The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France Part 26

[7] "La calomnie s'est attachee a poursuivre la reine, meme avant cette epoque ou l'esprit de parti a fait disparaitre la verite de la terre."-- Madame de Stael, _Proces de la Reine_, p. 2

[8] Madame de Campan, "eclairciss.e.m.e.nts Historiques," p. 461; "Marie Antoinette et le Proces du Collier," par M. emile Campardon, p. 144, _seq._

[9] "Permet au Cardinal de Rohan et au dit de Cagliostro de faire imprimer et afficher le present arret partout ou bon leur semblera."--Campardon, p.

152.

[10] "Sans doute le cardinal avait les mains pures de toute fraude; sans doute il n'etait pour rien dans l'escroquerie commise par les epoux de La Mothe."--Campardon, p. 155.

[11] Campardon, p. 153, quoting Madame de Campan.

[12] The most recent French historian, M.H. Martin, sees in this trial a proof of the general demoralization of the whole French nation.

"L'impression qui en resulte pour nous est l'impossibilite que la reine ait ete coupable. Mais plus les imputations dirigees contre elle etaient vraisemblables, plus la creance accordee a ces imputations etait caracteristique, et attestait la ruine morale de la monarchie. C'etait l'ombre du Parc aux Cerfs qui couvrait toujours Versailles."--_Histoire de France_, xvi., p. 559, ed. 1860.

[13] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 161.

[14] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 162. Some of the critics of M.F. de Conches's collection have questioned without sufficient reason the probability of there having been any correspondence between the queen and her elder sister. But the genuineness of this letter is strongly corroborated by a mistake into which no forger would have fallen. The queen speaks as if the cardinal had alleged that he had given her a rose; while his statement really was that Oliva, personating the queen, had dropped a rose at his feet. A forger would have made the letter Correspond with the evidence and the fact. The queen, in her agitation, might easily make a mistake.

[15] "Il se retira dans son eveche de l'autre cote du Rhin. La sa n.o.ble conduite fit oublier les torts de sa vie pa.s.see," etc.--Campardon, p. 156.

[16] Campardon, p. 156.

[17] It was from Ettenheim that the Duke d'Enghien was carried off in March, 1804. The cardinal died in February, 1803.

CHAPTER XXI.

[1] "Le duc declarait de son cote a Mr. Elliott que ... si la reine l'eut mieux traite il eut peut-etre mieux fait."--Chambrier, i., p.519

[2] Sophie Helene Beatrix, born July 9th, 1786, died June 9th, 1787, F. de Conches, i. p. 195.

[3] See her letter to her brother, February, 1788, Arneth, p. 112.

[4] "C'est un vrai enfant de paysan, grand frais et gros."--Arneth, pp.

113.

[5] Feuillet de Conches, i, p. 195.

[6] Apparently she means the Notables and the Parliament.

[7] The Duc de Guines.

[8] See _ante_, ch. xviii.

[9] "'Il faut,' dit-il, avec un mouvement d'impatience qui lui fit honneur, 'que, du moins, l'archeveque de Paris croie en Dieu.'"-- _Souvenirs par le Duc de Levis_, p. 102.

[10] The continuer of Sismondi's history, A. Renee, however, attributes the archbishop's appointment to the influence of the Baron de Breteuil.

[11] "Son grand art consistait a parler a chacun des choses qu'il croyait qu'on ignorait."--De Levis, p. 100.

[12] The loan he proposed in June was eighty millions (of francs); in October, that which he demanded was four hundred and forty millions.

[13] It is worth noticing that the French people in general did not regard the power of arbitrary imprisonment exercised by their kings as a grievance. In their eyes it was one of his most natural prerogatives. A year or two before the time of which we are speaking, Dr. Moore, the author of "Zeluco," and father of Sir John Moore, who fell at Corunna, was traveling in France, and was present at a party of French merchants and others of the same rank, who asked him many questions about the English Const.i.tution, When he said that the King of England could not impose a tax by his own authority, "they said, with some degree of satisfaction, 'Cependant c'est a.s.sez beau cela.'"... But when he informed them "that the king himself had not the power to encroach upon the liberty of the meanest of his subjects, and that if he or the minister did so, damages were recoverable in a court of law, a loud and prolonged 'Diable!' issued from every mouth. They forgot their own situation, and turned to their natural bias of sympathy with the king, who, they all seemed to think, must be the most oppressed and injured of manhood. One of them at last, addressing himself to the English politician, said, 'Tout ce que je puis vous dire, monsieur, c'est que votre pauvre roi est bien a plaindre.'"--_A View of the Society and Manners in France_, etc., by Dr. John Moore, vol. i., p.

47, ed. 1788.

CHAPTER XXII.

[1] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 205.

[2] M. Foulon was about this time made paymaster of the army and navy, and was generally credited with ability as a financier; but he was unpopular, as a man of ardent and cruel temper, and was brutally murdered by the mob in one of the first riots of the Revolution.

[3] The king.

[4] Necker.

[5] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 214.

[6] _Ibid_., p. 217.

[7] On one occasion when the Marquis de Bouille pointed out to him the danger of some of his plans as placing the higher cla.s.s at the mercy of the mob, "dirige par les deux pa.s.sions les plus actives du coeur humain, l'interet et l'amour propre, ... il me repondit froidement, en levant les yeux au ciel, qu'il fallait bien compter sur les vertus morales des hommes."--_Memoires de M. de Bouille_, p. 70; and Madame de Stael admits of her father that he was "se fiant trop, il faut l'avouer, a l'empire de la raison," and adds that he "etudia constamment l'esprit public, comme la boussole a laquelle les decisions du roi devaient se conformer."-- _Considerations sur la Revolution Francaise_, i., pp. 171, 172.

[8] Her exact words are "si ... il fa.s.se reculer l'autorite du roi" (if he causes the king's authority to retreat before the populace or the Parliament).

[9] "Histoire de Marie Antoinette," par M. Montjoye, p. 202.

[10] Madame de Campan, p. 412.

[11] This edict was registered in the "Chambre Syndicate," September 13th, 1787.--_La Reine Marie Antoinette et la Rev. Francaise, Recherches Historiques_, par le Comte de Bel-Castel, p. 246.

[12] There is at the present moment so strong a pretension set up in many const.i.tuencies to dictate to the members whom they send to Parliament as if they were delegates, and not representatives, that it is worth while to refer to the opinion which the greatest of philosophical statesman, Edmund Burke, expressed on the subject a hundred years ago, in opposition to that at a rival candidate who admitted and supported the claim of const.i.tuents to furnish the member whom they returned to Parliament with "instructions"

of "coercive authority." He tells the citizens of Bristol plainly that such a claim he ought not to admit, and never will. The "opinion" of const.i.tuents is "a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear, and which he ought most seriously to consider; but _authoritative instruction_, mandates issued which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and his conscience; these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our const.i.tution. Parliament is not a _congress_ of emba.s.sadors from different and hostile interests...but Parliament is a _deliberative_ a.s.sembly of _one_ nation, with _one_ interest, that of the whole, where not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament."--_General Election Speech at the Conclusion of the Poll at Bristol_, November 3d, 1774, Burke's Works, vol. iii., pp. 19, 20, ed. 1803.

[13] De Tocqueville considers the feudal system in France in many points more oppressive than that of Germany.--_Ancien Regime_, p. 43.

[14] Silence des grenouilles. Arthur Young, "Travels in France during 1787, '88, '89," p. 537. It is singular proof how entirely research into the condition of the country and the people of France had been neglected both by its philosophers and its statesmen, that there does not seem to have been any publication in the language which gave information on these subjects. And this work of Mr. Young's is the one to which modern French writers, such as M. Alexis de Tocqueville, chiefly refer.

[15] "The _lettres de cachet_ were carried to an excess hardly credible; to the length of being sold, with blanks, to be filled up with names at the pleasure of the purchaser, who was thus able, in the gratification of private revenge, to tear a man from the bosom of his family, and bury him in a dungeon, where he would exist forgotten and die unknown."--A. Young, p. 532. And in a note he gives an instance of an Englishman, named Gordon, who was imprisoned in the Bastile for thirty years without even knowing the reason of his arrest.

[16] Arthur Young, writing January 10th, 1790, identifies Les Enrages with the club afterward so infamous as the Jacobins. "The ardent democrats who have the reputation of being so much republican in principle that they do not admit any political necessity for having even the name of the king, are called the Enrages. They have a meeting at the Jacobins', the Revolution Club which a.s.sembles every night in the very room in which the famous League was formed in the reign of Henry III." (p. 267).

[17] M. Droz a.s.serts that a collector of such publications bought two thousand five hundred in the last three months of 1788, and that his collection was far from complete.--_Histoire de Louis XVI_., ii., p. 180.

[18] "Tout auteur s'erige en legislateur."--_Memorial of the Princes to the King_, quoted in a note to the last chapter of Sismondi's History, p.

551, Brussels ed., 1849.

[19] In reality the numbers were even more in favor of the Commons: the representatives of the clergy were three hundred and eight, and those of the n.o.bles two hundred and eighty-five, making only five hundred and ninety-three of the two superior orders, while the deputies of the Tiers- etat were six hundred and twenty-one.--_Souvenirs de la Marquise de Crequy_, vii., p. 58.

[20] "Se levant alors, 'Non,' dit le roi, 'ce ne peut etre qu'a Versailles, a cause des cha.s.ses.'"--LOUIS BLANC, ii., p. 212, quoting Barante.