A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 07

by Voltaire

In that long age of barbarism, when the only concern of Europe was to commit usurpations and to sustain them, it must be acknowledged that kings, being often chiefs of banditti or warriors armed against those banditti, it was not possible to be subject to the government of a woman. Whoever was in possession of a great warhorse would engage in the work of rapine and murder only under the standard of a man mounted upon a great horse like himself. A buckler of oxhide served for a throne. The caliphs governed by the Koran, the popes were deemed to govern by the Gospel. The South saw no woman reign before Joan of Naples, who was indebted for her crown entirely to the affection of the people for King Robert, her grandfather, and to their hatred of Andrew, her husband. This Andrew was in reality of royal blood, but had been born in Hungary, at that time in a state of barbarism. He disgusted the Neapolitans by his gross manners, intemperance, and drunkenness. The amiable king Robert was obliged to depart from immemorial usage, and declare Joan alone sovereign by his will, which was approved by the nation.

In the North we see no queen reigning in her own right before Margaret of Waldemar, who governed for some months in her own name about the year 1377.

Spain had no queen in her own right before the able Isabella in 1461. In England the cruel and bigoted Mary, daughter of Henry VIII., was the first woman who inherited the throne, as the weak and criminal Mary Stuart was in Scotland in the sixteenth century. The immense territory of Russia had no female sovereign before the widow of Peter the Great.

The whole of Europe, and indeed I might say the whole world, was governed by warriors in the time when Philip de Valois supported his right against Edward III. This right of a male who succeeded to a male, seemed the law of all nations. "You are grandson of Philip the Fair," said Valois to his competitor, "but as my right would be superior to that of the mother, it must be still more decidedly superior to that of the son. Your mother, in fact, could not communicate a right which she did not possess."

It was therefore perfectly recognized in France that a prince of the blood royal, although in the remotest possible degree, should be heir to the crown in exclusion even of the daughter of the king. It is a law on which there is now not the slightest dispute whatever. Other nations have, since the full and universal recognition of this principle among ourselves, adjudged the throne to princesses. But France has still observed its ancient usage. Time has conferred on this usage the force of the most sacred of laws. At what time the Salic law was framed or interpreted is not of the slightest consequence; it does exist, it is respectable, it is useful; and its utility has rendered it sacred.

Examination Whether Daughters Are In All Cases Deprived Of Every Species Of Inheritance By This Salic Law.

I have already bestowed the empire on a daughter in defiance of the Golden Bull. I shall have no difficulty in conferring on a daughter the kingdom of France. I have a better right to dispose of this realm than Pope Julian II., who deprived Louis XII. of it, and transferred it by his own single authority to the emperor Maximilian. I am better authorized to plead in behalf of the daughters of the house of France, than Pope Gregory XIII. and Cordelier Sextus-Quintus were to exclude from the throne our princes of the blood, under the pretence actually urged by these excellent priests, that Henry IV. and the princes of Condé were a "bastard and detestable race" of Bourbon—refined and holy words, which deserve ever to be remembered in order to keep alive the conviction of all we owe to the bishops of Rome. I may give my vote in the states-general, and no pope certainly can have any suffrage on it. I therefore give my vote without hesitation, some three or four hundred years from the present time, to a daughter of France, then the only descendant remaining in a direct line from Hugh Capet. I constitute her queen, provided she shall have been well educated, have a sound understanding, and be no bigot. I interpret in her favor that law which declares "que fille ne doit mie succéder"—that a daughter must in no case come to her succession. I understand by the words, that she must in no case succeed as long as there shall be any male. But on failure of males, I prove that the kingdom belongs to her by nature, which ordains it, and for the benefit of the nation.

I invite all good Frenchmen to show the same respect as myself for the blood of so many kings. I consider this as the only method of preventing factions which would dismember the state. I propose that she shall reign in her own right, and that she shall be married to some amiable and respectable prince, who shall assume her name and arms, and who, in his own right, shall possess some territory which shall be annexed to France; as we have seen Maria Theresa of Hungary united in marriage to Francis, duke of Lorraine, the most excellent prince in the world.

What Celt will refuse to acknowledge her, unless we should discover some other beautiful and accomplished princess of the issue of Charlemagne, whose family was expelled by Hugh Capet, notwithstanding the Salic law? or unless indeed we should find a princess fairer and more accomplished still, an unquestionable descendant from Clovis, whose family was before expelled by Pepin, his own domestic, notwithstanding, be it again remembered, the Salic law.

I shall certainly find no involved and difficult intrigues necessary to obtain the consecration of my royal heroine at Rheims, or Chartres, or in the chapel of the Louvre—for either would effectually answer the purpose; or even to dispense with any consecration at all. For monarchs reign as well when not consecrated as when consecrated. The kings and queens of Spain observe no such ceremony.