of war; and the cardinal de Tencin, a frivolous and worldly priest. Old Marshal de Noailles tried to incite Louis XV. to take his kingship in earnest, thinking to cure him by war of his effeminate passions; and, in the spring of 1744, the king’s grave illness at Metz gave a momentary hope of reconciliation between him and the deserted queen. But the duc de Richelieu, a roué who had joined hands with the sisters of the house of Nesle and was jealous of Marshal de Noailles, soon regained his lost ground; and, under the influence of this panderer to his pleasures, Louis XV. settled down into a life of vice. Holding aloof from active affairs, he tried to relieve the incurable boredom of satiety in the violent exercise of hunting, in supper-parties with his intimates, and in spicy indiscretions. Brought up religiously and to shun the society of women, his first experiences in adultery had been made with many scruples and intermittently. Little by little, however, jealous of power, yet incapable of exercising it to any purpose, he sank into a sensuality which became utterly shameless under the influence of his chief mistress the duchesse de Châteauroux.
Hardly had a catastrophe snatched her away in the zenith of her power when complete corruption and the flagrant triumph of egoism supervened with the accession to power of the marquise de Pompadour, and for nearly twenty years (1745–1764) the whims and caprices of this Madame de Pompadour. little bourgeoise ruled the realm. A prime minister in petticoats, she had her political system: reversed the time-honoured alliances of France, appointed or disgraced ministers, directed fleets and armies, concluded treaties, and failed in all her enterprises! She was the queen of fashion in a society where corruption blossomed luxuriantly and exquisitely, and in a century of wit hers was second to none. Amidst this extraordinary instability, when everything was at the mercy of a secret thought of the master, the mistress alone held lasting sway; in a reign of all-pervading satiety and tedium, she managed to remain indispensable and bewitching to the day of her death.
Meanwhile the War of the Austrian Succession broke out
again, and never had secretary of state more intricate questions
to solve than had D’Argenson. In the attempt
to make a stage-emperor of Charles Albert of Bavaria,
defeat was incurred at Dettingen, and the French
Peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle.
were driven back on the Rhine (1743). The Bavarian
dream dissipated, victories gained in Flanders by Marshal Saxe,
another adventurer of genius, at Fontenoy, Raucoux and
Lawfeld (1745–1747), were hailed with joy as continuing those
of Louis XIV.; even though they resulted in the loss of Germany
and the doubling of English armaments. The “disinterested”
peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (October 1748) had no effectual result
other than that of destroying in Germany, and for the benefit
of Prussia, a balance of power that had yet to be secured in
Italy, despite the establishment of the Spanish prince Philip at
Parma. France, meanwhile, was beaten at sea by England,
Maria Theresa’s sole ally. While founding her colonial empire
England had come into collision with France; and the rivalry
of the Hundred Years’ War had immediately sprung up again
between the two countries. Engaged already in both Canada
and in India (where Dupleix was founding an empire with a
mere handful of men), it was to France’s interest not to become
involved in war upon the Rhine, thus falling into England’s
continental trap. She did fall into it, however: for the sake of
conquering Silesia for the king of Prussia, Canada was left exposed
by the capture of Cape Breton; while in order to restore this
same Silesia to Maria Theresa, Canada was lost and with it India.
France had worked for the king of Prussia from 1740 to 1748; now it was Maria Theresa’s game that was played in the Seven Years’ War. In 1755, the English having made a sudden attack upon the French at sea, and Frederick II. having by a fresh volte-face passed into The Seven Years’ War, 1756–1763. alliance with Great Britain, Louis XV.’s government accepted an alliance with Maria Theresa in the treaty of the 1st of May 1756. Instead of remaining upon the defensive in this continental war—merely accessory as it was—he made it his chief affair, and placed himself under the petticoat government of three women, Maria Theresa, Elizabeth of Russia and the marquise de Pompadour. This error—the worst of all—laid the foundations of the Prussian and British empires. By three battles, victories for the enemies of France—Rossbach in Germany, 1757, Plassey in India, 1757, and Quebec in Canada, 1759 (owing to the recall of Dupleix, who was not bringing in large enough dividends to the Company of the Indies, and to the abandonment of Montcalm, who could not interest any one in “a few acres of snow”), the expansion of Prussia was assured, and the British relieved of French rivalry in the expansion of their empire in India and on the North American continent.
Owing to the blindness of Louis XV. and the vanity of the
favourite, the treaties of Paris and Hubertusburg (1763) once
more proved the French splendid in their conceptions,
but deficient in action. Moreover, Choiseul, secretary
of state for foreign affairs since 1758, made out of this
Treaties of Paris
and Hubertusburg.
deceptive Austrian alliance a system which put the
finishing touch to disaster, and after having thrown away
everything to satisfy Maria Theresa’s hatred of Frederick II.,
the reconciliation between these two irreconcilable Germans at
Neisse and at Neustadt (1769–1770) was witnessed by France,
to the prejudice of Poland, one of her most ancient adherents.
The expedient of the Family Compact, concluded with Spain
in 1761—with a view to taking vengeance upon England, whose
fleets were a continual thorn in the side to France—served only
to involve Spain herself in misfortune. Choiseul, who at least
had a policy that was sometimes in the right, and who was very
anxious to carry it out, then realized that the real quarrel had
to be settled with England. Amid the anguish of defeat and of
approaching ruin, he had an acute sense of the actualities of
the case, and from 1763 to 1766 devoted himself passionately
to the reconstruction of the navy. To compensate for the loss
of the colonies he annexed Lorraine (1766), and by the acquisition
of Corsica in 1768 he gave France an intermediary position in
the Mediterranean, between friendly Spain and Italy, looking
forward to the time when it should become a stepping-stone to
Africa.
But Louis XV. had two policies. The incoherent efforts
which he made to repair by the secret diplomacy of the comte
de Broglie the evils caused by his official policy only
aggravated his shortcomings and betrayed his weakness.
The contradictory intrigues of the king’s
First partition
of Poland.
secret proceedings in the candidature of Prince Xavier,
the dauphine’s brother, and the patriotic efforts of the confederation
of Bar, contributed to bring about the Polish crisis which
the partition of 1772 resolved in favour of Frederick II.; and
the Turks were in their turn dragged into the same disastrous
affair. Of the old allies of France, Choiseul preserved at least
Sweden by the coup d’état of Gustavus III.; but instead of being
as formerly the centre of great affairs, the cabinet of Versailles
lost all its credit, and only exhibited before the eyes of contemptuous
Europe France’s extreme state of decay.
The nation felt this humiliation, and showed all the greater
irritation as the want of cohesion in the government and the
anarchy in the central authority became more and
more intolerable in home affairs. Though the administration
still possessed a fund of tradition and a
Internal policy
of Louis XV.
personnel which, including many men of note, protected
it from the enfeebling influence of the court, it looked as though
chance regulated everything so far as the government was
concerned. These fluctuations were owing partly to the character
of Louis XV., and partly also to the fact that society in the 18th
century was too advanced in its ideas to submit without resistance
to the caprice of such a man. His mistresses were not the only
cause of this; for ever since Fleury’s advent political parties
had come to the fore. From 1749 to 1757 the party of religious
devotees grouped round the queen and the king’s daughters,
with the dauphin as chief and the comte D’Argenson, and
Machault d’Arnouville, keeper of the seals, as lieutenants, had
worked against Madame de Pompadour (who leant for support
upon the parlements, the Jansenists and the philosophers)
