The Bourbon Kings of France

by Seward, Desmond

  Few Frenchmen seem to have regretted the loss of Canada, which Voltaire actually dismissed as ‘a mere few acres of snow’. Louis himself was more interested in power in Europe than in power overseas. Like most contemporary monarchs, he operated his own secret service. His main objectives were to save Poland from Russia and to weaken England. In the first he was unsuccessful, Poland being partitioned at the end of his reign, despite tireless work by his agents; the King was one of the few Frenchmen to recognize the full might of the Russian menace. After the Treaty of Paris he concentrated on M de Broglie’s scheme for invading England; later he allowed the plans to be shown to Choiseul who was impressed, and also sent an Irish officer to investigate a possible invasion of Ireland. The Secret du Roi achieved little but Louis regarded it as essentially a safeguard against any weakening of his authority. He once said, ‘At my own court I enjoy less power than some lawyer at the Chatelet, over my armies less power than a Colonel. It is through the Secret that I can recover what I’ve lost.’

  Choiseul was the French Pitt. He toiled feverishly to restore his country’s position in the world. He handled the King brilliantly, never boring him with excessive details. Abroad he maintained the alliance with Austria and the Family Compact, besides detaching Portugal and Holland from England. The purchase and conquest of Corsica took place in 1768–9, an accession of territory which was a marvellous tonic for French pride, already soothed by the acquisition of Lorraine on the death of Louis’s father-in-law in 1766. As Minister for the Marine, he reorganized the ports and the navy, building over sixty ships of the line and fifty frigates with the King’s enthusiastic encouragement. At the same time, as Minister for War, he improved the army; the artillery was reorganized, training camps were set up, a serious attempt was made to raise the quality of non-commissioned officers, and colonels were no longer allowed to appoint their own junior officers. His ultimate objective, too, was the invasion of England.

  At home Choiseul was less effective. Money was needed to pay for the debts of the Seven Years War and for the new navy, and further taxes could only be obtained with the agreement of the Parlements. Not only did the Duke have little understanding of national finances, but he was not prepared to risk a complete confrontation with the lawyers. Accordingly he tried to buy their support by sacrificing the Jesuits who, as Ultramontanes and the Jansenists’ arch-enemies, were hated by the Parlementaires. As one who sympathized with the Philosophes, Choiseul himself had little love for the Order. In 1761 the Jesuit administrator of the Fathers’ sugar plantations in the West Indies went bankrupt for a large sum (as a result of British privateering); the courts ordered the Order to pay, whereupon it unwisely appealed to the Parlement of Paris, who promptly accused the Fathers of seeking to undermine public morals and the fundamental law. Much against his will, Louis was eventually persuaded by Choiseul to banish the Jesuits from France and to close their schools; the King had done everything possible to save them. Later the Vatican was cajoled into suppressing the entire Order.

  Unfortunately, far from being grateful, the Parlementaires remained as intractable as ever. In 1764 Louis summoned the leading members of the Paris Parlement to Versailles and threatened them, without effect. In 1766, in the Palais de Justice, at the famous Seance de la Flagellation—so called on account of the tremendous tongue-lashing which he gave them—the King told the Paris Parlement that ‘the courts depend for their very existence on me alone … to me alone belongs the legislative power’. But the lawyers remained unabashed. In 1768 he again had to force them to register new taxes by a lit de justice. Despite threats and banishment, they continued to obstruct the Government’s financial policy whenever possible. Choiseul was incapable of envisaging any solution.

  Paradoxically, the Parlements who challenged absolutism were among the most repressive institutions in what was still an age of brutal intolerance and ferocious punishment. Admittedly, a knock on the door at night and the production of a royal lettre de cachet meant arbitrary incarceration in the Bastille or Vincennes, but Louis XV was comparatively sparing in his use of this weapon. On the other hand the lawyers enforced their statutes with the utmost severity, especially on Protestants. When—ten years after the last Huguenot rising of 1752—some Protestant noblemen attempted to rescue their pastor who was being hanged, they were condemned and beheaded forthwith. The Calas affair (in which the Huguenot father of a young suicide was falsely accused by the Toulouse Parlement of murdering him for turning Catholic, found guilty and then barbarously executed) outraged public opinion; after a brilliant campaign of protest conducted by Voltaire, the King forced the Toulouse Parlement to make what reparation it could to the unfortunate man’s family.

  By the 1760s Mme de Pompadour had grown old and plump. Her position was much more secure since being made a lady-in-waiting to the Queen in 1756. None the less, in recent years her sway had been far from unquestioned. Her best friend, Mme d’Estrades, the mistress of M d’Argenson, had plotted to discredit her with the King, while there had been a number of take-over bids by Mme de Choiseul-Romanet and by the bewitchingly pretty Marquise de Coislin (who was known as ‘Proud Vashti’ and who tried to extort vast sums of money). In 1763 the King had an affair with young Mlle de Romans, whose beautiful black hair and satin skin were admired by no less a connoisseur than Casanova. Mlle de Romans, who had ambitions, might have been a really formidable rival; Louis set her up in a house at Passy where she bore him a son and he created her Baronne de Meilly-Coulongé; but her conceit put him off, luckily for Mme de Pompadour.

  Since 1756, poor Mme de Pompadour, already weakened by miscarriages, had suffered from tuberculosis, coughing blood with pitiful regularity; she was also afflicted with insomnia, bronchitis and breathlessness, hiding her ravaged face with more and more cosmetics and an unfailing smile. D’Argenson noted sweetly, ‘the bottom of her countenance is yellow and withered; as for her bosom it is kinder not to mention it.’ None the less, she continued to work at her patronage like some hard-pressed man of affairs, writing as many as sixty letters a day. The disasters of the Seven Years War hurt her deeply for she was a true patriot—she commented, ‘If I die it will be from grief.’ Eventually she found her position almost unbearable. According to her maid, she spent any time alone in tears; in 1763 she complained, ‘My life is like that of the early Christians—a perpetual struggle.’ She turned to religion—commissioning a Book of Hours illuminated by Boucher—and even considered returning to her husband. By now she was so short of breath that she had to move into a ground-floor flat. The poor woman was worn out, and when she contracted a bad inflammation of the lungs in February 1764 she sensed that her end was near. Louis went to Choisy to stay with her and then brought her back to Versailles, visiting her every day. Despite his soothing care, she grew steadily worse. The King now spent all his time in her room. Eventually they had to say good-bye, when the moment had come for her to receive the last rites. Mme de Pompadour died on 7 April 1764, with a courage which even the Dauphin admired. Louis could not attend her funeral, but watched from his study as the cortège left Versailles. He muttered, ‘a friend for twenty years’, and two tears fell from his eyes—he said to his servant Champlost, ‘Those are the only tributes I can pay her.’

  In the autumn of 1765 Horace Walpole, visiting the French court, noticed that the Dauphin was ailing—‘He is a spectre and cannot live these three months’, he wrote. The poor Dauphin, coughing and spitting blood, had indeed lost all his plumpness and, despite devoted nursing on the part of his wife—every day he told her, ‘How I love you!’—died of tuberculosis on 20 December 1765. He was only thirty-four. The King was inconsolable, writing of ‘a terrible blow for me’, and of how he could have suffered ‘no greater loss’. Louis now displayed the better side of his nature. He had liked the Dauphine, Marie Joséphine from the very first; they frequently wrote affectionate letters to each other. He was ready with the kindest and most understanding sympathy—the young widow wrote that in her misery, his kindness
had been her only comfort. But in 1767 Mme la Dauphine died too, of tuberculosis.

  On 24 June 1768, Queen Marie Leszczynska died; she had long been suffering from a tumour. While she lay dying the King spent more time with her than he had for many years—perhaps even he felt a little guilty. For several weeks after her death he showed the most edifying signs of grief and remorse, though he also seemed somewhat preoccupied. The princesses, who fancied that he might remarry, suddenly realized with fury that the preoccupation was with a new mistress. At least the Queen was spared the news.

  Since Mme de Pompadour’s death Louis had been lonely, and there had been several volunteers for the post of maîtresse en titre. Some time in 1768—it is not known exactly when—he met the Comtesse du Barry; it is even possible that the King’s valet brought her to the ‘Bird Trap’. Jeanne Bécu was born in 1743, the illegitimate daughter of a dressmaker; her father seems to have been a friar, Frère Ange. She first came to Paris at the age of five, when her mother found employment as a cook in the house of a rich contractor. This employer was a kindly man who paid for the pretty little girl to be educated at an excellent convent. Leaving school at fifteen, Jeanne was by turn a hairdresser, a companion to an old lady, and a shop girl in a milliner’s establishment where her lustrous dark eyes, radiant complexion and splendid bosom attracted both lovers and custom. She was taken up by M Jean Baptiste du Barry, a professional gambler and pimp, who peddled her services to various smart rakes. She lived with him for five years, calling herself Mme du Barry (although his wife was still alive) and meeting many noblemen from whom, despite being illiterate, she managed to acquire surprisingly polished manners. If she never actually worked in a brothel, she was none the less no better than a very high-class prostitute, albeit selective and at the top of her profession.

  A singularly beautiful woman, far lovelier than Mme de Pompadour, she was nearly twenty-five when she first met the King. Choiseul privately thought that so low born a creature could only be a passing fancy. However, Jeanne had not been a prostitute for nothing; Louis told M d’Ayen that he was experiencing ‘sensual pleasure of an entirely new kind’, and M de Richelieu that ‘she is the only woman in France who can make me forget I am nearly sixty’ (the Duc de Noailles gave it as his opinion that this was because the King had never patronized a really good brothel). To make her respectable, M du Barry—who saw golden possibilities—hastily married her to his bachelor brother, a retired naval officer, who received a large down payment in cash and a magnificent pension before being sent back to the country. By November 1768 she was living at Compiègne next to Mme de Pompadour’s old flat, waited on by footmen in splendid livery; edifyingly, she attended the King’s Mass on Sundays and feast days.

  Soon she had her own château at Louveciennes, with marble pillars and lapis lazuli chimney pieces, supervised by her Bengali page, Zamor. (Years later Zamor would testify against her when she was being tried for her life.) In April 1769, Mme du Barry made her official entrance to court where, wearing a dress of virginal white, her hair snowily powdered and blazing with diamonds, she was presented to the indignant princesses and the little Dauphin. Although nervous, she carried off the ordeal with some style. The King, with his arm in a sling—he had broken it in a hunting accident—watched admiringly. He was quite enslaved and soon afterwards closed the Parc aux Cerfs, no doubt for excellent reasons.

  In May 1770 the Dauphin—Louis-Auguste, Duc de Berry—was married at Versailles to an Austrian Archduchess. Louis-Auguste was sixteen, a fat lethargic youth who was irritated at having to miss his hunting on a day of such glorious weather. (Even Mme du Barry called him ‘the fat, ill-bred boy’.) The Archduchess Maria Antonia—Marie Antoinette, as the French christened her—was a pink-faced little blonde of fifteen, dressed all in white. Among those who signed the register was the Dauphin’s cousin, the Duc de Chartres, who, as ‘Philippe Egalité’, would vote for Louis-Auguste’s execution nearly a quarter of a century later. A violent thunderstorm marred the evening and spoilt the firework display. At the great supper in the Versailles opera house—specially built for the occasion—the Dauphin, enjoying himself for the first time during that long, boring day, fell on the food with his customary voracious appetite. Poor Marie Antoinette merely picked at hers. The King whispered to his grandson, ‘You mustn’t have too heavy a stomach for tonight.’ ‘Why not?’ answered the Dauphin, ‘I always sleep much better after plenty to eat.’ Sure enough, almost as soon as he was in the nuptial bed, Louis-Auguste fell into a deep sleep.

  There then began a fierce feud between the little Dauphine and la du Barry. When Marie Antoinette first inquired just what was that beautiful lady’s function, Mme de Noailles replied cryptically, ‘To make the King enjoy himself.’ On learning the exact nature of Mme du Barry’s employment, the Dauphine was horrified and refused to address a single word to her; soon the ladies of the court were supporting one side or the other, and fighting like cats. King Louis became irritated. News of his displeasure reached Vienna; the Empress Maria Theresa wrote to her daughter that she really must try to be polite to la du Barry, if only to please the King, and must feign ignorance of any squalid relationship. Finally, after nearly two years of ignoring her, the Dauphine at last acknowledged Mme du Barry’s presence at court by saying coldly to her, ‘Il y a beaucoup de monde aujourd’hui à Versailles.’ (There are lots of people at Versailles today.) Louis was delighted and sent beautiful gifts to Marie Antoinette. But the feud went on just the same.

  Choiseul was silly enough to resent Mme du Barry, joking about her in public. The new favourite, who was very good-natured, did her best to make friends, but to no avail, and she ended by hating him. She then spared no opportunity of making spiteful remarks to him, especially during the King’s little supper parties. In December 1770 Louis dismissed him. Horace Walpole wrote, ‘Choiseul has lost his power ridiculously, by braving a fille de joie to humour two women—his sister and his wife.’ In his retirement Choiseul wrote vitriolic memoirs, in which his gibes at the King suggest that there was something a little unstable about the Duke.

  Indeed, there was much more to Choiseul’s dismissal than the new favourite’s hostility. He had all but plunged France into a new war with England by his excessive support of Spain’s claim to the Falkland Islands. Nor was he the right man to cope with the Parlements. He was replaced by the Triumvirat—the Duc d’Aiguillon, the Chancellor Maupeou and the Controller-General Terray.

  Louis’s choice of d’Aiguillon is often dismissed as sheer bad judgement. Admittedly the Duke, another courtier soldier, was mediocre. Yet it is probable that the King chose him for sound reasons. D’Aiguillon was the one public figure who was a declared enemy of the Parlements; as Governor of Brittany he had been harried for years by the Parlement of Rennes, while the Parlement of Paris had only recently failed in an attempt to try him for misgovernment. And unlike Choiseul, he could be relied on not to plunge the country into a war which she could not afford.

  By now the Parlementaires had become an obstacle to national government. From obstructing taxes they had gone on to attacking the King’s officials. To make their point they frequently refused to allow any legal business to be transacted, thus bringing the courts to a standstill. Even Voltaire recognized that ‘this astonishing anarchy could not be allowed to continue. The Crown had to regain its authority or else the Parlement would have triumphed.’ After Louis had stopped the proceedings against M d’Aiguillon by a lit de justice, they adopted their usual strike tactics. On the night of 19 January 1771, musketeers ordered them to resume their duties; they refused. Next day all 700 magistrates were exiled, after being informed that their offices had been abolished. The Parlements were dissolved all over France.

  The Chancellor Maupeou set up new courts. Though these ‘Maupeou Parlements’ were laughed at, and even though they may have sometimes been corrupt, they were a step in the right direction—a blow against the most formidable obstacles to financial and even political reform.


  Now that the Parlements were out of the way it was possible to introduce new taxes. Those envisaged were revolutionary, constituting an attack on wealth and privilege of almost twentieth-century proportions. The bad qualities of the Abbé Joseph Marie Terray—cynicism, avarice and lack of pity—made him an excellent Controller-General. He repudiated many of the government’s more questionable financial obligations, delayed repayment of loans, reduced the income from rentes, converted tontines into life annuities, and abolished a number of court pensions and reduced others. He introduced a swingeing five per cent tax on real property as well as on income, and planned to bring in an entirely new system of taxation. He set up a board to control the grain trade, taxing it but also regulating it to meet supply and demand. To every complaint, Terray—known as the Vulture—answered, ‘The King is master and necessity knows no laws.’ At the same time he did his best to persuade his master to economize on the royal household.

  The work of the Triumvirat, who governed France for the rest of the reign, has some pretensions to be considered as a revolution. It has not received proper recognition because it came to an end prematurely; had it lasted, the Crown might well have succeeded in enforcing radical economies and political reforms in the teeth of the nobility’s counter-revolution. The coup d’état of 1770 against the Parlementaires needed real courage, as did Terray’s reforms. It is to Louis’s credit that for the remainder of his life he gave these strong ministers unqualified support.