So many scientific explorations, so many new discoveries of nature's secrets were seconded and celebrated by an analogous movement in literature. Rousseau had led the way to impassioned admiration of the beauties of nature; Bernardin de St. Pierre had just published his Etudes de la Nature; he had in the press his Paul et Virginie; Abbe Delille was reading his Jardin, and M. de St. Lambert his Saisons. In their different phases and according to their special instincts, all minds, scholarly or political, literary or philosophical, were tending to the same end, and pursuing the same attempt. It was nature which men wanted to discover or recover: scientific laws and natural rights divided men's souls between them. Buffon was still alive, and the great sailors were every day enriching with their discoveries the Jardin du Roi; the physicists and the chemists, in the wake of Lavoisier, were giving to science a language intelligible to common folks; the jurisconsults were attempting to reform the rigors of criminal legislation at the same time with the abuses they had entailed, and Beaumarchais was bringing on the boards his Manage de Figaro.

The piece had been finished and accepted at the Theatre Francais since the end of 1781, but the police-censors had refused permission to bring it out. Beaumarchais gave readings of it; the court itself was amused to see itself attacked, caricatured, turned into ridicule; the friends of Madame de Polignac reckoned among the most ardent admirers of the Manage de Figaro. The king desired to become acquainted with the piece. He had it read by Madame de Campan, lady of the chamber to the queen, and very much in her confidence. The taste and the principles of Louis XVI. were equally shocked. "Perpetually Italian concetti!" he exclaimed. When the reading was over: "It is detestable," said the king; "it shall never be played; the Bastille would have to be destroyed to make the production of this play anything but a dangerous inconsistency. This fellow jeers at all that should be respected in a government."

Louis XVI. had correctly criticised the tendencies as well as the effects of a production sparkling with wit, biting, insolent, licentious; but he had relied too much upon his persistency in his opinions and his personal resolves. Beaumarchais was more headstrong than the king; the readings continued. The hereditary grand-duke of Russia, afterwards Paul I., happening to be at Paris in 1782, under the name of Count North, no better diversion could be thought of for him than a reading of the Manage de Figaro. Grimm undertook to obtain Beaumarchais' consent. "As," says Madame de Oberkirsch, who was present at the reading,—as the mangy (chafouin) looks of M. de la Harpe had disappointed me, so the fine face, open, clever, somewhat bold, perhaps, of M. de Beaumarchais bewitched me. I was found fault with for it. I was told he was a good-for-naught. I do not deny it, it is possible; but he has prodigious wit, courage enough for anything, a strong will which nothing can stop, and these are great qualities."

Beaumarchais took advantage of the success of the reading to boldly ask the keeper of the seals for permission to play the piece; he was supported by public curiosity, and by the unreflecting enthusiasm of a court anxious to amuse itself; the game appeared to have been won, the day for its representation, at the Menus-Plaisirs Theatre, was fixed, an interdiction on the part of the king only excited the ill-humor and intensified the desires of the public. "This prohibition appeared to be an attack upon liberty in general," says Madame Campan. "The disappointment of all hopes excited discontent to such a degree, that the words oppression and tyranny were never uttered, in the days preceding the fall of the throne, with more passion and vehemence." Two months later, the whole court was present at the representation of the Mariage de Figaro, given at the house of M. de Vandreuil, an intimate friend of the Duchess of Polignac, on his stage at Gennevilliers. "You will see that Beaumarchais will have more influence than the keeper of the seals," Louis XVI. had said, himself foreseeing his own defeat. The Mariage de Figaro was played at the Theatre Francais on the 27th of April, 1784.

"The picture of this representation is in all the collections of the period," says M. de Lomenie. "It is one of the best known reminiscences of the eighteenth century; all Paris hurrying early in the morning to the doors of the Theatre Francais, the greatest ladies dining in the actresses' dressing-room in order to secure places." "The blue ribands," says Bachaumont, "huddled up in the crowd, and elbowing Savoyards; the guard dispersed, the doors burst, the iron gratings broken beneath the efforts of the assailants." "Three persons stifled," says La Harpe, "one more than for Scudery; and on the stage, after the rising of the curtain, the finest collection of talent that had probably ever had possession of the Theatre Francais, all employed to do honor to a comedy scintillating with wit, irresistibly lively and audacious, which, if it shocks and scares a few of the boxes, enchants, rouses, and fires an electrified pit." A hundred representations succeeding the first uninterruptedly, and the public still eager to applaud, such was the twofold result of the audacities of the piece and the timid hesitations of its censors. The Mariage de Figgaro bore a sub-title, la Folle Journee. "There is something madder than my piece," said Beaumarchais, "and that is its success." Figaro ridiculed everything with a dangerously pungent vigor; the days were coming when the pleasantry was to change into insults. Already public opinion was becoming hostile to the queen: she was accused of having remained devoted to the interests of her German family; the people were beginning to call her the Austrian. During the American war, M. de Vergennes had managed to prevail upon the king to remain neutral in the difficulties that arose in 1778 between Austria and Prussia on the subject of the succession to the elector palatine; the young queen had not wanted or had not been able to influence the behavior of France, as her mother had conjured her to do. "My dear lady— daughter," wrote Maria Theresa, "Mercy is charged to inform you of my cruel position, as sovereign and as mother. Wishing to save my dominions from the most cruel devastation, I must, cost what it may, seek to wrest myself from this war, and, as a mother, I have three sons who are not only running the greatest danger, but are sure to succumb to the terrible fatigues, not being accustomed to that sort of life. By making peace at this juncture, I not only incur the blame of great pusillanimity, but I render the king of Prussia still greater, and the remedy must be prompt. I declare to you, my head whirls and my heart has for a long time been entirely numb." France had refused to engage in the war, but she had contributed to the peace of Teschen, signed on the 13th of May, 1779. On the 29th of November, 1780, Maria Theresa died at the age of sixty-three, weary of life and of that glory to which she "was fain to march by all roads," said the Great Frederick, who added: "It was thus that a woman executed designs worthy of a great man."

In 1784, Joseph II. reigned alone. Less prudent and less sensible than his illustrious mother, restless, daring, nourishing useful or fanciful projects, bred of humanity or disdain, severe and affectionate at the same time towards his sister the queen of France, whose extravagance he found fault with during the trip he made to Paris in 1777, he was now pressing her to act on his behalf in the fresh embarrassments which his restless ambition had just excited in Europe. The mediation of King Louis XVI. between the emperor and the Dutch, as to the navigation of the Scheldt, had just terminated the incident pacifically: the king had concluded a treaty of defensive alliance with Holland. The minister of war, M. de Segur, communicated to the queen the note he had drawn up on this important question. "I regret," he said to Marie Antoinette, "to be obliged to give the king advice opposed to the desire of the emperor." "I am the emperor's sister, and I do not forget it," answered the queen; "but I remember above all that I am queen of France and mother of the dauphin." Louis XVI. had undertaken to pay part of the indemnity imposed upon Joseph II.; this created discontent in France. "Let the emperor pay for his own follies," people said; and the ill-humor of the public openly and unjustly accused the queen.

This direful malevolence on the part of public opinion, springing from a few acts of imprudence and fomented by a long series of calumnies, was about to burst forth on the occasion of a scandalous and grievous occurrence. On the 15th of August, 1785, at Mass-time, Cardinal Rohan, grand almoner of France, already in full pontificals, was arrested in the palace of Versailles and taken to the Bastille. The king had sent for him into his cabinet. "Cardinal," said Louis XVI. abruptly, "you bought some diamonds of Bcehmer?" "Yes, Sir." "What have you done with them?" "I thought they had been sent to the queen." "Who gave you the commission?" (The cardinal began to be uneasy.) "A lady, the Countess de la Motte Valois, . . . she gave me a letter from the queen; I thought I was obliging her Majesty. . . . "The queen interrupted. She had never forgiven M. de Rohan for some malevolent letters written about her when she was dauphiness. On the accession of Louis XVI. this intercepted correspondence had cost the prince his embassy to Vienna. "How, sir," said the queen, "could you think, you to whom I have never spoken for eight years, that I should choose you for conducting this negotiation, and by the medium of such a woman?" "I was mistaken, I see; the desire I felt to please your Majesty misled me, and he drew from his pocket the pretended letter from the queen to Madame de la Motte. The king took it, and, casting his eye over the signature: "How could a prince of your house and my grand almoner suppose that the queen would sign Marie Antoinette de France? Queens sign their names quite short. It is not even the queen's writing. And what is the meaning of all these doings with jewellers, and these notes shown to bankers?"



The cardinal could scarcely stand; he leaned against the table. "Sir," he stammered, "I am too much overcome to be able to reply." "Walk into this room, cardinal," rejoined the king kindly; "write what you have to say to me." The written explanations of M. de Rohan were no clearer than his words; an officer of the body-guard took him off to the Bastille; he had, just time to order his grand-vicar to burn all his papers.

The correspondence as well as the life of M. de Rohan was not worthy of a prince of the church: the vices and the credulity of the cardinal had given him over, bound hand and foot, to an intriguing woman as adroit as she was daring. Descended from a bastard of Henry II.'s, brought up by charity and married to a ruined nobleman, Madame de la Motte Valois had bewitched, duped, and robbed Cardinal Rohan. Accustomed to an insensate prodigality, asserting everywhere that a man of gallantry could not live on twelve hundred thousand livres a year, he had considered it very natural that the queen should have a fancy for possessing a diamond necklace worth sixteen hundred thousand livres. The jewellers had, in fact, offered this jewelry to Marie Antoinette; it was during the American war. "That is the price of two frigates," the king had said. "We want ships and not diamonds," said the queen, and dismissed her jeweller. A few months afterwards he told anybody who would listen that he had sold the famous collar in Constantinople for the favorite sultana. "This was a real pleasure to the queen," says Madame Campan; "she, however, expressed some astonishment that a necklace made for the adornment of Frenchwomen should be worn in the seraglio, and, thereupon, she talked to me a long while about the total change which took place in the tastes and desires of women in the period between twenty and thirty years of age. She told me that when she was ten years younger she loved diamonds madly, but that she had no longer any taste for anything but private society, the country, the work and the attentions required by the education of her children. From that moment until the fatal crisis there was nothing more said about the necklace."

The crisis would naturally come from the want of money felt by the jewellers. Madame de la Motte had paid them some instalments on account of the stones, which her husband had sold in England: they grew impatient and applied to the queen. For a long while she did not understand their applications: when the complaints of the purveyors at last made her apprehend an intrigue, she sent for Abbe de Vermond and Baron de Breteuil, minister of the king's household both detested the cardinal, both fanned the queen's wrath; she decided at last to tell the king everything. "I saw the queen after the departure of the baron and the abbe," says Madame Campan; "she made me tremble at her indignation." The cardinal renounced the privileges of his rank and condition; he boldly accepted the jurisdiction of the Parliament.

The trial revealed a gross intrigue, a disgraceful comedy, a prince of the church and a merchant equally befooled by a shameless woman, with the aid of the adventurer Cagliostro, and the name, the favors, and even the personality of the queen impudently dragged in. The public feeling was at its height, constantly over-excited by the rumors circulated during the sessions of the court. Opinion was hostile to the queen. "It was for her and by her orders that the necklace was bought," people said. The houses of Conde and Rohan were not afraid to take sides with the cardinal: these illustrious personages were to be seen, dressed in mourning, waiting for the magistrates on their way, in order to canvass them on their relative's behalf. On the 31st of May, 1786, the court condemned Madame de la Motte to be whipped, branded, and imprisoned; they purely and simply acquitted Cardinal Rohan. In its long and continual tussle with the crown, the Parliament had at last found the day of its revenge: political passions and the vagaries of public opinion had blinded the magistrates.

"As soon as I knew the cardinal's sentence, I went to the queen," says Madame Campan. "She heard my voice in the room leading to her closet; she called to me. I found her very sad. She said to me in a broken voice: 'Condole with me; the intriguer who wanted to ruin me, or procure money by using my name and forging my signature, has just been fully acquitted. But,' she added vehemently, 'as a Frenchwoman, accept my condolence. A people is very unfortunate to have for its supreme tribunal a lot of men who consult nothing but their passions, and of whom some are capable of bribery and others of an audacity which they have always displayed towards authority, and of which they have just given a striking example against those who are clothed therewith.' The king entered at this moment. 'You find the queen in great affliction,' he said to me: 'she has great reason to be. But what then! They would not see in this business anything save a prince of the church and the prince of Rohan, whereas it is only the case of a man in want of money and a mere dodge for raising the wind, wherein the cardinal has been swindled in his turn. Nothing can be easier to understand, and it needs no Alexander to cut this Gordian knot.'"

Guilty in the king's eyes, a dupe according to the judgment of history, Cardinal Rohan was exiled to his abbey of Chaise-Dieu, less to be pitied than the unhappy queen abruptly wrenched from the sweet dreams of a romantic friendship and confidence, as well as from the nascent joys of maternal happiness, to find herself henceforth confronting a deluded people and an ever increasing hostility which was destined to unjustly persecute her even to the block.

M. de Calonne had taken little part in the excitement which the trial of Cardinal Rohan caused in court and city he was absorbed by the incessantly recurring difficulties presented by the condition of the treasury; speculation had extended to all classes of society; loans succeeded loans, everywhere there were formed financial companies, without any resources to speak of, speculating on credit. Parliament began to be alarmed, and enregistered no more credits save with repugnance. Just as he was setting out on a trip to Normandy, which afforded him one of the last happy days of his life and as it were a dying flicker of his past popularity, the king scratched out on the registers of the Parliament the restrictions introduced by the court into the new loan of eighty millions presented by M. de Calonne. "I wish it to be known that I am satisfied with my comptroller-general," said Louis XVI. with that easy confidence which he did not always place wisely. When he returned from Cherbourg, at the end of June, 1786, M. de Calonne had at last arrived at the extremity of his financial expedients. He set his views and his ideas higher. Speculation was succeeded by policy.

"Sir," said the note handed to the king by the comptroller-general, "I will not go back to the fearful position in which the finances were when your Majesty deigned to intrust them to me. It is impossible to recall without a shudder that there was at that time neither money nor credit, that the pressing debts were immense, the revenues exhausted in anticipation, the resources annihilated, the public securities valueless, the coinage impoverished and without circulation, the discount-fund bankrupt, the general tax-exchequer (ferme general) on the point of failing to meet its bills, and the royal treasury reduced to two bags of 1200 livres. I am far from claiming credit for the success of the operations which, owing to the continuous support given by your Majesty, promptly established abundance of coin, punctuality in the payments, public confidence proved by the rise in all securities and by the highest degree of credit, abroad as well as at home: what I must forcibly call your Majesty's attention to is the importance of the present moment, the terrible embarrassment concealed beneath the appearance of the happiest tranquillity, the necessity of soon taking some measure for deciding the lot of the state. It must be confessed, Sir, that France at this moment is only kept up by a species of artifice; if the illusion which stands for reality were destroyed, if the confidence at present inseparable from the working staff were to fail, what would become of us with a deficit of a hundred millions every year? Without a doubt no time must be lost in filling up a void so enormous; and that can be done only by great measures. The plan I have formed appears to me the one that can solve so difficult a problem. Solely occupied with this great object, which demands enormous labor, and for the accomplishment of which I would willingly sacrifice my existence, I only beg your Majesty to accord to me, until I have carried it out, so much support and appearance of favor as I need to give me strength to attain it. It will perhaps be an affair of six months or a year at most. After that your Majesty may do as you please with me; I shall have followed the promptings of the heartiest zeal for your service, I shall be able to say,—

'Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domino.'"

This mysterious plan, which was to produce results as desirable as rare, and which M. de Calonne had hit upon to strengthen his shaky position, was the same which, in 1628, had occurred to Cardinal Richelieu, when he wanted to cover his responsibility in regard to the court of Rome. In view of the stress at the treasury, of growing discontent, of vanished illusions, the comptroller-general meditated convoking the Assembly of Notables, the feeble resource of the old French kingship before the days of pure monarchy, an expedient more insufficient and more dangerous than the most far-seeing divined after the lessons of the philosophers and the continuous abasement of the kingly Majesty.

The convocation of the Notables was the means upon which M. de Calonne relied; the object was the sanctioning of a financial system new in practice but old in theory. When the comptroller-general proposed to the king to abolish privileges, and assess the impost equally, renouncing the twentieths, diminishing the gabel, suppressing custom-houses in the interior and establishing provincial assemblies, Louis XVI. recognized an echo of his illustrious ministers. "This is sheer Necker!" he exclaimed. "In the condition in which things are, Sir, it is the best that can be done," replied M. de Calonne. He had explained his reasons to the king in an intelligent and able note.

"Such a plan," said the comptroller-general, after having unfolded his projects, "demands undoubtedly the most solemn examination and the most authentic sanction. It must be presented in the form most calculated. to place it beyond reach of any retardation and to acquire for it unassailable strength by uniting all the suffrages of the nation. Now, there is nothing but an assembly of notables that can fulfil this aim. It is the only means of preventing all parliamentary resistance, imposing silence on the clergy, and so clinching public opinion that no special interest dare raise a voice against the overwhelming evidence of the general interest. Assemblies of notables were held in 1558, in 1583, in 1596, in 1617, and in 1626; none was convoked for objects so important as those in question now, and never were circumstances' more favorable to success; as the situation requires strong measures, so it permits of the employment of strong means."

The king hesitated, from instinctive repugnance and the traditions of absolutism, at anything that resembled an appeal to the people. He was won, however, by the precedent of Henry IV. and by the frank honesty of the project. The secret was strictly kept. The general peace was threatened afresh by the restless ambition of Joseph II. and by the constant encroachments of the Empress Catherine. The Great Frederick was now dead. After being for a long while the selfish disturber of Europe, he had ended by becoming its moderator, and his powerful influence was habitually exerted on behalf of peace. The future was veiled and charged with clouds. M. de Vergennes, still possessing Louis XVI.'s confidence, regarded with dread the bold reforms proposed by M. de Calonne; he had yielded to the comptroller-general's representations, but he made all haste to secure for France some support in Europe; he concluded with England the treaty of commerce promised at the moment of signing the peace. There was a lively debate upon it in the English Parliament. Mr. Fox, then in opposition, violently attacked the provisions of the treaty; Mr. Pitt, quite young as yet, but already established in that foremost rank among orators and statesmen which he was to occupy to his last hour, maintained the great principles of European policy. "It is a very false maxim," said he, "to assert that France and England are not to cease to be hostile because they have been so heretofore. My mind revolts at so monstrous a principle, which is an outrage upon the constitution of societies as well as upon the two nations. Situated as we are in respect of France, it is expedient, it is a matter of urgency for the welfare of the two countries, to terminate this constant enmity which has been falsely said to be the basis of the true sentiments felt by the two nations towards each other. This treaty tends to augment the means of making war and to retard its coming."

Generous and sound maxims, only too often destined to be strikingly belied by human passions! When he supported in the House of Commons, in 1786, an alliance with monarchical France, Mr. Pitt did not foresee the terrible struggle he—would one day maintain, in the name of England and of Europe, against revolutionary, anarchical, or absolutist France.

The treaty had just been signed (September 26, 1786). M. de Vergennes was not long to survive his latest work: he died on the 13th of February, 1787, just before the opening of the Assembly of Notables, as if he would fain escape the struggle and the crisis he dreaded. Capable and far-sighted in his foreign policy, ever conciliatory and sometimes daring, M. de Vergennes, timid and weak as he was in home affairs, was nevertheless esteemed: he had often served as a connect ing link between the different elements of the government. The king gave his place to M. de Montmorin, an honest but insignificant man, without influence in France as well as in Europe.

On the 29th of December, 1786, at the close of the despatch-council, the king at last broke the silence he had so long kept even as regarded the queen herself. "Gentlemen," he said, "I shall convoke for the 29th of January an assembly composed of persons of different conditions and the best qualified in the state, in order to communicate to them my views for the relief of my people, the ordering of the finances, and the reformation of several abuses." Louis XVI.'s hesitations had disappeared: he was full of hope. "I have not slept a wink all night," he wrote on the morning of the 30th of December to M. de Calonne, "but it was for joy."

The sentiments of the public were very diverse: the court was in consternation. "What penalty would King Louis XIV. have inflicted upon a minister who spoke of convoking an assembly of notables?" asked old Marshal Richelieu, ever witty, frivolous, and corrupt. "The king sends in his resignation," said the young Viscount de Segur. At Paris curiosity was the prevalent feeling; but the jokes were bitter. "The comptroller-general has raised a new troop of comedians; the first performance will take place on Monday the 20th instant," said a sham play-bill: "they will give us the principal piece False Confidences, followed by Forced Consent and an allegorical ballot, composed by M. de Calonne, entitled The Tub of the Danaids."

The convocation of the notables was better received in the provinces: it was the first time for a hundred and sixty years that the nation had been called upon to take a part, even nominally, in the government of its affairs; it already began to feel powerful and proud. A note had been sent to the Journal de Paris to announce the convocation of the Assembly. "The nation," it said, "will see with transport that the king deigns to draw near to her." The day of excessive humiliation was no more, even in forms; M. de Calonne modified the expression thus: "The nation will see with transport that the king draws near to her."

Indisposition on the part of the comptroller-general had retarded the preparatory labors; the session opened on the 22d of February, 1787. The Assembly numbered one hundred and forty-four members, all nominated by the king: to wit, seven princes of the blood; fourteen archbishops and bishops; thirty-six dukes and peers, marshals of France and noblemen; twelve councillors of state and masters of requests; thirty-eight magistrates of sovereign courts; twelve deputies of states-districts, the only ones allowed to present to the king memorials of grievances; and twenty-five municipal officers of the large towns. In this Assembly, intended to sanction the abolition of privileges, a few municipal officers alone represented the third estate and the classes intended to profit by the abolition. The old Marquis of Mirabeau said facetiously: "This Calonne assembles a troop of Guillots, which he calls the nation, to present them with the cow by the horns, and say to them, 'Gentlemen, we take all the milk and what not, we devour all the meat and what not, and we are going to try and get that what not out of the rich, whose money has no connection with the poor, and we give you notice that the rich means you. Now, give us your opinion as to the manner of proceeding.'"

The king's speech was short and unimportant. Though honestly impressed with reminiscences of Henry IV., he could not manage, like him, to say to the notables he had just convoked, "I have had you assemble to take your counsels, to trust in them, to follow them, in short, to place myself under tutelage in your hands,—a feeling which is scarcely natural to kings, graybeards, and conquerors; but the violent love I bear my subjects, the extreme desire I have to add the title of liberator and restorer of this realm to that of king, make me find everything easy and honorable." M. de Calonne had reserved to himself the duty of explaining the great projects he had suggested to the king. "Gentle men," said he in his exordium, "the orders I am under at present do me the more honor in that the views of which the king has charged me to set before you the sum and the motives have been entirely adopted by him personally." Henry IV. might have said to the notables assembled by his successor, as he had said regarding his predecessors: "You were summoned hither not long ago to approve of the king's wishes."

The state was prosperous, at any rate in appearance; the comptroller-general assumed the credit for it. "The economy of a minister of finance," he said, "may exist under two forms so different that one might say they were two sorts of economy: one, which strikes the eye by its external strictness, which proclaims itself by startling and harshly uttered refusals, which flaunts its severity in the smallest matters in order to discourage the throng of applicants. It has an imposing appearance which really proves nothing, but which does a great deal as regards opinion; it has the double advantage of keeping importunate cupidity at arm's length and of quieting anxious ignorance. The other, which considers duty rather than force of character, can do more, whilst showing less strictness and reserve, as regards whatever is of any importance; it affects no austerity as regards that which is of none; it lets the talk be of what it grants, and does not talk about what it saves. Because it is seen to be accessible to requests, people will not believe that it refuses the majority of them; because it has not the useful and vulgar character of inflexibility, people refuse it that of wise discretion, and often, whilst by assiduous application to all the details of an immense department, it preserves the finances from the most fatal abuses and the most ruinously unskilful handling, it seems to calumniate itself by an easy-going appearance which the desire to injure transforms very soon into lavishness."

So much easy grace and adroitness succeeding the austere stiffness of M. Necker had been powerless to relieve the disorder of the finances; it was great and of ancient date. "A deficit has been existing in France for centuries," the comptroller-general asserted. It at last touched the figure of a hundred millions a year. "What is left for filling up so frightful a void and for reaching the desired level?" exclaimed M. de Calonne: "abuses! Yes, gentlemen, it is in abuses themselves that there is to be found a mine of wealth which the state has a right to reclaim and which must serve to restore order. Abuses have for their defenders interests, influence, fortune, and some antiquated prejudices which time seems to have respected. But of what force is such a vain confederation against the public welfare and the necessity of the state? Let others recall this maxim of our monarchy: 'As willeth the king, so willeth the law;' his Majesty's maxim is: 'As willeth the happiness of the people, so willeth the king.'"

Audaciously certain of the success of his project, M. de Calonne had not taken the trouble to disguise the vast consequences of it; he had not thought any the more about pre-securing a majority in the assembly. The members were divided into seven committees presided over by the princes; each committee disposed of one single vote; the comptroller-general had not taken exception to the selections designated by his adversaries. "I have made it a point of conscience," he said, "to give suitable nominations according to the morality, and talent, and importance of individuals." He had burned his ships, and without a care for the defective composition of the assembly, he set forth, one after the other, projects calculated to alarm the privileged orders. "More will be paid," he said in the preamble printed at the head of his notes and circulated in profusion over the whole of France, "undoubtedly more will be paid, but by whom? . . . By those only who do not pay enough; they will pay what they ought, according to a just proportionment, and nobody will be aggrieved. Privileges will be sacrificed! Yes! Justice wills it, necessity requires it! Would it be better to surcharge the non-privileged, the people?"

The struggle was about to begin, with all the ardor of personal interest; the principle of provincial assemblies had been favorably received by the notables; the committees (bureaux) had even granted to the third estate a representation therein equal to that of the two upper orders, on condition that the presidents of the delegates should be chosen from the nobility or the clergy. The recognition of a civil status for Protestants did not seem likely to encounter any difficulty. For more than twenty years past the parliaments, especially the parliament of Toulouse, had established the ruling of the inadmissibility of any one who disputed the legitimacy of children issue of Protestant marriages. In 1778, the parliament of Paris had deliberated as to presenting to the king a resolution in favor of authentic verification of non-Catholic marriages, births, and deaths; after a long interval, on, the 2d of February, 1787, this resolution had been formally, promulgated.

It was M. de Lafayette who had the honor of supporting in the assembly of notables the royal project announced by M. de Calonne and advised by the Parliament. In the ministry, MM. de Castries and De Breteuil had supported the equitable measure so long demanded by Protestants. M. de Rulhieres had drawn up for the king a note, entitled: Historic Evidences as to the Causes of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and M. de Malesherbes had himself presented to Louis XVI. a scheme for a law. "It is absolutely necessary," said he, "that I should render the Protestants some kind offices; my great-uncle De Baville did them so much injury!" The Assembly of notables appealed to the king's benevolence on behalf of "that considerable portion of his subjects which groans under a regimen of proscription equally opposed to the general interests of religion, to good morals, to population, to national industry, and to all the principles of morality and policy." "In the splendid reign of Louis XIV.," M. de Calonne had said, "the state was impoverished by victories, and the kingdom dispeopled through intolerance." "Are assemblies of non- Catholics dangerous?" asked M. Turgot. "Yes, as long as they are forbidden; no, when they are authorized."

The preliminary discussions had been calm, the great question was coming on; in theory, the notables were forced to admit the principle of equal assessment of the impost; in practice, they were, for the most part, resolved to restrict its application. They carried the war into the enemy's camp, and asked to examine the financial accounts. The king gave notice to the committees that his desire was to have the deliberations directed not to the basis of the question but to the form of collection of taxes. The Archbishop of Narbonne (Dillon) raised his voice against the king's exclusive right to decide upon imposts. "Your Royal Highness will allow me to tell you," was the reply made to the Count of Artois, president of his committee, by an attorney-general of the parliament of Aix, M. de Castillon, "that there exists no authority which can pass a territorial impost such as that proposed, nor this assembly, august as it may be, nor the parliaments, nor the several states, nor the king himself; the States-general alone would have that power."

Thus was proposed, in the very midst of the Assembly intended to keep it out, that great question of the convocation of the States-general which had been so long uppermost in all minds. "It is the States-general you demand!" said the Count of Artois to M. de La Fayette. "Yes, my lord," replied the latter, "and something better still if possible!" The comptroller-general continued to elude inquiry into the state of the treasury. M. Necker, offended by the statements of his successor, who questioned the truthfulness of the Report, addressed explanatory notes to the several committees of the Assembly. He had already, in 1784, published an important work in explanation and support of his financial system; the success of the book had been immense; in spite of the prohibition issued, at first, against the sale, but soon tacitly withdrawn, the three volumes had sold, it was said, to the extent of eighty thousand copies. In 1787, the late director-general asked leave to appear before the Assembly of notables to refute the statements of M. de Calonne; permission was refused. "I am satisfied with your services," the king sent word to him, "and I command you to keep silence." A pamphlet, without any title, was however sent to the notables. "I served the king for five years," said M. Necker, "with a zeal which knew no limits the duties I had taken upon myself were the only object of my solicitude. The interests of the state had become my passion and occupied all my faculties of heart and mind. Forced to retire through a combination of singular circumstances, I devoted my powers to the composition of a laborious work, the utility of which appears, to me to have been recognized. I heard it said that a portion of those ideas about administration which had been so dear to me formed the basis of the projects which were to be submitted to the Assembly of notables. I rendered homage to the beneficent views of his Majesty. Content with the contributions I had offered to the common weal, I was living happily and in peace, when all at once I found myself attacked or rather assailed in the most unjust and the strangest manner. M. de Calonne, finding it advisable to trace to a very remote period the causes of the present condition of the finances, was not afraid, in pursuance of this end, to have recourse to means with which he will, probably, sooner or later reproach himself; he declared in a speech, now circulated throughout Europe, that the Report to his Majesty, in 1781, was so extraordinarily erroneous, that, instead of the surplus published in that Report, there was, at that very time, an enormous deficit."

At the moment when M. Necker was publishing, as regarded the statements of M. de Calonne, an able rectification which did not go to the bottom of things any more than the Report had previously gone, the comptroller-general was succumbing beneath his enemies' attacks and his own errors. Justly irritated at the perfidious manoeuvres practised against him by the keeper of the seals in secretly heading at the Assembly of notables the opposition of the magistracy, Calonne had demanded and obtained from the king the recall of M. Miromesnil. He was immediately superseded by M. de Lamoignon, president of the parliament of Paris and a relative of M. de Malesherbes. The comptroller-general had the imprudence to push his demands further; he required the dismissal of M. de Breteuil. "I consent," said Louis XVI. after some hesitation; "but leave me time to forewarn the queen, she is much attached to M. de Breteuil." When the king quitted Marie Antoinette, the situation had changed face; the disgrace of M. de Calonne was resolved upon.

The queen had represented the dissatisfaction and opposition of the notables, which "proceeded solely," she said, "from the mistrust inspired by the comptroller-general;" she had dwelt upon the merits and resources of the Archbishop of Toulouse. "I don't like priests who haven't the virtues of their cloth," Louis XVI. had answered dryly. He called to the ministry M. Fourqueux, councillor of state, an old man, highly esteemed, but incapable of sustaining the crushing weight of affairs. The king himself presented M. de Calonne's last projects to the Assembly of notables; the rumor ran that the comptroller-general was about to re-enter the cabinet. Louis XVI. was informed of the illicit manoeuvres which M. de Calonne had authorized in operations on 'Change: he exiled him to his estate in Berry, and a few days afterwards to Lorraine. M. Necker had just published without permission his reply to the attacks of M. de Calonne the king was put out at it. "The eye of the public annoys those who manage affairs with carelessness," M. Necker had but lately said in his work on financial administration, "but those who are animated by a different spirit would be glad to multiply lights from every quarter." "I do not want to turn my kingdom into a republic screeching over state affairs as the city of Geneva is, and as happened during the administration of M. Necker," said Louis XVI. He, banished his late minister to a distance of twenty leagues from Paris. Madame Necker was ill, and the execution of the king's order was delayed for a few days.

Meanwhile the notables were in possession of the financial accounts, but the satisfaction caused them by the disgrace of M. de Calonne was of short duration; they were awaiting a new comptroller-general, calculated to enlighten them as to the position of affairs. M. de Montmorin and M. de Lamoignon were urgent for the recall of M. Necker. The king's ill feeling against his late minister still continued. "As long as M. Necker exists," said M. de Montmorin, "it is impossible that there should be any other minister of finance, because the public will always be annoyed to see that post occupied by any but by him." "I did not know M. Necker personally," adds M. de Montmorin in his notes left to Marmontel; "I had nothing but doubts to oppose to what the king told me about his character, his haughtiness, and his domineering spirit." Louis XVI. yielded, however. "Well!" he said, snappishly, "if it must be, recall him." M. de Breteuil was present. "Your Majesty," said he, "has but just banished M. Necker he has scarcely arrived at Montargis; to recall him now would have a deplorable effect." He once more mentioned the name of Leonie de Brienne, and the king again yielded. Ambitious, intriguing, debauched, unbelieving, the new minister, like his predecessor, was agreeable, brilliant, capable even, and accustomed in his diocese to important affairs. He was received without disfavor by public opinion. The notables and the chief of the council of finance undertook in concert the disentanglement of the accounts submitted to them.

In this labyrinth of contradictory figures and statements, the deficit alone came out clearly. M. de Brienne promised important economies, the Assembly voted a loan: they were not willing to accept the responsibility of the important reforms demanded by the king. The speeches were long and vague, the objections endless. All the schemes of imposts were censured one after the other. "We leave it to the king's wisdom," said the notables at last; "he shall himself decide what taxes will offer the least inconveniences, if the requirements of the state make it necessary to impose new sacrifices upon the people." "The notables have seen with dismay the depth of the evil caused by an administration whereof your parliament had more than once foreseen the consequence," said the premier president of the parliament of Paris. "The different plans proposed to your Majesty deserve careful deliberation. The most respectful silence is at this moment our only course."

The notables had themselves recognized their own impotence and given in their resignation. A formal closing session took place on the 25th of May, 1787. The keeper of the seals, enumerating the results of the labors of the Assembly, enregistered the royal promises as accomplished facts: "All will be set right without any shock, without any ruin of fortunes, without any alteration in the principles of government, without any of those breaches of faith which should never be so much as mentioned in the presence of the monarch of France.

"The resolved or projected reform of various abuses, and the permanent good for which the way is being paved by new laws concerted with you, gentlemen, are about to co-operate successfully for the present relief of the people.

"Forced labor is proscribed, the gabel (or salt-tax) is revised (juyee), the obstacles which hamper home trade are destroyed, and agriculture, encouraged by the free exportation of grain, will become day by day more flourishing.

"The king has solemnly promised that disorder shall not appear again in his finances, and his Majesty is about to take the most effective measures for fulfilling this sacred engagement, of which you are the depositaries.

"The administration of the state will approach nearer and nearer to the government and vigilance of a private family, and a more equitable assessment, which personal interest will incessantly watch over, will lighten the burden of impositions."

Only the provincial administrations were constituted; the hopes which had been conceived of the Assembly of notables remained more vague than before its convocation: it had failed, like all the attempts at reform made in succession by Louis XVI.'s advisers, whether earnest or frivolous, whether proved patriots or ambitious intriguers. It had, however, revealed to the whole country the deplorable disorder of the finances; it had taught the third estate and even the populace how deep was the repugnance among the privileged classes towards reforms which touched their interests. Whilst spreading, as a letter written to America by M. de La Fayette put it, "the salutary habit of thinking about public affairs," it had at the same time betrayed the impotence of the government, and the feebleness of its means of action. It was a stride, and an immense stride, towards the Revolution.



CHAPTER LX.——LOUIS XVI.—CONVOCATION OF THE STATES-GENERAL. 1787-1789.

Thirteen years had rolled by since King Louis XV. had descended to a dishonored grave, and on the mighty current which was bearing France towards reform, whilst dragging her into the Revolution, King Louis XVI., honest and sincere, was still blindly seeking to clutch the helm which was slipping from his feeble hands. Every day his efforts were becoming weaker and more inconsistent, every day the pilot placed at the tiller was less and less deserving of public confidence. From M. Turgot to M. Necker, from Calonne to Lomenie de Brienne, the fall had been rapid and deep. Amongst the two parties which unequally divided the nation, between those who defended the past in its entirety, its abuses as well as its grandeurs, and those who were marching on bewildered towards a reform of which they did not foresee the scope, the struggle underwent certain moments of stoppage and of abrupt reaction towards the old state of things. In 1781, the day after M. Necker's fall, an ordinance of the minister of war, published against the will of that minister himself, had restored to the verified and qualified noblesse (who could show four quarterings) the exclusive privilege of military grades. Without any ordinance, the same regulation had been applied to the clergy. In 1787, the Assembly of notables and its opposition to the king's projects presented by M. de Calonne were the last triumph of the enthusiastic partisans of the past. The privileged classes had still too much influence to be attacked with success by M. de Calonne, who appeared to be in himself an assemblage of all the abuses whereof he desired to be the reformer. A plan so vast, however ably conceived, was sure to go to pieces in the hands of a man who did not enjoy public esteem and confidence; but the triumph of the notables in their own cause was a fresh warning to the people that they would have to defend theirs with more vigor." [Memoires de Malouet, t. i. p. 253]. We have seen how monarchy, in concert with the nation, fought feudality, to reign thenceforth as sovereign mistress over the great lords and over the nation; we have seen how it slowly fell in public respect and veneration, and how it attempted unsuccessfully to respond to the confused wishes of a people that did not yet know its own desires or its own strength; we shall henceforth see it, panting and without sure guidance, painfully striving to govern and then to live. "I saw," says M. Malouet in his Memoires, "under the ministry of the archbishop (of Toulouse, and afterwards of Sens), all the avant-couriers of a revolution in the government. Three parties were already pronounced: the first wanted to take to itself all the influence of which it despoiled the king, whilst withstanding the pretensions of the third estate; the second proclaimed open war against the two upper orders, and already laid down the bases of a democratic government; the third, which was at that time the most numerous, although it was that of the wisest men, dreaded the ebullience of the other two, wanted compromises, reforms, and not revolution." By their conflicts the two extreme parties were to stifle for a while the party of the wise men, the true exponent of the national aspirations and hopes, which was destined, through a course of cruel vicissitudes and long trials, to yet save and govern the country.

The Assembly of notables had abdicated; contenting itself with a negative triumph, it had left to the royal wisdom and responsibility the burden of decisions which Louis XVI. had hoped to get sanctioned by an old and respected authority. The public were expecting to see all the edicts, successively presented to the notables as integral portions of a vast system, forthwith assume force of law by simultaneous registration of Parliament. The feebleness and inconsistency of governors often stultify the most sensible foresight. M. de Brienne had come into office as a support to the king's desires and intentions, for the purpose of obtaining from the notables what was refused through their aversion for M. de Calonne; as soon as he was free of the notables as well as of M. de Calonne, he hesitated, drew back, waited, leaving time for a fresh opposition to form and take its measures. "He had nothing but bad moves to make," says M. Mignet. Three edicts touching the trade in grain, forced labor, and the provincial assemblies, were first sent up to the Parliament and enregistered without any difficulty; the two edicts touching the stamp-tax and equal assessment of the impost were to meet with more hinderance; the latter at any rate united the sympathies of all the partisans of genuine reforms; the edict touching the stamp-tax was by itself and first submitted for the approval of the magistrates: they rejected it, asking, like the notables, for a communication as to the state of finance. "It is not states of finance we want," exclaimed a councillor, Sabatier de Cabre, "it is States-general." This bold sally became a theme for deliberation in the Parliament. "The nation represented by the States-general," the court declared, "is alone entitled to grant the king subsidies of which the need is clearly demonstrated." At the same time the Parliament demanded the impeachment of M. de Calonne; he took fright and sought refuge in England. The mob rose in Paris, imputing to the court the prodigalities with which the Parliament reproached the late comptroller-general. Sad symptom of the fatal progress of public opinion! The cries heretofore raised against the queen under the name of Austrian were now uttered against Madame Deficit, pending the time when the fearful title of Madame Veto would give place in its turn to the sad name of the woman Capet given to the victim of October 16, 1793.

The king summoned the Parliament to Versailles, and on the 6th of August, 1787, the edicts touching the stamp-tax and territorial subvention were enregistered in bed of justice. The Parliament had protested in advance against this act of royal authority, which it called "a phantom of deliberation." On the 13th of August, the court declared "the registration of the edicts null and without effect, incompetent to authorize the collection of imposts, opposed to all principles;" this resolution was sent to all the seneschalties and bailiwicks in the district. It was in the name of the privilege of the two upper orders that the Parliament of Paris contested the royal edicts and made appeal to the supreme jurisdiction of the States-general; the people did not see it, they took out the horses of M. d'Espremesnil, whose fiery eloquence had won over a great number of his colleagues, and he was carried in triumph. On the 15th of August the Parliament was sent away to Troyes.

Banishment far away from the capital, from the ferment of spirits, and from the noisy centre of their admirers, had more than once brought down the pride of the members of Parliament; they were now sustained by the sympathy ardently manifested by nearly all the sovereign courts. "Incessantly repeated stretches of authority," said the Parliament of Besanccon, "forced registrations, banishments, constraint and severity instead of justice, are astounding in an enlightened age, wound a nation that idolizes its kings, but is free and proud, freeze the heart and might break the ties which unite sovereign to subjects and subjects to sovereign." The Parliament of Paris declared that it needed no authority for its sittings, considering that it rendered justice wherever it happened to be assembled. "The monarchy would be transfigured into a despotic form," said the decree, "if ministers could dispose of persons by sealed letters (lettres de cachet), property by beds of justice, criminal matters by change of venue (evocation) or cassation, and suspend the course of justice by special banishments or arbitrary removals."

Negotiations were going on, however; the government agreed to withdraw the new imposts which it had declared to be indispensable; the Parliament, which had declared itself incompetent as to the establishment of taxes, prorogued for two years the second twentieth. "We left Paris with glory upon us, we shall return with mud," protested M. d'Espremesnil in vain; more moderate, but not less resolute, Duport, Robert de St. Vincent, and Freteau sought to sustain by their speeches the wavering resolution of their colleagues. The Parliament was recalled to Paris on the 19th of September, 1787.

The state of Europe inclined men's minds to reciprocal concessions; a disquieting good understanding appeared to be growing up between Russia and Austria. The Emperor Joseph II. had just paid a visit to the Crimea with the czarina. "I fancy I am still dreaming," wrote the Prince of Ligne, who had the honor of being in the trip, "when in a carriage with six places, which is a real triumphal car adorned with ciphers in precious stones, I find myself seated between two persons on whose shoulders the heat often sets me dozing, and I hear, as I wake up, one of my comrades say to the other 'I have thirty' millions of subjects, they say, counting males only.' 'And I twenty-two,' replies the other, 'all included.' 'I require,' adds the former, 'an army of at least six hundred thousand men between Kamtchatka and Riga.' 'With half that,' replies the other, 'I have just what I require.' God knows how we settle all the states and great personages. 'Rather than sign the separation of thirteen provinces, like my brother George,' says Catherine II. sweetly, 'I would have put a bullet through my head.' 'And rather than give in my resignation like my brother and brother-in-law, by convoking and assembling the nation to talk over abuses, I don't know what I wouldn't have done,' says Joseph II." Before the two allies could carry out their designs against Turkey, that ancient power, enfeebled as it was, had taken the offensive at the instigation of England; the King of Sweden, on his side, invaded Russia; war burst out in all directions. The traditional influence of France remained powerless in the East to maintain peace; the long weakness of the government was everywhere bearing fruit.

Nowhere was this grievous impotence more painfully striking than in Holland. Supported by England, whose slavish instrument he had been for so long, the stadtholder William V. was struggling, with the help of the mob, against the patriotic, independent, and proud patricians. For the last sixty years the position of Holland had been constantly declining in Europe. "She is afraid of everything," said Count de Broglie in 1773; "she puts up with everything, grumbles at everything, and secures herself against nothing." "Holland might pay all the armies of Europe," people said in 1787, "she couldn't manage to hold her own against any one of them." The civil war imminent in her midst and fomented by England had aroused the solicitude of M. de Calonne; he had prepared the resources necessary for forming a camp near Givet; his successor diverted the funds to another object. When the Prussians entered Dutch territory, being summoned to the stadtholder's aid by his wife, sister of the young King Frederick William II., the French government afforded no assistance to its ally; it confined itself to offering an asylum to the Dutch patriots, long encouraged by its diplomatists, and now vanquished in their own country, which was henceforth under the yoke of England. "France has fallen, I doubt whether she will get up again," said the Emperor Joseph II. "We have been caught napping," wrote M. de La Fayette to Washington; "the King of Prussia has been ill advised, the Dutch are ruined, and England finds herself the only power which has gained in the bargain."

The echo of humiliations abroad came to swell the dull murmur of public discontent. Disturbance was arising everywhere. "From stagnant chaos France has passed to tumultuous chaos," wrote Mirabeau, already an influential publicist, despite the irregularity of his morals and the small esteem excited by his life; "there may, there should come a creation out of it." The Parliament had soon resumed its defiant attitude; like M. de La Fayette at the Assembly of notables, it demanded the convocation of the States-general at a fixed epoch, in 1792; it was the date fixed by M. de Brienne in a vast financial scheme which he had boldly proposed for registration by the court. By means of a series of loans which were to reach the enormous total of four hundred and twenty millions, the States-general, assembled on the conclusion of this vast operation, and relieved from all pecuniary embarrassment, would be able to concentrate their thoughts on the important interests of the future. At the same time with the loan-edict, Brienne presented to the Parliament the law-scheme, for so long a time under discussion, on behalf of Protestants.

The king had repaired in person to the palace in royal session; the keeper of the seals, Lamoignon, expounded the necessity of the edicts. "To the monarch alone," he repeated, "belongs the legislative power, without dependence and without partition." This was throwing down the gauntlet to the whole assembly as well as to public opinion. Abbe Sabatier and Councillor Freteau had already spoken, when Robert de St. Vincent rose, an old Jansenist and an old member of Parliament, accustomed to express his thoughts roughly. "Who, without dismay, can hear loans still talked of?" he exclaimed "and for what sum? four hundred and twenty millions! A plan is being formed for five years? But, since your Majesty's reign began, have the same views ever directed the administration of finance for five years in succession? Can you be ignorant, sir (here he addressed himself to the comptroller-general), that each minister, as he steps into his place, rejects the system of his predecessor in order to substitute that which he has devised? Within only eight months, you are the fourth minister of finance, and yet you are forming a plan which cannot be accomplished in less than five years! The remedy, sir, for the wounds of the state has been pointed out by your Parliament: it is the convocation of the Statesgeneral. Their convocation, to be salutary, must be prompt. Your ministers would like to avoid this assembly whose surveillance they dread. Their hope is vain. Before two years are over, the necessities of the state will force you to convoke the States-general."

M. d'Espremesnil was overcome; less violent than usual, he had, appealed to the king's heart; for a moment Louis XVI. appeared to be moved, and so was the assembly with him; the edicts were about to be enregistered despite the efforts of the opposition; already the premier president was collecting the votes; the keeper of the seals would not, at this grave moment, renounce any kingly prerogative. "When the king is at the Parliament, there is no deliberation; his will makes law," said the legal rule and the custom of the magistracy. Lamoignon went up to the throne; he said a few words in a low voice. "Mr. Keeper of the seals, have the edicts enregistered," said Louis XVI. The minister immediately repeated the formula used at beds of justice. A murmur ran through the assembly; the Duke of Orleans rose; he had recently become the head of his house through his father's death, and found himself more than ever involved in intrigues hostile to the court. "Sir," said he in a broken voice, "this registration appears to me illegal. . . . It should be distinctly stated that the registration is done by the express command of your Majesty." The king was as much moved as the prince. "It is all the same to me," he replied. "You are master, of course." "Yes,—it is legal, because I so will." The edict relative to non-Catholics was read, and Louis XVI. withdrew.

There was violent commotion in the assembly; the protest of the Duke of Orleans was drawn up in a more explicit form. "The difference between a bed of justice and a royal session is, that one exhibits the frankness of despotism and the other its duplicity," cried d'Espremesnil. Notwithstanding the efforts of M. de Malesherbes and the Duke of Nivernais, the Parliament inscribed on the registers that it was not to be understood to take any part in the transcription here ordered of gradual and progressive loans for the years 1788, 1789, 1790, 1791, and 1792. In reply, the Duke of Orleans was banished to Villers-Cotterets, whilst Councillors Freteau and Sabatier were arrested and taken to a state-prison.

By the scandalousness of his life, as well as by his obstructive buildings in the Palais-Royal, the Duke of Orleans had lost favor with the public; his protest and his banishment restored him at once to his popularity. The Parliament piled remonstrance upon remonstrance, every day more and more haughty in form as well as in substance. Dipping into the archives in search of antiquated laws, the magistrates appealed to the liberties of olden France, mingling therewith the novel principles of the modern philosophy. "Several pretty well-known facts," they said, "prove that the nation, more enlightened as to its true interests, even in the least elevated classes, is disposed to accept from the hands of your Majesty the greatest blessing a king can bestow upon his subjects —liberty. It is this blessing, Sir, which your Parliament come to ask you to restore, in the name of a generous and faithful people. It is no longer a prince of your blood, it is no longer two magistrates whom your Parliament ask you to restore in the name of the laws and of reason, but three Frenchmen, three men."

To peremptory demands were added perfidious insinuations.

"Such ways, Sir," said one of these remonstrances, "have no place in your heart, such samples of proceeding are not the principles of your Majesty, they come from another source." For the first time the queen was thus held up to public odium by the Parliament which had dealt her a fatal blow by acquitting Cardinal Rohan; she was often present at the king's conferences with his ministers, reluctantly and by the advice of M. de Brienne, for and in whom Louis XVI. never felt any liking or confidence. "There is no more happiness for me since they have made me an intriguer," she said sadly to Madame Campan. And when the latter objected: "Yes," replied the queen, "it is the proper word: every woman who meddles in matters above her lights and beyond the limits of her duty, is nothing but an intriguer; you will remember, however, that I do not spare myself, and that it is with regret I give myself such a title. The other day, as I was crossing the Bull's Eye (Eil de Boeuf), to go to a private committee at the king's, I heard one of the chapel-band say out loud, 'A queen who does her duty remains in her rooms at her needlework.' I said to myself: 'Thou'rt quite right, wretch; but thou know'st not my position; I yield to necessity and my evil destiny.'" A true daughter of Maria Theresa in her imprisonment and on the scaffold, Marie Antoinette had neither the indomitable perseverance nor the simple grandeur in political views which had restored the imperial throne in the case of her illustrious mother. She weakened beneath a burden too heavy for a mind so long accustomed to the facile pleasures of youth. "The queen certainly has wits and firmness which might suffice for great things," wrote her friend, the Count of La Marck, to M. de Mercy Argenteau, her mother's faithful agent in France; "but it must be confessed that, whether in business or in mere conversation, she does not always exhibit that degree of attention and that persistence which are indispensable for getting at the bottom of what one ought to know, in order to prevent errors and to insure success."

The same want of purpose and persistence of which the Count of La Marck complained was strikingly apparent everywhere and in all matters; the Duke of Orleans was soon tired of banishment; he wrote to the queen, who obtained his recall. The ministers were making mysterious preparations for a grand stroke. The Parliament, still agitated and anxious, had at last enregistered the edict relating to non-Catholics. Public opinion, like the government, supported it eagerly; the principles of tolerance which had prompted it were henceforth accepted by all; certain bishops and certain bigots were still trying to hinder this first step towards a legal status for a long while refused to Protestants. M. d'Espremesnil, an earnest disciple of the philosophe inconnu, the mystic St. Martin, just as he had been the dupe of Mesmer and of Cagliostro, was almost single-handed in the Parliament in his opposition to the registration of the edict. Extending his hand towards the crucifix, he exclaimed with violence: "Would you crucify him a second time?" The court was a better judge of Christian principles, and Protestants were permitted to be born, to marry, and to die on French territory. The edict did not as yet concede to them any other right.

The contest extended as it grew hotter; everywhere the parliaments took up the quarrel of the court of Paris; the formation of the provincial assemblies furnished new centres of opposition; the petty noblesse made alliance with the magistracy; the antagonism of principles became every day more evident; after the five months elapsed since the royal session, the Parliament was still protesting against the violence done to it. "I had no need to take or count the votes," said the king's reply; "being present at the deliberation, I judged for myself without taking any account of plurality. If plurality in my courts were to force my will, the monarchy would be nothing but an aristocracy of magistrates." "No, sir, no aristocracy in France, but no despotism either," replied the members of parliament.

The indiscretion of a printer made M. d'Espremesnil acquainted with the great designs which were in preparation; at his instigation the Parliament issued a declaration as to the reciprocal rights and duties of the monarch and the nation. "France," said the resolution, "is a monarchy hereditary from male to male, governed by the king following the laws; it has for fundamental laws the nation's right to freely grant subsidies by means of the States-general convoked and composed according to regulation, the customs and capitulations of the provinces, the irremovability of the magistrates, the right of the courts to enregister edicts, and that of each citizen to be judged only by his natural judges, without liability ever to be arrested arbitrarily." "The magistrates must cease to exist before the nation ceases to be free," said a second protest.

Bold and defiant in its grotesque mixture of the ancient principles of the magistracy with the novel theories of philosophy, the resolution of the Parliament was quashed by the king. Orders were given to arrest M. d'Espremesnil and a young councillor, Goislard de Montsabert, who had proposed an inquiry into the conduct of the comptrollers commissioned to collect the second twentieth. The police of the Parliament was perfect and vigilant; the two magistrates were warned and took refuge in the Palace of Justice; all the chambers were assembled and the peers convoked. Ten or a dozen appeared, notwithstanding the king's express prohibition.

The Parliament had placed the two threatened members "under the protection of the king and of the law;" the premier president, at the head of a deputation, had set out for Versailles to demand immunity for the accused; the court was in session awaiting his return.

The mob thronged the precincts of the Palace, some persons had even penetrated into the grand chamber; no deliberations went on. Towards midnight, several companies of the French guards entered the hall of the Pas-Perdus; all the exits were guarded. The court was in commotion, the young councillors demanded that the deliberations should go on publicly. "Gentlemen," said President de Gourgues, "would you derogate from the ancient forms?" The spectators withdrew. The Marquis d'Agoult, aide-major of the French guards, demanded admission; he had orders from the king. The ushers opened the doors; at sight of the magistrates in scarlet robes, motionless upon their seats, the officer was for a moment abashed; he cast his eye from bench to bench, his voice faltered when he read the order signed by the king to arrest "MM. d'Espremesnil and De Montsabert, in the grand chamber or elsewhere." "The court will proceed to deliberate thereon, sir," replied the president. "Your forms are to deliberate," hotly replied M. d'Agoult, who had recovered himself; "I know nothing of those forms, the king's orders must be executed without delay; point out to me those whom I have to arrest." Silence reigned throughout the hall; not a word, not a gesture indicated the accused. Only the dukes and peers made merry aloud over the nobleman charged with so disagreeable a mission: he repeated his demand: "We are all d'Espremesnil and Montsabert," exclaimed the magistrates. M. d'Agoult left the room.

He soon returned, accompanied by an exon of the short robe, named Larchier. "Show me whom I have to arrest," was the officer's order. The exon looked all round the room; he knew every one of the magistrates; the accused were sitting right in front of him. "I do not see MM. d'Espremesnil and Montsabert anywhere," he at last said, tremulously. M. d'Agoult's threats could not get any other answer out of him.

The officer had gone to ask for fresh orders; the deputation sent to Versailles had returned, without having been received by Louis XVI., of whom an audience had not been requested. The court wanted to send some of the king's people at once to notify a fresh request; the troops guarded all the doors, nobody could leave the Palace.

"Gentlemen," said d'Espr4mesnil at last, "it would be contrary to our honor as well as to the dignity of the Parliament to prolong this scene any further; and, besides, we cannot be the ruin of Larchier; let M. d'Agoult be shown in again." The officer was recalled, the magistrates were seated and covered. "Sir," said M. d'Espremesnil, "I am one of those you are in search of. The law forbids me to obey orders irregularly obtained (surpris) of the sovereign, and it is to be faithful to him that I have not mentioned who I am until this moment. I call upon you to state whether, in case I should not go with you voluntarily, you have orders to drag me from this building." "Certainly, sir." D'Agoult was already striding towards the door to order in his troops. "Enough," said M. d'Espremesnil; "I yield to force;" and, turning to his colleagues, "Gentlemen," he said, "to you I protest against the violence of which I am the object; forget me and think henceforth of nothing but the common weal; I commend to you my family; whatever may be my fate, I shall never cease to glory in professing to the last hour the principles which do honor to this court." He made a deep obeisance, and followed the major, going out by the secret staircases in order to avoid the crowd whose shouts could be heard even within the palace buildings. Goislard de Montsabert followed his colleague's example: he was confined at Pierre-Encise; M. d'Espremesnil had been taken to the Isle of St. Marguerite.

Useless and ill-judged violence, which excited the passions of the public without intimidating opponents! The day after the scene of May 6th, at the moment when the whole magistracy of France was growing hot over the thrilling account of the arrest of the two councillors, the Parliament of Paris was sent for to Versailles (May 8, 1788).



The magistrates knew beforehand what fate awaited them. The king uttered a few severe words. After a pompous preamble, the keeper of the seals read out six fresh edicts intended to ruin forever the power of the sovereign courts.

Forty-seven great baillie-courts, as a necessary intermediary between the parliaments and the inferior tribunals, were henceforth charged with all civil cases not involving sums of more than twenty thousand livres, as well as all criminal cases of the third order (estate). The representations of the provincial assembly of Dauphiny severely criticised the impropriety of this measure. "The ministers," they said, "have not been afraid to flout the third estate, whose life, honor, and property no longer appear to be objects worthy of the sovereign courts, for which are reserved only the causes of the rich and the crimes of the privileged." The number of members of the Parliament of Paris was reduced to sixty-nine. The registration of edicts, the only real political power left in the hands of the magistrates, was transferred to a plenary court, an old title without stability and without tradition, composed, under the king's presidency, of the great functionaries of state, assisted by a small number of councillors. The absolute power was thus preparing a rampart against encroachments of authority on the part of the sovereign courts; it had fortified itself beforehand against the pretensions of the States-general, "which cannot pretend to be anything but a more extended council on behalf of the sovereign, the latter still remaining supreme arbiter of their representations and their grievances."

Certain useful ameliorations in the criminal legislation, amongst others total abolition of torture, completed the sum of edicts. A decree of the council declared all the parliarnents prorogued until the formation of the great bailliecourts. The plenary court was to assemble forthwith at Versailles. It only sat once; in presence of the opposition amongst the majority of the men summoned to compose it, the ministers, unforeseeing and fickle even with all their ability and their boldness, found themselves obliged to adjourn the sittings indefinitely. All the members of the Parliament of Paris had bound themselves by a solemn oath not to take a place in any other assembly. "In case of dispersal of the magistracy," said the resolution entered upon the registers of the court, "the Parliament places the present act as a deposit in the hands of the king, of his august family, of the peers of the realm, of the States- general, and of each of the orders, united or separate, representing the nation."

At sight of this limitation, less absolute and less cleverly calculated, of the attempts made by Chancellor Maupeou, after seventeen years' rapid marching towards a state of things so novel and unheard of, the commotion was great in Paris; the disturbance, however, did not reach to the masses, and the disorder in the streets was owing less to the Parisian populace than to mendicants, rascals of sinister mien, flocking in, none knew why, from the four points of the compass. The provinces were more seriously disturbed. All the sovereign courts rose up with one accord; the Parliament of Rouen declared "traitors to the king, to the nation, to the province, perjured and branded with infamy, all officers and judges" who should proceed in virtue of the ordinances of May 8. "The authority of the king is unlimited for doing good to his subjects," said one of the presidents, "but everybody should put limits to it when it turns towards oppression." It was the very commandant of the royal troops whom the magistrates thus reproached with their passive obedience.

Normandy confined herself to declarations and speeches; other provinces went beyond those bounds: Brittany claimed performance "of the marriage contract between Louis XII. and the Duchess Anne." Notwithstanding the king's prohibition, the Parliament met at Rennes. A detachment of soldiers having been ordered to disperse the magistrates, a band of gentlemen, supported by an armed mob, went to protect the deliberations of the court. Fifteen officers fought duels with fifteen gentlemen. The court issued a decree of arrest against the holders of the king's commission. The youth of Nantes hurried to the aid of the youth of Rennes. The intermediary commission of the states ordered the bishops to have the prayers said which were customary in times of public calamity, and a hundred and thirty gentlemen carried to the governor a declaration signed by the noblesse of almost the whole province. "We, members of the noblesse of Brittany, do declare infamous those who may accept any place, whether in the new administration of justice or in the administration of the states, which is not recognized by the laws and constitutions of the province." A dozen of them set off for Versailles to go and denounce the ministers to Louis XVI. Being put in the Bastille, eighteen of their friends went to demand then back; they were followed by fifty others. The officers of the Bassigny regiment had taken sides with the opposition, and discussed the orders sent to them. Among the great lords of the province, attached to the king's own person, MM. de La Tremoille, de Rieux, and de Guichen left the court to join their protests to those of their friends; the superintendent, Bertrand de Molleville, was hanged- in effigy and had to fly.

In Bearn, the peasantry had descended from the mountains; hereditary proprietors of their little holdings, they joined the noblesse to march out and meet the Duke of Guiche, sent by the king to restore order. Already the commandant of the province had been obliged to authorize the meeting of the Parliament. The Bearnese bore in front of their ranks the cradle of Henry IV., carefully preserved in the Castle of Pau. "We are no rebels," they said: "we claim our contract and fidelity to the oaths of a king whom we love. The Bearnese is free-born, he will not die a slave. Let the king have all from us in love and not by force; our blood is his and our country's. Let none come to take our lives when we are defending our liberty."

Legal in Normandy, violent in Brittany, tumultuous in Bearn, the parliamentary protests took a politic and methodical form in Dauphiny. An insurrection amongst the populace of Grenoble, soon supported by the villagers from the mountains, had at first flown to arms at the sound of the tocsin. The members of the Parliament, on the point of leaving the city, had been detained by force, and their carriages had been smashed. The troops offered little resistance; an entry was effected into the house of the governor, the Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre, and, with an axe above his head, the insurgents threatened to hang him to the chandelier in his drawing-room if he did not convoke the Parliament. Ragged ruffians ran to the magistrates, and compelled them to meet in the sessions-hall. The members of Parliament succeeded with great difficulty in pacifying the mob. As soon as they found themselves free, they hastened away into exile. Other hands had taken up their quarrel. A certain number of members of the three orders met at the town hall, and, on their private authority, convoked for the 21st of July the special states of Dauphiny, suppressed a while before by Cardinal Richelieu.

The Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre had been superseded by old Marshal Vaux, rough and ready. He had at his disposal twenty thousand men. Scarcely had he arrived at Grenoble, when he wrote to Versailles. "It is too late," he said. The prerogatives of royal authority were maintained, however. The marshal granted a meeting of the states-provincial, but he required permission to be asked of him. He forbade the assembly to be held at Grenoble. It was in the Castle of Vizille, a former residence of the dauphins, that the three orders of Dauphiny met, closely united together in wise and patriotic accord. The Archbishop of Vienne, Lefranc de Pompignan, brother of the poet, lately the inveterate foe of Voltaire, an ardently and sincerely pious man, led his clergy along the most liberal path; the noblesse of the sword, mingled with the noblesse of the robe, voted blindly all the resolutions of the third estate; these were suggested by the real head of the assembly, M. Mounier, judge-royal of Grenoble, a friend of M. Necker's, an enlightened, loyal, honorable man, destined ere long to make his name known over the whole of France by his courageous resistance to the outbursts of the National Assembly. Unanimously the three orders presented to the king their claims to the olden liberties of the province; they loudly declared, however, that they were prepared for all sacrifices and aspired to nothing but the common rights of all Frenchmen. The double representation of the third in the estates of Dauphiny was voted without contest, as well as equal assessment of the impost intended to replace forced labor. Throughout the whole province the most perfect order had succeeded the first manifestations of popular irritation.

It was now more than a year since Brienne had become chief minister. MM. de Segur and de Castries had retired, refusing to serve under a man whom they did not esteem. Alone, shut up in his closet, the archbishop listened without emotion to the low murmur of legal protests, the noisy tumult of insurrections. "I have foreseen all, even civil war. The king shall be obeyed, the king knows how to make himself obeyed," he kept repeating in the assured tones of an oracle. Resolved not to share the responsibility of the reverse he foresaw, Baron de Breteuil sent in his resignation.

Meanwhile the treasury was found to be empty; Brienne appealed to the clergy, hoping to obtain from ecclesiastical wealth one of those gratuitous gifts which had often come in aid of the State's necessities. The Church herself was feeling the influence of the times. Without relaxing in her pretensions to the maintenance of privileges, the ecclesiastical assembly thought itself bound to plead the cause of that magistracy which it had so, often fought. "Our silence," said the remonstrances, "would be a crime, of which the nation and posterity would never absolve us. Your Majesty has just effected at the bed of justice of May 8, a great movement as regards things and persons. Such ought to be a consequence rather than a preliminary of the States-general; the will of a prince which has not been enlightened by his courts may be regarded as a momentary will. Your Majesty has issued an edict carrying the restoration of the plenary court, but that court has recalled an ancient reign without recalling ancient ideas. Even if it had been once the supreme tribunal of our kings, it now presents no longer that numerous assemblage of prelates, barons, and lieges united together. The nation sees nothing in it but a court-tribunal whose complaisance it would be afraid of, and whose movements and intrigues it would dread in times of minority and regency. . . . Our functions are sacred, when, from the height of the altars, we pray heaven to send down blessings on kings and on their subjects; they are still so, when, after teaching people their duties, we represent their rights and make solicitations on behalf of the afflicted, on behalf of the absent despoiled of their position and their liberty. The clergy of France, Sir, stretch forth to you their suppliant hands; it is so beautiful to see might and puissance yielding to prayer! The glory of your Majesty is not in being King of France, but in being King of the French, and the heart of your subjects in the fairest of your domains." The assembly of the clergy granted to the treasury only a poor gift of eighteen hundred thousand livres.

All the resources were exhausted, disgraceful tricks had despoiled the hospitals and the poor; credit was used up, the payments of the State were backward; the discount-bank (caisse d'escompte) was authorized to refuse to give coin. To divert the public mind from this painful situation, Brienne proposed to the king to yield to the requests of the members of Parliament, of the clergy, and of the noblesse themselves. A decree of August 8, 1788, announced that the States-general would be convoked May 1, 1789: the re-establishment of the plenary court was suspended to that date. Concessions wrested from the weakness and irresolution of governments do not strengthen their failing powers. Brienne had exhausted his boldness as well as his basenesses; he succumbed beneath the outcry of public wrath and mistrust. He offered the comptroller-generalship to M. Necker, who refused. "He told XVI. "Mercy," is the expression in Brienne's own account, "that under a minister who, like me, had lost the favor of the public, he could not do any good." A court-intrigue at last decided the minister's fall. The Count of Artois, egged on by Madame de Polignac, made urgent entreaties to the queen; she was attached to Brienne; she, however, resigned herself to giving him up, but with so many favors and such an exhibition of kindness towards all his family, that the public did not feel at all grateful to Marie Antoinette. Already Brienne had exchanged the archbishopric of Toulouse for that of Sens, a much richer one. "The queen offered me the hat and anything I might desire," writes the prelate, "telling me that she parted from me with regret, weeping at being obliged to do so, and permitting me to kiss her (l'embrasser) in token of her sorrow and her interest." "After having made the mistake of bringing him into the ministry," says Madame Campan [Memoires, t. i. p. 33], "the queen unfortunately made an equally grave one in supporting him at the time of a disgrace brought upon him by the despair of the whole nation. She considered it only consistent with her dignity to give him, at his departure, ostensible proofs of her esteem, and, her very sensibility misleading her, she sent him her portrait adorned with precious stones and the patent of lady of the palace for his niece, Madame de Courcy, saying that it was necessary to indemnify a minister sacrificed by the trickery of courts and the factious spirit of the nation. I have since seen the queen shed bitter tears over the errors she committed at this period."