a hundred others, jealous of the favour, grow out of humour with me;
and, at the same time, I do not get the love of him on whom I have
conferred the benefit; he complains that I have not done enough for him,
and they, for my having done nothing for them. All love favour, and care
little for the King. I see about me only sordid souls, slaves to pride
and ostentation, acting only from interest; so that were it not for the
many favours emaning from the throne, they would not move a finger.
Another, and rather worse, inconveniency annexed to the crown, is the
impossibility for kings to distinguish honest men from those of a
different cast. They are so like each other, as to be generally
mistaken; for at court vice and virtue appear in the same colours. The
bulk of those about me, I strongly suspect to be void of any one
generous principle; but when I am for sifting them, my rank will not
allow of the proper measures. Thus they remain impenetrable to me, yet I
must employ them in the service of the state; and hence arise those
public misfortunes, for which I am answerable both to the present time
and to posterity.
“When some important choice is to be made, and I have pitched on the
person, all France seems to lay their heads together to deceive me. His
talents, his merit and virtue, are cried up to me; not one honest man
do I meet with in the kingdom to mention a word of any fault of his;
they are afraid of incurring the displeasure of him whom I have so
recently distinguished by my favour; and to this mean spirited fear they
sacrifice both me and the state.
“When, on the other hand, I withdraw my confidence from a minister, or
some other place-man, then I am told that he is deficient in every
political quality: those very persons who could never say enough in his
praise, now draw him in the most contemptible colours; all his faults
and errors, and sinister practices, are laid open to me in full detail.
The terrible accounts given of him from all hands set me against him, so
that I cannot bring myself to employ him, even though, by the
reflections on his past conduct and disgrace, he should afterwards
become thoroughly qualified for a public station.
“A patriot King is the most unhappy mortal under the sun; he has his
country’s happiness at heart, and is beset by people who cross his good
intentions. The ministers are the first in ruining a state, to save
themselves the labour of reforming abuses: to leave things as they are,
is soonest done; in the mean time, the evils continue, and when a
Monarch, tender of the welfare of his subjects, would remedy them, he
meets unsurmountable impediments; for the habit of a long and bad
administration at length comes to supersede the laws and usages, &c.
&c.”
Another time Lewis XV. was pleased to open himself to me on the same
subject: “A great misfortune to a King is, that ministers generally
conceal the true state of things from them. Sovereigns are always made
acquainted with the calamities of their dominions the last; and this,
lest such information should put them on taking the reins of government
into their own hands; and every one makes it his study to keep them in
the dark. The immense variety of concerns in a large monarchy, obliges
him to trust to ministers, and these ministers, for the greater part,
play false with him. On the last war, I consulted those who were at the
head of the administration, whether the advantages of victories would
balance the inevitable misfortunes of battles: one and all assured me,
that by no other way could the kingdom be retrieved, than by the glory
of my arms; and that the lustre and advantages derived from the
victories, would be the more lasting and solid, as due only to the
nation’s own strength.
“At the peace, I found they had deceived me; my subjects are in the
utmost distress, and all owing to the war; so that to recover themselves
must be the work of years; and should fresh disturbances happen, it will
never be done, &c. &c.”
I likewise had my complaints. “Sir, said I to the King, my grievances,
tho’ of a different nature from yours, are not less painful. The rancour
of all France is pointed at me. The royal family inveighs against me;
his royal Highness the Dauphin takes all opportunities of affronting me:
your ministers look on me as the fatal rock on which all their designs
go to wreck. The chief families of the kingdom treat me with contempt;
and all this because your Majesty has thought me worthy of your esteem.
“Many carry their malevolence so far, as to impute the disorders of the
finances to me, as if the administration of affairs was lodged in my
hands. I am accused of having all the money in the kingdom; I am changed
with the nation’s debts, as if I myself had contracted them. On any
minister’s failing in his duty, the blame is immediately laid on me. I
am exclaimed against for his being preferred, and his disgrace is
imputed as a crime to me.
“It is I who bear the blame of all political misfortunes; and if I have
not been directly accused of having declared war against your enemies,
it has been said, that I might have prevented those murderous sieges and
battles, as if the fate of Europe was at my beck, and I could model
foreign courts.
“I have been reproached with the oversights of your generals; not a
battle has been lost, not a siege has been raised, but it is all owing
to me. So much as their personal variances and quarrels are laid at my
door.
“The public distresses, though the consequence of a bad administration,
and the misfortunes of the times, have been attributed to me, as if my
doing. The populace has hissed me, and was often for stopping my coach,
and has been near coming to those extremities against me, with which
they only are treated whose notorious malversation has manifestly ruined
a people.
“Yet, Sire, what gives me most pain, is the ingratitude of those who
have felt the effects of my favour. I have often sollicited your Majesty
for persons, who were no sooner out of the meanness and obscurity from
whence I drew them, than they forgot the kind hand by which they had
been raised. I can reckon, hitherto, about three thousand persons who
owe their subsistence to me. It is through my care that they have been
brought into new stations, where they lost sight of me before they were
well warm in their places.
“Of such a great number, not one have I found with any due sense of
gratitude: nay, the greater the preferment, the less their
acknowledgment; some have even busily caballed against me: those whom I
thought most my friends, and whom the important services I had done them
should have made such, have been the first in deceiving and injuring me.
I have discovered treacheries at which I shuddered; so that since my
living at court, I am grown sick of mankind. I should have died a
thousand times under the anguish which such injurious treatment has
caused me, had not the kindness with which your Majesty honours me
reconciled me to life, &c.”
The death of the Prince of Wales,[5] eldest son to George II. and as
such, presumptive heir to the crown of England, made some impression at
Versailles: this Prince is said not to have been remarkable for those
eminent qualities with whose brilliancy the world is so much taken: but
they who knew him personally, perceived in him the more solid virtues:
compassion, goodness, sensibility, tenderness, candour, affability, a
readiness to oblige, and delight in doing good; these were his leading
dispositions: a Prince, in a word, qualified to make a people happy. He
had married a German Princess, intirely deserving to ascend the throne
with him. I have often pitied this Lady’s fate, to lose an affectionate
husband and a powerful crown at once, is one of those events which
elevated souls alone can bear with firmness. His death occasioned a
revolution in political affairs. France had great hopes of things going
better, when that Prince should have come to the throne: there was no
cordial harmony between him and his father King George. The son often
crossed the father’s measures, so that they seldom saw, and seldomer
spoke to each other. From this disposition it was hoped, that a Prince,
who so much disapproved the present system, would be less inveterate
against the house of Bourbon than his predecessors had been. It was
imagined that his accession would prove a happy turn for France, when,
perhaps, it might have only made matters worse. The sons of Kings, at
their entrance on regality, leave their ideas as Princes at the foot of
the throne, and take up those of Kings.
George II. is said not to have shewn any great concern at the death of
his son, appearing as usual in the drawing-room, and, within a few days,
giving audience to Ambassadors: in this there might be a little
affectation, it being the known character of that Prince to shew himself
firm and unshaken, in the midst of the most unfortunate events. The rest
of the royal family were in the deepest affliction: he was also greatly
lamented by his houshold; and I am told, that his death is still matter
of concern to many.
The death of this Prince likewise caused a national uneasiness, his
children being very young, and King George advanced in years, which
might be productive of the disorders almost inevitable under a minority.
In order to prevent them, the Princess Dowager of Wales was nominated
guardian to the King’s successor, and regent of the kingdom, till her
son should be of age; but the issue of the deliberation was, that this
Lady, who had come into England to wear the crown, should be neither
Queen nor Regent.
The French clergy’s affair, though thought to be over, was still going
on. The bishops and wealthy incumbents, amidst the privacy of their
dwellings, to which they had been ordered, disturbed the state; though
ardently desirous of returning to Paris, they were for coming at this
privilege as cheap as they could, haggling a long time with the King,
who, however, would make no abatement. They insisted on their
immunities, they pleaded their solemn promise to the Pope to maintain
their rights. This dispute irritated the court, and not a little soured
the King. At this juncture, a bishop took it into his head to come and
expostulate with me about the clergy’s prerogatives. This certainly was
not taking the right time, for as this affair gave so much displeasure
to his Majesty, it could not be very pleasing to me. The Prelate made a
long-winded harangue, in proof that the church was not to disseize
itself of its wealth. He recurred as far back as St. Peter, and through
an enumeration of those bulls, by which the church is ordered to keep
what it has came down to our times. “My Lord, said I interrupting him,
your prerogatives are what I know nothing of, but I know that your chief
duty, like that of other subjects, is to obey the King. Say what you
will of your bulls and immunities; every body of men declining to
conform to its Sovereign’s orders, is guilty of rebellion, and deserves
the punishment of high treason.”
A great many bad books came out against the clergy, in vindication of
the King’s cause. Among the several writers who, on these occasions,
take different parts, one wrote a pamphlet with the title of _An
Impartial Inquiry into the Immunities of the Clergy_. This work was full
of very judicious reflections, besides a nervous elegancy of stile: it
was indeed the only one on the subject which deserves reading.
After all, it became necessary that the plan which had been proposed,
and to which I myself had advised the King, should take place. This was
to draw up a state of the value of every churchman’s preferments, that
each might be taxed in proportion to his real income; and accordingly
the court ordered the intendants of the provinces to oblige all the
beneficed clergy to deliver in an account of the nature of their several
revenues. There was indeed a very hard clause, in case of a refusal; the
intendants being expressly enjoined to seize on the several revenues in
the King’s name, and leave the beneficiaries only an alimentary pension.
This was insuring their compliance; for being used to superfluity, they
could but very indifferently shift with no more than was necessary.
The clergy of France had already begun to lower their voice, when the
parliament of Paris raised theirs. I could find in my heart to say, that
in France the state is ever out of order; no sooner has the Sovereign
repaired some weak part of his prerogative, than another appears to be
running to ruin.
The parliament, instead of conforming to his pleasure, according to
their usual way, sent a deputation with remonstrances. These speeches
set out with great protestations of respect and submission, but are
seldom without some term which favours of a republican spirit, tending
to independency; and not seldom they strike at the prerogative of the
crown.
The King, though naturally irresolute, had his intervals of firmness, in
which he was immoveable. He gave the deputies to understand, that he
would have his edicts enrolled that very day, under penalty of
disobedience and immediate punishment.
The parliament were sitting when the deputies returned to Paris; being
forbid to deliberate, they registered the edicts. After this act of
duty, which they stiled deference, a second deputation was dispatched to
Versailles. These gentlemen began their harangue in this manner: _Your
Majesty has commanded, and your parliament has obeyed_.
A courtier said, that there they ought to have stopped, all the
remainder of their long speech being quite useless and superfluous.
The King was pleased, in the evening, to mention this affair to me; and
his having got the better of the parliament, made him much gayer than
usual; but this extraordinary chearfulness raised in me some misgivings.
To me, a body whose temporary submission excited in its master such a
lively joy, appeared dangerous.
FINIS
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The dukes of Richelieu, Mazarin, and Fleury.
[2] The military school was but just instituted.
[3] The country of Final, which belonged to the Genoese.
[4] 1751.
[5] 1751.
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
runs in his viens=> runs in his viens {pg 13}
if the the least=> if the least {pg 17}
Monsieur d’Etrees=> Monsieur d’Estrées {pg 21}
Chales VII. the cause of this general=> Charles VII. the cause of this
general {pg 64}
in those impractiable=> in those impracticable {pg 70}
being less estemed=> being less esteemed {pg 74}
the Duke de Richlieu=> the Duke de Richelieu {pg 97}
to M. de Puysieux=> to M. de Puisieux {pg 105}
the Duke de Richlieu=> the Duke de Richelieu {pg 111}
the Marshall de Noailles=> the Marshal de Noailles {pg 132}
view: M. Rouille=> view: M. Rouillé {pg 173}
is an inquitous assessment=> is an iniquitous assessment {pg 179}
frequently with M. de Pusieux=> frequently with M. de Puisieux {pg 183}
great Conde’s enemies=> great Condé’s enemies {pg 210}