A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume VI Part 3

The Regent saw the necessity of firmness. "It is a maxim," he declared, "that the king is always a major as regards justice; that which was done without the states-general has no need of their intervention to be undone." The decree of the council of regency, based on the same principles, suppressed the right of succession to the crown, and cut short all pretensions on the part of the legitimatized princes' issue to the rank of princes of the blood; the rights thereto were maintained in the case of the Duke of Maine and the Count of Toulouse, for their lives, by the bounty of the Regent, "which did not prevent the d.u.c.h.ess of Maine from uttering loud shrieks, like a maniac," says St. Simon, "or the d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans from weeping night and day, and refusing for two months to see anybody." Of the thirty-nine members of the n.o.bility who had signed the pet.i.tion to Parliament, six were detained in prison for a month, after which the Duke of Orleans pardoned them. "You know me, well enough to be aware that I am only nasty when I consider myself positively obliged to be," he said to them. The patrons, whose cause these n.o.blemen had lightly embraced, were not yet at the end of their humiliations.

[Ill.u.s.trations: The d.u.c.h.ess of Maine----72]

The Duke of Bourbon was not satisfied with their exclusion from the succession to the throne; he claimed the king's education, which belonged of right, he said, to the first prince of the blood, being a major. In his hatred, then, towards the legitimatized, he accepted with alacrity the Duke of St. Simon's proposal to simply reduce them to their rank by seniority in the peerage, with the proviso of afterwards restoring the privileges of a prince of the blood in favor of the Count of Toulouse alone, as a reward for his services in the navy. The blow thus dealt gratified all the pa.s.sions of the House of Conde and the wrath of Law, as well as that of the keeper of the seals, D'Argenson, against the Parliament, which for three months past had refused to enregister all edicts. On the 24th of August, 1718, at six in the morning, the Parliament received orders to repair to the Tuileries, where the king was to hold a bed of justice., The Duke of Maine, who was returning from a party, was notified, as colonel of the Swiss, to have his regiment under arms; at eight o'clock the council of regency was already a.s.sembled; the Duke of Maine and the Count of Toulouse arrived in peer's robes. The Regent had flattered himself that they would not come to the bed of justice, and had not summoned them. He at once advanced towards the Count of Toulouse, and said out loud that he was surprised to see him in his robes, and that he had not thought proper to notify him of the bed of justice, because he knew that, since the last edict, he did not like going to the Parliament. The Count of Toulouse replied that that was quite true, but that, when it was a question of the welfare of the State, he put every other consideration aside. The Regent was disconcerted; he hesitated a moment, then, speaking low and very earnestly to the Count of Toulouse, he returned to St. Simon. "I have just told him all," said he, "I couldn't help it; he is the best fellow in the world, and the one who touches my heart the most. He was coming to me on behalf of his brother, who had a shrewd notion that there was something in the wind, and that he did not stand quite well with me; he had begged him to ask me whether I wished him to remain, or whether he would not do well to go away. I confess to you that I thought I did well to tell him that his brother would do just as well to go away, since he asked me the question; that, as for himself, he might safely remain, because he was to continue just as he is, without alteration; but that something might take place rather disagreeable to M. du Maine. Whereupon, he asked me how he could remain, when there was to be an attack upon his brother, seeing that they were but one, both in point of honor and as brothers. I do believe, there they are just going out," added the Regent, casting a glance towards the door, as the members of the council were beginning to take their places: "they will be prudent; the Count of Toulouse promised me so." "But, if they were to do anything foolish, or were to leave Paris?" "They shall be arrested, I give you my word," replied the Duke of Orleans, in a firmer tone than usual. They had just read the decree reducing the legitimatized to their degree in the peerage, and M. le Duc had claimed the superintendence of the king's education, when it was announced that the Parliament, in their scarlet robes, were arriving in the court of the palace. Marshal de Villeroi alone dared to protest. "Here, then," said he with a sigh, "are all the late king's dispositions upset; I cannot see it without sorrow. M. du Maine is very unfortunate." "Sir," rejoined the Regent, with animation, "M. du Maine is my brother-in-law, but I prefer an open to a hidden enemy."

With the same air the Duke of Orleans pa.s.sed to the bed of justice, "with a gentle but resolute majesty, which was quite new to him; eyes observant, but bearing grave and easy; M. le Duc staid, circ.u.mspect, surrounded by a sort of radiance that adorned his whole person, and under perceptible restraint; the keeper of the seals, in his chair, motionless, gazing askance with that witful fire which flashed from his eyes and which seemed to pierce all bosoms, in presence of that Parliament which had so often given him orders standing at its bar as chief of police, in presence of that premier president, so superior to him, so haughty, so proud of his Duke of Maine, so mightily in hopes of the seals." After his speech, and the reading of the king's decree, the premier president was for attempting a remonstrance; D'Argenson mounted the step, approached the young king, and then, without taking any opinion, said, in a very loud voice, "The king desires to be obeyed, and obeyed at once."

There was nothing further for it but to enregister the edict; all the decrees of the Parliament were quashed.

Some old servants of Louis XIV., friends and confidants of the Duke of Maine, alone appeared moved. The young king was laughing, and the crowd of spectators were amusing themselves with the scene, without any sensible interest in the court intrigues. The d.u.c.h.ess of Maine made her husband pay for his humble behavior at the council; "she was," says St.

Simon, "at one time motionless with grief, at another boiling with rage, and her poor husband wept daily like a calf at the biting reproaches and strange insults which he had incessantly to pocket in her fits of anger against him."

In the excess of her indignation and wrath, the d.u.c.h.ess of Maine determined not to confine herself to reproaches. She had pa.s.sed her life in elegant entertainments, in sprightly and frivolous intellectual amus.e.m.e.nts; ever bent on diverting herself, she made up her mind to taste the pleasure of vengeance, and set on foot a conspiracy, as frivolous as her diversions. The object, however, was nothing less than to overthrow the Duke of Orleans, and to confer the regency on the King of Spain, Philip V., with a council and a lieutenant, who was to be the Duke of Maine. "When one has once acquired, no matter how, the rank of prince of the blood and the capability of succeeding to the throne," said the d.u.c.h.ess, "one must turn the state upside down, and set fire to the four corners of the kingdom, rather than let them be wrested from one." The schemes for attaining this great result were various and confused.

Philip V. had never admitted that his renunciation of the crown of France was seriously binding upon him; he had seen, by the precedent of the war of devolution, how a powerful sovereign may make sport of such acts; his Italian minister, Alberoni, an able and crafty man, who had set the crown of Spain upon the head of Elizabeth Farnese, and had continued to rule her, cautiously egged on his master into hostilities against France.

They counted upon the Parliaments, taking example from that of Paris, on the whole of Brittany, in revolt at the prolongation of the t.i.the-tax, on all the old court, accustomed to the yoke of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and of Madame de Maintenon, on Languedoc, of which the Duke of Maine was the governor; they talked of carrying off the Duke of Orleans, and taking him to the castle of Toledo; Alberoni promised the a.s.sistance of a Spanish army.

The d.u.c.h.ess of Maine had fired the train, without the knowledge, she said, and probably against the will, too, of her husband, more indolent than she in his perfidy. Some scatter-brains of great houses were mixed up in the affair; MM. de Richelieu, de Laval, and de Pompadour; there was secret coming and going between the castle of Sceaux and the house of the Spanish amba.s.sador, the Prince of Cellamare; M. de Malezieux, the secretary and friend of the d.u.c.h.ess, drew up a form of appeal from the French n.o.bility to Philip V., but n.o.body had signed it, or thought of doing so. They got pamphlets written by Abbe Brigault, whom the d.u.c.h.ess had sent to Spain; the mystery was profound, and all the conspirators were convinced of the importance of their manoeuvres; every day, however, the Regent was informed of them by his most influential negotiator with foreign countries, Abbe Dubois, his late tutor, and the most depraved of all those who were about him. Able and vigilant as he was, he was not ignorant of any single detail of the plot, and was only giving the conspirators time to compromise themselves. At last, just as a young abbe, Porto Carrero, was starting for Spain, carrying important papers, he was arrested at Poitiers, and his papers were seized. Next day, December 7, 1718, the Prince of Cellamare's house was visited, and the streets were lined with troops. Word was brought in all haste to the d.u.c.h.ess of Maine. She had company, and dared not stir. M. de Chatillon came in; joking commenced. "He was a cold creature, who never thought of talking," says Madame de Stael in her memoirs. "All at once he said, 'Really there is some very amusing news: they have arrested and put in the Bastille, for this affair of the Spanish amba.s.sador, a certain Abbe Bri . . . . Bri' he could not remember the name, and those who knew it had no inclination to help him. At last he finished, and added, 'The most amusing part is, that he has told all, and so, you see, there are some folks in a great fix.' Thereupon he burst out laughing for the first time in his life. The d.u.c.h.ess of Maine, who had not the least inclination thereto, said, 'Yes, that is very amusing.' 'O! it is enough to make you die of laughing,' he resumed; 'fancy those folks who thought their affair was quite a secret; here's one who tells more than he is asked, and names everybody by name!'" The agony was prolonged for some days; jokes were beginning to be made about it at the d.u.c.h.ess of Maine's; she kept friends with her to pa.s.s the night in her room, waiting for her arrest to come. Madame de Stael was reading Machiavelli's conspiracies.

"Make haste and take away that piece of evidence against us," said Madame du Maine, laughingly, "it would be one of the strongest."

The arrest came, however; it was six A.M., and everybody was asleep, when the king's men entered the Duke of Maine's house. The Regent had for a long time delayed to act, as if he wanted to leave everybody time to get away; but the conspirators were too scatter-brained to take the trouble.

The d.u.c.h.ess was removed to Dijon, within the government, and into the very house of the Duke of Bourbon, her nephew, which was a very bitter pill for her. The Duke of Maine, who protested his innocence and his ignorance, was detained in the Castle of Dourlans in Picardy. Cellamare received his pa.s.sports and quitted France. The less ill.u.s.trious conspirators were all put in the Bastille; the majority did not remain there long, and purchased their liberty by confessions, which the d.u.c.h.ess of Maine ended by confirming. "Do not leave Paris until you are driven thereto by force," Alberoni had written to the Prince of Cellamare, "and do not start before you have fired all the mines." Cellamare started, and the mines did not burst after his withdrawal; conspiracy and conspirators were covered with ridicule; the natural clemency of the Regent had been useful; the part of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Maine was played out.

The only serious result of Cellamare's conspiracy was to render imminent a rupture with Spain. From the first days of the regency the old enmity of Philip V. towards the Duke of Orleans and the secret pretensions of both of them to the crown of France, in case of little Louis XV.'s death, rendered the relations between the two courts th.o.r.n.y and strained at bottom, though still perfectly smooth in appearance. It was from England that Abbe Dubois urged the Regent to seek support. Dubois, born in the very lowest position, and endowed with a soul worthy of his origin, was "a little, lean man, wire-drawn, with a light colored wig, the look of a weasel, a clever expression," says St. Simon, who detested him; "all vices struggled within him for the mastery; they kept up a constant hubbub and strife together. Avarice, debauchery, ambition, were his G.o.ds; perfidy, flattery, slavishness, his instruments; and complete unbelief his comfort. He excelled in low intrigues; the boldest lie was second nature to him, with an air of simplicity, straightforwardness, sincerity, and often bashfulness." In spite of all these vices, and the depraving influence he had exercised over the Duke of Orleans from his earliest youth, Dubois was able, often far-sighted, and sometimes bold; he had a correct and tolerably practical mind. Madame, who was afraid of him, had said to her son on the day of his elevation to power, "I desire only the welfare of the state and your own glory; I have but one request to make for your honor's sake, and I demand your word for it, that is, never to employ that scoundrel of an Abbe Dubois, the greatest rascal in the world, and one who would sacrifice the state and you to the slightest interest." The Regent promised; yet a few months later and Dubois was Church-councillor of State, and his growing influence with the prince placed him, at first secretly, and before long openly, at the head of foreign affairs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cardinal Dubois----78]

James Stuart, King James II.'s son, whom his friends called James III.

and his enemies Chevalier St. George, had just unsuccessfully attempted a descent upon Scotland. The Jacobites had risen; they were crying aloud for their prince, who remained concealed in Lorraine, when at last he resolved to set out and traverse France secretly. Agents, posted by the English amba.s.sador, Lord Stair, were within an ace of arresting him, perhaps of murdering him. Saved by the intelligence and devotion of the post-mistress of Nonancourt, he embarked on the 26th of December at Dunkerque, too late to bring even moral support to the men who were fighting and dying for him. Six weeks after landing at Peterhead, in Scotland, he started back again without having struck a blow, without having set eyes upon the enemy, leaving to King George I. the easy task of avenging himself by sending to death upon the scaffold the n.o.blest victims. The Duke of Orleans had given him a little money, had known of and had encouraged his pa.s.sage through France, but had accorded him no effectual aid; the wrath of both parties, nevertheless, fell on him.

Inspired by Dubois, weary of the weakness and dastardly incapacity of the Pretender, the Regent consented to make overtures to the King of England.

The Spanish nation was favorable to France, but the king was hostile to the Regent; the English loved neither France nor the Regent, but their king had an interest in severing France from the Pretender forever.

Dubois availed himself ably of his former relations with Lord Stanhope, heretofore commander of the English troops in Spain, for commencing a secret negotiation which soon extended to Holland, still closely knit to England. "The character of our Regent," wrote Dubois on the 10th of March, 1716, "leaves no ground for fearing lest he should pique himself upon perpetuating the prejudices and the procedure of our late court, and, as you yourself remark, he has too much wit not to see his true interest." Dubois was the bearer to the Hague of the Regent's proposals; King George was to cross over thither; the clever negotiator veiled his trip under the pretext of purchasing rare books; he was going, he said, to recover from the hands of the Jews Le Poussin's famous pictures of the Seven Sacraments, not long ago carried off from Paris. The order of succession to the crowns of France and England, conformably to the peace of Utrecht, was guaranteed in the scheme of treaty; that was the only important advantage to the Regent, who considered himself to be thus nailing the renunciation of Philip V.; in other respects all the concessions came from the side of France; her territory was forbidden ground to the Jacobites, and the Pretender, who had taken refuge at Avignon on papal soil, was to be called upon to cross the Alps. The English required the abandonment of the works upon the ca.n.a.l of Mardyck, intended to replace the harbor of Dunkerque the Hollanders claimed commercial advantages. Dubois yielded on all the points, defending to the last with fruitless tenacity the t.i.tle of King of France, which the English still disputed. The negotiations came to an end at length on the 6th of January, 1717, and Dubois wrote in triumph to the Regent, "I signed at midnight; so there are you quit of servitude (your own master), and here am I quit of fear." The treaty of the triple alliance brought the negotiator before long a more solid advantage; he was appointed secretary of state for foreign affairs; it was on this occasion that he wrote to Mr. Craggs, King George's minister, a letter worthy of his character, and which contributed a great deal towards gaining credit for the notion that he had sold himself to England. "If I were to follow only the impulse of my grat.i.tude and were not restrained by respect, I should take the liberty of writing to H. B. Majesty to thank him for the place with which my lord the Regent has gratified me, inasmuch as I owe it to nothing but to the desire he felt not to employ in affairs common to France and England anybody who might not be agreeable to the King of Great Britain."

At the moment when the signature was being put to the treaty of the triple alliance, the sovereign of most distinction in Europe, owing to the eccentric renown belonging to his personal merit, the czar Peter the Great, had just made flattering advances to France. He had some time before wished to take a trip to Paris, but Louis XIV. was old, melancholy, and vanquished, and had declined the czar's visit. The Regent could not do the same thing, when, being at the Hague in 1717, Peter I. repeated the expression of his desire. Marshal Cosse was sent to meet him, and the honors due to the king himself were everywhere paid to him on the road. A singular mixture of military and barbaric roughness with the natural grandeur of a conqueror and creator of an empire, the czar mightily excited the curiosity of the Parisians.

"Sometimes, feeling bored by the confluence of spectators," says Duclos, "but never disconcerted, he would dismiss them with a word, a gesture, or would go away without ceremony, to stroll whither his fancy impelled him.

He was a mighty tall man, very well made, rather lean, face rather round in shape, a high forehead, fine eyebrows, complexion reddish and brown, fine black eyes, large, lively, piercing; well-opened; a glance majestic and gracious when he cared for it, otherwise stern and fierce, with a tic that did not recur often, but that affected his eyes and his whole countenance, and struck terror. It lasted an instant, with a glance wild and terrible, and immediately pa.s.sed away. His whole air indicated his intellect, his reflection, his grandeur, and did not lack a certain grace. In all his visits he combined a majesty the loftiest, the proudest, the most delicate, the most sustained, at the same time the least embarra.s.sing when he had once established it, with a politeness which savored of it, always and in all cases; masterlike everywhere, but with degrees according to persons. He had a sort of familiarity which came of frankness, but he was not exempt from a strong impress of that barbarism of his country which rendered all his ways prompt and sudden, and his wishes uncertain, without bearing to be contradicted in any."

Eating and drinking freely, getting drunk sometimes, rus.h.i.+ng about the streets in hired coach, or cab, or the carriage of people who came to see him, of which he took possession unceremoniously, he testified towards the Regent a familiar good grace mingled with a certain superiority; at the play, to which they went together, the czar asked for beer; the Regent rose, took the goblet which was brought and handed it to Peter, who drank, and, without moving, put the gla.s.s back on the tray which the Regent held all the while, with a slight inclination of the head, which, however, surprised the public. At his first interview with the little king, he took up the child in his arms, and kissed him over and over again, "with an air of tenderness and politeness which was full of nature, and nevertheless intermixed with a something of grandeur, equality of rank, and, slightly, superiority of age; for all that was distinctly perceptible." We know how he went to see Madame de Maintenon.

One of his first visits was to the church of the Sorbonne; when he caught sight of Richelieu's monument, he ran up to it, embraced the statue, and, "Ah! great man," said he, "if thou wert still alive, I would give thee one half of my kingdom to teach me to govern the other."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Peter the Great and Little Louis XV----82]

The czar was for seeing everything, studying everything; everything interested him, save the court and its frivolities; he did not go to visit the princesses of the blood, and confined himself to saluting them coldly, whilst pa.s.sing along a terrace; but he was present at a sitting of the Parliament and of the academies, he examined the organization of all the public establishments, he visited the shops of the celebrated workmen, he handled the coining-die whilst there was being struck in his honor a medal bearing a Fame with these words: _Vires acquiret eundo_ ('Twill gather strength as it goes.) He received a visit from the doctors of the Sorbonne, who brought him a memorial touching the reunion of the Greek and Latin Churches. "I am a mere soldier," said he, "but I will gladly have an examination made of the memorial you present to me."

Amidst all his chatting, studying, and information-hunting, Peter the Great did not forget the political object of his trip. He wanted to detach France from Sweden, her heretofore faithful ally, still receiving a subsidy which the czar would fain have appropriated to himself.

Together with his own alliance, he promised that of Poland and of Prussia. "France has nothing to fear from the emperor," he said; as for King George, whom he detested, "if any rupture should take place between him and the Regent, Russia would suffice to fill towards France the place of England as well as of Sweden."

Thanks to the ability of Dubois, the Regent felt himself infeoffed to England; he gave a cool reception to the overtures of the czar, who proposed a treaty of alliance and commerce. Prussia had already concluded secretly with France; Poland was distracted by intestine struggles; matters were confined to the establishment of amicable relations; France thenceforth maintained an amba.s.sador in Russia, and the czar accepted the Regent's mediation between Sweden and himself. "France will be ruined by luxury and daintiness," said Peter the Great, at his departure, more impressed with the danger run by the nation from a court which was elegant even to effeminacy than by the irregularity of the morals, to which elsewhere he was personally accustomed.

Dubois, however, went on negotiating, although he had displayed no sort of alacrity towards the czar; he was struggling everywhere throughout Europe against the influence of a broader, bolder, more powerful mind than his own, less adroit perhaps in intrigue, but equally dest.i.tute of scruples as to the employment of means. Alberoni had restored the finances, and reformed the administration of Spain; he was preparing an army and a fleet, meditating, he said, to bring peace to the world, and beginning that great enterprise by manoeuvres which tended to nothing less than setting fire to the four corners of Europe, in the name of an enfeebled and heavy-going king, and of a queen ambitious, adroit, and unpopular, "both of whom he had put under lock and key, keeping the key in his pocket," says St. Simon. He dreamed of reviving the ascendency of Spain in Italy, of overthrowing the Protestant king of England, whilst restoring the Stuarts to the throne, and of raising himself to the highest dignities in Church and State. He had already obtained from Pope Clement XI. the cardinal's hat, disguising under pretext of war against the Turks the preparations he was making against Italy; he had formed an alliance between Charles XII. and the czar, intending to sustain, by their united forces, the attempts of the Jacobites in England. His first enterprise, at sea, made him master of Sardinia within a few days; the Spanish troops landed in Sicily. The emperor and Victor Amadeo were in commotion; the pope, overwhelmed with reproaches by those princes, wept, after his fas.h.i.+on, saying that he had d.a.m.ned himself by raising Alberoni to the Roman purple; Dubois profited by the disquietude excited in Europe by the bellicose att.i.tude of the Spanish minister to finally draw the emperor into the alliance between France and England. He was to renounce his pretensions to Spain and the Indies, and give up Sardinia to Savoy, which was to surrender Sicily to him. The succession to the duchies of Parma and Tuscany was to be secured to the children of the Queen of Spain. "Every difficulty would be removed if there were an appearance of more equality," wrote the Regent to Dubois on the 24th of January, 1718.

"I am quite aware that my personal interest does not suffer from this inequality, and that it is a species of touchstone for discovering my friends as well at home as abroad. But I am Regent of France, and I ought to so behave myself that none may be able to reproach me with having thought of nothing but myself. I also owe some consideration to the Spaniards, whom I should completely disgust by making with the emperor an unequal arrangement, about which their glory and the honor of their monarchy would render them very sensitive. I should thereby drive them to union with Alberoni, whereas, if a war were necessary to carry our point, we ought to be able to say what Count Grammont said to the king: "At the time when we served your Majesty against Cardinal Mazarin.

Then the Spaniards themselves would help us." In the result, France and England left Holland and Savoy free to accede to the treaty; but, if Spain refused to do so voluntarily within a specified time, the allies engaged to force her thereto by arms.

The Hollanders hesitated; the Spanish amba.s.sador at the Hague had a medal struck representing the quadruple alliance as a coach on the point of falling, because it rested on only three wheels. Certain advantages secured to their commerce at last decided the States-general. Victor Amadeo regretfully acceded to the treaty which robbed him of Sicily; he was promised one of the Regent's daughters for his son.

Alberoni refused persistently to accede to the great coalition brought about by Dubois. Lord Stanhope proposed to go over to Spain in order to bring him round. "If my lord comes as a lawgiver," said the cardinal, "he may spare himself the journey. If he comes as a mediator I will receive him; but in any case I warn him that, at the first attack upon our vessels by an English squadron, Spain has not an inch of ground on which I would answer for his person." Lord Stanhope, nevertheless, set out for Spain, and had the good fortune to leave it in time, though without any diplomatic success. Admiral Byng, at the head of the English fleet, had destroyed the Spanish squadron before Messina; the troops which occupied Palermo found themselves blockaded without hope of relief, and the nascent navy of Spain was strangled at the birth. Alberoni, in his fury, had the persons and goods seized of English residents settled in Spain, drove out the consuls, and orders were given at Madrid that no tongue should wag about the affairs of Sicily. The hope of a sudden surprise in England, on behalf of the Jacobites, had been destroyed by the death of the King of Sweden, Charles XII., killed on the 12th of December, 1718, at Freiderishalt, in Norway; the flotilla equipped by Alberoni for Chevalier St. George, had been dispersed and beaten by the elements; the Pretender henceforth was considered to cost Spain too dear; he had just been sent away from her territory at the moment when the conspiracy of Cellamare failed in France; in spite of the feverish activity of his mind, and the frequently chimerical extent of his machinations, Alberoni remained isolated in Europe, without ally and without support.

The treaty of the quadruple alliance had at last come to be definitively signed; Marshal d'Huxelles, head of the council of foreign affairs, an enemy to Dubois, and displeased at not having been invited to take part in the negotiations, at first refused his signature. [_Memoires de St.

Simon,_ t. xix. p. 365.] "At the first word the Regent spoke to him, he received nothing but bows, and the marshal went home to sulk; caresses, excuses, reasons, it was all of no use; Huxelles declared to the Marquis of Effiat, who had been despatched to him, that he would have his hand cut off rather than sign. The Duke of Orleans grew impatient, and took a resolution very foreign to his usual weakness; he sent D'Antin to Marshal d'Huxelles, bidding him to make choice of this: either to sign or lose his place, of which the Regent would immediately dispose in favor of somebody who would not be so intractable (_farouclae_) as he. O, mighty power of orvietan (_a counterpoison_)! This man so independent, this great citizen, this courageous minister, had no sooner heard the threat, and felt that it would be carried into effect, than he bowed his head beneath his huge hat, which he always had on, and signed right off, without a word. He even read the treaty to the council of regency in a low and trembling voice, and when the Regent asked his opinion, 'the opinion of the treaty,' he answered, between his teeth, with a bow."

Some days later appeared, almost at the same time--the 17th of December, 1718, and the 9th of January, 1719--the manifestoes of England and France, proclaiming the resolution of making war upon Spain, whilst Philip V., by a declaration of December 25th, 1718, p.r.o.nounced all renunciations illusory, and proclaimed his right to the throne of France in case of the death of Louis XV. At the same time he made an appeal to an a.s.sembly of the States-general against the tyranny of the Regent, "who was making alliances," he said, "with the enemies of the two crowns."

For once, in a way, Alberoni indulged the feelings of the king his master, and, in spite of the good will felt by a part of the grandees towards France, Spain was, on the whole, with him; he no longer felt himself to be threatened, as he had been a few months before, when the king's illness had made him tremble for his greatness, and perhaps for his life. He kept the monarch shut up in his room, refusing entrance to even the superior officers of the palace. [_Memoires de St. Simon,_ t. xv.] "The Marquis of Villena, major-domo major, having presented himself there one afternoon, one of the valets inside half opened the door, and told him, with much embarra.s.sment, that he was forbidden to let him in. 'You are insolent, sir,' replied the marquis; 'that cannot be.'

He pushed; the door against the valet and went in. The marquis, though covered with glory, being very weak on his legs, thus advances with short steps, leaning on his little stick. The queen and the cardinal see him, and look at one another. The king was too ill to take notice of anything, and his curtains were drawn. The cardinal, seeing the marquis approach, went up to him, and represented to him that the king wished to be alone, and begged him to go away. 'That is not true,' said the marquis. 'I kept my eye upon you, and the king never said a word to you.' The cardinal, insisting, took him by the arm to make him go out; what with the heat of the moment, and what with the push, the marquis, being feeble, fell into an arm-chair which happened to be by. Wroth at his fall, he raises his stick and brings it down with all his might, hammer and tongs, about the cardinal's ears, calling him a little rascal, a little hound, who deserved nothing short of the stirrup-leathers. When he did at last go out, the queen had looked on from her seat at this adventure all through, without moving or saying a word, and so had the few who were in the room, without daring to stir. The curious thing is, that the cardinal, mad as he was, but taken completely by surprise at the blows, did not defend himself, and thought of nothing but getting clear.

The same evening the marquis was exiled to his estates, without ever wanting to return from them, until the fall of Alberoni." Alberoni has sometimes been compared to the great cardinals who had governed France.

To say nothing of the terror with which Richelieu inspired the grandees, who detested him, the Prince of Coude would not have dared to touch Cardinal Mazarin with the tip of his cane, even when the latter "kissed his boots" in the courtyard of the castle at Havre.

Alberoni had persuaded his master that the French were merely awaiting the signal to rise in his favor; the most odious calumnies were everywhere circulating against the Regent; he did not generally show that he was at all disturbed or offended by them; however, when the poem of the Philippics by La Grange appeared, he desired to see it; the Duke of St. Simon took it to him. "'Read it to me,' said the Regent. 'That I will never do, Monseigneur,' said I. He then took it and read it quite low, standing up in the window of his little winter-closet, where we were. All at once I saw him change countenance, and turn towards me, tears in his eyes, and very near fainting. 'All,' said he to me, 'this is too bad, this horrid thing is too much for me.' He had lit upon the pa.s.sage where the scoundrel had represented the Duke of Orleans purposing to poison the king, and all ready to commit his crime. I have never seen man so transfixed, so deeply moved, so overwhelmed by a calumny so enormous and so continuous. I had all the pains in the world to bring him round a little." King Louis XV., who had no love and scarcely any remembrance, preserved all his life some affection for the Regent, and sincere grat.i.tude for the care which the latter had lavished upon him.

The Duke of Orleans had never desired the crown for himself, and the attentions full of tender respect which he had shown the little king had made upon the child an impression which was never effaced.

The preparations for war with Spain meanwhile continued; the Prince of Conti was nominally at the head of the army, Marshal Berwick was intrusted with the command. He accepted it, in spite of his old connections with Spain, the benefits which Philip V. had heaped upon him, and the presence of his eldest son, the Duke of Liria, in the Spanish ranks. There were others who attached more importance to grat.i.tude. Berwick thought very highly of lieutenant-general Count D'Asfeldt, and desired to have him in his army; the Duke of Orleans spoke to him about it. "Monseigneur," answered D'Asfeldt, "I am a Frenchman, I owe you everything, I have nothing to expect save from you, but," taking the Fleece in his hand and showing it, "what would you have me do with this, which I hold, with the king's permission, from the King of Spain, if I were to serve against Spain, this being the greatest honor that I could have received?" He phrased his repugnance so well, and softened it down by so many expressions of attachment to the Duke of Orleans, that he was excused from serving against Spain, and he contented himself with superintending at Bordeaux the service of the commissariat. The French army, however, crossed the frontier in the month of March, 1719. "The Regent may send a French army whenever he pleases," wrote Alberoni, on the 21st November, 1718; "proclaim publicly that there will not be a shot fired, and that the king our master will have provisions ready to receive them." He had brought the king, the queen, and the prince of the Asturias into the camp; Philip V. fully expected the desertion of the French army in a ma.s.s. Not a soul budged; some refugees made an attempt to tamper with certain officers of their acquaintance; their messenger was hanged in the middle of Marshal Berwick's camp. Fontarabia, St.

Sebastian, and the Castle of Urgel fell before long into the power of the French; another division burned, at the port of Los Pasages, six vessels which chanced to be on the stocks; an English squadron destroyed those at Centera and in the port of Vigo. Everywhere the depots were committed to the flames: this cruel and destructive war against an enemy whose best troops were fighting far away, and who was unable to offer more than a feeble resistance, gratified the pa.s.sions and the interests of England rather than of France. "It was, of course, necessary," said Berwick, "that the English government should be able to convince the next Parliament that nothing had been spared to diminish the navy of Spain."

During this time the English fleet and the emperor's troops were keeping up an attack in Sicily upon the Spanish troops, who made a heroic defence, but were without resources or re-enforcements, and were diminis.h.i.+ng, consequently, every day. The Marquis of Leyden no longer held anything but Palermo and the region round AEtna.

Alberoni had attempted to create a diversion by hurling into the midst of France the brand of civil war. Brittany, for a long time past discontented with its governor, the Marquis of Montesquiou, and lately worked upon by the agents of the d.u.c.h.ess of Maine, was ripe for revolt; a few n.o.blemen took up arms, and called upon the peasants to enter the forest with them, that is, to take the field. Philip V. had promised the a.s.sistance of a fleet, and had supplied some money. But the peasants did not rise, the Spanish s.h.i.+ps were slow to arrive, the enterprise attempted against the Marquis of Montesquiou failed, the conspirators were surrounded in the forest of Noe, near Rennes; a great number were made prisoners and taken away to Nantes, where a special chamber inquired into the case against them. Three n.o.blemen and one priest perished on the scaffold.

Insurrection, as well as desertion and political opposition, had been a failure; Philip V. was beaten at home as well as in Sicily. The Regent succeeded in introducing to the presence of the King of Spain an unknown agent, who managed to persuade the monarch that the cardinal was s.h.i.+rking his responsibility before Europe, a.s.serting that the king and queen had desired the war, and that he had confined himself to gratifying their pa.s.sions. The Duke of Orleans said, at the same time, quite openly, that he made war not against Philip V. or against Spain, but against Alberoni only. Lord Stanhope declared, in the name of England, that no peace was possible, unless its preliminary were the dismissal of the pernicious minister. The fall of Alberoni was almost as speedy as that which he had but lately contrived for his enemy the Princess des Ursins. On the 4th of December, 1719, he received orders to quit Madrid within eight days and Spain under three weeks. He did not see the king or queen again, and retired first to Genoa, going by France, and then finally to Rome. He took with him an immense fortune. It was discovered, after his departure, that he had placed amongst the number of his treasures, the authentic will of Charles II., securing the throne of Spain to Philip V.

He was pursued, his luggage ransacked, and the precious doc.u.ment recovered. Alberoni had restored order in the internal administration of Spain; he had cleared away many abuses; Italian as he was, he had resuscitated Spanish ambition. "I requickened a corpse," he used to say.

His views were extensive and daring, but often chimerical; he had reduced to a nullity the sovereign whom he governed for so long, keeping him shut up far away from the world, in a solitude which he was himself almost the only one to interrupt. "The queen has the devil in her," he used to say; "if she finds a man of the sword who has some mental resources and is a pretty good general, she will make a racket in France and in Europe."

The queen did not find a general; and on the 17th of February, 1720, peace was signed at the Hague between Spain and the powers in coalition against her, to the common satisfaction of France and Spain, whom so many ties already united. The haughty Elizabeth Farnese looked no longer to anybody but the Duke of Orleans for the elevation of her children.

So great success in negotiation, however servile had been his bearing, had little by little increased the influence of Dubois over his master.

The Regent knew and despised him, but he submitted to his sway and yielded to his desires, sometimes to his fancies. Dubois had for a long while comprehended that the higher dignities of the church could alone bring him to the grandeur of which he was ambitious; yet everything about him seemed to keep them out of his reach, his scandalous life, his perpetual intrigues, the baseness, not of his origin, but of his character and conduct; nevertheless, the see of Cambrai having become vacant by the death of Cardinal de la Tremoille, Dubois conceived the hope of obtaining it. "Impudent as he was," says St. Simon, "great as was the sway he had acquired over his master, he found himself very much embarra.s.sed, and masked his effrontery by ruse; he told the Duke of Orleans that he had dreamed a funny dream, that he was Archbishop of Cambrai. The Regent, who saw what he was driving at, answered him in a tone of contempt, 'Thou, Archbishop of Cambrai! thou hast no thought of such a thing?' And the other persisting, he bade him think of all the scandal of his life. Dubois had gone too far to stop on so fine a road, and quoted to him precedents, of which there were, unfortunately, only too many. The Duke of Orleans, less moved by such bad reasons than put to it how to resist the suit of a man whom he was no longer wont to dare gainsay in anything, sought to get out of the affair. 'Why! who would consecrate thee?' 'Ah! if that's all,' replied Dubois, cheerfully, 'the thing is done. I know well who will consecrate me; but is that all, once more?' 'Well! who?' asked the Regent. 'Your premier almoner; there he is, outside; he will ask nothing better.' And he embraces the legs of the Duke of Orleans,--who remains stuck and caught without having the power to refuse,--goes out, draws aside the Bishop of Nantes, tells him that he himself has got Cambrai, begs him to consecrate him,--who promises immediately,--comes in again, capers, returns thanks, sings praises, expresses wonder, seals the matter more and more surely by reckoning it done, and persuading the Regent that it is so, who never dared say no. That is how Dubois made himself Archbishop of Cambrai."

He was helped, it is said, by a strange patron. Destouches, charge d'affaires in London, who was kept well informed by Dubois, went to see George I., requesting him to write to the Regent, recommending to him the negotiator of the treaties. The king burst out laughing. "How can you ask a Protestant prince," said he, "to mix himself up with the making of an archbishop in France? The Regent will laugh at the idea, as I do, and will do nothing of the sort." "Pardon me, sir," rejoined Destouches, "he will laugh, but he will do it, first out of regard for your Majesty, and then because he will think it a good joke. I beseech your Majesty to be pleased to sign the letter I have here already written." King George signed, and the adroit Dubois became Archbishop of Cambrai. He even succeeded in being consecrated, not only by the Bishop of Nantes, but also by Cardinal Rohan and by Ma.s.sillon, one of the glories of the French episcopate, a timid man and a poor one, in despite of his pious eloquence. The Regent, as well as the whole court, was present at the ceremony, to the great scandal of the people attached to religion.

Dubois received all the orders on the same day; and, when he was joked about it, he brazen-facedly called to mind the precedent of St. Ambrose.

Dubois henceforth cast his eyes upon the cardinal's hat, and his negotiations at Rome were as brisk as those of Alberoni had but lately been with the same purpose.

Amidst so much defiance of decency and public morality, in the presence of such profound abuse of sacred things, G.o.d did not, nevertheless, remain without testimony, and his omnipotent justice had spoken. On the 21st of July, 1719, the d.u.c.h.ess of Berry, eldest daughter of the Regent, had died at the Palais-Royal, at barely twenty-four years of age; her health, her beauty, and her wit were not proof against the irregular life she had led. Ere long a more terrible cry arose from one of the chief cities of the kingdom. "The plague," they said, "is at Ma.r.s.eilles, brought, none knows how, on board a s.h.i.+p from the East." The terrible malady had by this time been brooding for a month in the most populous quarters without anybody's daring to give it its real name. "The public welfare demands," said Chancellor d'Aguesseau, "that the people should be persuaded that the plague is not contagious, and that the ministry should behave as if it were persuaded of the contrary." Meanwhile emigration was commencing at Ma.r.s.eilles; the rich folks had all taken flight; the majority of the public functionaries, unfaithful to their duty, had imitated them, when, on the 31st of July, 1720, the Parliament of Aix, scared at the contagion, drew round Ma.r.s.eilles a sanitary line, proclaiming the penalty of death against all who should dare to pa.s.s it; the mayor (_viguier_) and the four sheriffs were left alone, and without resources to confront a populace bewildered by fear, suffering, and, ere long, famine. Then shone forth that grandeur of the human soul, which displays itself in the hour of terror, as if to testify of the divine image still existing amidst the wreck of us. Whilst the Parliament was flying from threatened Aix, and hurrying affrighted from town to town, accompanied or pursued in its route by the commandant of the province, all that while the Bishop of Ma.r.s.eilles, Monseigneur de Belzunce, the sheriffs Estelle and Moustier, and a simple officer of health, Chevalier Roze, sufficed in the depopulated town for all duties and all acts of devotion.

The plague showed a preference for attacking robust men, young people, and women in the flower of their age; it disdained the old and the sick; there was none to care for the dying, none to bury the dead. The doctors of Ma.r.s.eilles had fled, or dared not approach the dying without precautions, which redoubled the terror. "The doctors ought to be abolished," wrote Dubois to the Archbishop of Aix, "or ordered to show more ability and less cowardice, for it is a great calamity."

Some young doctors, arriving from Montpellier, raised the courage of their desponding brethren, and the sick no longer perished without help.

Rallying round the bishop, the priests, a.s.sisted by the members of all the religious orders, flew from bedside to bedside, and from grave to grave, without being able to suffice for the duties of their ministry.

"Look at Belzunce," writes M. Lemontey; "all he possessed, he has given; all who served him are dead; alone, in poverty, afoot, in the morning he penetrates into the most horrible dens of misery, and in the evening, he is found again in the midst of places bespattered with the dying; he quenches their thirst, he comforts them as a friend, he exhorts them as an apostle, and on this field of death he gleans abandoned souls. The example of this prelate, who seems to be invulnerable, animates with courageous emulation--not the clergy of lazy and emasculated dignitaries, for they fled at the first approach of danger, but--the parish-priests, the vicars and the religious orders; not one deserts his colors, not one puts any bound to his fatigues save with his life. Thus perished twenty- six Recollects and eighteen Jesuits out of twenty-six. The Capucins summoned their brethren from the other provinces, and the latter rushed to martyrdom with the alacrity of the ancient Christians; out of fifty- five the epidemic slew forty-three. The conduct of the priests of the Oratory was, if possible, more magnanimous. The functions of the sacred ministry were forbidden them by the bishop, a fanatical partisan of the bull Unigenitus; they refused to profit by their disqualification, and they devoted themselves to the service of the sick with heroic humility; nearly all succ.u.mbed, and there were still tears in the city for the Superior, a man of eminent piety."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Belzunce amid the Plague-stricken----96]

During more than five months the heroic defenders of Ma.r.s.eilles struggled against the scourge. The bishop drew the populace on to follow in his steps, in processions or in the churches, invoking the mercy of G.o.d in aid of a city which terror and peril seemed to have the effect of plunging into the most awful corruption. Estelle, Moustier, and Chevalier Roze, heading the efforts attempted in all directions to protect the living and render the last offices to the dead, themselves put their hands to the work, aided by galley-men who had been summoned from the hulks. Courage was enough to establish equality between all ranks and all degrees of virtue. Monseigneur de Belzunce sat upon the seat of the tumbrel laden with corpses, driven by a convict stained with every crime.

Ma.r.s.eilles had lost a third of its inhabitants. Aix, Toulon, Arles, the Cevennes, the Gevaudan were attacked by the contagion; fearful was the want in the decimated towns long deprived of every resource. The Regent had forwarded corn and money; the pope sent out three s.h.i.+ps laden with provisions; one of the vessels was wrecked, the two others were seized by Barbary pirates, who released them as soon as they knew their destination. The cargo was deposited on a desert island in sight of Toulon. Thither it was that boats, putting off from Ma.r.s.eilles, went to fetch the alms of the pope, more charitable than many priests, accompanying his gifts with all the spiritual consolations and indulgences of his holy office. The time had not come for Ma.r.s.eilles and the towns of Provence to understand the terrible teaching of G.o.d.

Scarcely had they escaped from the dreadful scourge which had laid them waste, when they plunged into excesses of pleasure and debauchery, as if to fly from the memories that haunted them. Scarcely was a thought given to those martyrs to devotion who had fallen during the epidemic; those who survived received no recompense; the Regent, alone, offered Monseigneur de Belzunce the bishopric of Laon, the premier ecclesiastical peerage in the kingdom; the saintly bishop preferred to remain in the midst of the flock for which he had battled against despair and death.

It was only in 1802 that the city of Ma.r.s.eilles at last raised a monument to its bishop and its heroic magistrates.