Chapter XIV: Part 14

The war of the Polish succession proved him to have been deceived. On the death of Augustus II. of Saxony, king of Poland, Louis XV.'s father-in-law had been proclaimed king by the Polish diet. This was an ephemeral success, ill-prepared and obtained by taking a sudden advantage of national sentiment; it was soon followed by a check, owing to a Russian and German coalition and the baseness of Cardinal Fleury, who, in order to avoid intervening, pretended to tremble before an imaginary threat of reprisals on the part of England. But Chauvelin, the keeper of the seals, supported by public opinion, avenged on the Rhine and the Po the unlucky heroism of the comte de Plélo at Dànzig,[34] the vanished dream of the queen, the broken word of Louis XV., and the treacherous abandonment of Poland. Fleury never forgave him for this: Chauvelin had checkmated him with war; he checkmated Chauvelin with peace, and hastened to replace Marshals Berwick and Villars by diplomatists. The third treaty of Vienna (1738), the reward of so much effort, would only have claimed for France the little duchy of Bar, had not Chauvelin forced Louis XV. to obtain Lorraine for his father-in-law--still hoping for the reversion of the crown; but Fleury thus rendered impossible any influence of the queen, and held Stanislaus at his mercy. In order to avenge himself upon Chauvelin he sacrificed him to the cabinets of Vienna and London, alarmed at seeing him revive the national tradition in Italy.

The Eastern question.

Fleury hardly had time to breathe before a new conflagration broke out in the east. The Russian empress Anne and the emperor Charles VI. had planned to begin dismembering the Turkish empire. More fortunate than Plélo, Villeneuve, the French ambassador at Constantinople, endeavoured to postpone this event, and was well supported; he revived the courage of the Turks and provided them with arms, thanks to the comte de Bonneval (q.v.), one of those adventurers of high renown whose influence in Europe during the first half of the eighteenth century is one of the most piquant features of that period. The peace of Belgrade (September 1739) was, by its renewal of the capitulations, a great material success for France, and a great moral victory by the rebuff to Austria and Russia.

War of the Austrian Succession.

France had become once more the arbiter of Europe, when the death of the emperor Charles VI. in 1740 opened up a new period of wars and misfortunes for Europe and for the pacific Fleury. Everyone had signed Charles VI.'s Pragmatic Sanction, proclaiming the succession-rights of his daughter, the archduchess Maria Theresa; but on his death there was a general renunciation of signatures and an attempt to divide the heritage. The safety of the house of Austria depended on the attitude of France; for Austria could no longer harm her. Fleury's inclination was not to misuse France's traditional policy by exaggerating it, but to respect his sworn word; he dared not press his opinion, however, and yielded to the fiery impatience of young hot-heads like the two Belle-Isles, and of all those who, infatuated by Frederick II., felt sick of doing nothing at Versailles and were backed up by Louis XV.'s bellicose mistresses. He had to experience the repeated defections of Frederick II. in his own interests, and the precipitate retreat from Bohemia. He had to humble himself before Austria and the whole of Europe; and it was high time for Fleury, now fallen into second childhood, to vanish from the scene (January 1743).

Personal rule of Louis XV.

Louis XV. was at last to become his own prime minister and to reign alone; but in reality he was more embarrassed than pleased by the responsibility incumbent upon him. He therefore retained the persons who had composed Fleury's staff; though instead of being led by a single one of them, he fell into the hands of several, who disputed among themselves for the ascendancy: Maurepas, incomparable in little things, but neglectful of political affairs; D'Argenson, bold, and strongly attached to his work as minister of war; and the cardinal de Tencin, a frivolous and worldly priest. Old Marshal de Noailles tried to incite Louis XV. to take his kingship in earnest, thinking to cure him by war of his effeminate passions; and, in the spring of 1744, the king's grave illness at Metz gave a momentary hope of reconciliation between him and the deserted queen. But the duc de Richelieu, a roué who had joined hands with the sisters of the house of Nesle and was jealous of Marshal de Noailles, soon regained his lost ground; and, under the influence of this panderer to his pleasures, Louis XV. settled down into a life of vice. Holding aloof from active affairs, he tried to relieve the incurable boredom of satiety in the violent exercise of hunting, in supper-parties with his intimates, and in spicy indiscretions. Brought up religiously and to shun the society of women, his first experiences in adultery had been made with many scruples and intermittently. Little by little, however, jealous of power, yet incapable of exercising it to any purpose, he sank into a sensuality which became utterly shameless under the influence of his chief mistress the duchesse de Châteauroux.

Madame de Pompadour.

Hardly had a catastrophe snatched her away in the zenith of her power when complete corruption and the flagrant triumph of egoism supervened with the accession to power of the marquise de Pompadour, and for nearly twenty years (1745-1764) the whims and caprices of this little _bourgeoise_ ruled the realm. A prime minister in petticoats, she had her political system: reversed the time-honoured alliances of France, appointed or disgraced ministers, directed fleets and armies, concluded treaties, and failed in all her enterprises! She was the queen of fashion in a society where corruption blossomed luxuriantly and exquisitely, and in a century of wit hers was second to none. Amidst this extraordinary instability, when everything was at the mercy of a secret thought of the master, the mistress alone held lasting sway; in a reign of all-pervading satiety and tedium, she managed to remain indispensable and bewitching to the day of her death.

Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.

Meanwhile the War of the Austrian Succession broke out again, and never had secretary of state more intricate questions to solve than had D'Argenson. In the attempt to make a stage-emperor of Charles Albert of Bavaria, defeat was incurred at Dettingen, and the French were driven back on the Rhine (1743). The Bavarian dream dissipated, victories gained in Flanders by Marshal Saxe, another adventurer of genius, at Fontenoy, Raucoux and Lawfeld (1745-1747), were hailed with joy as continuing those of Louis XIV.; even though they resulted in the loss of Germany and the doubling of English armaments. The "disinterested" peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (October 1748) had no effectual result other than that of destroying in Germany, and for the benefit of Prussia, a balance of power that had yet to be secured in Italy, despite the establishment of the Spanish prince Philip at Parma. France, meanwhile, was beaten at sea by England, Maria Theresa's sole ally. While founding her colonial empire England had come into collision with France; and the rivalry of the Hundred Years' War had immediately sprung up again between the two countries. Engaged already in both Canada and in India (where Dupleix was founding an empire with a mere handful of men), it was to France's interest not to become involved in war upon the Rhine, thus falling into England's continental trap. She did fall into it, however: for the sake of conquering Silesia for the king of Prussia, Canada was left exposed by the capture of Cape Breton; while in order to restore this same Silesia to Maria Theresa, Canada was lost and with it India.

The Seven Years' War, 1756-1763.

France had worked for the king of Prussia from 1740 to 1748; now it was Maria Theresa's game that was played in the Seven Years' War. In 1755, the English having made a sudden attack upon the French at sea, and Frederick II. having by a fresh _volte-face_ passed into alliance with Great Britain, Louis XV.'s government accepted an alliance with Maria Theresa in the treaty of the 1st of May 1756. Instead of remaining upon the defensive in this continental war--merely accessory as it was--he made it his chief affair, and placed himself under the petticoat government of three women, Maria Theresa, Elizabeth of Russia and the marquise de Pompadour. This error--the worst of all--laid the foundations of the Prussian and British empires. By three battles, victories for the enemies of France--Rossbach in Germany, 1757, Plassey in India, 1757, and Quebec in Canada, 1759 (owing to the recall of Dupleix, who was not bringing in large enough dividends to the Company of the Indies, and to the abandonment of Montcalm, who could not interest any one in "a few acres of snow"), the expansion of Prussia was assured, and the British relieved of French rivalry in the expansion of their empire in India and on the North American continent.

Treaties of Paris and Hubertusburg.

Owing to the blindness of Louis XV. and the vanity of the favourite, the treaties of Paris and Hubertusburg (1763) once more proved the French splendid in their conceptions, but deficient in action. Moreover, Choiseul, secretary of state for foreign affairs since 1758, made out of this deceptive Austrian alliance a system which put the finishing touch to disaster, and after having thrown away everything to satisfy Maria Theresa's hatred of Frederick II., the reconciliation between these two irreconcilable Germans at Neisse and at Neustadt (1769-1770) was witnessed by France, to the prejudice of Poland, one of her most ancient adherents. The expedient of the Family Compact, concluded with Spain in 1761--with a view to taking vengeance upon England, whose fleets were a continual thorn in the side to France--served only to involve Spain herself in misfortune. Choiseul, who at least had a policy that was sometimes in the right, and who was very anxious to carry it out, then realized that the real quarrel had to be settled with England. Amid the anguish of defeat and of approaching ruin, he had an acute sense of the actualities of the case, and from 1763 to 1766 devoted himself passionately to the reconstruction of the navy. To compensate for the loss of the colonies he annexed Lorraine (1766), and by the acquisition of Corsica in 1768 he gave France an intermediary position in the Mediterranean, between friendly Spain and Italy, looking forward to the time when it should become a stepping-stone to Africa.

First partition of Poland.

But Louis XV. had two policies. The incoherent efforts which he made to repair by the secret diplomacy of the comte de Broglie the evils caused by his official policy only aggravated his shortcomings and betrayed his weakness. The contradictory intrigues of the king's secret proceedings in the candidature of Prince Xavier, the dauphine's brother, and the patriotic efforts of the confederation of Bar, contributed to bring about the Polish crisis which the partition of 1772 resolved in favour of Frederick II.; and the Turks were in their turn dragged into the same disastrous affair. Of the old allies of France, Choiseul preserved at least Sweden by the _coup d'état_ of Gustavus III.; but instead of being as formerly the centre of great affairs, the cabinet of Versailles lost all its credit, and only exhibited before the eyes of contemptuous Europe France's extreme state of decay.

Internal policy of Louis XV.

The nation felt this humiliation, and showed all the greater irritation as the want of cohesion in the government and the anarchy in the central authority became more and more intolerable in home affairs. Though the administration still possessed a fund of tradition and a personnel which, including many men of note, protected it from the enfeebling influence of the court, it looked as though chance regulated everything so far as the government was concerned. These fluctuations were owing partly to the character of Louis XV., and partly also to the fact that society in the 18th century was too advanced in its ideas to submit without resistance to the caprice of such a man. His mistresses were not the only cause of this; for ever since Fleury's advent political parties had come to the fore. From 1749 to 1757 the party of religious devotees grouped round the queen and the king's daughters, with the dauphin as chief and the comte D'Argenson, and Machault d'Arnouville, keeper of the seals, as lieutenants, had worked against Madame de Pompadour (who leant for support upon the parlements, the Jansenists and the philosophers) and had gained the upper hand. Thenceforward poverty, disorders, and consequently murmurs increased. The financial reform attempted by Machault d'Arnouville between 1745 and 1749--a reduction of the debt through the impost of the twentieth and the edict of 1749 against the extensive property held in mortmain by the Church--after his disgrace only resulted in failure. The army, which D'Argenson (likewise dismissed by Madame de Pompadour) had been from 1743 to 1747 trying to restore by useful reforms, was riddled by cabals. Half the people in the kingdom were dying of hunger, while the court was insulting poverty by its luxury and waste; and from 1750 onwards political ferment was everywhere manifest. It found all the more favourable foothold in that the Church, the State's best ally, had made herself more and more unpopular. Her refusal of the sacraments to those who would not accept the bull _Unigenitus_ (1746) was exploited in the eyes of the masses, as in those of more enlightened people was her selfish and short-sighted resistance to the financial plans of Machault. The general discontent was expressed by the parlements in their attempt to establish a political supremacy amid universal confusion, and by the popular voice in pamphlets recalling by their violence those of the League. Every one expected and desired a speedy revolution that should put an end to a policy which alternated between overheated effervescence, abnormal activity and lethargy. Nothing can better show the point to which things had descended than the attempted assassination of Louis the Well-beloved by Damiens in 1757.

Choiseul.

Choiseul was the means of accelerating this revolution, not only by his abandonment of diplomatic traditions, but still more by his improvidence and violence. He reversed the policy of his predecessors in regard to the parlement. Supported by public opinion, which clamoured for guarantees against abitrary power, the parlements had dared not only to insist on being consulted as to the budget of the state in 1763, but to enter upon a confederation throughout the whole of France, and on repeated occasions to ordain a general strike of the judicial authorities. Choiseul did not hesitate to attack through _lits de justice_ or by exile a judiciary oligarchy which doubtless rested its pretensions merely on wealth, high birth, or that encroaching spirit that was the only counteracting agency to the monarchy. Louis XV., wearied with their clamour, called them to order. Choiseul's religious policy was no less venturesome; after the condemnation in 1759 of the Jesuits who were involved in the bankruptcy of Father de la Valette, their general, in the Antilles, he had the order dissolved for refusing to modify its constitution (1761-1764). Thus, not content with encouraging writers with innovating ideas to the prejudice of traditional institutions, he attacked, in the order of the Jesuits, the strongest defender of these latter, and delivered over the new generation to revolutionary doctrines.

The Triumvirate, 1770-1774.

A woman had elevated him into power; a woman brought him to the ground. He succumbed to a coalition of the chancellor Maupeou, the duc d'Aiguillon and the Abbé Terray, which depended on the favour of the king's latest mistress, Madame du Barry (December 1770); and the Jesuits were avenged by a stroke of authority similar to that by which they themselves had suffered. Following on an edict registered by the _lit de justice_, which forbade any remonstrance in political matters, the parlement had resigned, and had been imitated by the provincial parlements; whereupon Maupeou, an energetic chancellor, suppressed the parlements and substituted superior councils of magistrates appointed by the king (1771). This reform was justified by the religious intolerance of the parlements; by their scandalous trials of Calas, Pierre Paul Sirven (1709-1777), the chevalier de la Barre and the comte de Lally; by the retrograde spirit that had made them suppress the Encyclopaedia in 1759 and condemn _Émile_ in 1762; and by their selfishness in perpetuating abuses by which they profited. But this reform, being made by the minister of a hated sovereign, only aided in exasperating public opinion, which was grateful to the parlements in that their remonstrances had not always been fruitless.

Ancient influences and institutions.

Thus all the buttresses of the monarchical institution began to fall to pieces: the Church, undermined by the heresy of Jansenism, weakened by the inroads of philosophy, discredited by evil-livers among the priesthood, and divided against itself, like all losing parties; the nobility of the court, still brave at heart, though incapable of exertion and reduced to beggary, having lost all respect for discipline and authority, not only in the camp, but in civilian society; and the upper-class officials, narrow-minded and egotistical, unsettling by their opposition the royal authority which they pretended to safeguard. Even the "liberties," among the few representative institutions which the _ancien régime_ had left intact in some provinces, turned against the people. The estates opposed most of the intelligent and humane measures proposed by such intendants as Tourny and Turgot to relieve the peasants, whose distress was very great; they did their utmost to render the selfishness of the privileged classes more oppressive and vexatious.

The new ideas.

Thus the terrible prevalence of poverty and want; the successive famines; the mistakes of the government; the scandals of the Parc aux Cerfs; and the parlements playing the Roman senate: all these causes, added together and multiplied, assisted in setting a general fermentation to work. The philosophers only helped to precipitate a movement which they had not created; without pointing to absolute power as the cause of the trouble, and without pretending to upset the traditional system, they attempted to instil into princes the feeling of new and more precise obligations towards their subjects. Voltaire, Montesquieu, the Encyclopaedists and the Physiocrats (recurring to the tradition of Bayle and Fontenelle), by dissolving in their analytical crucible all consecrated beliefs and all fixed institutions, brought back into the human society of the 18th century that humanity which had been so rudely eliminated. They demanded freedom of thought and belief with passionate insistence; they ardently discussed institutions and conduct; and they imported into polemics the idea of natural rights superior to all political arrangements. Whilst some, like Voltaire and the Physiocrats, representatives of the privileged classes and careless of political rights, wished to make use of the omnipotence of the prince to accomplish desirable reforms, or, like Montesquieu, adversely criticized despotism and extolled moderate governments, other, plebeians like Rousseau, proclaimed the theory of the social contract and the sovereignty of the people. So that during this reign of frivolity and passion, so bold in conception and so poor in execution, the thinkers contributed still further to mark the contrast between grandeur of plan and mediocrity of result.

The preaching of all this generous philosophy, not only in France, but throughout the whole of Europe, would have been in vain had there not existed at the time a social class interested in these great changes, and capable of compassing them. Neither the witty and lucid form in which the philosophers clothed their ideas in their satires, romances, stage-plays and treatises, nor the salons of Madame du Deffand, Madame Geoffrin and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, could possibly have been sufficiently far-reaching or active centres of political propaganda. The former touched only the more highly educated classes; while to the latter, where privileged individuals alone had entry, novelties were but an undiluted stimulant for the jaded appetites of persons whose ideas of good-breeding, moreover, would have drawn the line at martyrdom.

The bourgeoisie--the incarnation of new ideas.

The class which gave the Revolution its chiefs, its outward and visible forms, and the irresistible energy of its hopes, was the _bourgeoisie_, intelligent, ambitious and rich; in the forefront the capitalists and financiers of the _haute bourgeoisie_, farmers-general and army contractors, who had supplanted or swamped the old landed and military aristocracy, had insensibly reconstructed the interior of the ancient social edifice with the gilded and incongruous materials of wealth, and in order to consolidate or increase their monopolies, needed to secure themselves against the arbitrary action of royalty and the bureaucracy. Next came the crowd of stockholders and creditors of the state, who, in face of the government's "extravagant anarchy," no longer felt safe from partial or total bankruptcy. More powerful still, and more masterful, was the commercial, industrial and colonial _bourgeoisie_; because under the Regency and under Louis XV. they had been more productive and more creative. Having gradually revolutionized the whole economic system, in Paris, in Lyons, in Nantes, in Bordeaux, in Marseilles, they could not tamely put up with being excluded from public affairs, which had so much bearing upon their private or collective enterprises. Finally, behind this _bourgeoisie_, and afar off, came the crowd of serfs, rustics whom the acquisition of land had gradually enfranchised, and who were the more eager to enjoy their definitive liberation because it was close at hand.

Transformation of manners and customs.

The habits and sentiments of French society showed similar changes. From having been almost exclusively national during Louis XIV.'s reign, owing to the perpetual state of war and to a sort of proud isolation, it had gradually become cosmopolitan. After the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, France had been flooded from all quarters of the civilized world, but especially from England, by a concourse of refined and cultured men well acquainted with her usages and her universal language, whom she had received sympathetically. Paris became the brain of Europe. This revolution in manners and customs, coinciding with the revolution in ideas, led in its turn to a transformation in feeling, and to new aesthetic needs. Gradually people became sick of openly avowed gallantry, of shameless libertinism, of moral obliquity and of the flattering artifices of vice; a long shudder ran through the selfish torpor of the social body. After reading the _Nouvelle-Héloïse_, _Clarissa_ and _Sir Charles Grandison_, fatigued and wearied society revived as though beneath the fresh breezes of dawn. The principle of examination, the reasoned analysis of human conditions and the discussion of causes, far from culminating in disillusioned nihilism, everywhere aroused the democratic spirit, the life of sentiment and of human feeling: in the drama, with Marivaux, Diderot and La Chaussée; in art, with Chardin and Greuze; and in the salons, in view of the suppression of privilege. So that to Louis XV.'s cynical and hopeless declaration: "Apres moi le déluge," the setting 18th century responded by a belief in progress and an appeal to the future. A long-drawn echo from all classes hailed a revolution that was possible because it was necessary.

If this revolution did not burst forth sooner, in the actual lifetime of Louis XV., if in Louis XVI.'s reign there was a renewal of loyalty to the king, before the appeal to liberty was made, that is to be explained by this hope of recovery. But Louis XVI.'s reign (1774-1792) was only to be a temporary halting-place, an artifice of history for passing through the transition period whilst elaborating the transformation which was to revolutionize, together with France, the whole world.

Louis XVI.

Louis XVI. was twenty years of age. Physically he was stout, and a slave to the Bourbon fondness for good living; intellectually a poor creature and but ill-educated, he loved nothing so much as hunting and locksmith's work. He had a taste for puerile amusements, a mania for useless little domestic economies in a court where millions vanished like smoke, and a natural idleness which achieved as its masterpiece the keeping a diary from 1766 to 1792 of a life so tragic, which was yet but a foolish chronicle of trifles. Add to this that he was a virtuous husband, a kind father, a fervent Christian and a good-natured man full of excellent intentions, yet a spectacle of moral pusillanimity and ineptitude.

Marie Antoinette.

From 1770 onwards lived side by side with this king, rather than at his side, the archduchess Marie Antoinette of Austria--one of the very graceful and very frivolous women who were to be found at Versailles, opening to life like the flowers she so much loved, enamoured of pleasure and luxury, delighting to free herself from the formalities of court life, and mingling in the amusements of society; lovable and loving, without ceasing to be virtuous. Flattered and adored at the outset, she very soon furnished a sinister illustration to Beaumarchais' _Basile_; for evil tongues began to calumniate the queen: those of her brothers-in-law, the duc d'Aiguillon (protector of Madame du Barry and dismissed from the ministry), and the Cardinal de Rohan, recalled from his embassy in Vienna. She was blamed for her friendship with the comtesse de Polignac, who loved her only as the dispenser of titles and positions; and when weary of this persistent begging for rewards, she was taxed with her preference for foreigners who asked nothing. People brought up against her the debts and expenditure due to her belief in the inexhaustible resources of France; and hatred became definite when she was suspected of trying to imitate her mother Maria Theresa and play the part of ruler, since her husband neglected his duty. They then became persuaded that it was she who caused the weight of taxation; in the most infamous libels comparison was made between her freedom of behaviour and that of Louis XV.'s former mistresses. Private envy and public misconceptions very soon summed up her excessive unpopularity in the menacing nickname, "L'Autrichienne." (See MARIE ANTOINETTE.)

Foreign policy of Louis XVI.

All this shows that Louis XVI. was not a monarch capable of directing or suppressing the inevitable revolution. His reign was but a tissue of contradictions. External affairs seemed in even a more dangerous position than those at home. Louis XVI. confided to Vergennes the charge of reverting to the traditions of the crown and raising France from the humiliation suffered by the treaty of Paris and the partition of Poland. His first act was to release French policy from the Austrian alliance of 1756; in this he was aided both by public opinion and by the confidence of the king--the latter managing to set aside the desires of the queen, whom the ambition of Maria Theresa and Joseph II. hoped to use as an auxiliary. Vergennes' object was a double one: to free the kingdom from English supremacy and to shake off the yoke of Austria. Opportunities offered themselves simultaneously. In 1775 the English colonies in America rebelled, and Louis XVI., after giving them secret aid and encouragement almost from the first, finally in February 1778, despite Marie Antoinette, formed an open alliance with them; while when Joseph II., after having partitioned Poland, wanted in addition to balance the loss of Silesia with that of Bavaria, Vergennes prevented him from doing so. In vain was he offered a share in the partition of the Netherlands by way of an inducement. France's disinterested action in the peace of Teschen (1779) restored to her the lost adherence of the secondary states. Europe began to respect her again when she signed a Franco-Dutch-Spanish alliance (1779-1780), and when, after the capitulation of the English at Yorktown, the peace of Versailles (1783) crowned her efforts with at least formal success. Thenceforward, partly from prudence and partly from penury, Vergennes cared only for the maintenance of peace--a not too easy task, in opposition to the greed of Catherine II. and Joseph II., who now wished to divide the Ottoman empire. Joseph II., recognizing that Louis XVI. would not sacrifice the "sick man" to him, raised the question of the opening of the Scheldt, against the Dutch. Vainly did Joseph II. accuse his sister of ingratitude and complain of her resistance; the treaty of Fontainebleau in 1785 maintained the rights of Holland. Later on, Joseph II., sticking to his point, wanted to settle the house of Bavaria in the Netherlands; but Louis XVI. supported the confederation of princes (Fürstenbund) which Frederick II. called together in order to keep his turbulent neighbour within bounds. Vergennes completed his work by signing a commercial treaty in 1786 with England, whose commerce and industry were favoured above others, and a second in 1787 with Russia. He died in 1787, at an opportune moment for himself; though he had temporarily raised France's position in Europe, his work was soon ruined by the very means taken to secure its successes: warfare and armaments had hastened the "hideous bankruptcy."

Internal policy of Louis XVI.

From the very beginning of his reign Louis XVI. fell into contradictions and hesitation in internal affairs, which could not but bring him to grief. He tried first of all to govern in accordance with public opinion, and was induced to flatter it beyond measure; in an extreme of inconsistency he re-established the parlements, the worst enemies of reform, at the very moment when he was calling in the reformers to his councils.

Turgot 1774-1776.

Turgot, the most notable of these latter, was well fitted to play his great part as an enlightened minister, as much from the principle of hard work and domestic economy traditional in his family, as from a maturity of mind developed by extensive study at the Sorbonne and by frequenting the salons of the Encyclopaedists. He had proved this by his capable administration in the paymaster's office at Limoges, from 1761 to 1774. A disciple of Quesnay and of Gournay, he tried to repeat in great affairs the experience of liberty which he had found successful in small, and to fortify the unity of the nation and the government by social, political and economic reforms. He ordained the free circulation of grain within the kingdom, and was supported by Louis XVI. in the course of the flour-war (_guerre des farines_) (April-May 1775); he substituted a territorial subsidy for the royal _corvée_--so burdensome upon the peasants--and thus tended to abolish privilege in the matter of imposts; and he established the freedom of industry by the dissolution of privileged trade corporations (1776). Finance was in a deplorable state, and as controller-general he formulated a new fiscal policy, consisting of neither fresh taxation nor loans, but of retrenchment. At one fell stroke the two auxiliaries on which he had a right to count failed him: public opinion, clamouring for reform on condition of not paying the cost; and the king, too timid to dominate public opinion, and not knowing how to refuse the demands of privilege. Economy in the matter of public finance implies a grain of severity in the collection of taxes as well as, in expenditure. By the former Turgot hampered the great interests; by the second he thwarted the desires of courtiers not only of the second rank but of the first. Therefore, after he had aroused the complaints of the commercial world and the bourgeoisie, the court, headed by Marie Antoinette, profited by the general excitement to overthrow him. The Choiseul party, which had gradually been reconstituted, under the influence of the queen, the princes, parlement, the prebendaries, and the trade corporations, worked adroitly to eliminate this reformer of lucrative abuses. The old courtier Maurepas, jealous of Turgot and desirous of remaining a minister himself, refrained from defending his colleague; and when Turgot, who never knew how to give in, spoke of establishing assemblies of freeholders in the communes and the provinces, in order to relax the tension of over-centralization, Louis XVI., who never dared to pass from sentiment to action, sacrificed his minister to the rancour of the queen, as he had already sacrificed Malesherbes (1776). Thus the first governmental act of the queen was an error, and dissipated the hope of replacing special privileges by a general guarantee given to the nation, which alone could have postponed a revolution. It was still too early for a Fourth of August; but the queen's victory was none the less vain, since Turgot's ideas were taken up by his successors.

Necker, 1776-1781.

The first of these was Necker, a Genevese financier. More able than Turgot, though a man of smaller ideas, he abrogated the edicts registered by the _lits de justice_; and unable or not daring to attack the evil at its root, he thought he could suppress its symptoms by a curative process of borrowing and economy. Like Turgot he failed, and for the same reasons. The American war had finally exhausted the exchequer, and, in order to replenish it, he would have needed to inspire confidence in the minds of capitalists; but the resumption in 1778 of the plan of provincial assemblies charged with remodelling the various imposts, and his _compte-rendu_ in which he exhibited the monarchy paying its pensioners for their inactivity as it had never paid its agents for their zeal, aroused a fresh outburst of anger. Necker was carried away in his turn by the reaction he had helped to bring about (1781).

The return of feudalism to the offensive.

Having fought the oligarchy of privilege, the monarchy next tried to rally it to its side, and all the springs of the old régime were strained to the breaking-point. The military rule of the marquis de Ségur eliminated the plebeians from the army; while the great lords, drones in the hive, worked with a kind of fever at the enforcement of their seigniorial rights; the feudal system was making a last struggle before dying. The Church claimed her right of ordering the civil estate of all Frenchmen as an absolute mistress more strictly than ever. Joly de Fleury and D'Ormesson, Necker's successors, pushed their narrow spirit of reaction and the temerity of their inexperience to the furthest limit; but the reaction which reinforced the privileged classes was not sufficient to fill the coffers of the treasury, and Marie Antoinette, who seemed gifted with a fatal perversity of instinct, confided the finances of the kingdom to Calonne, an upper-class official and a veritable Cagliostro of finance.

Calonne, 1783-1787.

From 1783 to 1787, this man organized his astounding system of falsification all along the line. His unbridled prodigality, by spreading a belief in unlimited resources, augmented the confidence necessary for the success of perpetual loans; until the day came when, having exhausted the system, he tried to suppress privilege and fall back upon the social reforms of Turgot, and the financial schemes of Necker, by suggesting once more to the assembly of notables a territorial subsidy from all landed property. He failed, owing to the same reaction that was causing the feudal system to make inroads upon the army, the magistracy and industry; but in his fall he put on the guise of a reformer, and by a last wild plunge he left the monarchy, already compromised by the affair of the Diamond Necklace (q.v.), hopelessly exposed (April 1787).

Loménie de Brienne.

The volatile and brilliant archbishop Loménie de Brienne was charged with the task of laying the affairs of the _ancien régime_ before the assembly of notables, and with asking the nation for resources, since the monarchy could no longer provide for itself; but the notables refused, and referred the minister to the states-general, the representative of the nation. Before resorting to this extremity, Brienne preferred to lay before the parlement his two edicts regarding a stamp duty and the territorial subsidy; to be met by the same refusal, and the same reference to the states-general. The exile of the parlement to Troyes, the arrest of various members, and the curt declaration of the king's absolute authority (November 9, 1787) were unsuccessful in breaking down its resistance. The threat of Chrétien François de Lamoignon, keeper of the seals, to imitate Maupeou, aroused public opinion and caused a fresh confederation of the parlements of the kingdom. The royal government was too much exhausted to overthrow even a decaying power like that of the parlements, and being still more afraid of the future representatives of the French people than of the supreme courts, capitulated to the insurgent parlements. The recalled parlement seemed at the pinnacle of power.

Recall of Necker.

Its next action ruined its ephemeral popularity, by claiming the convocation of the states-general "according to the formula observed in 1614," as already demanded by the estates of Dauphiné at Vizille on the 21st of July 1788. The exchequer was empty; it was necessary to comply. The royal declaration of the 23rd of September 1788 convoked the states-general for the 1st of May 1789, and the fall of Brienne and Lamoignon followed the recall of Necker. Thenceforward public opinion, which was looking for something quite different from the superannuated formula of 1614, abandoned the parlements, which in their turn disappeared from view; for the struggle beginning between the privileged classes and the government, now at bay, had given the public, through the states-general, that means of expression which they had always lacked.

Prelude to the states-general.

The electorate.

The conflict immediately changed ground, and an engagement began between privilege and the people over the twofold question of the number of deputies and the mode of voting. Voting by head, and the double representation of the third estate (_tiers état_); this was the great revolution; voting by order meant the continued domination of privilege, and the lesser revolution. The monarchy, standing apart, held the balance, but needed a decisive policy. Necker, with little backing at court, could not act energetically, and Louis XVI., wavering between Necker and the queen, chose the attitude most convenient to his indolence and least to his interest: he remained neutral, and his timidity showed clearly in the council of the 27th of December 1788. Separating the two questions which were so closely connected, and despite the sensational brochure of the abbé Sieyès, "What is the Third Estate?" he pronounced for the doubling of the third estate without deciding as to the vote by head, yet leaving it to be divined that he preferred the vote by order. As to the programme there was no more decisive resolution; but the edict of convocation gave it to be understood that a reform was under consideration; "the establishment of lasting and permanent order in all branches of the administration." The point as to the place of convocation gave rise to a compromise between the too-distant centre of France and too-tumultuous Paris. Versailles was chosen "because of the hunting!" In the procedure of the elections the traditional system of the states-general of 1614 was preserved, and the suffrage was almost universal, but in two kinds: for the third estate nearly all citizens over twenty-five years of age, paying a direct contribution, voted--peasants as well as bourgeois; the country clergy were included among the ecclesiastics; the smaller nobility among the nobles; and finally, Protestants were electors and eligible.

The addresses.

According to custom, documents (_cahiers_) were drawn up, containing a list of grievances and proposals for reform. All the orders were agreed in demanding prudently modified reform: the vote on the budget, order in finance, regular convocation of the states-general, and a written constitution in order to get rid of arbitrary rule. The address of the clergy, inspired by the great prelates, sought to make inaccurate lamentations over the progress of impiety a means of safeguarding their enormous spiritual and temporal powers, their privileges and exemptions, and their vast wealth. The nobility demanded voting by order, the maintenance of their privileges, and, above all, laws to protect them against the arbitrary proceedings of royalty. The third estate insisted on the vote by head, the graduated abolition of privilege in all governmental affairs, a written constitution and union. The programme went on broadening as it descended in the social scale.

The elections.

The elections sufficed finally to show that the _ancien régime_, characterized from the social point of view by inequality, from the political point of view by arbitrariness, and from the religious point of view by intolerance, was completed from the administrative point of view by inextricable disorder. As even the extent of the jurisdiction of the _bailliages_ was unknown, convocations were made at haphazard, according to the good pleasure of influential persons, and in these assemblies decisions were arrived at by a process that confused every variety of rights and powers, and was governed by no logical principle; and in this extreme confusion terms and affairs were alike involved.

The counter-currents of the Revolution.

Whilst the bureaucracy of the _ancien régime_ sought for desperate expedients to prolong its domination, the whole social body gave signs of a yet distant but ever nearing disintegration. The revolution was already complete before it was declared to the world. Two distinct currents of disaffection, one economic, the other philosophic, had for long been pervading the nation. There had been much suffering throughout the 17th and 18th centuries; but no one had hitherto thought of a politico-social rising. But the other, the philosophic current, had been set going in the 18th century; and the policy of despotism tempered by privilege had been criticized in the name of liberty as no longer justifying itself by its services to the state. The ultramontane and oppressively burdensome church had been taunted with its lack of Christian charity, apostolic poverty and primitive virtue. All vitality had been sapped from the old order of nobles, reduced in prestige by the _savonnette à vilains_ (office purchased to ennoble the holder), enervated by court life, and so robbed of its roots in the soil, from which it had once drawn its strength, that it could no longer live save as a ruinous parasite on the central monarchy. Lastly, to come to the bottom of the social scale, there were the common people, taxable at will, subject to the arbitrary and burdensome forced labour of the _corvée_, cut off by an impassable barrier from the privileged classes whom they hated. For them the right to work had been asserted, among others by Turgot, as a natural right opposed to the caprices of the arbitrary and selfish aristocracy of the corporations, and a breach had been made in the tyranny of the masters which had endeavoured to set a barrier to the astonishing outburst of industrial force which was destined to characterize the coming age.

The outward and visible progress of the Revolution, due primarily to profound economic disturbance, was thus accelerated and rendered irresistible. Economic reformers found a moral justification for their dissatisfaction in philosophical theories; the chance conjunction of a philosopho-political idea with a national deficit led to the preponderance of the third estate at the elections, and to the predominance of the democratic spirit in the states-general. The third estate wanted civil liberty above all; political liberty came second only, as a means and guarantee for the former. They wanted the abolition of the feudal system, the establishment of equality and a share in power. Neither the family nor property was violently attacked; the church and the monarchy still appeared to most people two respectable and respected institutions. The king and the privileged classes had but so to desire it, and the revolution would be easy and peaceful.

Meeting of the states-general.

Louis XVI. was reluctant to abandon a tittle of his absolute power, nor would the privileged classes sacrifice their time-honoured traditions; they were inexorable. The king, more ponderous and irresolute every day, vacillated between Necker the liberal on one side and Marie Antoinette, whose feminine pride was opposed to any concessions, with the comte d'Artois, a mischievous nobody who could neither choose a side nor stick to one, on the other. When the states-general opened on the 5th of May 1789 Louis XVI. had decided nothing. The conflict between him and the Assembly immediately broke out, and became acute over the verification of the mandates; the third estate desiring this to be made in common by the deputies of the three orders, which would involve voting by head, the suppression of classes and the preponderance of the third estate. On the refusal of the privileged classes and after an interval of six weeks, the third estate, considering that they represented 96% of the nation, and in accordance with the proposal of Sieyès, declared that they represented the nation and therefore were authorized to take resolutions unaided, the first being that in future no arrangement for taxation could take place without their consent.

Oath of the tennis-court.

The king, urged by the privileged classes, responded to this first revolutionary act, as in 1614, by closing the Salle des Menus Plaisirs where the third estate were sitting; whereupon, gathered in one of the tennis-courts under the presidency of Bailly, they swore on the 20th of June not to separate before having established the constitution of the kingdom.

The Lit de Justice of June 23, 1789.

Taking of the Bastille.

Louis XVI. then decided, on the 23rd, to make known his policy in a royal _lit de justice_. He declared for the lesser reform, the fiscal, not the social; were this rejected, he declared that "he alone would arrange for the welfare of his people." Meanwhile he annulled the sitting of the 17th, and demanded the immediate dispersal of the Assembly. The third estate refused to obey, and by the mouth of Bailly and Mirabeau asserted the legitimacy of the Revolution. The refusal of the soldiers to coerce the Assembly showed that the monarchy could no longer rely on the army; and a few days later, when the lesser nobility and the lower ranks of the clergy had united with the third estate whose cause was their own, the king yielded, and on the 27th of June commanded both orders to join in the National Assembly, which was thereby recognized and the political revolution sanctioned. But at the same time, urged by the "infernal cabal" of the queen and the comte d'Artois, Louis XVI. called in the foreign regiments--the only ones of which he could be certain--and dismissed Necker. The Assembly, dreading a sudden attack, demanded the withdrawal of the troops. Meeting with a refusal, Paris opposed the king's army with her citizen-soldiers; and by the taking of the Bastille, that mysterious dark fortress which personified the _ancien régime_, secured the triumph of the Revolution (July 14). The king was obliged to recall Necker, to mount the tricolor cockade at the Hôtel de Ville, and to recognize Bailly as mayor of Paris and La Fayette as commander of the National Guard, which remained in arms after the victory. The National Assembly had right on its side after the 20th of June and might after the 14th of July. Thus was accomplished the Revolution which was to throw into the melting-pot all that had for centuries appeared fixed and stable.

Spontaneous anarchy.

As Paris had taken her Bastille, it remained for the towns and country districts to take theirs--all the Bastilles of feudalism. Want, terror and the contagion of examples precipitated the disruption of governmental authority and of the old political status; and sudden anarchy dislocated all the organs of authority. Upon the ruins of the central administration temporary authorities were founded in various isolated localities, limited in area but none the less defiant of the government. The provincial assemblies of Dauphiné and elsewhere gave the signal; and numerous towns, following the example of Paris, instituted municipalities which substituted their authority for that of the intendants and their subordinates. Clubs were openly organized, pamphlets and journals appeared, regardless of administrative orders; workmen's unions multiplied in Paris, Bordeaux and Lyons, in face of drastic prohibition; and anarchy finally set in with the defection of the army in Paris on the 23rd of June, at Nancy, at Metz and at Brest. The crying abuses of the old régime, an insignificant factor at the outset, soon combined with the widespread agrarian distress, due to the unjust distribution of land, the disastrous exploitation of the soil, the actions of the government, and the severe winter of 1788. Discontent showed itself in pillage and incendiarism on country estates; between March and July 1789 more than three hundred agrarian riots took place, uprooting the feudal idea of property, already compromised by its own excesses. Not only did pillaging take place; the boundaries of property were also ignored, and people no longer held themselves bound to pay taxes. These _jacqueries_ hastened the movement of the regular revolution.

The night of August 4.

The decrees of the 4th of August, proposed by those noble "patriots" the duc d'Aiguillon and the vicomte de Noailles, who had already on the 23rd of June made armed resistance to the evacuation of the Hall of Assembly, put the final touch to the revolution begun by the provincial assemblies, by liberating land and labour, and proclaiming equality among all Frenchmen. Instead of exasperating the demands of the peasants and workmen by repression and raising civil war between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, they drew a distinction between personal servitude, which was suppressed, and the rights of contract, which were to be redeemed--a laudable but impossible distinction. The whole feudal system crumbled before the revolutionary insistence of the peasants; for their masters, bourgeois or nobles, terrified by prolonged riots, capitulated and gradually had to consent to make the resolutions of the 4th of August a reality.

Elaboration of the constitution.

Overjoyed by this social liberation, the Assembly awarded Louis XVI. the title of "renewer of French liberty"; but remaining faithful to his hesitating policy of the 23rd of June, he ratified the decrees of the 4th of August, only with a very ill grace. On the other hand, the privileged classes, and notably the clergy, who saw the whole traditional structure of their power threatened, now rallied to him, and when after the 28th of August the Assembly set to work on the new constitution, they combined in the effort to recover some of the position they had lost. But whatever their theoretical agreement on social questions, politically they were hopelessly at odds. The bourgeoisie, conscious of their opportunity, decided for a single chamber against the will of the noblesse; against that of the king they declared it permanent, and, if they accorded him a suspensory veto, this was only in order to guard them against the extreme assertion of popular rights. Thus the progress of the Revolution, so far, had left the mass of the people still excluded from any constitutional influence on the government, which was in the hands of the well-to-do classes, which also controlled the National Guard and the municipalities. The irritation of the disfranchised proletariat was moreover increased by the appalling dearness of bread and food generally, which the suspicious temper of the times--fomented by the tirades of Marat in the _Ami du peuple_--ascribed to English intrigues in revenge for the aid given by France to the American colonies, and to the treachery in high places that made these intrigues successful. The climax came with the rumour that the court was preparing a new military _coup d'état_, a rumour that seemed to be confirmed by indiscreet toasts proposed at a banquet by the officers of the guard at Versailles; and on the night of the 5th to the 6th of October a Parisian mob forced the king and royal family to return with them to Paris amid cries of "We are bringing the baker, the baker's wife and the little baker's boy!" The Assembly followed; and henceforth king and Assembly were more or less under the influence of the whims and passions of a populace maddened by want and suspicion, by the fanatical or unscrupulous incitements of an unfettered press, and by the unrestrained oratory of obscure demagogues in the streets, the cafés and the political clubs.