des thèses de doctoratès lettres des universités françaises 1810–1900 (Paris, 1903); and the annual Catalogue des Thèses et Écrits Académiques (Hachette) 1885–1910. For German academical dissertations see G. Fock, Catalogus dissertationum philologicorum classicarum (Leipzig, 1894), and many special catalogues by Klussmann (1889–1903), Kukula (1892–1893), Milkan (for Bonn, 1818–1885), Pretzsch (for Breslau, 1811–1885) and others. For Dutch pamphlets see L. D. Petit, Bibliotheck van nederlandsche Pamfletten (2 vols. 4to, Hague, 1882–1884); and W. P. C. Knuttel, Catalogus van de Pamfletten Verzameling berustende in de K. Bibliotheck 1486–1795 (5 parts 4to, Hague, 1889–1905). For methods of dealing with pamphlets in libraries, see various articles in Library Journal (1880, 1887, 1889, 1894). (H. R. T.)
