Reign of Louis XV. continued—The Bull Unigenitus—A Notary
Public—G. N. Nivelle—G. C. Buffard—Death of Deacon Paris—Rise,
progress, and acts, of the Convulsionaries—Persecution
of them, and artifices employed by them to foil their
persecutors—Lenglet Dufresnoy—La Beaumelle—F. de
Marsy—Marmontel—The Abbé Morellet—Mirabeau the elder—The
Chevalier Resseguier—Groubendal and Dulaurens—Robbé
de Beauveset—Mahé de la Bourdonnais—Count Lally—La
Chalotais—Marin—Durosoi—Prévost de Beaumont—Barletti St.
Paul—Dumouriez.
Religious intolerance, on the one hand, and disgusting fanaticism, on
the other, contributed largely to swell the number of captives in the
Bastile, and in other places of confinement. For many years after Pope
Clement XI., at the instigation of the bigoted Le Tellier and Louis XIV.,
had thrown among the clergy of the Gallican church that ecclesiastical
firebrand the bull Unigenitus, it continued to spread the flames of
fierce contention, hatred, and persecution. The first individual for whom
the bull found an abode in a prison was, I believe, a notary public.
While the regency was held by the Duke of Orleans, the bishops of
Mirepoix, Senez, Montpellier, and Boulogne, had the boldness to sign an
act, protesting against the bull, and appealing from the pope to a future
council; and, accompanied by a notary, they solemnly presented this act
to the assembled Sorbonne. As to have imprisoned the four bishops would
scarcely have been politic, they were only ordered to retire to their
dioceses; the notary, of whom a scape-goat could more conveniently be
made, was sent to the Bastile.
Backed by power, the supporters of the bull were finally triumphant, and
they did not fail to make the vanquished party experience the consequence
of being defeated by men who did not consider forbearance as a virtue.
It would be useless to dwell upon the many appellants who were chastised
for having ventured to doubt the pontifical infallibility, and insist on
referring the question in dispute to a future council; I will, therefore,
only make mention of two individuals.
Among those who were most active in opposing the bull Unigenitus, and
who, consequently, were proscribed by its champions, was Gabriel Nicholas
Nivelle; he was indefatigable in drawing up memorials and tracts, and
soliciting appeals against it. He more than once contrived to elude his
pursuers; but, in 1730, he was taken and committed to the Bastile, where
he remained for four months. His zeal was, however, rather excited than
cooled by this imprisonment; and, till his decease in 1761, when he was
in his seventy-fourth year, he continued to be a determined opponent of
the bull. Nivelle edited several voluminous works relative to the contest
in which his party was engaged; the principal of which, in four folio
volumes, bears the title of The Constitution Unigenitus denounced to the
Universal Church, or a General Collection of the Acts of Appeal.
Equally hostile to the bull, and equally persecuted by its victorious
friends, was Gabriel Charles Buffard, a native of Bayeux, who was born
in 1683. He was rector of the university of Caen, and canon of Bayeux;
but was expelled from his offices, and banished out of the diocese, in
1722. Buffard settled at Paris, where he was not long allowed to remain
in quiet. He was conveyed to the Bastile, and, after having been there
for some time, he was exiled to Auxerre. From Auxerre he was speedily
dragged to suffer another imprisonment in the Bastile. Fortunately, he
found a protector in Cardinal des Gesvres, through whose intercession he
was set at liberty. Buffard thenceforth lived in retirement, and gained
a subsistence by giving opinions as a chamber counsel, and by assisting
young scholars in the study of the canon law. He died in 1763.
It was an opinion of Bishop Butler, the celebrated author of The Analogy
of Religion, that “whole communities and public bodies might be seized
with fits of insanity, as well as individuals;” and, indeed, that
“nothing but this principle, that they are liable to insanity, equally
at least with private persons, can account for the major part of those
transactions which we read of in history.” Singular as, at first sight,
this opinion may appear to be, there are many circumstances which ought
to induce us to pause, before we reject it as erroneous. The strange
scenes, for instance, which took place among the Jansenists,—scenes
arising out of the death of the deacon Paris,—may almost authorize a
belief, that large bodies of individuals can be simultaneously smitten
with monomania, or at least can communicate it to each other with
wonderful rapidity.
Francis Paris, a strenuous opponent of the bull Unigenitus, was the son
of a French counsellor. Pious, humble, and benevolent, Paris relinquished
to his brother all claim to the paternal succession, renounced the
world, lived by the labour of his own hands, and spent his leisure
moments in prayer, and in succouring, consoling, and instructing the
poor. His modest estimate of his own abilities deterred him from taking
holy orders. He died on the 1st of May, 1727, and was buried in the
church-yard of St. Medard. Many of those to whom he had been a comforter
and guide, looked upon him as a beatified being, and came to pray at
his tomb. Among the number were many females. Rumours soon began to
be spread, that miracles were worked by the influence of the sainted
defunct; sight was said to be restored, and contracted limbs extended to
their full longitude. Multitudes now flocked to the sacred ground. Then
ensued, especially among the women, contortions and convulsive movements,
attended by cries, shrieks, and groans, all of which were regarded as
manifestations of divine power. All convulsive movements are catching,
and consequently, the number of persons who displayed them at St. Medard,
increased daily to an enormous extent. The jargon which was uttered by
the convulsionaries, during their paroxysms, was next supposed to be the
language of prophecy; and a whole volume of it was actually published,
under the title of “A Collection of Interesting Predictions.” Before,
however, we laugh at our Gallic neighbours for such folly, it may be well
to remember some things which have happened in England, within the last
quarter of a century.
After these practices had gone on, with hourly increasing vigour,
for some years, the government closed the church-yard of St. Medard,
which was become the theatre of exhibitions calculated to mislead the
weak-minded, and disgust men of sound intellect. But the sect of the
convulsionaries—for it had by this time grown into a strong and regularly
organized sect,—was not discouraged by this measure. Earth from the
church-yard where the deacon Paris was interred, and water from the
spring which had supplied him with drink, became the symbols of this
buried idol, and the means of working miracles. Meetings were held in
private houses, and there fanaticism, of the darkest, wildest kind,
gave full scope to all its gloomy inspirations. A regular system of
torture was practised by the deluded votaries; women being the principal
sufferers. To be beaten with logs on the tenderest portions of the human
frame; to bend the body into a semi-circular form, and allow a weight of
fifty pounds to be dropped from the ceiling on to the abdomen; to lie
with a plank on the same part, while several men stood on it; to be tied
up with the head downwards; and to have the breasts and nipples torn
with pincers; were among the inflictions to which females submitted, and
apparently with delight. The blows were inflicted by vigorous young men,
who were called Secouristes. The highly sublimed madness of some pushed
them to still more dreadful extremities; it prompted them to be tied on
spits, and exposed to the flames, or to be nailed by the hands and feet
to a cross. The performance of these unnatural acts was denominated “the
work.”
The Convulsionaries did not form a homogeneous body; as was to be
expected, they were split into parties, bearing various appellations,
and being, in some instances, hostile to each other. There were the
Vaillantistes, the Augustinians, the Melangistes, the Margoullistes, the
Figuristes, and many more. The Vaillantistes took their name from Peter
Vaillant, a priest, who taught that the prophet Elijah was resuscitated,
and that he would appear on earth, to convert the Jews and the court of
Rome. His disciple, Housset, maintained that Vaillant himself was the
prophet. Darnaud, another priest, boldly assumed the character of the
prophet Enoch. The Augustinians, who carried their fanaticism to such
a pitch that they were looked upon as heretical by other convulsionary
sects, were the followers of a friar of the name of Augustin. Among their
peculiar follies, was that of making nocturnal processions, with torches
in their hands, and halters round their necks, to Nôtre Dame, and thence
to the place de Grêve; these processions were a sort of rehearsal of the
tragic scene in which they expected they should ultimately be called
upon to perform. The Melangistes were those who distinguished two causes
producing convulsions; one which gave rise to useless or improper acts,
another which inspired divine and supernatural acts. The tenets of the
Margoullistes have not been handed down to us. The Figuristes were so
called from their representing, in their convulsive paroxysms, various
phases of the passion of Christ, and the martyrdom of the saints.
The fierce enthusiasm of all these sectarians has never been exceeded.
Like American Indians, they set at defiance the utmost severity of pain.
Even slight stimulus would rouse them into violent action. “I have seen
them,” says Voltaire, “when they were talking of the miracles of St.
Paris, grow heated by degrees, till their whole frame trembled, their
faces were disfigured by rage, and they would have killed whoever dared
to contradict them. Yes, I have seen them writhe their limbs, and foam,
and cry out ‘There must be blood!’” Not the slightest concession would
they make to avoid punishment. A pardon was offered to several of them,
who were sentenced to the pillory; they refused it, for they could not,
they said, repent of having done right. No lapse of time could eradicate
this feeling from their minds. In 1775, when M. de Malesherbes visited
the Concièrgerie, he found there a male and a female convulsionary, who
had been imprisoned for forty-one years. Age had not chilled in them the
resentment which was excited by their wrongs. He offered them liberty, if
they would only ask for it; but they firmly replied, that they had been
unjustly detained, and that it was the business of justice to atone for
its errors, and to give the reparation to which they were entitled. They
were released.
It must not be imagined that the sect of the convulsionaries consisted
merely of poor and ignorant people. Such was not the case. Strange as the
fact may appear, the sect included great numbers of pious, learned, and
intellectual men. Very many rich individuals also belonged to it, and
contributed to the maintenance of their less fortunate brethren. A Count
Daverne was sent to the Bastile “for wasting his property in supporting
the convulsionaries;” and the same crime brought a similar penalty on
other individuals. That there were, however, numerous impostors, who
pretended to espouse the doctrines of the sect in order to further their
own purposes, admits of no doubt. There were men who gave regular lessons
in the art of bringing on convulsions.
A hot persecution was perseveringly carried on against this sect, and
with the usual result; the sect throve in spite of it, or rather,
perhaps, in consequence of it. For five-and-thirty years it mocked
all attempts to exterminate it, and it did not begin to decline till
it was left to the withering influence of ridicule and neglect. It
is believed to have retained a few votaries even to a recent period.
The Bastile and the other Parisian prisons were yearly crowded with
convulsionaries. Of those who were confined in the Bastile, one of the
earliest was Peter Vaillant, from whom the Vaillantistes derived their
name. He had previously suffered there an imprisonment of three years,
for his opposition to the bull Unigenitus. In 1734, he was again sent
thither, and, after having been there for two-and-twenty years, he was
transferred to Vincennes, where he died. Housset, his disciple; Darnaud,
who called himself the prophet Enoch; the Abbé Blondel, author of Lives
of the Saints; the Abbés Deffart, Planchon, and Deribat; Lequeux,
prior of St. Yves, the learned editor of Bossuet’s works; and Carré de
Montgeron, a counsellor of the parliament of Paris; were of the number
of those who were sent to the Bastile. Montgeron was born in the French
capital, in 1686, and we have his own word for it that, till he was
suddenly converted in St. Médard’s church-yard, he was a thoroughly
worthless unbeliever. By a natural transition, he became one of the most
credulous and enthusiastic of dupes. In 1737, he printed a quarto volume,
illustrated with twenty plates, “to demonstrate the truth of the miracles
operated by the intercession of the beatified Paris.” This volume he
presented to Louis XV. at Versailles, and the next day, by order of the
monarch, he was conveyed to the Bastile. He was afterwards an inmate of
various prisons, and died at last in the citadel of Valence. While he was
in confinement, he added two more volumes to his rhapsody.
In hunting down the humbler class of delinquents, the police found
abundant employment, and they performed their task in the most oppressive
manner. Hénault, the lieutenant of police, an irascible and unreasoning
man, was an ardent partisan of the Jesuits, and, of course, was a
violent enemy of the proscribed sect. His myrmidons spread terror in all
directions. They are charged with having, “even in the dead of night,
penetrated into the dwellings of individuals, scaled the walls, broken
open the doors, and shown no respect to age or sex, when their object
was to discover, imprison, consign to the pillory, banish, and ruin,
those who favoured the convulsionaries.” It was dangerous to be subject
to epileptic or other fits; persons who were attacked by them in the
streets having been pitilessly hurried off to jail.
The vigilance of the police was also kept on the stretch, and in a
majority of cases was eluded, by the prints, posting-bills, pamphlets,
and periodical writings of the convulsionaries, as well as by their
secret meetings. Of the prints, one represented the tree of religion, in
the branches of which were seated Quesnel, Paris, and other apostles of
Jansenism, while two Jesuits were striving to root it up. For this, a
rhymer and engraver, Cointre by name, was committed to the Bastile. In
another, Archbishop Vintimille was seen throwing a stone at the sainted
deacon Paris, and the lieutenant of police was holding the archiepiscopal
cross, and stimulating the prelate. This print procured for Mercier, the
vender of it, a place in the Bastile. In a third of these caricatures was
depicted the pope larded with a dozen Jesuits.
In placarding the walls, and distributing hand-bills, all sorts of
stratagems were employed. The following is one of the most ingenious
modes which was adopted by the bill-stickers. A woman, raggedly dressed,
with a large pannier strapped on her back, leaned her pannier against
the wall, as though she wished to rest herself. In the pannier was a
child, who, as soon as she stopped, opened the cover, and fixed a bill
on the wall. As soon as his task was performed he closed the aperture,
and his bearer proceeded with him to another convenient place. The bills
and short pamphlets, which were made public in this and other ways, were
innumerable. In the library of the Duke de la Vallière, there was an
imperfect collection of them, which formed thirteen quarto volumes. Most
of them seem to have been printed in the environs of the capital; they
were often brought into the city by females, and in searching for them,
the police officers were guilty of the grossest indecency.
But the great object which the police sought to obtain, and in which it
was utterly foiled, was the suppression of a periodical publication which
bore the title of Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques. This obnoxious work was
vigorously continued for more than twenty years, without the government
being able to lay hands on the writers, or to stop the printing and
distributing of it. Many persons were, indeed, committed to the Bastile
and other prisons, on suspicion of being its editors or contributors,
but no positive proof could ever be procured. The police were wholly at
fault; and the authors of the paper appear to have taken a provoking
pleasure in showing the lieutenant of police their contempt of his
efforts. In one instance, while his satellites were fruitlessly searching
a house which was suspected of being the printing-office, a bundle of the
papers, wet from the press, was thrown into his carriage almost before
his face. The paper was sometimes printed in the city, and sometimes in
the neighbourhood. At one time the press was secreted even under the
dome of the Luxembourg; at another, it was hidden among piles of timber,
and the printers were disguised as sawyers; on other occasions, it was
contained in a boat on the Seine. When the paper was printed in the
vicinity of Paris, various artifices were resorted to for smuggling it
into the town, one of which deserves especial notice. Water-dogs were
trained as carriers; they were closely shorn, the papers were wrapped
round them, a large rough skin was then sewn carefully over the whole,
and the sagacious animals then took their way, unsuspected, to their
several destinations.
But enough has been said on the victims of religious delusion; and we
must now turn our view to persons of a different class. The fertile
author of little short of thirty works, and the editor of an equal
number, nearly all of which are forgotten, Lenglet Dufresnoy, who was
born at Beauvais in 1764, was perhaps a more frequent visiter to the
Bastile than any other person. It is said that he was so accustomed to
lettres de cachet, that as soon as he saw M. Tapin, the officer, enter
his apartment, he would greet him with, “Ah, M. Tapin, good day to you;”
and then say to his servant, “Come, be quick; make up my little bundle,
and put in my linen and my snuff;” which being done, he would add, “Now,
M. Tapin, I am at your service.” Between 1718 and 1751, he was at least
five times in the Bastile. He was also acquainted with Vincennes and
other jails. His first committal to the Parisian state prison was perhaps
the one which was most dishonourable to him; he was sent there to act
the part of a spy, and worm out the secrets of the persons who were in
durance for being concerned in the Cellamare conspiracy. It is asserted,
that he had already appeared in a similar degrading character at Lille,
in 1708, where he was paid for intelligence by the allies and the French,
and betrayed both parties. Lenglet was of a quarrelsome and caustic
disposition, which involved him in personal disputes, and he appears to
have paid little respect to truth; but he had at least one estimable
quality, an unconquerable love of independence,—no offers, however
flattering or lucrative, could prevail on him to place himself under the
galling yoke of the rich and the great. His death, which took place in
1755, was occasioned by his falling into the fire while he was asleep.
The Bastile twice received Laurent Angliviel la Beaumelle, who was born
in 1727, at Vallerangue, in Lower Languedoc. His first imprisonment, in
1753, which lasted six months, was caused by his Notes on the Age of
Louis XIV.; for his second, in the following year, he was indebted to a
passage in his Memoirs of Madame de Maintenon, which charged the Austrian
court with keeping poisoners in its pay. His release, at the end of five
months, was generously obtained by the intercession of that court which
he had so grossly insulted. La Beaumelle was brought up in the Catholic
religion, but, during a residence of some years in Geneva, he became
a protestant. At the age of twenty-one, he was appointed professor of
French literature at Copenhagen, and his first work, “Mes Pensées,” was
published in the Danish capital. Lured by the patronage which Frederic of
Prussia held out to authors, La Beaumelle removed to Berlin. Voltaire,
who was then at the Prussian court, visited him, and expressed a wish
to be numbered among his friends; but their amicable intercourse was
soon changed into deadly hostility. There was a short paragraph in Mes
Pensées, which wounded the vanity of Voltaire, and La Beaumelle was
also guilty of having a respect for Maupertuis, whom Voltaire detested,
and missed no opportunity of ridiculing. The rabid hatred with which
Voltaire ever after pursued his foe, and the virulent and even low abuse
which he lavished on him, can excite only disgust. The malign influence
of Voltaire having rendered Berlin a disagreeable abode, La Beaumelle
returned to his native country. After having resided in peace at Toulouse
for several years, he obtained a place in the King’s Library, at Paris,
which, however, he did not long retain; his death, which happened in
1779, followed close upon his appointment. La Beaumelle had certainly no
mean talents; and it is much to be regretted, that they were so often
thrown away upon literary squabbles. Of his works, the best are Mes
Pensées; a Defence of the Spirit of Laws; and Letters to M. de Voltaire.
The literary successor of La Beaumelle in the Bastile, was Francis
de Marsy, a native of Paris, born in 1714. After he had finished his
studies, he was admitted a member of the society of Jesuits. His first
productions were two Latin poems, on Tragedy and Painting, from which,
particularly the latter, he derived considerable reputation, his Latinity
being good, his versification flowing and spirited, and his imagery
poetical. Encouraged perhaps by the praise which he received for these
works, he became an author by profession, and wasted, in the ungrateful
occupation of writing for booksellers, those talents which, otherwise
employed, might have given him permanent fame. One of his tasks, an
analysis of the works of Bayle, which he published in 1755, was condemned
by the parliament of Paris, and made him, for some months, an inmate
of the Bastile. He died in 1763. Among his works are the first twelve
volumes of the History of the Chinese, Japanese, &c.; and an edition of
Rabelais in eight volumes. The former is a hasty compilation; the latter
he spoiled, by retouching and modernizing the style—it is probable,
however, that the clothing of Rabelais in a modern garb was a sagacious
scheme of the publishers.
To hazard censure upon an individual of the privileged class, or even
to be suspected of having done so, was an infallible passport to the
Bastile. That versatile and elegant writer Marmontel was one of those who
were taught the danger of a courtier’s hostility. This enemy was the Duke
d’Aumont, whom, in his Memoirs, he truly describes as being “the most
stupid, the most vain, and the most choleric, of all the gentlemen of the
King’s chamber.”
John Francis Marmontel, the son of parents in a humble station, was
born in 1723, at the town of Bort, in the Limousin. He has drawn a
delightful picture of the comfort and content in which his family lived.
“The property on which we all subsisted was very small. Order, domestic
arrangement, labour, a little trade, and frugality, kept us above want.
Our little garden produced nearly as many vegetables as the consumption
of the family required; the orchard afforded us fruits; and our quinces,
our apples, and our pears, preserved with the honey of our bees, were, in
winter, most exquisite breakfasts for the good old women and children.
They were clothed by the small flock of sheep that folded at St. Thomas.
My aunts spun the wool, and the hemp of the field that furnished us with
linen; and in the evenings, when, by the light of a lamp, which our
nut-trees supplied with oil, the young people of the neighbourhood came
to help us to dress our flax, the picture was exquisite. The harvest
of the little farm secured us subsistence; the wax and honey of the
bees, to which one of my aunts carefully attended, formed a revenue
that cost but little; the oil pressed from our green walnuts had a
taste and smell that we preferred to the flavour and perfume of that
of the olive. Our buck-wheat cakes, moistened, smoking hot, with the
good butter of Mont d’Or, were a delicious treat to us. I know not what
dish would have appeared to us better than our turnips and chesnuts;
and on a winter evening, while these fine turnips were roasting round
the fire, and we heard the water boiling in the vase where our chesnuts
were cooling, so relishing and sweet, how did our hearts palpitate with
joy! I well remember, too, the perfume that a fine quince used to exhale
when roasting under the ashes, and the pleasure our grandmother used
to have in dividing it amongst us. The most moderate of women made us
all gluttons. Thus, in a family where nothing was lost, trivial objects
united made plenty, and left but little to expend, in order to satisfy
all our wants. In the neighbouring forest there was an abundance of dead
wood of trifling value—there my father was permitted to make his annual
provision. The excellent butter of the mountain, and the most delicate
cheese, were common, and cost but little; wine was not dear, and my
father himself drank of it soberly.”
Marmontel was designed by his father to be brought up to trade, but
his desire of learning was unconquerable, and was at last allowed to
be gratified. His early education he received from the Jesuits, at the
humble college of Mauriac, and he completed it at Clermont and Toulouse.
At one time he fancied that he had a vocation for the ecclesiastical
state, and he would have become one of the fraternity of Jesuits, had he
not been deterred by the pathetic entreaties and remonstrances of his
mother. It was at Toulouse that he made his first literary essay, in a
competition for one of the prizes bestowed by the academy for Floral
Games. A correspondence into which he entered with Voltaire, induced the
poet to advise him to take up his abode in Paris, and on this advice he
acted in 1745. For a considerable time after his settling in the capital,
he had to contend against poverty. The complete success which attended
his tragedy of Dionysius the Tyrant, lifted him at once into fortune
and fame. “In one day,” says he, “almost in one instant, I found myself
rich and celebrated. I made a worthy use of my riches, but it was not so
with my celebrity. My fame became the origin of my dissipation, and the
source of my errors. Till then my life had been obscure and retired.”
It is honourable to him that all his family benefited by his improved
circumstances; and, in palliation of his errors, we must consider how
difficult it was for a young and flattered poet to escape the contagious
effect of a corrupted capital. He finally renounced his licentious
habits, and became an affectionate and happy husband and father.
Dionysius was followed by Aristomenes, Cleopatra, and other tragedies,
of which only Aristomenes was eminently successful. His wide-spread
reputation at length gained for him the patronage of Madame de
Pompadour, through whom he obtained the place of Secretary of the Royal
Buildings, and a pension on the French Mercury. It was for the Mercury
that he began those tales, which have been translated into English under
the erroneous appellation of Moral Tales. On the death of Boissy in
1758, Marmontel, by the favour of Pompadour, received the patent of the
Mercury; and, under his management, the work rose into high repute. He,
however, enjoyed this lucrative employment for only two years. Cury,
a wit, who had been deeply injured by the stupid and spiteful Duke
d’Aumont, composed a satire on his titled enemy. He repeated the verses
to Marmontel, and the latter, who had an excellent memory, repeated
them to a company at Madame Geoffrin’s. This circumstance was instantly
reported to the Duke d’Aumont, who lost not a moment in procuring a
lettre de cachet, by virtue of which Marmontel was conveyed to the
Bastile, charged with being the author of the satire. His confinement
lasted only eleven days; but as he generously refused to betray the
writer’s name, the patent of the Mercury was taken from him, and nothing
was left to him except a pension payable out of the profits of the work.
In 1763, Marmontel became a member of the French Academy, and, twenty
years later, he was appointed its perpetual secretary. After he was
deprived of the Mercury, he pursued his literary labours, for many years,
with equal vigour and credit. Among the works which he produced during
that period are Belisarius, the Incas, a translation of the Pharsalia,
a new series of tales, various comic operas, miscellaneous pieces, a
History of the Regency of the Duke of Orleans, Elements of Literature,
and Memoirs of his own Life. During the fierce struggles between the
republican parties, after the downfall of the throne, Marmontel lived in
retirement, and in a state of penury which bordered upon poverty. He was
elected a member of the council of elders, in 1797, but the revolution
of the 18th Fructidor deprived him of his seat, and he withdrew to his
cottage in Normandy, happy in not being exiled to another hemisphere, as
was the case with many of his colleagues. Marmontel died of apoplexy, on
the last day of 1799.
Morellet, the friend, and by marriage the relative, of Marmontel, was,
like that writer, one who suffered from the vengeance of the great. It
must be owned, however, that there was less injustice in his punishment
than in that of his friend, as he was really the author of the satire for
which he was confined, and it was published under circumstances which
made even Voltaire doubt whether the conduct of the writer was perfectly
justifiable. Andrew Morellet, to whom some of his acquaintance gave the
punning appellation of Mord-les, or Bite-’em, was born at Lyons, in 1727.
He received the early part of his education at the Jesuits’ College
in that city, and he completed his studies at Paris, in the seminary
of Trente-Trois, and the Sorbonne. He appears, however, to have paid
at least as much attention to the works of modern philosophers as to
those of the theologians. At Paris he became intimate with D’Alembert,
Diderot, and other contributors to the Encyclopædia. Returning to Paris,
after a tour which he made with a pupil, he was gladly admitted into the
most talented society in the capital. Palissot, in his comedy of the
Philosophers, having ridiculed the philosophical party, Morellet resented
the insult by a satirical production, called The Vision. In this work
there were some severe lines on the princess of Robecq, an enemy of the
encyclopedists, who was then lying on her death-bed. For these lines
Morellet suffered an imprisonment of several months in the Bastile.
Morellet was admitted into the French Academy in 1784, and he contributed
much to the Dictionary of that body. In 1803 he became a member of the
Institute, and in 1807 attained a seat in the legislature. His life was
protracted to the age of ninety-two, and, for nearly the whole of that
time his pen was actively employed on subjects of political economy and
general literature, and in translations, principally from the English
language. A selection from his writings was made by himself, in four
volumes, with the title of Literary and Philosophical Miscellanies of the
18th Century. He died in 1819.
By Marmontel, who married his friend’s niece, he is thus characterized:
“The Abbé Morellet, with more order and clearness, in a very rich
magazine of every kind of knowledge, possessed in conversation a source
of sound, pure, profound ideas, that, without ever being exhausted, never
overflowed. He showed himself at our dinners with an openness of soul,
a just and firm mind, and with as much rectitude in his heart as in his
understanding. One of his talents, and the most distinguishing, was a
turn of pleasantry delicately ironical, of which Swift alone had found
the secret. With this facility of being severe, if he had been inclined,
no man was ever less so; and, if he ever permitted himself to indulge in
personal raillery, it was but a rod in his hand to chastise insolence or
punish malignity.”
A less amiable captive than Marmontel and Morellet next claims our
attention. Though he was by no means destitute of talent or information,
Victor Riquetti, Marquis of Mirabeau, owes the redemption of his name
from oblivion less to his numerous literary productions than to his being
the father of the celebrated Mirabeau. The marquis, who was descended
from a Florentine family, was born at Perthes in 1715. He became a
disciple of Quesnay, and published many works, to disseminate the
doctrines of the political economists. His compositions are disfigured
by a detestable style, great affectation, and a want of method. Of his
labours, which amount to more than twenty volumes, it will suffice to
mention L’Ami des Hommes and the Théorie de l’Impôt. With reference to
the former, Voltaire satirically speaks of Mirabeau as “the friend of
man, who talks, who talks, who talks, who decides, who dictates, who
is so fond of the feudal government, who commits so many blunders, and
who gets so often into the wrong box—the pretended friend of the human
race.” He bestows equal contempt on the second work—“I have read the
Theory of Taxation,” says he, “and it seems to me no less absurd than
ridiculously written. I do not like those friends of man, who are for
ever telling the enemies of the state ‘we are ruined;—come;—you will have
an easy task.’” The government seems to have been of the same opinion as
Voltaire, for the Theory of Taxation procured for its author a lodging
in the Bastile. Mirabeau, however, continued to write and to publish
till nearly his last moments; he died in 1789. This pretended friend of
the human race, as Voltaire with justice calls him, deserved abhorrence
in all the relations of social life. He was an oppressive master, and a
tyrannical and brutal husband and father. He was perpetually soliciting
for lettres de cachet to plunge some branch or other of his family into
a dungeon. Of those letters he is said to have obtained fifty-four, many
of which were enforced against his highly-gifted though erring son, the
Count de Mirabeau, whom he hated, and whom, by his persevering cruelty,
he contributed to drive into desperate courses.
Among those who felt the vengeance of the vindictive Pompadour was the
Chevalier Resseguier, a native of Toulouse, who was much admired in the
Parisian circles for his gaiety and wit. An epigram which he aimed at
the royal mistress, speedily made him an inmate of the Bastile. There,
like many other unfortunate victims of the marchioness, he might perhaps
have spent the rest of his days, had not his brother, a member of the
parliament of Toulouse, hastened up to the capital and succeeded in
mollifying Pompadour. In their way home from the Bastile, the grave
magistrate began to give his brother some prudent advice. Little disposed
to listen to it, the chevalier thrust his head out of the coach window,
and, in the words of Philoxenus of Syracuse, exclaimed, “take me back
to the quarries!” The brother still persisting to administer caution
and reproof, the chevalier lost all patience, censured him bitterly for
having stooped to ask a favour from the marchioness, and then leaped from
the carriage. Resseguier of course continued to scatter his sarcasms on
all sides. For one of them, directed against the notorious President
Maupeou, who was afterwards chancellor, he ran considerable risk of
paying a second visit to the Bastile. He was dining, on a fast-day, at
the house of M. de Sartine, and some of the guests were admiring the
size of the fish. “Yes,” said Marin, (whose name the reader will meet
with again) “they are very fine fish; but I dined yesterday with the
president, and we had still larger.” “Ah!” replied Resseguier, “I do not
wonder in the least at that; it is the place for everything monstrous.”
Louis XV. was informed of this pungent attack on the instrument of his
despotism, and was greatly irritated by it.
The next literary prisoner was the involuntary proxy of an offender,
who took care to get beyond the reach of the police. In 1761, Grouber
de Grouberdal, a German by birth, and barrister by profession, author
of Irus, ou le Savetier du Coin, and a poem with the title of Le Sexe
Triomphant, was sent to the Bastile, on suspicion of having written a
satire called the Jesuitics, to which he appears to have only contributed
some verses. Grouber, however, escaped with no more than a month’s
imprisonment. A friend of Grouber’s was the real author. Henry Joseph
Dulaurens was born at Douay, and very early displayed abilities of a
superior order. He was less amiable than talented; for he is said to
have been suspicious, sarcastic, hasty, restless, and turbulent: that he
was licentious, is proved by his works. Dulaurens was destined for the
church, but abandoned the clerical profession. His satire, the Jesuitics,
which was modelled on the celebrated Philippics of La Grange Chancel,
was aimed at the Jesuits, to whom he had long been bitterly hostile.
Fearing that it would bring him into peril, he set off for Holland, on
the morning after it was published, without warning his friend Grouber
that danger was to be apprehended. In Holland he became a writer for
the booksellers; but, though his pen was extremely fertile, and his
productions, which were generally marked by originality and spirit,
obtained an extensive sale, he was scarcely able to avoid sinking into
poverty: the booksellers throve on those fruits of his talent, by which
he himself was barely kept alive. By his flight from Paris, Dulaurens
had eluded a residence in the Bastile, but it ultimately brought on him
a more protracted confinement than he would have endured had he remained
in France. In the hope of bettering his condition, he quitted Amsterdam,
and went to Liege, whence he removed to Frankfort. While he was living
in the latter city, he was prosecuted by the ecclesiastical chamber
of Mentz, as an anti-religious writer, and was condemned to perpetual
imprisonment. He died in 1797, in a convent near Mentz, after having been
a prisoner during thirty years. Of his works, the most remarkable are, Le
Compère Mathieu, L’Evangile de la Raison, Irma, and L’Aretin Moderne, in
prose; and Le Balai, and La Chandelle d’Arras, two mock-heroic poems;—of
these poems, which are of considerable length, the first was composed in
twenty-two days, and the second in fifteen.
Of all the writers who, during the reign of Louis XV., found or deserved
a lodging in the Bastile, Peter Robbé de Beauveset may, perhaps, be
considered as one of the most degraded, in a moral point of view. He
was born at Vendôme, in 1714, received a good education, and was not
destitute of talent. At an early age, he began to write poems of the
coarsest obscenity, and he continued the practice till almost the close
of a long life. To repeat them to all companies that would listen,
seems to have been one of his greatest pleasures. Next to licentious
composition, he delighted in satire. His verses were insufferably harsh;
but they now and then displayed happy thoughts and forcible expressions.
To give an idea of his propensity to wallow in the mire, it will be
sufficient to say, that he chose for one of his themes the only disease
which is a disgrace to the sufferer, and that the song was worthy of
the theme. This drew on him the sarcasm, likely enough to be true, that
he was “the bard of the unclean malady, and that he was full of his
subject.” Having tried his satirical skill upon Louis XV., an order was
issued to seize his papers, and he would certainly have paid a visit to
the Bastile, had he not skilfully parried the blow. Being timely warned
of his danger, he destroyed the obnoxious piece, and substituted in its
place another of an opposite kind. This stratagem was successful. Instead
of sending him to prison, the king pensioned him, and gave him apartments
in the palace of St. Germain. Severe censors have hinted, that the
debauched monarch wished to have a monopoly of the poet’s obscene rhymes.
Robbé likewise received a pension from the Archbishop of Paris, on
condition that he should not publish his objectionable pieces. He kept to
the letter of his agreement; he did not print them; he contented himself
with reciting them to as many hearers as he could find. The motive of
the archbishop we can comprehend; but it is not easy to perceive what
could have induced the duchess of Olone to leave a legacy of 15,000
francs to so shameless a writer, and to speak in flattering terms of his
reputation as an author! Before his death, which took place in 1794, he
is said to have manifested some signs of reformation.
The liability to be thrust into a prison, for the purpose of gratifying a
courtier, or other powerful enemy, was not the fate of authors alone; the
men who devoted their talents, and shed their blood, to enlarge or defend
the dominion of their country, were equally subject to it. Striking proof
of this fact is afforded by the persecution which fell to the lot of Mahé
de la Bourdonnais and Count Lally.
Bernard Francis Mahé de la Bourdonnais was born in 1699, at St. Malo,
entered the service of the East India Company at an early period, and
displayed such talent, and such consummate knowledge of mercantile
as well as of naval concerns, that, in 1735, he was appointed
governor-general of the isles of France and Bourbon. On his arrival
in the Isle of France, he found everything in a state of penury and
confusion. In a very short time, however, he showed what can be done
by a man of abilities and perseverance. A new and vivifying spirit was
breathed by him into the languishing frame of the colony. Laws and police
were established; arsenals, docks, forts, magazines, and canals, were
constructed; and the cultivation of indigo, cotton, manioc, and sugar,
was introduced. All this was accomplished within the space of five
years. Twice La Bourdonnais was sent to the coast of Coromandel, with
succours for his ungenerous rival and enemy Dupleix; the first time in
1741, the second in 1746. To narrate all the exertions of La Bourdonnais,
on these occasions, would require a volume. His conduct was such as to
win the warm praise of the English, who suffered by his success. The
result of his operations, in 1746, was the surrender of Madras; but the
terms of the capitulation were dishonourably violated by Dupleix, in
spite of the remonstrances of the indignant conqueror. Dupleix having
appointed another governor at the Isle of France, La Bourdonnais returned
to Europe, and on his way homeward was taken by an English vessel. In
England he met with that reception which was due to a talented and noble
foe, and was allowed to proceed on parole to his native country. A far
different greeting awaited him in France, where his mean and malignant
enemies had long been labouring effectually for his ruin. He had only
been three days in Paris before all his papers were seized, and he was
hurried to the Bastile. There he was kept in solitary confinement for
twenty-six months, not even his wife and children being allowed access
to him; nor was he permitted to have the means of writing. One of the
charges against him, founded on the testimony of a soldier who had been
hired to perjure himself, was that he had secretly conveyed on board of
his vessel a large sum of money from Madras. To refute this charge, by
showing that it was impossible for the witness to have seen any such
proceeding from the spot where he was posted, La Bourdonnais, destitute
as he was of materials, drew from memory an exact plan of Madras, and
contrived to have it conveyed to the commissioners who were appointed
to investigate his conduct. The plan was drawn on a white handkerchief,
with a rude sort of pencil formed from a slip of box, and dipped in brown
and yellow colours, which he obtained from coffee, and the verdigris
scraped from copper coins. This curious document quickened the movements
of his judges, and they took steps to bring the question to an issue.
After having undergone an imprisonment of three years, he was pronounced
innocent, and was released. The gift of liberty came too late to
save his life; his health was undermined by grief, anxiety, and the
unwholesomeness of his dungeon, and his fortune had melted away in the
hands of his persecutors; he languished in severe pain, and in a state of
indigence, till 1755, when death put an end to his sufferings.
A doom still more severe than that of La Bourdonnais was assigned to
the unfortunate Count Lally. Thomas Arthur Lally was born in 1702, and
was the son of Sir Gerard Lally, one of those high-minded but mistaken
Irishmen, whose ideas of duty led them to expatriate themselves rather
than renounce their allegiance to the second James. Young Lally was early
conversant with war; he was not twelve years old when he first mounted
guard, in the trenches before Barcelona. In the course of the next thirty
years, he distinguished himself in numerous battle fields, particularly
at Dettingen and Fontenoy, and was employed in missions to England and
Russia, the former of which, not a little perilous, was undertaken in
1737, for the service of the Stuart family. To the house of Hanover he
was an inveterate foe, and he was fertile in plans for its overthrow. On
the breaking out of the war between England and France in 1756, he was
made a lieutenant-general, and appointed commandant of all the French
establishments in Hindostan. Unfortunately for him, the government
unwisely delayed his departure, and withdrew a part of the force which
had been intended to accompany him. When he reached Pondicherry he found
everything in confusion, none of the resources which he had expected to
find, and, worse than all, men in office who knew that he meant to punish
peculators, and who were therefore incessantly on the alert to thwart all
his plans. Their machinations were aided by his own defects; for he was
harsh, violent, and headstrong, in an extraordinary degree. Voltaire
says of him, that “he had found the secret of making himself hated by
everybody,” and that “every one, except the executioner, had a right to
kill him.” There is much exaggeration in this; but it is certain that
Lally was, and deserved to be, an unpopular man.
In spite of the scantiness of his means, Lally took the field against
the English, with a firm resolve to drive them out of India. His first
operations were successful. He made himself master of Goudalour, Fort St.
David, and Devicotta, but here his good fortune ended; he was foiled in
an attack on Tanjore, and was subsequently compelled to raise the siege
of Madras. His failure must not be attributed to want of military skill;
he was nearly without resources, and there was in his own army a powerful
faction which was hostile to him. The council of Pondicherry, too, hated
him with such a deadly hatred that it rejoiced in, and even helped to
cause, his disappointments. Invested at last in Pondicherry by the
English, he defended the place with desperate courage, but was compelled
by famine to surrender.
On his return to France, Lally attacked his enemies with his wonted
impetuosity. Their influence, however, was superior to his, and he
was sent to the Bastile. Nineteen months elapsed before he was even
questioned. The trial was at last commenced, and it occupied more than
two years. The whole of the proceedings teemed with the most flagrant
injustice; there was a manifest determination to send the prisoner to the
scaffold. The language used by some of his judges deserved the severest
punishment. Sentence of death was pronounced on the 6th May, 1766. On its
being made known to him, Lally stabbed himself with a pair of compasses,
but the wound was not mortal. Three days afterwards, he was taken to
execution, and, that nothing might be wanting to lacerate his feelings,
he was conveyed in a mud-cart, and his mouth was gagged. This brutality
had a contrary effect to that which was expected; it excited for him
the sympathy of the spectators, and covered his enemies with execration
and disgrace. The son of Count Lally, advantageously known during the
revolution as Count Lally-Tolendal, obtained, some years afterwards, a
solemn reversal of the sentence, and the restoration of his parent’s
honour.
Caradeuc de la Chalotais, a Breton magistrate, estimable for his talents
and rectitude, is the next who comes forward on the scene. He appears
to have been indebted for his misfortunes partly to the Jesuits,
whose order he had assisted to suppress in France, and partly to the
Duke d’Aiguillon, whom he had offended, by venturing to hint a doubt
of his courage. He was a native of Rennes, born in 1701, and became
attorney-general in the parliament of Brittany. His two Comptes Rendus,
against the Jesuits, which contributed much to their overthrow, and his
Essay on National Education, which forms a kind of supplement to them,
are spoken of in the most laudatory terms by Voltaire. La Chalotais
subsequently acted a conspicuous part, when the parliament of Brittany
refused to register some of the royal edicts, which violated the Breton
privileges. The Duke d’Aiguillon was then governor of the province, and
we may believe that he was not sorry to take vengeance for the sarcasm
which the attorney-general had aimed at him. The Jesuits, too, are
said to have spared no pains to accomplish their enemy’s destruction.
In November, 1765, La Chalotais, his son, and four of the parliament
counsellors, were arrested, and in the following month, they were placed
in close confinement in the citadel of St. Malo. The main charges against
La Chalotais were, that he had written two anonymous letters to one of
the secretaries of state, which contained insults upon the king and his
ministers, and that he had entered into a conspiracy against the regal
authority. With respect to the letters, though some persons accustomed
to examine handwritings asserted them to be his, the vulgar style and
incorrect spelling render it in the highest degree improbable that he
was their author. He himself denied the charge in the most emphatic
manner. La Chalotais was carefully secluded from all correspondence, and
deprived of pen and ink; he, nevertheless, contrived to produce three
eloquent memorials in his defence, and to procure a wide circulation of
them. They were written on scraps of paper which had contained sugar and
chocolate, with a pen made from a toothpick, and ink composed of soot,
sugar, vinegar, and water. A commission was at first formed to try the
prisoners, but the cause was afterwards removed into the council of
state, and the captives were transferred to the Bastile. A stop was,
however, put to the proceedings by the king, and the accused individuals
were exiled to Saintes. An attempt was made to prevail on La Chalotais
to resign his office, but he refused to listen to the messenger. On the
death of Louis XV. his successor allowed La Chalotais to resume his seat
in parliament, and the magistrate retained it till his decease in 1785.
The celebrated Curran, whose conversational talents no one that witnessed
them could possibly forget, once said to me, in allusion to the transient
intoxication produced by champagne, that it made a runaway rap at a man’s
head. It may, perhaps, from a similar reason, be allowable to say, that a
runaway rap was made at the liberty of the person who is the subject of
this sketch. Francis Louis Marin had scarcely time to lament the loss of
his liberty before it was restored to him. Marin was a Provençal, born at
Ciotat, in 1721; after having been a chorister, and then an organist, he
adopted the clerical profession, and went to Paris, where he became tutor
to the son of a nobleman. His manner and figure, which were good, and
his talents, which were far from contemptible, gained him many patrons
in the French capital. He now quitted his ecclesiastical pursuits, was
admitted a barrister, and published various works, one of which, the
History of Saladin, is perhaps the best of all his productions, and is
still in repute; it was dedicated to St. Florentin, one of the ministers,
and gained for its author the appointment of royal censor, to which was
subsequently added that of secretary-general to Sartine, who had been
placed at the head of the inquisitorial office, to which printers and
publishers were amenable. As secretary-general he seems to have satisfied
no one; he was desirous of befriending the philosophical party, in which
he had several friends, but was still more desirous of retaining his
lucrative post. The consequence was, that he sometimes winked at, and
even aided, infractions of the law, and then sought to propitiate his
employers by additional vigilance and severity. Marin was certainly not
overburthened with delicacy; and, unless he is much belied, he increased
his income by acting as purveyor to the disgraceful amours of his royal
master. In 1763, he was confined for twenty-four hours in the Bastile,
for having, in his censorial character, neglected to expunge some lines
from one of Dorat’s tragedies. A few years afterwards, he was deprived of
a pension of 2000 livres, because he had allowed Favart’s comic opera of
the Gleaner to be acted and published. In 1771, he was made editor of the
Gazette de France, in which capacity he brought upon himself a perpetual
shower of epigrams and sarcasms. Many of these annoying shafts were aimed
at him by the Nouvelles à la Main, and he had the weakness to demand that
the editor of the paper should be arrested. He had soon the misfortune or
the folly to provoke a much more formidable enemy, the witty and eloquent
Beaumarchais, who covered him with ridicule. To complete his vexation,
no long time elapsed before the Count de Vergennes dismissed him, and
in the most humiliating manner, from the royal censorship and the
superintendence of the Gazette. Marin then retired to his native town,
where he busied himself in literary pursuits. By the revolution he lost a
considerable part of his income; but to his credit it must be owned, that
he did not lose his temper or his spirits; he died in 1809. Marin had
some praiseworthy qualities; he is said to have been ready to do acts of
kindness, and even to have often run serious risks to serve his friends.
But here we must stop, for it appears that his principles and his morals
were lamentably defective; one of his biographers, who writes of him
in a friendly spirit, owns that in extreme old age he had “a taste for
pleasure, and even for libertinism.”
Less fortunate than Marin, Farmain De Rozoi, or, as he was generally
called Durosoi, did not pay a visit of only twenty-four hours to the
Bastile. Durosoi was a Parisian by birth, and seems to have early
betaken himself to “the idle trade” of literature. He tried many
kinds of authorship, and was far below mediocrity in all; novels,
histories, poems, and plays, especially the latter, he poured forth in
rapid succession, drawing down abundance of bitter sarcasms from the
critics, and gaining little emolument to himself. Among the dramatic
subjects which he chose was Henry IV., and he was so delighted with his
hero, that he brought him on the stage in three different pieces. The
appellation of “the Modern Ravaillac,” which he acquired by these pieces,
shows how woefully the monarch fared under his hands. But Durosoi had
worse enemies than the critics; on an erroneous suspicion of his being
the author of two obnoxious works, he was shut up for two months in the
Bastile. When the revolution broke out he espoused the royal cause, and
became editor of the Gazette de Paris. He was a zealous and certainly an
honest advocate of that cause. Though slenderly endowed with talents, he
was by no means deficient in courage and noble feelings. When Louis XVI.,
after his flight to the frontier, was under restraint in the Tuileries,
Durosoi formed the romantic but generous project of obtaining the king’s
liberty, by inducing the friends of Louis to offer themselves as hostages
for him; and a great number of individuals actually consented to render
themselves personally responsible for the sovereign’s conduct. Durosoi
did not slacken in his hostility to the revolutionists, till their
final success on the 10th of August compelled him to drop the pen. He
was one of their earliest victims on the scaffold, he being executed by
torch-light only nineteen days after the downfall of the monarchy. He
died with the utmost firmness; in a letter which he left behind him, he
declared, that “a royalist like him was worthy to die on St. Louis’s day,
for his religion and his king.” It is said that, with the laudable desire
of benefiting mankind by his death, he was desirous that his blood should
be employed in trying the experiment of transfusion.
The French revolution, which ultimately consigned Durosoi to death,
opened the prison-gates of a man, of whom few particulars are recorded,
but whose courage and unmerited sufferings deserve our admiration and
pity. It will scarcely be credited that, from a very early period of the
reign of Louis XV. there existed an infamous monopoly of grain, which was
managed for the benefit of the monarch. Corn, bought at a low price in
plentiful seasons, was hoarded up, and sold at an immense profit in times
of scarcity. The circumstance was kept as secret as possible for many
years, but the truth got out, and the name of “the compact of famine”
was popularly given to the monopoly. A patriotic individual, Prévost
de Beaumont, the secretary of the clergy, formed the daring project of
at one sweep gaining possession of all the documents relative to this
affair, and revealing to France the whole machinery of the scandalous
system. When, however, he was about to carry his plan into effect, he was
seized by the police, and conveyed to the Bastile. In that prison, and at
Vincennes, he spent twenty-two years, his hands and feet heavily ironed,
a bare board for his bed, and a scanty portion of bread and water for his
daily subsistence; he would no doubt have perished in his dungeon, had
not the chains which he had so long worn been broken by the strong hand
of the French people.
A striking proof how liable to abuse is irresponsible power, placed in
the hands of ministers of state and of monopolizing corporations, is
afforded by the persecution of Barletti St. Paul, a man of considerable
abilities, who was born at Paris, in 1734. So precocious was his talent,
that, at the age of sixteen, he had made himself master of all that the
best teachers could communicate to him. After having been for a while
sub-preceptor of the junior branches of the royal family, he was involved
in a quarrel, in consequence of which he quitted France. He resided for
six years at Naples, after which he was intrusted by the Dauphin with a
diplomatic mission at Rome; and, when he had fulfilled this mission, he
returned to his native country.
Rapidly as St. Paul had acquired knowledge, he was thoroughly
dissatisfied with the method of instruction then in use, and particularly
with the various and discordant systems which were followed by
preceptors. He, therefore, undertook the Herculean task of forming a
collection of elementary treatises on the sciences and arts, with new
modes of studying languages. On this encyclopedic labour he was, at
intervals, employed during nearly the whole of his life. Eighteen volumes
of it were completed, and he was on the point of seeing them brought
before the public, when his prospects were destroyed by the base jealousy
of one learned body, and the legal despotism of another. As the cost of
printing the work would be great, a society of his friends was formed,
for the purpose of accomplishing the publication in concert, and a public
meeting was announced, to deliberate on the necessary arrangements. But
the University of Paris had taken the alarm. Like all old and pampered
institutions, it hated novelty, and trembled lest its monopoly should be
shaken. To avert the dreaded evil, it had recourse to the parliament;
and the compliant parliament issued a prohibition against the meeting.
This step was backed by the appointment of four commissioners to
examine the work. It did not require the spirit of prophecy to predict
that commissioners, chosen under such auspices, would be anything but
impartial. The hackneyed joke, of suing his Satanic majesty in one of
the infernal courts, is pretty sure to be realised on such occasions.
The report which they made was so unfavourable, that a complete stop was
put to the scheme of publishing. St. Paul did not tamely submit to this
treatment. He procured to be printed, at Brussels, a pamphlet, which was
entitled The Secret Revealed. Sartine, the minister of police, who had
been one of his active enemies, was somewhat roughly handled in this
production. The king of spies, jails, and gibbets, was not a man to be
attacked with impunity, and he avenged himself in a manner which was
worthy of him, by suppressing the pamphlet, and sending its author to the
Bastile.
At the expiration of three months, the intercession of the Cardinal de
Rohan obtained the liberation of St. Paul. He then went to Spain, where
he became professor of belles-lettres at Segovia; an appointment which
he held for three years. Returning again to France, he published a New
System of Typography, to diminish the labour of compositors. For this
the government rewarded him by a grant of twenty thousand livres, and
by printing five hundred copies of his volume at the Louvre press. His
improvement consisted in casting in one mass the diphthongs, triphthongs,
and all the most frequently occurring combinations of letters. A similar
plan, with the name of the Logographic, was tried in London, a few years
afterwards, but it was soon abandoned.
St. Paul continued to labour indefatigably on his ameliorated system of
education; he gained in its favour the suffrage of Sicard, who was one of
three persons whom the National Institute nominated to examine it; but
he did not live to complete it, and only a small specimen of it was ever
published. He passed unhurt through the storms of the Revolution, and
died at Paris, in 1809. One of his best works, “The means of avoiding the
customary errors in the instruction of Youth,” suggests a mode by which
two scholars may reciprocally give lessons to each other.
Almost the last prisoner, perhaps the last of any note, who was committed
to the Bastile in the closing year of Louis the Fifteenth’s reign,
was a man who subsequently acted a conspicuous part in politics and
war. Charles Francis Duperier Dumouriez, born at Cambray, in 1739,
was the son of an army commissary, who translated the Ricciardetto,
and wrote some dramatic pieces. After having been educated with much
care, Dumouriez obtained a cornetcy, and, before the close of the seven
years’ war, he had received two-and-twenty wounds, nineteen of which
were inflicted on him in a combat which he gallantly maintained against
twenty hussars, five of whom he disabled. Peace being concluded, he
travelled in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. In 1768 and 1769, he served
with distinction in Corsica, and rose to the rank of colonel. The Duke
de Choiseul employed him, in 1770, on a mission in Poland, to support
the confederation of Bar against the Russians, but the dismissal of
the duke, which took place soon after, led to the recall of the envoy.
Dumouriez was next intrusted, by Louis XV., with a secret mission to
the court of Gustavus of Sweden, relative to the revolution which that
sovereign was then planning. This was done by Louis, who was in the habit
of taking similar steps, without the knowledge of the Duke d’Aiguillon,
the minister for foreign affairs. Dumouriez was, in consequence, arrested
at Hamburgh, by order of the duke, and conveyed to the Bastile, Louis
not having spirit enough to avow his own acts. During his six months’
imprisonment, Dumouriez wrote various works. The accession of Louis
XVI. restored the captive to liberty; and he successively obtained
the government of Cherbourg, and the command of the country between
Nantes and Bordeaux. That such a man should not take an active part in
the French revolution was impossible. But Dumouriez was not, as the
ultra-royalists have unjustly described him to be, an enemy of the
throne; he was, in truth, a constitutional royalist. In 1792, he was
promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general, and was appointed minister
for foreign affairs, from which office he was shortly afterwards removed
to the war department. That department, however, he held only for four
days, at the end of which term he resigned. The duration of his official
existence did not exceed three months. He was now placed at the head
of the army which was destined to repel the Prussians, who were led by
the Duke of Brunswick. By a masterly disposition of his troops, in the
defiles of Champagne, he completely foiled the enemy, and compelled
them to make a ruinous retreat. He then broke into the Netherlands,
gained the battle of Jemappe, revolutionized the whole country, and
carried the French arms into Holland. Quitting his army for a while, he
visited Paris, for the purpose of endeavouring to save the king, but in
that he failed, and rendered himself an object of suspicion. The tide
of military success, too, at length began to turn against him. He lost
the battle of Neerwinden, and was forced to abandon the Low Countries.
Commissioners were now sent by the Convention to arrest him; and, after
having vainly endeavoured to rally his army on his side, he was obliged
to seek for safety in flight. After having resided in various foreign
countries, he finally settled in England, where he was often consulted by
the ministers. Though he was decidedly hostile to the emperor Napoleon,
he took no share in the restoration of the Bourbons, nor did he approve
of their conduct. Dumouriez died on the 14th of March, 1823, and was
interred at Henley, in Oxfordshire. His works are numerous; the most
interesting of them are, his Memoirs, and the Present State of Portugal.