Formidable Riots take place in some Provinces.--The Archbishop invites
Necker to join his Ministry.--Letter of Marie Antoinette describing her
Interview with the Archbishop, and her Views.--Necker refuses.--The Queen
sends Messages to Necker.--The Archbishop resigns, and Necker becomes
Minister.--The Queen's View of his Character.--General Rejoicing.--Defects
in Necker's Character.--He recalls the Parliament.--Riots in Paris.--
Severe Winter.--General Distress.--Charities of the King and Queen.--
Gratitude of the Citizens.--The Princes are concerned in the Libels
published against the Queen.--Preparations for the Meeting of the States-
general.--Long Disuse of that Assembly.--Need of Reform.--Vices Of the Old
Feudal System.--Necker's Blunders in the Arrangements for the Meeting of
the States.--An Edict of the King concedes the Chief Demands of the
Commons.--Views of the Queen.
The whole kingdom was thrown into great and dangerous excitement by these
transactions. Little as were the benefits which the people had ever
derived from the conduct of the Parliament, their opposition to the
archbishop, who had already had time to make himself generally hated and
despised, caused the councilors to be very generally regarded as champions
of liberty; and in the most distant provinces, in Béarn, in Isère, and in
Brittany, public meetings (a thing hitherto unknown in the history of the
nation) were held, remonstrances were drawn up, confederacies were formed,
and oaths were administered by which those who took them bound themselves
never to surrender what they affirmed to be the ancient privileges of the
nation.
The archbishop became alarmed; a little, perhaps, for the nation and the
king, but far more for his own place, which he had already contrived to
render profitable to himself by the preferments which it had enabled him
to engross. And, in the hope of saving it, he now entreated Necker to join
the Government, proposing to yield up the management of the finances to
him, and to retain only the post of prime minister.
A letter from the queen to Mercy shows that she acquiesced in the scheme.
Her disapproval of Necker's past conduct was outweighed by her sense of
the need which the State had of his financial talents; though, for reasons
which she explains, she was unwilling wholly to sacrifice the archbishop;
and the letter has a further interest as displaying some of the
difficulties which arose from the peculiar disposition of the king, while
every one was daily more and more learning to look upon her as the more
important person in the Government. On the 19th of August, 1783, she
writes to Mercy,[1] whom the archbishop had employed as his agent to
conciliate the stubborn Swiss Banker:
"The archbishop came to me this morning, immediately after he had seen
you, to report to me the conversation which he had had with you. I spoke
to him very frankly, and was touched by what he said. He is at this moment
with the king, to try and get him to decide; but I very much fear that M.
Necker will not accept while the archbishop remains. The animosity of the
public against him is pushed so far that M. Necker will be afraid of being
compromised, and, indeed, perhaps it might injure his credit; but, at the
same time, what is to be done? In truth and conscience we can not
sacrifice a man who has made for as all these sacrifices of his
reputation, of his position in the world, perhaps even of his life; for I
fear they would kill him. There is yet M. Foulon, if M. Necker refuses
absolutely.[2] But I suspect him of being a very dishonest man; and
confidence would not be established with him for comptroller. I fear, too,
that the public is pressing us to take a part much more humiliating for
the ministers, and much more vexatious for ourselves, inasmuch as we shall
have done nothing of our own will. I am very unhappy. I will close my
letter after I know the result of this evening's conference. I greatly
fear the archbishop will be forced to retire altogether, and then what man
are we to take to place at the head of the whole? For we must have one,
especially with M. Necker. He must have a bridle; and the person who is
above me[3] is not able to be such; and I, whatever people may say, and
whatever happens, am never any thing but second; and, in spite of the
confidence which the first has in me, he often makes me feel it.... The
archbishop has just gone. The king is very unwilling; and could only be
brought to make up his mind by a promise that the person[4] should only be
sounded; and that no positive engagement should be made."
Necker refused. The next day Mercy reported to the queen that, though the
excitement was great, it confined itself to denunciations of the
archbishop and of the keeper of the seals; and that "the name of the queen
had never once been mentioned;" and on the 22d, Marie Antoinette,[5] from
a conviction of the greatness of the emergency, determined to see Necker
herself; and employed the embassador and De Vermond to let him know that
her own wish for his restoration to the direction of the finances was
sincere and earnest, and to promise him that the archbishop should not
interfere in that department in any way whatever. Two days later,[6] she
wrote again to mention that the king had vanquished his repugnance to
Necker, and had come wholly over to her opinion. "Time pressed, and it was
more essential than ever that Necker should accept;" and on the 25th she
writes a final letter to report to Mercy that the archbishop has resigned,
and that she has just summoned Necker to come to her the next morning.
Though she felt that she had done what was both right and indispensable,
she was not without misgivings. "If," she writes, in a strain of anxious
despondency very foreign to her usual tone, and which shows how deeply she
felt the importance of the crisis, and of every step that might be taken--
"if he will but undertake the task, it is the best thing that can be done;
but I tremble (excuse my weakness) at the fact that it is I who have
brought him back. It is my fate to bring misfortune, and, if infernal
machinations should cause him once more to fail, or if he should lower the
authority of the king, they will hate me still more."
In one point of view she need not have trembled at being known to have
caused Necker's re-appointment, since it is plain that no other nomination
was possible. Vergennes had died a few months before, and the whole
kingdom did not supply a single statesman of reputation except Necker. Nor
could any choice have for the moment been more universally popular. The
citizens illuminated Paris; the mob burned the archbishop in effigy; and
the leading merchants and bankers showed their approval in a far more
practical way. The funds rose; loans to any amount were freely offered to
the Treasury; the national credit revived; as if the solvency or
insolvency of the nation depended on a single man, and him a foreigner.
Yet, if regarded in any point of view except that of a financier, he was
extremely unfit to be the minister at such a crisis; and the queen's
acuteness had, in the extract from her letter which has been, quoted
above, correctly pointed out the danger to be apprehended, namely, that he
might lower the authority of the king.[7] It was, in fact, to his uniform
and persistent degradation of the king's authority that the greater part,
if not the whole, of the evils which ensued may be clearly traced, and the
cause that led him to adopt this fatal system was thoroughly visible to
one gifted with such intuitive penetration into character as Marie
Antoinette. For he had two great defects or weaknesses; an overweening
vanity, which, as it is valued applause above every thing, led him to
regard the popularity which they might win for him as the natural motive
and the surest test of his actions; and an abstract belief in human
perfection and in the submission of all classes to strict reason, which
could only proceed from a total ignorance of mankind.[8] Yet, greatly as
financial skill was needed, if the kingdom was to be saved from the
bankruptcy which seemed to be imminent, it was plain that a faculty for
organization and legislation was no less indispensable if the vessel of
the State was to be steered safely along the course on which it was
entering; for the archbishop's last act had been to induce the king to
promise to convoke the States-general. The 1st of May of the ensuing year
was fixed for their meeting; and the arrangements for and the management
of an assembly, which, as not having met for nearly two hundred years,
could not fail to present many of the features of an entire novelty, were
a task which would have severely tested the most statesman-like capacity.
But, unhappily, Necker's very first acts showed him equally void of
resolution and of sagacity. He was not only unable to estimate the
probable conduct of the people in future, but he showed himself incapable
of profiting by the experience of the past; and, in spite of the
insubordinate spirit which the Parliament had at all times displayed, he
at once recalled them in deference to the clamor of the Parisian citizens,
and allowed them to enter Paris in a triumphal procession, as if his very
object had been to parade their victory over the king's authority. Their
return was the signal for a renewal of riots, which assumed a more
formidable character than ever. The police, and even the guardhouses, were
attacked in open day, and the Government had reason to suspect that the
money which was employed in fomenting the tumults was supplied by the Duc
d'Orléans. A fierce mob traversed the streets at night, terrifying the
peaceable inhabitants with shouts of triumph over the king as having been
compelled to recall the Parliament against his will; while those who were
supposed to be adverse to the pretensions of the councilors were insulted
in the streets, and branded as Royalists, the first time in the history of
the nation that ever that name had been used as a term of reproach.
Yet, presently the whole body of citizens, with their habitual impulsive
facility of temper, again, for a while, became Royalists. The winter was
one of unprecedented severity. By the beginning of December the Seine was
frozen over, and the whole adjacent country was buried in deep snow.
Wolves from the neighboring forests, desperate with hunger, were said to
have made their way into the suburbs, and to have attacked people in the
streets. Food of every kind became scarce, and of the poorer classes many
were believed to have died of actual starvation. Necker, as head of the
Government, made energetic and judicious efforts to relieve the universal
distress, forming magazines in different districts, facilitating the means
of transport, finding employment for vast numbers of laborers and
artisans, and purchasing large quantities of grain in foreign countries;
and, not only were Louis and Marie Antoinette conspicuous for the
unstinting liberality with which they devoted their own funds to the
supply of the necessities of the destitute, but the queen, in many cases
of unusual or pressing suffering that were reported to her in Versailles
and the neighboring villages, sent trustworthy persons to investigate
them, and in numerous instances went herself to the cottages, making
personal inquiries into the condition of the occupants, and showing not
only a feeling heart, but a considerate and active kindness, which doubled
the value of her benefactions by the gracious, thoughtful manner in which
they were bestowed.
She would willingly have done the good she did in secret, partly from her
constant feeling that charity was not charity if it were boasted of,
partly from a fear that those ready to misconstrue all her acts would find
pretexts for evil and calumny even in her bounty. One of her good deeds
struck Necker as of so remarkable a character that he pressed her to allow
him to make it known. "Be sure, on the contrary," she replied, "that you
never mention it. What good could it do? they would not believe you;[9]"
but in this she was mistaken. Her charities were too widely spread to
escape the knowledge even of those who did not profit by them; and they
had their reward, though it was but a short-lived one. Though the majority
of her acts of personal kindness were performed in Versailles rather than
in Paris, the Parisians were as vehement in their gratitude as the
Versaillese; and it found a somewhat fantastic vent in the erection of
pyramids and obelisks of snow in different quarters of the city, all
bearing inscriptions testifying the citizens' sense of her benevolence.
One, which far exceeded all its fellows in size--the chief beauty of works
of that sort--since it was fifteen feet high, and each of the four faces
was twelve feet wide at the base, was decorated with a medallion of the
royal pair, and bore a poetical inscription commemorating the cause of its
erection:
"Reine, dont la beauté surpasse les appas
Près d'un roi bienfaisant occupe ici la place.
Si ce monument frêle est de neige et de glace,
Nos coeurs pour toi ne le sont pas.
De ce monument sans exemple,
Couple auguste, l'aspect bien doux pur votre coeur
Sans doute vous plaira plus qu'un palais, qu'un temple
Que vous élèverait un peuple adulateur.[10]"
Neither the queen's feelings nor her conduct had been in any way altered;
but six months later the same populace who raised this monument and
applauded these verses were, with ferocious and obscene threats, clamoring
for her blood. And there is hardly any thing more strange or more grievous
in the history of the nation, hardly any greater proof of that incurable
levity which was one great cause of the long series of miseries which soon
fell upon it, than that the impressions of gratitude which were so vivid
at the moment, and so constantly revived by the queen's untiring
benevolence, could yet be so easily effaced by the acts of demagogues and
libelers, whom the people thoroughly despised even while suffering
themselves to be led by them. How great a part in these libels was borne
by those who were bound by every tie of blood to the king to be his
warmest supporters, we have a remarkable proof in an Edict of Council
which was issued during the ministry of the archbishop, and which deprived
the palaces of the Count de Provence, the Count d'Artois, and the Duc
d'Orléans of their usual exemption from the investigation of the syndics
of the library, as those officers were called whose duty it was to search
all suspected places for libelous or seditious pamphlets; the reason
publicly given for this edict being that the dwellings of these three
princes were a perfect arsenal for the issue of publications contrary to
the laws, to morality, and to religion.[11]
With the return of spring, the severity of the distress began to pass
away. But, even while it lasted, it scarcely diverted the attention of the
middle classes from the preparations for the approaching meeting of the
States-general, from which the whole people, with few exceptions, promised
themselves great advantages, though comparatively few had formed any
precise notion of the benefits which they expected, or of the mode in
which they were to be attained. The States-general had been originally
established in the same age which saw the organization of our own
Parliament, with very nearly the same powers, though the members had more
of the narrower character of delegates of their constituents than was the
case in England, where they were more wisely regarded as representatives
of the entire nation.[12] And it was an acknowledged principle of their
constitution that they could neither propose any measure nor ask for the
redress of any grievance which was not expressly mentioned in the
instructions with which their constituents furnished them at the time of
their election.
In England, the two Houses of Parliament, by a vigilant and systematic
perseverance, had gradually extorted from the sovereign a great and
progressive enlargement of their original powers, till they had almost
engrossed the entire legislative authority in the kingdom. But in France,
a variety of circumstances had prevented the States-general from arriving
at a similar development. And, consequently, as in human affairs very
little is stationary, their authority had steadily diminished, instead of
increasing, till they had become so powerless and utterly insignificant
that, since the year 1615, they had never once been convened. Not only had
they been wholly disused, but they seemed to have been wholly forgotten.
During the last two reigns no one had ever mentioned their name; much less
had any wish been expressed for their resuscitation, till the financial
difficulties of the Government, and the general and growing discontent of
the great majority of the nation, with which, since the death of Turgot,
every successive minister had been manifestly incompetent to deal, had, as
we have seen, led some ardent reformers to demand their restoration, as
the one expedient which had not been tried, and which, therefore, had this
in its favor, that it was not condemned by previous failure.
That great reforms were indispensable was admitted in every quarter. There
was no country in Europe where the feudal system had received so little
modification.[13] Every law seemed to have been made, and every custom to
have been established for the exclusive benefit of the nobles. They were
even exempted from many of the taxes, an exemption which was the more
intolerable from the vast number of persons who were included in the list.
Practically it may be said that there were two classes of nobles--the old
historic houses, as they were sometimes called, such as the Grammonts or
Montmorencies, which were not numerous, and many of which had greatly
decayed in wealth and influence; and an inferior class whose nobility was
derived from their possession of office under the crown in any part of the
kingdom. Even tax-gatherers and surveyors, if appointed by royal warrant,
could claim the rank; and new offices were continually being created and
sold which conferred the same title. Those so ennobled were not reckoned
the equals of the higher class. They could not even be received at court
until their patents were four hundred years old, but they had a right to
vote as nobles at elections to any representative body. Those whose
patents were twenty-four years old could be elected as representatives;
and from the moment of their creation they all enjoyed great exemptions;
so that, as the lowest estimate reckoned their numbers at a hundred
thousand, it is a matter for some wonder how the taxes to which they did
not contribute produced any thing worth collecting. It was, of course,
manifest that the exemptions enormously increased the burden to be borne
by the classes which did not enjoy such privileges.
But, heavy as the grievance of these exemptions was, it was as nothing
when compared with the feudal rights claimed by the greater nobles. The
peasants on their estates were forced to grind their corn at the lord's
mill, to press their grapes at his wine-press, paying for such act
whatever price he might think fit to exact, and often having their crops
wholly wasted or spoiled by the delays which such a system engendered. The
game-laws forbade them to weed their fields lest they should disturb the
young partridges or leverets; to manure the soil with any thing which
might injure their flavor; or even to mow or reap till the grass or corn
was no longer required as shelter for the young coveys. Some of the rights
of seigniory, as it was called, were such as can hardly be mentioned in
this more decorous age; some were so ridiculous that it is inconceivable
how their very absurdity had not led to their abolition. In the marshy
districts of Brittany, one right enjoyed by the great nobles was "the
silence of the frogs,[14]" which, whenever the lady was confined, bound
the peasants to spend their days and nights in beating the swamps with
long poles to save her from being disturbed by their inharmonious
croaking. And if this or any other feudal right was dispensed with, it was
only commuted for a money payment, which was little less burdensome.
The powers exercised by the crown were more intolerable still. The
sovereign was absolute master of the liberties of his subjects. Without
alleging the commission of any crime, he could issue warrants--letters
under seal, as they were called--which consigned the person named in them
to imprisonment, which was often perpetual. The unhappy prisoner had no
power of appeal. No judge could inquire into his case, much less release
him. The arrests were often made with such secrecy and rapidity that his
nearest relations knew not what had become of him, but he was cut off from
the outer world, for the rest of his life, as completely as if he had at
once been handed over to the executioner.[15]
It was impossible but that such customs should produce general discontent,
and a resolute demand for a complete reformation of the system. And one of
the problems which the minister had to determine was, how to organize the
States-general so that they should be disposed to promote such measures as
reform as should be adequate without being excessive; as should give due
protection to the middle and lower classes without depriving the nobles of
that dignity and authority which were not only desirable for themselves,
but useful to their dependents; and, lastly, such as should carefully
preserve the rightful prerogatives of the crown, while putting an end to
those arbitrary powers, the existence of which was incompatible with the
very name of freedom.
In making the necessary arrangements, the long disuse of the Assembly was
a circumstance greatly in favor of the Government, if Necker had had skill
to avail himself of it, since it wholly freed him from the obligation of
being guided by former precedents. Those arrangements were long and warmly
debated in the king's council. Though the records of former sessions had
been so carelessly preserved that little was known of their proceedings,
it seemed to be established that the representatives of the Commons had
usually amounted to about four-tenths of the whole body, those of the
clergy and of the nobles being each about three-tenths; and that they had
almost invariably deliberated and voted in separate chambers; and the
princes and the chief nobles presented memorials to the king, in which
they almost unanimously recommended an adherence to these ancient forms;
while, with patriotic prudence, they sought to obviate all jealousy of
their own pretensions or views which might be entertained or feigned in
any quarter, by announcing their willingness to abandon all the exclusive
privileges and exemptions which they had hitherto possessed, and which
were notoriously one chief cause of the generally prevailing discontent.
But the party which had originated the clamor for the States-general, now,
encouraged by their success, put forward two fresh demands; the first,
that the number of the representatives of the Commons should equal that of
both the other orders put together, which they called "the duplication of
the Third Estate;" the second, that the three orders should meet and vote
as one united body in one chamber; the two proposition taken together
being manifestly calculated and designed to throw the whole power into the
hands of the Commons.
Necker had great doubts about the propriety and safety of the first
proposal, and no doubt at all of the danger of the second. His own
judgment was that the wisest plan would be to order the clergy and nobles
to unite in an Upper Chamber, so as in some degree to resemble the British
House of Lords; while the Third Estate, in a Lower Chamber, would be a
tolerably faithful copy of our House of Commons. But he could never bring
himself to risk his popularity by opposing what he regarded as the opinion
of the masses. He was alarmed by the political clubs which were springing
up in Paris; one, whose president was the Duc d'Orléans, assuming the
significant and menacing title of Les Enragés;[16] and by the vast number
of pamphlets which were circulated both in the capital and the chief towns
of the provinces by thousands,[17] every writer of which put himself
forward as a legislator,[18] and of which the vast majority advocated what
they called the rights of the Third Estate, in most violent language; and,
finally, he adopted the course which is a great favorite with vain and
weak men, and which he probably represented to himself as a compromise
between unqualified concession and unyielding resistance, though, every
one possessed of the slightest penetration could see that it practically
surrendered both points: he advised the king to issue his edict that the
number of representatives to be returned to the States-general should be
twelve hundred, half of whom were to be returned by the Commons, a quarter
by the clergy, and a quarter by the nobles;[19] and to postpone the
decision as to the number of the chambers till the Assembly should meet,
when he proposed to allow the States themselves to determine it; trusting,
against all probability, that, after having thus given the Commons the
power to enforce their own views, he should be able to persuade them to
abandon the same in deference to his judgment.
Louis, as a matter of course, adopted his advice; and, after several
different towns--Blois, Tours, Cambrai, and Compiègne among them--had been
proposed as the place of meeting, he himself decided in favor of
Versailles,[20] as that which would afford him the best hunting while the
session lasted. The queen in her heart disapproved of every one of these
resolutions. She saw that Necker had, as she had foreboded, sacrificed the
king's authority by his advice on the two first questions; and she
perceived more clearly than any one the danger of fixing the States-
general so near to Paris that the turbulent population of the city should
be able to overawe the members. She pressed these considerations earnestly
on the king,[21] but it was characteristic of the course which she
prescribed to herself from, the beginning, and from which she never
swerved, that when her advice was overruled she invariably defended the
course which had been taken. Her language, when any one spoke to her
either of her own opinions and wishes, or of the feelings with which the
different classes of the nation regarded her, was invariably the same.
"You are not to think of me for a moment. All that I desire of you is to
take care that the respect which is due to the king shall not be
weakened;[22]" and it was only her most intimate friends who knew how
unwise she thought the different decisions that had been adopted, or how
deep were her forebodings of evil.