Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/621

LOUIS XV.] FRANCE 585 of >on ter. bis career of scheming, of clever unprincipled government, seemed crowned with fullest success, a little accident brought him to his grave. Four months later his boon companion the duke of Orleans was carried off by apoplexy. Thus had the long reign of Louis XV. begun with shame less vice and prosperous hypocrisy ; as it began, so it con tinued to the end ; and all the time the financial difficulties of the country grew apace. The debt, seed-plot of revolu tion, soon passed all power of management. The young king had some chances given him : he had good preceptors, and intelligent people around his youth. His temperament was, however, entirely bad : the religious element in him was superstition and fear, which led him to mix up piety and debauchery in most ghastly connexion ; he was coldly selfish, indolent, vicious ; the absolutions of his courtly confessors and directors gave him an easy con science, if he had a conscience at all, and encouraged him to continue his career of shameless immorality, till at last his vices did what religion seemed unwilling to do, they arrested the scandal of his life by bringing him suddenly and directly to his grave. From 1723 to 172G the duke of Bourbon, who had been president of the council of regency, was first minister. It is an obscure period, which produced only, through a back stairs intrigue, the marriage of the young king with Marie Leczinski, daughter of that Stanislas who had been king of Poland, and was to be the last duke of Lorraine, and who rejoiced in the high-sounding title of the " Beneficent Philosopher." In this 18th century princes and great min isters adopted titles and phrases which in our days have descended to the level of the vendors of quack medicines. Still these affectations of princely humanity were a pheno menon of some importance in the period, as showing how the current of feeling and opinion was setting towards those principles of right, that love for mankind, that zeal for good works, which is based on the intrinsic equality of all men. The rule of the brutal duke of Bourbon and his mistress, the Marquise de Prie, came to an end in 1726, and then Andre Hercule Floury, bishop of Frejus, the king s preceptor, took his place. The statesman Fleury, and the church historian, contemporaries, are not the same person. The historian was confessor to Louis XV., the statesman his tutor. Andre Fleury, now first minister and cardinal, had the credit of being an upright and disinterested man, Pope calls him " honest Fleury," and all society, from the king downwards, thoroughly trusted him. His honesty, how ever, was narrow and limited, and his home government ob scure and uneventful. He made no scandals and attempted no reforms. Against his will and judgment he left his mark on foreign politics, though here, too, his was a " hand- to-mouth " policy, which involved no large view or grasp. At first he succeeded, with no little dexterity, in arresting the war which Austria and Spain, supported by Russia and Prussia, threatened against England and France. The congress of Soissons in 1729 arranged the points at issue, at least for a time. In the north, however, matters were more difficult, for here new elements had entered into the political world. The new ambitions of Russia under Peter the Great, and the consolidation of the young kingdom of Prussia, at once affected the position of Austria, involving that ill-placed state in fresh relations and duties ; while the situation of Poland, amidst them all, was obviously threatened. France, of old the friend and always the rom antic admirer of Poland, could not fail to be involved in the quick and unstable changes of the chivalric kingdom. This now occurred. In 1733, Augustus II. of Poland dying, the electing nobles, instinctively dreading the power of their neighbours, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, who had made a secret compact together as to Polish affairs in 1732, ap pealed for French help, and re-elected Stanislas Leczinski their king ; he had been the nominee of Charles XII. in 1733-40. 1704, and had fallen with him. The Russian party among the nobles elected Augustus III. of Saxony, and as Austrian and Russian soldiers supported him, while France, in fact, did nothing but declare war against Austria, he seated himself firmly upon the throne of Poland. French influence for the time was utterly defeated, and Stanislas, after suit able romantic adventures, found refuge in France. The war with Austria, which began late in 1733, in 1734 occupied the last energies of the last of the old generals of Louis XIV. Marshal Berwick, commanding across the Rhine, was killed in the trenches before Philipsburg; and Villars, in Italy, after one brief campaign, in which he was thwarted by the duke of Savoy, died at Turin about the same time. The French fought well in this Italian war ; they won a hotly contested victory near Parma, lost a sharp affair at La Secchia, and defeated the Austrians at Cuastalla. The Spaniards, taking advantage of the weakening of Austria in south Italy, landed Don Carlos at Naples, where he was warmly welcomed, and the "Two Sicilies" passed from Austria to the Spanish Bourbons. The French having taken Philipsburg were in a commanding position on the Rhine, while the Austrians were much weakened in Italy. The emperor therefore made proposals for peace, which pacific Fleury gladly met. The treaty of Vienna (3d October 1735) seemed to secure French influence in central Europe ; the Two Sicilies were made a kingdom for Don Carlos; Lorraine and ducal Bar were given to Stanislas Leczinski, who abandoned all claims on Poland, and at his death the duchies were to fall in to France ; the duke of Lorraine was made heir of Tuscany, and succeeded to that government in 1737; France undertook to guarantee the The Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VI. Charles VI., under Pragnm- whom the house of Austria daily grew weaker, was daily !l more eager for the flimsy security of this famous document, Charles which aimed at ensuring the undisputed succession of his VI. daughter Maria Theresa to all his possessions, as head of the house of Austria. Fleury, by acceding to this paper-guar antee, became all powerful with him, and induced the emperor to sign the peace of Belgrade (1739), by which the possession of that important city passed to Turkey. In these years Fleury s policy seemed thoroughly successful, and France was believed to be prosperous. Her prosperity, however, did not reach her people ; the misery of the peas antry in 1738-1740 was exceedingly great ; famine came each winter; the people died in crowds. D Argenson in his Memoirs declares that "more Frenchmen died of misery in these two years than perished in all the wars of Louis XIV." In 1740 died both the emperor Charles VI. and Frederick The first William, king of Prussia ; the strength of the Pragmatic Silesian Sanction had now to be brought to the test. Charles VI. war - left no male issue, and his daughter Maria Theresa, married to a weak prince, Joseph of Lorraine and Tuscany, was his sole heir. To the throne of Prussia succeeded Fredsrick II., a slight and ingenious prince, who admired the French and played on the flute. He reigned for forty-six years, and was Frederick the Great. Instantly there was a scramble for the great and widespread lands thus left to a woman s care. Joseph of Lorraine failed to get the imperial crown ; this, however, was a little matter, and after all it came to him in 1745. For tho territories there were several claim ants : Bavaria, Spain, and Saxony, all asserted their claims to the whole inheritance ; the king of Sardinia wanted some Italian fiefs; the young king of Prussia laid hands on Silesia. France obviously lay outside the quarrel ; yet it was hard to think, with Fleury, that a peaceful and reserved position was her best policy. A war-party, headed by the two Belle-Isles, Fouquet s grandsons, negotiators and soldiers, rose up at court in opposition to the old minister. All Europe ranged itself for or against the fair young queen of IX. 74