The Eve of the French Revolution

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There is no doubt that the French administrative body at the time when
Louis XVI. began to reign, was corrupt and self-seeking. In the
management of the finances and of the army, illegitimate profits were
made. But this was not the worst evil from which the public service was
suffering. France was in fact governed by what in modern times is called
"a ring." The members of such an organization pretend to serve the
sovereign, or the public, and in some measure actually do so; but their
rewards are determined by intrigue and favor, and are entirely
disproportionate to their services. They generally prefer jobbery to
direct stealing, and will spend a million of the state's money in a
needless undertaking, in order to divert a few thousands into their own
pockets.

They hold together against all the world, while trying to circumvent
each other. Such a ring in old France was the court. By such a ring will
every country be governed, where the sovereign who possesses the
political power is weak in moral character or careless of the public
interest; whether that sovereign be a monarch, a chamber, or the mass of
the people.[Footnote: "Quand, dans un royaume, il y a plus d'avantage a
faire sa cour qu'a faire son devoir, tout est perdu." Montesquieu, vii.
176, (_Pensees diverses_.)]

Louis XVI., king of France and of Navarre, was more dull than stupid,
and weaker in will than in intellect. In him the hobbledehoy period had
been unusually prolonged, and strangers at court were astonished to see
a prince of nineteen years of age running after a footman to tickle him
while his hands were full of dirty clothes.[Footnote: Swinburne, i.
11.] The clumsy youth grew up into a shy and awkward man, unable to find
at will those accents of gracious politeness which are most useful to
the great. Yet people who had been struck at first only with his
awkwardness were sometimes astonished to find in him a certain amount of
education, a memory for facts, and a reasonable judgment.[Footnote:
Campan, ii. 231. Bertrand de Moleville, _Histoire_, i. Introd.;
_Memoires_, i. 221.] Among his predecessors he had set himself
Henry IV. as a model, probably without any very accurate idea of the
character of that monarch; and he had fully determined he would do what
in him lay to make his people happy. He was, moreover, thoroughly
conscientious, and had a high sense of the responsibility of his great
calling. He was not indolent, although heavy, and his courage, which was
sorely tested, was never broken. With these virtues he might have made a
good king, had he possessed firmness of will enough to support a good
minister, or to adhere to a good policy. But such strength had not been
given him. Totally incapable of standing by himself, he leant
successively, or simultaneously, on his aunt, his wife, his ministers,
his courtiers, as ready to change his policy as his adviser. Yet it was
part of his weakness to be unwilling to believe himself under the
guidance of any particular person; he set a high value on his own
authority, and was inordinately jealous of it. No one, therefore, could
acquire a permanent influence. Thus a well-meaning man became the worst
of sovereigns; for the first virtue of a master is consistency, and no
subordinate can follow out with intelligent zeal today a policy which he
knows may be subverted tomorrow.

The apologists of Louis XVI. are fond of speaking of him as
"virtuous." The adjective is singularly ill-chosen. His faults were
of the will more than of the understanding. To have a vague notion of
what is right, to desire it in a general way, and to lack the moral
force to do it,--surely this is the very opposite of virtue.

The French court, which was destined to have a very great influence on
the course of events in this reign and in the beginning of the French
Revolution, was composed of the people about the king's person. The
royal family and the members of the higher nobility were admitted into
the circle by right of birth, but a large place could be obtained only
by favor. It was the court that controlled most appointments, for no
king could know all applicants personally and intimately. The stream of
honor and emolument from the royal fountain-head was diverted, by the
ministers and courtiers, into their own channels. Louis XV had been led
by his mistresses; Louis XVI was turned about by the last person who
happened to speak to him. The courtiers, in their turn, were swayed by
their feelings, or their interests. They formed parties and
combinations, and intrigued for or against each other. They made
bargains, they gave and took bribes. In all these intrigues, bribes, and
bargains, the court ladies had a great share. They were as corrupt as
the men, and as frivolous. It is probable that in no government did
women ever exercise so great an influence.

The factions into which the court was divided tended to group themselves
round certain rich and influential families. Such were the Noailles, an
ambitious and powerful house, with which Lafayette was connected by
marriage; the Broglies, one of whom had held the thread of the secret
diplomacy which Louis XV. had carried on behind the backs of his
acknowledged ministers; the Polignacs, new people, creatures of Queen
Marie Antoinette; the Rohans, through the influence of whose great name
an unworthy member of the family was to rise to high dignity in the
church and the state, and then to cast a deep shadow on the darkening
popularity of that ill-starred princess. Such families as these formed
an upper class among nobles, and the members firmly believed in their
own prescriptive right to the best places. The poorer nobility, on the
other hand, saw with great jealousy the supremacy of the court families.
They insisted that there was and should be but one order of nobility,
all whose members were equal among themselves.[Footnote: See among
other places the Instructions of the Nobility of Blois to the deputies,
_Archives parlementaires_, ii. 385.]

The courtiers, on their side, thought themselves a different order of
beings from the rest of the nation. The ceremony of presentation was the
passport into their society, but by no means all who possessed this
formal title were held to belong to the inner circle. Women who came to
court but once a week, although of great family, were known as "Sunday
ladies." The true courtier lived always in the refulgent presence of his
sovereign.[Footnote: Campan, iii. 89.]

The court was considered a perfectly legitimate power, although much
hated at times, and bearing, very properly, a large share of the odium
of misgovernment. The idea of its legitimacy is impressed on the
language of diplomacy, and we still speak of the Court of St. James, the
Court of Vienna, as powers to be dealt with. Under a monarchy, people do
not always distinguish in their own minds between the good of the state
and the personal enjoyment of the monarch, nor is the doctrine that the
king exists for his people by any means fully recognized. When the Count
of Artois told the Parliament of Paris in 1787 that they knew that the
expenses of the king could not be regulated by his receipts, but that
his receipts must be governed by his expenses, he spoke a half-truth;
yet it had probably not occurred to him that there was any difference
between the necessity of keeping up an efficient army, and the
desirability of having hounds, coaches, and palaces. He had not
reflected that it might be essential to the honor of France to feed the
old soldiers in the Hotel des Invalides, and quite superfluous to pay
large sums to generals who had never taken the field and to colonels who
seldom visited their regiments. The courtiers fully believed that to
interfere with their salaries was to disturb the most sacred rights of
property. In 1787, when the strictest economy was necessary, the king
united his "Great Stables" and "Small Stables," throwing the Duke of
Coigny, who had charge of the latter, out of place. Although great pains
were taken to spare the duke's feelings and his pocket, he was very
angry at the change, and there was a violent scene between him and the
king. "We were really provoked, the Duke of Coigny and I," said Louis
good-naturedly afterwards, "but I think if he had thrashed me, I should
have forgiven him." The duke, however, was not so placable as the king.
Holding another appointment, he resigned it in a huff. The queen was
displeased at this mark of temper, and remarked to a courtier that the
Duke of Coigny did not appreciate the consideration that had been shown
him.

"Madam," was the reply, "he is losing too much to be content with
compliments. It is too bad to live in a country where you are not sure
of possessing today what you had yesterday. Such things used to take
place only in Turkey."[Footnote: Besenval, ii. 255.]

It is not easy, in looking at the French government in the eighteenth
century, to decide where the working administration ended, and where the
useless court that answered no real purpose began. The ministers of
state were reckoned a part of the court. So were many of the upper
civil-servants, the king's military staff, and in a sense, the guards
and household troops. So were the "great services," partaking of the
nature of public offices, ceremonial honors, and domestic labors. Of
this kind were the Household, the Chamber, the Antechamber and Closet,
the Great and the Little Stables, with their Grand Squire, First Squire
and pages, who had to prove nobility to the satisfaction of the royal
herald. There was the department of hunting and that of buildings, a
separate one for royal journeys, one for the guard, another for police,
yet another for ceremonies. There were five hundred officers "of the
mouth," table-bearers distinct from chair-bearers. There were tradesmen,
from apothecaries and armorers at one end of the list to saddle-makers,
tailors and violinists at the other.

When a baby is at last born to Marie Antoinette (only a girl, to every
one's disappointment), a rumor gets about that the child will be
tended with great simplicity. The queen's mother, the Empress Maria
Theresa, in distant Vienna, takes alarm. She does not approve of "the
present fashion according to Rousseau" by which young princes are
brought up like peasants. Her ambassador in Paris hastens to reassure
her. The infant will not lack reasonable ceremony. The service of her
royal person alone will employ nearly eighty attendants.[Footnote:
Mercy-Argenteau, iii. 283, 292.] The military and civil households of
the king and of the royal family are said to have consisted of about
fifteen thousand souls, and to have cost forty-five million francs per
annum. The holders of many of the places served but three months
apiece out of every year, so that four officers and four salaries were
required, instead of one.

With such a system as this we cannot wonder that the men who
administered the French government were generally incapable and
self-seeking. Most of them were politicians rather than
administrators, and cared more for their places than for their
country. Of the few conscientious and patriotic men who obtained
power, the greater number lost it very speedily. Turgot and
Malesherbes did not long remain in the Council. Necker, more cautious
and conservative, could keep his place no better. The jealousy of
Louis was excited, and he feared the domination of a man of whom the
general opinion of posterity has been that he was wanting in
decision. Calonne was sent away as soon as he tried to turn from
extravagance to economy. Vergennes alone, of the good servants,
retained his office; perhaps because he had little to do with
financial matters; perhaps, also, because he knew how to keep himself
decidedly subordinate to whatever power was in the ascendant. The
lasting influences were that of Maurepas, an old man who cared for
nothing but himself, whose great object in government was to be
without a rival, and whose art was made up of tact and gayety; and
that of the rival factions of Lamballe and Polignac, guiding the
queen, which were simply rapacious.

The courtiers and the numerous people who were drawn to Versailles by
business or curiosity were governed by a system of rules of gradual
growth, constituting what was known as "Etiquette." The word has passed
into common speech. In this country it is an unpopular word, and there
is an impression in many people's minds that the thing which it
represents is unnecessary. This, however, is a great delusion. Etiquette
is that code of rules, not necessarily connected with morals, by which
mutual intercourse is regulated. Every society, whether civilized or
barbarous, has such a code of its own. Without it social life would be
impossible, for no man would know what to expect of his neighbors, nor
be able promptly to interpret the words and actions of his fellow-men.
It is in obedience to an unwritten law of this kind that an American
takes off his hat when he goes into a church, and an Asiatic, when he
enters a mosque, takes off his shoes; that Englishmen shake hands, and
Africans rub noses. Where etiquette is well understood and well adapted
to the persons whom it governs, men are at ease, for they know what they
may do without offense. Where it is too complicated it hampers them,
making spontaneous action difficult, and there is no doubt that the
etiquette that governed the French court was antiquated, unadvisable and
cumbrous. Its rules had been devised to prevent confusion and to
regulate the approach of the courtiers to the king. As all honors and
emoluments came from the royal pleasure, people were sure to crowd about
the monarch, and to jostle each other with unmannerly and dangerous
haste, unless they were strictly held in check. Every one, therefore,
must have his place definitely assigned to him. To be near the king at
all times, to have the opportunity of slipping a timely word into his
ear, was an invaluable privilege. To be employed in menial offices about
his person was a mark of confidence. Rules could not easily be revised,
for each of them concerned a vested right. Those in force in the reign
of Louis XVI. had been established by his predecessors when manners were
different.

At the close of the Middle Ages privacy may be said to have been a
luxury almost unknown to any man. There was not room for it in the
largest castle. Solitude was seldom either possible or safe. People
were crowded together without means of escape from each other. The
greatest received their dependents, and often ate their meals, in
their bedrooms. A confidential interview would be held in the
embrasure of a window. Such customs disappeared but gradually from
the sixteenth century to our own. But by the latter part of the
eighteenth, modern ways and ideas were coming in. Yet the etiquette of
the French court was still old-fashioned. It infringed too much on the
king's privacy; it interfered seriously with his freedom. It exposed
him too familiarly to the eyes of a nation overprone to ridicule. A
man who is to inspire awe should not dress and undress in public. A
woman who is to be regarded with veneration should be allowed to take
her bath and give birth to her children in private.[Footnote: See the
account of the birth of Marie Antoinette's first child, when she was
in danger from the mixed crowd that filled her room, stood on chairs,
etc., 19th Dec. 1778. Campan, i. 201. At her later confinements only
princes of the blood, the chancellor and the ministers, and a few
other persons were admitted. Ibid., 203.]

Madame Campan, long a waiting-woman of Marie Antoinette, has left an
account of the toilet of the queen and of the little occurrences that
might interrupt it. The whole performance, she says, was a masterpiece
of etiquette; everything about it was governed by rules. The Lady of
Honor and the Lady of the Bedchamber, both if they were there together,
assisted by the First Woman and the two other women, did the principal
service; but there were distinctions among them. The Lady of the
Bedchamber put on the skirt and presented the gown. The Lady of Honor
poured out the water to wash the queen's hands and put on the chemise.
When a Princess of the Royal Family or a Princess of the Blood was
present at the toilet, the Lady of Honor gave up the latter function to
her. To a Princess of the Royal Family, that is to say to the sister,
sister-in-law, or aunt of the king, she handed the garment directly; but
to a Princess of the Blood (the king's cousin by blood or marriage) she
did not yield this service. In the latter case, the Lady of Honor handed
the chemise to the First Woman, who presented it to the Princess of the
Blood. Every one of these ladies observed these customs scrupulously, as
appertaining to her rank.

One winter's day it happened that the Queen, entirely undressed, was
about to put on her chemise. Madame Campan was holding it unfolded. The
Lady of Honor came in, made haste to take off her gloves and took the
chemise. While she still had it in her hands there came a knock at the
door, which was immediately opened. The new-comer was the Duchess of
Orleans, a Princess of the Blood. Her Highness's gloves were taken off,
she advanced to take the shift, but the Lady of Honor must not give it
directly to her, and therefore passed it back to Madame Campan, who gave
it to the princess. Just then there came another knock at the door, and
the Countess of Provence, known as Madame, and sister-in-law to the
king, was ushered in. The Duchess of Orleans presented the chemise to
her. Meanwhile the Queen kept her arms crossed on her breast, and looked
cold. Madame saw her disagreeable position, and without waiting to take
off her gloves, merely threw away her handkerchief and put the chemise
on the Queen. In her haste she knocked down the Queen's hair. The latter
burst out laughing, to hide her annoyance; and only murmured several
times between her teeth: "This is odious! What a nuisance!"

This anecdote gives but an instance of the well-known and not unfounded
aversion of Marie Antoinette to the etiquette of the French court. But
the young queen made no attempt to reform that etiquette; she tried only
to evade it. Much has been written about Marie Antoinette as a woman,
her terrible misfortunes and the fortitude with which she bore them
having evoked the sympathy of mankind. Her conduct as a queen-consort
has been less considered. The woman was lively and amiable, possessing a
great personal charm, which impressed those who approached her; but that
mattered little to the nation, whose dealings were with the queen. What
were the duties of her office and how did she fulfill them?

The first thing demanded of her was parade. She had to keep up the
splendor and attractiveness of the French monarchy. This, in spite of
her impatience of etiquette, was of all her public duties the one which
she best performed. Her manners were dignified, gracious, and
appropriately discriminating. It is said that she could bow to ten
persons with one movement, giving, with her head and eyes, the
recognition due to each separately.

She had also the art of talking to several people at once, so that each
one felt as if her remarks had been addressed to himself, and the
equally important art (sometimes called royal) of remembering faces and
names. As she passed from one part of her palace to another, surrounded
by the ladies of her court, she seemed to the spectator to surpass them
all in the nobility of her countenance and the dignified grace of her
carriage. She had the crowning beauty of woman, a well-poised and
proudly carried head. Her gait was a gliding motion, in which the steps
were not clearly distinguishable. Foreigners generally were enchanted
with her, and to them she owes no small part of her posthumous
popularity. The French nobility, on the other hand, complained, not
unreasonably, that the queen was too exclusively devoted to the society
of a few intimate companions, for whose sake she neglected other people.
Her court, on this account, was sometimes comparatively deserted. But a
young queen can hardly be very severely blamed if she often prefers her
pleasures and her friends to the tedious duties of her position. Marie
Antoinette had had little education or guidance. Her likes and dislikes
were strong, nor was she entirely above petty spite. "You tell me,"
wrote Maria Theresa to her daughter on one occasion, "that for love of
me you treat the Broglies well, although they have been disrespectful to
you personally. That is another odd idea. Can a little Broglie be
disrespectful to you? I do not understand that. No one was ever
disrespectful to me, nor to any of your ten brothers and sisters." It
was no fair-weather queen that wrote this most royal reproof. Marie
Antoinette never rose to this height of dignity, where the great lady
sits above the clouds. In her days of prosperity she certainly never
approached it. Perhaps no mortal woman ever reached it in early life.
[Footnote: Mercy-Argenteau, _passim_, and especially i. 218, 265,
279; ii. 218, 232, 312, 525; iii. 56, 113, 132 and _n_., 157, 265,
490. Tilly, _Memoires,_ 230. Cognel, 59, 84; Wraxall, i. 85;
Walpole's _Letters,_ vi. 245 (23d Aug. 1776), etc.]

It is one of the most important duties of a queen-consort to set a good
example in morals. Here Marie Antoinette was deficient. Her private
conduct has probably been slandered, but she brought the slanders on
herself. Beside the code of morals, there is in every country a code of
proprieties, and people who habitually do that which is considered
improper have only themselves to thank if a harsh construction is put on
their doubtful actions. The scandals concerning Marie Antoinette were
numberless and public. The young queen of France chose for her intimate
companions men and women of bad reputation. Her brother, Joseph II., was
shocked when he visited her, at the familiar manners which she
permitted. He wrote to her that English travelers compared her court to
Spa, then a famous gambling-place, and he called the house of the
Princess of Guemenee, which she was in the habit of frequenting, "a real
gambling-hell." Accusations of cheating at cards flew about the palace,
and one courtier had his pocket picked in the royal drawing-room. The
queen was constantly surrounded by dissipated young noblemen, who on
race days were allowed to come into her presence in costumes which
shocked conservative people. She herself was recognized at public masked
balls, where the worst women of the capital jostled the great nobles of
the court. When she had the measles, four gentlemen of her especial
friends were appointed nurses, and hardly left her chamber during the
day and evening. People asked ironically what four ladies would be
appointed to nurse the king if he were ill. In her amusements she was
seldom accompanied by her husband. It hardly told in her favor that the
latter was a man for whom a young and high-spirited woman could not be
expected to entertain any very passionate affection.

The country was deeply in debt, and during a part of the reign an
expensive war was going on. It was obviously the queen's duty to
retrench her own expenses, and to set an example of economy. Yet her
demands on the treasury were very great. Her personal allowance was
much larger than that of the previous queen, and she was frequently in
debt. Her losses at play were considerable, in spite of her husband's
well-known aversion to gambling. She increased the number of expensive
and useless offices about her court. She was constantly accessible to
rapacious favorites. The feeble king could at least recognize that he
owed something to his subjects; the queen appears to have thought that
the revenues of France were intended principally to provide means for
the royal bounty to people who had done nothing to deserve it. On the
other hand, she acknowledged the duty of private charity, and believed
that thereby she was earning the gratitude of her subjects. That the
taxpayer was entitled to any consideration is an idea that does not
seem to have entered her mind.

Had Marie Antoinette been the wife of a strong and able king, she would
probably have been quite right in avoiding interference in the
government of the state. Being married to Louis XVI., it was inevitable
that she should try to direct his vacillating will in public matters. It
therefore becomes pertinent to ask whether her influence was generally
exerted on the right side.

It is evident that in the earlier part of her reign the affairs of the
state did not interest her, though her feelings were often strongly
moved for or against persons. Her preference for Choiseul and his
adherents, over Aiguillon and his party, was natural and well founded.
The Duke of Choiseul was not only the author of the Austrian alliance
and of the queen's marriage, but was also the ablest minister who had
recently held favor in France. Had Marie Antoinette possessed as much
influence over her husband in 1774 as she obtained later, she might
perhaps have overcome what seems to have been one of his strongest
prejudices, and have brought Choiseul back to power, to the benefit of
the country. But her efforts in that direction were unavailing. In her
relations with the other ministers, Turgot, Malesherbes, and Necker, her
voice was generally on the side of extravagance and the court, and
against economy and the nation. This, far more than the intrigues of
faction, was the cause of the unpopularity that pursued her to her
grave. If the court of France was a corrupt ring living on the country,
Marie Antoinette was not far from being its centre.

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