Marie Antoinette

by Hilaire Belloc

For over a century the Scheldt had been closed to commerce by international treaty, and the trade that should naturally flow along that magnificent estuary of which Antwerp is the port had been artificially deflected to Holland. The Austrian Netherlands were therefore mechanically starved of a trade that had once been pre-eminent in Europe. It was as though Lancashire should be forbidden by a parchment to use Liverpool to-day, and should be dependent upon Preston or—as would more probably follow—upon Bristol and Glasgow. That part of the Low Countries which is, roughly speaking, the Catholic part and most of which is now included in Belgium formed, by an accident of history, an isolated fragment of the Hapsburg domain, and the closing of the Scheldt acutely affected a monarch whose mind, being narrow, was especially alive to anomalies that interfered with the rotundity of his rights. There was to Joseph II. something monstrous in the decay of Antwerp and the silence of that vast waterway—something out of nature, like the diversity of tongues, within his empire; it was a sentiment he felt less keenly in matters less disadvantageous to himself.

The chief beneficiary by this quaint artifice was, of course, Holland, but, among the greater Powers, England. If any one would know why, he has but to travel to-day from the Pool of London to Antwerp, and wonder next morning at the orderly and teeming crescent of the quays. Antwerp is London’s chief and most dangerous rival.

It was, therefore, during the failure of England in America that Joseph proposed the destruction of so ancient an instrument as the Peace of Westphalia and determined upon the opening of the river. To such a project the assent of France was essential, but the Cabinet of Versailles, in one of those acts of wisdom which were not unknown to the decaying Monarchy, postponed the discussion till the close of the war. The war had been over since the autumn of ’82; the peace had been signed at Paris in the new year. It was in 1783, therefore, that there began the growing pressure of Joseph II. upon Mercy, of Mercy upon Marie Antoinette, to see that the interests of Austria in this matter, as in others of the past, should predominate at Versailles. This purely Austrian move, though it took months to mature, was the political motive of the whole year, and side by side with it, like a tiny instrument accompanying a loud orchestra, went the rising popular demand for Beaumarchais’ play: also, just once or twice and for a moment only, one can hear in the background the occasional note of Madame de La Motte. Thus on Candlemas Day (a feast of the 2nd of February) she was seen at Versailles. It was a brief episode; she stood patiently in the rank of petitioners waiting for the Queen to pass upon her way to High Mass, and presented some modest demand—directly or indirectly—for money. It was refused, with a crowd of others, by the secretaries appointed to examine such things; and, if the Queen’s eyes had rested upon her face at all, no sort of impression of her remained. The Queen entered the chapel, and the Cardinal de Rohan pontificated there.

“Figaro” was more amusing and deserves a greater mention. All the jokes of the spring and all the society question was of “Figaro.” By June, somehow or other, by some intrigue, very possibly by a word from the Queen, the scandalous, the delightfully tickling attack upon all their privileges, their scandals—their very life; the comedy that half of them already knew by heart, and from which the younger could recite whole passages in Beaumarchais’ very manner, was to be acted at last—but only for the Court. Of course, such a scandal could not be allowed in Paris, or in the town. The Hall of the Menus Plaisirs was got ready, the parts were learnt, the actors of the Comédie Française were come, the courtiers and their wives had their tickets in hand, the carriages were at the door, the theatre half full, when a messenger came from the King bearing a lettre de cachet, a peremptory, secret and immediate order: the “Mariage de Figaro” was not to be played.

All who have seen a jostle of the wealthy suddenly deprived of some pleasure—especially of a satire upon themselves—may imagine the anger that arose. Meanwhile the King, who had bethought him so late of this vigorous act, murmured thoughtfully in his room that probably in the long run Beaumarchais would have the best of it.

He had. By September M. de Vandreuil had the play ready for “the ladies” and young Artois—he had put up a private stage. The smart and the literary were assured there would be no disappointment—nor was there. Beaumarchais had been recalled by a special secret messenger from England, whither he had retired in a pretended pique; secret permission was given, the “Mariage” was secretly played (before two hundred people), and the thing was done. Play-acting and a sort of passionate frivolity had conquered the State. I must ask pardon for wasting so many lines upon so light a matter.

Two greater things were at hand: Calonne was about to be put at the head of the finances; Joseph II. was beginning to be decisive about the Scheldt.

The business of the Scheldt had dragged all through 1783. The active hostility of France and England had ceased a year before—to the grave disadvantage of England. Peace had been actually signed for nine months, yet nothing had been done, and the Cabinet of Versailles still temporised. To Joseph this recalcitrance upon the part of his ally was not only irritating, as had been years ago the French hesitation to support him in the Bavarian chance of war, it was incomprehensible; he could lay it to nothing but folly. To what depths of folly Versailles might descend he would admit even his clear brain incapable of judging. The French lay, as he conceived, open to every attack; theirs was a power visibly in decay which had made indeed a chance lucky move beyond the Atlantic, but which could not long continue great. It was surely their duty, as it was obviously their policy, to be guided by Vienna. It was not till now—after so many years!—that he had come across the sharp French “jib” which has since his time disconcerted so many diplomatists.

For the statesmen of that people, under every régime—at least, every modern régime (wherein I count the later Ministers of Louis XV. and the anti-clericals of the present Republic)—have much in them, whatever their rank, of their own peasantry. It is as though the Frenchman, when he acts as a Minister for the collectivity of France, was collectively inspired and thought like the mass of ploughmen that build up his nation. As the peasants perpetually bewail the weather, so he the times. As the peasants curse authority (which they are so zealous to maintain as a guarantee of property), so the Statesman the régime of his epoch. As they will speculate rashly once in a generation, so he in the Seven Years’ War or in 1870. As they for years after such an error build up a fortune in the stodgiest securities, so he will build up alliances and an army in the long periods of national repose. As they with protestations of ruin and yet with courtesy will relinquish as make-weight to a bargain some article wholly worthless to them, so he will reluctantly throw into the diplomatic scale some barren or untenable possession overseas. As they in a bargain ask with the most natural air a most fantastic price, so he in a diplomatic proposition. But, above all, as the French Peasantry, when their apparent stupidity tempts the city man to ask for something that really concerns them, become first dumb, then nasty, so the French Statesman, quite unexpectedly and in one day, clouds over and reveals an astonishing obstinacy to yield any point of material value to his nation.

The opening of the Scheldt was of no advantage to France. The existence of a strong Austrian State to the north of her was a thing to avoid; the diplomatic tradition of a hundred years was in support of Holland, and, though the Austrian Alliance had changed much, it had been made to exercise pressure towards the Elbe, not towards the North Sea. Hence for all the courtesy, the postponements, the protestations of a continued warmth in the Alliance and the rest of it, France steadily refused to move. The Emperor Joseph did something he had been slow to do of recent years: he wrote directly to his sister.