I have always prayed to Thee for his salvation: now the path to it is open.” This saintly idea implies a perfection which is alarming because it is utterly inhuman: it is difficult to recognize maternal affection thus transfigured and freed from the weakness of the flesh which naturally accompanies it. Yet even this mother, for twenty years dead to the world, was perturbed when she knew that her son’s life was threatened. Every day throughout the Comptroller’s long trial she was to be seen at the door of the Arsenal, where the Court was sitting, and she petitioned the judges,
MME. FOUCQUET
Que mon fils est heureux, que j’aime sa prison!
Il est guéri du moins de ce mortel poison.
Par ses malheurs son âme à présent éclairée,
Voit comme dans la Cour elle était égarée.
Plût à Dieu que sa grâce ouvre si bien ses yeux
Qu’il ne les tourne plus que du côté des Cieux.
LA REINE MERE
Il peut, quoique Colbert lui déclare la guerre,
Ouvrir encor les yeux du côté de la terre.
MME. FOUCQUET
Si la terre, Madame, a du péril pour lui,
J’aime mieux à mes yeux le voir mort aujourd’hui.
(Le livre abominable de 1665 qui courait en manuscript parmi le monde, sous le nom de Molière (comédie en vers sur le procès de Foucquet), découvert et publié sur une copie du temps par Louis-Auguste Ménard. Paris, Firmin Didot et CIe” 1883, 2 vols. Vol. II, p. 116.)
The book is neither abominable nor a comedy of any kind. It consists of five Dansenist dialogues in the most insipid style. M. Louis-Auguste Ménard, who attributes this rhymed play to Molière, cannot expect many to share his extraordinary opinion.
The young Queen was ill at the time. Foucquet’s mother sent her one of the plasters she was in the habit of making for the poor, and she was so fortunate as to save the wife of him who was seeking to ruin her son. At least, the Queen’s recovery is generally attributed to Madame Foucquet’s remedy.
We shall see later that the cure did not produce any change of heart in the King.
This incident, however, refers to the downfall of a fortune of which we must first explain the beginnings, and the progressive stages. This I shall do without entering into details of administration or business. I am not writing an essay on the politics or finances of the days of Mazarin. My sole endeavour will be to depict the tastes, the manners and the mind of the creator and the host of Vaux. Vaux is the centre of my design.
In 1635, Nicolas Foucquet, at the age of twenty, entered the magistry as Master of Requests. The Masters of Requests were regarded as forming part of the Parliament, where they sat above the Councillors. From among those officers the Kings had long been accustomed to choose the commissaries whom they despatched into the provinces, to superintend the administration of justice and finance, or to the armies, when they were charged with all that concerned the policing and the maintenance of the troops.
Their journeys were known as the circuits of the Masters of Requests. They gave rise, at a date unknown, to a new office, that of Intendant, which grew in importance with the increase of the royal power. The young Foucquet, in 1636, was sent as Intendant of justice to the district of Grenoble.
The difficulties attending such a mission were great; and Richelieu could not have been ignorant of them. He had, however, diminished them somewhat by suspending the sittings of the provincial parliament which was the Intendants natural enemy. But Foucquet found the people of Le Dauphiné agitated by the memory of the religious wars and ardently engaging in new disputes in respect of certain taxes levied on the goods of the third estate from which the nobility and the clergy were exempt. The decree of the Royal Council which abolished the citizens’ grievances remained a dead letter. Feeling ran high. Foucquet did not succeed in alleviating it. After a revolt which he had been unable either to prevent or to repress he was recalled to Paris. From an inexperienced youth of twenty-one Richelieu could not have expected services which could only have been rendered by an old hand, experienced in negotiation, such, for example, as the Intendant of Guyenne, the skilful and resolute Servien. The opinion is seldom held to-day that the great Minister employed the system of Intendantst as a regular instrument of his policy; which may explain how he came to confide to an apprentice a mission which is regarded as of secondary importance. The office of Intendant was not a permanent one, so that Foucquet’s recall was doubtless not regarded as an absolute disgrace. Nevertheless, during the five years of life and power which yet remained to him, Richelieu, as far as we know, never again employed the young Master of Requests.
But Mazarin, having become first Minister, sent him, in 1647, to the Army of the North, which was under the command of Gassion and Rantzau. The leaders’ disagreements were arresting the army’s progress. Rantzau was a drunkard whom Gassion could not tolerate. Gassion, sober, energetic and fearless, displayed a brutality insufferable even in a soldier of fortune. He forgot himself so far as to strike in the face a captain of Condé’s regiment who had misunderstood his orders. The whole regiment determined to withdraw and the officers struck their tents. Only with great difficulty were they persuaded to remain. Touching this incident, Foucquet wrote to Mazarin:— “All are agreed that M. le Maréchal de Gassion committed a serious abuse in -striking the captain of His Royal Highness’s regiment. Every one condemned such an action, considering that M. le Maréchal should have sent him to prison, or should even have struck him with his sword, or fired his pistol at him, if he thought it necessary; but that it would have been better not to have resorted to such an extreme measure.”
We ought not, I think, to pass over a fact which permitted Foucquet to display, for the first time, as far as we are aware, that spirit of moderation which, until his reason became clouded, enabled him for a time to serve the State so well.
Mazarin was not slow to discern the Intendants merits. In 1648, at the time of the first disturbances, thinking to quit Paris and withdraw with the Court to Saint-Germain, he sent Foucquet to Brie “with orders there to collect large stores of grain for the maintenance of the army.” The Intendant established himself at Lagny and commandeered supplies from the peasants of Brie and Ile-de-France. He was then instructed to compile a list of those Parisians who possessed châteaux or country-houses in the suburbs of the city. Promising to preserve these properties from fire and pillage during the war, Mazarin taxed the owners. In reality he mulcted the rich of the money which he needed. When the Fronde was a thing of the past, Foucquet, as procurator of Ile-de-France, accompanied the King into Normandy, Burgundy, Poitou and Guyenne.
On his return from this royal progress, he bought, with the Cardinal’s approval, the post of Attorney-General in the Paris Parliament. From this office a certain Sieur Méliand retired in Foucquet’s favour, “receiving in return Foucquet’s office of Master of Requests, estimated by the son of the said Sieur Méliand as being worth more than fifty thousand crowns, plus a sum of one hundred thousand crowns in money.”
If Foucquet obtained preferment, it was not without the aid of a young clerk at the War Office, who at that time displayed a great deal of friendliness towards him, but was destined, eleven years later, to bring about his downfall, take his office and endeavour to procure his death. Colbert, who was then on terms of friendship with Foucquet, employed his interest with Le Tellier to recommend the ambitious Intendant. In August, 1650, he wrote to the Secretary of State for War:
“M. Foucquet, who has come here by order of His Eminence, has already on three several occasions assured me that he is possessed of an ardent desire to become one of your particular servants and friends because of the peculiar estimation in which he holds your attainments, and that he has no particular connections with any other person which would prevent his receiving this honour.... I thought it would be very suitable, he being a man of birth and merit and even capable, one day, of holding high office, if you in return were to offer him some friendly advances, si
nce it is not a question of entering into an engagement which might be burdensome to you, but merely of receiving him favourably and of making him some show of friendship when you meet? If you are of my opinion in this matter, I beg you to let me know as much in the first letter with which you honour me; nor can I refrain from assuring you, with all the respect which is your due, that I do not think I could possibly repay you a part of all that I owe you in better coin than by acquiring for you a hundred such friends, were I only sufficiently worthy to do so.”
This is a warm recommendation. We have quoted it in order that the reader may see with what confidence Foucquet inspired his friends, even in those early days, and how highly they thought of him. Moreover, it is interesting to find Colbert praising Foucquet. The latter was installed in, his new appointment on the 10th of October, 1650. He was thenceforth the first of the King’s servants at the head of that bar which the two Advocates General Omer Talon and Jérôme Bignon had caused to be renowned for its eloquence. An instrument of that great body which dealt with the administration of justice, controlled political affairs, exercised an influence over finance, whose jurisdiction extended over Ile-de-France, Picardy, Orléanais, Touraine, Anjou, Maine, Poitou, Angoumois, Champagne, Bourbonnais, Berry, Lyonnais, Forez, Beaujolais and Auvergne, the Attorney-General, Nicolas Foucquet, subdued the fleurs-de-lys to the policy of the Cardinal. Between such virtuous fools as the worthy Broussel, who, through very honesty, would have surrendered his disarmed country to the foreigner, and the Minister who had humiliated the house of Austria, threatened the Emperor even in his hereditary dominions, conquered Roussillon, Artois, Alsace, and who now sought to assure France of her natural boundaries, Foucquet’s genius was too lucid and his views too far-reaching to permit him to hesitate for a moment.
He remained attached to Mazarin’s fortunes when the Minister’s downfall seemed permanent. In 1651, that inauspicious year, he never ceased his endeavours to win supporters in the bourgeoisie and in the army, for the exiled Minister on whose head a price had been set. And when the Prince de Condé, in his manifesto of the 12th of April, 1652, confessed that he had formed ties, both within and without the kingdom, with the object of its preservation, it was the Attorney-General, Nicolas Foucquet, who uttered a protest which compelled the Prince to strike out of his manifesto the shameful avowal of his alliance with Spain, the enemy of France. He contributed not a little to ruin the cause of the Princes in Paris. When Turenne had defeated their army near Etampes (5th May, 1652), the Parliament wished to open negotiations for peace. The Attorney-General repaired to Saint-Germain, bearing to the King the complaints of his good city of Paris. The speech which he delivered on this occasion has been preserved. Its general tone is resolute; its language, sober and concise, contrasting with the obscure and unintelligible style affected by the judicial eloquence of the period. This address is the only example which we possess of Nicolas Foucquet’s oratorical talent. It will be found in M. Chéruel’s Mémoires. Here are a few passages from it:
“.. Sire, I have been commissioned to inform Your Majesty of the destitution to which the majority of your subjects have been reduced. There is no limit to the crimes and excesses committed by the military. Murders, violations, burnings and sacrileges are now regarded merely as ordinary actions; far from committing them in secret, the perpetrators boast of them openly. To-day, Sire, Your Majesty’s troops are living in such licence and such disorder that they are by no means ashamed to abandon their posts in order to despoil those of your subjects who have no means of resistance. In broad daylight, in the sight of their officers, without fear of recognition or apprehension of punishment, soldiers break into the houses of ecclesiastics, noblemen and your highest officials....
“I will not attempt, Sire, to represent to Your Majesty the greatness of the injury done to your cause by such public depredations, and the advantage which your enemies will derive therefrom, beholding the most sacred laws publicly violated, the impunity of crime firmly established, the source of your revenues exhausted, the affections of the people alienated and your authority derided. I shall only entreat Your Majesty, in the name of your Parliament and all your subjects, to be moved to pity by the cries of your poor people, to give ear to the groans and supplications of the widows and orphans, and to endeavour to preserve whatever remains, whatever has escaped the fury of those barbarians whose sole desire is for blood and the slaughter of the innocents....
“Make manifest, Sire, O make manifest at the outset of your reign, your natural kindness of heart, and may the compassion which you will feel for so many sufferers call down the blessings of heaven upon the first years of your majority, which will doubtless be followed by many and far happier years, if the desires and prayers of your Parliament and of all your good subjects be granted.”
These words had little effect. The war continued; the people’s sufferings increased; in the city the disturbances became more violent; several councillors were killed, and the hotel de ville was invaded and pillaged by the populace and by the troops of the princes. In the face of such disorders, which the magistrates could neither tolerate nor repress, the Attorney-General, accompanied by several notables, members of the Parliament, went to the King, who listened to his counsel. To the Cardinal he demonstrated the necessity of holding the Parliament and the Court in the same place, in order to display to the kingdom the spectacle of the King and his senate on the one hand and the rebel Princes on the other; and it was by his advice that a decree was issued on the 31st of July which ordered the removal of the Parliament from Paris to Pontoise, where the Court then was. Foucquet with the utmost energy devoted himself to the execution of this politic measure.
On the 7th of August, the first President, Mathieu Molé, presided at Pontoise over a solemn session in which the members present constituted themselves into the one and only Parliament of Paris. This assembly requested the King to dismiss Mazarin, and this they did in concert with Mazarin himself, who rightly believed his departure to be necessary. But he counted on speedily resuming his place beside the King. In the meanwhile he corresponded with Foucquet, in whom he placed the utmost confidence, “without reservation of any kind,” and whom he consulted on matters of State. Still, there was one point on which they did not think alike. Mazarin eagerly desired to return to Paris with the King, and, as it seemed, for the time being, that this desire could not be gratified, His Eminence was not displeased that the state entry into the capital should be delayed. Foucquet, on the other hand, was in favour of an immediate return to the Louvre. On this subject he wrote to the Cardinal:
“There is not one of the King’s servants, in Paris or out of it, who is not convinced that in order to make himself master of the city the King has only to desire as much, and that if the King sends to the inhabitants asking that two of the city gates shall be held by a regiment of his guards, and then proceeds directly to the Louvre, all Paris will approve such a masterful action and the Princes will be compelled to take flight. There is no doubt that on the very first day the King’s orders will be obeyed by all. The legitimate officers will be restored to the exercise of their function, the gates will be closed to enemies; such an amnesty as Your Eminence would wish will be published, and our friends will be reunited in the Louvre in the King’s presence. So universal will be the rejoicing and so loud the public acclamations that no one will be found so bold as to dissent.”
A few days later, on the 21st of October, amid popular acclamation, Louis XIV entered Paris. The stripling monarch brought with him peace, that beneficent peace which had been prepared by the tactful firmness of the Attorney-General.
Now, Mazarin’s friends had only to hasten his recall. This the Attorney-General and his brother, the Abbé Basile, succeeded in obtaining, and the Cardinal entered Paris on the 3rd of February, 1652. The office of Superintendent of the Finances had then been vacant for a month owing to the death, on the 2nd of January, of the holder, the Duc de La Vieuville. Despite the unfavourable condition of the
kingdom’s finances this office was most eagerly coveted. And the very disorder and obscurity which enveloped all the Superintendent’s operations excited the hopes of those men whom the
Marquis d’Effiat compared with “the cuttle-fish which possesses the art of clouding the water to deceive the eyes of the fisher who espies it.” Then the Superintendent had not the actual handling of the public moneys. Income and expenditure were in the hands of the Treasurers. But he ordered all State expenditure, charging it without appeal to the various resources of the Kingdom. He was answerable to the King alone. If, apparently, all his actions were subject to a strict control, in reality he worked in absolute secrecy. In the year we have now reached, 1653, the Treasury’s poverty and the Cardinal’s laxity permitted every abuse. Money must be found at any cost; all expedients were good and all rules might be infringed.
Things had been going badly for a long while. Since the Regent, Marie de Médicis, had madly dissipated the savings amassed by the prudent Sully, the State has subsisted upon detestable expedients, such as the creation of offices, the issue of Government Stocks, the sale of charters of pardon, the alienation of rights and domains. The Treasury was in the hands of plunderers, no accounts were kept. In 1626, Superintendent d’Effiat found it impossible to arrive at any accurate knowledge of the resources at the State’s disposal or at the amount of expenditure incurred by the military and naval services. Richelieu, when he came into power, began by condemning to death a few of the tax farmers-general. Had it not been for “these necessities which do not admit of the delay of formalities,” he might perhaps have restored the finances to order. But these necessities overwhelmed him and compelled him to resort to fresh expedients. He was driven to court the tax-farmers, whom he would rather have hanged, and to borrow from them at a high rate of interest the King’s money which they were detaining in their coffers. Exports, imposts and the salt tax were all controlled by the tax-farmers. An Italian adventurer, Signor Particelli d’Hémery, whom Mazarin appointed Superintendent in 1646, created one hundred and sixty-seven offices and alienated the revenue of 87,600,000 livres of capital. In 1648 the State suffered a shameful bankruptcy and the troubles of the Fronde supervened, aggravating yet further a situation which would have been desperate in any country other than inventive and fertile France.
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 347