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Rh Next came the crowd of stockholders and creditors of the state, who, in face of the government’s “extravagant anarchy,” no longer felt safe from partial or total bankruptcy. More powerful still, and more masterful, was the commercial, industrial and colonial bourgeoisie; because under the Regency and under Louis XV. they had been more productive and more creative. Having gradually revolutionized the whole economic system, in Paris, in Lyons, in Nantes, in Bordeaux, in Marseilles, they could not tamely put up with being excluded from public affairs, which had so much bearing upon their private or collective enterprises. Finally, behind this bourgeoisie, and afar off, came the crowd of serfs, rustics whom the acquisition of land had gradually enfranchised, and who were the more eager to enjoy their definitive liberation because it was close at hand.

The habits and sentiments of French society showed similar changes. From having been almost exclusively national during Louis XIV.’s reign, owing to the perpetual state of war and to a sort of proud isolation, it had gradually become cosmopolitan. After the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle,

France had been flooded from all quarters of the civilized world, but especially from England, by a concourse of refined and cultured men well acquainted with her usages and her universal language, whom she had received sympathetically. Paris became the brain of Europe. This revolution in manners and customs, coinciding with the revolution in ideas, led in its turn to a transformation in feeling, and to new aesthetic needs. Gradually people became sick of openly avowed gallantry, of shameless libertinism, of moral obliquity and of the flattering artifices of vice; a long shudder ran through the selfish torpor of the social body. After reading the Nouvelle-Héloïse, Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison, fatigued and wearied society revived as though beneath the fresh breezes of dawn. The principle of examination, the reasoned analysis of human conditions and the discussion of causes, far from culminating in disillusioned nihilism, everywhere aroused the democratic spirit, the life of sentiment and of human feeling: in the drama, with Marivaux, Diderot and La Chaussée; in art, with Chardin and Greuze; and in the salons, in view of the suppression of privilege. So that to Louis XV.’s cynical and hopeless declaration: “Apres moi le déluge,” the setting 18th century responded by a belief in progress and an appeal to the future. A long-drawn echo from all classes hailed a revolution that was possible because it was necessary.

If this revolution did not burst forth sooner, in the actual lifetime of Louis XV., if in Louis XVI.’s reign there was a renewal of loyalty to the king, before the appeal to liberty was made, that is to be explained by this hope of recovery. But Louis XVI.’s reign (1774–1792) was only to be a temporary halting-place, an artifice of history for passing through the transition period whilst elaborating the transformation which was to revolutionize, together with France, the whole world.

Louis XVI. was twenty years of age. Physically he was stout, and a slave to the Bourbon fondness for good living; intellectually a poor creature and but ill-educated, he loved nothing so much as hunting and locksmith’s work. He had a taste for puerile amusements, a

mania for useless little domestic economies in a court where millions vanished like smoke, and a natural idleness which achieved as its masterpiece the keeping a diary from 1766 to 1792 of a life so tragic, which was yet but a foolish chronicle of trifles. Add to this that he was a virtuous husband, a kind father, a fervent Christian and a good-natured man full of excellent intentions, yet a spectacle of moral pusillanimity and ineptitude.

From 1770 onwards lived side by side with this king, rather than at his side, the archduchess Marie Antoinette of Austria—one of the very graceful and very frivolous women who were to be found at Versailles, opening to life like the flowers she so much loved, enamoured of

pleasure and luxury, delighting to free herself from the formalities of court life, and mingling in the amusements of society; lovable and loving, without ceasing to be virtuous. Flattered and adored at the outset, she very soon furnished a sinister illustration to Beaumarchais’ Basile; for evil tongues began to calumniate the queen: those of her brothers-in-law, the duc d’Aiguillon (protector of Madame du Barry and dismissed from the ministry), and the Cardinal de Rohan, recalled from his embassy in Vienna. She was blamed for her friendship with the comtesse de Polignac, who loved her only as the dispenser of titles and positions; and when weary of this persistent begging for rewards, she was taxed with her preference for foreigners who asked nothing. People brought up against her the debts and expenditure due to her belief in the inexhaustible resources of France; and hatred became definite when she was suspected of trying to imitate her mother Maria Theresa and play the part of ruler, since her husband neglected his duty. They then became persuaded that it was she who caused the weight of taxation; in the most infamous libels comparison was made between her freedom of behaviour and that of Louis XV.’s former mistresses. Private envy and public misconceptions very soon summed up her excessive unpopularity in the menacing nickname, “L’Autrichienne.” (See .)

All this shows that Louis XVI. was not a monarch capable of directing or suppressing the inevitable revolution. His reign was but a tissue of contradictions. External affairs seemed in even a more dangerous position than those at home. Louis XVI. confided to Vergennes

the charge of reverting to the traditions of the crown and raising France from the humiliation suffered by the treaty of Paris and the partition of Poland. His first act was to release French policy from the Austrian alliance of 1756; in this he was aided both by public opinion and by the confidence of the king—the latter managing to set aside the desires of the queen, whom the ambition of Maria Theresa and Joseph II. hoped to use as an auxiliary. Vergennes’ object was a double one: to free the kingdom from English supremacy and to shake off the yoke of Austria. Opportunities offered themselves simultaneously. In 1775 the English colonies in America rebelled, and Louis XVI., after giving them secret aid and encouragement almost from the first, finally in February 1778, despite Marie Antoinette, formed an open alliance with them; while when Joseph II., after having partitioned Poland, wanted in addition to balance the loss of Silesia with that of Bavaria, Vergennes prevented him from doing so. In vain was he offered a share in the partition of the Netherlands by way of an inducement. France’s disinterested action in the peace of Teschen (1779) restored to her the lost adherence of the secondary states. Europe began to respect her again when she signed a Franco-Dutch-Spanish alliance (1779–1780), and when, after the capitulation of the English at Yorktown, the peace of Versailles (1783) crowned her efforts with at least formal success. Thenceforward, partly from prudence and partly from penury, Vergennes cared only for the maintenance of peace—a not too easy task, in opposition to the greed of Catherine II. and Joseph II., who now wished to divide the Ottoman empire. Joseph II., recognizing that Louis XVI. would not sacrifice the “sick man” to him, raised the question of the opening of the Scheldt, against the Dutch. Vainly did Joseph II. accuse his sister of ingratitude and complain of her resistance; the treaty of Fontainebleau in 1785 maintained the rights of Holland. Later on, Joseph II., sticking to his point, wanted to settle the house of Bavaria in the Netherlands; but Louis XVI. supported the confederation of princes (Fürstenbund) which Frederick II. called together in order to keep his turbulent neighbour within bounds. Vergennes completed his work by signing a commercial treaty in 1786 with England, whose commerce and industry were favoured above others, and a second in 1787 with Russia. He died in 1787, at an opportune moment for himself; though he had temporarily raised France’s position in Europe, his work was soon ruined by the very means taken to secure its successes: warfare and armaments had hastened the “hideous bankruptcy.”

From the very beginning of his reign Louis XVI. fell into