Part 8

“Don’t imagine that your intrigues with the Americans blind Europe; the most clandestine practices of courts are always detected. Already, you are made accountable for the proceedings of the Canadians, though you appear not to concern yourselves about them. It is known to all Europe, that the North American savages act without any continued design, when not spirited up and directed. Every body knows those automata have no will of their own, saying and doing only just as they are bid to do.

“Your navy is but in its infancy, scarce begun to be formed, so that a war only of two years would totally destroy it. Before engaging in a war, there is a sure way of knowing whether it should be undertaken, which is to weigh the advantages of the conquests with the disadvantages of the defeats.

“Should you beat the English at sea, which is a circumstance out of all probability, you will retain North America, which you already have; if beaten, and here the likelihood lies, you will lose America, and perhaps all your other colonies, for one conquest ever leads to another.

“The English, though beginning the war only on account of Canada, will avail themselves of their first victory to enlarge their views: and the court of St. James’s may afterwards strike out such a scheme of destruction to France, as perhaps, at present, it does not think of.

“A great disadvantage to France, is its having no ally who can help it to recover its losses against the English: the Spanish navy is in no better condition than that of France; and the Dutch rejoice in a war between the maritime powers, were it only for the vast advantages accruing to them from their neutrality. A continental power may retrieve the loss of a battle by a subsequent victory; a more experienced general, better disciplined troops, or more favourable circumstances, will give a turn to a land-war; but the maritime concerns of France are so situated, that a colony taken from it is lost for ever; its ships, the only means of bringing it again into the path of victory, being destroyed.”

This memorial, however approved by some politicians to whom I have since shewed it, had not the effect which might have been expected; another, afterwards presented to the same Minister, set the same object in a very different light.

It is said that the members of the English parliament being generally of contrary opinions, long debates are very frequent in that assembly; and that these debates produce lights, from which the hearers receive great improvement, and become better qualified to serve their country. It is otherwise in France: here the contrariety of opinions only bewilders the understanding, and increases the confusion.

“The Canada affair, said the last writer, too nearly concerns the French monarchy, to be left as it is. Every minute we lose diminishes our power, and augments that of our enemies. The war ought to have been continued, had not second causes forced the government into a peace; but those causes no longer subsisting, we should take up arms again.

“The English will never keep within the limits assigned by the commissaries. They will, by skirmishes and secret practices, be ever endeavouring to come beyond those barriers: they must be prevented in time, their schemes must be destroyed at their very first appearance, otherwise it will be too late.

“The loss of Canada would be an inconceivable detriment to France. It is that to which England owes its being mistress of the sea, opening to it numberless branches of commerce, which it would never have known without being possessed of this continent.

“Though we have no great navy, yet have we shipping enough; a sea quarrel is not the point, but a land war. It is enough for us to send over some troops to Canada; the American affairs have no connection with those of our country. Should any disturbances happen in Germany, they will spring from a quite different cause; and if the King of Prussia declares against France, it will be for some particular views of his own, quite foreign to our colonies; he would declare himself, if we had no dispute with the Britons about Canada.

“It is not the first time of our having several wars on our hands, or, rather, it is impossible that we should have but one at a time.

“Our concerns are so closely linked with the other powers of Europe, that on our arming, five or six princes cannot avoid declaring.

“The situation of affairs in Canada lays us under a necessity of renewing the war: we cannot continue in the state we now are in; the capital effort of our politics should be to recover the advantage which we lost by means of the English.

“Amidst all the magnified superiority of the British navy, its successes are not so certain as supposed. Advantages in war depend on a great number of unforeseen events. It is often observed, that the certain expectation of a victory has suddenly turned into the disappointment of a defeat.

“England has not had time, since the peace, to increase its marine; its naval force is, at this day, just as it was at the end of the war. Before the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, we could defend ourselves at sea, and still can: but if we defer any longer, the time will be over; for the British navy now is encreasing every day. Our’s will be so much inferior, as not to dare to shew its face before them; and then we shall be obliged to relinquish North America.

“Let us, without delay, begin the war again, and then we shall drive the English out of Canada; whereas, by continuing the peace, they will dispossess us. This is no time for parlying; we must either give up that part of America to England, or prepare to dispute it.

“The savage nations are our allies, they mortally hate the English; and shall we delay availing ourselves of such a favourable disposition? A people without any fixed laws, is naturally given to change. The Canadians love war, and despise such nations as live in peace: twenty years inactivity would give them an ill opinion of the French; whereas, seeing us at war with a nation whom they hate, they will esteem us, and come into a closer alliance with us than before, &c.”

These memorials made no alteration in the general system; both sides continued to dissemble, and express a desire of cultivating the peace. England applied itself to increase its navy, and France sent orders to Brest and Rochfort, for building ships with the utmost dispatch.

Amidst the most earnest concern to redress the calamities of the state, no expedients could be found for so great and good an end. The people could not be relieved but by abolishing the taxes; and the expences of the state could not be answered but by new imposts: every branch of the government was embarrassed; so that the King often said to me, with a painful sense of such a situation, _I know not where to begin_.

The advantages of the encouragement of tillage, the improvement of arts, the increase of trade, the discharge of the national debt, were only in perspective; whereas the people stood in need of present relief. Observing that the public affairs greatly affected the King’s temper and constitution, I contrasted them with diversions. I may say, the most gay and striking conceits of imagination, for pleasing the senses, were now exhibited at Versailles. In all the entertainments which I gave to the Monarch, there was little of my own; I had people of taste at Paris who furnished me with original materials, to which I only gave a few retouches.

Amidst all my inventions to draw the court from that mournful state which the perplexity of affairs shed on it, I perceived that the King was not so chearful as I could have desired. He had a cloudiness in his looks, which were naturally sprightly; he was, likewise, more thoughtful than usual. Alarmed at this lugubrious scene, I took the liberty to ask his Majesty the cause of so unhappy an alteration. He vaguely answered, “that he was not sensible of any alteration, and that my company still was his chief delight:” the revolution, however, was but too certain.

My enemies having miscarried in their design of inducing the King to remove me from court, by political motives, set religion to work; and no less a person than his Majesty’s confessor was put at the head of this cabal. He was a Jesuit with only morality for his instrument; but as that, with a Prince, seldom gets the better of pleasure, he contrived a way which struck my Monarch.

This reverend father employed one of the best hands in Paris, in a picture representing the torments of hell. Several crowned heads seemed chained down in dreadful sufferings; there was no beholding their contortions without shuddering. This infernal master-piece he made a present of to Lewis XV. The King having viewed it for some time with a frown, asked the meaning of the picture, the very thing the son of Loyola wanted.

“Sire, said he, the Prince you see there suffering eternal torments, was an ambitious Monarch, who sacrificed his people to his vain delight in glory and power. He next to him, whom the devils are insulting, was an avaricious monarch, who laid up in his coffers immense treasures, squeezed from his oppressed subjects. This third wretch was an indolent sovereign, who minded nothing, and instead of governing by himself, left every thing to his ministers, whose incapacity produced infinite mischiefs. This fourth, whose sufferings exceed those of the others, his crime being greater, was a voluptuous King, openly keeping a concubine at his court; and by this scandalous example had filled his kingdom with debauchery, &c.”

The allegory was coarse, and becoming a monk, who, in the want of the means to attain his ends in this world, has recourse to things of the other life. Lewis XV. who saw into the drift of the picture, ordered the moralist to withdraw, but the impression remained.

This was not the first time that the churchmen had presumed on their office, and abused the King’s goodness. A prelate had made him perform an ignominious act of penitence when sick at Metz.

I used fresh endeavours to relieve the King from this return of languor, and had in a great measure succeeded, when a family concern brought on a severe relapse.

The Dauphin was now in his twenty-second year, which, by the custom of France, intitled him to be intrusted with the affairs of the crown. This Prince had always shewn the most submissive deference to the King his father, but of late had put himself at the head of a party, most of whom were my enemies: they exposed me with all the venom of scurrility, and even brought in the King. Lewis XV. knew it, and this was what occasioned that inward conflict which gave him so much trouble. After communicating his situation to me, he said, _And what would you do, Madam, in such a case?_ “Sire, answered I, I would admit his Royal Highness the Dauphin into every council, and allow him all the honours due to his rank and birth.” _Well_, said the King, _I will follow your advice_; and soon after the Dauphin saw himself sent for on every important deliberation.

M. de Machault, then at the head of the finances, left no stone unturned to put them in a good condition: he was urged on every side. M. Rouillé asked very large sums to form a navy; the payers of annuities were perpetually at his elbow, and his apartment was never clear of those who had advanced money in the late war. He one day said to the King, in my hearing, _Sire, I know not how in the world, I shall answer your engagements; every body is making demands on me, and no body will give me any credit_.

Marshal Belleisle, to whom that laborious minister often used to pour forth his lamentations, told him, “Sir, I see but one way for you, which is to make the state a bankrupt. When a machine is out of order, the only remedy is to stop its motion, and to set it to rights again.”

This advice, however, was not followed; and instead of stopping the machine of the finances, in order to set it to rights again, it remained in all its former disorder. I have somewhere, among my papers, a scheme for discharging the national debt, in which the author, who was accounted a very skilful economist, advanced, that, for the settlement of an invariable order in the finances, the state, every twenty-five years, should declare itself insolvent; and the creditors compound with the King, as with a private insolvent.

“France, said this paper, will not hear of making itself a bankrupt, but the way it takes to avoid it, is still more burthensome; for when the King’s debts grow troublesome, does he not lay very onerous imposts on the people for the payment of them? Now this is a remedy worse than the disease, because the collecting of a tax, it is known, falls little short of doubling it. He extorts from one to pay another; a bankruptcy would ruin only a part of his subjects, whereas the means of payment impoverishes every body.”

I am not sufficiently acquainted with finances, to determine whether a wise King, in order to make his people easy, should begin by forfeiting the confidence of the wealthy part of his subjects. There are always some exceptionable things in these kinds of memorials. A person of a great genius has often told me, “that should all the fine projects, for making France the most opulent state in Europe, be carried into execution, it would perhaps make it the very poorest in the universe.”

The particular favour with which Lewis XV. continued to honour me, drew great numbers to my apartment, so that I had every morning a full court: some persons of eminence appeared there purely to please the King; but the business of the multitude was interest. I had brought the latter to give me memorials, as otherwise, I could never have recollected so many different objects. It is impossible for those who live at a distance from court, to conceive the various classes of askers, and what a number of favours the throne has the pleasure of bestowing.

I have read, in an original paper, that Lewis XIV. allowed all his subjects, who had any demand to make at court, to apply directly to himself. Had such an indulgence been continued under the present reign, Lewis XV’s whole life would have been taken up only in giving audiences. These memorials I had read to me, and afterwards talked them over to the King.

Besides those who asked favours, I was likewise teazed with complainers, and indeed these were usually more in number than the others.

In so large a kingdom as France, it is scarce possible to prevent all abuses; some necessarily arise from the very constitution, and the maintenance of political order. But one complaint so particularly struck me, that I thought it deserved to be laid before the King. This was the disregard of the children of officers dying in the service of their country.

A general officer, if no gentleman by birth, though, by his courage, he had secured the privileges both of the throne and nobility, leaving issue, they were excluded from nobility; and soon coming to intermix with the commonalty, no trace remained of the families which had performed the greatest services to the state: a hero’s atchievements died with him, his posterity were never the better for his exploits. This I mentioned to the King with a sensible concern, and some time after his Majesty, ever inclined to what was good and proper, issued an edict, ennobling military officers and their posterity. The different degrees of this nobility were specified in the edict, according to the different ranks of the officers.

No body in the kingdom apprehended that I had any share in this resolution; so that, unless my papers should be looked over, posterity will never know that this establishment, which gave so much satisfaction, was owing to me.

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 opposite in 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 to me, _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 glory of 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 shall miscarry; 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, on this 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 to be 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.