advocate Barbier wrote in his journal: “The King is perfectly well.
Madame the Marquise de Pompadour has not quitted Versailles. A few
days after his recovery the King paid her a visit of a quarter of an
hour, but since he holds his councils as usual he has resumed his own
occupations; he has hunted several times, and the little suppers have
begun again.” The chronicler, often cynical, concludes as follows:
“Notwithstanding the criticisms of evil-minded persons, the best thing
that could happen to both him and us, that is to all good citizens,
would be for him to banish from his mind a misfortune which ought not
to affect one, and continue his ordinary dissipations.”
Baron de Besenval’s conclusion must also be quoted: “Thus in the whole
of this affair, M. d’Argenson had been willing to sacrifice the King
to the Dauphin in order to prolong his own power. The King had been
willing to sacrifice his mistress to public opinion and the terrors
which disturbed his mind. M. de Machault consented to sacrifice Madame
de Pompadour, his friend, by giving her advice which might please
the monarch. And in the end everything was sacrificed to love, which
is what happens and will happen always.” Here the word “love” is not
accurate; “habit” is what he should have said.
Once more the favorite had triumphed; but in her victory she bore a
mortal grudge against the Jesuits who had nearly succeeded in banishing
her. She began that underhand but violent struggle against them which,
a few years later, was to result in the suppression of their order. She
had the audacity to forward secretly to the Pope a note which was a
censure on their conduct and, if one can believe it, a defence of her
own. This note, a copy of which has been discovered in the papers of
the Duke de Choiseul, is a veritable monument of cynicism or else of a
perverted conscience. It proves in the woman who conceived it an entire
lack of moral sense, a forgetfulness of the most elementary decorum,
and of the respect which unbelievers themselves owe to religion.
This curious document opens as follows:--
“At the beginning of 1752, determined by motives which it is useless to
give an account of, to no longer preserve for the King any sentiments
but those of gratitude and the purest attachment, I declared as much to
His Majesty, supplicating him to cause the doctors of the Sorbonne to
be consulted, and to write to his confessor that he might consult with
others, in order that I might be left near his person, since he desired
it, without being exposed to the suspicion of a weakness which I no
longer had.”
So then, to credit Madame de Pompadour, she had become a type of
modesty and Christian renunciation. She adds: “Things remained
in appearance just as they had been until 1755. Then, prolonged
reflections on the evils which had pursued me, even amidst the greatest
good fortune; the certainty of never arriving at happiness by worldly
goods, since none had ever been lacking to me, and yet I had never
attained to happiness; detachment from the things which had most amused
me,--all induced me to believe that the only happiness is in God. I
addressed myself to Père de Sacy as to a man fully penetrated with this
verity; I bared my soul completely to him; he tried me in secret from
September to the end of January, 1756. During this time he proposed
that I should write a letter to my husband, the rough draft of which,
drawn up by himself, I still have. My husband refused ever to see me.”
The Marquise then complained to the Sovereign Pontiff of Père de Sacy,
who, according to her, was the victim of intrigues of every sort, and
guilty of having told her that he would refuse her the sacraments
so long as she did not leave the court. She added, in speaking of
Damiens’s crime: “The abominable 5th January, 1757, arrived, and was
followed by the same intrigues as in the previous year. The King did
all in his power to bring Père Desmarets to the verity of religion. The
same motives being at work, the response was not different; and the
King, who earnestly desired to fulfil his duties as a Christian, was
prevented from doing so, and soon after relapsed into the same errors,
from which he would certainly have been extricated had they acted in
good faith.”
Perhaps all is not hypocrisy in this note. I incline to believe that
in spite of her idolatry for the court, the favorite recognized its
miseries and nothingness. How many persons remain vicious while knowing
well that vice produces their unhappiness! How many passionate people
own to themselves that their passions are killing them! O Ambition!
cries Saint Bernard, by what spell does it happen that, being the
torment of a heart where thou hast taken birth, and where thou
dost exert thine empire, yet there is no person whom thou dost not
please, and who does not allow himself to be taken by surprise by the
flattering attraction thou dost offer him. _O ambitio, quo modo omnes
torquens omnibus places?_
It would have been easy to reply to the Marquise de Pompadour that
if the grandeurs of this world gave her so little satisfaction, all
she had to do was to withdraw from the court. Hence the Pope remained
untouched by all this display of Christian philosophy. He could not
make up his mind to consider the mistress of Louis XV. as a repentant
Magdalen; and, far from blaming the Jesuits who had refused her
absolution, he approved them. The haughty favorite did not admit that
she was beaten. She kept silence, swearing, however, that she would be
avenged.
IX
MADAME DE POMPADOUR AND DOMESTIC POLITICS
At home as well as abroad, in parliamentary and clerical quarrels,
as in questions of external politics, Madame de Pompadour’s ideas
were always undecided, inconsistent, variable. For that matter, it is
not easy to find in a pretty woman the qualities needful to manage
public affairs well. With very few exceptions, fashionable women are
fickle, wilful, excessively impressionable, capricious, like nearly
all persons who are flattered. If they meddle with government, their
half-knowledge is more dangerous than complete ignorance. They have
infatuations, foregone determinations; their mania for protecting makes
them obstinate in sustaining undeserving favorites. Their most serious
determinations often depend on trifles. A well-turned compliment
influences them more than a good reason; they are the dupes of any one
who knows how to flatter them without seeming to do so, and who can
find more or less ingenious pretexts for justifying their whims or
palliating their faults. Such was Madame de Pompadour.
Is it not curious to see this futile woman leaving her gimcracks and
gewgaws to interfere in the most arduous theological or governmental
questions, to pose as an arbiter between the magistracy and the clergy,
the throne and the altar? “Certes,” writes D’Argenson in a style well
worthy of the epoch, “it is better to see a beautiful nymph at the helm
than a villainous crouching ape such as the late Cardinal Fleury. But
these fair ladies are as capricious as white cats, which caress you at
first and afterwards scratch and bite you.” Madame de Pompadour acted
like that with the Parliament; sometimes she caressed, sometimes she
clawed it.
The interminable struggle between secular jurisdiction and
ecclesiastical discipline had all the ruthlessness, all the asperity,
of a civil war. A society at once incredulous and fanatical grew
excited over theological questions worthy of Byzantium, and even in the
heart of the Seven Years’ War there were at Paris, as Voltaire remarks,
fifty thousand fanatics who did not know in what country flowed the
Danube and the Elbe, and who thought the universe turned upside down
by the contradictory propositions of the adepts of Jansenism and the
disciples of Molina.[48]
The question, however, was more serious than one might be inclined to
believe. Jansenism, that third estate of religion, as it has been so
justly called, was nothing more or less than a preliminary step toward
republican doctrines. “Do not believe,” said Bossuet, apropos of the
English revolution, “that it is simply the quarrel of the Episcopate,
or some intrigues against the Anglican liturgy which have moved the
common people. These disputes were as yet only feeble commencements
whereby turbulent spirits made a trial of their liberty; but something
more violent was stirring in the depths of men’s hearts; it was a
secret disgust for all that had been authority, and an itching to
innovate incessantly after the first example had been seen.”
French Jansenism had the haughty chagrin, the indocile curiosity, the
spirit of revolt, which characterized the Protestantism of England.
Louis XIV., so jealous of his royal prerogatives, had seen this at
once. He felt that discipline is as indispensable to the Church as to
the barracks, and comprehended that the throne has the same foundations
as the altar. The thing aimed at by the bull _Unigenitus_ of 1713
was to re-establish unity in doctrines; and when the Jansenists refused
to submit to the decree of the Sovereign Pontiff, the great King said
that this rebellion against the Pope would give rise to attacks against
the monarchical principle. He was not mistaken. If the Parliament
showed itself favorable to Jansenism, it was far less on account of
such or such ideas on free will or grace, than by instinctive liking
for the revolutionary spirit which existed in germ in the new sect.
Religious controversies were to lead by slow degrees to political
controversies. The Parliament led to parliamentarism. People began by
contemning the episcopal jurisdiction of an archbishop in order to end
by braving the authority of a king.
Christopher de Beaumont, that convinced priest, that austere and
inflexible prelate, so firm against the temptation of grandeurs that
Louis XV. had been obliged to summon him thrice in order to make him
leave his diocese of Vienne, in Dauphiny, and accept the archbishopric
of Paris, Christopher de Beaumont was faithful to the traditions of the
Church when he denied all competence over matters purely religious,
such as the administration of sacraments, to the Parliament. His
doctrine was after all only that of the separation of the powers.
Louis XV. inclined to the views of the Archbishop, whose virtues he
appreciated. Like Louis XIV., he recognized the bull _Unigenitus_,
and treated Jansenism as a heresy. Like Louis XIV., he suspected, not
without reason, both the Parliament and the Parisian population. “I
know the people of Paris,” said he; “they must have remonstrances and
shows, and perhaps worse than that some day.” Madame de Pompadour would
have taken the part of the Archbishop, as the King wished to do, if
the Archbishop had been a courtier; but Christopher de Beaumont would
rather have died than compromise with concubinage and adultery. He
could not understand a prelate’s stooping before a royal favorite,
and the idea of soliciting a Pompadour would have made him blush.
He preferred to be twice exiled. “The Queen,” wrote D’Argenson in
December, 1754, “Monseigneur the Dauphin, and all the royal family are
greatly troubled by the exile of the Archbishop of Paris; the Queen
weeps over it every day.” Christopher de Beaumont received numerous
visits in his exile at Conflans. The orthodox considered him the
upholder of the faith. The King admired the Archbishop, but did not
sustain him. D’Argenson wrote, March 6, 1756:--
“The motto _Dividatur_ might be recommended for the personal
government of Louis XV. He received this spirit of compromise from
Cardinal Fleury. All his forces run to that.... Hence, doing good
only half way, he also does evil half way, which produces a chaotic
state of things, and the worst effect.” With this system the monarch
dissatisfied the magistracy and the clergy at the same time. By turns
he banished the Parliament and the Archbishop. The curés continued to
refuse the sacraments to the Jansenists. The magistrates sent their
bailiffs’ men and caused the sick to be communicated surrounded by
bayonets. The Eucharist was abandoned to derision by the parties to the
strife. The court fluctuated between the two opinions. After having
sent the Archbishop of Paris to Conflans, Louis XV., although leaving
him in disgrace, pronounced in his favor.
In a bed of justice held December 13, 1756, the King forbade the
Parliament to decree the administration of the sacraments, to convene
general assemblies, to interfere with the course of justice, to suspend
the registration of edicts. He suppressed the chambers of inquests, and
declared that he would punish any who would not obey. One hundred and
fifty members of the Parliament sent in their resignations. All Paris
was in commotion. A riot was momentarily expected. Nothing was heard
but oaths and curses. The Parliament and Jansenistic diatribes had the
result of exciting Damiens to the insanity of fanaticism. He thought
that in striking Louis XV. he was acting for God and the people.
Madame de Pompadour, still more versatile than the King, was at this
time the enemy of the Parliament. However, the exile of the Archbishop
continued, because nothing could induce him to curry-favor with the
favorite. The charge which he sent from Conflans to Paris displeased
the Marquise.
“Let us enter into our own selves, my dear brethren,” said he, “and
see whether the aberrations of our own minds and hearts have not drawn
upon us so terrible an effect of the divine wrath. Examine without
prejudice what has been deserved by so many errors diffused among the
public, so much license in speech, such blasphemies against God and His
Christ, such disputing against the known truth, such scandals in every
condition and of all kinds; observe, in particular, whether, since the
weakening of faith among us, a multitude of principles tending to
disobedience and even to rebellion against the sovereign and his laws
have not insinuated themselves into men’s minds and books. It would be
easy for us to remind you of the maxims of the holy doctors which have
never ceased to inspire those sentiments of fidelity that are due to
earthly princes; the decisions of councils which have anathematized
every doctrine capable of revolting peoples against the sovereign; the
perpetual instructions of pastors, who have always said with the great
Apostle: Obey your temporal masters in all things.... What are we to
think of the execrable crime which has been conceived in the bosom of
the country and executed under our eyes? What must be our indignation
at the memory of a treasonable attempt, deliberately planned, and made
in that palace where everything announces the majesty of the sovereign?”
This truly evangelical language was the admiration of the Queen, the
Dauphin, and all pious people. But it seemed like a satire to the
protectress of the philosophers, the friend of Voltaire and Quesnay,
the patroness of the Encyclopedia. Louis XV. was in reality of the
Archbishop’s opinion. He recalled him in October, 1757. But, faithful
to his system of compromises, he permitted those members of the
Parliament who had resigned to resume their functions. The Archbishop,
constantly pursued by the animadversions of the favorite, was exiled
a second time, from January, 1758, to October, 1759. The inflexible
prelate conceded nothing in point of doctrine. “Let them erect a
scaffold in the midst of the court,” he exclaimed; “I would ascend
it to maintain my rights, fulfil my duties, and obey the laws of my
conscience.”
The quarrels over the bull _Unigenitus_ were at last appeased; but
religious authority was weakened at the same time as royal authority.
Emboldened by their polemics, the members of the Parliament began
gradually to pose as protectors of liberties and censors of absolute
monarchy. Some of the nobles, on the lookout for popularity, such as
D’Argenson, Choiseul, and other disciples of Voltaire, fancied that
the aristocracy could retain their privileges if the clergy lost
theirs. Louis XV., who foresaw the coming cataclysms, was under no such
illusion: at bottom he was inimical to the Parliament and friendly
to the Church. If the Most Christian King sometimes showed himself
indulgent toward the philosophers, it was because they flattered his
mistress and sought to stupefy him while lulling his remorse.
X
MADAME DE POMPADOUR AND THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR
One of the principal calamities laid to the charge of Madame de
Pompadour, by her contemporaries and by posterity, is the Seven Years’
War. They have resolved to hold her responsible for all the bloodshed,
all the disasters and humiliations, for Rossbach and Crevelt, for the
loss of the colonies and the profound injury done to the military
prestige and naval forces of France. There is some exaggeration in
this, as we believe. It must not be forgotten that the origin of the
Seven Years’ War was an unjustifiable aggression of the English,
who were absolutely bent on complete mastery of the seas. Madame de
Pompadour was certainly not responsible for British ambition. It is
true that France was not ready for strife, and that its marine had been
allowed to fall into decay. But if the favorite was deceived about
the resources of the country, if she cherished illusions which ruined
peoples as well as individuals, she was not the only one.
The Marquis d’Argenson accuses her of having been occupied with
porcelains at a time when people should have been thinking of arms.
“Madame de Pompadour,” he writes in 1754, “does nothing but preach up
the great advantage it has been to the State to manufacture porcelain
like that of Saxony, and even to have surpassed it. A royal warehouse
for this porcelain is being established in the rue de la Monnaie. There
may be seen a service which the King is about to send to the King of
Saxony, as if to brave and provoke him, saying that he has surpassed
even his manufactory. At the King’s suppers the Marquise says that it
is uncitizenlike not to buy as much of this porcelain as one can pay
for. Some one answered her: But while the King has been so liberal in
encouraging this manufactory, those of Charleville and Saint-Étienne
are abandoned, which are quite differently useful to us, since they
concern the defence of the kingdom, and three-quarters of the workmen
are passing into foreign countries.” The reflection is, doubtless,
just; but a few Saxony or Sèvres porcelains, more or less, would not
greatly have altered the situation of France. It was her misfortune to
be slumbering in a fatal ease. Voltaire has said: “All Europe never saw
happier days than followed the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, until
toward the year 1755. Commerce flourished from St. Petersburg to Cadiz;
the fine arts were everywhere in honor. A mutual confidence existed
between all nations. Europe resembled a large family, reunited after
its dissensions.” The French allowed themselves to be deceived by
this universal lull. Military men and diplomatists felt an exaggerated
confidence. In a few years people became so accustomed to peace that
they no longer even thought of war. It was the same thing that happened
about a century later, at the time of the Universal Exposition of
1867. Peoples who wish to preserve their greatness ought to beware
of cosmopolitan theories. While the philosophers were weaving their
humanitarian dreams, England was preparing her fleets and Frederick the
Great his armies.
A trifling contest between France and England for some wild lands in
Canada was the kindling spark of a fire that was to inflame the four
quarters of the earth. But this quarrel, insignificant in itself, was
not the true cause of the war: it was at most its pretext.
To avoid a struggle with England was well-nigh impossible; but what
France might have done, and did not, was to remain faithful to the
alliance with Prussia, instead of plunging into one absolutely contrary
to every tradition of its foreign policy, the Austrian alliance. What
the diplomacy of Louis XV. lacked was consecutiveness. The versatile
monarch did not know what he wanted. Sometimes Prussian, sometimes
Austrian, he fluctuated between two contradictory systems. The see-saw
policy creates only a momentary illusion. It succeeds for a while, but
it nearly always leads to ruin. The secret of strong diplomatists is
to persevere in one idea, pursue one end, choose one good alliance,
and stick to it. Feeble diplomatists, on the contrary, undo to-day what
they did yesterday. It is like the web of Penelope. Whoever studies
seriously the causes of our reverses, under Napoleonic France as well
as under the France of the Bourbons, will easily convince himself that
nearly all of them are due to incoherent principles and inconsistent
ideas. To preserve a system and follow a tradition gives a real
strength. The strength of Prince Bismarck is to have persevered in one
idea, that of German unity, and in one alliance, that of Russia.
The policy of the Versailles treaty of 1756, which established an
intimate accord between Louis XV. and Maria Theresa, was not in itself
a more objectionable policy than another. But if it was desired to
adopt it, it ought not to have been necessary to make war with Austria
beforehand. Nothing is more dangerous than to place one’s self in a
self-contradictory attitude. No confidence is inspired by such variable
conduct; one is at the mercy of every incident.
In politics, as in religion and literature, the prime essential is
unity. It is the same thing in diplomacy as in style.
“Ce que l’on conçoit bien s’énonce clairement,
Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément.”[49]
What is required is a true spirit of method, a clear, precise, definite
object, straight lines, an absence of tortuous proceedings.
The old maxim, “divide to reign,” the presence in the same ministry
of men warring against each other, of secret agents who undo the
work of official agents, underhand ways, countermines, politics by
double entry,--all this is no sign of strength; it is the expedient of
weakness. Occult diplomacy, like that of Louis XV., is suitable to none
but governments in extremity. Woe to a sovereign who suspects his own
ambassadors! If he has not full confidence in them, let him change them!
What lay at the root of the character of Louis XV. was the habit of
dissimulation, the vanity of being considered impenetrable. It was he,
not Madame de Pompadour, who had created a government at constant war
with the principal agents it made use of. Nor was the Austrian alliance
a conception of the favorite’s. Louis XV. did not like Frederick the
Great, and he was not less taken with the flatteries of the Empress
Maria Theresa than Madame de Pompadour herself. If the adroit sovereign
wrote the Marquise a letter in which she treated her as a dear friend,
she was careful at the same time to display a passionate admiration, a
sort of cult, for Louis XV. Moreover, there was an Austrian party at
Versailles. The Marquis d’Argenson wrote in January, 1756: “There is a
large party in our court for the court of Vienna. Austria has always
had emissaries at our court. I hear these emissaries saying that the
house of Austria is no longer what it was, that it has need of us, that
we ought to march in close accord with it. I know these insinuations,
and it was to opposing them that I owe my disgrace in 1747. They preach
to us against the King of Prussia, they say he is all English, and they
excite us against him in view of despoiling him, if we are able. Hence
we sulk at Spain, we are irritated against Prussia, our veritable and
sincere ally, and all this exasperates at court _femineo ululatu_.”
The partisans of the treaty of Versailles (May 1, 1756), by which
France and Austria promised each other mutual aid against their
enemies, have a right to extenuating circumstances. This passage from
Duclos must not be forgotten: “As soon as the treaty was known, there
was a sort of inebriation which was increased by the chagrin displayed
by the English; every one imagined that the union of the two first
powers would make all Europe respectful. Ideas have greatly changed
since then.”