The Age of Voltaire

by Will Durant

  Though Louis XV had officially come of age in 1723, he was then only thirteen years old, and he turned over the administration to Louis Henri, Duc de Bourbon. The Comte de Toulouse, legitimized offspring of Louis XIV, had been considered for the post, but had been rejected as “too honest to make a good minister.”79 “Monsieur le Duc” himself was a man of good will. He did his best to alleviate the poverty of the people; he thought to do this by an officially fixed scale of prices and wages, but the law of supply and demand defeated his hopes. He dared to lay an income tax of two per cent upon all classes; the clergy protested, and conspired for his fall.80 He allowed too much influence to his mistress, the Marquise de Prie. She was clever, but her intelligence fell short of her beauty. She maneuvered the marriage of Louis XV to Marie Leszczyńska, hoping to keep the young Queen in tutelage; however, Marie soon lost her influence. Mme. de Prie favored Voltaire, alienated the clergy, and led the Duke to attack the episcopal tutor who had recommended him to the King as chief minister. But the King admired and trusted his tutor beyond any other man in the state.

  André Hercule de Fleury had been made bishop of Fréjus in 1698, royal tutor in 1715. Soon he gained a dominant influence over the boy’s mind. The bishop was tall, handsome, pliant, gracious; a bit lazy, and never pushing his fortune, but he arrived. Michelet and Sainte-Beuve believed that Fleury, as preceptor, had weakened the young monarch’s character with carefree indulgence, and had trained him to favor the Jesuits;81 but Voltaire, no friend of the clergy, thought highly of Fleury both as tutor and as minister:

  Fleury applied himself to mold the mind of his pupil to business, secrecy, and probity, and preserved, amid the hurry and agitation of the court, during the minority [of the King], the good graces of the Regent and the esteem of the public. He never made a merit of his own services, nor complained of others, and never engaged in cabals or intrigues of the court.… He privately endeavored to make himself acquainted with the affairs of the kingdom at home, and its interests abroad. In a word, the circumspection of his conduct and the amiability of his disposition made all France wish to see him at the head of the administration.82

  When Fleury learned that his continuing influence in the determination of policy had provoked the Duc de Bourbon to recommend his dismissal from the court, he made no attempt to maintain his place, but quietly withdrew to the monastery of the Sulpicians at Issy, a suburb of Paris (December 18, 1725). The King ordered the Duke to ask Fleury to return. Fleury did. On June 11 Louis XV, responding to the evident desire of the court, the clergy, and the public,83 abruptly commanded Bourbon “to retire to Chantilly and remain there till further orders.” Mme. de Prie was banished to her château in Normandy, where, bored to death, she poisoned herself (1727).

  Fleury, still advancing by retreating, took no official position; on the contrary he persuaded the King to declare that henceforth he himself would rule. But Louis preferred to hunt or gamble, and Fleury became prime minister in all but name (June 11, 1726). He was now seventy-three years old. Many ambitious souls looked for his early death, but he ruled France for seventeen years.

  He did not forget that he was a priest. On October 8 he revoked the two per cent tax so far as it concerned the clergy; they responded with a don gratuit of five million livres to the state. Fleury asked their support to his request for a cardinal’s hat, which he needed for precedence over the dukes in the Council of State; it was given him (November 5), and now he made no effort to conceal the fact that he was ruling France.

  He astonished the court by remaining as modest in power as he had been in preparation. He lived with an almost parsimonious simplicity, satisfied with the reality, without the appurtenances, of power. “His exaltation,” wrote Voltaire, “made no change in his manners, and everyone was surprised to find in a prime minister the most engaging, and at the same time the most disinterested, courtier.”84 “He was the first of our ministers,” said Henri Martin, “who lived without luxury and died poor.”85 “He was perfectly honest, and never abused his position.”86 He was “infinitely more tolerant than his entourage.”87 He dealt amiably with Voltaire, and winked at the private practice of Protestant rites; but he gave no toleration to the Jansenists.

  He attended in his leisurely way not only to the formation of policy but to the administration of the government. He chose his aides with discerning judgment, and managed them with both firmness and courtesy. Under him Henri François d’Aguessau continued with his long task (1727–51) of reforming and codifying the law, and Philibert Orry restored order and stability to the finances of the state. Avoiding war until he was forced to it by the dynastic ambitions of the ruling family, Fleury gave France long periods of peace that allowed her to reinvigorate her economic life. His success seemed to justify in advance the arguments soon to be voiced by the physiocrats, that to govern little is to govern well. He promised to halt inflation, and kept his word. Internal and foreign commerce expanded rapidly; revenues rose. Spending the revenues with resolute economy, checking the cost of court festivities, he was able to remove from all classes (1727) the two per cent income tax, and to lower the taille that fell so heavily upon the peasantry. He returned to the cities and towns the right to elect their own officials. Under the example of his personal rectitude the morals of the court reluctantly improved.

  Against these credits some major debits raise their heads. He allowed the farmers general to continue their collection of taxes without ministerial interference. To further the vast plan of road building conceived by the intendants he established the corvée that put the peasants to work with no reward but food. He founded military schools for the sons of the aristocracy, but he economized imprudently by neglecting the repair and extension of the navy; soon French commerce and colonies were at the mercy of English fleets. He trusted too fondly to his ability to keep the peace with England.

  So long as Robert Walpole ruled England, the Cardinal’s pacific policy prospered. The two men, though poles apart in morals and character, agreed on the desirability of peace. In 1733, however, his advisers on foreign affairs persuaded him into a halfhearted attempt to replace the King’s father-in-law, Stanislas Leszczyński, upon the throne of Poland. But Leszczyński proposed to reform the Polish constitution and set up a strong government; Russia and Austria preferred a Poland hamstrung by the liberum veto; in the War of the Polish Succession (1733–38) they chased Leszczyński from Warsaw and then from Danzig; Fleury, averse to a major conflict, advised Stanislas to retire to Nancy and Lunéville as titular “king of Lorraine.” It was not all a disaster; Leszczyński and the Powers agreed that on his death Lorraine, which was predominantly French, should revert to France. It so transpired in 1766.

  Fleury, eighty-eight years old, strove with all his waning energy to keep France out of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740). A woman overruled him. Félicité de Nesle, Marquise de Vintimille, who for the time being was sharing the King’s bed, listened in rapture to Charles Auguste Fouquet, Comte de Belle-Isle, grandson of the artistic embezzler, Nicolas Fouquet, whom Louis XIV had so profitably deposed. Belle-Isle told her that Fleury was an old fool; that now, when Frederick II of Prussia was attacking the young Maria Theresa of Austria, a golden opportunity had come for dismembering her empire; France must join Frederick and share the spoils. The charming mistress sang these strains to her royal lover; she urged him to take the reins from the Cardinal’s timid hands, and make France glorious again. Fleury pleaded with him that both honor and interest forbade Belle-Isle’s scheme; England would not let Austria be destroyed to make France so dangerously great; France would have to fight England too; and France was doing so well in peace! On June 7, 1741, Louis declared war on Austria. On November 2 5 Belle-Isle captured Prague, and nearly all France agreed with him that Fleury was an old fool.

  After a year of war the shifty Frederick, deserting France, signed a secret truce with Austria. The Austrian armies, so released, moved into Bohemia and began to encircle Prague; it was only a matter of ti
me before Belle-Isle and his twenty thousand men, already harassed by a hostile population, would be compelled to surrender. On July 11, 1742, Fleury sent to the Austrian commander, Count von Königsegg, a humiliating appeal for mild terms to the French garrison. “Many people know,” he wrote, “how opposed I was to the resolutions we took, and that I was in a way forced to consent.”88 Königsegg sent the letter to Maria Theresa, who at once gave it to the world. A French army was sent to rescue Belle-Isle; it never reached him. In December Belle-Isle, leaving six thousand sick or wounded men behind, led his main force out of Prague to the frontier at Eger; but the flight took place in wintry weather over a hundred miles of mountainous or marshy terrain covered with snow or ice and infested with enemy raiders; of the fourteen thousand men who began that march twelve hundred died on the way. France applauded the brilliant salvage of a humiliating reverse. Fleury gave up his ministry, retired to Issy, and died (January 29, 1743), ninety years old.

  The King announced that henceforth he would be his own prime minister.

  V. LOUIS XV

  How does it feel to be king from the age of five? The boy who was destined to rule France for fifty-nine years was hardly noticed in his early childhood; he was weak, and was expected to die soon. Then suddenly, in 1712, both his parents, the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy, were carried off by smallpox, and the boy was heir to the throne. Three years later he was king.

  Every precaution was taken to unfit him for rule. His governess, Mme. de Ventadour, worried tremulously about the boy’s health, and shielded him from any hardening weather. A Jesuit confessor infused into him an awesome reverence for the Church. Fleury, as tutor, was complaisant and indulgent, and seems to have thought that it would be a blessing for France to have a do-nothing king. The lad’s governor, Maréchal de Villeroi, administered an opposite poison: leading him to a window of the Tuileries to receive the plaudits of a multitude gathered to acclaim him, “Look, mon maître” he said, “all that crowd, all those people, are yours; all belong to you; you are their master.”89 Omnipotence married incompetence.

  Spoiled by adoration, selfish in power, lazy and willful, Louis developed into a bored and taciturn youth, forgivably shunning the surveillance of his guardians—and later the ceremonies and servility of the court—to seek an outlet in wood carving, needlework, milking cows, playing with dogs.90 The elements of cruelty that lurk in all of us were allowed in him to come through his timidity to the surface; it is related that in his boyhood he took pleasure in hurting, even killing, animals.91 In mature years he sublimated this into hunting, but it may have entered into his callous use and quick discarding of the young women trained in the Parc aux Cerfs for a stay in his bed. And yet a certain shy sensitivity and considerateness marked his treatment of his friends.

  He had a good mind, which might have excelled if supported by character. He astonished all by his retentive memory and ready wit. He naturally preferred games to study, but he absorbed some real instruction in Latin, mathematics, history, botany, and military arts. He grew up to be tall, slender but broad-shouldered, with fine complexion and curly golden hair; Maréchal de Richelieu called him “the handsomest lad in his dominions.”92 The museum at Versailles preserves Vanloo’s portrait of him at thirteen, with sword and armor hardly befitting the boyish face. René Louis d’Argenson compared him to Eros. Women fell in love with him at first sight. When he took sick (1722), all France prayed for him; when he recovered, France wept with joy. This people which had suffered so much from its kings rejoiced in the hope that soon the youth would marry and beget a son to continue his noble house.

  Indeed, he had already been affianced (1721), aged eleven, to María Ana Victoria, aged two, daughter of Philip V of Spain; she had been delivered to Paris, and was now waiting for nubility. But Mme. de Prie thought she could ensure her continuing influence by having this tentative union annulled, and marrying Louis to Marie Leszczyńska, daughter of the deposed King of Poland. She had her way. The Infanta was sent back to Spain (1725)—an insult never forgiven by the Spanish court. Stanislas was in refuge at Wissembourg in Alsace when he received the French King’s request for his daughter’s hand. Entering the room where she and her mother were at work, he said, “Let us fall on our knees and thank God.” “My dear father,” exclaimed Marie joyfully, “are you recalled to the throne of Poland?” “God has done us a more astounding grace,” Stanislas replied; “you are made Queen of France.”93 Marie had never dreamed of elevation to the greatest throne in Europe; she had seen pictures of Louis XV as of someone unattainably exalted, handsome, and powerful. The French treasury sent her dresses, petticoats, shoes, gloves, jewelry; it promised her 250,000 livres upon her reaching Versailles, and a life annuity of twenty thousand gold crowns. She took it all in a daze, and thanked God for her good fortune. She was married to the King by proxy at Strasbourg (August 15, 1725); she went merrily through days of tribulation on storm-drenched roads to Paris; she was married to the King in person at Fontainebleau on September 5. He was fifteen, she was twenty-two. She was not beautiful, she was only good.

  Louis, who had as yet shown no interest in women, awoke at the touch of his modest bride. He embraced her with an ardor that surprised his entourage; and for some time their life was an idyl of love and happiness. She won the respect and loyalty of the people, but she was never popular. She was kind, affectionate, tender, and not lacking in playful wit; nevertheless Versailles missed in her the alert mind and vivacious speech that had become obligatory in ladies of the court. She was shocked by the morals of the aristocracy, but she made no other criticism than to give an example of a faithful wife, eager to please her husband and to give him an heir. In twelve years she bore ten children, and in her off years she suffered miscarriages. The royal appetite became a problem for the Queen; she begged the King to be continent at least on the festivals of the major saints. Then, through her labors and duties, she developed a scrofulous fistula, and the King’s ardor sought other channels. Her gratitude to Mme. de Prie and the Duc de Bourbon was a misfortune; she listened too patiently when, in the royal presence, the Duke denounced Fleury; when Fleury came to power he sent her daughters to a distant convent on grounds of economy, and his continuing influence weighted the scales against her. As the King grew colder she retired to an inner circle of her friends, played cards, wove tapestry, tried painting, and found solace in practices of piety and charity. “She lived a convent life amid the fevers and frivolities of the court.”94

  The King had to be amused, and Mme. de Prie had chosen for him an unamusing wife. But not until seven years after his marriage did he take a mistress; then he took four in succession, yet with a certain fidelity, for they were all sisters. None was very comely, but all were lively and amusing, and all but one were experts in coquetry. Louise de Nesle, Comtesse de Mailly, had the honor of being apparently the first to seduce the King (1732). Like Louise de La Vallière, she sincerely loved her royal master; she sought neither riches nor power, but only to make him happy. When her sister Félicité, fresh from a convent, competed for the King’s bed, Louise shared Louis with her (1739) in a heterodox ménage à quatre—for he still visited the Queen. The complication troubled the conscience of the King; for a time he avoided the Eucharist, having heard terrible stories of men who had dropped dead on taking the Host into a sinful mouth.95 This second siren, according to one of her sisters, “had the figure of a grenadier, the neck of a crane, and the smell of a monkey”;96 she managed nevertheless to become pregnant. To preserve the proprieties Louis found a husband for her, making her the Marquise de Vintimille. In 1740 Mme. de Mailly withdrew to a convent; she left it a year later to tend her victorious rival, who was dying in childbirth (1741). The King wept, Mme. de Mailly wept with him; he found comfort in her arms; she became mistress again.

  A third sister, Adélaïde de Nesle, fat and ugly, was clever and witty; she amused the King with her mimicry and repartee; he enjoyed her, found a husband for her, and passed on. A fourth sister, Mme. de F
lavacourt, resisted him and befriended the Queen. But a fifth sister, ablest of them all, Marie Anne de Nesle de La Tournelle, persuaded Mme. de Mailly to present her to the King. She not only conquered him (1742), but insisted on being sole mistress; the amiable Mailly was sent away penniless, falling in a day from royalty to piety; so one Nesle drove out another. Some time later she had to disturb a number of worshipers to reach her chair in Notre-Dame. One of these muttered, “A lot of fuss over a whore.” “Sir,” she said, “since you know me so well, grant me the favor of praying God for me.”97 God must have found it easy to forgive her.

  The new Nesle was the most beautiful of the sorority. Nattier’s portrait of her—fair of face, swelling bosom, graceful figure, swirling silk revealing pretty feet—explains the King’s precipitance. To all this she added a wit as sparkling as her eyes. Unlike La Mailly, she craved riches and power. She reckoned her curves were worth the duchy of Châteauroux, which brought 85,000 francs a year; she received it and its title of duchess (1743), and for a year she entered into history.

  A strong faction at court favored her, for it hoped to use her influence in winning the King to an active martial policy, in which the primacy of government would return from the bourgeois bureaucracy to the military nobility. Louis at times labored dutifully in council with his ministers; he more often delegated his authority and tasks to them, seldom met with them, rarely contradicted them, occasionally signed conflicting decrees proposed by rival aides with conflicting policies. He fled from the irksome etiquette of the court to his dogs, his horses, and the hunt; when he did not hunt the court said, “Today the King does nothing.” Though he did not lack courage, he had no taste for war; he preferred a bed to a trench.

  In bed and boudoir his voluptuous Duchess, reviving Agnès Sorel, urged him to play an active part in war against England and Austria. She pictured Louis XIV leading his army to glory at Mons and Namur, and asked why Louis XV, as handsome and brave as his great-grandfather, should not likewise shine in armor at the head of his troops. She had her way, and died in victory. For a moment the roi fainèant awoke from his lethargy. Perhaps it was at her prompting that when the end had come at last to the pacific Fleury, Louis announced that he would rule as well as reign. On April 26, 1744, France resumed active war against Austria; on May 22 alliance was renewed with Frederick of Prussia, who sent his thanks to Mme. de Châteauroux. Louis proceeded in royal fanfare to the front, followed a day later by his mistress and other ladies of the court, all attended by their wonted luxuries. The main French army, led by the King but directed in tactics by Adrien Maurice de Noailles and Maurice de Saxe, won easy victories at Courtrai, Menin, Ypres, and Furnes. Louis XIV and the grand siècle seemed reborn.