THE REAL LOUIS THE FIFTEENTH VOL. I LIB RARY J THE REGENT QF THE ROUES. with Seventeen Portraits. Demy 8vo, cloth gilt, I6s. net. ' ' This book, written in popular style to show — hut to show truthfully — the romance of the period of eight years before Louis XV. came to the throne, is in Colonel Haggard's best vein. It is a romance in which women take a chief part." — Daily Graphic. " No better guide to the history of France after the death of Louis XIV. could possibly be found than the entertaining writer who so vividly pictured for us the Grand Monarque and his satellites in ' Louis XIV. in Court and Camp.' " — Manchester Courier. c^2^?-fA '^^ Js:v T HE REAL LOUIS ^» THE FIFTEENTH By Ueut.=Colonel ANDREW C. P. HAGGARD. D.S.O. Auihor of " Side- lights on the Court of France," " Louis XIV. in Court and Camp," "The Regent of the Roues," etc. WITH 34 FULL-PAGE PORTRAITS . . INCLUDING 2 PHOTOGRAVURE PLATES Vol. I London: HUTCHINSON 6 CO. PATERNOSTER ROW # # ^ 1906 MY OLD FRIEND BARON NICOLAS DE VAY SEIGNEUR DE VAJA KNIGHT OF THE ORDER OF ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED ANDREW HAGGARD PREFATORY NOTE Only when the brave, dissipated, good-natured, and humane Regent, Philippe d'Orleans, sunk to his death upon the shoulder of Madame de Falari can Louis XV. be said to have ascended the throne of France. This was on December 2nd, 1723. Prior to this date, although the taciturn httle boy Louis had succeeded his great- grandfather eight years earher, the Due d'Orleans had been practically King. The subsequent rule of the fourth of the Bourbon Monarchs, who was, as if in irony, termed The Well- Beloved, extended to May, 1774, when he closed a degraded life by a degraded death. The reign of le Bien-Aime seems naturally to divide itself into two periods. It is with the earlier period, that which terminates with the year after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, concluded in October, 1748, that the first of these volumes deals. It may, in contradistinc- tion to that which follows, be characterised as the period of the Priest and the Petticoat, while in 1749 began those struggles with the clergy which eventually banished the Jesuit and left the Woman supreme. V.l viii Prefatory Note Up to 1749, however, the Priest, under one guise or another, and the Petticoat, in frequently changing form, ruled contemporaneously and frequently con- jointly. After that date the ruling element became gradually centred in the decision of Pompadour, an invalid and hourgeoise mistress who had long ceased to charm, or the whim of du Barry, a vulgar and self-assured courtesan who sprang from the lowest ranks of the people. Great indeed is the change with which we are con- fronted when we close the volume of the atheistical Regent of the Roues and open that of the degrading days of Louis XV., the devout pupil, so far as form goes, of holy Mother Church. One passes at once from the full light of day at the Palais-Royal, where every action, no matter how well intentioned, no matter how ignoble, takes place before all the world, to the gloom of night in the darksome petits cabinets of Versailles. There, one unpatriotic trick, one infamous or inglorious intrigue succeeds the other, all alike evolved from the cunning brain of the Jesuit without ; it may be at Issy or Saint-Sulpice close by, or in the tricky purlieus of the Court of Madrid. Filtering through the lips of the old-womanish Car- dinal Fleury, those of the four successive Nesle sisters, those of the three far too favourite daughters of the Monarch, or of Pompadour, inspired by her relatives the farmers-general Paris, these intrigues reach the licentious Prefatory Note ix Monarch in his besotted moments of debauchery and semi-intoxication. The result is seen in actions, apparently those of the weak, obstinate, and cowardly King himself, which tend to the discredit of his Government, the disgrace of his kingdom, and the untold misery of millions of his subjects. Nor do these priestly and womanish intrigues which, under Fleury, owing to his weakness for a bigoted Austria, sacrifice a French army in the snows at Prague, affect France alone. It will be seen in the following pages how they cause the blood to flow in streams all over Europe, and how, time and time again, that heroic figure Frederick the Great, the faithful ally of France, is treacherously abandoned owing to their far-reaching influences. ANDREW HAGGARD. VOL. I. CONTENTS CHAP. I. II. III. IV. y. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII. XIII. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX. VOL. THE BISHOP AND THE MARQUISE DE PRIE HOW A QUEEN WAS MADE . HOW A QUEEN WAS DEPOSED FRANCE, AFTER THE MARQUISE . A TROUBLESOME QUEEN THE DUG DE RICHELIEU AND PRINCE EUGENE TPIE TRIALS OF MARIE LESCZVNSKA . THE AFFAIRE CADIERE. LOUIS'S FIRST LOVES— AND BELLE-ISLE THE WAR OF THE POLISH SUCCESSION MADEMOISELLE DE NESLE . THE HOUSE OF ORLEANS THE GREAT FREDERICK A ROVAL CONSPIRACY AND A DOTARD'S FOLLIES THE INSTALLATION OF A FAVOURITE. THE WAR OF THE AUSTRIAN SUCCESSION THE DISC;RACE OF THE FAVOURITES . \ENGEANCE AND DEATH OF MADAME DE CHATEAUROUX .... THE BATTLE OF FONTENOY MADEMOISELLE LECOUVREUR AND THE MARECHAL DE SAXE I. xi c I 19 33 45 60 74 86 96 1 1 1 125 137 151 i6r 171 1 89 197 208 225 234 249 xii Contents CHAP. PAGE XXI. MADEMOISELLE POISSON — MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR 259 XXIL BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE AND FLORA MACDONALD 268 XXIIL MANCEUVRES OF THE MARQUIS D'ARGENSON 28O XXIV. THE FAMILY, POMPADOUR, VOLTAIRE, AND PEACE 293 XXV. A VENGEANCE FOR MADAME DE POMPADOUR 3 II XXVL MANNERS AND MORALS AT THE COURT OF STANISLAS 323 XXVn. COURT ETIQUETTE AND POMPADOUR'S MAG- NIFICENCE 338 ILLUSTRATIONS VOL. I LOUIS XV. {Photogravure) Frontispiece „ FACING PAGE CARDINAL FLEURY 4 MARIE LESCZYNSKA {after Va7iloo) 32 JOSEPH PARIS-DUVERNEY . . .o PRINCE EUGENE OF SAVOY ^8 MARIE LESCZYNSKA {after Nattier) 04 MAR^CHAL DE BELLE-ISLE j2q FREDERICK THE GREAT j56 EMPRESS MARIE THERESE . MADAME DE CHATEAUROUX 184 230 MAURICE DE SAXE ... „p, MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR . . 25q PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD .STUART 278 MADAME MARIE LOUISE j^LISABETH DE FRANCE 288 MADAME HENRIETTE OF FRANCE . . ,0, COMTE PH^LIPPEAUX DE MAUREPAS 320 STANISLAS LESCZYNSKI ^,2 THE REAL LOUIS THE FIFTEENTH CHAPTER I The Bishop and the Marquise de Prie 1723 AND LATER When the dissolute Regent, Philippe, Due d'Orleans, expired upon the shoulder of Madame de Falari, on December 2nd, 1723, the nod of an old man's head transferred the Kingdom of France. The dwarfish little Minister of State Prisons, la Vrilliere, who in his day signed no less than fifty thousand lettres de cachet, had a paper ready in his pocket in case of the Regent's death. This was a patent appointing M. le Due de Bourbon, Prince de Conde, to the office of First Minister, towards which supreme post even before the Regent's decease M.le Due had been casting covetous eyes. First Minister was the title which had been assumed by the Due d'Orleans since the death of, that disgrace to France, the infamous Cardinal Dubois, and the recently declared majority of the boy-King Louis XV. That Prince had, however, practically remained all-powerful Regent to his last moments, which had come with VOL. I. I 2 The Real Louis the Fifteenth such awful suddenness. Louis XV., great-grandson of Louis XIV. and third son of the Due de Bourgogne and Marie-Adelaide of Savoy, was born on February 15th, 1710. He was crowned at Reims on October 25th, 1722, and his majority declared on February 19th, 1723. Still very childish for his age, and taciturn in manner to a remarkable degree, the little boy was entirely under the thumb of his aged preceptor, Fleury, Bishop of Frejus. Hastily warning M. le Due, before any steps could be taken by the Due de Chartres, son of the late Regent, la Vrilliere repaired with the scheming scion of the house of Conde to the King's apartments. These apartments, in the chateau of Versailles, were situated just above those occupied by the Regent, who was now lying dead below. It was early on the winter's night, while the Due de Noailles and Due de Guiche were in Paris seeking for the Regent's son, that the first Prince of the Blood was forestalled at Versailles. The Due de Bourbon found the young King with his eyes red from weeping. Hard and cold as was the boy's nature, he had latterly become attached to the kindly disposition of his cousin the Regent ; moreover, tears came easily to him. While the gnome-like Due de la Vrilliere fingered the oath written out ready in his pocket, the Due de Bourbon demanded of the King to make him First Minister. The boy, without saying a word, looked across at old Fleury, who, as already arranged, remarked quietly that the King " could not do better." Still without a word, the boy-King made a sign of assent. The aspirant to office thanked him, took the paper from la Vrilliere, signed it, and went out. The Bishop and the Marquise de Prie 3 Thus was inaugurated the government of the Marquise de Prie, for it was this mistress en titre of M. le Due who actually ruled the kingdom for the ensuing year or two. The Due de Bourbon was the name, the harpy, Madame de Prie, the power behind that name. Behind both was Fleury, the King's preceptor. In the arrangements made with the new First Minister, the apparently benevolent seventy-year-old Bishop merely reserved for himself a seat in the Privy Council and the dispensation of ecclesiastical preferment. Who would, then, have dreamed that in three years' time that humble-mannered old man would have blossomed out into the position of practical Monarch, to rule absolutely for seventeen years, until he died at the age of ninety ? But such indeed was the case. Not for twenty years from the time that Bourbon signed the oath was Louis XV. able gleefully to exclaim, " Messieurs, here I am, then — at last — First Minister ! " while the courtiers in turn shouted, " Le cardinal est mort ! Vive le roi .' " as though it were a new reign commencing. By that time Louis XV., who succeeded his great- grandfather on September ist, 1715, had been twenty- eight years upon a throne without becoming his own master. And during the thirty-one subsequent years of his reign it was the King's mistresses who really ruled, or mis-ruled, the State. Those who remember the closing scenes of the life of Louis XIV. will recollect that one of the last actions of the Grand Monarque was to sign the appointment, suggested to him by his rabid Jesuit confessor le Tellier, of Fleury as preceptor and confessor to the little five-year- old boy about to succeed to the kingdom. Louis " Dicudonnc " then acted rather against his 4 The Real Louis the Fifteenth will, for he did not care for Fleury ; although, thanks to a handsome face and majestic presence, he had origin- ally appointed him Almoner to the Queen. About six feet in height, the appearance of the Abbe Fleury was gentle rather than truculent when he first appeared at the Court, and such it had remained. From the position of Queen's Almoner he was promoted to that of King's Almoner, although he was only a deacon and apparently in no hurry to take further orders. It was not until he had entered his fortieth year that Fleury made up his mind to become priest. It is to be feared that in those days the future Cardinal was not more particular in his moral conduct than Harlay de Champvallon, the Arch- bishop of Paris, who became so notorious with his duchesses and grisettes that the populace hooted him in the streets. The celebrated Abbe Pucelles, the courageous mainstay of Jansenism in the Parliament of Paris, went indeed so far as to declare that he and Fleury, for the sake of economy, shared the same mistress. These reports came to the ears of the King, who, already annoyed at the publicity of the Archbishop's immoralities, punished his Almoner by making him a Bishop and sending him far away from Paris. The bishopric of Frejus, to which he was appointed, was the most unenviable see in the whole of France. Two hundred leagues from Paris, Frejus was in a marsh whence, for fifteen long years, the only sounds of revelry which saluted the ears of the pleasure-loving prelate were the croakings of the frogs. He signed his letters " Bishop of Frejus — by divine indignation." Any prospects which he might have had of returning to the Court, the Bishop ruined for himself by his own indiscretion during the War of the Spanish Succession. From a)t engraving after the picture l)y Rigaiui. CARDINAI, 1-LEURY. The Bishop and the Marquise de Prie 5 Prince Eugene and the Duke of Savoy having invaded Provence, the incautious prelate visited them in their camps and charmed them with his agreeable society. Until the year after the Peace of Utrecht Fleury remained thus in banishment and disgrace, when he threw himself into the arms of the Jesuits in the hope of obtaining their good graces. Nor were his hopes in vain : the Jesuits accepted him, with a proviso. This was that the Bishop of Frejus should receive at their hands a very hard taskmaster, in the shape of the ruler of the Seminary Saint-Nicolas, the Pere Pollet, as his confessor. Under the auspices of this awful man, one of the savage and cruel despoilers of the Jansenist convent and cemetery of Port-Royal, Fleury floated back into favour ; until Louis XIV., after the gangrene had already gained his limbs, signed his appointment to his great- grandson as preceptor and confessor. In this position the Regent left him ; but knowing the ignorance and indolence of the Bishop of Frejus, the Due d'Orleans gave him two able assistants for the education of the child-King. Another priest, also named Fleury, was made his sous-preceptcur, while the Abbe Wittement, or Vitement, formerly reader to the Due de Bourgogne and a very honest man, taught the King to read. When, in August, 1722, the wilful boy-King, schooled by his governor, the Due de Villeroi, commenced to show his impatience of control, by refusing a Jesuit as confessor and cruelly, in his sullen temper, butchering his tame white doe, the Bishop played his cards well. Seeing that his Royal charge disliked constraint, he sent away the learned Fleury, author of the Histoire ecclesiastique ; he also sent off the excellent Wittement. Thus the Bishop of Frejus remained alone with the 6 The Real Louis the Fifteenth King, and, by allowing him to follow his own devices and not forcing him to talk, became absolutely necessary to the youth. It is true that, by way of keeping in with the Jesuits, the Bishop persuaded his charge to give the name of his confessor to a member of that order, the Pere Linieres, but it was merely a name. Fleury alone governed the young Louis in everything, and did so by doing nothing, never seeming to assert himself, either with the boy or with those in authority who might have become jealous had he pushed himself forward. More- over, he taught the King absolutely nothing. In the year 1722, after the Regent had seized the person of the insolent old Due de Villeroi and sent him off to his estates for interfering between himself and the King, Fleury remained the master while seeming the slave. That he was the former was made manifest when, upon the death of the Regent, he again played his cards well by permitting the most powerful of the Princes of the Blood to assume the nominal dictatorship. To have allowed the Due de Chartres, the honest but inefficient son of Phihppe d'Orleans, to have become First Minister would, from Fleury's point of view, have been a mistake. The Due d'Orleans once said to his son, whose incompetence he realised, " You will never be anything but an honest man." This was true, and his honesty, which turned to devotion and Jansenism, ended up in semi-madness. A Prince of Jansenistical principles would have helped Fleury little with the Jesuits or Rome, the persecutors of the Jansenists ; while, again, the turbulent and jealous spirit of the Condes and Contis, the other Princes, would before long have made the position of the First Prince of the Blood impossible, and probably resulted in a civil war. The Bishop and the Marquise de Prie 7 The Due de Chartres — now Due d'Orleans — was heir to the throne while the young Louis liad no children, and was excessively jealous of his position as head of the Royal Family. This fact also would have rendered the post of Fleury far more difficult to maintain than by accepting, as he quietly did, the rule of the Conde — for a time. The Due d'Orleans would have sought the support of the Jansenist faction, strong in the Parliament of Paris, against the Jesuits, the protectors of Fleury, and thus his Bishop's place would probably before long have been vacant. With M. le Due there was nothing of that sort to fear. He was no friend of the Due de Noailles, no friend of the Jansenists or the Parliament ; the Jesuits, Pollet and the rest, accordingly promised him their support. The Due de Bourbon, of course, promised in return to obtain from Rome the Cardinal's hat for the Bishop of Frejus. He promised, moreover, to work against and persecute the Jansenists, who still refused to accept the constitution of the Papal Bull Unigenitus. This Bull was framed in 171 1 by Louis XIV. and his grandson the Due de Bourgogne to crush the Jansenists, and furthermore it was forced by Louis and the Due upon Clement XL, a semi-Jansenist Pope. Bourbon also promised to persecute the Protestants. At Chantilly, the home of the Condes, irreligion reigned supreme, as it had reigned everywhere in France during the Regency, when indifference, led by the Regent and Cardinal Dubois, had been, fortunately for the Protestants, the order of the day. The Regent indeed had befriended the Protestants, and rescued many of their number from the galleys ; while the unbelieving Cardinal Dubois only made a pretence of wishing to 8 The Real Louis the Fifteenth persecute either Jansenist or Protestant for a short time, when agitating for his Cardinal's hat. That once obtained, all the old cruel traditions of the time of Louis XIV. and Madame de Maintenon had been com- pletely forgotten and ignored. It is not to be supposed, therefore, that the religious question was of more importance at Chantilly than it had been during the Regency. Madame de Prie was the friend of the ladies of the Conde family, all of them Princesses of more than light reputation. Madame la Duchesse the mother of the Due de Bourbon, Made- moiselle de Charolais and Mademoiselle de Clermont his sisters, his brother the Comte de Charolais, were all alike known for their immoral behaviour. All of these were the friends of Voltaire. The astute farmer- general Paris-Duverney, who with his three brothers had come into great prominence during the Regency, had been selected by Madame de Prie as her right-hand man. He helped to make Voltaire's enormous fortune, by giving him a share in his traffic in provisions for the army and the State, while Madame de Prie caused the poet to be given a pension. Things being thus at Chantilly, from the first M. le Due did not back up the Jesuits, who were behind Fleury, in a whole-hearted manner. Thus although, at the instance of Lavergne de Tressan, Bishop of Nantes, who wished to be made a Cardinal, an old edict of persecution of the days of Louis XIV. was revived against the Pro- testants, M. le Due took the sting out of it. He secretly removed the murderous article from the code which the clergy contrived to get him to promulgate — the clause by which every one found to be a Protestant might, for the crime of " relapse," be executed in some horrible The Bishop and the Marquise de Prie 9 manner, burned or broken on the wheel. Nor did he press the demand for the Cardinal's hat for Fleury : on the contrary, he tried to block the matter. Regarding the persecution of the Jansenists he was lukewarm also, and demanded peace from Rome instead of war. M, le Due was the more careless in these matters because from the first he found that the Bishop of Frejus was playing him false with the young King. While keeping entire control over the Monarch, Fleury also kept in his own hands the best part of the spoils of the State through that control. He reserved in a great measure the rewards, the power ; moreover, as regards his influence with the boy-King, he held M. le Due in a condition of fear as to how it might be exerted against him. Madame de Prie did not, however, propose to remain in the future Cardinal's tutelage. From the first she determined to be Queen in the State, and, with the assistance of Paris-Duverney, for a time she succeeded. There was no money in the State coffers, and without money the old priest Fleury was powerless. Paris- Duverney and his three brothers from Dauphine, who but two years earlier had been the conquerors of the brilliant Scotsman John Law and his SysUme, always seemed to have the knack of obtaining money. The brothers Paris were no common men ; Duverney in particular, who lived to the age of eighty, filled a century with his activity. At one time the favourite of de Prie, he was, many years afterwards, the favourite of Pompadour, who called him familiarly " my old booby." Long before the days of de Prie, he and his brothers, mountaineers and inn-keepers in the passes of the Alps, had helped Louvois, the furious Minister of War, to pass an army lo The Real Louis the Fifteenth rapidly across those Alps. All the brothers had a wonderful knowledge of affairs, while Duverney, with a remarkable sense of order and precision, loved affairs for themselves more than for the money they could bring. During his career he handled many millions, but only left a moderate fortune. He never cared about honours or titles, and was content to be known, while under the Due de Bourbon, as Secretaire des commandements de M. le Due. Having been associated with the great financier Samuel Bernard, the brothers Paris did all the rough work for him, provisioned army after army, always paying money down, and obtaining provisions when none else could find any. Upon one occasion they suddenly produced forty thousand horses at once for the Marechal de Villars ; moreover, they conducted him and pro- visioned him during his last splendid efforts upon the Rhine, which resulted in peace. In the days of the Seven Years' War we shall find Paris-Duverney, as an octogenarian, again in the field, as active as ever, and always a performer of miracles. Such, then, was the man with whom Madame de Prie had associated herself. In her alliance with him she was strong ; she found means to satisfy her ambition, and that greed which had enabled her, with M. le Due and his family, to make at least fifty millions of livres, by dubious methods, out of John Law and his Systeme during the Regency. Madame de Prie, daughter of Madame Pleneuf, an amiable lady with many lovers, became at an early age the wife of the Marquis de Prie, a starveling envoy at Turin to the Court of Victor Amadeus of Savoy, King of Sardinia. When «he returned to Paris she was floated The Bishop and the Marquise de Prie 1 1 by a well-known stock- jobbing lady, Madame de Verrue, who was of the ducal family de Luynes. Madame de Verrue also had lived long in Italy, in Piedmont, where her husband had taken it in very bad part when she refused to become the mistress of the then Duke of Savoy, rviler of Piedmont. She at length gave way to the importunities of the Duke, and practically became Queen of the State, until, wearied out by the jealous tyranny of her Royal lover, she made her escape back to Paris and indulged in both unlimited pleasure and boundless speculations. Her hotel became famous for its splendid picture-galleries, and especially for its collection of paintings by Rubens and Rembrandt, of whose work Madame de Verrue was one of the earliest admirers. When the Marquise de Prie, then in the flower of her youthful beauty, returned, full of Italian charms and graces, from Turin, Madame de Verrue saw in the beautiful but depraved girl an object of speculation. She knew the young Due de Bourbon to be tired of Madame de Nesle, by whom he had two daughters, one acknowledged and legitimatised, the other to become one of the several sisters who became the King's first mistresses. She therefore planned the celebrated meetings at the masked balls in which Madame de Prie captivated M. le Due even before he succeeded in seeing her face. With the possession of Madame de Prie, fortune came rolling in upon the Conde family. Law's shares began to rise from that moment. She and the Condes had the State secrets from the Regent, and knew how to work the rise and how to take advantage of it, how unscrupu- lously need not be detailed here. In her nature the Marquise de Prie was ferocious, 12 The Real Louis the Fifteenth she was a tiger-cat, and proved it by her hatred of Orleans and the way in which she pursued her good- natured, good-looking mother, whom she envied her celebrated lovers, among whom were Leblanc and Belle-Isle. Libertine with all the libertinism of a Borgia, the Marquise de Prie had about her nothing bourgeoise like Madame de Pompadour, nothing that was vulgar after the fashion of Madame du Barry. She bewitched the Due de Bourbon at the same time that, with the touch of her magic wand, she caused to flow for his benefit the golden river of Pactolus. The most trustworthy and honest of all the chroniclers of the time of Louis XV. was undoubtedly the Marquis Rene Louis de Voyer d'Argenson, eldest son of the celebrated Police-Lieutenant Marc Rene, and elder brother of the Minister of War, Comte Marc Pierre. Both the brothers were born in the same year, 1696, and, fortunately for the Marquis, he died in 1757, a few days before the disgrace of his brother, owing to the wiles of Madame de Pompadour. Besides his journal, which was continued to within a few days of his death, the Marquis left behind him, in his Loisirs d'un ministre, voluminous notes amounting in many cases to veritable essays upon every man and woman of importance of his day, from the King downwards. Often he returns, in subsequent years, to add additional notes or to modify previous impressions of the same personages as he follows their careers. Throughout his memoirs it is constantly forced upon the mind of the reader that their writer was indeed that which he claimed to be — an honest man ! At the time of his dismissal from the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs, for the mere crime of not being enough of a courtier, posterity, reading The Bishop and the Marquise de Prie 13 his temperate remarks, shares with the Marquis himself his patriotic grief that the King, whose faihngs he always attributes to his evil surroundings, had not continued to keep him in office. How much would not the world have been spared had his counsels but prevailed. For although he still remained a IMinister, as a member of the Council, the Marquis d'Argenson never again received a portfolio, although his scheming brother the Comte, whose character, without malevolence, he often dissects, gradually increased in power and importance, owing to the absence of those very qualities of honesty by which the Marquis stands forth alone in the Court of Louis XV. In reading his concluding pages, we do so with the greatest regret that he should not have lived to continue his diary until the close of the Seven Years' War, to have given to posterity his views upon the dismember- ment of Poland. However, we must be thankful that he left us so much that we feel can be absolutely relied upon. He remarks upon Madame de Prie as follows : " It was in the winter of 1719 that Madame de Prie returned to Paris from Turin, where her husband was Ambassador. I often met her in the house of a lady,* one of her cousins. " I do not think that there has ever existed a more celestial creature than Madame de Prie. She was the real flower of the sweet-pea. A charming face, and even more graces than beauty, wit lively and acute, genius, ambition, giddiness, and nevertheless a supreme presence • This lady, whom the worthy d'Argenson often speaks of as Madame de G., was his mistress, but historians have not been successful in discovering the identity of one to whom he continued to show such fidchty. 14 The Real Louis the Fifteenth of mind, an extreme indifference in her choices, and with it all the most decent air in the world. " Well, she governed France throughout two years, and one was able to judge her ; but to say that she governed it well is another matter ! " At the depth there reigned the greatest disorder in her conduct ; also she died partly from the results of her libertinage, partly from rage at seeing her credit overturned. During her prosperity she maintained an affection for each of her lovers, and did her best to be useful to them.* " I saw her intimately at the period of her great beauty. Her fascination was great, but, whether from prudence or from chance, I resisted it, and do not regret having done so, however much my conduct may have damaged me with her. " Madame de Prie arrived ruined from the Embassy, and set at once about repairing her fortunes. She would not have succeeded badly had it not been for the extreme disorder in which she lived. " M. le Due was wildly taken with her. Mesdames de Verrue and de Saissac gave her to him. The bargain was soon made. I have known a good many of the details of this liaison and its origin. I knew their customs, their goings to the opera-balls, their grey chariot de bonne fortune, which had outwardly the appearance of a common fiacre, but was internally of an extreme magnificence. Madame de G. and I accompanied them everywhere, and I was proud to be seen walking about arm-in-arm with a Prince of the Blood. * Madame de Prie died of poison, self-administered, at the age of twenty-nine. She had been exiled to the country for fifteen months when her death took place on October 6th, 1727. The Bishop and the Marquise de Prie i 5 " Nevertheless, I almost ceased to see him later on, and when he became First Minister. I am inclined, however, to think him an honest man, above all, having the desire to be one, although for that matter restricted and narrow-minded. " M. le Due became jealous of the Marquis d'Alincourt (the grandson of the Marechal-Duc de Villeroi), and in consequence Madame de Prie had to give the Marquis his conge at an opera-ball. There was great irritation about it, but all that is very young and childish. " M. le Due d'Orleans died, and M, le Due became First Minister, or rather he only had the title of it. La de Prie and Du Vernay [Paris-Duverney] held him in bondage. " Madame de Prie did not like my brother ; she took away from him his post of Lieutenant de Police. But he was a Councillor of State. At the same time I gave up my Intendance of Valenciennes, which only ruined me without being good for anything. I was reproached for this step as a want of attachment to M. le Due, and an occasion for making me feel it soon came. I had asked for an intendancy, and there were two vacant. La de Prie cut me out ; she preferred M. de Harlay, who had Strasbourg, and M. d'Angervilliers, who got Paris. She procured M. le Due Madame d'Egmont for his amusement as soon as she perceived that her own charms ceased to have the same empire over that Prince. In fact, she was getting thin while one looked at her, her bones showed through the skin. " She it was who made the Queen, just as I would make of my lackey a valet de chambre. That was a pity ! Nevertheless, her credit fell against M. de Fr^jus [Fleury], whom she wished to separate from the King, but who 1 6 The Real Louis the Fifteenth sat tight and laughed at her. From disappointment, she became hideous and haughty with every one, would listen to no reasonable advice. " Seeing that I was becoming importunate, I seldom appeared before her ; not that I feared her though, on account of our old acquaintance, and therefore did not neglect to tell her a few home truths when I saw her, at which she only laughed. She was disgraced at the same time as M. le Due. Her husband, M. de Prie, asked everybody with a comic affectation, ' But what have my wife and M. le Due to do in common ? ' " She died in the saddest manner at Courbe-Epine. I have seen M. le Due from time to time since then, but not with the old familiarity. " Madame de Prie was absolutely determined to receive me alone. As for me, I avoided these interviews like another Joseph with Potiphar's wife. Never was her door closed to me. One day when I went I was ushered in to her at her toilette — she was washing herself. I wished to retire, but she made me remain. " ' At all events, madame,' I then said, ' let me take the first-fruits of such cleanliness.' As a matter of fact, I kissed her, and heartily too, although it was but by chance that I found myself there. Fortunately some one came, for I really truly loved Madame de G., and it went against the grain that, from pure libertinage, her cousin should make advances to me and fail towards M. le Due, who was so good to her. She was uncommonly pretty then, although she had commenced to fine down. I went off on the morrow to Valenciennes, without taking advantage in any way of her good will towards me." Such, then, is a portrait of the woman who ruled tlie The Bishop and the Marquise de Prie 17 State, and whose first measure was to send back the young Infanta from Versailles to Spain. This young daughter of Philip V., uncle of Louis XV., first Bourbon King of Spain, and husband of Elizabeth Farnese of Parma, had come to France as a mere child of four or five, a year or two earlier, amid a great flourish of trumpets. The projected alliance had been the work of Cardinal Dubois and the Regent, who, b}^ selecting such a very young child to be afftanced to the young King, had hoped for a long time to keep the power in France in their own hands. Since there could naturally be no heir to the King, moreover, the boy being in feeble health, there was in the event of his death every prospect that the Due d'Orleans, the direct heir, would himself succeed to the crown. Two of the Regent's daughters were at about the same time sent to Spain. Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the elder, married Don Luis, Prince of the Asturias, and was for eight months Queen of Spain, Philip V. having temporarily abdicated until King Luis his son died of smallpox. Mademoiselle de Beaujolais, the younger daughter, was sent in exchange for the Infanta, who came to Ver- sailles, and was intended for Don Carlos, the younger half-brother of Luis. She was, however, sent back to France when Madame de Prie returned the Infanta. This was a step which caused the greatest fury at the Court of Spain, and especially in the heart of Elizabeth Farnese, the second wife of the French King of Spain. She, although but a beggarly Princess from the infini- tesimal Court of Parma, was perhaps the most ambitious Queen who ever sat upon an European throne. Ruling her husband, her manoeuvres in pursuit of this ambition VOL. I. 2 1 8 The Real Louis the Fifteenth frequently drenched all Europe in blood. Later on she procured the eldest daughter of Louis XV. for Don Philip, who was the second son of the Parmesan Princess, and eventually obtained the Principality of Parma. CHAPTER II How a Queen was Made 1725 The inauguration of the reign of the Marquise de Prie was marked by the bitterness between the houses of Orleans and Conde. In this matter Madame de Prie was as much Conde as her princely lover the First Minister and all his female relations. Of these his mother, Madame la Ducliesse, was the most bitter, although, an illegitimate daughter of Louis XIV. by Madame de Montespan, she was sister to the Dowager Duchesse d'Orleans, widow of the late Regent. The Regent was the son of Philippe d'Orleans the only brother of Louis XIV,, and had, greatly against his will, married Mademoiselle de Blois, the youngest of that King's illegitimate daughters. She, however, with her brothers, the Due du Maine and the Comte de Toulouse, as well as her two sisters, liad been publicly legitimatised and declared Royal with the rights oi Royalty. During the Regency the Due d'Orleans, at the instance of the Conde faction and to preserve himself from the plottings with Spain of the Due du Maine, had taken away these Royal rights from Montespan's children, including his own wife and the Duchesse de Bourbon, who liad married the head of the Conde family. A single exception, 19 20 The Real Louis the Fifteenth however, was made in favour of the Comte de Touloues^ for his hfetime only, since he was harmless and did not intrigue against his cousin the Regent. The Comte de Toulouse married an attractive widow, whose relations with the young King were at different times of a varied nature, which caused considerable comment during the few years after the death of the Regent, as will be seen later. She was the widow of the Due d'Antin, by whom she had two sons, the Due d'Epernon and the Marquis d'Antin. Her name before marriage was Marie Victoire de Noailles, she being the sister of the Marechal-Duc de Noailles. By the Comte de Toulouse she had one son, who was given the title of Due de Penthievre. This title had been borne by several Princes of the legitimatised house of Vendome, descendants of Henri TV. and Gabrielle d'Estrees, cele- brated as la belle Gabrielle in the song which the gallant Henri de Navarre composed about his beloved mistress. While maintaining, as Ministers, la Vrilliere, Fleuriau d'Amenonville, the Comte de Morville, Breteuil, and Dodun, all mediocre nominees of the late Due d'Orleans, Madame de Prie and M. le Due were not so complaisant where other friends of the Orleans family were concerned. They commenced by, in as far as possible, making a clean sweep of Versailles. From the numerous sets of apartments in that chateau was first hunted out the brave Comte de Belle-Isle, who with his friend and colleague the able Minister of War, Leblanc, had already experienced the vengeance of " la " Prie and M. le Due before the deaths of Cardinal Dubois and the Regent. Their real crime had been that of being among the be- loved of Madame Pleneuf, the mother of M. le Due's How a Queen was Made 21 favourite. What they were pursued for, although the charge was disproved before the Parhament, was pilfering the chest of the War Office. After Belle-Isle, went the Marquis de Simiane and all the roues, those companions of pleasure and debauch of the late Regent. While thus in one way striving to cause the ruin of the party of Orleans, by banishing its adherents from the Court, in another way it was sought to be occasioned by the elevation of its enemies to lucrative posts, which M. le Due sold and gave the proceeds to Madame de Prie. The cause of this hatred between the allied families of Conde and Orleans, both of the Blood-Royal, was undoubtedly the haughty attitude and pretensions of the Orleans themselves. M. le Due declared that it was his project " to humiliate " the latter, as he regarded their pretensions as " enormous, exorbitant." The young Due de Chartres became Due d'Orleans on the death of the Regent, and at once comported himself in a haughty manner, in no way after the fashion of his good-natured, easy-going father. Occupying now the position of First Prince of the Blood, he declared that, if in the affairs of the State M. le Due enjoyed the power of First Minister, his own rank constituted him his cousin's superior. He added that he himself was alone pre-eminent in the rank of Prince of the Blood of France, and that, as heir to the throne, he intended to be treated with proper respect by one whom he would teach that he was only the Minister. His mother, the Duchesse d'Orleans, a woman of such a disagreeable nature that her husband, against whose interests she had plotted, always called her Madame Satan, was more haughty even tlian her son. While backing up Leblanc and trying to restore him to office, 22 The Real Louis the Fifteenth she refused to accept of any favours from " the Minister," insisting upon her rights from the young King himself. Thus when the new distribution of apartments was made at Versailles, since this distribution was made by the Due de Bourbon, the Duchesse declined to accept those which her son desired, making him go to the King in person to demand apartments befitting his rank. The war was carried on by Madame de Prie's dis- missal from the Police-Lieutenantcy of the Comte d'Argenson. It was a place of great importance, since by it were held all the secrets of Paris, especially the handling of the letters in the post department, which were opened, their contents copied, and then resealed and forwarded. Instead of this friend of the Orleans family, who was for long its chancelier, a relation of " la " Prie's, named d'Omberval, was made Police- Lieutenant, by whose agency the ruling Marquise was soon able to know all that was taking place. About this time the young Due d'Orleans thought of taking a wife, and he fixed his affections upon a Princesse of the Blood — Louise Adelaide, Mademoiselle de la Roche-sur-Yon. She was the daughter of Fran9ois, Prince de Conti, and her mother was a Conde. To her his mother objected, upon the grounds that the young lady was " haughty, quarrelsome, and above all very libertine." That the Duchesse d'Orleans had right upon her side in objecting to the match with Mademoiselle de la Roche-sur-Yon is apparent from the remarks of the Marquis d'Argenson concerning that lady, when she died unmarried in 1750, at the age of fifty-four. " C'etait une bonne princesse, et qui laisse beaucoup de How a Queen was Made 23 batards." It has been said of her that her blood was too rich ! Faihng to obtain this bonne princesse, the Due d'Orleans had to search elsewhere, when, oddly enough, in spite of the internecine warfare raging between the families, the Duchesse d'Orleans applied to the Duchesse de Bourbon for a young sister of M. le Due — Made- moiselle de Vermandois. This demand was to court a refusal, especially as Madame la Duchesse was secretly aspiring to marry that young lady to the fourteen-year-old King. She offered instead Mademoiselle de Sens, who was declined ; while the Duchesse d'Orleans began to search the Almanach- royal for a suitable Princesse elsewhere. When at length she fixed upon the Princess of Baden- Baden, M. le Due contrived to put all sorts of obstacles in the way, to prevent the demand being made with the proper ceremony comporting with the Royal rank of the Due d'Orleans. In fact, every petty means which his mind or the ingenuity of his mistress could invent was employed to reduce the grandeur of the house of Orleans. Notwithstanding these tactics, the First Minister had at length to give way, when the demand for the hand of the Princess was made in the name of the King, It was, however, the Marquis de Matignon, an enemy of the Orleans family, who was entrusted with the duty, and he was instructed to carry it out in an unbefitting manner. Ne\^ertheless, the marriage took place. This Marquis de Matignon, formerly Comte de Gac6, was he who fought the memorable duel in the street with his comrade in debauch, the young Due de Riche- lieu. The mutual dissipations in which these nobles 24 The Real Louis the Fifteenth were indulging with some of the highest ladies in the land gave rise to the quarrel, which took place at an opera-ball, when the young men went outside and fought it out in the presence of numerous well-known persons in their ball attire. Gace then received three wounds, while Richelieu was run through the body. The Parliament of Paris insisted, in spite of the Regent, in imprisoning both in the Bastille, but both swore vigorously that there had been no duel. Moreover, none of the witnesses had seen anything ! When, after some time, their bodies were ordered to be examined for wounds, they had covered these with taffeta and had them skilfully painted. Thus the judges observed nothing, and the two nobles were released, after embracing each other heartily and dining together with the Governor of the Bastille. Although at the time of these quarrels between the two princely families the boy- King was exceedingly handsome, he was in delicate health. Moreover, he occasionally had severe, if short, illnesses. These made M. le Due excessively anxious lest he should die and the kingdom pass to the Due d'Orleans. He was desirous, therefore, to marry the youth to a lady of an age capable of having an heir, and for this reason it was that the seven-year-old Infanta was suddenly sent back to Spain, at the risk of a war with that Power, whose troops were, indeed, ordered to make some incursions across the Pyrenees. The First Minister had further cause for anxiety in the policy of the Bishop of Frejus, which consisted in making the boy as effeminate as possible. He wished to keep all ideas of the sex out of the King's head, and for that purpose allowed him to be surrounded by several How a Queen was Made 25 young companions of execrable habits. Already, two years earlier, the Regent had violently removed from Versailles several grandsons and a young granddaughter by marriage of the old Due de Villeroi on account of their bad example to the King ; the priestly preceptor was, however, once more closing his eyes and conniving at what he knew to be utterly wrong. The leaders of this gang of effeminate young wretches were the Due d'Epernon, son of Madame de Toulouse, who lived in apartments just below the King at Versailles ; the boy-Due de Gesvres, who did woman's work, such as tapestry and knitting, all his life, and who was always with the King ; and la Tremouille, two years older than the others, the worst of the three. There was likewise the young Comte de Maurepas, a Secre- tary of State at fifteen, and afterwards an important personage in the State. He was witty, clever, fond of bon-mots, epigrams, and charades from early youth. Although looked down upon by the others on account of his inferiority of birth, being but the grandson of the Chancelier Pontchartrain, he led the band and encouraged them in iniquity ; he was, moreover, a year or two the senior of Tremouille. Madame de Toulouse, who, although still young and remarkably well preserved, at this time played the mother to the young King, did all she could to foster the intimacy of her son with him ; in short, she backed up the Bishop in allowing his Royal charge to run wild with the girlish boys who set him against all women, and made him vow that he would never marry, as did the others. Owing to disorder on a large scale which was taking place in Paris at this time in the house of a certain des Chauffours (who was eventually burned), the public, who 26 The Real Louis the Fifteenth loved their young King, became alarmed for his moral welfare. While the still youthful Voltaire was taking up his pen to flagellate, in La Courcillonade and the Cure de Chantilly, those vicious persons whose example these young mignons but imitated, M. le Due and Madame de Prie were endeavouring to institute vigorous police measures against them, in which they were assisted by Paris-Duverney. It would take many pages to follow the ramifications of the affair, in which, in the end, the influence of Versailles proved too strong for the really laudable efforts of Madame de Prie. This, by-the-bye, was owing to the fact that Herault, whom she appointed Lieutenant de Police instead of her cousin d'Omberval, proved untrue to her and went over to the other side. It may be well to mention that the celebrated beating which Voltaire received at the hands of the servants of the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot came out of the same business, as was also his imprisonment in the Bastille to prevent him fighting a duel with de Rohan, and his subsequent departure for England. The Chevalier, formerly a friend of the Marquise de Prie, like Herault, had changed sides. Although unsuccessful in the sweeping reforms of the public morals which they sought to carry out in Paris, at Versailles Madame de Prie and M. le Due contrived to triumph over the old Bishop Fleury, whose studied indulgence amounted to iniquity. By it, indeed, he kept a hold over the young King all the rest of his life. The excellent Abbe Wittement said some years later, *' There exists a certain indissoluble bond between the King and the Cardinal from which it results that His Majesty could never send him away, however much he might wish to." And he never did send him away, How a Queen was Made 27 although men and events all around him proved more and more every day how necessary it was that he should do so. The Due and his mistress resolved to marry young la Tremouille by force — which they did ; they also resolved to marry the King, in spite of Fleury. Now we shall see the truth of d'Argenson's words, " Madame de Prie made the Queen of France as I would make my lackey valet de chambre.'' She and her partner at the head of affairs well realised that to marry the King had this much to recommend it : for not only would it do away with the Court influences at Versailles, but it would be the greatest blow that could be aimed at the Palais-Royal, since it would render the Orleans family furious. The scheme was therefore all the more readily decided on. While looking about for a wife for the young King, the Due did him a good turn. An ardent sportsman himself, he commenced to make a sportsman of Louis, and to take him out to his parties of the chase. In later years the only healthy occupation of the King's life was hunting and shooting, and at this critical period of his youth these pursuits made a man of the badly brought- up boy, and his health was soon greatly improved by the outdoor exercise. It was natural, while looking about for a wife for the King, that the Due de Bourbon should be of the same opinion as Madame la Duchesse in considering that he could not do better than give him his own young sister, Mademoiselle de Vermandois. By nature this young lady, who was still being educated in a convent, was haughty, spiriiuelle, and given to speaking out her mind. She took good care to let all the other pupils in the 2 8 The Real Louis the Fifteenth convent understand her superior rank, and exacted from them humble respect to herself. In appearance she was remarkably good-looking and well formed for her age. While Madame de Prie was of the same mind as her lover in considering the Due's young sister as a suitable match for the King, she determined not to decide on accepting the young Princesse without in a personal interview deciding upon her adaptability for the mag- nificent position to which she proposed to raise her. With this object in view, and especially to see if she would be likely to allow herself to be ruled, the Marquise formed a plan for finding out the true nature of Mademoiselle de Vermandois. Disguising herself and taking a titled name not her own, she proceeded to Tours, where the convent was situated. Having armed herself with letters from M. le Due to his sister, she readily gained access to the young member of the house of Conde. Chatting with the girl in a lively manner and giving her all the Court news, she managed to bring the con- versation round to herself, asking Mademoiselle de Vermandois if she had heard of the Marquise de Prie, and what she thought about her. The young Princesse was not long in giving her opinion ; she thought all the horrors possible of Madame de Prie — and said so. The Marquise listened, in no wise disconcerted, and drew her on with an approving smile while she said that " Well did she know that wicked woman ; they talked of nothing else in the convent, and in a horrible manner. It was very annoying that her brother had about him a disgusting creature like that, whose very name made him hated by the whole of France." The young scholar How a Queen was Made 29 continued for a long time in this strain, ending up by saying that it was greatly to be desired that her brother's friends should contrive to remove such an abandoned person from his society. Madame de Prie had now heard enough ; moreover, owing to the increasing animation of Mademoiselle de Vermandois, she commenced to feel that she herself was losing her temper. Rising hurriedly to leave, she re- marked aloud, contemptuously, " Va! tu ne seras point reine de France," and thereupon left the incautious young Princesse to her reflections. Upon returning to Versailles Madame de Prie did not fall into the error of abusing his sister to her lover. Far too clever to adopt such a course, she acted in an entirely contrary manner, declaring to M. le Due that his sister possessed all the qualities required in a Queen of France. Having thus eliminated the chance of any odium falling upon herself should the match not come off, Madame de Prie repaired to Paris-Duverney, who pos- sessed the Due's full confidence and ruled him in great matters of State. To him she pointed out that if Mademoiselle de Vermandois should become Queen, he would, instead of the one master whom he now had, have five. These she enumerated : they were the King, the Queen, M. le Due, his mother, Madame la Duchesse, and M. de Lassay. This Marquis de Lassay was an old fop whom the mother of the First Minister was not ashamed to be seen about with everywhere, and who exercised a great deal too much influence upon Madame la Duchesse. Perhaps fortunately for her, she had never prided herself suffici- ently upon her reputation to mind what was said about 30 The Real Louis the Fifteenth her and the bitter-tongued old man to whom eventually she was supposed to have been married in secret. Paris-Duverney was not long in acting upon the hint given to him by the cunning Marquise ; and it bore such good fruit that before long M. le Due was telling everybody that if the marriage with his sister was une affaire man- quee, it was by no means the fault of Madame de Prie, as that lady had strongly recommended the alliance. The worthy couple experienced a good deal of difficulty in finding just the sort of wife they wanted for the young King, which was one who would be virtuous and at the same time docile enough to do what she was told. For one cause or another, all the marriageable Princesses seemed unsuitable, or, if suitable, were refused to them. Among the former class was Elizabeth, Princess of Russia, whom her mother, Catherine I., widow of Peter the Great, very readily offered. The mother's character and low birth, however, were an obstacle, to which was added the equivocal reputation of the Princess herself ; she was therefore declined with thanks. With George I., the German King of England, the First Minister had continued the traditions of Cardinal Dubois, which were those of a close friendship, cemented all the closer from the fact that the annual million of livres which England had given to Dubois were continued to Madame de Prie. When, therefore, the King of England was asked for one of his grand-daughters for the King of France, he made no personal objection ; on the contrary, expressed himself flattered. But he pointed out that the people of England would not stand the proviso that an English Princess should change her religion. At length some one thought of a very humble How a Queen was Made 31 personage who yet had some claims to the rank of a Royal Princess, and suggested her to Madame de Prie. It is probable that Paris-Duverney was the real originator of the suggestion, although de Rohan, Bishop of Strasbourg, has been named as responsible for it. It was remembered that, living humbly in a remote corner of Alsace upon the bounty of the King of France, there existed a worthy gentleman who once had been a King of Poland, and that he had a daughter. Duverney, at all events, had formerly lent money at Wurtemburg to Stanislas Lesczynski, and knew him. He was now at Weissemburg with his family. His career had been a varied one already, and was to be more so before he died. Son of Raphael Lesczynski, Palatine of Posen and Treasurer of Poland, Stanislas had in his youth been appointed arch-butler to the crown by Augustus II. When Charles XII. of Sweden conquered Augustus in 1704, he took a fancy to Stanislas, and helped to get him elected to the throne by the Diet at Warsaw. After Charles was defeated at Pultawa in 1709, Stanislas felt his position insecure, and had definitely to abandon the crown and fly to Pomerania when Augustus came back in 1712. He then abdicated ; but being treacherously taken prisoner by the Hospodar of Moldavia, he was sold by him to the Turks, who kept Stanislas until 1714. The exiled King then going to Sweden, Charles XII. made Stanislas the Governor of Deux-Ponts. Five years later Charles died. Bereft at once of his protector and his large family estates in Poland, Lesczynski found a refuge under Philippe d'Orleans, the Regent, who gave him an allowance and permission to live at Weissemburg, with his only daughter Marie Lesczynska. He had been trying hard for some years past to marry Marie 32 The Real Louis the Fifteenth to some Prince, but in vain, and at length had fallen so low in his demands for his penniless daughter that he had been ready to unite her to a simple colonel, the Comte d'Estrees. This marriage, however, fell through, as the Regent declined to make the Comte a due and peer of France. Madame de Prie learned enough about Marie to know that she was twenty-two years old, was virtuous, gentle and simple in manner, and that she was not handsome. She was convinced that her poverty would make her submissive to her will. When the messenger arrived with the demand for his daughter's hand for the King of France, it is said that Stanislas Lesczynski fell upon Marie Lesczynska's neck in a swoon. On recovery from his fainting fit, the ex-King of Poland remarked, " Never have I wished again to sit upon a throne save for the purpose of establishing my beloved daughter." Neither father nor daughter could believe the good news to be true ; but hard upon the heels of her messenger arrived Madame de Prie herself at Strasbourg, to indoc- trinate the simple Polish maiden with the duties that she was contracting towards the First Minister. The Marquise had not only brought advice, she came with her hands full of presents from M. le Due, and other and more womanly ones from herself. Having learned that the Queen of her selection was wanting in underclothing, the favourite profited by the extreme poverty of Stanislas to take his daughter a liberal supply of these necessary articles, and especially stockings of the finest quality. Poor Marie Lesczynska, accustomed to the direst poverty, was dazzled. She exclaimed simply, " Never in my life have I seen so much riches ! " From an ciigiaviiig ujlti llic /ml me bv yuii/oo. MARIF, LKSCZYNSKA, I'RINCK.SS OF I'OI.ANI) AXl) (^X'KKN OF FRANCE. CHAPTER III How a Queen was Deposed 1725 — 1726 The old saying of " Happy is the bride that the sun shines upon " could liardly have been apphed to Marie Lesczynska. From the moment that she left Alsace to the time that she arrived in Paris it rained in torrents. In spite of the fact that all the horses of the farmers were impressed to draw the coaches of the cortege, in spite, too, of the impressment of thousands of miserable peasants to work upon the roads by forced labour in every province, the carriages were with the greatest difficulty got through. They were, indeed, frequently floating. She, however, duly arrived at length, and was married to the handsome young King on September 5th, 1725. He was then fifteen and a half years old, and, from the contemporary reports of Bachelier, his celebrated valet de chambre, and others, appears at first to have persisted in following the advice of the now married la TremouiUe, and treated his spouse more as a sister than a wife. La TremouiUe, who was married to the daughter of the Due de Bouillon, in spite of the threats of his father-in-law, insisted for eight years in following a similar line of conduct and neglecting his amiable bride. The misery and famine brought about by the heavy VOL. I. 33 3 34 The Real Louis the Fifteenth rains of the year of the marriage were all visited upon the head of Paris-Duverney. Since he had been following the tenets of the celebrated engineer Vauban, and en- deavouring to tax nobles and clergy as well as the peasants and bourgeoisie, the members of the privileged classes stirred up even the ignorant lower orders against Du- verney. His tax-collectors were received everywhere with a pitchfork. To wind up his splendid military career, Vauban's book was publicly burned by the hangman, and he died in disgrace in 1707. In such guise had Louis XIV. treated his faithful servant, who brought him so much military glory at sieges at which the Monarch was present in person. To touch the pockets of the nobility or the clergy was still a dangerous operation under Louis XV., and when the fall arrived of the Due de Bourbon and the Marquise de Prie, Duverney was rewarded for his courageous attempts with eighteen months in the Bastille. In the meantime, however, the trio proceeded gaily, suppressing most of the pensions conferred upon his favourites by the late Regent, and many also which dated from the time of Louis XIV. By this means there was some money for the State and a good deal for M. le Due, his family, and his mistress. The hard laws of the energetic Duverney, his wholesale suppression of the millions of beggars whom he forced to work or imprisoned, his prying into the private affairs and the incomes of the noblesse and clergy, soon made the ruling couple excessively unpopular. Especially did the Jesuit party — which was also the party of Versailles and Fleury — rage. Their meeting-place was the salon of the infamous Madame de Tencin, the ex-nun who had been mistress to Dubois, and was, by the poet Destouches, How a Queen was Deposed 35 the mother of the celebrated d'Alembert, whom she abandoned at his birth upon the steps of a church. This late go-between of the Regent's amours and stage-manageress of his shameful orgies lived in a semi- marital fashion with her equally shameless brother, soon now to become Cardinal de Tencin. While still Abbe this disgrace to the Church had, by blackmailing the old Cardinal Conti after his election to the papal chair as Innocent XIII., compelled him to give the Cardinal's hat to the dissolute Dubois. He had now been negotiating successfully with Benedict XIII. for the same distinction for the Bishop of Frejus and himself. The credit of the two Tencins stood very high with Fleury and the Jesuits — and through Fleury with the young King. In every manner in their power they sought to subvert the authority ai M. le Due and Madame de Prie, who soon found themselves without any support save in the Queen whom they had made, and she was almost a nonentity. Far from marriage having served to regulate the King in the matter of his choice of friends, it had but served to cynically emancipate him. At his levers, at his couchers, his friends had returned, including the scandalous young Duchesse de Retz, whom the Regent had banished from Court with those polissons the grandsons of Villeroi. She was now a widow, and gained in favour. The girlish Gesvres was also to be seen back once more, doing his tapestry work in the Royal apartments. As for the newly married Queen, she was quite neglected and left out in the cold, to the society of the ladies-of-honour whom de Prie had selected for her, and upon none of whom, as yet, the boy-King had deigned to cast his eyes. 36 The Real Louis the Fifteenth Seeking to find in others that which she did not possess herself, Madame de Prie had undertaken a difficult task when she endeavoured to procure for the Queen's household none but ladies whose names the breath of scandal had not sullied. The Abbe de Soulavie tells us that " After having greatly searched it was found that Madame la Marechale de Boufflers possessed the qualities and virtue required for a lady-of-honour, whence one may infer to what corruption the sex had abandoned itself, and how much the Regency had favoured scandalous libertinage. It was for these reasons that the Comtesse de Mailly, the eldest daughter of the Mar- quise de Nesles, was chosen for Lady of the Robes. She was neither capricious, intriguing, nor ambitious, and her character had in it much that could accommodate itself to that of the Queen, which it much resembled. Madame de Mailly had in addition qualities of the heart ; with an equable temperament, she was true to her friendships, and was known for her probity and modesty. " Massillon says that ' One did not look so closely into the character of the twelve ladies of the Palace, for it would have been too difficult to fill these places with ladies of irreproachable manners. M. le Due was obliged to recompense Madame de Prie and Madame d'Egmont, whose gallantry was known to all the Court, and some others whom in his moments of distraction had not proved cruel to him.' " Among other ladies were to be distinguished Madame de Nesle and Madame de Gontaut, who had for the Due de Richelieu, among others, sentiments less interested but more lively and natural than those of Madame de Prie for M. le Due. While Madame de Nesle had wit and How a Queen was Deposed 37 courage, activity and energy, in her passions, Madame de Gontaut, on the other hand, possessed more sensibihty and reflection," It will be remembered that although for years the mistress of M. le Due, the Marquise de Nesle during the Regency fought a duel with pistols with Madame de Polignac for the Due de Richelieu, and while lying bathed in blood as a result of a bullet received just above the breast, that she loudly proclaimed that fickle noble to the bystanders as " the eldest son of Venus and Mars, for whom I am ready to shed my blood to the last drop." Her courage was, therefore, certainly less to be questioned than her qualities of reflection. The manners and morals of the ladies of the Palace of the Queen were, as may be judged from those already named, sufficiently varied. Among the others were the Duchesses de Tallard, de Bethune, and d'Epernon, the young and beautiful Marechale de Villars, for whose beaux yeux Voltaire sighed a whole year in vain, and Mesdames de Chalais, de Rupelmonde, de Merode, and de Matignon, of whom it was said that they were sus- pected of some gallantries, but less bold and less talked about than those of the other ladies. To this charming bevy of ladies, then, was the Queen relegated, and it must be conceded that if among such a collection of unprincipled women she, while neglected by the King, remained good and pure, it was owing alone to her own innate virtue. Virtuous and religious, indeed, this ill-treated woman remained all her life. For the officers of her chapel she was compelled to accept Fleury as her Grand Almoner, while Bishop Tavannes, afterwards a Cardinal and Archbishop of Rouen, was appointed her First Almoner. 38 The Real Louis the Fifteenth While Fleury, burning with the desire to govern the State and to get rid of M. le Due and Madame de Prie, was plotting with the Tencins and the Jesuits their enemies, M. le Due tried to appease the old Bishop of Frejus by leaving in his hands everything of whatsoever kind to do with the distribution of favours in the Church. Fleury, however, was not by any means contented, M. le Due and the Marquise therefore laid a plot to get rid of him. A great coup was attempted in December, 1725, by which it was proposed to separate the prelate from his pupil. It was Madame de Prie, inspired by Duverney, who suggested to M. le Due that he should get the King to speak to him alone about State affairs, carefully keeping him apart from the Bishop, who invariably contrived to be present. By degrees, it was thought, the King would learn to do without this constant presence of his preceptor, and eventually send him away altogether. To succeed, the Queen's assistance was required and readily granted. M. le Due, on December 17th, 1725, was with the Queen, who sent to ask the King to come to her (he was, as usual, with Fleury). Upon his arrival the doors were closed, and the Queen and the Due de Bourbon kept them so until eleven o'clock. At half-past eight Fleury, tired of waiting for the King, left Versailles and went off to a convent at Issy. He had played the same trick once before with great success during the Regency. Then, while the King moaned and groaned and refused to eat or sleep, Fleury remained concealed for a day or two, to the great dis- comfiture of the Regent, who did not know how to pacify the boy. It was upon the occasion that the Marechal de Villeroi was sent away. Fleury had promised the King's How a Queen was Deposed 39 Governor that he would also leave the Court and remain absent if anything should happen to him. He did not, however, keep his compact with Villeroi, but allowed himself to be found and brought back in triumph to his charge, while the Marechal was kept in exile by the Regent. Remembering the King's tears upon the former occasion of his absenting himself, the wily Bishop felt that in a similar manner he would now triumph over M. le Due. He did not, however, this time take the trouble to hide himself, but left a letter for the King to say where he was gone — and why. This letter no one dared to deliver that night nor the next morning, when the King went out hunting. It was only on the evening of December i8th that he received the letter in which Fleury declared that he " would never return to the Court." As before, the King wept, he was sulky with M. le Due, and constantly demanded his pre- ceptor from every one. It was the Due de Mortemart, of the party opposed to the First Minister, who dared at length to say to the King that he had only to give his orders, and he would go and bring Fleury back from Issy in his carriage. He even had the courage to tell the boy, whimpering in such a childish manner, that he would also go to M. le Due and order him on the King's behalf to send a messenger himself to the Bishop of Frejus and tell him to return. The result was, as had been anticipated, triumph for Fleury and his party, consternation in the camp of the Condes. Among these, the Queen was as much embarrassed as the rest, for she had now learned that her master was not the King, nor M. le Due, but the Bishop. It was a lesson which the unfortunate woman 40 The Real Louis the Fifteenth was never allowed to forget in after-years. Her first mortification came very soon, when she vigorously demanded the cordon bleu of the order of the Saint- Esprit for M. de Nangis and the Marechal de Tesse, and was refused point-blank. A month or two after this rebuff to M. le Due and the Marquise, a horrible incident occurred which for the time greatly abased their enemies the Tencins, brother and sister. During the frantic gambling for Law's shares during the Regency, Madame de Tencin took the money of one of her lovers, the Jacobite Lord Boling- broke, to gamble with, saying that she would give him the proceeds. To speculate in the shares, she sent an aimable young councillor in the Parliament backwards and forwards to the Rue Quincampoix to the Bourse. He gained immense sums, which he remitted to Madame de Tencin, and she promised him that she would become his wife, while he was foolish enough to remain in- fatuated with the horrible woman. Early in 1726 it transpired that she had refused to give to Bolingbroke the money that she held of his, denying that she had ever received it. La Fresnaye, the young gentleman who had brought back to her the spoils of the Bourse, felt his honour at stake, but he still urged her to marry him, apparently intending to make good the missing sums himself. For reply, Madame de Tencin — who, by-the-bye, was really Mademoiselle, and only called Madame for having been a canoness — snapped her fingers in his face. She told la Fresnaye plainly that she had never dreamed of doing anything else than make use of him as a tool. On April 6th, 1726, while the Tencins and the rest of Voltaire's enemies were laughing spitefully at his How a Queen was Deposed 41 ineffectual attempts to fight his duel with Rohan-Chabot, the laughers became the laughed at, although it was a horrible tragedy which caused the turn of the tables. M. la Fresnaye, in despair and dishonoured, had taken a dire revenge. After writing a terrible letter, which he sent to a sure place, detailing all he knew of Madame de Tencin's iniquities, and accusing her of ruining him, he repaired to her house. There in her presence, after upbraiding her, he blew his brains out with a pistol. It was in vain that Madame de Tencin with some magistrates of her acquaintance, without informing the police, contrived to bury the body in quick-lime in the vaults of Saint-Roch ; in vain, too, that they pretended that la Fresnaye had died of apoplexy. The dead man's letter remained to explain the whole truth about Madame de Tencin. The Police of the Chatelet, under Herault, seized her on the loth, and were about to judge her, when she would have received scant mercy. Versailles, however, came to her assistance. Fleury, with the aid of the Comte Phelipeaux de Maurepas, the young Secretary of State, contrived to rescue her from the police, who might have hanged her out of hand. They were, however, compelled, if only for her own safety, to put her in the Bastille under a lettre de cachet. It was, however, a terrible blow for them, so great that Fleury commenced to talk about retiring, while Madame de Prie was able to write to the Due de Richelieu, then on an embassy to the Emperor Charles VI. at Vienna, " Everything is once more in order, again I am in repose." By the end of May, however, her friend Voltaire, released from the Bastille, had been hunted out of France, 42 The Real Louis the Fifteenth while in the honeyed tones with which Fleury remarked to M. le Due that " one might arrange matters if Madame de Prie and Duverney would go to the country," the First Minister saw a danger. He recognised the fear and hatred of the young King behind the suave words of the old priest — now a Cardinal. Madame de Prie and Paris-Duverney consented to go to the country for a time, when M. le Due was rewarded for their departure by the burning of des Chauffours, the head of an enor- mous institution of vice. None of his several hundred disciples, many of them nobles, protected by Versailles, or Bishops, like Saint-Aignan and la Fare, were allowed to be interfered with. The Conseiller Delpech, the painter Nattier, and the ex-Jesuit the Abbe Desfontaines, although among those whose prosecution Madame de Prie had urged, were allowed to go scot-free. It was, indeed, Voltaire who, with the chivalry of youth, saved Desfontaines from the Bastille before enter- ing its portals for the second time himself. And yet it was precisely because this wretched Abbe had done him the greatest possible injury that Voltaire rushed off to young Maurepas in haste to save him, Desfontaines had stolen and published as his own, under the name of La Ligue, Voltaire's magnificent epic of Henry IV. called La Henriade. Maurepas, an effeminate, frivolous young man, as we have seen the friend of la Tremouille and Gesvres, was himself not without suspicion of being mixed up with the cabal of vice in Paris, whose manners he was con- sidered to have brought to Versailles. He was not sorry, although of the party against Voltaire, the friend of de Prie, to stifle the charge against the Abbe Desfontaines. That there can be no doubt as to Voltaire really having ' 'tti'iiiitii)iiiiiiiniiimiiiHiiiii!iiiiiHiiMiiniii;iiiniiiimiM iMiji/imhMiiimiii mmiiiiiiiiMniiiiiiiN]iumiiiiiini;uimnini I'roui (in iiii;iaviiig ti/tei llie />icliiic by I'liii'oo. JOSKI'M I'AKIS-DIVERNEY. How a Queen was Deposed 43 performed this generous action, was proved by the letter of thanks written by Desfontaines himself, and the statement of that writer most hostile to Voltaire, the learned Nicolardot. With the absence of Duverney, Versailles was at ease, especially as the Marquise was also away. After a few weeks of absence, however, Paris-Duverney, learning that his own creatures, appointed by himself, were performing various strange financial operations, boldly returned. Not only did he return himself, but he wrote to Madame de Prie to return also, that M. le Due and the State were lost in her absence. Like a whirlwind the Marquise flew back to Ver- sailles. This was what Fleury wished ; he had even himself secretly given to Duverney a hint that he would not be averse to seeing the lady back. For he knew that by this time the King hated as well as feared her ; by that hatred Fleury expected to profit so soon as his Royal pupil should find himself once more face to face with the favourite of M. le Due. The King, however, was too frightened, when in the middle of May the Marquise returned, to act. He would not even speak a word when Fleury begged him to act against Duverney and Madame de Prie, who were be- having as master and mistress at Versailles once more and making every one feel their supreme authority. For about a month more, while Fleury fell at the feet of M. le Due and begged him to reign alone, " la " Prie remained as the real Queen and ruler of France. At length the King timidly fled to "Maman" Toulouse at Rambouillet, and at the same time became guilty of the first of those acts of duplicity for which he afterwards became so well known whenever he intended to dismiss 44 The Real Louis the Fifteenth a Minister. Upon leaving for Rambouillet, he begged M. le Due in the most cordial manner to come and join him there. When the Due de Bourbon had finished his State affairs that afternoon, the Due de Charost handed him a letter from the King saying that in future he in- tended to govern by himself without a First Minister ! M. le Due was exiled to Chantilly. This took place on June nth, 1726, and the reign of the Marquise de Prie ceased upon the same day. CHAPTER IV France, after the Marquise 1727 AND LATER M. LE Due was exiled to his home at Chantilly, a punish- ment which might not have seemed very great when the splendours of that home of the Condes were considered. Unfortunately, the old-womanish spite of the priesthood added a very bitter pill to the first sentence of exile nominally pronounced by the King, actually by Fleury. This was to deprive the energetic Due de Bourbon of the pleasures of the chase in his country retreat. M. le Due, who was a chasseur enrage, was forbidden his horses and his hounds, his dogs and guns. A petty spite this to wreak upon his rival ! but Fleury knew how to make the late ruler of the State wince, and that all the more since he was deprived of the presence and counsels of his soul, Madame de Prie, who was exiled to Courbe- Epine. This was that chateau in Normandy whence she had recently returned to resume for a short time the helm of government. As for Paris-Duverney, a man so able that in order to rule by a proper administration of the taxes he seemed necessary, the old priest had recourse to all his rivals and enemies in order to work his downfall. These were the old agents of the extortion of the days of Louis XIV., 45 46 The Real Louis the Fifteenth farmers-general and financiers. To tliese Fleury remitted the enormous sum of fifty-six millions, owed by them on back taxes, in order that they should take up the matter of supply to the State according to the rotten, old- fashioned methods. They pocketed the fifty-six millions, abolished all regular administration ; the farmers-general were re-established everywhere, while Duverney went to rage in the Bastille, in solitude. While the absolute nothingness of the character of M. le Due became apparent, by his actually begging the girlish Gesvres to ask grace for him in the matter of hunting, Madame de Prie behaved differently. She affected the greatest stoicism and indifference, and, in her retreat, lived ostentatiously in a manner to show that she did not care — that she snapped her fingers at Fleury and her disgrace. This young lady, who had been so great and was now only twenty-seven, endeavoured, indeed, to lead a life of the wildest en train. She composed verses and wrote plays, and recited or acted before an audience of such members of the Court as she could get to visit her. She had kept a friend — albeit a false one — in the shape of the spiteful spitfire Madame du Deffand ; she took a new lover in the shape of a young country gentleman, who was the nephew of the Abbe Damfreville. Under all her apparent carelessness, she was eating her heart out, and had resolved to die upon a day that she had appointed and announced long in advance, while in the meantime comporting herself after the fashion of a jemme d'espHt. This she most certainly was — the perusal of one of her long letters to the Due de Richelieu at Vienna is alone sufficient to reveal that fact. Never was seen such a mixture upon every subject, from the France^ after the Marquise 47 affairs of the State to the latest affaires de cceur of the Royal Princesses, or the Marquise de Villars, as, written in an agreeable style, composed those budgets. While giving out to everybody that she knew she was going to die upon a certain date, no one believed her, least of all the young lover whom she patronised and who adored her as a slave. The Due de Bouillon was among those who was visiting at her chateau when, three days before her death, she recited in the most brilliant fashion three hundred verses before her guests. On the following day she made a present of a diamond to her lover, then despatched him with fifty thousand livres' worth of other diamonds, to place in security at Rouen. " Go ! " she said ; " I don't wish you to see me die." He went, but had no idea that she was in earnest. When he returned, he found her dead ! She had died in the most awful agonies ; the unhappy woman's legs and feet were all curved and drawn up by the contraction of the muscles caused by the poison, her screams were fearful. The false Due de Bouillon, upon his return to Versailles, thought it appropriate to pay court to the Cardinal by depicting these tortures in a semi-humorous manner, while representing them as the just torments experienced by one of the damned. The fact that a great nobleman — we cannot call him a gentleman — could behave in such a way after having been her guest, and yet not be scouted by society, affords in itself a picture of the times ! And yet there was Royal blood in the veins of the family of Bouillon — to which the great Mar6chal Turenne had belonged — the hereditary rulers of Sedan. The unhappy Madame de Prie being dead, it must be conceded that, in spite of the viciousncss of her character, 48 The Real Louis the Fifteenth she was worth more than many who came after her in the management of the State coach. There was an at- tempt at rude vigour in her government with Duverney ; whereas, after her, under the Jesuits and farmers-general, the administration went to sleep. At all events, the Marquise de Prie made a determined effort to abolish certain abuses. However impure, however furious or bizarre her nature, her ideas, energetic as they were, contained ^ements of greatness. It is probable that she would have done something for France had she not had the opposition of Fleury to contend with. According to her own words, she had the real interests of the young King at heart, and those interests were most certainly not better served when they were entirely abandoned to the senile ecclesiastic who did not commence to rule until in his seventy-third year. We will give an extract from one of her letters to Richelieu ; it was written at the time that, for the good of M. le Due, she left the Court for Normandy, while Duverney also went away. x\fter a lot of amusing gossip, the Marquise says : " If I talked to you about myself, I should not find any such lively matter to discuss. I can only assure you that the ties of attachment must be very strong in me which can induce me to remain in a country where I have just experienced the greatest rebuffs {les dernier es horreurs) through those whom I had the best served, and that I shall have no other consolation than that of seeing my enemies obliged to lie to injure me. Although that may seem a triumph, I would make more of one by my retreat. Thus, in spite of the violence with which the Queen, M. le Due, and my friends attack me for taking France, after the Marquise 49 this resolution, I wish to let you know that I have proved the stronger ; therefore, in no longer exciting jealousy, I shall at the same time only show existing facts in my line of conduct. I shall shortly obtain the esteem of all honest people and the justice due to me, I shall have more tranquillity and repose. Again, no longer will it be imputed to me that I govern people who are not in- clined to be governed and whose firmness ought to be recognised. I refuse, while their glory has ever been my sole object, to allow myself longer to be made the pretext by which it is sought to weaken them. I speak to you as my friend, and hope that you will make no other usage of that which I say than to be touched by the confidence reposed in you. . . . " I find all the obstacles in the world opposed to my intention. I shall have all the more merit in following it, since they only seek to bafiie it with chains which, while appearing to be those of flowers, may well contain some of the serpents with which the Court is filled. " I have never seen anything so black, so low, so false and much to be despised as that which I find there. Only does M. le Due appear to me to-day as worthy of my veneration and of all my attachment. His firmness, friendship, and truth towards myself have made liim for ever the master of my life, which I would with joy lay down in his service." Upon reading this letter, one feels inclined to exclaim " Poor Madame de Prie ! " with one of the great historians of France, who has elsewhere abused her as a vampire and all kinds of evil things. In her remarks about the Court, that she is truthful is evident ; they might have come verbatim from the pages of that honest d'Argenson who ran away to Valen- VOL. I. 4 50 The Real Louis the Fifteenth ciennes to escape her wiles. With regard to her ex- pressed gratitude to M. le Due, she proved it ; even in doing that which should excite our reprobation, such as giving to him Madame d'Egmont, at the risk of being herself utterly effaced in his affections. During her last days, when she allowed herself to be beloved by the young man who persisted in his adoration, her heart was withered and she never returned that love. Only indeed did she accept his homage from pride, to keep up her reputation, and prove to her enemies that there still ex- isted those who would persist in casting themselves at her feet. Madame de Prie had already decided to die when he presented himself again and again, and would not be sent away. When all else is said, the Marquise de Prie, if a female tyrant, was yet a young woman of courage. This she proved in her tentatives of reform with Duverney ; in the manner in which she returned to the Court, a hornets' nest of her enemies, which she cowed by her presence ; and, above all, by the manner in which, like the victim of the red Indian tied to the stake, she apparently kept up the liveliest spirits until the day that she had decreed was to terminate her exis- tence, and then boldly kept her word and passed out into the unknown. After M. le Due and Madame de Prie had disappeared from the scene of the Court, the state of affairs in France soon became pitiable in the extreme. Under Fleury's controleur des finances Desforts, who made a foolish arrangement with the receivers and farmers-general, the people were ruined everywhere throughout the country, where armies of clerks, tax-gatherers, archers, and bailiffs invaded every home. In vain was it that the wretched people crowded into the towns and cities. France, after the Marquise 51 There they were worse off than ever, the cruel system of octroi duties pressing most heavily upon those of the lowest classes. As if these miseries were not enough, religious per- secution recommenced. From Noailles, the aged Arch- bishop of Paris, dowmwards, every person was persecuted who was suspected of not accepting in its entirety the absurd Papal Bull Unigenitus, which made of the Pope a god. The abominable Tencin, who before he suc- ceeded in being elevated to Cardinal's rank had been made Archbishop of Embrun, by the King's orders — that is to say, those of Fleury and the Jesuits — assembled a Court of Bishops at Embrun, composed of prelates favourable to the Bull. This Council of Embrun has been called the brigandage d'Enibrun. Without allowing him to speak on his own behalf, they condemned the old Soanen, a Bishop eighty years of age, to the cold mountains of Auvergne, where he died. Noailles, with twelve Bishops, vainly protested against this infamous Council, presided over by an infamous man. But Tencin and his crew, which included a wretch like Lafiteau, whom even Cardinal Dubois had punished for his thefts, were too strong for the Archbishop of Paris. This old man, whose life since 171 1 had but been a long story of Jesuit persecution, was soon literally worried to death. He was forced to accept the Bull, however, before he, like Soanen, gave up the ghost. While the followers of St. Augustine, those who maintained that man had a right to a conscience of his own, were in this manner being worried, while the police- agents of Herault were everywhere inscribing their names upon the registers and finding in Chauvelin, the able new Keeper of the Seals, a hard and bitter judge who 52 The Real Louis the Fifteenth handed them over to Saint-Florentin, the gaoler, son of la Vrilliere, the Protestants were not forgotten, M. le Due, before his fall, had eliminated from the revived edicts against these the clause which subjected to death those accused of " relapse ; " he had, however, passed another clause unnoticed. By tliis clause all parish priests possessed the power to take, one by one, any man or woman whom he chose, and argue or bargain with them in private, in such manner as he thought fit, upon the question of the penalties to which they or those near and dear to them were exposed. Seeing the danger to women, in a time when the priesthood were not over-famous for morality, the old edict of Louis XIV. had expressly stipulated that the cure or other priest should not be alone to examine those whom he chose to interrogate. This clause as altered soon became a cause of great terror to the unhappy Protestant women who sought to save their husbands or brothers from some dreadful fate. The persecution, however, far from stamping out the Protestantism which existed concealed in the country, merely caused the death of many martyrs. A noble young pastor of Geneva, Antoine Court, restored the Reformed faith in France. Himself leaving wife and children to come and preach in the mountain villages and caverns, or the recesses of the forests, he ordained others, who ordained more in turn. Hunted about, starved or hanged, if the numbers of these pastors were constantly being diminished, there were thus always found others ready to replace them and receive in turn the crown of martyrdom, for the sake of the souls that they might save. In spite of the law which hanged the pastors, a seminary was founded at Lausanne, in Switzer- France, after the Marquise S3 land, to furnish victims for the dragoons and judges. They came into France, to hve thenceforward Hke wild beasts, chased from rock to rock, ever flying, always in hiding, without a fire, without a roof ! And, with it all, they maintained a great instinct of peace ; preaching to the multitudes against armed resistance, and non-resistance to those who would assassinate them. As in the days of the massacres in the Cevennes forty years earlier, when the poor people, driven in time to armed resistance, were known as the Camisards, the poor, persecuted creatures considered that to pray for the King, that his heart might be rendered merciful towards them, was the only right way in wliich to avoid the miseries inflicted upon them in the name of religion. Meanwhile, their marriages and baptisms took place in secret under the panoply of heaven, since from the time of the Revoca- tion of the Edict of Nantes, by Louis XIV. and Madame de Maintenon in 1685, all the Protestant churches had been destroyed in France. At length, against these celebrations of the Christian rites in the woods and fields, the Bishops, becoming more and more intolerant, called for a repetition of the dragonnades. In 1738 they demanded the sword and military government to suppress those whom all other means, however severe, had failed to convince and convert. The strangest thing, in reference to the intolerance of the Catholic clergy towards the Protestants, was that the very Jansenists, who had so much to fear from per- secution themselves, were as intolerant as those of the Jesuitical tendency who supported the Bull Unigenitus. The good-natured and irreligious Regent soon found this out when he assumed the reins of government in 1715. 54 The Real Louis the Fifteenth Had not the Archbishop Noailles, the Chanceher d'Agues- seau, and many Jansenist conseillers of the Parliament of Paris been so bitter against the Protestants, he would have recalled to the kingdom all the scattered thousands of Huguenots, who had gone to enrich other countries with their industries, or the armies of foreign potentates with their skill and valour. During the last fourteen years of the seventeenth, and during the eighteenth century until the Peace of Utrecht, Frenchmen frequently found that the most stubborn and valorous foes whom they had to encounter were Protestant Frenchmen who had been driven from their native country. To give but one instance of this, at the battle of the Boyne, in 1690, the French troops aiding James H., under the Comte de Lauzun, were mainly defeated by the French Protestants, who, under the French Due de Schomberg, had reinforced William of Orange. To return to the Chancelier d'Aguesseau : he, under the Regent in 1721, severely reproved the Intendants in the provinces who did not repress the Protestants. They indeed enjoyed considerably more repose than usual, owing to the known indifference of the Regent, during the eight years that he held the supreme power. And yet this Jansenist d'Aguesseau was a very honest man, who had dared to flout the great Louis XIV. to his face in the matter of refusing to register the Bull upon the records of the Parliament. Another very honest man was an austere Jansenist Bishop named Colbert. According to Corbiere, this Bishop, who for forty years fought boldly against the Ultramontanes, was, on that account, none the less hostile to the Pro- testants. Upon the whole, therefore, it would seem as if the France, after the Marquise 55 unfortunate members of the Reformed faith had Httle more mercy to expect from the one great Cathohc party than from the other ; but had the Due d'Orleans lived longer, they probably would have had their hard lot improved. The moral misery throughout the kingdom of France was, under any circumstances, extreme from the be- ginning of the influence of Fleury. While Louis XIV. had dazzled and the Regent lured onward with false hopes, under the King's old preceptor there was neither hope nor thought. It was a government as dull as ditch- water, tiresome, tedious, when the end of one day meant nothing as much as did the end of that which followed. All was as monotonous as the dull skies of the short winter days as seen from the unhealthy and narrow streets of Paris. Here, owing to the ridiculous laws which forbade building outside the walls, the surplus of the inhabitants lived in a huge and miserable camp of torn canvas and rotten planks ; while, in the streets, the houses grew higher and higher. Tenements of seven and eight stories in height were everywhere to be seen, the garret roofs of which let in the rain everywhere. The damp running down the walls on the insides of the houses left greenish mouldy streaks from floor to floor, while the lower stages were dark, and regular wells of standing water. Up under the dripping roof the apprentices and serving-women were all crowded together, with no fireplaces and no carpeting upon the filthy boarding. Upon the ground floor, in the shop or counting-house, the visitor was on entering greeted with the pale and emaciated faces of unhealthy men and women, living in an atmosphere of damp and mould which clung to everything. Such was the condition of the greater part of Paris in S^ The Real Louis the Fifteenth the reign of Louis XV. Since the streets were, in addition, crowded with sturdy, deformed, or maimed beggars, often old soldiers who would stop at no kind of violence, it was, save for the rich or noble who could go out attended and armed, not a very pleasant place to live in. Versailles being once more the Court, since during the last two years of his life the Regent had left the Palais-Royal and contrived, by a ruse, to instal the young King there, in order to avoid the intrigues of the Due de Villeroi, the greater number of the courtiers always remained there, where was the seat of Government. Paris being ten miles distant, the Court avoided the city, and for which, a few years later, Louis XV. grew to have a positive hatred. While such was the general condition of affairs pre- vailing after the fall of the Due de Bourbon and Madame de Prie, owing to the indignation caused by the perse- cution of the Jansenists in 1727, a religious fanaticism arose in opposition to it. The persecution itself was a false fanaticism, set to work by all the interested prelates, from Fleury downwards, who wished to stand in well with Rome, that which arose in opposition to it was real when it commenced in 1728, became crazy in 1729, and later on resulted in depravity. There was a certain good, humble, and charitable deacon of the Jansenist faction, who died after having, from religious asceticism, become semi-deranged. His name was Paris, and he had lived in a kind of hermit's retreat, made of rough planks, in a damp courtyard in the quarter of Saint-Marceau. His death, which resulted from starvation owing to his giving away all that he had, created a great stir among a large number of people, who, even before death, looked France, after the Marquise 57 upon him as a saint. Accordingly, no sooner was Paris buried than, throughout the summer of 1727, sick people commenced to drag themselves to the holy man's tomb. His brother, a conseiller in the Parliament, had erected over his grave a marble slab, at a height of about one foot from the ground. Some of those who from faith visited the saint's tomb, died ; others declared themselves cured of their maladies. The crowd increased daily, chiefly consisting of sick ladies or unmarried girls. These, to get closer to the holy earth, would squeeze themselves under the marble slab and kiss the ground or swallow some earth ; when many would fall into trances from ecstasy, or have attacks of an hysterical nature, after which they would leave, declaring themselves cured. When, the religious persecution increasing, the Jansenist priests were deprived of their offices, the condition of things around the tomb of the deacon Paris soon amounted to a veritable delirium. Many indeed were the miracles which were declared to have taken place owing to the agency of the departed saint, whose reputation soon spread far and wide, while they found their chronicler in a certain Carre de Montgeron. His book, entitled Verite des miracles du bienhcureux Paris, is most in- structive. It commences by relating in detail all the miseries and ills of the times, and then, with the greatest sincerity and mentioning witnesses, describes all the wonderful cures which took place. No stone is left unturned by Montgeron to prove the miracles ; many of the names he gives of witnesses are those of serious savants, who had made a critical and searching examina- tion into the facts. The cures which took place, and apparently there really were some, would seem to have been the result of a sort of hypnotic effect created upon 58 The Real Louis the Fifteenth the imagination. The sick thought themselves well — therefore they were well. Those cured meanwhile no longer felt the need of the priests who had been taken away from tliem. They felt that they now possessed that grace within themselves which made them semi-divine. Thus even people at a distance, hearing the echo of the call of these semi-divine voices, soon came to Saint-Medard cemetery, to squeeze themselves in turn under the marble slab, and share in the solace of the condition of grace to the soul which accompanied the relief from the ills of the body. Meanwhile, no less than fifty learned doctors of the Sorbonne, who had nobly protested against the ill-treat- ment meted out to the old Bishop Soanen, were carried off by force and thrust into the hardest prisons of the State. These cruelties excited the imagination of the public, and the fanaticism of the persecuted Jansenists only increased all the more when the gates of the little cemetery were definitely closed upon them. The result was that the unfortunate women, deprived of the open- air devotion to which they had been able to give them- selves over at the tomb of Paris, commenced, in the secret retreats to which they were compelled to resort, to follow, in an outre manner, the inclination of their religious tenets, they believing that the sorrows of the innocent served as expiation for the guilty. Accordingly, as the years rolled by and Versailles plunged itself deeper and deeper into the mire of de- bauchery, so also did the innocent martyrs seek out more and more cruel penances for themselves. With the most painful tortures, offered as a sacrifice to God, they appealed for mercy for the King, implored that the cup of vengeance might be turned from him to them, who France, after the Marquise 59 expiated his sins in their own persons. To those who may say that these ecstasies, these furies of hunger and thirst, these self-inflicted floggings and other cruel punishments, were a perversion of the real ideas of Christianity, the reply is, that it was not so according to the stories of the lives of the saints. The recorded legends of all the saints are alike. Whoever reads them will see that all say that suffering purifies, that the love of death is the real path which leads to the salvation of the soul. Thus undoubtedly, according to their lights, these Jansenists were true Christians. Unfortunately, they possessed all the intolerance so often seen in the various sects of Christianity. One marvels that they were not moved by the extraordinary patience and resignation shown at the same period by the Protestants. CHAPTER V A Troublesome Queen 1724— 1731 The restoration of the royalty of the priesthood, march- ing to aggressive warfare under the banner of the Bull, was not the outcome of revived religious sentiment, but that of interested motives. At its head were men like Tencin, already Archbishop of Embrun, Tressan, Almoner to the late Regent, who had revived and put before M. le Due the old edicts of Louis XIV., and Fleury himself. All of these were seeking the Cardinal's hat, to obtain which it was necessary to make evident to Rome their energy in strongly repressing schism and heresy in France. Behind these leaders were a very large body of the priesthood, fighting against a very actual danger with which of recent years they had been twice threatened. The goods of the Church were at stake. During the Regency, John Law, the indomitable Scotsman, had when Controleur-General endeavoured to compel the priesthood to sell half of the properties which they had acquired during the last hundred and twenty years ; while, under the rule of Madame de Prie, Paris-Duverney had made a determined effort to tax their enormous revenues for the benefit of the State. 60 A Troublesome Queen 6i The movement for the suppression of heresy was by no means confined to France ; and in Poland the action of the Jesuits was such as to give rise to the state of affairs which, before the end of the reign of Louis XV., afforded Frederick the Great the pretext for the partition of Poland with Austria and Russia. Poland had taken under its protection two merchant cities of Germanic origin — Thorn and Dantzic. The latter-named city, in Polish Gdansk, with an ad- ministrative district extending a hundred miles along the Baltic, is traversed by the River Vistula, and now forms a province of West Prussia. The city of Dantzic, which abounds with learned, charitable, and artistic institutions, is still, as in the days of Louis XV., chiefly the home of Protestant inhabitants. In exports it is nowadays probably the first Prussian port, where also ship-building is extensively carried on. In 1310 Dantzic fell under the sway of the order of Teutonic Knights, and became a German city in the midst of a Polish population, the protection of whose State it obtained in 1454 while remaining a free city. The town of Thorn, which was likewise a stronghold of the Reformed faith, is chiefly celebrated as having been the birthplace of Copernicus, in Polish Nicolas Kopemik, the German astronomer who was the discoverer of the system of the planetary revolutions. He was born at Thorn, which now like Dantzic forms part of Prussia, on February 19th, 1473, and died at Frauenberg in June, 1543. Oddly enough, he received the first copy of the first edition of his six books on the very morning of the day that he died. The country of Poland having until the seventeenth century been the protector of free institutions and. 62 The Real Louis the Fifteenth largely Protestant itself, the hospitable receiver of Protestant exiles, had generously extended its hand to assist Thorn and Dantzic. With the seventeenth century however, came a change. Poland, being three times invaded by the Protestant Swedes, went over to the enemy, the Jesuits, who had gradually insinuated them- selves into all the households. Thenceforth the banner of Poland became that of the Catholic Church — the Virgin. Wounded in their pride, the greater number of the inhabitants now hated the religion of Reform which they had formerly espoused and protected. Thorn and Dantzic, however, refused to be gained by the suavities of the Order of Jesus, and remained ultra-Protestant. It was with great difficulty that, one by one, the Jesuits contrived to enter these free cities also, and establish themselves in the houses of the nobility. They founded a school and a college in Thorn for the education of the young nobles. These proud young lords, marching about sword on hip, were not contented with the religious Jesuit-led processions with which they offended the eyes of the majority of the inhabitants of Thorn : they set to work to provoke and quarrel with the merchant population. When the Lutheran lookers-on refused to remove their hats as they passed with their procession of the Virgin, they attacked them. Thereupon the magistrates arrested one of the noble students, and the Jesuits in return laid violent hands upon the people. As a result, there was a riot of the workmen, who broke into the Jesuit college and smashed up everything, including two altars, also burning the image of the Virgin which had given rise to the quarrel. The Virgin being the sacred emblem of the flag of Poland, the Jesuits had no difficulty in making of these A Troublesome Queen 6^ religious disturbances a national affair. They argued that if Louis XIV., a mere human being, had revenged his personal majesty, which was outraged by Genoa, by crushing that city with bomb-shells, how much more right would Poland have to avenge the wrongs of her divine Virgin ! The Jesuits violently demanded the death of the magistrates themselves ; they were not contented with merely demanding the blood of the workmen who had retaliated upon their pupils, when they first attacked them. The Saxon Elector Augustus, who sat also upon the throne of Poland, a drunkard and debauchee, was afraid to protect his brother-Germans from the result of the insult to the Polish flag. While rescuing one alone, he left the remainder of the arrested magistrates in the claws of the Jesuits, who, before sending them to the scaffold, tortured the unhappy men almost to death with priestly exhortations to recant, in order that they might die Catholics, which they refused to do. Ten heads fell to satisfy Jesuit revenge, in December, 1724 ; before which, however, not only had the second King of Prussia, Frederick William I., father of Frederick the Great, intervened, but Sweden, Hanover, Denmark, Holland, England, and even France, through M. le Due, had made representations to save the innocent magistrates of Thorn. There was, however, no combination between the Powers ; their separate action was also slow. Thus the Jesuits were triumphant ; the ten heads fell at Thorn, and, as a result, eventually Poland was dismembered. The excuse for the dismemberment being the protection of those of the Protestant and Greek Churches, the Poles had little for which to be thankful to the Jesuits, who 64 The Real Louis the Fifteenth were constantly leading them into the extremes of violence. While in Poland this party were laying up the seeds from which subsequently sprung the dismember- ment of the State, in Spain they were not behindhand. Here, in April, 1725, the ambitious Italian Queen, Elizabeth Farnese, and her husband Philip V., whom with her wine and her drugs she rendered for a time half-crazy and bestial, were ruled by their confessors, Montgon and Bermudez. To be more accurate, it might perhaps be said that while the Queen made of Father Montgon her secretary and man of affairs, the Jesuit Bermudez, the hater of the Jansenists, burned to establish the French Philip V. at Versailles, and pushed him in that direction. During the period of the abdication of Philip from the Spanish throne, while his son Luis, for eight months only, was Monarch, the King and Queen retired to the castle of San Ildefonso, where they had laid up all the revenues of the coming year, levied in advance, to furnish them with the means of entry into France. Unfortunately for them, while with their baggage packed, hand-bag in hand, they eagerly read each bulletin which announced that the young Louis XV. suffered from a bad cold, that nephew of Philip V. did not die. On the other hand, he lived, sent back the child Infanta, married Marie Lesczyn- ska, and generally upset the plans of San Ildefonso. Who did die was the young King Luis, whereupon his widow, daughter of the Regent, was packed off back to France with Mademoiselle de Beaujolais, her sister ; while the Queen of Spain dragged forth her husband from his swinish retreat and filthy clothing and made him resume the crown, in spite of the solemn oaths which he had sworn. A Troublesome Queen 65 The Queen, in league with the Jesuits in Italy, friends of the so-called James III. of England, the old Pretender, more furiously than ever recommenced her plottings to upset the peace of Europe. Since there was no longer any question of her husband relinquishing one throne for the sake of obtaining another, Elizabeth Farnese turned her thoughts more ardently than ever in the direction of Italy. There she sought to establish various kingdoms and principalities — for her two sons, Carlos and Philip, in the first instance ; one for herself, too, should she become a widow. Austria and Savoy, the Duke of which latter State had become King of Sardinia in 1718, as the result of the Queen of Spain's folly, remained the paramount Powers in Italy. It had hitherto been Elizabeth's plan, which had signally failed, to enforce the assistance of England in her Italian plans against Austria, terrifying that Power by launching the Pretender upon her shores. Her compact with Charles XII. of Sweden having failed, owing to that adventurous King's death, her sea expedition fitted out by Cardinal Alberoni for Scotland having been wrecked, her fleet off the shores of Sicily having been destroyed by Admiral Byng, neither England nor Austria had been affected by the Queen's menaces. In the month of April, 1725, the Queen formed a new plan, encouraged thereto by a Spanish-Dutch adventurer who, formerly a Protestant, came into her service and became a Catholic. This was an empty-headed boaster whom she created Duke of Riperda. The old idea of launching the Pretender, who had failed so completely in the rising of 1715, once more upon tlie coasts of Scotland was not abandoned in the new combination of the Par- mesan Princess. VOL. I. 5 66 The Real Louis the Fifteenth In her blind fury against France, she sought to humble that country, the ally of England, with England. Thus, while the old romance of the Jesuits, the re-establishment of a Catholic Prince upon the throne of Great Britain, was not forgotten, Elizabeth sought a new ally, one whom she hoped to use against both Great Britain and France. This was Austria, the very Power whose territories she most coveted, by whose means she now fancied that she would be enabled to change the face of Europe. Riperda undertook to manage the business for the Queen of Spain — it would be easy. It was only the matter of a few ducats to Charles VI., Emperor of Germany, hereditary ruler of Austria as Grand Duke, of Bohemia and Hungary as King, since 1714 lord of Naples, Milan, and other Italian principalities, ruler also of the Nether- lands and Sicily. Elizabeth accordingly sought for an intimate alliance with this Charles VI., who, during the War of the Spanish Succession, had actually at one time been declared King in Spain, where he was fighting for his rights. He would, indeed, have been crowned at Madrid in 1706, but refused because he had not the proper regal outfit. Elizabeth sent Riperda to Vienna, his pockets being lined with all the gold that could be procured. At the same time the celebrated profligate the Due de Richelieu, great-nephew of Cardinal Richelieu, was sent to Vienna by France to upset Riperda's plans if possible. We may here remark casually that his first efforts in that direction resulted in his upsetting Riperda himself. By husthng the Spanish Ambassador so violently that he fell down the grand- ducal staircase, Richelieu forcibly obtained precedence of entry to the presence of the Emperor. For this insult, Riperda, who was a poltroon, refused to ask A Troublesome Queen 67 for satisfaction with the sword, although Richeheu, in a very insulting manner, called upon him to ask for tidings of his health. The Emperor Charles was just at tliis time fishing round in all directions to gain adherents to help him in carrying out an illegal scheme of his own. By this scheme, which he called a Pragmatic, he sought to upset the Salic and constitutional law of the various countries of which he was hereditary ruler. He had no sons, only two young daughters, Maria Theresa and Maria Eleonora, the latter bom in 1718, by his wife Elizabeth of Brunswick-Wolf enbiittel, who had remained with Count Stahrenberg, her Minister, as Queen of Spain in Barcelona until 1713, although Philip V. had ascended the throne in 1700 and was reigning with the Savoyarde Princess Louise Marie, his first wife at Madrid. Charles himself had, in the meantime, at the suggestion of Prince Eugene, returned to Germany and been elected and crowned Emperor in 171 1, he being the son of the Emperor Leopold I. and brother of the Emperor Joseph I., whom he succeeded. While uniting in his person so many grandeurs and dignities, Charles was the last heir male of the great house of Hapsburg, or Habsburg, in which family the Empire, supposed to be elective, had remained as if hereditary ever since, in 1273, Rudolph of Hapsburg-Lauffenburg, son of Count Albert IV., became first Emperor of the line. The family of Hapsburg was even then a very ancient one of potentates who had ruled over a great portion of Europe, being descended from Ethico L, a Uuke of the Alemannia in the seventh century. The elder of Charles VL's daughters was Maria Theresa, born in May, 171 7, to whom he was anxious 68 The Real Louis the Fifteenth to leave all his crowns — although, of course, they would not include the Empire, it being, as mentioned, elective by the Princes of Germany holding the rank of Elector. The young Maria Theresa was affianced at this time to Prince Francis of Lorraine, who, when John Gaston de Medicis died, as the last of his line, in 1737, be- came Grand Duke of Tuscany, and gave in exchange Lorraine to King Stanislas, ex-King of Poland, with reversion to France of the duchy of Lorraine at his death. In pursuit of his plan to obtain the recognition by Europe of his daughter as his heiress, in spite of the Salic law, Charles VL was, at the time of Riperda's embassy, in the mood to make concessions in any direc- tion where they would be likely to be most useful. Riperda, therefore, imagined that he would have no difficulty in bending the Emperor to the will of the Queen of Spain and obtaining his alliance. Elizabeth Farnese wished to obtain for her family in Italy, Tuscany, Parma, Piacenza, Naples, and as much as possible of Milan and Piedmont, this latter being part of the dominions of the King of Sardinia. Nor did her pre- tensions fall short of Sicily. In fact, there were none of the Italian duchies which she did not desire. Her more immediate desire was, however, to obtain the island of Minorca and Gibraltar from the English, who had taken the Rock in 1704 and had it ceded to them by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Also she desired the invasion of France. The ideas of the Queen of Spain were that since the Emperor, for all the kingdoms that he possessed, was in want of money, this old enemy of Spain, on being supplied liberally with funds, should arm once more that Savoyard A Troublesome Queen 69 hero the Prince Eugene, the son of the Comte de Soissons and Olympia Mancini, one of the first sweethearts of the Grand Monarque. With an enormous army Eugene should fall upon France and, tooth and nail, ravage its fair domains. At the same time an invincible Spanish fleet, aided by a Russian squadron, should menace the coasts of England. Spain would meanwhile invest Gibraltar. George I. would, she imagined, immediately become frightened and give instructions for Gibraltar to be surrendered forthwith. This action would make him unpopular in Great Britain, where he would be de- posed. Thereupon the Pretender would enter upon his dominions as James III. without being obliged to strike a blow. A pretty fable indeed ! and rendered none the less chimerical that, as if to increase the difficulties with the British nation, the whole was to be accomplished under the Jesuit flag. The Pretender had been sufficiently wise to provide himself with a council of Protestants. His wife, Clementina Sobieski, a Polish woman of Jesuitical leanings, was instructed from Madrid to make him get rid of these Protestants. This she accomplished by retiring to a convent and refusing to come out until the affair was all constituted upon religious grounds, the forced conversion of Great Britain to the faith of Rome, where the Pretender resided. In Vienna, however, the Empress was also the ruler of her husband, and she had no cause to love that Spain where she had, while Queen, so long been shut up in Barcelona. Therefore, while taking the Spanish ducats and constantly asking for more, Charles treated Riperda politely, and thoroughly befooled liim. He had not 70 The Real Louis the Fifteenth the remotest idea of plunging, on behalf of Spain, into a bloody war with that Europe whose adherence he sought to his Pragmatic Sanction. All that the Emperor did was to make a pretence of threatening Holland. England, alarmed, was at this time governed by Sir Robert Walpole, who entered into mutual treaties with France and Prussia, while dispatching fleets in all directions to overawe Russia and Spain, at home and in her American colonies. Three large fleets were sent to the Mediterranean. By May 31st, 1726, the Emperor had extracted from the Duke of Riperda the last of the Spanish ducats. He was then tired of the whole business and a richer man than before, so he definitely abandoned Spain. It might have been imagined that the Queen of that country would then have had sense enough to give up her enterprise. Not at all ! She merely exclaimed, " M. le Due is no longer at the head of affairs in France ; we have only got Fleury to deal with. Let us send the Abbe Montgon to him and ask him to give us three months' grace, during which he does nothing. We, in the mean- time, will attack his ally, England, alone. During those three months we will take Gibraltar, the House of Brunswick will fall, and the Stuarts will be back again in England." Montgon flew to Paris, and, strange to say, when by the Queen's express orders the Spanish emissary laid bare before the Cardinal the whole design, he did not refuse the three months' grace desired. Acting as Fleury the Jesuit-ridden priest rather than as Fleury the Minister and ruler of France, he was afraid of his ultramontane friends if he should refuse. Montgon had not gone to France as the emissary of A Troublesome Queen 71 the Queen alone. The King, Philip V., who, with his manhood restored, had now also a will of his own, sent him to rally all the old friends of his Bourbon house — to the Due de Bourbon and his adherents. The Queen, however, gave to the Abbe Montgon secret instructions to reveal to Fleury all that M. le Due might say. This he did. Montgon, who has left five great volumes behind him, reveals all the plottings, all the incidents of this shady affair. He distinctly shows the opposition existing between the King and the Queen of Spain, and, further, that Fleury, treacherously to England, not only accorded to Spain the time to take Gibraltar, but that to raise Scotland also and let the Pretender be loosed upon the Caledonian shores. The reason for his conduct is explained above — his servility to the Jesuits, who had years before withdrawn him from the swamps of Frejus, and, by appointing one of their order as his confessor, whom he was forced to obey, they had given him also a fresh start in life. While tacking about, Fleury deceived Walpole, with whom he was not yet in accord, as, owing to mutual pacific inclinations, he afterwards became. While thus preparing for the siege of Gibraltar, it was vainly pointed out to the Queen that it was an impossibility to take that stronghold by land alone, that the command of the seas was necessary. To Elizabeth it was all the same, she insisted upon proceeding, even when the Jacobite agents in Rome assured her that Scotland was not ripe for an invasion. Austria now openly blamed her and worked against her views in Italy, while the King told his wife that history would call her the assassin of his people, and asked, witli anguish, why there should be all this unnecessary effusion of blood. Indeed, althougli Philip, now in the full possession of his 72 The Real Louis the Fifteenth senses, vainly exclaimed, " Oh the false — the false Italian ! " the siege took place. The Conde de las Torres with 30,000 men sat down before Gibraltar for four months in 1727, but the attempt to take the Rock proved a dismal failure, and the siege had to be raised without any result save disaster to the Spanish forces. The Bourbon King, now filled with religious remorse, endeavoured to abdicate once more ; the Italian Queen, however, fearing to see Spain revert to its owners, the Spaniards, contrived to keep him a prisoner under lock and key. The real state in which he was then has never been known, but what is known is that Philip V. protested by refusing to shave and, although religious, by refusing also to hear the Mass. The Queen now herself went through the farce of taking the robe of the Franciscan Order of Mendicants, which she wore for eight months in 1728. Before the end of that time the King consented to shave and there was a reconciliation, and the Queen became the mother of another child, a girl, in March, 1729. In the meantime George II. had come to the throne (in 1727). Spain, at an end of her resources, had been compelled to disarm, and peace had been signed with England. Thus, for the time being, was this wicked and troublesome Italian woman compelled to cease from disturbing Europe with her continued agitations. By the Treaty of Seville, all that she gained was the promise of the succession of one of her sons to the principality of Parma, whence she herself came, upon the death of her uncle the ruling Duke, and to Tuscany, which latter she never obtained. Spain, and England some time later (173 1 ), gave to the Emperor Charles their guarantee to the A Troublesome Queen 73 Pragmatic Sanction. Other countries also gave this guarantee, which ensured to the mind of the Emperor a repose which he would not have felt had that mind but been prophetic enough to foresee the events that occurred upon his death. For guarantees and treaties entered into between the European Princes in the eighteenth century greatly resembled pie-crust, in that they were made solely to be broken. CHAPTER VI The Due de Richelieu and Prince Eugene 1725— 1729 While the Queen of Spain had, by the endless intrigues in which she had indulged, seriously compromised the peace of Europe, the lot of the still young Due de Riche- lieu, the envoy of France at the Court of Vienna, had not exactly resembled a bed of roses. For a long time debarred from the permission to make his public and official entry, when this was at length accorded he endeavoured to carry out this function with a magnificence such as would redound to the glory of France. The description of this public entry of Richelieu into Vienna reads, indeed, more like that of a glorified Lord Mayor's show than anything else. It was made with seventy-five coaches, each with six horses, the trappings of coaches and horses alike being of gold, silver, and richest velvets of different colours. The Ambassador's own carriage was draped within and without with crimson velvet, covered with gold embroidery in relief, heavy with fringes of gold ; the four panels carried his arms in golden relief, his monogram in the same style being upon the small side-panels. The large panel behind, and the box, were treated in similar 74 The Due de Richelieu and Prince Eugene 75 fashion, golden branches and flowers in rehef also draping the velvet hangings of the box. The six horses of this carriage were bright bays, their harness, of crimson velvet, covered with silver-gilt plates, while upon the heads of each were aigrettes of red feathers and gold ornaments interwoven. The second coach was in blue, the third in green, the fourth in jonquil-tinted velvet, the fifth in grey, the sixth in rose-coloured velvet, all equally covered with gold and silver, and some carrying mythological designs, such as figures of Prudence, Secrecy, Silence, Fame, and so on. The horses of each coach varied in colour — one had greys, another blacks, a third chestnuts, a fourth roans ; while armed outriders and footmen, smothered in golden ornaments, accompanied the cortege, the fur- nishing of which must have cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. Upon the principle of that renowned fop the Duke of Buckingham, who at a ball in the presence of Anne of Austria wore pearls so loosely attached that they were meant to fall and be gathered up by the company, Richelieu imagined the idea of shoeing all his horses with silver, the shoes only being attached by one nail. They thus fell off as the cortege progressed, and were gathered up by the crowd. Upon the morrow of this public entrance the Am- bassador was accorded his public audience of the Em- peror Charles VI. and the Empress, also of the dowager Empress Amelie. To this, attired in the full robes of a peer of France, Richelieu proceeded with equal magni- ficence, while, after the audience, he gave a banquet in his palace to more than five hundred persons of dis- tinction. He also gave a fete for the people at large, 76 The Real Louis the Fifteenth who were permitted to roam at will about his magnificent apartments. Whether or no this splendour dazzled the Emperor, it most certainly dazzled the great ladies of Vienna. It also appalled the Due's rival, the Duke of Riperda, who precipitately fled from Vienna on the very day of the audience. The letters of Richelieu to Fleury, for whose Cardinal's hat he was working with the Emperor through the Prince Eugene, soon reveal the fact that all this magni- ficence reduced him to very great straits. Fleury's letters in reply usually promise money, which is to be sent by the Comte de Morville as soon as it can be procured, but never arrives, and in the meantime Richelieu finds himself greatly in debt. Fleury, however, writes to him to keep up appearances in the best way that he can, while promising upon his side not to allow it to be known to any one that he is pressed for money. This, it seems, was the least that Fleury could do, since he did not pay the appointments of the Ambassador in cash. Accordingly, while the great-nephew of Cardinal Richelieu, finding himself baffled at every turn by the Emperor and Prince Eugene in matters of policy, began to grow impatient, the actual ruler of France found other means to allay him when he earnestly urged his recall. This was to promise that the King would before long make him a chevalier des ordres — that is to say, give him the coveted cordon bleu of the Order of the Holy Ghost. With this great distinction held out as a bait, Richelieu held on at Vienna for more than three years, from 1725 almost to 1729. In the meantime love, as usual with this profligate The Due de Richelieu and Prince Eugene 77 noble, came to his assistance in several ways. His many mistresses among the great ladies of Paris remitted to him large sums of money, while two new mistresses, with whom he formed liaisons among the great ladies of Vienna, helped him politically. Among the former class there was notably a certain Duchesse, whose scruples he had, by a combination of fraud and audacity, contrived to overcome when, quite as a boy as Due de Fronsac, he had been staying in her chateau. There he took advantage of the certainly very free tricks which the ladies played upon him to play a trick in return — one which landed him in the apartment of the Duchesse, where he remained in spite of her religious scruples. This woman, however, after weakening for a time to the worthless Richelieu, with whom she was honestly in love, refused before long, despite his prayers, to remain to him anything more than a friend. In this capacity not only was she kind to a poor young hourgeoise, Madame Michehn, whom he deceived and whose death he caused of a broken heart, but she often vainly urged him to reform. Although reformation was not possible to the depraved nature of a man who remained a rake until eighty years of age, the Duchesse, having become a widow, never lost her interest in him. While, therefore, he was vainly awaiting remittances from M. de Morville, who was acting as Foreign Minister under Fleury, she occa- sionally relieved his necessity by sending him as nuich as 100,000 livres at a time, while others helped him in a similar manner. There were no foolish scruples of honour about the Due de Richelieu to debar him from taking money from his mistresses, old or new. On the contrary, it was a 78 The Real Louis the Fifteenth known thing among a great many of the ladies who sought to become of the fashionable Court world by, in the recognised manner, passing first through the hands of the Due de Richelieu, that they must pay him for his favours. He used to charge a large sum for a single rendezvous. The letters which he received proposing these were so many that he was in the habit of throwing quantities on one side unopened, in which condition they were found more than half a century later, upon his death, which took place at the age of ninety-two, in 1788. In Vienna, finding that he was not advancing in State negotiations, and especially was unable to discover what were the secret dispositions and inclinations towards France of the Emperor and Prince Eugene, he conceived the idea of making up to the Countess Batthyany, the mistress of this latter. The Countess Batthyany, by birth Eleonora Strattmann, the last of her race, was a young and beautiful woman who enjoyed the entire confidence of this Prince, who, having been born in Paris in 1663, was now sixty-two years of age. Richelieu, being only twenty-nine, thought that he would have no great difficulty in persuading the Countess that the merits of youth upon his side would prove an equivalent of all the honours which were laid at her feet by one who, born a Frenchman, had always been the enemy of France. Nor was he mistaken ; for he soon shared the favours of the lady with the hero of so many combats, to whom she proved ere long so faithless that she whispered upon the shoulder of her new lover all the State secrets that she learned from the old one, greatly to the advantage of Richelieu in his negotiations. If Eugene, who might well have been the son of From a mczz^liitl a/let J . Kufn'zhy. I'RINCE RUCKNE OK SAVOY. The Due de Richelieu and Prince Eugene 79 Louis XIV., were the enemy of France, that Monarch had only to blame himself and his fiery War Minister Louvois for the fact that that country had been deprived of his services. His father, Eugene Maurice, Comte de Soissons, was the grandson of Emanuel I., Duke of Savoy ; while 013'mpia Mancini, his mother, was one of the beautiful nieces of Cardinal Mazarin, with whom Louis XIV. had love affairs before and after her marriage. In company with her brother-in-law the Comte de Clermont, Olympia is supposed to have poisoned her husband. Then hurriedly leaving France for Madrid, she there also is believed to have poisoned the young French Queen of Spain. When Louis refused a regiment to Olympia's son, he entered the service of Austria, distinguishing himself greatly in his first campaign against the Turks in 1683. After, in 1688, he had won increased renown and been made a major-general at the siege of Belgrade, Louvois ordered home, on pain of banishment, all Frenchmen serving in foreign armies. Eugene, however, refused to consider himself as a Frenchman or to return to France, saying that he would do the latter only when he chose, at the head of an army. When the Duke of Savoy invaded France in 1692, Eugene, serving under his relative, was enabled to keep his promise. Louis XIV. now offered Eugene, who had become a Field Marshal, the highest honours to enter his service ; these offers were again rejected, and after, in 1697, gallantly defeating the Turks at Zentha, the Prince combined with Marlborough to humble the pride of Louis XIV. in the War of the Spanish Succession, between 1702 and 171 1. In Italy he defeated tlie Marechal de Catinat ; the vamglorious Due de Villeroi lie defeated at Chiari, and 8o The Real Louis the Fifteenth captured, subsequently, in his sleeping-attire at Cremona ; while against that sleepy bon-vivant the Due de Ven- dome he fought a bloody drawn battle at Luzara in August, 1702. After sharing with Marlborough on August 13th, 1704, the glories of Blenheim, Prince Eugene found the tables turned upon him by Vendome at Cassano. In this battle, which took place on August i6th, 1705, Eugene was twice wounded. He had, how- ever, a glorious revenge at Turin a year later, failed to take Toulon in 1707, but helped Marlborough at Ouden- arde, Lille, and Malplaquet, all victories over the French. In the last-named action, fought on September nth, 1709, the defeated French infantry made their name as glorious as did the English infantry at the battle of Fontenoy nearly forty years later. After the Treaty of Rastadt in 1714 secured that peace between France and Austria which England had arranged in the previous year by the Treaty of Utrecht, Eugene recommended Austria to join Venice against his old enemies the Turks, whom he defeated, again in the month of August, in the year 1716, with immense slaugh- ter at Peterwardein. Perhaps the greatest feat of renown for which the name of the gallant Eugene will ever remain famous was the battle which he fought once more near Belgrade and once more in his usually lucky month. On August i6th, 1717, he was assailed by the Turks with forces six times as many as his own, but inflicted upon them the greatest defeat which they ever experienced, and on the 22nd he took the city, but was again wounded. The last time upon which we shall find Eugene pitted against the French is upon the Rhine, in the War of the Polish Succession in 1734. By that time, however, his The Due de Richelieu and Prince Eugene 8i own inclinations were rather inclined to the side of France, since he saw the error of Austria in encouraging the growth of Prussia, and had already strongly urged a French alliance, very possibly as a result of the instigations of the Countess Batthyany, after she had been gained by Richelieu. Whatever the cause, Eugene did not act with his old energy against France in this campaign, and, while there was not much lighting, made no efforts to bring about a pitched battle. The heir-apparent to the Prussian Crown, afterwards to become Frederick II, and The Great of Prussia, had his baptism of fire under him in this campaign, the young Prince having enrolled himself as a volunteer and being present with the great Savoyard commander at Philipsburg. Eugene, who was of a poetic and artistic frame of mind, fostered the arts of literature and science almost as much as those of war. The personal friend of Leibnitz, he frequently corresponded with Montesquieu and other philosophers, while he himself made collections of books, manuscripts, and, above all, pictures. This great man, one of the five greatest Generals who ever lived, was found dead in his bed in Vienna on April 21st, 1736, after an evening passed peaceably in playing piquet, and sixteen Field Marshals carried his coffin to the tomb. No legitimate offspring survived him, as he was never inarried, but he was supposed to be the father of two sons by the beautiful Countess Batthyany. Such, then, is a brief epitome of the career of one against whom Richelieu found it necessary to pit his wits in whatever way he could. While enjoying liimself with the Countess Batthyany, and making use of her, the Due had during his mission to undergo many a mauvais quart dlieure. " The Emperor," according to VOL. I. 6 82 The Real Louis the Fifteenth one of the Due's letters to the witty Cardinal de Polignac, " under the pretext of invitations to chapel, causes himself to be followed about by the Ambassadors as if they were his valets de chambre. None but a Capuchin of the healthiest constitution could survive such a life during Lent ! Just to give your Eminence an idea : I have been, since Palm Sunday until the Wednesday after Easter, an hundred hours in Church with the Emperor — an enforced devotion which is unheard of in any Court in the world, and of which I cannot prevent myself from giving to your Eminence a touch of my ill-humour." Polignac wrote back to congratulate Richelieu upon having survived the sacred duties of Holy Week, saying, " Perhaps you have never done so much before in all your life. Imagine yourself exactly the same as a Cardinal when at Rome. It is true, however, that we are paid for it." From the Ministers of the Emperor Richelieu received many humiliations. Nor, although Prince Eugene com- menced to treat him with a friendliness which he scarcely deserved, was the great General himself well regarded by these Ministers, who were jealous of his influence. Especially were they averse to Eugene, because he was advising the Emperor to listen to one of the pro- positions of the ambitious Queen of Spain. This was that he should unite in marriage his two daughters, the Archduchesses Maria Theresa and Maria Eleonora, to the two Infantes her sons. Since Richelieu, on behalf of France, was equally averse to the idea that these daughters of a Power then hostile to France should be united to Spain, there were thus wheels within wheels which made it very difficult to steer a straight course. The Due de Richelieu and Prince Eugene 83 He therefore continued to steer a crooked one, and, careless of the feehngs of the Countess Batthyany, the intimate of the Prince, contrived to enter into a fresh haison with the Princess von Lichtenstein, who was very liee with the Ministers. He thus soon had a female friend in both camps in the Austrian Court. Indeed, it would seem as if the Princess, who was trcs grande dame, herself gave to the young Ambassador the opportunity of talking to her — about affairs — a conversa- tion which led to others. During a grand sleighing party given by the Emperor, this lady fell to Richelieu's lot, to drive in his own magnificent sledge, when she opened the ball by asking him, in an apologetic manner, if he would mind her giving him a few counsels, as a friend. Naturally, Richelieu did not mind in the least, where- upon the Princess informed him that France was making a great mistake in assuming a humble attitude in the negotiations ; that what she had to do, if she required peace, was to make a show of arming. It was, in fact, in the sense of the old Latin proverb, " Si vis pacem para bellum," that the Princess von Lichtenstein ad- dressed Richelieu. These views were exactly those held by the Due himself, and he now urged them so strongly upon Fleury that the pacific and economical Bishop of Frejus took his advice. Shortly afterwards he was able to main- tain boldly to the Emperor, who menaced him with war, that France was quite ready to face hostilities, and that she had merely entered into negotiations to avoid the effusion of blood — it was not, however, men nor money that were wanting. After thus boldly asserting himself, Richelieu (and the interests of France through him), received more 84 The Real Louis the Fifteenth consideration. He naturally thought it only right to thank the Princess Lichtenstein for his success, but one evening, going to do so in disguise, and on foot, just as he was about to enter by a side door, upon which he had given three mysterious taps, he had a disagreeable misadventure. Three half-drunken members of his own suite, seeing a mysterious person who seemed to wish to avoid ob- servation, commenced to insult him. Finding it im- possible to escape from them, the Due, losing his temper, struck them violently with his stick. The drunkards then shouted for the watch, and made so much noise that people, running up on all sides, attempted to arrest the man whom they said had assaulted them. At length Richelieu was compelled to make himself known to his followers. This made things worse than ever. The three rascals, falling upon their knees, loudly com- menced to call him " Monseigneur," and to beg for mercy. At length the young Ambassador got away somehow, but he was obliged to reserve his thanks to the Princess von Lichtenstein until another and more auspicious occasion. Eventually, at the beginning of 1728, the nomination for the cordon bleu arrived for Richelieu at Vienna ; when, for sponsors in the investiture, he had the honour of having the Prince Eugene and Graf von Seckendorf, the Emperor's Chancellor. He had not yet reached the age of thirty-two, while the rule of the Ordre du Saint Esprit was that it should not be granted to any noble before thirty-five. He was thus the recipient of a most unusual honour, which was repeated, with all the full ceremonies at Versailles, after his return at the beginning of the following year. The Due de Richelieu and Prince Eugene 85 By that time all apparent danger of war with Austria and Spain had been cleared away, and the profligate courtier, tired of the caresses of the ladies of Vienna, was only too pleased to be able to return to receive the fehcitations of those of Paris upon the results of his Embassy. The Princess von Lichtenstein, however, parted with him in grief and tears, the Countess Batthyany also expressed her sorrow, but Prince Eugene did not prove over-cordial in the manner in which he took leave of the departing Richelieu. He had, it appears, some time earlier made up his mind that the gay Ambassador of France was to be seen a great deal too often in the drawing-rooms of the Countess CHAPTER VII The Trials of Marie Lesczynska 1725 — 1768 As the young Louis XV. grew up, his health, originally so weak, gradually improved, and he became more good- looking daily until, at the age of seventeen, he was reckoned the most handsome young man in the kingdom. His education having, however, been purposely neglected by Fleury, he was in the greatest state of ignorance, notably so in all matters pertaining to the government of the State. Fleury had, however, taken particular pains to have him instructed so as to have the blindest faith in matters of religion ; he had been often, indeed, frightened in his childish years with pictures of the devil, of hell, and of death. These impressions never left him through life ; even in his most libertine moments in his later years he would instruct in religion the poor young girls whom he had debauched, after having torn them from their homes or bought them for his pleasures. There was thus a perpetual combat apparent in his mind throughout his life between the religious instruction he had received and his evil passions. Especially did the fear of death trouble him, as he showed notably upon various occasions in his career ; while even to 86 The Trials of Marie Lesczynska 87 hear of the death of any noble of the Court, or any of his friends, disturbed his peace of mind. As in his childhood, so he grew up to man's estate, taciturn, reserved, concentrated in himself. With women in general he continued for the first five years after his marriage to maintain an attitude of nervous timidity. With the exception of the motherly Comtesse de Toulouse, who was Marie Victoire, sister of the Mar^chal Due de Noailles, he never felt at home in their society ; only with her he was at his ease — and more than at his ease. For in spite of her age, her decent tenue, and the observances of devotion which were regular at her semi- Court at Rambouillet, all historians unite in saying that the Comtesse de Toulouse it was who first instructed the young Monarch in the meaning of the verb to love. She became a widow, for the second time, just at the period of the young man's life when he was commencing to realise that it was not a verb that he could conjugate with the Queen. His cousin Mademoiselle de Charolais succeeded, by her unremitting attentions, in leading the King still further astray. Of the Queen it was said that he became the father of her numerous children — mostly girls — without ever speaking to her. This was partly owing to the timid nature of Marie Lesczynska herself. Thus, from the beginning, each treated the other coldly and with cere- mony, and the more so from the fact of the rebuffs which the Queen received from Fleury, causing her to shrink within herself. She was not inclined to ask any- thing more from the King from the day when, having vainly begged for some favour for M. de Nangis, a member of her household, he had, upon her complaining 88 The Real Louis the Fifteenth to him of the fact of Fleury's refusal, rephed, " Do as I do, ask nothing of the Cardinal." It was as much as to say that it was Fleury who was King, not himself. What hurt the gentle-minded Marie still more was the roughly worded note written to her after the occasion when she had combined with M. le Due against Fleury, whereupon the preceptor had run away to Issy. This note merely said, " You will execute the Cardinal's orders ! " She was just beginning to hope to live, and love, for the King was the object of her greatest admiration, when her spirits were thus crushed. The Queen was not, moreover, in herself naturally inclined to be prudish ; on the contrary, she was fond of lively company, while far livelier stories were, accord- ing to d'Argenson, related in her presence than would be considered at all proper nowadays. Towards the King, however, she schooled herself to act with a studied obedience and indifference ; the more so that an old Jesuit, her confessor, had foolishly indoctrinated her with the idea that heaven would be displeased if she showed too much that was really womanly in the in- timate relations of life. She, therefore, instead of endeavouring to attract her youthful husband by feminine coquetry, on the contrary, put all such things from her, in the fear that earthly desires and satisfactions should make her lose a heavenly crown. Her character upon all matters became of an equal reserve, and, after her rebuffs, she no longer sought to take any interest in the affairs of the State. Further, she forbade the persons of her household to solicit any- thing, any more than she did so herself, while she main- tained an air of general tranquilhty and decency which never gave the world occasion to talk lightly about her in The Trials of Marie Lesczynska 89 anyway. Moreover, owing to her bringing up, the Queen hated extravagance, and was fond of doing charitable deeds. She hked to save, and did not mind privations if by them she could do good with her savings. With this object in view, she looked upon the expenses of her household as a charge upon the State which was much to be regretted, and would often inquire, " How much did this cost ? " While all others about the Court merely looked upon the lower orders as an evil, neces- sary to be endured as the means of production of money for the noblesse, Marie Lesczynska held opposite views, and would exclaim, " Money is the product of the sweat of the people's brow." Never was the old adage, " Set a beggar on horseback and he will ride to the devil," more falsified than in tlie case of this amiable Polish woman. Out of tiie money which she received for her allowance for private purposes, she annually set apart some for the poor, gave dowries to indigent young ladies, donations to wounded officers, assisted the education of youth, the apprenticing of young men to the trades, established homes for the Savoyard street porters and workmen of Paris, while causing also schools and work- ing-classes to be formed and supported in the country villages. Had her successor as Queen, the giddy Austrian Princess, Marie Antoinette, but shown one tithe of the solicitude for her people that did Marie, the history of France would probably have nowadays to be written differently, with the bloody episodes of the Revolution left out. Unfortunately, she, on the contrary, re- mained wholly taken up with her pleasures and excite- ments while the people were starving, with the result that, after being mainly instrumental in causing her husband's head to fall, she lost her own. 90 The Real Louis the Fifteenth Had but Marie Lesczynska enjoyed her husband's love, or possessed the power to rule him of Marie Antoinette to rule Louis XVI., there would have been a very different state of affairs existing in France before ever the well- meaning, but stupid and wife-governed, grandson of Louis XV. ascended the throne. But she enjoyed none of that influence. Fleury had seen to that ! In personal appearance, while not handsome, Marie was pleasant to look at. When upon horseback she became handsome, her beautiful figure was then seen to its full advantage. The mistresses of Louis XV. were well aware of this fact, and, accordingly, no sooner did their reign commence, with Madame de Mailly, the first of the four de Nesle sisters who were to succeed or run contemporaneously with each other, than her appear- ances on horseback were restricted, since it caused themselves to show to a disadvantage. The jealous malice of the mistresses went further than this. In a time when it was customary for the Academie Francaise to celebrate in flowery language the virtues of the worst conducted members of the Royal family, no literary gem was ever allowed to sparkle with the praises of the one occupant of the throne who deserved the nation's admiration — the good- hearted, downtrodden, neglected Marie Lesczynska. No wonder if, towards the end of her days, the nature of this excellent Princess became somewhat soured and embittered. Victim of the disgraceful vices of her husband, living in a Court to witness shameful harlotry flaunting openly, and its absolute usurpation of her own position and rights, she was also witness of the miseries of the people that she loved. These she knew chiefly to be caused by the extravagance or the ambition of The Trials of Marie Lesczynska 91 the courtesans who reigned, and who had secured their positions by their own calculated and meretricious arts. These women, some of them chosen from among her own ladies-of-honour, the unhappy Queen had to meet at every turn ; she was compelled to be civil to them when they attended upon her person, coming into her presence frequently from the very arms of the King. No wonder if she is reported as having frequently shed torrents of tears, as having been in the habit of pros- trating herself for hours at a time before her crucifix, while offering up her sorrows to her Maker as a sacrifice. Only too well did she see in the life of the King the source of the calamities of France, not only in the present, but to come. With a prophetic eye she realised that heaven, at present abandoning the King, would also abandon the kingdom in the future. Thus did Marie Lesczynska pass her days in tears, moanings, and vain repinings, while ardently praying for the King's conversion. Unhappy Queen ! one's heart bleeds for her. Truly the Providence which elevated her to the throne treated her more than ordinarily unkindly ; slie had better by far have been left in obscurity, to have been married to the simple Colonel, tlie Comte d'Estrees, to whom her father, Stanislas of Poland, had once been willing to unite her. While thus weeping at the foot of her cross, it must not be imagined that the character of the Polish Princess was such that she was unable to give vent to her pique, should she so choose, in no other way. Far from this, her powers of conversation, of expressing herself wittily and bitterly, were sufficient whenever she chose to let her tongue express what she thought. And, since even a worm will turn, so did Marie Lesczynska occasionally 92 The Real Louis the Fifteenth exert her powers of sarcasm. When we consider that, before her death in 1768, she had seen no less than six women pubhcly at the Court as her husband's acknow- ledged favourites, one of whom lasted for ten and another for twenty years in her presence, it would have been a marvel indeed had the Queen done otherwise. Like the Regent before him, not only was the King, let us hope wrongly, accused of too great an intimacy during his drunken fits with some of his own daughters, but he maintained the horrible pleasure-house presented to him by Madame de Pompadour, called the Pare aux Cerfs. In this he installed woman after woman of the lower orders, for a day, week, or month or two. Let us see, however, who were those loves of Louis, miscalled the Well-Beloved, who, belonging to the nobility, polluted the precincts of the Palace before the twenty years of the bourgeoise Mademoiselle Poisson, who became Marquise de Pompadour, and her successor, Dubarry, this latter a low woman from the dregs of the people. There were four of them, all sisters, and there would have been five, save for the fact that Hortense Felicite, the fifth, preferred to remain faithful to her husband, the Marquis de Flavacourt — a good and worthy soldier. These four, all daughters of the ultra-gallant Madame de Nesle, wife of the third Marquis Louis de Nesle, were — 1. Louise Julie, born 1710, who married her cousin Louis Alexandre de Mailly in 1726, and died in 175 1. 2. Pauline Felicite, who espoused Felix de Vintimille, and died in 1741. 3. Diane Adelaide, born in 1714, and married Louis de Brancas, Due de Lauraguais. 4. Marie Anne, married in 1734 the Marquis de la The Trials of Marie Lesczynska 93 Tournelle, who died in 1740. She survived liim four years, and was made the Duchesse de Chateauroux by the King, with a great flourish of trumpets in the patent creating her peeress and duchesse of France — on account of her virtues ! This patent, presented to the Parhament by the King, that body was obhged to register tamely. Madame de Flavacourt, who refused to become one of the incestuous gang, came between Madame de Lauraguais and the Duchesse de Chateauroux ; she was a celebrated beauty, and much sougiit after by the King. Of these four charming creatures, one alone, Madame de Mailly, after she had sold herself on account of her poverty, showed tliat she possessed a heart. Cold at first, she became ardently attached to the King, while she remained disinterested and anxious for his welfare in every way. Her reward was to be sent away in poverty, after having had to witness the King's inlidelity to her witli one of her sisters, who deliberately supplanted her. It will be remembered that the Marquise de Neslc, mother of these sisters, was one of those who had been appointed dame du palais to the Queen on her marriage. By birth she was Mademoiselle de la Porte-Mazarin. Marie Lesczynska, who did not approve of this lady's mode of behaviour, somewhat maliciously found means to prevent her from leaving her presence upon various occasions when she was going off to some giddy fete. She then caused her lady-of-the-palace to sit down and read to her books from which she might possibly derive some edification — such as the Imitation of Christ, the History of France, or the Gospels. Madame de Nesle died HI 1729, before any of her young and enterprising 94 The Real Louis the Fifteenth daughters had attracted the attention of the youthful King. She herself only lived to be thirty-nine. Two instances of the Queen's smartness of tongue have been recorded ; both at the time that Madame de Mailly, the first of the Nesle favourites, had been recently elevated to that unenviable distinction. The old Princesse de Conti was, with justice, suspected by the outraged wife of lending her protection to the intrigue, to which she gave countenance by her frequent presence at parties of pleasure with the King and his inamorata. In her anger against this Princesse of the Blood-Royal, with whose history she was well acquainted, Marie Lesczynska gave vent to a biting sarcasm which, when repeated throughout the Court, made its subject wince : " Un vieux cocher aime encore a entendre claquer le fouet." Upon another occasion it was Madame de Mailly herself who was made to feel the lash in a witty mot. Having, in her quality of lady-of-honour, respectfully requested the Queen's permission about some matter, she received for reply, " Comment, oubliez-vous done que vous etes la maitresse ? " In these little ways, thus, the Queen occasionally allowed herself the satisfaction of a trifling vengeance, and then only for a time, after which she became silently contemptuous. As the nocturnal orgies of the King increased in frequency, she became tired of giving per- mission of absence to such of her ladies as were bidden to them ; nor would she exact the presence of the other ladies who came voluntarily to replace the absentees in their duties about her person. She gave, therefore, a general permission of absence to all who pleased to go to the petits soupers des cabinets, or anywhere From an e>i^iai>ing after ih MARIE LKSCZYNSKA, I'RINCKSS 01' TOLAM) AM) (JUKKN OK I-KANCE. The Trials of Marie Lesczynska 95 else they might choose. She preferred the absence of nearly all to their presence, and contented herself with the society of an excellent woman, the Duchesse de Luynes, also of Mesdames d'Ancenis, de Rupelmonde, and one or two others, with whom she would sup in a modest manner, after which the ladies amused themselves by reading. These modest reunions were sneered at by the libertine Court, which called them " the holy week," but they formed an exemplary contrast to the petits cabinets of the King. CHAPTER VIII The Affaire Cadiere 1730— 1732 The leit motif of whicli the refrain runs through the whole of the reign of Louis XV. may be said to be the murmur — by no means harmonious — of the struggles between the magistracy and the clergy. The kingdom was continually disturbed by contests between the ecclesiastical and civil authorities, growing out of attempts on the part of the clergy to enforce the Papal Bull Unigenitus, which were resisted by the Parliaments of Paris and the provinces. Although, chiefly owing to the instances of the Due de Choiseul and Madame de Pompadour, who hated them, the King was at length induced to banish the Jesuits, in the mean- time their perpetual dissensions with the Jansenists had greatly embittered the conflict. This, towards the end of the reign, became merged in the struggles between the King and the Parliaments, in which the Royal authority was finally triumphant. It was, how- ever, but a transient triumph for the Royalty, for already could be heard the distant murmurings of the Revolution when Louis XV. died in May, 1774. In the year 1730 the power of the priesthood was so great, headed as it was by Fleury, that it may be truly 96 i The Affaire Cadi^re 97 said to have represented both the State and the Govern- ment. The King himself was but a puppet in the hands of the clergy, who ruled Fleury, as we have already seen. Although they do not appear much upon the surface, there were potentates of very great power in France, in the shape of two valets de chamhre. These were Bachelier, belonging to the King, and Barjac, in whose possession the Cardinal considered himself fortunate. There seems to have been no rivalry between the couple, who, indeed, worked together under Fleury, to whom the Sieur Bachelier, as he became, remitted the compromising correspondence that he found at nights in the King's pockets. Yet these two both recognised that there were greater than they in the kingdom ; the old Barjac said, of the out-and-out ultramontane papists, " If we don't let them loose they will devour us ourselves." i Cardinal Fleury knew well this fact, and, too feeble to resist, was constantly trotting backwards and forwards to the establishment at Issy, to take the orders of his spiritual director Couturier. The result of these visits was made clearly evident when, upon April 3rd, 1730, a great event happened, the greatest triumph for the ultra- montane party in twenty years. On that day, with the greatest ceremony, accom- panied by many troops, the twenty-year-old King was led in person to the Parliament of Paris to enforce the registering of the Bull — an action which that Jansenistical body had refused to perform in tlie teeth of his great- grandfather the Grand Monarque. There was a calculated provocation in this challenge, thrown by the clergy to the magistracy, the men of the robe, who were popularly supposed to be the guardians VOL. I. 7 98 The Real Louis the Fifteenth of the Regal rights. The outrage — felt throughout all France — was intended to exasperate them beyond all measure, cause them to revolt, to make a new Fronde, and stir up the populace by the unruly attitude which they might assume. By these mutinous actions the King and Fleury would both become alarmed — they would then suppress the Parliament of Paris by force. That was the plan, although it was not avowed. The King, in haughty style, accomplished his mission. Not deigning to speak himself, he stood by while the Chancellor read out words to the effect that " since the Bull had force and authority of itself, it was not the King who imposed it." The Parliament trembled. One old magistrate, nearly ninety years of age, fell upon his knees before the handsome young King, but was not allowed to speak. Only forty out of the two hundred conseillers present would vote for the regis- tration, but these forty votes were declared to be the majority by that formerly staunch Jansenist, the Chancellor d'Aguesseau. All throughout this year of 1730 there was a cabal, headed by that person devoid of morality, the Dowager Duchesse de Bourbon, to supply this handsome young King, now twenty years of age, with a mistress who would counteract the influence of Fleury, and restore that of M. le Due. It was now sought to carry out this plan ; the infamous Madame la Duchesse seeking to supply the young second wife of her son for that purpose. The banishment of M. le Due had been revoked in 1729, after the death of Madame de Prie, and he had taken a second wife. She was a Savoyard Princess, being sister of the young King of Sardinia, whose father, Duke of Savoy until 1718, had recently abdicated. She was the The Affaire Cadiere 99 granddaughter of the celebrated " Madame," sister of Charles II. of England and first wife of the father of the Regent, who was supposed to have met her death by poison sent by the Chevalier de Lorraine. The young Duchesse de Bourbon was a very pretty and attractive woman, to whose society the King had shown a marked partiality. Her mother-in-law, the mother of the un- principled Mademoiselle de Charolais, had absolutely no scruples where the King was concerned. She had already accepted as a present for her daughter-in-law some very valuable diamonds from the King, of which she intended to keep her own share, when Fleury got an inkling of the affair, in which, by the way, the part played by M. le Due is uncertain. The Cardinal was justly frightened, however, and with the more reason since there were other plots being woven against him, and by persons in the most intimate daily communion with the King. M. de Chauvelin, the Keeper of the Seals, was a man of great energy and capacity ; he was, moreover, very artful. Unable openly to combat the womanly rule of Fleury, he formed the design of letting the King know, through his boyish comrades, how incapable the Cardinal really was. The young Due de Gesvres was the nephew of the Cardinal de Rohan, the friend of Fleury, and was, therefore, above suspicion. This effeminate youth was, however, as capable of liolding the threads of a plot as those of the tapestry work which he delighted in weaving. One day, accordingly, he allowed the King, as if by chance, to see him with a paper, which he pretended to hide. Louis, becoming curious, could not obtain it with- out an effort, when it was fcnuid to be a very clever and loo The Real Louis the Fifteenth pungent exposition of all the Cardinal's weak points. Above all, the King understood with terror as he read it that the action of the Cardinal with regard to the Parliament was such as was likely to bring about a state of civil war. He took a copy of the paper before he returned it to Gesvres. After this the King went to bed, forgetting the copy of the memorial in his pockets. Bachelier, feeling through these, found it, read it, and took it straight to Fleury. Never was the King seen weaker than at this moment ! Fleury attacked him upon the subject of his continuing to hold friendly relations with the youths whose conduct had already been condemned. He terrified the King, who, after prevaricating and lying, gave up both Gesvres and d'Epernon to the Cardinal, who forced him to sign their exile for two years. Fleury now changed the locks of the King's apartments, and kept duplicate keys for himself and any one whom he might wish to use as a spy. At the same time he rewarded Bachelier. The valet de chambre was made a seigneur, the Intendant of Marly and of the Trianon. In spite of this treachery on behalf of his domestic, Louis retained him about his person as before, and apparently without resentment. After this Barjac, the Cardinal's valet de chambre, became the most courted man in the kingdom. While nightly now the courtiers thronged to the Cardinal's bed-goings, his valet was beset by applicants for favours. He had in effect the disposition of all the important places in France, made farmers-general or appointed to any office he pleased. In speaking, Barjac would say, " We will do this " ; "We cannot allow that " ; or, " I The Affaire Cadicre loi have finished the affair." Such was the manner of the government of the country of France ! It is in vain that the methods of government of the Cardinal have been called " gentle and moderate," for that they were not. The press was gagged, forty-eight learned doctors were sent away to prison from the Sor- bonne, every voice was stifled, while the terror of the Protestants, attacked by the clergy with troops in this year 1730, was aggravated. The word " relapse," of which M. le Due had removed the principal terrors, was now openly pronounced with its whole fell signifi- cance, for it carried with it a sentence of death. It was while things were in this stifled condition that a circumstance took place, a voice arose away in the south, which was the cause of great disturbance, and rightly ended in the utter disrepute of the Jesuit faction. In fact it did more, for so strong was the voice of public opinion that the priesthood were in the end debarred from ever obtaining that which was the cause of their conflict with the magistracy — a Church Court of their own, which should make them independent of the lay tribunals of the Parliaments and the law. It was not, however, until after a violent struggle and the most cruel injustice had for a time seemed to show the Church as supreme, that at last Versailles yielded and made the clergy remain for ever subject to lay justice. In the year 173 1 the mockers of Paris listened and scoffed as they heard the news which filtered through from Toulon and Aix, cities of Provence ; the latter, the seat of the Proven9al Parliament. The Jesuists, as a counter-blast to the Jansenist miracles said to have taken place at the tomb of the recluse Paris, had manufactured a miracle of their own ! I02 The Real Louis the Fifteenth In Toulon, Mademoiselle Cadiere, being brought up in a convent under the spiritual direction of an elderly and ill-looking priest named Girard, became stigmatised. In imitation of Christ, the marks of whose wounds she bore upon her person, the blood fell continually from her forehead, wounded by the crown of thorns — she was a saint ! No sooner had this startling news arrived when it was followed by the intelligence that the saint was about to become a mother, and not she alone, but many others — merchants' daughters, ladies, and work- girls. The Jansenists now violently declared that the action of Girard, in taking advantage of these innocent young women under his direction, proved him to be a sorcerer, a wizard. It was, they maintained, only by the use of the black art that this Jesuit, old and ugly, could have prevailed over so many victims. He was, they said, another Gauffridi — " Prince of the Magicians," the spiritual director burned at Marseilles by the Parlia- ment of Provence in 1610. Like him, Girard should perish at the stake for witchcraft ; as, under similar conditions, had the priest Urbain Grandier at Loudun in 1634, and the Vicaire Picart, who, with the already dead Pere Boulle, was burned by the Fronde about 1649. All of these spiritual directors had taught too freely to their patients the tenets of lUuminism and Molinism : " The body cannot stain the soul. One must, by the sin which renders humble and cures pride, kill sin ! " Having already (in Louis XIV. in Court and Camp) related at length all the details of these separate affairs, as weU as explained the doctrines of Quietism, Illu- minism, and Molinism, which were productive in the convents of such evil results, only a word is here necessary The Affaire Cadiere 103 in referring to them. While the nuns, a whole convent full at Louviers, who were the victims, became hysterical and fraudulent, and pretended to have been bewitched, upon each occasion one particular nun was made the scapegoat, at the same time that the greatest efforts were made to save the priests. The unfortunate girls underwent untold horrors : being stripped and stuck all over with needles to find the witch's mark, and subjected to such terrifying tortures as to be shut up with dead men's bones in a charnel house, or left without clothing in underground sewers full of rats ! Instead of it being admitted that the horrible de- bauchery which had taken place was but the result of the wickedness of the director, it was sought to prove that the girl it was who was possessed, and had cast her spell over the priest. To prove this in the case of Father Gauffridi — the " Prince of the Magicians " — Father Michaelis, the Pope's Inquisitor at Avignon, declared, after examining his quite young victim Madeleine de la Palud, that he had, by exorcism, drawn out from her no less than six thousand six hundred devils, at one time, in a gluey mass ! A sirrilar reply was that made by the Jesuits who defended Father Girard. They admitted the sorcery, but said that it was the young saint of the miracle. Mademoiselle Cadiere, who had put the devil into Girard. The whole of Provence divided itself furiously into two parties. In the cities, those against the priest flooded the streets with comic literature, songs, and pamphlets. In Paris there was an echo of the songs, which derided the Jesuits, and which, while vulgar and ribald, concealed a danger. In the south, at Mar- seilles and elsewhere, such was the excitement that I04 The Real Louis the Fifteenth crowds of hundreds of thousands collected while the trial progressed. At first people had laughed on learning that the Jesuits intended to cap one crime with another ; the laugh, however, turned to a thrill of horror when it became known that, before the very Parliament of Aix, the people of the King proposed to strangle, not Girard, but the maiden whom he had outraged ! While the world shuddered it also became instructed, with a sudden revelation, of the evils which in almost a century had been forgotten. Mademoiselle Cadiere was a weakly and not by any means strong-minded girl, there was, therefore, nothing marvellous in the fact that Girard should have won her to his will ; but what astonished the world was the fact of the immense power given to the priest by the mystical jargon of Illuminism, a power by which, in only six months, Girard had made victims of his penitents in all directions. Much — too much — became known concerning the interior of the Convent d'OUioules, where Mademoiselle Cadiere was kept concealed by Girard : the manners of the rich abbess, the rich ladies who visited the convent, the monks who met them there, the nuns under the abbess, — all these became the subject of universal comment. The Bishop of Toulon, who was an honest man, at first made a determined effort to save Mademoiselle Cadiere. The Jesuits, however, frightened him with a threat of bringing a shameful accusation against him. The Bishop then joined her enemies, and, in company with the judge, subjugated the Lieutenant Civil, who represented the King, to whom " la " Cadiere appealed for justice. and mercy in vain. The Affaire Cadiere 105 The other women who were in the same phght as the poor girl herself were brought to testify against her, and say that Girard was possessed by her, that she alone was answerable for his actions ; while the nuns of Ollioules were threatened with the torture unless they spoke as they were told to. All this became publicly known, and also the fact that, on account of her clear, straightforward answers, a poisonous drug was forced down the throat of the poor innocent, which affected her senses so that for three days she did not know what she was saying, and contradicted herself. Being afraid of Paris, the Jesuits endeavoured to get two Commissaircs from the Parliament of Aix to come to Toulon and complete the preparation of the case. They came, with permission of the Chancellor d'Aguesseau — a Jansenist, and formerly an honest man but who had weakened lately — and actually lodged in the quarters of the Jesuits themselves. What chance was there for the poor girl ? The two Commissaircs found that there was sufficient evidence against her to send on the case to the Parliament of Aix. All the great ladies of that city were for the Jesuits, who were their confessors. It was a simple matter for Girard to prove that he had only followed the tenets of Illuminism, of the high mysticism of Molinos, greatly approved by the Jesuits. It was, he maintained, the right and the duty of the confessor to shut himself up with and discipline his penitent, and only lay ignorance could question that right. Whatever might be found indecent or impure was recommended as the effort of obedient humility to break down pride and the will. Without referring to ancient books, he had only to refer to the book of the day to prove this — a book recently io6 The Real Louis the Fifteenth dedicated to the Queen by the Bishop who wrote it, and generally highly approved. In this, the Life of Marie Alacoque, obedience was preached at every line as superior to every other virtue. It was distinctly laid down that Jesus said, " Prefer the will of thy superiors to Mine," " Obey them before Me." That meant, obey the priest before the God whom he pretends to serve. This Marie Alacoque was a Burgundian nun of a convent of the Sacre Cceur at Paray. She also was a miracle-worker, since her heart actually became joined to that of Christ, after which she was united in marriage to Jesus, signing the marriage contract with her own blood. This occurred in 1675, and great events followed upon that marriage, which we have described in Louis XIV. in Court and Camp (p. 217 et seqq.). The great ladies of Provence — and it is a picture of the power of the priesthood — instead of feeling pity for the victims of Father Girard, considered them highly honoured — especially, it would seem. Mademoiselle Cadiere. " What ! " they exclaimed, " even if the good Pere Girard did honour her so much as to indulge in certain intimacies with her, she has been very daring to be wanting in respect to her director — to the order of the Jesuits. She is only a monster fit for stifling." The influence of these women carried the verdict in the Parliament of Aix. She was condemned "to be hanged and strangled at Toulon " ; her brothers who had sup- ported her were ordered to be criminally proceeded against, also the lawyer who had defended her, he having been officially ordered to do so. The people rose in hundreds of thousands, rushed to the prison, shouting, " Be not frightened, mademoiselle. We are here ; they shall not strangle you." The Affaire Cadiere 107 Hereupon the terrified Parliament, in which were many Jansenist members, took courage, and some of these magistrates declared that Pere Girard was worthy of death — worthy of the fire ! In their excess of zeal, in persisting in thus looking upon Girard as a sorcerer, a wizard, these Jansenists defeated themselves. They were merely laughed at for persisting in seeing the devil everywhere, the result of which was that many who were quite ready to hang Girard, rather than burn a man, retracted. His death was put to the vote before a special Court of twenty-five. Twelve of these voted for his death, twelve for his acquittal ; the President gave his vote in his favour — Girard was saved. Girard and the President were, however, nearly torn to pieces by the infuriated people. In the meantime the revised judgment had said that Mademoiselle Cadiere should be restored to her mother. This was pure hypocrisy, since she was ordered at the same time to pay all the costs of the proceedings against herself. As a matter of fact the poor, unhappy girl never was returned to her mother at Toulon, where she would have received a triumph worthy of a Roman Emperor. The people waited for her, and burned Girard in effigy. But she never came — she was never seen again ! The Jesuits had hidden her away somewhere in some horrible in pace below a convent — some cesspool or drain, whence the victim never reappeared. Nor were there any Jesuits massacred. And yet in her horrible end, whatever it may have been, she conquered these. Even to the Parliament of Aix, which from the earliest times had shown a spirit of persecution, there came a revulsion of feeling, and with it reform. The full light of day, as distinguished from io8 The Real Louis the Fifteenth the dark shadows of the silent convent, had been thrown athwart the dark paths of the Church by justice as administered in open court in the affaire Cadi ere. From that moment the world became more curious as to what was contained between those sealed walls, where the little bones were suspected to lie whitening in heaps beneath the flags in the convent yard. They have been found since those days ; but before the affaire Cadiere the magistrates were not bold enough to face the Church. The judge, when his eyes fell upon those convent walls, discreetly looked the other way. The clergy feared, however, that the time of further well-merited exposures would follow fast upon the heels of these terrible scandals which had become universally known to the world. Fleury was seventy-six years old ; he could not, they imagined, live much longer : after him who knew what might happen ? All the Parlia- ments were not, moreover, like those of Aix, which had favoured the massacre of the Vandois or Waldenses in the days of Fran9ois I. Before no other Parliament in France could Girard have escaped so lightly. Should some new shady affair arise, the priesthood would, they feared, find themselves at the mercy of the magis- trates. Feverishly, accordingly, the clergy hurried up to put pressure upon the old Cardinal, to cause him to suppress the censors of their morals, to assure to them- selves the sweets of untrammelled liberty. The people understood their haste, and laughed and hooted. In Paris every Jesuit who passed in the street was mocked at, while the people called out, "Girard! there goes Girard ! " Notwithstanding this the Church seemed to triumph, The Affaire Cadiere 109 when, in 1732, the Parhament of Paris was humbled by the Cardinal, through the King. The Sulpicians, whose house at Issy was greatly favoured by Fleury, had formed the plan to remove entirely from the Parliaments all jurisdiction in ecclesias- tical matters. To humiliate the Parliament of Paris, that body, to commence with, was ordered not to discuss in any form the question of the Bull. Thereupon the celebrated orator the Jansenist Abbe Pucelles, by his eloquent denunciations of despotism, aroused all his comrades, who drew up a memorial to the King. In this appeal it was represented that the temporal power was directly established by God, and under the King, that the clergy had no right to interfere between Parliament and the King, since the canons of the Church only became laws of the State when clothed by the authority of the Sovereign. The memorial was ordered to be erased from the books, when, Maurepas arriving with a letter from the King, the Parliament refused to open it or take knowledge of its contents. Another letter was sent, with orders to read it or be treated as rebels. This was in the year 1731. After long deliberation it was decided to open this letter, and, after doing so, to proceed in a body to the King at Marly, and humbly remonstrate with His Majesty. But it was only when the courageous Abbe Pucelles offered to go alone on this dangerous mission that his comrades said that they would not desert him. The letter, wlien opened, was found to contain a sharp order from Louis XV. to leave all Church affairs alone. Upon the arrival of the conseillers at Marly they were unable to see the King, but a personal altercation no The Real Louis the Fifteenth took place between Pucelles and the Cardinal, in which the Abbe told Fleury boldly what may be expressed as " a few plain truths." Without beating about the bush, he told the Cardinal exactly what he thought of him and his behaviour. Early in the following year, 1732, Fleury had his revenge. The King sent for the Parliament, whom Pucelles had again been animating to resistance. Upon arrival the magistrates were not allowed to speak a single word, but ordered merely to listen to the King's words. These, which were very violent, he read out of his hat. He then caused d'Aguesseau, who, with Maurepas, Chauvelin, Fleury, and the Due d'Orleans, was present, to order the Parliament to wipe out from their records all traces of their recent deliberations. The old Pucelles fell upon his knees and offered a memorial. This Maurepas snatched from his hand and tore to pieces, after which the King spoke again. " This is my will ; do not force me to make you feel that I am master ! " The First President made a reply of about only ten words of regret that the King would not hear them, when the audience was ended, greatly to the satisfaction of Versailles. In spite of this, in the month of December that same year, Versailles receded and yielded. Neither imprison- ments, exiles, nor carryings off proving of any avail against the stubbornness of the Parliament, Versailles abandoned, under form of a reprieve, that which it had accorded to the clergy upon August i8th. This abandon- ment left the Church, after all, subject to the authority of the men of the robe. CHAPTER IX Louisas First Loves — and Belle-Isle 1732— 1739 It was near the end of the year 1732 when Cardinal Fleury decided that it would be as well that Louis XV. should take a mistress, and that the lady should be of his own selection. After a consultation with Madame de Tencin, that old go-between of the days of the Regent, it was determined that this mistress should be the eldest daughter of the Nesle family. From the manner in which she subsequently comported herself, no better selection could have been made than that of Louise Julie, Comtesse de Mailly, who was married to her own first cousin. The Cardinal arranged the matter as cheaply as he could with the lady's husband, giving to the needy Comte de Mailly the sum of 20,000 livres ; and Madame de Mailly was brouglit by Bachelier, upon a cold winter's night, to meet the King in a dark entresol at Versailles. According to the King's valet de chamhre, Louis greeted with timidity the lady thus sold to meet her husband's necessities, while she herself was very unenthusiastic at this first interview, which was purely a cold-blooded affair of sale and barter. The meetings were, however, continued. Since the III 112 The Real Louis the Fifteenth King was afraid to ask from the Cardinal the sum of 1,000 francs which, for a time at all events, he wished to present to Madame de Mailly upon each interview, he had recourse to Chauvelin. The Keeper of the Seals contrived, without the knowledge of Fleury, to obtain the necessary funds from some Government department, upon which account Chauvelin commenced to take a stronger position with Louis, while he also earned the gratitude of Louise Julie de Mailly. She and the King were both of the same age, twenty-two in 1732, and for three years the liaison was continued in secret, during which time she fell greatly in love with Louis, who, it will be remembered, was remarkably hand- some. Madame de Mailly was an excellent person, but no beauty. Tall and a brunette, she was thin, and showed evidences of the Italian blood she had inherited on the father's side in her very fine dark eyes, which were full of fire. Fleury, who was kept well informed of all that took place in the King's fetits cabinets, felt gratified with his selection of a favourite, and the succeeding years continued to show the discretion of her whom he had chosen as a means of baffling the plan of Madame la Duchesse. The Comtesse was gentle, reserved, and timid. With- out having the slightest pretensions of knowledge of State affairs, she was amusing, owing to her clever little sayings and joyous manners. A sure friend, she was incapable of deceit, and had a sympathetic manner. Strange to say, although living in the Court, she remained disinterested, was without personal ambition and un- intriguing. Louis's First Loves — and Bellc'IsIc 1 1 3 Perfectly content to love the King in secret, she never desired either to profit by her favour or to make it known. Madame la Duchesse, Madame de Tencin, and the valetry, Bachelier, le Bel, and Barjac, how- ever, all took very good care to keep on friendly terms with the lady. The Duchesse, of course, only learned the secret when it was one no longer, which was in 1735. Then, for some reason, Fleury and his cabal thought it as well that the world should become aware that the place which women of all ages about the Court were striving to occupy was already held. As if by an accident, one night, while the Comtesse was being conducted by Bachelier up a staircase, her hood was allowed to slip on one side when two ladies were passing. That was sufficient ! all the world knew after that, that one of the Queen's ladies was not the plaything of a moment, but the King's acknowledged favourite. The excuse which was given out for the King's open infidelity was a malady from which the Queen suffered, as a result of having, since her marriage to the fifteen- year-old boy, borne seven children with too great rapidity, and her consequent expressed disinclination to lead an intimate conjugal existence. The Queen had, indeed, thrown every obstacle in the way of the King's approaching her apartments, especially when he had been drinking, which was a common occurrence. Then, if he presented himself after she was already in bed, she reproached the King with the smell of the wines of Champagne ; whereas, if she had not already retired, the Queen took an unusually long time over her prayers, which would sometimes be continued until the King had fallen asleep. VOL. I. 8 114 The Real Louis the Fifteenth Marie Lesczynska was thus the cause of her own downfall, although had those who followed Madame de Mailly but loved the Queen as well as did that unfortunate lady, the Queen would not have been so greatly to be pitied. Indeed, the interests of the Queen were always considered by the Comtesse, for which reason she fell in with the views of Chauvelin, and of all France, against Fleury with reference to the restoration of the King's father-in-law to his throne. Secretly she urged the King to the War of the Polish Succession. Personally it was, however, but little which the Comtesse either sought for or obtained. The presents which the King gave her were modest for a King, more worthy, indeed, of some little bourgeois ; while she herself ran into debt for the expenses of entertaining him in her house. After having been the beloved of the King for nine years, in 1741 she had, we are told, " neither silver flambeaux nor counters " to entertain Louis with when he came, but had always to borrow these from her neigh- bours. Things were different in the time of Pompadour ! That lady knew how to help herself with both hands, and how to help those whom she chose to with both hands also. She, however, was a mere bourgeoise — Miss Fish by name (Mademoiselle Poisson). Madame de Mailly came of one of the oldest families of France. With her it was a case of noblesse oblige ! It was not so, however, with the King. When he eventually sent Madame de Mailly away cruelly, as part of the bargain made with her sister, Madame de la Tourneile, he left her to pay her own debts. He was even mean enough to retain, for the benefit of two of the sisters, the blue silk sheets which the Comtesse had Louis's First Loves — and Belle^lsle 1 1 5 worked for him with her own hands, and the materials for which he knew she owed and would be sued for. If, as well as being King of France, Louis XV. had happened to have possessed the instincts of a gentleman, he would, at all events, have paid that bill for the disinterested woman. Unfortunately, he was only King of France. Thus was all the solicitude and affection which Madame de Mailly showered upon her Royal lover only met by the greatest ingratitude and neglect. From a worthless husband, a mere parasite, she fell into the hands of a worthless King, for whose sake she sacrificed all her womanly feelings when he turned his eyes upon her sisters, to be in the end driven from the Court like a pariah dog. After she was first handed over to Louis in 1732, the Comte de Mailly soon astonished Versailles by appearing in a smart carriage. His wife's discretion was, however, so great that none knew whence he had obtained the funds which enabled him to exchange a fiacre for a gilded coach. By the year 1739 Louis was tired of Madame de Mailly, who, nevertheless, still maintained her position at the Court without any apparent rival. The King was, however, in the habit of visiting Chantilly so often as to cause the greatest anxiety to Fleury, as also to M. le Due, who was now excessively jealous of his young wife. Louis also was indulging in various escapades — visiting the opera balls and other places masked, running severe risks to his health from his excesses. These, indeed, resulted in his severe illness in 1738, when the Queen was advised by the scheming Madame de Tencin to arrange for a Council of Regency, chiefly of women, to be ready in case of the death of the Monarch. The Cardinal was 1 1 6 The Real Louis the Fifteenth very ill at the same time, but France was not fated to be relieved of either Cardinal or King upon that occasion. In her convent, the Abbaye de Port-Royal, there was a young lady weaving plans. This was a simple pensionnaire, Mademoiselle de Nesle ; in this year, 1739, she was twenty-four years of age. This young lady's plans can be expressed in three words — to rule France ! She proposed to capture the King, and oust the Ministers and her sister for this purpose ; and, since not only was she not good-looking, but positively ugly, it must be owned that her plan seemed a trifle doubtful. This is how she expressed her intention to her friend, the Chanoinesse Madame de Dray : "I will write letters upon letters to my sister Mailly — she is good, she will call me to her ; I will make the King love me ; I will hunt out Fleury and will govern France ! " " La " Nesle nearly succeeded in accomplishing all this before a dose of poison, administered by the priests, stopped a career which was just then more promising than ever. The Abbe Brissard, confidential man to the Cardinal's nephews, is said to have given the dose. Although Pauline Felicite had no looks, she was much whiter than her sister Louise Julie ; she also had some- thing else which the other did not possess — strength of character. She knew well enough that she was ugly, but with an elevated genius, an inventive brain, a bold and decided manner and limitless impertinence, Pauline proposed to prevent the King from finding out that fact for himself. This she succeeded in doing. Madame de Mailly did not see her sister's falseness at first. When she did so, and discovered that the petulant, audacious, and spirituel conversation of that young lady had bewitched the King, it was too late to Louis's First Loves— and Belle Jslc 1 1 7 send her away again. For a short time she struggled, when Louis first proposed that she should bring her sister to the petits soupcrs in the pdits cabinets. Then, for sheer love of the King, to whom she could refuse nothing, she did not refuse him her own sister. There were now two of them at the Court, and the King soon determined to find a husband for the last arrival, so that the intention of his assiduities to the sister of his acknowledged mistress might be covered with the cloak of decency, even more than it was by the complaisant Desmoiselles de Charolais and de Clermont, Princesses of the Blood. The selected husband was a young fellow, Felix de Vintimille, son of the Comte du Luc, and nephew of Vintimille du Lur, Archbishop of Paris. This Prelate performed the marriage, the whole pro- ceedings in connection with which, and the subsequent retirement to Madrid, the chateau of Madame la Duchesse, were a farce for which the Archbishop was very largely paid. At Madrid the King attended and pretended to act the part of best man in putting the husband to bed. In the presence of a bevy of great ladies who had consented to attend the farce, the King did to the bridegroom the great honour of presenting him with the chemise. On the morrow every one about the Court said, however, that instead of it having been the King who went back to La Muette, it was the young bridegroom who occu- pied His Majesty's coach, while Louis himself remained to enjoy the hospitality of the Conde ladies at Madrid. From the date of that marriage Louis gave himself up entirely to his love for Madame de Vintimille, married only in name. She was, indeed, the only woman whom he ever really loved. Although seeing her constantly ii8 The Real Louis the Fifteenth he was, when away from her, always writing to her ; during the two years that the connection lasted he wrote her over two thousand letters. We must, however, return to the days when Madame de Mailly first became favourite. France had then been at peace for practically twenty years, and there was a very warlike feeling throughout the country, the young nobles especially burning to emulate the deeds of their fathers in the days of the Grand Monarque. There were two or three persons of distinction in the country who sought to instil this warlike feeling into the heart of the young King, At the head of these was the gallant old Marechal de Villars, the hero of endless combats, the greatest of which, his brilliant victory at Denain in 1713, had brought Austria to her knees, and forced her to the Peace of Rastadt in the following year. Villars was much beloved of the Queen, and when that old voluptuary Augustus II., Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, died in February, 1733, he boldly declared to Louis that the time had come for him to re- instate the Queen's father, Stanislas Lesczynski, upon the throne of Poland. Secretly he was aided in his counsels by Chauvelin and Madame de Mailly ; but Fleury was all for peace at any price. In his wishes for peace the Cardinal had two ideas — the first, rigid economy ; the second, to do nothing cal- culated to hurt the interests of France's old enemy, Austria. This country was dear to the Jesuits on account of its persecution of the Protestants in Hungary, which was continued and bitterly cruel. The wishes of the Jesuits were accordingly to allow Austria to remain strong with a free hand, and they warned Fleury to let her alone. Louisas First Loves — and Bellc'IsIe 1 1 9 Fleury, in 1733, however, found himself being carried off his legs by the current, headed by the young King and the nobles. To his disgust he found himself compelled to send a million of livres to Poland to assist the cause of the re-election of Stanislas, and, not much later, three more millions had to follow. The Pohsh Assembly at Warsaw voted in May that they would have " none but a Polish King," thus ex- cluding Augustus III., the son of the Saxon debauchee, who was the candidate of Russia. The Emperor Charles VI., however, addressed haughty letters to France from Vienna, making light of the Polish rights of election — he was on the side of Saxony and Russia. In spite of Fleury, angry replies were sent from France, who felt that her honour was at stake. In France war was looked forward to, more than for any other reason, as a means of emancipation from the tutelage of Fleury. It was hoped that, with it, the young King, who was but as a baby in arms, would shake off the leading-strings, and display to the kingdom some of the energy of his great-grandfather ; moreover that, while gaining liberty for himself, Louis would give liberty to the people. Already it was felt that Fleury was declining. Among those nursing this hope was Voltaire. He dared not launch upon France, while Fleury was onmi- potent, those famous Lettres sur les xinglais which had already been in the press at Rouen for two or three years awaiting a favourable moment for pubhcation. In these Voltaire exhibited his admiration of the English and their polity. Above all, he described the operations of constitutional government in flattering terms, calcu- lated to give a powerful impulse to the love of liberty I20 The Real Louis the Fifteenth which, from the days of the Regent, PhiHppe d'Orleans, had commenced to spread among the classes and the masses ahke. Among those whose counsels Fleury had to fear almost as much as those of Villars, was the able and brave Comte de Bellisle, or Belle-Isle, as his name is written by d'Argenson in his Loisirs d'un ministre. The Comte de Belle-Isle was the grandson of Fouquet, the Surintendant des Finances in the days of Cardinal Mazarin, who was disgraced when the Cardinal died, and imprisoned for life at the instances of his rival Colbert. Fouquet's grandson was the son of the Marquis de Belle-Isle and a sister of the Due de Levis. Although bearing the title from the island of the same name off the French coast which was his possession, the Marquis was kept in disgrace by Louis XIV., who occupied his island with a garrison. Colbert had, indeed, too well aroused the Monarch's hatred against the family for any of Fouquet's descendants to have any chance of advance- ment before the death of Louis XIV. With the Regency came a change. The young Belle- Isle, distinguished already, and dangerously wounded in the Flemish wars under the Marechal de Boufflers, knew how to make himself useful to the Due d'Orleans and his Minister, Cardinal Dubois. In the short war against Spain in 1719 he fulfilled the hazardous position of spy upon his chief, the Duke of Berwick, the commander of the French forces. This son of James II. and Ara- bella Churchill, sister of the Duke of Marlborough, was looked upon by the Regent with a certain amount of suspicion, he being half-brother to the Pretender, whose cause Spain was supporting. After this war Belle-Isle Louis's First Loves — and BelleJsle 121 was rewarded by being made Marechal de Camp and Governor of Himinguen. Towards the end of the Regent's career, and during the First-Ministry of M. le Due, the Comte de Belle-Isle shared with his friend Leblanc, Minister of War, the hatred of Madame de Prie, from which cause both fell for a time, and were unjustl}^ imprisoned in the Bastille. Belle-Isle was further exiled and persecuted so long as the reign of Madame de Prie lasted. For that lady never could forgive her mother's lovers for refusing to leave Madame Pleneuf to worship at her own feet. When the Cardinal de Fleury took hold of the reins, and while, in their turn, his enemies the Due de Bourbon and Madame de Prie were exiled, Belle-Isle, with his brother the Chevalier de Belle-Isle, reappeared at the Court. The Cardinal, in his young and giddy days, had carried on a love affair with the Duchesse de Levis, Belle- Isle's aunt. The lady reminded the Cardinal of the happy past days, with the result that her nephew was reinstated in the War Office, with his old chief and friend Leblanc, who was once more made War Minister. Leblanc dying, the Comte de Belle-Isle did not care to remain in the War Department under M. d'Anger- villiers, his successor. He contrived to be appointed Lieutenant-General and Commandant of Metz and the Three Bishoprics, and to gain considerable credit for the advantageous arrangements which he made for the State in his new command, especially for his splendid fortification of Metz. This was the position which the Comte de Belle-Isle occupied when, at the beginning of 1733, he joined with the old Marechal de Villars in urging the King to war- like measures, and, together, the King was not able to 122 The Real Louis the Fifteenth withstand them. Towards the end of August all of the Council of State was carried away by their eloquence. Fleury alone was left murmuring. Even the semi- Jansenist, semi-devout young Due d'Orleans, who hated war, agreed with the rest of the Council in saying that in the matter of Poland France had gone too far to draw back. There is no doubt, despite the sneers of his enemies, that Belle-Isle was a great man. Although the Marquis d'Argenson joins occasionally in these sneers, it would seem rather as if his memoirs had been touched up by his son M. de Paulmy where they concern Belle-Isle. A reason for this can be found in the fact that, some years after the Marquis wrote, M. de Paulmy was re- placed in the Ministry of War by the then old Marechal de Belle-Isle, who also assumed some of the honours of which the Comte Marc-Pierre d'Argenson, Paulmy's uncle, had been bereft. Paulmy would, therefore, be only too ready to minimise such acts of personal bravery as Belle-Isle's capture of Treves by a coup de main in 1733) or to cut out too complimentary mention of his gallant storming of Trarbach, and also of an outwork of Philipsburg, which he took by sheer audacity. But his father seems to speak with attempted impartiality, even if his words have been touched up : " However it may be, there is every reason to suppose that the fortune of M. de Belle-Isle will not stay where it now is. Although up to the present he has, so to speak, done nothing but intrigue, people believe him capable of becoming a very great General, and even a great Minister. That is possible, but it must be agreed that up till now he has only been recompensed for pre- sumed merits. Louisas First Loves — and Belk'Isle 123 " He is tall and thin, his constitution seems delicate, his stomach weak, his chest attacked. Since the wound through the breast received at the siege of Lille, he seems compelled to take great care of his health ; but from the second that he feels himself animated with the desire for glory, or to make an ambitious plan succeed, the activity of his soul makes him find the strength which the weakness of his body refuses. He works continually, never sleeps, tires out the hardest-working secretaries, dictating to several at the same time ; in short, he is all on fire, devours everything and resists everything. He carries along several intrigues at once, and is careful that the several threads do not become intermixed. Nevertheless, the proof that his ideas are neither very luminous nor really great is that his style is weak, even flat, that he writes neither purely nor with strength, that he is not even eloquent when speak- ing. But he always seems assured of success, he speaks without hesitating, and he persuades all the better because one believes that he is not artificial. He under- stands even better to cause approval of what he has done than what he is going to do. When one has followed his advice, if things have turned out all right one feels under an obligation to him ; should they have gone wrong one feels that it has been one's own fault. If M. de Belle-Isle should be charged with a great admini- stration, it is to be feared that his love for details and projects of all kinds will induce him to take hold of more than he can handle. Also, he is sure to take a fancy to adventurers ; being something of one himself, he will not be able to distinguish between those who will be really useful to him and the others. " M. de Belle-Isle has made himself a custom of 124 The Real Louis the Fifteenth concealing the immensity of his plans under a starchy air of wisdom. Nevertheless, the interior fire of his imagina- tion is heated up by this constraint. You see a stiff and motionless statue calmly proposing to you the devastation of empires, the agitation of republics, and leading you, by reasoned consequences, to the most dangerous results for the State which should follow them according to his ideas. The great fault of his nature is that he does not know when to pull up, he only perceives perfection in the infinite. " I once heard M. de Belle-Isle utter words which made me shudder. ' Nothing so easy,' said he one day before me, ' than to overset, by a simple line of the pen, the Russian power into the sea, and that with- out leaving one's office ! ' " In truth, there is enough to make one tremble in seeing a frivolous and venturesome people like ours giving itself over into the hands of such leaders." Such then is a portrait of the sole French General in whom Frederick the Great had ever any confidence ; the man who would have brought glory to France had it not been for the crass idiotcy and obstinacy of the old woman Fleury, who seemed to take a positive delight, as long as he lived, in doing the exact opposite to any scheme proposed by Belle- Isle. CHAPTER X The War of the Polish Succession 1733— 1737 When Chauvelin discovered the strength of the party behind him, he ceased for the moment to fear Fleury, and acted promptly, taking, in conjunction with Spain and Savoy — that is, the kingdom of Sardinia and Pied- mont — such measures as must necessarily lead to war. Years afterwards, when in disgrace and exile, he disclosed his reasons for thus hurr5dng on the conflict. They were no weighty affairs of State which prompted Chauvelin to deluge Europe with blood, but simply that, with its affaire Cadiere and other foolish disputes, France had become ridiculous and a laughing-stock. The Keeper of the Seals, therefore, considered that she required a war to re-estabhsh herself as a serious nation in the eyes of the world. While, therefore, apparently merely following the general and national impulse, Chauvelin was in reality acting vigorously upon his own account when, upon September 26th, 1733, he signed what was known as the Treaty of Turin, between Spain, France, and Sardinia. This treaty was one for the driving of Austria out of Italy. Its provisions were, roughly, that the Duchy of Milan should be conquered and given to the Pied- 125 126 The Real Louis the Fifteenth montese Prince, who in return would give Savoy to France ; France would then generously return Savoy, satisfied if Austria were driven from Italy. The elder Infante of Spain, Don Carlos, was to have the two Sicilies — that is, the kingdom of Naples and the island of Sicily — the younger, Don Philip, to have Tuscany, Parma^ and Piacenza, and, in return for her assist- ance, Spain was to pay large subsidies to France. This latter proviso delighted and calmed Fleury. A large French army under the Duke of Berwick was to occupy Lorraine, and to cross the Rhine into Germany, and, at the same time, the army of Italy under the Marechal Due de Villars was to cross the Alps. In the harbour of Brest a fleet, under the violent old sea- dog Duguay-Trouin, was to be got ready for the North Sea and the Baltic. To all these provisions Fleury appeared to agree, but it was with a concealed ill-will. Secretly, even before the war broke out, he was cooling down the martial ardour of the young King, who soon ceased to wish for a war or to care whether or no his father-in- law should become once more a King in Poland. There was, however, no means of holding the country of France, which, like a greyhound on a leash, was straining for war. Fleury was, however, in league with Sir Robert Walpole, the peaceable Minister then direct- ing affairs in England, and, between them, they agreed to do all that they could to prevent the beginning of a war, but, if begun, to neutralise its results and stultify the action of the French Generals, by working in favour of Austria. The Poles were to be betrayed and Austria saved in the moment of her imminent destruction. Such was the design of the traitor The War of the Polish Succession 127 Fleury, acting under the instructions of his rehgious director at Issy, which were the more peremptory on account of the recent mihtary persecution by Austria of Salzburg. England, also, which had been the ally of Austria in the last war against France, now seemed to love that land of bigoted and persecuting Catholics more than ever, and anxious to protect the country whence the hordes of semi-barbarians who mutilated prisoners were to be launched on Europe. The diplomatist Horatio Walpole, brother of Sir Robert, was present in Paris, and appeared to be in- separable from Fleury. He brought all his dispatches from London to the old Cardinal, and paid him the compliment of asking his assistance in framing their replies. Thus English Protestantism and the Jesuits in France were in league together for Austria against France, the Cardinal — the ruler of France — being as much a traitor to his country as though he were fighting in the ranks of her opponents. While both the Queen and the mistress urged the King on to the war, Fleury continued to block all pre- parations, and allowed the summer to pass by. Nothing was done to arm the fleet in Brest, nor were any measures taken for the provisioning of the armies, to move which swiftly was a vital measure if success were to be ensured. Thus the Saxon and the Austrian were enabled to arm at their leisure ; the distant Russian had also time to quietly get ready for a promenade into Poland. To- wards the end of August a despairing cry came from Poland. " King Stanislas must come at once, or all will be lost ! " While the Queen was on needles with anxiety and 128 The Real Louis the Fifteenth Villars was thundering in rage, the assembled Council could do nothing because the King could not be found. For three days he remained missing — he was at Chantilly making love to the young wife of M. le Due. At length he returned, and Stanislas was then able to tear himself from his anxious daughter's arms and start almost alone for his perilous journey across Europe, through hostile States. That night Louis XV., instead of staying at Versailles to console his wife, in an agony of fear for her father's safety, went off to sleep at la Muette, accompanied by his mistress. In fifteen days Stanislas made the journey to War- saw, where he was received tumultuously by the Poles. Sixty thousand nobles and gentlemen voted for him as their King. But, with exception of some excellent but scattered cavalry, there were no forces at hand wherewith to protect the King whom they had chosen, and the Russians were coming. Saxony had not, how- ever, yet set any troops in motion, and merely ten thousand men sent from France would have been suffi- cient to secure the Queen's father in the possession of the crown which he had regained by the popular acclaim. But they did not come. Stanislas Lesczynski, who had counted upon at least that number of men from his daughter's kingdom, as a nucleus around which to raise an army, found himself deserted, for not a man came from France. Fleury saw to that. Forced to retire to Dantzic, he next expected the arrival of the fleet from Brest. For that too the deceived Prince waited in vain. Walpole and Fleury had together played a comedy over that matter to deceive France. English war- ships were sent to cruise up and down in front of Brest, The War of the Polish Succession 129 which furnished Fleury with the false and feeble excuse, " We dare not leave — Horatio Walpole says that to do so would be an attack upon the commercial liberties which the treaties assure to the navigation of the Baltic." Thus winter came, the Baltic was closed with ice, while the city of Dantzic did its best to defend itself and its newly elected King from the Russians who, to the number of thirty thousand, arrived before the place. The sole assistance which came to Dantzic was a letter, written by Louis XV. upon November i8th, 1733, encouraging the citizens of Dantzic to resist boldly and vigorously. In the meantime, France had placed a hundred thousand men upon the Rhine. Villars and Belle- Isle loudly cried for permission to penetrate into Ger- many, to stir up Bavaria and other German Powers inimical to Austria. The Austrians by the greatest exertions had meanwhile only contrived to put seventy thousand in the field. Fleury, however, replied to his two brave generals, " Yes, yes ; if we only had with us the States of the German Empire, we could go in." " Go in ; and the Empire will be with you," thundered Villars in reply. At length, after the late autumn rains had come, the armies were allowed to cross the Rhine. They soon returned, the country having become impassable with water, while the Austrian forces marched off to Italy, whither Villars also proceeded. The gallant old Mar^chal Due de Villars, although now over eighty years of age, was as full of courage and fire as ever. He had been invested with a rank which had only been hitherto bestowed upon his fcjrmer comrade, the Mar^chal Vicomte de Turenne. This was VOL. I. 9 130 The Real Louis the Fifteenth that of Marechal-General of the camps and armies of France. He strove, and not in vain, to prove him- self in his old age as worthy of this rank as Turenne had been before him. In Italy he rapidly conquered the Duchies of Milan and Mantua, but he soon had cause to be dissatisfied with the conduct of the King of Sar- dinia, in whose interests France was fighting, since, according to the bargain made, Milan was to be annexed to the possessions of that Piedmontese Prince whose seat of government was Turin. The Savoyard King, Charles Emanuel, however, refused to listen when Villars endeavoured to drive into his head the fact that he should assist with all his might in crushing Austria before she could get together a big army ; replying that Milan was all he wanted — with that he was satisfied. In February, 1734, the Spanish army arrived, under Don Carlos. Now, at all events, Villars hoped for assistance in crushing the Austrians. Again he was doomed to disappointment ; Don Carlos marched away to the south to the easy conquest of Naples, leaving Villars with the French army to face the storm gathering against him in the Tyrol. Naples opened its gates to the Infante on May 30th, 1734, when he received homage in the name of his father, Philip V., from all orders of the State. The King his father, transferred his rights to Don Carlos, who thus became the first Bourbon King of the two Sicilies. The French infantry, by performing prodigies of valour, held the Austrians in the north, but Villars died of disgust and despair at Turin on June 17th. He was succeeded in the command by two old Generals, The War of the Polish Succession 131 the Marechal Due de Coigny and the Marechal Comte de Broglie, then called Broglio. This latter, owing to the intentional delays of the Savoyard, was almost captured on the Secchia. He escaped in his shirt, with his breeches in his hand ! In two furious battles, however, at Parma and Guastalla. the young French soldiery with the greatest steadiness beat off the terrible onslaughts of the wild Hungarian and Croatian cavalry, charging like demons with their red cloaks flying in the breeze. In the former, June 29th, 1734, the able Austrian General Count Mercy was killed, while in the latter, Sep- tember 19th, 1734, Broglio defeated Count Konigsegg and drove him across the Po. The Sardinians fought valiantly with Broglio in this action. These battles saved the Spaniards in the south, the scanty garrisons of Germanic race yielded up most of the towTis almost without a blow to Don Carlos, and such of their remnants as, banded together, attempted to make a stand against the Spaniards, were defeated by the Duke of Mortemart at Bitonto. The cowardice or treachery of Fleury's government had in the meantime become more than ever apparent in the matter of Poland, which country was by this time occupied by a hundred thousand Russians and Saxons. It was now no longer a question of retaining the monarchy for Stanislas ; all that could be hoped for was to save the life of that Prince, still shut up in Dantzic. Some French ships arrived at length, in May, before that place, but refused to disembark the few troops on board. There was at Copenhagen in the position of French Ambassador a gallant man, the Comte de Plelo. In his indignation, when the French fleet arrived at CopLMihagcn, Pltlo taunted the commanders of the little 132 The Real Louis the Fifteenth force on board with their cowardice. He offered to lead them himself against the Russians, and obtained some fifteen or sixteen hundred volunteers under Peyrouse-Lamotte. With this small force Plelo landed below the fort of Wechselmunde and charged the thirty thousand Russians in front of Dantzic. Such was the gallantry with which this brave man inspired his few followers, that Plelo had almost succeeded in cutting liis way through the Russians into Dantzic when he fell mortally wounded. M. de la Peyrouse- Lamotte then gallantly managed to extricate his small force from the thousands of Russians surrounding them, and for a month entrenched himself near at hand, sup- porting the brave defenders of Dantzic. On June 23rd the small French band was forced to yield to General Munich, the Austrian General assisting the Russians, when this General chivalrously allowed Peyrouse-Lamotte to re-embark with his remaining men and stores, owing to his admiration of the courage dis- played by the French. Dantzic fell on July 7th, 1734, but King Stanislas Lesczynski escaped in disguise and found a refuge with Frederick William L, who was the second King of Prussia and the brutal father of Frederick the Great. Although a partisan war continued to be carried on m Poland for some little time longer, the Austrians and Russians were omnipotent. The Pope absolved the Polish nobility and gentry from the oath they had sworn never to have a foreign King, and Augustus IIL, the Saxon, the tool of Russia, became their ruler. Meanwhile, in Germany the Duke of Berwick had taken the fortress of Kehl in December, 1733, had forced the lines of the Austrians at Erlingen in the early part The War of the Polish Succession 133 of 1734, and had then proceeded to invest Phihpsbiirg in form. In front of this city he was killed by a cannon- ball while making a reconnaissance. "Just like his usual luck ! " exclaimed old Villars when he heard of this occurrence, which was shortly before his own death in his bed at Turin. This occurrence took place in the very room in which he was born. Philipsburg, in the Grand Duchy of Baden, on the right bank of the Rhine, fell not long after to the Due de Noailles, who was made a Marechal de France when Berwick died. During the con- tinuance of the siege of that place the old Prince Eugene was close at hand with an army, but his ardour was gone and he did not approve of the war. Accordingly, he stood by without making any effort to save the town, which was only taken after great difficulties, owing to heavy rains, on July i8th, 1734. In the following year, the senile Due de Noailles and his lieutenant the Marechal d'Asfeldt failing to agree, nothing was done to profit by the advantages which had been gained in Germany. After the battles of Parma and Guastalla the fortunes of Austria seemed, however, to be at a low ebb. In the former their commander-in-chief, M. de Mercy, had been killed, while in the latter the Prince of Wurtemberg likewise met his fate. The Spaniards had occupied Sicily as well as the kingdom of Naples, while the Austrians, falling back on the Tyrol, merely held Mantua. The Due de Noailles was about to invest Mantua, and thus complete the conquest of Italy, when, owing to the quarrels between the King of Sardinia and the Queen of Spain as to which of tliem should keep the place when taken, Charles Emanuel withdrew his troops in dudgeon. 134 The Real Louis the Fifteenth Noailles now remained inactive, and in the meantime Fleury, inspired by England and his Jesuits, suddenly commenced overtures of peace with Austria, greatly to the advantage of that country. Entirely renouncing those ideas of the total emancipation of Italy from the Austrian rule with which France had entered upon the war, Fleury in 1735 proposed to return the Duchy of Milan, while France was also to renounce all her conquests in Germany. At the same time the Cardinal guaranteed to the Emperor Charles VI. that pragmatic sanction which his soul so greatly desired. The two Sicilies were left to Don Carlos, who was to become their King ; but he was compelled to renounce his claim to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, also Parma and Piacenza, which he had obtained in 173 1. These three States were formed into an appanage for Duke Francis of Lorraine, the betrothed of Maria Theresa of Austria. All that the King of Sardinia gained by the war was Tortona and Novara, two cantons of Milan. For Stanislas Lesczynski, the father of the French Queen, in his anxiety to advantage Austria, Fleury had but little care. Modestly the Cardinal expressed himself as willing to accept for the King of Poland merely the little Duchy of Bar, and, in addition, the return of his personal estates in Poland. It is true that to these was added a facetious proviso emanating from Walpole. This was that an embassy should be solemnly sent to the King of Poland to thank him for giving up his dominions. The negotiations of this inglorious peace were, in spite of Fleury, who wished to finish off at once, con- siderably protracted. The Keeper of the Seals, Chauvelin, was determined that terms so ignoble for France should not be accepted. He dared to browbeat the Cardinal, The War of the Polish Succession 135 and insist that in return for the three Italian Duchies given to the Duke Francis of Lorraine that Prince should resign Lorraine. This country was, according to the views of Chauvelin, to be given as well as Bar to Stanislas for life ; after his death to revert to the Crown of France. Moreover, Stanislas was to retain the title of King of Poland, while relinquishing the throne of that country. In the end Chauvelin gained his point, and with it the glorious possession of Lorraine for France, which she retained until the war with Prussia in 1870, when she lost both Lorraine and Alsace. While gaining for France the only honourable terms in the treaty of peace, Chauvelin ruined himself. His principal crime in the eyes of the Cardinal was a postscript which, in 1737, he added in his own handwriting to a letter written by Fleury to the Emperor : " That in the meantime the King would continue to hold Philipsburg, Treves, and Kehl." These were the words added by Chauvelin, and they were tantamount to saying that if the Emperor would never finish the negotiations France would continue to remain in Germany. These bold words decided everything. Austria yielded, Stanislas obtained the Duchy of Lorraine, where he established his Court at Luneville ; but the fall of Chauvelin was assured. It had long been decided upon between Walpole and Cardinal Floury — he was too good a Frenchman for those good Austrians. He was offered money to go, but he refused. His enemies then descended to calumny, and accused him of stealing — a watch among other things ! Walpole then procured letters in which the Keeper of the Seals had communicated with Spain. He had done so purely in the interests of I^ance, but it was made the excuse, 136 The Real Louis the Fifteenth by the traitor Fleury, to accuse Chauvelin of treason to his country. Conquered and terrified by the firmness of Chauvehn, Austria dehvered over Lorraine upon February 15th, 1737. A week later, on February 23rd, Cardinal Fleury, in revenge, exiled Chauvelin — an exile which lasted for the rest of his life. Although frequently appealed to, never, in the moments of the greatest difficulties of France, would the ungrateful Louis XV. consent to his return to Versailles. I ;! CHAPTER XI Mademoiselle de Nesle 1738— 174T The life of the devoted Madame de Mailly was not a very happy one between the years 1737 and 1741. Fluttering around the Queen were the intriguing Madame de Tencin with her unscrupulous brother the Archbishop of Embrun (who became at last a Cardinal, in March, 1739), the Due and the ladies of the Noailles family, and, above all, the most important of the Noailles, Madame de Toulouse. During the King's illness in 1738 the Tencins had arranged everything in such a manner that upon them would have devolved the supreme authority, in a Council of Regency under the Queen, had Louis died. The King, however, recovered, when Madame de Toulouse became more than ever empressee in her semi-motherly, semi-loverly attentions to the young Monarch. She, who set up for being devout, was working at the same time in the interests of her son the Due de Penthievre, and the interests of the Church. The Condes demanded that this young son, upon the death of his father the Comte de Toulouse, should not continue in his person the Royal condition which the Regent had continued to his father, who was one ^37 138 The Real Louis the Fifteenth of the legitimatised children of Louis XIV. by Madame de Montespan. Madame de Toulouse, according to the Due de Luynes, gave little suppers to the King which astonished the Court, who knew to what an extent Louis was apt to forget himself after drinking. When her husband died, all inundated with tears, the Comtesse threw herself into the arms of the King, confiding to his care her fortunes and those of her son. The King was greatly touched ; he consoled her, and thenceforward his visits to her pleasant retreat at Rambouillet became more frequent than ever. Thus she gradually advanced more and more in his good graces. Not content with receiving the King at Rambouillet, Madame de Toulouse, who had in her widowhood re- tained a fine set of apartments at Versailles, kept him there constantly by her side. There was a little secret staircase by which M. de Toulouse had formerly been able to visit at will his father Louis XIV. — he had possesed a private key. The King was now in the habit of running up and down this staircase at any hour, but Madame de Toulouse did not possess the key, and was anxious to obtain that favour. She at length, however, succeeded in gaining it by a ruse. Louis XV. was fond of wood-carving and turning ; the Comtesse brought him a piece of some precious wood which she had received from her late husband, and proposed that he should turn and carve it for her into a pretty key-holder, upon the model of the key of his apartments. When it was finished, it was a pity that the case should remain empty ! Louis re- turned it, with the precious key inside, to the Comtesse upon March 17th, 1738. It was, moreover, the master- Mademoiselle de Nesle 139 key which opened all the doors, even that leading to the King's last cabinet, where he wrote. The intimacy so granted to Madame de Toulouse was greater than any which the King ever accorded to his daughter Madame Henriette, although later he gave it to his beloved daughter Madame Adelaide. It was in truth a very great favour, since by it Madame de Toulouse was able to go in and out whenever she chose, and read at will all the papers lying upon the King's table. In the meantime the Comtesse kept up a great appearance of affliction for the loss of her husband, and, with many devotional exercises, imposed upon the inhabitants of the Chateau of Versailles. Thus people thought more than they dared to say openly of such a pious lady. Madame de Mailly was, however, very unhappy, and frequently tired the King with scenes of jealousy on account of her good-looking, plump, and elderly rival. Madame de Toulouse, on the other hand, put for- ward the excuse that she was really in need of the King's protection for her young son. In such a cause, what might seem doubtful was really but the performance of a motherly duty. She proved eminently successful in the accomplishment of her designs. Between May and November, 1738, she contrived to win back for the young Due de Penthievre all the Royal honours, and to recover all the princely appanages of his rank. At a supper at Fontainebleau this young son, now named as a Prince of the Blood, waited upon the King at table, while the Comtesse herself waited upon him at dessert, handing to Louis a glass and a plate. By these actions, a relic of feudal customs, the Royalty of both mother and son was undeniably established. 140 The Real Louis the Fifteenth After this the Comtesse was less careful to keep up appearances ; in August she established a bedroom for the King at Rambouillet, also, says the Due de Luynes, a private cabinet, concerning which she held a long conversation with the King in the presence of the courtiers at Versailles. The conversation, although carried on in low tones, was not so low but that all knew what it was about. (Luynes, ii. 226 : August 21st, 1738.) This state of affairs naturally saddened Madame de Mailly. Feeling herself neglected and alone, she listened all the more readily when her intriguing sister Mademoiselle de Nesle wrote her the " letters upon letters " begging her to take her from her convent. Upon her arrival at the Court, full of life and gaiety, she soon filled the tedious Versailles with her youthful spirits and clever sayings. These were bold and biting, and spared no one, not even the King, whom she cap- tivated by laughing at and making fun of him. It was not long, indeed, after the arrival of Made- moiselle de Nesle at Versailles, before every one in the dull surroundings of the Court, fearing her ridicule, was afraid of her. The situation had indeed been flat and uninteresting to a degree, dominated as it was by an old Minister who seemed in his dotage, and a mistress whose charms no longer attracted. Moreover, people were bored to death with the unhealthy and tiresome story of Madame de Toulouse with her secret staircase ; the pious manoeuvres of that lady, twenty-two years the King's senior, filled the wearied courtiers with dis- gust. Thus Versailles was worn out and sick of every- thing, when, after the peace negotiations had been at length completed, and Chauvelin, the one person Mademoiselle de Nesle 141 of energy, sent away, Pauline F^licite brought a breath of novelty and liveliness to the used-up sourroundings of the King and Queen. In the following year the King gave evidence of being conscience-stricken. Brought up as he had been in the fear of the terrors of hell, he imagined that, living a life whicli was considered incestuous with the two sisters, he could no longer take the Sacrament at Easter. The fear of some terrible judgment falling upon him, if he should desecrate the Sacrament, determined Louis to take a step which was a great blow to the clergy. The Church was crushed when the King declared " quHl ne ferait 'point ses pdques.^^ The eldest son of the Church — not to communicate at Easter ! There was the greatest scandal and com- motion throughout Paris when this became known. Many, no doubt, shared the views of Barbier, that the King could do no wrong. That writer demands " how is it that the Church has not a dispensation from the Pope to administer the Sacrament to Louis, no matter what might be the conditions of his life ? " The ultramontane party, knocked down by the blow, tried to deceive the public by a ruse. Cardinal Fleury endeavoured to persuade his pupil to allow a Low Mass to be celebrated in the Royal cabinet, so that the world miglit imagine he had communicated as usual. Louis, however, would have none of these subterfuges — he refused to allow the not very credit- able farce proposed by the clergy to be played. Meanwhile the curious spectacle was to be seen in France of the hopes of the people being fixed upon a woman to save the Royalty, elevate the King, lift up the kingdom. It did not matter whom the woman 142 The Real Louis the Fifteenth might be — any woman would serve the turn. The same hope was to be seen springing to tlie surface every time that the King took a new mistress. Even the best of men hke the Marquis d'Argenson embraced it. It mattered not whether the woman were Madame de Mailly, Madame de Vintimille, Madame de la Tournelle, or Madame de Pompadour, it was ever the same. With the appearance of each upon the scene in turn there sprang up in the breast of the people of France the ardent desire that she might do something with the King — make a man of Louis. Even the biting and ironical Voltaire went with the rest in this matter. In spite of his ironies and sarcasms, Voltaire persisted in imagining vainly that each new petticoat might contain an Agnes Sorel, to stir up to manhood and glory another Charles VII. It must be confessed that with the appearance upon the scene of Mademoiselle de Nesle there seemed some considerable prospect that the necessary miracle might be accomplished. The essential thing was that the King loved her and admired her genius. Although her power was exerted in secret, and, so to speak, under the shadow of her sister's wing, it was none the less real, at the same time that it was exercised with prudence. Prudence was indeed necessary for one who, actively anti-Austrian in her sentiments, was combating the ever-present inert weight of the Austrian Fleury, with his Austrian Walpole and Austrian Jesuits at Issy behind him. During her short lifetime, under her sister's cloak, Pauline Felicite de Nesle thus contrived to a great extent to prevent her actual position from being recog- nised. France at large scarcely knew her name at the Mademoiselle de Nesle 143 very moment when she was preparing to launch upon Austria and Europe an entire revolution of policy. All, however, about the Court who knew her, friend and foe alike, recognised that, with a keen and brilliant mode of expressing herself, she possessed a vast and powerful mind, one which would have shrunk before nothing. The young King Frederick II. of Prussia, afterwards known as Frederick the Great, ascended the throne at the age of twenty-eight at the end of May, 1740. As may be seen from his own Memoirs, none better than he understood the position of affairs at Versailles before he ventured suddenly to attack Austria. He well knew that the Nesle interest was dead against Austria, or he would never have dared to strike as boldly as he did. Everything, however, hung upon a young woman, and upon the strength of the King's love for her. How far was he prepared to go, tied to her frills and furbelows ? How far would he be bold enough to resist the influences of his childhood, as represented by the senile and old- womanly Fleury ? Would Louis ever be capable of rising from the mud in which he grovelled upon the wings of a great love ? These were the questions to be considered, and their answer was doubtful in the extreme. Voltaire, however, was inclined to answer the last in the affirmative. For several years past he had taken refuge at Cirey, near Vassy, in Champagne, with Madame du Chatelet, the handsome young lady of literary and philosophical inclinations who worshipped him. Her Imsband, according to the strange customs of those days, approved of the liaison. To the Marquis du Chatelet his wife was so but in name ; for fifteen years she was practically the wife of Voltaire, after which 144 The Real Louis the Fifteenth she proved unfaithful to her distinguished lover. Being present with the Marquis du Chatelet and Voltaire at the Court of King Stanislas at Luneville, she gave birth to a little girl, of which the poet Saint-Lambert was the father. She was then forty-two, and died a few days later. Her life had paid the forfeit of her too late ex- cursions into fresh courts of love. Already in 1739, while the then Prince of Prussia, himself a writer and adorer of les belles-lettres, was calling Voltaire to him, Madame du Chatelet persuaded the poet to return to Paris, which was, she felt, the real theatre for his genius. In April of that year she and Voltaire together purchased the magnificent hotel belonging to the Dupins, son-in-law and daughter of the wealthy Samuel Bernard. It was known as the Hotel Lambert, and situated upon the point of the island. To this spot they proposed to return, and openly. Voltaire, who had been an outcast, and was now forty-four years old, no longer proposed to make even a pretence of concealment, so convinced was he of the change that was being operated in the nature of the King, whose religious devotion had in a marked manner been dis- played in antipathy to the free-thinking ideas of the author of the Lettres sur les Anglais and the Henriade. Vainly did Voltaire think that now he was to obtain rest and repose, to be allowed to pass the rest of his life in the Hotel Lambert, for a career of continued exile was, had he but known it, that which was really looming ahead of him. While Voltaire was writing Mahomet, dedicated, strange to say, by permission, to the Pope, Alzire, his Memoire sur le feu, and the disgusting La Pucelle, while also early in 1740 he visited the Prince of Prussia at Mademoiselle de Nesle 145 Berlin, the religious scruples of Louis XV. returned stronger than ever. Being frightened by the rough language of the Bishop of Chartres, who threatened him with the plague, the King was seized with a fainting-fit while present at the Mass : he was not at all inclined to relent in his feelings towards the philosophical freethinker or others of his kidney. Nevertheless Bachelier, his valet dc chauihrc, at this time preached tolerance to his master, with tlie result that Louis ordered the slackening of the religious persecution of the Jansenists who refused to accept the Bull. They were now, at all events, allowed to die in peace, without having their last moments disturbed by the ultramontane priests who forced them to subscribe to its tenets with their last breath. With this relief to the Jansenists it almost seemed as if the downfall of Fleury were about to take place. That very libertine Princesse of the Blood, Mademoiselle de Charolais, had openly taken Madame de Vintimille under her protection, taking her to stay in her apart- ments at Compiegne, where the King came to visit his beloved. Between them these ladies persuaded the King to play an unexpected trick upon the Cardinal, who was in the habit of coming to Compiegne to work with the King, during the presence there of a large camp under the command of the Due de Biron. Having his own key to the Royal apartments, Fleury was wont to open the door and walk in without being announced. Arriving one day, with Barjac, his valet, carrying his portfolio, in vain did both master and servant endeavour to open the door. Louis, inside, listened and laughed as he heard first the fumblings and VOL. I. 10 146 The Real Louis the Fifteenth then the scratchings at the door which in those days took the place of knocking. At length the King opened, and, to the Cardinal's expostulations, merely remarked frigidly, " I have had the locks changed." In spite of this childish affront to the Cardinal, the natural maliciousness of the King's nature made him take an equal delight in seeing Fleury at times humiliate not only Madame de Mailly but Madame de Vintimillc, whom he professed and appeared to love so deeply. Blow after blow was struck by Fleury at the friends of the sisters. Chauvelin was exiled, M. de Mailly was exiled, M. de Nesle, the father of the two mistresses, was also exiled from Versailles to Lisieux. It amused the petty mind of the King to see the two sisters compelled to go humbly to the old Cardinal and beg from him their father's pardon. The Cardinal, at their request, changed the place of exile from Lisieux to Caen. Even in the matter of the marriage of Mademoiselle de Nesle, Louis played her false. Having determined to provide her with a husband, in order that any offspring that she might bear should be covered with his name, he had promised to the young lady that that husband should be a Prince — the Comte d'Eu, a son of the Due du Maine. Instead of which he provided her with a little protege of Fleury's, Vintimille, a noble of no con- sequence. She, like her sister de Mailly, now became sad, feeling herself humiliated by Fleury. Others, too, seeing this, thought that the star of "la " Nesle was setting, and com- menced to avoid her, after the fashion of Courts under such circumstances. She lived, thenceforth, very much alone in her chamber, to which her husband never ven- tured to penetrate. Mademoiselle de Nesle i47 The ladies about the Queen, notably the spiteful woman connected with the Queen's intimates, the de Luynes, Madame du Deffand, formerly the hanger-on and go-between of Madame de Prie, became curious to penetrate to this apartment and find out what she did there. Du Deffand was now living in the household of the Duchesse du Maine, from whose imitation of a Court at Sceaux she wished to emancipate herself to form an establishment of her own. This she thought she could accomplish either through Madame de Vin- timille or through the enemies of that lady. She com- menced by flattery and caresses. In the sincerity of these Pauline Felicite pretended to believe, answering the gushing letter, in which du Deffand represented her- self as the friend of Voltaire, by one equally expansive. With a charming abandon and appearance of credulity, Madame de Vintimille declared to Madame du Deffand that nothing in the world would give her so much pleasure as to be directed in all matters by her. But " la " Nesle took care that matters should go no farther, and, as she remained alone to plot and plan, her star soon seemed to reascend. In the beginning of 1740 it was very high. To her alone of all the ladies or Princesses of the Court did the King give a New Year's gift upon January ist ; while in February she had a victory over Fleury. In that month she appointed the new Minister of War, M. de Breteuil, in the very face of the Cardinal's wishes. He replaced d'Angcr- villiers, who died. The spiteful, bitter-tongucd, and witty Comte Pheli- peaux de Maurepas, who had hitherto maintained his post of Secretary of State since the age of fifteen by successful trimming, veered round to the &ide of the 148 The Real Louis the Fifteenth rising star. He quietly deserted the Cardinal, while speaking well of Madame de Vintimille. This, then, was the state of affairs at the Court of Versailles when two events of great importance occurred in Europe almost simultaneously. In the month of May, 1740, by his father's death, Frederick the Great, henceforth to be the hero of the hour, sprung upon the scene. Four months or so later Charles VI., Emperor of Germany, Archduke of Austria, and King or Duke of half a dozen other countries, breathed his last. Thus Europe was now face to face with the new and serious situation created by the Pragmatic Sanction, which Charles had instituted in favour of his daughter Maria Theresa, and by which, in defiance of the Salic law, she was to inherit all his possessions. How now would all those countries act who, after the War of the Polish Succession, had subscribed to that Pragmatic Sanction ? It was a moment of the greatest gravity for France above all other countries, yet was she perhaps the weakest in all Europe, owing to the fact that her fortunes still continued to be held in the hands of a doddering old priest, at this time eighty- seven years old. Against his weight and influence the Jesuits saw in Madame de Vintimille alone at Versailles an adversary of any weight to the cause of Austria, that ancient enemy of France. For the party of the rehgious Queen and her daughters and that of the Noailles, brother and sister, formed but one in favour of Austria, while the Comte de Stainville from Lorraine, later Due de Choiseul, was but an Austrian spy. In this year 1740 the Cardinal was rendered stronger than ever, owing to the withdrawal by death of the rival whose return to favour he ever feared. M. le Due Mademoiselle de Nesle 149 died early that year, at the age of forty-seven, from a chill caught while rabbit shooting when too lightly dressed. Not long before his death, although him- self continuing to live with the Comtesse d'Egmont, he had displayed the greatest jealousy of his wife. A serving-woman having informed him that the Duchesse de Bourbon was carrying on a love affair with M. de Bissy, M. le Due had ordered her to be confined in barred apartments at the top of the house. As a matter of fact, the affair had not gone any further than the inter- change of a letter or two, but the head of the Conde family had one law for himself and another for his wife, except where the King was concerned. For he had been compelled to rage in vain at His Majesty's atten- tions, which were fostered by his mother, the wicked Madame la Duchesse. From the time that she was known as Mademoiselle de Nantes, this licentious daughter of Louis XIV. and Madame de Montespan had never shrunk from any iniquity. When he died, the King gave to his three-year-old son, the Prince de Conde, the charge of Grand-Master and also the government of Burgundy. The furious Comte de Charolais, a man of the most unbridled and violent passions, was appointed to exercise these functions, however, for his little nephew, until he should attain the age of eighteen. In the autumn before M. le Due died, he succeeded in procuring from the King the legitimation of his natural daughter by the Marquise de Nesle. This young lady, half-sister to Madame de Mailly and Madame de Vintimille, was called Henriette, Mademoiselle de Verneuil, and she married the Comte de la Guiche eight months after the Due de Bourbon died. 150 The Real Louis the Fifteenth The public saw in this act of legitimation the fore- shadowment of a similar act in favour of a child whom Madame de Mailly was expected to bring into the world. Already people were saying, " It will be a Due de Vendome, like the son of Henri IV. by Gabrielle d'Estrees," when an accident ruined the hopes of Madame de Mailly. Her sister, however, became enceinte in the beginning of 1741, at the very time that the question of peace or war with Austria was once more the question of the day. The circumstance becoming known at once, the credit of Fleury commenced to go down, while that of the war party, headed by the Comte de Belle- Isle, was once more in the ascendant. Madame de Vintimille being in favour of the party which was for alliance with the Protestant King of Prussia, she became more than ever hateful to the Church which favoured Catholic Austria. Her child was, to the great delight of the King, born at Versailles on September 4th, 1741. It was a son and a healthy infant, who lived to old age. The mother, however, already very ill, succumbed to a dose of poison, by whom actually administered being unknown, on September 9th. Moreover, her confessor, whom the dying girl had entrusted with a message for Madame de Mailly, never reached that lady's apartments alive. He tottered and fell dead at the threshold. The agony of mind of the King was pitiable, but he consoled him- self with Madame de Mailly and the Comtesse de Toulouse. CHAPTER XII The House of Orleans 1740— 1741 When Madame de Vintimille died, according to an absurd custom which did not allow death to exist in the presence of Royalty, her body was hustled out of Versailles at once to a neighbouring hotel, and, having been examined with a view to finding poison, was care- lessly left lying uncovered in a coach-house. Here the brutal populace of Versailles treated the remains to all sorts of indignities, such as firing crackers upon the body. The reason of the enmity shown to her whom they called la reine de Choisy was that the canaille imagined tlie dead woman to have been the cause of the King's prolonged absences from Versailles at Choisy. This was a little country house which had been purchased for the King by Fleury in November, 1738, nominally as a hunting-box. However, M. le Due's sister, the shameless Mademoiselle de Charolais, who had instituted herself as a sort of purveyor of the King's pleasures, soon gave a different character to the house at Choisy. Here the rule was enforced that ladies alone were received without their husbands. There were six bedrooms usually occupied by women of the Court, who came on the King's invitation for a day or two. 15^ The Real Louis the Fifteenth It was in order that she might hold the fort against all comers that Madame de Vintimille established her- self at Choisy during the months before her confinement. Here she rendered herself extremely unpopular among the useless servantry, by pointing out to Louis how they were robbing him in the most barefaced manner, especially by their large thefts of bottles of Champagne. Thus, not content with endeavouring to reform Europe, she tried also to reform the King's household, and to save him money, with which he was but poorly supplied by Fleury. Afraid of no one, she was foolish enough to attack even Bachelier, saying of the power- ful valet de chambre to the King, " I suppose that you will go and report this to Bachelier ? " She pointed out to him also how Barjac, Fleury's domestic, trafficked in the greatest places in the kingdom ; how again the Abbe Brissard, the preceptor of Fleury's nephews, sold offices, and had made more than a million out of his illegal traffic. When this Brissard died, eighteen hundred thousand francs were found under the carpets in his bedroom ; but in the meantime he is supposed to have served as the agent for all those who desired the death of the favourite, and to have poisoned both her and her unfortunate confessor. Unfortunately, she was seen to be somewhat neg- lected by the King during the last months of her preg- nancy, especially after the King had realised, from hearing the opinion of others, that she was ugly. They therefore arranged their plans serenely, and waited for the moment of her confinement to execute them with- out fear of punishment. The manner in which the King learned what was thought of the personal appearance of his mistress was as follows The House of Orkans 153 Louis was one day walking upon a terrace at Versailles, when, from a chimney which opened close at hand, from a room below, he heard the voices of the Marquis de Flavacourt, husband of the handsome Hortense Felicite de Nesle, and M. de Vintimille. Approaching his ear to the wide chimney, the King found that they were discussing him and his mistresses, the sisters-in-law and wife of the persons talking below. They talked of the advancing age of Madame de Mailly, and of the imperi- ous nature of Madame de Vintimille, that lady's husband expressly dwelling upon the ugliness of both, and the King's bad taste. Flavacourt, married to the beauty of the family, agreed, saying, " Yes, it's quite true, he has only got the two ugly ones," when the King lost his temper and shouted down the chimney, " Vintimille and Flavacourt ! Will you hold your tongues ? Do you understand what I say ? " Although the courtiers were alarmed at the angry tones of the master, it seems more than probable that they knew all the time that they could be overheard, and were only rehearsing a little comedy which was arranged for the King's especial benefit. At all events, the King was oftener at Rambouillet than at Choisy for some time after the conversation, although at the time of Madame de Vintimille's accouche- ment he showed the greatest anxiety, and personally and triumphantly conducted her to Versailles — and her deatli. A day or two previously he had, however, shown a great mark of favour to the Comtesse de Toulouse in presenting to her the chateau and estate of Luciennes, which had been occupied by Mademoiselle de Clermont — sister of M. \v Due — that lady having died recently. 154 The Real Louis the Fifteenth Never, both in the Court of France and the Courts of various other States of Europe, was there such a mass of intrigue as during the months which succeeded the death of the Emperor in October, 1740, and preceded that of Madame de Vintimille in September, 1741. The juvenile Dauphin having been married to Marie Therese, a young Infanta of Spain, and the eldest daughter of Louis XV., a child of fifteen, united to the Infante Don Philip, the bonds between the two Bourbon-ruled countries had been drawn closer to- gether, and with them strengthened the ambitions of Elizabeth Farnese, the Spanish Queen. Don Carlos, the elder of the two sons of this second wife of Philip V., being now provided for with the kingdom of the two Sicilies, she was more furiously determined than ever to establish Don Philip in another Italian kingdom at the expense of Austria. Tuscany, or at all events Milan, she was determined to have at any price, but Duke Francis of Lorraine was not inclined to give up the former, while to attempt to take Milan from Austria for a Spanish Prince married to a French Princesse would be to embroil France, with Spain, in a quarrel with Sar- dinia, who, since the Polish war, was still determined to possess Milan. While, owing to the closely knit family relations, the King, Queen, Dauphin, and Royal Family in France were anxious to help in this matter of Milan for the Infante Don Philip, they were otherwise not at all unfavourable to Austria. Led by Fleury and the priesthood, they were indeed favourably inclined towards the youthful Queen of Hungary, Maria Theresa, and consequently disposed to support the Pragmatic Sanction which gave her Hungary, Bohemia, Austria, the Low Countries, The House of Orkans 155 and other possessions. The Royal Family, however, was not France, which was opposed to both the Royal Family and Fleury. Especially was France, including the King, who was worked upon by the Comte de Belle- Isle and the two mistresses, averse to the project of of the ambitious young Maria Theresa for making her husband, Francis of Lorraine, Emperor of Germany in place of her deceased father Charles VI. Louis XV. had, by descent through his Spanish ancestresses, him- self some claims to this grand position, held for so long in the male line of the Hapsburgs, but these he was inclined to waive, provided that he could supply Germany with an Emperor of his own choice, and the choice of France was the Bavarian Elector, Charles Albert. To place him upon the Imperial throne, with the title of Charles VII., all the influence of France was accordingly exerted, and the Comte de Belle-Isle was in December, 1740, appointed to a splendid embassy to the Diet of Frankfort for the election of the Emperor. This step alone seemed to make war with Austria pro- bable. There were, however, other causes of disturbance, owing to the quarrels of Spain with England, the friend of Austria, into which France seemed likely to be drawn, and owing also to the clamours of the Queen of Spain to be allowed to march her troops through France into Italy. With reference to this demand, botli England and Holland declared that if the permission were granted it w(juld be considered as a declaration of war. The weak old Cardinal was in despair ; he found himself driven into a corner of the wall, and could see no means of escape. In the meantime Madame de Mailly, and especially Madame de Vintimille, had formed a compact of mutual 156 The Real Louis the Fifteenth assistance with the party of the Noailles family. This included the Duchesses de Villars and d'Armagnac among its members, and had great weight with all the female members of the Royal Family. The Due de Noailles was anxious to become President of the Council of State, to obtain which brilliant position the Due sent his son the Due d'Ayen to make a pretence of being violently in love with Madame de Vintimille. That lady was not deceived, but laughed ; however, the two Nesle ladies promised to exert their influence with the King to obtain for the father the leadership of the Council. While political intrigues, including the warm advances made to France by the young King of Prussia, were occupying all Europe, less weighty affairs seemed to form the principal subject of consideration at Versailles. Of these the most important appeared to be the King's revived interest in the womanly occupation, learned from the Due de Gesvres, of making tapestry ; the next to be considered was the Cardinal's determina- tion to thwart the house of Orleans and prevent the marriage of the young Due de Chartres, son of the Due d'Orleans, with his cousin Madame Henriette, the eldest unmarried daughter of the King. She was now about fifteen, and loved her cousin, who also loved her, and she had been promised to him by Louis. Early in the year 1741 the Court of Versailles, following the King's example, went wild with the craze of tapestry making. To such an extent was this in- dulged in that it led to a quarrel, as between two children, between Louis and Madame de Mailly. The King and that lady were both occupied in this delightful occu- pation when the favourite became so engrossed in her employment that she failed to reply upon being ad- The House of Orleans 157 dressed several times. So angry did Louis then become that he sprang up in a rage and with a pocket-knife cut Madame de Mailly's embroidery into four pieces. A terrible quarrel ensued ; the rest of those present had to interfere to separate the disputants. The old Latin proverb, " Amantium irae amoris integratio est," however, once more held good. The lovers became reconciled ; with the result that that night the King proceeded to Paris, to be entertained to supper by Madame de Mailly. In addition to the usual silver flambeaux, she upon this occasion also borrowed a cook and gave a delight- ful entertainment to a small party of live or six convives. All through the autumn and winter of 1740-41 there was the greatest distress throughout the country, the people wanting bread. While the Due d'Orleans, devout and occupied with the affairs of eternity to an extent that he usually neglected those of this world, sympathised with the sufferers, Fleury could not be brought to pay attention to his suggestions for the relief of the people. Entirely taken up with his foolish hatreds and petty dislikes, he refused to see the distress. Everything appeared to the Cardinal under one of three heads — Freemasonry, Jansenism, or Chauvelinism. It was for attending a Freemasons' dinner that he caused the King to exile the husband of Madame de Mailly, but he failed to excite His Majesty to renewed oppression of the Jansenists. When, as he frequently did, he re- verted to bitter abuse of Chauvehn and his admirers, who were termed Chauvelinists, Louis, tired of the subject, became mute and answered nothing. The King, however, hated the society of Freemasons, to be accused of belonging to which was to incur his dis- pleasure. As for Fleury, he saw Freemasons everywhere, 158 The Real Louis the Fifteenth and when the Prince de Tingry, son of the Marechal Due de Montmorency, was accused by Marville, the PoHce-Lieutenant, of belonging to that body, he sent for him from the Opera to come to him at once at Issy. Although the Prince knew absolutely nothing about the association, and proved it, the old man gave the serious de Tingry a violent scolding for a crime of which he understood nothing whatever. Fleury was, in fact, in his dotage completely. When, in October, 1740, the Due d'Orleans returned furious from Fontainebleau because, the price of bread increasing, neither the King nor the Cardinal seemed in the least to care about the awful suffering throughout the kingdom, Fleury re- plied that " he did not understand anything about it " — a nice reply for the actual ruler of the State ! The Due d'Orleans found himself treated with scant courtesy in other matters. Complaining of being un- suitably lodged at Fontainebleau, Fleury paid no attention to the complaint ; while the hand of Madame Henriette, which had been promised long since to the Due for his son, was suddenly refused to him merely on account of the ill-humour of the Cardinal against himself and his house. Fleury simply forced the King to refuse to keep his promise. The only pretext for a refusal was frivolous in the highest degree. Fleury said that if the Empress, wife of Charles VI., died, Madame Henriette, a child of fifteen, would be given to the Emperor as a second wife. The Emperor himself it was who died that same year. In May, 1741, the young Due de Chartres went in person to have it out with the Cardinal before witnesses. " I have to thank you, monsieur," he said, " for the great pains you have taken in the matter of my marriage ! " The House of Orleans 159 The Cardinal reddened as he repHed, " Yes, Mon- seigneur, I have thoiiglit that, under the circumstances of present conditions, it would be difficult to ally our- selves so openly with Bavaria ; but there are other Princesses in Germany — three Princesses, for instance, of Salzbach, of whom the second is very good-looking and livelv." To this Chartres replied, with great hauteur, " Mon- sieur, there is another establishment here which is all that I require." Again the Cardinal reddened with embarrassment, and remained five or six seconds before he could find strength to stammer out confusedly, " Monseigneur, of what do you wish to speak ? " " Monsieur, it is not a question of answering me, but «f understanding me," said the Prince angrily. The Cardinal murmured, " But, but, I have spoken to the Due d'Orleans on the subject, and the King has it before him." " Sir, I leave for the army in Flanders on Thursday," answered Chartres, and went out without leave-taking. In the end the amiable Henriette, who was heart- broken at her disappointment about him, died unmarried at an early age. Meanwhile in the Palais-Royal, the old home of the Regent, an unhappy state of affairs prevailed. The Regent's widow, the legitimatised daughter of Louis XIV. whom Philippe d'Orleans used to call Madame Satan, was terribly at cross-purposes with her son. " Never," says d'Argenson, " have I seen a little provincial town so quarrelsome as is the Palais-Royal to-day. It is the house of back-bitings, of calumnies, of repeatings, of feuds, and of detestable passions. Her Royal Highness i6o The Real Louis the Fifteenth the Dowager Duchesse d'Orleans is like a dethroned Queen. After several years of her widowhood she has lost all authority over her son. She moans — she rages. The son is jealous to preserve his independence, the mother on the look-out to recapture her domination. She has wit, above all, woman's instincts. One must distrust them. I can answer for it that she joins bad faith to her pretended devotion. She often lies to the Holy Ghost, bears false witness against those whom she knows to merit but good words, nurses bitter hatreds and unjust suspicions. She is herself irreconcilable in her aversions and in those passions which make the heart black ; witness her horrible rancour against her daughter Madame la Duchesse de Modene. In fact, one sees more than ever the existence of two parties in the members of the nobility inhabiting the Palais-Royal, of both sexes. They are those of the mother and those belonging to the son. One distinguishes them and points them out with the finger, and the august Princesse takes good care to maintain the division. The son only preserves silence, makes himself acquainted with all that takes place, and shows firmness in only appointing to places people who are for himself. My brother was for the mother — but, as for myself, I most decidedly belong to the son." Since the honest Marquis d'Argenson suc- ceeded his more than doubtful brother the Comte in the position of Chancellor of the house of Orleans, he evi- dently knew what he put on record to be true. Upon reading his words, therefore, the student of history is inclined to believe that Philippe, Due d'Orleans, the Regent, was not so far wrong when he christened the wife forced upon him by Louis XIV. by the euphonious title of Madame Satan. CHAPTER XIII The Great Frederick 1740 — 1742 Frederick, artist, musician, poet, and literary genius, who had long been held a prisoner by his father, and narrowly escaped being beheaded by him, spoke the French language better than German, and started in life a Frenchman at heart. In his long confinement at Gastrin and at the castle of Rheinsberg, where he amused himself with literary occupations and in studying the arts of peace, none had imagined the military and patriotic ambitions that the young man was nursing in his heart. The early life of Frederick II., third King in Prussia, not of Prussia, and great-grandson of Frederick WiUiam, the " Great " Elector of Brandenburg, indeed in no manner fore- shadowed his future greatness. His father, Frederick William I., was noted for two crazes — one of these was avarice, the other the formation of a corps of giant soldiers. Every month of his reign he put away a large sum of money, and at the same time had the world ransacked for giants for his army. For an Irish giant seven feet high he paid a bounty of £1,300 to induce him to enlist. Not content with the giants already to be found, he bred them, like horses VOL. I. 161 II 1 62 The Real Louis the Fifteenth or cattle. Whenever he found a tall young woman he had her married forcibly to one of his tallest soldiers. An amusing story is told concerning one of these forced marriages. Frederick William, one day out riding in a forest, came upon a beautiful girl about six feet in height. She did not know the King by sight, and when, after having got into conversation with her, the stranger offered her a thaler or two to carry a note for him, she readily acceded to his request. The note was to the officer commanding the guard at a fortress not far distant, and ran as follows : " Instantly have the bearer of this letter married to Corporal Fritz of the Grenadiers." The King rode away in one direction while the maiden started on her journey in another. Presently she realised that to accomplish her mission she would be compelled to miss an appointment that afternoon with her lover. The stately maid accordingly bethought her of a withered old crone who lived alone in a hut upon the borders of the forest. To her she repaired, and, giving half of the King's bounty to the beldame, entrusted her with the missive, and then tripped away gaily in search of her swain. When Frederick William rode into the gates of the fortress in the evening he found the corporal married sure enough — but to the old hag ! History does not relate whether or no he had the handsome young giantess searched for and married after all to the same or another grenadier ; but, judging from his passion for breeding giants, it seems more than probable that she did not escape some such fate. The Kingdom of Prussia merely dated from the year 1701, and during his reign of twenty-seven years, from The Great Frederick 163 1713, Frederick William increased the dominions of what had been the Electorate of Brandenburg by the conquest from Charles XII. of Pomerania, with Stettin and the islands at the mouth of the Oder. He was married to Sophia Dorothea of Hanover, daughter of George I. of England, and among her ten children the eldest son, Prince Frederick, and a daughter, Wilhelmina, incurred the ferocious hatred of their father. The King strove hard to induce the Prince to renounce the succes- sion, which young Frederick announced his willingness to do — provided that the King would declare that he was not his father ! From childhood to the age of twenty Frederick William vented his rage upon the youth in the most savage manner, while the Prince, chiefly brought up by French refugees, conceived a strong passion for French literature. He was not, however, allowed to learn Latin, Greek, English, or any other language. After narrowly escaping death at his father's hands, Frederick attempted to escape to his uncle George II., in England. He was, however, captured, and sentenced to death as — a deserter. Frederick William, after executing before his son's eyes a young officer who had assisted his flight, kept the Prince a prisoner at Gastrin before carrying out upon him the sentence of death also. In the meantime, however, the Emperor, the Kings of Sweden and Poland, and the rulers of the United States of Holland, contrived by their interposition to save the Prince. After a long imprisonment he was released from Gastrin, appointed a Gouncillor of War, and banished from the Court to Rheinsbcrg, when his father forced liim to marry Elizabeth Christina, daughter of the Duke of Brunswick Bevern, in 1733. 164 The Real Louis the Fifteenth With this Princess Frederick refused to cohabit, and various stories are told of his youthful excesses, which may or may not be true. Judging by his sub- sequent career, it seems pretty safe to say that the calumnies of his enemies were at all events exaggerated, for he could never have been a monster of vice. At Rheinsberg Frederick followed his literary tastes and collected around him French and German savants. Being now left in peace he played upon the flute without fear of the instrument being broken over his head, dined without danger of having dishes flung at him, and was able to sit undisturbed to write verses or prose without expecting at every moment the apparition of a furious father, to drag him round by the hair of his head while kicking him with heavy riding-boots. While Frederick was writing the Anti-Macchiavelli and many other of his celebrated works, his crazy old father's heart was becoming softened towards him. He died after sobbing out upon his son's breast the words, " My God, my God, I die content with such a noble son to succeed me." Owing to his freethinking ideas and wild admiration for French literature, Frederick at an early age held an exaggerated opinion of the talents of Voltaire, of whom, however, he formed his own estimate as a man, and by whom, it must be confessed, he was very sorely tried and subsequently treated with great in- gratitude. However, he wrote in the following terms to Voltaire at a time when he was inchned to idolise his literary genius and wished him to come to him, " My Royal titles shall run thus : By the grace of God, King of Prussia, Elector of Brandenburg, possessor of Voltaire, etc." Frederick at the same time wrote to Algarotti of the poet, that he knew him to be a scoundrel, The Great Frederick 165 but that he could make use of him and learn his French. French was, by-the-bye, the language which Frederick usually employed for his writings, but he never learned to write it with the pen of a Voltaire. Upon his father's death Frederick inherited from him about a million and a quarter pounds sterling in surplus cash, and an army of seventy-two thousand soldiers, which had, however, had but very little, if any, experience in war. Those of his judges who had before their eyes but the knowledge of his epicurean abode at Rheinsberg were astounded at the energy which was immediately displayed by the already very stout young man of twenty-eight, he having been born in 1712. Frederick almost instantly astonished the world by appearing in the light of a military despot — one who listened to no counsel and confided in no friend, while all the time bent upon enlarging his monarchy and determined to make of the dominions of the King of Prussia something more than a kingdom in name only. Prussia, in common with the other nations of Europe, had guaranteed to Charles VI. his Pragmatic Sanction, and, upon her father's death, Frederick sent to the young Archduchess Maria Theresa an offer of help in money and his vote for her husband Duke Francis as Emperor. He, however, made conditions, which were that the Duchies of Glogau and Sagan, and the greater part of Silesia, to which the house of Hohenzollern laid claim, should be ceded to him. Hohenzollern in those days formed two small independent principalities of the Germanic confederation, railed Hohenzollern-Hechingen and HohenzoUern-Sigmaringen, and Hechingen was the original abode of the afterwards princely house of 1 66 The Real Louis the Fifteenth Hohenzollern, to which the reigning dynasty in Prussia belongs. Its possessions were all finally ceded to Prussia in 1850. The name of Prussia was, until the eighteenth century, only applied to the former Duchy of Prussia on the Baltic and Vistula, whose inhabitants, a Lithuanian tribe called Porussi, or Borussi, whence the Latin name Borussia, had been conquered by the Teutonic knights in the thirteenth century. The rulers of Prussia were formerly called Kings in Prussia, thus expressing that their Germanic possessions were no kingdom ; but when Frederick the Great firmly established his power, he also assumed the title of King of Prussia. Since his day the different provinces ruled over by the Hohen- zollern dynasty have come to be considered a consolidated kingdom. Of these provinces Brandenburg was the original possession in Germany of the Prussian dynasty. The Teutonic knights, who finally conquered the Borussi in 1283, were constantly fighting against Poland and Lithuania until Casimir IV. of Poland compelled them to cede Western Prussia and Erme- land to Poland, the knights being left the remainder of Borussia merely as a fief under Poland. In 1525 the Margrave Albert of Brandenburg, Grand Master of the Order, after various wars, accepted all of Prussia as a duchy from Poland. A collateral de- scendant, John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg, inherited it in the year 1618. This Elector was descended from Frederick of Hohenzollern, Burgrave of Nuremberg, who had become possessor of Brandenburg in 1415 by foreclosure of a mortgage. It is therefore the Electorate of Brandenburg, not Prussia proper, which must be considered the nucleus of the present monarchy of that name, the two countries having been definitely united From a mezzoliitl after George I'aiu/ir Ah FREDKRICK THK (;REA1', King of Prussia. The Great Frederick 167 by John Sigismimd, who was a Protestant. The third Elector Frederick, the son of the " Great " Elector, Frederick William, by consent of the German Emperor, assumed the title of King in Prussia in 1702. He was the grandfather of King Frederick II. — called the " Great.'* To return to that Monarch's overtures to the young Maria Theresa. They were rejected and his claims to Silesia laughed at. To the surprise of the world, this young King wasted no time in endeavouring to enforce them at the point of the bayonets of his untried army, of which he took the command in person. On December 13th, 1740, the year of his accession, he entered Lower Silesia, routed the handful of Austrians who were quartered on the frontier, and overran the province. In six weeks he returned to Berlin in triumph. It was the dead of winter, and Maria Theresa, almost incredulous of what had happened, was immediately honoured by the young King with proposals of peace and alliance. Privately, Frederick acknowledged that " ambition, interest, the desire to make people talk about me, carried the day, and I decided to make war." As a matter of fact, Frederick had good cause to hate Austria and the Imperial Family. Among the most remarkable men of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was Count Friedrich Heinrich Seckendorf, born in 1673, who lived for a hundred years and five months. This German General and diplomatist served during his career England, Holland, the Emperor, Saxony, and Poland, and Austria again from 1715 to 1737 ; after which that country imprisoned liim for three years at Gratz, on account of his want of success against the Turks. After his release, Seckendorf entered the service of Charles VII. of Bavaria for some years from 1740, 1 68 The Real Louis the Fifteenth now fighting vigorously against Maria Theresa and the Austrians. Subsequently, regaining his former position in Austria, this Count of the Empire fell, in 1758, into the hands of Frederick the Great, who imprisoned him for six months in Magdeburg. It was through the action of this Seckendorf towards Frederick in his early years that Austria made for herself the great enemy who well-nigh destroyed her. He had served, for upwards of twenty years, as Ambassador at Berlin, and been expressly charged by Austria to stifle the infancy of Frederick and prevent him from reigning, because Vienna feared in him a Prince of absolutely French sympathies. Thus Seckendorf it was who stirred up Frederick's father against him to an extent that the brutal German was ready to cut off the head of his son, whom he looked upon as being merely a httle French marquis. The little French marquis, however, was not stifled, but, alone in his imprisonment, although fat and feverish, he was laying up for himself a force of wonderful energy, a resistless will. When the time came, this writer of pretty French verses, the friend of Voltaire and player on the flute, burst forth from his bonds a man of iron. In his first great battle, that of Mollwitz in the spring of 1741, he, however, showed the white feather, and lost command of himself so completely as to fly with his broken cavalry miles from the scene of action. The battle, how- ever, was gained by the courage of those under him, and never again was Frederick aught but calm and lucid under the most tremendous fire when fighting against overwhelming odds. The fighting in Silesia during the previous winter had by no means been severe, as the Protestant inhabit- The Great Frederick 169 ants were favourable to the invasion and opened the gates of the principal places. The personal courage of Frederick had, however, been previously well estab- lished when in the Polish war, a volunteer under Prince Eugene against the French, he sacrificed the pleasures of Rheinsberg for a few weeks. But, as we have already mentioned, Eugene displayed none of his old fire and activity during these operations ; the Prussian Prince saw, therefore, nothing of that fury and carnage of war which came to him as a surprise at MoUwitz, This battle decided the fate of Silesia. It was, however, the signal for a general war in Europe, known as the War of the Austrian Succession. Bavaria, backed up by France, now took up arms. A French, Saxon, and Bavarian army invaded Bohemia, while Frederick marched into Moravia. Thus the fortunes of the ambitious young Maria Theresa seemed at a low ebb, especially as England, although indulging in a desultory and unrecognised naval warfare with France, declined to assist her, maintaining neutrality on land. How she was saved by Fleury we shall presently see ; but in the meantime Frederick, disgusted with his French allies, after gaining a magnificent victory at Chotusitz, in the Bohemian province of Czaslau, in May, 1742, concluded a separate peace. Accepting English mediation, Maria Theresa made peace with Prussia by a treaty concluded at Breslau on June nth, 1742, and ceded to Frederick both Silesia and the county of (ilatz, in the district of Breslau. This fertile county, separated by mountains from Bohemia and Austrian Silesia, had frequently been the cause of dispute between Poland and Bohemia, and it continued to change masters at times until Frederick definitely lyo The Real Louis the Fifteenth retained its possession by the Peace of Hubertsburg in 1763. In the meantime he was enabled to retire from the contest in 1742, well contented with his present gains, if disgusted with the folly by which Fleury's effete rule left Austria strong and powerful instead of crushed and crawling in the dirt. When Prussia withdrew victorious from the conflict, the Austrian arms triumphed everywhere against France and Bavaria, while England, thinking the moment now opportune, cut in upon the side of Austria. CHAPTER XIV A Royal Conspiracy and a Dotard^s Follies 1741— 1742 While anxious to carry out the views of his great-grand- father Louis XIV., and aggrandise Cathohc Bavaria, the King of France had no such wishes in favour of Protestant Prussia. Fleury openly moaned at the idea, the King did so secretly. He was, however, between two stools, Fleury and Madame de Vintimille, in 1740, and when in 1741 his mistress was expected to become a mother, she instantly took the upper hand. Fleury trembled, succumbed like a pricked bladder, and at once commenced to make up to Frederick by writing to liim that, " since Austria had not fulfilled her treaties, France would no longer guarantee her." At the same time this old man played at Versailles the comedy of pretending that he had no ideas, no intentions, did not know which way to go — enacting, in fact, the part of a simpleton. The Marquis d'Argenson says in his Memoirs, " He has made himself shorter in appearance, and goes about trying to excite pity," while the people at large exclaimed in their exasperation, " Will one never be able to kill off that old priest ? " Meanwhile he continued his old game of 1733, his old policy of delay and shilly-shally, instead of marching 171 172 The Real Louis the Fifteenth at once upon Vienna, as he should have done in March, 1741, Nor would he listen to the urgent appeal of Frederick, which was to give the supreme command to the Comte de Belle-Isle, whose genius Frederick had recognised when meeting him recently with his splendid embassy to the German Diet for the Imperial election. The ideas of both of these great commanders, the one then almost as untried as the other, had agreed in every particular. Belle-Isle pointed out to Frederick that the moment had come to dismember Austria, while Frederick showed to Belle-Isle the most efficacious manner in which France could co-operate in that dis- memberment. While Fleury did nothing, Frederick gained MoUwitz. The Cardinal still waited ! Fleury was, however, very near his fall in 1741. Being secretly anxious to obtain for his nephew the Due de Fleury the post of First Gentleman of the Bedchamber, vacant by the death of the Due de la Tremouille, the whole Court was against him. The two mistresses were in favour of the Due de Luxembourg, and there were other applicants for the post of far higher birth than his nephew, but recently created a peer of France. Adopting his old tactics, Fleury sulkily retired to Issy, and while pretending to the King that he did not want the post, at the same time sent in his resignation as Minister, upon the grounds of ill-health. To this resig- nation Madame de Vintimille persuaded Louis to write an acceptance, saying that he regretted that the Cardinal did not feel strong enough to continue his labours, but, under the circumstances, he excused him from them. That night the King passed with Madame de Mailly, who, we are told by the Abbe Soulavie, slept with her A Royal Conspiracy and a Dotard^s Follies 173 hair arranged and wearing all her diamonds. The fatal letter, which was to decide the fate of the Cardinal — and France — lay upon the chimney piece. In the meantime the Cardinal had sent a sure person to Madame de Vintimille, warning her of the danger to which she would expose herself if she pushed him too far. She sent, in turn, word to her sister Mailly, requesting her not to allow the letter to go, but, on the other hand, to speak for the Due de Fleury and to drop the Due de Luxembourg. For she understood Louis' heart, and knew that he could not really make up his mind to do without Fleury for long — that, if disgraced, the Cardinal would probably be recalled. In the middle of tlie night the King aroused Madame de Mailly. He was in a very melancholy state of mind, and said, " I thought that the Cardinal was really attached to me, but he is more so to his own credit.'* He seemed anxious to negotiate with his favourite for the suppression of the letter, and pointed out to her all the good services which the Cardinal had rendered to the State. Madame de Mailly, warned by her sister, replied to the King that he was the master — he could destroy the letter if he liked. In a second the King sprang up cheerfully, threw the letter into the fire, and recovered all his good-humour. The next morning he personally appointed the Due de Fleury to the coveted post, with a revenue of four hundred thousand livres. Thereupon the old hypocrite Fleury declared openly that the greatest injury had been done to I lis house, since he had never desired anything for his nephew. He even had the effrontery to rush in to the Queen with this ridiculous story, when Marie Lesczynska crushed liim witii the biting sarcasm of her reply. 174 The Real Louis the Fifteenth A strange contrast was to be seen in the month of May, 1 741, when these events took place. While the eighty-eight-year-old Cardinal, representing extreme weakness, was apparently once more fixed in perpetuity upon the seat of government at Versailles — fixed there as the man of Austria, the man of peace — throughout all Europe Louis XV. was being proclaimed as the King of war. Bavaria, Saxony, the countries on the Rhine, Poland, Spain, Sardinia, all were crying out to France, begging her to make treaties of alliance with them. All declared their firm intention to follow her to the tented field of glory should she but show the way. Belle-Isle returned from his embassy bringing in person this expression of the wishes of Europe. He came with all the strength due to the personal favourite of three Monarchs — the new Emperor, Charles VII. (of Bavaria), Frederick Augustus III., King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, and Frederick, King of Prussia. But all that he could extort from Fleury, even so late as the month of July, 1741, was the vague promise of twenty- five thousand men. Austria had indeed gained a respite ! That which distressed Belle-Isle more than all else was the decided change which he found in the Court that had sent him away to procure the election of Charles VII. Then there had been, at all events, some ideas favourable to the King of Prussia ; upon his return there was nothing but dislike seen at Versailles for the Protestant King. The Court, the Royal Family, so essentially Catholic, now seemed to have become more Austrian even than Spanish — all that they wanted was the establishment in Italy of a kingdom for the Infante, Don Philip, husband of the King's daughter. If only A Royal Conspiracy and a Dotard's Follies 175 this could be arranged — what, they said, was the need for war with their dear friend, Maria Theresa ? And Prussia was temporised with more than ever. As week by week there came from the httle Infanta in Spain a long letter to her father, the King, which had been carefully dictated by the Queen, Elizabeth Farnese, Frederick commenced to grow irritable, the new Em- peror was also out of temper, and meanwhile the year dragged out its length. August came — and September. It almost seemed as though it were Frederick who was the enemy. At length, on September 13th, 1741, Maria Theresa, with one child in her arms and about to become the mother of another, was enabled to play her great stroke, her pathetic comedy, which assured to her the assistance of those very Hungarians who for so long past had suffered by fire and sword at the hands of Austria on account of their religion. Holding up her child, she begged the Hungarian nobles for their assistance. Chivalrously drawing their swords, they forgot old injuries and, headed by Count Batthyany, cried, " Let us die for Maria Theresa — our King ! " Thus they forged their own fetters — which still exist. This event occurred only four days after the death of Madame de Vintimille, the only counsellor of any weight whom Louis XV. had possessed to help to make a man of him in spite of Fleury, The murderers of this poor woman had foreseen only too surely that the King would insist upon no inquiry of any serious nature as to the cause of her death. The doctors were too prudent to say what they discovered, and it would seem that Louis himself would rather not push the inquiry too far. He knew full well tlial there 176 The Real Louis the Fifteenth was a party of the clergy who had seriously approached the devout young Dauphin and asked this thirteen-year- old boy to become their protector. Realising that these persons would be only too willing to welcome this boy to the throne in his own place, he was afraid to push them too far, for fear that he might himself follow Madame de Vintimille sooner than he expected. So the King held his tongue, and contented himself with weeping for his loss alternately with Madame de Toulouse in the entresol and Madame de Mailly in the apartments overhead. The Dauphin, even at this early age, was heavy in temperament and heavy in body ; as he grew older he became enormously fat, and, as he was disinclined to movement, continued so. He did not share the predilec- tion for field-sports and the chase which was common to all the other members of the Bourbon race. This may perhaps have been because he was unfortunate on the occasion of his earlier shooting parties. Upon the first of these he shot and killed a man, while upon that which succeeded he wounded a lady severely ! While following a very sedentary life, the youth shared with his sisters views about Austria which agreed with those of Fleury. This old Cardinal, when interrogated by the Dauphin as to the justice or injustice of the war, allowed himself to be forced, as it were, to confess to the Prince that it was " an unjust war." All who heard this fall from the lips of the Minister were horrified ; but the Dauphin was thenceforward the hope of those who styled themselves " les honnetes gens.^^ As the war was being continued by Frederick alone, and when that Prince was pushing hard the troops of Maria Theresa, Fleury nevertheless did not scruple to A Royal Conspiracy and a Dotard^s Follies 177 give vent to very similar sentiments before the Council of State. He exclaimed of the Queen of Hungary, " She is like Jesus upon the mountain tried by the devil. But the angels will bear her up." Meanwhile the Dauphin was made the nucleus, the kernel, around which, little by little, all the retrograde elements in the Court collected. The Spanish-Austrian intrigue, the Royal Family, the clergy, the Queen to whom Spain was so dear, the two-faced intriguers such as Stainville (later Due de Choiseul) from Lorraine, the Polish Jesuits — all these formed but one party with the Dauphin, and it was a party formed with the intention of working upon the feelings of the King. Louis was very much attached to his daughters, even to the extent of being jealous of them. The elder, the Infanta, was tall, handsome, and cunning ; she en- deavoured by all means in her power to wind herself around the King. The nature of Madame Henriette, a little younger, and weakly in person, was singularly sweet. Her spirit remained completely broken when her match with the Due de Chartres was broken off, but she never complained. It was, however, by working upon tlie King's jealousy of the Orleans family that Fleury contrived without difficulty to cause the engagement to be broken. She remained timid and trembling, the mere instrument of the Dauphin, until she died aged twenty-ftve. Another daughter, Adelaide, only ten years old, already possessed a different nature. Full of Polish vivacity, she, even at that early age, caused astonish- ment by the liveliness of her sallies and, indeed, uncouth tricks of manner and speech. From an early age the King favoured her ; alone of his daughters he kept her always at home, never sent her to a convent for education. VOL. I. 12 1 78 The Real Louis the Fifteenth All of these sung the same song, of which the refrain was — first Spain, second Austria ! All alike hoped to see an Infanta of Spain betrothed before long to the infant eldest son of Maria Theresa, afterwards to become the Emperor Joseph II. This child of Don Philip and the French Princesse was now only six months old; but that did not matter. The Bourbons in Spain, ever anxious to despoil Austria, were also ever anxious to conclude matrimonial alliances with her; and the Bourbons in France always were of the same mind as their cousins. The Imperial Family always seemed to them something grander than themselves, worthy to be courted even when most considered as a cause for jealousy. Imperial the Austrian family was indeed to become once more before long, although it was only owing to the election of Duke Francis of Lorraine, her husband, to the dignity of Emperor when Charles VII. died, that Maria Theresa earned that title of Empress by which she was so well known. Her son Joseph II. eventually married, as his first wife, the daughter of the Infanta, wife of Don Philip, while the wishes of the Bourbons were likewise crowned with success in that marriage — so unfortunate for France — of the Empress's daughter Marie Antoinette to the son of the Dauphin who became Louis XVI. Having now explained the situation, it will be easily realised that Fleury, in blocking the war, was but acting in accordance with the views of the honnetes gens. He was directly acceding to the vows of that Royal Family which wept when France gained a victory, which had formed what may be called a " family conspiracy " against the very kingdom over which it ruled. The older the Dauphin grew the more clearly could A Royal Conspiracy and a Dotard's Follies 179 the existence of this family conspiracy be seen and realised, although it worked underground, and worked upon the King only through those influences — bigoted religion and love for Austria — in which Cardinal Fleury had brought him up from infancy. The only possible opposing influences to these were to be found in his mistresses. Of these, Madame de Mailly, being all heart and no politician, did not count. Her sister Mademoiselle de Nesle, who possessed grand and patriotic instincts, was poisoned before she could accomplish anything. There are yet to come Madame de la Tournelle, who became Duchesse de Chateauroux, and who wished to make of Louis an absolute Monarch in the highest degree, and Mademoiselle Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, who would, if she could, have instilled some ideas of literature and philosophy into the King's head. But if ever for a time he seemed to tolerate any change or listen to anything new, or in any way to take the initiative in a manly way to break away from the leadership of those who led him, it was merely from hatred and jealousy of the Dauphin. And when he broke away from, or acted from antagonism to, the Dauphin, his daughters picked up the broken threads, and bound him once more in the meshes of the family conspiracy. While on the death of Madame de Vintimille two classes of interested persons were already trying to assuage the King's grief by presenting him with either Mademoiselle Poisson or the deceased favourite's sister Madame de la Tournelle, the question of war or no war was still being vigorously discussed at Versailles. It must not be forgotten tliat in July, 1741, Belle-Isle had i8o The Real Louis the Fifteenth extorted from the Cardinal the promise of twenty-five thousand men to help the allies. The war was at last embarked on, but in a manner to meet the wishes of Fleury, the Noailles, and the Royal Family, not at all upon the sure road leading to success as pointed out by the King of Prussia. It seemed, indeed, as if the object of Versailles were to wound Frederick as much as possible. His views were disregarded in two matters. Instead of making Belle-Isle Commander-in-chief, the Marechal Due de Broglio, formerly one of the Regent's roues and an ill-mannered and incompetent General, who had recently most grossly insulted Frederick, was given the principal command : he was sent to super- sede Belle-Isle on pretence of the ill-health of the latter. The French army, however, did not march straight into Vienna, which was left undefended by the flying Maria Theresa, but was foolishly stopped short when only six leagues from that city, and instructed to take Prague, in Bohemia. Once again — instead of making use of Hanover as a battle-ground — George II., King of England and ruler of Hanover, the uncle and bitter enemy of Frederick, was accorded the neutrality of his Hanoverian dominions. And yet, already in April, 1741, six English ships had attacked four French vessels near Martinique, while in May the British took from Spain the city of Cartagena in South America, burned six galleys, and captured six Spanish ships-of-war. It was not until November, 1741, that the troops under the Comte Maurice de Saxe at length fell upon Prague, which was taken by assault upon the i8th, owing to the marked bravery of Colonel Chevert, his subordinate; and in the meantime Belle-Isle obtained elsewhere that command which he had been refused of French troops. A Royal Conspiracy and a Dotard's Follies i8i The Saxon and Bavarian armies were also before Prague. King Augustus III. of Poland, Elector of Saxony, presented to Belle-Isle a sword with a diamond-en- crusted hilt, and in that same month of November appointed him Generalissimo of all his Saxon troops. The Spaniards had already marched forty thousand men into Spain, through Roussillon and Languedoc, and the Infante Don Philip followed, to join them at about the same time as the French arms appeared before Prague. Upon arrival, the Spaniards found that Sar- dinia was inimical to them, owing to the old quarrel about Milan, which the Savoyard King would rather have died than see pass into the hands of Spain. Ac- cordingly that Piedmontese Prince joined hands with Austria in 1742, although he commenced the war as the friend of France. Before Prague the Comte de Belle-Isle, feeling the disgrace of the appointment of Brogho over his head, fell back upon the diplomatic position which he still held of Envoy-Extraordinary to the Princes of the Empire ; but he found himself un- justly exposed to numerous insults from the various Lieutenant-Generals who were jealous of him. Thus, while following the threads of the negotiations with the Germanic Princes, he found himself compelled to waste endless time in writing letters in order to right himself in view of the false accusations and calumnies made against him. Belle-Isle's diplomatic functions were no sinecure ; everything seemed to be giving way under his feet. The Prussian and the Saxon he found floating, his friend Frederick especially being angered at hnding, upon the top of French disregard of his advice, that Comte Maurice de Saxe was being set up by France in a measure against 1 82 The Real Louis the Fifteenth him. This General in the French service was one of the three or four hundred bastards of whom the late Augustus II. of Poland and Saxony was supposed to be the father. His mother was the Swedish Countess of Kcenigsmark, and having aspired to the Russian Duchy of Courland, Saxe had displayed the unheard-of folly of declaring himself jealous of the King of Prussia. Frederick, feeling himself alone, was already calmly determining to fight for his own hand, and make peace when he had conquered that which he fought for, without considering his perfidious allies. Nor did he disguise his views from Belle-Isle, whom he trusted. The situation was rendered worse by the fact that the hereditary dominions of the Emperor in Bavaria were already overrun and in the possession of Austria. In March, 1742, Belle-Isle posted off to Versailles to re- present the situation, where he found, upon arrival, that the Cardinal had been abusing him worse than a pick- pocket, and had held him in the greatest aversion ever since he had discovered that the King had commenced to recognise his merits. The Cardinal's petty jealousy was aroused, and he was determined upon his disgrace. Yet, by his ability, Belle-Isle had succeeded in placing the Imperial crown upon the head of the nominee of France, after conciliating all the opposing German interests, and his only crime was that he was beloved by three Kings, the allies of France, none of whom cared to act except in conjunction with himself. The evening of his arrival at Versailles, at the hour of seven, the Cardinal refused to see Belle-Isle, sending word that it was late — that they were both tired, and that he required repose. The next day he was received A Royal Conspiracy and a Dotard^s Follies 183 by the Cardinal, but very coldly ; the interview only lasted for a minute and half. Proceeding to the King's levee, His Majesty, in turn, would scarcely speak to the Ambassador who had done so much ; his disgrace now seemed certain — the Bastille loomed ahead. To the surprise of the courtiers, who were turning their back upon the fallen man, and to the disgust of the Cardinal, against whose wishes the King acted, two days later this disgraced soldier and diplo- matist was placed at the top of the ladder. Louis had appointed the man whom he would not speak to as Marechal de France, and in addition endowed him with the rank and title of Due ct pair her edit aire de Vernon. All the partisans of Fleury, Broglio, and the Tencins had their noses put out of joint, while the disconcerted Cardinal attempted to explain this sudden promotion to the Due de Chartres by saying, " You see, we could not do without him down there ; it was necessary to send him back again." But the fact was that there was one good heart at Versailles which bled for the Frenchmen whose lives were being wasted by the follies of Fleury, the incom- petence of Broglio — one woman who knew that if Belle- Isle fell, the army would surely be left to perish unaided and unfed. Madame de Mailly it was who had forced the King to listen to wliat Belle-Isle had to say, and who, by so doing, crushed all his enemies and their jealousies together. The Emperor also appointed Belle- Isle a Prince of the Empire -but all these honours came late in the day. Frederick, finding the Saxons, like the French, were not backing him up, and being very closely pressed, gave battle to the forces of Maria Tiieresa. So certain 1 84 The Real Louis the Fifteenth was the Queen of Hungary of the victory, that she was debating in advance whether she would pardon or be- head Frederick, when the news came of the crushing defeat which he had inflicted upon her arms at Chotusitz. Maria Theresa then became humble and took a very different tone ; while Frederick wrote to Brogho that he was now quits with him and France, and would make peace alone. At the same time, he gave Brogho some sound advice, by ignoring which that incompetent leader got himself soundly beaten and compelled to shut himself up with his army within the walls of Prague. This occurred in May, 1742. Belle-Isle hastily hurried to Frederick, and endeavoured to prevent him from treating. The newly created Due de Vernon even lost his temper with the King of Prussia when he found him inexorable. Thereupon Frederick greeted him with a surprise. From his pockets he extracted several letters which Fleury had written to Austria, in which he offered to desert Prussia, to force the King of that country to restore Silesia if the Emperor were only given Bohemia. They were miserable and disgraceful letters, the out- pourings of a dotard. In them Fleury related all his secret sorrows ; the spirit of the priest, of the pohce-spy, of the coward, of the child telling tales, made them the more remarkable. Formerly, in 1737, he had written similar letters, accusing Chauvelin. In these, produced from Frederick's pockets, Belle-Isle found something else equally cowardly. For he himself was denounced by name as being the sole cause of the war with Austria. Maria Theresa had caused these letters to be printed and scattered broadcast throughout all Europe, in order to shame France and make of her a laughing- stock. Poor Belle-Isle was dumbfounded. A patriotic //.. //;