Almost the whole ministry was in the hands of reformers; a sincere desire to do good impelled the king towards those who promised him the happiness of his people. Marshal Muy had succumbed to a painful operation. “Sir,” he had said to Louis XVI., before placing himself in the surgeon’s hands, “in a fortnight I shall be at your Majesty’s feet or with your august father.” He had succumbed. M. Turgot spoke to M. de Maurepas of the Duke of St. Germain. “Propose him to the king,” said the minister, adding his favorite phrase “one can but try.”
In the case of government, trials are often a dangerous thing. M. de St. Germain, born in the Jura in 1707, and entered first of all amongst the Jesuits, had afterwards devoted himself to the career of arms: he had served the Elector Palatine, Maria Theresa, and the Elector of Bavaria; enrolled finally by Marshal Saxe, he had distinguished himself under his orders; as lieutenant-general during the Seven Years’ War, he had brought up his division at Rosbach more quickly than his colleagues had theirs, he had fled less far than the others before the enemy; but his character was difficult, suspicious, exacting; he was always seeing everywhere plots concocted to ruin him. “I am persecuted to the death,” he would say. He entered the service of Denmark: returning to France and in poverty, he lived in Alsace on the retired list; it was there that the king’s summons came to find him out. In his solitude M. de St. Germain had conceived a thousand projects of reform; he wanted to apply them all at once. He made no sort of case of the picked corps and suppressed the majority of them, thus irritating, likewise, all the privileged. “M. de St. Germain,” wrote Frederick II. to Voltaire, “had great and noble plans very advantageous for your Welches; but everybody thwarted him, because the reforms he proposed would have entailed a strictness which was repugnant to them on ten thousand sluggards, well frogged, well laced.” The enthusiasm which had been excited by the new minister of war had disappeared from amongst the officers; he lost the hearts of the soldiers by wanting to establish in the army the corporal punishments in use amongst the German armies in which he had served. The feeling was so strong, that the attempt was abandoned. “In the matter of sabres,” said a grenadier, “I like only the edge.” Violent and weak both together, in spite of his real merit and his genuine worth, often giving up wise resolutions out of sheer embarrassment, he nearly always failed in what he undertook; the outcries against the reformers were increased thereby; the faults of M. de St. Germain were put down to M. Turgot.
It was against the latter indeed, that the courtiers’ anger and M. de Maurepas’ growing jealousy were directed. “Once upon a time there was in France,” said a pamphlet, entitled Le Songe de M. de Maurepas, attributed to Monsieur, the king’s brother,—“there was in France a certain man, clumsy, crass, heavy, born with more of rudeness than of character, more of obstinacy than of firmness, of impetuosity than of tact, a charlatan in administration as well as in virtue, made to bring the one into disrepute and the other into disgust, in other respects shy from self-conceit, timid from pride, as unfamiliar with men, whom he had never known, as with public affairs, which he had always seen askew; his name was Turgot. He was one of those half-thinking brains which adopt all visions, all manias of a gigantic sort. He was believed to be deep, he was really shallow; night and day he was raving of philosophy, liberty, equality, net product.” “He is too much (trop fort) for me,” M. de Maurepas would often say. “A man must be possessed (or inspired— enrage),” wrote Malesherbes, “to force, at one and the same time, the hand of the king, of M. de Maurepas, of the whole court and of the Parliament.”
Perhaps the task was above human strength; it was certainly beyond that of M. Turgot. Ever occupied with the public weal, he turned his mind to every subject, issuing a multiplicity of decrees, sometimes with rather chimerical hopes. He had proposed to the king six edicts; two were extremely important; the first abolished jurorships (jurandes) and masterships (maitrises) among the workmen. “The king,” said the preamble, “wishes to secure to all his subjects, and especially to the humblest, to those who have no property but their labor and their industry, the full and entire enjoyment of their rights, and to reform, consequently, the institutions which strike at those rights, and which, in spite of their antiquity, have failed to be legalized by time, opinion, and even the acts of authority.” The second substituted for forced labor on roads and highways an impost to which all proprietors were equally liable.
This was the first step towards equal redistribution of taxes; great was the explosion of disquietude and wrath on the part of the privileged; it showed itself first in the council, by the mouth of M. de Miromesnil; Turgot sprang up with animation. “The keeper of the seals,” he said, “seems to adopt the principle that, by the constitution of the state, the noblesse ought to be exempt from all taxation. This idea will appear a paradox to the majority of the nation. The commoners (roturiers) are certainly the greatest number, and we are no longer in the days when their voices did not count.” The king listened to the discussion in silence. “Come,” he exclaimed abruptly, “I see that there are only M. Turgot and I here who love the people,” and he signed the edicts.
The Parliament, like the noblesse, had taken up the cudgels; they made representation after representation. “The populace of France,” said the court boldly, “is liable to talliage and forced labor at will, and that is a part of the constitution which the king cannot change.” Louis XVI. summoned the Parliament to Versailles, and had the edicts enregistered at a bed of justice. “It is a bed of beneficence!” exclaimed Voltaire, a passionate admirer of Turgot.
The comptroller-general was triumphant; but his victory was but the prelude to his fall. Too many enemies were leagued against him, irritated both by the noblest qualities of his character, and at the same time by the natural defects of his manners. Possessed of love “for a beautiful ideal, of a rage for perfection,” M. Turgot had wanted to attempt everything, undertake everything, reform everything at one blow. He fought single-handed. M. de Malesherbes, firm as a rock at the head of the Court of Aids, supported as he was by the traditions and corporate feeling of the magistracy, had shown weakness as a minister. “I could offer the king only uprightness and good-heartedness,” he said himself, “two qualities insufficient to make a minister, even a mediocre one.” The courtiers, in fact, called him “good-heart” (bonhomme). “M. de Malesherbes has doubts about everything,” wrote Madame du Deffand; “M. Turgot has doubts about nothing.” M. de Maurepas having, of set purpose, got up rather a serious quarrel with him, Malesherbes sent in his resignation to the king; the latter pressed him to withdraw it: the minister remained inflexible. “You are better off than I,” said Louis XVI. at last, “you can abdicate.”
For a long while the king had remained faithful to M. Turgot. “People may say what they like,” he would repeat, with sincere conviction, “but he is an honest man!” Infamous means were employed, it is said, with the king; he was shown forged letters, purporting to come from M. Turgot, intercepted at the post and containing opinions calculated to wound his Majesty himself. To pacify the jealousy of M. de Maurepas, Turgot had given up his privilege of working alone with the king. Left to the adroit manoeuvres of his old minister, Louis XVI. fell away by degrees from the troublesome reformer against whom were leagued all those who were about him. The queen had small liking for M. Turgot, whose strict economy had cut down the expenses of her household; contrary to their usual practice, her most trusted servants abetted the animosity of M. de Maurepas. “I confess that I am not sorry for these departures,” wrote Marie Antoinette to her mother, after the fall of M. Turgot, “but I have had nothing to do with them.” “Sir,” M. Turgot had written to Louis XVI., “monarchs governed by courtiers have but to choose between the fate of Charles I. and that of Charles XI.” The coolness went on increasing between the king and his minister. On the 12th of May, 1776, the comptroller-general entered the king’s closet; he had come to speak to him about a new project for an edict; the exposition of reasons was, as usual, a choice morsel of political philosophy. “Another commentary!” said the king with temper. He listened, however. When the comptroller-general had finished, “Is that all?” asked the king. “Yes, Sir.” “So much the better,” and he showed the minister out. A few hours later, M. Turgot received his dismissal.
