A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume VI Part 20

[Ill.u.s.tration: Suffren----413]

He sought them for three months without any decisive result; it was only on the 4th of July in the morning, at the moment when Hyder Ali was to attack Negapatam, that a serious engagement began between the hostile fleets. The two squadrons had already suffered severely; a change of wind had caused disorder in the lines: the English had several vessels dismantled; one single French vessel, the _Severe,_ had received serious damage; her captain, with cowardly want of spirit, ordered the flag to be hauled down. His lieutenants protested; the volunteers to whom he had appealed refused to execute his orders. By this time the report was spreading among the batteries that the captain, was giving the order to cease firing; the sailors were as indignant as the officers: a cry arose, "The flag is down!" A complaisant subaltern had at last obeyed the captain's repeated orders. The officers jumped upon the quarter-deck.

"You are master of your flag," fiercely cried an officer of the blue, Lieutenant Dien, "but we are masters as to fighting, and the s.h.i.+p shall not surrender!" By this time a boat from the English s.h.i.+p, the _Sultan,_ had put off to board the Severe, which was supposed to have struck, when a fearful broadside from all the s.h.i.+p's port-holes struck the _Sultan,_ which found herself obliged to sheer off. Night came; without waiting for the admiral's orders, the English went and cast anchor under Negapatam.

M. de Suffren supposed that hostilities would be resumed; but, when the English did not appear, he at last prepared to set sail for Gondelour to refit his vessels, when a small boat of the enemy's hove in sight: it bore a flag of truce. Admiral Hughes claimed the _Severe,_ which had for an instant hauled down her flag. M. de Suffren had not heard anything about her captain's poltroonery; the flag had been immediately replaced; he answered that none of the French vessels had surrendered. "However,"

he added with a smile, "as this vessel belongs to Sir Edward Hughes, beg him from me to come for it himself." Suffren arrived without hinderance at Gondelour (_Kaddalore_).

Scarcely was he there, when Hyder Ali expressed a desire to see him, and set out for that purpose without waiting for his answer. On the 26th of July, M. de Suffren landed with certain officers of his squadron; an escort of cavalry was in waiting to conduct him to the camp of the nabob, who came out to meet him. "Heretofore I thought myself a great man and a great general," said Hyder Ali to the admiral; "but now I know that you alone are a great man." Suffren informed the nabob that M. de Bussy- Castelnau, but lately the faithful lieutenant of Dupleix and the continuer of his victories, had just been sent to India with the t.i.tle of commander-in-chief; he was already at Ile de France, and was bringing some troops. "Provided that you remain with us, all will go well," said the nabob, detaching from his turban an aigrette of diamonds which he placed on M. de Suffren's hat. The nabob's tent was reached; Suffren was fat, he had great difficulty in sitting upon the carpets; Hyder Ali perceived this and ordered cus.h.i.+ons to be brought. "Sit as you please,"

said he to the commander, "etiquette was not made for such as you." Next day, under the nabob's tent, all the courses of the banquet offered to M.

de Suffren were prepared in European style. The admiral proposed that Hyder Ali should go to the coast and see all the fleet dressed, but, "I put myself out to see you only," said the nabob, "I will not go any farther." The two great warriors were never to meet again.

The French vessels were ready; the commander had more than once put his own hand to the work in order to encourage the workmen's zeal.

Carpentry-wood was wanted; he had ransacked Gondelour (_Kaddalore_) for it, sometimes pulling down a house to get hold of a beam that suited him.

His officers urged him to go to Bourbon or Ile-de-France for the necessary supplies and for a good port to shelter his damaged s.h.i.+ps.

"Until I have conquered one in India, I will have no port but the sea,"

answered Suffren. He had re-taken Trincomalee before the English could come to its defence. The battle began. As had already happened more than once, a part of the French force showed weakness in the thick of the action either from cowardice or treason; a cabal had formed against the commander; he was fighting single-handed against five or six a.s.sailants: the main-mast and the flag of the _Heros,_ which he was on, fell beneath the enemy's cannon-b.a.l.l.s. Suffren, standing on the quarter-deck, shouted beside himself "Flags! Set white flags all round the Heros!" The vessel, all bristling with flags, replied so valiantly to the English attacks, that the rest of the squadron had time to re-form around it; the English went and anch.o.r.ed before Madras.

Bussy had arrived, but aged, a victim to gout, quite a stranger amid those Indian intrigues with which he had but lately been so well acquainted. Hyder Ali had just died on the 7th of December, 1782, leaving to his son Tippoo Sahib affairs embroiled and allies enfeebled.

At this news the Mahrattas, in revolt against England, hastened to make peace; and Tippoo Sahib, who had just seized Tanjore, was obliged to abandon his conquest and go to the protection of Malabar. Ten thousand men only remained in the Carnatic to back the little corps of French.

Bussy allowed himself to be driven to bay by General Stuart beneath the walls of Gondelour; he had even been forced to shut himself up in the town. M. de Suffren went to his release. The action was hotly contested; when the victor landed, M. de Bussy was awaiting him on the sh.o.r.e. "Here is our savior," said the general to his troops, and the soldiers taking up in their arms M. de Suffren, who had been lately promoted by the grand master of the order of Malta to the rank of grand- cross (_bailli_), carried him in triumph into the town. "He pressed M. de Bussy every day to attack us," says Sir Thomas Munro, "offering to land the greater part of his crews and to lead them himself to deliver the a.s.sault upon our camp." Bussy had, in fact, resumed the offensive, and was preparing to make fresh sallies, when it was known at Calcutta that the preliminaries of peace had been signed at Paris on the 9th of February. The English immediately proposed an armistice. The _Surveillante_ shortly afterwards brought the same news, with orders for Suffren to return to France. India was definitively given up to the English, who restored to the French Pondicherry, Chandernuggur, Mahe, and Karikal, the last strips remaining of that French dominion which had for a while been triumphant throughout the peninsula. The feebleness and the vices of Louis XV.'s government weighed heavily upon the government of Louis XVI. in India as well as in France, and at Paris itself.

It is to the honor of mankind and their consolation under great reverses that political checks and the inutility of their efforts do not obscure the glory of great men. M. de Suffren had just arrived at Paris, he was in low spirits; M. de Castries took him to Versailles. There was a numerous and brilliant court. On entering the guards' hall, "Gentlemen,"

said the minister to the officers on duty, "this is M. de Suffren."

Everybody rose, and the body-guards, forming an escort for the admiral, accompanied him to the king's chamber. His career was over; the last of the great sailors of the old regimen died on the 8th of December, 1788.

Whilst Hyder Ali and M. de Suffren were still disputing India with England, that power had just gained in Europe an important advantage in the eyes of public opinion as well as in respect of her supremacy at sea.

For close upon three years past a Spanish army had been investing by land the town and fortress of Gibraltar; a strong squadron was cruising out of cannon-shot of the place, incessantly engaged in barring the pa.s.sage against the English vessels. Twice already, in 1780 by Admiral Rodney, and in 1781 by Admiral Darby, the vigilance of the cruisers had been eluded and reinforcements of troops, provisions, and ammunition had been thrown into Gibraltar. In 1782 the town had been half destroyed by an incessantly renewed bombardment, the fortifications had not been touched.

Every morning, when he awoke, Charles III. would ask anxiously, "Have we got Gibraltar?" and when "No" was answered, "We soon shall," the monarch would rejoin imperturbably. The capture of Fort Philip had confirmed him in his hopes; he considered his object gained, when the Duke of Crillon with a corps of French troops came and joined the besiegers; the Count of Artois, brother to the king, as well as the Duke of Bourbon, had come with him. The camp of St. Roch was the scene of continual festivities, sometimes interrupted by the sallies of the besieged. The fights did not interfere with mutual good offices: in his proud distress, General Eliot still kept up an interchange of refreshments with the French princes and the Duke of Crillon; the Count of Artois had handed over to the English garrison the letters and correspondence which had been captured on the enemy's s.h.i.+ps, and which he had found addressed to them on his way through Madrid.

Preparations were being made for a grand a.s.sault. A French engineer, Chevalier d'Arcon, had invented some enormous floating batteries, fire-proof, as he believed; a hundred and fifty pieces of cannon were to batter the place all at once, near enough to facilitate the a.s.sault. On the 13th of September, at 9 A. M., the Spaniards opened fire: all the artillery in the fort replied at once; the surrounding mountains repeated the cannonade; the whole army covered the sh.o.r.e awaiting with anxiety the result of the enterprise. Already the fortifications seemed to be beginning to totter; the batteries had been firing for five hours; all at once the Prince of Na.s.sau, who commanded a detachment, thought he perceived flames mastering his heavy vessel; the fire spread rapidly; one after another, the floating batteries found themselves disarmed. "At seven o'clock we had lost all hope," said an Italian officer who had taken part in the a.s.sault; "we fired no more, and our signals of distress remained unnoticed. The red-hot shot of the besieged rained down upon us; the crews were threatened from every point." Timidly and by weak detachments, the boats of the two fleets crept up under cover of the batteries in hopes of saving some of the poor creatures that were like to perish; the flames which burst out on board the doomed s.h.i.+ps served to guide the fire of the English as surely as in broad daylight. At the head of a small squadron of gunboats Captain Curtis barred the pa.s.sage of the salvors; the conflagration became general, only the discharges from the fort replied to the hissing of the flames and to the Spaniard's cries of despair. The fire at last slackened; the English gunboats changed their part; at the peril of their lives the brave seamen on board of them approached the burning s.h.i.+ps, trying to save the unfortunate crews; four hundred men owed their preservation to those efforts. A month after this disastrous affair, Lord Howe, favored by the accidents of wind and weather, revictualled for the third time, and almost without any fighting, the fortress and the town under the very eyes of the allied fleets. Gibraltar remained impregnable.

Peace was at hand, however: all the belligerents were tired of the strife; the Marquis of Rockingham was dead; his ministry, after being broken up, had re-formed with less l.u.s.tre under the leaders.h.i.+p of Lord Shelburne. William Pitt, Lord Chatham's second son, at that time twenty-two years of age, had a seat in the cabinet. Already negotiations for a general peace had begun at Paris; but Was.h.i.+ngton, who eagerly desired the end of the war, did not yet feel any confidence. "The old infatuation, the political duplicity and perfidy of England, render me, I confess, very suspicious, very doubtful," he wrote; "and her position seems to me to be perfectly summed up in the laconic saying of Dr.

Franklin 'They are incapable of continuing the war and too proud to make peace.' The pacific overtures made to the different belligerent nations have probably no other design than to detach some one of them from the coalition. At any rate, whatever be the enemy's intentions, our watchfulness and our efforts, so far from languis.h.i.+ng, should become more vigorous than ever. Too much trust and confidence would ruin everything."

America was the first to make peace, without however detaching herself officially from the coalition which had been formed to maintain her quarrel and from which she had derived so many advantages. On the 30th of November, 1782, in disregard of the treaties but lately concluded between France and the revolted colonies, the American negotiators signed with stealthy precipitation the preliminary articles of a special peace, "thus abandoning France to the dangers of being isolated in negotiations or in arms." The votes of Congress, as well as the att.i.tude of Was.h.i.+ngton, did not justify this disloyal and ungrateful eagerness.

"The articles of the treaty between Great Britain and America," wrote the general to Chevalier de La Luzerne, French minister at Philadelphia, "are so far from conclusive as regards a general pacification, that we must preserve a hostile att.i.tude and remain ready for any contingency, for war as well as peace."

On the 5th of December, at the opening of Parliament, George III.

announced in the speech from the throne that he had offered to recognize the independence of the American colonies. "In thus admitting their separation from the crown of this kingdom, I have sacrificed all my desires to the wishes and opinion of my people," said the king.

"I humbly pray Almighty G.o.d, that Great Britain may not feel the evils which may flow from so important a dismemberment of its empire, and that America may be a stranger to the calamities which have before now proved to the mother-country that monarchy is inseparable from the benefits of const.i.tutional liberty. Religion, language, interests, affections may still form a bond of union between the two countries, and I will spare no pains or attention to promote it." "I was the last man in England to consent to the Independence of America," said the king to John Adams, who was the first to represent the new republic at the Court of St. James; "I will be the last in the world to sanction any violation of it." Honest and sincere in his concessions as he had been in his persistent obstinacy, the king supported his ministers against the violent attacks made upon them in Parliament. The preliminaries of general peace had been signed at Paris on the 20th of January, 1783.

To the exchange of conquests between France and England was added the cession to France of the island of Tobago and of the Senegal River with its dependencies. The territory of Pondicherry and Karikal received some augmentation. For the first time for more than a hundred years the English renounced the humiliating conditions so often demanded on the subject of the harbor of Dunkerque. Spain saw herself confirmed in her conquest of the Floridas and of the island of Minorca. Holland recovered all her possessions, except Negapatam.

Peace was made, a glorious and a sweet one for the United States, which, according to Was.h.i.+ngton's expression, "saw opening before them a career that might lead them to become a great people, equally happy and respected." Despite all the mistakes of the people and the defects every day more apparent in the form of its government, this n.o.ble and healthy ambition has always been present to the minds of the American nation as the ultimate aim of their hopes and their endeavors. More than eighty years after the war of independence, the indomitable energy of the fathers reappeared in the children, worthy of being called a great people even when the agonies of a civil war without example denied to them the happiness which had a while ago been hoped for by the glorious founder of their liberties as well as of their Const.i.tution.

France came out exhausted from the struggle, but relieved in her own eyes as well as those of Europe from the humiliation inflicted upon her by the disastrous Seven Years' War and by the treaty of 1763. She saw triumphant the cause she had upheld and her enemies sorrow-stricken at the dismemberment they had suffered. It was a triumph for her arms and for the generous impulse which had prompted her to support a legitimate but for a long while doubtful enterprise. A fresh element, however, had come to add itself to the germs of disturbance, already so fruitful, which were hatching within her. She had promoted the foundation of a Republic based upon principles of absolute right; the government had given way to the ardent sympathy of the nation for a people emanc.i.p.ated from a long yoke by its deliberate will and its indomitable energy.

France felt her heart still palpitating from the efforts she had witnessed and shared on behalf of American freedom; the unreflecting hopes of a blind emulation were already agitating many a mind. "In all states," said Was.h.i.+ngton, "there are inflammable materials which a single spark may kindle." In 1783, on the morrow of the American war, the inflammable materials everywhere acc.u.mulated in France were already providing means for that immense conflagration in the midst of which the country well-nigh perished.

CHAPTER LVIII.----LOUIS XVI.--FRANCE AT HOME.--MINISTRY OF M. NECKER.

1776-1781.

We have followed the course of good and bad fortune; we have exhibited France engaged abroad in a policy at the same time bold and generous, proceeding from rancor as well as from the sympathetic enthusiasm of the nation; we have seen the war, at first feebly waged, soon extending over every sea and into the most distant colonies of the belligerents, though the European continent was not attacked at any point save the barren rock of Gibraltar; we have seen the just cause of the United States triumphant and freedom established in the New World: it is time to inquire what new shocks had been undergone by France whilst she was supporting far away the quarrel of the revolted colonies, and what new burdens had come to be added to the load of difficulties and deceptions which she had seemed to forget whilst she was fighting England at so many different points. It was not without great efforts that France had acquired the generous fame of securing to her allies blessings which she did not herself yet possess to their full extent; great hopes, and powers fresh and young had been exhausted in the struggle: at the close of the American war M. Necker was played out politically as well as M. Turgot.

It was not to supersede the great minister who had fallen that the Genevese banker had been called to office. M. de Maurepas was still powerful, still up and doing; he loved power, in spite of his real levity and his apparent neglectfulness. M. Turgot had often galled him, had sometimes forced his hand; M. de Clugny, who took the place of the comptroller-general, had no pa.s.sion for reform, and cared for nothing but leading, at the treasury's expense, a magnificently scandalous life; M. de Malesherbes had been succeeded in the king's household by Marquis Amelot. "At any rate," said M. de Maurepas, "n.o.body will accuse me of having picked him out for his wits."

Profoundly shocked at the irreligious tendencies of the philosophers, the court was, nevertheless, aweary of the theoricians and of their essays in reform; it welcomed the new ministers with delight; without fuss, and as if by a natural recurrence to ancient usage, the edict relative to forced labor was suspended, the anxieties of the n.o.blesse and of the clergy subsided; the peasantry knew nothing yet of M. Turgot's fall, but they soon found out that the evils from which they had imagined they were delivered continued to press upon them with all their weight. For their only consolation Clugny opened to them the fatal and disgraceful chances of the lottery, which became a royal inst.i.tution. To avoid the remonstrances of Parliament, the comptroller-general established the new enterprise by a simple decree of the council. "The entries being voluntary, the lottery is no tax and can dispense with enregistration,"

it was said. It was only seventy-five years later, in 1841, under the government of King Louis Philippe and the ministry of M. Humann, that the lottery was abolished, and this scandalous source of revenue forbidden to the treasury.

So much moral weakness and political changeableness, so much poltroonery or indulgence towards evil and blind pa.s.sions disquieted serious minds, and profoundly shook the public credit. The Dutch refused to carry out the loan for sixty millions which they had negotiated with M. Turgot; the discount-fund (_caisse d'escompte_) founded by him brought in very slowly but a moderate portion of the a.s.sets required to feed it; the king alone was ignorant of the prodigalities and irregularities of his minister.

M. de Maurepas began to be uneasy at the public discontent, he thought of superseding the comptroller-general: the latter had been ill for some time, on the 22d of October he died. By the advice of M. de Maurepas, the king sent for M. Necker.

James Necker was born at Geneva in 1732. Engaging in business without any personal taste for it and by his father's wish, he had been successful in his enterprises; at forty he was a rich man, and his banking-house enjoyed great credit when he retired from business, in 1772, in order to devote himself to occupations more in accordance with his natural inclinations. He was ambitious and disinterested. The great operations in which he had been concerned had made his name known. He had propped up the _Compagnie des Indes_ nearly falling to pieces, and his financial resources had often ministered to the necessities of the State. "We entreat your a.s.sistance in the day of need," wrote Abbe Terray when he was comptroller-general; "deign to come to our a.s.sistance with a sum which is absolutely necessary." On ceasing to be a banker, Necker soon gave indications of the direction in which his thoughts turned; he wrote an indifferent Bloge de Colbert, crowned by the French Academy, in 1773. He believed that he was destined to wear the mantle of Louis XIV.'s great minister.

Society and public opinion exercised an ever increasing influence in the eighteenth century; M. Necker managed to turn it to account. He had married, in 1764, Mdlle. Suzanne Curchod, a Swiss pastor's daughter, pretty, well informed, and pa.s.sionately devoted to her husband, his successes and his fame. The respectable talents, the liberality, the large scale of living of M. and Madame Necker attracted round them the literary and philosophical circle; the religious principles, the somewhat stiff propriety of Madame Necker maintained in her drawing-room an intelligent and becoming gravity which was in strong contrast with the licentious and irreligious frivolity of the conversations customary among the philosophers as well as the courtiers. Madame Necker paid continuous and laborious attention to the duties of society. She was not a Frenchwoman, and she was uncomfortably conscious of it. "When I came to this country," she wrote to one of her fair friends, "I thought that literature was the key to everything, that a man cultivated his mind with books only, and was great by knowledge only." Undeceived by the very fact of her admiration for her husband, who had not found leisure to give himself up to his natural taste for literature, and who remained rather unfamiliar with it, she made it her whole desire to be of good service to him in the society in which she had been called upon to live with him. "I hadn't a word to say in society," she writes; "I didn't even know its language. Obliged, as a woman, to captivate people's minds, I was ignorant how many shades there are of self-love, and I offended it when I thought I was flattering it. Always striking wrong notes and never hitting it off, I saw that my old ideas would never accord with those I was obliged to acquire; so I have hid my little capital away, never to see it again, and set about working for my living and getting together a little stock, if I can." Wit and knowledge thus painfully achieved are usually devoid of grace and charm.

Madame du Deffand made this a reproach against M. Necker as well as his wife "He wants one quality, that which is most conducive to agreeability, a certain readiness which, as it were, provides wits for those with whom one talks; he doesn't help to bring out what one thinks, and one is more stupid with him than one is all alone or with other folks." People of talent, nevertheless, thronged about M. and Madame Necker. Diderot often went to see them; Galiani, Raynal, Abbe Morellet, M. Suard, quite young yet, were frequenters of the house; Condorcet did not set foot in it, pa.s.sionately enlisted as he was amongst the disciples of M. Turgot, who were hostile to his successor; Bernardin de St. Pierre never went thither again from the day when the reading of _Paul and Virginia_ had sent the company to sleep. "At first everybody listens in silence," says M. Aime Martin; "by degrees attention flags, people whisper, people yawn, n.o.body listens any more; M. de Buffon looks at his watch and asks for his carriage; the nearest to the door slips out, Thomas falls asleep, M. Necker smiles to see the ladies crying, and the ladies ashamed of their tears dare not acknowledge that they have been interested."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Reading of "Paul and Virginia."----427]

The persistent admiration of the general public, and fifty imitations of _Paul and Virginia_ published in a single year, were soon to avenge Bernardin de St. Pierre for the disdainful yawns of the philosophers.

It is pretty certain that Madame Necker's daughter, little Germaine, if she were present at the reading, did not fall asleep as M. Thomas did, and that she was not ashamed of her tears.

Next to M. Buffon, to whom Madame had vowed a sort of cult, and who was still writing to this faithful friend when he was near his last gasp, M. Thomas had more right than anybody to fall asleep at her house if he thought fit. Marmontel alone shared with him the really intimate friends.h.i.+p of M. and Madame Necker; the former had given up tragedies and moral tales; a pupil of Voltaire, without the splendor and inexhaustible vigor of his master, he was less p.r.o.ne to license, and his feelings were more serious; he was at that time correcting his _Elements de Litterature,_ but lately published in the _Encyclopaedie,_ and commencing the _Memoires d'un pere, pour servir d l'instruction de ses enfants_.

Thomas was editing his _Eloges,_ sometimes full of eloquence, often subtle and delicate, always long, unexceptionable, and wearisome. His n.o.ble character had won him the sincere esteem and affection of Madame Necker. She, laboriously anxious about the duties politeness requires from the mistress of a house, went so far as to write down in her tablets "To recompliment M. Thomas more strongly on the song of France in his poem of Pierre le Grand." She paid him more precious homage when she wrote to him: "We were united in our youth in every honorable way; let us be more than ever united now when ripe age, which diminishes the vivacity of impressions, augments the force of habit, and let us be more than ever necessary to one another when we live no longer save in the past and in the future, for, as regards myself, I, in antic.i.p.ation, lay no store by the approbation of the circles which will surround us in our old age, and I desire nothing among posterity but a tomb to which I may precede M.

Necker, and on which you will write the epitaph. Such resting-place will be dearer to me than that among the poplars which cover the ashes of Rousseau."

It was desirable to show what sort of society, cultivated and virtuous, lively and serious, all in one, the new minister whom Louis XVI. had just called to his side had managed to get about him. Though friendly with the philosophers, he did not belong to them, and his wife's piety frequently irked them. "The conversation was a little constrained through the strictness of Madame Necker," says Abbe Morellet; "many subjects could not be touched upon in her presence, and she was particularly hurt by freedom in religious opinions." Practical acquaintance with business had put M. Necker on his guard against the chimerical theories of the economists. Rousseau had exercised more influence over his mind; the philosopher's wrath against civilization seemed to have spread to the banker, when the latter wrote in his _Traite sur le commerce des grains,_ "One would say that a small number of men, after dividing the land between them, had made laws of union and security against the mult.i.tude, just as they would have made for themselves shelters in the woods against the wild beasts. What concern of ours are your laws of property? the most numerous cla.s.s of citizens might say: we possess nothing. Your laws of right and wrong? We have nothing to defend. Your laws of liberty? If we do not work to-morrow, we shall die."

Public opinion was favorable to M. Necker, his promotion was well received; it presented, however, great difficulties: he had been a banker, and hitherto the comptrollers-general had all belonged to the cla.s.s of magistrates or superintendents; he was a Protestant, and, as such, could not hold any office. The clergy were in commotion; they tried certain remonstrances. "We will give him up to you," said M. de Maurepas, "if you undertake to pay the debts of the state." The opposition of the church, however, closed to the new minister an important opening; at first director of the treasury, then director-general of finance, M. Necker never received the t.i.tle of comptroller-general, and was not admitted to the council. From the outset, with a disinterestedness not devoid of ostentation, he had declined the salary attached to his functions. The courtiers looked at one another in astonishment. It is easy to see that he is a foreigner, a republican, and a Protestant," people said. M. de Maurepas laughed.

"M. Necker," he declared, "is a maker of gold; he has introduced the philosopher's stone into the kingdom."

This was for a long while the feeling throughout France. "No bankruptcies, no new imposts, no loans," M. Turgot had said, and had looked to economy alone for the resources necessary to restore the finances. Bolder and less scrupulous, M. Necker, who had no idea of having recourse to either bankruptcy or imposts, made unreserved use of the system of loans. During the five years that his ministry lasted, the successive loans he contracted amounted to nearly five hundred million livres. There was no security given to insure its repayment to the lenders. The mere confidence felt in the minister's ability and honesty had caused the money to flow into the treasury.

M. Necker did not stop there: a foreigner by birth, he felt no respect for the great tradition of French administration; practised in the handling of funds, he had conceived as to the internal government of the finances theories opposed to the old system; the superintendents established a while ago by Richelieu had become powerful in the central administration as well as in the provinces, and the comptroller-general was in the habit of accounting with them; they nearly all belonged to old and notable families; some of them had attracted the public regard and esteem. The new minister suppressed several offices and diminished the importance of some others; he had taken away from M. Trudaine, administrator of gabels and heavy revenues (_grosses fermes_), the right of doing business with the king; M. Trudaine sent in his resignation; he was much respected, and this reform was not approved of. "M. Necker,"

people said, "wants to be a.s.sisted by none but removable slaves." At the same time the treasurers-general, numbering forty-eight, were reduced to a dozen, and the twenty-seven treasurers of marine and war to two; the farmings-general (of taxes) were renewed with an advantage to the treasury of fifteen millions. The posts at court likewise underwent reform; the courtiers saw at one blow the improper sources of their revenues in the financial administration cut off, and obsolete and ridiculous appointments, to which numerous pensions, were attached, reduced. "Acquisitions of posts, projects of marriage or education, unforeseen losses, abortive hopes, all such matters had become an occasion for having recourse to the sovereign's munificence," writes M.

Necker. "One would have said that the royal treasury was bound to do all the wheedling, all the smoothing-down, all the reparation; and as the method of pensions, though pushed to the uttermost (the king was at that time disbursing in that way some twenty-eight millions of livres), could not satisfy all claims or sufficiently gratify shameful cupidity, other devices had been hit upon, and would have gone on being hit upon, every day; interests in the collection of taxes, in the customs, in army supplies, in the stores, in many pay-offices, in markets of every kind, and even in the furnis.h.i.+ng of hospitals, all was fair game, all was worthy of the attention of persons often, from their position, the most above any business of the kind."

The discontent of the great financiers and that of the courtiers was becoming every day more noisy, without as yet shaking the credit of M. Necker. "M. Necker wants to govern the kingdom of France like his little republic of Geneva," people said: "he is making a desert round the king; each loan is the recompense for something destroyed." "Just so,"

answered M. de Maurepas: "he gives us millions, provided that we allow him to suppress certain offices." "And if he were to ask permission to have the superintendents' heads cut off?" "Perhaps we should give it him," said the veteran minister, laughing. "Find us the philosopher's stone, as he has done, and I promise you that his Majesty will have you into the ministry that very day."

M. Necker did not indulge in illusions, he owed to the embarra.s.sments of the government and to the new burdens created by the American war a complaisance which his bold attempts would not have met with under other circ.u.mstances. "n.o.body will ever know," he himself said, "the steadfastness I found necessary; I still recall that long and dark staircase of M. de Maurepas' which I mounted in fear and sadness, uncertain of succeeding with him as to some new idea which I had in my mind, and which aimed most frequently at obtaining an increase of revenue by some just but severe operation. I still recall that upstairs closet, beneath the roof of Versailles, but over the rooms, and, from its smallness and its situation, seeming to be really a superfine extract and abstract of all vanities and ambitions; it was there that reform and economy had to be discussed with a minister grown old in the pomps and usages of the court. I remember all the delicate management I had to employ to succeed, after many a rebuff. At last I would obttin some indulgences for the commonwealth. I obtained them, I could easily see, as recompense for the resources I had found during the war. I met with more courage in dealing with the king. Young and virtuous, he could and would hear all. The queen, too, lent me a favorable ear, but, all around their Majesties, in court and city, to how much enmity and hatred did I not expose myself? There were all kinds of influence and power which I had to oppose with firmness; there were all sorts of interested factions with which I had to fight in this perpetual struggle."

"Alas!" Madame Necker would say, "my heart and my regrets are ever yearning for a world in which beneficence should be the first of virtues.

What reflections do I not make on our own particular case! I thought to see a golden age under so pure an administration; I see only an age of iron. All resolves itself into doing as little harm as possible." 0 the grievous bitterness of past illusions! Madame Necker consoled herself for the enmity of the court and for the impotence of that beneficence which had been her dream by undertaking on her own account a difficult reform, that of the hospitals of Paris, scenes, as yet, of an almost savage disorderliness. The sight of sick, dead, and dying huddled together in the same bed had excited the horror and the pity of Madame Necker. She opened a little hospital, supported at her expense and under her own direction, which still bears the name of Necker Hospital, and which served as a model for the reforms attempted in the great public establishments. M. Necker could not deny himself the pleasure of rendering homage to his wife's efforts in a report to the king; the ridicule thrown upon this honest but injudicious gush of conjugal pride proved the truth of what Madame Necker herself said. "I did not know the language of this country. What was called frankness in Switzerland became egotism at Paris."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Necker Hospital----432]