The History of French Revolution. John Stevens Cabot Abbott
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of Europe the state of affairs was equally bad, if not worse. But in France wealth and intelligence had made great advances, while in central and northern Europe the enslaved people were so debased by ignorance that they had no consciousness of the rights of which they were defrauded.
The court demanded of a rich man, M. Massat, six hundred thousand livres ($120,000). Stunned by the ruinous demand, he ventured to remonstrate. He was dragged to the Bastille, where the vermin of his dungeon could alone hear his murmurs. M. Catalan, another man of wealth, after experiencing the horrors of such an imprisonment for several months, was glad to purchase his ransom for six millions of livres ($1,200,000).37
The money thus extorted was squandered in the most shameless profligacy. The king sometimes expended two hundred thousand dollars for a single night's entertainment at Versailles. The terrors of the Bastille frowned down all remonstrances. A "stone doublet" was the robe which the courtiers facetiously remarked they had prepared for murmurers.
On the 1st of May, 1749, a gentleman of the name of Latude was arrested by one of these lettres de cachet, and thrown into the Bastille. He was then but twenty years of age, and had given offense to Madame de Pompadour, by pretending that a conspiracy had been formed against her life. For thirty-five years he remained in prison enduring inconceivable horrors. In 1784, several years after the death of both the mistress and her subject king, he was liberated and wrote an account of his captivity. It was a tale of horror which thrilled the ear of Europe. Eloquently, in view of the letters of Latude, Michelet represents the people as exclaiming,
"Holy, holy Revolution, how slowly dost thou come! I, who have been waiting for thee a thousand years in the furrows of the Middle Ages, what! must I wait still longer? Oh, how slowly time passes! Oh, how have I counted the hours! Wilt thou never arrive?"
A young man, in a Jesuit College, in a thoughtless hour, composed a satirical Latin distich, making merry with the foibles of the professors and of the king. A lettre de cachet was immediately served upon him, and for thirty-one years, until youth and manhood were giving place to old age, he remained moaning in living burial in one of the dungeons of the Bastille. One of the first acts of the Revolution was to batter down these execrable walls and to plow up their very foundations.
In view of the facts here revealed one can not but be amazed at the manner in which many have spoken of the French Revolution, as if it were merely an outburst of human depravity. "Burke had no idea," writes De Tocqueville, "of the state in which the monarchy, he so deeply regretted, had left us." Michelet, glowing with the indignation which inflamed the bosoms of his fathers, exclaims, "Our fathers shivered that Bastille to pieces, tore away its stones with bleeding hands, and flung them afar. Afterward they seized them again, and, having hewn them into a different form, in order that they might be trampled under foot by the people forever, built with them the Bridge of Revolution."38
FOOTNOTES:
35. Historical View of French Revolution, by J. Michelet, i., 66.
36. History of the Bastille, Chambers' Miscellany.
37. Old Régime, p. 191.
Chapter VI.
The Court and the Parliament
Death of Louis XV.—Education of Louis XVI.—Maurepas, Prime Minister.—Turgot; his Expulsion from Office.—Necker.—Franklin.—Sympathy with the Americans.—La Fayette.—Views of the Court.—Treaty with America.—Popularity of Voltaire.—Embarrassment of Necker.—Compte Rendu au Roi.—Necker driven into Exile.—Enslavement of France.—New Extravagance.—Calonne.
As the clock of Versailles tolled the hour of twelve at midnight of the 10th of May, 1774, Louis XV., abandoned by all, alone in his chamber, died. In the most loathsome stages of the confluent small-pox, his body had for several days presented but a mass of corruption. Terror had driven all the courtiers from the portion of the palace which he occupied, and even Madame du Barry dared not approach the bed where her guilty paramour was dying. The nurse hired to attend him could not remain in the apartment, but sat in an adjoining room. A lamp was placed at the window, which she was to extinguish as soon as the king was dead. Eagerly the courtiers watched the glimmering of that light that they might be the first to bear to Louis, the grandson of the king, the tidings that he was monarch of France.
Louis was then hardly twenty years of age.39 His wife, Marie Antoinette, daughter of Maria Theresa, Queen of Austria, was scarcely nineteen. They had been married four years. Marie Antoinette was one of the most beautiful of women, but from infancy she had been educated in the belief that kings and nobles were created to illustrate life by gayety and splendor, and that the people were created only to be their servants.40
The taper was extinguished, and the crowd of courtiers rushed to the apartment of the Dauphin to hail him as Louis XVI. The tidings, though expected, for a moment overwhelmed them both, and, encircled in each other's arms, they fell upon their knees, while Louis exclaimed, "O God! guide us, protect us, we are too young to govern."41 They then entered the grand saloon, where they received the congratulations of all the dignitaries of the Church and the State. All were anxious to escape from the palace whose atmosphere was tainted, and hardly an hour elapsed ere the new court, in carriages and on horseback, left Versailles and were passing rapidly to the Chateau of Choisy, one of the favorite rural palaces of Louis XV. The loathsome remains of the king were left to the care of a few under-servants to be hurried to their burial.
It was not yet four o'clock in the morning. The sleepless night, the chill morning air, the awful scene of death from which they had come, oppressed all spirits. Soon, however, the sun rose warm and brilliant; a jocular remark dispelled the mental gloom, and in two hours they arrived at the palace a merry party exulting in the new reign. The education of Louis XVI. had been such that he was still but a boy, bashful, self-distrusting, and entirely incompetent to guide the kingdom through the terrific storm which for ages had been gathering. He had not the remotest idea of the perils with which France was surrounded. He was an exceedingly amiable young man, of morals most singularly pure for that corrupt age, retiring and domestic in his tastes, and sincerely desirous of promoting the happiness of France. Geography was the only branch of learning in which he appeared to take any special interest. He framed, with much sagacity, the instructions for the voyage of La Pérouse around the world in 1786, and often lamented the fate of this celebrated navigator, saying, "I see very well that I am not fortunate."42 How mysterious the government of God, that upon the head of this benevolent, kind-hearted, conscientious king should have been emptied, even to the dregs, those vials of wrath which debauched and profligate monarchs had been treasuring up for so many reigns!
LOUIS XVI. AND LA PÉROUSE.
Louis had no force of character, and, destitute of self-reliance, was entirely guided by others. At the suggestion of his aunt, Adelaide, he called to the post of prime minister Count Maurepas, who was eighty years of age, and who, having been banished from Paris by Madame de Pompadour, had been living for thirty years in retirement. Thus France was handed over in these hours of peril to