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slipping from the hands of the most energetic. Naturally gentle,
moderate, discreet, though stubborn and persevering in his views, he had
not an idea of conceiving and practising a great policy. France was
indebted to him for a long period of mediocre and dull prosperity, which
was preferable to the evils that had for so long oppressed her, but as
for which she was to cherish no remembrance and no gratitude, when new
misfortunes came bursting upon her.
Both court and nation hurled the same reproach at Cardinal Fleury; he
alone prevented the king from governing, and turned his attention from
affairs, partly from jealousy, and partly from the old habit acquired as
a preceptor, who can never see a man in one who has been his pupil. When
the old man died at last, as M. d'Argenson cruelly puts it, France turned
her eyes towards Louis XV. "The cardinal is dead: hurrah! for the king!"
was the cry amongst the people. The monarch himself felt as if he were
emancipated. "Gentlemen, here am I--premier minister!" said he to his
most intimate courtiers. "When MM. de Maurepas and Amelot went to
announce to him this death, it is said that he was at first overcome, and
that when he had recovered himself, he told them that hitherto he had
availed himself of Cardinal Fleury's counsels; but he relied upon it that
they would so act, that they would not need to place any one between them
and him. If this answer is faithfully reported," adds the advocate
Barbier, "it is sufficiently in the high style to let it be understood
that there will be no more any premier minister, or at any rate any body
exercising the functions thereof."
For some time previously, in view of the great age and rapid enfeeblement
of Cardinal Fleury, Marshal Noailles, ever able and far-sighted, had been
pressing Louis XV. to take into his own hands the direction of his
affairs. Having the command on the frontier of the Low Countries, he had
adopted the practice of writing directly to the king. "Until it may
please your Majesty to let me know your intentions and your will," said
the marshal at the outset of his correspondence, "confining myself solely
to what relates to the frontier on which you have given me the command, I
shall speak with frankness and freedom about the object confided to my
care, and shall hold my peace as regards the rest. If you, Sir, desire
the silence to be broken, it is for you to order it." For the first time
Louis XV. seemed to awake from the midst of that life of intellectual
lethargy and physical activity which he allowed to glide along, without a
thought, between the pleasures of the chase and the amusements invented
by his favorite; a remembrance of Louis XIV. came across his mind,
naturally acute and judicious as it was. "The late king, my great-
grandfather," he writes to Marshal Noailles on the 26th of November,
1743, "whom I desire to imitate as much as I can, recommended me, on his
death-bed, to take counsel in all things, and to seek out the best, so as
always to follow it. I shall be charmed, then, if you will give me some;
thus do I open your mouth, as the pope does the cardinals, and I permit
you to say to me what your zeal and your affection for me and my kingdom
prompt you." The first fruit of this correspondence was the entrance of
Marshal Noailles into the Council.
[Illustration: Louis XV. and his Councillors----148]
"One day as he was, in the capacity of simple courtier, escorting the
king, who was on his way to the Council, his Majesty said to him,
"Marshal, come in; we are going to hold a council," and pointed to a
place at his left, Cardinal Tencin being on his right. "This new
minister does not please our secretaries of state. He is a troublesome
inspector set over them, who meddles in everything, though master of
nothing." The renewal of active hostilities was about to deliver the
ministers from Marshal Noailles.
The prudent hesitation and backwardness of Holland had at last yielded to
the pressure of England. The States-general had sent twenty thousand men
to join the army which George II. had just sent into Germany. It was
only on the 15th of March, 1744, that Louis XV. formally declared war
against the King of England and Maria Theresa, no longer as an auxiliary
of the 'emperor, but in his own name and on behalf of France. Charles
VII., a fugitive, driven from his hereditary dominions, which had been
evacuated by Marshal Broglie, had transported to Frankfurt his ill
fortune and his empty titles. France alone supported in Germany a
quarrel the weight of which she had imprudently taken upon herself.
The effort was too much for the resources; the king's counsellors felt
that it was; the battle of Dettingen, skilfully commenced on the 27th of
June, 1743, by Marshal Noailles, and lost by the imprudence of his
nephew, the Duke of Gramont, had completely shaken the confidence of the
armies; the emperor had treated with the Austrians for an armistice;
establishing the neutrality of his troops, as belonging to the empire.
Noailles wrote to the king on the 8th of July, "It is necessary to uphold
this phantom, in order to restrain Germany, which would league against
us, and furnish the English with all the troops therein, the moment the
emperor was abandoned." It was necessary, at the same time, to look out
elsewhere for more effectual support. The King of Prussia had been
resting for the last two years, a curious and an interested spectator of
the contests which were bathing Europe in blood, and which answered his
purpose by enfeebling his rivals. He frankly and coolly flaunted his
selfishness. "In a previous war with France," he says in his memoirs, "I
abandoned the French at Prague, because I gained Silesia by that step.
If I had escorted them to Vienna, they would never have given me so
much." In turn the successes of the Queen of Hungary were beginning to
disquiet him; on the 5th of June, 1744, he signed a new treaty with
France; for the first time Louis XV. was about to quit Versailles and
place himself at the head of an army. "If my country is to be devoured,"
said the king, with a levity far different from the solemn tone of Louis
XIV., "it will be very hard on me to see it swallowed without personally
doing my best to prevent it."
He had, however, hesitated a long while before he started. There was a
shortness of money. For all his having been head of the council of
finance, Noailles had not been able to rid himself of ideas of arbitrary
power. "When the late king, your great-grandfather, considered any
outlay necessary," he wrote to Louis XV., "the funds had to be found,
because it was his will. The case in question is one in which your
Majesty ought to speak as master, and lay down the law to your ministers.
Your comptroller-general ought, for the future, to be obliged to furnish
the needful funds without daring to ask the reasons for which they are
demanded of him, and still less to decide upon them. It was thus that
the late king behaved towards M. Colbert and all who succeeded him in
that office; he would never have done anything great in the whole course
of his reign, if he had behaved otherwise." It was the king's common
sense which replied to this counsel, "We are still paying all those debts
that the late king incurred for extraordinary occasions, fifty millions a
year and more, which we must begin by paying off first of all." Later
on, he adds, gayly, "As for me, I can do without any equipage, and, if
needful, the shoulder of mutton of the lieutenants of infantry will do
perfectly well for me." "There is nothing talked off here but the doings
of the king, who is in extraordinary spirits," writes the advocate
Barbier; "he has visited the places near Valenciennes, the magazines, the
hospitals; he has tasted the broth of the sick, and the soldiers' bread.
The ambassador of Holland came, before his departure, to propose a truce
in order to put us off yet longer. The king, when he was presented,
merely said, 'I know what you are going to say to me, and what it is all
about. I will give you my answer in Flanders.' This answer is a proud
one, and fit for a king of France."
[Illustration: Louis XV. and the Ambassador of Holland----151]
The hopes of the nation were aroused. "Have we, then, a king?" said
M. d'Argenson. Credit was given to the Duchess of Chateauroux, Louis
XV.'s new favorite, for having excited this warlike ardor in the king.
Ypres and Menin had already surrendered after a few days' open trenches;
siege had just been laid to Furnes. Marshal Noailles had proposed to
move up the king's household troops in order to make an impression upon
the enemy. "If they must needs be marched up," replied Louis XV., "I do
not wish to separate from my household: _verbum sap_."
[Illustration: YPRES----151]
The news which arrived from the army of Italy was equally encouraging;
the Prince of Conde, seconded by Chevert, had forced the passage of the
Alps. "There will come some occasion when we shall do as well as the
French have done," wrote Count Campo-Santo, who, under Don Philip,
commanded the Spanish detachment; "it is impossible to do better."
Madame de Chateauroux had just arrived at Lille; there were already
complaints in the army of the frequent absence of the king on his visits
to her, when alarming news came to cause forgetfulness of court intrigues
and dissatisfaction; the Austrians had effected the passage of the Rhine
by surprise near Philipsburg; Elsass was invaded. Marshal Coigny, who
was under orders to defend it, had been enticed in the direction of
Worms, by false moves on the part of Prince Charles of Lorraine, and had
found great difficulty in recrossing the frontier. "Here we are on the
eve of a great crisis," writes Louis XV. on the 7th of July. It was at
once decided that the king must move on Elsass to defend his threatened
provinces. The King of Prussia promised to enter Bohemia immediately
with twenty thousand men, as the diversion was sure to be useful to
France. Louis XV. had already arrived at Metz, and Marshal Noailles
pushed forward in order to unite all the corps. On the 8th of August the
king awoke in pain, prostrated by a violent headache; a few days later,
all France was in consternation; the king was said to have been given
over.
"The king's danger was noised abroad throughout Paris in the middle of
the night," writes Voltaire [_Siecle de Louis XV.,_ p. 103]: "everybody
gets up, runs about, in confusion, not knowing whither to go. The
churches open at dead of night; nobody takes any more note of time,
bed-time, or day-time, or meal-time. Paris was beside itself; all the
houses of officials were besieged by a continual crowd; knots collected,
at all the cross-roads. The people cried, 'If he should die, it will be
for having marched to our aid.' People accosted one another, questioned
one another in the churches, without being the least acquainted. There
were many churches where the priest who pronounced the prayer for the
king's health interrupted the intoning with his tears, and the people
responded with nothing but sobs and cries. The courier, who, on the
19th, brought to Paris the news of his convalescence, was embraced and
almost stifled by the people; they kissed his horse, they escorted him in
triumph. All the streets resounded with a shout of joy. 'The king is
well!' When the monarch was told of the unparalleled transports of joy
which had succeeded those of despair, he was affected to tears, and,
raising himself up in a thrill of emotion which gave him strength, 'Ah!'
he exclaimed, 'how sweet it is to be so loved! What have I done to
deserve it?'"
What had he done, indeed! And what was he destined to do? France had
just experienced the last gush of that monarchical passion and fidelity
which had so long distinguished her, and which were at last used up and
worn out through the faults of the princes as well as through the
blindness and errors of the nation itself.
Confronted with death, the king had once more felt the religious terrors
which were constantly intermingled with the irregularity of his life;
he had sent for the queen, and had dismissed the Duchess of Chateauroux.
On recovering his health, he found himself threatened by new perils,
aggravated by his illness and by the troubled state into which it had
thrown the public mind. After having ravaged and wasted Elsass, without
Marshals Coigny and Noailles having been able to prevent it, Prince
Charles had, without being harassed, struck again into the road towards
Bohemia, which was being threatened by the King of Prussia. "This
prince," wrote Marshal Belle-Isle on the 13th of September, "has written
a very strong letter to the king, complaining of the quiet way in which
Prince Charles was allowed to cross the Rhine; he attributes it all to
his Majesty's illness, and complains bitterly of Marshal Noailles." And,
on the 25th, to Count Clermont, "Here we are, decided at last; the king
is to start on Tuesday the 27th for Lundville, and on the 5th of October
will be at Strasbourg. Nobody knows as yet any further than that, and it
is a question whether he will go to Fribourg or not. The ministers are
off back to Paris. Marshal Noailles, who has sent for his equipage
hither, asked whether he should attend his Majesty, who replied, 'As you
please,' rather curtly. Your Highness cannot have a doubt about his
doing so, after such a gracious permission."
Louis XV. went to the siege of Fribourg, which was a long and a difficult
one. He returned to Paris on the 13th of November, to the great joy of
the people. A few days later, Marshal Belle-Isle, whilst passing through
Hanover in the character of negotiator, was arrested by order of George
II., and carried to England a prisoner of war, in defiance of the law of
nations and the protests of France. The moment was not propitious for
obtaining the release of a marshal of France and an able general. The
Emperor Charles VII., who but lately returned to his hereditary
dominions, and recovered possession of his capital, after fifteen months
of Austrian occupation, died suddenly on the 20th of January, 1745, at
forty-seven years of age. The face of affairs changed all at once; the
honor of France was no longer concerned in the struggle; the Grand-duke
of Tuscany had no longer any competitor for the empire; the eldest son of
Charles VII. was only seventeen; the Queen of Hungary was disposed for
peace. "The English ministry, which laid down the law for all, because
it laid down the money, and which had in its pay, all at one time, the
Queen of Hungary, the King of Poland, and the King of Sardinia,
considered that there was everything to lose by a treaty with France, and
everything to gain by arms. War continued, because it had commenced."
[Voltaire, _Siecle de Louis XV_.]
The King of France henceforth maintained it almost alone by himself. The
young Elector of Bavaria had already found himself driven out of Munich,
and forced by his exhausted subjects to demand peace of Maria Theresa.
The election to the empire was imminent; Maximilian-Joseph promised his
votes to the Grand-duke of Tuscany; at that price he was re-established
in his hereditary dominions. The King of Poland had rejected the
advances of France, who offered him the title of emperor, beneath which
Charles VII. had succumbed. Marshal Saxe bore all the brunt of the war.
A foreigner and a Protestant, for a long while under suspicion with Louis
XV., and blackened in character by the French generals, Maurice of Saxony
had won authority as well as glory by the splendor of his bravery and of
his military genius. Combining with quite a French vivacity the
far-sightedness and the perseverance of the races of the north, he had
been toiling for more than a year to bring about amongst his army a
spirit of discipline, a powerful organization, a contempt for fatigue as
well as for danger. "At Dettingen the success of the allies was due to
their surprising order, for they were not seasoned to war," he used to
say. Order did not as yet reign in the army of Marshal Saxe. In 1745,
the situation was grave; the marshal was attacked with dropsy; his life
appeared to be in danger. He nevertheless commanded his preparations to
be made for the campaign, and, when Voltaire, who was one of his friends,
was astounded at it, "It is no question of living, but of setting out,"
was his reply.
[Illustration: Marshal Saxe 154]
The king was preparing to set out, like Marshal Saxe; he had just married
the dauphin to the eldest daughter of the King of Spain; the young prince
accompanied his father to the front before Tournai, which the French army
was besieging. On the 8th of May Louis XV. visited the outskirts; an
attack from the enemy was expected, the field of battle was known
beforehand. The village of Fontenoy had already been occupied by Marshal
Noailles, who had asked to serve as aide-de-camp to Marshal Saxe, to whom
he was attached by sincere friendship, and whom he had very much
contributed to advance in the king's good graces.
"Never did Louis XV. show more gayety than on the eve of the fight," says
Voltaire. "The conversation was of battles at which kings had been
present in person. The king said that since the battle of Poitiers no
king of France had fought with his son beside him, that since St. Louis
none had gained any signal victory over the English, and that he hoped to
be the first. He was the first up on the day of action; he himself at
four o'clock awoke Count d'Argenson, minister of war, who on the instant
sent to ask Marshal Saxe for his final orders. The marshal was found in
a carriage of osier-work, which served him for a bed, and in which he had
himself drawn about when his exhausted powers no longer allowed him to
sit his horse." The king and the dauphin had already taken up their
positions of battle; the two villages of Fontenoy and Antoin, and the
wood of Barri, were occupied by French troops. Two armies of fifty
thousand men each were about to engage in the lists as at Dettingen.
Austria had sent but eight thousand soldiers, under the orders of the old
and famous General Konigseck; the English and the Hollanders were about
to bear all the burden and heat of the day.
It was not five in the morning, and already there was a thunder of
cannon. The Hollanders attacked the village of Antoin, the English that
of Fontenoy. The two posts were covered by a redoubt which belched forth
flames; the Hollanders refused to deliver the assault. An attack made by
the English on the wood of Barri had been repulsed. "Forward, my lord,
right to your front," said old Konigseck to the Duke of Cumberland,
George II.'s son, who commanded the English; "the ravine in front of
Fontenoy must be carried." The English advanced; they formed a deep and
serried column, preceded and supported by artillery. The French
batteries mowed them down right and left, whole ranks fell dead; they
were at once filled up; the cannon which they dragged along by hand,
pointed towards Fontenoy and the redoubts, replied to the French
artillery. An attempt of some officers of the French guards to carry off
the cannon of the English was unsuccessful. The two corps found
themselves at last face to face.
The English officers took off their hats; Count Chabannes and the Duke of
Biron, who had moved forward, returned their salute. "Gentlemen of the
French guard, fire!" exclaimed Lord Charles Hay. "Fire yourselves,
gentlemen of England," immediately replied Count d'Auteroche; "we never
fire first." [All fiction, it is said.] The volley of the English laid
low the foremost ranks of the French guards. This regiment had been
effeminated by a long residence in Paris and at Versailles; its colonel,
the Duke of Gramont, had been killed in the morning, at the commencement
of the action; it gave way, and the English cleared the ravine which
defended Fontenoy. They advanced as if on parade; the majors
[?sergeant-majors], small cane in hand, rested it lightly on the
soldiers' muskets to direct their fire. Several regiments successively
opposed to the English column found themselves repulsed and forced to
beat a retreat; the English still advanced.
Marshal Saxe, carried about everywhere in his osier-litter, saw the
danger with a calm eye; he sent the Marquis of Meuse to the king. "I beg
your Majesty," he told him to say, "to go back with the dauphin over the
bridge of Calonne; I will do what I can to restore the battle." "Ah! I
know well enough that he will do what is necessary," answered the king,
"but I stay where I am." Marshal Saxe mounted his horse.
[Illustration: Battle of Fontenoy----157]
In its turn, the cavalry had been repulsed by the English; their fire
swept away rank after rank of the regiment of Vaisseaux, which would not
be denied. "How is it that such troops are not victorious?" cried
Marshal Saxe, who was moving about at a foot's pace in the middle of the
fire, without his cuirass, which his weakness did not admit of his
wearing. He advanced towards Fontenoy; the batteries had just fallen
short of ball. The English column had ceased marching; arrested by the
successive efforts of the French regiments, it remained motionless, and
seemed to receive no more orders, but it preserved a proud front, and
appeared to be masters of the field of battle. Marshal Saxe was
preparing for the retreat of the army; he had relinquished his proposal
for that of the king, from the time that the English had come up and
pressed him closely. "It was my advice, before the danger was so great,"
he said; "now there is no falling back."
A disorderly council was being held around Louis XV. With the fine
judgment and sense which he often displayed when he took the trouble to
have an opinion on his affairs, the king had been wise enough to
encourage his troops by his presence without in any way interfering with
the orders of Marshal Saxe. The Duke of Richelieu vented an opinion more
worthy of the name he bore than had been his wont in his life of
courtiership and debauchery. "Throw forward the artillery against the
column," he said, "and let the king's household, with all the disposable
regiments, attack them at the same time; they must be fallen upon like so
many foragers."
The retreat of the Hollanders admitted of the movement; the small
field-pieces, as yet dragged by hand, were pointed against the English
column. Marshal Saxe, with difficulty keeping his seat upon his horse,
galloped hastily up to the Irish brigade, commanding all the troops he
met on the way to make no more false attacks, and to act in concert. All
the forces of the French army burst simultaneously upon the English. The
Irish regiments in the service of France, nearly all composed of Jacobite
emigrants, fought with fury. Twice the brave enemy rallied, but the
officers fell on all sides, the ranks were everywhere broken; at last
they retired, without disorder, without enfeeblement, preserving, even in
defeat, the honor of a vigorous resistance. The battle was gained at the
moment when the most clear-sighted had considered it lost. Marshal Saxe
had still strength left to make his way to the king. "I have lived long
enough, sir," he said, "now that I have seen your Majesty victorious.
You now know on what the fortune of battles depends."
The victory of Fontenoy, like that of Denain, restored the courage and
changed the situation of France. When the King of Prussia heard of his
ally's success, he exclaimed with a grin, "This is about as useful to us
as a battle gained on the banks of the Scamander." His selfish
absorption in his personal and direct interests obscured the judgment of
Frederick the Great. He, however, did justice to Marshal Saxe: "There
was a discussion the other day as to what battle had reflected most honor
on the general commanding," he wrote, a long while after the battle of
Fontenoy; "some suggested that of Almanza, others that of Turin; but I
suggested--and everybody finally agreed that it was undoubtedly that in
which the general had been at death's door when it was delivered."
The fortress of Tournai surrendered on the 22d of May; the citadel
capitulated on the 19th of June. Ghent, Bruges, Oudenarde, Dendermonde,
Ostend, Nienport, yielded, one after another, to the French armies. In
the month of February, 1746, Marshal Saxe terminated the campaign by
taking Brussels. By the 1st of the previous September Louis XV. had
returned in triumph to Paris.
[Illustration: BRUSSELS----159]
Henceforth he remained alone confronting Germany, which was neutral, or
had rallied round the restored empire. On the 13th of September, the
Grand-duke of Tuscany had been proclaimed emperor at Frankfurt, under the
name of Francis I. The indomitable resolution of the queen his wife had
triumphed. In spite of the checks she suffered in the Low Countries,
Maria Theresa still withstood, at all points, the pacific advances of the
belligerents.
On the 4th of June, the King of Prussia had gained a great victory at
Freilberg. "I have honored the bill of exchange your Majesty drew on me
at Fontenoy," he wrote to Louis XV. A series of successful fights had
opened the road to Saxony. Frederick headed thither rapidly; on the 18th
of December he occupied Dresden.
This time, the King of Poland, Elector of Saxony, forced the hand of the
new empress: "The Austrians and the Saxons have just sent ministers
hither to negotiate for peace," said a letter to France from the King of
Prussia; "so I have no course open but to sign. Would that I might be
fortunate enough to serve as the instrument of general pacification.
After discharging my duty towards the state I govern, and towards my
family, no object will be nearer to my heart than that of being able to
render myself of service to your Majesty's interests." Frederick the
Great returned to Berlin covered with glory, and definitively master of
Silesia. "Learn once for all," he said at a later period, in his
instructions to his successor, "that where a kingdom is concerned, you
take when you can, and that you are never wrong when you are not obliged
to hand over. An insolent and a cynical maxim of brute force, which
conquerors have put in practice at all times, without daring to set it up
as a principle.
Whilst Berlin was in gala trim to celebrate the return of her monarch in
triumph, Europe had her eyes fixed upon the unparalleled enterprise of a
young man, winning, courageous, and frivolous as he was, attempting to
recover by himself alone the throne of his fathers. For nearly three
years past, Charles Edward Stuart, son of Chevalier St. George, had been
awaiting in France the fulfilment of the promises and hopes which had
been flashed before his eyes. Weary of hope deferred, he had conceived
the idea of a bold stroke. "Why not attempt to cross in a vessel to the
north of Scotland?" had been the question put to him by Cardinal Tencin,
who had, some time before, owed his cardinal's hat to the dethroned King
of Great Britain. "Your presence will be enough to get you a party and
an army, and France will be obliged to give you aid."
Charles Edward had followed this audacious counsel. Landing, in June,
1745, in the Highlands of Scotland, he had soon found the clans of the
mountaineers hurrying to join his standard. At the head of this wild
army, he had in a few months gained over the whole of Scotland. On the
20th of September he was proclaimed at Edinburgh Regent of England,
France, Scotland, and Ireland, for his father, King James III. George
II. had left Hanover; the Duke of Cumberland, returning from Germany,
took the command of the troops assembled to oppose the invader. Their
success in the battle of Preston-Pans against General Cope had emboldened
the Scots; at the end of December, 1745, Prince Charles Edward and his
army had advanced as far as Derby.
It was the fate of the Stuarts, whether heroes or dastards, to see their
hopes blasted all at once, and to drag down in their fall their most
zealous and devoted partisans. The aid, so often promised by France and
Spain, had dwindled down to the private expeditions of certain brave
adventurers. The Duke of Richelieu, it was said, was to put himself at
their head. "As to the embarkation at Dunkerque," writes the advocate
Barbier, at the close of the year 1745, "there is great anxiety about it,
for we are at the end of December, and it is not yet done, which gives
every one occasion to make up news according to his fancy. This
uncertainty discourages the Frenchman, who gives out that our expedition
will not take place, or, at any rate, will not succeed." Charles Edward
had already been forced to fall back upon Scotland. As in 1651, at the
time of the attempt of Charles II., England remained quite cold in the
presence of the Scottish invasion. The Duke of Cumberland was closely
pressing the army of the mountaineers. On the 23d of April, 1746, the
foes found themselves face to face at Culloden, in the environs of
Inverness. Charles Edward was completely beaten, and the army of the
Highlanders destroyed; the prince only escaped either death or captivity
by the determined devotion of his partisans, whether distinguished or
obscure; a hundred persons had risked their lives for him, when he
finally succeeded, on the 10th of October, in touching land, in Brittany,
near St. Pol de Leon. His friends and his defenders were meanwhile dying
for his cause on scaffold or gallows.
The anger and severity displayed by the English government towards the
Jacobites were aggravated by the checks encountered upon the Continent by
the coalition. At the very moment when the Duke of Cumberland was
defeating Charles Edward at Culloden, Antwerp was surrendering to Louis
XV. in person: Mons, Namur, and Charleroi were not long before they fell.
Prince Charles of Lorraine was advancing to the relief of the besieged
places; Marshal Saxe left open to him the passage of the Meuse. The
French camp seemed to be absorbed in pleasures; the most famous actors
from Paris were ordered to amuse the general and the soldiers. On the
10th of October, in the evening, Madame Favart came forward on the stage.
"To-morrow," said she, "there will be no performance, on account of the
battle: the day after, we shall have the honor of giving you _Le Coq du
Village_." At the same time the marshal sent the following order to the
columns which were already forming on the road from St. Tron to Liege,
near the village of Raucoux: "Whether the attacks succeed or not, the
troops will remain in the position in which night finds them, in order to
recommence the assault upon the enemy."
[Illustration: BRUSSELS----159]
The battle of October 11 left the battle-field in the hands of the
victors, the sole result of a bloody and obstinate engagement. Marshal
Saxe went to rest himself at Paris; the people's enthusiasm rivalled and
indorsed the favors shown to him by the king. At the opera, the whole
house rose at the entrance of the valiant foreigner who had dedicated his
life to France; there was clapping of hands, and the actress who in the
prologue took the character of Glory leaned over towards the marshal with
a crown of laurel. "The marshal was surprised, and refused it with
profound bows. Glory insisted; and as the marshal was too far off in the
boxes for her to hand it to him, the Duke of Biron took the crown from
Glory's hands and passed it under Marshal Saxe's left arm. This striking
action called forth fresh acclamations, 'Hurrah! for Marshal Saxe!' and
great clapping of hands. The king has given the marshal Chambord for
life, and has even ordered it to be furnished. Independently of all
these honors, it is said that the marshal is extremely rich and powerful
just now, solely as the result of his safe-conducts, which, being
applicable to a considerable extent of country, have been worth immense
sums to him." The second marriage of the dauphin--who had already lost
the Infanta--with the Princess of Saxony, daughter of the King of Poland,
was about to raise, before long, the fortune and favor of Marshal Saxe to
the highest pitch: he was proclaimed marshal-general of the king's
armies.
So much luck and so much glory in the Low Countries covered, in the eyes
of France and of Europe, the checks encountered by the king's armies in
Italy. The campaign of 1745 had been very brilliant. Parma, Piacenza,
Montferrat, nearly all Milaness, with the exception of a few fortresses,
were in the hands of the Spanish and French forces. The King of Sardinia
had recourse to negotiation; he amused the Marquis of Argenson, at that
time Louis XV.'s foreign minister, a man of honest, expansive, but
chimerical views. At the moment when the king and the marquis believed
themselves to be remodelling the map of Europe at their pleasure, they
heard that Charles Emmanuel had resumed the offensive. A French corps
had been surprised at Asti, on the 5th of March; thirty thousand
Austrians marched down from the Tyrol, and the Spaniards evacuated Milan.
A series of checks forced Marshal Maillebois to effect a retreat; the
enemy's armies crossed the Var, and invaded French territory. Marshal
Belle-Isle fell back to Puget, four leagues from Toulon.
The Austrians had occupied Genoa, the faithful ally of France. Their
vengefulness and their severe exactions caused them to lose the fruits of
their victory. The grandees were ruined by war-requisitions; the
populace were beside themselves at the insolence of the conquerors;
senators and artisans made common cause. An Austrian captain having
struck a workman, the passengers in the streets threw themselves upon him
and upon his comrades who came to his assistance; the insurrection spread
rapidly in all quarters of Genoa; there was a pillage of the weapons
lying heaped in the palace of the Doges; the senators put themselves at
the head of the movement; the peasants in the country flew to arms. The
Marquis of Botta, the Austrian commandant, being attacked on all sides,
and too weak to resist, sallied from the town with nine regiments. The
allies, disquieted and dismayed, threatened Provence, and laid siege to
Genoa. Louis XV. felt the necessity of not abandoning his ally; the Duke
of Boufflers and six thousand French shut themselves up in the place.
"Show me the danger," the general had said on entering the town; "it is
my duty to ascertain it; I shall make all my glory depend upon securing
you from it." The resistance of Genoa was effectual; but it cost the
life of the Duke of Boufflers, who was wounded in an engagement, and died
three days before the retreat of the Austrians, on the 6th of July, 1747.
On the 19th of July, Common-Sense Belle-Isle (_Bon-Sens de Belle-Isle_),
as the Chevalier was called at court, to distinguish him from his brother
the marshal, nicknamed _Imagination,_ attacked, with a considerable body
of troops, the Piedmontese intrenchments at the Assietta Pass, between
the fortresses of Exilles and Fenestrelles; at the same time, Marshal
Belle-Isle was seeking a passage over the Stura Pass, and the Spanish
army was attacking Piedmont by the way of the Apennines. The engagement
at the heights of Assietta was obstinate; Chevalier Belle-Isle, wounded
in both arms, threw himself bodily upon the palisades, to tear them down
with his teeth; he was killed, and the French sustained a terrible
defeat;--five thousand men were left on the battle-field. The campaign
of Italy was stopped. The King of Spain, Philip V., enfeebled and
exhausted almost in infancy, had died on the 9th of July, 1746. The
fidelity of his successor, Ferdinand VI., married to a Portuguese
princess, appeared doubtful; he had placed at the head of his forces in
Italy the Marquis of Las Minas, with orders to preserve to Spain her only
army. "The Spanish soldiers are of no more use to us than if they were
so much cardboard," said the French troops. Europe was tired of the war.
England avenged herself for her reverses upon the Continent by her
successes at sea; the French navy, neglected systematically by Cardinal
Fleury, did not even suffice for the protection of commerce. The
Hollanders, who had for a long while been undecided, and had at last
engaged in the struggle against France without any declaration of war,
bore, in 1747, the burden of the hostilities. Count Lowendahl, a friend
of Marshal Saxe, and, like him, in the service of France, had taken Sluys
and Sas-de-Gand; Bergen-op-Zoom was besieged; on the 1st of July, Marshal
Saxe had gained, under the king's own eye, the battle of Lawfeldt. As in
1672, the French invasion had been the signal for a political revolution
in Holland; the aristocratical burgessdom, which had resumed power,
succumbed once more beneath the efforts of the popular party, directed by
the house of Nassau and supported by England. "The republic has need of
a chief against an ambitious and perfidious neighbor who sports with the
faith of treaties," said a deputy of the States-general on the day of the
proclamation of the stadtholderate, re-established in favor of William
IV., grand-nephew of the great William III., and son-in-law of the King
of England, George II. Louis XV. did not let himself be put out by this
outburst. "The Hollanders are good folks," he wrote to Marshal Noailles:
"it is said, however, that they are going to declare war against us; they
will lose quite as much as we shall."
Bergen-op-Zoom was taken and plundered on the 16th of September. Count
Lowendahl was made a marshal of France. "Peace is in Maestricht, Sir,"
was Maurice of Saxony's constant remark to the king. On the 9th of
April, 1748, the place was invested, before the thirty-five thousand
Russians, promised to England by the Czarina Elizabeth, had found time to
make their appearance on the Rhine. A congress was already assembled at
Aix-la-Chapelle to treat for peace. The Hollanders, whom the Marquis of
Argenson before his disgrace used always to call "the ambassadors of
England," took fright at the spectacle of Maestricht besieged; from
parleys they proceeded to the most vehement urgency; and England yielded.
The preliminaries of peace were signed on the 30th of April; it was not
long before Austria and Spain gave in their adhesion. On the 18th of
October the definitive treaty was concluded at Aix-la-Chapelle. France
generously restored all her conquests, without claiming other advantages
beyond the assurance of the duchies of Parma and Piacenza to the Infante
Don Philip, son-in-law of Louis XV. England surrendered to France the
Island of Cape Breton and the colony of Louisbourg, the only territory
she had preserved from her numerous expeditions against the French
colonies and from the immense losses inflicted upon French commerce.
The Great Frederic kept Silesia; the King of Sardinia the territories
already ceded by Austria. Only France had made great conquests; and
only she retained no increment of territory. She recognized the
Pragmatic-Sanction in favor of Austria and the Protestant succession in
favor of George II. Prince Charles Edward, a refugee in France, refused
to quit the hospitable soil which had but lately offered so magnificent
an asylum to the unfortunates of his house: he was, however, carried off,
whilst at the Opera, forced into a carriage, and conveyed far from the
frontier. "As stupid as the peace!" was the bitter saying in the streets
of Paris.
[Illustration: Arrest of Charles Edward----166]
The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle had a graver defect than that of
fruitlessness; it was not and could not be durable. England was excited,
ambitious of that complete empire of the sea which she had begun to build
up upon the ruins of the French navy and the decay of Holland, and greedy
of distant conquests over colonies which the French could not manage to
defend. In proportion as the old influence of Richelieu and of Louis
XIV. over European politics grew weaker and weaker, English influence,
founded upon the growing power of a free country and a free government,
went on increasing in strength. Without any other ally but Spain,
herself wavering in her fidelity, the French remained exposed to the
attempts of England, henceforth delivered from the phantom of the
Stuarts. "The peace concluded between England and France in 1748 was, as
regards Europe, nothing but a truce," says Lord Macaulay "it was not even
a truce in other quarters of the globe." The mutual rivalry and mistrust
between the two nations began to show themselves everywhere, in the East
as well as in the West, in India as well as in America.
CHAPTER LIII.----LOUIS XV., FRANCE IN THE COLONIES. 1745-1763.
France was already beginning to perceive her sudden abasement in Europe;
the defaults of her generals as well as of her government sometimes
struck the king himself; he threw the blame of it on the barrenness of
his times. "This age is not fruitful in great men," he wrote to Marshal
Noailles: "you know that we miss subjects for all objects, and you have
one before your eyes in the case of the army which certainly impresses me
more than any other." Thus spoke Louis XV. on the eve of the battle of
Fontenoy Marshal Saxe was about to confer upon the French arms a
transitory lustre; but the king, who loaded him with riches and honors,
never forgot that he was not his born subject. "I allow that Count Saxe
is the best officer to command that we have," he would say; "but he is a
Huguenot, he wants to be supreme, and he is always saying that, if he is
thwarted, he will enter some other service. Is that zeal for France?
I see, however, very few of ours who aim high like him."
The king possessed at a distance, in the colonies of the Two Indies, as
the expression then was, faithful servants of France, passionately
zealous for her glory, "aiming high," ambitious or disinterested, able
politicians or heroic pioneers, all ready to sacrifice both property and
life for the honor and power of their country: it is time to show how La
Bourdonnais, Dupleix, Bussy, Lally-Tollendal were treated in India; what
assistance, what guidance, what encouragement the Canadians and their
illustrious chiefs received from France, beginning with Champlain, one
of the founders of the colony, and ending with Montcalm, its latest
defender. It is a painful but a salutary spectacle to see to what
meannesses a sovereign and a government may find themselves reduced
through a weak complaisance towards the foreigner, in the feverish desire
of putting an end to a war frivolously undertaken and feebly conducted.
French power in India threw out more lustre, but was destined to
speedier, and perhaps more melancholy, extinction than in Canada.
Single-handed in the East the chiefs maintained the struggle against the
incapacity of the French government and the dexterous tenacity of the
enemy; in America the population of French extraction upheld to the
bitter end the name, the honor, and the flag of their country. "The fate
of France," says Voltaire, "has nearly always been that her enterprises,
and even her successes, beyond her own frontiers should become fatal to
her." The defaults of the government and the jealous passions of the
colonists themselves, in the eighteenth century, seriously aggravated the
military reverses which were to cost the French nearly all their
colonies.
More than a hundred years previously, at the outset of Louis XIV.'s
personal reign, and through the persevering efforts of Colbert marching
in the footsteps of Cardinal Richelieu, an India Company had been founded
for the purpose of developing French commerce in those distant regions,
which had always been shrouded in a mysterious halo of fancied wealth and
grandeur. Several times the Company had all but perished; it had revived
under the vigorous impulse communicated by Law, and had not succumbed at
the collapse of his system. It gave no money to its shareholders, who
derived their benefits only from a partial concession of the tobacco.
revenues, granted by the king to the Company, but its directors lived a
life of magnificence in the East, where they were authorized to trade on
their own account. Abler and bolder than all his colleagues, Joseph
Dupleix, member of a Gascon family and son of the comptroller-general of
Hainault, had dreamed of other destinies than the management of a
counting-house; he aspired to endow France with the empire of India.
Placed at a very early age at the head of the French establishments at
Chandernuggur, he had improved the city and constructed a fleet, all the
while acquiring for himself an immense fortune; he had just been sent to
Pondicherry as governor-general of the Company's agencies, when the war
of succession to the empire broke out in 1742. For a long time past
Dupleix and his wife, who was called in India Princess Jane, had been
silently forming a vast network of communications and correspondence
which kept them acquainted with the innumerable intrigues of all the
petty native courts. Madame Dupleix, a Creole, brought up in India,
understood all its dialects. Her husband had been the first to conceive
the idea of that policy which was destined before long to deliver India
to the English, his imitators; mingling everywhere in the incessant
revolutions which were hatching all about him, he gave the support of
France at one time to one pretender and at another to another, relying
upon the discipline of the European troops and upon the force of his own
genius for securing the ascendency to his protege of the moment: thus
increasing little by little French influence and dominion throughout all
the Hindoo territory. Accustomed to dealing with the native princes, he
had partially adopted their ways of craft and violence; more concerned
for his object than about the means of obtaining it, he had the
misfortune, at the outset of the contest, to clash with another who was
ambitious for the glory of France, and as courageous but less able a
politician than he; their rivalry, their love of power, and their
inflexible attachment to their own ideas, under the direction of a feeble
government, thenceforth stamped upon the relations of the two great
European nations in India a regrettable character of duplicity: all the
splendor and all the efforts of Dupleix's genius could never efface it.
[Illustration: Dupleix----168]
Concord as yet reigned between Dupleix and the governor of Bourbon and of
Ile de France, Bertrand Francis Mahe de La Bourdonnais, when, in the
month of September, 1746, the latter put in an appearance with a small
squadron in front of Madras, already one of the principal English
establishments. Commodore Peyton, who was cruising in Indian waters,
after having been twice beaten by La Bourdonnais, had removed to a
distance with his flotilla; the town was but feebly fortified; the
English, who had for a while counted upon the protection of the Nabob of
the Carnatic, did not receive the assistance they expected;,they
surrendered at the first shot, promising to pay a considerable sum for
the ransom of Madras, which the French were to retain as security until
the debt was completely paid. La Bourdonnais had received from France
this express order "You will not, keep any of the conquests you may make
in India." The chests containing the ransom of the place descended
slowly from the white town, which was occupied solely by Europeans and by
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