The courtiers were in as great a ferment as ever. They who found there was no pushing their fortune by my means, endeavoured to hurt me. Herein they often made use of indecent, and even insolent talk, besides the baseness of calumny. Several cabals had been formed, and these produced clashing and competitions, which affected the crown, as stirring up discontent in those who held the principal posts of the state.
The chancellor de Aguesseau pleaded his great age, and laid down business, as no longer able to bear the weight of it. A courtier, who was present when the King received his resignation, said to him,Certainly, Sire, M. de Aguesseau must be above a century old, for at a hundred years one is still young enough to be chancellor of France.
Several other placemen quitted, alledging that they could not live in a court where every thing was ruled by a woman: but this philosophy was of the latest; they never had any thoughts of retirement, till their endeavours to raise themselves to the very highest pitch of fortune, had miscarried; and some, in their voluntary exile, had set instruments to work, for making their appearance again on the theatre of power, which they had so lately quitted.
M. de Machault had the seals. This circulation of posts, diametrically oppositein practice, and requiring different talents, has been the subject of much complaint: but the fault lies in ambition. In France subaltern posts are looked on only as introductory to the more honourable and lucrative employments. On the vacancy of any great office, my apartment was crowded with competitors, who all had a genteel competency; but they wanted profitable posts, to make a show in the world.
The round of diversions which I had settled at Versailles, to recover the King from that lethargic heaviness which was growing constitutional, did not break in on general affairs. Lewis XV. daily devoted six hours to business. In the morning he employed himself about the foreign and domestic affairs.
The death of Marshal count Saxe now cast a damp on the festivity of the court. I remember a man of wit, being in my apartment when the news came, said tome,Now, Madam, we shall soon have a war, for he was the only one of all his Majesty’s generals whom the King of Prussia in the least feared.
The frequent conferences between Lewis XV. and this hero gave me an opportunity of studying his temper; for there is a pleasure in knowing great men; and his mind was of a singular cast: all his private behaviour savoured of the common man, great only in the day of action; then his soul, if I may be allowed the expression, assumed a new form; it became piercing, noble, and exalted: a new light beaming on his mind, he had an instantaneous perception of every thing. His imagination had nothing to do, the military genius which inspired him at those times was all-sufficient; yet after the battle, all this flame and magnanimity sunk again into littleness and vulgarity, nothing great remained in him but the fame of his actions.
In private life, he addicted himself to sensuality in its most brutish excesses; he was a stranger to that refined love which distinguishes noble from vulgar souls, delighting in the company of women only for debauchery; for all his mistresses were common prostitutes. Whilst he was disturbing all Europe by his victories, the gallantries of La Favart, an actress, allowed him no ease.
They who were often with him say, that he had scarce any tincture of learning; war was all he knew; and that he knew without learning it. Some politicians have thought, that his death wrought a change in the systems of Europe, and particularly, that the King of Prussia would never have renewed the war, had Maurice been living: it is certain that one man may change the whole scene of our political world.
I have read, in original memoirs of Lewis XIV. of surprising revolutions,brought about only by the ascendency of one mortal. Count Saxe had long laboured with indefatigable ardour in pursuit of a repose which he never enjoyed; for scarce had he seen himself in that summit of grandeur to which his military talents had raised him, than death laid him in the grave. Besides the royal seat given him by the King, in reward of his services, with suitable incomes, he was invested with the highest dignities and honours.
This general left behind him an incontestable reputation; his very enemies allow him to have been a consummate warrior; but if he did a great deal for France, France still did more for him; he never wanted for any thing. The King’s commissaries constantly furnished him with plenty of all necessaries; he had large armies, and fought in a country which has almost ever been the theatre of French victories, and where the gloryof the French name has shone in its greatest lustre. Farther, Maurice had with him the King’s best troops, impatiently longing to signalize themselves. I heard one of the trade, and reckoned to understand it thoroughly, say, that to be a hero, a man should have passed through all the military paths leading to glory; whereas Maurice, in the service of France, trod only one, and that smoothed for him; he was never put to those trials where a commander, being forced to exert all his abilities, approves himself a general.
I have read in the manuscript memoirs of Lewis XV. that the great Condé’s enemies put the Queen-mother on sending him into Catalonia only with a small body of troops, and those of the very worst. Conde, who knew his enemies views, wrote thus to his friend Gourville:I have been sent here to attack the gods and men, with only shadows to fight them. I shallmiscarry; how can it be otherwise, when the means of beating the enemy have been all taken away from me?Yet this hero, under the disadvantages both of numbers and the climate, baffled all the efforts of Spain.
The death of Marshal Saxe occasioned a revolution in the minds of the military courtiers. They who hitherto had hid themselves behind his merit, made their appearance: all put in for this hero’s post, and not one of them was qualified for it.
The King, on the first notice of count Maurice’s death, said,I am now without any general, I have only some captains remaining. Lowendahl, however, was still living; but it is said, the genius of those two men was formed to be together, and that the heroic virtues of the latter derived their splendor from the superior qualities of the other. A courtier said, onthis head,Lowendahl’s exploits are over; his counsellor is dead.
Whilst Versailles was full of this event, the Pope’s nuncio came to acquaint Lewis XV. that the King of Prussia had granted the free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion at Berlin; and that even the religious were allowed to settle, and wear the habit of their respective orders. A courtier hereupon said to the King,Sire, that Prince is for having a little of every thing. Once nothing would go down with him but soldiers, now he must have some monks. Another courtier replied,Since he begins to fancy gowns, let me advise your Majesty to make him a present of all the Jesuits in France. A third added,That article should be kept for the next treaty of peace, and let six Loyolites be exchanged for one soldier. The systematical people, however, attributed this indulgence to policy; for when a Prince is looked on tobe full of schemes and designs, every step of his is nicely canvassed, and various constructions put on it. Some said that the King of Prussia thereby intended to ingratiate himself with the court of Rome, as, by its intrigues with weak and superstitious princes, it can amply make up its want of temporal strength. Some thought it to arise from a new system of population, to draw Catholics thither from other parts; but the monks and priests of our faith do not increase population, &c. &c.
For my part, I attributed it to the humour for new foundations, which prevails with all the princes of our days. On examining the constitution of the Prussian government, which is an absolute monarchy, the plurality of religions will by no means appear suitable to it; at least I have heard from a very intelligent person, that it is only in republicswhere a freedom of religion can be properly allowed.
For some time the King had been more chearful than usual: after so many vexations and fatigues, he now began to breathe a little; he was at leisure to be often with me, and to hunt as much as he could. Never was a Prince so fond of this exercise. His eagerness in it often fatigued him beyond all bounds. I one day represented to him, that he made a toil of that pleasure, and that it would be better for him to be more moderate in it; that excess in any thing was hurtful: but he answered, that the more he hunted, the better he found himself. This is a new medical system; the court-physicians, who are all for motion and agitation, will have kings to spend half their life on horse-back.
But a great satisfaction, which that justly beloved Prince now felt,was the having given some relief to his burthened subjects. He had remitted three millions of the land-tax, abolished the hundredth denier, and the pence per livres levied on this impost. Though this was no great good, it presaged the end of a great evil.
At the same time, Lewis XV. ordered an inquiry into the nature of the taxes; of all imposts, the land-tax was found to be the most burthensome, as not proportioned to the real income. The old tax was still levied, without considering any decays, or damages of estates and lands; many a market-town, or village, which had formerly been able to pay large sums, was now no longer so; yet the same duty was required.
The government deliberated on ways for abolishing such an unequal tax, and substitute another of a more proportionate assessment. This had, for some time past, been often proposed, but alwaysrejected. It was now again taken into consideration, and after the most minute discussions, it was found best to leave things as they were, lest worse inconveniences might ensue. It is said, there are abuses in government, the reformation of which would do more harm than the very abuse itself. This was the opinion of the ministers, and of the King himself; but it was not mine, having always thought that no good can come from evil. We had often little debates about government, for Lewis XV. as I have said in the beginning of these Memoirs, has a great deal of wit and good-sense, and especially a very ready penetration. “You, Madam, would he say to me, look on the political community as a private family, whereas it is to be considered as an universal society, consisting of different bodies, the conjunction of which constitutes the state. Amidst this immensity of objects, conductedby men of opposite views and interests; the security and well-being of the state is upheld by those very things which seem to undermine it. In a private family, there is only one single plan of administration, the abuses are few, easily animadverted on, and the reformation of them restores that unity of government which is the perfection of such a society: but in the general community, good is to be continually ballanced by evil, and in this equipoize lies the political order of the state.”
“If so, Sir, said I to him, how is it that those states, where the most abuses are reformed, are the best governed. The Muscovites, of all the European nations, were the least civilized, and consequently the most unhappy, till Peter the Great appeared, who vigorously suppressing abuses of all kinds,from his reformation has sprung a powerful nation, a rich and happy people.
“Brandenburgh had neither force nor power; the art of war was scarce known there; it lay in obscurity; it was of no account among the states of Europe; and this contemptible condition was, in a great measure, owing to many abuses which its sovereigns either could not or would not reform. But in our times, one of its sovereigns has suppressed abuses, introduced political order and military discipline, and this reformation has enabled him to act a capital part on the theatre of Europe.”
“England is said once to have been nothing, till the parliament took in hand to form its power. It has since been continually retouching the political system, and correcting a number of abuses, which, for several centuries, hinderedthis state from emerging into power and reputation; and now itsbillsshew the continued system of its greatness.
“France, Sir, is a home instance of this. Lewis XIII. a weak Prince, and wholly governed by his ministers, concerned not himself about abuses; he left the state as he found it, full of mismanagement and disorder. Your great grand-father changed the whole, and by the reformation he brought about in all the branches of government, imparted, as it were, a new genius to his people.
“France, during the first years of Lewis XIV. rose to a pitch of glory and grandeur beyond any thing ever seen in the Roman empire.”
Here the King smiled, and very obligingly said to me, “I own, Madam, I didnot think you had been so well acquainted with these points; it gives me infinite pleasure that, besides the graces of wit and vivacity, you are possessed of that knowledge which enlarges and revives the judgment. The world is often deceived in those matters, continued the King, and the greatness of Princes is almost ever confounded with the happiness of the people. A Sovereign may make reformations in his kingdom, and his subjects be never the better for them; he is the only gainer by the change.
“Peter I. made considerable alterations in Muscovy, but did not thereby make the Russians a whit the happier. The revolution was felt only by the state. The Monarch became great and powerful, but the people still continued little and mean; for to have brought them from the abject state inwhich they then were, required the suppression of a multitude of civil abuses and vices, which continued after his time, and still subsist. The present Muscovites are sordid slaves, with all the ignorance and superstition of their fore-fathers, who lived before the reign of that great reformer Peter. And if the empire, once without a soldier, has now a numerous army; yet this adventitious power depends on the chance of a battle or two.
“Prussia, with all the reformations made there, does not find itself more happy. The people, amidst their Monarch’s victories, groan under the weight of the military burden laid on them; and its power depends on the existence of one single man. When Frederick comes to die, its political state dies with him.
“It is a question, continued the King, much debated, whether the Englishare more powerful, and more happy, than they were before those volumes of reformingbillswere in being: this is a point the nation itself is not agreed on. There is a party in England which affirms that the government is intirely ruined, and the political state indebted beyond what it is able to pay; and that it cannot answer its necessities. Yet I am inclined to think that England is increased in strength; but this is rather owing to the inadvertency of other powers, than to any reformations of its own, which would have profited very little, had its neighbours followed its example.
“As to the instance of our own country, I have wished that France had been in the same situation, at my accession to the throne, that Lewis XIII. left it in. His successor, what with reformations, splendor, and glory, reducedit so low, that it will be ages before it is thoroughly recovered.”
Our political discussions were always mixed with politeness and compliments; never did a word come from Lewis XV’s mouth which had any thing of asperity in it, &c.
England still kept a watchful eye on the French navy; and, on our side, the increase of it was the ministry’s chief object. All M. Rouille’s demands of money were immediately answered, and he lost no time: ships were daily launched.
France and England were, indeed, at peace; but acted with the same mistrust as if at open war; the public expences rose high; yet the French, who are continually complaining, did not in the least murmur, so convinced was every one of the absolute necessity of having a navy capable of facing that of Great Britain.
In the mean time, all the ministers continued declaring themselves against me; the very persons who, through my interest with his Majesty, had been promoted to the object of their wishes, were the most forward in promoting my disgrace. Since my living at Versailles, I have often lamented this flagitiousness, which is, as it were, innate in the human mind. No sooner is a man invested with honour and power, than he studies to cut off the hand which raised him. It is not my intention to enter into all the arts and practices of my enemies; there would be no end of the allusions, tales, stories, and songs, industriously disseminated over the kingdom to expose me. However, I was always exactly informed of what was said about me; but of some of my revilers I took no notice; others I threatened to complain of to the King. All, however, continuedtheir abuses: I was a thousand times for leaving the court, had I not apprehended that the King being now habituated to see me daily, it might shorten his valuable life.
The Count de Argenson, secretary at war, did not love me, saying, “That I gave too many military posts; that he had not so much as a lieutenancy of foot at his disposal.” Now this accusation was so far from being true, that I never recommended any person to his Majesty, without previously consulting that Minister. It was purely my favour which rankled him; he wanted to set the King against me, that he might ingross the whole royal favour to himself.
Peace being the season for public foundations, a plan of a military school, for instructing the French nobility in the art of war, was laid before his Majesty in the year 1751.The kingdom, said the author,was full of gentlemen who, unable, conveniently, to put themselves under masters, led an inactive life in the country, instead of spending it in the service of the state.
In this school five hundred gentlemen were to be boarded and educated: the King was pleased to shew me the plan, and asked my thoughts on it.
“Sir, said I, nothing can be better; I could only wish it more comprehensive. This school will not furnish officers enough for France, which is so frequently at war. I have heard Marshal Saxe say, That in an army of two hundred and fifty thousand men, there was seldom less than twenty thousand officers; so that only one fortieth of that number can be had from the military-school, which to me appears no small defect in a foundation, of itself, so excellent.”
A courtier, on reading the plan for this school, jocularly said,This martial convent will afford very good military monks.
The great objection made against it, by some discreet persons, was the exorbitant expence of it, at a time when every resource of the state had been drained to defray the extraordinary demands of the war. The expence, indeed, was not to be furnished from the royal treasury; but from whatever fund sums are taken on such occasions, they are still burthensome, as tending to keep the people poor.
It was likewise said, that France stood more in need of a naval than a military-school; that the King might find a hundred land-officers in his dominions, for one sea-officer; that the French gentry was naturally fond of signalizing itself in armies, and had as great an aversionto fleets; but the plan had been resolved on.
The powers of Europe were at peace, when religious disputes, breaking out, disturbed France in its political and domestic quiet.
Two parties, who, for forty years past, had been contending for the superiority, now returned to the charge. Being quite ignorant of the subject of their quarrels, I had it explained to me. Should ever these Memoirs be made public, the reader will be so kind as to excuse my tiring him with the following detail. Never had this evil found a place in these annals, had it not concerned the King; but his interesting himself in this dispute, and greatly so, is alone sufficient motive for my giving some account of it.
A native of Spain, named Molina, in the fullness of his knowledge, took it into his head to decide, and vindicate, howGod acts on mortals, and in what manner mortals withstand God. The Popes, who know every thing, and pronounce sentence on every thing, had, till then, been totally unacquainted with the mechanism of the metaphysical intercourse between the Creator and creature; and, for their better information, Molina invented many barbarous words, or scholastic terms, with innumerable distinctions and divisions.
To proceed in this dispute with some order, and wrangle theologically, he distinguished betweenpreventiveandco-operating grace: one of these graces could do any thing, and the other little or nothing; but this not being sufficient for understanding what he himself did not understand, he farther invented themediate knowledgeandcongruism.
According to him, God held a council of state in Heaven, before which all men were summoned and interrogated, howthey will act after receiving his grace; and, according to the free use which he saw they were to make of it, he decreed within himself, either to admit them into Paradise, or call them down into hell.
Unluckily for the Christian world, this Molina was a Jesuit; an order little beloved by the others: the Dominicans, especially, raised an outcry against his congruism.
These things being transacted in Spain, the Inquisition took cognizance of the altercation; and had they burned Molina, and a few Dominicans, there would have been an end of the matter, and, for once, this tribunal had done a good piece of service to Christendom.Concomitant concurrenceandco-operating gracehad a trial at Rome; but the more the parties disputed, the less understood they one another. A monk offered his mediation: but this mediator was less intelligible than the controversists.
The difficulty was not so much the putting an end to the dispute, as to know what the dispute was about. Neither party understood themselves or the other, and, in the mean time, with their free-will, mediate knowledge, complement of active virtue, &c. they ran themselves more and more into darkness.
The bickerings, at length, ceased for want of disputants, there being times when monks sacrifice every thing to indolence. All remained quiet, till one Cornelius Jansenius renewed the contest; yet, instead of inventing any thing, he only disputed behind a huge book, the author of which was named Baius. The Jesuits sollicited the Pope to condemn Cornelius, and by the dexterity of their agents at Rome, carried their point there; but in other parts of Europe, it went against them. The universities, the parliaments, and chiefly the women, profoundjudges of such things, sided with Jansenius.
A paper war commenced with great acrimony; congruism, by dint of bulky volumes, worsted predestination in some pitched battles: yet the war went on undecided; both parties being now grown powerful, and fighting merely for the honour of victory.
Till then, only private persons had appeared in the field; but now universities declaring themselves, the action became general. No accommodation was so much as talked of, there being no body, or society, in the state, of a power sufficient to compel the two parties to accept of its mediation.
In the mean time, the Molinist bishops drew up a condemnation of Jansenius’s five articles, though, in the opinion of his party, they were no more than what St. Augustine himself had advanced. Several communities of men signed thecondemnation; but the nuns, who have nothing to do, and eagerly catch at every opportunity which may bring them into the world again, protested against subscribing; and those of Port Royal distinguished themselves by their firmness, or obstinacy.
I do not wonder that they refused subscribing, but am surprised that their subscription should have been required; it was shewing them a regard, on this affair, which ought not to have been shewn them: on their pertinacious refusal, they were forcibly removed, and dispersed into other convents; whereas the real punishment would have been to have kept them always in the same spot.
The Popes, likewise, from time to time, issued new formularies, which gave an air of greater moment to the quarrel; but they had done much better to have left it to itself, and then Molina and Jansenius would soon have sunk into oblivion;but the court of Rome is ever for being absolute.
In the midst of this war, however, a truce was brought about. Clement IX. a man of good sense and prudence, drew up a set of articles of capitulation, had them signed by the Jansenists, and thus, brought about a peace; but, unhappily, when religion is in the case, war soon kindles again.
A father of the oratory, named Quesnel, is said, this time, to have been the instrument of discord. He wrote a book which, after being applauded throughout all Europe, France censured. It was not very easy to point out wherein this book was to be found fault with; but religious cabals were then in fashion. The Molinist party, in the mean time, carried it with a high hand, having the King’s ear.
The confessor to Lewis XIV. was a Jesuit, who formed parties both at courtand in town, against the Jansenists, who keenly revenged themselves with their pens; thus, though there was a prevailing party, the war still continued.
Hitherto no manifestos had passed between the Molinists and the Jansenists, both parties, in the heat of their zeal, having taken up arms without any declaration of war. Lewis XIV. procured from Rome a bull, whereby a fire was kindled, which has not since been quenched. The Pope, the bishops, the King, the religious orders, in short, people of all ranks gradually engaged in the quarrel, to the great disturbance of the nation and families; all plotting and caballing one against the other.
The principal object of public hatred was father Le Tellier, who over-ruled the King’s conscience: this was a hot and ambitious man, who wanted to revenge some personal offences given him by the Jansenists, and, in pursuit of his drift,alarmed both the King’s conscience and the kingdom.
Lewis XIV. towards the decline of his life, was grown weak and irresolute, and often harrassed with terrible fears of the devil. The hard-hearted Jesuit had possessed him with a persuasion, that the affair of the Molinists was the cause of God. His resentment chiefly aimed at the cardinal de Noailles, and he had the confidence to move his penitent to depose him judicially. The death of this Prince brought on a suspension of this bustle, which was called the constitution.
The Duke of Orleans, who loved neither popes nor bishops, and despised bulls, in order to rid himself both of the Molinists and Jansenists, appointed commissioners for hearing their broils, separately from the other affairs of the monarchy; with an intent to deprive them of their public importance: butthe wisdom of this precaution was frustrated; those people still were for figuring in the state. They appealed to a national council, which was nothing less than throwing off the yoke of the administration, to erect another independent of it. The regent banished and exiled both bishops and priests; but this remedy only inflamed the disease, hardening both parties in their obstinacy. The Jansenists and Molinists then formed themselves into two factions, under the names ofacceptantsandrecusants. The Acceptants called the Recusants heretics, and the Recusants gave the appellation of schismatics to the Acceptants.
The frenzy for efficacious grace was bursting out with greater violence than ever, when the Missisippi scheme was set on foot; then avarice did what neither the Pope nor King could: all the people’s thoughts now ran only ongetting money. The names of Jansenists and Molinists were almost forgotten, though to this nothing perhaps contributed more than the contempt and ridicule which the Duke of Orleans put on this controversy, calling it a trifle; whereas Lewis XIV. had been made to lay it to heart, as an affair of the greatest concern.
The subsequent wars under Lewis XV. made the Jansenists and Molinists to be still farther forgotten, though not without some occasional skirmishes on predestination; but as there was no general action, they were not much heeded.
The dispute, in the mean time, was not totally extinguished, or rather it was a-fire lurking under embers. In 1750, the Molinists renewed hostilities, refusing the Sacraments to sick persons of the contrary party, under pretence of their not having confessional certificates.
The parliament intervened, and punished the delinquents; by which the two parties regained the consideration, which they had lost by the Duke of Orleans’s measures. This rupture gave rise to a new discussion, whether the parliament could intermeddle with this affair, or had any right to banish, or inflict punishments on priests, who, in refusing to administer the sacraments, only conformed to the injunctions of their bishops.
The Jansenists said that the civil magistrate has a power legally superior even to that of the church, the order of a state depending on such subordination; and they farther added, that the administration of the Sacraments is the capital branch of the polity exercised by the civil magistrate.
The answer of the Molinists was, that in spirituals they acknowledged no other superiority than that of the Pope and hisbishops; that civil affairs were the parliament’s province, and all it ought to concern itself in; but that the kingdom of heaven had been committed to pastors, and not lawyers.
The subjects, in the mean time, died without the sacraments; the priests indeed were punished, yet the evil remained, and this affair gave the King much uneasiness: the Bourbons indeed have always laid to heart religious disturbances: the court gave itself more concern about these confessional certificates, than ever it had shewn in the most important political transactions. It often became necessary to put a violence on priests, and make use of soldiers to compel them to administer. Never, from the birth of Christ, had such a thing been seen, as having recourse to the bayonet for the administration of the most sacred mystery. It was indeed a horrid scandal; but to see subjects,at the point of death, begging for the communion, and refused, was something still more shocking.
The King, one day, said to me, “These people give me a great deal of uneasiness; if they go on, I shall be obliged to turn all the priests out of their livings, and have their functions performed by Capuchin-friars, who are intirely as I would have them, &c.”[4]
The court’s attention now came to be taken up with an affair of still greater importance than the constitution itself; the election of a King of the Romans. The house of Austria, fond of its greatness, is always providing for the future security of it. As Charles VI. had engaged the Sovereigns of Europe to make themselves the instruments of his ambition, even after his decease; Maria Theresa, in her life-time, took measuresfor fixing the Imperial throne in her family.
It was on a Prince who might be looked on as a Lorrainer, that she was conferring the title of presumptive heir; for Charles VI. dying without male-issue, the house of Austria had ended in him. The circles of the empire accounted this measure a greater act of despotism than that of the late emperor; as hereby the empire, from an elective constitution, not only became hereditary, but even escheated to a foreign family: loud complaints were made, and that was all. It is now about a century, that the petty princes in Germany have not been able to shew their resentment against the house of Austria, any farther than by complaints and murmurs.
Maria Theresa, knowing how far her forces were superior to any which the Northern Princes could oppose to her designs,communicated her plan to the other courts of Europe, and to France one of the first. The King shewed me the Austrian ambassador’s reasons, digested into writing by M. de Puisieux, after a conference with that minister. The artful turn given to them by ambition, makes them worthy of being preserved.
“The calamities still recent, said that Ambassador, which the vacancy of the Imperial throne, on the demise of Charles VI. brought on Europe, should move Christian Princes to prevent the like. The Emperor now reigning is in full health, and it may be presumed, that God will grant him length of days: but should one of those many accidents to which human nature is liable, disappoint the public hopes, and shorten his valuable life, Christendom would be plunged in the same abysses, as on the decease of the last Emperor.It is therefore the concern of all the European powers to prevent a war, that scourge which throws every thing into confusion, lays waste whole nations, and thins mankind. The calamities caused by the late vacancy of the empire are not likely to be brought to a speedy end, and what will it be should new disturbances be accumulated on the former?
“Too many precautions cannot be taken against evils, which, when once happened, cannot be averted, or the issue of them determined.
“By the election of a King of the Romans, the views of Princes who may have formed designs, are prevented; and the coronation once over, will suppress all cabals and intrigues about being head of the empire. When a sceptre is vacant, a great stir is made after it; but when once possessed, it is no longer thought of.
“Archduke Joseph, indeed, should the Emperor die, is not of age to govern his dominions; but the evils of minority cannot be compared to those which the want of a head to the empire would occasion.
“Not that the Queen of Hungary is in the least apprehensive of her heirs being deprived of a throne, the legal appenage of her family; her leading motive in this settlement is to prevent the needless effusion of blood.
“On the death of Charles VI. it was seen that all Europe cannot make an Emperor. The Elector of Bavaria, after being placed on that throne by foreign armies, was always in a tottering condition; so that had not death deprived him of the crown, he would have been obliged to resign it, &c.”
I have observed that ambassadors, in cases of personal interest, generally overlook the regard due to Princes by the lawof nations. Here the Vienna minister would have France subvert the very foundations of the Imperial constitution, and make that crown hereditary, which had always been elective. He surely forgot that the house of Bourbon, as I have been told, had, at the treaty of Westphalia, made itself a guarantee of the liberties and privileges of the empire. His court seemed not to recollect that the election of a King of the Romans depended on the consent of the electors, in a diet held expressly for such election.
The King, on reading this Memoir, asked M. de Puisieux what he thought of the business.Sir, answered the Minister,you must consent to every thing; it is no longer worth France’s while to meddle with the affairs of Germany; at present the King of Prussia is able to keep up the balance in the North, and hinder the house of Austria from lording it over yours; so that all wehave to do now, is to look on. The council, however, was of a different opinion; but it is not the first time that one man has been wiser than an assembly.
The court of Vienna was likewise busy in bringing the other courts of Europe to countenance this election. That of England represented to the Marquis de Mirepoix, that it was the interest of France to close with the making a King of the Romans; doubtless, because it was theirs. This court afterwards went farther, and George the Second affirmed, that the election of a King of the Romans did not depend on the Electoral college; that is, that the dignity of presumptive heir to the empire might be conferred without any deliberation of the electors, which was making the Imperial crown absolutely hereditary.
I remember all the memoirs of that time agree in the Archduke’s being very young, but they all likewise added, thatan Emperor under age was better than a vacancy of the throne, which amounts to an approbation of a regular succession.
A politician of our court, with whom I was talking of this election, told me, that there was an article in the treaty of Westphalia, which formally settled this affair. It is there expressly said,That no election of a King of the Romans shall be entered on, unless the reigning emperor be out of the empire, and with an intent to be absent a long time, or for ever; or that age should render him incapable of government; or there should manifestly appear some great necessity on which the safety of the empire depended. But treaties are never followed, and no more was said of this, than if it had never existed.
The King of Prussia alone stood up in defence of the Electoral-college; but he had his reasons for this specious conduct. The election of a King of the Romanssecured the empire to the house of Austria; and it has been believed by many, that he himself looked that way. There is indeed no ambition, of which a Prince, so powerful in war as to subdue several nations, is not susceptible.
I return to Versailles, from whence the affair of the King of the Romans has carried me too far. Lewis XV. as I have said elsewhere, was now a little relieved from the load of business imposed on him by the war; peace allowed him a leisure, which was the very felicity of my life. Amidst the confusion of sieges and battles, he had no settled residence. Flanders had several times deprived me of him; but the treaty of peace entirely restored him to me, and his confidence in me daily increased; so that he even imparted to me his uneasiness, for kings have their troubles both as men and as Princes.
Lewis XV. would often lament, that he had no friends, and had a thousand times wished to have been a private person, for the sake of cordial friendship and sympathy, to the effects of which Kings are always strangers.
“No sooner have I distinguished a subject by some considerable post, but 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 criedup 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 anddisgrace, 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 thetrue 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 andsolid, 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 abattle 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 canreckon, 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 thekindness 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 affectionatehusband 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’sprerogatives. 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 theKing’s cause. Among the several writers who, on these occasions, take different parts, one wrote a pamphlet with the title ofAn 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 beingexpressly 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 republicanspirit, 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 remainderof 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.
F I N I S