Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/627

STATE OF FRANCE.] F K A N C E 591 -63. . of !0 f ing war ; in a few months the Spanish navy had ceased to exist, and France lost her West-Indian Islands one after an other. Bute with the young king stood aghast at the series of brilliant triumphs which signalized their efforts to bring war to an end. Meanwhile the French armies in Germany continued an inglorious if not any longer a disastrous career. In 1760, 1761, 1762, they still occupied Hesse and the Rhine country, fighting a few battles with varying success, and displaying in the clearest light the incapacity of their leaders. Negotiations for peace went on through 1762 between France and England, and before the year ended the preliminaries of peace had been signed, just in time to save Soubise with his 80,000 men from being ignominiously driven out of Hesse-Cassel. Frederick the Great, thus abandoned by George III., was also ready for peace. In February 1763 the two treaties of Paris between France and England, Spain and Portugal, and of Hubertsburg be tween Prussia and Austria with Saxony were signed, and closed the Seven Years War. To French historians it had seemed, as Michelet ventures to call it, "an ignoble war"; a record of blunders and follies, met by shouts of derision at home ; for the French people were, at the time, as much amused with the downfall of their incapable nobility as if they had belonged to a totally different race. It was as if they wished to say to Europe that these defeats and scandals were not the defeat _ of the French people, but of an intrusive clique of strangers ; it was also as if the in extinguishable gaiety of the nation could find even the ruin of the country comical. Doubtless, in more or less uncon scious fashion, France felt that the war had brought the domination of the Bourbon monarchy and its noble flatterers nearer to an end. A summary of the stipulations of the peace of Paris shows at a glance how low France had fallen, how futile had been the Family Compact. She ceded all her claims to Nova Scotia, Canada, Cape Breton, reserving only her fishing rights and some small islands useful for that in dustry ; she ceded all the territory which lay between the English settlements along the Atlantic and the line of the river Mississippi ; she ceded the islands of Grenada, Saint Vincent, Dominique, Tobago. She received back Pondi- cherry, and a certain district on the east coast of India ; she gave up Minorca, the one flower she had plucked in all the war, to England, and withdrew all her troops out of Germany. England came out chief gainer from the war ; her development in these years was immense. To this time we owe the maritime supremacy of this country, and the spread of the English language and race to every shore. We have good reason to be proud of it, and to read with kindling eye the chronicle of our incessant advances. Yet it has, too, its dark side : a world filled with pushing English men could scarcely be a paradise ; there are races which object to being thrust aside ; there are civilizations which English commonplace cannot supersede; the dull self-satis faction of ordinary " Anglo-Saxonism" is at least as offen sive as the livelier " Chauvinisme" of our neighbours. In the eleven uneventful years which form the remainder of Louis XV. s reign the characteristics of the 18th century displayed themselves with clearness, and we shall do well to pass them briefly in review. In them we shall recog nize at once most of the germs of those movements of the Revolution-era, towards which affairs in France had long been tending. To begin at the top ; the court was so cor rupt that we must go to the history of the most Oriental despots for a parallel. The king, coldly dissolute, idle, careless as to everything except his scandalous pleasures, and the direction of foreign affairs, which he kept in his own hands, shut himself up at Versailles, leaving Madame de Pompadour to manage everything, even the details of his own debaucheries ; the infamous Pare aux Cerfs spread shame and misery among hundreds of families, and added 17(53. heavily to the financial difficulties of the time. No mem ber of the royal family was of any mark ; the pious queen lived neglected and forgotten ; the dauphin, whom the king disliked, because he did not wish to be reminded of his successor, was a friend of the Jesuits ; there was no other prince of consideration. Consequently, all fell into Madamo de Pompadour s hands; and till her death in 1764 she too might well have cried " L 6 tat, c est moi. " And if the princes The of the blood were ciphers, still more so were the nobles, a noblesse, needy well-bred throng, if of the older race, an obsequious and despicable crowd, if of the newer creations. To a large extent this proud noblesse was quite modern ; for a long time noble fiefs had been changing hands rapidly ; and as citizens grew wealthy they bought themselves into the sacred circle of privilege. No love of country, no desire to devote themselves or to resign their rights, existed in a body which had been steadily degraded by Louis XIV., had been tempted into display which meant debt, and had been carefully kept away from their estates, lest social independence should lead them to think and act for them selves. The more embarrassed and dependent they were, the better pleased was the spirit of absolutism, which thought it natural that they should crowd the army and disgrace the country in war by their vices, frivolities, arid imbecility. When at last they had to stand up, face to face with the crisis of the Revolution, they were absolutely Un able to defend themselves ; their pride and poverty alike forbade them to sacrifice their privilege, and to submit to taxation with their fellow subjects. The clergy were cut The asunder, and had a divided existence. The prelates, clergy, bishops and dignitaries, and the religious houses, on the one hand, were in all essential respects on the footing of the nobles, and took part with them. They, too, were privileged landholders, who could inflict heavy burdens on the people, while they would bear no weight on their own shoulders. These are the privileged classes, who brought about the Revolution. The king and his court, the nobles, and the upper clergy, these chiefly caused it, and these were the chief sufferers from it. The rest of the clergy were a very different race ; they were simple cure s, parish priests, by birth and interest allied with the people, not with their lords, men whose meaner position gave them a chance of being and doing good. Arthur Young, who travelled through France on the eve of the Revolution, bears witness to their general excellence and devotion to their duties. The burgher class in France had grown The wealthier; manufactures were not unknown; trade increased citizens. rapidly ; financiers, money-lenders, new nobles sprang from this class ; the public creditor in these days grew to be a power in the state, very far removed from the peasant on the soil or the fierce artisan in towns, and yet advancing the revolutionary current by producing many of the writers, and much of the general intelligence of the time. By the side of them we may place the legal profession, that The conservative body, which struggled in vain against all in- lawyers, vasions of ancient usage, whether from the side of king or of people, and which in the end gave many victims and some leaders to the Revolution. In the country the state The pea- of the people was wretched, though it is true that in many sautry. districts the soil was already much subdivided, and the peasant proprietors numerous. It was reckoned that about a quarter of the soil was in their hands ; yet their condition was little the better for this. Their burdens were still very heavy, their knowledge and methods of tillage rude ; they had no capital to expend on the land, no good tools, no cattle, no manures ; winter after winter they fell to famine-level, and sustained a miserable existence till the sun again revived them, and sent them forth once more to labour in the fields. Fortunately, the French winter is