Landweber|213Emperor [Charles VI] would have good reason to fear him becoming... the
instrument of some Turkish enterprise against his lands. But France must not
be suspected of playing a role. The King does not intend to give the Viennese
court any pretext for complaints.... You must therefore have absolutely no
contact with Monsieur de Bonneval, and take care that no members of your
household, however lowly, have any association with the count or his people.Louis XV liked Bonneval’s wild plan! But to avoid compromising France (or in-
viting awkward questions from the Ottomans or Hapsburgs) Bonneval’s French
identity must be publicly renounced.
By December Bonneval believed himself in danger of being either poisoned
to death or sent back to Vienna, where a death sentence for treason likely awaited.
He had pretended to sovereign independence in his June letter. Recognizing that
that was a mistake, he now asserted his French identity. His next letter to Ville-
neuve (quoted at the chapter’s beginning) peculiarly declared what should have
been self-evident: “I am not German but French, as you know.” It is rare to find
anyone asserting their national identity so forcefully in this period, excepting
those who might genuinely have trouble proving their origins. Bonneval should
not have fallen into that category, but the Austrians were sparing no expense to
ensure that he “be placed back in their hands as German.” They made this claim
not from real belief that Bonneval had somehow transformed his national iden-
tity during his tenure with the imperial army but because, in the 1718 Treaty of
Passarowitz between the Ottoman Empire and Austria, each side had pledged to
reciprocate in returning fugitive subjects. Claiming Bonneval as German was the
easiest way for the Austrians to remove him from Bosnia to their own territories.
Bonneval had ignored the value of his national identity, only to have the
Austrians turn the tables by trying to assign him an unwanted new one. Bon-
neval now appealed to Villeneuve’s own loyalty to the French state: “Consider
that the Germans... do injury to Your Excellency and to all the nation by claim-
ing jurisdiction over me.” In early eighteenth-century European countries, na-
tional identity was granted as a privilege from sovereign to subject, and then by
extension the treatment of the subject by other nations reflected on the subject’s
country and ruler. The Austrians were insulting France with their claim on him.
As representative of France within the Ottoman Empire, Villeneuve had a duty
to defend the nation against slurs and insults. But Bonneval unknowingly played
this stratagem too late; his plea fell on deaf ears.
In the summer of 1730, Bonneval concluded the only remaining path to free-
dom was converting to Islam. He later explained his decision to his brother:
After fifteen months of arrest, the order was given to hand me over to the
Germans. To avoid falling into the hands of my cruelest enemies I abandoned
the hat for the turban, which alone could save me.... You will understand