XXXV. war. Had they not had this effect on Louis the Fif CHAP. teenth and his court, the contest might have long continued. For two events took away the great living obstacles to ambition and bloodshed. Early in 1742 Walpole was driven from power, and Lord Carteret, who succeeded to his lead in government office, excited nation and king to raise an army, march into Germany, and emulate the great deeds of Marlborough. In June 1743 Cardinal Fleury expired under the weight of years, and still more of the anxious and unexpected cares that the reverses of the war heaped upon him. He was, to be sure, not answerable for this. The king and the Belleisles had plunged France into the idle project of conquering and dividing the Austrian empire. On Fleury, however, fell the responsibility, as well as the task of making the most of imbecile allies, and deprecating the hostility of involuntarily made enemies. It is difficult not to compare Fleury with Walpole, two prime ministers who maintained peace between their respective countries for so many years, in despite of national currents in the opposite direction. Walpole had a troublous world of faction to control, as well as a warlike and un-English king to manage. Fleury had to defeat the efforts of an ever-changing band of courtiers to wean the young monarch from the certainly inglorious policy of his minister. Both showed equal address. But Walpole was the more accomplished politician. He was fully versed in domestic administration, and perfectly understood the science which in France seemed wanting, that of finance. Neither of them had any far-sighted views; Walpole, indeed, did not need them. For England was in the right track to attain prosperity within her shores; her only true policy abroad being abstention. France, on the contrary, stood in need of something more than a mere weathering and adjourning of difficulties. Its government, XXXV. CHAP. laws, and social state required complete reorganisation. Fleury made no attempt to accomplish this reform, of which he scarcely descried the necessity. He thought that economy would remedy all the evils of finance, but found, when he was driven into war against his wish, that economy did not suffice. The peasant, whom one might have expected the mild churchman to favour, benefited little by his rule. The cardinal sorely vexed them by resuscitating the corvée for the sake of opening those magnificent roads of idle and monarchical grandeur. The famine of 1740 laid bare all the misery of the population, and showed it as heavily shorn, and as hardly pressed, as in the last days of Louis the Fourteenth. To the courtier and noble class Fleury's reign was highly distasteful. He denied them place, influence, and power. They, therefore, haunted Paris, not Versailles, and mingled more with other classes, forming a society with a community of ideas, which laughed at the epigrams of Voltaire one day, and studied the novel theories of the Encylopedia the next. Fleury tried to stop this flowing tide of infidelity, but he who was unable to stem the war tendencies of a few courtiers could not repress the progress of intellect in a nation. If thus powerless over the country which he seemed to govern, he had become almost equally so over the king. His frequent illnesses had weakened the exercise of his influence in political affairs. Over the private conduct of the king and his batch of mistresses he had no control. His tenure of power was thus necessarily declining, when death spared him the mortification of disgrace. If ever monarch or monarchy stood in need of a prime minister, it was that of France. A personage of high character and of superior talents could alone keep down the licentious and greedy courtiers, the royal mistresses, the intolerant clergy, and the host of intriguers of all kinds. Chauvelin certainly had the 1 XXXV. greatest claims to the post. But Fleury, in anticipation, CHAP. combated his recall by introducing Cardinal Tencin and the elder D'Argenson to the council. The former he sought to recognise as his successor in lieu of Chauvelin. As long as Madame de Vintimille and Madame de Mailly were the dominant mistresses,* Louis adopted their preference of Chauvelin and the Belleisles. In November 1742, however, Madame de Mailly was rudely dismissed, and her younger sister, Madame de la Tournelle, better known as the Duchess of Châteauroux, was installed in her place. This lady disliked Chauvelin, and favoured the Duc de Noailles, who thus facquired most influence after the death of Fleury. Aware, however, of his inability to keep such an office, the duke recommended the monarch to be his own minister, citing to him the example of his great-grandsire. Louis was flattered by the proposal, and, when full of the idea, received a rather impudent letter from Chauvelin, demanding the place of prime minister. He was not aware of the change of feminine influence at Versailles, and his unseasonable demand so incensed the king that Louis replied by ordering his ex-minister to a more remote place of exile. The monarch's determination to act as his own prime minister merely displayed his utter inability to perform such functions. The six ministers of departments each managed as they could, and as they pleased, the result being no government at all. Frederick of Prussia makes very merry with the ministers to whom was left the government of France. A lawyer minister of war, a captain of dragoons at the head of the finances. Amelot, a mere clerk, who could not see a yard before him, was foreign minister, whilst Maurepas, the wit and courtier of the cabinet, neither of which precluded his imbecility as a politician, pleased * Madame de Vintimille had superseded her sister in the predilection of Louis. D'Argenson. CHAP. XXXV. the king by his manners. His department was the marine, which suited him, as Fleury had left no fleet, and scarcely the materials for one. The cardinal, nevertheless, or the party which overruled him, had provoked hostilities with England. This country was at war with Spain, and the French court concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with that of Madrid. The Pretender lost no time in returning to France, and when the English government remonstrated, it was answered by a declaration of war.* The English, however, did not put forth their strength until 1743, when it collected an army of English and Hanoverians in Flanders to renew the feats of Marlborough, and rescue Austria from the enmity of France and the rivalry of Bavaria. A French army under De Broglie had succeeded in repelling the Austrians from a portion of Bavaria, and thus enabling the electoremperor to revisit Munich. His stay was not of long duration. In the spring of 1743 the Austrians defeated the Bavarians at Braunau, and drove the French with considerable loss from the electorate. Whilst the Bavarian emperor withdrew to Frankfort, and Broglie to the Rhine, another French army, under Maréchal de Noailles, watched the movements of the English king. George might with advantage have attacked the French on their northern frontier, but he wished to restore the Austrian cause in Germany, where all the petty princes, greedy for the subsidies of France, were induced by the promise or receipt of these to rally round the elector emperor. In the month of May 1743, the English army, which had been nominally under Lord Stair, but was really commanded by the king in person, was on the north bank of the Maine, near Aschaffenburg; the French, under Marshal de Noailles, on the south of that river; King George's army mustering about 40,000, not one * The arguments on both sides are published by De Flassan, t. v. ele td he B half of whom were English. The French were supe- Noailles was able to sweep this with his guns from the southern side of the river, whilst he had occupied the defile with some three-and-twenty thousand men. This was his mistake; had he posted the strength of his army in the defile, and kept but a portion on the other side to cross and attack the English in the rear, he might have succeeded. But the English king and his son, the Duke of Cumberland, perceiving the strait they were in, each put himself at the head of a regiment, and marched to the attack of the defile. The French attribute their failure, and their being driven from thence, which they were by sheer fighting, to the circumstance of the Duc de Grammont having hcharged with the cavalry, and thus prevented the batteries on the other side of the river from firing. His impetuous charge had been near succeeding, and would have done so upon less solid troops; but English and Hanoverians, recovering from its effect, pressed forward in their turn, and drove the French from all their positions, Noailles vainly beholding the rout from the opposite bank. (June 26, 1743.)* Fre Dettingen may have been glorious to the English king and his son as gallant soldiers and commanders, but as politicians neither they nor the English minister * Mémoires de Noailles, of De Luynes, t. v. Appendix. Lord Carteret's despatch. Coxe. Lord Mahon. Voltaire's Louis XV. CHAP. XXXV. |