Her finances were ruined. Her people were half starving.
Marlborough declared that in the villages through which he
passed in the summer of 1710, at least half the inhabitants
had perished since the beginning of the preceding winter, and
the rest looked as if they had come out of their graves. All
the old dreams of French conquests in the Spanish Netherlands,
in Italy, and in Germany were dispelled, and the French
generals were now struggling desperately and skilfully to
defend their own frontier. ... In 1710, while the Whig
ministry [in England] was still in power, but at a time when
it was manifestly tottering to its fall, Lewis had made one
more attempt to obtain peace by the most ample concessions.
The conferences were held at the Dutch fortress of
Gertruydenberg. Lewis declared himself ready to accept the
conditions exacted as preliminaries of peace in the preceding
year, with the exception of the article compelling Philip
within two months to cede the Spanish throne. He consented, in
the course of the negotiations, to grant to the Dutch nearly
all the fortresses of the French and Spanish Netherlands,
including among others Ypres, Tournay, Lille, Furnes, and even
Valenciennes, to cede Alsace to the Duke of Lorraine, to destroy
the fortifications of Dunkirk, and those on the Rhine from
Bale to Philipsburg. The main difficulty was on the question
of the Spanish succession. ... The French troops had already
been recalled from Spain, and Lewis consented to recognise the
Archduke as the sovereign, to engage to give no more
assistance to his grandchild, to place four cautionary towns
in the hands of the Dutch as a pledge for the fulfilment of
the treaty, and even to pay a subsidy to the allies for the
continuance of the war against Philip. The allies, however,
insisted that he should join with them in driving his grandson
by force of arms from Spain, and on this article the
negotiations were broken off."
_W. E. H. Lecky,
History of England in the 18th Century,
chapter 1._
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1710-1712.
{1246}
FRANCE: A. D. 1713-1714.
Ending of the War of the Spanish Succession.
The Peace of Utrecht and the Treaty of Rastadt.
See UTRECHT: A. D. 1712-1714.
FRANCE: A. D. 1714.
The desertion of the Catalans.
See SPAIN: A. D. 1713-1714.
FRANCE: A. D. 1715.
Death of Louis XIV.
The character of his reign.
Louis XIV. died September 1, 1715, at the age of 77 years,
having reigned 72 years. "Richelieu, and after him Mazarin,
governing as if they had been dictators of a republic, had
extinguished, if I may use the expression, their personality
in the idea and service of the state. Possessing only the
exercise of authority, they both conducted themselves as
responsible agents towards the sovereign and before the
judgment of the country; while Louis XIV., combining the
exercise with the right, considered himself exempted from all
rule but that of his own will, and acknowledged no
responsibility for his actions except to his own conscience.
It was this conviction of his universal power, a conviction
genuine and sincere, excluding both scruples and remorse,
which made him upset one after the other the twofold system
founded by Henry IV., of religious liberty at home, and abroad
of a national preponderance resting upon a generous protection
of the independence of states and European civilisation. At
the personal accession of Louis XIV., more than fifty years
had passed since France had pursued the work of her policy in
Europe, impartial towards the various communions of
Christians, the different forms of governments, and the
internal revolutions of the states. Although France was
catholic and monarchical, her alliances were, in the first
place, with the Protestant states of Germany and with
republican Holland; she had even made friendly terms with
regicide England. No other interest but that of the
well-understood development of the national resources had
weight in her councils, and directed the internal action of
her government. But all was changed by Louis XIV., and special
interests, the spawn of royal personality, of the principle of
the hereditary monarchy, or that of the state religion, were
admitted, soon to fly upward in the scale. Thence resulted the
overthrow of the system of the balance of power in Europe,
which might be justly called the French system, and the
abandonment of it for dreams of an universal monarchy, revived
after the example of Charles V. and Philip II. Thence a
succession of enterprises, formed in opposition to the policy
of the country, such as the war with Holland, the factions
made with a view to the Imperial crown, the support given to
James II. and the counter-revolution in England, the
acceptance of the throne of Spain for a son of France,
preserving his rights to the Crown. These causes of
misfortune, under which the kingdom was obliged to succumb,
all issued from the circumstance applauded by the nation and
conformable to the spirit of its tendencies, which, after
royalty had attained its highest degree of power under two
ministers, delivered it unlimited into the hands of a prince
endowed with qualities at once brilliant and solid, an object
of enthusiastic affection and legitimate admiration. When the
reign, which was to crown under such auspices the ascendant
march of the French monarchy, had falsified the unbounded
hopes which its commencement had excited; when in the midst of
fruitless victories and continually increasing reverses, the
people beheld progress in all the branches of public economy
changed into distress,--the ruin of the finances, industry,
and agriculture--the exhaustion of all the resources of the
country,--the impoverishment of all classes of the nation, the
dreadful misery of the population, they were seized with a
bitter disappointment of spirit, which took the place of the
enthusiasm of their confidence and love."
_A. Thierry,
Formation and Progress of the Tiers
État or Third Estate in France,
chapter 9._
FRANCE: A. D. 1715.
Accession of King Louis XV.
FRANCE: A. D. 1715-1723.
State of the kingdom at the death of Louis XIV.
The minority of Louis XV. and Regency of the Duke of Orleans.
"Louis XIV. ... left France excessively exhausted. The State
was ruined, and seemed to have no resource but bankruptcy.
This trouble seemed especially imminent in 1715, after the
war, during which the government had been obliged to borrow at
400 per cent., to create new taxes, to spend in advance the
revenue of two years, and to increase the public debt to 2,400
millions. The acquisition of two provinces (Flanders,
Franche-Comté) and a few cities (Strassburg, Landau, and
Dunkirk) was no compensation for such terrible poverty.
Succeeding generations have remembered only the numerous
victories, Europe defied, France for twenty years
preponderant, and the incomparable splendor of the court of
Versailles, with its marvels of letters and arts, which have
given to the 17th century the name of the age of Louis XIV. It
is for history to show the price which France has paid for her
king's vain attempts abroad to rule over Europe, and at home
to enslave the wills and consciences of men. ... The weight of
the authority of Louis XIV. had been crushing during his last
years. When the nation felt it lifted, it breathed more
freely; the court and the city burst into disrespectful
demonstrations of joy; the very coffin of the great king was
insulted. The new king [Louis XV., great-grandson of Louis
XIV.] was five years old. Who was to govern? Louis XIV. had
indeed left a will, but he had not deceived himself with
regard to the value of it. 'As soon as I am dead, it will be
disregarded; I know too well what became of the will of the
king, my father!' As after the death of Henry IV. and Louis
XIII. there was a moment of feudal reaction; but the decline
of the nobility may be measured by the successive weakening of
its efforts in each case. Under Mary de'Medici it was still able
to make a civil war; under Anne of Austria it produced the
Fronde; after Louis XIV. it only produced memorials. The Duke
of Saint-Simon desired that the first prince of the blood,
Philip of Orleans, to whom the will left only a shadow of
power, should demand the regency from the dukes and peers, as
heirs and representatives of the ancient grand vassals. But
the Duke of Orleans convoked Parliament in order to break down
the posthumous despotism of the old king, feigning that the
king had committed the government to his hands. The regency,
with the right to appoint the council of regency as he would,
was conferred upon him, and the command of the royal household
was taken from the Duke of Maine [one of the bastard sons of
Louis XIV.], who yielded this important prerogative only after
a violent altercation.
{1247}
As a reward for the services of his two allies, the Duke of
Orleans called the high nobility into affairs, by substituting
for the ministries six councils; in which they occupied almost
all the places, and accorded to Parliament the right of
remonstrance. But two years had hardly passed when the
ministries were re-established, and the Parliament again
condemned to silence. It was plain that neither nobility nor
Parliament were to be the heirs of the absolute monarchy. ...
Debauchery had, until then, kept within certain limits;
cynicism of manners as well as of thought was now adopted
openly. The regent set the example. There had never been seen
such frivolity of conduct nor such licentious wit as that
exhibited in the wild meetings of the roués of the Duke of
Orleans. There had been formerly but one salon in France, that
of the king; a thousand were now open to a society which, no
longer occupied with religious questions, or with war, or the
grave futilities of etiquette, felt that pleasure and change
were necessities. ... Louis XV. attained his majority February
13, 1723, being then 13 years old. This terminated the regency
of the Duke of Orleans. But the king was still to remain a
long time under tutelage; the duke, in order to retain the
power after resigning the regency, had in advance given
[Cardinal] Dubois the title of prime minister. At the death of
the wretched Dubois he took the office himself, but held it
only four months, dying of apoplexy in December, 1723."
_V. Duruy,
History of France,
chapters 52 and 55._
ALSO IN:
_W. C. Taylor,
Memoirs of the House of Orleans,
volume 1, chapters 11-17,
and volume 2, chapters 1-3._
_F. Rocquain,
The Revolutionary Spirit preceding the French Revolution,
chapter 1._
_J. B. Perkins,
France under the Regency._
FRANCE: A. D. 1717-1719.
The Triple Alliance.
The Quadruple Alliance.
War with Spain.
See SPAIN: A. D. 1713-1725;
also, ITALY: A. D. 1715-1735.
FRANCE: A. D. 1717-1720.
John Law and his Mississippi Scheme.
"When the Regent Orleans assumed the government of France, he
found its affairs in frightful confusion. The public debt was
three hundred millions; putting the debt on one side, the
expenditure was only just covered by the revenue. St. Simon
advised him to declare a national bankruptcy. De Noailles,
less scrupulous, proposed to debase the coinage. ... In such
desperate circumstances, it was no wonder that the regent was
ready to catch eagerly at any prospect of success. A remedy
was proposed to him by the famous John Law of Lauriston. This
new light of finance had gambled in, and been banished from,
half the courts of Europe; he had figured in the English 'Hue
and Cry,' as 'a very tall, black, lean man, well-shaped, above
six feet high, large pock-holes in his face, big-nosed, speaks
broad and loud.' He was a big, masterful, bullying man, one of
keen intellect as well; the hero of a hundred romantic
stories. ... He studied finance at Amsterdam, then the great
school of commerce, and offered his services and the 'system'
which he had invented, first to Godolphin, when that nobleman
was at the head of affairs in England, then to Victor Amadeus,
duke of Savoy, then to Louis XIV., who, as the story goes,
refused any credit to a heretic. He invented a new combination
at cards, which became the despair of all the croupiers in
Europe; so successful was this last invention, that he arrived
for the second time at Versailles, in the early days of the
regency, with upwards of £120,000 at his disposal, and a copy
of his 'system' in his pocket. ... There was a dash of daring
in the scheme which suited well with the regent's peculiar
turn of mind; it was gambling on a gigantic scale. ...
Besides, the scheme was plausible and to a certain point
correct. The regent, with all his faults, was too clever a man
not to recognize the genius which gleamed in Law's dark eyes.
Law showed that the trade and commerce of every country was
crippled by the want of a circulating medium; specie was not
to be had in sufficient quantities; paper, backed by the
credit of the state, was the grand secret. He adduced the
examples of Great Britain, of Genoa, and of Amsterdam to prove
the advantage of a paper currency; he proposed to institute a
bank, to be called the 'Bank of France,' and to issue notes
guaranteed by the government and secured on the crown lands,
exchangeable at sight for specie, and receivable in payment of
taxes; the bank was to be conducted in the king's name, and to
be managed by commissioners appointed by the States-General.
The scheme of Law was based on principles which are now
admitted as economical axioms; the danger lay in the enormous
extent to which it was intended to push the scheme. ... While
the bank was in the hands of Law himself, it appears to have
been managed with consummate skill; the notes bore some
proportion to the amount of available specie; they contained a
promise to pay in silver of the same standard and weight as
that which existed at the time. A large dividend was declared;
then the regent stepped in. The name of the bank was changed
to that of the Royal Bank of France, the promise to pay in
silver of a certain weight and standard was dropped, and a
promise substituted to pay 'in silver coin.' This omission, on
the part of a prince who had already resorted to the expedient
of debasing the currency, was ominous, and did much to shake
public confidence; the intelligence that in the first year of
the new bank 1,000,000,000 of livres were fabricated, was not
calculated to restore it. But these trifles were forgotten in
the mad excitement which followed. Law had long been
elaborating a scheme which is for ever associated with his
name, and beside which the Bank of France sank into
insignificance. In 1717, the year before the bank had been
adopted by the regent, the billets d'état of 500 livres each
were worth about 160 livres in the market. Law, with the
assent of the regent, proposed to establish a company which
should engross all the trade of the kingdom, and all the
revenues of the crown, should carry on the business of
merchants in every part of the world, and monopolize the
farming of the taxes and the coining of money; the stock was
to be divided into 200,000 shares of 500 livres each. The
regent nearly marred the scheme at starting by inserting a
proviso that the depreciated billets d'état were to be
received at par in payment for the new stock, on which four
per cent. was guaranteed by the State." Law's company was
formed, under the name of the Company of the West, and
obtained for the basis of its operations a monopoly of the
trade of that vast territory of France in the valley of the
Mississippi which bore the name of Louisiana. The same
monopoly had been held for five years by one Crozat, who now
resigned it because he found it unprofitable; but the fact
received little attention.
See LOUISIANA: A. D. 1717-1718.
{1248}
"Louisiana was described as a paradise. ... Shareholders in
the company were told that they would enjoy the monopoly of
trade throughout French North America, and the produce of a
country rich in every kind of mineral wealth. Billets d'état
were restored to their nominal value; stock in the Mississippi
scheme was sold at fabulous prices; ingots of gold, which were
declared to have come from the mines of St. Barbe, were taken
with great pomp to the mint; 6,000 of the poor of Paris were
sent out as miners, and provided with tools to work in the new
diggings. New issues of shares were made; first 50,000, then
50,000 more; both at an enormous premium. The jobbers of the
rue Quincampoix found ordinary language inadequate to express
their delight: they invented a new slang for the occasion, and
called the new shares 'les filles,' and, 'les petites filles,'
respectively. Paris was divided between the 'Anti-system' party
who opposed Law, and the Mississippians who supported him. The
State borrowed from the company fifteen hundred millions;
government paid its creditors in warrants on the company. To
meet them, Law issued 100,000 new shares; which came out at a
premium of 1,000 per cent. The Mississippians went mad with
joy--they invented another new slang phrase; the 'cinq cents'
eclipsed the filles and the petites filles in favour. The
gates of Law's hotel had to be guarded by a detachment of
archers; the cashiers were mobbed in their bureaux; applicants
for shares sat in the ante-rooms; a select body slept for
several nights on the stairs; gentlemen disguised themselves
in Law's livery to obtain access to the great man. ... By this
time the charter of the company of Senegal had been merged in
the bank, which also became sole farmer of the tobacco duties;
the East India Company had been abolished, and the exclusive
privilege of trading to the East Indies, China, and the South
Seas, together with all the possessions of Colbert's company
were transferred to Law. The bank now assumed the style of the
Company of the Indies. Before the year [1719] was out the
regent had transferred to it the exclusive privilege of the
mint, and the contract of all the great farms. Almost every
branch of industry in France, its trade, its revenue, its
police, were now in the hands of Law. Every fresh privilege
was followed by a new issue of shares. ... The shares of 500
franks were now worth 10,000. The rue Quincampoix became
impassable, and an army of stockjobbers camped in tents in the
Place Vendome. ... The excitement spread to England [where the
South Sea Bubble was inflated by the madness of the hour].
See SOUTH SEA BUBBLE.
... Law's system and the South Sea scheme both went down
together. Both were calculated to last so long, and so long
only, as universal confidence existed; when it began to be
whispered that those in the secret were realizing their
profits and getting out of the impending ruin, the whole
edifice came down with a crash. ... No sooner was it evident
that the system was about to break down, than Law, the only
man who could at least have mitigated the blow, was banished."
_Viscount Bury,
Exodus of the Western Nations,
volume 2, chapter 5._
ALSO IN:
_C. Mackay,
Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions,
volume 1, chapter 1._
_A. Thiers,
The Mississippi Bubble._
_W. C. Taylor,
Memoirs of the House of Orleans,
volume 2, chapter 2._
_C. Gayarre,
History of Louisiana, second series,
lecture 1._
_Duke de Saint-Simon,
Memoirs:
abridged translation by St. John, volume 3, chapter 25,
and volume 4, chapters 4, and 13-15._
FRANCE: A. D. 1720.
The fortifying of Louisbourg.
See CAPE BRETON ISLAND: A. D. 1720-1745.
FRANCE: A. D. 1723-1774.
Character and reign of Louis XV.
The King's mistresses and their courtiers
who conducted the government.
State and feeling of the nation.
After the death of the Duke of Orleans, "a short period of
about two years and a-half comprehends the administration of
the Duke of Bourbon, or rather of his mistress, la Marquise de
Prie. Fleury [Cardinal] then appears on the stage, and dies in
1743. He was, therefore, minister of France for seventeen
years. On his death, the king (Louis XV.) undertook to be his
own prime minister; an unpromising experiment for a country at
any time. In this instance the result was only that the king's
mistress, Madame de Chateauroux, became the ruler of France,
and soon after Madame de Pompadour, another mistress, whose
reign was prolonged from 1745 to 1768. Different courtiers and
prelates were seen to hold the first offices of the state
during this apparent premiership of the monarch. The ladies
seem to have chosen or tolerated Cardinal Tençin, Argençon,
Orsy, Mauripaux, and Amelot, who, with the Dukes Noailles and
Richelieu, succeeded to Fleury. Afterwards, we have Argençon
and Machault, and then come the most celebrated of the
ministers or favourites of Madame de Pompadour, the Abbé de
Bemis and the Duc de Choiseul. The last is the most
distinguished minister after Fleury. He continued in favour
from 1758, not only to 1763, when Madame de Pompadour died,
but for a few years after. He was at length disgraced by la
Comtesse Dubarri, who had become the king's mistress soon
after the death of Madame de Pompadour, and remained so,
nearly to the death of the monarch himself, in 1774."
_W. Smyth,
Lectures on the History of the French Revolution,
lecture 3._