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

one of her friends, which it is impossible to read without being struck by the sincerity of the sympathy with which she enters into the grief of the bereaved mother. In these moments of anguish she showed herself indeed a true sister, and, the two clinging to one another the more the greater their dangers and distresses became, a true sister she continued to the end.

Meanwhile the embarrassments of the Government were daily assuming a more formidable appearance. Calonne had for some time endeavored to meet the deficiency of the revenue by raising fresh loans, till he had completely exhausted the national credit; and at last had been forced to admit that the scheme originally propounded by Turgot, and subsequently in a more modified degree by Necker, of abolishing the exemptions from taxation which were enjoyed by the nobles--the privileged classes, as they were often called--was the only expedient to save the nation from the disgrace and ruin of total bankruptcy. But, as it seemed probable that the nobles would resist such a measure, and that their resistance would prove too strong for him, as it had already been found to be for his predecessors, he proposed to the king to revive an old assembly which had been known by the title of the Notables; trusting that, if he succeeded in obtaining the sanction of that body to his plans, the nobles would hardly venture to insist on maintaining their privileges in defiance of the recorded judgment of so respectable a council. His hopes were disappointed. He might fairly have reckoned on obtaining their concurrence, since it was the unquestioned prerogative of the king to nominate all the members; but, even when he was most deliberate and resolute, his rashness and carelessness were incurable. He took no pains whatever to select members favorable to his views; and the consequence was that, in March, 1787, in the very first month of the session of the Notables, the whole body protested against one of the taxes which he desired to impose; and his enemies at once urged the king to dismiss him, basing their recommendation on the practice of England, where, as they affirmed, a minister who found himself in a minority on an important question immediately retired from office.

Marie Antoinette, who, as we have seen, had been a diligent reader of Hume, had also been led to compare the proceedings of the refractory Notables with the conduct of our English parliamentary parties, and to an English reader some of her comments can not fail to be as interesting as they are curious. The Duchess de Polignac was drinking the waters at Bath, which at that time was a favorite resort of French valetudinarians, and, while she was still in that most beautiful of English cities, the queen kept up an occasional correspondence with her. We have two letters which Marie Antoinette wrote to her in April; one on the 9th, the very day on which Calonne was dismissed; the second, two days latter; and even the passages which do not relate to politics have their interest as specimens of the writer's character, and of the sincere frankness with which she laid aside her rank and believed in the possibility of a friendship of complete equality.

"April 9th, 1787.

"I thank you, my dear heart, for your letter, which has done me good. I was anxious about you. It is true, then, that you have not suffered much from your journey. Take care of yourself, I insist on it, I beg of you; and be sure and derive benefit from the waters, else I should repent of the privation I have inflicted on myself without your health being benefited. When you are near I feel how much I love you; and I feel it much more when you are far away. I am greatly taken up with you and yours, and you would be very ungrateful if you did not love me, for I can not change toward you.

"Where you are you can at least enjoy the comfort of never hearing of business. Although you are in the country of an Upper and a Lower House, you can stop your ears and let people talk. But here it is a noise that deafens one in spite of all I can do. The words 'opposition' and 'motions' are established here as in the English Parliament, with this difference, that in London, when people go into opposition, they begin by denuding themselves of the favors of the king; instead of which, here numbers oppose all the wise and beneficent views of the most virtuous of masters, and still keep all he has given them. It may be a cleverer way of managing, but it is not so gentleman-like. The time of illusion is past, and we are tasting cruel experience. We are paying dearly to-day for our zeal and enthusiasm for the American war. The voice of honest men is stifled by members and cabals. Men disregard principles to bind themselves to words, and to multiply attacks on individuals. The seditious will drag the State to its ruin rather than renounce their intrigues."

And in her second letter she specifies some of the Opposition by name; one of whom, as will be seen hereafter, contributed greatly to her subsequent miseries.... "The repugnance which you know that I have always had to interfering in business is today put cruelly to the proof; and you would be as tired as I am of all that goes on. I have already spoken to you of our Upper and Lower House,[6] and of all the absurdities which take place there, and of the nonsense which is talked. To be loaded with benefits by the king, like M. de Beauvau, to join the Opposition, and to surrender none of them, is what is called having spirit and courage. It is, in truth, the courage of infamy. I am wholly surrounded with folks who have revolted from him. A duke,[7] a great maker of motions, a man who has always a tear in his eye when he speaks, is one of the number. M. de La Fayette always founds the opinions he expresses on what is done at Philadelphia.... Even bishops and archbishops belong to the Opposition, and a great many of the clergy are the very soul of the cabal. You may judge, after this, of all the resources which they employ to overturn the plans of the king and his ministers."

Calonne, however, as has already been intimated, had been dismissed from office before this last letter was written. There had been a trial of strength between him and his enemies; which he, believing that he had won the confidence of Louis himself, reckoned on turning to his own advantage, by inducing the king to dismiss those of his opponents who were in office. To his astonishment, he found that Louis preferred dispensing with his own services, and the general voice was probably correct when it, affirmed that it was the queen who had induced him to come to that decision.

Lomenie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, was again a candidate for the vacant post, and De Vermond was as diligent as on the previous occasion[8] in laboring to return the obligations under which that prelate had formerly laid him, by extolling his abilities and virtues to the queen, and recommending him as a worthy successor to Calonne, whom she had never trusted or liked. In reality, the archbishop was wholly destitute of either abilities or virtues. He was notorious both for open profligacy and for avowed infidelity, so much so that Louis had refused to transfer him to the diocese of Paris, on the ground that "at least the archbishop of the metropolis ought to believe in God.[9]" But Marie Antoinette was ignorant of his character, and believed De Vermond's assurance that the appointment of so high an ecclesiastic would propitiate the clergy, whose opposition, as many of her letters prove, she thought specially formidable, and for whose support she knew her husband to be nervously anxious. Some of Calonne's colleagues strongly urged the king to re-appoint Necker, whose recall would have been highly popular with the nation. But Necker had recently given Louis personal offense by publishing a reply to some of Calonne's statements, in defiance of the king's express prohibition, and had been banished from Paris for the act; and the queen, recollecting how he had formerly refused to withdraw his resignation at her entreaty, felt that she had no reason to expect any great consideration for the opinions or wishes of either herself or the king from one so conceited and self-willed, who would be likely to attribute his re-appointment, not to the king's voluntary choice, but to his necessities: she therefore strongly pressed that the archbishop should be preferred. In an unhappy moment she prevailed;[10] and on the 1st of May, 1787, Lomenie de Brienne was installed in office with the title of Chief of the Council of Finance.

A more unhappy choice could not possibly have been made. The new minister was soon seen to be as devoid of information and ability as he was known to be of honesty. He had a certain gravity of outward demeanor which imposed upon many, and he had also the address to lead the conversation to points which, his hearers understood still less than himself; dilating on finance and the money market even to the ladies of the court, who had had some share in persuading the queen of his fitness for office.[11] But his disposition was in reality as rash as that of Calonne; and it was a curious proof of his temerity, as well as of his ignorance of the feeling of parties in Paris, that though he knew the Notables to be friendly to him, as indeed they would have been to any one who might have superseded Calonne, he dismissed them before the end of the month. And the language held on their dissolution both by the ministers and by the President of the Notables, and which was cheerfully accepted by the people, is remarkable from the contrast which it affords to the feelings which swayed the national council exactly two years afterward. Some measures of retrenchment which the Notables had recommended had been adopted; some reductions had been made in the royal households; some costly ceremonies had been abolished; and one or two imposts, which had pressed with great severity on the poorer classes, had been extinguished or modified. And not only did M. Lamoignon, the Keeper of the Seals, in the speech in which he dismissed them, venture to affirm that these reductions would be found to have effected all that was needed to restore universal prosperity to the kingdom; but the President of the Assembly, in his reply, thanked God "for having caused him to be born in such an age, under such a government, and for having made him the subject of a king whom he was constrained to love," and the thanksgiving was re-echoed by the whole Assembly. But this contentment did not last long. The embarrassments of the Treasury were too serious to be dissipated by soft speeches. The Notables were hardly dissolved before the archbishop proposed a new loan of an enormous amount; and, as he might have foreseen, their dissolution revived the pretensions of the Parliament. The queen's description of the rise of a French opposition at once received a practical commentary. The debates in the Parliament became warmer than they had ever been since the days of the Fronde: the citizens, sharing in the excitement, thronged the palace of the Parliament, expressing their approval or disapproval of the different speakers by disorderly and unprecedented clamor; the great majority hooting down the minister and his supporters, and cheering those who spoke against him. The Duc d'Orleans, by open bribes, gained over