Calumny was the only weapon which could be employed against her; but in that he and his partisans had long been adept. Every old libel and pretext for detraction was diligently revived. The old nickname of "The Austrian" was repeated with pertinacity as spiteful as causeless; even the king's aunts lending their aid to swell the clamor on that ground, and often saying, with all the malice of their inveterate jealousy, that it was not to be expected that she should have the same feelings as their father or Louis XIV., since she was not of their blood, though it was plain that the same remark would have applied to every Queen of France since Anne of Brittany. Even the embarrassments of the revenue were imputed to her; and she, who had curtailed her private expenses, even those which seemed almost necessary to her position, that she might minister move largely to the necessities of the poor-who had declined to buy jewels that the money might be applied to the service of the State-was now held up to the populace as being by her extravagance the prime cause of the national distress. Pamphlets and caricatures gave her a new nickname of "Madame Deficit;" and such an impression to her disfavor was thus made on the minds of the lower classes, that a painter, who had just finished an engaging portrait of her surrounded by her children, feared to send it to the exhibition, lest it should be made a pretext for insult and violence. Her unpopularity did not, indeed, last long at this time, but was superseded, as we shall presently see, by fresh feelings of gratitude for fresh labors of charity; nevertheless, the outcry now raised left its seed behind it, to grow hereafter into a more enduring harvest of distrust and hatred.
She had troubles, too, of another kind which touched her more nearly. A second daughter, Sophie[2], had been born to her in the summer of 1786; but she was a sickly child, and died, before she was a year old, of one of the illnesses to which children are subject, and for some months the mother mourned bitterly over her "little angel," as she called her. Her eldest boy, too, was getting rapidly and visibly weaker in health: his spine seemed to diseased, Marie Antoinette's only hope of saving him rested on the fact that his father had also been delicate at the same age. Luckily his brother gave her no cause for uneasiness; as she wrote to the emperor[3]-"he had all that his elder wanted; he was a thorough peasant's child, tall, stout, and ruddy.[4]" She had also another comfort, which, as her troubles thickened, became more and more precious to her, in the warm affection that had sprung up between her and her sister-in-law, the Princess Elizabeth. A letter[5] has been preserved in which the princess describes the death of the little Sophie to 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 a
nd 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 wore 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 many of the councilors to oppose the court in every thing. The registration of several of the edicts which the minister had sent down was refused; and one member of the Orleanist party even demanded the convocation of the States- general, formerly and constitutionally the great council of the nation, but which had never been assembled since the time of Richelieu.
The archbishop was sometimes angry, and sometimes terrified, and as weak in his anger as in his terror. He persuaded the king to hold a bed of justice to compel the registration of the edicts. When the Parliament protested, he banished it to Troyes. In less than a month he became alarmed at his own vigor, and recalled it. Encouraged by his pusillanimity, and more secure than ever of the support of the citizens who had been thrown into consternation by his demand of a second loan, nearly[12] six times as large as the first, it became more audacious and defiant than ever, D'Orleans openly placing himself at the head of the malcontents. Lomenie persuaded the king to banish the duke, and to arrest one or two of his most vehement partisans; and again in a few weeks repented of this act of decision also, released the prisoners, and recalled the duke.
As a matter of course, the Parliament grew bolder still. Every measure which the minister proposed was rejected; and under the guidance of one of their members, Duval d'Espremesnil, the councilors at last proceeded so far as to take the initiative in new legislation into their own hands. In the first week in May, 1788, they passed a series of resolutions affirming that to be the law which indeed ought to have been so, but which had certainly never been regarded as such at any period of French history. One declared that magistrates were irremovable, except in cases of misconduct; another, that the individual liberty and property of every citizen were inviolable; others insisted on the necessity of convoking the States- general as the only assembly entitled to impose taxes; and the councilors hoped to secure the royal acceptance of these resolutions by some previous votes which asserted that, of those laws which were the very foundation of the Constitution, the first was that which assured the "crown to the reigning house and to its descendants in the male line, in the order of primogeniture.[13]"
But Louis, or rather his rash minister, was not to be so conciliated; and a scene ensued which is the first of the striking parallels which this period in France affords to the events which had taken place in England a century and a half before. As in 1642 Charles I. had attempted to arrest members of the English Parliament in the very House of Commons, so the archbishop now persuaded Louis to send down the captain of the guard, the Marquis d'Agoust, to the palace of the Parliament, to seize D'Espremesnil, and another councilor named Montsabert, who had been one of his foremost supporters in the recent discussions. They behaved with admirable dignity. Marie Antoinette was not one to betray her husband's counsels, as Henrietta Maria had betrayed those of Charles. D'Espremesnil and his friend, wholly taken by surprise, had had no warning of what was designed, no time to withdraw, nor in all probability would they have done so in any case. When M. d'Agoust entered the council hall and demanded his prisoners, there was a great uproar. The whole Assembly made common cause with their two brethren who were thus threatened. "We are all d'Espremesnils and Montsaberts," was their
unanimous cry; while the tumult at the doors, where a vast multitude was collected, many of whom had arms in their hands and seemed prepared to use them, was more formidable still. But D'Agoust, though courteous in the discharge of his duty, was intrepid and firm; and the two members voluntarily surrendered themselves and retired in custody, while the archbishop was so elated with his triumph that a few days afterwards he induced the king to venture on another imitation of the history of England, though now it was not Charles, but the more tyrannical Cromwell, whose conduct was copied. Before the end of the month the Governor of Paris entered the palace of the Parliament, seized all the registers and documents of every kind, locked the doors, and closed them with the king's seal; and a royal edict was issued suspending all the parliaments both in the capital and the provinces.
CHAPTER XXII. Formidable Riots take place in some Provinces.-The Archbishop invites Necker to join his Ministry.-Letter of Marie Antoinette describing her Interview with the Archbishop, and her Views.-Necker refuses.-The Queen sends Messages to Necker.-The Archbishop resigns, and Necker becomes Minister.-The Queen's View of his Character.-General Rejoicing.-Defects in Necker's Character.-He recalls the Parliament.-Riots in Paris.- Severe Winter.-General Distress.-Charities of the King and Queen.- Gratitude of the Citizens.-The Princes are concerned in the Libels published against the Queen.-Preparations for the Meeting of the States- general.-Long Disuse of that Assembly.-Need of Reform.-Vices Of the Old Feudal System.-Necker's Blunders in the Arrangements for the Meeting of the States.-An Edict of the King concedes the Chief Demands of the Commons.-Views of the Queen.
The Life of Marie Antoinette Page 25
