The Life of Marie Antoinette

CHAPTER XXII. Formidable Riots take place in some Provinces.-The Archbishop invites Necker to join his Ministry.-Letter of Marie Antoinette describing her Interview with the Archbishop, and her Views.-Necker refuses.-The Queen sends Messages to Necker.-The Archbishop resigns, and Necker becomes Minister.-The Queen's View of his Character.-General Rejoicing.-Defects in Necker's Character.-He recalls the Parliament.-Riots in Paris.- Severe Winter.-General Distress.-Charities of the King and Queen.- Gratitude of the Citizens.-The Princes are concerned in the Libels published against the Queen.-Preparations for the Meeting of the States- general.-Long Disuse of that Assembly.-Need of Reform.-Vices Of the Old Feudal System.-Necker's Blunders in the Arrangements for the Meeting of the States.-An Edict of the King concedes the Chief Demands of the Commons.-Views of the Queen.

The whole kingdom was thrown into great and dangerous excitement by these transactions. Little as were the benefits which the people had ever derived from the conduct of the Parliament, their opposition to the archbishop, who had already had time to make himself generally hated and despised, caused the councilors to be very generally regarded as champions of liberty; and in the most distant provinces, in Bearn, in Isere, and in Brittany, public meetings (a thing hitherto unknown in the history of the nation) were held, remonstrances were drawn up, confederacies were formed, and oaths were administered by which those who took them bound themselves never to surrender what they affirmed to be the ancient privileges of the nation.

The archbishop became alarmed; a little, perhaps, for the nation and the king, but far more for his own place, which he had already contrived to render profitable to himself by the preferments which it had enabled him to engross. And, in the hope of saving it, he now entreated Necker to join the Government, proposing to yield up the management of the finances to him, and to retain only the post of prime minister.

A letter from the queen to Mercy shows that she acquiesced in the scheme. Her disapproval of Necker's past conduct was outweighed by her sense of the need which the State had of his financial talents; though, for reasons which she explains, she was unwilling wholly to sacrifice the archbishop; and the letter has a further interest as displaying some of the difficulties which arose from the peculiar disposition of the king, while every one was daily more and more learning to look upon her as the more important person in the Government. On the 19th of August, 1783, she writes to Mercy,[1] whom the archbishop had employed as his agent to conciliate the stubborn Swiss Banker:

"The archbishop came to me this morning, immediately after he had seen you, to report to me the conversation which he had had with you. I spoke to him very frankly, and was touched by what he said. He is at this moment with the king, to try and get him to decide; but I very much fear that M. Necker will not accept while the archbishop remains. The animosity of the public against him is pushed so far that M. Necker will be afraid of being compromised, and, indeed, perhaps it might injure his credit; but, at the same time, what is to be done? In truth and conscience we can not sacrifice a man who has made for as all these sacrifices of his reputation, of his position in the world, perhaps even of his life; for I fear they would kill him. There is yet M. Foulon, if M. Necker refuses absolutely.[2] But I suspect him of being a very dishonest man; and confidence would not be established with him for comptroller. I fear, too, that the public is pressing us to take a part much more humiliating for the ministers, and much more vexatious for ourselves, inasmuch as we shall have done nothing of our own will. I am very unhappy. I will close my letter after I know the result of this evening's conference. I greatly fear the archbishop will be forced to retire altogether, and then what man are we to take to place at the head of the whole? For we must have one, especially with M. Necker. He must have a bridle; and the person who is above me[3] is not able to be such; and I, whatever people may say, and whatever happens, am never any thing but second; and, in spite of the confidence which the first has in me, he often makes me feel it.... The archbishop has just gone. The king is very unwilling; and could only be brought to make up his mind by a promise that the person[4] should only be sounded; and that no positive engagement should be made."

Necker refused. The next day Mercy reported to the queen that, though the excitement was great, it confined itself to denunciations of the archbishop and of the keeper of the seals; and that "the name of the queen had never once been mentioned;" and on the 22d, Marie Antoinette,[5] from a conviction of the greatness of the emergency, determined to see Necker herself; and employed the embassador and De Vermond to let him know that her own wish for his restoration to the direction of the finances was sincere and earnest, and to promise him that the archbishop should not interfere in that department in any way whatever. Two days later,[6] she wrote again to mention that the king had vanquished his repugnance to Necker, and had come wholly over to her opinion. "Time pressed, and it was more essential than ever that Necker should accept;" and on the 25th she writes a final letter to report to Mercy that the archbishop has resigned, and that she has just summoned Necker to come to her the next morning. Though she felt that she had done what was both right and indispensable, she was not without misgivings. "If," she writes, in a strain of anxious despondency very foreign to her usual tone, and which shows how deeply she felt the importance of the crisis, and of every step that might be taken- "if he will but undertake the task, it is the best thing that can be done; but I tremble (excuse my weakness) at the fact that it is I who have brought him back. It is my fate to bring misfortune, and, if infernal machinations should cause him once more to fail, or if he should lower the authority of the king, they will hate me still more."

In one point of view she need not have trembled at being known to have caused Necker's re-appointment, since it is plain that no other nomination was possible. Vergennes had died a few months before, and the whole kingdom did not supply a single statesman of reputation except Necker. Nor could any choice have for the moment been more universally popular. The citizens illuminated Paris; the mob burned the archbishop in effigy; and the leading merchants and bankers showed their approval in a far more practical way. The funds rose; loans to any amount were freely offered to the Treasury; the national credit revived; as if the solvency or insolvency of the nation depended on a single man, and him a foreigner.

Yet, if regarded in any point of view except that of a financier, he was extremely unfit to be the minister at such a crisis; and the queen's acuteness had, in the extract from her letter which has been, quoted above, correctly pointed out the danger to be apprehended, namely, that he might lower the authority of the king.[7] It was, in fact, to his uniform and persistent degradation Of the king's authority that the greater part, if not the whole, of the evils which ensued may be clearly traced, and the cause that led him to adopt this fatal system was thoroughly visible to one gifted with such intuitive penetration into character as Mario Antoinette. For he had two great defects or weaknesses; an overweening vanity, which, as it is valued applause above every thing, led him to regard the popularity which they might win for him as the natural motive and the surest test of his actions; and an abstract belief in human perfection and in the submission of all classes to strict reason, which could only proceed from a total ignorance of mankind.[8] Yet, greatly as financial skill was needed, if the kingdom was to be saved from the bankruptcy which seemed to be imminent, it was plain that a faculty for organization and legislation was no less indispensable if the vessel of the State was to be steered safely along the course on which it was entering; for the archbishop's last act had been to induce the king to promise to convoke the States-general. The 1st of May of the ensuing year was fixed for their meeting; and the arrangements for and the management of an assembly, which, as not having met for nearly two hundred years, could not fail to present many of the features of an entire novelty, were a task which would have severely tested the most statesman-like capacity.

But, unhappily, Necker's very first acts showed him equally void of resolution and of sagacity. He was not only unable to estimate the probable conduct of the people in future, but he showed himself incapable of profiting by the experience of the past; and, in spite of the insubordinate spirit which the Parliament had at all times displayed, he at once recalled them in deference to the clamor of the Parisian citizens, and allowed them to enter Paris in a triumphal procession, as if his very object had been to parade their victory over the king's authority. Their return was the signal for a renewal of riots, which assumed a more formidable character than ever. The police, and even the guardhouses, were attacked in open day, and the Government had reason to suspect that the money which was employed in fomenting the tumults was supplied by the Duc d'Orleans. A fierce mob traversed the streets at night, terrifying the peaceable inhabitants with shouts of triumph over the king as having been compelled to recall the Parliament against his will; while those who were supposed to be adverse to the pretensions of the councilors were insulted in the streets, and branded as Royalists, the first time in the history of the nation that ever that name had been used as a term of reproach.

Yet, presently the whole body of citizens, with their habitual impulsive facility of temper, again, for a while, became Royalists. The winter was one of unprecedented severity. By the beginning of December the Seine was frozen over, and the whole adjacent country was buried in deep snow. Wolves from the neighboring forests, desperate with hunger, were said to have made their way into the suburbs, and to have attacked people in the streets. Food of every kind became scarce, and of the poorer classes many were believed to have died of actual starvation. Necker, as head of the Government, made energetic and judicious efforts to relieve the universal distress, forming magazines in different districts, facilitating the means of transport, finding employment for vast numbers of laborers and artisans, and purchasing large quantities of grain in foreign countries; and, not only were Louis and Marie Antoinette conspicuous for the unstinting liberality with which they devoted their own funds to the supply of the necessities of the destitute, but the queen, in many cases of unusual or pressing suffering that were reported to her in Versailles and the neighboring villages, sent trustworthy persons to investigate them, and in numerous instances went herself to the cottages, making personal inquiries into the condition of the occupants, and showing not only a feeling heart, but a considerate and active kindness, which doubled the value of her benefactions by the gracious, thoughtful manner in which they were bestowed.

She would willingly have done the good she did in secret, partly from her constant feeling that charity was not charity if it were boasted of, partly from a fear that those ready to misconstrue all her acts would find pretexts for evil and calumny even in her bounty. One of her good deeds struck Necker as of so remarkable a character that he pressed her to allow him to make it known. "Be sure, on the contrary," she replied, "that you never mention it. What good could it do? they would not believe you;[9]" but in this she was mistaken. Her charities were too widely spread to escape the knowledge even of those who did not profit by them; and they had their reward, though it was but a short-lived one. Though the majority of her acts of personal kindness were performed in Versailles rather than in Paris, the Parisians were as vehement in their gratitude as the Versaillese; and it found a somewhat fantastic vent in the erection of pyramids and obelisks of snow in different quarters of the city, all bearing inscriptions testifying the citizens' sense of her benevolence. One, which far exceeded all its fellows in size-the chief beauty of works of that sort-since it was fifteen feet high, and each of the four faces was twelve feet wide at the base, was decorated with a medallion of the royal pair, and bore a poetical inscription commemorating the cause of its erection:

"Reine, dont la beaute surpasse les appas

Pres d'un roi bienfaisant occupe ici la place.

Si ce monument frele est de neige et de glace,

Nos coeurs pour toi ne le sont pas.

De ce monument sans exemple,

Couple auguste, l'aspect bien doux pur votre coeur

Sans doute vous plaira plus qu'un palais, qu'un temple

Que vous eleverait un peuple adulateur.[10]"

Neither the queen's feelings nor her conduct had been in any way altered; but six months later the same populace who raised this monument and applauded these verses were, with ferocious and obscene threats, clamoring for her blood. And there is hardly any thing more strange or more grievous in the history of the nation, hardly any greater proof of that incurable levity which was one great cause of the long series of miseries which soon fell upon it, than that the impressions of gratitude which were so vivid at the moment, and so constantly revived by the queen's untiring benevolence, could yet be so easily effaced by the acts of demagogues and libelers, whom the people thoroughly despised even while suffering themselves to be led by them. How great a part in these libels was borne by those who were bound by every tie of blood to the king to be his warmest supporters, we have a remarkable proof in an Edict of Council which was issued during the ministry of the archbishop, and which deprived the palaces of the Count de Provence, the Count d'Artois, and the Duc d'Orleans of their usual exemption from the investigation of the syndics of the library, as those officers were called whose duty it was to search all suspected places for libelous or seditious pamphlets; the reason publicly given for this edict being that the dwellings of these three princes were a perfect arsenal for the issue of publications contrary to the laws, to morality, and to religion.[11]

With the return of spring, the severity of the distress began to pass away. But, even while it lasted, it scarcely diverted the attention of the middle classes from the preparations for the approaching meeting of the States-general, from which the whole people, with few exceptions, promised themselves great advantages, though comparatively few had formed any precise notion of the benefits which they expected, or of the mode in which they were to be attained. The States-general had been originally established in the same age which saw the organization of our own Parliament, with very nearly the same powers, though the members had more of the narrower character of delegates of their constituents than was the case in England, where they were more wisely regarded as representatives of the entire nation.[12] And it was an acknowledged principle of their constitution that they could neither propose any measure nor ask for the redress of any grievance which was not expressly mentioned in the instructions with which their constituents furnished them at the time of their election.

In England, the two Houses of Parliament, by a vigilant and systematic perseverance, had gradually extorted from the sovereign a great and progressive enlargement of their original powers, till they had almost engrossed the entire legislative authority in the kingdom. But in France, a variety of circumstances had prevented the States-general from arriving at a similar development. And, consequently, as in human affairs very little is stationary, their authority had steadily diminished, instead of increasing, till they had become so powerless and utterly insignificant that, since the year 1615, they had never once been convened. Not only had they been wholly disused, but they seemed to have been wholly forgotten. During the last two reigns no one had ever mentioned their name; much less had any wish been expressed for their resuscitation, till the financial difficulties of the Government, and the general and growing discontent of the great majority of the nation, with which, since the death of Turgot, every successive minister had been manifestly incompetent to deal, had, as we have seen, led some ardent reformers to demand their restoration, as the one expedient which had not been tried, and which, therefore, had this in its favor, that it was not condemned by previous failure.

That great reforms were indispensable was admitted in every quarter. There was no country in Europe where the feudal system had received so little modification.[13] Every law seemed to have been made, and every custom to have been established for the exclusive benefit of the nobles. They were even exempted from many of the taxes, an exemption which was the more intolerable from the vast number of persons who were included in the list. Practically it may be said that there were two classes of nobles-the old historic houses, as they were sometimes called, such as the Grammonts or Montmorencies, which were not numerous, and many of which had greatly decayed in wealth and influence; and an inferior class whose nobility was derived from their possession of office under the crown in any part of the kingdom. Even tax-gatherers and surveyors, if appointed by royal warrant, could claim the rank; and new offices were continually being created and sold which conferred the same title. Those so ennobled were not reckoned the equals of the higher class. They could not even be received at court until their patents were four hundred years old, but they had a right to vote as nobles at elections to any representative body. Those whose patents were twenty-four years old could be elected as representatives; and from the moment of their creation they all enjoyed great exemptions; so that, as the lowest estimate reckoned their numbers at a hundred thousand, it is a matter for some wonder how the taxes to which they did not contribute produced any thing worth collecting. It was, of course, manifest that the exemptions enormously increased the burden to be borne by the classes which did not enjoy such privileges.

But, heavy as the grievance of these exemptions was, it was as nothing when compared with the feudal rights claimed by the greater nobles. The peasants on their estates were forced to grind their corn at the lord's mill, to press their grapes at his wine-press, paying for such act whatever price he might think fit to exact, and often having their crops wholly wasted or spoiled by the delays which such a system engendered. The game-laws forbade them to weed their fields lest they should disturb the young partridges or leverets; to manure the soil with any thing which might injure their flavor; or even to mow or reap till the grass or corn was no longer required as shelter for the young coveys. Some of the rights of seigniory, as it was called, were such as can hardly be mentioned in this more decorous age; some were so ridiculous that it is inconceivable how their very absurdity had not led to their abolition. In the marshy districts of Brittany, one right enjoyed by the great nobles was "the silence of the frogs,[14]" which, whenever the lady was confined, bound the peasants to spend their days and nights in beating the swamps with long poles to save her from being disturbed by their inharmonious croaking. And if this or any other feudal right was dispensed with, it was only commuted for a money payment, which was little less burdensome.

The powers exercised by the crown were more intolerable still. The sovereign was absolute master of the liberties of his subjects. Without alleging the commission of any crime, he could issue warrants-letters under seal, as they were called-which consigned the person named in them to imprisonment, which was often perpetual. The unhappy prisoner had no power of appeal. No judge could inquire into his case, much less release him. The arrests were often made with such secrecy and rapidity that his nearest relations knew not what had become of him, but he was cut off from the outer world, for the rest of his life, as completely as if he had at once been handed over to the executioner.[15]

It was impossible but that such customs should produce general discontent, and a resolute demand for a complete reformation of the system. And one of the problems which the minister had to determine was, how to organize the States-general so that they should be disposed to promote such measures as reform as should be adequate without being excessive; as should give due protection to the middle and lower classes without depriving the nobles of that dignity and authority which were not only desirable for themselves, but useful to their dependents; and, lastly, such as should carefully preserve the rightful prerogatives of the crown, while putting an end to those arbitrary powers, the existence of which was incompatible with the very name of freedom.

In making the necessary arrangements, the long disuse of the Assembly was a circumstance greatly in favor of the Government, if Necker had had skill to avail himself of it, since it wholly freed him from the obligation of being guided by former precedents. Those arrangements were long and warmly debated in the king's council. Though the records of former sessions had been so carelessly preserved that little was known of their proceedings, it seemed to be established that the representatives of the Commons had usually amounted to about four-tenths of the whole body, those of the clergy and of the nobles being each about three-tenths; and that they had almost invariably deliberated and voted in separate chambers; and the princes and the chief nobles presented memorials to the king, in which they almost unanimously recommended an adherence to these ancient forms; while, with patriotic prudence, they sought to obviate all jealousy of their own pretensions or views which might be entertained or feigned in any quarter, by announcing their willingness to abandon all the exclusive privileges and exemptions which they had hitherto possessed, and which were notoriously one chief cause of the generally prevailing discontent.

But the party which had originated the clamor for the States-general, now, encouraged by their success, put forward two fresh demands; the first, that the number of the representatives of the Commons should equal that of both the other orders put together, which they called "the duplication of the Third Estate;" the second, that the three orders should meet and vote as one united body in one chamber; the two proposition taken together being manifestly calculated and designed to throw the whole power into the hands of the Commons.

Necker had great doubts about the propriety and safety of the first proposal, and no doubt at all of the danger of the second. His own judgment was that the wisest plan would be to order the clergy and nobles to unite in an Upper Chamber, so as in some degree to resemble the British House of Lords; while the Third Estate, in a Lower Chamber, would be a tolerably faithful copy of our House of Commons. But he could never bring himself to risk his popularity by opposing what he regarded as the opinion of the masses. He was alarmed by the political clubs which were springing up in Paris; one, whose president was the Duc d'Orleans, assuming the significant and menacing title of Les Enrages;[16] and by the vast number of pamphlets which were circulated both in the capital and the chief towns of the provinces by thousands,[17] every writer of which put himself forward as a legislator,[18] and of which the vast majority advocated what they called the rights of the Third Estate, in most violent language; and, finally, he adopted the course which is a great favorite with vain and weak men, and which he probably represented to himself as a compromise between unqualified concession and unyielding resistance, though, every one possessed of the slightest penetration could see that it practically surrendered both points: he advised the king to issue his edict that the number of representatives to be returned to the States-general should be twelve hundred, half of whom were to be returned by the Commons, a quarter by the clergy, and a quarter by the nobles;[19] and to postpone the decision as to the number of the chambers till the Assembly should meet, when he proposed to allow the States themselves to determine it; trusting, against all probability, that, after having thus given the Commons the power to enforce their own views, he should be able to persuade them to abandon the same in deference to his judgment.

Louis, as a matter of course, adopted his advice; and, after several different towns-Blois, Tours, Cambrai, and Compiegne among them-had been proposed as the place of meeting, he himself decided in favor of Versailles,[20] as that which would afford him the best hunting while the session lasted. The queen in her heart disapproved of every one of these resolutions. She saw that Necker had, as she had foreboded, sacrificed the king's authority by his advice on the two first questions; and she perceived more clearly than any one the danger of fixing the States- general so near to Paris that the turbulent population of the city should be able to overawe the members. She pressed these considerations earnestly on the king,[21] but it was characteristic of the course which she prescribed to herself from, the beginning, and from which she never swerved, that when her advice was overruled she invariably defended the course which had been taken. Her language, when any one spoke to her either of her own opinions and wishes, or of the feelings with which the different classes of the nation regarded her, was invariably the same. "You are not to think of me for a moment. All that I desire of you is to take care that the respect which is due to the king shall not be weakened;[22]" and it was only her most intimate friends who knew how unwise she thought the different decisions that had been adopted, or how deep were her forebodings of evil.