XXXVI. CHAP. Paoli, the former of whom consented to acknowledge the suzerainty of France, and pay to it the same tribute they had paid to Genoa. But Choiseul wanted to strengthen his position in France by a conquest. The French minister therefore bought the island, or their right to the island, from the Genoese for 2,000,000 livres, and sent the Marquis de Chauvelin with 7,000 men to complete the conquest. The Marquis and his 7,000 men were, however, no match for Paoli and his band of peasants, with whom the French commander was obliged to conclude a peace. In the following year, 1769, Choiseul, determined this time to conquer, sent about 30,000 or 40,000 men under the Count de Vaux. Paoli relied on succour from England, often promised him. But England had a more serious quarrel pending with its North American colonies, and could offer but a few guns and bayonets to the Corsican. The large French army overcame the island, and Paoli was compelled to take refuge in England. It was in the spring of 1759 that Corsica thus became French, and in a few weeks after it formally became so, Napoleon Buonaparte was born at Ajaccio. This want of success in foreign policy was fatal to a minister whose influence was already undermined at home.. "Of excellent parts," writes Walpole, who knew him and his circle intimately, the "duke was of a levity and indiscretion, which most men of his nature divest themselves of before his age. Rash and presumptuous, good humoured, but neither good nor ill natured, frank, gay and thoughtless, he seemed more the sovereign than the minister. Scorning rather than fearing his enemies, he seldom condemned or persecuted them." In 1768, Louis the Fifteenth was fascinated by the charms of Mademoiselle Lange, or Madame du Barry. A professional caterer to the pleasures of mankind, she pleased the old voluptuary, and her influence was soon supreme at Versailles. The whole court, with 7774 one or two exceptions, turned their back upon this woman: as none were more indignant at her rise than the female friends of Choiseul, especially his sister, who had great influence over him, the minister refused to pay court to the new mistress, or come to any understanding with her. This was Choiseul's enemy the first; the second was the chancellor Maupeou whom the duke selected and favoured. Maupeou as councillor of parliament had shown himself after the fall of Machault a useful intermediary between the government and the judicial body. He was, in consequence, made vice-chancellor and keeper of the seals, and whilst holding that office employed every kind of adulation towards Choiseul. The latter, though warned of the artful and supple nature of his protégé, appointed him chancellor in 1758.* Maupeou soon made Madame du Barry, instead of Choiseul, the object of his worship, and thus became an adjunct of the party opposed to his benefactor. A more unfortunate choice was that of the Abbé Terrai, to be Controller-General of Finance. Choiseul stated to the king the necessity of a new appointment in 1759. The king agreed, but neither monarch nor minister knew whom to appoint. Choiseul had made two controllers-general, both of whom had failed. He declined to name a third. D'Aiguillon hints that the duke wanted to be appointed to the finance himself. A more probable story is, that he wished Maupeou to become "Maupeou was sullen and black," writes Walpole, "with eyes penetrating, acute and suspicious; his complexion spoke determinate villany; his eyes seemed rather roving in search of prey for it, or glaring on snares that he apprehended. His parts were great and his courage adventurous. Power was his object, despotism his road, the clergy his instrument. Not being qualified like D'Aiguillon to shine in CHAP. XXXVI. XXXVI. CHAP. controller, as necessarily leading to failure and disgrace. Maupeou declined the place for himself, but recommended a parliamentary subordinate and a man like himself, in the Abbé Terrai. As ministers of justice and finance, Maupeou and Terrai were the cope-stones of the venal, iniquitous and arbitrary system of government in all its branches, which discredited and ruined the monarchy of the Bourbons. Injustice, rapacity and cruelty could be carried no farther. Terrai was one of those who most contributed to the coming revolution, by disgusting the middle class with the monarchy and its government. It is reported by D'Argenson, that when the news spread in Paris of Damiens' attempt on the life of the king, the middle class showed every kind of sympathy, whilst the people remained indifferent and mute. The middle class, or men of small earnings, had often suffered from the fisc, but their suffering was due to the necessities of the state and the ignorance of the finance minister. Terrai pillaged them with a perfect cognizance of what he was doing, and accompanied his acts, not by regrets or sympathy, but by sarcasm and jocularity. He was as dark and disagreeable to the eye as Maupeou; tall, yet bent; dissolute in morals and in language. No fitter gossips than he and Maupeou could be found for Du Barry. Yet it required a man of reckless morality and audacity to undertake the management of the finance in 1769, when the revenue for the ensuing year was already spent or anticipated. There was an arrear of 381 millions, with a debt of 2,300,000,000, bearing 110 millions of interest. Bankruptcy, towards those state creditors whom he could despoil with impunity, was the sum of Terrai's financial views. He began by seizing the sinking-fund, by refusing payment of bills on the treasury, as well as upon sums due to the farmers and receivers-general. The claims of these were converted into rentes, and at the same time the half of the interest due upon the rentes was cancelled. The tontines were converted into simple life annuities, and the life annuitant reduced one-fifth or one-fourth. Terrai also seized the money lodged as judicial deposits, putting depreciated treasury bills in lieu. Heavy contributions were laid on all placeholders, and on those lately ennobled. The Abbé left the direct taxes untouched, and avoided, at least at first, arousing the ire of the landed and proprietary classes.* Of the millions thus grabbed and stolen by the Abbé Terrai, a large portion was spent in the spring of 1770 on the festivities to celebrate the marriage of the Archduchess Marie Antoinette with the eldest son of the late dauphin, then dauphin himself the future Louis the Sixteenth. It took place on May 30, and, owing to a quarrel between the municipality and the police, the latter were not employed on the occasion. The fireworks, instead of taking place on the Seine or on its banks, were arranged between the centre of the Place Louis Quinze, and the Rue Royale, the boulevards being also illuminated. The streets between them thus became encumbered, when the wooden frame constructed for the fireworks began to burn. The panic this occasioned, with the engines that were brought to extinguish it, so blocked up the Rue Royale that a crush took place, 1,200 persons being left dead when the crowd dispersed. The dauphin and dauphiness were deeply and ominously affected. The people kept a more durable remembrance of an event which was then as afterwards considered a presage. The power of Choiseul was thought to be strengthened by this marriage, which he had recommended, and which was also supposed to strengthen the Austrian alliance. The parliamentarians seized the opportunity to press for the liberation of La Chalotais from exile, and the restoration of the enemies of D'Aiguillon. The * Coquereau, Mémoires de l'Abbé Terrai. CHAP. XXXVI. XXXVI. CHAP. duke was accused of various malversations, especially that of having suborned witnesses against his Breton opponents. D'Aiguillon, piqued, demanded to be tried by his peers. His desire was complied with, and the trial carried before the parliament of Paris, at whose sitting the peers attended. The progress of the enquiry was however far from being as favourable to D'Aiguillon as he had hoped, and he had recourse to Madame du Barry's influence with the king to save him. The monarch went to the parliament, and in a Bed of Justice— which ceremony overcame all opposition-quashed the prosecution against D'Aiguillon, and evoked the cause to himself. This was interference with what was essentially the parliament's right of justice; it declared that a trial once commenced could not thus be extinguished. The parliament of Rouen was still more violent, and all the provincial judges joined in the clamour. Calonne, who had distinguished himself by violence against La Chalotais, was implicated in the testimony brought forward on D'Aiguillon's trial. He had just been appointed intendant at Metz. The parliament of this province refused to recognise him till he had cleared himself of culpability. The parliament of Paris declared D'Aiguillon suspended from his right of peer. The king overruled the act of the judges of Metz as well as that of Paris, as he was compelled to crush with the same authority the parliaments of the south. The Paris judges refused to give up the papers relative to D'Aiguillon's accusation. The king was obliged to hold another Bed of Justice to compel them. In December a similar ceremony became necessary. Ministers and liament had issued each an edict condemnatory of the 'other; that of the parliament boasted of being the only conservative power in the state, and ended by demanding the punishment of those who calumniated the judicial body. Maupeou could not rest under such a threat. The king insisted on the parliament registering his edict. par |