The success of the war in America, especially the dramatic finale of Cornwallis’ surrender, had an effect upon opinion in Paris which, though it was sudden and short, was yet very powerful. The French, having of all nations by far the most general experience of war, are slow to adventures of such a kind as had been their intervention in America: the Court had been especially slow; the King perhaps the most reluctant of all—in the last peril of death he exclaimed against the memory of that campaign. Once engaged, therefore, if matters had gone ill (as the French troops in America most characteristically swore they would go ill!), or even if a long and indefinite campaign had dragged on through succeeding years so that the full financial effect of the struggle could have been felt before its close, then the whole weight of blame would have fallen upon Versailles. At it was, Yorktown came like the thrust of a spur, and the Monarchy, doubtful as was its course, leapt forward.
The death of Maurepas was the last coincidence of these three; it was as exactly synchronous and as full of effect as either of its fellow accidents. The capitulation of Lord Cornwallis was known in Paris precisely thirty-one days after it had taken place. It was upon the 19th of November, a Monday, that Louis had the news. The Queen had not yet risen from child-bed, Louis was sitting with her in her room, when the Duc de Lauzun was announced, and gave the message that Yorktown had surrendered. Upon the Wednesday following, De Maurepas was dead. The importance of that passing lay in this, that Louis, at such a juncture, now first attempted to be free.
All men are chafed, and that perpetually, by what they know of their own defects, and Louis could not forget, from his accession onwards, that it was always in him to yield to a quicker brain. He thought it shameful in a King. He never yielded from weakness, but often from bewilderment. His own decision would come to him after he had acted on the decision of another. He understood, he desired to act, later than did his advisers: often so late that, by the time his will was formed, occasion had passed. If, when his slow judgment had matured, he found it different from that upon which immediate action had been taken, he was angered. If that immediate action had proved disastrous, he was secretly indignant that his slower wit had not prevailed. But, stronger than all these reasons, the mere instinct of the imperfect warned him to a distaste of guidance.
He had, however, come to the throne a boy; in years but twenty, in experience (save in the excellent art of horsemanship) null. He had found ready to hand this old Minister, Maurepas, courteous, active, with a good though a too facile judgment; a patriot whose career had been ruined by the mistress of Louis XV. (in itself this was a recommendation to the young King), and a courtier whom his father, the Dauphin, had, upon his deathbed, pointed out to be the true counterweight to the irreligion of Choiseul: Louis XVI. had accepted such a guide and had upon the whole not repented of his choice. For seven years the young King had received the counsel of this old man; a habit had been formed, and a strong affection with it. But as Maurepas approached his end, as the gout forbade him his former clearness of thought, and a continual confinement interfered with his attendance at the Council, the maturer judgment of Louis began, though secretly, to assert itself. He showed for the depositary of so lengthy a Court tradition a filial devotion; he would come in person, and familiarly, to bring news to the old man’s room—notably the news of the Dauphin’s birth was so given, domestically and alone. There subsisted between them one of those intimate relations which so often arise between the permanent official upon the one side and the responsible authority upon the other: it became a personal tie, and when, Maurepas died Louis would renew it with no one. After some hesitation the King lit for a first Minister upon Vergennes, but he would not give to this new officer the official title of Premier; he was jealous of a fuller power which he now proposed to exercise continuously and with a more direct affirmation than in the past. Louis was incapable of the task he so attempted, but if ever there was a time in the reign when such a task could be attempted, this autumn and winter of 1781 was that time.
Here then was the field: a treasury embarrassed, but relieved, in appearance at least, by a frank audit—for the “cooked” accounts Necker had prepared before his dismissal bore the aspect and title of a public audit; great and unexpected success in a doubtful foreign war; a monarch possessed of a power approaching that of a modern Cabinet, and now ready to experiment with that power; abroad, Joseph II., who was the chief element of international politics and the national ally of France, had entered upon a new direction of the Austrian House. Upon such a field was to work the increasing influence of the Queen.
It is true that a certain part of her repute was now fixed in public opinion: that she was extravagant, that she was bound to favourites, that she was foreign. The legend had arisen in Paris, and no detail of her action, no appreciation of complexity could easily alter the simple conclusions of the Parisian populace. But, on the other hand, she was the mother of the heir, her position was stable while the opinion of the capital was not so, and it did not seem impossible that in the long course of years the great and dumb national mass should be indoctrinated in her favour, as the growth of her children, an older judgment in her, and perhaps a continued peace and a return to prosperity, should restore the tradition of the Monarchy, or rather confirm it in its new characters.
If the King was now ready to act and to reform the State, Marie Antoinette was of far more influence with him than ever she had been before. It was hers, if she chose, to regulate the new phase of Government. She did in part so choose, and she might have succeeded. Her habits would, indeed, have continued—her cards, her theatre, her gems, her familiarity—but all, as it were, tinctured, accepted, taken with the life of the Court and little affecting a new-found order. Had the problems presented to her been of those that fitted her intuition or experience, she might even then have lifted her fate. For a year and for more than a year—all 1782 and on into 1783, the solidity of her position was assured; the future was apparently prepared. A group of trifling incidents passed her quite, or almost, unperceived in the midst of an established leadership in Europe, of royal visits that cemented a general alliance, and of accomplished hopes; another year passed, she was presented—her influence being then at its height—with the affair of the Scheldt, a problem in which the interests of her Austrian House clashed with that new patriotism which, least of all things French, could she understand. She blundered, she necessarily blundered; but as she looked around to see what forces were left her, she found not only the results of that blunder confronting her, but an appalling menace proceeding from a direction wholly unconnected with her life—from the business of the diamond necklace—and beside it, grown suddenly quite loud like an offensive chorus of disdain, the voice of a writer whom she had half patronised and wholly despised, the neglected voice of Caron—Beaumarchais: by the beginning of ’84, one of those accidents—the pen of Beaumarchais—had shaken her influence and that of all the Monarchy; by the end of ’85 the other—the affair of the necklace—had destroyed it.
The year 1782 opened upon the new gladness of the Queen; her churching at Notre Dame (now customary) was marked, if not by a vivid popular greeting, yet by no coldness. At the Hôtel de Ville in the evening she met an official and commercial world that was warmly hers; she shared as warmly in the glories of the American news; she would have driven home in her own carriage the wife of La Fayette to show her enthusiasm for his triumph and his return. Her ampler manner, her more contained and settled bearing was consonant with the position she had gained; it promised her, in those who saw and approved it among the magistracy of the city, a continuance and an increase of influence. Back at Versailles she continued without scandal, and yet at a fast-rising expenditure, the habits which had now become permanently hers: new fashions in dress perpetually changing and in head-dress, cards into the small hours, and her private theatre at Trianon still receiving her upon its stage to the applause now, not of a half-dozen or so of the royal family, but of a full audience; many courtiers, many friends of friends, and even the officers of the Guard were permitted to see her painted behind the foot-lights, to note her true rendering of vivacious parts, and to accept when she sang her imperfectly-trained, insufficient, and somewhat violent voice. Of these regular dissipations the last was the most criticised, though even that seemed by this time so normal that of itself it did not lessen her growing power; but in distant connection with her taste for such things there arose, and precisely at this critical moment, a discussion which was largely to affect her life: it was the discussion upon the “Mariage de Figaro.”
The “Mariage de Figaro” was no great thing; it was a well-written play from the pen of a man, now advanced in middle age, whose diction and care for letters were typical of his own time, but whose vices were entirely modern. Born in a low position, his darting mind had carried him to a sort of fluctuating eminence, especially in wit. He had taught music to princesses, married an infatuated widow, adopted her name of Beaumarchais, purchased some insignificant post and with it a nominal right to the “de” of nobility, preserved his health, speculated, probably robbed, certainly made and lost considerable sums, traversed and thoroughly understood English society, repaid its hospitality by advancing the American cause in France, speculated upon the commissariat of that campaign, rendered jealous years ago the equally cynical Voltaire, and now at fifty was getting talked of again in the matter of his new play.