"In a committee on the sense of the nation, Moved, that for preventing future disorders and dissensions, the heads of the Mutiny Act be brought in, and suffered to lie on the table to-morrow."—Fox's Motion in Parliament, February, 1784.
That renowned "coalition" between Lord North and Mr. Fox in 1783, the theme of countless caricatures and endless invective, illustrates the confusing influence of the king. During the whole period of the American Revolution, Lord North, as the head of the ministry, was obliged to execute and defend the king's policy, much of which we now know he disapproved. Naturally he would have been an ally of Fox years before, and they could either have prevented or shortened the conflict. The spell of the royal closet and the personal entreaties of the king prevailed over his better judgment, and made him the antagonist of Fox. At length, the war being at an end and North in retirement, England saw these two men, whose nightly conflicts had been the morning news for ten years, suddenly forming a "coalition," united in the administration, and pledged to the same policy. As we trace the successive steps which led to the alliance in the memoirs and diaries of the time, we discover that it was not so much the coalition as the previous estrangement that was unnatural. The public, however, could not be expected to see it in that light, and an uproar greeted the reconciliation that greatly aided the king in getting rid of the obnoxious Fox. The specimens of the caricatures to which it gave rise, presented on this and the two preceding pages, are two out of a great number still procurable.
CHAPTER XIV.
DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
In France, more conspicuously than in England, kingship broke down in that century. Louis XV., born in a private station, might have risen to the ownership of a small livery-stable, in which position his neighbors, commenting upon his character in the candid manner of French neighbors, would have epitomized him as a cross, proud pig. Those dull kings who finished kingship in Europe possessed but one trait which we usually associate with the kingly character—pride—and this was the single point of resemblance between Louis XV. and George III. Once in his life, it is related, Louis XV. uttered a few words with a vivacity approaching eloquence. "Would you believe," said he to Madame de Pompadour, "that there is a man in my court who dares to lift his eyes to one of my daughters?" He was blazing with passion at the thought of such flagrant impiety.
And was there ever, since sacred childhood first appealed for protection to the human heart, a child so unhappily placed as that baby king, an orphan, with a roué for a guardian, a smooth, insinuating priest for preceptor, and a dissolute court conspiring to corrupt him? The priest, who represented what then passed for virtue, taught him virtue out of a dreary catechism, still extant, which never yet elevated or nobly formed a human soul—a dead, false thing, with scarcely an atom in it of sound nutrition for heart or mind. But Cardinal Fleury had some success with his pupil. Thirty years after, when Pompadour was supplying him with fresh young girls of fourteen and fifteen, bought from their mothers by her for this purpose, the king's conscience would not permit him to go to bed until he had knelt down by the side of the timid victim, and required her to join him in saying the prescribed prayers.
The courtiers were not less successful in their endeavors. At the tender age of six years they provided for him an entertainment which gave the old Marquis de Dangeau the idea that they had formed the purpose of "drying up in him the very source of good feeling." They caused thousands of sparrows to be let loose in a vast hall, where they gave the boy the "divertissement" of seeing them shoot the birds, and covering all the floor with bloody, fluttering, crying victims. He doubtless enjoyed the spectacle, for at sixteen he shot in cold blood a pointer bred by himself, and accustomed to feed from his hand. So rude was he at seventeen, the chroniclers tell us, that the courtiers used all their arts to give him du goût pour les femmes, hoping thereby to render him "more polite and tractable." The precise manner in which a bevy of illustrious princesses and duchesses sought to débaucher le roi during one of the royal hunts is detailed in the diaries and satirized in the epigrams of the time.
The ladies, long frustrated by the "ferocity" of the youth, who cared only for hunting, succeeded at last, and succeeded with the applause of all the court. "Every one else has a mistress," remarks Barbier, advocate and magistrate; "why shouldn't the king?" It was a long reign of mistresses. Changes of ministry, questions of peace or war, promotions and appointments of generals and admirals, the arrest of authors and nobles—all were traceable to the will or caprice of a mistress. Frederick of Prussia styled Pompadour, Petticoat the Third, which some one was kind enough to report to her; and when Voltaire, whom she "protected," conveyed to the Prussian monarch a complimentary message, he replied, coldly, "I don't know her." Maria Theresa of Austria, a proud and high-principled lady, stooped to recognize her existence, and wrote her civil notes. If there is any truth in the printed gossip of the innermost court circles of that period, it was this difference in the treatment of the king's mistress which made France the ally of Austria in the Seven Years' War.
Would the reader like to know how affairs go on in a court governed by a mistress, then let him ponder this one sample anecdote, related by the femme de chambre of Madame de Pompadour, showing how she, femme de chambre as she was, obtained a lieutenant's commission in the army for one of her relations. She first asked "madame" for the commission; but as madame was in full intrigue to remove the Minister of War, this application did not succeed. "Pressed by my family," the femme de chambre relates, "who could not conceive that, in the position in which I was, it could be difficult for me to procure a trifling commission for a good soldier, I asked it directly from the minister himself. He received me coldly, and gave me little hope. On going out, the Marquis de V—— followed me, and said: 'You desire a commission. There is one vacant, which has been promised to a protégé of mine; but if you are willing to exchange favors with me, I will yield it to you. What I desire is to play the part of Exempt de Police in "Tartuffe" the next time madame gives it in the palace before the king. It is a rôle of a few lines only. Get madame to assign that part to me, and the lieutenancy is yours.' I told madame of this. The thing was done. I obtained my lieutenancy, and the marquis thanked madame for the rôle as warmly as if she had made him a duke."
Generals were appointed to the command of expeditions for no better reason than this. That Pompadour drew thirty-six millions of francs from the "royal treasury," i. e., from the earnings of the frugal and laborious French people, could easily have been borne. It was government by mistresses and for mistresses, the government of ignorant and idle caprice, that broke down monarchy in France and set the world on fire. Of the evils which corrupt rulers bring upon communities, the waste of the people's money (though that is a great evil in so poor a world as ours, with such crowds of poor relations and so much to be done) is among the least. It is the absence of intelligence and public spirit in the Government that brings on ruin.
"As long as I live," said Louis XV. one day to Madame de Pompadour, "I shall be the master, to do as I like. But my grandson will have trouble." Madame was of the same mind, but gave it neater expression: "After us the deluge."