A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume VI Part 17

M. Turgot, meanwhile, was continuing his labors, preparing a project for equitable redistribution of the talliage and his grand system of a graduated scale (_hierarchie_) of munic.i.p.al a.s.semblies, commencing with the parish, to culminate in a general meeting of delegates from each province; he threatened, in the course of his reforms, the privileges of the n.o.blesse and of the clergy, and gave his mind anxiously to the instruction of the people, whose condition and welfare he wanted to simultaneously elevate and augment; already there was a buzz of murmurs against him, confined as yet to the courtiers, when the dearness of bread and the distress which ensued till the spring of 1775 furnished his adversaries with a convenient pretext. Up to that time the attacks had been cautious and purely theoretical. M. Necker, an able banker from Geneva, for a long while settled in Paris, hand and glove with the philosophers, and keeping up, moreover, a great establishment, had brought to the comptroller-general a work which he had just finished on the trade in grain; on many points he did not share M. Turgot's opinions.

"Be kind enough to ascertain for yourself," said the banker to the minister, "whether the book can be published without inconvenience to the government." M. Turgot was proud and sometimes rude. "Publish, sir, publish," said he, without offering his hand to take the ma.n.u.script; "the public shall decide." M. Necker, out of pique, published his book; it had an immense sale; other pamphlets, more violent and less solid, had already appeared; at the same moment a riot, which seemed to have been planned and to be under certain guidance, broke out in several parts of France. Drunken men shouted about the public thoroughfares, "Bread!

cheap bread!"

Burgundy had always been restless and easily excited. It was at Dijon that the insurrection began; on the 20th of April, the peasantry moved upon the town and smashed the furniture of a councillor in the Maupeou Parliament, who was accused of monopoly; they were already overflowing the streets; exasperated by the cruel answer of the governor, M. de la Tour du Pin: "You want something to eat? Go and graze; the gra.s.s is just coming up." The burgesses trembled in their houses; the bishop threw himself in the madmen's way and succeeded in calming them with his exhortations. The disturbance had spread to Pontoise; there the riot broke out on the 1st of May, the market was pillaged; and the 2d, at Versailles, a mob collected under the balcony of the castle. Everywhere ruffians of sinister appearance mingled with the mob, exciting its pa.s.sions and urging it to acts of violence: the same men, such as are only seen in troublous days, were at the same time scouring Brie, Soissonnais, Vexin, and Upper Normandy; already barns had been burned and wheat thrown into the river; sacks of flour were ripped to pieces before the king's eyes, at Versailles. In his excitement and dismay he promised the mob that the bread-rate should for the future be fixed at two sous; the rioters rushed to Paris.

M. Turgot had been confined to his bed for some months by an attack of gout; the Paris bakers' shops had already been pillaged; the rioters had entered simultaneously by several gates, badly guarded; only one bakery, the owner of which had taken the precaution of putting over the door a notice with shop to let on it, had escaped the madmen. The comptroller-general had himself put into his carriage and driven to Versailles: at his advice the king withdrew his rash concession; the current price of bread was maintained. "No firing upon them," Louis XVI.

insisted. The lieutenant of police, Lenoir, had shown weakness and inefficiency; Marshal Biron was intrusted with the repression of the riot. He occupied all the main thoroughfares and cross-roads; sentries were placed at the bakers' doors; those who had hidden themselves were compelled to bake. The _octroi_ dues on grain were at the same time suspended at all the markets; wheat was already going down; when the Parisians went out of doors to see the riot, they couldn't find any.

"Well done, general in command of the flour (_general des farina_)," said the tremblers, admiring the military arrangements of Marshal Biron.

The Parliament had caused to be placarded a decree against street a.s.semblies, at the same time requesting the king to lower the price of bread. The result was deplorable; the severe resolution, of the council was placarded beside the proclamation of the Parliament; the magistrates were summoned to Versailles. The prosecution of offenders was forbidden them; it was intrusted to the provost's department. "The proceedings of the brigands appear to be combined," said the keeper of the seals; "their approach is announced; public rumors indicate the day, the hour, the places at which they are to commit their outrages. It would seem as if there were a plan formed to lay waste the country-places, intercept navigation, prevent the carriage of wheat on the high-roads, in order to starve out the large towns, and especially the city of Paris." The king at the same time forbade any "remonstrance." I rely," said he on dismissing the court, "upon your placing no obstacle or hinderance in the way of the measures I have taken, in order that no similar event may occur during the period of my reign."

The troubles were everywhere subsiding, the merchants were recovering their spirits. M. Turgot had at once sent fifty thousand francs to a trader whom the rioters had robbed of a boat full of wheat which they had flung into the river; two of the insurgents were at the same time hanged at Paris on a gallows forty feet high; and a notice was sent to the parish priests, which they were to read from the pulpit in order to enlighten the people as to the folly of such outbreaks and as to the conditions of the trade in grain. "My people, when they know the authors of the trouble, will regard them with horror," said the royal circular.

The authors of the trouble have remained unknown; to his last day M.

Turgot believed in the existence of a plot concocted by the Prince of Conti, with the design of overthrowing him.

Severities were hateful to the king; he had misjudged his own character, when, at the outset of his reign, he had desired the appellation of Louis le Severe. "Have we nothing to reproach ourselves with in these measures?" he was incessantly asking M. Turgot, who was as conscientious but more resolute than his master. An amnesty preceded the coronation, which was to take place at Rheims on the 11th of June, 1775.

A grave question presented itself as regarded the king's oath: should he swear, as the majority of his predecessors had sworn, to exterminate heretics? M. Turgot had aroused Louis XVI.'s scruples upon this subject.

"Tolerance ought to appear expedient in point of policy for even an infidel prince," he said; "but it ought to be regarded as a sacred duty for a religious prince." His opinion had been warmly supported by M. de Malesherbes, premier president of the Court of Aids. The king in his perplexity consulted M. de Maurepas. "M. Turgot is right," said the minister, "but he is too bold. What he proposes could hardly be attempted by a prince who came to the throne at a ripe age and in tranquil times. That is not your position. The fanatics are more to be dreaded than the heretics. The latter are accustomed to their present condition. It will always be easy for you not to employ persecution.

Those old formulas, of which n.o.body takes any notice, are no longer considered to be binding." The king yielded; he made no change in the form of the oath, and confined himself to stammering out a few incoherent words. At the coronation of Louis XV. the people, heretofore admitted freely to the cathedral, had been excluded; at the coronation of Louis XVI. the officiator, who was the coadjutor of Rheims, omitted the usual formula addressed to the whole a.s.sembly, "Will you have this king for your king?" This insolent neglect was soon to be replied to by the sinister echo of the sovereignty of the people. The clergy, scared by M.

Turgot's liberal tendencies, reiterated their appeals to the king against the liberties tacitly accorded to Protestants. "Finish," they said to Louis XVI., "the work which Louis the Great began, and which Louis the Well-beloved continued." The king answered with vague a.s.surances; already MM. Turgot and de Malesherbes were entertaining him with a project which conceded to Protestants the civil status.

M. de Malesherhes, indeed, had been for some months past seconding his friend in the weighty task which the latter had undertaken. Born at Paris on the 6th of December, 1721, son of the chancellor William de Lamoignon, and for the last twenty-three years premier president in the Court of Aids, Malesherbes had invariably fought on behalf of honest right and sound liberty; popularity had followed him in exile; it had increased continually since the accession of Louis XVI., who lost no time in recalling him; he had just presented to the king a remarkable memorandum touching the reform of the fiscal regimen, when M. Turgot proposed to the king to call him to the ministry in the place of the Duke of La Vrilliere. M. de Maurepas made no objection. "He will be the link of the ministry," he said, "because he has the eloquence of tongue and of heart." "Rest a.s.sured," wrote Mdlle. de Lespina.s.se, "that what is well will be done and will be done well. Never, no never, were two more enlightened, more disinterested, more virtuous men more powerfully knit together in a greater and a higher cause." The first care of M. de.

Malesherbes was to protest against the sealed letters (_lettres de cachet_--summary arrest), the application whereof he was for putting in the hands of a special tribunal; he visited the Bastille, releasing the prisoners confined on simple suspicion. He had already dared to advise the king to a convocation of the states-general. "In France," he had written to Louis XVI., "the nation has always had a deep sense of its right and its liberty. Our maxims have been more than once recognized by our kings; they have even gloried in being the sovereigns of a free people. Meanwhile, the articles of this liberty have never been reduced to writing, and the real power, the power of arms, which, under a feudal government, was in the hands of the grandees, has been completely centred in the kingly power. . . . We ought not to hide from you, Sir, that the way which would be most simple, most natural, and most in conformity with the const.i.tution of this monarchy, would be to hear the nation itself in full a.s.sembly, and n.o.body should have the poltroonery to use any other language to you; n.o.body should leave you in ignorance that the unanimous wish of the nation is to obtain states-general or at the least states-provincial. . . . Deign to consider, Sir, that on the day you grant this precious liberty to your people it may be said that a treaty has been concluded between king and nation against ministers and magistrates: against the ministers, if there be any perverted enough to wish to conceal from you the truth; against the magistrates, if there ever be any ambitious enough to pretend to have the exclusive right of telling you it."

Almost the whole ministry was in the hands of reformers; a sincere desire to do good impelled the king towards those who promised him the happiness of his people. Marshal Muy had succ.u.mbed to a painful operation. "Sir,"

he had said to Louis XVI., before placing himself in the surgeon's hands, "in a fortnight I shall be at your Majesty's feet or with your august father." He had succ.u.mbed. M. Turgot spoke to M. de Maurepas of the Duke of St. Germain. "Propose him to the king," said the minister, adding his favorite phrase "one can but try."

In the case of government, trials are often a dangerous thing. M. de St.

Germain, born in the Jura in 1707, and entered first of all amongst the Jesuits, had afterwards devoted himself to the career of arms: he had served the Elector Palatine, Maria Theresa, and the Elector of Bavaria; enrolled finally by Marshal Saxe, he had distinguished himself under his orders; as lieutenant-general during the Seven Years' War, he had brought up his divisionn at Rosbach more quickly than his colleagues had theirs, he had fled less far than the others before the enemy; but his character was difficult, suspicious, exacting; he was always seeing everywhere plots concocted to ruin him. "I am persecuted to the death," he would say. He entered the service of Denmark: returning to France and in poverty, he lived in Alsace on the retired list; it was there that the king's summons came to find him out. In his solitude M. de St. Germain had conceived a thousand projects of reform; he wanted to apply them all at once. He made no sort of case of the picked corps and suppressed the majority of them, thus irritating, likewise, all the privileged. "M. de St. Germain," wrote Frederick II. to Voltaire, "had great and n.o.ble plans very advantageous for your Welches; but everybody thwarted him, because the reforms he proposed would have entailed a strictness which was repugnant to them on ten thousand sluggards, well frogged, well laced."

The enthusiasm which had been excited by the new minister of war had disappeared from amongst the officers; he lost the hearts of the soldiers by wanting to establish in the army the corporal punishments in use amongst the German armies in which he had served. The feeling was so strong, that the attempt was abandoned. "In the matter of sabres," said a grenadier, "I like only the edge." Violent and weak both together, in spite of his real merit and his genuine worth, often giving up wise resolutions out of sheer embarra.s.sment, he nearly always failed in what he undertook; the outcries against the reformers were increased thereby; the faults of M. de St. Germain were put down to M. Turgot.

It was against the latter indeed, that the courtiers' anger and M. de Maurepas' growing jealousy were directed. "Once upon a time there was in France," said a ,pamphlet, ent.i.tled _Le Songe de M. de Maurepas,_ attributed to Monsieur, the king's brother,--"there was in France a certain man, clumsy, cra.s.s, heavy, born with more of rudeness than of character, more of obstinacy than of firmness, of impetuosity than of tact, a charlatan in administration as well as in virtue, made to bring the one into disrepute and the other into disgust, in other respects shy from self-conceit, timid from pride, as unfamiliar with men, whom he had never known, as with public affairs, which he had always seen askew; his name was Turgot. He was one of those half-thinking brains which adopt all visions, all manias of a gigantic sort. He was believed to be deep, he was really shallow; night and day he was raving of philosophy, liberty, equality, net product." "He is too much (trop fort) for me," M.

de Maurepas would often say. "A man must be possessed (or inspired-- _enrage_)," wrote Malesherbes, "to force, at one and the same time, the hand of the king, of M. de Maurepas, of the whole court and of the Parliament."

Perhaps the task was above human strength; it was certainly beyond that of M. Turgot. Ever occupied with the public weal, he turned his mind to every subject, issuing a multiplicity of decrees, sometimes with rather chimerical hopes. He had proposed to the king six edicts; two were extremely important; the first abolished jurorships (_jurandes_) and masterships (_maitrises_) among the workmen. "The king," said the preamble, "wishes to secure to all his subjects, and especially to the humblest, to those who have no property but their labor and their industry, the full and entire enjoyment of their rights, and to reform, consequently, the inst.i.tutions which strike at those rights, and which, in spite of their antiquity, have failed to be legalized by time, opinion, and even the acts of authority." The second subst.i.tuted for forced labor on roads and highways an impost to which all proprietors were equally liable.

This was the first step towards equal redistribution of taxes; great was the explosion of disquietude and wrath on the part of the privileged; it showed itself first in the council, by the mouth of M. de Miromesnil; Turgot sprang up with animation. "The keeper of the seals," he said, "seems to adopt the principle that, by the const.i.tution of the state, the n.o.blesse ought to be exempt from all taxation. This idea will appear a paradox to the majority of the nation. The commoners (_roturiers_) are certainly the greatest number, and we are no longer in the days when their voices did not count." The king listened to the discussion in silence. "Come," he exclaimed abruptly, "I see that there are only M.

Turgot and I here who love the people," and he signed the edicts.

The Parliament, like the n.o.blesse, had taken up the cudgels; they made representation after representation. "The populace of France," said the court boldly, "is liable to talliage and forced labor at will, and that is a part of the const.i.tution which the king cannot change." Louis XVI.

summoned the Parliament to Versailles, and had the edicts enregistered at a bed of justice. "It is a bed of beneficence!" exclaimed Voltaire, a pa.s.sionate admirer of Turgot.

The comptroller-general was triumphant; but his victory was but the prelude to his fall. Too many enemies were leagued against him, irritated both by the n.o.blest qualities of his character, and at the same time by the natural defects of his manners. Possessed of love "for a beautiful ideal, of a rage for perfection," M. Turgot had wanted to attempt everything, undertake everything, reform everything at one blow.

He fought single-handed. M. de Malesherbes, firm as a rock at the head of the Court of Aids, supported as he was by the traditions and corporate feeling of the magistracy, had shown weakness as a minister. "I could offer the king only uprightness and good-heartedness," he said himself, "two qualities insufficient to make a minister, even a mediocre one."

The courtiers, in fact, called him "good-heart" (_bonhomme_). "M. de Malesherbes has doubts about everything," wrote Madame du Deffand; "M.

Turgot has doubts about nothing." M. de Maurepas having, of set purpose, got up rather a serious quarrel with him, Malesherbes sent in his resignation to the king; the latter pressed him to withdraw it: the minister remained inflexible. "You are better off than I," said Louis XVI. at last, "you can abdicate."

For a long while the king had remained faithful to M. Turgot. "People may say what they like," he would repeat, with sincere conviction, "but he is an honest man!" Infamous means were employed, it is said, with the king; he was shown forged letters, purporting to come from M. Turgot, intercepted at the post and containing opinions calculated to wound his Majesty himself. To pacify the jealousy of M. de Maurepas, Turgot had given up his privilege of working alone with the king. Left to the adroit manoeuvres of his old minister, Louis XVI. fell away by degrees from the troublesome reformer against whom were leagued all those who were about him. The queen had small liking for M. Turgot, whose strict economy had cut down the expenses of her household; contrary to their usual practice, her most trusted servants abetted the animosity of M. de Maurepas. "I confess that I am not sorry for these departures," wrote Marie Antoinette to her mother, after the fall of M. Turgot, "but I have had nothing to do with them." "Sir," M. Turgot had written to Louis XVI., "monarchs governed by courtiers have but to choose between the fate of Charles I. and that of Charles XI." The coolness went on increasing between the king and his minister. On the 12th of May, 1776, the comptroller-general entered the king's closet; he had come to speak to him about a new project for an edict; the exposition of reasons was, as usual, a choice morsel of political philosophy. "Another commentary!"

said the king with temper. He listened, however. When the comptroller-general had finished, "Is that all?" asked the king. "Yes, Sir." "So much the better," and he showed the minister out. A few hours later, M. Turgot received his dismissal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Turgot's Dismissal----367]

He was at his desk, drawing up an important decree; he laid down his pen, saying quietly, "My successor will finish;" and when M. de Maurepas hypocritically expressed his regret, "I retire," said M. Turgot, "without having to reproach myself with feebleness, or falseness, or dissimulation." He wrote to the king: "I have done, Sir, what I believed to be my duty in setting before you, with unreserved and unexampled frankness, the difficulty of the position in which I stood and what I thought of your own. If I had not done so, I should have considered myself to have behaved culpably towards you. You, no doubt, have come to a different conclusion, since you have withdrawn your confidence from me; but, even if I were mistaken, you cannot, Sir, but do justice to the feeling by which I was guided. All I desire, Sir, is that you may always be able to believe that I was short-sighted, and that I pointed out to you merely fanciful dangers. I hope that time may not justify me, and that your reign may be as happy and as tranquil, for yourself and your people, as they flattered themselves it would be, in accordance with your principles of justice and beneficence."

Useless wishes, belied in advance by the previsions of M. Turgot himself.

He had espied the danger and sounded some of the chasms just yawning beneath the feet of the nation as well as of the king; he committed the n.o.ble error of believing in the instant and supreme influence of justice and reason. "Sir," said he to Louis XVI., "you ought to govern, like G.o.d, by general laws." Had he been longer in power, M. Turgot would still have failed in his designs. The life of one man was too short, and the hand of one man too weak to modify the course of events, fruit slowly ripened during so many centuries. It was to the honor of M. Turgot that he discerned the mischief and would fain have applied the proper remedy.

He was often mistaken about the means, oftener still about the strength he had at disposal. He had the good fortune to die early, still sad and anxious about the fate of his country, without having been a witness of the catastrophes he had foreseen and of the sufferings as well as wreckage through which France must pa.s.s before touching at the haven he would fain have opened to her.

The joy of the courtiers was great, at Versailles, when the news arrived of M. Turgot's fall; the public regretted it but little: the inflexible severity of his principles which he never veiled by grace of manners, a certain disquietude occasioned by the chimerical views which were attributed to him, had alienated many people from him. His real friends were in consternation. "I was but lately rejoicing," said Abbe Very, "at the idea that the work was going on of coolly repairing a fine edifice which time had damaged. Henceforth, the most that will be done will be to see after repairing a few of its cracks. I no longer indulge in hopes of its restoration; I cannot but apprehend its downfall sooner or later."

"O, what news I hear!" writes Voltaire to D'Alembert; "France would have been too fortunate. What will become of us? I am quite upset. I see nothing but death for me to look forward to, now that M. Turgot is out of office. It is a thunderbolt fallen upon my brain and upon my heart."

A few months later M. de St. Germain retired in his turn, not to Alsace again, but to the a.r.s.enal with forty thousand livres for pension. The first, the great attempt at reform had failed. "M. de Malesherbes lacked will to remain in power," said Abbe Wry, "M. Turgot conciliatoriness (_conciliabilite_), and M. de Maurepas soul enough to follow his lights."

"M. de Malesherbes," wrote Condorcet, "has, either from inclination or from default of mental rect.i.tude, a bias towards eccentric and paradoxical ideas; he discovers in his mind numberless arguments for and against, but never discovers a single one to decide him. In his private capacity he had employed his eloquence in proving to the king and the ministers that the good of the nation was the one thing needful to be thought of; when he became minister, he employed it in proving that this good was impossible." "I understand two things in the matter of war,"

said M. de St. Germain just before he became minister, "to obey and to command; but, if it comes to advising, I don't know anything about it."

He was, indeed, a bad adviser; and with the best intentions he had no idea either how to command or how to make himself obeyed. M. Turgot had correctly estimated the disorder of affairs, when he wrote to the king on the 30th of April, a fortnight before his disgrace: "Sir, the parliaments are already in better heart, more audacious, more implicated in the cabals of the court than they were in 1770, after twenty years of enterprise and success. Minds are a thousand times more excited upon all sorts of matters, and your ministry is almost as divided and as feeble as that of your predecessor. Consider, Sir, that, in the course of nature, you have fifty years to reign, and reflect what progress may be made by a disorder which, in twenty years, has reached the pitch at which we see it."

Turgot and Malesherbes had fallen; they had vainly attempted to make the soundest as well as the most moderate principles of pure philosophy triumphant in the government; at home a new attempt, bolder and at the same time more practical, was soon about to resuscitate for a while the hopes of liberal minds; abroad and in a new world there was already a commencement of events which were about to bring to France a revival of glory and to shed on the reign of Louis XVI. a moment's legitimate and brilliant l.u.s.tre.

CHAPTER LVII.----LOUIS XVI.--FRANCE ABROAD.--UNITED STATES' WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 1775-1783.

"Two things, great and difficult as they may be, are a man's duty and may establish his fame. To support misfortune and be st.u.r.dily resigned to it; to believe in the good and trust in it perseveringly. [M. Guizot, _Washington_].

"There is a sight as fine and not less salutary than that of a virtuous man at grips with adversity; it is the sight of a virtuous man at the head of a good cause and securing its triumph.

"If ever cause were just and had a right to success, it was that of the English colonies which rose in insurrection to become the United States of America. Opposition, in their case, preceded insurrection.

"Their opposition was founded on historic right and on facts, on rational right and on ideas.

"It is to the honor of England that she had deposited in the cradle of her colonies the germ of their liberty; almost all, at their foundation, received charters which conferred upon the colonists the franchises of the mother-country.

"At the same time with legal rights, the colonists had creeds. It was not only as Englishmen, but as Christians, that they wanted to be free, and they had their faith even more at heart than their charters. Their rights would not have disappeared, even had they lacked their charters.

By the mere impulse of their souls, with the a.s.sistance of divine grace, they would have derived them from a sublimer source and one inaccessible to human power, for they cherished feelings that soared beyond even the inst.i.tutions of which they showed themselves to be so jealous.

"Such, in the English colonies, was the happy condition of man and of society, when England, by an arrogant piece of aggression, attempted to dispose, without their consent, of their fortunes and their destiny."

The uneasiness in the relations between the mother-country and the colonies was of old date; and the danger which England ran of seeing her great settlements beyond the sea separating from her had for some time past struck the more clear-sighted. "Colonies are like fruits which remain on the tree only until they are ripe," said M. Turgot in 1750; "when they have become self-sufficing, they do as Carthage did, as America will one day do." It was in the war between England and France for the possession of Canada that the Americans made the first trial of their strength.

Alliance was concluded between the different colonies; Virginia marched in tune with Ma.s.sachusetts; the pride of a new power, young and already victorious, animated the troops which marched to the conquest of Canada.

"If we manage to remove from Canada these turbulent Gauls," exclaimed John Adams, "our territory, in a century, will be more populous than England herself. Then all Europe will be powerless to subjugate us."

"I am astounded," said the Duke of Choiseul to the English negotiator who arrived at Paris in 1761, "I am astounded that your great Pitt should attach so much importance to the acquisition of Canada, a territory too scantily peopled to ever become dangerous for you, and one which, in our hands, would serve to keep your colonies in a state of dependence from which they will not fail to free themselves the moment Canada is ceded to you." A pamphlet attributed to Burke proposed to leave Canada to France with the avowed aim of maintaining on the border of the American provinces an object of anxiety and an everthreatening enemy.

America protested its loyalty and rejected with indignation all idea of separation. "It is said that the development of the strength of the colonies may render them more dangerous and bring them to declare their independence," wrote Franklin in 1760; "such fears are chimerical. So many causes are against their union, that I do not hesitate to declare it not only improbable but impossible; I say impossible--without the most provoking tyranny and oppression. As long as the government is mild and just, as long as there is security for civil and religious interests, the Americans will be respectful and submissive subjects. The waves only rise when the wind blows."

In England, many distinguished minds doubted whether the government of the mother-country would manage to preserve the discretion and moderation claimed by Franklin. "Notwithstanding all you say of your loyalty, you Americans," observed Lord Camden to Franklin himself, "I know that some day you will shake off the ties which unite you to us, and you will raise the standard of independence." "No such idea exists or will enter into the heads of the Americans," answered Franklin, "unless you maltreat them quite scandalously." "That is true," rejoined the other, "and it is exactly one of the causes which I foresee, and which will bring on the event."