A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times_ Volume 6 François Guizot 1159 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Popular History of France
from the Earliest Times, Volume 6
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 6

Author: François Guizot

Illustrator: Alphonse Marie de Neuville

Translator: Robert Black

Release date: April 1, 2004 [eBook #11956]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11956

Credits: Produced by David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A POPULAR
HISTORY OF FRANCE FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES, VOLUME 6
***

A POPULAR HISTORY OF
FRANCE

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES

By M. Guizot

ENLARGE

CONTENTS

CHAPTER XLIX. LOUIS XIV. AND HIS COURT.

CHAPTER L. LOUIS XIV. AND DEATH. 1711-1715.

CHAPTER LI. LOUIS XV., THE REGENCY, AND
CARDINAL DUBOIS. 1715-1723.

CHAPTER LII. LOUIS XV., THE MINISTRY OF
CARDINAL FLEURY., 1723-1748.

CHAPTER LIII. LOUIS XV., FRANCE IN THE COLONIES.
1745-1763.

CHAPTER LIV. LOUIS XV., THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR.

CHAPTER LV. LOUIS XV., THE PHILOSOPHERS.

CHAPTER LVI. LOUIS XVI., MINISTRY OF M. TURGOT.
1774-1776.

CHAPTER LVII. LOUIS XVI., FRANCE ABROAD.—
UNITED STATES’ WAR

CHAPTER LVIII. LOUIS XVI., FRANCE AT HOME.—
MINISTRY OF M. NECKER.

CHAPTER LIX. LOUIS XVI., M. DE CALONNE AND THE
ASSEMBLY OF NOTABLES.

CHAPTER LX. LOUIS XVI., CONVOCATION OF THE
STATES-GENERAL. 1787-1789.

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Grand Monarch in his State Robes——9
Madame de La Valliere——10
Madame de Montespan 12
The Iron Mask——14
Bed-chamber Etiquette——15
Madame de Maintenon and the Duchess of
Burgundy.——27
Death of Madame de Maintenon.——34
The King Leaving the Death-bed of Monseigneur
——36
Louis XIV. In Old Age——47
The Death-bed of Louis XIV.——50
Versailles at Night——52
The Regent Orleans——54
The Bed of Justice——57
John Law——62
La Rue Quincampoix—-68
The Duke and Duchess of Maine——71
Cardinal Dubois——78
Peter the Great and Little Louis XV.——82
Belzunce Amid the Plague-Stricken——96
The Boy King and his People——104

Death of the Regent—-107
Louis XV.——110
Cardinal Fleury—110
Mary Leczinska——121
Death of Plelo——130
“Moriamur Pro Rege Nostro.”——142
Louis XV. and his Councillors——148
Louis XV. and the Ambassador of Holland——151
Marshal Saxe 154
Battle of Fontenoy——157
Brussels——159
The Citadel of Namur——161
Arrest of Charles Edward——166
Dupleix——168
La Bourdonnais——170
Dupleix Meeting the Soudhabar of The Deccan——
174
Death of the Nabob Of The Carnatic——174
Lally at Pondicherry——184
Champlain——190
Death of General Braddock——203
Death of Wolfe——209
Madame de Pompadour——215

Attack on Fort St. Philip——218
Assassination of Louis XV. by Damiens——221
Death of Chevalier D’Assas——233
Antwerp——234
“France, Thy Parliament Will Cut off Thy Head
Too!”—249
Defeat of the Corsicans at Golo——256
Montesquieu——269
Fontenelle——274
Voltaire——277
The Rescue of “La Henriade.”——283
Arrest of Voltaire——298
Diderot——314
Alembert——317
Diderot and Catherine II.——321
Buffon 323
Rousseau and Madame D’Epinay——338
Louis XVI.——347
Turgot’s Dismissal——367
Destruction of the Tea——378
Suffren——413
The Reading of “Paul and Virginia.”——427
Necker Hospital——432

Marie Antoinette 456
“There Are My Sledges, Sirs.”——458
Lavoisier——465
Cardinal Rohan’s Discomfiture——470
Arrest of the Members——502
Genealogical Tables——545

A POPULAR HISTORY OF
FRANCE

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES.

CHAPTER XLIX.

LOUIS XIV. AND HIS COURT.

Louis XIV. reigned everywhere, over his people, over his age, often over
Europe; but nowhere did he reign so completely as over his court. Never
were the wishes, the defects, and the vices of a man so completely a law to
other men as at the court of Louis XIV. during the whole period of his long
life. When near to him, in the palace of Versailles, men lived, and hoped,
and trembled; everywhere else in France, even at Paris, men vegetated. The
existence of the great lords was concentrated in the court, about the person
of the king. Scarcely could the most important duties bring them to absent
themselves for any time. They returned quickly, with alacrity, with ardor;
only poverty or a certain rustic pride kept gentlemen in their provinces.
“The court does not make one happy,” says La Bruyere, “it prevents one
from being so anywhere else.”
At the outset of his reign, and when, on the death of Cardinal Mazarin, he
took the reins of power in hand, Louis XIV. had resolved to establish about
him, in his dominions and at his court, “that humble obedience on the part
of subjects to those who are set over them,” which he regarded as “one of
the most fundamental maxims of Christianity.” “As the principal hope for
the reforms I contemplated establishing in my kingdom lay in my own
will,” says he in his Memoires, “the first step towards their foundation was
to render my will quite absolute by a line of conduct which should induce
submission and respect, rendering justice scrupulously to any to whom I
owed it, but, as for favors, granting them freely and without constraint to
any I pleased and when I pleased, provided that the sequel of my acts
showed that, for all my giving no reason to anybody, I was none the less
guided by reason.”

The principle of absolute power, firmly fixed in the young king’s mind,
began to pervade his court from the time that he disgraced Fouquet and
ceased to dissemble his affection for Mdlle. de La Valliere. She was young,
charming, and modest. Of all the king’s favorites she alone loved him
sincerely. “What a pity he is a king!” she would say. Louis XIV. made her a
duchess; but all she cared about was to see him and please him. When
Madame de Montespan began to supplant her in the king’s favor, the grief
of Madame de La Valliere was so great that she thought she should die of it.
Then she turned to God, in penitence and despair. Twice she sought refuge
in a convent at Chaillot. “I should have left the court sooner,” she sent word
to the king on leaving, “after having lost the honor of your good graces, if I
could have prevailed upon myself never to see you again; that weakness
was so strong in me that hardly now am I capable of making a sacrifice of it
to God; after having given you all my youth, the rest of my life is not too

much for the care of my salvation.” The king still clung to her. “He sent M.
Colbert to beg her earnestly to come to Versailles, and that he might speak
with her. M. Colbert escorted her thither; the king conversed for an hour
with her, and wept bitterly. Madame de Montespan was there to meet her
with open arms and tears in her eyes.” “It is all incomprehensible,” adds
Madame de Sevigne; “some say that she will remain at Versailles, and at
court, others that she will return to Chaillot; we shall see.” Madame de La
Valliere remained three years at court, “half penitent,” she said humbly,
detained there by the king’s express wish, in consequence of the tempers
and jealousies of Madame de Montespan, who felt herself judged and
condemned by her rival’s repentance. Attempts were made to turn Madame
de La Valliere from her inclination for the Carmelites: “Madame,” said
Madame Scarron to her one day, “here are you one blaze of gold: have you
really considered that at the Carmelites’ before long, you will have to wear
serge?” She, however, persisted. She was already practising in secret the
austerities of the convent. “God has laid in this heart the foundation of great
things,” said Bossuet, who supported her in her conflict: “the world puts
great hinderances in her way and God great mercies; I have hopes that God
will prevail; the uprightness of her heart will carry everything.”

“When I am in trouble at the Carmelites’,” said Madame de La Valliere,
as at last she quitted the court, “I will think of what those people have made
me suffer.” “The world itself makes us sick of the world,” said Bossuet in
the sermon he preached on the day of her taking the dress; “its attractions
have enough of illusion, its favors enough of inconstancy, its rebuffs
enough of bitterness, there is enough of injustice and perfidy in the dealings
of men, enough of unevenness and capriciousness in their intractable and
contradictory humors—there is enough of it all, without doubt, to disgust
us.” “She was dead to me the day she entered the Carmelites,” said the king,
thirty-five years later, when the modest and fervent nun expired at last, in
1710, at her convent, without having ever relaxed the severities of her
penance. He had married the daughter she had given him to the Prince of
Conti. “Everybody has been to pay compliments to this saintly Carmelite,”
says Madame de Sevigne, without appearing to perceive the singularity of
the alliance between words and ideas; “I was there too with Mademoiselle.
The Prince of Conti detained her in the parlor. What an angel appeared to
me at last! She had to my eyes all the charms we had seen heretofore. I did
not find her either puffy or sallow; she is less thin, though, and more happy-

looking. She has those same eyes of hers, and the same expression;
austerity; bad living, and little sleep have not made them hollow or dull;
that singular dress takes away nothing of the easy grace and easy bearing.
As for modesty, she is no grander than when she presented to the world a
princess of Conti, but that is enough for a Carmelite. In real truth, this dress
and this retirement are a great dignity for her.” The king never saw her
again, but it was at her side that Madame de Montespan, in her turn forced
to quit the court, went to seek advice and pious consolation. “This soul will
be a miracle of grace,” Bossuet had said.

It was no longer the time of “this tiny violet that hides itself in the grass,”
as Madame de Sevigne used to remark. Madame de Montespan was
haughty, passionate, “with hair dressed in a thousand ringlets, a majestic
beauty to show off to the ambassadors: “she openly paraded the favor she
was in, accepting and angling for the graces the king was pleased to do her
and hers, having the superintendence of the household of the queen whom
she insulted without disguise, to the extent of wounding the king himself.
“Pray consider that she is your mistress,” he said one day to his favorite.
The scandal was great; Bossuet attempted the task of stopping it. It was the
time of the Jubilee: neither the king nor Madame de Montespan had lost all

religious feeling; the wrath of God and the refusal of the sacraments had
terrors for them still. Madame de Montespan left the court after some
stormy scenes; the king set out for Flanders. “Pluck this sin from your heart,
Sir,” Bossuet wrote to him; “and not only this sin, but the cause of it; go
even to the root. In your triumphant march amongst the people whom you
constrain to recognize your might, would you consider yourself secure of a
rebel fortress if your enemy still had influence there? We hear of nothing
but the magnificence of your troops, of what they are capable under your
leadership! And as for me, Sir, I think in my secret heart of a war far more
important, of a far more difficult victory which God holds out before you.
What would it avail you to be dreaded and victorious without, when you are
vanquished and captive within?” “Pray God for me,” wrote the bishop at the
same time to Marshal Bellefonds, “pray Him to deliver me from the greatest
burden man can have to bear, or to quench all that is man in me, that I may
act for Him only. Thank God, I have never yet thought, during the whole
course of this business, of my belonging to the world; but that is not all;
what is wanted is to be a St. Ambrose, a true man of God, a man of that
other life, a man in whom everything should speak, with whom all his
words should be oracles of the Holy Spirit, all his conduct celestial; pray,
pray, I do beseech you.”
At the bottom of his soul, and in the innermost sanctuary of his
conscience, Bossuet felt his weakness; he saw the apostolic severance from
the world, the apostolic zeal and fervor required for the holy crusade he had
undertaken. “Your Majesty has given your promise to God and the world,”
he wrote to Louis XIV. in, ignorance of the secret correspondence still kept
up between the king and Madame de Montespan. “I have been to see her,”
added the prelate. “I find her pretty calm; she occupies herself a great deal
in good works. I spoke to her as well as to you the words in which God
commands us to give Him our whole heart; they caused her to shed many
tears; may it please God to fix these truths in the bottom of both your
hearts, and accomplish His work, in order that so many tears, so much
violence, so many strains that you have put upon yourselves, may not be
fruitless.”
The king was on the road back to Versailles; Madame de Montespan was
to return thither also, her duties required her to do so, it was said; Bossuet
heard of it; he did not for a single instant delude himself as to the emptiness

of the king’s promises and of his own hopes. He determined, however, to
visit the king at Luzarches. Louis XIV. gave him no time to speak.
“Do not say a word to me, sir,” said he, not without blushing, “do not say
a word; I have given my orders, they will have to be executed.” Bossuet
held his tongue. “He had tried every thrust; had acted like a pontiff of the
earliest times, with a freedom worthy of the earliest ages and the earliest
bishops of the Church,” says St. Simon. He saw the inutility of his efforts;
henceforth, prudence and courtly behavior put a seal upon his lips. It was
the time of the great king’s omnipotence and highest splendor, the time
when nobody withstood his wishes. The great Mademoiselle had just
attempted to show her independence: tired of not being married, with a
curse on the greatness which kept her a-strand, she had made up her mind to
a love-match. “Guess it in four, guess it in ten, guess it in a hundred,” wrote
Madame de Sevigne to Madame de Coulanges: “you are not near it; well,
then, you must be told. M. de Lauzun is to marry on Sunday at the Louvre,
with the king’s permission, mademoiselle . . . mademoiselle de . ..
mademoiselle, guess the name . . . he is to marry Mademoiselle, my word!
upon my word! my sacred word! Mademoiselle, the great Mademoiselle,
Mademoiselle daughter of the late Monsieur, Mademoiselle grand-daughter
of Henry IV., Mademoiselle d’Eu, Mademoiselle de Dombes, Mademoiselle
de Montpensier, Mademoiselle d’ Orleans, Mademoiselle, cousin-german to
the king, Mademoiselle destined to the throne, Mademoiselle, the only
match in France who would have been worthy of Monsieur!” The
astonishment was somewhat premature; Mademoiselle did not espouse
Lauzun just then, the king broke off the marriage. “I will make you so
great,” he said to Lauzun, “that you shall have no cause to regret what I am
taking from you; meanwhile, I make you duke, and peer, and marshal of
France.” “Sir,” broke in Lauzun, insolently, “you have made so many dukes
that it is no longer an honor to be one, and as for the baton of marshal of
France, your Majesty can give it me when I have earned it by my services.”
He was before long sent to Pignerol, where he passed ten years. There he
met Fouquet, and that mysterious personage called the Iron Mask, whose
name has not yet been discovered to a certainty by means of all the most
ingenious conjectures. It was only by settling all her property on the Duke
of Maine after herself that Mademoiselle purchased Lauzun’s release. The
king had given his posts to the Prince of Marcillac, son of La

Rochefoucauld. He at the same time overwhelmed Marshal Bellefonds with
kindnesses.

“He sent for him into his study,” says Madame de Sevigne, “and said to
him, ‘Marshal, I want to know why you are anxious to leave me. Is it a
devout feeling? Is it a desire for retirement? Is it the pressure of your debts?
If the last, I shall be glad to set it right, and enter into the details of your
affairs.’ The marshal was sensibly touched by this kindness: ‘Sir,’ said he,
‘it is my debts; I am over head and ears. I cannot see the consequences
borne by some of my friends who have assisted me, and whom I cannot
pay.’ ‘Well,’ said the king, ‘they must have security for what is owing to
them. I will give you a hundred thousand francs on your house at Versailles,
and a patent of retainder (brevet de retenue—whereby the emoluments of a
post were not lost to the holder’s estate by his death) for four hundred

thousand francs, which will serve as a policy of assurance if you should die;
that being so, you will stay in my service.’ In truth, one must have a very
hard heart not to obey a master who enters with so much kindness into the
interests of one of his domestics; accordingly, the marshal made no
objection, and here he is in his place again, and loaded with benefits.”
The king entered benevolently into the affairs of a marshal of France; he
paid his debts, and the marshal was his domestic; all the court had come to
that; the duties which brought servants in proximity to the king’s person
were eagerly sought after by the greatest lords. Bontemps, his chief valet,
and Fagon, his physician, as well as his surgeon Marachal, very excellent
men, too, were all-powerful amongst the courtiers. Louis XIV. had
possessed the art of making his slightest favors prized; to hold the
candlestick at bedtime (au petit coucher), to make one in the trips to Marly,
to play in the king’s own game, such was the ambition of the most
distinguished; the possessors of grand historic castles, of fine houses at
Paris, crowded together in attics at Versailles, too happy to obtain a lodging
in the palace. The whole mind of the greatest personages, his favorites at
the head, was set upon devising means of pleasing the king; Madame de
Montespan had pictures painted in miniature of all the towns he had taken
in Holland; they were made into a book which was worth four thousand
pistoles, and of which Racine and Boileau wrote the text; people of tact,
like M. de Langlee, paid court to the master through those whom he loved.
“M. de Langlee has given Madame de Montespan a dress of the most divine
material ever imagined; the fairies did this work in secret, no living soul
had any notion of it; and it seemed good to present it as mysteriously as it
had been fashioned. Madame de Montespan’s dressmaker brought her the
dress she had ordered of him; he had made the body a ridiculous fit; there
was shrieking and scolding as you may suppose. The dressmaker said, all in
a tremble, ‘As time presses, madame, see if this other dress that I have here
might not suit you for lack of anything else.’ ‘Ah! what material! Does it
come from heaven? There is none such on earth.’ The body is tried on; it is
a picture. The king comes in. The dressmaker says, ‘Madame, it is made for
you.’ Everybody sees that it is a piece of gallantry; but on whose part? ‘It is
Langlee,’ says the king; ‘it is Langlee.’ ‘Of course,’ says Madame de
Montespan, ‘none but he could have devised such a device; it is Langlee, it
is Langlee.’ Everybody repeats, ‘it is Langlee;’ the echoes are agreed and

say, ‘it is Langlee;’ and as for me, my child, I tell you, to be in the fashion,
‘it is Langlee.’”

All the style of living at court was in accordance with the magnificence
of the king and his courtiers; Colbert was beside himself at the sums the
queen lavished on play. Madame de Montespan lost and won back four
millions, in one night at bassette; Mdlle. de Fontanges gave away twenty
thousand crowns’ worth of New Year’s gifts; the king had just accomplished
the dauphin’s marriage. “He made immense presents on this occasion; there
is certainly no need to despair,” said Madame de Sevigne, “though one does
not happen to be his valet; it may happen that, whilst paying one’s court,
one will find one’s self underneath what he showers around. One thing is
certain, and that is, that away from him all services go for nothing; it used
to be the contrary.” All the court were of the same opinion as Madame de
Sevigne.
A new power was beginning to appear on the horizon, with such modesty
and backwardness that none could as yet discern it, least of all could the
king. Madame de Montespan had looked out for some one to take care of
and educate her children. She had thought of Madame Scarron; she
considered her clever; she was so herself, “in that unique style which was
peculiar to the Mortemarts,” said the Duke of St. Simon; she was fond of
conversation; Madame Scarron had a reputation of being rather a blue-
stocking; this the king did not like; Madame de Montespan had her way;
Madame Scarron took charge of the children secretly and in an isolated
house. She was attentive, careful, sensible. The king was struck with her
devotion to the children intrusted to her. “She can love,” he said; “it would
be a pleasure to be loved by her.” The confidence of Madame de Montespan

went on increasing. “The person of quality (Madame de Montespan) has no
partnership with the person who has a cold (Madame Scarron), for she
regards her as the confidential person; the lady who is at the head of all (the
queen) does the same; she is, therefore, the soul of this court,” writes
Madame de Sevigne in 1680. There were, however, frequent storms;
Madame de Montespan was jealous and haughty, and she grew uneasy at
the nascent liking she observed in the king for the correct and shrewd
judgment, the equable and firm temper, of his children’s governess. The
favor of which she was the object did not come from Madame de
Montespan. The king had made the Parliament legitimatize the Duke of
Maine, Mdlle. de Nantes, and the Count of Vexin; they were now formally
installed at Versailles. Louis XIV. often chatted with Madame Scarron. She
had bought the estate of Maintenon out of the king’s bounty. He made her
take the title. The recollection of Scarron was displeasing to him. “It is
supposed that I am indebted for this present to Madame de Montespan,” she
wrote to Madame de St. Geran; “I owe it to my little prince. The king was
amusing himself with him one day, and, being pleased with the manner with
which he answered his questions, told him that he was a very sensible little
fellow. ‘I can’t help being,’ said the child, ‘I have by me a lady who is sense
itself.’ ‘Go and tell her,’ replied the king, ‘that you will give her this
evening a hundred thousand francs for your sugar-plums.’ The mother gets
me into trouble with the king, the son makes my peace with him; I am never
for two days together in the same situation, and I do not get accustomed to
this sort of life, I who thought I could make myself used to anything.” She
often spoke of leaving the court. “As I tell you everything honestly,” she
wrote in 1675 to her confessor, Abbe Gobelin, “I will not tell you that it is
to serve God that I should like to leave the place where I am; I believe that I
might work out my salvation here and elsewhere, but I see nothing to forbid
us from thinking of our repose, and withdrawing from a position that vexes
us every moment. I explained myself badly if you understood me to mean
that I am thinking of being a nun; I am too old for a change of condition,
and, according to the property I shall have, I shall look out for securing one
full of tranquillity. In the world, all reaction is towards God; in a convent,
all reaction is towards the world; there is one great reason; that of age
comes next.” She did not, however, leave the court except to take to the
waters the little Duke of Maine, who had become a cripple after a series of
violent convulsions. “Never was anything more agreeable than the surprise

which Madame de Maintenon gave the king,” writes Madame de Sevigne to
her daughter. “He had not expected the Duke of Maine till the next day,
when he saw him come walking into his room, and only holding by the
hand of his governess; he was transported with joy. M. do Louvois on her
arrival went to call upon Madame de Maintenon; she supped at Madame de
Richelieu’s, some kissing her hand, others her gown, and she making fun of
them all, if she is not much changed; but they say that she is.” The king’s
pleasure in conversing with the governess became more marked every day;
Madame de Montespan frequently burst out into bitter complaints. “She
reproaches me with her kindnesses, with her presents, with those of the
king, and has told me that she fed me, and that I am strangling her; you
know what the fact is; it is a strange thing that we cannot live together and
that we cannot separate. I love her, and I cannot persuade myself that she
hates me.” They found themselves alone together in one of the court
carriages. “Let us not be duped by such a thing as this,” said Madame de
Montespan, rudely; “let us talk as if we had no entanglements between us to
arrange; it being understood, of course,” added she, “that we resume our
entanglements when we get back.” “Madame de Maintenon accepted the
proposal,” says Madame de Caylus, who tells the story, “and they kept their
word to the letter.” Madame de Maintenon had taken a turn for preaching
virtue. “The king passed two hours in my closet,” she wrote to Madame de
St. Geran; “he is the most amiable man in his kingdom. I spoke to him of
Father Bourdaloue. He listened to me attentively. Perhaps he is not so far
from thinking of his salvation as the court suppose. He has good sentiments
and frequent reactions towards God.” “The star of Quanto (Madame de
Montespan) is paling,” writes Madame de Sevigne to her daughter; “there
are tears, natural pets, affected gayeties, poutings—in fact, my dear, all is
coming to an end. People look, observe, imagine, believe that there are to
be seen as it were rays of light upon faces which, a month ago, were
thought to be unworthy of comparison with others. If Quanto had hidden
her face with her cap at Easter in the year she returned to Paris, she would
not be in the agitated state in which she now is. The spirit, indeed, was
willing, but great is human weakness; one likes to make the most of a
remnant of beauty. This is an economy which ruins rather than enriches.”
“Madame de Montespan asks advice of me,” said Madame de Maintenon;
“I speak to her of God, and she thinks I have some understanding with the
king; I was present yesterday at a very animated conversation between

them. I wondered at the king’s patience, and at the rage of that vain
creature. It all ended with these terrible words: ‘I have told you already,
madame; I will not be interfered with.’”
Henceforth Madame de Montespan “interfered with” the king. He gave
the new dauphiness Madame de Maintenon as her mistress of the robes. “I
am told,” writes Madame de Sevigne, “that the king’s conversations do
nothing but increase and improve, that they last from six to ten o’clock, that
the daughter-in-law goes occasionally to pay them a shortish visit, that they
are found each in a big chair, and that, when the visit is over, the talk is
resumed. The lady is no longer accosted without awe and respect, and the
ministers pay her the court which the rest do. No friend was ever so careful
and attentive as the king is to her; she makes him acquainted with a
perfectly new line of country—I mean the intercourse of friendship and
conversation, without chicanery and without constraint; he appears to be
charmed with it.”
Discreet and adroit as she was, and artificial without being false,
Madame de Maintenon gloried in bringing back the king and the court to
the ways of goodness. “There is nothing so able as irreproachable conduct,”
she used to say. The king often went to see the queen; the latter heaped
attentions upon Madame de Maintenon. “The king never treated me more
affectionately than he has since she had his ear,” the poor princess would
say. The dauphiness had just had a son. The joy at court was excessive.
“The king let anybody who pleased embrace him,” says the Abbe de Croisy;
“he gave everybody his hand to kiss. Spinola, in the warmth of his zeal, bit
his finger; the king began to exclaim. ‘Sir,’ interrupted the other, ‘I ask your
Majesty’s pardon; but, if I hadn’t bitten you, you would not have noticed
me.’ The lower orders seemed beside themselves, they made bonfires of
everything. The porters and the Swiss burned the poles of the chairs, and
even the floorings and wainscots intended for the great gallery. Bontemps,
in wrath, ran and told the king, who burst out laughing and said, ‘Let them
be; we will have other floorings.’”
The least clear-sighted were beginning to discern the modest beams of a
rising sun. Madame de Montespan, who had a taste for intellectual things,
had not long since recommended Racine and Boileau to the king to write a
history of his reign. They had been appointed historiographers. “When they
had done some interesting piece,” says Louis Racine in his Memoires, “they

used to go and read it to the king at Madame de Montespan’s. Madame de
Maintenon was generally present at the reading. She, according to Boileau’s
account, liked my father better than him, and Madame de Montespan, on
the contrary, liked Boileau better than my father, but they always paid their
court jointly, without any jealousy between them. When Madame de
Montespan would let fall some rather tart expressions, my father and
Boileau, though by no means sharp-sighted, observed that the king, without
answering her, looked with a smile at Madame de Maintenon, who was
seated opposite to him on a stool, and who finally disappeared all at once
from these meetings. They met her in the gallery, and asked her why she did
not come any more to hear their readings. She answered very coldly, ‘I am
no longer admitted to those mysteries.’ As they found a great deal of
cleverness in her, they were mortified and astonished at this. Their
astonishment was very much greater, then, when the king, being obliged to
keep his bed, sent for them with orders to bring what they had newly
written of history, and they saw as they went in Madame de Maintenon
sitting in an arm-chair near the king’s pillow, chatting familiarly with his
Majesty. They were just going to begin their reading, when Madame do
Montespan, who had not been expected, came in, and after a few
compliments to the king, paid such long ones to Madame de Maintenon,
that the king, to stop them, told her to sit down. ‘As it would not be fair,’ he
added, ‘to read without you a work which you yourself ordered.’ From this
day, the two historians paid their court to Madame de Maintenon as far as
they knew how to do so.”
The queen had died on the 30th of July, 1683, piously and gently, as she
had lived. “This is the first sorrow she ever caused me,” said the king, thus
rendering homage in his superb and unconscious egotism, to the patient
virtue of the wife he had put to such cruel trials. Madame de Maintenon was
agitated but resolute. “Madame de Montespan has plunged into the deepest
devoutness,” she wrote, two months after the queen’s death; “it is quite time
she edified us; as for me, I no longer think of retiring.” Her strong common
sense and her far-sighted ambition, far more than her virtue, had secured her
against rocks ahead; henceforth she saw the goal, she was close upon it, she
moved towards it with an even step. The king still looked in upon Madame
de Montespan of an evening on his way to the gaming-table; he only staid
an instant, to pass on to Madame de Maintenon’s; the latter had modestly
refused to become lady in attendance upon the dauphiness. She, however,

accompanied the king on all his expeditions, “sending him away always
afflicted, but, never disheartened.” Madame de Montespan, piqued to see
that the king no longer thought of anybody but Madame de Maintenon,
“said to him one day at Marly,” writes Dangeau, “that she has a favor to ask
of him, which was to let her have the duty of entertaining the second-
carriage people and of amusing the antechamber.” It required more than
seven years of wrath and humiliation to make her resolve upon quitting the
court, in 1691.
The date has never been ascertained exactly of the king’s private
marriage with Madame de Maintenon. It took place, probably, eighteen
months or two years after the queen’s death; the king was forty-seven,
Madame de Maintenon fifty.
“She had great remains of beauty, bright and sprightly eyes, an
imcomparable grace,” says St. Simon, who detested her; “an air of ease, and
yet of restraint and respect; a great deal of cleverness, with a speech that
was sweet, correct, in good terms, and naturally eloquent and brief.”
Madame do La Valliere had held sway over the young and passionate
heart of the prince, Madame de Montespan over the court, Madame de
Maintenon alone established her empire over the man and the king. “Whilst
giving up our heart, we must remain absolute master of our mind,” Louis
XIV. had written, “separate our affections from our resolves as a sovereign,
that she who enchants us may never have liberty to speak to us of our
business or of the people who serve us, and that they be two things
absolutely distinct.” The king had scrupulously applied this maxim; Mdlle.
de La Valliere had never given a thought to business; Madame de
Montespan had sought only to shine, disputing the influence of Colbert
when he would have put a limit upon her ruinous fancies, leaning for
support at the last upon Louvois, in order to counterbalance the growing
power of Madame de Maintenon; the latter alone had any part in affairs, a
smaller part than has frequently been made out, but important, nevertheless,
and sometimes decisive. Ministers went occasionally to do their work in her
presence with the king, who would turn to her when the questions were
embarrassing, and ask, “What does your Solidity think?” The opinions she
gave were generally moderate and discreet. “I did not manage to please in
my conversation about the buildings,” she wrote to Cardinal Noailles, “and
what grieves me is to have caused vexation to no purpose. Another block of

chambers is being built here at a cost of a hundred thousand francs; Marly
will soon be a second Versailles. The people, what will become of them?”
And later on: “Would you think proper, monsignor, to make out a list of
good bishops? You could send it me, so that, on the occasions which are
constantly occurring, I might support their interests, and they might have
the business referred to them in which they ought to have a hand, and for
which they are the proper persons. I am always spoken to when the question
is of them; and if I were better informed, I should be bolder.” “It is said that
you meddle too little with business,” Fenelon wrote to her in 1694; “your
mind is better calculated for it than you suppose. You ought to direct your
whole endeavors to giving the king views tending to peace, and especially
to the relief of the people, to moderation, to equity, to mistrust of harsh and
violent measures, to horror for acts of arbitrary authority, and finally to love
of the Church, and to assiduity in seeking good pastors for it.” Neither
Fenelon nor Madame de Maintenon had seen in the revocation of the edict
of Nantes “an act of arbitrary authority, or a harsh and violent measure.”
She was not inclined towards persecution, but she feared lest her
moderation should be imputed to a remnant of prejudice in favor of her
former religion, “and this it is,” she would say, “which makes me approve
of things quite opposed to my sentiments.” An egotistical and cowardly
prudence, which caused people to attribute to Madame de Maintenon, in the
severities against the Huguenots, a share which she had not voluntarily or
entirely assumed.
Whatever the apparent reserve and modesty with which it was cloaked,
the real power of Madame de Maintenon over the king’s mind peeped out
more and more into broad daylight. She promoted it dexterously by her
extreme anxiety to please him, as well as by her natural and sincere
attachment to the children whom she had brought up, and who had a place
near the heart of Louis XIV. Already the young Duke of Maine had been
sent to the army at the dauphin’s side; the king was about to have him
married [August 29, 1692] to Mdlle. de Charolais; carefully seeking for his
natural children alliances amongst the princes of his blood, he had recently
given Mdlle. de Nantes, daughter of Madame de Montespan, to the duke,
grandson of the great Conde. “For a long time past,” says St. Simon,
“Madame de Maintenon, even more than the king, had been thinking of
marrying Mdlle. de Blois, Madame de Montespan’s second daughter, to the
Duke of Chartres; he was the king’s own and only nephew, and the first

moves towards this marriage were the more difficult in that Monsieur was
immensely attached to all that appertained to his greatness, and Madame
was of a nation which abhorred misalliances, and of a character which gave
no promise of ever making this marriage agreeable to her.” The king
considered himself sure of his brother; he had set his favorites to work, and
employed underhand intrigues. “He sent for the young Duke of Chartres,
paid him attention, told him he wanted to have him settled in life, that the
war which was kindled on all sides put out of his reach the princesses who
might have suited him, that there were no princesses of the blood of his own
age, that he could not better testify his affection towards him than by
offering him his daughter whose two sisters had married princes of the
blood; but that, however eager he might be for this marriage, he did not
want to put any constraint upon him, and would leave him full liberty in the
matter. This language, addressed with the awful majesty so natural to the
king to a prince who was timid, and had not a word to say for himself, put
him at his wits’ end.” He fell back upon the wishes of his father and mother.
“That is very proper in you,” replied the king; “but, as you consent, your
father and mother will make no objection;” and, turning to Monsieur, who
was present, “Is it not so, brother?” he asked. Monsieur had promised; a
messenger was sent for Madame, who cast two furious glances at her
husband and her son, saying that, as they were quite willing, she had
nothing to say, made a curt obeisance, and went her way home. Thither the
court thronged next day; the marriage was announced. “Madame was
walking in the gallery with her favorite, Mdlle. de Chateau-Thiers, taking
long steps, handkerchief in hand, weeping unrestrainedly, speaking
somewhat loud, gesticulating and making a good picture of Ceres after the
rape of her daughter Proserpine, seeking her in a frenzy, and demanding her
back from Jupiter. Everybody saluted, and stood aside out of respect.
Monsieur had taken refuge in lansquenet; never was anything so
shamefaced as his look or so disconcerted as his whole appearance, and this
first condition lasted more than a month with him. The Duke of Chartres
came into the gallery, going up to his mother, as he did every day, to kiss
her hand. At that moment, Madame gave him a box of the ear so loud that it
was heard some paces off, and given as it was before the whole court,
covered the poor prince with confusion, and overwhelmed the countless
spectators with prodigious astonishment.” That did not prevent or hamper
the marriage, which took place with great pomp at Versailles on the 18th of

February, 1692. The king was, and continued to the last, the absolute and
dread master of all his family, to its remotest branches.
He lost through this obedience a great deal that is charming and sweet in
daily intercourse. For him and for Madame de Maintenon the great and
inexhaustible attraction of the Duchess of Burgundy was her gayety and
unconstrained ease, tempered by the most delicate respect, which this
young princess, on coming as quite a child to France from the court of
Savoy, had tact enough to introduce, and always maintain, amidst the most
intimate familiarity. “In public, demure, respectful with the king, and on
terms of timid propriety with Madame de Maintenon, whom she never
called anything but aunt, thus prettily blending rank and affection. In
private, chattering, frisking, fluttering around them, at one time perched on
the arm of one or the other’s chair, at another playfully sitting on their knee,
she would throw herself upon their necks, embrace them, kiss them, fondle
them, pull them to pieces, chuck them under the chin, tease them, rummage
their tables, their papers, their letters, reading them sometimes against their
will, according as she saw that they were in the humor to laugh at it, and
occasionally speaking thereon. Admitted to everything, even at the
reception of couriers bringing the most important news, going into the king
at any hour, even at the time the council was sitting, useful and also fatal to
ministers themselves, but always inclined to help, to excuse, to benefit,
unless she were violently set against anybody. The king could not do
without her; when, rarely, she was absent from his supper in public, it was
plainly shown by a cloud of more than usual gravity and taciturnity over the
king’s whole person; and so, when it happened that some ball in winter or
some party in summer made her break into the night, she arranged matters
so well that she was there to kiss the king the moment he was awake, and to
amuse him with an account of the affair.” [Memoires de St. Simon, t. x. p.
186.]

The dauphiness had died in 1690; the Duchess of Burgundy was,
therefore, almost from childhood queen of the court, and before long the
idol of the courtiers; it was around her that pleasures sprang up; it was for
her that the king gave the entertainments to which he had habituated
Versailles, not that for her sake or to take care of her health he would ever
consent to modify his habits or make the least change in his plans. “Thank
God, it is over!” he exclaimed one day, after an accident to the princess; “I
shall no longer be thwarted in my trips, and in all I desire to do, by the
representations of physicians. I shall come and go as I fancy; and I shall be
left in peace.” Even in his court, and amongst his most devoted servants,
this monstrous egotism astounded and scandalized everybody. “A silence in
which you might have heard an ant move succeeded this sally,” says St.
Simon, who relates the scene; “we looked down; we hardly dared draw
breath. Everybody stood aghast. To the very builders-men and gardeners

everybody was motionless. This silence lasted more than a quarter of an
hour. The king broke it, as he leaned against a balustrade of the great basin,
to speak about a carp. Nobody made any answer. He afterwards addressed
his remarks about these carp to some builder’s-men who did not keep up the
conversation in the regular way; it was but a question of carp with them.
Everything was at a low ebb, and the king went away some little time after.
As soon as we dared look at one another out of his sight, our eyes meeting
told all.” There was no venturing beyond looks. Fenelon had said, with
severe charity, “God will have compassion upon a prince beset from his
youth up by flatterers.”
Flattery ran a risk of becoming hypocrisy. On returning to a regular life,
the king was for imposing the same upon his whole court; the instinct of
order and regularity, smothered for a while in the heyday of passion, had
resumed all its sway over the naturally proper and steady mind of Louis
XIV. His dignity and his authority were equally involved in the cause of
propriety and regularity at his court; he imposed this yoke as well as all the
others; there appeared to be entire obedience; only some princes or
princesses escaped it sometimes, getting about them a few free-thinkers or
boon-companions; good, honest folks showed ingenuous joy; the virtuous
and far-sighted were secretly uneasy at the falsehood, and deplored the
pressure put on so many consciences and so many lives. The king was
sincere in his repentance for the past, many persons in his court were as
sincere as he; others, who were not, affected, in order to please him, the
externals of austerity; absolute power oppressed all spirits, extorting from
them that hypocritical complaisance which is liable to engender; corruption
was already brooding beneath appearances of piety; the reign of Louis XV.
was to see its deplorable fruits displayed with a haste and a scandal which
are to be explained only by the oppression exercised in the last years of
King Louis XIV.
Madame de Maintenon was like the genius of this reaction towards
regularity, propriety, order; all the responsibility for it had been thrown
upon her; the good she did has disappeared beneath the evil she allowed or
encouraged; the regard lavished upon her by the king has caused illusions
as to the discreet care she was continually taking to please him. She was
faithful to her friends, so long as they were in favor with the king; if they
had the misfortune to displease him, she, at the very least, gave up seeing
them; without courage or hardihood to withstand the caprices and wishes of

Louis XIV., she had gained and preserved her empire by dint of dexterity
and far-sighted suppleness beneath the externals of dignity.
She never forgot her origin. “I am not a grandee,” she would say; “I am a
mushroom.” Her life, entirely devoted to the king, had become a veritable
slavery; she said as much to Mdlle. d’Aumale at St. Cyr. “I have to take for
my prayers and for mass the time when everybody else is still sleeping. For,
when once they begin coming into my room, at half past seven, I haven’t
another moment to myself. They come filing in, and nobody goes out
without being relieved by somebody higher. At last comes the king; then, of
course, they all have to go out; he remains with me up to mass. I am, still in
my night-cap. The king comes back after mass; then the Duchess of
Burgundy with her ladies. They remain whilst I dine. I have to keep up the
conversation, which flags every moment, and to manage so as to harmonize
minds and reconcile hearts which are as far as possible asunder. The circle
is all round me, and I cannot ask for anything to drink; I sometimes say to
them (aside), ‘It is a great honor, but really I should prefer a footman.’ At
last they all go away to dinner. I should be free during that time, if
Monseigneur did not generally choose it for coming to see me, for he often
dines earlier in order to go hunting. He is very difficult to entertain, having
very little to say, and finding himself a bore, and running away from
himself continually; so I have to talk for two. Immediately after the king
has dined, he comes into my room with all the royal family, princes and
princesses; then I must be prepared for the gayest of conversation, and wear
a smiling face amidst so much distressing news. When this company
disperses, some lady has always something particular to say to me; the
Duchess of Burgundy also wants to have a chat. The king returns from
hunting. He comes to me. The door is shut, and nobody else is admitted.
Then I have to share his secret troubles, which are no small number. Arrives
a minister; and the king sets himself to work. If I am not wanted at this
consultation, which seldom happens, I withdraw to some farther distance
and write or pray. I sup, whilst the king is still at work. I am restless,
whether he is alone or not. The king says to me, ‘You are tired, Madame; go
to bed.’ My women come. But I feel that they interfere with the king, who
would chat with me, and does not like to chat before them; or, perhaps,
there are some ministers still there, whom he is afraid they may overhear.
Wherefore I make haste to undress, so much so that I often feel quite ill
from it. At last I am in bed. The king comes up and remains by my pillow

until he goes to supper. But a quarter of an hour before supper, the dauphin
and the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy come in to me again. At ten,
everybody goes out. At last I am alone, but very often the fatigues of the
day prevent me from sleeping.”
She was at that time seventy. She was often ailing; but the Duchess of
Burgundy was still very young, and the burden of the most private matters
of court diplomacy fell entirely upon Madame de Maintenon. “The Princess
des Ursins is about to return to Spain,” she said; “if I do not take her in
hand, if I do not repair by my attentions the coldness of the Duchess of
Burgundy, the indifference of the king and the curtness of the other princes,
she will go away displeased with our court, and it is expedient that she
should praise it, and speak well of it in Spain.”
It was, in fact, through Madame de Maintenon and her correspondence
with the Princess des Ursins, that the private business between the two
courts of France and Spain was often carried on. At Madrid, far more than
at Versailles, the influence of women was all-powerful. The queen ruled her
husband, who was honest and courageous, but without wit or daring; and
the Princess des Ursins ruled the queen, as intelligent and as amiable as her
sister the Duchess of Burgundy, but more ambitious and more haughty.
Louis XIV. had several times conceived some misgiving of the camarera
major’s influence over his grandson; she had been disgraced, and then
recalled; she had finally established her sway by her fidelity, ability,
dexterity, and indomitable courage. She served France habitually, Spain and
her own influence in Spain always; she had been charming, with an air of
nobility, grace, elegance, and majesty all together, and accustomed to the
highest society and the most delicate intrigues, during her sojourn at Rome
and Madrid; she was full of foresight and calculation, but impassioned,
ambitious, implacable, pushing to extremes her amity as well as her hatred,
faithful to her master and mistress in their most cruel trials, and then
hampering and retarding peace for the sake of securing for herself a
principality in the Low Countries. Without having risen from the ranks, like
Madame de Maintenon, she had reached a less high and less safe elevation;
she had been more absolutely and more daringly supreme during the time of
her power, and at last she fell with the rudest shock, without any support
from Madame de Maintenon. The pretensions of Madame des Ursins during
the negotiations had offended France; “this was the stone of stumbling
between the two supreme directresses,” says St. Simon; after this attempt at

sovereignty, there was no longer the same accord between Madame de
Maintenon and Madame des Ursins, but this latter had reached in Spain a
point at which she more easily supposed that she could dispense with it. The
Queen of Spain had died at the age of twenty-six, in 1714; did the princess
for a moment conceive the hope of marrying Philip V. in spite of the
disproportion in rank and age? Nobody knows; she had already been
reigning as sovereign mistress for some months, when she received from
the king this stunning command: “Look me out a wife.” She obeyed; she
looked out. Alberoni, an Italian priest, brought into Spain by the Duke of
Vendome, drew her attention to the Princess of Parma, Elizabeth Farnese.
The principality was small, the princess young; Alberoni laid stress upon
her sweetness and modesty. “Nothing will be more easy,” he said, “than for
you to fashion her to Spanish gravity, by keeping her retired; in the capacity
of her camarera major, intrusted with her education, you will easily be able
to acquire complete sway over her mind.” The Princess des Ursins believed
him, and settled the marriage. “Cardonne has surrendered at last, Madame,”
she wrote on the 20th of September, 1714, to Madame de Maintenon; “there
is nothing left in Catalonia that is not reduced. The new queen, at her
coming into this kingdom, is very fortunate to find no more war there. She
whom we have lost would have been beside herself with delight at enjoying
peace after having experienced such cruel sufferings of all kinds. The
longer I live, the more I see that we are never so near a reverse of Fortune
as when she is favorable, or so near receiving favors as when she is
maltreating us. For that reason, Madame, if one were wise, one would take
her inconstancy graciously.”
The time had come for Madame des Ursins to make definitive trial of
Fortune’s inconstancy. She had gone to meet the new queen, in full dress
and with her ornaments; Elizabeth received her coldly; they were left alone;
the queen reproached the princess with negligence in her costume Madame
des Ursins, strangely surprised, would have apologized, “but, all at once
there was the queen at offensive words, and screaming, summoning,
demanding officers, guards, and imperiously ordering Madame des Ursins
out of her presence. She would have spoken; but the queen, with redoubled
rage and threats, began to scream out for the removal of this mad woman
from her presence and her apartments; she had her put out by the shoulders,
and on the instant into a carriage with one of her women, to be taken at
once to St. Jean-de-Luz. It was seven o’clock at night, the day but one

before Christmas, the ground all covered with ice and snow; Madame des
Ursins had no time to change gown or head-dress, to take any measures
against the cold, to get any money, or any anything else at all.” Thus she
was conducted almost without a mouthful of food to the frontier of France.
She hoped for aid from the king of Spain; but none came; it got known that
the queen had been abetted in everything and beforehand by Philip V. On
arriving at St. Jean-de-Luz, she wrote to the king and to Madame de
Maintenon: “Can you possibly conceive, Madame, the situation in which I
find myself? Treated in the face of all Europe, with more contempt by the
Queen of Spain than if I were the lowest of wretches? They want to
persuade me that the king acted in concert with a princess who had me
treated with such cruelty. I shall await his orders at St. Jean-de-Luz, where I
am in a small house close by the sea. I see it often stormy and sometimes
calm; a picture of courts. I shall have no difficulty in agreeing with you that
it is of no use looking for stability but in God. Certainly it cannot be found
in the human heart, for who was ever more sure than I was of the heart of
the King of Spain?”
The king did not reply at all, and Madame de Maintenon but coldly,
begging the princess, however, to go to Versailles. There she passed but a
short time, and received notice to leave the kingdom. With great difficulty
she obtained an asylum at Rome, where she lived seven years longer,
preserving all her health, strength, mind, and easy grace until she died, in
1722, at more than eighty-four years of age, in obscurity and sadness,
notwithstanding her opulence, but avenged of her Spanish foes, Cardinals
della Giudice and Alberoni, whom she met again at Rome, disgraced and
fugitive like herself. “I do not know where I may die,” she wrote to
Madame de Maintenon, at that time in retirement at St. Cyr. Both had
survived their power; the Princess des Ursins had not long since wanted to
secure for herself a dominion; Madame de Maintenon, more far-sighted and
more modest, had aspired to no more than repose in the convent which she
had founded and endowed. Discreet in her retirement as well as in her life,
she had not left to chance the selection of a place where she might die.

CHAPTER L.

LOUIS XIV. AND DEATH. 1711-1715.

“One has no more luck at our age,” Louis XIV. had said to his old friend
Marshal Villars, returning from his most disastrous campaign. It was a bitter
reflection upon himself which had put these words into the king’s mouth.
After the most brilliant, the most continually and invariably triumphant of
reigns, he began to see Fortune slipping away from him, and the grievous
consequences of his errors successively overwhelming the state. “God is
punishing me; I have richly deserved it,” he said to Marshal Villars, who
was on the point of setting out for the battle of Denain. The aged king,
dispirited and beaten, could not set down to men his misfortunes and his
reverses; the hand of God Himself was raised against his house. Death was
knocking double knocks all round him. The grand-dauphin had for some
days past been ill of small-pox. The king had gone to be with him at
Meudon, forbidding the court to come near the castle. The small court of
Monseigneur were huddled together in the lofts. The king was amused with
delusive hopes; his chief physician, Fagon, would answer for the invalid.
The king continued to hold his councils as usual, and the deputation of
market-women (dames de la Halle), come from Paris to have news of
Monseigneur, went away, declaring that they would go and sing a Te Deum,
as he was nearly well. “It is not time yet, my good women,” said
Monseigneur, who had given them a reception. That very evening he was
dead, without there having been time to send for his confessor in ordinary.
“The parish priest of Meudon, who used to look in every evening before he
went home, had found all the doors open, the valets distracted, Fagon
heaping remedy upon remedy without waiting for them to take effect. He
entered the room, and hurrying to Monseigneur’s bedside, took his hand
and spoke to him of God. The poor prince was fully conscious, but almost
speechless. He repeated distinctly a few words, others inarticulately, smote
his breast, pressed the priest’s hand, appeared to have the most excellent

sentiments, and received absolution with an air of contrition and
wistfulness.” [Memoires de St. Simon, ix.] Meanwhile word had been sent
to the king, who arrived quite distracted. The Princess of Conti, his
daughter, who was deeply attached to Monseigneur, repulsed him gently:
“You must think only of yourself now, Sir,” she said. The king let himself
sink down upon a sofa, asking news of all that came out of the room,
without any one’s daring to give him an answer. Madame de Maintenon,
who had hurried to the king, and was agitated without being affected, tried
to get him away; she did not succeed, however, until Monseigneur had
breathed his last. He passed along to his carriage between two rows of
officers and valets, all kneeling, and conjuring him to have pity upon them
who had lost all and were like to starve.

The excitement and confusion at Versailles were tremendous. From the
moment that small-pox was declared, the princes had not been admitted to
Meudon. The Duchess of Burgundy alone had occasionally seen the king.
All were living in confident expectation of a speedy convalescence; the
news of the death came upon them like a thunderclap. All the courtiers
thronged together at once, the women half dressed, the men anxious and
concerned, some to conceal their extreme sorrow, others their joy, according
as they were mixed up in the different cabals of the court. “It was all,
however, nothing but a transparent veil,” says St. Simon, “which did not
prevent good eyes from observing and discerning all the features. The two
princes and the two princesses, seated beside them, taking care of them,
were most exposed to view. The Duke of Burgundy wept, from feeling and
in good faith, with an air of gentleness, tears of nature, of piety, and of
patience. The Duke of Berry, in quite as good faith, shed abundance, but

tears, so to speak, of blood, so great appeared to be their bitterness; he gave
forth not sobs, but shrieks, howls. The Duchess of Berry (daughter of the
Duke of Orleans) was beside herself. The bitterest despair was depicted on
her face. She saw her sister-in-law, who was so hateful to her, all at once
raised to that title, that rank of dauphiness, which were about to place so
great a distance between them. Her frenzy of grief was not from affection,
but from interest; she would wrench herself from it to sustain her husband,
to embrace him, to console him, then she would become absorbed in herself
again with a torrent of tears, which helped her to stifle her shrieks. The
Duke of Orleans wept in his own corner, actually sobbing, a thing which,
had I not seen it, I should never have believed,” adds St. Simon, who
detested Monseigneur, and had as great a dread of his reigning as the Duke
of Orleans had. “Madame, re-dressed in full dress, in the middle of the
night, arrived regularly howling, not quite knowing why either one or the
other; inundating them all with her tears as she embraced them, and making
the castle resound with a renewal of shrieks, when the king’s carriages were
announced, on his return to Marly.” The Duchess of Burgundy was awaiting
him on the road. She stepped down and went to the carriage window. “What
are you about, Madame?” exclaimed Madame de Maintenon; “do not come
near us, we are infectious.” The king did not embrace her, and she went
back to the palace, but only to be at Marly next morning before the king
was awake.
The king’s tears were as short as they had been abundant. He lost a son
who was fifty years old, the most submissive and most respectful creature
in the world, ever in awe of him and obedient to him, gentle and good-
natured, a proper man amid all his indolence and stupidity, brave and even
brilliant at head of an army. In 1688, in front of Philipsburg, the soldiers
had given him the name of “Louis the Bold.” He was full of spirits and
always ready, “revelling in the trenches,” says Vauban. The Duke of
Montausier, his boyhood’s strict governor, had written to him,
“Monseigneur, I do not make you my compliments on the capture of
Philipsburg; you had a fine army, shells, cannon, and Vauban. I do not make
them to you either on your bravery; it is an hereditary virtue in your house;
but I congratulate you on being open-handed, humane, generous, and
appreciative of the services of those who do well; that is what I make you
my compliments upon.” “Did not I tell you so?” proudly exclaimed the
Chevalier de Grignan, formerly attached (as menin) to the person of

Monseigneur, on hearing his master’s exploits lauded; “for my part, I am
not surprised.” Racine had exaggerated the virtues of Monseigneur in the
charming verses of the prologue of Esther:

“Thou givest him a son, an ever ready aid,
Apt or to woo or fight, obey or be obeyed;
A son who, like his sire, drags victory in his train,
Yet boasts but one desire, that father’s heart to gain;
A son, who to his will submits with loving air,
Who brings upon his foes perpetual despair.
As the swift spirit flies, stern Equity’s envoy,
So, when the king says, ‘Go,’ down rusheth he in joy,
With vengeful thunderbolt red ruin doth complete,
Then tranquilly returns to lay it at his feet.”

In 1690 and in 1691 he had gained distinction as well as in 1688. “The
dauphin has begun as others would think it an honor to leave off,” the
Prince of Orange had said, “and, for my part, I should consider that I had
worthily capped anything great I may have done in war if, under similar
circumstances, I had made so fine a march.” Whether it were owing to
indolence or court cabal, Monseigneur had no more commands; he had no
taste for politics, and always sat in silence at the council, to which the king
had formally admitted him at thirty years of age, “instructing him,” says the
Marquis of Sourches, “with so much vigor and affection, that Monseigneur
could not help falling at his feet to testify his respect and gratitude.” Twice,
at grave conjunctures, the grand-dauphin allowed his voice to be heard; in
1685, to offer a timid opposition to the Edict of Nantes, and, in 1700, to
urge very vigorously the acceptance of the King of Spain’s will. “I should
be enchanted,” he cried, as if with a prophetic instinct of his own destiny,
“to be able to say all my life, ‘The king my father, and the king my SON.’”
Heavy in body as well as mind, living on terms of familiarity with a petty
court, probably married to Mdlle. Choin, who had been for a long time
installed in his establishment at Meudon, Monseigneur, often embarrassed
and made uncomfortable by the austere virtue of the Duke of Burgundy, and
finding more attraction in the Duke of Berry’s frank geniality, had
surrendered himself, without intending it, to the plots which were woven
about him. “His eldest son behaved to him rather as a courtier than as a son,
gliding over the coldness shown him with a respect and a gentleness which,
together, would have won over any father less a victim to intrigue. The
Duchess of Burgundy, in spite of her address and her winning grace, shared

her husband’s disfavor.” The Duchess of Berry had counted upon this to
establish her sway in a reign which the king’s great age seemed to render
imminent; already, it was said, the chief amusement at Monseigneur’s was
to examine engravings of the coronation ceremony, when death carried him
off suddenly on the 14th of April, 1711, to the consternation of the lower
orders, who loved him because of his reputation for geniality. The severity
of the new dauphin caused some little dread.
“Here is a prince who will succeed me before long,” said the king on
presenting his grandson to the assembly of the clergy; “by his virtue and
piety he will render the church still more flourishing, and the kingdom more
happy.” That was the hope of all good men. Fenelon, in his exile in
Cambrai, and the Dukes of Beauvilliers and Chevreuse, at court, began to
feel themselves all at once transported to the heights with the prince whom
they had educated, and who had constantly remained faithful to them. The
delicate foresight and prudent sagacity of Fenelon had a long while ago
sought to prepare his pupil for the part which he was about to play. It was
piety alone that had been able to triumph over the dangerous tendencies of a
violent and impassioned temperament. Fenelon, who had felt this, saw also
the danger of devoutness carried too far. “Religion does not consist in a
scrupulous observance of petty formalities,” he wrote to the Duke of
Burgundy; “it consists, for everybody, in the virtues proper to one’s
condition. A great prince ought not to serve God in the same way as a
hermit or a simple individual.”
“The prince thinks too much and acts too little,” he said to the Duke of
Chevreuse; “his most solid occupations are confined to vague applications
of his mind and barren resolutions; he must see society, study it, mix in it,
without becoming a slave to it, learn to express himself forcibly, and
acquire a gentle authority. If he do not feel the need of possessing firmness
and nerve, he will not make any real progress; it is time for him to be a
man. The life of the region in which he lives is a life of effeminacy,
indolence, timidity, and amusement. He will never be so true a servant to
the king and to Monseigneur as when he makes them see that they have in
him a man matured, full of application, firm, impressed with their true
interests, and fitted to aid them by the wisdom of his counsels and the vigor
of his conduct. Let him be more and more little in the hands of God, but let
him become great in the eyes of men; it is his duty to make virtue,
combined with authority, loved, feared, and respected.”

Court-perfidy dogged the Duke of Burgundy to the very head of the army
over which the king had set him; Fenelon, always correctly informed, had
often warned him of it. The duke wrote to him, in 1708, on the occasion of
his dissensions with Vendome: “It is true that I have experienced a trial
within the last fortnight, and I am far from having taken it as I ought,
allowing myself to give way to an oppression of the heart caused by the
blackenings, the contradictions, and the pains of irresolution, and the fear of
doing something untoward in a matter of extreme importance to the State.
As for what you say to me about my indecision, it is true that I myself
reproach myself for it, and I pray God every day to give me, together with
wisdom and prudence, strength and courage to carry out what I believe to
be my duty.” He had no more commands, in spite of his entreaties to obtain,
in 1709, permission to march against the enemy. “If money is short, I will
go without any train,” he said; “I will live like a simple officer; I will eat, if
need be, the bread of a common soldier, and none will complain of lacking
superfluities when I have scarcely necessaries.” It was at the very time
when the Archbishop of Cambrai was urgent for peace to be made at any
price. “The people no longer live like human beings,” he said, in a
memorial sent to the Duke of Beauvilliers; “there is no counting any longer
on their patience, they are reduced to such outrageous trials. As they have
nothing more to hope, they have nothing more to fear. The king has no right
to risk France in order to save Spain; he received his kingdom from God,
not that he should expose it to invasion by the enemy, as if it were a thing
with which he can do anything he pleases, but that he should rule it as a
father, and transmit it as a precious heirloom to his posterity.” He demanded
at the same time the convocation of the assembly of notables.
It was this kingdom, harassed on all sides by its enemies, bleeding,
exhausted, but stronger, nevertheless, and more bravely faithful than was
made out by Fenelon, that the new dauphin found himself suddenly called
upon to govern by the death of Monseigneur, and by the unexpected
confidence testified in him before long by the king. “The prince should try
more than ever to appear open, winning, accessible, and sociable,” wrote
Fenelon; “he must undeceive the public about the scruples imputed to him;
keep his strictness to himself, and not set the court apprehending a severe
reform of which society is not capable, and which would have to be
introduced imperceptibly, even if it were possible. He cannot be too careful
to please the king, avoid giving him the slightest umbrage, make him feel a

dependence founded on confidence and affection, relieve him in his work,
and speak to him with a gentle and respectful force which will grow by
little and little. He should say no more than can be borne; it requires to have
the heart prepared for the utterance of painful truths which are not wont to
be heard. For the rest, no puerilities or pettinesses in the practice of
devotion; government is learned better from studying men than from
studying books.”
The young dauphin was wise enough to profit by these sage and able
counsels. “Seconded to his heart’s content by his adroit young wife, herself
in complete possession of the king’s private ear and of the heart of Madame
de Maintenon, he redoubled his attentions to the latter, who, in her transport
at finding a dauphin on whom she might rely securely instead of one who
did not like her, put herself in his hands, and, by that very act, put the king
in his hands. The first fortnight made perceptible to all at Marly this
extraordinary change in the king, who was so reserved towards his
legitimate children, so very much the king with them. Breathing more freely
after so great a step had been made, the dauphin showed a bold front to
society, which he dreaded during the lifetime of Monseigneur, because,
great as he was, he was often the victim of its best received jests. The king
having come round to him; the insolent cabal having been dispersed by the
death of a father, almost an enemy, whose place he took; society in a state
of respect, attention, alacrity; the most prominent personages with an air of
slavishness; the gay and frivolous, no insignificant portion of a large court,
at his feet through his wife,—it was observed that this timid, shy, self-
concentrated prince, this precise (piece of) virtue, this (bit of) misplaced
learning, this gawky man, a stranger in his own house, constrained in
everything,—it was observed, I say, that he was showing himself by
degrees, unfolding himself little by little, presenting himself to society in
moderation, and that he was unembarrassed, majestic, gay, and agreeable in
it. A style of conversation, easy but instructive, and happily and aptly
directed, charmed the sensible courtier and made the rest wonder. There
was all at once an opening of eyes, and ears, and hearts. There was a taste
of the consolation, which was so necessary and so longed for, of seeing
one’s future master so well fitted to be from his capacity and from the use
that he showed he could make of it.”
The king had ordered ministers to go and do their work at the prince’s.
The latter conversed modestly and discreetly with the men he thought

capable of enlightening him; the Duke of St. Simon had this honor, which
he owed to the friendship of the Duke of Beauvilliers, and of which he
showed himself sensible in his Memoires. Fenelon was still at Cambrai,
“which all at once turned out to be the only road from all the different parts
of Flanders. The archbishop had such and so eager a court there, that for all
his delight he was pained by it, from apprehension of the noise it would
make, and the bad effect he feared it might have on the king’s mind.” He,
however, kept writing to the dauphin, sending him plans of government
prepared long before; some wise, bold, liberal, worthy of a mind that was
broad and without prejudices; others chimerical and impossible of
application. The prince examined them with care. “He had comprehended
what it is to leave God for God’s sake, and had set about applying himself
almost entirely to things which might make him acquainted with
government, having a sort of foretaste already of reigning, and being more
and more the hope of the nation, which was at last beginning to appreciate
him.”
God had in former times given France a St. Louis. He did not deem her
worthy of possessing such an ornament a second time. The comfort and
hope which were just appearing in the midst of so many troubles vanished
suddenly like lightning; the dauphiness fell ill on the 5th of February; she
had a burning fever, and suffered from violent pains in the head; it was
believed to be scarlet-fever (rougeole), with whispers, at the same time, of
ugly symptoms; the malady went on increasing; the dauphin was attacked in
his turn; sacraments were mentioned; the princess, taken by surprise,
hesitated without daring to speak. Her Jesuit confessor, Father La Rue,
himself proposed to go and fetch another priest. A Recollet (Raptionist) was
brought; when he arrived she was dying. A few hours later she expired, at
the age of twenty-six, on the 12th of February, 1712. “With her there was a
total eclipse of joys, pleasures, amusements even, and every sort of grace;
darkness covered the whole face of the court; she was the soul of it all, she
filled it all, she pervaded all the interior of it.” The king loved her as much
as he was capable of loving; she amused him and charmed him in the
sombre moments of his life; he, like the dauphin, had always been ignorant
of the giddiness of which she had been guilty; Madame de Maintenon, who
knew of them, and who held them as a rod over her, was only concerned to
keep them secret; all the court, with the exception of a few perfidious
intriguers, made common cause to serve her and please her. “Regularly

ugly, pendent cheeks, forehead too prominent, a nose that said nothing; of
eyes the most speaking and most beautiful in the world; a carriage of the
head gallant, majestic, graceful, and a look the same; smile the most
expressive, waist long, rounded, slight, supple; the gait of a goddess on the
clouds; her youthful, vivacious, energetic gayety, carried all before it, and
her nymph-like agility wafted her everywhere, like a whirlwind that fills
many places at once, and gives to them movement and life. If the court
existed after her it was but to languish away.” [Memoires de St. Simon, xi.]
There was only one blow more fatal for death to deal; and there was not
long to wait for it.
“I have prayed, and I will pray,” writes Fenelon. “God knows whether the
prince is for one instant forgotten. I fancy I see him in the state in which St.
Augustin depicts himself: ‘My heart is obscured by grief. All that I see
reflects for me but the image of death. All that was sweet to me, when I
could share it with her whom I loved, becomes a torment to me since I lost
her. My eyes seek for her everywhere and find her nowhere. When she was
alive, wherever I might be without her, everything said to me, You are
going to see her. Nothing says so now. I find no solace but in my tears. I
cannot bear the weight of my wounded and bleeding heart, and yet I know
not where to rest it. I am wretched; for so it is when the heart is set on the
love of things that pass away.’” “The days of this affliction were soon
shortened,” says St. Simon; “from the first moment I saw him, I was scared
at his fixed, haggard look, with a something of ferocity, at the change in his
countenance and the livid marks I noticed upon it. He was waiting at Marly
for the king to awake; they came to tell him he could go in; he turned
without speaking a word, without replying to his gentlemen (menins) who
pressed him to go; I went up to him, taking the liberty of giving him a
gentle push; he gave me a look, that pierced right to the heart, and went
away. I never looked on him again. Please God in His mercy I may look on
him forever there where his goodness, no doubt, has placed him!”
It was a desperate but a short struggle. Disease and grief were victorious
over the most sublime courage. “It was the spectacle of a man beside
himself, who was forcing himself to keep the surface smooth, and who
succumbed in the attempt.” The dauphin took to his bed on the 14th of
February; he believed himself to be poisoned, and said, from the first, that
he should never recover. His piety alone, through the most prodigious
efforts, still kept up; he spoke no more, save to God, continually lifting up

his soul to him in fervent aspirations. “What tender, but tranquil views!
What lively motions towards thanksgiving for being preserved from the
sceptre and the account that must be rendered thereof! What submission,
and how complete! What ardent love of God! What a magnificent idea of
infinite mercy! What pious and humble awe! What invincible patience!
What sweetness! What constant kindness towards all that approached him!
What pure charity which urged him forward to God! France at length
succumbed beneath this last chastisement; God gave her a glimpse of a
prince whom she did not deserve. Earth was not worthy of him; he was
already ripe for a blessed eternity!”
“For some time past I have feared that a fatality hung over the dauphin,”
Fenelon had written at the first news of his illness; “I have at the bottom of
my heart a lurking apprehension that God is not yet appeased towards
France. For a long while He has been striking, as the prophet says, and His
anger is not yet worn out. God has taken from us all our hope for the
Church and for the State.”
Fenelon and his friends had expected too much and hoped for too much;
they relied upon the dauphin to accomplish a work above human strength;
he might have checked the evil, retarded for a while the march of events,
but France carried simultaneously in her womb germs of decay and hopes
of progress, both as yet concealed and confused, but too potent and too
intimately connected with the very sources of her history and her existence
for the hand of the most virtuous and most capable of princes to have the
power of plucking them out or keeping them down.
There was universal and sincere mourning in France and in Europe. The
death of the little Duke of Brittany, which took place a few days after that
of his parents, completed the consternation into which the court was
thrown. The most sinister rumors circulated darkly; a base intrigue caused
the Duke of Orleans to be accused; people called to mind his taste for
chemistry and even magic, his flagrant impiety, his scandalous debauchery;
beside himself with grief and anger, he demanded of the king to be sent to
the Bastille; the king refused curtly, coldly, not unmoved in his secret heart
by the perfidious insinuations which made their way even to him, but too
just and too sensible to entertain a hateful lie, which, nevertheless, lay
heavy on the Duke of Orleans to the end of his days.

Darkly, but to more effect, the same rumors were renewed before long.
The Duke of Berry died at the age of twenty-seven on the 4th of May, 1714,
of a disease which presented the same features as the scarlet fever (rougeole
vourpree) to which his brother and sister-in-law had succumbed. The king
was old and sad; the state of his kingdom preyed upon his mind; he was
surrounded by influences hostile to his nephew, whom he himself called “a
vaunter of crimes.” A child who was not five years old remained sole heir to
the throne. Madame de Maintenon, as sad as the king, “naturally
mistrustful, addicted to jealousies, susceptibilities, suspicions, aversions,
spites, and woman’s wiles” [Lettres de Fenelon au duc de Chevreuse],
being, moreover, sincerely attached to the king’s natural children, was
constantly active on their behalf. On the 19th of July, 1714, the king
announced to the premier president and the attorney-general of the

Parliament of Paris that it was his pleasure to grant to the Duke of Maine
and to the Count of Toulouse, for themselves and their descendants, the
rank of princes of the blood, in its full extent, and that he desired that the
deeds should be enregistered in the Parliament. Soon after, still under the
same influence, he made a will which was kept a profound secret, and
which he sent to be deposited in the strong-room (greffe) of the Parliament,
committing the guardianship of the future king to the Duke of Maine, and
placing him, as well his brother, on the council of regency, with close
restrictions as to the Duke of Orleans, who would he naturally called to the
government of the kingdom during the minority. The will was darkly talked
about; the effect of the elevation of bastards to the rank of princes of the
blood had been terrible. “There was no longer any son of France; the
Spanish branch had renounced; the Duke of Orleans had been carefully
placed in such a position as not to dare say a word or show the least
dissatisfaction; his only son was a child; neither the Duke (of Berry), his
brothers, nor the Prince of Conti, were of an age or of standing, in the
king’s eyes, to make the least trouble in the world about it.” The bombshell
dropped all at once when nobody could have expected it, and everybody fell
on his stomach as is done when a shell drops; everybody was gloomy and
almost wild; the king himself appeared as if exhausted by so great an effort
of will and power. He had only just signed his will, when he met, at
Madame de Maintenon’s, the Ex-Queen of England. “I have made my will,
Madame,” said he. “I have purchased repose; I know the impotence and
uselessness of it; we can do all we please as long as we are here; after we
are gone, we can do less than private persons; we have only to look at what
became of my father’s, and immediately after his death too, and of those of
so many other kings. I am quite aware of that; but, in spite of all that, it was
desired; and so, Madame, you see it has been done; come of it what may, at
any rate I shall not be worried about it any more.” It was the old man
yielding to the entreaties and intrigues of his domestic circle; the judgment
of the king remained steady and true, without illusions and without
prejudices.
Death was coming, however, after a reign which had been so long and
had occupied so much room in the world that it caused mistakes as to the
very age of the king. He was seventy-seven; he continued to work with his
ministers; the order so long and so firmly established was, not disturbed by
illness any more than it had been by the reverses and sorrows of late;

meanwhile the appetite was diminishing, the thinness went on increasing, a
sore on the leg appeared, the king suffered a great deal. On the 24th of
August he dined in bed, surrounded as usual by his courtiers; he had a
difficulty in swallowing; for the first time, publicity was burdensome to
him; he could not get on, and said to those who were there that he begged
them to withdraw. Meanwhile the drums and hautboys still went on playing
beneath his window, and the twenty-four violins at his dinner. In the
evening, he was so ill that he asked for the sacraments. There had been
wrung from him a codicil which made the will still worse. He, nevertheless,
received the Duke of Orleans, to whom he commended the young king. On
the 26th he called to his bedside all those of the court who had the entry.
“Gentlemen,” he said to them, “I ask your pardon for the bad example I
have set you. I have to thank you much for the way in which you have
served me, and for the attachment and fidelity you have always shown me. I
am very sorry not to have done for you what I should have liked to do. The
bad times are the cause of that. I request of you, on my great-grandson’s
behalf, the same attention and fidelity that you have shown me. It is a child
who will possibly have many crosses to bear. Follow the instructions my
nephew gives you; he is about to govern the kingdom, and I hope that he
will do it well; I hope also that you will all contribute to preserve unity. I
feel that I am becoming unmanned, and that I am unmanning you also; I ask
your pardon. Farewell, gentlemen; I feel sure that you will think of me
sometimes.”
The princesses had entered the king’s closet; they were weeping and
making a noise. “You must not cry so,” said the king, who asked for them to
bid them farewell. He sent for the little dauphin. His governess, the Duchess
of Ventadour, brought him on to the bed. “My child,” said the king to him,
“you are going to be a great king. Render to God that which you owe to
Him; recognize the obligations you have towards Him; cause Him to be
honored by your subjects. Try to preserve peace with your neighbors. I have
been too fond of war; do not imitate me in that, any more than in the too
great expenses I have incurred. Take counsel in all matters, and seek to
discern which is the best in order to follow it. Try to relieve your people,
which I have been so unfortunate as not to have been able to do.” He kissed
the child, and said, “Darling, I give you my blessing with all my heart.” He
was taken away; the king asked for him once more and kissed him again,
lifting hands and eyes to Heaven in blessings upon him. Everybody wept.

The king caught sight in a glass of two grooms of the chamber who were
sobbing. “What are you crying for?” he said to them; “did you think that I
was immortal?” He was left alone with Madame de Maintenon. “I have
always heard say that it was difficult to make up one’s mind to die,” said he;
“I do not find it so hard.” “Ah, Sir,” she replied, “it may be very much so,
when there are earthly attachments, hatred in the heart, or restitutions to
make!” “Ah!” replied the king, “as for restitutions to make, I owe nobody
any individually; as for those that I owe the kingdom, I have hope in the
mercy of God.”

The Duke of Orleans came back again; the king had sent for him. “When
I am dead,” he said, “you will have the young king taken to Vincennes; the
air there is good; he will remain there until all the ceremonies are over at
Versailles, and the castle well cleaned afterwards; you will then bring him

back again.” He at the same time gave orders for going and furnishing
Vincennes, and directed a casket to be opened in which the plan of the
castle was kept, because, as the court had not been there for fifty years,
Cavoye, grand chamberlain of his household, had never prepared
apartments there. “When I was king . . . ,” he said several times.
A quack had brought a remedy which would cure gangrene, he said. The
sore on the leg was hopeless, but they gave the king a dose of the elixir in a
glass of Alicante. “To life and to death,” said he as he took the glass; “just
as it shall please God.” The remedy appeared to act; the king recovered a
little strength. The throng of courtiers, which, the day before, had been
crowding to suffocation in the rooms of the Duke of Orleans, withdrew at
once. Louis XIV. did not delude himself about this apparent rally. “Prayers
are offered in all the churches for your Majesty’s life,” said the parish priest
of Versailles. “That is not the question,” said the king “it is my salvation
that much needs praying for.”
Madame de Maintenon had hitherto remained in the back rooms, though
constantly in the king’s chamber when he was alone. He said to her once,
“What consoles me for leaving you, is that it will not be long before we
meet again.” She made no reply. “What will become of you?” he added;
“you have nothing.” “Do not think of me,” said she; “I am nobody; think
only of God.” He said farewell to her; she still remained a little while in his
room, and went out when he was no longer conscious. She had given away
here and there the few movables that belonged to her, and now took the
road to St. Cyr. On the steps she met Marshal Villeroy. “Good by, marshal,”
she said curtly, and covered up her face in her coifs. He! it was who sent her
news of the king to the last moment. The Duke of Orleans, on becoming
regent, went to see her, and took her the patent (brevet) for a pension of
sixty thousand livres, “which her disinterestedness had made necessary for
her,” said the preamble. It was paid her up to the last day of her life. History
makes no further mention of her name; she never left St. Cyr. Thither the
czar Peter the Great, when he visited Paris and France, went to see her; she
was confined to her bed; he sat a little while beside her. “What is your
malady?” he asked her through his interpreter. “A great age,” answered
Madame de Maintenon, smiling. He looked at her a moment longer in
silence; then, closing the curtains, he went out abruptly. The memory he
would have called up had vanished. The woman on whom the great king
had, for thirty years, heaped confidence and affection, was old, forgotten,

dying; she expired at St. Cyr on the 15th of April, 1719, at the age of
eighty-three.
She had left the king to die alone. He was in the agonies; the prayers in
extremity were being repeated around him; the ceremonial recalled him to
consciousness. He joined his voice with the voices of those present,
repeating the prayers with them. Already the court was hurrying to the Duke
of Orleans; some of the more confident had repaired to the Duke of
Maine’s; the king’s servants were left almost alone around his bed; the
tones of the dying man were distinctly heard above the great number of
priests. He several times repeated, Nunc et in hora mortis. Then he said,
quite loud, “O, my God, come Thou to help me, haste Thee to succor me.”
Those were his last words. He expired on Sunday, the 1st of September,
1715, at eight A. M. Next day, he would have been seventy-seven years of
age, and he had reigned seventy-two of them.
In spite of his faults and his numerous and culpable errors, Louis XIV.
had lived and died like a king. The slow and grievous agony of olden
France was about to begin.

CHAPTER LI.

LOUIS XV., THE REGENCY, AND CARDINAL
DUBOIS.

1715-1723.

At the very moment when the master’s hand is missed from his work, the
narrative makes a sudden bound out of the simple times of history. Under
Henry IV., under Richelieu, under Louis XIV., events found quite naturally
their guiding hand and their centre; men as well as circumstances formed a
group around the head of the nation, whether king or minister, to thence
unfold themselves quite clearly before the eyes of posterity. Starting from
the reign of Louis XV. the nation has no longer a head, history no longer a
centre; at the same time with a master of the higher order, great servants
also fail the French monarchy; it all at once collapses, betraying thus the
exhaustion of Louis XIV.‘s latter years; decadence is no longer veiled by
the remnants of the splendor which was still reflected from the great king
and his great reign; the glory of olden France descends slowly to its grave.
At the same time, and in a future as yet obscured, intellectual progress
begins to dawn; new ideas of justice, of humanity, of generous equity
towards the masses germinate sparsely in certain minds; it is no longer
Christianity alone that inspires them, though the honor is reflected upon it
in a general way and as regards the principles with which it has silently
permeated modern society, but they who contribute to spread them, refuse
with indignation to acknowledge the source whence they have drawn them.
Intellectual movement no longer appertains exclusively to the higher
classes, to the ecclesiastics, or to the members of the Parliaments; vaguely
as yet, and retarded by apathy in the government as well as by disorder in
affairs, it propagates and extends itself imperceptibly pending that signal
and terrible explosion of good and evil which is to characterize the close of

the eighteenth century. Decadence and progress are going on confusedly in
the minds as well as in the material condition of the nation. They must be
distinguished and traced without any pretence of separating them.
There we have the reign of Louis XV. in its entirety.

The regency of the Duke of Orleans and the ministry of Cardinal Dubois
showed certain traits of the general tendencies and to a certain extent felt
their influence; they formed, however, a distinct epoch, abounding in
original efforts and bold attempts, which remained without result, but which
testified to the lively reaction in men’s minds against the courses and
fundamental principles of the reign which had just ended.

Louis XIV. had made no mistake about the respect which his last wishes
were destined to meet with after his death. In spite of the most extreme
precautions, the secret of the will had transpired, giving occasion for some
days past to secret intrigues. Scarcely had the king breathed his last, when
the Duke of Orleans was urged to get the regency conferred upon him by
the dukes and peers, simply making to Parliament an announcement of what
had been done. The Duke of Orleans was a better judge of the moral
authority belonging to that important body; and it was to the Palace of
Justice that he repaired on the morning of September 2, 1715. The crowd
there was immense; the young king alone was not there, in spite of his
great-grandfather’s express instructions. The day was a decisive one; the
legitimatized princes were present, “the Duke of Maine bursting with joy,”
says St. Simon; “a smiling, satisfied air overrippled that of audacity, of
confidence, which nevertheless peeped through, and the politeness which
seemed to struggle against it. He bowed right and left, piercing every one
with his looks. Towards the peers, the earnestness, it is not too much to say
the respectfulness, the slowness, the profoundness of his bow was eloquent.
His head remained lowered even on recovering himself.” The Duke of
Orleans had just begun to speak; his voice was not steady; he repeated the
terms of which the king had made use, he said, for the purpose of confiding
the dauphin to his care. “To you I commend him; serve him faithfully as
you have served me, and labor to preserve to him his kingdom. I have made
such dispositions as I thought wisest; but one cannot foresee everything; if
there is anything that does not seem good, it will of course be altered.”
The favor of the assembly was plainly with him, and the prince’s accents
became more firm. “I shall never,” said he, “have any other purpose but to
relieve the people, to reestablish good order in the finances, to maintain
peace at home and abroad, and to restore unity and tranquillity to the
church; therein I shall be aided by the wise representations of this august
assembly, and I hereby ask for them in anticipation.” The Parliament was
completely won; the right of representation (or remonstrance) was promised
them; the will of Louis XIV. was as good as annulled; it was opened, it was
read, and so were the two codicils. All the authority was intrusted to a
council of regency of which the Duke of Orleans was to be the head, but
without preponderating voice and without power to supersede any of the
members, all designated in advance by Louis XIV. The person and the

education of the young king, as well as the command of the household
troops, were intrusted to the Duke of Maine.
“It was listened to in dead silence, and with a sort of indignation, which
expressed itself in all countenances,” says St. Simon. “The king, no doubt,
did not comprehend the force of what he had been made to do,” said the
Duke of Orleans; “he assured me in the last days of his life that I should
find in his dispositions nothing that I was not sure to be pleased with, and
he himself referred the ministers to me on business, with all the orders to be
given.” He asked, therefore, to have his regency declared such as it ought to
be, “full and independent, with free formation of the council of regency.”
The Duke of Maine wished to say a word. “You shall speak in your turn,
Sir,” said the Duke of Orleans in a dry tone. The court immediately decided
in his favor by acclamation, and even without proceeding in the regular way
to vote. There remained the codicils, which annulled in fact the Regent’s
authority. A discussion began between the Duke of Orleans and the Duke of
Maine; it was causing Philip of Orleans to lose the advantage he had just
won; his friends succeeded in making him perceive this, and he put off the
session until after dinner. When they returned to the Palace of Justice the
codicils were puffed away like the will by the breath of popular favor. The
Duke of Maine, despoiled of the command of the king’s household,
declared that, under such conditions, it was impossible for him to be
answerable for the king’s person, and that he “demanded to be relieved of
that duty.” “Most willingly, Sir,” replied the Regent; “your services are no
longer required;” and he forthwith explained to the Parliament his intention
of governing affairs according to the plan which had been found among the
papers of the Duke of Burgundy. “Those gentry know little or nothing of the
French, and of the way to govern them,” had been the remark of Louis XIV.
on reading the schemes of Fenelon, the Duke of Beauvilliers, and St.
Simon. The Parliament applauded the formation of the six councils of
foreign affairs, of finance, of war, of the marine, of home or the interior, of
conscience or ecclesiastical affairs; the Regent was intrusted with the free
disposal of graces. “I want to be free for good,” said he, adroitly repeating a
phrase from Telemaque, “I consent to have my hands tied for evil.”
The victory was complete. Not a shred remained of Louis XIV.‘s will.
The Duke of Maine, confounded and humiliated, retired to his Castle of
Sceaux, there to endure the reproaches of his wife. The king’s affection and
Madame de Maintenon’s clever tactics had not sufficed to found his power;

the remaining vestiges of his greatness were themselves about to vanish
before long in their turn.

On the 12th of September, the little king held a bed of justice; his
governess, Madame de Ventadour, sat alone at the feet of the poor orphan,
abandoned on the pinnacle of power. All the decisions of September 2 were
ratified in the child’s name. Louis XIV. had just descended to the tomb
without pomp and without regret. The joy of the people broke out
indecently as the funeral train passed by; the nation had forgotten the glory
of the great king; it remembered only the evils which had for so long
oppressed it during his reign.
The new councils had already been constituted, when it was discovered
that commerce had been forgotten; and to it was assigned a seventh body.
“Three sorts of men, the choice of whom was dictated by propriety,
weakness, and necessity, filled the lists: in the first place, great lords,
veterans in intrigue but novices in affairs, and less useful from their
influence than embarrassing from their pride and their pettinesses; next, the
Regent’s friends, the cream of the rows, possessed with the spirit of
opposition and corruption, ignorant and clever, bold and lazy, and far better
calculated to harass than to conduct a government; lastly, below them, were
pitch-forked in, pell-mell, councillors of State, masters of requests,
members of Parliament, well-informed and industrious gentlemen, fated
henceforth to crawl about at the bottom of the committees, and, without the
spur of glory or emulation, to repair the blunders which must be expected
from the incapacity of the first and the recklessness of the second class
amongst their colleagues.” [Lemontey, Histoire de la Regence, t. i. p. 67.]
“It is necessary,” the young king was made to say in the preamble to the

ordinance which established the councils, “that affairs should be regulated
rather by unanimous consent than by way of authority.”
How singular are the monstrosities of experience! At the head of the
council of finance, a place was found for the Duke of Noailles, active in
mind and restless in character, without any fixed principles, an adroit and a
shameless courtier, strict in all religious observances under Louis XIV., and
a notorious debauchee under the Regency, but intelligent, insolent,
ambitious, hungering and thirsting to do good if he could, but evil if need
were, and in order to arrive at his ends. His uncle, Cardinal Noailles, who
had been but lately threatened by the court of Rome with the loss of his hat,
and who had seen himself forbidden to approach the dying king, was now
president of the council of conscience. Marshal d’Huxelles, one of the
negotiators who had managed the treaty of Utrecht, was at the head of
foreign affairs. The Regent had reserved to himself one single department,
the Academy of Sciences. “I quite intend,” said he, gayly, “to ask the king,
on his majority, to let me still be Secretary of State of the Academy.”
The Regent’s predilection, consolidating the work of Colbert, contributed
to the development of scientific researches, for which the neatness and
clearness of French thought rendered it thenceforth so singularly well
adapted.
The gates of the prison were meanwhile being thrown open to many a
poor creature; the Jansenists left the Bastille; others, who had been for a
long time past in confinement, were still ignorant of the grounds for their
captivity, which was by this time forgotten by everybody. A wretched
Italian, who had been arrested the very day of his arrival in Paris, thirty-five
years before, begged to remain in prison; he had no longer any family, or
relatives, or resources. For a while the Protestants thought they saw their
advantage in the clemency with which the new reign appeared to be
inaugurated, and began to meet again in their assemblies; the Regent had
some idea of doing them justice, re-establishing the Edict of Nantes, and re-
opening to the exiles the doors of their country, but his councillors
dissuaded him; the more virtuous, like St. Simon, from Catholic piety, the
more depraved from policy and indifference. However, the lot of the
Protestants remained under the Regency less hard than it had been under
Louis XIV., and than it became under the Duke of Bourbon.

The chancellor, Voysin, had just died. To this post the Regent summoned
the attorney-general, D’Aguesseau, beloved and esteemed of all, learned,
eloquent, virtuous, but too exclusively a man of Parliament for the functions
which had been confided to him. “He would have made a sublime premier
president,” said St. Simon, who did not like him. The magistrate was
attending mass at St. Andre-des-Arts; he was not ignorant of the
chancellor’s death, when a valet came in great haste to inform him that the
Regent wanted him at the Palais-Royal. D’Aguesseau piously heard out the
remainder of the mass before obeying the prince’s orders. The casket
containing the seals was already upon the table. The Duke of Orleans took
the attorney-general by the arm and, going out with him into the gallery
thronged with courtiers, said, “Gentlemen, here is your new and most
worthy chancellor!” and he took him away with him to the Tuileries, to pay
his respects to the little king.
On returning home, still all in a whirl, D’Aguesseau went up to the room
of his brother, “M. de Valjouan, a sort of Epicurean (voluptueux)
philosopher, with plenty of wit and learning, but altogether one of the
oddest creatures.” He found him in his dressing-gown, smoking in front of
the fire. “Brother,” said he, as he entered, “I have come to tell you that I am
chancellor.” “Chancellor!” said the other, turning round; “and what have
you done with the other one?” “He died suddenly to-night.” “O, very well,
brother, I am very glad; I would rather it were you than I;” and he resumed
his pipe. Madame D’Aguesseau was better pleased. Her husband has
eulogized her handsomely. “A wife like mine,” he said, “is a good man’s
highest reward.”
The new system of government, as yet untried, and confided to men for
the most part little accustomed to affairs, had to put up with the most
formidable difficulties, and to struggle against the most painful position.
The treasury was empty, and the country exhausted; the army was not paid,
and the most honorable men, such as the Duke of St. Simon, saw no other
remedy for the evils of the state but a total bankruptcy, and the convocation
of the States-general. Both expedients were equally repugnant to the Duke
of Orleans. The Duke of Noailles had entered upon a course of severe
economy; the king’s household was diminished, twenty-five thousand men
were struck off the strength of the army, exemption from talliage for six
years was promised to all such discharged soldiers as should restore a
deserted house, and should put into cultivation the fields lying waste. At the

same time something was being taken off the crushing weight of the taxes,
and the state was assuming the charge of recovering them directly, without
any regard for the real or supposed advances of the receivers-general; their
accounts were submitted to the revision of the brothers Paris, sons of an
innkeeper in the Dauphinese Alps, who had made fortunes by military
contracts, and were all four reputed to be very able in matters of finance.
They were likewise commissioned to revise the bills circulating in the name
of the state, in other words, to suppress a great number without
reimbursement to the holder, a sort of bankruptcy in disguise, which did not
help to raise the public credit. At the same time also a chamber of justice,
instituted for that purpose, was prosecuting the tax-farmers (traitants), as
Louis XIV. had done at the commencement of his reign, during the suit
against Fouquet. All were obliged to account for their acquisitions and the
state of their fortunes; the notaries were compelled to bring their books
before the court. Several tax-farmers (traitants) killed themselves to escape
the violence and severity of the procedure. The Parliament, anything but
favorable to the speculators, but still less disposed to suffer its judicial
privileges to be encroached upon, found fault with the degrees of the
Chamber. The Regent’s friends were eager to profit by the reaction which
was manifesting itself in the public mind; partly from compassion, partly
from shameful cupidity, all the courtiers set themselves to work to obtain
grace for the prosecuted financiers. The finest ladies sold their protection
with brazen faces; the Regent, who had sworn to show no favor to anybody,
yielded to the solicitations of his friends, to the great disgust of M. Rouille-
Ducoudray, member of the council of finance, who directed the operations
of the Chamber of Justice with the same stern frankness which had made
him not long before say to a body of tax-farmers (traitants) who wanted to
put at his disposal a certain number of shares in their enterprise, “And
suppose I were to go shares with you, how could I have you hanged, in case
you were rogues?” Nobody was really hanged, although torture and the
penalty of death had been set down in the list of punishments to which the
guilty were liable; out of four thousand five hundred amenable cases, nearly
three thousand had been exempted from the tax. “The corruption is so wide-
spread,” says the preamble to the edict of March, 1727, which suppressed
the Chamber of Justice, “that nearly all conditions have been infected by it
in such sort that the most righteous severities could not be employed to
punish so great a number of culprits without causing a dangerous

interruption to commerce, and a kind of general shock in the system of the
state.” The resources derived from the punishment of the tax-farmers
(traitants), as well as from the revision of the state’s debts, thus remaining
very much below expectation, the deficit went on continually increasing. In
order to re-establish the finances, the Duke of Noailles demanded fifteen
years’ impracticable economy, as chimerical as the increment of the
revenues on which he calculated; and the Duke of Orleans finally suffered
himself to be led away by the brilliant prospect which was flashed before
his eyes by the Scotsman, Law, who had now for more than two years been
settled in France.

Law, born at Edinburgh, in 1611, son of a goldsmith, had for a long time
been scouring Europe, seeking in a clever and systematic course of
gambling a source of fortune for himself, and the first foundation of the
great enterprises he was revolving in his singularly inventive and daring
mind. Passionately devoted to the financial theories he had conceived, Law
had expounded them to all the princes of Europe in succession. “He says
that of all the persons to whom he has spoken about his system, he has
found but two who apprehended it, to wit, the King of Sicily and my son,”
wrote Madame, the Regent’s mother. Victor Amadeo, however, had rejected
Law’s proposals. “I am not powerful enough to ruin myself,” he had said.

Law had not been more successful with Louis XIV. The Regent had not the
same repugnance for novelties of foreign origin; so soon as he was in
power, he authorized the Scot to found a circulating and discount bank
(banque de circulation et d’escompte), which at once had very great
success, and did real service. Encouraged by this first step, Law reiterated
to the Regent that the credit of bankers and merchants decupled their
capital; if the state became the universal banker, and centralized all the
values in circulation, the public fortune would naturally be decupled. A
radically false system, fated to plunge the state, and consequently the whole
nation, into the risks of speculation and trading, without the guarantee of
that activity, zeal, and prompt resolution which able men of business can
import into their private enterprises. The system was not as yet applied; the
discreet routine of the French financiers was scared at such risky chances,
the pride of the great lords sitting in the council was shocked at the idea of
seeing the state turning banker, perhaps even trader. St. Simon maintained
that what was well enough for a free state, could not take place under an
absolute government. Law went on, however; to his bank he had just added
a great company. The king ceded to him Louisiana, which was said to be
rich in gold and silver mines, superior to those of Mexico and Peru. People
vaunted the fertility of the soil, the facility offered for trade by the extensive
and rapid stream of the Mississippi; it was by the name of that river that the
new company was called at first, though it soon took the title of Compagnie
d’ Occident, when it had obtained the privilege of trading in Senegal and in
Guinea; it became the Compagnie des Indes, on forming a fusion with the
old enterprises which worked the trade of the East. For the generality, and
in the current phraseology, it remained the Mississippi; and that is the name
it has left in history. New Orleans was beginning to arise at the mouth of
that river. Law had bought Belle-Isle-en-Mer and was constructing the port
of Lorient.
The Regent’s councillors were scared and disquieted; the chancellor
proclaimed himself loudly against the deception or illusion which made of
Louisiana a land of promise; he called to mind that Crozat had been ruined
in searching for mines of the precious metals there. “The worst of him was
his virtue,” said Duclos. The Regent made a last effort to convert him, as
well as the Duke of Noailles, to the projects of Law. It was at a small house
in the faubourg St. Antoine, called La Roquette, belonging to the last
named, that the four interlocutors discussed the new system thoroughly.

“With the use of very sensible language Law had the gift of explaining
himself so clearly and intelligibly that he left nothing to desire as concerned
making himself comprehended. The Duke of Orleans liked him and relished
him. He regarded him and all he did as work of his own creation. He liked,
moreover, extraordinary and out-of-the-way methods, and he embraced
them the more readily in that he saw the resources which had become so
necessary for the state and all the ordinary operations of finance vanishing
away. This liking of the Regent’s wounded Noailles, as being adopted at his
expense. He wanted to be sole master in the matter of finance, and all the
eloquence of Law could not succeed in convincing him.” The chancellor
stood firm; the Parliament, which ever remained identified in his mind with
his country, was in the same way opposed to Law. The latter declared that
the obstacles which arrested him at every step through the ill will of the
Council and of the magistrates, were ruining all the fruits of his system. The
representations addressed by the Parliament to the king, on the 20th of
January, touching a re-coinage of all moneys, which had been suggested by
Law, dealt the last blow at the chancellor’s already tottering favor. On the
morning of the 23d M. de La Villiere went to him on behalf of the Regent
and demanded the return of the seals. D’Aguesseau was a little affected and
surprised. “Monseigneur,” he wrote to the Duke of Orleans, “you gave me
the seals without any merit on my part, you take them away without any
demerit.” He had received orders to withdraw to his estate at Fresnes; the
Regent found his mere presence irksome. D’Aguesseau set out at once. “He
had taken his elevation like a sage,” says St. Simon, “and it was as a sage
too that he fell.” “The important point,” wrote the disgraced magistrate to
his son, “is to be well with one’s self.”
The Duke of Noailles had resigned his presidency of the council of
finance; but, ever adroit, even in disgrace, he had managed to secure
himself a place in the council of regency. The seals were intrusted to M.
d’Argenson, for some years past chief of police at Paris. “With a forbidding
face, which reminded one of the three judges of Hades, he made fun out of
everything with excellence of wit, and he had established such order
amongst that innumerable multitude of Paris, that there was no single
inhabitant of whose conduct and habits he was not cognizant from day to
day, with exquisite discernment in bringing a heavy or light hand to bear on
every matter that presented itself, ever leaning towards the gentler side,
with the art of making the most innocent tremble before him.” [St. Simon, t.

xv. p. 387.] Courageous, bold, audacious in facing riots, and thereby master
of the people, he was at the same time endowed with prodigious activity.
“He was seen commencing his audiences at three in the morning, dictating
to four secretaries at once on various subjects, and making his rounds at
night whilst working in his carriage at a desk lighted with wax candles. For
the rest, without any dread of Parliament, which had often attacked him, he
was in his nature royal and fiscal; he cut knots, he was a foe to lengthiness,
to useless forms or such as might be skipped, to neutral or wavering
conditions.” [Lemontey, Histoire de la Regence, t. i. p. 77.] The Regent
considered that he had secured to himself an effective instrument of his
views; acceptance of the system had been the condition sine qua non of M.
d’Argenson’s elevation.
He, however, like his predecessors, attempted before long to hamper the
march of the audacious foreigner; but the die had been cast, and the Duke of
Orleans outstripped Law himself in the application of his theories. A
company, formed secretly, and protected by the new keeper of the seals, had
bought up the general farmings (fermes generales), that is to say, all the
indirect taxes, for the sum of forty-eight million fifty-two thousand livres;
the Compagnie des Indes re-purchased them for fifty-two millions; the
general receipts were likewise conceded to it, and Law’s bank was
proclaimed a Royal Bank; the company’s shares already amounted to the
supposed value of all the coin circulating in the kingdom, estimated at
seven or eight millions. Law thought he might risk everything in the
intoxication which had seized all France, capital and province. He created
some fifteen hundred millions of new shares, promising his shareholders a
dividend of twelve per cent. From all parts silver and gold flowed into his
hands; everywhere the paper of the Bank was substituted for coin. The
delirium had mastered all minds. The street called Quincampoix, for a long
time past devoted to the operations of bankers, had become the usual
meeting-place of the greatest lords as well as of discreet burgesses. It had
been found necessary to close the two ends of the street with gates, open
from six A. M. to nine P. M.; every house harbored business agents by the
hundred; the smallest room was let for its weight in gold. The workmen
who made the paper for the bank-notes could not keep up with the
consumption. The most modest fortunes suddenly became colossal,
lacqueys of yesterday were millionaires to-morrow; extravagance followed
the progress of this outburst of riches, and the price of provisions followed

the progress of extravagance. Enthusiasm was at its height in favor of the
able author of so many benefits. Law became a convert to Catholicism, and
was made comptroller-general; all the court was at his feet. “My son was
looking for a duchess to escort my granddaughter to Genoa,” writes
Madame, the Regent’s mother. “‘Send and choose one at Madame Law’s,’
said I; ‘you will find them all sitting in her drawing-room.’” Law’s triumph
was complete; the hour of his fall was about to strike.
At the pinnacle of his power and success the new comptroller-general fell
into no illusion as to the danger of the position. “He had been forced to
raise seven stories on foundations which he had laid for only three,” said a
contemporary, as clear-sighted as impartial. Some large shareholders were
already beginning to quietly realize their profits. The warrants of the
Compagnie des Indes had been assimilated to the bank-notes; and the
enormous quantity of paper tended to lower its value. First, there was a
prohibition against making payments in silver above ten francs, and in gold
above three hundred. Soon afterwards money was dislegalized as a tender,
and orders were issued to take every kind to the Bank on pain of
confiscation, half to go to the informer. Informing became a horrible trade;
a son denounced his father. The Regent openly violated law, and had this
miscreant punished. The prince one day saw President Lambert de Vernon
coming to visit him. “I am come,” said the latter, “to denounce to your
Royal Highness a man who has five hundred thousand livres in gold.” The
Duke of Orleans drew back a step. “Ah, Mr. President,” he cried, “what low
vocation have you taken to?” “Monseigneur,” rejoined the president, “I am
obeying the law; but your Royal Highness may be quite easy; it is myself
whom I have come to denounce, in hopes of retaining at least a part of this
sum, which I prefer to all the bank-notes.” “My money is at the king’s
service,” was the proud remark of Nicolai, premier president of the
Exchequer-Chamber, “but it belongs to nobody.” The great mass of the
nation was of the same opinion as the two presidents; forty-five millions
only found their way to the Bank; gold and silver were concealed
everywhere. The crisis was becoming imminent; Law boldly announced
that the value of the notes was reduced by a half. The public outcry was so
violent that the Regent was obliged to withdraw the edict, as to which the
council had not been consulted. “Since Law became comptroller-general,
his head has been turned,” said the prince. That same evening Law was
arrested by the major of the Swiss; it was believed to be all over with him,

but the admirable order in which were his books, kept by double entry after
the Italian manner, as yet unknown in France, and the ingenious expedients
he indicated for restoring credit, gave his partisans a moment’s fresh
confidence. He ceased to be comptroller-general, but he remained director
of the Bank. The death-blow, however, had been dealt his system, for a
panic terror had succeeded to the insensate enthusiasm of the early days.
The Prince of Conti had set the example of getting back the value of his
notes; four wagons had been driven up to his house laden with money. It
was suffocation at the doors of the Bank, changing small notes, the only
ones now payable in specie. Three men were crushed to death on one day in
the crowd. It was found necessary to close the entrances to Quincampoix
Street, in order to put a stop to the feverish tumult arising from desperate
speculation. The multitude moved to the Place Vendome; shops and booths
were thrown up; there was a share-fair; this ditty was everywhere sung in
the streets:—

“On Monday I bought share on share;
On Tuesday I was a millionaire;
On Wednesday took a grand abode;
On Thursday in my carriage rode;
On Friday drove to the Opera-ball;
On Saturday came to the paupers’ hall.”

To restore confidence, Law conceived the idea of giving the seals back to
D’Aguesseau; and the Regent authorized him to set out for Fresnes. In
allusion to this step, so honorable for the magistrate who was the object of
it, Law afterwards wrote from Venice to the Regent, “In my labors I desired
to be useful to a great people, as the chancellor can bear me witness. . . . At
his return I offered him my shares, which were then worth more than a
hundred millions, to be distributed by him amongst those who had need of

them.” The chancellor came back, though his influence could neither stop
the evil, nor even assuage the growing disagreement between the Duke of
Orleans and the Parliament. None could restore the public sense of security,
none could prevent the edifice from crumbling to pieces. With ruin came
crimes. Count Horn, belonging to the family of the celebrated Count Horn,
who was beheaded under Philip II., in company with Count Lamoral
d’Egmont, murdered at an inn a poor jobber whom he had inveigled thither
on purpose to steal his pocket-book. In spite of all his powerful family’s
entreaties, Count Horn died on the wheel, together with one of his
accomplices. It was represented to the Regent that the count’s house had the
honor of being connected with his. “Very, well, gentlemen,” said he, “then I
will share the shame with you,” and he remained inflexible.
The public wrath and indignation fastened henceforth upon Law, the
author and director of a system which had given rise to so many hopes, and
had been the cause of so many woes. His carriage was knocked to pieces in
the streets. President de Mesmes entered the Grand Chamber, singing with
quite a solemn air,—

“Sirs, sirs, great news! What is it?
It’s—They’ve smashed Law’s carriage all to bits.”

The whole body jumped up, more regardful of their hatred than of their
dignity; and “Is Law torn in pieces?” was the cry. Law had taken refuge at
the Palais Royal. One day he appeared at the theatre in the Regent’s box;
low murmurs recalled to the Regent’s mind the necessity for prudence; in
the end he got Law away secretly in a carriage lent him by the Duke of
Bourbon.
Law had brought with him to France a considerable fortune; he had
scarcely enough to live upon when he retired to Venice, where he died some
years later (1729), convinced to the last of the utility of his system, at the
same time that he acknowledged the errors he had committed in its
application. “I do not pretend that I did not make mistakes,” he wrote from
his retreat; “I know I did, and that if I had to begin again I should do
differently. I should go more slowly but more surely, and I should not
expose the state and my own person to the dangers which may attend the
derangement of a general system.” “There was neither avarice nor rascality

in what he did,” says St. Simon; “he was a gentle, kind, respectful man,
whom excess of credit and of fortune had not spoilt, and whose bearing,
equipage, table, and furniture could not offend anybody. He bore with
singular patience and evenness the obstructions that were raised against his
operations, until at the last, finding himself short of means, and nevertheless
seeking for them and wishing to present a front, he became crusty, gave
way to temper, and his replies were frequently ill-considered. He was a man
of system, calculation, comparison, well informed and profound in that sort
of thing, who was the dupe of his Mississippi, and in good faith believed in
forming great and wealthy establishments in America. He reasoned
Englishwise, and did not know how opposed to those kinds of
establishments are the levity of our nation and the inconveniences of a
despotic government, which has a finger in everything, and under which
what one minister does is always destroyed or changed by his successor.”
The disasters caused by Law’s system have recoiled upon his memory.
Forgotten are his honesty, his charity, his interest in useful works;
remembered is nothing but the imprudence of his chimerical hopes and the
fatal result of his enterprises, as deplorable in their effects upon the moral
condition of France, as upon her wealth and her credit.
The Regent’s rash infatuation for a system, as novel as it was seductive,
had borne its fruits. The judgment which his mother had pronounced upon
Philip of Orleans was justified to the last. “The fairies,” said Madame,
“were all invited to the birth of my son; and each endowed him with some
happy quality. But one wicked fairy, who had been forgotten, came
likewise, leaning upon her stick, and not being able to annul her sisters’
gifts, declared that the prince should never know how to make use of them.”
Throughout the successive periods of intoxication and despair caused by
the necessary and logical development of Law’s system, the Duke of
Orleans had dealt other blows and directed other affairs of importance.
Easy-going, indolent, often absorbed by his pleasures, the Regent found no
great difficulty in putting up with the exaltation of the legitimatized princes;
it had been for him sufficient to wrest authority from the Duke of Maine, he
let him enjoy the privileges of a prince of the blood. “I kept silence during
the king’s lifetime,” he would say; “I will not be mean enough to break it
now he is dead.” But the Duke of Bourbon, heir of the House of Conde,
fierce in temper, violent in his hate, greedy of honors as well as of money,
had just arrived at man’s estate, and was wroth at sight of the bastards’

greatness. He drew after him the Count of Charolais his brother, and the
Prince of Conti his cousin; on the 22d of April, 1716, all three presented to
the king a request for the revocation of Louis XIV.‘s edict declaring his
legitimatized sons princes of the blood, and capable of succeeding to the
throne. The Duchess of Maine, generally speaking very indifferent about
her husband, whom she treated haughtily, like a true daughter of the House
of Conde, flew into a violent passion, this time, at her cousins’ unexpected
attack; she was for putting her own hand to the work of drawing up the
memorial of her husband and of her brother-in-law, the Count of Toulouse.
“The greater part of the nights was employed at it,” says Madame de Stael,
at that time Mdlle. do Launay, a person of much wit, half lady’s maid, half
reader to the duchess. “The huge volumes, heaped up on her bed like
mountains overwhelming her, caused her,” she used to say, “to look,
making due allowances, like Enceladus, buried under Mount AEtna. I was
present at the work, and I also used to turn over the leaves of old chronicles
and of ancient and modern jurisconsults, until excess of fatigue disposed the
princess to take some repose.”

All this toil ended in the following declaration on the part of the
legitimatized princes: “The affair, being one of state, cannot be decided but
by a king, who is a major, or indeed by the States-general.” At the same
time, and still at the instigation of the Duchess of Maine, thirty-nine
noblemen signed a petition, modestly addressed to “Our Lords of the
Parliament,” demanding, in their turn, that the affair should be referred to
the states-general, who alone were competent, when it was a question of the
succession to the throne.
The Regent saw the necessity of firmness. “It is a maxim,” he declared,
“that the king is always a major as regards justice; that which was done

without the states-general has no need of their intervention to be undone.”
The decree of the council of regency, based on the same principles,
suppressed the right of succession to the crown, and cut short all
pretensions on the part of the legitimatized princes’ issue to the rank of
princes of the blood; the rights thereto were maintained in the case of the
Duke of Maine and the Count of Toulouse, for their lives, by the bounty of
the Regent, “which did not prevent the Duchess of Maine from uttering
loud shrieks, like a maniac,” says St. Simon, “or the Duchess of Orleans
from weeping night and day, and refusing for two months to see anybody.”
Of the thirty-nine members of the nobility who had signed the petition to
Parliament, six were detained in prison for a month, after which the Duke of
Orleans pardoned them. “You know me, well enough to be aware that I am
only nasty when I consider myself positively obliged to be,” he said to
them. The patrons, whose cause these noblemen had lightly embraced, were
not yet at the end of their humiliations.
The Duke of Bourbon was not satisfied with their exclusion from the
succession to the throne; he claimed the king’s education, which belonged
of right, he said, to the first prince of the blood, being a major. In his hatred,
then, towards the legitimatized, he accepted with alacrity the Duke of St.
Simon’s proposal to simply reduce them to their rank by seniority in the
peerage, with the proviso of afterwards restoring the privileges of a prince
of the blood in favor of the Count of Toulouse alone, as a reward for his
services in the navy. The blow thus dealt gratified all the passions of the
House of Conde and the wrath of Law, as well as that of the keeper of the
seals, D’Argenson, against the Parliament, which for three months past had
refused to enregister all edicts. On the 24th of August, 1718, at six in the
morning, the Parliament received orders to repair to the Tuileries, where the
king was to hold a bed of justice., The Duke of Maine, who was returning
from a party, was notified, as colonel of the Swiss, to have his regiment
under arms; at eight o’clock the council of regency was already assembled;
the Duke of Maine and the Count of Toulouse arrived in peer’s robes. The
Regent had flattered himself that they would not come to the bed of justice,
and had not summoned them. He at once advanced towards the Count of
Toulouse, and said out loud that he was surprised to see him in his robes,
and that he had not thought proper to notify him of the bed of justice,
because he knew that, since the last edict, he did not like going to the
Parliament. The Count of Toulouse replied that that was quite true, but that,

when it was a question of the welfare of the State, he put every other
consideration aside. The Regent was disconcerted; he hesitated a moment,
then, speaking low and very earnestly to the Count of Toulouse, he returned
to St. Simon. “I have just told him all,” said he, “I couldn’t help it; he is the
best fellow in the world, and the one who touches my heart the most. He
was coming to me on behalf of his brother, who had a shrewd notion that
there was something in the wind, and that he did not stand quite well with
me; he had begged him to ask me whether I wished him to remain, or
whether he would not do well to go away. I confess to you that I thought I
did well to tell him that his brother would do just as well to go away, since
he asked me the question; that, as for himself, he might safely remain,
because he was to continue just as he is, without alteration; but that
something might take place rather disagreeable to M. du Maine.
Whereupon, he asked me how he could remain, when there was to be an
attack upon his brother, seeing that they were but one, both in point of
honor and as brothers. I do believe, there they are just going out,” added the
Regent, casting a glance towards the door, as the members of the council
were beginning to take their places: “they will be prudent; the Count of
Toulouse promised me so.” “But, if they were to do anything foolish, or
were to leave Paris?” “They shall be arrested, I give you my word,” replied
the Duke of Orleans, in a firmer tone than usual. They had just read the
decree reducing the legitimatized to their degree in the peerage, and M. le
Duc had claimed the superintendence of the king’s education, when it was
announced that the Parliament, in their scarlet robes, were arriving in the
court of the palace. Marshal de Villeroi alone dared to protest. “Here, then,”
said he with a sigh, “are all the late king’s dispositions upset; I cannot see it
without sorrow. M. du Maine is very unfortunate.” “Sir,” rejoined the
Regent, with animation, “M. du Maine is my brother-in-law, but I prefer an
open to a hidden enemy.”
With the same air the Duke of Orleans passed to the bed of justice, “with
a gentle but resolute majesty, which was quite new to him; eyes observant,
but bearing grave and easy; M. le Duc staid, circumspect, surrounded by a
sort of radiance that adorned his whole person, and under perceptible
restraint; the keeper of the seals, in his chair, motionless, gazing askance
with that witful fire which flashed from his eyes and which seemed to
pierce all bosoms, in presence of that Parliament which had so often given
him orders standing at its bar as chief of police, in presence of that premier

president, so superior to him, so haughty, so proud of his Duke of Maine, so
mightily in hopes of the seals.” After his speech, and the reading of the
king’s decree, the premier president was for attempting a remonstrance;
D’Argenson mounted the step, approached the young king, and then,
without taking any opinion, said, in a very loud voice, “The king desires to
be obeyed, and obeyed at once.” There was nothing further for it but to
enregister the edict; all the decrees of the Parliament were quashed.
Some old servants of Louis XIV., friends and confidants of the Duke of
Maine, alone appeared moved. The young king was laughing, and the
crowd of spectators were amusing themselves with the scene, without any
sensible interest in the court intrigues. The Duchess of Maine made her
husband pay for his humble behavior at the council; “she was,” says St.
Simon, “at one time motionless with grief, at another boiling with rage, and
her poor husband wept daily like a calf at the biting reproaches and strange
insults which he had incessantly to pocket in her fits of anger against him.”
In the excess of her indignation and wrath, the Duchess of Maine
determined not to confine herself to reproaches. She had passed her life in
elegant entertainments, in sprightly and frivolous intellectual amusements;
ever bent on diverting herself, she made up her mind to taste the pleasure of
vengeance, and set on foot a conspiracy, as frivolous as her diversions. The
object, however, was nothing less than to overthrow the Duke of Orleans,
and to confer the regency on the King of Spain, Philip V., with a council
and a lieutenant, who was to be the Duke of Maine. “When one has once
acquired, no matter how, the rank of prince of the blood and the capability
of succeeding to the throne,” said the duchess, “one must turn the state
upside down, and set fire to the four corners of the kingdom, rather than let
them be wrested from one.” The schemes for attaining this great result were
various and confused. Philip V. had never admitted that his renunciation of
the crown of France was seriously binding upon him; he had seen, by the
precedent of the war of devolution, how a powerful sovereign may make
sport of such acts; his Italian minister, Alberoni, an able and crafty man,
who had set the crown of Spain upon the head of Elizabeth Farnese, and
had continued to rule her, cautiously egged on his master into hostilities
against France. They counted upon the Parliaments, taking example from
that of Paris, on the whole of Brittany, in revolt at the prolongation of the
tithe-tax, on all the old court, accustomed to the yoke of the bastards and of
Madame de Maintenon, on Languedoc, of which the Duke of Maine was

the governor; they talked of carrying off the Duke of Orleans, and taking
him to the castle of Toledo; Alberoni promised the assistance of a Spanish
army. The Duchess of Maine had fired the train, without the knowledge, she
said, and probably against the will, too, of her husband, more indolent than
she in his perfidy. Some scatter-brains of great houses were mixed up in the
affair; MM. de Richelieu, de Laval, and de Pompadour; there was secret
coming and going between the castle of Sceaux and the house of the
Spanish ambassador, the Prince of Cellamare; M. de Malezieux, the
secretary and friend of the duchess, drew up a form of appeal from the
French nobility to Philip V., but nobody had signed it, or thought of doing
so. They got pamphlets written by Abbe Brigault, whom the duchess had
sent to Spain; the mystery was profound, and all the conspirators were
convinced of the importance of their manoeuvres; every day, however, the
Regent was informed of them by his most influential negotiator with
foreign countries, Abbe Dubois, his late tutor, and the most depraved of all
those who were about him. Able and vigilant as he was, he was not ignorant
of any single detail of the plot, and was only giving the conspirators time to
compromise themselves. At last, just as a young abbe, Porto Carrero, was
starting for Spain, carrying important papers, he was arrested at Poitiers,
and his papers were seized. Next day, December 7, 1718, the Prince of
Cellamare’s house was visited, and the streets were lined with troops. Word
was brought in all haste to the Duchess of Maine. She had company, and
dared not stir. M. de Chatillon came in; joking commenced. “He was a cold
creature, who never thought of talking,” says Madame de Stael in her
memoirs. “All at once he said, ‘Really there is some very amusing news:
they have arrested and put in the Bastille, for this affair of the Spanish
ambassador, a certain Abbe Bri . . . . Bri’ he could not remember the name,
and those who knew it had no inclination to help him. At last he finished,
and added, ‘The most amusing part is, that he has told all, and so, you see,
there are some folks in a great fix.’ Thereupon he burst out laughing for the
first time in his life. The Duchess of Maine, who had not the least
inclination thereto, said, ‘Yes, that is very amusing.’ ‘O! it is enough to
make you die of laughing,’ he resumed; ‘fancy those folks who thought
their affair was quite a secret; here’s one who tells more than he is asked,
and names everybody by name!’” The agony was prolonged for some days;
jokes were beginning to be made about it at the Duchess of Maine’s; she
kept friends with her to pass the night in her room, waiting for her arrest to

come. Madame de Stael was reading Machiavelli’s conspiracies. “Make
haste and take away that piece of evidence against us,” said Madame du
Maine, laughingly, “it would be one of the strongest.”
The arrest came, however; it was six A.M., and everybody was asleep,
when the king’s men entered the Duke of Maine’s house. The Regent had
for a long time delayed to act, as if he wanted to leave everybody time to
get away; but the conspirators were too scatter-brained to take the trouble.
The duchess was removed to Dijon, within the government, and into the
very house of the Duke of Bourbon, her nephew, which was a very bitter
pill for her. The Duke of Maine, who protested his innocence and his
ignorance, was detained in the Castle of Dourlans in Picardy. Cellamare
received his passports and quitted France. The less illustrious conspirators
were all put in the Bastille; the majority did not remain there long, and
purchased their liberty by confessions, which the Duchess of Maine ended
by confirming. “Do not leave Paris until you are driven thereto by force,”
Alberoni had written to the Prince of Cellamare, “and do not start before
you have fired all the mines.” Cellamare started, and the mines did not burst
after his withdrawal; conspiracy and conspirators were covered with
ridicule; the natural clemency of the Regent had been useful; the part of the
Duke and Duchess of Maine was played out.
The only serious result of Cellamare’s conspiracy was to render
imminent a rupture with Spain. From the first days of the regency the old
enmity of Philip V. towards the Duke of Orleans and the secret pretensions
of both of them to the crown of France, in case of little Louis XV.‘s death,
rendered the relations between the two courts thorny and strained at bottom,
though still perfectly smooth in appearance. It was from England that Abbe
Dubois urged the Regent to seek support. Dubois, born in the very lowest
position, and endowed with a soul worthy of his origin, was “a little, lean
man, wire-drawn, with a light colored wig, the look of a weasel, a clever
expression,” says St. Simon, who detested him; “all vices struggled within
him for the mastery; they kept up a constant hubbub and strife together.
Avarice, debauchery, ambition, were his gods; perfidy, flattery, slavishness,
his instruments; and complete unbelief his comfort. He excelled in low
intrigues; the boldest lie was second nature to him, with an air of simplicity,
straightforwardness, sincerity, and often bashfulness.” In spite of all these
vices, and the depraving influence he had exercised over the Duke of
Orleans from his earliest youth, Dubois was able, often far-sighted, and

sometimes bold; he had a correct and tolerably practical mind. Madame,
who was afraid of him, had said to her son on the day of his elevation to
power, “I desire only the welfare of the state and your own glory; I have but
one request to make for your honor’s sake, and I demand your word for it,
that is, never to employ that scoundrel of an Abbe Dubois, the greatest
rascal in the world, and one who would sacrifice the state and you to the
slightest interest.” The Regent promised; yet a few months later and Dubois
was Church-councillor of State, and his growing influence with the prince
placed him, at first secretly, and before long openly, at the head of foreign
affairs.

James Stuart, King James II.‘s son, whom his friends called James III.
and his enemies Chevalier St. George, had just unsuccessfully attempted a

descent upon Scotland. The Jacobites had risen; they were crying aloud for
their prince, who remained concealed in Lorraine, when at last he resolved
to set out and traverse France secretly. Agents, posted by the English
ambassador, Lord Stair, were within an ace of arresting him, perhaps of
murdering him. Saved by the intelligence and devotion of the post-mistress
of Nonancourt, he embarked on the 26th of December at Dunkerque, too
late to bring even moral support to the men who were fighting and dying for
him. Six weeks after landing at Peterhead, in Scotland, he started back
again without having struck a blow, without having set eyes upon the
enemy, leaving to King George I. the easy task of avenging himself by
sending to death upon the scaffold the noblest victims. The Duke of Orleans
had given him a little money, had known of and had encouraged his passage
through France, but had accorded him no effectual aid; the wrath of both
parties, nevertheless, fell on him.
Inspired by Dubois, weary of the weakness and dastardly incapacity of
the Pretender, the Regent consented to make overtures to the King of
England. The Spanish nation was favorable to France, but the king was
hostile to the Regent; the English loved neither France nor the Regent, but
their king had an interest in severing France from the Pretender forever.
Dubois availed himself ably of his former relations with Lord Stanhope,
heretofore commander of the English troops in Spain, for commencing a
secret negotiation which soon extended to Holland, still closely knit to
England. “The character of our Regent,” wrote Dubois on the 10th of
March, 1716, “leaves no ground for fearing lest he should pique himself
upon perpetuating the prejudices and the procedure of our late court, and, as
you yourself remark, he has too much wit not to see his true interest.”
Dubois was the bearer to the Hague of the Regent’s proposals; King George
was to cross over thither; the clever negotiator veiled his trip under the
pretext of purchasing rare books; he was going, he said, to recover from the
hands of the Jews Le Poussin’s famous pictures of the Seven Sacraments,
not long ago carried off from Paris. The order of succession to the crowns
of France and England, conformably to the peace of Utrecht, was
guaranteed in the scheme of treaty; that was the only important advantage
to the Regent, who considered himself to be thus nailing the renunciation of
Philip V.; in other respects all the concessions came from the side of France;
her territory was forbidden ground to the Jacobites, and the Pretender, who
had taken refuge at Avignon on papal soil, was to be called upon to cross

the Alps. The English required the abandonment of the works upon the
canal of Mardyck, intended to replace the harbor of Dunkerque the
Hollanders claimed commercial advantages. Dubois yielded on all the
points, defending to the last with fruitless tenacity the title of King of
France, which the English still disputed. The negotiations came to an end at
length on the 6th of January, 1717, and Dubois wrote in triumph to the
Regent, “I signed at midnight; so there are you quit of servitude (your own
master), and here am I quit of fear.” The treaty of the triple alliance brought
the negotiator before long a more solid advantage; he was appointed
secretary of state for foreign affairs; it was on this occasion that he wrote to
Mr. Craggs, King George’s minister, a letter worthy of his character, and
which contributed a great deal towards gaining credit for the notion that he
had sold himself to England. “If I were to follow only the impulse of my
gratitude and were not restrained by respect, I should take the liberty of
writing to H. B. Majesty to thank him for the place with which my lord the
Regent has gratified me, inasmuch as I owe it to nothing but to the desire he
felt not to employ in affairs common to France and England anybody who
might not be agreeable to the King of Great Britain.”
At the moment when the signature was being put to the treaty of the
triple alliance, the sovereign of most distinction in Europe, owing to the
eccentric renown belonging to his personal merit, the czar Peter the Great,
had just made flattering advances to France. He had some time before
wished to take a trip to Paris, but Louis XIV. was old, melancholy, and
vanquished, and had declined the czar’s visit. The Regent could not do the
same thing, when, being at the Hague in 1717, Peter I. repeated the
expression of his desire. Marshal Cosse was sent to meet him, and the
honors due to the king himself were everywhere paid to him on the road. A
singular mixture of military and barbaric roughness with the natural
grandeur of a conqueror and creator of an empire, the czar mightily excited
the curiosity of the Parisians. “Sometimes, feeling bored by the confluence
of spectators,” says Duclos, “but never disconcerted, he would dismiss them
with a word, a gesture, or would go away without ceremony, to stroll
whither his fancy impelled him. He was a mighty tall man, very well made,
rather lean, face rather round in shape, a high forehead, fine eyebrows,
complexion reddish and brown, fine black eyes, large, lively, piercing; well-
opened; a glance majestic and gracious when he cared for it, otherwise stern
and fierce, with a tic that did not recur often, but that affected his eyes and

his whole countenance, and struck terror. It lasted an instant, with a glance
wild and terrible, and immediately passed away. His whole air indicated his
intellect, his reflection, his grandeur, and did not lack a certain grace. In all
his visits he combined a majesty the loftiest, the proudest, the most delicate,
the most sustained, at the same time the least embarrassing when he had
once established it, with a politeness which savored of it, always and in all
cases; masterlike everywhere, but with degrees according to persons. He
had a sort of familiarity which came of frankness, but he was not exempt
from a strong impress of that barbarism of his country which rendered all
his ways prompt and sudden, and his wishes uncertain, without bearing to
be contradicted in any.” Eating and drinking freely, getting drunk
sometimes, rushing about the streets in hired coach, or cab, or the carriage
of people who came to see him, of which he took possession
unceremoniously, he testified towards the Regent a familiar good grace
mingled with a certain superiority; at the play, to which they went together,
the czar asked for beer; the Regent rose, took the goblet which was brought
and handed it to Peter, who drank, and, without moving, put the glass back
on the tray which the Regent held all the while, with a slight inclination of
the head, which, however, surprised the public. At his first interview with
the little king, he took up the child in his arms, and kissed him over and
over again, “with an air of tenderness and politeness which was full of
nature, and nevertheless intermixed with a something of grandeur, equality
of rank, and, slightly, superiority of age; for all that was distinctly
perceptible.” We know how he went to see Madame de Maintenon. One of
his first visits was to the church of the Sorbonne; when he caught sight of
Richelieu’s monument, he ran up to it, embraced the statue, and, “Ah! great
man,” said he, “if thou wert still alive, I would give thee one half of my
kingdom to teach me to govern the other.”

The czar was for seeing everything, studying everything; everything
interested him, save the court and its frivolities; he did not go to visit the
princesses of the blood, and confined himself to saluting them coldly, whilst
passing along a terrace; but he was present at a sitting of the Parliament and
of the academies, he examined the organization of all the public
establishments, he visited the shops of the celebrated workmen, he handled
the coining-die whilst there was being struck in his honor a medal bearing a
Fame with these words: Vires acquiret eundo (‘Twill gather strength as it
goes.) He received a visit from the doctors of the Sorbonne, who brought
him a memorial touching the reunion of the Greek and Latin Churches. “I
am a mere soldier,” said he, “but I will gladly have an examination made of
the memorial you present to me.” Amidst all his chatting, studying, and
information-hunting, Peter the Great did not forget the political object of his

trip. He wanted to detach France from Sweden, her heretofore faithful ally,
still receiving a subsidy which the czar would fain have appropriated to
himself. Together with his own alliance, he promised that of Poland and of
Prussia. “France has nothing to fear from the emperor,” he said; as for King
George, whom he detested, “if any rupture should take place between him
and the Regent, Russia would suffice to fill towards France the place of
England as well as of Sweden.”
Thanks to the ability of Dubois, the Regent felt himself infeoffed to
England; he gave a cool reception to the overtures of the czar, who
proposed a treaty of alliance and commerce. Prussia had already concluded
secretly with France; Poland was distracted by intestine struggles; matters
were confined to the establishment of amicable relations; France
thenceforth maintained an ambassador in Russia, and the czar accepted the
Regent’s mediation between Sweden and himself. “France will be ruined by
luxury and daintiness,” said Peter the Great, at his departure, more
impressed with the danger run by the nation from a court which was elegant
even to effeminacy than by the irregularity of the morals, to which
elsewhere he was personally accustomed.
Dubois, however, went on negotiating, although he had displayed no sort
of alacrity towards the czar; he was struggling everywhere throughout
Europe against the influence of a broader, bolder, more powerful mind than
his own, less adroit perhaps in intrigue, but equally destitute of scruples as
to the employment of means. Alberoni had restored the finances, and
reformed the administration of Spain; he was preparing an army and a fleet,
meditating, he said, to bring peace to the world, and beginning that great
enterprise by manoeuvres which tended to nothing less than setting fire to
the four corners of Europe, in the name of an enfeebled and heavy-going
king, and of a queen ambitious, adroit, and unpopular, “both of whom he
had put under lock and key, keeping the key in his pocket,” says St. Simon.
He dreamed of reviving the ascendency of Spain in Italy, of overthrowing
the Protestant king of England, whilst restoring the Stuarts to the throne,
and of raising himself to the highest dignities in Church and State. He had
already obtained from Pope Clement XI. the cardinal’s hat, disguising under
pretext of war against the Turks the preparations he was making against
Italy; he had formed an alliance between Charles XII. and the czar,
intending to sustain, by their united forces, the attempts of the Jacobites in
England. His first enterprise, at sea, made him master of Sardinia within a

few days; the Spanish troops landed in Sicily. The emperor and Victor
Amadeo were in commotion; the pope, overwhelmed with reproaches by
those princes, wept, after his fashion, saying that he had damned himself by
raising Alberoni to the Roman purple; Dubois profited by the disquietude
excited in Europe by the bellicose attitude of the Spanish minister to finally
draw the emperor into the alliance between France and England. He was to
renounce his pretensions to Spain and the Indies, and give up Sardinia to
Savoy, which was to surrender Sicily to him. The succession to the duchies
of Parma and Tuscany was to be secured to the children of the Queen of
Spain. “Every difficulty would be removed if there were an appearance of
more equality,” wrote the Regent to Dubois on the 24th of January, 1718. “I
am quite aware that my personal interest does not suffer from this
inequality, and that it is a species of touchstone for discovering my friends
as well at home as abroad. But I am Regent of France, and I ought to so
behave myself that none may be able to reproach me with having thought of
nothing but myself. I also owe some consideration to the Spaniards, whom I
should completely disgust by making with the emperor an unequal
arrangement, about which their glory and the honor of their monarchy
would render them very sensitive. I should thereby drive them to union with
Alberoni, whereas, if a war were necessary to carry our point, we ought to
be able to say what Count Grammont said to the king: ‘At the time when we
served your Majesty against Cardinal Mazarin. Then the Spaniards
themselves would help us.’” In the result, France and England left Holland
and Savoy free to accede to the treaty; but, if Spain refused to do so
voluntarily within a specified time, the allies engaged to force her thereto
by arms.
The Hollanders hesitated; the Spanish ambassador at the Hague had a
medal struck representing the quadruple alliance as a coach on the point of
falling, because it rested on only three wheels. Certain advantages secured
to their commerce at last decided the States-general. Victor Amadeo
regretfully acceded to the treaty which robbed him of Sicily; he was
promised one of the Regent’s daughters for his son.
Alberoni refused persistently to accede to the great coalition brought
about by Dubois. Lord Stanhope proposed to go over to Spain in order to
bring him round. “If my lord comes as a lawgiver,” said the cardinal, “he
may spare himself the journey. If he comes as a mediator I will receive him;
but in any case I warn him that, at the first attack upon our vessels by an

English squadron, Spain has not an inch of ground on which I would
answer for his person.” Lord Stanhope, nevertheless, set out for Spain, and
had the good fortune to leave it in time, though without any diplomatic
success. Admiral Byng, at the head of the English fleet, had destroyed the
Spanish squadron before Messina; the troops which occupied Palermo
found themselves blockaded without hope of relief, and the nascent navy of
Spain was strangled at the birth. Alberoni, in his fury, had the persons and
goods seized of English residents settled in Spain, drove out the consuls,
and orders were given at Madrid that no tongue should wag about the
affairs of Sicily. The hope of a sudden surprise in England, on behalf of the
Jacobites, had been destroyed by the death of the King of Sweden, Charles
XII., killed on the 12th of December, 1718, at Freiderishalt, in Norway; the
flotilla equipped by Alberoni for Chevalier St. George, had been dispersed
and beaten by the elements; the Pretender henceforth was considered to cost
Spain too dear; he had just been sent away from her territory at the moment
when the conspiracy of Cellamare failed in France; in spite of the feverish
activity of his mind, and the frequently chimerical extent of his
machinations, Alberoni remained isolated in Europe, without ally and
without support.
The treaty of the quadruple alliance had at last come to be definitively
signed; Marshal d’Huxelles, head of the council of foreign affairs, an
enemy to Dubois, and displeased at not having been invited to take part in
the negotiations, at first refused his signature. [Memoires de St. Simon, t.
xix. p. 365.] “At the first word the Regent spoke to him, he received
nothing but bows, and the marshal went home to sulk; caresses, excuses,
reasons, it was all of no use; Huxelles declared to the Marquis of Effiat,
who had been despatched to him, that he would have his hand cut off rather
than sign. The Duke of Orleans grew impatient, and took a resolution very
foreign to his usual weakness; he sent D’Antin to Marshal d’Huxelles,
bidding him to make choice of this: either to sign or lose his place, of which
the Regent would immediately dispose in favor of somebody who would
not be so intractable (farouclae) as he. O, mighty power of orvietan (a
counterpoison)! This man so independent, this great citizen, this courageous
minister, had no sooner heard the threat, and felt that it would be carried
into effect, than he bowed his head beneath his huge hat, which he always
had on, and signed right off, without a word. He even read the treaty to the
council of regency in a low and trembling voice, and when the Regent

asked his opinion, ‘the opinion of the treaty,’ he answered, between his
teeth, with a bow.” Some days later appeared, almost at the same time—the
17th of December, 1718, and the 9th of January, 1719—the manifestoes of
England and France, proclaiming the resolution of making war upon Spain,
whilst Philip V., by a declaration of December 25th, 1718, pronounced all
renunciations illusory, and proclaimed his right to the throne of France in
case of the death of Louis XV. At the same time he made an appeal to an
assembly of the States-general against the tyranny of the Regent, “who was
making alliances,” he said, “with the enemies of the two crowns.”
For once, in a way, Alberoni indulged the feelings of the king his master,
and, in spite of the good will felt by a part of the grandees towards France,
Spain was, on the whole, with him; he no longer felt himself to be
threatened, as he had been a few months before, when the king’s illness had
made him tremble for his greatness, and perhaps for his life. He kept the
monarch shut up in his room, refusing entrance to even the superior officers
of the palace. [Memoires de St. Simon, t. xv.] “The Marquis of Villena,
major-domo major, having presented himself there one afternoon, one of
the valets inside half opened the door, and told him, with much
embarrassment, that he was forbidden to let him in. ‘You are insolent, sir,’
replied the marquis; ‘that cannot be.’ He pushed; the door against the valet
and went in. The marquis, though covered with glory, being very weak on
his legs, thus advances with short steps, leaning on his little stick. The
queen and the cardinal see him, and look at one another. The king was too
ill to take notice of anything, and his curtains were drawn. The cardinal,
seeing the marquis approach, went up to him, and represented to him that
the king wished to be alone, and begged him to go away. ‘That is not true,’
said the marquis. ‘I kept my eye upon you, and the king never said a word
to you.’ The cardinal, insisting, took him by the arm to make him go out;
what with the heat of the moment, and what with the push, the marquis,
being feeble, fell into an arm-chair which happened to be by. Wroth at his
fall, he raises his stick and brings it down with all his might, hammer and
tongs, about the cardinal’s ears, calling him a little rascal, a little hound,
who deserved nothing short of the stirrup-leathers. When he did at last go
out, the queen had looked on from her seat at this adventure all through,
without moving or saying a word, and so had the few who were in the
room, without daring to stir. The curious thing is, that the cardinal, mad as
he was, but taken completely by surprise at the blows, did not defend

himself, and thought of nothing but getting clear. The same evening the
marquis was exiled to his estates, without ever wanting to return from them,
until the fall of Alberoni.” Alberoni has sometimes been compared to the
great cardinals who had governed France. To say nothing of the terror with
which Richelieu inspired the grandees, who detested him, the Prince of
Coude would not have dared to touch Cardinal Mazarin with the tip of his
cane, even when the latter “kissed his boots” in the courtyard of the castle at
Havre.
Alberoni had persuaded his master that the French were merely awaiting
the signal to rise in his favor; the most odious calumnies were everywhere
circulating against the Regent; he did not generally show that he was at all
disturbed or offended by them; however, when the poem of the Philippics
by La Grange appeared, he desired to see it; the Duke of St. Simon took it
to him. “‘Read it to me,’ said the Regent. ‘That I will never do,
Monseigneur,’ said I. He then took it and read it quite low, standing up in
the window of his little winter-closet, where we were. All at once I saw him
change countenance, and turn towards me, tears in his eyes, and very near
fainting. ‘All,’ said he to me, ‘this is too bad, this horrid thing is too much
for me.’ He had lit upon the passage where the scoundrel had represented
the Duke of Orleans purposing to poison the king, and all ready to commit
his crime. I have never seen man so transfixed, so deeply moved, so
overwhelmed by a calumny so enormous and so continuous. I had all the
pains in the world to bring him round a little.” King Louis XV., who had no
love and scarcely any remembrance, preserved all his life some affection for
the Regent, and sincere gratitude for the care which the latter had lavished
upon him. The Duke of Orleans had never desired the crown for himself,
and the attentions full of tender respect which he had shown the little king
had made upon the child an impression which was never effaced.
The preparations for war with Spain meanwhile continued; the Prince of
Conti was nominally at the head of the army, Marshal Berwick was
intrusted with the command. He accepted it, in spite of his old connections
with Spain, the benefits which Philip V. had heaped upon him, and the
presence of his eldest son, the Duke of Liria, in the Spanish ranks. There
were others who attached more importance to gratitude. Berwick thought
very highly of lieutenant-general Count D’Asfeldt, and desired to have him
in his army; the Duke of Orleans spoke to him about it. “Monseigneur,”
answered D’Asfeldt, “I am a Frenchman, I owe you everything, I have

nothing to expect save from you, but,” taking the Fleece in his hand and
showing it, “what would you have me do with this, which I hold, with the
king’s permission, from the King of Spain, if I were to serve against Spain,
this being the greatest honor that I could have received?” He phrased his
repugnance so well, and softened it down by so many expressions of
attachment to the Duke of Orleans, that he was excused from serving
against Spain, and he contented himself with superintending at Bordeaux
the service of the commissariat. The French army, however, crossed the
frontier in the month of March, 1719. “The Regent may send a French army
whenever he pleases,” wrote Alberoni, on the 21st November, 1718;
“proclaim publicly that there will not be a shot fired, and that the king our
master will have provisions ready to receive them.” He had brought the
king, the queen, and the prince of the Asturias into the camp; Philip V. fully
expected the desertion of the French army in a mass. Not a soul budged;
some refugees made an attempt to tamper with certain officers of their
acquaintance; their messenger was hanged in the middle of Marshal
Berwick’s camp. Fontarabia, St. Sebastian, and the Castle of Urgel fell
before long into the power of the French; another division burned, at the
port of Los Pasages, six vessels which chanced to be on the stocks; an
English squadron destroyed those at Centera and in the port of Vigo.
Everywhere the depots were committed to the flames: this cruel and
destructive war against an enemy whose best troops were fighting far away,
and who was unable to offer more than a feeble resistance, gratified the
passions and the interests of England rather than of France. “It was, of
course, necessary,” said Berwick, “that the English government should be
able to convince the next Parliament that nothing had been spared to
diminish the navy of Spain.” During this time the English fleet and the
emperor’s troops were keeping up an attack in Sicily upon the Spanish
troops, who made a heroic defence, but were without resources or re-
enforcements, and were diminishing, consequently, every day. The Marquis
of Leyden no longer held anything but Palermo and the region round AEtna.
Alberoni had attempted to create a diversion by hurling into the midst of
France the brand of civil war. Brittany, for a long time past discontented
with its governor, the Marquis of Montesquiou, and lately worked upon by
the agents of the Duchess of Maine, was ripe for revolt; a few noblemen
took up arms, and called upon the peasants to enter the forest with them,
that is, to take the field. Philip V. had promised the assistance of a fleet, and

had supplied some money. But the peasants did not rise, the Spanish ships
were slow to arrive, the enterprise attempted against the Marquis of
Montesquiou failed, the conspirators were surrounded in the forest of Noe,
near Rennes; a great number were made prisoners and taken away to
Nantes, where a special chamber inquired into the case against them. Three
noblemen and one priest perished on the scaffold.
Insurrection, as well as desertion and political opposition, had been a
failure; Philip V. was beaten at home as well as in Sicily. The Regent
succeeded in introducing to the presence of the King of Spain an unknown
agent, who managed to persuade the monarch that the cardinal was shirking
his responsibility before Europe, asserting that the king and queen had
desired the war, and that he had confined himself to gratifying their
passions. The Duke of Orleans said, at the same time, quite openly, that he
made war not against Philip V. or against Spain, but against Alberoni only.
Lord Stanhope declared, in the name of England, that no peace was
possible, unless its preliminary were the dismissal of the pernicious
minister. The fall of Alberoni was almost as speedy as that which he had but
lately contrived for his enemy the Princess des Ursins. On the 4th of
December, 1719, he received orders to quit Madrid within eight days and
Spain under three weeks. He did not see the king or queen again, and retired
first to Genoa, going by France, and then finally to Rome. He took with him
an immense fortune. It was discovered, after his departure, that he had
placed amongst the number of his treasures, the authentic will of Charles
II., securing the throne of Spain to Philip V. He was pursued, his luggage
ransacked, and the precious document recovered. Alberoni had restored
order in the internal administration of Spain; he had cleared away many
abuses; Italian as he was, he had resuscitated Spanish ambition. “I
requickened a corpse,” he used to say. His views were extensive and daring,
but often chimerical; he had reduced to a nullity the sovereign whom he
governed for so long, keeping him shut up far away from the world, in a
solitude which he was himself almost the only one to interrupt. “The queen
has the devil in her,” he used to say; “if she finds a man of the sword who
has some mental resources and is a pretty good general, she will make a
racket in France and in Europe.” The queen did not find a general; and on
the 17th of February, 1720, peace was signed at the Hague between Spain
and the powers in coalition against her, to the common satisfaction of
France and Spain, whom so many ties already united. The haughty

Elizabeth Farnese looked no longer to anybody but the Duke of Orleans for
the elevation of her children.
So great success in negotiation, however servile had been his bearing,
had little by little increased the influence of Dubois over his master. The
Regent knew and despised him, but he submitted to his sway and yielded to
his desires, sometimes to his fancies. Dubois had for a long while
comprehended that the higher dignities of the church could alone bring him
to the grandeur of which he was ambitious; yet everything about him
seemed to keep them out of his reach, his scandalous life, his perpetual
intrigues, the baseness, not of his origin, but of his character and conduct;
nevertheless, the see of Cambrai having become vacant by the death of
Cardinal de la Tremoille, Dubois conceived the hope of obtaining it.
“Impudent as he was,” says St. Simon, “great as was the sway he had
acquired over his master, he found himself very much embarrassed, and
masked his effrontery by ruse; he told the Duke of Orleans that he had
dreamed a funny dream, that he was Archbishop of Cambrai. The Regent,
who saw what he was driving at, answered him in a tone of contempt,
‘Thou, Archbishop of Cambrai! thou hast no thought of such a thing?’ And
the other persisting, he bade him think of all the scandal of his life. Dubois
had gone too far to stop on so fine a road, and quoted to him precedents, of
which there were, unfortunately, only too many. The Duke of Orleans, less
moved by such bad reasons than put to it how to resist the suit of a man
whom he was no longer wont to dare gainsay in anything, sought to get out
of the affair. ‘Why! who would consecrate thee?’ ‘Ah! if that’s all,’ replied
Dubois, cheerfully, ‘the thing is done. I know well who will consecrate me;
but is that all, once more?’ ‘Well! who?’ asked the Regent. ‘Your premier
almoner; there he is, outside; he will ask nothing better.’ And he embraces
the legs of the Duke of Orleans,—who remains stuck and caught without
having the power to refuse,—goes out, draws aside the Bishop of Nantes,
tells him that he himself has got Cambrai, begs him to consecrate him,—
who promises immediately,—comes in again, capers, returns thanks, sings
praises, expresses wonder, seals the matter more and more surely by
reckoning it done, and persuading the Regent that it is so, who never dared
say no. That is how Dubois made himself Archbishop of Cambrai.”
He was helped, it is said, by a strange patron. Destouches, charge
d’affaires in London, who was kept well informed by Dubois, went to see
George I., requesting him to write to the Regent, recommending to him the

negotiator of the treaties. The king burst out laughing. “How can you ask a
Protestant prince,” said he, “to mix himself up with the making of an
archbishop in France? The Regent will laugh at the idea, as I do, and will do
nothing of the sort.” “Pardon me, sir,” rejoined Destouches, “he will laugh,
but he will do it, first out of regard for your Majesty, and then because he
will think it a good joke. I beseech your Majesty to be pleased to sign the
letter I have here already written.” King George signed, and the adroit
Dubois became Archbishop of Cambrai. He even succeeded in being
consecrated, not only by the Bishop of Nantes, but also by Cardinal Rohan
and by Massillon, one of the glories of the French episcopate, a timid man
and a poor one, in despite of his pious eloquence. The Regent, as well as the
whole court, was present at the ceremony, to the great scandal of the people
attached to religion. Dubois received all the orders on the same day; and,
when he was joked about it, he brazen-facedly called to mind the precedent
of St. Ambrose. Dubois henceforth cast his eyes upon the cardinal’s hat, and
his negotiations at Rome were as brisk as those of Alberoni had but lately
been with the same purpose.
Amidst so much defiance of decency and public morality, in the presence
of such profound abuse of sacred things, God did not, nevertheless, remain
without testimony, and his omnipotent justice had spoken. On the 21st of
July, 1719, the Duchess of Berry, eldest daughter of the Regent, had died at
the Palais-Royal, at barely twenty-four years of age; her health, her beauty,
and her wit were not proof against the irregular life she had led. Ere long a
more terrible cry arose from one of the chief cities of the kingdom. “The
plague,” they said, “is at Marseilles, brought, none knows how, on board a
ship from the East.” The terrible malady had by this time been brooding for
a month in the most populous quarters without anybody’s daring to give it
its real name. “The public welfare demands,” said Chancellor d’Aguesseau,
“that the people should be persuaded that the plague is not contagious, and
that the ministry should behave as if it were persuaded of the contrary.”
Meanwhile emigration was commencing at Marseilles; the rich folks had all
taken flight; the majority of the public functionaries, unfaithful to their duty,
had imitated them, when, on the 31st of July, 1720, the Parliament of Aix,
scared at the contagion, drew round Marseilles a sanitary line, proclaiming
the penalty of death against all who should dare to pass it; the mayor
(viguier) and the four sheriffs were left alone, and without resources to
confront a populace bewildered by fear, suffering, and, ere long, famine.

Then shone forth that grandeur of the human soul, which displays itself in
the hour of terror, as if to testify of the divine image still existing amidst the
wreck of us. Whilst the Parliament was flying from threatened Aix, and
hurrying affrighted from town to town, accompanied or pursued in its route
by the commandant of the province, all that while the Bishop of Marseilles,
Monseigneur de Belzunce, the sheriffs Estelle and Moustier, and a simple
officer of health, Chevalier Roze, sufficed in the depopulated town for all
duties and all acts of devotion.
The plague showed a preference for attacking robust men, young people,
and women in the flower of their age; it disdained the old and the sick; there
was none to care for the dying, none to bury the dead. The doctors of
Marseilles had fled, or dared not approach the dying without precautions,
which redoubled the terror. “The doctors ought to be abolished,” wrote
Dubois to the Archbishop of Aix, “or ordered to show more ability and less
cowardice, for it is a great calamity.”
Some young doctors, arriving from Montpellier, raised the courage of
their desponding brethren, and the sick no longer perished without help.
Rallying round the bishop, the priests, assisted by the members of all the
religious orders, flew from bedside to bedside, and from grave to grave,
without being able to suffice for the duties of their ministry. “Look at
Belzunce,” writes M. Lemontey; “all he possessed, he has given; all who
served him are dead; alone, in poverty, afoot, in the morning he penetrates
into the most horrible dens of misery, and in the evening, he is found again
in the midst of places bespattered with the dying; he quenches their thirst,
he comforts them as a friend, he exhorts them as an apostle, and on this
field of death he gleans abandoned souls. The example of this prelate, who
seems to be invulnerable, animates with courageous emulation—not the
clergy of lazy and emasculated dignitaries, for they fled at the first approach
of danger, but—the parish-priests, the vicars and the religious orders; not
one deserts his colors, not one puts any bound to his fatigues save with his
life. Thus perished twenty-six Recollects and eighteen Jesuits out of twenty-
six. The Capucins summoned their brethren from the other provinces, and
the latter rushed to martyrdom with the alacrity of the ancient Christians;
out of fifty-five the epidemic slew forty-three. The conduct of the priests of
the Oratory was, if possible, more magnanimous. The functions of the
sacred ministry were forbidden them by the bishop, a fanatical partisan of
the bull Unigenitus; they refused to profit by their disqualification, and they

devoted themselves to the service of the sick with heroic humility; nearly
all succumbed, and there were still tears in the city for the Superior, a man
of eminent piety.”

During more than five months the heroic defenders of Marseilles
struggled against the scourge. The bishop drew the populace on to follow in
his steps, in processions or in the churches, invoking the mercy of God in
aid of a city which terror and peril seemed to have the effect of plunging
into the most awful corruption. Estelle, Moustier, and Chevalier Roze,
heading the efforts attempted in all directions to protect the living and
render the last offices to the dead, themselves put their hands to the work,
aided by galley-men who had been summoned from the hulks. Courage was
enough to establish equality between all ranks and all degrees of virtue.

Monseigneur de Belzunce sat upon the seat of the tumbrel laden with
corpses, driven by a convict stained with every crime.
Marseilles had lost a third of its inhabitants. Aix, Toulon, Arles, the
Cevennes, the Gevaudan were attacked by the contagion; fearful was the
want in the decimated towns long deprived of every resource. The Regent
had forwarded corn and money; the pope sent out three ships laden with
provisions; one of the vessels was wrecked, the two others were seized by
Barbary pirates, who released them as soon as they knew their destination.
The cargo was deposited on a desert island in sight of Toulon. Thither it was
that boats, putting off from Marseilles, went to fetch the alms of the pope,
more charitable than many priests, accompanying his gifts with all the
spiritual consolations and indulgences of his holy office. The time had not
come for Marseilles and the towns of Provence to understand the terrible
teaching of God. Scarcely had they escaped from the dreadful scourge
which had laid them waste, when they plunged into excesses of pleasure
and debauchery, as if to fly from the memories that haunted them. Scarcely
was a thought given to those martyrs to devotion who had fallen during the
epidemic; those who survived received no recompense; the Regent, alone,
offered Monseigneur de Belzunce the bishopric of Laon, the premier
ecclesiastical peerage in the kingdom; the saintly bishop preferred to remain
in the midst of the flock for which he had battled against despair and death.
It was only in 1802 that the city of Marseilles at last raised a monument to
its bishop and its heroic magistrates.
Dubois, meanwhile, was nearing the goal of all his efforts. In order to
obtain the cardinal’s hat, he had embraced the cause of the Court of Rome,
and was pushing forward the registration by Parliament of the Bull
Unigenitus. The long opposition of the Duke of Noailles at last yielded to
the desire of restoring peace in the church. In his wake the majority of the
bishops and communities who had made appeal to the contemplated
council, renounced, in their turn, the protests so often renewed within the
last few years. The Parliament was divided, but exiled to Pontoise, as a
punishment for its opposition to the system of Law; it found itself
threatened with removal to Blois. Chancellor d’Aguesseau had vainly
sought to interpose his authority; a magistrate of the Grand Chamber,
Perelle by name, was protesting eloquently against any derogation from the
principles of liberty of the Gallican Church and of the Parliaments. “Where
did you find such maxims laid down?” asked the chancellor, angrily. “In the

pleadings of the late Chancellor d’Aguesseau,” answered the councillor,
icily. D’Aguesseau gave in his resignation to the Regent; the Parliament did
not leave for Blois; after sitting some weeks at Pontoise, it enregistered the
formal declaration of the Bull, and at last returned to Paris on the, 20th of
December, 1720.
Dubois had reconciled France with the court of Rome; the latter owed
him recompense for so much labor. Clement XI. had promised, but he could
not make up his mind to bring down so low the dignity of the Sacred
College; he died without having conferred the hat upon Dubois. During the
conclave intrigues recommenced, conducted this time by Cardinal Rohan.
The Jesuit Lafitteau, who had become Bishop of Sisteron, and had for a
long while been the secret agent of Dubois at Rome, kept him acquainted
with all the steps taken to wrest a promise from Cardinal Conti, who was
destined, it was believed, to unite the majority of the suffrages. “Do not be
surprised,” he adds, “to hear me say that I go by night to the conclave, for I
have found out the secret of getting the key of it, and I constantly pass
through five or six guard-posts, without their being able to guess who I
am.”
Cardinal Conti was old and feeble; all means were brought to bear upon
him. Dubois had for a long time past engaged the services of Chevalier St.
George; when the new pope was proclaimed, under the name of Innocent
XIII., he had signed a conditional promise in favor of Dubois. The Regent,
who had but lately pressed his favorite’s desires upon Clement XI., was not
afraid to write to the new pontiff—
“MOST HOLY FATHER,
“Your Holiness is informed of the favor which the late pope had granted
me on behalf of the Archbishop of Cambrai, of which his death alone
prevented the fulfilment. I hope that Your Holiness will let it be seen, on
your accession to the throne of St. Peter, that services rendered to the
Church lose nothing by the death of the sovereign pontiffs, and that you will
not think it unworthy of your earliest care to give me this public mark of the
attention paid by the Holy See to the zeal which I profess for its interests.
This kindness on the part of Your Holiness will crown the wishes I formed
for your exaltation, will fill up the measure of the joy which it has caused
me, will maintain our kindly relations to the advantage of the peace of the
Church and the authority of the Holy See, and will fortify the zeal of the

Archbishop of Cambrai in the execution of my orders to the glory of the
Pontificate and of Your Holiness.”
On the 16th of July, 1721, Dubois was at last elected Cardinal; it was
stated that his elevation had cost eight millions of livres. The frivolous
curiosity of the court was concerned with the countenance the new
Eminence would make in his visits of ceremony, especially in that to
Madame, his declared foe at all times. “He had nearly two months to
prepare for it,” says St. Simon, “and it must be admitted that he had made
good use of them. He got himself up for his part, and appeared before
Madame with deep respect and embarrassment. He prostrated himself, as
she advanced to greet him, sat down in the middle of the circle, covered his
head for a moment with his red hat, which he removed immediately, and
made his compliments; he began with his own surprise at finding himself in
such a position in presence of Madame, spoke of the baseness of his birth
and his first employments; employed them with much cleverness and in
very choice terms to extol so much the more the kindness, courage, and
power of the Duke of Orleans, who from so low had raised him to where he
found himself; gave Madame some delicate incense; in fine, dissolved in
the most profound respect and gratitude, doing it so well that Madame
herself could not help, when he was gone, praising his discourse and his
countenance, at the same time adding that she was mad to see him where he
was.”
The bearing of the newly-elected was less modest at the council of
regency; he got himself accompanied thither by Cardinal Rohan; their rank
gave the two ecclesiastics precedence. The Duke of Noailles, d’Aguesseau,
and some other great lords refused to sit with Dubois. “This day, sir, will be
famous in history,” said the Duke of Noailles to the new cardinal; “it will
not fail to be remarked therein that your entrance into the council caused it
to be deserted by the grandees of the kingdom.” Noailles was exiled, as well
as d’Aguesseau.
The great lords had made a decided failure in government. Since 1718,
the different councils had been abolished; defended by Abbe St. Pierre,
under the grotesque title of Polysynodie, they had earned for the candid
preacher of universal peace his exclusion from the French Academy, which
was insisted upon by the remnants of the old court, whom he had mortally
offended by styling Louis XIV.‘s governmental system a viziership. The

Regent had heaped favors upon the presidents and members of the councils,
but he had placed Dubois at the head of foreign affairs and Le Blanc over
the war department. “I do not inquire into the theory of councils,” said the
able Dubois to the Regent by the mouth of his confidant Chavigny; “it was,
as you know, the object of worship to the shallow pates of the old court.
Humiliated by their nonentity at the end of the last reign, they begot this
system upon the reveries of M. de Cambrai. But I think of you, I think of
your interests. The king will reach, his majority, the grandees of the
kingdom approach the monarque by virtue of their birth; if to this privilege
they unite that of being then at the head of affairs, there is reason to fear
that they may surpass you in complaisance, in flattery, may represent you as
a useless phantom, and establish themselves upon the ruin of you. Suppress,
then, these councils, if you mean to continue indispensable, and haste to
supersede the great lords, who would become your rivals, by means of
simple secretaries of state, who, without standing or family, will perforce
remain your creatures.”
The Duke of Antin, son of Madame de Montespan, one of the most adroit
courtiers of the old as well as of the new court, “honorless and passionless”
(sans honneur et sans humeur), according to the Regent’s own saying, took
a severer view than Dubois of the arrangement to which he had contributed.
“The councils are dissolved,” he wrote in his memoirs; “the nobility will
never recover from it—to my great regret, I must confess. The kings who
hereafter reign will see that Louis XIV., one of the greatest kings in the
world, never would employ people of rank in any of his business; that the
Regent, a most enlightened prince, had begun by putting them at the head of
all affairs, and was obliged to remove them at the end of three years. What
can they and must they conclude therefrom? That people of this condition
are not fitted for business, and that they are good for nothing but to get
killed in war. I hope I am wrong, but there is every appearance that the
masters will think like that, and there will not be wanting folks who will
confirm them in that opinion.” A harsh criticism on the French nobility, too
long absorbed by war or the court, living apart from the nation and from
affairs, and thereby become incapable of governing, put down once for all
by the iron hand of Richelieu, without ever having been able to resume at
the head of the country the rank and position which befitted them.
The special councils were dissolved, the council of regency diminished;
Dubois became premier minister in name—he had long been so in fact.

He had just concluded an important matter, one which the Regent had
much at heart—the marriage of the king with the Infanta of Spain, and that
of Mdlle. de Montpensier, daughter of the Duke of Orleans, with the Prince
of the Asturias. The Duke of St. Simon was intrusted with the official
demand. Philip V. was rejoiced to see his daughter’s elevation to that throne
which he still regarded as the first in the world; he purchased it by the
concession made to the Regent.
The age of the Infanta was a serious obstacle; she was but three years old,
the king was twelve. When the Duke of Orleans went in state to announce
to Louis XV. the negotiation which tarried for nothing further but his
consent, the young prince, taken by surprise, was tongue-tied, seemed to
have his heart quite full, and his eyes grew moist. His preceptor, Fleury,
Bishop of Frejus, who had just refused the Archbishopric of Rheims, seeing
that he must make up his mind to please the Regent or estrange him,
supported what had just been said. “Marshal Villeroy, decided by the
bishop’s example, said to the king, ‘Come, my dear master; the thing must
be done with a good grace.’ The Regent, very much embarrassed, the duke,
mighty taciturn, and Dubois, with an air of composure, waited for the king
to break a silence which lasted a quarter of an hour, whilst the bishop never
ceased whispering to the king. As the silence continued, and the assembly
of all the council, at which the king was about to appear, could not but
augment his timidity, the bishop turned to the Regent, and said to him, ‘His
Majesty will go to the council, but he wants a little time to prepare himself
for it.’ Thereupon the Regent replied, that he was created to await the
convenience of the king, saluted him with an air of respect and affection,
went out and made signs to the rest to follow him. A quarter of an hour later
the king entered the council, with his eyes still red, and replied, with a very
short and rather low yes, to the Regent’s question, whether he thought
proper that the news of his marriage should be imparted to the council.” “It
was the assurance of peace with Spain, and the confirmation of the recent
treaties; the Regent’s enemies saw in it the climax of the policy, by the
choice of an infant, which retarded the king’s marriage.” [Memoires secrets
de Dubois, t. ii. p. 163.]
Accusations of greater gravity had been recently renewed against the
Duke of Orleans. The king had been ill; for just a moment the danger had
appeared serious; the emotion in France was general, the cabal opposed to
the Regent went beyond mere anxiety. “The consternation everywhere was

great,” says St. Simon; “I had the privileges of entry, and so I went into the
king’s chamber. I found it very empty; the Duke of Orleans seated at the
chimney-corner, very forlorn and very sad. I went up to him for a moment,
then I approached the king’s bed. At that moment, Boulduc, one of his
apothecaries, was giving him something to take. The Duchess of la Ferte
was at Boulduc’s elbow, and, having turned round to see who was coming,
she saw me, and all at once said to me, betwixt loud and soft, ‘He is
poisoned, he is poisoned.’ ‘Hold your tongue, do,’ said I; ‘that is awful!’
She went on again, so much and so loud, that I was afraid the king would
hear her. Boulduc and I looked at one another, and I immediately withdrew
from the bed and from that madwoman, with whom I was on no sort of
terms. The illness was not a long one, and the convalescence was speedy,
which restored tranquillity and joy, and caused an outburst of Te Deums and
rejoicings. On St. Louis’ day, at the concert held every year on that evening
at the Tuileries, the crowd was so dense that a pin would not have fallen to
the ground in the garden. The windows of the Tuileries were decorated and
crammed full, and all the roofs of the Carrousel filled with all that could
hold on there, as well as the square. Marshal Villeroy revelled in this
concourse, which bored the king, who kept hiding himself every moment in
the corners; the marshal pulled him out by the arm and led him up to the
windows. Everybody shouted ‘Hurrah! for the king!’ and the marshal,
detaining the king, who would still have gone and hidden himself, said,
‘Pray look, my dear master, at all this company, all this people; it is all
yours, it all belongs to you; you are their master; pray give them a look or
two just to satisfy them!’ A fine lesson for a governor, and one which he did
not tire of impressing upon him, so fearful was he lest he should forget it;
accordingly he retained it very perfectly.”

The Duke of Beauvilliers and Fenelon taught the Duke of Burgundy
differently; the Duke of Montausier and Bossuet himself, in spite of the
majestic errors of his political conceptions, had not forgotten in the
education of the grand-dauphin the lesson of kings’ duties towards their
peoples.
Already, over the very infancy of Louis XV. was passing the breath of
decay; little by little that people, as yet so attached to their young sovereign,
was about to lose all respect and submission towards its masters; a trait long
characteristic of the French nation.
The king’s majority was approaching, the Regent’s power seemed on the
point of slipping from him; Marshal Villeroy, aged, witless, and tactless,
irritated at the elevation of Dubois, always suspicious of the Regent’s
intentions towards the young king, burst out violently against the minister,

and displayed towards the Regent an offensive distrust. “One morning,”
says Duclos, “when the latter came to give an account to the king of the
nomination to certain benefices, he begged his Majesty to be pleased to
walk into his closet, where he had a word to say to him in private. The
governor objected, saying that he knew the duties of his place, that the king
could have no secrets from his governor, protested that he would not lose
sight of him for an instant, and that he was bound to answer for his person.
The Regent, then taking a tone of superiority, said to the marshal, ‘You
forget yourself, sir; you do not see the force of your expressions; it is only
the king’s presence that restrains me from treating you as you deserve.’
Having so said, he made a profound bow to the king and went out. The
disconcerted marshal followed the Regent to the door, and would have
entered upon a justification; all his talk all day long was a mixture of the
Roman’s haughtiness and the courtier’s meanness.” [Memoires de St.
Simon.]
“Next day, at noon, Marshal Villeroy repaired to the Duke of Orleans’ to
excuse himself, fancying he might attempt an explanation as equal with
equal. He crosses with his grand airs, in the midst of the whole court, the
rooms which preceded the prince’s closet; the crowd opens and makes way
for him respectfully. He asks, in a loud tone, where the Duke of Orleans is;
the answer is that he is busy. ‘I must see him, nevertheless,’ says he;
‘announce me!’ The moment he advances towards the door, the Marquis of
La Fare, captain of the Regent’s guards, shows himself between the door
and the marshal, arrests him, and demands his sword. Le Blanc hands him
the order from the king, and at the same instant Count d’Artagnan,
commandant of the musketeers, blocks him on the opposite side to La Fare.
The marshal shouts, remonstrates; he is pitched into a chair, shut up in it,
and passed out by one of the windows which opens door-wise on to the
garden; at the bottom of the steps of the orangery behold a carriage with six
horses, surrounded by twenty musketeers. The marshal, furious, storms,
threatens; he is carried into the vehicle, the carriage starts, and in less than
three hours the marshal is at Villeroi, eight or nine leagues from Versailles.”
The king wept a moment or two without saying a word; he was consoled by
the return of the Bishop of Frejus, with whom it was supposed to be all
over, but who was simply at Baville, at President Lamoignon’s; his pupil
was as much attached to him as he was capable of being; Fleury remained
alone with him, and Marshal Villeroy was escorted to Lyons, of which he

was governor. He received warning not to leave it, and was not even present
at the king’s coronation, which took place at Rheims, on the 25th of
October, 1722. Amidst the royal pomp and festivities, a significant
formality was for the first time neglected; that was, admitting into the nave
of the church the people, burgesses and artisans, who were wont to join
their voices to those of the clergy and nobility when, before the anointment
of the king, demand was made in a loud voice for the consent of the
assembly, representing the nation. Even in external ceremonies, the
kingship was becoming every day more and more severed from national
sentiment and national movement.
The king’s majority, declared on the 19th of February, 1723, had made no
change in the course of the government; the young prince had left Paris, and
resumed possession of that Palace of Versailles, still full of mementoes of
the great king. The Regent, more and more absorbed by his pleasures,
passed a great deal of time at Paris; Dubois had the government to himself.
His reign was not long at this unparalleled pinnacle of his greatness; he
had been summoned to preside at the assembly of the clergy, and had just
been elected to the French Academy, where he was received by Fontenelle,
when a sore, from which he had long suffered, reached all at once a serious
crisis; an operation was indispensable, but he set himself obstinately against
it; the Duke of Orleans obliged him to submit to it, and it was his death-
blow; the wretched cardinal expired, without having had time to receive the
sacraments.
The elevation and power of Dubois had the fatal effect of lowering
France in her own eyes; she had felt that she was governed by a man whom
she despised, and had a right to despise; this was a deep-seated and lasting
evil; authority never recovered from the blow thus struck at its moral
influence. Dubois, however, was more able and more farsighted in his
foreign policy than the majority of his predecessors and his contemporaries
were; without definitively losing the alliance of Spain, re-attached to the
interests of France by the double treaty of marriage, he had managed to
form a firm connection with England, and to rally round France the
European coalition but lately in arms against her. He maintained and made
peace ingloriously; he obtained it sometimes by meannesses in bearing and
modes of acting; he enriched himself by his intrigues, abroad as well as at
home; his policy none the less was steadfastly French, even in his relations

with the court of Rome, and in spite of his eager desire for the cardinal’s
hat. He died sadly, shamefully, without a friend and without regret, even on
the part of the Regent, whom he had governed and kept in hand by active
and adroit assiduity, by a hardihood and an effrontery to the influence of
which that prince submitted, all the while despising it. Dubois had raised up
again, to place himself upon it, that throne of premier minister on which
none had found a seat since Richelieu and Mazarin; the Duke of Orleans
succeeded him without fuss, without parade, without even appearing to
have any idea of the humiliation inflicted upon him by that valet, lying in
his coffin, whom he had raised to power, and whose place he was about to
fill for a few days.

On the 2d of December, 1723, three months and a half after the death of
Dubois, the Duke of Orleans succumbed in his turn. Struck down by a
sudden attack of apoplexy, whilst he was chatting with his favorite for the
time, the Duchess of Falarie, he expired without having recovered
consciousness. Lethargized by the excesses of the table and debauchery of
all kinds, more and more incapable of application and work, the prince did
not preserve sufficient energy to give up the sort of life which had ruined
him. For a long while the physicians had been threatening him with sudden
death. “It is all I can desire,” said he. Naturally brave, intelligent, amiable,
endowed with a charm of manner which recalled Henry IV., kind and
merciful like him, of a mind that was inquiring, fertile, capable of applying
itself to details of affairs, Philip of Orleans was dragged down by depravity
of morals to the same in soul and mind; his judgment, naturally

straightforward and correct, could still discern between good and evil, but
he was incapable of energetically willing the one and firmly resisting the
other; he had governed equitably, without violence and without harshness,
he had attempted new and daring courses, and he had managed to abandon
them without any excesses or severities; like Dubois, he had inspired
France with a contempt which unfortunately did not protect her from
contagion. When Madame died, an inscription had been put on the tomb of
that honest, rude, and haughty German: “Here lies Lazybones” (Ci-git
l’oisivete). All the vices thus imputed to the Regent did not perish with him,
when he succumbed at forty-nine years of age under their fatal effects. “The
evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones;”
the Regency was the signal for an irregularity of morals which went on
increasing, like a filthy river, up to the end of the reign of Louis XV.; the
fatal seed had been germinating for a long time past under the forced and
frequently hypocritical decency of the old court; it burst out under the easy-
going regency of an indolent and indulgent prince, himself wholly given to
the licentiousness which he excused and authorized by his own example.
From the court the evil soon spread to the nation; religious faith still
struggled within the soul, but it had for a long while been tossed about
between contrary and violent opinions; it found itself disturbed, attacked,
by the new and daring ideas which were beginning to dawn in politics as
well as in philosophy. The break-up was already becoming manifest, though
nobody could account for it, though no fixed plan was conceived in men’s
minds. People devoured the memoirs of Cardinal Retz and Madame de
Motteville, which had just appeared; people formed from them their
judgments upon the great persons and great events which they had seen and
depicted. The University of Paris, under the direction of Rollin, was
developing the intelligence and lively powers of burgessdom; and
Montesquieu, as yet full young, was shooting his missiles in the Lettres
persanes at the men and the things of his country with an almost cynical
freedom, which was, as it were, the alarum and prelude of all the liberties
which he scarcely dared to claim, but of which he already let a glimpse be
seen. Evil and good were growing up in confusion, like the tares and the
wheat. For more than eighty years past France has been gathering the
harvest of ages; she has not yet separated the good grain from the rubbish
which too often conceals it.

CHAPTER LII.

LOUIS XV., THE MINISTRY OF CARDINAL
FLEURY.,

1723-1748.

The riotous and frivolous splendor of the Regency had suffered eclipse;
before their time, in all their vigor, through disgrace or by death, Law,
Dubois, and the Regent, had suddenly disappeared from the stage of the
world. To these men, a striking group for different reasons, notwithstanding
their faults and their vices, was about to succeed a discreet but dull and limp
government, the reign of an old man, and, moreover, a priest. The Bishop of
Frejus, who had but lately been the modest preceptor of the king, and was
quietly ambitious and greedy of power, but without regard to his personal
interests, was about to become Cardinal Fleury, and to govern France for
twenty years; in 1723 he was seventy years old.
Whether from adroitness or prudence, Fleury did not all at once aspire to
all-powerfulness. Assured in his heart of his sway over the as yet dormant
will of his pupil, he suffered the establishment of the Duke of Bourbon’s
ministry, who was in a greater hurry to grasp the power he had so long
coveted. When the king received his cousin, head of the house of Conde,
who had but lately taken the place of the Duke of Maine near his person, he
sought in his preceptor’s eyes the guidance he needed, and contented
himself with sanctioning by an inclination of the head the elevation of the
duke, presented by Fleury. The new Duke of Orleans, as yet quite a youth,
hovering between debauchery and devotion, obtained no portion of his
father’s heritage; he had taken away from him even the right of doing
business with the king, a right secured to him by his office of colonel-
general.

The Bishop of Frejus had nursed his power more skilfully; he kept the list
of benefices, and he alone, it was said, knew how to unloosen the king’s
tongue; but he had not calculated upon the pernicious and all-powerful
influence of the Marchioness of Prie, favorite “by appointment” (attitree) to
the duke. Clever, adroit, depraved, she aspired to govern, and chose for her
minister Paris-Duverney, one of the four Dauphinese brothers who had been
engaged under the regency in the business of the visa, and the enemies as
well as rivals of the Scotsman Law. Whilst the king hunted, and Fleury
exercised quietly the measure of power which as yet contented his desires,
the duke, blinded by his passion for Madame de Prie, slavishly submissive
to her slightest wishes, lavished, according to his favorite’s orders, honors
and graces in which she managed to traffic, enriching herself brazen-
facedly. Under Louis XIV. Madame de Maintenon alone, exalted to the rank
of wife, had taken part in state affairs; amidst the irregularity of his life the

Regent had never accorded women any political influence, and the
confusion of the orgie had never surprised from his lips a single important
secret; Madame de Prie was the first to become possessed of a power
destined to frequently fall, after her, into hands as depraved as they were
feeble.
The strictness of the views and of the character of Paris-Duverney strove,
nevertheless, in the home department, against the insensate lavishness of
the duke, and the venal irregularities of his favorite; imbued with the
maxims of order and regularity formerly impressed by Colbert upon the
clerks of the treasury, and not yet completely effaced by a long interregnum,
he labored zealously to cut down expenses and useless posts, to resuscitate
and regulate commerce; his ardor, systematic and wise as it was, hurried
him sometimes into strange violence and improvidence; in order to restore
to their proper figure values and goods which still felt the prodigious rise
brought about by the System, Paris-Duverney depreciated the coinage and
put, a tariff on merchandise as well as wages. The commotion amongst the
people was great; the workmen rioted, the tradesmen refused to accept the
legal figure for their goods; several men were killed in the streets, and some
shops put the shutters up. The misery, which the administration had meant
to relieve, went on increasing; begging was prohibited; refuges and
workshops were annexed to the poorhouses; attempts were made to collect
there all the old, infirm, and vagabond. The rigor of procedure, as well as
the insufficiency of resources, caused the failure of the philanthropic
project. Lightly conceived, imprudently carried out, the new law filled the
refuges with an immense crowd, taken up in all quarters, in the villages, and
on the high roads; the area of the relieving-houses became insufficient.
“Bedded on straw, and fed on bread and water as they ought to be,” wrote
the comptroller-general Dodun, “they will take up less room and be less
expense.” Everywhere the poor wretches sought to fly; they were branded
on the arm, like criminals. All this rigor was ineffectual; the useful object of
Paris-Duverney’s decrees was not attained.
Other outrages, not to be justified by any public advantage, were being at
the same time committed against other poor creatures, for a long while
accustomed to severities of all kinds. Without freedom, without right of
worship, without assemblies, the Protestants had, nevertheless, enjoyed a
sort of truce from their woes during the easy-going regency of the Duke of
Orleans. Amongst the number of his vices Dubois did not include

hypocrisy; he had not persecuted the remnants of French Protestantism,
enfeebled, dumb, but still living and breathing. The religious enthusiasm of
the Camisards had become little by little extinguished; their prophets and
inspired ones, who were but lately the only ministers of the religion in the
midst of a people forcibly deprived of its pastors, had given place to new
servants of God, regularly consecrated to His work and ready to brave for
His sake all punishments. The Church under the Cross, as the Protestants of
France then called themselves, was reviving slowly, secretly, in the desert,
but it was reviving. The scattered members of the flocks, habituated for so
many years past to carefully conceal their faith in order to preserve it intact
in their hearts, were beginning to draw near to one another once more;
discipline and rule were once more entering within that church, which had
been battered by so many storms, and the total destruction of which had
been loudly proclaimed. In its origin, this immense work, as yet silently and
modestly progressing, had been owing to one single man, Antony Court,
born, in 1696, of a poor family, at Villeneuve-de-Berg in the Vivarais. He
was still almost a child when he had perceived the awakening in his soul of
an ardent desire to rebuild the walls of holy Sion; without classical
education, nurtured only upon his reading of the Bible, guided by strong
common sense and intrepid courage, combined with a piety as sincere as it
was enlightened, he had summoned to him the preachers of the Uvennes,
heirs of the enthusiastic Camisards. From the depths of caverns, rocks, and
woods had come forth these rude ministers, fanatics or visionaries as they
may have been, eagerly devoted to their work and imbued with their pious
illusions; Court had persuaded, touched, convinced them; some of the
faithful had gathered around him, and, since the 11th of August, 1715, at the
first of those synods in the desert, unknown to the great king whose life was
ebbing away at Versailles, the Protestant church of France had been
reconstituting itself upon bases as sound as they were strong; the functions
of the ancients were everywhere re-established; women were forbidden to
hold forth at assemblies; the Holy Scriptures were proclaimed as the only
law of faith; pastoral ordination was required of preachers and ministers of
the religion; Corteis, a friend of Court’s, went to Switzerland to receive
from the pastors of Zurich the imposition of hands, which he transmitted
afterwards to his brethren. Everywhere the new Evangelical ministry was
being recruited. “I seek them in all places,” said Court, “at the plough, or
behind the counter, everywhere where I find the call for martyrdom.” Of the

six devoted men who signed the statutes of the first synod, four were
destined to a martyr’s death. The restorer of French Protestantism had made
no mistake about the call then required for the holy ministry. The synods of
the desert became every year more numerous; deputies from the North,
from the West, from the Centre, began to join those of the South.
Persecution continued, but it was local, more often prompted by the
fanatical zeal of the superintendents than by the sovereign impulse of
government; the pastors died without having to sorrow for the church, up-
risen from its ruins, when a vague echo of this revival came striking upon
the ears of the Duke and Madame de Prie, amidst the galas of Chantilly.
Their silence and their exhaustion had for some time protected the
Protestants; fanaticism and indifference made common cause once more to
crush them at their reawakening.
The storm had now been brewing for some years; the Bishop of Nantes,
Lavergne de Tressan, grand almoner to the Regent, had attempted some
time before to wrest from him a rigorous decree against the Protestants; the
Duke of Orleans, as well as Dubois, had rejected his overtures. Scarcely had
the duke (of Bourbon) come into power, when the prelate presented his
project anew; indifferent and debauched, a holder of seventy-six benefices,
M. de Tressan dreamed of the cardinal’s hat, and aspired to obtain it from
the Court of Rome at the cost of a persecution. The government was at that
time drifting about, without compass or steersman, from the hands of
Madame de Prie to those of Paris-Duverney. Little cared they for the fate of
the Reformers. “This castaway of the regency,” says M. Lemontey, “was
adopted without memorial, without examination, as an act of homage to the
late king, and a simple executive formula. The ministers of Louis XVI.
afterwards found the minute of the declaration of 1724, without any
preliminary report, and simply bearing on the margin the date of the old
edicts.” For aiming the thunderbolts against the Protestants, Tressan
addressed himself to their most terrible executioner. Lamoignon de Baville
was still alive; old and almost at death’s door as he was, he devoted the last
days of his life to drawing up for the superintendents some private
instructions; an able and a cruel monument of his past experience and his
persistent animosity. He died with the pen still in his hand.
The new edict turned into an act of homage to Louis XIV. the rigors of
Louis XV. “Of all the grand designs of our most honored lord and great-
grandfather, there is none that we have more at heart to execute than that

which he conceived, of entirely extinguishing heresy in his kingdom.
Arrived at majority, our first care has been to have before us the edicts
whereof execution has been delayed, especially in the provinces afflicted
with the contagion. We have observed that the chief abuses which demand a
speedy remedy relate to illicit assemblies, the education of children, the
obligation of public functionaries to profess the Catholic religion, the
penalties against the relapsed, and the celebration of marriage, regarding
which here are our intentions: Shall be condemned: preachers to the penalty
of death, their accomplices to the galleys for life, and women to be shaved
and imprisoned for life. Confiscation of property: parents who shall not
have baptism administered to their children within twenty-four hours, and
see that they attend regularly the catechism and the schools, to fines and
such sums as they may amount to together; even to greater penalties.
Midwives, physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, domestics, relatives, who
shall not notify the parish priests of births or illnesses, to fines. Persons who
shall exhort the sick, to the galleys or imprisonment for life, according to
sex; confiscation of property. The sick who shall refuse the sacraments, if
they recover, to banishment for life; if they die, to be dragged on a hurdle.
Desert-marriages are illegal; the children born of them are incompetent to
inherit. Minors whose parents are expatriated may marry without their
authority; but parents whose children are on foreign soil shall not consent to
their marriage, on pain of the galleys for the men and banishment for the
women. Finally, of all fines and confiscations, half shall be employed in
providing subsistence for the new converts.”
Just as the last edicts of Louis XIV., the edict of 1724 rested upon an
absolute contradiction: the legislators no longer admitted the existence of
any reformers in the kingdom; and yet all the battery of the most formidable
punishments was directed against that Protestant church which was said to
be defunct. The same contradiction was seen in the conduct of the
ecclesiastics: Protestants could not be admitted to any position, or even
accomplish the ordinary duties of civil life, without externally conforming
to Catholicism; and, to so conform, there was required of them not only an
explicit abjuration, but even an anathema against their deceased parents. “It
is necessary,” said Chancellor d’Aguesseau, “either that the church should
relax her vigor by some modification, or, if she does not think she ought to
do so, that she should cease requesting the king to employ his authority in

reducing his subjects to the impossible, by commanding them to fulfil a
religious duty which the church does not permit them to perform.”
At this point is revealed a progress in ideas of humanity and justice: the
edict of 1724 equalled in rigor the most severe proclamations of Louis
XIV.; it placed the peace, and often the life, of Reformers at the mercy not
only of an enemy’s denunciation, but of a priest’s simple deposition; it
destroyed all the bonds of family, and substituted for the natural duties a
barbarous and depraving law; but general sentiment and public opinion
were no longer in accord with the royal proclamations. The clergy had not
solicited the edict, the work of an ambitious man backed up by certain
fanatics; they were at first embarrassed by it. When the old hatreds revived,
and the dangerous intoxications of power had affected the souls of bishops
and priests, the magistracy, who had formerly been more severe towards the
Reformers than even the superintendents of the provinces had been,
pronounced on many points in favor of the persecuted; the judges were
timid; the legislation, becoming more and more oppressive, tied their hands;
but the bias of their minds was modified; it tended to extenuate, and not to
aggravate, the effects of the edict. The law was barbarous everywhere, the
persecution became so only at certain spots, owing to the zeal of the
superintendents or bishops; as usual, the south of France was the first to
undergo all the rigors of it. Emigration had ceased there for a long time
past; whilst the Norman or Dauphinese Reformers, on the revival of
persecution, still sought refuge on foreign soil, whilst Sweden, wasted by
the wars of Charles XII., invited the French Protestants into her midst, the
peasants of the Uvennes or of the Vivarais, passionately attached to the soil
they cultivated, bowed their heads, with a groan, to the storm, took refuge
in their rocks and their caverns, leaving the cottages deserted and the
harvests to be lost, returning to their houses and their fields as soon as the
soldiery were gone, ever faithful to the proscribed assemblies in the desert,
and praying God for the king, to whose enemies they refused to give ear.
Alberoni, and after him England, had sought to detach the persecuted
Protestants from their allegiance; the court was troubled at this; they had
not forgotten the Huguenot regiments at the battle of the Boyne. From the
depths of their hiding-places the pastors answered for the fidelity of their
flocks; the voice of the illustrious and learned Basnage, for a long while a
refugee in Holland, encouraged his brethren in their heroic submission. As
fast as the ministers died on the gallows, new servants of God came forward

to replace them, brought up in the seminary which Antony Court had
founded at Lausanne, and managed to keep up by means of alms from
Protestant Europe. It was there that the most illustrious of the pastors of the
desert, Paul Rabaut, already married and father of one child, went to seek
the instruction necessary for the apostolic vocation which he was to
exercise for so many years in the midst of so many and such formidable
perils. “On determining to exercise the ministry in this kingdom,” he wrote,
in 1746, to the superintendent of Languedoc, Lenain d’Asfeldt, “I was not
ignorant of what I exposed myself to; so I regarded myself as a victim
doomed to death. I thought I was doing the greatest good of which I was
capable in devoting myself to the condition of a pastor. Protestants, being
deprived of the free exercise of their own religion, not seeing their way to
taking part in the exercises of the Roman religion, not being able to get the
books they would require for their instruction, consider, my lord, what—
might be their condition if they were absolutely deprived of pastors. They
would be ignorant of their most essential duties, and would fall either into
fanaticism, the fruitful source of extravagances and irregularities, or into
indifference and contempt for all religion.” The firm moderation, the
courageous and simple devotion, breathed by this letter, were the distinctive
traits of the career of Paul Rabaut, as well as of Antony Court; throughout a
persecution which lasted nearly forty years, with alternations of severity
and clemency, the chiefs of French Protestantism managed to control the
often recurring desperation of their flocks. On the occasion of a temporary
rising on the borders of the Gardon, Paul Rabaut wrote to the governor of
Languedoc, “When I desired to know whence this evil proceeded, it was
reported to me that divers persons, finding themselves liable to lose their
goods and their liberty, or to have to do acts contrary to their conscience, in
respect of their marriages or the baptism of their children, and knowing no
way of getting out of the kingdom and setting their conscience free,
abandoned themselves to despair, and attacked certain priests, because they
regarded them as the primal and principal cause of the vexations done to
them. Once more, I blame those people; but I thought it my duty to explain
to you the cause of their despair. If it be thought that my ministry is
necessary to calm the ruffled spirits, I shall comply with pleasure. Above
all, if I might assure the Protestants of that district that they shall not be
vexed in their conscience, I would pledge myself to bind over the greater
number to stop those who would make a disturbance, supposing that there

should be any.” At a word from Paul Rabaut calmness returned to the most
ruffled spirits; sometimes his audience was composed of ten or twelve
thousand of the faithful; his voice was so resonant and so distinct, that in
the open air it would reach the most remote. He prayed with a fervor and an
unction which penetrated all hearts, and disposed them to hear, with fruits
following, the word of God. Simple, grave, penetrating rather than eloquent,
his preaching, like his life, bears the impress of his character. As moderate
as fervent, as judicious as heroic in spirit, Paul Rabaut preached in the
desert, at the peril of his life, sermons which he had composed in a cavern.
“During more than thirty years,” says one of his biographers, “he had no
dwelling-place but grottoes, hovels, and cabins, whither men went to draw
him like a ferocious beast. He lived a long while in a hiding-place, which
one of his faithful guides had contrived for him under a heap of stones and
blackberry bushes. It was discovered by a shepherd; and such was the
wretchedness of his condition, that, when forced to abandon it, he regretted
that asylum, more fitted for wild beasts than for men.”
The hulks were still full of the audience of Paul Rabaut, and Protestant
women were still languishing in the unwholesome dungeon of the Tower of
Constance, when the execution of the unhappy Calas, accused of having
killed his son, and the generous indignation of Voltaire cast a momentary
gleam of light within the sombre region of prisons and gibbets. For the first
time, public opinion, at white heat, was brought to bear upon the decision of
the persecutors. Calas was dead, but the decree of the Parliament of
Toulouse which had sentenced him, was quashed by act of the council: his
memory was cleared, and the day of toleration for French Protestants began
to glimmer, pending the full dawn of justice and liberty.
We have gone over in succession, and without break, the last cruel
sufferings of the French Protestants; we now turn away our eyes with a
feeling of relief mingled with respect and pride; we leave the free air of the
desert to return to the rakes and effeminates of Louis XV.‘s court. Great was
the contrast between the government which persecuted without knowing
why, and the victims who suffered for a faith incessantly revived in their
souls by suffering. For two centuries the French Reformation had not
experienced for a single day the formidable dangers of indifference and
lukewarmness.

The young king was growing up, still a stranger to affairs, solely
occupied with the pleasures of the chase, handsome, elegant, with noble and
regular features, a cold and listless expression. In the month of February,
1725, he fell ill; for two days there was great danger. The duke thought
himself to be threatened with the elevation of the house of Orleans to the
throne. “I’ll not be caught so again,” he muttered between his teeth, when
he came one night to inquire how the king was, “if he recovers, I’ll have
him married.” The king did recover, but the Infanta was only seven years
old. Philip V., who had for a short time abdicated, retiring with the queen to
a remote castle in the heart of the forests, had just remounted the throne
after the death of his eldest son, Louis I. Small-pox had carried off the
young monarch, who had reigned but eight months. Elizabeth Farnese,
aided by the pope’s nuncio and some monks who were devoted to her, had
triumphed over her husband’s religious scruples and the superstitious
counsels of his confessor; she was once more reigning over Spain, when she
heard that the little Infanta-queen, whose betrothal to the King of France
had but lately caused so much joy, was about to be sent away from the court
of her royal spouse. “The Infanta must be started off, and by coach too, to
get it over sooner,” exclaimed Count Morville, who had been ordered by
Madame de Prie to draw up a list of the marriageable princesses in Europe.
Their number amounted to ninety-nine; twenty-five Catholics, three
Anglicans, thirteen Calvinists, fifty-five Lutherans, and three Greeks. The
Infanta had already started for Madrid; the Regent’s two daughters, the
young widow of Louis I. and Mdlle. de Beaujolais, promised to Don Carlos,
were on their way back to France; the advisers of Louis XV. were still
looking out for a wife for him. Spain had been mortally offended, without
the duke’s having yet seen his way to forming a new alliance in place of
that which he had just broken off. Some attempts at arrangement with
George I. had failed; an English princess could not abjure Protestantism.
Such scruples did not stop Catherine I., widow of Peter the Great, who had
taken the power into her own hands to the detriment of the czar’s grandson;
she offered the duke her second daughter, the grand-duchess Elizabeth, for
King Louis XV., with a promise of abjuration on the part of the princess,
and of a treaty which should secure the support of all the Muscovite forces
in the interest of France. At the same time the same negotiators proposed to
the Duke of Bourbon himself the hand of Mary Leckzinska, daughter of

Stanislaus, the dispossessed King of Poland, guaranteeing to him, on the
death of King Augustus, the crown of that kingdom.

The proposals of Russia were rejected. “The Princess of Muscovy,” M.
de Morville had lately said, “is the daughter of a low-born mother, and has
been brought up amidst a still barbarous people.” Every great alliance
appeared impossible; the duke and Madame de Prie were looking out for a
queen who would belong to them, and would secure them the king’s heart.
Their choice fell upon Mary Leckzinska, a good, gentle, simple creature,
without wit or beauty, twenty-two years old, and living upon the alms of
France with her parents, exiles and refugees at an old commandery of the
Templars at Weissenburg. Before this King Stanislaus had conceived the
idea of marrying his daughter to Count d’Estrees; the marriage had failed
through the Regent’s refusal to make the young lord a duke and peer. The
distress of Stanislaus, his constant begging letters to the court of France,
were warrant for the modest submissiveness of the princess. “Madame de

Prie has engaged a queen, as I might engage a valet to-morrow,” writes
Marquis d’Argenson; “it is a pity.”
When the first overtures from the duke arrived at Weissenburg, King
Stanislaus entered the room where his wife and daughter were at work, and,
“Fall we on our knees, and thank God!” he said. “My dear father,”
exclaimed the princess, “can you be recalled to the throne of Poland?” “God
has done us a more astounding grace,” replied Stanislaus: “you are Queen
of France!”
“Never shall I forget the horror of the calamities we were enduring in
France, when Queen Mary Leckzinska arrived,” says M. d’Argenson. “A
continuance of rain had caused famine, and it was much aggravated by the
bad government under the duke. That government, whatever may be said of
it, was even more hurtful through bad judgment than from interested views,
which had not so much to do with it as was said. There were very costly
measures taken to import foreign corn; but that only augmented the alarm,
and, consequently, the dearness.
“Fancy the unparalleled misery of the country-places! It was just the time
when everybody was thinking of harvests and ingatherings of all sorts of
things, which it had not been possible to get in for the continual rains; the
poor farmer was watching for a dry moment to get them in; meanwhile all
the district was beaten with many a scourge. The peasants had been sent off
to prepare the roads by which the queen was to pass, and they were only the
worse for it, insomuch that Her Majesty was often within a thought of
drowning; they pulled her from her carriage by the strong arm, as best they
might. In several stopping-places she and her suite were swimming in water
which spread everywhere, and that in spite of the unparalleled pains that
had been taken by a tyrannical ministry.”
It was under such sad auspices that Mary Leckzinska arrived at
Versailles. Fleury had made no objection to the marriage. Louis XV.
accepted it, just as he had allowed the breaking-off of his union with the
Infanta and that of France with Spain. For a while the duke had hopes of
reaping all the fruit of the unequal marriage he had just concluded for the
King of France. The queen was devoted to him; he enlisted her in an
intrigue against Fleury. The king was engaged with his old preceptor; the
queen sent for him; he did not return. Fleury waited a long while. The duke
and Paris-Duverney had been found with the queen; they had papers before

them; the king had set to work with them. When he went back, at length, to
his closet, Louis XV. found the bishop no longer there; search was made for
him; he was no longer in the palace.
The king was sorry and put out; the Duke of Mortemart, who was his
gentleman of the bed-chamber, handed him a letter from Fleury. The latter
had retired to Issy, to the countryhouse of the Sulpicians; he bade the king
farewell, assuring him that he had for a long while been resolved, according
to the usage of his youth, to put some space between the world and death.
Louis began to shed tears; Mortemart proposed to go and fetch Fleury, and
got the order given him to do so. The duke had to write the letter of recall.
Next morning the bishop was at Versailles, gentle and modest as ever, and
exhibiting neither resentment nor surprise. Six months later, however, the
king set out from Versailles to go and visit the Count and Countess of
Toulouse at Rambouillet. The duke was in attendance at his departure. “Do
not make us wait supper, cousin,” said the young monarch, graciously.
Scarcely had his equipages disappeared, when a letter was brought: the
duke was ordered to quit the court and retire provisionally to Chantilly.
Madame de Prie was exiled to her estates in Normandy, where she soon
died of spite and anger. The head of the House of Conde came forth no
more from the political obscurity which befitted his talents. At length
Fleury remained sole master.
He took possession of it without fuss or any external manifestation;
caring only for real authority, he advised Louis XV. not to create any
premier minister, and to govern by himself, like his great-grandfather. The
king took this advice, as every other, and left Fleury to govern. This was
just what the bishop intended; a sleepy calm succeeded the commotions
which had been caused by the inconsistent and spasmodic government of
the duke; galas and silly expenses gave place to a wise economy, the real
and important blessing of Fleury’s administration. Commerce and industry
recovered confidence; business was developed; the increase of the revenues
justified a diminution of taxation; war, which was imminent at the moment
of the duke’s fall, seemed to be escaped; the Bishop of Frejus became
Cardinal Fleury; the court of Rome paid on the nail for the service rendered
it by the new minister in freeing the clergy from the tax of the fiftieth
(impot du cinquantieme). “Consecrated to God, and kept aloof from the
commerce of men,” had been Fleury’s expression, “the dues of the church
are irrevocable, and cannot be subject to any tax, whether of ratification or

any other.” The clergy responded to this pleasant exposition of principles by
a gratuitous gift of five millions. Strife ceased in every quarter; France
found herself at rest, without lustre as well as without prospect.
It was not, henceforth, at Versailles that the destinies of Europe were
discussed and decided. The dismissal of the Infanta had struck a deadly
blow at the frail edifice of the quadruple alliance, fruit of the intrigues and
diplomatic ability of Cardinal Dubois. Philip V. and Elizabeth Farnese,
deeply wounded by the affront put upon them, had hasted to give the
Infanta to the Prince of Brazil, heir to the throne of Portugal, at the same
time that the Prince of the Asturias espoused a daughter of John V. Under
cover of this alliance, agreeable as it was to England, the faithful patron of
Portugal, the King of Spain was negotiating elsewhere, with the Emperor
Charles VI., the most ancient and hitherto the most implacable of his
enemies. This prince had no son, and wished to secure the succession to his
eldest daughter, the Arch-duchess Maria Theresa. The Pragmatic-Sanction
which declared this wish awaited the assent of Europe; that of Spain was of
great value; she offered, besides, to open her ports to the Ostend Company,
lately established by the emperor to compete against the Dutch trade.
The house of Austria divided the house of Bourbon, by opposing to one
another the two branches of France and Spain; the treaty of Vienna was
concluded on the 1st of May, 1725. The two sovereigns renounced all
pretensions to each other’s dominions respectively, and proclaimed, on both
sides, full amnesty for the respective partisans. The emperor recognized the
hereditary rights of Don Carlos to the duchies of Tuscany, Parma, and
Piacenza; he, at the same time, promised his good offices with England to
obtain restitution of Gibraltar and Mahon. In spite of the negotiations
already commenced with the Duke of Lorraine, hopes were even held out to
the two sons of Elizabeth Farnese, Don Carlos and Don Philip, of obtaining
the hands of the arch-duchesses, daughters of the emperor.
When the official treaty was published and the secret articles began to
transpire, Europe was in commotion at the new situation in which it was
placed. George I. repaired to his German dominions, in order to have a
closer view of the emperor’s movements. There the Count of Broglie soon
joined him, in the name of France. The King of Prussia, Frederick William
I., the King of England’s son-in-law, was summoned to Hanover. Passionate
and fantastic, tyrannical, addicted to the coarsest excesses, the King of

Prussia had, nevertheless, managed to form an excellent army of sixty
thousand men, at the same time amassing a military treasure amounting to
twenty-eight millions; he joined, not without hesitation, the treaty of
Hanover, concluded on the 3d of September, 1725, between France and
England. The Hollanders, in spite of their desire to ruin the Ostend
Company, had not yet signed the convention; Frederick William was
disturbed at their coming in. “Say, I declare against the emperor,” said he in
a letter which he communicated on the 5th of December to the ambassadors
of France and England: “he will not fail to get the Muscovites and Poles to
act against me. I ask whether their majesties will then keep my rear open?
England, completely surrounded by sea, and France, happening to be
covered by strong places, consider themselves pretty safe, whilst the greater
part of my dominions are exposed to anything it shall seem good to attempt.
By this last treaty, then, I engage in war for the benefit of Mr. Hollander and
Co., that they may be able to sell their tea, coffee, cheese, and crockery
dearer; those gentlemen will not do the least thing for me, and I am to do
everything for them. Gentlemen, tell me, is it fair? If you deprive the
emperor of his ships and ruin his Ostend trade, will he be a less emperor
than he is at this moment? The pink of all (le pot aux roses) is to deprive the
emperor of provinces, but which? And to whose share will they fall? Where
are the troops? Where is the needful, wherewith to make war? Since it
seems good to commence the dance, it must of course be commenced. After
war comes peace. Shall I be forgotten? Shall I be the last of all? Shall I have
to sign perforce?” The coarse common sense of the Vandal soon prevailed
over family alliances; Frederick William broke with France and England in
order to rally to the emperor’s side. Russia, but lately so attentive to France,
was making advances to Spain. “The czar’s envoy is the most taciturn
Muscovite that ever came from Siberia,” wrote Marshal Tesse. “Goodman
Don Miguel Guerra is the minister with whom he treats, and the effect of
eight or ten apoplexies is, that he has to hold his head with his hands, else
his mouth would infallibly twist round over his shoulder. During their
audience they seat themselves opposite one another in arm-chairs, and, after
a quarter of an hour’s silence, the Muscovite opens his mouth and says, ‘Sir,
I have orders from the emperor, my master, to assure the Catholic King that
he loves him very much.’ ‘And I,’ replies Guerra, ‘do assure you that the
king my master loves your master the emperor very much.’ After this

laconic conversation they stare at one another for a quarter of an hour
without saying anything, and the audience is over.”
The tradition handed down by Peter the Great forbade any alliance with
England; M. de Campredon, French ambassador at Petersburg, was seeking
to destroy this prejudice. One of the empress’s ministers, Jokosinski, rushed
abruptly from the conference; he was half drunk, and he ran to the church
where the remains of the czar were lying. “O my dear master!” he cried
before all the people, “rise from the tomb, and see how thy memory is
trampled under foot!” Antipathy towards England, nevertheless, kept
Catherine I. aloof from the Hanoverian league; she made alliance with the
emperor. France was not long before she made overtures to Spain. Philip V.
always found it painful to endure family dissensions; he became reconciled
with his nephew, and accepted the intervention of Cardinal Fleury in his
disagreements with England. The alliance, signed at Seville on the 29th of
November, 1729, secured to Spain, in return for certain commercial
advantages, the co-operation of England in Italy. The Duke of Parma had
just died; the Infante Don Carlos, supported by an English fleet, took
possession of his dominions. Elizabeth Farnese had at last set foot in Italy.
She no longer encountered there the able and ambitious monarch whose
diplomacy had for so long governed the affairs of the peninsula; Victor
Amadeo had just abdicated. Scarcely a year had passed from the date of that
resolution, when, suddenly, from fear, it was said, of seeing his father
resume power, the young king, Charles Emmanuel, had him arrested in his
castle of Pontarlier. “It will be a fine subject for a tragedy, this that is just
now happening to Victor, King of Sardinia,” writes M. d’Argenson. “What
a catastrophe without a death! A great king, who plagued Europe with his
virtues and his vices, with his courage, his artifices, and his perfidies, who
had formed round him a court of slaves, who had rendered his dominion
formidable by his industry and his labors; indefatigable in his designs,
unresting in every branch of government, cherishing none but great
projects, credited in every matter with greater designs than he had yet been
known to execute, —this king abdicates unexpectedly, and, almost
immediately, here he finds himself arrested by his son, whose benefactor he
had been so recently and so extraordinarily! This son is a young prince
without merit, without courage, and without capacity, gentle and under
control. His ministers persuaded him to be ungrateful: he accomplishes the
height of crime, without having crime in his nature; and here is his father

shut up like a bear in a prison, guarded at sight like a maniac, and separated
from the wife whom he had chosen for consolation in his retirement!”
Public indignation, however, soon forced the hand of Charles Emmanuel’s
minister. Victor Amadeo was released; his wife, detained in shameful
captivity, was restored to him; he died soon afterwards in that same castle
of Pontarlier, whence he had been carried off without a voice being raised
in his favor by the princes who were bound to him by the closest ties of
blood.
The efforts made in common by Fleury and Robert Walpole, prime
minister of the King of England, had for a long while been successful in
maintaining the general peace; the unforeseen death of Augustus of Saxony,
King of Poland, suddenly came to trouble it. It was, thenceforth, the
unhappy fate of Poland to be a constant source of commotion and discord in
Europe. The Elector of Saxony, son of Augustus H., was supported by
Austria and Russia; the national party in Poland invited Stanislaus
Leckzinski; he was elected at the Diet by sixty thousand men of family, and
set out to take possession of the throne, reckoning upon the promises of his
son-in-law, and on the military spirit which was reviving in France. The
young men burned to win their spurs; the old generals of Louis XIV. were
tired of idleness.
The ardor of Cardinal Fleury did not respond to that of the friends of
King Stanislaus. Russia and Austria made an imposing display of force in
favor of the Elector of Saxony; France sent, tardily, a body of fifteen
hundred men; this ridiculous re-enforcement had not yet arrived when
Stanislaus, obliged to withdraw from Warsaw, had already shut himself up
in Dantzic. The Austrian general had invested the place.
News of the bombardment of Dantzic greeted the little French corps as
they approached the fort of Wechselmunde. Their commander saw his
impotence; instead of landing his troops, he made sail for Copenhagen. The
French ambassador at that court, Count Plelo, was indignant to see his
countrymen’s retreat, and, hastily collecting a hundred volunteers, he
summoned to him the chiefs of the expeditionary corps.
“How could you resolve upon not fighting, at any price?” he asked. “It is
easy to say,” rejoined one of the officers roughly, “when you’re safe in your
closet.” “I shall not be there long!” exclaims the count, and presses them to
return with him to Dantzic. The officer in command of the detachment, M.

de la Peyrouse Lamotte, yields to his entreaties. They set out both of them,
persuaded at the same time of the uselessness of their enterprise and of the
necessity they were under, for the honor of France, to attempt it. Before
embarking, Count Plelo wrote to M. de Chauvelin, the then keeper of the
seals, “I am sure not to return; I commend to you my wife and children.”
Scarcely had the gallant little band touched land beneath the fort of
Wechselmunde, when they marched up to the Russian lines, opening a way
through the pikes and muskets in hopes of joining the besieged, who at the
same time effected a sally. Already the enemy began to recoil at sight of
such audacity, when M. de Plelo fell mortally wounded; the enemy’s
battalions had hemmed in the French.

La Peyrouse succeeded, however, in effecting his retreat, and brought
away his little band into the camp they had established under shelter of the

fort. For a month the French kept up a rivalry in courage with the defenders
of Dantzic; when at last they capitulated, on the 23d of June, General
Munich had conceived such esteem for their courage that be granted them
leave to embark with arms and baggage. A few days later King Stanislaus
escaped alone from Dantzic, which was at length obliged to surrender on
the 7th of July, and sought refuge in the dominions of the King of Prussia.
Some Polish lords went and joined him at Konigsberg. Partisan war
continued still, but the arms and influence of Austria and Russia had carried
the day; the national party was beaten in Poland. The pope released the
Polish gentry from the oath they had made never to intrust the crown to a
foreigner. Augustus III., recognized by the mass of the nation, became the
docile tool of Russia, whilst in Germany and in Italy the Austrians found
themselves attacked simultaneously by France, Spain, and Sardinia.
Marshal Berwick had taken the fort of Kehl in the month of December,
1733; he had forced the lines of the Austrians at Erlingen at the
commencement of the campaign of 1734, and he had just opened trenches
against Philipsburg, when he pushed forward imprudently in a
reconnaissance between the fires of the besiegers and besieged; a ball
wounded him mortally, and he expired immediately, like Marshal Turenne;
he was sixty-three. The Duke of Noailles, who at once received the
marshal’s baton, succeeded him in the command of the army by agreement
with Marshal d’Asfeldt. Philipsburg was taken after forty-eight days’ open
trenches, without Prince Eugene, all the while within hail, making any
attempt to relieve the town. He had not approved of the war. “Of three
emperors that I have served,” he would say, “the first, Leopold, was my
father; the Emperor Joseph was my brother; this one is my master.” Eugene
was old and worn out; he preserved his ability, but his ardor was gone.
Marshal Noailles and D’Asfeldt did not agree; France did not reap her
advantages. The campaign of 1735 hung fire in Germany.
It was not more splendid in Italy, where the outset of the war had been
brilliant. Presumptuous as ever, in spite of his eighty-two years, Villars had
started for Italy, saying to Cardinal Fleury, “The king may dispose of Italy, I
am going to conquer it for him.” And, indeed, within three months, nearly
the whole of Milaness was reduced. Cremona and Pizzighitone had
surrendered; but already King Charles Emmanuel was relaxing his efforts
with the prudent selfishness customary with his house. The Sardinian
contingents did not arrive; the Austrians had seized a passage over the Po;

Villars, however, was preparing to force it, when a large body of the enemy
came down upon him. The King of Sardinia was urged to retire. “That is not
the way to get out of this,” cried the marshal, and, sword in hand, he
charged at the head of the body-guard; Charles Emmanuel followed his
example; the Austrians were driven in. “Sir,” said Villars to the king, who
was complimenting him, “these are the last sparks of my life; thus, at
departing, I take my leave of it.”
Death, in fact, had already seized his prey; the aged marshal had not time
to return to France to yield up his last breath there; he was expiring at Turin,
when he heard of Marshal Berwick’s death before Philipsburg. “That fellow
always was lucky,” said he. On the 17th of June, 1734, Villars died, in his
turn, by a strange coincidence in the very room in which he had been born
when his father was French ambassador at the court of the Duke of Savoy.
Some days later Marshals Broglie and Coigny defeated the Austrians
before Parma; the general-in-chief, M. de Mercy, had been killed on the
19th of September; the Prince of Wurtemberg, in his turn, succumbed at the
battle of Guastalla, and yet these successes on the part of the French
produced no serious result. The Spaniards had become masters of the
kingdom of Naples and of nearly all Sicily; the Austrians had fallen back on
the Tyrol, keeping a garrison at Mantua only. The Duke of Noailles, then at
the head of the army, was preparing for the siege of the place, in order to
achieve that deliverance of Italy which was as early as then the dream of
France, but the King of Sardinia and the Queen of Spain were already
disputing for Mantua; the Sardinian troops withdrew, and it was in the midst
of his forced inactivity that the Duke of Noailles heard of the armistice
signed in Germany. Cardinal Fleury, weary of the war which he had entered
upon with regret, disquieted too at the new complications which he foresaw
in Europe, had already commenced negotiations; the preliminaries were
signed at Vienna in the month of October, 1735.
The conditions of the treaty astonished Europe. Cardinal Fleury had
renounced the ambitious idea suggested to him by Chauvelin; he no longer
aspired to impose upon the emperor the complete emancipation of Italy, but
he made such disposition as he pleased of the states there, and reconstituted
the territories according to his fancy. The kingdom of Naples and the Two
Sicilies were secured to Don Carlos, who renounced Tuscany and the
duchies of Parma and Piacenza. These three principalities were to form the

appanage of Duke Francis of Lorraine, betrothed to the Archduchess Maria
Theresa. There it was that France was to find her share of the spoil; in
exchange for the dominions formed for him in Italy, Duke Francis ceded the
duchies of Lorraine and Bar to King Stanislaus; the latter formally
renounced the throne of Poland, at the same time preserving the title of
king, and resuming possession of his property; after him, Lorraine and the
Barrois were to be united to the crown of France, as dower and heritage of
that queen who had been but lately raised to the throne by a base intrigue,
and who thus secured to her new country a province so often taken and
retaken, an object of so many treaties and negotiations, and thenceforth so
tenderly cherished by France.
The negotiations had been protracted. England, stranger as she had been
to the war, had taken part in the diplomatic proposals. The Queen of Spain
had wanted to keep the states in the north of Italy, as well as those in the
south. “Shall I not have a new heir given me by and by?” said the Duke of
Tuscany, John Gaston de Medici, last and unworthy scion of that illustrious
family, who was dying without posterity. “Which is the third child that
France and the empire mean to father upon me?” The King of Sardinia
gained only Novara and Tortona, whilst the emperor recovered Milaness.
France renounced all her conquests in Germany; she guaranteed the
Pragmatic-Sanction. Russia evacuated Poland: peace seemed to be firmly
established in Europe. Cardinal Fleury hasted to consolidate it, by removing
from power the ambitious and daring politician whose influence he dreaded.
“Chauvelin had juggled the war from Fleury,” said the Prince of Prussia,
afterwards the great Frederick; “Fleury in turn juggles peace and the
ministry from him.”
“It must be admitted,” wrote M. d’Argenson, “that the situation of
Cardinal Fleury and the keeper of the seals towards one another is a
singular one just now. The cardinal, disinterested, sympathetic, with upright
views, doing nothing save from excess of importunity, and measuring his
compliance by the number, and not the weight, of the said importunities,—
the minister, I say, considers himself bound to fill his place as long as he is
in this world. It is only as his own creature that he has given so much
advancement to the keeper of the seals, considering him wholly his, good,
amiable, and of solid merit, without the aid of any intrigue; and so his
adjunction to the premier minister has made the keeper of the seals a butt
for all the ministers. He has taken upon himself all refusals, and left to the

cardinal the honor of all benefits and graces; he has, transported himself in
imagination to the time when he would be sole governor, and he would
have had affairs set, in advance, upon the footing on which he calculated
upon placing them. It must be admitted, as regards that, that he has ideas
too lofty and grand for the state; he would like to set Europe by the ears, as
the great ministers did; he is accused of resembling M. de Louvois, to
whom he is related. Now the cardinal is of a character the very opposite to
that of this adjunct of his. M. Chauvelin has embarked him upon many great
enterprises, upon that of the late war, amongst others; but scarcely is his
Eminence embarked, by means of some passion that is worked upon, when
the chill returns, and the desire of getting out of the business becomes
another passion with him. Altogether, I see no great harm in the keeper of
the seals being no longer minister, for I do not like any but a homely
(bourgeoise) policy, whereby one lives on good terms with one’s neighbors,
and whereby one is merely their arbiter, for the sake of working a good long
while and continuously at the task of perfecting the home affairs of the
kingdom, and rendering Frenchmen happy.”
M. d’Argenson made no mistake; the era of a great foreign policy had
passed away for France. A king, who was frivolous and indifferent to his
business as well as to his glory; a minister aged, economizing, and timid; an
ambitious few, with views more bold than discreet,—such were henceforth
the instruments at the disposal of France; the resources were insufficient for
the internal government; the peace of Vienna and the annexation of
Lorraine were the last important successes of external policy. Chauvelin had
the honor of connecting his name therewith before disappearing forever in
his retreat at Grosbois, to expend his life in vain regrets for lost power, and
in vain attempts to recover it.
Peace reigned in Europe, and Cardinal Fleury governed France without
rival and without opposition. He had but lately, like Richelieu, to whom,
however, he did not care to be compared, triumphed over parliamentary
revolt. Jealous of their ancient, traditional rights, the Parliament claimed to
share with the government the care of watching over the conduct of the
clergy. It was on that ground that they had rejected the introduction of the
Legend of, Gregory VII., recently canonized at Rome, and had sought to
mix themselves up in the religious disputes excited just then by the
pretended miracles wrought at the tomb of Deacon Paris, a pious and
modest Jansenist, who had lately died in the odor of sanctity in the parish of

St. Medard. The cardinal had ordered the cemetery to be closed, in order to
cut short the strange spectacles presented by the convulsionists; and, to
break down the opposition of Parliament, the king had ordered, at a bed of
justice, the registration of all the papal bulls succeeding the Unigenitus. In
vain had D’Aguesseau, reappointed to the chancellorship, exhorted the
Parliament to yield: he had fallen in public esteem. Abbe Pernelle,
ecclesiastical councillor, as distinguished for his talent as for his courage,
proposed a solemn declaration, analogous, at bottom, to the maxims of the
Gallican church, which had been drawn up by Bossuet, in the assembly of
the clergy of France. The decision of the Parliament was quashed by the
council. An order from the king, forbidding discussion, was brought to the
court by Count Maurepas; its contents were divined, and Parliament refused
to open it. The king iterated his injunctions. “If his Majesty were at the
Louvre,” cried Abbe Pernelle, “it would be the court’s duty to go and let
him know how his orders are executed.” “Marly is not so very far!” shouted
a young appeal-court councillor (aux enquetes) eagerly. “To Marly! To
Marly!” at once repeated the whole chamber. The old councillors
themselves murmured between their teeth, “To Marly!” Fourteen carriages
conveyed to Marly fifty magistrates, headed by the presidents. The king
refused to receive them; in vain the premier president insisted upon it, to
Cardinal Fleury; the monarch and his Parliament remained equally
obstinate. “What a sad position!” exclaimed Abbe Pernelle, “not to be able
to fulfil one’s duties without falling into the crime of disobedience! We
speak, and we are forbidden a word; we deliberate, and we are threatened.
What remains for us, then, in this deplorable position, but to represent to the
king the impossibility of existing under form of Parliament, without having
permission to speak; the impossibility, by consequence, of continuing our
functions?” Abbe Pernelle was carried off in the night, and confined in the
abbey of Corbigny, in Nivernais, of which he was titular head. Other
councillors were arrested; a hundred and fifty magistrates immediately gave
in their resignation. Rising in the middle of the assembly, they went out two
and two, dressed in their long scarlet robes, and threaded the crowd in
silence. There was a shout as they went, “There go true Romans, and fathers
of their country!” “All those who saw this procession,” says the advocate
Barbier, “declare that it was something august and overpowering.” The
government did not accept the resignations; the struggle continued. A
hundred and thirty-nine members received letters under the king’s seal

(lettres de cachet), exiling them to the four quarters of France. The Grand
Chamber had been spared; the old councillors, alone remaining,
enregistered purely and simply the declarations of the keeper of the seals.
Once more the Parliament was subdued; it had testified its complete
political impotence. The iron hand of Richelieu, the perfect address of
Mazarin, were no longer necessary to silence it; the prudent moderation, the
reserved frigidity, of Cardinal Fleury had sufficed for the purpose. “The
minister, victorious over the Parliament, had become the arbiter of Europe,”
said Frederick II., in his History of my Time. The standard of intelligences
and of wills had everywhere sunk down to the level of the government of
France. Unhappily, the day was coming when the thrones of Europe were
about to be occupied by stronger and more expanded minds, whilst France
was passing slowly from the hands of a more than octogenarian minister
into those of a voluptuous monarch, governed by his courtiers and his
favorites. Frederick II., Maria Theresa, Lord Chatham, Catherine II., were
about to appear upon the scene; the French had none to oppose them but
Cardinal Fleury with one foot in the grave, and, after him, King Louis XV.
and Madame de Pompadour.
It was amidst this state of things that the death of the Emperor Charles
VI., on the 20th of October, 1740, occurred, to throw Europe into a new
ferment of discord and war. Maria Theresa, the emperor’s eldest daughter,
was twenty-three years old, beautiful, virtuous, and of a lofty and resolute
character; her rights to the paternal heritage had been guaranteed by all
Europe. Europe, however, soon rose, almost in its entirety, to oppose them.
The Elector of Bavaria claimed the domains of the house of Austria, by
virtue of a will of Ferdinand I., father of Charles V. The King of Poland
urged the rights of his wife, daughter of the Emperor Joseph I. Spain put
forth her claims to Hungary and Bohemia, appanage of the elder branch of
the house of Austria. Sardinia desired her share in Italy. Prussia had a new
sovereign, who spoke but little, but was the first to act.
Kept for a long while by his father in cruel captivity, always carefully
held aloof from affairs, and, to pass the time, obliged to engage in literature
and science, Frederick II. had ascended the throne in August, 1740, with the
reputation of a mind cultivated, liberal, and accessible to noble ideas.
Voltaire, with whom he had become connected, had trumpeted his praises
everywhere. The first act of the new king revealed qualities of which
Voltaire had no conception. On the 23d of December, after leaving a

masked ball, he started post-haste for the frontier of Silesia, where he had
collected thirty thousand men. Without preliminary notice, without
declaration of war, he at once entered the Austrian territory, which was
scantily defended by three thousand men and a few garrisons. Before the
end of January, 1741, the Prussians were masters of Silesia. “I am going, I
fancy, to play your game,” Frederick had said, as he set off, to the French
ambassador: “if the aces come to me we will share.”
Meanwhile France, as well as the majority of the other nations, had
recognized the young Queen of Hungary. She had been proclaimed at
Vienna on the 7th of November, 1740; all her father’s states had sworn
alliance and homage to her. She had consented to take to the Hungarians the
old oath of King Andreas II., which had been constantly refused by the
house of Hapsburg: “If I, or any of my successors, at any time whatsoever,
would infringe your privileges, be it permitted you, by virtue of this
promise, you and your descendants, to defend yourselves, without being
liable to be treated as rebels.”
When Frederick II., encamped in the midst of the conquered provinces,
made a proposal to Maria Theresa to cede him Lower Silesia, to which his
ancestors had always raised pretensions, assuring her, in return, of his amity
and support, the young queen, deeply offended, replied haughtily that she
defended her subjects, she did not sell them. At the same time an Austrian
army was advancing against the King of Prussia; it was commanded by
Count Neipperg. The encounter took place at Molwitz, on the banks of the
Neiss. For one instant Frederick, carried along by his routed cavalry,
thought the battle was lost, and his first step towards glory an unlucky
business. The infantry, formed by the aged Prince of Anhalt, and
commanded by Marshal Schwerin, late comrade of Charles XII., restored
the fortune of battle; the Austrians had retired in disorder. Europe gave the
King of Prussia credit for this first success, due especially to the excellent
organization of his father’s troops. “Each battalion,” says Frederick, “was a
walking battery, whose quickness in loading tripled their fire, which gave
the Prussians the advantage of three to one.”
Meanwhile, in addition to the heritage of the house of Austria, thus
attacked and encroached upon, there was the question of the Empire. Two
claimants appeared: Duke Francis of Lorraine, Maria Theresa’s husband,
whom she had appointed regent of her dominions, and the Elector of

Bavaria, grandson of Louis XIV.‘s faithful ally, the only Catholic amongst
the lay electors of the empire, who was only waiting for the signal from
France to act, in his turn, against the Queen of Hungary.
Cardinal Fleury s intentions remained as yet vague and secret. Naturally
and stubbornly pacific as he was, he felt himself bound by the confirmation
of the Pragmatic-Sanction, lately renewed, at the time of the treaty of
Vienna. The king affected indifference. “Whom are you for making
emperor, Souvre?” he asked one of his courtiers. “Faith, sir,” answered the
marquis, “I trouble myself very little about it; but if your Majesty pleased,
you might tell us more about it than anybody.” “No,” said the king; “I shall
have nothing to do with it; I shall look on from Mont-Pagnotte” (a post of
observation out of cannon-shot). “Ah, sir,” replied Souvre, “your Majesty
will be very cold there, and very ill lodged.” “How so?” said the king. “Sir,”
replied Souvre, “because your ancestors never had any house built there.”
“A very pretty answer,” adds the advocate Barbier; “and as regards the
question, nothing can be made of it, because the king is mighty close.”
A powerful intrigue was urging the king to war. Cardinal Fleury, prudent,
economizing, timid as he was, had taken a liking for a man of adventurous,
and sometimes chimerical spirit. “Count Belle-Isle, grandson of Fouquet,”
says M. d’Argenson, “had more wit than judgment, and more fire than
force; but he aimed very high.” He dreamed of revising the map of Europe,
and of forming a zone of small states, destined to protect France against the
designs of Austria. Louis XV. pretended to nothing, demanded nothing for
the price of his assistance; but France had been united from time
immemorial to Bavaria: she was bound to raise the elector to the imperial
throne. If it happened afterwards, in the dismemberment of the Austrian
dominions, that the Low Countries fell to the share of France, it was the
natural sequel of past conquests of Flanders, Lorraine, and the Three
Bishoprics. Count Belle-Isle did not disturb with his dreams the calm of the
aged cardinal; he was modest in his military aspirations. The French navy
was ruined, the king had hardly twenty vessels to send to sea; that mattered
little, as England and Holland took no part in the contest; Austria was not a
maritime power; Spain joined with France to support the elector. A body of
forty thousand men was put under the orders of that prince, who received
the title of lieutenant-general of the armies of the King of France. Louis XV.
acted only in the capacity of Bavaria’s ally and auxiliary. Meanwhile
Marshal Belle-Isle, the King’s ambassador and plenipotentiary in Germany,

had just signed a treaty with Frederick II., guaranteeing to that monarch
Lower Silesia. At the same time, a second French army, under the orders of
Marshal Maillebois, entered Germany; Saxony and Poland came into the
coalition. The King of England, George II., faithful to the Pragmatic-
Sanction, hurrying over to Hanover to raise troops there, found himself
threatened by Maillebois, and signed a treaty of neutrality. The elector had
been proclaimed, at Lintz, Archduke of Austria nowhere did the Franco-
Bavarian army encounter any obstacle. The King of Prussia was occupying
Moravia; Upper and Lower Austria had been conquered without a blow, and
by this time the forces of the enemy were threatening Vienna. The success
of the invasion was like a dream; but the elector had not the wit to profit by
the good fortune which was offered him. On the point of entering the capital
abandoned by Maria Theresa, he fell back, and marched towards Bohemia;
the gates of Prague did not open like those of Passau or of Lintz; it had to
be besieged. The Grand-duke of Tuscany was advancing to the relief of the
town; it was determined to deliver the assault.
Count Maurice of Saxony, natural son of the late King of Poland, the
most able and ere long the most illustrious of the generals in the service of
France, had opposed the retrograde movement towards Bohemia. In front of
Prague, he sent for Chevert, lieutenant-colonel of the regiment of Beauce,
of humble origin, but destined to rise by his courage and merit to the
highest rank in the army; the two officers made a reconnaissance; the
moment and the point of attack were chosen. At the approach of night on
the 25th of November, 1741, Chevert called up a grenadier. “Thou seest
yonder sentry?” said he to the soldier. “Yes, colonel.” “He will shout to
thee, ‘Who goes there?’” “Yes, colonel.” “He will fire upon thee and miss
thee.” “Yes, colonel.” “Thou’lt kill him, and I shall be at thy heels.” The
grenadier salutes, and mounts up to the assault; the body of the sentry had
scarcely begun to roll over the rampart when Colonel Chevert followed the
soldier; the eldest son of Marshal Broglie was behind him.
Fifty men had escaladed the wall before the alarm spread through the
town; a gate was soon burst to permit the entrance of Count Maurice with a
body of cavalry. Next day the elector was crowned as King of Bohemia; on
the 13th of January, 1742, he was proclaimed emperor, under the name of
Charles VII.

A few weeks had sufficed to crown the success; less time sufficed to
undo it. On flying from Vienna, Maria Theresa had sought refuge in
Hungary; the assembly of the Estates held a meeting at Presburg; there she
appeared, dressed in mourning, holding in her arms her son, scarce six
months old. Already she had known how to attach the magnates to her by
the confidence she had shown them; she held out to them her child; “I am
abandoned of my friends,” said she in Latin, a language still in use in
Hungary amongst the upper classes; “I am pursued by my enemies, attacked
by my relatives; I have no hope but in your fidelity and courage; we—my
son and I—look to you for our safety.”
The palatines scarcely gave the queen time to finish; already the sabres
were out of the sheaths and flashing above their heads. Count Bathyany was
the first to shout, “Moriamur pro rege nostro Maria Theresa!” The same
shout was repeated everywhere; Maria Theresa, restraining her tears,
thanked her defenders with gesture and voice; she was expecting a second
child before long. “I know not,” she wrote to her mother-in-law, the
Duchess of Lorraine, “if I shall have a town left to be confined in.”

Hungary rose, like one man, to protect her sovereign against the excess
of her misfortunes; the same spirit spread before long through the Austrian
provinces; bodies of irregulars, savage and cruel, formed at all points,
attacking and massacring the French detachments they encountered,—and
giving to the war a character of ferocity which displayed itself with special
excess against Bavaria. Count Segur, besieged in Lintz, was obliged to
capitulate on the 26th of January, and the day after the Elector of Bavaria
had received the imperial crown at Frankfurt, February 12, 1742—the
Austrians, under the orders of General Khevenhuller, obtained possession
of Munich, which was given up to pillage. Jokes then began to fly about in
Paris at the expense of the emperor who had just been made after an
interregnum of more than a year. “The thing in the world which it is
perceived that one can most easily do without,” said Voltaire, “is an

emperor.” “As Paris is always crammed with a number of Austrians in heart
who are charmed at the sad events,” writes the advocate Barbier, “they have
put in the Bastille some indiscreet individuals who said in open cafe that the
emperor was John Lackland, and that a room would have to be fitted up for
him at Vincennes. In point of fact, he remains at Frankfurt, and it would be
very hard for him to go elsewhere in safety.”
Meanwhile England had renounced her neutrality; the general feeling of
the nation prevailed over the prudent and farsighted ability of Robert
Walpole; he succumbed, after his long ministry, full of honors and riches;
the government had passed into warlike hands. The women of society,
headed by the Duchess of Marlborough, raised a subscription of one
hundred thousand pounds, which they offered unsuccessfully to the haughty
Maria Theresa. Parliament voted more effectual aid, and English diplomacy
adroitly detached the King of Sardinia from the allies whom success
appeared to be abandoning. The King of Prussia had just gained at Czezlaw
an important victory; next day, he was negotiating with the Queen of
Hungary. On the 11th of June the treaty which abandoned Silesia to
Frederick II. was secretly concluded; when the signatures were exchanged
at Berlin in the following month, the withdrawal of Prussia was everywhere
known in Europe. “This is the method introduced and accepted amongst the
allies: to separate and do a better stroke of business by being the first to
make terms,” writes M. d’Argenson on 30th June; “it used not to be so. The
English were the first to separate from the great alliance in 1711, and they
derive great advantages from it; we followed this terrible example in 1735,
and got Lorraine by it; lastly, here is the King of Prussia, but under much
more odious circumstances, since he leaves us in a terrible scrape, our
armies, in the middle of Germany, beaten and famine-stricken; the emperor,
despoiled of his hereditary dominions and his estates likewise in danger. All
is at the mercy of the maritime powers, who have pushed things to the
extremity we see; and we, France, who were alone capable of resisting such
a torrent at this date— here be we exhausted, and not in a condition to
check these rogueries and this power, even by uniting ourselves the most
closely with Spain. Let be, let us meddle no more; it is the greatest service
we can render at this date to our allies of Germany.”
Cardinal Fleury had not waited for confirmation of the King of Prussia’s
defection to seek likewise to negotiate; Marshal Belle-Isle had been
intrusted with this business, and, at the same time with a letter addressed by

the cardinal—to Field-Marshal Konigseck. The minister was old, timid,
displeased, disquieted at the war which he had been surprised into; he made
his excuses to the Austrian negotiator and delivered his plenipotentiary into
his hands at the very outset. “Many people know,” said he, “how opposed I
was to the resolutions we adopted, and that I was in some sort compelled to
agree to them. Your Excellency is too well informed of all that passes not to
divine who it was who set everything in motion for deciding the king to
enter into a league which was so contrary to my inclinations and to my
principles.”
For sole answer, Maria Theresa had the cardinal’s letter published. At
Utrecht, after the unparalleled disasters which were overwhelming the
kingdom, and in spite of the concessions they had been ordered to offer, the
tone of Louis XIV.‘s plenipotentiaries was more dignified and prouder than
that of the enfeebled old man who had so long governed France by dint of
moderation, discretion, and patient inertness. The allies of France were
disquieted and her foes emboldened. Marshal Belle-Isle, shut up in Prague,
and Marshal Broglie, encamped near the town, remaining isolated in a
hostile country, hemmed in on all sides by a savage foe, maintaining order
with difficulty within the fortress itself.
“Marshal Broglie is encamped under the guns of Prague,” says Barbier’s
journal: “his camp is spoken of as a masterpiece. As there is reason to be
shy of the inhabitants, who are for the Queen of Hungary, a battery has been
trained upon Prague, the garrison camps upon the ramparts, and Marshal
Belle-Isle patrols every night.”
Marshal Maillebois was at Dusseldorf, commissioned to observe the
Hollanders and protect Westphalia; he received orders to join Marshals
Broglie and Belle-Isle. “It is the army of redemption for the captives,” was
the saying at Paris. At the same time that the marshal was setting out for
Prague, Cardinal Fleury sent him the following instructions: “Engage in no
battle of which the issue may be doubtful.” All the defiles of Bohemia were
carefully guarded; Maillebois first retired on Egra, then he carried his arms
into Bavaria, where Marshal Broglie came to relieve him of his command.
Marshal Belle-Isle remained with the sole charge of the defence of Prague;
he was frequently harassed by the Austrians; his troops were exhausted with
cold and privation. During the night between the 16th and 17th of
December, 1742, the marshal sallied from the town. “I stole a march of

twenty-four hours good on Prince Lobkowitz, who was only five leagues
from me,” wrote Belle-Isle, on accomplishing his retreat; “I pierced his
quarters, and I traversed ten leagues of plain, having to plod along with
eleven thousand foot and three thousand two hundred and fifty worn-out
horses, M. de Lobkowitz having eight thousand good horses and twelve
thousand infantry. I made such despatch that I arrived at the defiles before
he could come up with me. I concealed from him the road I had resolved to
take, for he had ordered the occupation of all the defiles and the destruction
of all the bridges there are on the two main roads leading from Prague to
Egra. I took one which pierces between the two others, where I found no
obstacles but those of nature, and, at last, I arrived on the tenth day, without
a check, though continually harassed by hussars in front, rear, and flank.”
The hospitals at Egra were choke full of sick soldiers; twelve nights passed
on the snow without blankets or cloaks had cost the lives of many men; a
great number never recovered more than a lingering existence. Amongst
them there was, in the king’s regiment of infantry, a young officer, M. de
Vauvenargues, who expired at thirty-two years of age, soon after his return
to his country, leaving amongst those who had known him a feeling that a
great loss had been suffered by France and human intellect.
Chevert still occupied Prague, with six thousand sick or wounded; the
Prince of Lorraine had invested the place and summoned it to surrender at
discretion. “Tell your general;” replied Chevert to the Austrian sent to
parley, “that, if he will not grant me the honors of war, I will fire the four
corners of Prague, and bury myself under its ruins.” He obtained what he
asked for, and went to rejoin Marshal Belle-Isle at Egra. People compared
the retreat from Prague to the Retreat of the Ten Thousand; but the truth
came out for all the fictions of flattery and national pride. A hundred
thousand Frenchmen had entered Germany at the outset of the war; at the
commencement of the year 1743, thirty-five thousand soldiers, mustered in
Bavaria, were nearly all that remained to withstand the increasing efforts of
the Austrians.
Marshal Belle-Isle was coldly received at Paris. “He is much
inconvenienced by a sciatica,” writes the advocate Barbier, “and cannot
walk but with the assistance of two men. He comes back with grand
decorations: prince of the empire, knight of the Golden Fleece, blue riband,
marshal of France, and duke. He is held accountable, however, for all the
misfortunes that have happened to us; it was spread about at Paris that he

was disgraced and even exiled to his estate at Vernon, near Gisors. It is true,
nevertheless, that he has several times done business with the king, whether
in M. Amelot’s presence, on foreign affairs, or M. d’Aguesseau’s, on
military; but this restless and ambitious spirit is feared by the ministers.”
Almost at the very moment when the Austrians were occupying Prague
and Bohemia, Cardinal Fleury was expiring, at Versailles, at the age of
ninety. Madame Marshal Noailles, mother of the present marshal, who is at
least eighty-seven, but is all alive, runs about Paris and writes all day, sent
to inquire after him. He sent answer to her, “that she was cleverer than he—
she managed to live; as for him, he was ceasing to exist. In fact, it is the
case of a candle going out, and being a long while about it. Many people are
awaiting this result, and all the court will be starting at his very ghost, a
week after he has been buried.” [Journal de Barbier, t. ii. p. 348.]
Cardinal Fleury had lived too long: the trials of the last years of his life
had been beyond the bodily and mental strength of an old man elevated for
the first time to power at an age when it is generally seen slipping from the
hands of the most energetic. Naturally gentle, moderate, discreet, though
stubborn and persevering in his views, he had not an idea of conceiving and
practising a great policy. France was indebted to him for a long period of
mediocre and dull prosperity, which was preferable to the evils that had for
so long oppressed her, but as for which she was to cherish no remembrance
and no gratitude, when new misfortunes came bursting upon her.
Both court and nation hurled the same reproach at Cardinal Fleury; he
alone prevented the king from governing, and turned his attention from
affairs, partly from jealousy, and partly from the old habit acquired as a
preceptor, who can never see a man in one who has been his pupil. When
the old man died at last, as M. d’Argenson cruelly puts it, France turned her
eyes towards Louis XV. “The cardinal is dead: hurrah! for the king!” was
the cry amongst the people. The monarch himself felt as if he were
emancipated. “Gentlemen, here am I—premier minister!” said he to his
most intimate courtiers. “When MM. de Maurepas and Amelot went to
announce to him this death, it is said that he was at first overcome, and that
when he had recovered himself, he told them that hitherto he had availed
himself of Cardinal Fleury’s counsels; but he relied upon it that they would
so act, that they would not need to place any one between them and him. If
this answer is faithfully reported,” adds the advocate Barbier, “it is

sufficiently in the high style to let it be understood that there will be no
more any premier minister, or at any rate any body exercising the functions
thereof.”
For some time previously, in view of the great age and rapid
enfeeblement of Cardinal Fleury, Marshal Noailles, ever able and far-
sighted, had been pressing Louis XV. to take into his own hands the
direction of his affairs. Having the command on the frontier of the Low
Countries, he had adopted the practice of writing directly to the king. “Until
it may please your Majesty to let me know your intentions and your will,”
said the marshal at the outset of his correspondence, “confining myself
solely to what relates to the frontier on which you have given me the
command, I shall speak with frankness and freedom about the object
confided to my care, and shall hold my peace as regards the rest. If you, Sir,
desire the silence to be broken, it is for you to order it.” For the first time
Louis XV. seemed to awake from the midst of that life of intellectual
lethargy and physical activity which he allowed to glide along, without a
thought, between the pleasures of the chase and the amusements invented
by his favorite; a remembrance of Louis XIV. came across his mind,
naturally acute and judicious as it was. “The late king, my great-
grandfather,” he writes to Marshal Noailles on the 26th of November, 1743,
“whom I desire to imitate as much as I can, recommended me, on his death-
bed, to take counsel in all things, and to seek out the best, so as always to
follow it. I shall be charmed, then, if you will give me some; thus do I open
your mouth, as the pope does the cardinals, and I permit you to say to me
what your zeal and your affection for me and my kingdom prompt you.”
The first fruit of this correspondence was the entrance of Marshal Noailles
into the Council.

“One day as he was, in the capacity of simple courtier, escorting the king,
who was on his way to the Council, his Majesty said to him, ‘Marshal,
come in; we are going to hold a council,’ and pointed to a place at his left,
Cardinal Tencin being on his right. ‘This new minister does not please our
secretaries of state. He is a troublesome inspector set over them, who
meddles in everything, though master of nothing.’” The renewal of active
hostilities was about to deliver the ministers from Marshal Noailles.
The prudent hesitation and backwardness of Holland had at last yielded
to the pressure of England. The States-general had sent twenty thousand
men to join the army which George II. had just sent into Germany. It was
only on the 15th of March, 1744, that Louis XV. formally declared war
against the King of England and Maria Theresa, no longer as an auxiliary of
the ‘emperor, but in his own name and on behalf of France. Charles VII., a
fugitive, driven from his hereditary dominions, which had been evacuated
by Marshal Broglie, had transported to Frankfurt his ill fortune and his
empty titles. France alone supported in Germany a quarrel the weight of
which she had imprudently taken upon herself.
The effort was too much for the resources; the king’s counsellors felt that
it was; the battle of Dettingen, skilfully commenced on the 27th of June,
1743, by Marshal Noailles, and lost by the imprudence of his nephew, the
Duke of Gramont, had completely shaken the confidence of the armies; the
emperor had treated with the Austrians for an armistice; establishing the
neutrality of his troops, as belonging to the empire. Noailles wrote to the
king on the 8th of July, “It is necessary to uphold this phantom, in order to
restrain Germany, which would league against us, and furnish the English
with all the troops therein, the moment the emperor was abandoned.” It was

necessary, at the same time, to look out elsewhere for more effectual
support. The King of Prussia had been resting for the last two years, a
curious and an interested spectator of the contests which were bathing
Europe in blood, and which answered his purpose by enfeebling his rivals.
He frankly and coolly flaunted his selfishness. “In a previous war with
France,” he says in his memoirs, “I abandoned the French at Prague,
because I gained Silesia by that step. If I had escorted them to Vienna, they
would never have given me so much.” In turn the successes of the Queen of
Hungary were beginning to disquiet him; on the 5th of June, 1744, he
signed a new treaty with France; for the first time Louis XV. was about to
quit Versailles and place himself at the head of an army. “If my country is to
be devoured,” said the king, with a levity far different from the solemn tone
of Louis XIV., “it will be very hard on me to see it swallowed without
personally doing my best to prevent it.”
He had, however, hesitated a long while before he started. There was a
shortness of money. For all his having been head of the council of finance,
Noailles had not been able to rid himself of ideas of arbitrary power. “When
the late king, your great-grandfather, considered any outlay necessary,” he
wrote to Louis XV., “the funds had to be found, because it was his will. The
case in question is one in which your Majesty ought to speak as master, and
lay down the law to your ministers. Your comptroller-general ought, for the
future, to be obliged to furnish the needful funds without daring to ask the
reasons for which they are demanded of him, and still less to decide upon
them. It was thus that the late king behaved towards M. Colbert and all who
succeeded him in that office; he would never have done anything great in
the whole course of his reign, if he had behaved otherwise.” It was the
king’s common sense which replied to this counsel, “We are still paying all
those debts that the late king incurred for extraordinary occasions, fifty
millions a year and more, which we must begin by paying off first of all.”
Later on, he adds, gayly, “As for me, I can do without any equipage, and, if
needful, the shoulder of mutton of the lieutenants of infantry will do
perfectly well for me.” “There is nothing talked off here but the doings of
the king, who is in extraordinary spirits,” writes the advocate Barbier; “he
has visited the places near Valenciennes, the magazines, the hospitals; he
has tasted the broth of the sick, and the soldiers’ bread. The ambassador of
Holland came, before his departure, to propose a truce in order to put us off
yet longer. The king, when he was presented, merely said, ‘I know what you

are going to say to me, and what it is all about. I will give you my answer in
Flanders.’ This answer is a proud one, and fit for a king of France.”

The hopes of the nation were aroused. “Have we, then, a king?” said M.
d’Argenson. Credit was given to the Duchess of Chateauroux, Louis XV.‘s
new favorite, for having excited this warlike ardor in the king. Ypres and
Menin had already surrendered after a few days’ open trenches; siege had
just been laid to Furnes. Marshal Noailles had proposed to move up the
king’s household troops in order to make an impression upon the enemy. “If
they must needs be marched up,” replied Louis XV., “I do not wish to
separate from my household: verbum sap.”
The news which arrived from the army of Italy was equally encouraging;
the Prince of Conde, seconded by Chevert, had forced the passage of the
Alps. “There will come some occasion when we shall do as well as the

French have done,” wrote Count Campo-Santo, who, under Don Philip,
commanded the Spanish detachment; “it is impossible to do better.”
Madame de Chateauroux had just arrived at Lille; there were already
complaints in the army of the frequent absence of the king on his visits to
her, when alarming news came to cause forgetfulness of court intrigues and
dissatisfaction; the Austrians had effected the passage of the Rhine by
surprise near Philipsburg; Elsass was invaded. Marshal Coigny, who was
under orders to defend it, had been enticed in the direction of Worms, by
false moves on the part of Prince Charles of Lorraine, and had found great
difficulty in recrossing the frontier. “Here we are on the eve of a great
crisis,” writes Louis XV. on the 7th of July. It was at once decided that the
king must move on Elsass to defend his threatened provinces. The King of
Prussia promised to enter Bohemia immediately with twenty thousand men,
as the diversion was sure to be useful to France. Louis XV. had already
arrived at Metz, and Marshal Noailles pushed forward in order to unite all
the corps. On the 8th of August the king awoke in pain, prostrated by a
violent headache; a few days later, all France was in consternation; the king
was said to have been given over.
“The king’s danger was noised abroad throughout Paris in the middle of
the night,” writes Voltaire [Siecle de Louis XV., p. 103]: “everybody gets up,
runs about, in confusion, not knowing whither to go. The churches open at
dead of night; nobody takes any more note of time, bed-time, or day-time,
or meal-time. Paris was beside itself; all the houses of officials were
besieged by a continual crowd; knots collected, at all the cross-roads. The
people cried, ‘If he should die, it will be for having marched to our aid.’
People accosted one another, questioned one another in the churches,
without being the least acquainted. There were many churches where the
priest who pronounced the prayer for the king’s health interrupted the
intoning with his tears, and the people responded with nothing but sobs and
cries. The courier, who, on the 19th, brought to Paris the news of his
convalescence, was embraced and almost stifled by the people; they kissed
his horse, they escorted him in triumph. All the streets resounded with a
shout of joy. ‘The king is well!’ When the monarch was told of the
unparalleled transports of joy which had succeeded those of despair, he was
affected to tears, and, raising himself up in a thrill of emotion which gave
him strength, ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed, ‘how sweet it is to be so loved! What
have I done to deserve it?’”

What had he done, indeed! And what was he destined to do? France had
just experienced the last gush of that monarchical passion and fidelity
which had so long distinguished her, and which were at last used up and
worn out through the faults of the princes as well as through the blindness
and errors of the nation itself.
Confronted with death, the king had once more felt the religious terrors
which were constantly intermingled with the irregularity of his life; he had
sent for the queen, and had dismissed the Duchess of Chateauroux. On
recovering his health, he found himself threatened by new perils,
aggravated by his illness and by the troubled state into which it had thrown
the public mind. After having ravaged and wasted Elsass, without Marshals
Coigny and Noailles having been able to prevent it, Prince Charles had,
without being harassed, struck again into the road towards Bohemia, which
was being threatened by the King of Prussia. “This prince,” wrote Marshal
Belle-Isle on the 13th of September, “has written a very strong letter to the
king, complaining of the quiet way in which Prince Charles was allowed to
cross the Rhine; he attributes it all to his Majesty’s illness, and complains
bitterly of Marshal Noailles.” And, on the 25th, to Count Clermont, “Here
we are, decided at last; the king is to start on Tuesday the 27th for
Lundville, and on the 5th of October will be at Strasbourg. Nobody knows
as yet any further than that, and it is a question whether he will go to
Fribourg or not. The ministers are off back to Paris. Marshal Noailles, who
has sent for his equipage hither, asked whether he should attend his
Majesty, who replied, ‘As you please,’ rather curtly. Your Highness cannot
have a doubt about his doing so, after such a gracious permission.”
Louis XV. went to the siege of Fribourg, which was a long and a difficult
one. He returned to Paris on the 13th of November, to the great joy of the
people. A few days later, Marshal Belle-Isle, whilst passing through
Hanover in the character of negotiator, was arrested by order of George II.,
and carried to England a prisoner of war, in defiance of the law of nations
and the protests of France. The moment was not propitious for obtaining the
release of a marshal of France and an able general. The Emperor Charles
VII., who but lately returned to his hereditary dominions, and recovered
possession of his capital, after fifteen months of Austrian occupation, died
suddenly on the 20th of January, 1745, at forty-seven years of age. The face
of affairs changed all at once; the honor of France was no longer concerned
in the struggle; the Grand-duke of Tuscany had no longer any competitor

for the empire; the eldest son of Charles VII. was only seventeen; the Queen
of Hungary was disposed for peace. “The English ministry, which laid
down the law for all, because it laid down the money, and which had in its
pay, all at one time, the Queen of Hungary, the King of Poland, and the
King of Sardinia, considered that there was everything to lose by a treaty
with France, and everything to gain by arms. War continued, because it had
commenced.” [Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XV.]
The King of France henceforth maintained it almost alone by himself.
The young Elector of Bavaria had already found himself driven out of
Munich, and forced by his exhausted subjects to demand peace of Maria
Theresa. The election to the empire was imminent; Maximilian-Joseph
promised his votes to the Grand-duke of Tuscany; at that price he was re-
established in his hereditary dominions. The King of Poland had rejected
the advances of France, who offered him the title of emperor, beneath
which Charles VII. had succumbed. Marshal Saxe bore all the brunt of the
war. A foreigner and a Protestant, for a long while under suspicion with
Louis XV., and blackened in character by the French generals, Maurice of
Saxony had won authority as well as glory by the splendor of his bravery
and of his military genius. Combining with quite a French vivacity the far-
sightedness and the perseverance of the races of the north, he had been
toiling for more than a year to bring about amongst his army a spirit of
discipline, a powerful organization, a contempt for fatigue as well as for
danger. “At Dettingen the success of the allies was due to their surprising
order, for they were not seasoned to war,” he used to say. Order did not as
yet reign in the army of Marshal Saxe. In 1745, the situation was grave; the
marshal was attacked with dropsy; his life appeared to be in danger. He
nevertheless commanded his preparations to be made for the campaign,
and, when Voltaire, who was one of his friends, was astounded at it, “It is
no question of living, but of setting out,” was his reply.

The king was preparing to set out, like Marshal Saxe; he had just married
the dauphin to the eldest daughter of the King of Spain; the young prince
accompanied his father to the front before Tournai, which the French army
was besieging. On the 8th of May Louis XV. visited the outskirts; an attack
from the enemy was expected, the field of battle was known beforehand.
The village of Fontenoy had already been occupied by Marshal Noailles,
who had asked to serve as aide-de-camp to Marshal Saxe, to whom he was
attached by sincere friendship, and whom he had very much contributed to
advance in the king’s good graces.
“Never did Louis XV. show more gayety than on the eve of the fight,”
says Voltaire. “The conversation was of battles at which kings had been
present in person. The king said that since the battle of Poitiers no king of
France had fought with his son beside him, that since St. Louis none had

gained any signal victory over the English, and that he hoped to be the first.
He was the first up on the day of action; he himself at four o’clock awoke
Count d’Argenson, minister of war, who on the instant sent to ask Marshal
Saxe for his final orders. The marshal was found in a carriage of osier-work,
which served him for a bed, and in which he had himself drawn about when
his exhausted powers no longer allowed him to sit his horse.” The king and
the dauphin had already taken up their positions of battle; the two villages
of Fontenoy and Antoin, and the wood of Barri, were occupied by French
troops. Two armies of fifty thousand men each were about to engage in the
lists as at Dettingen. Austria had sent but eight thousand soldiers, under the
orders of the old and famous General Konigseck; the English and the
Hollanders were about to bear all the burden and heat of the day.
It was not five in the morning, and already there was a thunder of
cannon. The Hollanders attacked the village of Antoin, the English that of
Fontenoy. The two posts were covered by a redoubt which belched forth
flames; the Hollanders refused to deliver the assault. An attack made by the
English on the wood of Barri had been repulsed. “Forward, my lord, right to
your front,” said old Konigseck to the Duke of Cumberland, George II.‘s
son, who commanded the English; “the ravine in front of Fontenoy must be
carried.” The English advanced; they formed a deep and serried column,
preceded and supported by artillery. The French batteries mowed them
down right and left, whole ranks fell dead; they were at once filled up; the
cannon which they dragged along by hand, pointed towards Fontenoy and
the redoubts, replied to the French artillery. An attempt of some officers of
the French guards to carry off the cannon of the English was unsuccessful.
The two corps found themselves at last face to face.
The English officers took off their hats; Count Chabannes and the Duke
of Biron, who had moved forward, returned their salute. “Gentlemen of the
French guard, fire!” exclaimed Lord Charles Hay. “Fire yourselves,
gentlemen of England,” immediately replied Count d’Auteroche; “we never
fire first.” [All fiction, it is said.] The volley of the English laid low the
foremost ranks of the French guards. This regiment had been effeminated
by a long residence in Paris and at Versailles; its colonel, the Duke of
Gramont, had been killed in the morning, at the commencement of the
action; it gave way, and the English cleared the ravine which defended
Fontenoy. They advanced as if on parade; the majors [?sergeant-majors],
small cane in hand, rested it lightly on the soldiers’ muskets to direct their

fire. Several regiments successively opposed to the English column found
themselves repulsed and forced to beat a retreat; the English still advanced.
Marshal Saxe, carried about everywhere in his osier-litter, saw the danger
with a calm eye; he sent the Marquis of Meuse to the king. “I beg your
Majesty,” he told him to say, “to go back with the dauphin over the bridge
of Calonne; I will do what I can to restore the battle.” “Ah! I know well
enough that he will do what is necessary,” answered the king, “but I stay
where I am.” Marshal Saxe mounted his horse.

In its turn, the cavalry had been repulsed by the English; their fire swept
away rank after rank of the regiment of Vaisseaux, which would not be
denied. “How is it that such troops are not victorious?” cried Marshal Saxe,
who was moving about at a foot’s pace in the middle of the fire, without his
cuirass, which his weakness did not admit of his wearing. He advanced
towards Fontenoy; the batteries had just fallen short of ball. The English

column had ceased marching; arrested by the successive efforts of the
French regiments, it remained motionless, and seemed to receive no more
orders, but it preserved a proud front, and appeared to be masters of the
field of battle. Marshal Saxe was preparing for the retreat of the army; he
had relinquished his proposal for that of the king, from the time that the
English had come up and pressed him closely. “It was my advice, before the
danger was so great,” he said; “now there is no falling back.”
A disorderly council was being held around Louis XV. With the fine
judgment and sense which he often displayed when he took the trouble to
have an opinion on his affairs, the king had been wise enough to encourage
his troops by his presence without in any way interfering with the orders of
Marshal Saxe. The Duke of Richelieu vented an opinion more worthy of the
name he bore than had been his wont in his life of courtiership and
debauchery. “Throw forward the artillery against the column,” he said, “and
let the king’s household, with all the disposable regiments, attack them at
the same time; they must be fallen upon like so many foragers.”
The retreat of the Hollanders admitted of the movement; the small field-
pieces, as yet dragged by hand, were pointed against the English column.
Marshal Saxe, with difficulty keeping his seat upon his horse, galloped
hastily up to the Irish brigade, commanding all the troops he met on the way
to make no more false attacks, and to act in concert. All the forces of the
French army burst simultaneously upon the English. The Irish regiments in
the service of France, nearly all composed of Jacobite emigrants, fought
with fury. Twice the brave enemy rallied, but the officers fell on all sides,
the ranks were everywhere broken; at last they retired, without disorder,
without enfeeblement, preserving, even in defeat, the honor of a vigorous
resistance. The battle was gained at the moment when the most clear-
sighted had considered it lost. Marshal Saxe had still strength left to make
his way to the king. “I have lived long enough, sir,” he said, “now that I
have seen your Majesty victorious. You now know on what the fortune of
battles depends.”
The victory of Fontenoy, like that of Denain, restored the courage and
changed the situation of France. When the King of Prussia heard of his
ally’s success, he exclaimed with a grin, “This is about as useful to us as a
battle gained on the banks of the Scamander.” His selfish absorption in his
personal and direct interests obscured the judgment of Frederick the Great.

He, however, did justice to Marshal Saxe: “There was a discussion the other
day as to what battle had reflected most honor on the general commanding,”
he wrote, a long while after the battle of Fontenoy; “some suggested that of
Almanza, others that of Turin; but I suggested—and everybody finally
agreed that it was undoubtedly that in which the general had been at death’s
door when it was delivered.”
The fortress of Tournai surrendered on the 22d of May; the citadel
capitulated on the 19th of June. Ghent, Bruges, Oudenarde, Dendermonde,
Ostend, Nienport, yielded, one after another, to the French armies. In the
month of February, 1746, Marshal Saxe terminated the campaign by taking
Brussels. By the 1st of the previous September Louis XV. had returned in
triumph to Paris.

Henceforth he remained alone confronting Germany, which was neutral,
or had rallied round the restored empire. On the 13th of September, the
Grand-duke of Tuscany had been proclaimed emperor at Frankfurt, under
the name of Francis I. The indomitable resolution of the queen his wife had
triumphed. In spite of the checks she suffered in the Low Countries, Maria
Theresa still withstood, at all points, the pacific advances of the
belligerents.
On the 4th of June, the King of Prussia had gained a great victory at
Freilberg. “I have honored the bill of exchange your Majesty drew on me at
Fontenoy,” he wrote to Louis XV. A series of successful fights had opened
the road to Saxony. Frederick headed thither rapidly; on the 18th of
December he occupied Dresden.

This time, the King of Poland, Elector of Saxony, forced the hand of the
new empress: “The Austrians and the Saxons have just sent ministers hither
to negotiate for peace,” said a letter to France from the King of Prussia; “so
I have no course open but to sign. Would that I might be fortunate enough
to serve as the instrument of general pacification. After discharging my duty
towards the state I govern, and towards my family, no object will be nearer
to my heart than that of being able to render myself of service to your
Majesty’s interests.” Frederick the Great returned to Berlin covered with
glory, and definitively master of Silesia. “Learn once for all,” he said at a
later period, in his instructions to his successor, “that where a kingdom is
concerned, you take when you can, and that you are never wrong when you
are not obliged to hand over.” An insolent and a cynical maxim of brute
force, which conquerors have put in practice at all times, without daring to
set it up as a principle.
Whilst Berlin was in gala trim to celebrate the return of her monarch in
triumph, Europe had her eyes fixed upon the unparalleled enterprise of a
young man, winning, courageous, and frivolous as he was, attempting to
recover by himself alone the throne of his fathers. For nearly three years
past, Charles Edward Stuart, son of Chevalier St. George, had been
awaiting in France the fulfilment of the promises and hopes which had been
flashed before his eyes. Weary of hope deferred, he had conceived the idea
of a bold stroke. “Why not attempt to cross in a vessel to the north of
Scotland?” had been the question put to him by Cardinal Tencin, who had,
some time before, owed his cardinal’s hat to the dethroned King of Great
Britain. “Your presence will be enough to get you a party and an army, and
France will be obliged to give you aid.”
Charles Edward had followed this audacious counsel. Landing, in June,
1745, in the Highlands of Scotland, he had soon found the clans of the
mountaineers hurrying to join his standard. At the head of this wild army, he
had in a few months gained over the whole of Scotland. On the 20th of
September he was proclaimed at Edinburgh Regent of England, France,
Scotland, and Ireland, for his father, King James III. George II. had left
Hanover; the Duke of Cumberland, returning from Germany, took the
command of the troops assembled to oppose the invader. Their success in
the battle of Preston-Pans against General Cope had emboldened the Scots;
at the end of December, 1745, Prince Charles Edward and his army had
advanced as far as Derby.

It was the fate of the Stuarts, whether heroes or dastards, to see their
hopes blasted all at once, and to drag down in their fall their most zealous
and devoted partisans. The aid, so often promised by France and Spain, had
dwindled down to the private expeditions of certain brave adventurers. The
Duke of Richelieu, it was said, was to put himself at their head. “As to the
embarkation at Dunkerque,” writes the advocate Barbier, at the close of the
year 1745, “there is great anxiety about it, for we are at the end of
December, and it is not yet done, which gives every one occasion to make
up news according to his fancy. This uncertainty discourages the
Frenchman, who gives out that our expedition will not take place, or, at any
rate, will not succeed.” Charles Edward had already been forced to fall back
upon Scotland. As in 1651, at the time of the attempt of Charles II., England
remained quite cold in the presence of the Scottish invasion. The Duke of
Cumberland was closely pressing the army of the mountaineers. On the 23d
of April, 1746, the foes found themselves face to face at Culloden, in the
environs of Inverness. Charles Edward was completely beaten, and the
army of the Highlanders destroyed; the prince only escaped either death or
captivity by the determined devotion of his partisans, whether distinguished
or obscure; a hundred persons had risked their lives for him, when he
finally succeeded, on the 10th of October, in touching land, in Brittany, near
St. Pol de Leon. His friends and his defenders were meanwhile dying for his
cause on scaffold or gallows.
The anger and severity displayed by the English government towards the
Jacobites were aggravated by the checks encountered upon the Continent by
the coalition. At the very moment when the Duke of Cumberland was
defeating Charles Edward at Culloden, Antwerp was surrendering to Louis
XV. in person: Mons, Namur, and Charleroi were not long before they fell.
Prince Charles of Lorraine was advancing to the relief of the besieged
places; Marshal Saxe left open to him the passage of the Meuse. The French
camp seemed to be absorbed in pleasures; the most famous actors from
Paris were ordered to amuse the general and the soldiers. On the 10th of
October, in the evening, Madame Favart came forward on the stage. “To-
morrow,” said she, “there will be no performance, on account of the battle:
the day after, we shall have the honor of giving you Le Coq du Village.” At
the same time the marshal sent the following order to the columns which
were already forming on the road from St. Tron to Liege, near the village of
Raucoux: “Whether the attacks succeed or not, the troops will remain in the

position in which night finds them, in order to recommence the assault upon
the enemy.”
The battle of October 11 left the battle-field in the hands of the victors,
the sole result of a bloody and obstinate engagement. Marshal Saxe went to
rest himself at Paris; the people’s enthusiasm rivalled and indorsed the
favors shown to him by the king. At the opera, the whole house rose at the
entrance of the valiant foreigner who had dedicated his life to France; there
was clapping of hands, and the actress who in the prologue took the
character of Glory leaned over towards the marshal with a crown of laurel.
“The marshal was surprised, and refused it with profound bows. Glory
insisted; and as the marshal was too far off in the boxes for her to hand it to
him, the Duke of Biron took the crown from Glory’s hands and passed it
under Marshal Saxe’s left arm. This striking action called forth fresh
acclamations, ‘Hurrah! for Marshal Saxe!’ and great clapping of hands. The
king has given the marshal Chambord for life, and has even ordered it to be
furnished. Independently of all these honors, it is said that the marshal is
extremely rich and powerful just now, solely as the result of his safe-
conducts, which, being applicable to a considerable extent of country, have
been worth immense sums to him.” The second marriage of the dauphin—
who had already lost the Infanta—with the Princess of Saxony, daughter of
the King of Poland, was about to raise, before long, the fortune and favor of
Marshal Saxe to the highest pitch: he was proclaimed marshal-general of
the king’s armies.
So much luck and so much glory in the Low Countries covered, in the
eyes of France and of Europe, the checks encountered by the king’s armies
in Italy. The campaign of 1745 had been very brilliant. Parma, Piacenza,
Montferrat, nearly all Milaness, with the exception of a few fortresses, were
in the hands of the Spanish and French forces. The King of Sardinia had
recourse to negotiation; he amused the Marquis of Argenson, at that time
Louis XV.‘s foreign minister, a man of honest, expansive, but chimerical
views. At the moment when the king and the marquis believed themselves
to be remodelling the map of Europe at their pleasure, they heard that
Charles Emmanuel had resumed the offensive. A French corps had been
surprised at Asti, on the 5th of March; thirty thousand Austrians marched
down from the Tyrol, and the Spaniards evacuated Milan. A series of checks
forced Marshal Maillebois to effect a retreat; the enemy’s armies crossed

the Var, and invaded French territory. Marshal Belle-Isle fell back to Puget,
four leagues from Toulon.
The Austrians had occupied Genoa, the faithful ally of France. Their
vengefulness and their severe exactions caused them to lose the fruits of
their victory. The grandees were ruined by war-requisitions; the populace
were beside themselves at the insolence of the conquerors; senators and
artisans made common cause. An Austrian captain having struck a
workman, the passengers in the streets threw themselves upon him and
upon his comrades who came to his assistance; the insurrection spread
rapidly in all quarters of Genoa; there was a pillage of the weapons lying
heaped in the palace of the Doges; the senators put themselves at the head
of the movement; the peasants in the country flew to arms. The Marquis of
Botta, the Austrian commandant, being attacked on all sides, and too weak
to resist, sallied from the town with nine regiments. The allies, disquieted
and dismayed, threatened Provence, and laid siege to Genoa. Louis XV. felt
the necessity of not abandoning his ally; the Duke of Boufflers and six
thousand French shut themselves up in the place. “Show me the danger,”
the general had said on entering the town; “it is my duty to ascertain it; I
shall make all my glory depend upon securing you from it.” The resistance
of Genoa was effectual; but it cost the life of the Duke of Boufflers, who
was wounded in an engagement, and died three days before the retreat of
the Austrians, on the 6th of July, 1747.

On the 19th of July, Common-Sense Belle-Isle (Bon-Sens de Belle-Isle),
as the Chevalier was called at court, to distinguish him from his brother the

marshal, nicknamed Imagination, attacked, with a considerable body of
troops, the Piedmontese intrenchments at the Assietta Pass, between the
fortresses of Exilles and Fenestrelles; at the same time, Marshal Belle-Isle
was seeking a passage over the Stura Pass, and the Spanish army was
attacking Piedmont by the way of the Apennines. The engagement at the
heights of Assietta was obstinate; Chevalier Belle-Isle, wounded in both
arms, threw himself bodily upon the palisades, to tear them down with his
teeth; he was killed, and the French sustained a terrible defeat;—five
thousand men were left on the battle-field. The campaign of Italy was
stopped. The King of Spain, Philip V., enfeebled and exhausted almost in
infancy, had died on the 9th of July, 1746. The fidelity of his successor,
Ferdinand VI., married to a Portuguese princess, appeared doubtful; he had
placed at the head of his forces in Italy the Marquis of Las Minas, with
orders to preserve to Spain her only army. “The Spanish soldiers are of no
more use to us than if they were so much cardboard,” said the French
troops. Europe was tired of the war. England avenged herself for her
reverses upon the Continent by her successes at sea; the French navy,
neglected systematically by Cardinal Fleury, did not even suffice for the
protection of commerce. The Hollanders, who had for a long while been
undecided, and had at last engaged in the struggle against France without
any declaration of war, bore, in 1747, the burden of the hostilities. Count
Lowendahl, a friend of Marshal Saxe, and, like him, in the service of
France, had taken Sluys and Sas-de-Gand; Bergen-op-Zoom was besieged;
on the 1st of July, Marshal Saxe had gained, under the king’s own eye, the
battle of Lawfeldt. As in 1672, the French invasion had been the signal for a
political revolution in Holland; the aristocratical burgessdom, which had
resumed power, succumbed once more beneath the efforts of the popular
party, directed by the house of Nassau and supported by England. “The
republic has need of a chief against an ambitious and perfidious neighbor
who sports with the faith of treaties,” said a deputy of the States-general on
the day of the proclamation of the stadtholderate, re-established in favor of
William IV., grand-nephew of the great William III., and son-in-law of the
King of England, George II. Louis XV. did not let himself be put out by this
outburst. “The Hollanders are good folks,” he wrote to Marshal Noailles: “it
is said, however, that they are going to declare war against us; they will lose
quite as much as we shall.”

Bergen-op-Zoom was taken and plundered on the 16th of September.
Count Lowendahl was made a marshal of France. “Peace is in Maestricht,
Sir,” was Maurice of Saxony’s constant remark to the king. On the 9th of
April, 1748, the place was invested, before the thirty-five thousand
Russians, promised to England by the Czarina Elizabeth, had found time to
make their appearance on the Rhine. A congress was already assembled at
Aix-la-Chapelle to treat for peace. The Hollanders, whom the Marquis of
Argenson before his disgrace used always to call “the ambassadors of
England,” took fright at the spectacle of Maestricht besieged; from parleys
they proceeded to the most vehement urgency; and England yielded. The
preliminaries of peace were signed on the 30th of April; it was not long
before Austria and Spain gave in their adhesion. On the 18th of October the
definitive treaty was concluded at Aix-la-Chapelle. France generously
restored all her conquests, without claiming other advantages beyond the
assurance of the duchies of Parma and Piacenza to the Infante Don Philip,
son-in-law of Louis XV. England surrendered to France the Island of Cape
Breton and the colony of Louisbourg, the only territory she had preserved
from her numerous expeditions against the French colonies and from the
immense losses inflicted upon French commerce. The Great Frederic kept
Silesia; the King of Sardinia the territories already ceded by Austria. Only
France had made great conquests; and only she retained no increment of
territory. She recognized the Pragmatic-Sanction in favor of Austria and the
Protestant succession in favor of George II. Prince Charles Edward, a
refugee in France, refused to quit the hospitable soil which had but lately
offered so magnificent an asylum to the unfortunates of his house: he was,
however, carried off, whilst at the Opera, forced into a carriage, and
conveyed far from the frontier. “As stupid as the peace!” was the bitter
saying in the streets of Paris.

The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle had a graver defect than that of
fruitlessness; it was not and could not be durable. England was excited,
ambitious of that complete empire of the sea which she had begun to build
up upon the ruins of the French navy and the decay of Holland, and greedy
of distant conquests over colonies which the French could not manage to
defend. In proportion as the old influence of Richelieu and of Louis XIV.
over European politics grew weaker and weaker, English influence, founded
upon the growing power of a free country and a free government, went on
increasing in strength. Without any other ally but Spain, herself wavering in
her fidelity, the French remained exposed to the attempts of England,
henceforth delivered from the phantom of the Stuarts. “The peace
concluded between England and France in 1748 was, as regards Europe,
nothing but a truce,” says Lord Macaulay “it was not even a truce in other
quarters of the globe.” The mutual rivalry and mistrust between the two
nations began to show themselves everywhere, in the East as well as in the
West, in India as well as in America.

CHAPTER LIII.

LOUIS XV., FRANCE IN THE COLONIES.
1745-1763.

France was already beginning to perceive her sudden abasement in
Europe; the defaults of her generals as well as of her government
sometimes struck the king himself; he threw the blame of it on the
barrenness of his times. “This age is not fruitful in great men,” he wrote to
Marshal Noailles: “you know that we miss subjects for all objects, and you
have one before your eyes in the case of the army which certainly impresses
me more than any other.” Thus spoke Louis XV. on the eve of the battle of
Fontenoy Marshal Saxe was about to confer upon the French arms a
transitory lustre; but the king, who loaded him with riches and honors,
never forgot that he was not his born subject. “I allow that Count Saxe is the
best officer to command that we have,” he would say; “but he is a
Huguenot, he wants to be supreme, and he is always saying that, if he is
thwarted, he will enter some other service. Is that zeal for France? I see,
however, very few of ours who aim high like him.”
The king possessed at a distance, in the colonies of the Two Indies, as the
expression then was, faithful servants of France, passionately zealous for
her glory, “aiming high,” ambitious or disinterested, able politicians or
heroic pioneers, all ready to sacrifice both property and life for the honor
and power of their country: it is time to show how La Bourdonnais,
Dupleix, Bussy, Lally-Tollendal were treated in India; what assistance, what
guidance, what encouragement the Canadians and their illustrious chiefs
received from France, beginning with Champlain, one of the founders of the
colony, and ending with Montcalm, its latest defender. It is a painful but a
salutary spectacle to see to what meannesses a sovereign and a government
may find themselves reduced through a weak complaisance towards the

foreigner, in the feverish desire of putting an end to a war frivolously
undertaken and feebly conducted.
French power in India threw out more lustre, but was destined to
speedier, and perhaps more melancholy, extinction than in Canada. Single-
handed in the East the chiefs maintained the struggle against the incapacity
of the French government and the dexterous tenacity of the enemy; in
America the population of French extraction upheld to the bitter end the
name, the honor, and the flag of their country. “The fate of France,” says
Voltaire, “has nearly always been that her enterprises, and even her
successes, beyond her own frontiers should become fatal to her.” The
defaults of the government and the jealous passions of the colonists
themselves, in the eighteenth century, seriously aggravated the military
reverses which were to cost the French nearly all their colonies.
More than a hundred years previously, at the outset of Louis XIV.‘s
personal reign, and through the persevering efforts of Colbert marching in
the footsteps of Cardinal Richelieu, an India Company had been founded
for the purpose of developing French commerce in those distant regions,
which had always been shrouded in a mysterious halo of fancied wealth and
grandeur. Several times the Company had all but perished; it had revived
under the vigorous impulse communicated by Law, and had not succumbed
at the collapse of his system. It gave no money to its shareholders, who
derived their benefits only from a partial concession of the tobacco.
revenues, granted by the king to the Company, but its directors lived a life
of magnificence in the East, where they were authorized to trade on their
own account. Abler and bolder than all his colleagues, Joseph Dupleix,
member of a Gascon family and son of the comptroller-general of Hainault,
had dreamed of other destinies than the management of a counting-house;
he aspired to endow France with the empire of India. Placed at a very early
age at the head of the French establishments at Chandernuggur, he had
improved the city and constructed a fleet, all the while acquiring for himself
an immense fortune; he had just been sent to Pondicherry as governor-
general of the Company’s agencies, when the war of succession to the
empire broke out in 1742. For a long time past Dupleix and his wife, who
was called in India Princess Jane, had been silently forming a vast network
of communications and correspondence which kept them acquainted with
the innumerable intrigues of all the petty native courts. Madame Dupleix, a
Creole, brought up in India, understood all its dialects. Her husband had

been the first to conceive the idea of that policy which was destined before
long to deliver India to the English, his imitators; mingling everywhere in
the incessant revolutions which were hatching all about him, he gave the
support of France at one time to one pretender and at another to another,
relying upon the discipline of the European troops and upon the force of his
own genius for securing the ascendency to his protege of the moment: thus
increasing little by little French influence and dominion throughout all the
Hindoo territory. Accustomed to dealing with the native princes, he had
partially adopted their ways of craft and violence; more concerned for his
object than about the means of obtaining it, he had the misfortune, at the
outset of the contest, to clash with another who was ambitious for the glory
of France, and as courageous but less able a politician than he; their rivalry,
their love of power, and their inflexible attachment to their own ideas, under
the direction of a feeble government, thenceforth stamped upon the
relations of the two great European nations in India a regrettable character
of duplicity: all the splendor and all the efforts of Dupleix’s genius could
never efface it.

Concord as yet reigned between Dupleix and the governor of Bourbon
and of Ile de France, Bertrand Francis Mahe de La Bourdonnais, when, in
the month of September, 1746, the latter put in an appearance with a small
squadron in front of Madras, already one of the principal English
establishments. Commodore Peyton, who was cruising in Indian waters,
after having been twice beaten by La Bourdonnais, had removed to a
distance with his flotilla; the town was but feebly fortified; the English, who
had for a while counted upon the protection of the Nabob of the Carnatic,
did not receive the assistance they expected; they surrendered at the first
shot, promising to pay a considerable sum for the ransom of Madras, which
the French were to retain as security until the debt was completely paid. La
Bourdonnais had received from France this express order “You will not,
keep any of the conquests you may make in India.” The chests containing
the ransom of the place descended slowly from the white town, which was
occupied solely by Europeans and by the English settlements, to the black
town, inhabited by a mixed population of natives and foreigners of various
races, traders or artisans. Already the vessels of La Bourdonnais, laden with
these precious spoils, had made sail for Pondicherry; the governor of
Bourbon was in a hurry to get back to his islands; autumn was coming on,
tempests were threatening his squadron, but Dupleix was still disputing the
terms of the treaty concluded with the English for the rendition of Madras;
he had instructions, he said, to raze the city and place it thus dismantled in
the hands of the Nabob of the Carnatic; the Hindoo prince had set himself
in motion to seize his prey; the English burst out into insults and threats. La
Bourdonnais, in a violent rage, on the point of finding himself arrested by
order of Dupleix, himself put in prison the governor-general’s envoys; the
conflict of authority was aggravated by the feebleness and duplicity of the
instructions from France. All at once a fearful tempest destroyed a part of
the squadron in front of Madras; La Bourdonnais, flinging himself into a
boat, had great difficulty in rejoining his ships; he departed, leaving his
rival master of Madras, and adroitly prolonging the negotiations, in order to
ruin at least the black city, which alone was rich and prosperous, before
giving over the place to the Nabob. Months rolled by, and the French
remained alone at Madras.

A jealous love of power and absorption in political schemes had induced
Dupleix to violate a promise lightly given by La Bourdonnais in the name
of France; he had arbitrarily quashed a capitulation of which he had not
discussed the conditions. The report of this unhappy conflict, and the color
put upon it by the representations of Dupleix, were about to ruin at Paris the
rival whom he had vanquished in India.
On arriving at Ile de France, amidst that colony which he had found
exhausted, ruined, and had endowed with hospitals, arsenals, quays, and
fortifications, La Bourdonnais learned that a new governor was already
installed there. His dissensions with Dupleix had borne their fruits; he had
been accused of having exacted too paltry a ransom from Madras, and of
having accepted enormous presents; the Company had appointed a
successor in his place. Driven to desperation, anxious to go and defend
himself, La Bourdonnais set out for France with his wife and his four
children; a prosecution had already been commenced against him. He was
captured at sea by an English ship, and taken a prisoner to England. The

good faith of the conqueror of Madras was known in London; one of the
directors of the English Company offered his fortune as security for M. de
La Bourdonnais. Scarcely had he arrived in Paris when he was thrown into
the Bastille, and for two years kept in solitary confinement. When his
innocence was at last acknowledged and his liberty restored to him, his
health was destroyed, his fortune exhausted by the expenses of the trial. La
Bourdonnais died before long, employing the last remnants of his life and
of his strength in pouring forth his anger against Dupleix, to whom he
attributed all his woes. His indignation was excusable, and some of his
grievances were well grounded; but the germs of suspicion thus sown by
the unfortunate prisoner released from the Bastille were destined before
long to consign to perdition not only his enemy, but also, together with him,
that French dominion in India to which M. de La Bourdonnais had
dedicated his life.
Meanwhile Dupleix grew greater and greater, every day more powerful
and more daring. The English had not forgotten the affair of Madras. On the
30th of August, 1748, Admiral Boscawen went and laid siege to
Pondicherry; stopped at the outset by the fort of Ariocapang, of the
existence of which they were ignorant, the disembarked troops could not
push their trenches beyond an impassable morass which protected the town.
The fire of the siege-artillery scarcely reached the ramparts; the sallies of
the besieged intercepted the communications between the camp and the
squadron, which, on its side, was bombarding the walls of Pondicherry
without any serious result. Dupleix himself commanded the French
batteries; on the 6th of October he was wounded, and his place on the
ramparts was taken by Madame Dupleix, seconded by her future son-in-
law, M. de Bussy-Castelnau, Dupleix’s military lieutenant, animated by the
same zeal for the greatness of France. The fire of the English redoubled; but
there was laughter in Pondicherry, for the balls did not carry so far; and on
the 20th of October, after forty days’ siege, Admiral Boscawen put to sea
again, driven far away from the coasts by the same tempests which, two
years before, had compelled La Bourdonnais to quit Madras. Twice had
Dupleix been served in his designs by the winds of autumn. The peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle came to put an end to open war between the Europeans; at
the French establishments in the Indies the Te Deum was sung; Dupleix
alone was gloomy, despite the riband of St. Louis and the title of marquis,

recently granted him by King Louis XV: he had been obliged to restore
Madras to the English.
War soon recommenced, in the name, and apparently to the profit, of the
Hindoo princes. France and England had made peace; the English and
French Companies in India had not laid down arms. Their power, as well as
the importance of their establishments was as yet in equipoise. At Surat
both Companies had places of business; on the coast of Malabar the English
had Bombay, and the French Mahe; on the coast of Coromandel the former
held Madras and Fort St. George, the latter Pondicherry and Karikal. The
principal factories, as well as the numerous little establishments which were
dependencies of them, were defended by a certain number of European
soldiers, and by Sepoys, native soldiers in the pay of the Companies.
These small armies were costly, and diminished to a considerable extent
the profits of trade. Dupleix espied the possibility of a new organization
which should secure to the French in India the preponderance, and ere long
the empire even, in the two peninsulas. He purposed to found manufactures,
utilize native hand-labor, and develop the coasting trade, or Ind to Ind trade,
as the expression then was; but he set his pretensions still higher, and
carried his views still further. He purposed to acquire for the Company, and,
under its name, for France, territories and subjects furnishing revenues, and
amply sufficing for the expenses of the commercial establishments. The
moment was propitious; the ancient empire of the Great Mogul, tottering to
its base, was distracted by revolutions, all the chops and changes whereof
were attentively followed by Madame Dupleix; two contested successions
opened up at once—those of the Viceroy or Soudhabar of the Deccan and of
his vassal, the Nabob of the Carnatic. The Great Mogul, nominal sovereign
of all the states of India, confined himself to selling to all the pretenders
decrees of investiture, without taking any other part in the contest. Dupleix,
on the contrary, engaged in it ardently. He took sides in the Deccan for
Murzapha Jung, and in the Carnatic for Tchunda Sahib against their rivals
supported by the English. Versed in all the resources of Hindoo policy, he
had negotiated an alliance between his two proteges; both marched against
the Nabob of the Carnatic. He, though a hundred and seven years old, was
at the head of his army, mounted on a magnificent elephant. He espied in
the melley his enemy Tchunda Sahib, and would have darted upon him; but,
whilst his slaves were urging on the huge beast, the little French battalion
sent by Dupleix to the aid of his allies marched upon the nabob, a ball

struck him to the heart, and he fell. The same evening, Murzapha Jung was
proclaimed Soudhabar of the Deccan, and he granted the principality of the
Carnatic to Tchunda Sahib, at the same time reserving to the French
Company a vast territory.
Some months rolled by, full of vicissitudes and sudden turns of fortune.
Murzapha Jung, at first victorious, and then vanquished by his uncle Nazir
Jung, everywhere dragged at his heels as a hostage and a trophy of his
triumph, had found himself delivered by an insurrection of the Patanian
chiefs, Affghans by origin, settled in the south of India. The head of Nazir
Jung had come rolling at his feet. For a while besieged in Pondicherry, but
still negotiating and everywhere mingling in intrigues and conspiracies,
Dupleix was now triumphant with his ally; the Soudhabar of the Deccan
made his entry in state upon French territory. Pondicherry was in holiday
trim to receive him. Dupleix, dressed in the magnificent costume of, the
Hindoo princes, had gone with his troops to meet him. Both entered the
town in the same palanquin to the sound of native cymbals and the military
music of the French. A throne awaited the soudhabar, surrounded by the
Affghan chiefs, who were already claiming the reward of their services. The
Hindoo prince needed the aid of France; he knew it. He proclaimed Dupleix
nabob of all the provinces to the south of the River Krischna. Tebunda
Sahib, but lately his ally, became his vassal—“the vassal of France,”
murmured Madame Dupleix, when she heard of this splendid recompense
for so many public and private services. The ability and indomitable
bravery of M. de Bussy soon extended the French conquests in the Deccan.
Murzapha Jung had just been assassinated at the head of his army; Bussy
proclaimed and supported a new soudhabar, who was friendly to the French,
and who ceded to them five provinces, of which the large town of
Masulipatam, already in French hands, became the capital. A third of India
was obedient to Dupleix; the Great Mogul sent him a decree of investiture,
and demanded of the Princess Jane the hand of her youngest daughter,
promised to M. de Bussy. Dupleix well know the frailty of human affairs,
and the dark intrigues of Hindoo courts; he breathed freely, however, for he
was on his guard, and the dream of his life seemed to be accomplished.
“The empire of France is founded,” he would say.

He reckoned without France, and without the incompetent or timid men
who governed her. The successes of Dupleix scared King Louis XV. and his
feeble ministers; they angered and discomfited England, which was as yet
tottering in India, and whose affairs there had for a long while been ill
managed, but which remained ever vigorous, active, animated by the
indomitable ardor of a free people. At Versailles attempts were made to
lessen the conquests of Dupleix, prudence was recommended to him, delay
was shown in sending him the troops he demanded. In India England had at
last found a man still young and unknown, but worthy of being opposed to
Dupleix. Clive, who had almost in boyhood entered the Company’s offices,
turned out, after the turbulence of his early years, a heaven-born general; he
was destined to continue Dupleix’s work, when abandoned by France, and
to found to the advantage of the English that European dominion in India
which had been the Governor of Pondicherry’s dream. The war still
continued in the Carnatic: Mahomet Ali, Tchunda Sahib’s rival, had for the
last six months been besieged in Trichinopoli; the English had several
times, but in vain, attempted to effect the raising of the siege; Clive, who
had recently entered the Company’s army, was for saving the last refuge of
Mahomet Ali by a bold diversion against Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic.
To him was given the command of the expedition he had suggested. In the
month of September, 1751, he made himself master of Arcot by a surprise.
The Hindoo populations, left to themselves, passed almost without
resistance from one master to another. The Europeans did not signalize by
the infliction of punishment the act of taking possession. Clive was before
long attacked in Arcot by Tchunda Sahib, who was supported by a French
detachment. He was not in a position to hold the town; so he took refuge in
the fort, and there, for fifty days, withstood all the efforts of his enemies.

Provisions fell short; every day the rations were becoming more
insufficient; but Clive had managed to implant in his soldiers’ hearts the
heroic resolution which animated him. “Give the rice to the English,” said
the sepoys; “we will be content with the water in which it is boiled.” A body
of Mahrattas, allies of the English, came to raise the siege. Clive pursued
the French on their retreat, twice defeated Tchunda Sahib, and, at last
effecting a junction with the Governor-General Lawrence, broke the
investment of Trichinopoli, and released Mahomet Ali. Tchunda Sahib, in
his turn shut up in Tcheringham, was delivered over to his rival by a Tanjore
chieftain in whom he trusted; he was put to death; and the French
commandant, a nephew of Law’s, surrendered to the English. Two French
corps had already been destroyed by Clive, who held the third army
prisoners. Bussy was carrying on war in the Deccan, with great difficulty
making head against overt hostilities and secret intrigues. The report of
Dupleix’s reverses arrived in France in the month of September, 1752.

The dismay at Versailles was great, and prevailed over the astonishment.
There had never been any confidence in Dupleix’s projects, there had been
scarcely any belief in his conquests. The soft-hearted inertness of ministers
and courtiers was almost as much disgusted at the successes as at the
defeats of the bold adventurers who were attempting and risking all for the
aggrandizement and puissance of France in the East. Dupleix secretly
received notice to demand his recall. He replied by proposing to have M. de
Bussy nominated in his place. “Never was so grand a fellow as this Bussy,”
he wrote. The ministers and the Company cared little for the grandeur of
Bussy or of Dupleix; what they sought was a dastardly security, incessantly
troubled by the enterprises of the politician and the soldier. The tone of
England was more haughty than ever, in consequence of Clive’s successes.
The recall of Dupleix was determined upon.

The Governor of Pondicherry had received no troops, but he had
managed to reorganize an army, and had resumed the offensive in the
Carnatic; Bussy, set free at last as to his movements in the Deccan, was
preparing to rejoin Dupleix. Clive was ill, and had just set out for England:
fortune had once more changed front. The open conferences held with
Saunders, English Governor of Madras, failed in the month of January,
1754; Dupleix wished to preserve the advantages he had won; Saunders
refused to listen to that. The approach of a French squadron was signalled;
the ships appeared to be numerous. Dupleix was already rejoicing at the
arrival of unexpected aid, when, instead of an officer commanding the
twelve hundred soldiers from France, he saw the apparition of M. Godeheu,
one of the directors of the Company, and but lately his friend and
correspondent. “I come to supersede you, sir,” said the new arrival, without
any circumstance; “I have full powers from the Company to treat with the
English.” The cabinet of London had not been deceived as to the
importance of Dupleix in India; his recall had been made the absolute
condition of a cessation of hostilities. Louis XV. and his ministers had
shown no opposition; the treaty was soon concluded, restoring the
possessions of the two Companies within the limits they had occupied
before the war of the Carnatic, with the exception of the district of
Masulipatam, which became accessible to the English. All the territories
ceded by the Hindoo princes to Dupleix reverted to their former masters;
the two Companies interdicted one another from taking any part in the
interior policy of India, and at the same time forbade their agents to accept
from the Hindoo princes any charge, honor, or dignity; the most perfect
equality was re-established between the possessions and revenues of the
two great European nations, rivals in the East as well as in Europe; England
gave up some petty forts, some towns of no importance, France ceded the
empire of India. When Godeheu signed the treaty, Trichinopoli was at last
on the point of giving in. Bussy was furious, and would have quitted the
Deccan, which he still occupied, but Dupleix constrained him to remain
there; he himself embarked for France with his wife and daughter, leaving
in India, together with his life’s work destroyed in a few days by the
poltroonery of his country’s government, the fortune he had acquired during
his great enterprises, entirely sunk as it was in the service of France; the
revenues destined to cover his advances were seized by Godeheu.

France seemed to comprehend what her ministers had not even an idea
of; Dupleix’s arrival in France was a veritable triumph. It was by this time
known that the reverses which had caused so much talk had been half
repaired. It was by this time guessed how infinite were the resources of that
empire of India, so lightly and mean-spiritedly abandoned to the English.
“My wife and I dare not appear in the streets of Lorient,” wrote Dupleix,
“because of the crowd of people wanting to see us and bless us;” the
comptroller-general, Herault de Sechelles, as well as the king and Madame
de Pompadour, then and for a long while the reigning favorite, gave so
favorable a reception to the hero of India that Dupleix, always an optimist,
conceived fresh hopes. “I shall regain my property here,” he would say,
“and India will recover in the hands of Bussy.”
He was mistaken about the justice as he had been about the discernment
and the boldness of the French government; not a promise was
accomplished; not a hope was realized; after delay upon delay, excuse upon
excuse, Dupleix saw his wife expire at the end of two years, worn out with
suffering and driven to despair; like her, his daughter, affianced for a long
time past to Bussy, succumbed beneath the weight of sorrow; in vain did
Dupleix tire out the ministers with his views and his projects for India; he
saw even the action he was about to bring against the Company vetoed by
order of the king. Persecuted by his creditors, overwhelmed with regret for
the relatives and friends whom he had involved in his enterprises and in his
ruin, he exclaimed a few months before his death, “I have sacrificed youth,
fortune, life, in order to load with honor and riches those of my own nation
in Asia. Unhappy friends, too weakly credulous relatives, virtuous citizens,
have dedicated their property to promoting the success of my projects; they
are now in want. . . . I demand, like the humblest of creditors, that which is
my due; my services are all stuff, my demand is ridiculous, I am treated like
the vilest of men. The little I have left is seized, I have been obliged to get
execution stayed to prevent my being dragged to prison!” Dupleix died at
last on the 11th of November, 1763, the most striking, without being the last
or the most tragical, victim of the great French enterprises in India.
Despite the treaty of peace, hostilities had never really ceased in India.
Clive had returned from England; freed henceforth from the influence, the
intrigues, and the indomitable energy of Dupleix, he had soon made himself
master of the whole of Bengal, he had even driven the French from
Chandernuggur; Bussy had been unable to check his successes; he avenged

himself by wresting away from the English all their agencies on the coast of
Orissa, and closing against them the road between the Coromandel coast
and Bengal.
Meanwhile the Seven Years’ War had broken out; the whole of Europe
had joined in the contest; the French navy, still feeble in spite of the efforts
that had been made to restore it, underwent serious reverses on every sea.
Count Lally-Tollendal, descended from an Irish family which took refuge in
France with James II., went to Count d’Argenson, still minister of war, with
a proposition to go and humble in India that English power which had been
imprudently left to grow up without hinderance. M. de Lally had served
with renown in the wars of Germany; he had seconded Prince Charles
Edward in his brave and yet frivolous attempt upon England. The directors
of the India Company went and asked M. d’Argenson to intrust to General
Lally the king’s troops promised for the expedition. “You are wrong,” M.
d’Argenson said to them; “I know M. de Lally; he is a friend of mine, but
he is violent, passionate, inflexible as to discipline; he will not tolerate any
disorder; you will be setting fire to your warehouses, if you send him
thither.” The directors, however, insisted, and M. de Lally set out on the 2d
of May, 1757, with four ships and a body of troops. Some young officers
belonging to the greatest houses of France served on his staff.
M. de Lally’s passage was a long one; the English re-enforcements had
preceded, him by six weeks. On arriving in India, he found the arsenals and
the magazines empty; the establishment of Pondicherry alone confessed to
fourteen millions of debt. Meanwhile the enemy was pressing at all points
upon the French possessions. Lally marched to Gondelour (Kaddaloue),
which he carried on the sixth day; he, shortly afterwards, invested Fort St.
David, the most formidable of the English fortresses in India. The first
assault was repulsed; the general had neither cannon nor beasts of burden to
draw them. He hurried off to Pondicherry and had the natives harnessed to
the artillery trains, taking pellmell such men as fell in his way, without
regard for rank or caste, imprudently wounding the prejudices most dear to
the country he had come to govern. Fort St. David was taken and razed.
Devicotah, after scarcely the ghost of a siege, opened its gates. Lally had
been hardly a month in India, and he had already driven the English from
the southern coast of the Coromandel. “All my policy is in these five words,
but they are binding as an oath—No English in the peninsula,” wrote the

general. He had sent Bussy orders to come and join him in order to attack
Madras.
The brilliant courage and heroic ardor of M. de Lally had triumphed over
the first obstacles; his recklessness, his severity, his passionateness were
about to lose him the fruits of his victories. “The commission I hold,” he
wrote to the directors of the Company at Paris, “imports that I shall be held
in horror by all the people of the country.” By his personal defaults he
aggravated his already critical position. The supineness of the French
government had made fatal progress amongst its servants; Count d’Ache,
who commanded the fleet, had refused to second the attempt upon Madras;
twice, whilst cruising in Indian waters, the French admiral had been beaten
by the English; he took the course back to Ile de France, where he reckoned
upon wintering. Pondicherry was threatened, and Lally found himself in
Tanjore, where he had hoped to recover a considerable sum due to the
Company; on his road he had attacked a pagoda, thinking he would find
there a great deal of treasure, but the idols were hollow and of worthless
material. The pagoda was in flames, the disconsolate Brahmins were still
wandering round about their temple; the general took them for spies, and
had them tied to the cannons’ mouths. The danger of Pondicherry forced M.
de Lally to raise the siege of Tanjore; the English fell back on Madras.
Disorder was at its height in the Company’s affairs; the vast enterprises
commenced by Dupleix required success and conquests, but they had been
abandoned since his recall, not without having ingulfed, together with his
private fortune, a portion of the Company’s resources. Lally was angered at
being every moment shackled for want of money; he attributed it not only
to the ill will, but also to the dishonesty, of the local authorities. He wrote,
in 1758, to M. de Leyrit, Governor of Pondicherry, “Sir, this letter shall be
an eternal secret between you and me, if you furnish me with the means of
terminating my enterprise. I left you a hundred thousand livres of my own
money to help you to meet the expenditure it requires. I have not found so
much as a hundred sous in your purse and in that of all your council; you
have both of you refused to let me employ your credit. I, however, consider
you to be all of you under more obligation to the Company than I am, who
have unfortunately the honor of no further acquaintance with it than to the
extent of having lost half my property by it in 1720. If you continue to leave
me in want of everything and exposed to the necessity of presenting a front
to the general discontent, not only shall I inform the king and the Company

of the fine zeal testified for their service by their employees here, but I shall
take effectual measures for not being at the mercy, during the short stay I
desire to make in this country, of the party spirit and personal motives by
which I see that every member appears to be actuated to the risk of the
Company in general.”
In the midst of this distress, and in spite of this ebullition, M. de Lally led
his troops up in front of Madras; he made himself master of the Black
Town. “The immense plunder taken by the troops,” says the journal of an
officer who held a command under Count Lally, “had introduced abundance
amongst them. Huge stores of strong liquors led to drunkenness and all the
evils it generates. The situation must have been seen to be believed. The
works, the guards in the trenches were all performed by drunken men. The
regiment of Lorraine alone was exempt from this plague, but the other corps
surpassed one another. Hence scenes of the most shameful kind and most
destructive of subordination and discipline, the details of which confined
within the limits of the most scrupulous truthfulness would appear a
monstrous exaggeration.” Lally in despair wrote to his friends in France,
“Hell vomited me into this land of iniquities, and I am waiting, like Jonah,
for the whale that shall receive me in its belly.”
The attack on the White Town and on Fort St. George was repulsed; and
on the 18th of February, 1759, Lally was obliged to raise the siege of
Madras. The discord which reigned in the army as well as amongst the civil
functionaries was nowhere more flagrant than between Lally and Bussy.
The latter could not console himself for having been forced to leave the
Deccan in the feeble bands of the Marquis of Conflans. An expedition
attempted against the fortress of Wandiwash, of which the English had
obtained possession, was followed by a serious defeat; Colonel Coote was
master of Karikal. Little by little the French army and French power in
India found themselves cooped within the immediate territory of
Pondicherry. The English marched against this town. Lally shut himself up
there in the month of March, 1760. Bussy had been made prisoner, and
Coote had sent him to Europe. “At the head of the French army Bussy
would be in a position by himself alone to prolong the war for ten years,”
said the Hindoos. On the 27th of November, the siege of Pondicherry was
transformed into an investment. Lally had taken all the precautions of a
good general, but he had taken them with his usual harshness; he had driven
from the city all the useless mouths; fourteen hundred Hindoos, old men,

women, and children, wandered for a week between the English camp and
the ramparts of the town, dying of hunger and misery, without Lally’s
consenting to receive them back into the place; the English at last allowed
them to pass. The most severe requisitions had been ordered to be made on
all the houses of Pondicherry, and the irritation was extreme; the heroic
despair of M. de Lally was continually wringing from him imprudent
expressions. “I would rather go and command a set of Caffres than remain
in this Sodom, which the English fire, in default of Heaven’s, must sooner
or later destroy,” had for a long time past been a common expression of the
general’s, whose fate was henceforth bound up with that of Pondicherry.
He held out for six weeks, in spite of famine, want of money, and ever-
increasing dissensions. A tempest had caused great havoc to the English
squadron which was out at sea; Lally was waiting and waiting for the
arrival of M. d’Ache with the fleet which had but lately sought refuge at Ile
de France after a fresh reverse. From Paris, on the report of an attack
projected by the—English against Bourbon and Ile de France, ministers had
given orders to M. d’Ache not to quit those waters. Lally and Pondicherry
waited in vain.
It became necessary to surrender; the council of the Company called
upon the general to capitulate; Lally claimed the honors of war, but Coote
would have the town at discretion; the distress was extreme as well as the
irritation. Pondicherry was delivered up to the conquerors on the 16th of
January, 1761; the fortifications and magazines were razed; French power
in India, long supported by the courage or ability of a few men, was
foundering, never to rise again. “Nobody can have a higher opinion than I
of M. de Lally,” wrote Colonel Coote; “he struggled against obstacles that I
considered insurmountable, and triumphed over them. There is not in India
another man who could have so long kept an army standing without pay and
without resources in any direction.” “A convincing proof of his merits,”
said another English officer, “is his long and vigorous resistance in a place
in which he was universally detested.”

Hatred bears bitterer fruits than is imagined even by those who provoke
it. The animosity which M. de Lally had excited in India was everywhere an
obstacle to the defence; and it was destined to cost him his life and imperil
his honor. Scarcely had he arrived in England, ill, exhausted by sufferings
and fatigue, followed even in his captivity by the reproaches and anger of
his comrades in misfortune, when be heard of the outbreak of public
opinion against him in France; he was accused of treason; and he obtained
from the English cabinet permission to repair to Paris. “I bring hither my
head and my innocence,” he wrote, on disembarking, to the minister of war,
and he went voluntarily to imprisonment in the Bastille. There he remained
nineteen months without being examined. When the trial commenced in
December, 1764, the heads of accusation amounted to one hundred and
sixty, the number of witnesses to nearly two hundred; the matter lasted a
year and a half, conducted with violence on the part of M. de Lally’s

numerous enemies, with inveteracy on the part of the Parliament, still at
strife with the government, with courage and firmness on the part of the
accused. He claimed the jurisdiction of a court-martial, but his demand was
rejected; when he saw himself confronted with the dock, the general
suddenly uncovered his whitened head and his breast covered with scars,
exclaiming, “So this is the reward for fifty years’ service!” On the 6th of
May, 1766, his sentence was at last pronounced. Lally was acquitted on the
charges of high treason and malversation; he was found “guilty of violence,
abuse of authority, vexations and exactions, as well as of having betrayed
the interests of the king and of the Company.” When the sentence was being
read out to the condemned, “Cut it short, sir,” said the count to the clerk,
“come to the conclusions.” At the words “betrayed the interests of the
king,” Lally drew himself up to his full height, exclaiming, “Never, never!”
He was expending his wrath in insults heaped upon his enemies, when,
suddenly drawing from his pocket a pair of mathematical compasses, he
struck it violently against his heart; the wound did not go deep enough; M.
de Lally was destined to drink to the dregs the cup of man’s injustice.
On the 9th of May, at the close of the day, the valiant general whose
heroic resistance had astounded all India, mounted the scaffold on the Place
de Greve, nor was permission granted to the few friends who remained
faithful to him to accompany him to the place of execution; there was only
the parish priest of St. Louis en l’Ile at his side; as apprehensions were felt
of violence and insult on the part of the condemned, he was gagged like the
lowest criminal when he resolutely mounted the fatal ladder; he knelt
without assistance, and calmly awaited his death-blow. “Everybody,”
observed D’Alembert, expressing by that cruel saying the violence of public
feeling against the condemned, “everybody, except the hangman, has a right
to kill Lally.” Voltaire’s judgment, after the subsidence of passion and after
the light thrown by subsequent events upon the state of French affairs in
India before Lally’s campaigns, is more just. “It was a murder committed
with the sword of justice.” King Louis XV. and his government had lost
India; the rage and shame blindly excited amongst the nation by this
disaster had been visited upon the head of the unhappy general who had
been last vanquished in defending the remnants of French power. The
English were masters forever of India when the son of M. de Lally-
Tollendal at last obtained, in 1780, the rehabilitation of his father’s memory.

Public opinion had not waited till then to decide the case between the
condemned and his accusers.
Whilst the French power in India, after having for an instant had the
dominion over nearly the whole peninsula, was dying out beneath the
incapacity and feebleness of its government, at the moment when the heroic
efforts of La Bourdonnais, Dupleix, and Lally were passing into the domain
of history, a people decimated by war and famine, exhausted by a twenty
years’ unequal struggle, was slowly expiring, preserving to the very last its
hopes and its patriotic devotion. In the West Indies the whole Canadian
people were still maintaining, for the honor of France, that flag which had
just been allowed to slip from the desperate hands of Lally in the East. In
this case, there were no enchanting prospects of power and riches easily
acquired, of dominion over opulent princes and submissive slaves; nothing
but a constant struggle against nature, still mistress of the vast solitudes,
against vigilant rivals and a courageous and cruel race of natives. The
history of the French colonists in Canada showed traits and presented
characteristics rare in French annals; the ardor of the French nature and the
suavity of French manners seemed to be combined with the stronger virtues
of the people of the north; everywhere, amongst the bold pioneers of
civilization in the new world, the French marched in the first rank without
ever permitting themselves to be surpassed by the intrepidity or
perseverance of the Anglo-Saxons, down to the day when, cooped up within
the first confines of their conquests, fighting for life and liberty, the
Canadians defended foot to foot the honor of their mother-country, which
had for a long while neglected them, and at last abandoned them, under the
pressure of a disastrous war conducted by a government as incapable as it
was corrupt.
For a long time past the French had directed towards America their
ardent spirit of enterprise; in the fifteenth century, on the morrow of the
discovery of the new world, when the indomitable genius and religious faith
of Christopher Columbus had just opened a new path to inquiring minds
and daring spirits, the Basques, the Bretons, and the Normans were amongst
the first to follow the road he had marked out; their light barks and their
intrepid navigators were soon known among the fisheries of Newfoundland
and the Canadian coast. As early as 1506 a chart of the St. Lawrence was
drawn by John-Denis, who came from Honfleur in Normandy. Before long
the fishers began to approach the coasts, attracted by the fur-trade; they

entered into relations with the native tribes, buying, very often for a mere
song, the produce of their hunting, and, introducing to them, together with
the first fruits of civilization, its corruptions and its dangers. Before long the
savages of America became acquainted with the fire-water.
Policy was not slow to second the bold enterprises of the navigators.
France was at that time agitated by various earnest and mighty passions; for
a moment the Reformation, personified by the austere virtues and grand
spirit of Coligny, had seemed to dispute the empire of the Catholic church.
The forecasts of the admiral became more and more sombre every day; he
weighed the power and hatred of the Guises as well as of their partisans; in
his anxiety for his countrymen and his religion he determined to secure for
the persecuted Protestants a refuge, perhaps a home, in the new world, after
that defeat of which he already saw a glimmer.
A first expedition had failed, after an attempt on the coasts of Brazil; in
1562, a new flotilla set out from Havre, commanded by John Ribaut of
Dieppe. A landing was effected in a beautiful country, sparkling with
flowers and verdure; the century-old trees, the vast forests, the unknown
birds, the game, which appeared at the entrance of the glades and stood still
fearlessly at the unwonted apparition of man—this spectacle, familiar and at
the same time new, presented by nature at the commencement of May,
caused great joy and profound gratitude amongst the French, who had come
so far, through so many perils, to the borders of Florida; they knelt down
piously to thank God; the savages, flocking together upon the shore,
regarded them with astonishment mingled with respect. Ribaut and his
companions took possession of the country in the name of France, and
immediately began to construct a fort, which they called Fort Charles, in
honor of the young king, Charles IX. Detachments scoured the country, and
carried to a distance the name of France: during three years, through a
course of continual suffering and intestine strife more dangerous than the
hardships of nature and the ambushes of savages, the French maintained
themselves in their new settlement, enlarged from time to time by new
emigrants. Unhappily they had frequently been recruited from amongst men
of no character, importing the contagion of their vices into the little colony
which Coligny had intended to found the Reformed church in the new
world. In 1565 a Spanish expedition landed in Florida. Pedro Menendez de
Aviles, who commanded it, had received from King Philip II. the title of
adelantado (governor) of Florida; he had pledged himself, in return, to

conquer for Spain this territory impudently filched from the jurisdiction
which His Catholic Majesty claimed over the whole of America. The
struggle lasted but a few days, in spite of the despair and courage of the
French colonists; a great number were massacred, others crowded on to the
little vessels still at their disposal, and carried to France the news of the
disaster. Menendez took possession of the ruined forts, of the scarcely
cleared fields strewn with the corpses of the unhappy colonists. “Are you
Catholics or Lutherans?” he demanded of his prisoners, bound two and two
before him. “We all belong to the Reformed faith,” replied John Ribaut; and
he intoned in a loud voice a psalm: “Dust we are, and to dust we shall
return; twenty years more or less upon this earth are of small account;” and,
turning towards the adelantado, “Do thy will,” he said. All were put to
death, “as I judged expedient for the service of God and of your Majesty,”
wrote the Spanish commander to Philip II., “and I consider it a great piece
of luck that this John Ribaut hath died in this place, for the King of France
might have done more with him and five hundred ducats than with another
man and five thousand, he having been the most able and experienced
mariner of the day for knowing the navigation of the coasts of India and
Florida.” Above the heap of corpses, before committing them to the flames,
Menendez placed this inscription: “Not as Frenchmen, but as heretics.”
Three years later, on the same spot on which the adelantado had heaped
up the victims of his cruelty and his perfidy lay the bodies of the Spanish
garrison. A Gascon gentleman, Dominic de Gourgues, had sworn to avenge
the wrongs of France; he had sold his patrimony, borrowed money of his
friends, and, trusting to his long experience in navigation, put to sea with
three small vessels equipped at his expense. The Spaniards were living
unsuspectingly, as the French colonists had lately done; they had founded
their principal settlement at some distance from the first landing-place, and
had named it St. Augustine. De Gourgues attacked unexpectedly the little
fort of San-Mateo; a detachment surrounded in the woods the Spaniards
who had sought refuge there; all were killed or taken; they were hanged on
the same trees which had but lately served for the execution of the French.
“This I do not as to Spaniards, but as to traitors, thieves, and murderers,”
was the inscription placed by De Gourgues above their heads. When he
again put to sea, there remained not one stone upon another of the fort of
San-Mateo. France was avenged. “All that we have done was done for the
service of the king and for the honor of the country,” exclaimed the bold

Gascon as he re-boarded his ship. Florida, nevertheless, remained in the
hands of Spain; the French adventurers went carrying elsewhither their
ardent hopes and their indomitable courage.
For a long while expeditious and attempts at French colonization had
been directed towards Canada. James Cartier, in 1535, had taken possession
of its coasts under the name of New France. M. de Roberval had taken
thither colonists agricultural and mechanical; but the hard climate, famine,
and disease had stifled the little colony in the bud; religious and political
disturbances in the mother-country were absorbing all thoughts; it was only
in the reign of Henry IV., when panting France, distracted by civil discord,
began to repose, for the first time since more than a century, beneath a
government just, able, and firm at the same time, that zeal for distant
enterprises at last attracted to New France its real founder. Samuel de
Champlain du Brouage, born in 1567, a faithful soldier of the king’s so long
as the war lasted, was unable to endure the indolence of peace. After long
and perilous voyages, he enlisted in the company which M. de Monts,
gentleman of the bed-chamber in ordinary to Henry IV., had just formed for
the trade in furs on the northern coast of America; appointed viceroy of
Acadia, a new territory, of which the imaginary limits would extend in our
times from Philadelphia to beyond Montreal, and furnished with a
commercial monopoly, M. de Monts set sail on the 7th of April, 1604,
taking with him, Calvinist though he was, Catholic priests as well as
Protestant pastors. “I have seen our priest and the minister come to a fight
over questions of faith,” writes Champlain in his journal; “I can’t say which
showed the more courage, or struck the harder, but I know that the minister
sometimes complained to Sieur de Monts of having been beaten.” This was
the prelude to the conversion of the savages, which was soon to become the
sole aim or the pious standard of all the attempts at colonization in New
France.

M. de Monts and his comrades had been for many years struggling
against the natural difficulties of their enterprise, and against the ill-will or
indifference which they encountered in the mother-country; religious zeal
was reviving in France; the edict of Nantes had put a stop to violent strife;
missionary ardor animated the powerful society of Jesuits especially. At
their instigation and under their direction a pious woman, rich and of high
rank, the Marchioness of Guercheville, profited by the distress amongst the
first founders of the French colony; she purchased their rights, took
possession of their territory, and, having got the king to cede to her the
sovereignty of New France, from the St. Lawrence to Florida, she dedicated
all her personal fortune to the holy enterprise of a mission amongst the
Indians of America. Beside the adventurers, gentlemen or traders, attracted
by the hope of gain or by zeal for discovery, there set out a large number of
Jesuits, resolved to win a new empire for Jesus Christ. Champlain
accompanied them. After long and painful explorations in the forests and
amongst the Indian tribes, after frequent voyages to France on the service of
the colony, he became at last, in 1606, the first governor of the nascent town
of Quebec.

Never was colony founded under more pious auspices; for some time
past the Recollects had been zealously laboring for the conversion of
unbelievers; seconded by the Jesuits, who were before long to remain sole
masters of the soil, they found themselves sufficiently powerful to forbid
the Protestant sailors certain favorite exercises of their worship: “At last it
was agreed that they should not chant the psalms,” says Champlain, “but
that they should assemble to make their prayers.” A hand more powerful
than that of Madame de Guercheville or of the Jesuits was about to take the
direction of the affairs of the colony as well as of France: Cardinal
Richelieu had become premier minister.
The blind gropings and intestine struggles of the rival possessors of
monopolies were soon succeeded by united action. Richelieu favored
commerce, and did not disdain to apply thereto the resources of his great
and fertile mind. In 1627 he put himself at the head of a company of a
hundred associates, on which the king conferred the possession as well as
the government of New France, together with the commercial monopoly
and freedom from all taxes for fifteen years. The colonists were to be
French and Catholics; Huguenots were excluded: they alone had till then
manifested any tendency towards emigration; the attempts at colonization in
America were due to their efforts: less liberal in New France than he had
lately been in Europe, the cardinal thus enlisted in the service of the
foreigner all the adventurous spirits and the bold explorers amongst the
French Protestants, at the very moment when the English Puritans, driven
from their country by the narrow and meddlesome policy of James I., were
dropping anchor at the foot of Plymouth Rock., and were founding, in the
name of religious liberty, a new Protestant England, the rival ere long of
that New France which was Catholic and absolutist.
Champlain had died at Quebec on Christmas Day, 1635, after twenty-
seven years’ efforts and sufferings in the service of the nascent colony. Bold
and enterprising, endowed with indomitable perseverance and rare practical
faculties, an explorer of distant forests, an intrepid negotiator with the
savage tribes, a wise and patient administrator, indulgent towards all, in
spite of his ardent devotion, Samuel de Champlain had presented the rare
intermixture of the heroic qualities of past times with the zeal for science
and the practical talents of modern ages; he was replaced in his government
by a knight of Malta, M. de Montmagny. Quebec had a seminary, a hospital,
and a convent, before it possessed a population.

The foundation of Montreal was still more exclusively religious. The
accounts of the Jesuits had inflamed pious souls with a noble emulation; a
Montreal association was formed, under the direction of M. Olier, founder
of St. Sulpice. The first expedition was placed under the command of a
valiant gentleman, Paul de Maisonneuve, and of a certain Mademoiselle
Mance, belonging to the middle class of Nogent-le-Roi, who was not yet a
nun, but who was destined to become the foundress of the hospital-sisters of
Ville-Marie, the name which the religious zeal of the explorers intended for
the new colony of Montreal.
It was not without jealousy that the governor of Quebec and the agents of
the hundred associates looked upon the enterprise of M. de Maisonneuve;
an attempt was made to persuade him to remain in the settlement already
founded. “I am not come here to deliberate, but to act,” answered he; “it is
my duty, as well as an honor to me, to found a colony at Montreal, and I
shall go, though every tree were an Iroquois!”
On the 16th of May, 1642, the new colonists had scarcely disembarked
when they were mustered around Father Vimont, a Jesuit, clothed in his
pontifical vestments. The priest, having first celebrated mass, turned to
those present. “You are only a grain of mustard-seed,” said he, “but you will
grow until your branches cover the whole earth. You are few in number, but
your work is that of God. His eye is upon you, and your children will
replenish the earth.” “You say that the enterprise of Montreal is of a cost
more suitable for a king than for a few private persons too feeble to sustain
it,” wrote the associates of Montreal, in 1643, in reply to their adversaries,
“and you further allege the perils of the navigation and the shipwrecks that
may ruin it. You have made a better hit than you supposed in saying that it
is a king’s work, for the King of kings has a hand in it, He whom the winds
and the sea obey. We, therefore, do not fear shipwrecks; He will not cause
them save when it is good for us, and when it is for His glory, which is our
only aim. If the, finger of God be not in the affair of Montreal, if it be a
human invention, do not trouble yourselves about it; it will never endure;
but, if God have willed it, who are you, that you should gainsay Him?”
The affair of Montreal stood, like that of Quebec; New France was
founded, in spite of the sufferings of the early colonists, thanks to their
courage, their fervent enthusiasm, and the support afforded them by the
religious zeal of their friends in Europe. The Jesuit missionaries every day

extended their explorations, sharing with M. de La Salle the glory of the
great discoveries of the West. Champlain had before this dreamed of and
sought for a passage across the continent, leading to the Southern seas and
permitting of commerce with India and Japan. La Salle, in his intrepid
expeditions, discovered Ohio and Illinois, navigated the great lakes, crossed
the Mississippi, which the Jesuits had been the first to reach, and pushed on
as far as Texas. Constructing forts in the midst of the savage districts, taking
possession of Louisiana in the name of King Louis XIV., abandoned by the
majority of his comrades and losing the most faithful of them by death,
attacked by savages, betrayed by his own men, thwarted in his projects by
his enemies and his rivals, this indefatigable explorer fell at last beneath the
blows of a few mutineers, in 1687, just as he was trying to get back to New
France; he left the field open after him to the innumerable travellers of
every nation and every language who were one day to leave their mark on
those measureless tracts. Everywhere, in the western regions of the
American continent, the footsteps of the French, either travellers or
missionaries, preceded the boldest adventurers. It is the glory and the
misfortune of France to always lead the van in the march of civilization,
without having the wit to profit by the discoveries and the sagacious
boldness of her children. On the unknown roads which she has opened to
the human mind and to human enterprise she has often left the fruits to be
gathered by nations less inventive and less able than she, but more
persevering and less perturbed by a confusion of desires and an incessant
renewal of hopes.
The treaty of Utrecht had taken out of French hands the gates of Canada,
Acadia, and Newfoundland. It was now in the neighborhood of New France
that the power of England was rising, growing rapidly through the
development of her colonies, usurping little by little the empire of the seas.
Canada was prospering, however; during the long wars which the condition
of Europe had kept up in America, the Canadians had supplied the king’s
armies with their best soldiers. Returning to their homes, and resuming
without an effort the peaceful habits which characterized them, they
skilfully cultivated their fields, and saw their population increasing
naturally, without any help from the mother-country. The governors had
succeeded in adroitly counterbalancing the influence of the English over the
Indian tribes. The Iroquois, but lately implacable foes of France, had
accepted a position of neutrality. Agricultural development secured to the

country comparative prosperity, but money was scarce, the instinct of the
population was not in the direction of commerce; it was everywhere
shackled by monopolies. The English were rich, free, and bold; for them the
transmission and the exchange of commodities were easy. The commercial
rivalry which set in between the two nations was fatal to the French; when
the hour of the final struggle came, the Canadians, though brave, resolute,
passionately attached to France, and ready for any sacrifice, were few in
number compared with their enemies. Scattered over a vast territory, they
possessed but poor pecuniary resources, and could expect from the mother
country only irregular assistance, subject to variations of government and
fortune as well as to the chances of maritime warfare and engagements at
sea, always perilous for the French ships, which were inferior in build and
in number, whatever might be the courage and skill of their commanders.
The capture of Louisbourg and of the Island of Cape Breton by the English
colonists, in 1745, profoundly disquieted the Canadians. They pressed the
government to make an attempt upon Acadia. “The population has remained
French,” they said; “we are ready to fight for our relatives and friends who
have passed under the yoke of the foreigner.” The ministry sent the Duke of
Anville with a considerable fleet; storms and disease destroyed vessels and
crews before it had been possible to attack. A fresh squadron, commanded
by the Marquis of La Jonquiere, encountered the English off Cape Finisterre
in Spain. Admiral Anson had seventeen ships, M. de La Jonquiere had but
six; he, however, fought desperately. “I never saw anybody behave better
than the French commander,” wrote the captain of the English ship
Windsor; “and, to tell the truth, all the officers of that nation showed great
courage; not one of them struck until it was absolutely impossible to
manoeuvre.” The remnants of the French navy, neglected as it had been
through the unreflecting economy of Cardinal Fleury, were almost
completely destroyed, and England reckoned more than two hundred and
fifty ships of war. Neither the successes in the Low Countries and in
Germany nor the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle put a serious end to the maritime
war; England used her strength to despoil the French forever of the colonies
which she envied them. The frontiers of Canada and Acadia had not been
clearly defined by the treaties of peace. Distrust and disquiet reigned
amongst the French colonists; the ardor of conquest fired the English, who
had for a long while coveted the valley of the Ohio and its fertile territories.
The covert hostility which often betrayed itself by acts of aggression was

destined ere long to lead to open war. An important emigration began
amongst the Acadians; they had hitherto claimed the title of neutrals, in
spite of the annexation of their territory by England, in order to escape the
test oath and to remain faithful to the Catholic faith; the priests and the
French agents urged them to do more; more than three thousand Acadians
left their fields and their cottages to settle on the French coasts, along the
Bay of Fundy. Every effort of the French governors who succeeded one
another only too rapidly in Canada was directed towards maintaining the
natural or factitious barriers between the two territories. The savages,
excited and flattered by both sides, loudly proclaimed their independence
and their primitive rights over the country which the Europeans were
disputing between themselves. “We have not ceded our lands to anybody,”
they said; “and we have no mind to obey any king.” “Do you know what is
the difference between the King of France and the Englishman?” the
Iroquois was asked by Marquis Duquesne, the then governor of Canada.
“Go and look at the forts which the king had set up, and you will see that
the land beneath his walls is still a hunting-ground, he having chosen the
spots frequented by you simply to serve your need. The Englishman, on the
other hand, is no sooner in possession of land than the game is forced to
quit, the woods are felled, the soil is uncovered, and you can scarcely find
the wherewithal to shelter yourselves at night.”
The governor of Canada was not mistaken. Where France established
mere military posts, and as it were landmarks of her political dominion, the
English colonists, cultivators and traders, brought with them practical
civilization, the natural and powerful enemy of savage life. Already war
was in preparation without regard to the claims of these humble allies, who
were destined ere long to die out before might and the presence of a
superior race. The French commander in the valley of the Ohio, M. de
Contrecoeur, was occupied with preparations for defence, when he learned
that a considerable body of English troops were marching against him under
the orders of Colonel Washington. He immediately despatched M. de
Jumonville with thirty men to summon the English to retire and to evacuate
French territory. At break of day on the 18th of May, 1754, Washington’s
men surprised Jumonville’s little encampment. The attack was unexpected;
it is not known whether the French envoy had time to convey the summons
with which he had been charged; he was killed, together with nine men of
his troops. The irritation caused by this event precipitated the

commencement of hostilities. A corps of Canadians, re-enforced by a few
savages, marched at once against Washington; he was intrenched in the
plain; he had to be attacked with artillery. The future hero of American
independence was obliged to capitulate; the English retired with such
precipitation that they abandoned even their flag.
Negotiations were still going on between London and Versailles, and
meanwhile the governors of the English colonies had met together to form a
sort of confederation against French power in the new world. They were
raising militia everywhere. On the 20th of January, 1755, General Braddock
with a corps of regulars landed at Williamsburg, in Virginia. Two months
later, or not until the end of April, in fact, Admiral Dubois de la Motte
quitted Brest with re-enforcements and munitions of war for Canada. After
him and almost in his wake went Admiral Boscawen from Plymouth, on the
27th of April, seeking to encounter him at sea. “Most certainly the English
will not commence hostilities,” said the English cabinet to calm the
anxieties of France.
It was only off Newfoundland that Admiral Boscawen’s squadron
encountered some French vessels detached from the fleet in consequence of
the bad weather. “Captain Hocquart, who commanded the Alcide,” says the
account of M. de Choiseul, “finding himself within hail of the Dunkerque,
had this question put in English: ‘Are we at peace or war?’ The English
captain appearing not to understand, the question was repeated in French.
‘Peace! peace!’ shouted the English. Almost at the same moment the
Dunkerque poured in a broadside, riddling the Alcide with balls.” The two
French ships were taken; and a few days afterwards, three hundred
merchant vessels, peaceably pursuing their course, were seized by the
English navy. The loss was immense, as well as the disgrace. France at last
decided upon declaring war, which had already been commenced in fact for
more than two years.
It was regretfully, and as if compelled by a remnant of national honor,
that Louis XV. had just adopted the resolution of defending his colonies; he
had, and the nation had as well, the feeling that the French were hopelessly
weak at sea. “What use to us will be hosts of troops and plenty of money,”
wrote the advocate Barbier, “if we have only to fight the English at sea?
They will take all our ships one after another, they will seize all our
settlements in America, and will get all the trade. We must hope for some

division amongst the English nation itself, for the king personally does not
desire war.”
The English nation was not divided. The ministers and the Parliament, as
well as the American colonies, were for war. “There is no hope of repose
for our thirteen colonies, as long as the French are masters of Canada,” said
Benjamin Franklin, on his arrival in London in 1754. He was already
laboring, without knowing it, at that great work of American independence
which was to be his glory and that of his generation; the common efforts
and the common interest of the thirteen American colonies in the war
against France were the first step towards that great coalition which
founded the United States of America.
The union with the mother-country was as yet close and potent: at the
instigation of Mr. Fox, soon afterwards Lord Holland, and at the time Prime
Minister of England, Parliament voted twenty-five millions for the
American war. The bounty given to the soldiers and marines who enlisted
was doubled by private subscription; fifteen thousand men were thus raised
to invade the French colonies.
Canada and Louisiana together did not number eighty thousand
inhabitants, whilst the population of the English colonies already amounted
to twelve hundred thousand souls; to the twenty-eight hundred regular
troops sent from France, the Canadian militia added about four thousand
men, less experienced but quite as determined as the most intrepid veterans
of the campaigns in Europe. During more than twenty years the courage and
devotion of the Canadians never faltered for a single day.
Then began an unequal, but an obstinate struggle, of which the issue,
easy to foresee, never cowed or appeased the actors in it. The able tactics of
M. de Vaudreuil, governor of the colony, had forced the English to scatter
their forces and their attacks over an immense territory, far away from the
most important settlements; the forts which they besieged were scarcely
defended. “A large enclosure, with a palisade round it, in which there were
but one officer and nineteen soldiers,” wrote the Marquis of Montcalm at a
later period, “could not be considered as a fort adapted to sustain a siege.”
In the first campaign, the settlements formed by the Acadian emigrants on
the borders of the Bay of Fundy were completely destroyed: the French
garrisons were obliged to evacuate their positions.

This withdrawal left Acadia, or neutral land, at the mercy of the Anglo-
Americans. Before Longfellow had immortalized, in the poem of
Evangeline, the peaceful habits and the misfortunes of the Acadians, Raynal
had already pleaded their cause before history. “A simple and a kindly
people,” he said, “who had no liking for blood, agriculture was their
occupation. They had been settled in the low grounds, forcing back, by dint
of dikes, the sea and rivers wherewith those plains were covered. The
drained marshes produced wheat, rye, oats, barley, and maize. Immense
prairies were alive with numerous flocks; as many as sixty thousand horned
cattle were counted there. The habitations, nearly all built of wood, were
very commodious, and furnished with the neatness sometimes found
amongst our European farmers in the easiest circumstances. Their manners
were extremely simple; the little differences which might from time to time
arise between the colonists were always amicably settled by the elders. It
was a band of brothers, all equally ready to give or receive that which they
considered common to all men.”
War and its horrors broke in upon this peaceful idyll.
The Acadians had constantly refused to take the oath to England; they
were declared guilty of having violated neutrality. For the most part the
accusation was unjust; but all were involved in the same condemnation.
On the 5th of September, 1755, four hundred and eighteen heads of
families were summoned to meet in the church of Grand Pre. The same
order had been given throughout all the towns of Acadia. The anxious
farmers had all obeyed. Colonel Winslow, commanding the Massachusetts
militia, repaired thither with great array. “It is a painful duty which brings
me here,” he said. “I have orders to inform you that your lands, your
houses, and your crops are confiscated to the profit of the crown; you can
carry off your money and your linen on your deportation from the
province.” The order was accompanied by no explanation; nor did it admit
of any. All the heads of families were at once surrounded by the soldiers.
By tens, and under safe escort, they were permitted to visit once more the
fields which they had cultivated, the houses in which they had seen their
children grow up. On the 10th they embarked, passing, on their way to the
ships, between two rows of women and children in tears. The young people
had shown a disposition to resist, demanding leave to depart with their
families: the soldiers crossed their bayonets. The vessels set sail for the

English colonies, dispersing over the coast the poor creatures they had torn
away from all that was theirs. Many perished of want while seeking from
town to town their families, removed after them from Acadia; the charity of
the American colonists relieved their first wants. Some French Protestants,
who had settled in Philadelphia after the revocation of the edict of Nantes,
welcomed them as brothers, notwithstanding the difference of their creed;
for they knew all the heart-rending evils of exile.
Much emotion was excited in France by the woes of the Acadians. In
spite of the declaration of war, Louis XV. made a request to the English
cabinet for permission to send vessels along the coasts of America, to pick
up those unfortunates. “Our navigation act is against it,” replied Mr.
Grenville; “France cannot send ships amongst our colonies.” A few
Acadians, nevertheless, reached France; they settled in the outskirts of
Bordeaux, where their descendants still form the population of two
prosperous communes. Others founded in Louisiana settlements which bore
the name of Acadia. The crime was consummated: the religious, pacific,
inoffensive population, which but lately occupied the neutral land, had
completely disappeared. The greedy colonists, who envied them their farms
and pasturage, had taken possession of the spoil; Acadia was forever in the
power of the Anglo-Saxon race, which was at the same moment invading
the valley of the Ohio.
General Braddock had mustered his troops at Wills Creek, in the
neighborhood of the Alleghany Mountains. He meditated surprising Fort
Duquesne, erected but a short time previously by the French on the banks of
the Ohio. The little army was advancing slowly across the mountains and
the forests; Braddock divided it into two corps, and placing himself with
Colonel Washington, who was at that time serving on his staff at the head of
twelve hundred men, he pushed forward rapidly. “Never,” said Washington
afterwards, “did I see a finer sight than the departure of the English troops
on the 9th of July, 1755; all the men were in full uniform, marching in slow
time and in perfect order; the sun was reflected from their glittering arms;
the river rolled its waves along on their right, and on their left the vast
forest threw over them its mighty shadows. Officers and soldiers were
equally joyous and confident of success.”
Twice the attacking column had crossed the Monongahela by fording; it
was leaving the plain which extended to some distance from Fort

Duquesne, to enter the wood-path, when the advance-guard was all at once
brought up by a tremendous discharge of artillery; a second discharge came
almost immediately from the right. The English could not see their enemy;
they were confused, and fell back upon General Braddock and the main
body of the detachment who were coming up to their aid. The disorder soon
became extreme. The regular troops, unaccustomed to this kind of warfare,
refused to rally, in spite of the efforts of their general, who would have had
them manoeuvre as in the plains of Flanders; the Virginia militia alone,
recurring to habits of forest warfare, had dispersed, but without flying,
hiding themselves behind the trees, and replying to the French or Indian
sharpshooters.

Before long General Braddock received a mortal wound; his staff had
fallen almost to a man; Colonel Washington alone, reserved by God for

another destiny, still sought to rally his men. “I have been protected by the
almighty intervention of Providence beyond every human probability,” he
wrote to his brother after the action. “I received four balls in my clothes,
and I had two horses killed under me; nevertheless I came out of it safe and
sound, whilst death was sweeping down my comrades around me.” The
small English corps was destroyed; the fugitives communicated their terror
to the detachment of Colonel Dunbar, who was coming to join them. All the
troops disbanded, spiking the guns and burning the munitions and baggage;
in their panic the soldiers asked no question save whether the enemy were
pursuing them. “We have been beaten, shamefully beaten,” wrote
Washington, “by a handful of French whose only idea was to hamper our
march. A few moments before the action we thought our forces almost a
match for all those of Canada; and yet, against every probability, we have
been completely defeated and have lost everything.” The small French
corps, which sallied from Fort Duquesne under the orders of M. de Beaujeu,
numbered only two hundred Canadians and six hundred Indians. It was not
until three years later, in 1758, that Fort Duquesne, laid in ruins by the
defenders themselves, at last fell into the hands of the English, who gave to
it, in honor of the great English minister, the name of Pittsburg, which is
borne to this day by a flourishing town.
The courage of the Canadians and the able use they had the wits to make
of their savage allies still balanced the fortunes of the war; but the
continuance of hostilities betrayed more and more every day the inferiority
of the forces and the insufficiency of the resources of the colony. “The
colonists employed in the army, of which they form the greater part, no
longer till the lands they had formerly cleared, far from clearing new ones,”
wrote the superintendent of Canada; “the levies about to be made will still
further dispeople the country. What will become of the colony? There will
be a deficiency of everything, especially of corn; up to the present the
intention had been not to raise the levies until the work of spring was over.
That indulgence can no longer be accorded, since the war will go on during
the winter, and the armies must be mustered as early as the month of April.
Besides, the Canadians are decreasing fast; a great number have died of
fatigue and disease. There is no, relying,” added the superintendent, “on the
savages save so long as we have the superiority, and so long as all their
wants are supplied.” The government determined to send re-enforcements
to Canada under the orders of the Marquis of Montcalm.

The new general had had thirty-five years’ service, though he was not yet
fifty; he had distinguished himself in Germany and in Italy. He was brave,
amiable, clever; by turns indolent and bold; skilful in dealing with the
Indians, whom he inspired with feelings of great admiration; jealous of the
Canadians, their officers and their governor, M. de Vaudreuil; convinced
beforehand of the uselessness of all efforts and of the inevitable result of the
struggle he maintained with indomitable courage. More intelligent than his
predecessor, General Dieskau, who, like Braddock, had fallen through the
error of conducting the war in the European fashion, he, nevertheless, had
great difficulty in wrenching himself from the military traditions of his
whole life. An expedition, in 1756, against Fort Oswego, on the right bank
of Lake Ontario, was completely successful; General Webb had no time to
relieve the garrison, which capitulated. Bands of Canadians and Indians laid
waste Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Montcalm wrote to the
minister of war, Rouille, “It is the first time that, with three thousand men
and less artillery, a siege has been maintained against eighteen hundred,
who could be readily relieved by two thousand, and who could oppose our
landing, having the naval superiority on Lake Ontario. The success has been
beyond all expectation. The conduct I adopted on this occasion and the
arrangements I ordered are so contrary to the regular rules, that the boldness
displayed in this enterprise must look like rashness in Europe. Therefore, I
do beseech you, monseigneur, as the only favor I ask, to assure his Majesty
that, if ever he should be pleased, as I hope, to employ me in his own
armies, I will behave differently.”
The same success everywhere attended the arms of the Marquis of
Montcalm. In 1757 he made himself master of Fort William Henry, which
commanded the lake of Saint-Sacrement; in 1758 he repulsed with less than
four thousand men the attack of General Abercrombie, at the head of
sixteen thousand men, on Carillon, and forced the latter to relinquish the
shores of Lake Champlain. This was cutting the enemy off once more from
the road to Montreal; but Louisbourg, protected in 1757 by the fleet of
Admiral Dubois de la Motte, and now abandoned to its own resources, in
vain supported an unequal siege; the fortifications were in ruins, the
garrison was insufficient notwithstanding its courage and the heroism of the
governor, M. de Drucourt. Seconded by his wife, who flitted about the
ramparts, cheering and tending the wounded, he energetically opposed the
landing of the English, and maintained himself for two months in an almost

open place. When he was at last obliged to surrender, on the 26th of July,
Louisbourg was nothing but a heap of ruins; all the inhabitants of the
islands of St. John and Cape Breton were transported by the victors to
France.
Canada had by this time cost France dear; and she silently left it to its
miserable fate. In vain did the governor, the general, the commissariat
demand incessantly re-enforcements, money, provisions; no help came from
France. “We keep on fighting, nevertheless,” wrote Montcalm to the
minister of war, “and we will bury ourselves, if necessary, under the ruins
of the colony.” Famine, the natural result of neglecting the land, went on
increasing: the Canadians, hunters and soldiers as they were, had only
cleared and cultivated their fields in the strict ratio of their daily wants;
there was a lack of hands; every man was under arms; destitution prevailed
everywhere; the inhabitants of Quebec were reduced to siege-rations; the
troops complained and threatened to mutiny; the enemy had renewed their
efforts: in the campaign of 1758, the journals of the Anglo-American
colonies put their land forces at sixty thousand men. “England has at the
present moment more troops in motion on this continent than Canada
contains inhabitants, including old men, women, and children,” said a letter
to Paris from M. Doreil, war commissioner. Mr. Pitt, afterwards Lord
Chatham, who had lately, come to the head of the English government,
resolved to strike the last blow at the French power in America. Three
armies simultaneously invaded Canada; on the 25th of June, 1759, a
considerable fleet brought under the walls of Quebec General Wolfe, a
young and hopeful officer who had attracted notice at the siege of
Louisbourg. “If General Montcalm succeeds again this year in frustrating
our hopes,” said Wolfe, “he may be considered an able man; either the
colony has resources that nobody knows of, or our generals are worse than
usual.”
Quebec was not fortified; the loss of it involved that of all Canada; it was
determined to protect the place by an outlying camp; appeal was made to
the Indian tribes, lately zealous in the service of France, but now detached
from it by ill fortune and diminution of the advantages offered them, and
already for the most part won over by the English. The Canadian colonists,
exhausted by war and famine, rose in mass to defend their capital. The
different encampments which surrounded Quebec contained about thirteen
thousand soldiers. “So strong a force had not been reckoned upon,” says an

eye-witness, “because nobody had expected to have so large a number of
Canadians; but there prevailed so much emulation among this people that
there were seen coming into the camp old men of eighty and children of
from twelve to thirteen, who would not hear of profiting by the exemption
accorded to their age.” The poor cultivators, turned soldiers, brought to the
camp their slender resources; the enemy was already devastating the
surrounding country. “It will take them half a century to repair the damage,”
wrote an American officer in his journal of the expedition on the St.
Lawrence. The bombardment of Quebec was commencing at the same
moment.
For more than a month the town had stood the enemy’s fire; all the
buildings were reduced to ruins, and the French had not yet budged from
their camp of Ange-Gardien. On the 31st of July, General Wolfe, with three
thousand men, came and attacked them in front by the River St. Lawrence,
and in flank by the River Montmorency. He was repulsed by the firm
bravery of the Canadians, whose French impetuosity seemed to have
become modified by contact with the rough climates of the north.
Immovable in their trenches, they waited until the enemy was within range;
and, when at length they fired, the skill of the practised hunters made
fearful havoc in the English ranks. Everywhere repulsed, General Wolfe in
despair was obliged to retreat. He all but died of vexation, overwhelmed
with the weight of his responsibility. “I have only a choice of difficulties
left,” he wrote to the English cabinet. Aid and encouragement did not fail
him.
The forts of Carillon on Lake Champlain and of Niagara on Lake Ontario
were both in the hands of the English. A portion of the Canadians had left
the camp to try and gather in the meagre crops which had been cultivated
by the women and children. In the night between the 12th and 13th of
September, General Wolfe made a sudden dash upon the banks of the St.
Lawrence; he landed at the creek of Foulon. The officers had replied in
French to the Qui vive ( Who goes there?) of the sentinels, who had
supposed that what they saw passing was a long-expected convoy of
provisions; at daybreak the English army was ranged in order of battle on
the Plains of Abraham; by evening, the French were routed, the Marquis of
Montcalm was dying, and Quebec was lost.

General Wolfe had not been granted time to enjoy his victory. Mortally
wounded in a bayonet charge which he himself headed, he had been carried
to the rear. The surgeons who attended to him kept watching the battle from
a distance. “They fly,” exclaimed one of them. “Who?” asked the general,
raising himself painfully. “The French!” was the answer. “Then I am
content to die.” he murmured, and expired.

Montcalm had fought like a soldier in spite of his wounds; when he fell
he still gave orders about the measures to be taken and the attempts to be
made. “All is not lost,” he kept repeating. He was buried in a hole pierced
by a cannonball in the middle of the church of the Ursulines; and there he
still rests. In 1827, when all bad feeling had subsided, Lord Dalhousie, the
then English governor of Canada, ordered the erection at Quebec of an
obelisk in marble bearing the names and busts of Wolfe and Montcalm, with
this inscription: Mortem virtus communem, famam historia, monumentum
posteritas dedit [Valor, history, and posterity assigned fellowship in death,
fame, and memorial].
In 1759, the news of the death of the two generals was accepted as a sign
of the coming of the end. Quebec capitulated on the 18th of September,
notwithstanding the protests of the population. The government of Canada
removed to Montreal.
The joy in England was great, as was the consternation in France. The
government had for a long while been aware of the state to which the army
and the brave Canadian people had been reduced, the nation knew nothing

about it; the repeated victories of the Marquis of Montcalm had caused
illusion as to the gradual decay of resources. The English Parliament
resolved to send three armies to America, and the remains of General Wolfe
were interred at Westminster with great ceremony. King Louis XV. and his
ministers sent to Canada a handful of men and a vessel which suffered
capture from the English; the governor’s drafts were not paid at Paris. The
financial condition of France did not permit her to any longer sustain the
heroic devotion of her children.
M. de Lally-Tollendal was still struggling single-handed in India,
exposed to the hatred and the plots of his fellow-countrymen as well as of
the Hindoos, at the very moment when the Canadians, united in the same
ideas of effort and sacrifice, were trying their last chance in the service of
the distant mother-country, which was deserting them. The command had
passed from the hands of Montcalm into those of the general who was
afterwards a marshal and Duke of Levis. He resolved, in the spring of 1760,
to make an attempt to recover Quebec.
“All Europe,” says Raynal, “supposed that the capture of the capital was
an end to the great quarrel in North America. Nobody supposed that a
handful of French who lacked everything, who seemed forbidden by fortune
itself to harbor any hope, would dare to dream of retarding inevitable fate.”
On the 28th of April, the army of General de Levis, with great difficulty
maintained during the winter, debouched before Quebec on those Plains of
Abraham but lately so fatal to Montcalm.
General Murray at once sallied from the place in order to engage before
the French should have had time to pull themselves together. It was a long
and obstinate struggle; the men fought hand to hand, with impassioned
ardor, without the cavalry or the savages taking any part in the action; at
nightfall General Murray had been obliged to re-enter the town and close
the gates. The French, exhausted but triumphant, returned slowly from the
pursuit; the unhappy fugitives fell into the hands of the Indians; General de
Levis had great difficulty in putting a stop to the carnage. In his turn he
besieged Quebec.
One single idea possessed the minds of both armies; what flag would be
carried by the vessels which were expected every day in the St. Lawrence?
“The circumstances were such on our side,” says the English writer Knox,

“that if the French fleet had been the first to enter the river, the place would
have fallen again into the hands of its former masters.”
On the 9th of May, an English frigate entered the harbor. A week
afterwards, it was followed by two other vessels. The English raised shouts
of joy upon the ramparts, the cannon of the place saluted the arrivals.
During the night between the 16th and 17th of May, the little French army
raised the siege of Quebec. On the 6th of September, the united forces of
Generals Murray, Amherst, and Haviland invested Montreal.
A little wall and a ditch, intended to resist the attacks of Indians, a few
pieces of cannon eaten up with rust, and three thousand five hundred troops
—such were the means of defending Montreal. The rural population yielded
at last to the good fortune of the English, who burned on their marsh the
recalcitrant villages. Despair was in every heart; M. de Vaudreuil assembled
during the night a council of war. It was determined to capitulate in the
name of the whole colony. The English generals granted all that was asked
by the Canadian population; to its defenders they refused the honors of war.
M. de Levis retired to the Island of Sainte-Helene, resolved to hold out to
the last extremity; it was only at the governor’s express command that he
laid down arms. No more than three thousand soldiers returned to France.
The capitulation of Montreal was signed on the 8th of September, 1760;
on the 10th of February, 1763, the peace concluded between France, Spain,
and England completed without hope of recovery the loss of all the French
possessions in America; Louisiana had taken no part in the war; it was not
conquered; France ceded it to Spain in exchange for Florida, which was
abandoned to the English. Canada and all the islands of the St. Lawrence
shared the same fate. Only the little islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon were
preserved for the French fisheries. One single stipulation guaranteed to the
Canadians the free exercise of the Catholic religion. The principal
inhabitants of the colony went into exile on purpose to remain French. The
weak hands of King Louis XV. and of his government had let slip the fairest
colonies of France.
Canada and Louisiana had ceased to belong to her; yet attachment to
France subsisted there a long while, and her influence left numerous traces
there. It is an honor and a source of strength to France that she acts
powerfully on men through the charm and suavity of her intercourse; they
who have belonged to France can never forget her.

The struggle was over. King Louis XV. had lost his American colonies,
the nascent empire of India, and the settlements of Senegal. He recovered
Guadaloupe and Martinique, but lately conquered by the English,
Chandernuggur and the ruins of Pondicherry. The humiliation was deep and
the losses were irreparable. All the fruits of the courage, of the ability, and
of the passionate devotion of the French in India and in America were
falling into the hands of England. Her government had committed many
faults; but the strong action of a free people had always managed to repair
them. The day was coming when the haughty passions of the mother-
country and the proud independence of her colonies would engage in that
supreme struggle which has given to the world the United States of
America.

CHAPTER LIV.

LOUIS XV.—THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR.

MINISTRY OF THE DUKE OF CHOISEUL.
1748-1774.

It was not only in the colonies and on the seas that the peace of Aix-la-
Chapelle had seemed merely a truce destined to be soon broken; hostilities
had never ceased in India or Canada; English vessels scoured the world,
capturing, in spite of treaties, French merchant-ships; in Europe and on the
continent, all the sovereigns were silently preparing for new efforts; only
the government of King Louis XV., intrenched behind its disinterestedness
in the negotiations, and ignoring the fatal influences of weakness and
vanity, believed itself henceforth beyond the reach of a fresh war. The
nation, as oblivious as the government, but less careless than it, because
they had borne the burden of the fault committed, were applying for the
purpose of their material recovery that power of revival which, through a
course of so many errors and reverses, has always saved France; in spite of
the disorder in the finances and the crushing weight of the imposts, she was
working and growing rich; intellectual development was following the rise
in material resources; the court was corrupt and inert, like the king, but a
new life, dangerously free and bold, was beginning to course through men’s
minds the wise, reforming instincts, the grave reflections of the dying
Montesquieu no longer sufficed for them; Voltaire, who had but lately been
still moderate and almost respectful, was about to commence with his
friends of the L’Encyclopedie that campaign against the Christian faith
which was to pave the way for the materialism of our own days. “Never
was Europe more happy than during the years which rolled by between
1750 and 1758,” he has said in his Tableau du Siecle de Louis XV. The evil,
however, was hatching beneath the embers, and the last supports of the old

French society were cracking up noiselessly. The Parliaments were about to
disappear, the Catholic church was becoming separated more and more
widely every day from the people of whom it claimed to be the sole
instructress and directress. The natural heads of the nation, the priests and
the great lords, thought no longer and lived no longer as it. The public voice
was raised simultaneously against the authority or insensate prodigality of
Madame de Pompadour, and against the refusal, ordered by the Archbishop
of Paris, of the sacraments. “The public, the public!” wrote M. d’Argenson;
“its animosity, its encouragements, its pasquinades, its insolence—that is
what I fear above everything.” The state of the royal treasury and the
measures to which recourse was had to enable the state to make both ends
meet, aggravated the dissension and disseminated discontent amongst all
classes of society. Comptrollers- general came one after another, all armed
with new expedients; MM. de Machault, Moreau de Sechelles, de Moras,
excited, successively, the wrath and the hatred of the people crushed by
imposts in peace as well as war; the clergy refused to pay the twentieth, still
claiming their right of giving only a free gift; the states-districts, Languedoc
and Brittany at the head, resisted, in the name of their ancient privileges, the
collection of taxes to which they had not consented; riots went on
multiplying; they even extended to Paris, where the government was
accused of kidnapping children for transportation to the colonies. The
people rose, several police-agents were massacred; the king avoided
passing through the capital on his way from Versailles to the camp at
Compiegne; the path he took in the Bois de Boulogne received the name of
Revolt Road. “I have seen in my days,” says D’Argenson, “a decrease in the
respect and love of the people for the kingship.”
Decadence went on swiftly, and no wonder. At forty years of age Louis
XV., finding every pleasure pall, indifferent to or forgetful of business from
indolence and disgust, bored by everything and on every occasion, had
come to depend solely on those who could still manage to amuse him.

Madame de Pompadour had accepted this ungrateful and sometimes
shameful task. Born in the ranks of the middle class, married young to a
rich financier, M. Lenormant d’Etioles, Mdlle. Poisson, created
Marchioness of Pompadour, was careful to mix up more serious matters
with the royal pleasures. The precarious lot of a favorite was not sufficient
for her ambition. Pretty, clever, ingenious in devising for the king new
amusements and objects of interest, she played comedy before him in her
small apartments and travelled with him from castle to castle; she thus
obtained from his easy prodigality enormous sums to build pleasaunces
which she amused herself by embellishing; Bellevue, Babiole, the
marchioness’ house at Paris, cost millions out of the exhausted treasury.
Madame de Pompadour was fond of porcelain; she conceived the idea of

imitating in France the china-work of Saxony, and founded first at
Vincennes and then at Sevres the manufacture of porcelain, which the king
took under his protection, requiring the courtiers to purchase the proceeds
of it at high prices. Everybody was anxious to please the favorite; her
incessantly renewed caprices contributed to develop certain branches of the
trade in luxuries. The expenses of the royal household went on increasing
daily; the magnificent prodigalities of King Louis XIV. were surpassed by
the fancies of Madame de Pompadour. Vigilant in attaching the courtiers to
herself, she sowed broadcast, all around her, favors, pensions, profitable
offices, endowing the gentlemen to facilitate their marriage, turning a deaf
ear to the complaints of the people as well as to the protests of the States or
Parliaments. The greedy and frivolous crowd that thronged at her feet well
deserved the severe judgment pronounced by Montesquieu on courtiers and
courts. “Ambition amidst indolence, baseness amidst pride, the desire to
grow rich without toil, aversion from truth, flattery, treason, perfidy, neglect
of all engagements, contempt for the duties of a citizen, fear of virtue in the
prince, hope in his weaknesses, and more than all that, the ridicule
constantly thrown upon virtue, form, I trow, the characteristics of the
greatest number of courtiers, distinctive in all places and at all times.” The
majesty of Louis XIV. and the long lustre of his reign had been potent
enough to create illusions as to the dangers and the corruptions of the court;
the remnants of military glory were about to fade out round Louis XV.; the
court still swarmed with brave officers, ready to march to death at the head
of the troops; the command of armies henceforth depended on the favor of
Madame the Marchioness of Pompadour.
The day had come when the fortune of war was about to show itself fatal
to France. Marshal Saxe had died at Chambord, still young and worn out by
excesses rather than by fatigue; this foreigner, this Huguenot, as he was
called by Louis XV., had been the last to maintain and continue the grand
tradition of French generals. War, however, was inevitable; five months of
public or private negotiation, carried on by the ambassadors or personal
agents of the king, could not obtain from England any reparation for her
frequent violation of the law of nations; the maritime trade of France was
destroyed; the vessels of the royal navy were themselves no longer safe at
sea. On the 21st of December, 1755, the minister of foreign affairs, Rouille,
notified to the English cabinet, “that His Most Christian Majesty, before
giving way to the effects of his resentment, once more demanded from the

King of England satisfaction for all the seizures made by the English navy,
as well as restitution of all vessels, whether war-ships or merchant-ships,
taken from the French, declaring that he should regard any refusal that
might be made as an authentic declaration of war.” England eluded the
question of law, but refused restitution. On the 23d of January, an embargo
was laid on all English vessels in French ports, and war was officially
proclaimed. It had existed in fact for two years past.
A striking incident signalized the commencement of hostilities. Rather a
man of pleasure and a courtier than an able soldier, Marshal Richelieu had,
nevertheless, the good fortune to connect his name with the only successful
event of the Seven Years’ War that was destined to remain impressed upon
the mind of posterity. Under his orders, a body of twelve thousand men, on
board of a squadron, commanded by M. de la Galissonniere, left Toulon on
the 10th of April, 1756, at the moment when England was excited by
expectation of a coming descent upon her coasts. On the 17th, the French
attacked the Island of Minorca, an important point whence the English
threatened Toulon, and commanded the western basin of the Mediterranean.
Some few days later, the English troops, driven out of Ciudadela and
Mahon, had taken refuge in Fort St. Philip, and the French cannon were
battering the ramparts of the vast citadel.
On the 10th of May an English fleet, commanded by Admiral Byng,
appeared in the waters of Port Mahon; it at once attacked M. de la
Galissonniere. The latter succeeded in preventing the English from
approaching land. After an obstinate struggle, Admiral Byng, afraid of
losing his fleet, fell back on Gibraltar. The garrison of Fort St. Philip waited
in vain for the return of the squadron; left to its own devices, it nevertheless
held out; the fortifications seemed to be impregnable; the siege-works
proceeded slowly; the soldiers were disgusted, and began to indulge to
excess in the wine of Spain. “No one who gets drunk shall have the honor
of mounting the breach,” said Richelieu’s general order. Before long he
resolved to attempt the assault.

Fort St. Philip towered up proudly on an enormous mass of rock; the
French regiments flung themselves into the fosses, setting against the
ramparts ladders that were too short; the soldiers mounted upon one
another’s shoulders, digging their bayonets into the interstices between the
stones; the boldest were already at the top of the bastions. On the 28th of
June, at daybreak, three of the forts were in possession of the French; the
same day the English commandant decided upon capitulation. The Duke of
Fronsac, Marshal Richelieu’s son, hurried to Versailles to announce the
good news. There was great joy at court and amongst the French nation; the
French army and navy considered themselves avenged of England’s insults.
In London Admiral Byng was brought to trial; he was held responsible for
the reverse, and was shot, notwithstanding the protests of Voltaire and of
Richelieu himself. At the same time the king’s troops were occupying
Corsica in the name of the city of Genoa, the time-honored ally of France.
Mistress of half the Mediterranean, and secure of the neutrality of Holland,
France could have concentrated her efforts upon the sea, and have
maintained a glorious struggle with England, on the sole condition of
keeping peace on the Continent. The policy was simple, and the national
interest palpable; King Louis XV. and some of his ministers understood
this; but they allowed themselves to drift into forgetfulness of it.
For a long time past, under the influence of Count Kaunitz, a young
diplomat equally bold and shrewd, “frivolous in his tastes and profound in
his views,” Maria Theresa was inclining to change the whole system of her
alliances in Europe; she had made advances to France. Count Kaunitz had
found means of pleasing Madame de Pompadour; the empress put the
crowning touch to the conquest by writing herself to the favorite, whom she

called “My cousin.” The Great Frederick, on the contrary, all the time that
he was seeking to renew with the king his former offensive and defensive
relations, could not manage to restrain the flow of his bitter irony. Louis
XV. had felt hurt, on his own account and on his favorite’s; he still sought to
hold the balance steady between the two great German sovereigns, but he
was already beginning to lean towards the empress. A proposal was made to
Maria Theresa for a treaty of guarantee between France, Austria, and
Prussia; the existing war between England and France was excepted from
the defensive pact; France reserved to herself the right of invading Hanover.
The same conditions had been offered to the King of Prussia; he was not
contented with them. Whilst Maria Theresa was insisting at Paris upon
obtaining an offensive as well as defensive alliance, Frederick II. was
signing with England an engagement not to permit the entrance into
Germany of any foreign troops. “I only wish to preserve Germany from
war,” wrote the King of Prussia to Louis XV. On the 1st of May, 1756, at
Versailles, Louis XV. replied to the Anglo-Prussian treaty by his alliance
with the Empress Maria Theresa. The house of Bourbon was holding out
the hand to the house of Austria; the work of Henry IV. and of Richelieu,
already weakened by an inconsistent and capricious policy, was completely
crumbling to pieces, involving in its ruin the military fortunes of France.
The prudent moderation of Abbe de Bernis, then in great favor with
Madame de Pompadour, and managing the negotiations with Austria, had
removed from the treaty of Versailles the most alarming clauses. The
empress and the King of France mutually guaranteed to one another their
possessions in Europe, “each of the contracting parties promising the other,
in case of need, the assistance of twenty-four thousand men.” Russia and
Saxony were soon enlisted in the same alliance; the King of Prussia’s
pleasantries, at one time coarse and at another biting, had offended the
Czarina Elizabeth and the Elector of Saxony as well as Louis XV. and
Madame de Pompadour. The weakest of the allies was the first to
experience the miseries of that war so frivolously and gratuitously entered
upon, from covetousness, rancor, or weakness, those fertile sources of the
bitterest sorrows to humanity.
“It is said that the King of Prussia’s troops are on the march,” wrote the
Duke of Luynes in his journal (September 3, 1756); “it is not said whither.”
Frederick II. was indeed on the march with his usual promptitude; a few
days later, Saxony was invaded, Dresden occupied, and the Elector-king of

Poland invested in the camp of Pirna. General Braun, hurrying up with the
Austrians to the Saxons’ aid, was attacked by Frederick on the 1st of
October, near Lowositz; without being decisive, the battle was,
nevertheless, sufficient to hinder the allies from effecting their junction. The
Saxons attempted to cut their way through; they were hemmed in and
obliged to lay down their arms; the King of Prussia established himself at
Dresden, levying upon Saxony enormous military contributions and
otherwise treating it as a conquered country. The unlucky elector had taken
refuge in Poland.
The empress had not waited for this serious reverse to claim from France
the promised aid. By this time it was understood how insufficient would be
a body of twenty-four thousand men for a distant and hazardous war.
Recently called to the council by King Louis XV., Marshal Belle-Isle, still
full of daring in spite of his age, loudly declared that, “since war had come,
it must be made on a large scale if it were to be made to any purpose, and
speedily.” Some weeks later, preparations were commenced for sending an
army of a hundred thousand men to the Lower Rhine. The king undertook,
besides, to pay four thousand Bavarians and six thousand Wurtemburgers,
who were to serve in the Austrian army. Marshal d’Estrees, grandson of
Louvois, was placed at the head of the army already formed. He was not
one of the favorite’s particular friends. “Marshal d’Estrees,” she wrote to
Count Clermont, “is one of my acquaintances in society; I have never been
in a position to make him an intimate friend, but were he as much so as M.
de Soubise, I should not take upon myself to procure his appointment, for
fear of having to reproach myself with the results.” Madame de Pompadour
did not continue to be always so reserved, and M. de Soubise was destined
before long to have his turn. M. de Belle-Isle had insisted strongly on the
choice of Marshal d’Estrees; he was called “the Temporizer,” and was
equally brave and prudent. “I am accustomed,” said the king, “to hear from
him all he thinks.” The army was already on the march.
Whilst hostilities were thus beginning throughout Europe, whilst
negotiations were still going on with Vienna touching the second treaty of
Versailles, King Louis XV., as he was descending the staircase of the
marble court at Versailles on the 5th of January, 1757, received a stab in the
side from a knife. Withdrawing full of blood the hand he had clapped to his
wound, the king exclaimed, “There is the man who wounded me, with his
hat-on; arrest him, but let no harm be done him!” The guards were already

upon the murderer and were torturing him pending the legal question. The
king had been carried away, slightly wounded by a deep puncture from a
penknife. In the soul of Louis XV. apprehension had succeeded to the first
instinctive and kingly impulse of courage; he feared the weapon might be
poisoned, and hastily sent for a confessor. The crowd of courtiers was
already thronging to the dauphin’s. To him the king had at once given up
the direction of affairs.

Justice, meanwhile, had taken the wretched murderer in hand. Robert
Damiens was a lackey out of place, a native of Artois, of weak mind, and
sometimes appearing to be deranged. In his vague and frequently incoherent
depositions, he appeared animated by a desire to avenge the wrongs of the
Parliament; he burst out against the Archbishop of Paris, Christopher de
Beaumont, a virtuous prelate of narrow mind and austere character. “The

Archbishop of Paris,” he said, “is the cause of all this trouble through
ordering refusal of the sacraments.” No investigation could discover any
conspiracy or accomplices; with less coolness and fanatical resolution than
Ravaillac, Damiens, like the assassin of Henry IV., was an isolated criminal,
prompted to murder by the derangement of his own mind; he died, like
Ravaillac, amidst fearful tortures which were no longer in accord with
public sentiment and caused more horror than awe. France had ceased to
tremble for the life of King Louis XV.
For one instant the power of Madame de Pompadour had appeared to be
shaken; the king, in his terror, would not see her; M. de Machault, but lately
her protege, had even brought her orders to quit the palace. Together with
the salutary terrors of death, Louis XV.‘s repentance soon disappeared; the
queen and the dauphin went back again to the modest and pious retirement
in which they passed their life; the marchioness returned in triumph to
Versailles. MM. de Machault and D’Argenson were exiled; the latter, who
had always been hostile to the favorite, was dismissed with extreme
harshness. The king had himself written the sealed letter “Your services are
no longer required. I command you to send me your resignation of the
secretaryship of state for war, and of all that appertains to the posts
connected therewith, and to retire to your estate of Ormes.” Madame de
Pompadour was avenged.
The war, meanwhile, continued; the King of Prussia, who had at first
won a splendid victory over the Austrians in front of Prague, had been
beaten at Kolin, and forced to fall back on Saxony. Marshal d’Estrees,
slowly occupying Westphalia, had got the Duke of Cumberland into a
corner on the Weser.
On the morning of July 23, 1757, the marshal summoned all his
lieutenant-generals. “Gentlemen,” he said to them, “I do not assemble you
to-day to ask whether we should attack M. de Cumberland and invest
Hamlin. The honor of the king’s arms, his wishes, his express orders, the
interest of the common cause, all call for the strongest measures. I only
seek, therefore, to profit by your lights, and to combine with your assistance
the means most proper for attacking with advantage.” A day or two after,
July 26, the Duke of Cumberland, who had fallen back on the village of
Hastenbeck, had his intrenchments forced; he succeeded in beating a retreat
without being pursued; an able movement of Prince Ferdinand of

Brunswick, and a perhaps intentional mistake on the part of M. de
Maillebois had caused a momentary confusion in the French army. Marshal
d’Estrees, however, was not destined to enjoy for long the pleasure of his
victory. Even before he had given battle the Duke of Richelieu had set out
from Versailles to supersede him in his command.
The conquest of Port Mahon had thrown around Richelieu a halo of
glory; in Germany, he reaped the fruits of Marshal d’Estrees’ successes; the
Electorate of Hanover was entirely occupied; all the towns opened their
gates; Hesse Cassel, Brunswick, the duchies of Verden and of Bremen met
with the same fate. The marshal levied on all the conquered countries heavy
contributions, of which he pocketed a considerable portion. His soldiers
called him “Father La Maraude.” The pavilion of Hanover at Paris was built
out of the spoils of Germany. Meanwhile, the Duke of Cumberland, who
had taken refuge in the marshes at the mouth of the Elbe, under the
protection of English vessels, was demanding to capitulate; his offers were
lightly accepted. On the 8th of September, through the agency of Count
Lynar, minister of the King of Denmark, the Duke of Cumberland and the
marshal signed at the advanced posts of the French army the famous
convention of Closter-Severn. The king’s troops kept all the conquered
country; those of Hesse, Brunswick, and Saxe-Gotha returned to their
homes; the Hanoverians were to be cantoned in the neighborhood of Stade.
The marshal had not taken the precaution of disarming them.
Incomplete as the convention was, it nevertheless excited great emotion
in Europe. The Duke of Cumberland had lost the military reputation
acquired at Fontenoy; the King of Prussia remained alone on the Continent,
exposed to all the efforts of the allies; every day fresh reverses came down
upon him; the Russian army had invaded the Prussian provinces and beaten
Marshal Schwald near Memel; twenty-five thousand Swedes had just
landed in Pomerania. Desertion prevailed amongst the troops of Frederick,
recruited as they often were from amongst the vanquished; it was in vain
that the king, in his despair, shouted out on the battle-field of Kolin, “D’ye
expect to live forever, pray?” Many Saxon or Silesian soldiers secretly left
the army. One day Frederick himself kept his eye on a grenadier whom he
had seen skulking to the rear of the camp. “Whither goest thou?” he cried.
“Faith, sir,” was the answer, “I am deserting; I’m getting tired of being
always beaten.” “Stay once more,” replied the king, without showing the

slightest anger; “I promise that, if we are beaten, we will both desert
together.” In the ensuing battle the grenadier got himself killed.
For a moment, indeed, Frederick had conceived the idea of deserting
simultaneously from the field of battle and from life. “My dear sister,” he
wrote to the Margravine of Baireuth, “there is no port or asylum for me any
more save in the arms of death.” A letter in verse to the Marquis of Argens
pointed clearly to the notion of suicide. A firmer purpose, before long,
animated that soul, that strange mixture of heroism and corruption. The
King of Prussia wrote to Voltaire,—

“Threatened with shipwreck though I be,
I, facing storms that frown on me,
Must king-like think, and live, and die.”

Fortune, moreover, seemed to be relaxing her severities. Under the
influence of the hereditary grand-duke, a passionate admirer of Frederick
II., the Russians had omitted to profit by their victories; they were by this
time wintering in Poland, which was abandoned to all their exactions. The
Swedes had been repulsed in the Island of Rugen, Marshal Richelieu
received from Versailles orders to remain at Halberstadt, and to send re-
enforcements to the army of the Prince of Soubise; it was for this latter that
Madame de Pompadour was reserving the honor of crushing the Great
Frederick. More occupied in pillage than in vigorously pushing forward the
war, the marshal tolerated a fatal license amongst his troops. “Brigandage is
more prevalent in the hearts of the superior officers than in the conduct of
the private soldier, who is full of good will to go and get shot, but not at all
to submit to discipline. I’m afraid that they do not see at court the alarming
state of things to their full extent,” says a letter from Paris-Duverney to the
Marquis of Cremille, “but I have heard so much of it, and perhaps seen so
much since I have been within eyeshot of this army, that I cannot give a
glance at the future without being transfixed with grief and dread. I dare to
say that I am not scared more than another at sight of abuses and disorder,
but it is time to apply to an evil which is at its height other remedies than
palliatives, which, for the most part, merely aggravate it and render it
incurable as long as war lasts. I have not seen and do not see here anything
but what overwhelms me, and I feel still more wretched for having been the
witness of it.”

Whilst the plunder of Hanover was serving the purpose of feeding the
insensate extravagance of Richelieu and of the army, Frederick II. had
entered Saxony, hurling back into Thuringia the troops of Soubise and of
the Prince of Hildburghausen. By this time the allies had endured several
reverses; the boldness of the King of Prussia’s movements bewildered and
disquieted officers as well as soldiers. “Might I ask your Highness what you
think of his Prussian majesty’s manoeuvring?” says a letter to Count
Clermont, from an officer serving in the army of Germany; “this prince,
with eighteen or twenty thousand men at most, marches upon an army of
fifty thousand men, forces it to recross a river, cuts off its rear guard,
crosses this same river before its very eyes, offers battle, retires, encamps
leisurely, and loses not a man. What calculation, what audacity in this
fashion of covering a country!” On the 3d of November the Prussian army
was all in order of battle on the left bank of the Saale, near Rosbach.
Soubise hesitated to attack; being a man of honesty and sense, he took
into account the disposition of his army, as well as the bad composition of
the allied forces, very superior in number to the French contingent. The
command belonged to the Duke of Saxe-Hildburghausen, who had no doubt
of success. Orders were given to turn the little Prussian army, so as to cut
off its retreat. All at once, as the allied troops were effecting their
movement to scale the heights, the King of Prussia, suddenly changing front
by one of those rapid evolutions to which he had accustomed his men,
unexpectedly attacked the French in flank, without giving them time to
form in order of battle. The batteries placed on the hills were at the same
time unmasked, and mowed down the infantry. The German troops at once
broke up. Soubise sought to restore the battle by cavalry charges, but he
was crushed in his turn. The rout became general; the French did not rally
till they reached Erfurt; they had left eight thousand prisoners and three
thousand dead on the field.
The news of the defeat at Rosbach came bursting on France like a clap of
thunder; the wrath, which first of all blazed out against Soubise, at whose
expense all the rhymesters were busy, was reflected upon the king and
Madame de Pompadour.

“With lamp in hand, Soubise is heard to say
‘Why, where the devil can my army be?
I saw it hereabouts but yesterday:
Has it been taken? has it strayed from me?

I’m always losing-head and all, I know:
But wait till daylight, twelve o’clock or so!
What do I see? O, heavens, my heart’s aglow:
Prodigious luck! Why, there it is, it is!
Eh! ventrebleu, what in the world is this?
I must have been mistaken—it’s the foe.’”

Frederick II. had renovated affairs and spirits in Germany; the day after
Rosbach, he led his troops into Silesia against Prince Charles of Lorraine,
who had just beaten the Duke of Bevern; the King of Prussia’s lieutenants
were displeased and disquieted at such audacity. He assembled a council of
war, and then, when he had expounded his plans, “Farewell, gentlemen,”
said be; “we shall soon have beaten the enemy, or we shall have looked on
one another for the last time.” On the 3d of December the Austrians were
beaten at Lissa, as the French had been at Rosbach, and Frederick II.
became the national hero of Germany; the Protestant powers, but lately
engaged, to their sorrow, against him, made up to the conqueror; admiration
for him permeated even the French army. “At Paris,” wrote D’Alembert to
Voltaire, “everybody’s head is turned about the King of Prussia; five months
ago he was trailed in the mire.”
“Cabinet-generals,” says Duclos, “greedy of money, inexperienced and
presumptuous; ignorant, jealous, or ill-disposed ministers; subalterns lavish
of their blood on the battle-field and crawling at court before the
distributors of favors—such are the instruments we employed. The small
number of those who had not approved of the treaty of Versailles declared
loudly against it; after the campaign of 1757, those who had regarded it as a
masterpiece of policy, forgot or disavowed their eulogies, and the bulk of
the public, who cannot be decided by anything but the event, looked upon it
as the source of all our woes.” The counsels of Abbe de Bernis had for some
time past been pacific; from a court-abbe, elegant and glib, he had become,
on the 25th of June, minister of foreign affairs. But Madame de Pompadour
remained faithful to the empress. In the month of January, 1758, Count
Clermont was appointed general-in-chief of the army of Germany. In
disregard of the convention of Closter-Severn, the Hanoverian troops had
just taken the field again under the orders of the Grand-Duke Ferdinand of
Brunswick; he had already recovered possession of the districts of
Luneberg, Zell, a part of Brunswick and of Bremen. In England, Mr. Pitt,
afterwards Lord Chatham, had again come into office; the King of Prussia
could henceforth rely upon the firmest support from Great Britain.

He had need of it. A fresh invasion of Russians, aided by the savage
hordes of the Zaporoguian Cossacks, was devastating Prussia; the
sanguinary battle of Zorndorf, forcing them to fall back on Poland,
permitted Frederick to hurry into Saxony, which was attacked by the
Austrians. General Daun surprised and defeated him at Hochkirch; in spite
of his inflexible resolution, the King of Prussia was obliged to abandon
Saxony. His ally and rival, Ferdinand of Brunswick, had just beaten Count
Clermont at Crevelt.
The new commander-in-chief of the king’s armies, prince of the blood,
brother of the late Monsieur le Duc, abbot commendatory of St. Germain-
des-Pres, “general of the Benedictines,”, as the soldiers said, had brought
into Germany, together with the favor of Madame de Pompadour, upright
intentions, a sincere desire to restore discipline, and some great illusions
about himself. “I am very impatient, I do assure you, to be on the other side
of the Rhine,” wrote Count Clermont to Marshal Belle-Isle; “all the country
about here is infested by runaway soldiers, convalescents, camp-followers,
all sorts of understrappers, who commit fearful crimes. Not a single officer
does his duty; they are the first to pillage; all the army ought to be put under
escort and in detachments, and then there would have to be escorts for those
escorts. I hang, I imprison; but, as we march by cantonments and the
regimental (particuliers) officers are the first to show a bad example, the
punishments are neither sufficiently known nor sufficiently seen.
Everything smacks of indiscipline, of disgust at the king’s service, and of
asperity towards one’s self. I see with pain that it will be indispensable to
put in practice the most violent and the harshest measures.” The king’s
army, meanwhile, was continuing to fall back; a general outcry arose at
Paris against the general’s supineness. On the 23d of June he was surprised
by Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick in the strong position of Crevelt, which he
had occupied for two days past; the reserves did not advance in time, orders
to retreat were given too soon, the battle was lost without disaster and
without any rout; the general was lost as well as the battle. “It is certain,”
says the Marquis of Vogel, in his narrative of the affair, “that Count
Clermont was at table in his headquarters of Weschelen at one o’clock, that
he had lost the battle before six, arrived at Reuss at half past ten, and went
to bed at midnight; that is doing a great deal in a short time.” The Count of
Gisors, son of Marshal Belle-Isle, a young officer of the greatest promise,
had been killed at Crevelt; Count Clermont was superseded by the Marquis

of Contades. The army murmured; they had no confidence in their leaders.
At Versailles, Abbe de Bernis, who had lately become a cardinal, paid by
his disgrace for the persistency he had shown in advising peace. He was
chatting with M. de Stahrenberg, the Austrian ambassador, when he
received a letter from the king, sending him off to his abbey of St. Medard
de Soissons. He continued the conversation without changing countenance,
and then, breaking off the conversation just as the ambassador was
beginning to speak of business. “It is no longer to me, sir,” he said, “that
you must explain yourself on these great topics; I have just received my
dismissal from his Majesty.” With the same coolness he quitted the court
and returned, pending his embassy to Rome, to those elegant intellectual
pleasures which suited him better than the crushing weight of a ministry in
disastrous times, under an indolent and vain-minded monarch, who was
governed by a woman as headstrong as she was frivolous and depraved.
Madame de Pompadour had just procured for herself a support in her
obstinate bellicosity. Cardinal Bernis was superseded in the ministry of
foreign affairs by Count Stainville, who was created Duke of Choiseul.
After the death of Marshal Belle-Isle he exchanged the office for that of
minister of war; with it he combined the ministry of the marine. The foreign
affairs were intrusted to the Duke of Praslin, his cousin. The power rested
almost entirely in the hands of the Duke of Choiseul. Of high birth, clever,
bold, ambitious, he had but lately aspired to couple the splendor of
successes in the fashionable world with the serious preoccupations of
politics; his marriage with Mdlle. Crozat, a wealthy heiress, amiable and
very much smitten with him, had strengthened his position. Elevated to the
ministry by Madame de Pompadour, and as yet promoting her views, he
nevertheless gave signs of an independent spirit and a proud character,
capable of exercising authority firmly in the presence and the teeth of all
obstacles. France hoped to find once more in M. de Choiseul a great
minister; nor were her hopes destined to be completely deceived.
A new and secret treaty had just riveted the alliance between France and
Austria. M. de Choiseul was at the same time dreaming of attacking
England in her own very home, thus dealing her the most formidable of
blows. The preparations were considerable. M. de Soubise was recalled
from Germany to direct the army of invasion. He was to be seconded in his
command by the Duke of Aiguillon, to whom, rightly or wrongly, was
attributed the honor of having repulsed in the preceding year an attempt of

the English at a descent upon the coasts of Brittany. The expedition was
ready, there was nothing to wait for save the moment to go out of port, but
Admiral Hawke was cruising before Brest; it was only in the month of
November, 1759, that the marquis of Conflans, who commanded the fleet,
could put to sea with twenty-one vessels. Finding himself at once pursued
by the English squadron, he sought shelter in the difficult channels at the
mouth of the Vilaine. The English dashed in after him. A partial
engagement, which ensued, was unfavorable; and the commander of the
French rear-guard, M. St. Andre du Verger, allowed himself to be knocked
to pieces by the enemy’s guns in order to cover the retreat. The admiral ran
ashore in the Bay of Le Croisic and burned his own vessel; seven ships
remained blockaded in the Vilaine. M. de Conflans’ job, as the sailors called
it at the time, was equivalent to a battle lost without the chances and the
honor of the struggle. The English navy was triumphant on every sea, and
even in French waters.
The commencement of the campaign of 1759 had been brilliant in
Germany; the Duke of Broglie had successfully repulsed the attack made by
Ferdinand of Brunswick on his positions at Bergen; the prince had been
obliged to retire. The two armies, united under M. de Contades, invaded
Hesse and moved upon the Weser; they were occupying Minden when Duke
Ferdinand threw himself upon them on the 1st of August. The action of the
two French generals was badly combined, and the rout was complete. It was
the moment of Canada’s last efforts, and the echo of that glorious death-
rattle reached even to Versailles. The Duke of Choiseul had, on the 19th of
February, replied to a desperate appeal from Montcalm, “I am very sorry to
have to send you word that you must not expect any re-enforcements. To
say nothing of their increasing the dearth of provisions of which you have
had only too much experience hitherto, there would be great fear of their
being intercepted by the English on the passage, and, as the king could
never send you aid proportionate to the forces which the English are in a
position to oppose to you, the efforts made here to procure it for you would
have no other effect than to rouse the ministry in London to make still more
considerable ones in order to preserve the superiority it has acquired in that
part of the continent.” The necessity for peace was, beginning to be
admitted even, in Madame de Pompadour’s little cabinets.
Maria Theresa, however, was in no hurry to enter into negotiations; her
enemy seemed to be bending at last beneath the weight of the double

Austrian and Russian attack. At one time Frederick had thought that he saw
all Germany rallying round him; now, beaten and cantoned in Saxony, with
the Austrians in front of him, during the winter of 1760, he was everywhere
seeking alliances and finding himself everywhere rejected. “I have but two
allies left,” he would say, “valor and perseverance.” Repeated victories,
gained at the sword’s point, by dint of boldness and in the extremity of
peril, could not even protect Berlin. The capital of Prussia found itself
constrained to open its gates to the enemy, on the sole condition that the
regiments of Cossacks should not pass the line of enclosure. When the
regular troops withdrew, the generals had not been able to prevent the city
from being pillaged. The heroic efforts of the King of Prussia ended merely
in preserving to him a foothold in Saxony. The Russians occupied Poland.
Marshal Broglie, on becoming general-in-chief of the French army, had
succeeded in holding his own in Hesse; he frequently made Hanover
anxious. To turn his attention elsewhither and in hopes of deciding the
French to quit Germany, the hereditary Prince of Brunswick attempted a
diversion on the Lower Rhine; he laid siege to Wesel, whilst the English
were preparing for a descent at Antwerp. Marshal Broglie detached M. de
Castries to protect the city. The French corps had just arrived; it was
bivouacking. On the night between the 15th and 16th of October, Chevalier
d’Assas, captain in the regiment of Auvergne, was sent to reconnoitre. He
had advanced some distance from his men, and happened to stumble upon a
large force of the enemy. The Prince of Brunswick was preparing to attack.
All the muskets covered the young captain. “Stir, and thou’rt a dead man,”
muttered threatening voices. Without replying, M. d’Assas collected all his
strength and shouted, “Auvergne! Here are the foe!” At the same instant he
fell pierced by twenty balls. [Accounts differ; but this is the tradition of the
Assas family.] The action thus begun was a glorious one. The hereditary
prince was obliged to abandon the siege of Wesel and to recross the Rhine.
The French divisions maintained their positions.

The war went on as bloodily as monotonously and fruitlessly, but the face
of Europe had lately altered. The old King George II., who died on the 25th
of September, 1760, had been succeeded on the throne of England by his
grandson, George III., aged twenty-two, the first really native sovereign
who had been called to reign over England since the fall of the Stuarts.
George I. and George II. were Germans, in their feelings and their manners
as well as their language; the politic wisdom of the English people had put
up with them, but not without effort and ill-humor; the accession of the
young king was greeted with transport. Pitt still reigned over Parliament
and over England, governing a free country sovereign-masterlike. His
haughty prejudice against France still ruled all the decisions of the English
government, but Lord Bute, the young monarch’s adviser, was already
whispering pacific counsels destined ere long to bear fruit. Pitt’s dominion

was tottering when the first overtures of peace arrived in London. The Duke
of Choiseul proposed a congress. He at the same time negotiated directly
with England. Whilst Pitt kept his answer waiting, an English squadron
blockaded Belle-Isle, and the governor, M. de Sainte-Croix, left without
relief, was forced to capitulate after an heroic resistance. When the
conditions demanded by England were at last transmitted to Versailles, the
English flag was floating over the citadel of Belle-Isle, the mouth of the
Loire and of the Vilaine was blockaded. The arrogant pretensions of Mr. Pitt
stopped at nothing short of preserving the conquests of England in both
hemispheres; he claimed, besides, the demolition of Dunkerque “as a
memorial forever of the yoke imposed upon France.” Completely
separating the interests of England from those of the German allies, he did
not even reply to the proposals of M. de Choiseul as to the evacuation of
Hesse and Hanover. Mistress of the sea, England intended to enjoy alone
the fruits of her victories.

The parleys were prolonged, and M. de Choiseul seemed to be resigned
to the bitterest pill of concession, when a new actor came upon the scene of
negotiation; France no longer stood isolated face to face with triumphant
England. The younger branch of the house of Bourbon cast into the scale
the weight of its two crowns and the resources of its navy.
The King of Spain, Ferdinand VI., who died on the 10th of August, 1759,
had not left any children. His brother, Charles III., King of Naples, had
succeeded him. He brought to the throne of Spain a more lively intelligence
than that of the deceased king, a great aversion for England, of which he
had but lately had cause to complain, and the traditional attachment of his

race to the interests and the glory of France. The Duke of Choiseul managed
to take skilful advantage of this disposition. At the moment when Mr. Pitt
was haughtily rejecting the modest ultimatum of the French minister, the
treaty between France and Spain, known by the name of Family Pact, was
signed at Paris (August 15,
1761).
Never had closer alliance been concluded between the two courts, even at
the time when Louis XIV. placed his grandson upon the throne of Spain. It
was that intimate union between all the branches of the house of Bourbon
which had but lately been the great king’s conception, and which had cost
him so many efforts and so much blood; for the first time it was becoming
favorable to France; the noble and patriotic idea of M. de Choiseul found an
echo in the soul of the King of Spain; the French navy, ruined and
humiliated, the French colonies, threatened and all but lost, found faithful
support in the forces of Spain, recruited as they were. by a long peace. The
King of the Two Sicilies and the Infante Duke of Parma entered into the
offensive and defensive alliance, but it was not open to any other power in
Europe to be admitted to this family union, cemented by common interests
more potent and more durable than the transitory combinations of policy. In
all the ports of Spain ships were preparing to put to sea. Charles III. had
undertaken to declare war against the English if peace were not concluded
before the 1st of May, 1762. France promised in that case to cede to him the
Island of Minorca.
All negotiations with England were broken off; on the 20th of September,
Mr. Pitt recalled his ambassador; this was his last act of power and
animosity; he at the same time proposed to the council of George III. to
include Spain forthwith in the hostilities. Lord Bute opposed this; he was
supported by the young king as well as by the majority of the ministers. Pitt
at once sent in his resignation, which was accepted. Lord Bute and the
Tories came into power. Though more moderate in their intentions, they
were as yet urged forward by popular violence, and dared not suddenly alter
the line of conduct. The family pact had raised the hopes—always an easy
task—of France, the national impulse inclined towards the amelioration of
the navy; the estates of Languedoc were the first in the field, offering the
king a ship of war; their example was everywhere followed; sixteen ships,
first-rates, were before long in course of construction, a donation from the

great political or financial bodies; there were, besides, private subscriptions
amounting to thirteen millions; the Duke of Choiseul sought out
commanders even amongst the mercantile marine, and everywhere showed
himself favorable to blue officers, as the appellation then was of those
whose birth excluded them from the navy corps; the knowledge of the
nobly born often left a great deal to be desired, whatever may have been
their courage and devotion. This was a last generous effort on behalf of the
shreds of France’s perishing colonies. The English government did not give
it time to bear fruit; in the month of January, 1762, it declared war against
Spain. Before the year had rolled by, Cuba was in the hands of the English,
the Philippines were ravaged and the galleons laden with Spanish gold
captured by British ships. The unhappy fate of France had involved her
generous ally. The campaign attempted against Portugal, always hand in
hand with England, had not been attended with any result. Martinique had
shared the lot of Guadaloupe, lately conquered by the English after an
heroic resistance. Canada and India had at last succumbed. War dragged its
slow length along in Germany. The brief elevation of the young czar, Peter
III., a passionate admirer of the great Frederick, had delivered the King of
Prussia from a dangerous enemy, and promised to give him an ally equally
trusty and potent. France was exhausted, Spain discontented and angry;
negotiations recommenced, on what disastrous conditions for the French
colonies in both hemispheres has already been remarked; in Germany the
places and districts occupied by France were to be restored; Lord Bute, like
his great rival, required the destruction of the port of Dunkerque.
This was not enough for the persistent animosity of Pitt. The
preliminaries of peace had been already signed at Fontainebleau on the 3d
of November, 1762: when they were communicated to Parliament, the
fallen minister, still the nation’s idol and the real head of the people, had
himself carried to the House of Commons. He was ill, suffering from a
violent attack of gout; two of his friends led him with difficulty to his place,
and supported him during his long speech; being exhausted, he sat down
towards the end, contrary to all the usages of the House, without, however,
having once faltered in his attacks upon a peace too easily made, of which it
was due to him that England was able to dictate the conditions. “It is as a
maritime power,” he exclaimed, “that France is chiefly if not exclusively
formidable to us;” and the ardor of his spirit restored to his enfeebled voice
the dread tones which Parliament and the nation had been wont to hear

“what we gain in this respect is doubly precious from the loss that results to
her. America, sir, was conquered in Germany. Now you are leaving to
France a possibility of restoring her navy.”
The peace was signed, however, not without ill humor on the part of
England, but with a secret feeling of relief; the burdens which weighed
upon the country had been increasing every year. In 1762, Lord Bute had
obtained from Parliament four hundred and fifty millions (eighteen million
pounds) to keep up the war. “I wanted the peace to be a serious and a
durable one,” said the English minister in reply to Pitt’s attacks; “if we had
increased our demands, it would have been neither the one nor the other.”
M. de Choiseul submitted in despair to the consequences of the long-
continued errors committed by the government of Louis XV. “Were I
master,” said he, “we would be to the English what Spain was to the Moors;
if this course were taken, England would be destroyed in thirty years from
now.” The king was a better judge of his weakness and of the general
exhaustion. “The peace we have just made is neither a good one nor a
glorious one; nobody sees that better than I,” he said in his private
correspondence; “but, under such unhappy circumstances, it could not be
better, and I answer for it that if we had continued the war, we should have
made, a still worse one next year.” All the patriotic courage and zeal of the
Duke of Choiseul, all the tardy impulse springing from the nation’s
anxieties, could not suffice even to palliate the consequences of so many
years’ ignorance, feebleness, and incapacity in succession.
Prussia and Austria henceforth were left to confront one another, the only
actors really interested in the original struggle, the last to quit the battle-
field on to which they had dragged their allies. By an unexpected turn of
luck, Frederick II. had for a moment seen Russia becoming his ally; a fresh
blow came to wrest from him this powerful support. The Czarina Catherine
II., Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst and wife of the Czar Peter III., being on bad
terms with her husband and in dread of his wrath, had managed to take
advantage of the young czar’s imprudence in order to excite a mutiny
amongst the soldiers; he had been deposed, and died before long in prison.
Catherine was proclaimed in his place. With her accession to the throne
there commenced for Russia a new policy, equally bold and astute, having
for its sole aim, unscrupulously and shamelessly pursued, the
aggrandizement and consolidation of the imperial power; Russia became

neutral in the strife between Prussia and Austria. The two sovereigns, left
without allies and with their dominions drained of men and money, agreed
to a mutual exchange of their conquests; the boundaries of their territories
once more became as they had been before the Seven Years’ War. Frederick
calculated at more than eight hundred thousand men the losses caused to the
belligerents by this obstinate and resultless struggle, the fruit of wicked
ambition or culpable weaknesses on the part of governments. Thanks to the
indomitable energy and the equally zealous and unscrupulous ability of the
man who had directed her counsels during the greater part of the war,
England alone came triumphant out of the strife. She had won India forever;
and, for some years at least, civilized America, almost in its entirety, obeyed
her laws. She had won what France had lost, not by superiority of arms, or
even of generals, but by the natural and proper force of a free people, ably
and liberally governed.
The position of France abroad, at the end of the Seven Years’ War, was as
painful as it was humiliating; her position at home was still more serious,
and the deep-lying source of all the reverses which had come to overwhelm
the French. Slowly lessened by the faults and misfortunes of King Louis
XIV.‘s later years, the kingly authority, which had fallen, under Louis XV.,
into hands as feeble as they were corrupt, was ceasing to inspire the nation
with the respect necessary for the working of personal power: public
opinion was no longer content to accuse the favorite and the ministers; it
was beginning to make the king responsible for the evils suffered and
apprehended. People waited in vain for a decision of the crown to put a stop
to the incessantly renewed struggles between the Parliament and the clergy.
Disquieted at one and the same time by the philosophical tendencies which
were beginning to spread in men’s minds, and by the comptroller-general
Machault’s projects for exacting payment of the imposts upon ecclesiastical
revenues, the Archbishop of Paris, Christopher de Beaumont, and the
Bishop of Mirepoix, Boyer, who was in charge of the benefice-list,
conceived the idea of stifling these dangerous symptoms by an imprudent
recourse to the spiritual severities so much dreaded but lately by the people.
Several times over, the last sacraments were denied to the dying who had
declined to subscribe to the bull Unigenitus, a clumsy measure, which was
sure to excite public feeling and revive the pretensions of the Parliaments to
the surveillance, in the last resort, over the government of the church;
Jansenism, fallen and persecuted, but still living in the depths of souls,

numbered amongst the ranks of the magistracy, as well as in the University
of Paris, many secret partisans; several parish-priests had writs of personal
seizure issued against them, and their goods were confiscated. Decrees
succeeded decrees; in spite of the king’s feeble opposition the struggle was
extending and reaching to the whole of France. On the 22d of February,
1753, the Parliament of Paris received orders to suspend all the proceedings
they had commenced on the ground of refusals of the sacraments; the king
did not consent even to receive the representations. By the unanimous vote
of the hundred and fifty-eight members sitting on the Court, Parliament
determined to give up all service until the king should be pleased to listen.
“We declare,” said the representation, “that our zeal is boundless, and that
we feel sufficient courage to fall victims to our fidelity. The Court could not
serve without being wanting to their duties and betraying their oaths.”
Indolent and indifferent as he was, King Louis XV. acted as seldom and
as slowly as he could; he did not like strife, and gladly saw the belligerents
exhausting against one another their strength and their wrath; on principle,
however, and from youthful tradition, he had never felt any liking for the
Parliaments. “The long robes and the clergy are always at daggers drawn,”
he would say to Madame de Pompadour “they drive me distracted with
their quarrels, but I detest the long robes by far the most. My clergy, at
bottom, are attached to me and faithful to me; the others would like to put
me in tutelage. . . . They will end by ruining the state; they are a pack of
republicans. . . . However, things will last my time, at any rate.” Severe
measures against the Parliament were decided upon in council. Four
magistrates were arrested and sent to fortresses; all the presidents,
councillors of inquests and of requests, were exiled; the grand chamber,
which alone was spared, refused to administer justice. Being transferred to
Pontoise, it persisted in its refusal. It was necessary to form a King’s
Chamber, installed at the Louvre; all the inferior jurisdictions refused to
accept its decrees. After a year’s strife, the Parliament returned in triumph
to Paris in the month of August, 1754; the clergy received orders not to
require from the dying any theological adhesion. Next year, the Archbishop
of Paris, who had paid no attention to the prohibition, was exiled in his turn.
Thus, by mutually weakening each other, the great powers and the great
influences in the state were wasting away; the reverses of the French arms,
the loss of their colonies, and the humiliating peace of Paris aggravated the
discontent. In default of good government the people are often satisfied

with glory. This consolation, to which the French nation had but lately been
accustomed, failed it all at once; mental irritation, for a long time silently
brooding, cantoned in the writings of philosophers and in the quatrains of
rhymesters, was beginning to spread and show itself amongst the nation; it
sought throughout the state an object for its wrath; the powerful society of
the Jesuits was the first to bear all the brunt of it.
A French Jesuit, Father Lavalette, had founded a commercial house at
Martinique. Ruined by the war, he had become bankrupt to the extent of
three millions; the order having refused to pay, it was condemned by the
Parliament to do so. The responsibility was declared to extend to all the
members of the Institute, and public opinion triumphed over the
condemnation with a “quasi-indecent” joy, says the advocate Barbier. Nor
was it content with this legitimate satisfaction. One of the courts which had
until lately been most devoted to the Society of Jesus had just set an
example of severity. In 1759, the Jesuits had been driven from Portugal by
the Marquis of Pombal, King Joseph I.‘s all-powerful minister; their goods
had been confiscated, and their principal, Malagrida, handed over to the
Inquisition, had just been burned as a heretic (Sept. 20, 1761).
The Portuguese Jesuits had been feebly defended by the grandees; the
clergy were hostile to them. In France, their enemies showed themselves
bolder than their defenders. Proudly convinced of the justice of their cause,
the Fathers had declined the jurisdiction of the grand council, to which they
had a right, as all ecclesiastical bodies had, and they had consented to hand
over to the Parliament the registers of their constitutions, up to that time
carefully concealed from the eyes of the profane. The skilful and clear-
sighted hostility of the magistrates was employed upon the articles of this
code, so stringently framed of yore by enthusiastic souls and powerful
minds, forgetful or disdainful of the sacred rights of human liberty. All the
services rendered by the Jesuits to the cause of religion and civilization
appeared effaced; forgotten were their great missionary enterprises, their
founders and their martyrs, in order to set forth simply their insatiable
ambition, their thirst after power, their easy compromises with evil passions
condemned by the Christian faith. The assaults of the philosophers had
borne their fruit in the public mind; the olden rancor of the Jansenists
imperceptibly promoted the severe inquiry openly conducted by the
magistrates. Madame de Pompadour dreaded the influence of the Jesuits;
religious fears might at any time be aroused again in the soul of Louis XV.

The dauphin, who had been constantly faithful to them, sought in vain to
plead their cause with the king. He had attacked the Duke of Choiseul; the
latter so far forgot himself, it is asserted, as to say to the prince, “Sir, I may
have the misfortune to be your subject, but I will never be your servant.”
The minister had hitherto maintained a prudent reserve; he henceforth
joined the favorite and the Parliament against the Jesuits.
On the 6th of August, 1761, the Parliament of Paris delivered a decree
ordering the Jesuits to appear at the end of a year for the definite judgment
upon their constitutions; pending the judicial decision, all their colleges
were closed. King Louis XV. still hesitated, from natural indolence and
from remembrance of Cardinal Fleury’s maxims. “The Jesuits,” the old
minister would often say, “are bad masters, but you can make them useful
tools.” An ecclesiastical commission was convoked; with the exception of
the Bishop of Soissons, the prelates all showed themselves favorable to the
Jesuits and careless of the old Gallican liberties. On their advice, the king
sent a proposal to Rome for certain modifications in the constitutions of the
order. Father Ricci, general of the Jesuits, answered haughtily, “Let them be
as they are, or not be” (Sint ut sunt, aut non sint). Their enemies in France
accepted the challenge. On the 6th of August, 1762, a decree of the
Parliament of Paris, soon confirmed by the majority of the sovereign courts,
declared that there was danger (abus) in the bulls, briefs, and constitutions
of the Society, pronounced its dissolution, forbade its members to wear the
dress and to continue living in common under the sway of the general and
other superiors. Orders were given to close all the Jesuit houses. The
principle of religious liberty, which had been so long ignored, and was at
last beginning to dawn on men’s minds, was gaining its first serious victory
by despoiling the Jesuits in their turn of that liberty for the long-continued
wrongs whereof they were called to account. A strange and striking reaction
in human affairs; the condemnation of the Jesuits was the precursory sign of
the violence and injustice which were soon to be committed in the name of
the most sacred rights and liberties, long violated with impunity by arbitrary
power.
Vaguely and without taking the trouble to go to the bottom of his
impression, Louis XV. felt that the Parliaments and the philosophers were
dealing him a mortal blow whilst appearing to strike the Jesuits; he stood
out a long while, leaving the quarrel to become embittered and public
opinion to wax wroth at his indecision. “There is a hand to mouth

administration,” said an anonymous letter addressed to the king and
Madame de Pompadour, “but there is no longer any hope of government. A
time will come when the people’s eyes will be opened, and peradventure
that time is approaching.”
The persistency of the Duke of Choiseul carried the day at last; an edict
of December, 1764, declared that “the Society no longer existed in France,
that it would merely be permitted to those who composed it to live privately
in the king’s dominions, under the spiritual authority of the local ordinaries,
whilst conforming to the laws of the realm.” Four thousand Jesuits found
themselves affected by this decree; some left France, others remained still
in their families, assuming the secular dress. “It will be great fun to see
Father Perusseau turned abbe,” said Louis XV. as he signed the fatal edict.
“The Parliaments fancy they are serving religion by this measure,” wrote
D’Alembert to Voltaire, “but they are serving reason without any notion of
it; they are the, executioners on behalf of philosophy, whose orders they are
executing without knowing it.” The destruction of the Jesuits served neither
religion nor reason, for it was contrary to justice as well as to liberty; it was
the wages and the bitter fruit of a long series of wrongs and iniquities
committed but lately, in the name of religion, against justice and liberty.
Three years later, in 1767, the King of Spain, Charles III., less moderate
than the government of Louis XV., expelled with violence all the members
of the Society of Jesus from his territory, thus exciting the Parliament of
Paris to fresh severities against the French Jesuits, and, on the 20th of July,
1773, the court of Rome itself, yielding at last to pressure from nearly all
the sovereigns of Europe, solemnly pronounced the dissolution of the
Order. “Recognizing that the members of this Society have not a little
troubled the Christian commonwealth, and that for the welfare of
Christendom it were better that the Order should disappear.” The last houses
still offering shelter to the Jesuits were closed; the general, Ricci, was
imprisoned at the castle of St. Angelo, and the Society of Jesus, which had
been so powerful for nearly three centuries, took refuge in certain distant
lands, seeking in oblivion and silence fresh strength for the struggle which
it was one day to renew.
The Parliaments were triumphant, but their authority, which seemed
never to have risen so high or penetrated so far in the government of the
state, was already tottering to its base. Once more the strife was about to

begin between the kingly power and the magistracy, whose last victory was
destined to scarcely precede its downfall. The financial embarrassments of
the state were growing more serious every day; to the debts left by the
Seven Years’ War were added the new wants developed by the necessities of
commerce and by the progress of civilization. The Board of Works, a useful
institution founded by Louis XV., was everywhere seeing to the
construction of new roads, at the same time repairing the old ones; the
forced labor for these operations fell almost exclusively on the peasantry.
The Parliament of Normandy was one of the first to protest against “the
impositions of forced labor, and the levies of money which took place in the
district on pretext of repairs and maintenance of roads, without legal
authority.” “France is a land which devours its inhabitants,” cried the
Parliament of Paris. The Parliament of Pau refused to enregister the edicts;
the Parliament of Brittany joined the Estates in protesting against the Duke
of Aiguillon, the then governor, “the which hath made upon the liberties of
the province one of those assaults which are not possible save when the
crown believes itself to be secure of impunity.” The noblesse having yielded
in the states, the Parliament of Rennes gave in their resignation in a body.
Five of its members were arrested; at their head was the attorney-general,
M. de la Chalotais, author of a very remarkable paper against the Jesuits. It
was necessary to form at St. Malo a King’s Chamber to try the accused. M.
de Calonne, an ambitious young man, the declared foe of M. de la
Chalotais, was appointed attorney-general on the commission. He pretended
to have discovered grave facts against the accused; he was suspected of
having invented them. Public feeling was at its height; the magistrates
loudly proclaimed the theory of Classes, according to which all the
Parliaments of France, responsible one for another, formed in reality but
one body, distributed by delegation throughout the principal towns of the
realm. The king convoked a bed of justice, and, on the 2d of March, 1766,
he repaired to the Parliament of Paris. “What has passed in my Parliaments
of Pau and of Rennes has nothing to do with my other Parliaments,” said
Louis XV. in a firm tone, to which the ears of the Parliament were no longer
accustomed. “I have behaved in respect of those two courts as comported
with my authority, and I am not bound to account to anybody. I will not
permit the formation in my kingdom of an association which might reduce
to a confederacy of opposition the natural bond of identical duties and
common obligations, nor the introduction into the monarchy of an

imaginary body which could not but disturb its harmony. The magistracy
does not form a body or order separate from the three orders of the
kingdom; the magistrates are my officers. In my person alone resides the
sovereign power, of which the special characteristic is the spirit of counsel,
justice, and reason; it is from me alone that my courts have their existence
and authority. It is to me alone that the legislative power belongs, without
dependence and without partition. My people is but one with me, and the
rights and interests of the nation whereof men dare to make a body separate
from the monarch are necessarily united with my own, and rest only in my
hands.”
This haughty affirmation of absolute power, a faithful echo of Cardinal
Richelieu’s grand doctrines, succeeded for a while in silencing the
representations of the Parliaments; but it could not modify the course of
opinion, passionately excited in favor of M. de la Chalotais. On the 24th of
December, 1766, after having thrice changed the jurisdiction and the judges,
the king annulled the whole procedure by an act of his supreme authority.
“We shall have the satisfaction,” said the edict, “of finding nobody guilty,
and nothing will remain for us but to take such measures as shall appear
best adapted to completely restore and maintain tranquillity in a province
from which we have on so many occasions had proofs of zeal for our
service.” M. de la Chalotais and his comrades were exiled to Saintes. They
demanded a trial and a legal justification, which were refused. “It is enough
for them to know that their honor is intact,” the king declared. A Parliament
was imperfectly reconstructed at Rennes. “It is D’Aiguillon’s bailiff-court,”
was the contemptuous saying in Brittany. The governor had to be changed.
Under the administration of the Duke of Duras, the agitation subsided in the
province; the magistrates who had resigned resumed their seats; M. de la
Chalotais and his son, M. de Caradeuc, alone remained excluded by order
of the king. The restored Parliament immediately made a claim on their
behalf, accompanying the request with a formal accusation against the Duke
of Aiguillon. The states supported the Parliament. “What! sir,” said the
remonstrance; “they are innocent, and yet you punish them! It is a natural
right that nobody should be’ punished without a trial; we have property in
our honor, our lives, and our liberty, just as you have property in your
crown. We would spill our blood to preserve your rights; but, on your side,
preserve us ours. Sir, the province on its knees before you asks you for
justice.” A royal ordinance forbade any proceedings against the Duke of

Aiguillon, and enjoined silence on the parties. Parliament having persisted,
and declaring that the accusations against the Duke of Aiguillon attached
(entachaient) his honor, Louis XV., egged on by the chancellor, M. de
Maupeou, an ambitious, bold, bad man, repaired in person to the office, and
had all the papers relating to the procedure removed before his eyes. The
strife was becoming violent; the Duke of Choiseul, still premier—minister
but sadly shaken in the royal favor, disapproved of the severities employed
against the magistracy. All the blows dealt at the Parliaments recoiled upon
him.
King Louis XV. had taken a fresh step in the shameful irregularity of his
life; on the 15th of April, 1764, Madame de Pompadour had died, at the age
of forty-two, of heart disease. As frivolous as she was deeply depraved and
baseminded in her calculating easiness of virtue, she had more ambition
than comported with her mental calibre or her force of character; she had
taken it into her head to govern, by turns promoting and overthrowing the
ministers, herself proffering advice to the king, sometimes to good purpose,
but more often still with a levity as fatal as her obstinacy. Less clever, less
ambitious, but more potent than Madame de Pompadour over the faded
passions of a monarch aged before his time, the new favorite, Madame
Dubarry, made the least scrupulous blush at the lowness of her origin and
the irregularity of her life. It was, nevertheless, in her circle that the plot
was formed against the Duke of Choiseul. Bold, ambitious, restless,
presumptuous sometimes in his views and his hopes, the minister had his
heart too nearly in the right place and too proper a spirit to submit to either
the yoke of Madame Dubarry or that of the shameless courtiers who made
use of her influence. Chancellor Maupeou, the Duke of Aiguillou, and the
new comptroller- general, Abbe Terray, a man of capacity, invention, and no
scruple at all, at last succeeded in triumphing over the force of habit, the
only thing that had any real effect upon the king’s listless mind. After
twelve years’ for a long while undisputed power, after having held in his
hands the whole government of France and the peace of Europe, M. de
Choiseul received from the king on the 24th of December, 1770, a letter in
these terms:—
“Cousin, the dissatisfaction caused me by your services forces me to
banish you to Chanteloup, whither you will repair within twenty-four hours.
I should have sent you much further off, but for the particular regard I have
for Madame de Choiseul, in whose health I feel great interest. Take care

your conduct does not force me to alter my mind. Whereupon I pray God,
cousin, to have you in His holy and worthy keeping.”
The thunderbolt which came striking the Duke of Choiseul called forth a
fresh sign of the times. The fallen minister was surrounded in his disgrace
with marks of esteem and affection on the part of the whole court. The
princes themselves and the greatest lords felt it an honor to pay him a visit
at his castle of Chanteloup. He there displayed a magnificence which ended
by swallowing up his wife’s immense fortune, already much encroached
upon during his term of power. Nothing was too much for the proud
devotion and passionate affection of the Duchess of Choiseul: she declined
the personal favors which the king offered her, setting all her husband’s
friends the example of a fidelity which was equally honorable to them and
to him. Acute observers read a tale of the growing weakness of absolute
power in the crowd which still flocked to a minister in disgrace; the Duke
of Choiseul remained a power even during a banishment which was to last
as long as his life.
With M. de Choiseul disappeared the sturdiest prop of the Parliaments. In
vain had the king ordered the magistrates to resume their functions and
administer justice. “There is nothing left for your Parliament,” replied the
premier president, “but to perish with the laws, since the fate of the
magistrates should go with that of the state.” Madame Dubarry, on a hint
from her able advisers, had caused to be placed in her apartments a fine
portrait of Charles I. by Van Dyck. “France,” she was always reiterating to
the king with vulgar familiarity, “France, thy Parliament will cut off thy
head too!”

A piece of ignorant confusion, due even more to analogy of name than to
the generous but vain efforts often attempted by the French magistracy in
favor of sound doctrines of government. The Parliament of Paris fell sitting
upon curule chairs, like the old senators of Rome during the invasion of the
Gauls; the political spirit, the collected and combative ardor, the
indomitable resolution of the English Parliament, freely elected
representatives of a free people, were unknown to the French magistracy.
Despite the courage and moral, elevation it had so often shown, its strength
had been wasted in a constantly useless strife; it had withstood Richelieu
and Mazarin; already reduced to submission by Cardinal Fleury, it was
about to fall beneath the equally bold and skilful blows of Chancellor
Maupeou. Notwithstanding the little natural liking and the usual distrust he

felt for Parliaments, the king still hesitated. Madame Dubarry managed to
inspire him with fears for his person; and he yielded.
During the night between the 19th and 20th of January, 1771, musketeers
knocked at the doors of all the magistrates; they were awakened in the
king’s name, at the same time being ordered to say whether they would
consent to resume their service. No equivocation possible! No margin for
those developments of their ideas which are so dear to parliamentary minds!
It was a matter of signing yes or no. Surprised in their slumbers, but still
firm in their resolution of resistance, the majority of the magistrates signed
no. They were immediately sent into banishment; their offices were
confiscated. Those members of the Parliament from whom weakness or
astonishment had surprised a yes retracted as soon as they were assembled,
and underwent the same fate as their colleagues. On the 23d of January,
members delegated by the grand council, charged with the provisional
administration of justice, were installed in the Palace by the chancellor
himself. The registrar-in- chief, the ushers, the attorneys, declined or eluded
the exercise of their functions; the advocates did not come forward to plead.
The Court of Aids, headed by Lamoignon de Malesherbes, protested against
the attack made on the great bodies of the state. “Ask the nation themselves,
sir,” said the president, “to mark your displeasure with the Parliament of
Paris, it is proposed to rob them—themselves—of the essential rights of a
free people.” The Court of Aids was suppressed like the Parliament; six
superior councils, in the towns of Arras, Blois, Chalons-sur-Marne, Lyon,
Clermont, and Poitiers parcelled out amongst them the immense jurisdiction
of Paris; the members of the grand council, assisted by certain magistrates
of small esteem, definitively took the places of the banished, to whom
compensation was made for their offices. The king appeared in person on
the 13th of April, 1771, at the new Parliament; the chancellor read out the
edicts. “You have just heard my intentions,” said Louis XV.; “I desire that
they may be conformed to. I order you to commence your duties. I forbid
any deliberation contrary to my wishes and any representations in favor of
my former Parliament, for I shall never change.”
One single prince of the blood, the Count of La Marche, son of the Prince
of Conti, had been present at the bed of justice. All had protested against the
suppression of the Parliament. “It is one of the most useful boons for
monarchs and of those most precious to Frenchmen,” said the protest of the
princes, “to have bodies of citizens, perpetual and irremovable, avowed at

all times by the kings and the nation, who, in whatever form and under
whatever denomination they may have existed, concentrate in themselves
the general right of all subjects to invoke the law.” “Sir, by the law you are
king, and you cannot reign but by it,” said the Parliament of Dijon’s
declaration, drawn up by one of the mortarcap presidents (presidents a
mortier), the gifted president De Brosses. The princes were banished; the
provincial Parliaments, mutilated like that of Paris or suppressed like that of
Rouen, which was replaced by two superior councils, ceased to furnish a
centre for critical and legal opposition. Amidst the rapid decay of absolute
power, the transformation and abasement of the Parliaments by Chancellor
Maupeou were a skilful and bold attempt to restore some sort of force and
unity to the kingly authority. It was thus that certain legitimate claims had
been satisfied, the extent of jurisdictions had been curtailed, the salability of
offices had been put down, the expenses of justice had been lessened.
Voltaire had for a long time past been demanding these reforms, and he was
satisfied with them. “Have not the Parliaments often been persecuting and
barbarous?” he wrote; “I wonder that the Welches [i. e., Barbarians, as
Voltaire playfully called the French] should take the part of those insolent
and intractable cits.” He added, however, “Nearly all the kingdom is in a
boil and consternation; the ferment is as great in the provinces as in Paris
itself.”
The ferment subsided without having reached the mass of the nation; the
majority of the princes made it up with the court, the dispossessed
magistrates returned one after another to Paris, astonished and mortified to
see justice administered without them and advocates pleading before the
Maupeou Parliament. The chancellor had triumphed, and remained master;
all the old jurisdictions were broken up, public opinion was already
forgetting them; it was occupied with a question more important still than
the administration of justice. The ever-increasing disorder in the finances
was no longer checked by the enregistering of edicts; the comptroller-
general, Abbe Terray, had recourse shamelessly to every expedient of a bold
imagination to fill the royal treasury; it was necessary to satisfy the ruinous
demands of Madame Dubarry and of the depraved courtiers who thronged
about her. Successive bad harvests and the high price of bread still further
aggravated the position. It was known that the king had a taste for private
speculation; he was accused of trading in grain and of buying up the stores
required for feeding the people. The odious rumor of this famine pact, as

the bitter saying was, soon spread amongst the mob. Before its fall, the
Parliament of Rouen had audaciously given expression to these dark
accusations; it had ordered proceedings to be taken against the monopolists.
A royal injunction put a veto upon the prosecutions. “This prohibition from
the crown changes our doubts to certainty,” wrote the Parliament to the king
himself; “when we said that the monopoly existed and was protected, God
forbid, sir, that we should have had your Majesty in our eye, but possibly
we had some of those to whom you distribute your authority.” Silence was
imposed upon the Parliaments, but without producing any serious effect
upon public opinion, which attributed to the king the principal interest in a
great private concern bound to keep up a certain parity in the price of grain.
Contempt grew more and more profound; the king and Madame Dubarry by
their shameful lives, Maupeou and Abbe Terray by destroying the last
bulwarks of the public liberties, were digging with their own hands the
abyss in which the old French monarchy was about to be soon ingulfed.
For a long while pious souls had formed great hopes of the dauphin;
honest, scrupulous, sincerely virtuous, without the austerity and extensive
views of the Duke of Burgundy, he had managed to live aloof, without
intrigue and without open opposition, preserving towards the king an
attitude of often sorrowful respect, and all the while remaining the support
of the clergy and their partisans in their attempts and their aspirations. The
Queen, Mary Leczinska, a timid and proudly modest woman, resigned to
her painful situation, lived in the closest intimacy with her son, and still
more with her daughter-in-law, Mary Josepha of Saxony, though the
daughter of that elector who had but lately been elevated to the throne of
Poland, and had vanquished King Stanislaus. The sweetness, the tact, the
rare faculties of the dauphiness had triumphed over all obstacles. She had
three sons. Much reliance was placed upon the influence she had managed
to preserve with the king, and on the dominion she exercised over her
husband’s mind. In vain had the dauphin, distracted at the woes of France,
over and over again solicited from the king the honor of serving him at the
head of the army; the jealous anxiety of Madame de Pompadour was at one
with the cold indifference of Louis XV. as to leaving the heir to the throne
in the shade. The prince felt it deeply, in spite of his pious resignation. “A
dauphin,” he would say, “must needs appear a useless body, and a king
strive to be everybody” (un homme universel).

Whilst trying to beguile his tedium at the camp of Compiegne, the
dauphin, it is said, overtaxed his strength, and died at the age of thirty-six
on the 20th of December, 1765, profoundly regretted by the bulk of the
nation, who knew his virtues without troubling themselves, like the court
and the philosophers, about the stiffness of his manners and his complete
devotion to the cause of the clergy. The new dauphin, who would one day
be Louis XVI., was still a child; the king had him brought into his closet.
“Poor France!” he said sadly, “a king of fifty-five and a dauphin of eleven!”
The dauphiness and Queen Mary Leczinska soon followed the dauphin to
the tomb (1767-1768). The king, thus left alone and scared by the repeated
deaths around him, appeared for a while to be drawn closer to his daughters,
for whom he always retained some sort of affection, a mixture of weakness
and habit. One of them, Madame Louise, who was deeply pious, left him to
enter the convent of the Carmelites; he often went to see her, and granted
her all the favors she asked. But by this time Madame Dubarry had become
all-powerful; to secure to her the honors of presentation at court, the king
personally solicited the ladies with whom he was intimate in order to get
them to support his favorite on this new stage; when the youthful Marie
Antoinette, Archduchess of Austria, and daughter of Maria Theresa, whose
marriage the Duke of Choiseul had negotiated, arrived in France, in 1770,
to espouse the dauphin, Madame Dubarry appeared alone with the royal
family at the banquet given at La Muette on the occasion of the marriage.
After each reaction of religious fright and transitory repentance, after each
warning from God that snatched him for an instant from the depravity of his
life, the king plunged more deeply than before into shame. Madame
Dubarry was to reign as much as Louis XV.
Before his fall the Duke of Choiseul had made a last effort to revive
abroad that fortune of France which he saw sinking at home without his
being able to apply any effective remedy. He had vainly attempted to give
colonies once more to France by founding in French Guiana settlements
which had been unsuccessfully attempted by a Rouennese Company as
early as 1634. The enterprise was badly managed; the numerous colonists,
of very diverse origin and worth, were cast without resources upon a
territory as unhealthy as fertile. No preparations had been made to receive
them; the majority died of disease and want; New France henceforth
belonged to the English, and the great hopes which had been raised of
replacing it in Equinoctial France, as Guiana was named, soon vanished

never to return. An attempt made about the same epoch at St. Lucie was
attended with the same result. The great ardor and the rare aptitude for
distant enterprises which had so often manifested themselves in France
from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century seemed to be henceforth
extinguished. Only the colonies of the Antilles, which had escaped from the
misfortunes of war, and were by this time recovered from their disasters,
offered any encouragement to the patriotic efforts of the Duke of Choiseul.
He had been more fortunate in Europe than in the colonies: henceforth
Corsica belonged to France.
In spite of the French occupations, from 1708 to 1756, in spite of the
refusals with which Cardinal Fleury had but lately met their appeals, the
Corsicans, newly risen against the oppression of Genoa, had sent a
deputation to Versailles to demand the recognition of their republic, offering
to pay the tribute but lately paid annually to their tyrannical protectress.
The hero of Corsican independence, Pascal Paoli, secretly supported by
England, had succeeded for several years past not only in defending his
country’s liberty, but also in governing and at the same time civilizing it.
This patriotic soul and powerful mind, who had managed to profit by the
energetic passions of his compatriots whilst momentarily repressing their
intestine quarrels, dreamed of an ideal constitution for his island; he sent to
ask for one of J. J. Rousseau, who was still in Switzerland, and whom he
invited to Corsica. The philosophical chimeras of Paoli soon vanished
before a piece of crushing news. The Genoese, weary of struggling
unsuccessfully against the obstinate determination of the Corsicans, and
unable to clear off the debts which they had but lately incurred to Louis
XV., had proposed to M. de Choiseul to cede to France their ancient rights
over Corsica, as security for their liabilities. A treaty, signed at Versailles on
the 15th of May, 1768, authorized the king to perform all acts of
sovereignty in the places and forts of Corsica; a separate article accorded to
Genoa an indemnity of two millions.
A cry arose in Corsica. Paoli resolved to defend the independence of his
country against France, as he had defended it against Genoa. For several
months now French garrisons had occupied the places still submitting to
Genoa; when they would have extended themselves into the interior, Paoli
barred their passage; he bravely attacked M. de Chauvelin, the king’s
lieutenant-general, who had just landed with a proclamation from Louis XV.

to his new subjects. “The Corsican nation does not let itself be bought and
sold like a flock of sheep sent to market,” said the protest of the republic’s
Supreme Council. Fresh troops from France had to be asked for; under the
orders of Count Vaux they triumphed without difficulty over the Corsican
patriots. Mustering at the bridge of Golo for a last effort, they made a
rampart of their dead; the wounded had lain down amongst the corpses to
give the survivors time to effect their retreat. The town of Corte, the seat of
republican government, capitulated before long. England had supplied Paoli
with munitions and arms; he had hoped more from the promises of the
government and the national jealousy against France. “The ministry is too
weak and the nation too wise to make war on account of Corsica,” said an
illustrious judge, Lord Mansfield. In vain did Burke exclaim, “Corsica, as a
province of France, is for me an object of alarm!” The House of Commons
approved of the government’s conduct, and England contented herself with
offering to the vanquished Paoli a sympathetic hospitality; he left Corsica
on an English frigate, accompanied by most of his friends, and it is in
Westminster Abbey that he lies, after the numerous vicissitudes of his life,
which fluctuated throughout the revolutions of his native land, from
England to France and from France to England, to the day when Corsica,
proud of having given a master to France and the Revolution, became
definitively French with Napoleon.

Corsica was to be the last conquest of the old French monarchy. Great or
little, magnificent or insignificant, from Richelieu to the Duke of Choiseul,
France had managed to preserve her territorial acquisitions; in America and
in Asia, Louis XV. had shamefully lost Canada and the Indies; in Europe,
the diplomacy of his ministers had given to the kingdom Lorraine and
Corsica. The day of insensate conquests ending in a diminution of territory
had not yet come. In the great and iniquitous dismemberment which was
coming, France was to have no share.
Profound disquietude was beginning to agitate Europe: the King of
Poland, Augustus III., had died in 1763, leaving the unhappy country over
which he had reigned a prey to internal anarchy ever increasing and
systematically fanned by the avidity or jealousy of the great powers, its
neighbors. “As it is to the interest of the two monarchs of Russia and

Prussia that the Polish commonwealth should preserve its right to free
election of a king,” said the secret treaty concluded in 1764 between
Frederick II. and the Empress Catherine, “and that no family should possess
itself of the elective throne of that country, the two undermentioned
Majesties engage to prevent, by all means in their power, Poland from being
despoiled of its right of election and transformed into an hereditary
kingdom; they mutually promise to oppose in concert, and, if necessary, by
force of arms, all plans and designs which may tend thereto as soon as
discovered.”
A second article secured to the dissidents, as Protestants and Greeks were
called in Poland, the protection of the King of Prussia and of the empress,
“who will make every effort to persuade, by strong and friendly
representations, the king and the commonwealth of Poland to restore to
those persons the rights, privileges, and prerogatives they have acquired
there, and which have been accorded them in the past, as well in
ecclesiastical as in civil matters, but have since been, for the most part,
circumscribed or unjustly taken away. But, should it be impossible to attain
that end at once, the contracting parties will content themselves with seeing
that, whilst waiting for more favorable times and circumstances, the
aforesaid persons are put beyond reach of the wrongs and oppression under
which they are at present groaning.” In order to remain masters of Poland
and to prevent it from escaping the dissolution with which it was threatened
by its internal dissensions, Frederick and Catherine, who were secretly
pursuing different and often contrary courses, united to impose on the Diet
a native prince. “I and my ally the Empress of Russia,” said the King of
Prussia, “have agreed to promote the selection of a Piast (Pole), which
would be useful and at the same time glorious for the nation.” In vain had
Louis XV. by secret policy sought for a long while to pave the way for the
election of the Prince of Conti to the throne of Poland; the influence of
Russia and of Prussia carried the day. Prince Poniatowski, late favorite of
the Empress Catherine, was elected by the Polish Diet; in discouragement
and sadness, four thousand nobles only had responded to the letters of
convocation. The new king, Stanislaus Augustus, handsome, intelligent,
amiable, cultivated, but feeble in character and fatally pledged to Russia,
sought to rally round him the different parties, and to establish at last, in the
midst of general confusion, a regular and a strong government. He was
supported in this patriotic task by the influence, ever potent in Poland, of

the Czartoriskis. The far-seeing vigilance of Frederick II. did not give them
time to act. “Poland must be left in her lethargy,” he had said to the Russian
ambassador Saldern. “It is of importance,” he wrote to Catherine, “that Her
Majesty the empress, who knows perfectly well her own interests and those
of her friends and allies, should give orders of the most precise kind to her
ambassador at Warsaw, to oppose any novelty in the form of government,
and, generally speaking, the establishment of a permanent council, the
preservation of the commissions of war and of the treasury, the power of the
king and the unlimited concession on the prince’s part of ability to
distribute offices according to his sole will.” The useful reforms being thus
abandoned and the king’s feeble power radically shaken, religious discord
came to fill up the cup of disorder, and to pave the way for the
dismemberment, as well as definitive ruin, of unhappy Poland.
Subjected for a long time past to an increasing oppression, which was
encouraged by a fanatical and unenlightened clergy, the Polish dissidents
had conceived great hopes on the accession of Stanislaus Augustus; they
claimed not only liberty of conscience and of worship, but also all the civil
and political rights of which they were deprived. “It is no question of
establishing the free exercise of different religions in Poland,” wrote
Frederick to Catherine; “it is necessary to reduce the question to its true
issue, the demand of the dissident noblesse, and obtain for them the equality
they demand, together with participation in all acts of sovereignty.” This
was precisely what the clergy and the Catholic noblesse were resolved
never to grant. In spite of support from the empress and the King of Prussia,
the demand of the dissidents was formally rejected by the Diet of 1766. At
the Diet of 1767, Count Repnin, Catherine’s ambassador and the real head
of the government in Poland, had four of the most recalcitrant senators
carried off and sent into exile in Russia. The Diet, terrified, disorganized,
immediately pronounced in favor of the dissidents. By the modifications
recently introduced into the constitution of their country, the Polish nobles
had lost their liberum veto; unanimity of suffrages was no longer necessary
in the Diet; the foreign powers were able to insolently impose their will
upon it; the privileges of the noblesse, as well as their traditional faith, were
attacked at the very foundations; religious fanaticism and national
independence boiled up at the same time in every heart; the discontent,
secretly fanned by the agents of Frederick, burst out, sooner than the skilful
weavers of the plot could have desired, with sufficient intensity and

violence to set fire to the four corners of Poland. By a bold surprise the
confederates gained possession of Cracow and of the fortress of Barr, in
Podolia; there it was that they swore to die for the sacred cause of Catholic
Poland. For more than a century, in the face of many mistakes and many
misfortunes, the Poles have faithfully kept that oath.
The Bishop of Kaminck, Kraminski, had gone to Versailles to solicit the
support of France. The Duke of Choiseul, at first far from zealous in the
cause of the Polish insurrection, had nevertheless sent a few troops, who
were soon re-enforced. The Empress Catherine had responded to the
violence of the confederates of Barr by letting loose upon the Ukraine the
hordes of Zaporoguian Cossacks, speedily followed by regular troops. The
Poles, often beaten, badly led by chieftains divided amongst themselves, but
ever ardent, ever skilful in seizing upon the smallest advantages, were
sustained by the pious exhortations of the clergy, who regarded the war as a
crusade; they were rejoiced to see a diversion preparing in their favor by the
Sultan’s armaments. “I will raise the Turks against Russia the moment you
think proper,” was the assurance given to the Duke of Choiseul by the
Count of Vergennes, French ambassador at Constantinople, “but I warn you
that they will be beaten.” Hostilities broke out on the 30th of October, 1768;
a Turkish army set out to aid the Polish insurrection. Absorbed by their
patriotic passions, the Catholic confederates summoned the Mussulmans to
their assistance. Prince Galitzin, at the head of a Russian force very inferior
to the Ottoman invaders, succeeded in barring their passage; the Turks fell
back, invariably beaten by the Russian generals. Catherine at the same time
summoned to liberty the oppressed and persecuted Greeks; she sent a
squadron to support the rising which she had been fomenting for some
months past. After a few brilliant successes, her arms were less fortunate at
sea than on land. A French officer, of Hungarian origin, Baron Tott, sent by
the Duke of Choiseul to help the Sublime Porte, had fortified the Straits of
the Dardanelles; the Russians were repulsed; they withdrew, leaving the
Greeks to the vengeance of their oppressors. The efforts which the Empress
Catherine was making in Poland against the confederates of Barr had
slackened her proceedings against Turkey; she was nevertheless becoming
triumphant on the borders of the Vistula, as well as on the banks of the
Danube, when the far-sighted and bold policy of Frederick II. interfered in
time to prevent Russia from taking possession of Poland as well as of the
Ottoman empire.

Secretly favoring the confederates of Barr whom he had but lately
encouraged in their uprising, and whom he had suffered to make purchases
of arms and ammunition in Prussia, Frederick II. had sought in Austria a
natural ally, interested like himself in stopping the advances of Russia. The
Emperor, Maria Theresa’s husband, had died in 1764; his son, Joseph II.,
who succeeded him, had conceived for the King of Prussia the spontaneous
admiration of a young and ardent spirit for the most illustrious man of his
times. In 1769, a conference which took place at Neisse brought the two
sovereigns together. “The emperor is a man eaten up with ambition,” wrote
Frederick after the interview; “he is hatching some great design. At present,
restrained as he is by his mother, he is beginning to chafe at the yoke he
bears, and, as soon as he gets elbow-room, he will commence with some
‘startling stroke; it was impossible for me to discover whether his views
were directed towards the republic of Venice, towards Bavaria, towards
Silesia, or towards Lorraine; but we may rely upon it that Europe will be all
on fire the moment he is master.” A second interview, at Neustadt in 1770,
clinched the relations already contracted at Neisse. Common danger
brought together old enemies. “I am not going to have the Russians for
neighbors,” the Empress Maria Theresa was always repeating. The
devastating flood had to be directed, and at the same time stemmed. The
feeble goodwill of France and the small body of troops commanded by
Dumouriez were still supporting the Polish insurrection, but the Duke of
Choiseul had just succumbed to intrigue at home. There was no longer any
foreign policy in France. It was without fear of intervention from her that
the German powers began to discuss between them the partition of Poland.
She was at the same time suffering disseverment at her own hands
through her intestine divisions and the mutual jealousy of her chiefs. In
Warsaw the confederates had attempted to carry off King Stanislaus
Augustus, whom they accused of betraying the cause of the fatherland; they
had declared the throne vacant, and took upon themselves to found an
hereditary monarchy. To this supreme honor every great lord aspired, every
small army-corps acted individually and without concert with the
neighboring leaders. Only a detachment of French, under the orders of
Brigadier Choisi, still defended the fort of Cracow; General Suwarrow, who
was investing it, forced them to capitulate; they obtained all the honors of
war, but in vain was the Empress Catherine urged by D’Alembert and his
friends the philosophers to restore their freedom to the glorious vanquished;

she replied to them with pleasantries. Ere long the fate of Poland was about
to be decided without the impotent efforts of France in her favor weighing
for an instant in the balance. The political annihilation of Louis XV. in
Europe had been completed by the dismissal of the Duke of Choiseul.
The public conscience is lightened by lights which ability, even when
triumphant, can never altogether obscure. The Great Frederick and the
Empress Catherine have to answer before history for the crime of the
partition of Poland, which they made acceptable to the timorous jealousy of
Maria Theresa and to the youthful ambition of her son. As prudent as he
was audacious, Frederick had been for a long time paving the way for the
dismemberment of the country he had seemed to protect. Negotiations for
peace with the Turks became the pretext for war-indemnities. Poland,
vanquished, divided, had to pay the whole of them. “I shall not enter upon
the portion that Russia marks out for herself,” wrote Frederick to Count
Solms, his ambassador at St. Petersburg. “I have expressly left all that blank
in order that she may settle it according to her interests and her own good
pleasure. When the negotiations for peace have advanced to a certain stage
of consistency, it will no longer depend upon the Austrians to break them
off if we declare our views unanimously as to Poland. She cannot rely any
further upon France, which happens to be in such a fearful state of
exhaustion that it could not give any help to Spain, which was on the point
of declaring war against England. If that war do not take place, it must be
attributed simply to the smash in the finances of France. I guarantee, then,
to the Russians all that may happen to suit them; they will do as much for
me; and, supposing that the Austrians should consider their share of Poland
too paltry in comparison with ours, and it were desirable to satisfy them,
one would only have to offer them that strip of the Venetian dominions
which cuts them off from Trieste in order to keep them quiet; even if they
were to turn nasty, I will answer for it with my head that our union with
Russia, once clearly established, will tide them over all that we desire. They
have to do with two powers, and they have not a single ally to give them a
shoulder.”
Frederick said truly; his sound and powerful judgment took in the
position of Europe: France, exhausted by the lingering decay of her
government and in travail with new and confused elements which had as
yet no strength but to shatter and destroy; Spain, lured on by France and
then abandoned by her; England, disturbed at home by parliamentary

agitation, favorably disposed to the court of Russia and for a long while
allied to Frederick; Sweden and Denmark, in the throes of serious events;
there was nothing to oppose the iniquity projected and prepared for with so
much art and ability. It was in vain that the King of Prussia sought to turn
into a joke the unscrupulous manoeuvres of his diplomacy when he wrote to
D’Alembert in January, 1772, “I would rather undertake to put the whole
history of the Jews into madrigals than to cause to be of one mind three
sovereigns amongst whom must be numbered two women.” The
undertaking was already accomplished. Three months later, the first
partition of Poland had been settled between Russia, Prussia, and Austria,
and on the 2d of September, 1772, the treaty was made known at Warsaw.
The manifesto was short. “It is a general rule of policy,” Frederick had said,
“that, in default of unanswerable arguments, it is better to express one’s self
laconically, and not go beating about the bush.” The care of drawing it up
had been intrusted to Prince Kaunitz. “It was of importance,” said the
document, “to establish the commonwealth of Poland on a solid basis whilst
doing justice to the claims of the three powers for services rendered against
the insurrection.” The king and the senate protested. The troops of the allies
surrounded Warsaw, and the Diet, being convoked, ratified by a majority of
two voices the convention presented by the spoilers themselves. Catherine
assigned to herself three thousand square leagues, and one million five
hundred thousand souls, in Lithuania and Polish Livonia; Austria took
possession of two thousand five hundred square leagues, and more than two
million souls, in Red Russia and the Polish palatinates on the left of the
Vistula; the instigator and plotter of the whole business had been the most
modest of all; the treaty of partition brought Prussia only nine hundred
square leagues and eight hundred and sixty thousand souls, but he found
himself master of Prussian Poland and of a henceforth compact territory.
England had opposed, in Russia, the cession of Dantzick to the Great
Frederick. “The ill-temper of France and England at the dismemberment of
Poland calls for serious reflections,” wrote the King of Prussia on the 5th of
August, 1772: “these two courts are already moving heaven and earth to
detach the court of Vienna from our system; but as the three chief points
whence their support should come are altogether to seek in France, and
there is neither system, nor stability, nor money there, her projects will be
given up with the same facility with which they were conceived and

broached. They appear to me, moreover, like the projects of the Duke of
Aiguillon, ebullitions of French vivacity.”
France did not do anything, and could not do anything; the king’s secret
negotiators, as well as the minister of foreign affairs, had been tricked by
the allied powers. “Ah! if Choiseul had been here!” exclaimed King Louis
XV., it is said, when he heard of the partition of Poland. The Duke of
Choiseul would no doubt have been more clear-sighted and better informed
than the Duke of Aiguillon, but his policy could have done no good.
Frederick II. knew that. “France plays so small a part in Europe,” he wrote
to Count Solms, “that I merely tell you about the impotent efforts of the
French ministry’s envy just to have a laugh at them, and to let you see in
what visions the consciousness of its own weaknesses is capable of leading
that court to indulge.” “O! where is Poland?” Madame Dubarry had said to
Count Wicholorsky, King Stanislaus Augustus’ charge d’affaires, who was
trying to interest her in the misfortunes of his country.
The partition of Poland was barely accomplished, the confederates of
Barr, overwhelmed by the Russian troops, were still arriving in France to
seek refuge there, and already King Louis XV., for a moment roused by the
audacious aggression of the German courts, had sunk back into the
shameful lethargy of his life. When Madame Louise, the pious Carmelite of
St. Denis, succeeded in awakening in her father’s soul a gleam of religious
terror, the courtiers in charge of the royal pleasures redoubled their efforts
to distract the king from thoughts so perilous for their own fortunes. Louis
XV., fluctuating between remorse and depravity, ruled by Madame Dubarry,
bound hand and foot to the triumvirate of Chancellor Maupeou, Abbe
Terray, and the Duke of Aiguillon, who were consuming between them in
his name the last remnants of absolute power, fell suddenly ill of small-pox.
The princesses, his daughters, had never had that terrible disease, the
scourge and terror of all classes of society, yet they bravely shut themselves
up with the king, lavishing their attentions upon him to the last gasp. Death,
triumphant, had vanquished the favorite. Madame Dubarry was sent away
as soon as the nature of the malady had declared itself. The king charged his
grand almoner to ask pardon of the courtiers for the scandal he had caused
them. “Kings owe no account of their conduct save to God only,” he had
often repeated to comfort himself for the shame of his life. “It is just He
whom I fear,” said Maria Theresa, pursued by remorse for the partition of
Poland.

Louis XV. died on the 10th of May, 1774, in his sixty-fourth year, after
reigning fifty-nine years, despised by the people who had not so long ago
given him the name of Well-beloved, and whose attachment he had worn
out by his cold indifference about affairs and the national interests as much
as by the irregularities of his life. With him died the old French monarchy,
that proud power which had sometimes ruled Europe whilst always holding
a great position therein. Henceforth France was marching towards the
unknown, tossed about as she was by divers movements, which were
mostly hostile to the old state of things, blindly and confusedly as yet, but,
under the direction of masters as inexperienced as they were daring, full of
frequently noble though nearly always extravagant and reckless hopes, all
founded on a thorough reconstruction of the bases of society and of its
ancient props. Far more even than the monarchy, at the close of Louis XV.‘s
reign, did religion find itself attacked and threatened; the blows struck by
the philosophers at fanaticism recoiled upon the Christian faith, transiently
liable here below for human errors and faults over which it is destined to
triumph in eternity.