Chapter VI: The Court and the Parliament

Death of Louis XV.--Education of Louis XVI.--Maurepas,
Prime Minister.--Turgot; his Expulsion from
Office.--Necker.--Franklin.--Sympathy with the Americans.--La
Fayette.--Views of the Court.--Treaty with America.--Popularity
of Voltaire.--Embarrassment of Necker.--_Compte Rendu au
Roi._--Necker driven into Exile.--Enslavement of France.--New
Extravagance.--Calonne.

As the clock of Versailles tolled the hour of twelve at midnight of the 10th of May, 1774, Louis XV., abandoned by all, alone in his chamber, died. In the most loathsome stages of the confluent small-pox, his body had for several days presented but a mass of corruption. Terror had driven all the courtiers from the portion of the palace which he occupied, and even Madame du Barry dared not approach the bed where her guilty paramour was dying. The nurse hired to attend him could not remain in the apartment, but sat in an adjoining room. A lamp was placed at the window, which she was to extinguish as soon as the king was dead. Eagerly the courtiers watched the glimmering of that light that they might be the first to bear to Louis, the grandson of the king, the tidings that _he_ was monarch of France.

Louis was then hardly twenty years of age.[39] His wife, Marie Antoinette, daughter of Maria Theresa, Queen of Austria, was scarcely nineteen. They had been married four years. Marie Antoinette was one of the most beautiful of women, but from infancy she had been educated in the belief that kings and nobles were created to illustrate life by gayety and splendor, and that the people were created only to be their servants.[40]

The taper was extinguished, and the crowd of courtiers rushed to the apartment of the Dauphin to hail him as Louis XVI. The tidings, though expected, for a moment overwhelmed them both, and, encircled in each other's arms, they fell upon their knees, while Louis exclaimed, "_O God! guide us, protect us, we are too young to govern_."[41] They then entered the grand saloon, where they received the congratulations of all the dignitaries of the Church and the State. All were anxious to escape from the palace whose atmosphere was tainted, and hardly an hour elapsed ere the new court, in carriages and on horseback, left Versailles and were passing rapidly to the Chateau of Choisy, one of the favorite rural palaces of Louis XV. The loathsome remains of the king were left to the care of a few under-servants to be hurried to their burial.

It was not yet four o'clock in the morning. The sleepless night, the chill morning air, the awful scene of death from which they had come, oppressed all spirits. Soon, however, the sun rose warm and brilliant; a jocular remark dispelled the mental gloom, and in two hours they arrived at the palace a merry party exulting in the new reign. The education of Louis XVI. had been such that he was still but a boy, bashful, self-distrusting, and entirely incompetent to guide the kingdom through the terrific storm which for ages had been gathering. He had not the remotest idea of the perils with which France was surrounded. He was an exceedingly amiable young man, of morals most singularly pure for that corrupt age, retiring and domestic in his tastes, and sincerely desirous of promoting the happiness of France. Geography was the only branch of learning in which he appeared to take any special interest. He framed, with much sagacity, the instructions for the voyage of La Perouse around the world in 1786, and often lamented the fate of this celebrated navigator, saying, "I see very well that I am not fortunate."[42] How mysterious the government of God, that upon the head of this benevolent, kind-hearted, conscientious king should have been emptied, even to the dregs, those vials of wrath which debauched and profligate monarchs had been treasuring up for so many reigns!

Louis had no force of character, and, destitute of self-reliance, was entirely guided by others. At the suggestion of his aunt, Adelaide, he called to the post of prime minister Count Maurepas, who was eighty years of age, and who, having been banished from Paris by Madame de Pompadour, had been living for thirty years in retirement. Thus France was handed over in these hours of peril to a king in his boyhood and a prime minister in his dotage. Was it chance? Was it Providence? Clouds and darkness surround God's throne!

M. Turgot was appointed to the post of utmost difficulty and danger--the administration of the finances. He had acquired much reputation by the skill with which, for twelve years, he had administered the government of the Province of Limousin. The kingdom of France was already in debt more than four thousand millions of francs ($800,000,000).[43] As the revenue was by no means sufficient to pay the interest upon this debt and the expenses of the government, new loans had been incessantly resorted to, and national bankruptcy was near at hand. To continue borrowing was ruin; to impose higher taxes upon the people impossible. There were but two measures which could be adopted. One was to introduce a reform of wide-sweeping and rigid economy, cutting down salaries, abolishing pensions and sinecures, and introducing frugality into the pleasure-haunts of the court. Turgot was too well acquainted with the habits of the courtiers to dream that it was in the power of any minister to enforce this reform. There remained only the plan to induce the clergy and the nobles to allow themselves to be taxed, and thus to bear their fair proportion of the expenses of the state. Turgot fully understood the Herculean task before him in attempting this measure, and in a letter to the king he wrote:

"We will have no bankruptcies, no augmentation of the taxes, no loans. I shall have to combat abuses of every kind, to combat those who are benefited by them, and even the kindness, sire, of your own nature. I shall be feared, hated, and calumniated; but the affecting goodness with which you pressed my hands in yours, to witness your acceptance of my devotion to your service, is never to be obliterated from my recollection, and must support me under every trial."[44]

Several of Turgot's measures of reform the privileged class submitted to, though with reluctance and with many murmurs; but when he proposed that a tax should be fairly and equally levied upon proprietors of every description, a burst of indignant remonstrance arose from the nobles which drowned his voice. To suggest that a _high-born_ man was to be taxed like one _low-born_ was an insult too grievous to be borne. The whole privileged class at once combined, determined to crush the audacious minister thus introducing the doctrine of equal taxation into the court of aristocratic privilege.

Madame du Barry, in a pet, four years before, had abolished the Parliament of Paris, which was entirely under the control of the aristocracy. Louis XVI., seeking popularity, restored the Parliament. Unfortunately for reform, the nobles had now an organized body with which to make resistance. The Parliament, the clergy, the old minister Maurepas, and even the young queen, all united in a clamorous onset upon Turgot, and he was driven from the ministry, having been in office but twenty months.[45] The Parliament absolutely refused to register the obnoxious decree. The inexperienced and timid king, frightened by the clamor, yielded, and abandoned his minister. Had the king been firm, he might, perhaps, have carried his point; but want of capacity leads to results as disastrous as treachery, and the king, though actuated by the best intentions, was ignorant and inefficient. Though the king held a _bed of justice_,[46] and ordered the edicts registered, they remained as dead letters and were never enforced.

There was in Paris a wealthy Protestant banker, born in Geneva, of great financial celebrity, M. Necker. He was called to take the place of Turgot. Warned by the fate of his predecessor and seeing precisely the same difficulties staring him in the face, he resolved to try the expedient of economy, cutting off pensions and abolishing sinecures. But the nobles, in Church and State, disliked this as much as being taxed, and immediately their clamor was renewed.[47]

Just at this time the American war of independence commenced. All France was in a state of enthusiasm in view of a heroic people struggling to be free. And when the American delegation appeared in Paris, headed by Franklin, all hearts were swept along by a current which neither king nor nobles could withstand. The republican simplicity of Franklin in his attire and manners produced an extraordinary impression upon all classes. The French ladies in particular were lavish in their attentions. Several fetes were given in his honor, at one of which the most beautiful of three hundred ladies crowned him with a laurel wreath, and then kissed him on both cheeks. Almost every saloon was ornamented with his bust, bearing the inscription, "Eripuit coelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis."

All the latent spirit of freedom which had so long been slowly accumulating burst forth with a power which alarmed the court. Not a few of the nobles, disgusted with the aristocratic oppression which was ruining France, gave their sympathies to the American cause. The Marquis la Fayette, then but eighteen years of age, openly and enthusiastically applauded the struggle of the colonists. Marie Antoinette, instinctively hating a war in which the people were contending against royalty, expressed much indignation that La Fayette should utter such sentiments in the Palace of Versailles. Joseph II. of Austria, brother of Marie Antoinette, then on a visit to the French court, was asked by a lady his opinion of the subject which was now engrossing every mind. He replied, "I must decline answering; my business is to be a Royalist" (_Mon metier a moi c'est d'etre Royaliste_).[48]

It is hardly possible for one now to realize the enthusiasm with which the American war, at that time, inspired France. Even the court hated England, and wished to see that domineering power humbled. The mind of the nation had just awakened and was thoroughly aroused from the lethargy of ages. Theories, dreams, aspirations had exhausted themselves, and yet there was in France no scope whatever for action. America opened a theatre for heroic enterprise. France had given the theory of liberty, America was illustrating that theory by practice. The popular cry so effectually drowned every other voice that even the king was compelled to yield. A treaty with America was signed which drew from the treasury of France twelve hundred millions of francs ($240,000,000), in support of American independence.[49] But for the substantial aid thus rendered by the fleet and the army of France it can hardly be doubted that the American Revolution would have been crushed, Washington and Franklin would have been hanged as traitors, and monarchical historians would elegantly have described the horrors of the great American rebellion.[50]

The king, however, had sufficient intelligence to appreciate the suicidal act he was thus compelled to perform. With extreme reluctance he signed the treaty which recognized the right of nations to change their government. The doctrine of the _sovereignty of the people_ was thus legitimated in France. That one sentiment unresisted would sweep Europe of its despotic thrones. As the king signed the treaty, Feb. 8, 1778, he remarked to his minister, "You will remember, sir, that this is contrary to my opinion."[51] The same weakness which constrained Louis XVI. to abandon Turgot to his enemies, compelled him to perform this act which his views of state policy condemned. "How painful," he writes, in his private correspondence, "to be obliged, for reasons of state, to sign orders and commence a great war contrary alike to my opinions and my wishes."[52]

In the midst of these transactions Voltaire, after an absence of twenty-seven years, much of which time he had passed in his retreat at Ferney, about five miles from Geneva, revisited Paris. He was then eighty-four years of age. The court hated the bold assailer of corruptions, and refused to receive him. But the populace greeted him with enthusiasm unparalleled. He attended the theatre where his last play, "Irene," was acted. Immediately upon his appearance the whole audience, rising, greeted him with long and tumultuous applause. As, overpowered with emotion, he rose to depart, with trembling limbs and with flooded eyes, men of the highest rank and beautiful women crowded around him and literally bore him in their arms to his carriage. He could only exclaim, "Do you wish to kill me with joy?" A crowd with lighted torches filled the streets, making his path brilliant as day, and shouts of triumph arose which appalled the courtiers in the saloons of the palace. A few weeks after this, May 30, 1778, Voltaire died. The Archbishop of Paris refused to allow him Christian burial, and the court forbade his death to be mentioned in the public journals. His corpse was taken from the city and buried secretly at an old abbey at Scellieres. This petty persecution only exasperated the friends of reform. A month after the death of Voltaire, Rousseau also passed away to the spirit-land.

The situation of Necker was now deplorable. The kingdom was involved in an enormously expensive war. The court would not consent to any diminution of its indulgences, and the privileged class would not consent to be taxed. Necker was almost in despair. He borrowed of every one who would lend, and from the already exhausted people with sorrow, almost with anguish, gleaned every sou which the most ingenious taxation could extort.

"Never shall I forget," he wrote, in 1791, "the long, dark staircase of M. Maurepas, the terror and the melancholy with which I used to ascend it, uncertain of the success of some idea that had occurred to me, likely, if carried into effect, to produce an increase of the revenue, but likely at the same time to fall severely though justly on some one or other; the sort of hesitation and diffidence with which I ventured to intermingle in my representations any of those maxims of justice and of right with which my own heart was animated."

For a time Necker succeeded by loans and annuities in raising money, but at last it became more difficult to find lenders, and national bankruptcy seemed inevitable. And what is national bankruptcy? It is the paralysis of industry, and wide-spreading consternation and woe. Thousands of widows and orphans had all their patrimony in the national funds. The failure of these funds was to them beggary and starvation. The hospitals, the schools, the homes of refuge for the aged and infirm--all would lose their support. The thousands in governmental employ and those dependent upon them would be left in utter destitution. The bankruptcy of a solitary merchant may send poverty to many families--the bankruptcy of a nation sends paleness to the cheeks and anguish to the hearts of millions.

In this exigence Necker adopted the bold resolve to publish an honest account of the state of the finances, that the nation, nobles, and unennobled might see the destruction toward which the state was drifting. Necker thought that, if the facts were fairly presented, the privileged class, in view of the ruin otherwise inevitable, would consent to bear their share of taxation, manifestly the only possible measure which could arrest the disaster. He consequently, in 1781, published his celebrated _Compte Rendu au Roi_. The impression which this pamphlet produced was amazing. Two hundred thousand copies were immediately called for, and the appalling revelation went with electric speed through the whole length and breadth of the land. It was read in the saloon, in the work-shop, and in the hamlet. Groups of those who could not read were gathered at all corners to hear it read by others.

"We wetted with our tears," writes M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, who acted an illustrious part in those days, "those pages which a citizen minister had imprinted with luminous and comfortable reflections, and where he was turning all his attention to the prosperity of the French with a sensibility deserving of their gratitude. The _people_ blessed him as its savior. But all those nourished by abuses formed a confederacy against the man who seemed about to wrest their prey from them."

Necker was desirous of introducing some popular element into the government. There was now a numerous body of men belonging to the unprivileged class, energetic and enlightened, whose voice ought to be heard in the administration of affairs as representatives of the people. He therefore recommended that there should be provincial parliaments in the different departments of France, somewhat corresponding with the present legislatures in the United States. In a few of the provinces there were already parliaments, but they were composed exclusively of the privileged class. Turgot also had contemplated provincial legislatures, which he desired to constitute as the organ of the _people_, and to be composed only of members of the Tiers Etat.[53] Necker, however, hoped to conciliate the nobles by giving the privileged body an equal representation with the unprivileged in these assemblies. One half were to be representatives of the clergy and the nobility, and the other half of the people, though the people numbered millions, while the clergy and nobles numbered but thousands.

Necker's report showed that the interest upon the public debt absorbed one third of the revenues; that the remaining two thirds were by no means sufficient for carrying on the government, and that, consequently, the burden was continually growing heavier by loans and accumulations.[54] The suggestions of Necker, to give the people a voice in the administration of affairs and to tax high-born men equally with low-born, created intense opposition. The storm became too fierce to be resisted. Both the king and the prime minister yielded to its violence, and Necker, like Turgot, was driven with contumely from the ministry and into exile. The hearts of the people followed the defeated minister to his retreat. These outrages were but making the line which separated the privileged from the unprivileged more visible, and were rousing and combining the masses. The illustrious financier, in his retirement, wrote his celebrated work upon the administration of the finances, a work which contributed much to the enlightenment of the public mind.[55] The intellect of the nation was roused, as never before, to the discussion of the affairs of state. In the parlor, the counting-room, the work-shop, the farm-house, and the field, all were employed in deliberating upon the one great topic which engrossed universal attention. And yet the nobles and their partisans, with infatuation inexplicable, resisted all measures of reform; a singular illustration of the Roman adage, "Quem Deus vult perdere priusquam dementat" (_whom God would destroy he first makes mad_).

Indeed, the opposition was sufficiently formidable to appal any minister. There were eighty thousand nobles, inheriting the pride and prestige of feudal power, with thousands, dependent upon their smiles, rallying around them as allies. There were the officers in the army, who were either hereditary nobles or, still worse, men of wealth who had purchased titles of nobility. There were a hundred thousand persons who, in various ways, had purchased immunity from the burdens of state, and were thus within the limits of the privileged class, and hated by the people, though despised by the nobles. There were two hundred thousand priests bound by the strongest of possible ties to the hierarchy, the humble class depending for position and bread upon their spiritual lords and obliged by the most solemn oaths to obey their superiors. And these priests, intrusted with the keys of heaven and of hell, as was supposed by the unenlightened masses, held millions in subjection by the most resistless powers of superstition. There were sixty thousand in the cloisters of the monasteries, many of them dissolute in the extreme, and who were necessarily subservient to the ecclesiastics. There were the farmers general, the collectors of the revenue, and all the vast army of office-holders, who were merely the agents of the court.

"This formidable mass of men," says M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, "were in possession of all France. They held her by a thousand chains. They formed, in a body, what was termed _la haute nation_. All the rest was the people."[56]

Though the privileged class and their dependents, which we have above enumerated, amounted to but a few hundred thousand, perhaps not five hundred thousand in all, and the people amounted to some twenty-five millions, still all the power was with the aristocracy. The mass of the people were merely slaves, unarmed, unorganized, uneducated. They had been degraded and dispirited by ages of oppression, and had no means of combining or of uttering a united voice which should be heard.

Immediately succeeding M. Necker in the ministry of finance came M. Fleury and M. d'Ormesson. They were both honest, well-meaning men, but were promptly crushed by a burden which neither of them was at all capable of bearing. Their names are hardly remembered. Maurepas was now dead. The Americans, aided by France, had achieved their independence, and France and England were again at peace. The king now selected M. de Calonne from the Parliament, as Minister of Finance. He was a man of brilliant genius, of remarkably courtly manners, but licentious and extravagant. The king hoped, by his selecting Calonne, to diminish that opposition of the Parliament which was daily growing more inveterate against the crown. For a time the new minister was exceedingly popular. His high reputation for financial skill and his suavity enabled him to effect important loans; and by the sale and the mortgage of the property of the crown he succeeded for a few months in having money in abundance. The court rioted anew in voluptuous indulgence. The beautiful palace of St. Cloud was bought of the Duke of Orleans for the queen, and vast sums were expended for its embellishment. The Palace of Rambouillet was purchased as a hunting-seat for the king. Marie Antoinette gave innumerable costly entertainments at Versailles, and rumor was rife with the scenes of measureless extravagance which were there displayed. The well-meaning, weak-minded king, having no taste for courtly pleasure and no ability for the management of affairs, either unconscious of the peril of the state or despairing of any remedy, fitted up a work-shop at Versailles, where he employed most of his time at a forge, under the guidance of a blacksmith, tinkering locks and keys. This man, Gamin, has recorded:

"The king was good, indulgent, timid, curious, fond of sleep. He passionately loved working as a smith, and hid himself from the queen and the court to file and forge with me. To set up his anvil and mine, unknown to all the world, it was necessary to use a thousand stratagems."[57]

There is a secret power called _public credit_ which will speedily bring such a career to its close. Public credit was now exhausted. No more money could be borrowed. The taxes for some time in advance were already pledged in payment of loans. The people, crushed by their burdens, could not bear any augmentation of taxes. The crisis seemed to have come. Calonne now awoke to the consciousness of his condition, and was overpowered by the magnitude of the difficulties in which he was involved. There was but one mode of redress--_an immediate retrenchment of expenses and the including of the privileged class in the assessment of taxes_. Whoever had attempted this had been crushed by the aristocratic Parliament. Could Calonne succeed? After long and anxious deliberation he became conscious that it would be impossible to induce the Parliament to consent to such a reform, that it would be very hazardous to call a meeting of the States-General, where the _people_ could make their voice to be heard, and yet it was essential to have some public body upon which he could lean for support. He therefore recommended that the king should convene an assembly of the notables, to be composed of such individuals as the king should select from the clergy, the nobles, and the magistracy, they all belonging to the privileged class. Such an assembly had never been convened since Richelieu called one in 1626.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 38: Historical View of the French Revolution, by J. Michelet, vol. i., p. 64.]

[Footnote 39: Louis XVI. was born Aug. 22, 1754. In May, 1770, when not quite sixteen, he married Marie Antoinette. In May, 1774, he wanted three months of being twenty years of age. Marie Antoinette was born Nov. 2, 1755. She was but fourteen years and six months old when married. She was but eighteen years and six months old when she became Queen of France.--_Encyclopaedia Americana._]

[Footnote 40: "It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision! I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendor and joy."--_Burke's Reflections._]

[Footnote 41: Memoirs of Marie Antoinette, by Madame Campan, i., 75.]

[Footnote 42: Encyclopaedia Americana, article Louis XVI.]

[Footnote 43: Encyclopaedia Americana, article Louis XV.]

[Footnote 44: Precis de la Revolution, par M. Lacretelle.]

[Footnote 45: "On the very threshold of the business he must propose to make the clergy, the noblesse, the very Parliament subject to taxes! One shriek of indignation and astonishment reverberates through all the chateau galleries. M. de Maurepas has to gyrate. The poor king, who had written (to Turgot) a few weeks ago, '_Il n'y a que vous et moi qui aimions le peuple_' (There is none but you and I who love the people), must now write a dismissal, and let the French Revolution accomplish itself pacifically or not, as it can."--_Carlyle, French Revolution_, i., 41.

"The nobles and the prelates, it seems, considered themselves degraded if they were to contribute to the repair of the roads; and they would no doubt have declared that their dignity and their existence, the very rights of property itself, were endangered, if they were now, for the first time, they would have said, in the history of the monarchy, to be subjected to the visits of the tax-gatherer."--_Lectures on the French Revolution, by Wm. Smyth_, vol. i., p. 102.]

[Footnote 46: _Lit de justice_ was a proceeding in which the king, with his court, proceeded to the Parliament, and there, sitting upon the throne, caused those edicts which the Parliament did not approve to be registered in his presence.--_Encyclopaedia Americana._]

[Footnote 47: It is not necessary to allude to De Clugny, who immediately succeeded Turgot, but who held his office six months only and attempted nothing.]

[Footnote 48: Woman in France, by Julia Kavanagh, p. 211. Memoirs of Marie Antoinette, by Madame Campan, vol. i., p. 375.]

[Footnote 49: Hist. Phil. de la France, par Ant. Fantin Desodoards, t. i., p. 28. Audouin states that the war cost France, from 1778 to 1782, fourteen hundred millions of livres ($280,000,000).]

[Footnote 50: "The queen never disguised her dislike to the American war. She could not conceive how any one could advise a sovereign to aim at the humiliation of England through an attack on the sovereign authority, and by assisting a people to organize a republican constitution. She often laughed at the enthusiasm with which Franklin inspired the French."--_Madame Campan's Mem. of Marie Antoinette_, ii., 29.]

[Footnote 51: Lectures on Fr. Rev., by Wm. Smyth, i., 109.]

[Footnote 52: Cor. Conf. de Louis XVI., ii., 178.]

[Footnote 53: Lectures on the French Revolution, by William Smyth, i., 115.]

[Footnote 54: "The notion that our maladies were incapable of remedy, and that no human mind could cure them, added keenly to the general grief. We saw ourselves plunged into a gulf of debts and public engagements, the interest alone of which absorbed the third part of the revenue, and which, far from being put into a course of liquidation, were continually accumulating by loans and anticipations."--_History of the French Revolution, by M. Rabaud de St. Etienne_, vol. i., p. 19.]

[Footnote 55: "And so Necker, Atlas-like, sustains the burden of the finances for five years long. Without wages--for he refused such--cheered only by public opinion and the ministering of his noble wife. He, too, has to produce his scheme of taxing; clergy, noblesse to be taxed--like a mere Turgot. Let Necker also depart; not unlamented."--_Carlyle, French Revolution_, vol. i., p. 46.]

[Footnote 56: M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, vol. i., p. 22.]

[Footnote 57: Memoirs of the Reign of Louis XVI., by the Abbe Soulavie, vol. ii., p. 191.]