CHAPTER LIV.
LOUIS XV.—THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR.
MINISTRY OF THE DUKE OF CHOISEUL. 1748-1774.
It was not only in the colonies and on the seas that the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle had seemed merely a truce destined to be soon broken; hostilities had never ceased in India or Canada; English vessels scoured the world, capturing, in spite of treaties, French merchant-ships; in Europe and on the continent, all the sovereigns were silently preparing for new efforts; only the government of King Louis XV., intrenched behind its disinterestedness in the negotiations, and ignoring the fatal influences of weakness and vanity, believed itself henceforth beyond the reach of a fresh war. The nation, as oblivious as the government, but less careless than it, because they had borne the burden of the fault committed, were applying for the purpose of their material recovery that power of revival which, through a course of so many errors and reverses, has always saved France; in spite of the disorder in the finances and the crushing weight of the imposts, she was working and growing rich; intellectual development was following the rise in material resources; the court was corrupt and inert, like the king, but a new life, dangerously free and bold, was beginning to course through men’s minds the wise, reforming instincts, the grave reflections of the dying Montesquieu no longer sufficed for them; Voltaire, who had but lately been still moderate and almost respectful, was about to commence with his friends of the L’Encyclopedie that campaign against the Christian faith which was to pave the way for the materialism of our own days. “Never was Europe more happy than during the years which rolled by between 1750 and 1758,” he has said in his Tableau du Siecle de Louis XV. The evil, however, was hatching beneath the embers, and the last supports of the old French society were cracking up noiselessly. The Parliaments were about to disappear, the Catholic church was becoming separated more and more widely every day from the people of whom it claimed to be the sole instructress and directress. The natural heads of the nation, the priests and the great lords, thought no longer and lived no longer as it. The public voice was raised simultaneously against the authority or insensate prodigality of Madame de Pompadour, and against the refusal, ordered by the Archbishop of Paris, of the sacraments. “The public, the public!” wrote M. d’Argenson; “its animosity, its encouragements, its pasquinades, its insolence—that is what I fear above everything.” The state of the royal treasury and the measures to which recourse was had to enable the state to make both ends meet, aggravated the dissension and disseminated discontent amongst all classes of society. Comptrollers- general came one after another, all armed with new expedients; MM. de Machault, Moreau de Sechelles, de Moras, excited, successively, the wrath and the hatred of the people crushed by imposts in peace as well as war; the clergy refused to pay the twentieth, still claiming their right of giving only a free gift; the states-districts, Languedoc and Brittany at the head, resisted, in the name of their ancient privileges, the collection of taxes to which they had not consented; riots went on multiplying; they even extended to Paris, where the government was accused of kidnapping children for transportation to the colonies. The people rose, several police-agents were massacred; the king avoided passing through the capital on his way from Versailles to the camp at Compiegne; the path he took in the Bois de Boulogne received the name of Revolt Road. “I have seen in my days,” says D’Argenson, “a decrease in the respect and love of the people for the kingship.”
Decadence went on swiftly, and no wonder. At forty years of age Louis XV., finding every pleasure pall, indifferent to or forgetful of business from indolence and disgust, bored by everything and on every occasion, had come to depend solely on those who could still manage to amuse him.
Madame de Pompadour had accepted this ungrateful and sometimes shameful task. Born in the ranks of the middle class, married young to a rich financier, M. Lenormant d’Etioles, Mdlle. Poisson, created Marchioness of Pompadour, was careful to mix up more serious matters with the royal pleasures. The precarious lot of a favorite was not sufficient for her ambition. Pretty, clever, ingenious in devising for the king new amusements and objects of interest, she played comedy before him in her small apartments and travelled with him from castle to castle; she thus obtained from his easy prodigality enormous sums to build pleasaunces which she amused herself by embellishing; Bellevue, Babiole, the marchioness’ house at Paris, cost millions out of the exhausted treasury. Madame de Pompadour was fond of porcelain; she conceived the idea of imitating in France the china-work of Saxony, and founded first at Vincennes and then at Sevres the manufacture of porcelain, which the king took under his protection, requiring the courtiers to purchase the proceeds of it at high prices. Everybody was anxious to please the favorite; her incessantly renewed caprices contributed to develop certain branches of the trade in luxuries. The expenses of the royal household went on increasing daily; the magnificent prodigalities of King Louis XIV. were surpassed by the fancies of Madame de Pompadour. Vigilant in attaching the courtiers to herself, she sowed broadcast, all around her, favors, pensions, profitable offices, endowing the gentlemen to facilitate their marriage, turning a deaf ear to the complaints of the people as well as to the protests of the States or Parliaments. The greedy and frivolous crowd that thronged at her feet well deserved the severe judgment pronounced by Montesquieu on courtiers and courts. “Ambition amidst indolence, baseness amidst pride, the desire to grow rich without toil, aversion from truth, flattery, treason, perfidy, neglect of all engagements, contempt for the duties of a citizen, fear of virtue in the prince, hope in his weaknesses, and more than all that, the ridicule constantly thrown upon virtue, form, I trow, the characteristics of the greatest number of courtiers, distinctive in all places and at all times.” The majesty of Louis XIV. and the long lustre of his reign had been potent enough to create illusions as to the dangers and the corruptions of the court; the remnants of military glory were about to fade out round Louis XV.; the court still swarmed with brave officers, ready to march to death at the head of the troops; the command of armies henceforth depended on the favor of Madame the Marchioness of Pompadour.
The day had come when the fortune of war was about to show itself fatal to France. Marshal Saxe had died at Chambord, still young and worn out by excesses rather than by fatigue; this foreigner, this Huguenot, as he was called by Louis XV., had been the last to maintain and continue the grand tradition of French generals. War, however, was inevitable; five months of public or private negotiation, carried on by the ambassadors or personal agents of the king, could not obtain from England any reparation for her frequent violation of the law of nations; the maritime trade of France was destroyed; the vessels of the royal navy were themselves no longer safe at sea. On the 21st of December, 1755, the minister of foreign affairs, Rouille, notified to the English cabinet, “that His Most Christian Majesty, before giving way to the effects of his resentment, once more demanded from the King of England satisfaction for all the seizures made by the English navy, as well as restitution of all vessels, whether war-ships or merchant-ships, taken from the French, declaring that he should regard any refusal that might be made as an authentic declaration of war.” England eluded the question of law, but refused restitution. On the 23d of January, an embargo was laid on all English vessels in French ports, and war was officially proclaimed. It had existed in fact for two years past.
A striking incident signalized the commencement of hostilities. Rather a man of pleasure and a courtier than an able soldier, Marshal Richelieu had, nevertheless, the good fortune to connect his name with the only successful event of the Seven Years’ War that was destined to remain impressed upon the mind of posterity. Under his orders, a body of twelve thousand men, on board of a squadron, commanded by M. de la Galissonniere, left Toulon on the 10th of April, 1756, at the moment when England was excited by expectation of a coming descent upon her coasts. On the 17th, the French attacked the Island of Minorca, an important point whence the English threatened Toulon, and commanded the western basin of the Mediterranean. Some few days later, the English troops, driven out of Ciudadela and Mahon, had taken refuge in Fort St. Philip, and the French cannon were battering the ramparts of the vast citadel.
On the 10th of May an English fleet, commanded by Admiral Byng, appeared in the waters of Port Mahon; it at once attacked M. de la Galissonniere. The latter succeeded in preventing the English from approaching land. After an obstinate struggle, Admiral Byng, afraid of losing his fleet, fell back on Gibraltar. The garrison of Fort St. Philip waited in vain for the return of the squadron; left to its own devices, it nevertheless held out; the fortifications seemed to be impregnable; the siege-works proceeded slowly; the soldiers were disgusted, and began to indulge to excess in the wine of Spain. “No one who gets drunk shall have the honor of mounting the breach,” said Richelieu’s general order. Before long he resolved to attempt the assault.