Equally lucrative and useless are the court offices[1413], so many domestic sinecures, the profits and accessories of which largely exceed the emoluments. I find in the printed register 295 cooks, without counting the table-waiters of the king and his people, while "the head butler obtains 84,000 livres a year in billets and supplies," without counting his salary and the "grand liveries" which he receives in money. The head chambermaids to the queen, inscribed in the Almanac for 150 livres and paid 12,000 francs, make in reality 50,000 francs by the sale of the candles lighted during the day. Augeard, private secretary, and whose place is set down at 900 livres a year, confesses that it is worth to him 200,000. The head huntsman at Fontainebleau sells for his own benefit each year 20,000 francs worth of rabbits. "On each journey to the king's country residences the ladies of the bedchamber gain eighty per cent on the expenses of moving; it is said that the coffee and bread for each of these ladies costs 2,000 francs a year, and so on with other things." "Mme. de Tallard made 115,000 livres income out of her place of governess to the children of France, because her salary was increased 35,000 livres for each child." The Duc de Penthièvre, as grand admiral, received an anchorage due on all vessels "entering the ports and rivers of France," which produced annually 91,484 francs. Mme. de Lamballe, superintendent of the queen's household, inscribed for 6,000 francs, gets 50,000.[1414] The Duc de Gèvres gets 50,000 crowns[1415] by one show of fireworks out of the fragments and scaffolding which belong to him by virtue of his office.[1416]—Grand officers of the palace, governors of royal establishments, captains of captaincies, chamberlains, equerries, gentlemen in waiting, gentlemen in ordinary, pages, governors, almoners, chaplains, ladies of honor, ladies of the bedchamber, ladies in waiting on the King, the Queen, on Monsieur, on Madame, on the Comte D'Artois, on the Comtesse D'Artois, on Mesdames, on Madame Royale, on Madame Elisabeth, in each princely establishment and elsewhere, hundreds of places provided with salaries and accessories are without any service to perform, or simply answer a decorative purpose. "Mme. de Laborde has just been appointed keeper of the queen's bed, with 12,000 francs pension out of the king's privy purse; nothing is known of the duties of this position, as there has been no place of this kind since Anne of Austria." The eldest son of M. de Machault is appointed intendant of the classes. "This is one of the employments called complimentary: it is worth 18,000 livres income to sign one's name twice a year." And likewise with the post of secretary-general of the Swiss guards, worth 30,000 livres a year and assigned to the Abbé Barthélemy; and the same with the post of secretary-general of the dragoons, worth 20,000 livres a year, held in turn by Gentil Bernard and by Laujon, two small pocket poets.?—It would be simpler to give the money without the place. There is, indeed, no end to them. On reading various memoirs day after day it seems as if the treasury was open to plunder. The courtiers, unremitting in their attentions to the king, force him to sympathize with their troubles. They are his intimates, the guests of his drawing-room; men of the same stamp as himself, his natural clients, the only ones with whom he can converse, and whom it is necessary to make contented; he cannot avoid helping them. He must necessarily contribute to the dowries of their children since he has signed their marriage contracts; he must necessarily enrich them since their profusion serves for the embellishment of his court. Nobility being one of the glories of the throne, the occupant of the throne is obliged to regild it as often as is necessary.[1417] In this connection a few figures and anecdotes among a thousand speak most eloquently.[1418]—"The Prince de Pons had a pension of 25,000 livres, out of the king's bounty, on which his Majesty was pleased to give 6,000 to Mme. de Marsan, his daughter, Canoness of Remiremont. The family represented to the king the bad state of the Prince de Pons's affairs, and his Majesty was pleased to grant to his son Prince Camille, 15,000 livres of the pension vacated by the death of his father, and 5,000 livres increase to Mme. de Marsan."—M. de Conflans espouses Mlle. Portail. "In honor of this marriage the king was pleased to order that out of the pension of 10,000 livres granted to Mme. la Presidente Portail, 6,000 of it should pass to M. de Conflans after the death of Mme. Portail."—M. de Séchelles, a retiring minister, "had 12,000 livres on an old pension which the king continued; he has, besides this, 20,000 livres pension as minister; and the king gives him in addition to all this a pension of 40,000 livres." The motives, which prompt these favors, are often remarkable. M. de Rouillé has to be consoled for not having participated in the treaty of Vienna; this explains why "a pension of 6,000 livres is given to his niece, Mme. de Castellane, and another of 10,000 to his daughter, Mme. de Beuvron, who is very rich."—"M. de Puisieux enjoys about 76,000 or 77,000 livres income from the bounty of the king; it is true that he has considerable property, but the revenue of this property is uncertain, being for the most part in vines."—"A pension of 10,000 livres has just been awarded to the Marquise de Lède because she is disagreeable to Mme. Infante, and to secure her resignation."—The most opulent stretch out their hands and take accordingly. "It is estimated that last week 128,000 livres in pensions were bestowed on ladies of the court, while for the past two years the officers have not received the slightest pension: 8,000 livres to the Duchesse de Chevreuse, whose husband has an income of 500,000 livres; 12,000 livres to Mme. de Luynes, that she may not be jealous; 10,000 to the Duchesse de Brancas; 10,000 to the dowager Duchesse de Brancas, mother of the preceding," etc. At the head of these leeches come the princes of the blood. "The king has just given 1,500,000 livres to M. le Prince de Conti to pay his debts, 1,000,000 of which is under the pretext of indemnifying him for the injury done him by the sale of Orange, and 500,000 livres as a gratuity." "The Duc d'Orléans formerly had 50,000 crowns pension, as a poor man, and awaiting his father's inheritance. This event making him rich, with an income of more than 3,000,000 livres, he gave up his pension. But having since represented to the king that his expenditure exceeded his income, the king gave him back his 50,000 crowns."—Twenty years later, in 1780, when Louis XVI., desirous of relieving the treasury, signs "the great reformation of the table, 600,000 livres are given to Mesdames for their tables." This is what the dinners, cut down, of three old ladies, cost the public! For the king's two brothers, 8,300,000 livres, besides 2,000,000 income in appanages; for the Dauphin, Madame Royale, Madame Elisabeth, and Mesdames 3,500,000 livres; for the queen, 4,000,000: such is the statement of Necker in 1784. Add to this the casual donations, admitted or concealed; 200,000 francs to M. de Sartines, to aid him in paying his debts; 200,000 to M. Lamoignon, keeper of the seals; 100,000 to M. de Miromesnil for expenses in establishing himself; 166,000 to the widow of M. de Maurepas; 400,000 to the Prince de Salm; 1,200,000 to the Duc de Polignac for the pledge of the county Fenestranges; 754,337 to Mesdames to pay for Bellevue.[1419] M. de Calonne," says Augeard, a reliable witness,[1420] "scarcely entered on his duties, raised a loan of 100,000,000 livres, one-quarters of which did not find its way into the royal treasury; the rest was eaten up by people at the court; his donations to the Comte Artois are estimated at 56,000,000; the portion of Monsieur is 5,000,000; he gave to the Prince de Condé, in exchange for 300,000 livres income, 12,000,000 paid down and 600,000 livres annuity, and he causes the most burdensome acquisition to be made for the State, in exchanges of which the damage is more than five to one." We must not forget that in actual rates all these donations, pensions, and salaries are worth double the amount.—Such is the use of the great in relation to the central power; instead of constituting themselves representatives of the people, they aimed to be the favorites of the Sovereign, and they shear the flock which they ought to preserve.
IV. Isolation of the Chiefs
Isolation of the Chiefs—Sentiments of subordinates
—Provincial nobility—The Curates.
The fleeced flock is to discover finally what is done with its wool. "Sooner or later," says a parliament of 1764,[1421] "the people will learn that the remnants of our finances continue be wasted in donations which are frequently undeserved; in excessive and multiplied pensions for the same persons; in dowries and promises of dowry, and in useless offices and salaries." Sooner or later they will thrust back "these greedy hands which are always open and never full; that insatiable crowd which seems to be born only to seize all and possess nothing, and pitiless as it is shameless."—And when this day arrives the extortioners will find that they stand alone. For the characteristic of an aristocracy which cares only for itself is to live aloof in a closed circle. Having forgotten the public, it also neglects its subordinates; after being separated from the nation it separates itself from its own adherents. Like a group of staff-officers on furlough, it indulges in Sports without giving itself further concern about inferior officers; when the hour of battle comes nobody will march under its orders, and chieftains are sought elsewhere. Such is the isolation of the seigniors of the court and of the prelates among the lower grades of the nobility and the clergy; they appropriate to themselves too large a share, and give nothing, or almost nothing, to the people who are not of their society. For a century a steady murmur against them rising, and goes on expanding until it becomes an uproar, which the old and the new spirit, feudal ideas and philosophic ideas, threaten in unison. "I see," said the bailiff of Mirabeau,[1422] "that the nobility is demeaning itself and becoming a wreck. It is extended to all those children of bloodsuckers, the vagabonds of finance, introduced by La Pompadour, herself the spring of this foulness. One portion of it demeans itself in its servility to the court; the other portion is amalgamated with that quill-driving rabble who are converting the blood of the king's subjects into ink; another perishes stifled beneath vile robes, the ignoble atoms of cabinet-dust which an office drags up out of the mire;" and all, parvenus of the old or of the new stock, form a band called the court, 'The court!" exclaims D'Argenson. "The entire evil is found in this word, The court has become the senate of the nation; the least of the valets at Versailles is a senator; chambermaids take part in the government, if not to legislate, at least to impede laws and regulations; and by dint of hindrance there are no longer either laws, or rules, or law-makers. . . . Under Henry IV courtiers remained each one at home; they had not entered into ruinous expenditure to belong to the court; favors were not thus due to them as at the present day. . . The court is the sepulcher of the nation." Many noble officers, finding that high grades are only for courtiers, abandon the service, and betake themselves with their discontent to their estates. Others, who have not left their domains, brood there in discomfort, idleness, and ennui, their ambition embittered by their powerlessness. In 1789, says the Marquis de Ferrières, most of them "are so weary of the court and of the ministers, they are almost democrats." At least, "they want to withdraw the government from the ministerial oligarchy in whose hands it is concentrated;" there are no grand seigniors for deputies; they set them aside and "absolutely reject them, saying that they would traffic with the interests of the nobles;" they themselves, in their registers, insist that there be no more court nobility.
The same sentiments prevail among the lower clergy, and still more actively; for they are excluded from the high offices, not only as inferiors, but also as commoner.[1423] Already, in 1766, the Marquis de Mirabeau writes: "It would be an insult to most of our pretentious ecclesiastics to offer them a curacy. Revenues and honors are for the abbés-commendatory, for tonsured beneficiaries not in orders, for the numerous chapters (of nobility)." On the contrary, "the true pastors of souls, the collaborators in the holy ministry, scarcely obtain a subsistence." The first class "drawn from the nobility and from the best of the bourgeoisie have pretensions only, without being of the true ministry. The other, only having duties to fulfill without expectations and almost without income. . . can be recruited only from the lowest ranks of civil society," while the parasites who despoil the laborers "affect to subjugate them and to degrade them more and more." "I pity," said Voltaire, "the lot of a country curate, obliged to contend for a sheaf of wheat with his unfortunate parishioner, to plead against him, to exact the tithe of peas and lentils, to waste his miserable existence in constant strife. . . . I pity still more the curate with a fixed allowance to whom monks, called gros decimateurs[1424] dare offer a salary of forty ducats, to go about during the year, two or three miles from his home, day and night, in sunshine and in rain, in the snow and in the ice, exercising the most trying and most disagreeable functions." Attempts are made for thirty years to secure their salaries and raise them a little; in case of their inadequacy the beneficiary, collator or tithe-owner of the parish is required to add to them until the curê obtains 500 livres (1768), then 700 livres (1785), the vicar 200 livres (1768), then 250 (1778), and finally 350 (1785). Strictly, at the prices at which things are, a man may support himself on that.[1425] But he must live among the destitute to whom he owes alms, and he cherishes at the bottom of his heart a secret bitterness towards the indolent Dives who, with full pockets, dispatches him, with empty pockets, on a mission of charity. At Saint-Pierre de Barjouville, in the Toulousain, the archbishop of Toulouse appropriates to himself one-half of the tithes and gives away eight livres a year in alms. At Bretx, the chapter of Isle Jourdain, which retains one-half of certain tithes and three-quarters of others, gives ten livres; at Croix Falgarde, the Benedictines, to whom a half of the tithes belong, give ten livres per annum.[1426] At Sainte-Croix de Bernay in Normandy,[1427] the non-resident abbé, who receives 57,000 livres gives 1,050 livres to the curate without a parsonage, whose parish contains 4,000 communicants. At Saint-Aubin-sur-Gaillon, the abbé, a gros décimateur, gives 350 livres to the vicar, who is obliged to go into the village and obtain contributions of flour, bread and apples. At Plessis Hébert, "the substitute deportuaire,[1428] not having enough to live on is obliged to get his meals in the houses of neighboring curates." In Artois, where the tithes are often seven and a half and eight per cent. on he product of the soil, a number of curates have a fixed rate and no parsonage; their church goes to ruin and the beneficiary gives nothing to the poor. "At Saint-Laurent, in Normandy, the curacy is worth not more than 400 livres, which the curate shares with an obitier,[1429] and there are 500 inhabitants, three quarters of whom receive alms." As the repairs on a parsonage or on a church are usually at the expense of a seignior or of a beneficiary often far off, and in debt or indifferent, it sometimes happens that the priest does not know where to lodge, or to say mass. "I arrived," says a curate of the Touraine, "in the month of June, 1788. . . . The parsonage would resemble a hideous cave were it not open to all the winds and the frosts. Below there are two rooms with stone floors, without doors or windows, and five feet high; a third room six feet high, paved with stone, serves as parlor, hall, kitchen, wash-house, bakery, and sink for the water of the court and garden. Above are three similar rooms, the whole cracking and tumbling in ruins, absolutely threatening to fail, without either doors and windows that hold." And, in 1790, the repairs are not yet made. See, by way of contrast, the luxury of the prelates possessing half a million income, the pomp of their palaces, the hunting equipment of M. de Dillon, bishop of Evreux, the confessionals lined with satin of M. de Barral, bishop of Troyes, and the innumerable culinary utensils in massive silver of M. de Rohan, bishop of Strasbourg.—Such is the lot of curates at the established rates, and there are "a great many" who do not get the established rates, withheld from them through the ill-will of the higher clergy; who, with their perquisites, get only from 400 to 500 livres, and who vainly ask for the meager pittance to which they are entitled by the late edict. "Should not such a request," says a curate, "be willingly granted by Messieurs of the upper clergy who suffer monks to enjoy from 5 to 6,000 livres income each person, whilst they see curates, who are at least as necessary, reduced to the lighter portion, as little for themselves as for their parish?"—And they yet gnaw on this slight pittance to pay the free gift. In this, as in the rest, the poor are charged to discharge the rich. In the diocese of Clermont, "the curates, even with the simple fixed rates, are subject to a tax of 60, 80, 100, 120 livres and even more; the vicars, who live only by the sweat of their brows, are taxed 22 livres." The prelates, on the contrary, pay but little, and "it is still a custom to present bishops on New-Year's day with a receipt for their taxes."[1430]—There is no escape for the curates. Save two or three small bishoprics of "lackeys," all the dignities of the church are reserved to the nobles; "to be a bishop nowadays," says one of them, "a man must be a gentleman." I regard them as sergeants who, like their fellows in the army, have lost all hope of becoming officers.—Hence there are some whose anger bursts its bounds: "We, unfortunate curates at fixed rates; we, commonly assigned to the largest parishes, like my own which, for two leagues in the woods, includes hamlets that would form another; we, whose lot makes even the stones and beams of our miserable dwellings cry aloud," we have to endure prelates "who would still, through their forest-keepers, prosecute a poor curate for cutting a stick in their forests, his sole support on his long journeys over the road." On their passing, the poor man "is obliged to jump close against a slope to protect himself from the feet and the spattering of the horses, as likewise from the wheels and, perhaps, the whip of an insolent coachman," and then, "begrimed with dirt, with his stick in one hand and his hat, such as it is, in the other, he must salute, humbly and quickly, through the door of the close, gilded carriage, the counterfeit hierophant who is snoring on the wool of the flock the poor curate is feeding, and of which he merely leaves him the dung and the grease." The whole letter is one long cry of rage; it is rancor of this stamp which is to fashion Joseph Lebons and Fouchés.—In this situation and with these sentiments it is evident that the lower clergy will treat its chiefs as the provincial nobility treated theirs.[1431] They will not select "for representatives those who swim in opulence and who have always regarded their sufferings with tranquility." The curates, on all sides "will confederate together" to send only curates to the States-General, and to exclude "not only canons, abbés, priors and other beneficiaries, but again the principal superiors, the heads of the hierarchy," that is to say, the bishops. In fact, in the States-General, out of three hundred clerical deputies we count two hundred and eight curates, and, like the provincial nobles, these bring along with them the distrust and the ill-will which they have so long entertained against their chiefs. Events are soon to prove this. If the first two orders are constrained to combine against the communes it is at the critical moment when the curates withdraw. If the institution of an upper chamber is rejected it is owing to the commonalty of the gentry (la plèbe des gentilshommes) being unwilling to allow the great families a prerogative which they have abused.
V. The King's Incompetence and Generosity.
The most privileged of all—Having monopolized all powers,
he takes upon himself their functional activity—The burden
of this task—He evades it or is incompetent—His
conscience at ease—France is his property—How he abuses
it—Royalty the center of abuses.
One privilege remains the most considerable of all, that of the king; for, in his staff of hereditary nobles he is the hereditary general. His office, indeed, is not a sinecure, like their rank; but it involves quite as grave disadvantages and worse temptations. Two things are pernicious to Man, the lack of occupation and the lack of restraint; neither inactivity nor omnipotence are in harmony with his nature. The absolute prince who is all-powerful, like the listless aristocracy with nothing to do, in the end become useless and mischievous.—In grasping all powers the king insensibly took upon himself all functions; an immense undertaking and one surpassing human strength. For it is the Monarchy, and not the Revolution, which endowed France with administrative centralization [1432]. Three functionaries, one above the other, manage all public business under the direction of the king's council; the comptroller-general at the center, the intendant in each generalship,[1433] the sub-delegate in each election, fixing, apportioning and levying taxes and the militia, laying out and building highways, employing the national police force, distributing succor, regulating cultivation, imposing their tutelage on the parishes, and treating municipal magistrates as valets. "A village," says Turgot,[1434] "is simply an assemblage of houses and huts, and of inhabitants equally passive. . . . Your Majesty is obliged to decide wholly by yourself or through your mandataries. . . . Each awaits your special instructions to contribute to the public good, to respect the rights of others, and even sometimes to exercise his own." Consequently, adds Necker, "the government of France is carried on in the bureaux. . . .The clerks, relishing their influence, never fail to persuade the minister that he cannot separate himself from command in a single detail." Bureaucratic at the center, arbitrariness, exceptions and favors everywhere, such is a summary of the system. "Sub-delegates, officers of elections, receivers and comptrollers of the vingtièmes, commissaires and collectors of the tailles, officers of the salt-tax, process-servers, voituriers-buralistes, overseers of the corvées, clerks of the excise, of the registry, and of dues reserved, all these men belonging to the tax-service. Each of these will, aided by his fiscal knowledge and petty authority, so overwhelm the ignorant and inexperienced tax payer that he does not recognize that he is being cheated." [1435] A rude species of centralization with no control over it, with no publicity, without uniformity, thus installs over the whole country an army of petty pashas who, as judges, decide causes in which they are themselves contestants, ruling by delegation, and, to sanction their theft or their insolence, always having on their lips the name of the king, who is obliged to let them do as they please.—In short, the machine, through its complexity, irregularity, and dimensions, escapes from his grasp. A Frederick II. who rises at four o'clock in the morning, a Napoleon who dictates half the night in his bath, and who works eighteen hours a day, would scarcely suffice for its needs. Such a régime cannot operate without constant strain, without indefatigable energy, without infallible discernment, without military rigidity, without superior genius; on these conditions alone can one convert twenty-five millions of men into automatons and substitute his own will, lucid throughout, coherent throughout and everywhere present, for the wills of those he abolishes. Louis XV lets "the good machine" work by itself, while he settles down into apathy. "They would have it so, they thought it all for the best,"[1436] is his manner of speaking when ministerial measures prove unsuccessful. "If I were a lieutenant of the police," he would say again, "I would prohibit cabs." In vain is he aware of the machine being dislocated, for he can do nothing and he causes nothing to be done. In the event of misfortune he has a private reserve, his purse apart. "The king," said Mme. de Pompadour, "would sign away a million without thinking of it, but he would scarcely bestow a hundred louis out of his own little treasury."—Louis XVI strives for some time to remove some of the wheels, to introduce better ones and to reduce the friction of the rest; but the pieces are too rusty, and too weighty. He cannot adjust them, or harmonize them and keep them in their places; his hand falls by his side wearied and powerless. He is content to practice economy himself; he records in his journal the mending of his watch, and leaves the State carriage in the hands of Calonne to be loaded with fresh abuses that it may revert back to the old rut from which it is to issue only by breaking down.