Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/620

 584 FRANCE [HISTORY. France 1715. had become too great to bear. He had vised them, their strength and the labour of their hands, without stint or re gret ; but had never done anything to solace their woes, and in the worst and most famine-stricken times the wasteful expenditure of the court remained undiminished, and the cares of the Great Monarch never descended so low as to the poor people, whose fortunes the steady growth of the absolute monarchy had placed entirely in his hands. A new For France the 18th century begins with the death of age Louis XIV. The party which had surrounded the late king, begins. fa e p ar fcy o f Madame de Maintenon, the Jesuits, the duke of Maine, represented the past ; their opponents were am- Philip of bitious to represent the future. At their head stood Philip, Orleans duke of Orleans, who had in extremest form all the char- regent. ac teristics of the Orleans branch of the Bourbon family, who was brilliant and most intelligent, highly educated and cultivated ; who was brave and capable as a soldier, full of good ideas as to the benevolent management of the people, and lastly, profligate and utterly without rule in his moral life, so that his better side was always neutralized by his worse qualities, and he ended by failing completely in his attempt to govern France on principles opposed to those of Louis XIV. Like so many of the prominent personages of the 18th century, his intellect grasped the future, while his vices clung to the past. Even while the old monarch s re mains were being hurried with scanty pomp and tearless eyes to St Denis, Philip of Orleans swept away all the arrangements of the royal will, and had himself declared regent, with full power to appoint his council of regency. The public opinion, as far as it could exist and express itself, warmly supported this coup d etat, and the party of the duke of Maine shrank into utter obscurity. At once the The re- regent set himself to reform the government, and alter the action in foreign policy of France ; in this he was guided partly by his knowledge of the plans of the late duke of Burgundy, and partly by the acute intelligence of his former tutor the Abb6 Dubois ; the duke of Burgundy represented also the virtuous, the abb6 the scandalous, side of the new Govern ment. In home affairs the regent s action aimed at a com plete reversal of the late king s methods. He proposed to shift the work of governing from the king to the nobles ; there were to be six business councils or boards, for foreign affairs, army, navy, church affairs (the &quot;council of con science&quot;), home affairs, and finance. This system of govern ment failed, partly through the indolence of the regent, partly through the inaptness of the nobles for practical business. In church matters, the Jansenists were not un popular, and came back to Paris ; Cardinal Noailles, head of the council of conscience, was moderate and tolerant, and the Jesuits felt that their power was much weakened. The regent even talked of inviting back the Huguenots to France; this, however, was beyond his powers. He had Fenelon s Telemaque published at last, as a kind of manifesto against the late reign, and a prophecy of the coming era of benevo lent princes. He hoped to introduce throughout France the system known as that of the pays d etats, a system of local estates or parliaments, which should lead up to a real and substantive States-General, and make all the provinces alike in form of government. This also he could not carry into effect. In foreign affairs Dubois led ; his main view was that France and Spain could not be friends, that Philip V. would gladly represent the old high Catholic interference in France, and would do his worst to overthrow the regent, whose character and ideas alike were odious to him. This being so, here was reason for another reversal of the late king s views ; France should seek her friends among the natural foes of Spain, England under the house of Hanover, and Holland. The marked Anglomania, the enthusiasm for everything English, which is to be seen at this time in France, worked in well with these new lines of foreign policy. With these views Dubois set himself to 171 3 resist the bold schemes of Cardinal Alberoni, the adventurer, the would-be regenerator of Spain. In 1717 he succeeded in combining the three countries in opposition to Alberoni, and in 1 7 1 8, on the emperor acceding to the league, the Quad- Tin ruple Alliance (France, England, Holland, the empire) was ru l signed. The detection of the Cellamare plot, for the over- A11 * throw and assassination of the regent, had enabled Dubois, just before this time, to get rid of all the Spanish party. He deported Cellamare, the Spanish ambassador, and im prisoned the duke of Maine and the leaders of that side ; he also took for himself the post of foreign minister. War now began ; England crushed the Spanish fleet ; the im perialists, in British ships, seized Sicily ; Marshal Berwick won some successes in northern Spain. The basis on which Alberoni had built was too slight to bear the strain of un successful war; he fell, and early in 1720 the treaty of London closed this little war. Spain ceased thenceforward to cherish schemes of life and energy; the ancient kingdom lapsed once more into proud decay. At this very moment France greatly needed some triumph and some tranquillity, for she was now rudely waking from new dreams of gambler-wealth at home. The financial difficulties inherited from the late reign had baffled all the skill of the duke of Noailles, who presided over the council of finance. His &quot; chambre ardente,&quot; with which he had hoped to cure the evils of the time by punishing and frighten ing financiers, brought no relief ; and the regent, whose active mind and indolent disposition led him to adopt new and brilliant schemes, was carried away by the clever sugges tions of John Law of Lauriston, an adventurer, in whose j, ready brain new ideas as to finance and banking teemed. L tht He had hold of some half-truths respecting the real objects fii; * and character of money and commercial circulation. Paper money was a new thing ; and Law believed that notes, based on the permanent wealth of the country, the soil, might be made to double the nation s capital, and relieve it of all its embarrassments. Hs was allowed to establish a bank of his own in 171 G. This answered so well that in 1718 Government undertook the whole mystery of banking, with Law as director of the new Royal Bank. In connexion with this institution, intended to set afloat paper sup ported by the property of the state, he started his famous Joint-stock Mississippi Company, with its grant of T Mis- Louisiana, and all the unknown, and therefore marvellous, S1 I*: wealth and resources of the interior of North America. The : shares were greedily taken up ; the new bank notes seemed to afford an easy and inexhaustible supply of wealth, which would extinguish the debt, and set the country forward in lucrative enterprise. For a few months the fever was amazing ; the wildest excesses of stock-jobbing and gam bling were committed ; on the wings of this paper-wealth the state should escape out of its difficulties, and private persons fly up to splendour. Law himself bought a hand ful of titled estates, and seemed to become one of the great est men in France. Early in 1720, however, confidence was shaken, and then the bubble burst. Law stood his ground a while, but at the end of the year he was obliged to take flight, as poor as when he began. The embarrass ments of France were not got rid of in this way ; the royal bankruptcy which was impending would in the end pull down the monarchy. Dubois, who had prudently kept C &quot;&amp;gt; ; clear of this downfall, now turned his ambition towards church preferment ; on his unworthy head were placed first the archiepiscopal mitre of Cambrai, then the cardinal s hat. His rise made it necessary for him to appease the Jesuits and depress the Jansenists, and this he did without a moment s hesitation. For a year Cardinal Dubois, as first minister, was the foremost man in France. He pro claimed the majority of Louis XV. in 1723; and just as