XXX. CHAP. Thirteenth. Perhaps it was the sole, as assuredly it was the great cause of Mazarin's influence with Anne of Austria and the young king, her son. This prevalence of Mazarin's war policy was no doubt a great misfortune to France. It merely produced eleven more years of anarchy, weakness, and bloodshed, diverting the two great nations engaged in the strife from efforts at self-regeneration and reform, not impossible at that epoch. France could have had Roussillon and Artois just as well at Munster as on the Bidassoa; whilst the eleven years spent in the dilapidations, the ignorant and jealous tyranny of Mazarin at home, might have seen either the States General, or some similar effort of the different classes of the nation to introduce the principles of justice, of freedom, and of humanity, if not of tolerance, into its government. French writers, however, join, almost all of them, in the apotheosis of Mazarin, because he signed the two treaties which extended the frontiers of France. And yet would not France have gained even far greater extension, if it had turned its intellect and its energies to the arts of peace, instead of wasting both in the continuance of a puny and contemptible war? Could the public men of France have established anything like free institutions, such as a citizen class must delight to join, they would have obtained not merely Alsace and Roussillon, but the Belgian provinces to the Scheldt, which were then and have been since averted and diverted from France, solely by the tyranny, the intolerance, and utter disregard of any liberal principle of government, which have marked the career of that people. The French estimation of Mazarin seems thus to be grossly exaggerated in his favour, the meanness, nullity, and ignorance of his domestic administration being considered to be more than compensated by the glory and ability of the warrior and the negotiator. These, however, appear to have been completely thrown away. XXX. They gained no more in 1660 than might have been CHAP. secured twelve years previous. But they certainly acted as stepping-stones to the ambitious efforts of Louis the Fourteenth, which led the country still more astray into the labyrinth of expensive and bootless wars, not productive of any augmentation of territory worth noting, whilst attended by results the most degrading to humanity, bringing civilised man lower than he had ever been under any régime, and ending inevitably in those throes and convulsions of the unhappy country to right itself, which produced scenes of human misery and crime almost unequalled in the annals of the world. Although the Paris parliament had been somewhat quieted in 1645, a papal bull, issued in the following year, infringing the liberties of the Gallican church, offered a new theme and fresh excitement to the younger members. Towards the close of that year Emery introduced a new tariff or high octroi on all commodities entering Paris, which he proposed extending to other towns. It affected wine and the necessaries of life, and set the people, as well as the better citizens who owned land and vineyards about the capital, in violent commotion. The parliament took up the question; the minister declared that the tariff was not of their jurisdiction, and had it registered in the cour des aides. The judges declared the levy illegal, and the people of Paris, once more appearing with their old turbulence upon the scene, were determined to prevent it. Emery was obliged to give up his scheme, but he told the parliament that if he abandoned the tariff he must make demands more unpalatable to them, such as exclusive taxes on the rich, or the creation and sale of new offices of judicature. Whatever may have been Mazarin's abilities as a foreign statesman, and as a counsellor to the queen in the treatment of courtiers and grandees, he was singu XXX. CHAP. larly unskilful in his management of popular interests and the vital questions mixed up with them. He allowed Emery to propose taxes, which were indeed indispensable in order to make head against foreign foes, but which, from their nature, made more dangerous domestic ones. The absurd and fatal custom of raising money by the sale of places had of course created a multitude of placemen, every duty and function having its officer. When obstruction was thrown in the way of trade, and when land could with difficulty be bought by the citizen, and if bought was peculiarly taxed and ransomed, the savings of the middle class were vested in the purchase of place. They came thus to form a large functionary body, a bureaucracy, as the modern term expresses it. Richelieu, who saw the danger of such a class, strove to combat it, but so ineffectually that he only awoke its hostility to government. Mazarin, less influenced by views to humble any class, but impelled by great necessities, found, as he thought, this functionary body the only possessor of wealth and capital, and the only source from which they could be extracted. He might, perhaps, have succeeded in dividing classes, and so mulcting them, but in his ignorance or recklessness, the cardinal's proceedings affronted and provoked them all, and literally drove them to make common cause against him and against the regent. He first offended the parliament. In 1646 he created a new law court to take cognisance of the affairs of the royal domains. The judges were always menaced with seeing their profits divided, their salaries unpaid, and themselves punished for being refractory with exile or death. The wealthier citizens were oppressed by forced loans, or by the tax on the aisés, which, when not paid with sufficient alacrity, was enforced by quartering the king's archers upon the refractory, to harass and to plunder them.* Those of humbler savings were * Ormesson. XXX. beggared by the non-payment of the rentes on the Hotel CHAP. de Ville; while Emery, by his tariff, pinched the pockets of the labouring poor, and drove them to shout against Mazarin. Whilst the minister saw no remedy for such disorders, and the judges protested against him and them, there arose the state of things which De Retz has so powerfully described. "At the murmurs of parliament the world awoke; and in awakening began to grope in the dark for the laws. They were not to be found; and there arose cries, questions, and affright. In the midst of the agitation men undertook to state and to explain what had hitherto remained in venerable obscurity. Truth became problematical, and to some alarming. The people forced their way into the sanctuary, and tore away the veil which ought to cover all that can be said or thought concerning the mutual rights of kings and peoples-rights which are best made to accord in silence. The hall of the palace of justice showed the first example of the profanation of these mysteries." It would be tedious to enumerate the various fiscal edicts of 1647, with the remonstrances of parliament, and the efforts of court and cardinal to overcome opposition by compromise, cajolery or menace. On the first day of 1648 Emery announced more edicts, a loan of 150,000 livres on the rich, a new semestral parliament, provincial as well as metropolitan, a creation of numerous secretaries, greffiers, audienciers, and twentyfour new masters of requests. These were pleaders or younger judges in the grand council, which heard appeals from the king's prévôté, and ought to have been peculiarly attached to the court. But the new edicts flung the great council to fraternise with the parliament. To crown the disorder, the finance superintendent pressed for the ransom due on certain houses. The owners thronged to the hall of the parliament, and XXX. CHAP. meeting Emery's son, who was a judge, they hustled and maltreated him. Apparently to avenge this, an order of arrest was signed against two shopkeepers of the Rue St. Denis (January 12th, 1648). Marshal Schomberg, with some of the king's guards, was sent to effect the arrest. The persons sought were not found at home. But the population of the quarter mustering in agitation, mounted the church steeple and rang the bells, bringing a crowd into the street, which would have rendered the carrying off any captive impossible.* The circumstance brought the people to know their force and to take pleasure in showing it by collecting every night and making frequent discharges of arms, as if challenging the government. The masters of requests were scarcely less noisy in their way, and as the parliament showed no inclination to register the new edicts, the king was brought on the 15th of January to enforce this ceremony in a bed of justice. Instead of giving a lesson, however, the young king received one. For Omer Talon, the procureur-general, told him in an harangue, "That his majesty, indeed, had no account to render of his acts, except to God and his conscience. theless, the greatness of a monarch ruling over freemen, not over slaves. admitted checks to their authority. not, ruled over ruined provinces and desert kingdoms." After drawing a fearful picture of the general distress, Talon bade the young monarch to triumph over his own luxury, and that of the court, and not over the patience of his subjects.† But that, never- From January to April the court made every effort, by relaxing some demands and pressing others, to obtain the sanction of parliament for some mode of Omer Talon, Guy Joly, Histoire du Tems, par Du Portael. + All respecting the Maîtres de Requêtes, is told by Ormesson, who was one of them. |