The King visits Cherbourg.--Rarity of Royal Journeys.--The Princess
Christine visits the Queen--Hostility of the Duc d'Orléans to the Queen.--
Libels on her.--She is called Madame Deficit.--She has a Second Daughter,
who dies.--Ill Health of the Dauphin.--Unskillfulness and Extravagance of
Calonne's System of Finance.--Distress of the Kingdom.--He assembles the
Notables.--They oppose his Plans.--Letters of Marie Antoinette on the
Subject.--Her Ideas of the English Parliament.--Dismissal of Calonne.--
Character of Archbishop Loménie de Brienne.--Obstinacy of Necker.--The
Archbishop is appointed Minister.--The Distress increases.--The Notables
are dissolved.--Violent Opposition of the Parliament--Resemblance of the
French Revolution to the English Rebellion of 1642.--Arrest of
d'Esprémesnil and Montsabert.
It was owing to Marie Antoinette's influence that Louis himself in the
following year began to enter on a line of conduct which, if circumstances
had not prevented him from persevering in it, might have tended, more
perhaps than any thing else that he could have done, to make him also
popular with the main body of the people. The emperor, while at
Versailles, had strongly pressed upon him that it was his duty, as king of
the nation, to make himself personally acquainted with every part of his
kingdom, to visit the agricultural districts, the manufacturing towns, the
fortresses, arsenals, and harbors of the country. Joseph himself had
practiced what he preached. No corner of his dominions was unknown to him;
and it is plain that there can be no nation which must not be benefited by
its sovereign thus obtaining a personal knowledge of all the various
interests and resources of his subjects. But such personal investigations
were not yet understood to be a part of a monarch's duties. Louis's
contemporary, our own sovereign, George III., than whom, if rectitude of
intention and benevolence of heart be the principal standards by which
princes should be judged, no one ever better deserved to be called the
father of his country, scarcely ever went a hundred miles from Windsor,
and never once visited even those Midland Counties which before the end of
his reign had begun to give undeniable tokens of the contribution which
their industry was to furnish to the growing greatness of his empire; and
the last two kings of France, though in the course of their long reigns
they had once or twice visited their armies while waging war on the
Flemish or German frontier, had never seen their western or southern
provinces.
But now Marie Antoinette suggested to her husband that it was time that he
should extend his travels, which, except when he had gone to Rheims for
his coronation, had never yet carried him beyond Compiègne in one
direction and Fontainebleau in another; and, as of all the departments of
Government, that which was concerned with the marine of the nation
interested her most (we fear that she was secretly looking forward to a
renewal of war with England), she persuaded him to select for the object
of his first visit the fort of Cherbourg in Normandy, where those great
works had been recently begun which have since been constantly augmented
and improved, till they have made it a worthy rival to our own harbors on
the opposite side of the Channel. He was received in all the towns through
which he passed with real joy. The Normans had never seen their king since
Henry IV. had made their province his battle-field; and the queen, who
would gladly have accompanied him, had it not been that such a journey
undertaken by both would have resembled a state procession, and therefore
have been tedious and comparatively useless, exulted in the reception
which he had met with, and began to plan other expeditions of the same
kind for him, feeling assured that his presence would be equally welcomed
in other provinces--at Bourdeaux, at Lyons, or at Toulon. And a series of
such visits would undoubtedly have been calculated to strengthen the
attachment of the people everywhere to the royal authority; which,
already, to some far-seeing judges, seemed likely soon to need all the
re-enforcement which it could obtain in any quarter.
In the summer of 1786 she had a visit from her sister Christine, the
Princess of Teschen, who, with her husband, had been joint governor of
Hungary, and since the death of her uncle, Charles of Lorraine, had been
removed to the Netherlands. She had never seen her sister since her own
marriage, and the month which they spent together at Versailles may be
almost described as the last month of perfect enjoyment that Marie
Antoinette ever knew; for troubles were thickening fast around the
Government, and were being taken wicked advantage of by her enemies, at
the head of whom the Duc d'Orléans now began openly to range himself. He
was a man notorious, as has been already seen, for every kind of infamy;
and though he well knew the disapproval with which Marie Antoinette
regarded his way of life and his character, it is believed that he had had
the insolence to approach her with the language of gallantry; that he had
been rejected with merited indignation; and that he ever afterward
regarded her noble disdain as a provocation which it should be the chief
object of his life to revenge. In fact, on one occasion he did not scruple
to avow his resentment at the way in which, as he said, she had treated
him; though he did not mention the reason.[1]
Calumny was the only weapon which could be employed against her; but in
that he and his partisans had long been adept. Every old libel and pretext
for detraction was diligently revived. The old nickname of "The Austrian"
was repeated with pertinacity as spiteful as causeless; even the king's
aunts lending their aid to swell the clamor on that ground, and often
saying, with all the malice of their inveterate jealousy, that it was not
to be expected that she should have the same feelings as their father or
Louis XIV., since she was not of their blood, though it was plain that the
same remark would have applied to every Queen of France since Anne of
Brittany. Even the embarrassments of the revenue were imputed to her; and
she, who had curtailed her private expenses, even those which seemed
almost necessary to her position, that she might minister more largely to
the necessities of the poor--who had declined to buy jewels that the money
might be applied to the service of the State--was now held up to the
populace as being by her extravagance the prime cause of the national
distress. Pamphlets and caricatures gave her a new nickname of "Madame
Deficit;" and such an impression to her disfavor was thus made on the
minds of the lower classes, that a painter, who had just finished an
engaging portrait of her surrounded by her children, feared to send it to
the exhibition, lest it should be made a pretext for insult and violence.
Her unpopularity did not, indeed, last long at this time, but was
superseded, as we shall presently see, by fresh feelings of gratitude for
fresh labors of charity; nevertheless, the outcry now raised left its seed
behind it, to grow hereafter into a more enduring harvest of distrust and
hatred.
She had troubles, too, of another kind which touched her more nearly. A
second daughter, Sophie[2], had been born to her in the summer of 1786;
but she was a sickly child, and died, before she was a year old, of one of
the illnesses to which children are subject, and for some months the
mother mourned bitterly over her "little angel," as she called her. Her
eldest boy, too, was getting rapidly and visibly weaker in health: his
spine seemed to diseased, Marie Antoinette's only hope of saving him
rested on the fact that his father had also been delicate at the same age.
Luckily his brother gave her no cause for uneasiness; as she wrote to the
emperor[3]--"he had all that his elder wanted; he was a thorough peasant's
child, tall, stout, and ruddy.[4]" She had also another comfort, which, as
her troubles thickened, became more and more precious to her, in the warm
affection that had sprung up between her and her sister-in-law, the
Princess Elizabeth. A letter[5] has been preserved in which the princess
describes the death of the little Sophie to one of her friends, which it
is impossible to read without being struck by the sincerity of the
sympathy with which she enters into the grief of the bereaved mother. In
these moments of anguish she showed herself indeed a true sister, and, the
two clinging to one another the more the greater their dangers and
distresses became, a true sister she continued to the end.
Meanwhile the embarrassments of the Government were daily assuming a more
formidable appearance. Calonne had for some time endeavored to meet the
deficiency of the revenue by raising fresh loans, till he had completely
exhausted the national credit; and at last had been forced to admit that
the scheme originally propounded by Turgot, and subsequently in a more
modified degree by Necker, of abolishing the exemptions from taxation
which were enjoyed by the nobles--the privileged classes, as they were
often called--was the only expedient to save the nation from the disgrace
and ruin of total bankruptcy. But, as it seemed probable that the nobles
would resist such a measure, and that their resistance would prove too
strong for him, as it had already been found to be for his predecessors,
he proposed to the king to revive an old assembly which had been known by
the title of the Notables; trusting that, if he succeeded in obtaining the
sanction of that body to his plans, the nobles would hardly venture to
insist on maintaining their privileges in defiance of the recorded
judgment of so respectable a council. His hopes were disappointed. He
might fairly have reckoned on obtaining their concurrence, since it was
the unquestioned prerogative of the king to nominate all the members; but,
even when he was most deliberate and resolute, his rashness and
carelessness were incurable. He took no pains whatever to select members
favorable to his views; and the consequence was that, in March, 1787, in
the very first month of the session of the Notables, the whole body
protested against one of the taxes which he desired to impose; and his
enemies at once urged the king to dismiss him, basing their recommendation
on the practice of England, where, as they affirmed, a minister who found
himself in a minority on an important question immediately retired from
office.
Marie Antoinette, who, as we have seen, had been a diligent reader of
Hume, had also been led to compare the proceedings of the refractory
Notables with the conduct of our English parliamentary parties, and to an
English reader some of her comments can not fail to be as interesting as
they are curious. The Duchess de Polignac was drinking the waters at Bath,
which at that time was a favorite resort of French valetudinarians, and,
while she was still in that most beautiful of English cities, the queen
kept up an occasional correspondence with her. We have two letters which
Marie Antoinette wrote to her in April; one on the 9th, the very day on
which Calonne was dismissed; the second, two days latter; and even the
passages which do not relate to politics have their interest as specimens
of the writer's character, and of the sincere frankness with which she
laid aside her rank and believed in the possibility of a friendship of
complete equality.
"April 9th, 1787.
"I thank you, my dear heart, for your letter, which has done me good. I
was anxious about you. It is true, then, that you have not suffered much
from your journey. Take care of yourself, I insist on it, I beg of you;
and be sure and derive benefit from the waters, else I should repent of
the privation I have inflicted on myself without your health being
benefited. When you are near I feel how much I love you; and I feel it
much more when you are far away. I am greatly taken up with you and yours,
and you would be very ungrateful if you did not love me, for I can not
change toward you.
"Where you are you can at least enjoy the comfort of never hearing of
business. Although you are in the country of an Upper and a Lower House,
you can stop your ears and let people talk. But here it is a noise that
deafens one in spite of all I can do. The words 'opposition' and 'motions'
are established here as in the English Parliament, with this difference,
that in London, when people go into opposition, they begin by denuding
themselves of the favors of the king; instead of which, here numbers
oppose all the wise and beneficent views of the most virtuous of masters,
and still keep all he has given them. It may be a cleverer way of
managing, but it is not so gentleman-like. The time of illusion is past,
and we are tasting cruel experience. We are paying dearly to-day for our
zeal and enthusiasm for the American war. The voice of honest men is
stifled by members and cabals. Men disregard principles to bind themselves
to words, and to multiply attacks on individuals. The seditious will drag
the State to its ruin rather than renounce their intrigues."
And in her second letter she specifies some of the Opposition by name; one
of whom, as will be seen hereafter, contributed greatly to her subsequent
miseries.... "The repugnance which you know that I have always had to
interfering in business is today put cruelly to the proof; and you would
be as tired as I am of all that goes on. I have already spoken to you of
our Upper and Lower House,[6] and of all the absurdities which take place
there, and of the nonsense which is talked. To be loaded with benefits by
the king, like M. de Beauvau, to join the Opposition, and to surrender
none of them, is what is called having spirit and courage. It is, in
truth, the courage of infamy. I am wholly surrounded with folks who have
revolted from him. A duke,[7] a great maker of motions, a man who has
always a tear in his eye when he speaks, is one of the number. M. de La
Fayette always founds the opinions he expresses on what is done at
Philadelphia.... Even bishops and archbishops belong to the Opposition,
and a great many of the clergy are the very soul of the cabal. You may
judge, after this, of all the resources which they employ to overturn the
plans of the king and his ministers."
Calonne, however, as has already been intimated, had been dismissed from
office before this last letter was written. There had been a trial of
strength between him and his enemies; which he, believing that he had won
the confidence of Louis himself, reckoned on turning to his own advantage,
by inducing the king to dismiss those of his opponents who were in office.
To his astonishment, he found that Louis preferred dispensing with his own
services, and the general voice was probably correct when it, affirmed
that it was the queen who had induced him to come to that decision.
Loménie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, was again a candidate for the
vacant post, and De Vermond was as diligent as on the previous occasion[8]
in laboring to return the obligations under which that prelate had
formerly laid him, by extolling his abilities and virtues to the queen,
and recommending him as a worthy successor to Calonne, whom she had never
trusted or liked. In reality, the archbishop was wholly destitute of
either abilities or virtues. He was notorious both for open profligacy and
for avowed infidelity, so much so that Louis had refused to transfer him
to the diocese of Paris, on the ground that "at least the archbishop of
the metropolis ought to believe in God.[9]" But Marie Antoinette was
ignorant of his character, and believed De Vermond's assurance that the
appointment of so high an ecclesiastic would propitiate the clergy, whose
opposition, as many of her letters prove, she thought specially
formidable, and for whose support she knew her husband to be nervously
anxious. Some of Calonne's colleagues strongly urged the king to
re-appoint Necker, whose recall would have been highly popular with the
nation. But Necker had recently given Louis personal offense by publishing
a reply to some of Calonne's statements, in defiance of the king's express
prohibition, and had been banished from Paris for the act; and the queen,
recollecting how he had formerly refused to withdraw his resignation at
her entreaty, felt that she had no reason to expect any great
consideration for the opinions or wishes of either herself or the king
from one so conceited and self-willed, who would be likely to attribute
his re-appointment, not to the king's voluntary choice, but to his
necessities: she therefore strongly pressed that the archbishop should be
preferred. In an unhappy moment she prevailed;[10] and on the 1st of May,
1787, Loménie de Brienne was installed in office with the title of Chief
of the Council of Finance.
A more unhappy choice could not possibly have been made. The new minister
was soon seen to be as devoid of information and ability as he was known
to be of honesty. He had a certain gravity of outward demeanor which
imposed upon many, and he had also the address to lead the conversation to
points which, his hearers understood still less than himself; dilating on
finance and the money market even to the ladies of the court, who had had
some share in persuading the queen of his fitness for office.[11] But his
disposition was in reality as rash as that of Calonne; and it was a
curious proof of his temerity, as well as of his ignorance of the feeling
of parties in Paris, that though he knew the Notables to be friendly to
him, as indeed they would have been to any one who might have superseded
Calonne, he dismissed them before the end of the month. And the language
held on their dissolution both by the ministers and by the President of
the Notables, and which was cheerfully accepted by the people, is
remarkable from the contrast which it affords to the feelings which swayed
the national council exactly two years afterward. Some measures of
retrenchment which the Notables had recommended had been adopted; some
reductions had been made in the royal households; some costly ceremonies
had been abolished; and one or two imposts, which had pressed with great
severity on the poorer classes, had been extinguished or modified. And not
only did M. Lamoignon, the Keeper of the Seals, in the speech in which he
dismissed them, venture to affirm that these reductions would be found to
have effected all that was needed to restore universal prosperity to the
kingdom; but the President of the Assembly, in his reply, thanked God "for
having caused him to be born in such an age, under such a government, and
for having made him the subject of a king whom he was constrained to
love," and the thanksgiving was re-echoed by the whole Assembly. But this
contentment did not last long. The embarrassments of the Treasury were too
serious to be dissipated by soft speeches. The Notables were hardly
dissolved before the archbishop proposed a new loan of an enormous amount;
and, as he might have foreseen, their dissolution revived the pretensions
of the Parliament. The queen's description of the rise of a French
opposition at once received a practical commentary. The debates in the
Parliament became warmer than they had ever been since the days of the
Fronde: the citizens, sharing in the excitement, thronged the palace of
the Parliament, expressing their approval or disapproval of the different
speakers by disorderly and unprecedented clamor; the great majority
hooting down the minister and his supporters, and cheering those who spoke
against him. The Duc d'Orléans, by open bribes, gained over many of the
councilors to oppose the court in every thing. The registration of several
of the edicts which the minister had sent down was refused; and one member
of the Orleanist party even demanded the convocation of the States-
general, formerly and constitutionally the great council of the nation,
but which had never been assembled since the time of Richelieu.
The archbishop was sometimes angry, and sometimes terrified, and as weak
in his anger as in his terror. He persuaded the king to hold a bed of
justice to compel the registration of the edicts. When the Parliament
protested, he banished it to Troyes. In less than a month he became
alarmed at his own vigor, and recalled it. Encouraged by his
pusillanimity, and more secure than ever of the support of the citizens
who had been thrown into consternation by his demand of a second loan,
nearly[12] six times as large as the first, it became more audacious and
defiant than ever, D'Orléans openly placing himself at the head of the
malcontents. Loménie persuaded the king to banish the duke, and to arrest
one or two of his most vehement partisans; and again in a few weeks
repented of this act of decision also, released the prisoners, and
recalled the duke.
As a matter of course, the Parliament grew bolder still. Every measure
which the minister proposed was rejected; and under the guidance of one of
their members, Duval d'Esprémesnil, the councilors at last proceeded so
far as to take the initiative in new legislation into their own hands. In
the first week in May, 1788, they passed a series of resolutions affirming
that to be the law which indeed ought to have been so, but which had
certainly never been regarded as such at any period of French history. One
declared that magistrates were irremovable, except in cases of misconduct;
another, that the individual liberty and property of every citizen were
inviolable; others insisted on the necessity of convoking the States-
general as the only assembly entitled to impose taxes; and the councilors
hoped to secure the royal acceptance of these resolutions by some previous
votes which asserted that, of those laws which were the very foundation of
the Constitution, the first was that which assured the "crown to the
reigning house and to its descendants in the male line, in the order of
primogeniture.[13]"
But Louis, or rather his rash minister, was not to be so conciliated; and
a scene ensued which is the first of the striking parallels which this
period in France affords to the events which had taken place in England a
century and a half before. As in 1642 Charles I. had attempted to arrest
members of the English Parliament in the very House of Commons, so the
archbishop now persuaded Louis to send down the captain of the guard, the
Marquis d'Agoust, to the palace of the Parliament, to seize D'Esprémesnil,
and another councilor named Montsabert, who had been one of his foremost
supporters in the recent discussions. They behaved with admirable dignity.
Marie Antoinette was not one to betray her husband's counsels, as
Henrietta Maria had betrayed those of Charles. D'Esprémesnil and his
friend, wholly taken by surprise, had had no warning of what was designed,
no time to withdraw, nor in all probability would they have done so in any
case. When M. d'Agoust entered the council hall and demanded his
prisoners, there was a great uproar. The whole Assembly made common cause
with their two brethren who were thus threatened. "We are all
d'Esprémesnils and Montsaberts," was their unanimous cry; while the tumult
at the doors, where a vast multitude was collected, many of whom had arms
in their hands and seemed prepared to use them, was more formidable still.
But D'Agoust, though courteous in the discharge of his duty, was intrepid
and firm; and the two members voluntarily surrendered themselves and
retired in custody, while the archbishop was so elated with his triumph
that a few days afterwards he induced the king to venture on another
imitation of the history of England, though now it was not Charles, but
the more tyrannical Cromwell, whose conduct was copied. Before the end of
the month the Governor of Paris entered the palace of the Parliament,
seized all the registers and documents of every kind, locked the doors,
and closed them with the king's seal; and a royal edict was issued
suspending all the parliaments both in the capital and the provinces.