The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, Charles Duke Yonge [e book reader android txt] 📗

rebuilding a third, named Bagatelle, in the Bois de Boulogne, which he had just bought, and as to which he had laid an enormous wager that it should be completed and furnished in sixty days. To win his bet nearly a thousand workmen were employed day and night, and, as the requisite materials could not be provided at so short a notice, he sent patrols of his regiment to scour the roads, and seize every cart loaded with stones or timber for other employers, which he thus appropriated to his own use. He did, indeed, pay for the goods thus seized, and he won his bet, but when the princes of the land made so open a parade of their disregard of all law and all decency, one can hardly wonder that men in secret began, to talk of a revolution, or that all the graces and gentleness of the queen should be needed to outweigh such grave causes of discontent and indignation.

As the new year opened, affairs of a very different kind began to occupy the queen's attention. On political questions, the advice which the empress gave her differed in some degree from that of her embassador. Maria Teresa was an earnest politician, but she was also a mother; and, as being eager above all things for her daughter's happiness, while she entreated Marie Antoinette to study politics, history, and such other subjects as might qualify her to be an intelligent companion of the king, and so far as or whenever he might require it, his chief confidante, she warned her also against ever wishing to rule him. But Mercy was a statesman above every thing, and, feeling secure of being able to guide the queen, he desired to instill into her mind an ambition to govern the king. On one most important question she proved wholly unable to do so, since the decision taken was not even in accordance with the judgment or inclination of Louis himself; but he allowed himself to be persuaded by two of his ministers to adopt a course against which Joseph had earnestly warned him in the preceding year, and which, as he had been then convinced, was inconsistent alike with his position as a king and with his interests as King of France.

England had been for some years engaged in a civil war with her colonies in North America, and from the commencement of the contest a strong sympathy for the colonists had been evinced by a considerable party in France. Louis, who, for several reasons disliked England and English ideas, was at first inclined to coincide in this feeling as a development of anti-English principles: he was far from suspecting that its source was rather a revolutionary and republican sentiment. But he had conversed with his brother-in-law on the possibility of advantages which might accrue to France from the weakening of her old foe, if French aid should enable the Americans to establish their independence. Joseph's opinion was clear and unhesitating: "I am a king; it is my business to be royalist." And he easily convinced Louis that for one sovereign to assist the subjects of another monarch who were in open revolt, was to set a mischievous example which might in time be turned against himself. But since his return to Vienna, unprecedented disasters had befallen England; a whole army had laid down its arms; the ultimate success of the Americans seemed to every statesman in Europe to be assured, and the prospect gave such encouragement to the war party in the French cabinet that Louis could resist it no longer. In February, 1778, a treaty was concluded with the United States, as the insurgents called themselves; and France plunged into a war from which she had nothing to gain, which involved her in enormous expenses, which brought on her overwhelming defeats, and which, from its effects upon the troops sent to serve with the American army, who thus became infected with republican principles, had no slight influence in bringing about the calamities which, a few years later, overwhelmed both king and people.

All Marie Antoinette's language on the subject shows that she viewed the quarrel with England with even greater repugnance than her husband; but it is curious to see that her chief fear was lest the war should be waged by land, and that she felt much greater confidence in the French navy than in the army;[3] though it was just at this time that Voltaire was pointing out to his countrymen that England had always enjoyed and always would possess a maritime superiority which different inquirers might attribute to various causes, but which none could deny.[4]

Even before the conclusion of this treaty, however, the Americans had found sympathizers in France, to one of whom some of the circumstances of the war which they were now waging gave a subsequent importance to which no talents or virtues of his own entitled him. The Marquis de La Fayette was a young man of ancient family, and of fair but not excessive fortune. He was awkward in appearance and manner, gawky, red-haired, and singularly deficient in the accomplishments which were cultivated by other youths of his age and rank.[5] But he was deeply imbued with the doctrines of the new philosophy which saw virtue in the mere fact of resistance to authority; and when the colonists took up arms, he became eager to afford them such aid as he could give. He made the acquaintance of Silas Deane, one of the most unscrupulous of the American agents, who promised him, though he was only twenty years of age, the rank of major-general. As he was at all times the slave of a most overweening conceit, he was tempted by that bait; and, though he could not leave France without incurring the forfeiture of his military rank in the army of his own country, in April, 1777, he crossed over to America to serve as a volunteer under Washington, who naturally received with special distinction a recruit of such political importance. He was present at more than one battle, and was wounded at Brandywine; but the exploit which made him most conspicuous was a ridiculous act of bravado in sending a challenge to Lord Carlisle, the chief of the English Commissioners who in 1778 were dispatched to America to endeavor to re-establish peace. However, the close of the war, which ended, as is well known, in the humiliation of Great Britain and the establishment of the independence of the colonies, made him seem a hero to his countrymen on his return. The queen, always eager to encourage and reward feats of warlike enterprise, treated him with marked distinction, and procured him from her husband not only the restoration of his commission, but promotion to the command of a regiment;[6] kindness which, as will be seen, he afterward requited with the foulest ingratitude.

Nor was this most imprudent war with England the only question of foreign politics which at this time interested Marie Antoinette. Her native land, her mother's hereditary dominions, were also threatened with war. On the death of the Elector of Bavaria at the end of 1777, Joseph, who had been married to his sister, claimed a portion of his territories; and Frederick of Prussia, that "bad neighbor," as Marie Antoinette was wont to call him, announced his resolution to resist that claim, by force of arms if necessary. If he should carry out the resolution which he had announced, and if war should in consequence break out, much would depend on the attitude which France would assume on her fidelity to or disregard of the alliance which had now subsisted more than twenty years. So all-important to Austria was her decision, that Maria Teresa forgot the line which, as a general rule of conduct, she had recommended to her daughter, and wrote to her with the most extreme earnestness to entreat her to lose no opportunity of influencing the King's council. If it depended upon Maria Teresa, the claim would probably not have been advanced; but Joseph had made it on the part of the empire, and, when it was once made, the empress could not withhold her support from her son. She therefore threw herself into the quarrel with as much earnestness as if it had been her own. Indeed, since Joseph had as yet no authority over her hereditary possessions, it was only by her armies that it could be maintained; and in her letters to her daughter she declared that Marie Antoinette had her happiness, the welfare of her house, and of the whole Austrian nation in her hands; that all depended on her activity and affection. She knew that the French ministers were inclined to favor the views of Frederick, but if the alliance should be dissolved it would kill her.[7] Marie Antoinette grew pale at reading so ominous a denunciation. It required no art to inflame her against Frederick. The Seven Years' War had begun when she was but a year old; and all her life she had heard of nothing more frequently than of the rapacity and dishonesty of that unprincipled aggressor. She now entered with eagerness into her mother's views, and pressed them on Louis with unremitting diligence and considerable fertility of argument, though she was greatly dismayed at finding that not only his ministers, but he himself, regarded Austria as actuated by an aggressive ambition, and compared her claim to a portion of Bavaria to the partition of Poland, which, six years before, had drawn forth unwonted expressions of honorable indignation from even his unworthy grandfather. The idea that the alliance between France and the empire was itself at stake on the question, made her so anxious that she sent for the ministers themselves, pressing her views on both Maurepas and Vergennes with great earnestness. But they, though still faithful to the maintenance of the alliance, sympathized with the king rather than with her in his view of the character of the claim which the emperor had put forward; and they also urged another argument for abstaining from any active intervention, that the finances of the country were in so deplorable a state that France could not afford to go to war. It was plain, as she told them, that this consideration should at least equally have prevented their quarreling with England. But, in spite of all her persistence, they were not to be moved from this view of the true interest of France in the conjuncture that had arisen; and, accordingly, in the brief war which ensued between the empire and Prussia, France took no part, though it is more than probable that her mediation between the belligerents, which had no little share in bringing about the peace of Teschen,[8] was in a great degree owing to the queen's influence.

For she was not discouraged by her first failure, but renewed her importunities from time to time; and at last did succeed in wringing a promise from her husband that if Prussia should invade the Flemish provinces of Austria, France would arm on the empress's side. So fully did the affair absorb her attention that it made her indifferent to the gayeties which the carnival always brought round. She did, indeed, as a matter of duty, give one or two grand state balls, one of which, in which the dancers of the quadrilles were masked, and in which their dresses represented the male and female costumes of India, was long talked of for both the magnificence and the novelty of the spectacle; and she attended one or two of the opera-balls, under the escort of her brothers-in-law and their countesses; but they had begun to pall upon her, and she made repeated offers to the king to give them up and to spend her evenings in quiet with him. But he was more inclined to prompt her to seek amusement than