It was then resolved to demand in marriage the daughter of Augustus III. of Saxony. The enterprise proceeded with singular rapidity, and d'Argenson is proud to record it as the most striking of his diplomatic successes. Yet on the very day on which the marriage was celebrated at Dresden, the apparent author of it was disgraced.
The reason is as remarkable as the fact itself. Throughout the negotiation there were two policies at work, one of which was entirely unknown to the French minister. D'Argenson had conceived certain bold and statesmanlike views with regard to the position of Saxony. He hoped to bring about an understanding between Saxony and Prussia, and by the combined influence of France and Prussia, to make the crown of Poland hereditary in the Saxon house. By so doing it might be possible to withdraw Augustus III. from his blind dependence upon Vienna and St. Petersburg. The first step in the realisation of this plan must be the ruin of the Saxon minister, Count Brühl, a sworn partisan of Austria. The other policy was that of Count Brühl himself. He proposed to take advantage of the French overtures in order to bring about an understanding between France and Austria, and so to use their combined forces for the destruction of the rising power of Prussia. The first step in furtherance of the scheme must be the ruin of the Marquis d'Argenson, a firm ally of Prussia.
In fact, the negotiation of Dresden resolved itself into a personal duel between Count Brühl and d'Argenson. It ended, as we know, in the triumph of the former, through the intervention of his great compatriot, Maurice de Saxe.[368] The victor of Raucoux had recognised a strong personal interest in the proposal to make his niece Dauphine of France; and unknown to d'Argenson, he had exerted his powerful influence in favour of it both at Versailles and Dresden. Having nothing further to gain from the war, he was easily persuaded to second Brühl's scheme for the mediation of Saxony; and being given to understand by the Saxon minister that the real obstacle in the way of an arrangement was the "faux système"[369] pursued by the d'Argensons, he resolved to do his best to compass their fall. On the 10th of December he wrote to Brühl:
"People here are beginning to suspect that the d'Argensons have no sincere desire for peace. There is a shell planted; and if we apply the fuse, they will be blown into the air.... I have sounded the Marquis with regard to that question you spoke of last. He is unwilling to listen to any proposals on behalf of the Court of Vienna, and talks upon that matter in a very strange fashion."[370]
Maurice proceeded to apply the fuse. He won over Madame de Pompadour, between whom and the Foreign Minister there was no love lost;[371] and he engaged his friend and d'Argenson's enemy, Noailles, to use his influence with the King. Accordingly on the 15th of December Noailles submitted to Louis XV. a famous memoir,[372] in which d'Argenson's ministry is elaborately represented as one long disaster: his portrait being drawn with a bitterness of party spirit and personal animosity but thinly disguised by an affectation of disinterestedness. D'Argenson was by no means unaware of the intrigues against him; but he would not stoop to defend himself. He thought that his position had been strengthened by the successful negotiation of the Saxon marriage, of which he imagined he had the sole honour; and he believed himself secure in the confidence of the King. The latter, who seems to have regarded d'Argenson with unusual esteem, succumbed to the importunities of the Favourite, the Courts of Saxony and Spain, the all-powerful Maurice de Saxe, the Council of ministers, and every one whom d'Argenson, to relieve his soul or to protect the public, had found it necessary to offend; and on the very day on which what seemed to be a brilliant diplomatic stroke was consummated at Dresden, the man who imagined himself the author of it was dismissed.
The immediate cause of his fall was his obstinate refusal to traffic with Austria, or to sacrifice what generations of experience had taught him to regard as the interest of France to the fortuitous prepossessions of a foreign adventurer.[373]
We can form no just estimate of d'Argenson's capacity as a statesman without some clear ideas of his position as a minister. He had entered office burdened with two disabilities, the cause of which it has been the most important of duties to lay bare. He had no aptitude for court intrigue; he had no power of confronting opposition and sternly frowning it down. Unable to win, he neglected the courtiers; unable to coerce his enemies in the Ministry, he was only too happy to avoid them. He was forced to rely upon the value of his services, and upon the esteem and confidence of the King. That he managed to secure that confidence, and to preserve it even at the moment of his fall, there is ample evidence to show. Relying upon the royal support, he did not hesitate to enforce those principles of policy which research and reflection had led him to embrace. He determined, so far as possible, to make his will felt; and the incapacity with which he was charged by Noailles and the anti-Prussian party in the Council was really incapacity to accept proposals at variance with every statesmanlike tradition. Without regard for the consequences to himself, he acted for what he thought to be the public interest—a process which no French statesman could then pursue without offending innumerable susceptibilities, and uniting every one, from the reigning favourite to the most insignificant chargé d'affaires, in a league of enmity against him. They all combined to convict him of incapacity and indiscretion; he passed among the courtiers as "Dunce d'Argenson";[374] and his eccentricities of manner gave occasion to caricatures which were carefully gathered up by that consummate chronicler of the unimportant, the Duc de Luynes. The persecution was too bitter to be inspired merely by contempt; and we have only to read the letters of Noailles and Saxe to know that they were directed, not to the dismissal of an incapable minister, but to the removal of a statesman who barred their path.[375]
In his public life, d'Argenson is distinguished rather for what he might have done than for anything he did. In 1745 he was, as it has been necessary to show, in no sense responsible for the policy of France; while throughout the year 1746 his position was being undermined in all directions. There was, however, at least one transaction for which his responsibility is clear and undivided. His conduct of the Negotiation of Turin displays in brief the character of the man, and the peculiar qualities of his statesmanship. It reveals one capital defect, the defect of one who has been long accustomed to look upon the world through his own eyes. He made a fatal mistake in attributing his own motives to the Sardinian Government, and in imagining that it would consent for a national ideal to hazard its present and material interests. He did not see that in offering the King of Sardinia the hegemony of the Italian states, he was inviting him to accept the desperate part which had been played by Frederick in Silesia; and that, though the reward would indeed be brilliant, it was far too distant and uncertain to be readily sought by the Government of Turin. The defect, grave as it was, proceeded chiefly from lack of the experience, which a man like d'Argenson can only gain through the terrible bitterness of a first disappointment. We have only to consider the incident further to see that no man ever compassed disaster with so many of the qualities which make for success. The scheme was distinguished by grandeur of conception, and in pursuing it the author gave proof of decision and intrepidity. Incidentally he achieved one triumph of which any statesman might be proud. His dealings with Spain were a monument of reasoned daring and determination; and the acceptance of the Treaty of Turin by Elisabeth Farnese is the most striking tribute that could have been paid to d'Argenson's political capacity. It is true that he was carried away by an enthusiasm which a longer experience would certainly have chastened; and that he courted disaster by endeavouring to accomplish in three weeks the work of thirty, or a hundred and thirty, years. Yet his callow temerity was not ignoble; and French diplomacy can boast of few more honourable failures.
France owes to d'Argenson one lasting debt. He strove, as gallantly as ever man could, to arrest the disintegration of French policy. His determination to adhere to the anti-Austrian tradition embroiled him with his colleagues in the Ministry, and became the occasion of his fall; while it has been made the principal ground of impeachment by certain writers of his own country. He is charged with having sacrificed the substantial interests of France to his blind prejudice in favour of Prussia; and with having refused to recognise the new problems created by the decline of the Austrian House. Such criticism must not pass unchallenged.
It cannot be too clearly remembered that to French statesmen in 1745 the decline of Austria had not yet begun.[376] Fondly had they dreamed of the ruin of her dominion; they woke up to find that in the person of Maria Theresa the Hapsburg dynasty had renewed its youth. The Austrian succession had been maintained in arms; and it would never even have been questioned had it not been for Frederick's seizure of Silesia. As to Frederick himself we have to beware of misconceptions; for in much of French criticism with regard to him we recognise the impressions of 1763—or even of 1870. No one suspected what was in the man, and it was not until December, 1745, that people began to think of him as "the Great." Only three months before the campaign in Saxony, which won from his people and wrung from his enemies that noble salutation, he was described by the oldest of his admirers, d'Argenson himself, as "a man who might have been great."[377] It was not until after the Treaty of Dresden that he ceased to be looked upon as merely an able and unscrupulous prince who had wantonly provoked the resentment of his neighbours, and who had only to be abandoned by his one ally to receive the punishment his insolence had deserved. When, in the previous September, the Empress, at the cost of some of her Flemish provinces, offered to purchase the withdrawal of France, neither she nor d'Argenson mistook for a moment the real meaning of the proposal. In all human probability Frederick would have been doomed. Those who suggest that the "traitor of Hanover" should have been abandoned to his fate, forget the sublime capacity for vengeance with which men like Frederick are endowed. If such a man had yielded to the Empress the sword of Prussia, it would have been to receive it back as the sword of the Empire. The Imperial troops, headed by the Prussians and commanded by the victor of Friedbourg, would have marched to wrest from the common enemy his ill-gotten provinces of Flanders and Lorraine; France might have taken the place of Saxony, and the pride of Paris been bitterly rebuked a hundred years before the time. D'Argenson may not have seen all this; but he was a statesman and a thinker, and he was wise enough to know that such cheap successes as the Empress offered him are often the very dearest of all. With an admirable moral courage, he maintained that nothing Frederick could do, no treason he might contrive, could lessen the interest of France in maintaining him in Silesia; and he would not allow the resentments of a month to obscure the tradition or the teaching of a century.