Volume VI Part 6 (2/2)
Your comptroller-general ought, for the future, to be obliged to furnish the needful funds without daring to ask the reasons for which they are demanded of him, and still less to decide upon them. It was thus that the late king behaved towards M. Colbert and all who succeeded him in that office; he would never have done anything great in the whole course of his reign, if he had behaved otherwise.” It was the king's common sense which replied to this counsel, ”We are still paying all those debts that the late king incurred for extraordinary occasions, fifty millions a year and more, which we must begin by paying off first of all.” Later on, he adds, gayly, ”As for me, I can do without any equipage, and, if needful, the shoulder of mutton of the lieutenants of infantry will do perfectly well for me.” ”There is nothing talked off here but the doings of the king, who is in extraordinary spirits,” writes the advocate Barbier; ”he has visited the places near Valenciennes, the magazines, the hospitals; he has tasted the broth of the sick, and the soldiers' bread.
The amba.s.sador of Holland came, before his departure, to propose a truce in order to put us off yet longer. The king, when he was presented, merely said, 'I know what you are going to say to me, and what it is all about. I will give you my answer in Flanders.' This answer is a proud one, and fit for a king of France.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Louis XV. and the Amba.s.sador of Holland----151]
The hopes of the nation were aroused. ”Have we, then, a king?” said M. d'Argenson. Credit was given to the d.u.c.h.ess of Chateauroux, Louis XV.'s new favorite, for having excited this warlike ardor in the king.
Ypres and Menin had already surrendered after a few days' open trenches; siege had just been laid to Furnes. Marshal Noailles had proposed to move up the king's household troops in order to make an impression upon the enemy. ”If they must needs be marched up,” replied Louis XV., ”I do not wish to separate from my household: _verb.u.m sap_.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: YPRES----151]
The news which arrived from the army of Italy was equally encouraging; the Prince of Conde, seconded by Chevert, had forced the pa.s.sage of the Alps. ”There will come some occasion when we shall do as well as the French have done,” wrote Count Campo-Santo, who, under Don Philip, commanded the Spanish detachment; ”it is impossible to do better.”
Madame de Chateauroux had just arrived at Lille; there were already complaints in the army of the frequent absence of the king on his visits to her, when alarming news came to cause forgetfulness of court intrigues and dissatisfaction; the Austrians had effected the pa.s.sage of the Rhine by surprise near Philipsburg; Elsa.s.s was invaded. Marshal Coigny, who was under orders to defend it, had been enticed in the direction of Worms, by false moves on the part of Prince Charles of Lorraine, and had found great difficulty in recrossing the frontier. ”Here we are on the eve of a great crisis,” writes Louis XV. on the 7th of July. It was at once decided that the king must move on Elsa.s.s to defend his threatened provinces. The King of Prussia promised to enter Bohemia immediately with twenty thousand men, as the diversion was sure to be useful to France. Louis XV. had already arrived at Metz, and Marshal Noailles pushed forward in order to unite all the corps. On the 8th of August the king awoke in pain, prostrated by a violent headache; a few days later, all France was in consternation; the king was said to have been given over.
”The king's danger was noised abroad throughout Paris in the middle of the night,” writes Voltaire [_Siecle de Louis XV.,_ p. 103]: ”everybody gets up, runs about, in confusion, not knowing whither to go. The churches open at dead of night; n.o.body takes any more note of time, bed-time, or day-time, or meal-time. Paris was beside itself; all the houses of officials were besieged by a continual crowd; knots collected, at all the cross-roads. The people cried, 'If he should die, it will be for having marched to our aid.' People accosted one another, questioned one another in the churches, without being the least acquainted. There were many churches where the priest who p.r.o.nounced the prayer for the king's health interrupted the intoning with his tears, and the people responded with nothing but sobs and cries. The courier, who, on the 19th, brought to Paris the news of his convalescence, was embraced and almost stifled by the people; they kissed his horse, they escorted him in triumph. All the streets resounded with a shout of joy. 'The king is well!' When the monarch was told of the unparalleled transports of joy which had succeeded those of despair, he was affected to tears, and, raising himself up in a thrill of emotion which gave him strength, 'Ah!'
he exclaimed, 'how sweet it is to be so loved! What have I done to deserve it?'”
What had he done, indeed! And what was he destined to do? France had just experienced the last gush of that monarchical pa.s.sion and fidelity which had so long distinguished her, and which were at last used up and worn out through the faults of the princes as well as through the blindness and errors of the nation itself.
Confronted with death, the king had once more felt the religious terrors which were constantly intermingled with the irregularity of his life; he had sent for the queen, and had dismissed the d.u.c.h.ess of Chateauroux.
On recovering his health, he found himself threatened by new perils, aggravated by his illness and by the troubled state into which it had thrown the public mind. After having ravaged and wasted Elsa.s.s, without Marshals Coigny and Noailles having been able to prevent it, Prince Charles had, without being hara.s.sed, struck again into the road towards Bohemia, which was being threatened by the King of Prussia. ”This prince,” wrote Marshal Belle-Isle on the 13th of September, ”has written a very strong letter to the king, complaining of the quiet way in which Prince Charles was allowed to cross the Rhine; he attributes it all to his Majesty's illness, and complains bitterly of Marshal Noailles.” And, on the 25th, to Count Clermont, ”Here we are, decided at last; the king is to start on Tuesday the 27th for Lundville, and on the 5th of October will be at Strasbourg. n.o.body knows as yet any further than that, and it is a question whether he will go to Fribourg or not. The ministers are off back to Paris. Marshal Noailles, who has sent for his equipage hither, asked whether he should attend his Majesty, who replied, 'As you please,' rather curtly. Your Highness cannot have a doubt about his doing so, after such a gracious permission.”
Louis XV. went to the siege of Fribourg, which was a long and a difficult one. He returned to Paris on the 13th of November, to the great joy of the people. A few days later, Marshal Belle-Isle, whilst pa.s.sing through Hanover in the character of negotiator, was arrested by order of George II., and carried to England a prisoner of war, in defiance of the law of nations and the protests of France. The moment was not propitious for obtaining the release of a marshal of France and an able general. The Emperor Charles VII., who but lately returned to his hereditary dominions, and recovered possession of his capital, after fifteen months of Austrian occupation, died suddenly on the 20th of January, 1745, at forty-seven years of age. The face of affairs changed all at once; the honor of France was no longer concerned in the struggle; the Grand-duke of Tuscany had no longer any compet.i.tor for the empire; the eldest son of Charles VII. was only seventeen; the Queen of Hungary was disposed for peace. ”The English ministry, which laid down the law for all, because it laid down the money, and which had in its pay, all at one time, the Queen of Hungary, the King of Poland, and the King of Sardinia, considered that there was everything to lose by a treaty with France, and everything to gain by arms. War continued, because it had commenced.”
[Voltaire, _Siecle de Louis XV_.]
The King of France henceforth maintained it almost alone by himself. The young Elector of Bavaria had already found himself driven out of Munich, and forced by his exhausted subjects to demand peace of Maria Theresa.
The election to the empire was imminent; Maximilian-Joseph promised his votes to the Grand-duke of Tuscany; at that price he was re-established in his hereditary dominions. The King of Poland had rejected the advances of France, who offered him the t.i.tle of emperor, beneath which Charles VII. had succ.u.mbed. Marshal Saxe bore all the brunt of the war.
A foreigner and a Protestant, for a long while under suspicion with Louis XV., and blackened in character by the French generals, Maurice of Saxony had won authority as well as glory by the splendor of his bravery and of his military genius. Combining with quite a French vivacity the far-sightedness and the perseverance of the races of the north, he had been toiling for more than a year to bring about amongst his army a spirit of discipline, a powerful organization, a contempt for fatigue as well as for danger. ”At Dettingen the success of the allies was due to their surprising order, for they were not seasoned to war,” he used to say. Order did not as yet reign in the army of Marshal Saxe. In 1745, the situation was grave; the marshal was attacked with dropsy; his life appeared to be in danger. He nevertheless commanded his preparations to be made for the campaign, and, when Voltaire, who was one of his friends, was astounded at it, ”It is no question of living, but of setting out,”
was his reply.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Marshal Saxe 154]
The king was preparing to set out, like Marshal Saxe; he had just married the dauphin to the eldest daughter of the King of Spain; the young prince accompanied his father to the front before Tournai, which the French army was besieging. On the 8th of May Louis XV. visited the outskirts; an attack from the enemy was expected, the field of battle was known beforehand. The village of Fontenoy had already been occupied by Marshal Noailles, who had asked to serve as aide-de-camp to Marshal Saxe, to whom he was attached by sincere friends.h.i.+p, and whom he had very much contributed to advance in the king's good graces.
”Never did Louis XV. show more gayety than on the eve of the fight,” says Voltaire. ”The conversation was of battles at which kings had been present in person. The king said that since the battle of Poitiers no king of France had fought with his son beside him, that since St. Louis none had gained any signal victory over the English, and that he hoped to be the first. He was the first up on the day of action; he himself at four o'clock awoke Count d'Argenson, minister of war, who on the instant sent to ask Marshal Saxe for his final orders. The marshal was found in a carriage of osier-work, which served him for a bed, and in which he had himself drawn about when his exhausted powers no longer allowed him to sit his horse.” The king and the dauphin had already taken up their positions of battle; the two villages of Fontenoy and Antoin, and the wood of Barri, were occupied by French troops. Two armies of fifty thousand men each were about to engage in the lists as at Dettingen.
Austria had sent but eight thousand soldiers, under the orders of the old and famous General Konigseck; the English and the Hollanders were about to bear all the burden and heat of the day.
It was not five in the morning, and already there was a thunder of cannon. The Hollanders attacked the village of Antoin, the English that of Fontenoy. The two posts were covered by a redoubt which belched forth flames; the Hollanders refused to deliver the a.s.sault. An attack made by the English on the wood of Barri had been repulsed. ”Forward, my lord, right to your front,” said old Konigseck to the Duke of c.u.mberland, George II.'s son, who commanded the English; ”the ravine in front of Fontenoy must be carried.” The English advanced; they formed a deep and serried column, preceded and supported by artillery. The French batteries mowed them down right and left, whole ranks fell dead; they were at once filled up; the cannon which they dragged along by hand, pointed towards Fontenoy and the redoubts, replied to the French artillery. An attempt of some officers of the French guards to carry off the cannon of the English was unsuccessful. The two corps found themselves at last face to face.
The English officers took off their hats; Count Chabannes and the Duke of Biron, who had moved forward, returned their salute. ”Gentlemen of the French guard, fire!” exclaimed Lord Charles Hay. ”Fire yourselves, gentlemen of England,” immediately replied Count d'Auteroche; ”we never fire first.” [All fiction, it is said.] The volley of the English laid low the foremost ranks of the French guards. This regiment had been effeminated by a long residence in Paris and at Versailles; its colonel, the Duke of Gramont, had been killed in the morning, at the commencement of the action; it gave way, and the English cleared the ravine which defended Fontenoy. They advanced as if on parade; the majors [?sergeant-majors], small cane in hand, rested it lightly on the soldiers' muskets to direct their fire. Several regiments successively opposed to the English column found themselves repulsed and forced to beat a retreat; the English still advanced.
Marshal Saxe, carried about everywhere in his osier-litter, saw the danger with a calm eye; he sent the Marquis of Meuse to the king. ”I beg your Majesty,” he told him to say, ”to go back with the dauphin over the bridge of Calonne; I will do what I can to restore the battle.” ”Ah! I know well enough that he will do what is necessary,” answered the king, ”but I stay where I am.” Marshal Saxe mounted his horse.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Battle of Fontenoy----157]
In its turn, the cavalry had been repulsed by the English; their fire swept away rank after rank of the regiment of Vaisseaux, which would not be denied. ”How is it that such troops are not victorious?” cried Marshal Saxe, who was moving about at a foot's pace in the middle of the fire, without his cuira.s.s, which his weakness did not admit of his wearing. He advanced towards Fontenoy; the batteries had just fallen short of ball. The English column had ceased marching; arrested by the successive efforts of the French regiments, it remained motionless, and seemed to receive no more orders, but it preserved a proud front, and appeared to be masters of the field of battle. Marshal Saxe was preparing for the retreat of the army; he had relinquished his proposal for that of the king, from the time that the English had come up and pressed him closely. ”It was my advice, before the danger was so great,”
he said; ”now there is no falling back.”
A disorderly council was being held around Louis XV. With the fine judgment and sense which he often displayed when he took the trouble to have an opinion on his affairs, the king had been wise enough to encourage his troops by his presence without in any way interfering with the orders of Marshal Saxe. The Duke of Richelieu vented an opinion more worthy of the name he bore than had been his wont in his life of courtiers.h.i.+p and debauchery. ”Throw forward the artillery against the column,” he said, ”and let the king's household, with all the disposable regiments, attack them at the same time; they must be fallen upon like so many foragers.”
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