Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/630

 594 FRANCE [HISTORY. 1774-76, Begin ning of the reign The min istry of Turgot. The pacte de famine. Neckcr becomes finance minister, less ; that in the crisis of affairs she led the king away from his subjects, and taught him to rely on German help. And so, while the virtues of Louis XVI. may have retarded the revolutionary outbreak for a few years, his weaknesses and the character of his spouse made the eventual explosion all the more complete and terrible. The opening of the reign was a period of hope; all seemed to go so well. The king and queen themselves were no common mortals : so young, so innocent, so graceful, they formed a strange contrast to the gloomy selfishness of the past. And roused by a gleam of hope, literature itself also passed into sentimental idyls ; the court was itself idyllic ; at the Little Trianon the king and queen played at farm and mill ; the unreadable sentimentalities of Florian were the delight of Versailles ; the innocent pictures of Gessner s pen had a great popularity ; the days of Paul and Virginia were not far off. These things occupied and deluded the upper world ; the middle world smiled in bitterness over the keen satires of Beaumarchais ; the lower world starved and turned uneasily on its frozen couch. The well-meant attempts of the court to administer charities, &quot; to make little alms and great galas,&quot; as Michel et phrases it, only served still more to irritate the discontented crowd. At first all seemed well; the ministers of Louis XV., obscure and corrupt, vanished ; some gleam of prosperity shone on agriculture, and the court was inclined to reduce the disorders of finance. No able statesman could the king find at the beginning ; he was obliged to trust to Maurepas, a frivolous and incompetent old man, who did the state one great service, for he led Louis XVI. to entrust the finances to Turgot. Turgot was a disciple of the economists, who had worked miracles of prosperity as intendant of the Limoges district, a man of good faith, high character, and ability; but, like many others, he thought that what seemed so simple to him would at once commend itself to all, and entirely underrated the resistance which the interested noblesse and the court itself would make to his reforms. He at once proposed his remedies for the evils of the time, the only true remedies economy and the abolition of privi lege. The state should spend less, and should draw its supplies from all orders of men alike. To the court and the nobles this seemed revolution and ruin ; even the king was startled. Instead of supporting his minister manfully, he recalled the banished parliaments, and thought to shelter himself behind the law. The lawyers, however, special lovers of use and privilege, felt instinctively that Turgot was their foe ; from that moment his fate was sealed. A great league was formed against him ; the powerful help of the scandalous pacte de famine, the grain-ring which had been established with the approval and participation of Louis XV., was enlisted in behalf of the privileged orders ; a famine ensued in 1775, and lasted three years. Louis XVI. was frightened ; all seemed to be against him ; and at last in 1776 he dismissed his one great minister. &quot;Tur got and I are the only men in France who care for the people,&quot; was the king s mournful complaint ; it was time that the people should begin to care for themselves. Jacques Necker, an ingenious Genevan banker, who seemed to have the art of creating resources, now became finance minister. He was a high-typed charlatan, who grasped no principles, tried no heroic remedies, but thought only how to make credit and float the country over its diffi culties. Unfortunately for him, the strain of war expendi ture was added to his other burdens, for France was moved by her fate to take part in the American struggle now beginning. Necker s idea was that he might stave off the imminent bankruptcy of the state with paper and credit, and that, to be successful in this, he must lay the proper foundations of credit, knowledge and honesty in dealing. With this end before him, he wished from the beginning to issue his Compte rendu, and thereby to let 17 France know how she really stood. This, however, he could not at first carry through, so that he was obliged to borrow for the state on his own credit, and to shift as he best might. People trusted him, and he crossed no angry and alarmed interest ; but for the American war, he might have held out a considerable time. The war, however, was grow ing urgent. At first it had been volunteer work ; for young French nobles, fired with a new zeal for liberty, went over to support the colonists in their struggle ; and though the court at first was afraid of war, thanks to its embarrass ments, it could only look with favour on this new sea-power rising up to counterbalance the overbearing supremacy of England. The most noted of the volunteers was the Mar quis de Lafayette, who manned a frigate at his own cost. The Saratoga disaster in 1777 made more active measures necessary; the Americans were enthusiastic, and France, pushed by the popularity of the war at court, made a treaty of alliance and trade with the colonists early in 1778. Then began a great maritime struggle. England declared war on France, and tried to raise up embarrassments for her in Germany; but the skilful diplomacy of Vergennes, foreign minister of France, arranged the peace of Teschen T| (May 1779), thereby avoiding a great European war, and?4 also, in all probability, securing the independence of the 1 United States; for it freed France from anxiety by land, and enabled her to push on her war at sea. An alliance with Spain against England followed. The war lasted about five years, and was marked at first by a striking revival of vigour in the French navy. The sea fight off Ushant (July 1778), though it did not enable the French admiral D Orvilliers to | claim an actual victory, had revived hope and confidence in I the country. The war was waged in five theatres, in tho Channel, at Gibraltar, in North America, in the West Indies, and in India. The French attack on Gibraltar in 1779 t was entirely foiled by the strength of the place and the 1 1 ability of Elliot ; the threatened descent on the English shores came to nothing ; in the West Indies D Estaing de feated Admiral Byron. In 1780, however, the English roused themselves, and their more real strength began to appear. Rodney defeated the Franco-Spanish fleet, reliev- &amp;lt; ing Gibraltar and Minorca from blockade ; then sailing for the West Indies, he helped the English cause against the insurgent colonists and their friends. At this time a new and powerful engine was set in motion against England ; it was in 1780 that the system of the Armed Neutrality, in which French diplomacy had a hand, was proclaimed by Catherine II. of Russia. Freedom of navigation for all was asserted. England had insisted on visiting neutral ships, and on confiscating all warlike munitions : she defined these by a long list of articles possibly useful to a belli gerent, such as timber or. iron, out of which ships could be built. The contention of the empress was that the flag protects the cargo ; also that neutral ships, if escorted by a neutral war ship, are free from visitation, and that a &quot;paper-blockade,&quot; that is a blockade announced but not supported by a sufficient force, is not to be recognized as real. France, Prussia, Spain, Denmark, and Sweden, the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Austria, all adhered to the Russian proclamation, and equipped armed ships to assert this new and liberal maritime code. When Holland also joined the other states, England at once declared war onl her, and crushed her without mercy. As an immediate! result, the French navy seemed to secure the ascendant ia every quarter. De Grasse defeated Howe in the Wests Indies, and sailed thence to support Washington andj Rochambeau against Lord Cornwallis. The combination was thoroughly successful, ending in the famous capitulation} of York Town (October 1781), which indicated that tha struggle between England and her colonies must soon end