Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/631

 THE FALLING MONARCHY.] FRANCE 595 in the discomfiture of the mother-country. In 1782, how ever, things seemed to go better with England : in India affairs looked brighter; Rodney defeated Do Grasse off Saintes in the Antilles ; Gibraltar held out firmly, though Minorca had fallen. Later in the year England made peace with the colonists, and recognized the independence of the United States ; it was felt that the new Rockingham min istry would be willing to make peace with France. And France, much as she had distinguished herself in the war, was too much exhausted to wish to push it further. The sea-rights of Europe had been asserted against England ; America had secured her freedom ; France had played a brilliant part, with one hand protecting Holland, and with the other giving independence to the United States ; she, too, was quite ready for peace. In September 1783 the treaty of Versailles was signed between France, England, and Spain. England restored to Holland the main part of her conquests, ceded Minorca and Florida to Spain, and to France her Indian possessions, confirming also the stipu lation of the peace of Utrecht respecting Dunkirk. On the same day England also solemnly recognized the independ ence of the young republic of the West. France came out of the war with much honour on all hands ; as champion of liberty abroad, as founder of re publics, as apostle of new ideas, she could scarcely be ex pected to feel a stronger attachment than before for her own despotic monarchy. The contrast was all against the old regime, and the heavy debts incurred in carrying on the war had added greatly to the embarrassments of the crown. Moreover, Necker was gone. He had struggled hard against the inherent difficulties of his position and the per sistent hostility of the court ; at last he had persuaded Louis XVI. to let him issue his balance sheet, the famous Compte rendu, early in 1781. The document, afterwards shown to be erroneous on the side of hope, was an offence to the spending classes, an assault on their privilege, a kind of act of treason in their eyes ; that the king should keep accounts, and lay them before his people, was in their view scandalous; from the moment it appeared Necker s fate was sealed. The Compte rendu was more clear million livres ; and Necker hoped that, seeing this, con- an* Compte rendu would then accomplish its own statements and - |make a solid surplus. For France in these years had cer- ainly been growing richer and stronger ; the duties on ob jects of consumption had increased two million livres a year ; and Arthur Young declared that &quot; in these late days the advance of maritime commerce has been more rapid in France than in England. Commerce has doubled in twenty years.&quot; Necker had therefore a sound basis to go on ; but the court could not endure life on such terms, and in May 1781 he had to resign office. From this time the queen s influence was omnipotent over the feeble king. She ruled jwith a succession of obscure and incompetent ministers, l;;tJ jfirst Joli do Fleury, then D Ormesson, who, when he re signed office, left only about 14,400 in the treasury, after having borrowed nearly 14,000,000 sterling in two years uid a half. These men were followed by the &quot; ladies minis-
 * han convincing ; it made out an actual surplus of ten
 * i Ifidence would recover, and, like a prophecy of good, the
 * &amp;lt; per,&quot; the Fouquet of that age, even as Necker had been its

Law, Calonne, the &quot; enchanter,&quot; the &quot; model minister,&quot; as the court styled him. He found &quot; two little bags of gold, vvith 1200 francs in each, in the royal treasury,&quot; a rather light foundation to begin upon. &quot; There was,&quot; he says, neither money nor credit ; the current debts of the crown vere immense, the income pledged far in advance, the re sources dried up, public property valueless, the coin of the realm impoverished and withdrawn from circulation the ivhole, in a word, on the very verge of bankruptcy.&quot; His
 * ! |dea was to mend matters by a gay and profuse expenditure ;

the queen should have whatever she wanted ; &quot; waste is the 1786-87. true alms-giving of kings&quot; again became a state-maxim ; and all things should go on merrily, from minute to minute. So the great annual deficit continued unchecked. In the autumn of 1786 Calonne himself, in spite of his lively expedients and &quot; gaiety of heart,&quot; as he dragged the nation to its ruin, was forced to admit that the finances were in a hopeless state. He seemed to think that the privileges! orders, which had so praised and petted him, would be flexible to one they knew to be their friend, and induced Louis XVI. to call an assembly of notables in 1787, before whom he laid the state of the finances and his proposals for reform. For forty years finance had been steadily going wrong ; the deficit, which began in 1739, was a million and a third per annum in 1764 ; was, even in Necker s days, well over two millions; by 1786 had increased to more than six millions and a half; the best estimate Calonne could make for 1787 involved a deficit of five million pounds. Since Necker had come to power the total loans had amounted to fifty million pounds. Calonne, with irresistible force, argued from this that the ruin of the privileged classes impended.. The argument was so unpleasant that they would not see it. He proposed that the taiile, or land-tax, should be levied equally on all ; that the odious right of corvee, which took the peasant s labour, and brought him under subjection to the lord, the intendant, and the money-lender, also should be swept away ; that there should be free trade in grain, so that another pacte, de famine might be impossible, and that all restrictions on traffic should be abolished. The notables replied with one voice (for they were all men of the privi leged orders) that they would none of it. So Calonne fell, astonished at the ingratitude of his friends. Another queen s nominee, the incompetent Cardinal Lome nie de Brienne, succeeded him. The anger of the people against the queen and her friends grew daily hotter ; and, .though she was absolutely guiltless in the matter, the scandal of the diamond necklace story in 1785-1786 seemed to give point to the popular discontent against her. She was frivolous and ex travagant, and without the slightest feeling for the French nation ; her love of amusement easily led people to take the worst view of all she did ; she was identified in their minds with offensive foreign tastes and interests, and cre dited with French morals at their worst. The accession to the ministry of Lome nie de Brienne was Ministry the beginning of the end of the monarchy. He found at once that he must press on the privileged classes Calonne s g r e ie ( proposals ; and parties formed afresh, on the one side the king, the queen, and the minister, supported by some of the noblesse ; on the other the duke of Orleans, already beginning to take an active and ominous part in affairs, the main bulk of the nobles, and the parliament of Paris ; the lawyers went with them in defending privilege. Below them all were the starving and angry people ; in front of them the yawning deficit. The queen and her minister thought to save the ancient monarchy by abandoning the noblesse. To the people, however, it did not appear to be a question of one or other, but of their own claims and rights against both. No doubt the general bulk of the people would have welcomed a king who would reform loyally; Louis XVI., unfortunately, for all his honesty and well-meaning wishes, was not strong enough to face the difficulties before him. In August 1787 the king held a great lit de justice, The lit or personal visitation of the parliament, to enforce Q&dejtutice registration of his edicts, and after he had thus over-^ v ^ ul borne its opposition, he exiled that learned body to Troyes. Though the edicts were for a stamp-tax and for the equal distribution of the land-tax, the popular voice went with the parliament ; for the more ambitious and active spirits would not accept as sufficient the reforms recommended by