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Typos — p. 125: mesalliance [= mésalliance]


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XIX
Louis XV

Of Louis XV, in whom the most depraved of the Bourbon characteristics seem to have collected, Pierre de Nolhac says: "One may well recoil in terror from the power of his evil propensities . . . left as he was at the mercy of his all-pervading lasciviousness, what would have become of him if in his heart there had not been that faint trace, forgotten perhaps though not wholly obliterated, of the Christian rule of duty . . . without it, in after years, this vicious man would have become a monster." (Louis XV and Marie Leczinska, Chap. III).
        Edward Armstrong describes his life as "absolutely idle", devoted to his dogs, horses and mistresses, and implies that he was heartless. (The Cambridge Modern History, Vol. VI, Chap. V). Casimir Stryienski, the French authority on the period, defends Louis XV by emphasising the errors of his upbringing (The Eighteenth Century, Chap. II); but admits that "all his life he was idle, a great hunter and an equally great gambler" (Part II, Chap. VI). Prof. A. C. Grant says, "it would be difficult to mention the name of any European king whose private life shows such a record of vulgar vice unredeemed by higher aims of any kind." (Encyl. Brit. 1910, Vol. XVII).
        Even Pierre Gaxotte, who tries to whitewash the king, has to admit much that is damaging to his case. In his Preface to Louis XV and His Times, he maintains that Louis "has been judged wholly and solely on the testimony of his enemies". Yet he himself reveals the king as weak, prone to subject himself to android women and never energetic enough to apply himself to his duties as a ruler. He also acknowledges that Louis was "the most scandalous of princes" and relates how on one occasion "by way of being funny" he deliberately "trod on the foot of a man who had recently had an attack of gout", with the result that the fellow suffered such agony that, although coaxed to do so, he refused ever to show his face at

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Versailles again. (Chap. VI). Gaxotte moreover rather spoils his apologia by admitting that Nolhac, whose severe indictment of Louis I have quoted, conspicuously combines both accuracy and insight in his book on the king. (Chap. VI).
        D'Argenson, Louis' able Minister of War, whom Mme de Pompadour caused to be sacked, said of the whole reign, "under the appearance of personal monarchy, it was really anarchy that reigned" and, as Louis sank ever more deeply into debauchery and vice, this summing-up became increasingly apt.
        At last, infected by one of the young girls with whom, as a man of sixty-four, he happened in 1774 to be cohabiting, the King died of smallpox and left his miserably endowed eldest grandson the impossible task of restoring the royal prestige and establishing law and order in the neglected realm.
        "I have governed and administered badly", Louis XV wrote in his will, "because I have little talent." (C. Stryienski: The Eighteenth Century, Part III, Chap. V). He might with equal truth have added, "and because all my life I have been a hopeless rake."
        As for Louis XV's Queen, she was the last person who could have inspired a lasting affection in her husband. Besides her incompatibility as an alien, which meant that she introduced a further foreign strain into the dynasty, Marie Leszczynska was six and a half years older than her husband and was neither good-looking nor amusing. A German writer describes her as positively ugly and Gaxotte represents her as spinsterly, humdrum and provincial. (Chap. VI). A paragon of virtue, she was also dismally dull and, Louis being what he was, this was probably her worst defect. Her ten confinements had not increased tier attractiveness: besides which the whole of her behaviour and interests were petty and more middle-class than aristocratic.
        Nolhac, however, regards her as much superior to Marie Antoinette in the attention she gave to culture and the arts. (Chap. IV). From King Stanislas, her father, she had inherited her plain looks and mediocre gifts. Nolhac describes him as "full of incurable ambition, but only indifferently endowed to realising it. . . . He was born to lead the life of a country squire with dignity and to play the tender role of a family man, rather than to exercise the authority and bear the responsibility of a ruler of a great nation." (Chap. I). And Marie Leszczynska

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seems to have handed on to her poor grandson Louis XVI many of these characteristics.
        She was not enamoured of her role of Queen. "It's no fun being Queen", she once remarked, and Dr. Gooch tells us that when she died at the age of sixty-five "she was glad to go." (Louis XV: The Monarchy in Decline, Chap. 6, ii). She was at least spared the humiliation of seeing Mme du Barry installed as Maitresse en titre.
        Dauphin Louis was very much like his mother in appearance. Like her too, he was reserved. "His conversation was coherent, well-informed and agreeable . . . he was a considerable judge of character" . . . and "would doubtless have shown more energy on the throne than did his son, Louis XVI" (C. Stryienski: The Eighteenth Century, Chap. VIII). But, too fat to enjoy the chase, "he was taciturn, preoccupied and heavy" and in view of the lack of sound judgment displayed by his son, it is important to note that he was most tactless and heartless as well. As an example of these two failings, he compelled his second wife, Marie Josephe de Saxe, to wear for years "bracelets that contained portraits of his first wife." (F. Hamel: The Dauphines of France, Chap. X). Dr. G. P. Gooch who devoted twelve pages of his book on Louis XV to the Dauphin, speaks of him as "one of the riddles of French history", and we gather from this historian's description of him that, like his grandfather, the Duke of Burgundy, he would probably have turned out to be a pious bigot and dreamer rather than a man of action (Chap. 6). He died of pulmonary tuberculosis in 1765.
        His second wife, Marie Josephe de Saxe (1731–1767), the mother of the three last Bourbon Kings of France, was fifteen when he married her in 1746. She was the third daughter of Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, and is described as "not pretty". Her nose and teeth were bad; yet some thought her attractive. Chevery says she was "cross to her household and little liked" (Gooch: op. cit., 6 iii), and this seems to be confirmed by Walpole who in 1765 said of her, "she looks cross, is not civil and has the true Westphalian grace and accents." (F. Hamel, op. cit., Chap X). It is therefore probable that the couple were more respected than liked. Stryienski, however, (op. cit., Part II, Chap. VIII), describes her as "high-minded and well-educated" and says "she won universal esteem". Having, like many of her predecessors on the French

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throne, introduced a further strain of alien blood into the dynasty (this time Dano-German), she died of the same disease as her husband in 1707.
        In view of his antecedents and breeding, it would have been little short of a miracle if Louis XVI had been a great king.
        The state of affairs at the time when he ascended the throne called for a man of the stamp of the Founder of the Dynasty. No one less gifted could have been expected to cope with the difficulties of the situation. Instead, however, France was given a youth only twenty years old, well-meaning, honest and kind, but weak, ill-trained and generally unequal to the task awaiting him. He was moreover possessed of tastes and inclinations that made him shun the onerous duties of his exalted rank. Dangerously subservient to his young attractive wife and more anxious to please everybody than to frame such policies as the disordered state of the nation demanded, he started by making concession after concession to every party or interest determined enough to intimidate him. As an example of his fecklessness, he had not been king for three months before his wife made him dismiss a man like Maupeou in whom he himself firmly believed.
        Stryienski describes him as "heavy, ungainly, morally and physically awkward." Caraccioli, the Neapolitan Ambassador, says he was "boorish and rustic to such a degree that he might have been educated in a wood." (C. Stryienski, op. cit., Part II, Chap. V). Mme de Campan, who was able to observe him at close quarters, throws much light on his character. "He had certain rather noble features (des traits assez nobles)", she says, "stamped however with melancholy. His bearing was clumsy and devoid of grandeur, and in his dress he was always extremely untidy. Despite all the skill of his hairdresser, he would soon appear dishevelled; for he took no care of his person. His voice, though not harsh, was far from pleasing and when he was excited it rose to a shrill falsetto." (Mémoires sur la vie de Marie Antoinette).
        Furthermore — and this was his most fatal shortcoming as a husband — like his ancestor Louis XIII, he was sexually subnormal. Mme de Campan repeatedly mentions his neglect of Marie Antoinette. "Often," she says, "simply out of a sense of duly, he would go into bed beside her, but only to fall asleep at once without breathing a word" ("et s'endormait sou-

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vent sans lui avoir adressé la parole"). She assures us that even four years after their marriage he had still not had any marital intercourse. ("Louis XVI à l'époque de la mort de son aieul n'eut pas encore joui des droits d'époux." Mme de Campan, op. cit., Chaps. III and IV).
        This was all the more unfortunate because it undermined his wife's respect for him and left her to the influence of associates who were incapable of understanding the problems with which she and the King were confronted. Mme de Campan refers in this respect to the sinister figure of l'Abbé de Vermond and says that he was Marie Antoinette's evil genius ("l'étoile funeste de Marie Antoinette." Mme de Campan, op. cit., Chap. II).
        The Queen had had an indifferent education and like her sisters was not cultured. Nor was she improved by having at the age of fourteen joined the dissolute court of Louis XV. She needed a spouse who could have corrected the faults in her upbringing and, by winning her entire trust and devotion, have afforded her wise leadership. Instead she had a man who was wax in her hands. "The King", wrote Mirabeau, "has only one man about him — his wife." (Louis Madelin: The French Revolution, Intro. Chap. IV). To make matters worse, besides being inexperienced, thoughtless and over-fond of gambling and dress, she was easily influenced and soon became the tool of a secret party at court "whose only principle was to secure places, sinecures and reversions to the detriment of those who might have been of use to the State." (C. Stryienski, op cit., Chap. XVII).
        Although she may have been much to blame for her unpopularity and the slanders that were current about her, her husband's character and lack of manliness were chiefly responsible for the fate that finally overtook her. It was his defects that made her dare to measure her will against his and turn elsewhere than to him for guidance and companionship. A wife who could put the clock forward a half to three-quarters of an hour so as to speed her sleepy husband to bed and the sooner to bring out the faro table, could hardly be deemed well mated; and the tragedy of her life may thus perhaps be summed up as the outcome of a mesalliance.
        For Louis XVI had only two passions, which he indulged with unflagging fidelity; and they left him exhausted at the

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end of the day. Hours of valuable time would be spent "in trifling mechanical pursuits" and often he returned from the hunting field so thoroughly worn out that he would fall asleep in Council "when grave business was under discussion". (The Cambridge Modern History, Vol. VIII, Chap. IV). Mme de Campan speaks of masonry and locksmithery (serrurie) as amongst his favourite pastimes; and "after such work", she says, "his hands were often so filthy that I have heard the Queen remonstrate with him and rebuke him quite angrily." (op. cit., Chap. V).
        He was certainly a much better man and king than his grandfather; but he had humble and domestic virtues, inherited probably from his great-grandfather the dethroned King of Poland; and these were not the qualities required to win the fight he was called upon to wage in the late eighteenth century.
        It is typical of him, for instance, that on May 4th 1789, when the States-General met in the Cathedral of St Louis and the hour had struck for the exercise of the utmost caution in the control of the factions there assembled, he not only kept the assembly waiting three whole hours before he appeared, but when at last he did come in and La Fare, Bishop of Nancy, preached a sermon in which "he read the Court a lecture", Louis' fell fast asleep. He was woken up by the loud burst of applause with which the more revolutionary among the audience greeted the conclusion of the bishop's veiled admonition; and then, taking for granted that the harangue had been a fulsome eulogy of the reign, he beamed gratefully on the prelate. Again, when five months later "the surging populace set out for Versailles crying 'Bread! Bread!'" and, after insulting the Assembly, turned towards the Palace, "the king", Dr. G. W. Kitchin tells us, "was out hunting." (History of France, Vol. III, Chap. VIII).
        Until it was too late to adopt any other policy than flight — and even this he succeeded in bungling most hopelessly — he appears to have had no statesmanlike understanding of the influences both intellectual and physical that were preparing the way for the Revolution.
        In his person, we see vividly displayed all the irresolution, lack of self-confidence, infirmity of purpose and conflicting impulses which naturally afflict a man whose instincts are a tumult of the contending voices belonging to scores of dis-

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parate forebears; who knows no clear-cut goal because too many different influences strive for supremacy in his breast. Add to this the extreme mediocrity, compounded with villainy, of many of his ancestors and the fact that even his brothers were among those who conspired against him, and you behold a tragic figure who was certainly more sinned against than sinning, and who, as Professor Montagu declares, was "no more than an inglorious victim of the circumstances in which Fate had placed him." (The Cambridge Modern History, Vol. VIII, Chap. IV).
        When, therefore on that January morning in 1795 he ascended the scaffold, he paid with his life for the ignorance, stupidity and lack of ordinary farmhouse wisdom in the ruling houses of Europe. Yet, to judge from the subsequent behaviour of Royalty on this Continent, his death served little purpose; for it taught no lesson to his many royal survivors and left their disillusioned subjects no alternative but to resort to that bogus and purely Fancy-dress form of Royalty known as "Constitutional" or "Limited Monarchy".

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