XXXVI. CHAP. gabelle or salt tax had been contemplated: Terrai at once increased it. When the people were thus ground, collectors, generals, and functionaries were not paid. By exactions of all kinds he was able to procure a balance of receipt and expenditure. But the court would not abide by the dictates of economy, and Terrai was still by thirty millions short of his aim. He once more sold municipal offices. The only thing that could be said in his favour was that, armed with the plenitude of power, he spared no class. "Terrai is a spoiled child," exclaimed the wits; "he puts his finger in every one's pockets." "Where should I seek for money, if not there?" said the Abbé. The agents of the clergy remonstrated with him upon the injustice of some of his taxes. "Who pretended that they were just?” asked the controller. Such repartees were the habit of Paris, whose inhabitants consoled themselves for every case of exaction or oppression by a shower of epigrams. The suffering of the provinces was more serious. The province, on losing its parliament, felt as if it had lost the last vestige of its political existence. Maupeou threatened to deprive Brittany of its estates. Three-fourths of the better class would thus lose fortune and place. One might think some demoniac foe of the monarchy prompted its chief and his advisers to commit acts calculated to alienate every friend, disgust every loyal subject, and sow disaffection in the breasts of every class. class. The Duke d'Aiguillon, who with the support of Du Barry succeeded the Duke of Choiseul as foreign minister, had splendid opportunity for the exercise of his talents or his influence. Had war threatened, or great events occurred, this might not have been the case, as D'Aiguillon preferred the Prussian to the Austrian alliance, and cared little for that influence over Spain and the southern courts of Europe, on which Choiseul prided himself. The only event of importance during his ministry was the first partition of Poland. If the Austrian alliance had been worth anything, it ought to have saved France from an event which was considered as humiliating to it. But the court of Vienna, or rather Joseph the Second, had given up Choiseul, and was naturally displeased at his having so unfortunately incited the Turks against Russia. With D'Aiguillon and Du Barry, Austria had no terms to keep. There is no more ominous incident in the history of this period than the tendency to turbulence and insurrection which manifested itself in the population of France during the last ten years of Louis the Fifteenth's reign. These troubles were, in fact, the forerunners of the Great Revolution. Although maladministration had much to do with this, there were other causes which deserve to be noticed, and which passed any ministerial power of prevention. It has been remarked, that the period which elapsed between the commencement of the century and the Peace of Paris in 1763 was marked by a more constant series of good harvests than similar periods before or since. Whilst the English labourer was known to have profited by these years of abundance, to have had higher wages, and succeeded in substituting wheaten bread for a diet of the inferior grain,* the French peasant knew no amelioration. There was a tariff in England upon exports, which at least returned money to agriculture. In France there was prohibition and insufficiency of transport, and yet the peasant rarely ate wheaten bread, contenting himself with chestnuts and rye. With the year 1765, another period commenced, marked by a succession of bad harvests, high prices and famine. This was the moment, unfortunately, which the economists had chosen, or in which they had tried, to obtain the promulgation of an edict, permitting the free exportation of corn. The ill-timed measure came * Tooke, History of Prices, vol. i. p. 60. СНАР. XXXVI. XXXVI. CHAP. out in 1764, and was far, even under the circumstances, from being a fair experiment, as although the circulation of corn was declared free, the transit dues were still levied on it, no funds being procured to buy them up. Exports too were forbidden when the price of. corn reached twelve livres ten sous the quintal, which closed Nantes and the Loire for three years, exceptional permission to export being granted to the injury of the real trade. Amongst those who made money by this privileged power of export was the king. He and Maupeou purchased corn, sent it to their store, and kept it till a rise of prices afforded profit. The Normans broke out into fiscal insurrection, riots took place in the markets, the parliament of Rouen siding with the peasantry, suspending the edict of exportation, and accusing the court, if not the king himself, of being a monopoliser of grain. His majesty, indeed, could not deny this, having royal stores at Corbeil, with a manager whose name and position was announced in the royal almanack. A functionary having thought fit to disclose a contract entered into between the monarch and a company for the purpose of trafficing in corn, the accuser was arrested, and consigned to a dungeon, his proofs and papers disappearing with him. In other provinces as well as Normandy, popular insurrections took place; whilst the anarchy was as great in the legislature as in the people. Each parliament or baillage issued different decrees, some forbidding the export of corn, some allowing it. In some provinces grain could be only bought at market, and farmers were obliged to bring a ton to the place of sale each market day. In other districts sellers as well as buyers of corn were obliged to be registered. The authorities of towns stopped all the corn boats that floated down the river. It was upon a population thus ground by famine and distracted by contradictory edicts, that Terrai began to launch his spoliating decrees. In 1771 and 1772, one or more of these appeared every fortnight. Government combined with the seasons and the local authorities, to inflict all the ills and cause all the troubles in their power. * Feeble as was the monarchy, corrupt and rotten as were its institutions, still its splendour and gilding had fascination for foreign visitors. Gustavus the Third of Sweden was at Paris in 1772, when he learned his accession to the throne. His impulse was to imitate Louis the Fifteenth, destroying senate and parliament, and all that offuscated royalty. And he returned to Stockholm to carry out this brilliant plan. He succeeded by means of the army, and reduced Sweden and its government to the same nullity as that of France. Sweden was to Versailles, what Portugal was to the court of London, a political dependence. Louis promised to send 7,000 soldiers to support Gustavus. They could only reach Sweden by going through Germany, which the government would not allow; or by sea, which was in the power of the English. To avoid both difficulties Louis sent General Dumourier first to raise a foreign regiment in Hamburg, without the knowledge of D'Aiguillon: the latter discovered the scheme, and with it the fact of Louis's secret correspondence. As the minister was maltreated therein, he insisted on punishing the members, Dumourier and the Count de Broglie. To this disgrace of his agents, inflicted on them for having served and obliged him, Louis consented. He had not a will of his own. A prey to despondency, and to the impossibility of finding pleasure in aught, Louis, though not in very advanced age (he was sixty-four), felt his end approaching. A court preacher once compared him to Solomon, not the wise, but the voluptuary, who, lost in the pleasures of the senses whilst his people were in * Terrai's edicts, as well as those of the Parliaments, are printed in the Journal Historique, and other peri- CHAP. XXXVI. CHAP. misery, would soon be called to account for his dereXXXVI. lictions. Louis made the man a bishop. Had the king survived some time, he might have become a saint. But for the moment he relapsed into those habitual and effeminate connexions which disgraced his reign. The result of an excess of this kind at Trianon was that the monarch was brought back to Versailles attacked with small-pox. In four days the disease attained a degree of virulence that left no hope of recovery. Louis advised Madame du Barry to withdraw to the residence of the Duke d'Aiguillon at Rueil. The three daughters of the king courageously attended his last moments; and the monarch, thus not deserted like Louis the Fourteenth, expired on May the 10th, 1774. His obsequies were as hurried and attracted as little reverence as those of his great predecessor. Madame du Barry survived him some twenty years, in her beautiful retreat of Loubcienne. She perished on the revolutionary scaf fold, as did Malesherbes. Machault died in prison. Madame du Barry was one of the few victims of the revolution who met her fate with shrinking, and in the agony of human weakness. She was untouched by the sad and passive heroism of the time. 4 |