XXXIV.

CHAP. standing the solemn renunciation on which the Treaty of Utrecht was based. The Duke of Orleans was an old enemy of Philip. When commanding in Spain, and when there were thoughts of Philip abdicating, the duke hoped to take his place, and intrigued to do so. Philip of Spain now sought to do the same by him, and sent an envoy, Prince Cellamare, to Paris, to collect and consult friends, and pave the way for the Spanish king to the French regency and succession.

On Louis's demise, however, Philip made no sign, and the Duke du Maine but a feeble stand. The Duke of Orleans had been advised to prepare formidable means to put down hostile pretensions, to summon the StatesGeneral, and convoke the grandees. His good sense taught him to prefer appealing to the parlement to cancel whatever was injurious to him in the king's testament. It was the precedent followed, on the death of Louis the Thirteenth, by Anne of Austria. And as the judges were almost all of Jansenist or Gallican leanings, the object of the hatred and persecution of the old court and its confessor, Le Tellier, to dethrone these by cancelling Louis's will was considered a labour of love by the magistrature.

The Duke of Orleans accordingly, on the day after the king's death, proceeded to the parlement, where the dignitaries of state and justice were assembled. He requested to be at once declared regent, and to have his rights by birth and blood acknowledged, before the reading of the will. The judges objected to this.* The testament of Louis was produced and read, appointing a council to discuss all matters in concert with the regent, the plurality of voices deciding. Codicils drawn up in the last days of the king's life were also read, giving the guardianship and education of the young king to the Duc du Maine, with the command of the household troops. The regent then rose to com

*Buvat, Journal de la Régence, MSS. Bib. Impériale.

plain of these testamentary dispositions, as injurious to
his rights and to the interests of the state, as well as to
the last intentions of the late king, who on his deathbed
addressed him as the rightful heir to the crown, should
the Duke of Anjou fail, and as his successor in the
government, with power to change whatever might be
impracticable or wrong.
The Duc du Maine rose to
speak; but being contented that the regent, whilst at-
tacking the testament, seemed to respect the codicil,
he was easily reduced to silence. The abrogation of
the testament was voted, and the regent endowed with
all authority, not only independent of the council, but
over it. He could remove or nominate its members.
After this his declaration that he would be guided by
the plurality of the council's vote was idle.

The chiefs of the parlement had, in fact, agreed before the sitting to set aside the testament. They had, however, not prearranged how to deal with the codicils; and when the Duke of Orleans rose to protest against them, the Duc du Maine defended them, and a prolonged altercation followed betwixt them, which was felt to be awkward, dangerous, and inconclusive by the regent's friends.† They forced the regent and duke to adjourn their wordy dispute to another room; and as this was equally inconclusive, the sitting of the parlement was adjourned to the afternoon. In the interval the chiefs of parlement were dealt with; and when the regent again harangued that body and declared that his government would be guided by their sage remonstrances, to which he would restore their rights, judges and counsellors burst forth into acclamations. Du Maine was not listened to; the late king's order giving him the command of the guards was rescinded. The Duc du Maine demanded that he should at least have the command of the guard stationed at the king's residence.

*Mémoire de Mathieu Marais
† St. Simon.

CHAP.

XXXIV.

XXXIV

CHAP. Even this was denied.* "In that case," exclaimed the duke, “you may as well take from me the guardianship of the king's person, which I can no longer answer for." "With the greatest pleasure," hastily interrupted the regent; "we will relieve you of that trouble too." Thus the Duc du Maine, though allowed to continue his superintendence of the young king's education, was left dependent, and the regent endowed with power as absolute as that wielded by Louis.†

Whatever was the private life of the Duke of Orleans, his first intentions as a future ruler were the best, and moreover planned and discussed with the best men. Both court and public had been fully alive to the disorder, dilapidation, and decay produced by the abuses of a superannuated administration. The late Duke of Burgundy had sent commissions through all the provinces, and studied their heartrending reports. The politicians who had aided and surrounded the dauphin betook themselves to the Duke of Orleans, who promised to adopt all that was feasible in their suggestions. The opinion of Fénelon, the head of the dauphin's school, was that despotism was the great malady which was eating up the monarchy, and that the States-General offered the best remedy. But how could the tax-worn and despised commons agree with the clergy and the nobles, if no external force was applied? or, did the people throw out that force, how could resistance and civil war be avoided? St. Simon himself recommended the convocation of the StatesGeneral, chiefly to perpetrate a state bankruptcy in their name. The regent himself already felt that constitutional reform would be revolution, and limited in consequence his views to administrative amelioration.

* Staal.

† Memoirs of St. Simon, Duclos,
Noailles, Registres du Parlement, &c.
Lemontey, Histoire de la Régence,
Mathieu Marais, &c.

They are in MSS. in the Bib. Impériale.

One of the acts of the regent at this time was to order the publication of "Télémaque.”

The grandees, who possessed his ear, never failed to declaim against the tyranny of single ministers, who in the late reign were little kings in their departments. Government by councils, not ministers, was a favourite idea of the dauphin's friends. The regent resolved to put it in practice, yet this had been the system established by the princes of the House of Austria, in Spain, as elsewhere; and it had been found to aggravate all the ills and all the stagnation of despotism.

More pressing than even financial embarrassment was the management of ecclesiastical affairs. The prisons were full of victims immured for the crime of being Jansenists, and for entertaining different ideas from the Jesuits and the late king on the efficacy of Grace. The instrument of their persecution, Le Tellier, was appointed by the king's will confessor to the young sovereign. The regent dismissed him with a pension; whilst the chief object of Le Tellier's enmity, the Cardinal de Noailles, was appointed to preside over the new council for ecclesiastical affairs, of which the eminent lawyer Daguesseau became a member. The gates of the Bastille were flung open, and the Jansenists came forth, with others even more ignorant of the crime for which they had suffered years of incarceration.*

One should have expected that Protestants had shared in the effects of newly awakened tolerance. But their sufferings remained unattended to until the regent's attention was attracted to their condition by the information that they were about to rise in the south, and that a quantity of arms prepared for the insurrection. had been seized. His impulse then was to avert the danger by once more granting liberty of worship and conscience to the religionists. The Abbé Dubois had,

Cardinals Rohan and Bussy waited on the regent to ask what was to be done in the matter of the Constitution and the Bull Unige

nitus. "Leave it alone," said the
regent; "it would have been better
had you never meddled with it."
Buvat.

CHAP.

XXXIV.

།།

XXXIV.

CHAP. however, by that time acquired chief influence over the regent; and he, hoping and intriguing to be cardinal, could not consent to a measure of tolerance that might incense Rome. The Protestants, therefore, were abandoned to all the rigours of proscription, in order that a dissolute politician might become cardinal!* For the same reason, the regent had resisted Daguesseau's proposal to banish the Jesuits. He felt that he had sufficiently offended Rome by the reversal of all that had been done against Jansenism by the Bull Unigenitus.

Foreign relations also pressed upon the regent for guidance and solution. A council, with the Maréchal d'Uxelles at its head, was formed to administer them. But the regent soon took these affairs into his own hands, and found a practical minister to conduct them in the Abbé Dubois. Torcy was set aside, though retained in such a position that recourse could be had to him for information and advice. It was impossible to continue in office the old foreign minister when the object and scope of French policy became totally changed.

Louis the Fourteenth had one great idea, the aggrandisement of his monarchy and the extension of its frontiers. To this he had sacrificed the internal prosperity of the kingdom, and with such disproportionate success that it was impossible to do other than abandon the policy of aggrandisement and war. From this time till the fall of the monarchy it made no acquisition, and sought none, if Lorraine be excepted, which the French kings in many respects already considered their

own.

This wisely stationary policy of France allowed England to adopt one similarly pacific, the tranquillity of the west being for some years only disturbed by the personal intrigues of upstart ministers or mistresses. Wars themselves, when they arose, had a personal more