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THE MARQUIS D'ARGENSON

THE MARQUIS D'ARGENSON:
A STUDY IN CRITICISM;
BEING THE STANHOPE
ESSAY: OXFORD, 1893
BY
ARTHUR OGLE
EXHIBITIONER OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE

London
T. FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
MDCCCXCIII

[CONTENTS.]

I.

1630-1721.

II.

1694-1724.

III.

1724-1744.

IV.

November, 1744-January, 1747.

V.

1747-1757.

VI.

1737 and 1755.

[THE MARQUIS D'ARGENSON.]

[I.]
1630-1721.
D'Argenson's Ancestry.

There are occasions when the craft of the critic becomes especially delightful, and at the same time especially dangerous. Delightful, when the material in which he works is new and unessayed; dangerous, from the besetting temptation to be content with accredited methods, and to neglect that watchful regard to the texture of the clay, which alone can suggest the conditions of successful treatment. Of such delicate fabric is a man made, here and there. It is as if for a moment the common matter had been thrown aside wearily, as if Nature, when she wrought him, had been toying with an inspiration, sometimes happy, often unhappy. In dealing with such a man, the critic will proceed very patiently and tenderly. He will beware of presenting him, morally or otherwise, in the light of the prevailing prejudice; nor will he erect his own provincialities of opinion as a final measure of wisdom or worth. Rather will he let the man go his own way and tell his own tale, content if he may but follow and hear and understand, without sitting in the gate to judge him.

That criticism, in the case of the Marquis d'Argenson,[1] has not always been chastened to this wholesome deference, there will be occasion to notice at a later date. We may remark at once how necessary it was. D'Argenson was indeed no ordinary man. The character with which destiny had endowed him was but poorly adapted to the social medium in which it was to move; and to the great world where moral commonplace is law, he was a stranger. He dwelt, as such men do, in a little world of his own creating, peopled with his own pleasures and his own pains. His only critic was his conscience: himself was his sternest judge: and he knew no tribunal but the midnight silence, when the glow was dying on the hearth. He was an original, in short, and as an original he must be treated.

When we are puzzled by the character of any among the illustrious dead, and when other resources fail us, a saunter in the portrait gallery of the old house is often pregnant with suggestion. Of such a privilege it will be well to avail ourselves in the present instance. The time will be very well spent.

In the days when Mazarin was king, France had no more able or trusted servant than René de Voyer, Count d'Argenson. He was a nobleman of old Touraine—one of his ancestors had sailed with St. Louis[2]— and now in these latter days, he worthily fulfilled the promise of his name by a rich devotion to his country and her master. Mazarin knew his worth. He commends him to Cardinal Grimaldi as "huomo versato e prudente,"[3] a phrase which is translated in an earlier letter to d'Argenson himself, where he compliments him on "la prudence et l'adresse" with which he had governed the Catalans.[4] His life was passed amid the stress and movement of affairs, the scene changing as circumstances of delicacy and danger called for the intervention of an accomplished hand. Only once, in 1640, is the sequence of activity broken, to reveal to us a sidelight of character which is brightly suggestive. Released for a time from the cares of administration—he had fallen into the hands of the Spaniards[5]—he employed the leisure so rudely thrust upon him in translating Thomas à Kempis, and in composing a treatise on "The Wisdom of a Christian." Years after, now grown old in the King's service, he laid aside the sword and robe, to don the cassock and die a servant of the Church.[6]

The portrait is broadly drawn, but already the features are clearly marked.

We pass on to his son, René II.[7] We are at once arrested. Were it not for the doublet and hose of the seventeenth century, we should mistake him for his own grandson. Young René de Voyer was destined, like his father, for the diplomatic service. His political pilgrimage had scarce begun when a cloud fell across his path. A rumour got abroad to the effect that the youthful diplomatist would be also a poet, and moreover, that he gave more time to religious exercises than was good for a young man who had the world before him. And so it was that when d'Argenson left for Venice with the King's commission, there was some misgiving in exalted circles; prayer and praise might be all very well, but they were not among the recognised resources of earthly diplomacy. Be that as it may, d'Argenson succeeded in commending himself to the citizens of the Republic.[8] At home he was not so fortunate. As his grandson observes, the embassy was a mistake.[9] In the first place, the thousand little complaisances, respectable and other, which were among the first conditions of comfort at court, were quite beyond him. Practically they filled him with despair, morally with disgust. Moreover he was cursed with that species of reserve which often comes of extreme humility, and is almost always attributed to extreme pride. When things went wrong at headquarters, he took to railing against the vices of the great; he fell out with Mazarin as he afterwards did with Colbert; and finally, after a few years of thankless labour, he was dismissed, and the door of advancement was closed against him. D'Argenson accepted his fate. He shut himself up on his country estates, consoling himself with the thought that he was an injured man.[10] But he was not of the men who can sit down and nurse their disappointments. Though cruelly broken, he set to work to repair his fortune and to repair his life. In the provinces of France, on the slopes of Touraine, there was plenty of work for a willing hand, as events too clearly proved. In that work d'Argenson found refuge from his manifold chagrins. The rest of his life—he was still but thirty-two[11] —was devoted to the development of his estates and to the welfare of his dependents. "Interested in the improvement of education and manners in the country, he gathered the peasantry together for lectures, instructing them himself, and exhorting them to the practice of their duties."[12] So he died, a failure, of a kind; one of those rich-souled men who are never successful until they fail. He bequeathed to posterity a number of devotional works, a "Paraphrase of the Prophet Jeremiah," an "Exposition of the Book of Job," and others of a like character. Yet, though entrenched behind numerous theological quartos, his orthodoxy was sadly open to attack. Having built a church, he dedicates it to the "Eternal Father," in scandalous disregard of the company of the saints.

Already it is apparent that we have to deal with men of singular force of character and fulness of soul. Evidently it was no mere freak of fortune which made the grandson of this luckless ambassador the greatest political moralist of his time.[13] Practical vigour, moral depth, they are in the blood of the d'Argensons. They look down upon us from the last canvas before which it is necessary to linger, the portrait of "Mon Père."

At the climax of the Grand Age, ere the slope of Avernus had yet begun, the King's justice was administered in the district of Angoulême by as strange a magistrate as ever shocked the susceptibilities of a court. He was in the prime of life, tall, dark, with striking features, and a glance that was charming and might be terrible. A strange figure did he make in that district court of Angoulême, as he sat dispensing justice quick and plentiful, patching up suits, cutting down fees, driving a vigorous pen through venerable formalities, and fondling the muzzle of his great hound, who sat blinking placidly upon the fuming functionaries, without the faintest sense of his unwarrantable intrusion.[14] So things went on until, in 1694, a special commission for the reform of abuses in the administration of justice appeared in Angoulême. My lords discovered, probably with equal surprise, the absence of abuses, and the presence of an extraordinary man. Of his capacity as a magistrate they had ample evidence before them; and the lighter experiences of a commission on circuit were sufficient to convince them that M. d'Argenson was excellent company, a man brimful of life and energy, whose wit sparkled with his wine.[15] To leave him to rust in a provincial court was of course out of the question. He was plied with hearty invitations to Paris and generous promises of service. "As a matter of fact, my father was not an ambitious man";[16] and it was only after much solicitation that he was decoyed to the capital, and introduced by M. de Caumartin, his friend of the commission, to the reigning Controller-General. Three years afterwards, at the age of thirty-nine, he was appointed chief of the Parisian police; and for twenty years and more, from the time of Ryswick to well on in the Regency, he became "the soul, always in action, scarcely ever in evidence,"[17] the soul of the great metropolis.

Henceforth his life was an eventful one. Criticism, caricature, opinion of all sorts, fastened upon it as a delectable morsel; its incidents were recorded, politely in the pages of contemporary memoirs, impolitely upon the walls of Paris. With the events themselves we are not concerned; we pursue them only for the character of the man. This is no place to relate how, when the woodyards of the Porte St. Bernard were on fire, he saved a quarter by the sacrifice of his clothes;[18] how in the year of Malplaquet, when bread was nine sous a pound and the Quartier du Temple took the pavement, he risked his life in confronting the mobs;[19] or to recall the memorable day when he presents a 'lettre de cachet' to the Abbess of Port Royal with a request for compliance within fifteen minutes;[20] or later, when, in the King's name, he was called upon to entertain one "François Marie Arouet, twenty-two, of no profession," in the Bastille,[21] and to be immortalised as a worthy successor of Cato in six tearfully cheerful verses.[22] He received the highest eulogy known to the classicism of the time. "He was made to be a Roman," writes Fontenelle,[23] his fingers trembling with unwonted enthusiasm, "and to pass from the Senate to the head of an army." And the daily routine was no less imposing. In toil unceasing, he forgets the distinction between night and day,[24] eats when he must, sleeps when he can. We see him dictating letters to four secretaries at a time,[25] dining in his carriage as it rattles over the stones,[26] vouchsafing an audience to a La Rochefoucauld at two in the morning.[27] His pleasures when he could snatch them were rich and strong. He had a lusty interest in life and living, and a hearty contempt for the Talon Rouge. D'Argenson's heels were of good cow-hide, and not wholly free from the mould of Touraine. His boon companions were not ministers and great lords, but "unknown men of the lower ranks," with whom, it is important to notice, "he was more at home than with people of more exalted station."[28] "In a gentlemanly way, he was fond of wine and women."[29] In the latter regard, his tastes were too catholic to be altogether creditable; but "he preferred nuns," as his son remarks, with a smile of remembrance at the old days. In fact, he had rigged up a lodging in the precincts of the Convent de la Madeleine de Traisnel; and all the magnificence of Versailles was less to him than an evening in the company of the Lady Superior.[30] But not even the charms of Madame du Veni could wean him from his devotion to duty. Paris never had such a chief of police.[31] Evil-doers trembled at the name of him; mobs, whether in the galleries of Versailles or in the faubourgs of Paris, quailed beneath his glance. They might well. When he liked, "he had a face that was frightful, and recalled those of the three judges of hell!"[32] But there is another side to all this. St. Simon, who liked him less than he admired him, says that "in the midst of his painful functions, he was always to be touched by the voice of humanity;"[33] and there is a little picture, from the hand of Fontenelle, which tells so much that it must be placed upon the line. It is the picture of an audience at the bureau of police. "Surrounded and deafened by a crowd of people of the lower orders, most of them hardly knowing what had brought them there, violently agitated about matters of the most trifling nature and often only half understood, accustomed not to rational speaking but to senseless noise, he had neither the carelessness nor the contempt which the applicants and their affairs might well have induced; he gave himself up whole-heartedly to the meanest details, ennobled in his eyes by their necessary relation to the public good; he suited himself to ways of thinking the lowest and the most gross; he talked to every one in his own tongue."[34] And so for the space of one-and-twenty years Marc René d'Argenson went his way, more loved and feared than any man in Paris. But that was not all.

In September, 1715, the Grand Monarque died; and Liberalism gathered up the reins and went cantering gaily into a morass. After three years, d'Argenson was called upon to help it out. These were the days of the great "System," and of the encampment in the Rue Quincampoix. The Regent, abandoning his chemical researches, had been studying alchemy under John Law. For some time the great Experiment had been going well, altogether too well, it appeared, as difficulties gathered round it one by one. One obstacle had to be removed, cost what it might. On acceding to power, Orleans, in the innocence of his heart, had restored to the Parlement the right of remonstrance. Messieurs of the Long Robe had so far presumed upon his confidence as to attempt to use it. Strong measures became necessary, and a strong man. The old chancellor, d'Aguesseau, retired, and in January, 1718, d'Argenson received the seals.[35] On the 26th of August the crisis had come, and King and Parlement were face to face in the hall of audience at the Tuileries. "At last all was arranged and the assembly had resumed their seats. For a few moments"[36] there was a dead silence, while the gaze of many besides St. Simon was fixed upon a solitary seat below the King. "Motionless on his bench sat the Warden of the Seals, his look bent upon the ground, while the inward fire that played from his eyes seemed to penetrate every heart." He rose and delivered his memorable speech. The Parlement began their remonstrance, when suddenly the voice of d'Argenson rang clear and crushing: "What the King requires is obedience, and upon the spot!"[37] and the protest was silenced as by a "clap of thunder." It was a day of bitter humiliation for the Parlement and of triumph for their old enemy.

Other events of his ministry were less impressive, but not less important. As President of the Council of Finance (January, 1718), he succeeded during his first year in extinguishing arrears to the amount of sixteen million livres;[38] and he was the first to apply the system of direct collection (Régie) in regard to certain of the taxes.[39] As a financial minister he had only one failing. His homely prejudice in favour of honest dealing sometimes got him into trouble with the Regent;[40] but their occasional quarrels were only on the surface; and when d'Argenson was dismissed, as he was in June, 1720, for speeding the Bank upon its downward way,[41] he was allowed to keep his emoluments and his violet robe:[42] and a few years after he had quitted office, the Regent sent him a purse of gold, which was an annual perquisite of the Warden of the Seals.[43]

St. Simon shall finish the picture.[44]

"His retirement was of the strangest. He withdrew into a convent in the Faubourg St. Antoine, called La Madeleine de Tresnel. A long time before, he had fitted up an apartment in the convent buildings which he had furnished handsomely and well. It was as convenient as a house, and for many years he was in the habit of going there as often as he could. He had procured, even given, large sums to this convent for the sake of a Madame du Veni, who was the Superior—a relation, he said—and of whom he was very fond. She was a very charming person, extremely witty, and one of whom none have ever thought of speaking ill. All the Argensons paid court to her; but the strange thing about it was that when he was chief of police and fell ill, she left her convent to come to his house and to remain near him."[45]

A strong man and a strange one, and withal, a lovable, as we learn from many besides Madame du Veni.

In June, 1720, his "brief and troublous ministry"[46] came to an end, and the Palais Royal knew him no longer. He had but a short time to enjoy the rest which had come to him as a happy release. On May 8, 1721, he died. Many was the shrewd encounter he had had with the rabble of the slums; and as the old chief was borne to his last home, he was pursued by the curses of the basket-women of Paris. And hearing of it, proud and beautiful old Mathieu Marais turned in disgust from "this mad populace, which, while he lived, dared never look him in the face;" and alone with his journal, with his mind upon the man who had passed away, he writes:—

"Who will have his soul, I know not. In the other world, as in this, there must be a fine debate over it."[47]

He left behind him one who was to uphold the honour of a worthy name, and to bequeath to criticism an exercise no less perplexing. Upon the features of his son, the Marquis d'Argenson of history, the family lineaments are clearly marked. The moral fibre, the exuberant vitality, the rough irreverence for the world and its ways, which distinguished the men whose portraits have been sketched, descended to the heir of their name. We have but to see how the given material was affected by the influence of an inauspicious training, to be in possession of the radical substance of d'Argenson's character. In default of such knowledge of the man and his mind, it is impossible to criticise his life with justice; for without the secret of his singularities of temper, one is tempted to yield to that haste and impatience which they are too often apt to provoke. The secret once discovered, there is no longer any room for irritation; but we are content to pity him for the weaknesses of his character, while we admire him for its real nobility.

[II.]
1694-1724.
Youth and early manhood—Intendant of Maubeuge.

"I returned after supper at one o'clock. The man told me that his honour, the Chief of Police, desired to see me. It was to copy out fifteen circular letters to as many Intendants, and not to retire till it was done; my brother had already finished his task—an equal number—and my father had told him to go to bed. I took some coffee, and retired at four o'clock."[48]

He is a young man, very dark, with clear-cut features, his eye glancing with a rough vivacity as he plies his pen with nervous hand. There is a future before him; and, though he cannot be more than eighteen or nineteen,[49] he has already a past.

René Louis de Voyer d'Argenson was born at Paris in 1694, in the same year as two puissant men whose fortunes were to intersect his own, the Englishman, Henry St. John, and his friend and countryman Voltaire. Two years later he was joined by his brother, Marc Pierre, known to history as the astute and charming Count d'Argenson. His father, who had but lately come to Paris, was as yet known only as a rising Master of Requests; his mother was a sister of the distinguished de Caumartin, M. d'Argenson's patron and sponsor in the official world. Among his other natural endowments, the young René Louis possessed, and was possessed by, an expansive imagination; he early conceived and resolved upon a career. Before he was well in his teens, he was leading his brother along those devious courses by which a wholesome boy was to be turned into a fine gentleman and a man of the world.

"We were not born libertines, but are become so. I saw all the sights, I was at all the gatherings, I knew all the women. I thought to myself, what a fine figure I was making in the world."[50]

The boys were not overburdened with parental solicitude.

"My mother was good-natured and indulgent, and a clever woman; our escapades did not induce her to interfere with our habits."[51]

The annoyance came from another quarter. The boys had a tutor, who is described with the true d'Argenson stroke as "fou, imbécile, ignorant, libertin, et hypocrite;"[52] one of those persons who, when you have executed some very bad drawings and love them very dearly, will vent his spleen by tearing them up.[53] It became too much for mortal endurance; and when one day the tutor "advanced upon his desk," the boy received him with doubled fists.[54] From that time forward d'Argenson went his way in peace; and the little rake's progress was proceeding apace, when it was overtaken by one of those strokes of destiny which it is equally impossible to foresee and to resist.[55]

He was sent to school.

In 1709, at the age of fifteen, he went with his brother to the Jesuit College of Louis-le-Grand, which had become, under the patronage of the Great King, the most fashionable of French public schools.[56] Thither, thirty years later, he was followed by another d'Argenson—one who, in the fulness of time and the sunshine of circumstance, was to leave a record, not of maimed and weary aspiration, but of rapid, resolute achievement—Anne Robert Jacques Turgot. But the lad was busied with other thoughts. From "a man of the world who could count his conquests,"[57] he had dwindled to the compass of a mere schoolboy; and his heart was heavy over his fallen state. Occasionally the boys acted tragedies at the College; and as d'Argenson sat in the amphitheatre, pilloried in his hateful gown, a glimpse of some fair spectator whom he had known in happier days would cover him with unutterable shame.[58] But he had the tenacity of purpose which distinguished his race; his time would come; and the modest treasure he was able to amass from the savings of his pocket-money, was dissipated upon those rare occasions when he could shake off the class-room dust from his feet, and plume himself in the great world again. "Why," he asks, with that strange recurrent smile of his, "why should one laugh at such an ambition? Surely it is upon the same canvas that that of conquerors is built (bâtie)!"[59] He possessed that keen, yet kindly humour of the man who knows himself, and can laugh at himself, without ceasing to be himself.

One incident in his school career he never forgot. It began with pea-shooters, and ended with a tragedy. One morning, as the venerable professor of rhetoric, Père Lejay,[60] entered the class-room, he was received with a raking fire of peas. The culprit platoon consisted of the Duc de Boufflers, Count d'Argenson, and his faithful apparitor, Marc Pierre. Boufflers received a flogging, and died from the effect of it. His father was only a duke. But when it came to the sons of M. d'Argenson, the retributive rod was stayed by the timely remembrance of that dark and dangerous person: Jesuitical discretion came into play,[61] and the youthful malefactors escaped. It is curious that the brothers should have lived, the one to be the powerful patron of the Jesuits, the other to attack them, for the eyes of posterity, with a weapon which carries further than a "Sarbacane."

But the young Count d'Argenson was not long to trouble the repose of his spiritual task-masters. He was to complete his education in another school, deemed no less necessary to the training of the whole and perfect man. From the sallow austerity of the reverend fathers, with their hard beds and their unspeakable soup, he passed to the gracious converse of ladies' society, where knowledge was savoured with a joyous sweetness, and where the rewards of success were great indeed. Dreaming long afterwards of the year 1712 and of the gallantries of that golden age, he sighs regretfully over the hearts that fell, and over those that might have fallen had the siege been pressed.

"What a fool I was not to have profited by them! I have repented at leisure."[62]

A votary of pleasure, he was never its slave; and an event was approaching which was soon to engage him in the more sober interests of life. On the morning of September 1st, 1715, the eyelids of the Grand Monarque closed upon a long and fateful chapter in French history; and the hearts of men beat high again with the generous hopes of a newer time. France, and the humblest of her children, d'Argenson, had reached the parting of the ways. The "epic of royalty"[63] was over; the epic of revolution was about to begin. In the development of the drama d'Argenson was to bear a modest, but no mean part. He was now twenty-one. The time for dreaming had passed away; the time for action was at hand. On the threshold of his career, we may pause to gather up those early half-conscious political impressions, which, in the case of quick-minded men, have a real, if only half-recognised, influence upon the direction of future thought.

He had been but a boy of eight when great events occurred.[64] We can well imagine with what childish pleasure he must have watched the stirring of the troops in Paris on the renewal of the great War; and the wide-eyed wonderment with which he may have heard how an army of France was cutting down French citizens for the pleasure of those great black men, whom every one laughed with and called abbé; and how everybody said that one Cavalier was as brave as he was beautiful, and that he and the like of him should have been at Blenheim! And then, as he grew in wit, the excitement of boyhood may have been clouded, if ever so little, by the growing desolation, as defeat followed upon disaster. He could remember how haggard men began to cry for bread; until at last, in 1709, the stones of Paris rose in mutiny, and his own father, the Chief of Police, went in fear of his life.[65] And through it all there was no comfort, but only men said that this Great King had been too great, that he had aroused the alarm of Europe, and that at last Europe had turned to bay. And then when the peace had come, and the people were beginning to breathe, Jesuit and Jansenist reopened their feud and reviled each other in the name of God; while d'Argenson suspected, what his friend Arouet and the wits who supped with the Grand Prior disdainfully averred,[66] that there was no truth to be found upon either side, but only arrogant unspirituality. And now the King, great though he had been, had gone the way of little men; and the hearts of his own people rejoiced, even as the nations whom he had humbled in the dust.

D'Argenson never forgot those fatal years. They haunted his memory and moulded his thought; and he could realise the gravity of the course before him, when, in 1716, he began his career as a councillor of the Parlement of Paris. Shortly afterwards, he received his first official appointment as Director of the Press.

As yet he had excited no great hopes. His father saw but little of him, and was inclined to regard him as rather a fool; the paternal hopes were centred upon his brother, the pleasing, popular and imposing Marc Pierre, then a young man of twenty. This unhappy partiality left a fatal mark upon the character of the elder son; and though d'Argenson never speaks of his father but with affection and respect,[67] he cannot disguise how deeply he felt it. And yet, it is curious to remember, he was before all things else his father's son. He inherited from him his passion for work;[68] to him he owed that instinctive regard for "le bien public,"[69] which afterwards ripened into absolute devotion; from him he drew that soundness of heart and incisiveness of mind which are d'Argenson's prime distinction as a thinker and a man. But there was another strand in the stout complexity of the father's nature, something which had led him, when he came to Paris, to shun the companionship of the great, and to seek his pleasure in a self-chosen society of the baser sort,[70] which had surrounded his life with the infernal obscurity of a magician's cell,[71] something of self-sufficience, of self-contentment, self-concentration. That too, for his own confusion, d'Argenson had inherited. It might have remained harmless; but nourished by his father's indifference and neglect, it grew with the rankness of a noxious weed. He came to find comfort in his own society. As his own company became dearer to him, so did the distance widen between himself and his fellows. Alone, he could be natural, forceful, even great at times; in society, he was pursued by a haunting self-distrust, which attracted disparagement and very often ridicule. As yet, it is true, beyond a touch of depreciation here and there,[72] we see very little of it; the energy of youth and his own strength of will enabled him to fight with his misfortune. But it had afflicted him with one disability which no effort, however determined, could overcome. It had rendered him for ever incapable of coping with the blatancy, the loud insistence, the insensate, trumpet-tongued vulgarity, with which every man of affairs is called upon to deal; and he relates an incident in his present experience as Director of the Press which shows that he was as helpless in the face of it now as he afterwards proved in the more august circle of the Council of State. He was arranging some matter with Machault,[73] who was then in charge of the police; his colleague was for carrying things off with a high hand; d'Argenson laid down his pen, looked at the man, rose, and retired from the business.[74] It was an act of weakness, but the weakness was invincible.

In spite of it, and of those defects of manner which led others to hold him in such scant esteem, there was one person who believed in d'Argenson, his aunt, Charlotte Emilie de Caumartin, Marquise de Balleroy. In one of the earlier letters of that famous correspondence[75] in which most of the materials for his life at this period are preserved, he tries to excuse his slackness in the friendly office of literary purveyor. "If I am not sending you any books," he writes (March 23, 1717), "it is not for want of will. I have brought misfortune on the Press. My censorial severity is silencing all our authors." There were more solid reasons for the unwonted lull in the activity of the Press Bureau.[76] There were no authors to silence. The literary efflorescence of the Grand Age was long since dead; while the new spirit, which was to be so fruitful in trouble to d'Argenson's successors, was only fermenting beneath the surface. It made its appearance with the "Lettres Persanes," which came—from Holland—in 1721. The Censor was not even made the tool of a political party. It is true that the battle of the "Constitution"[77] was raging as fiercely as ever; but Madame de Maintenon had disappeared, and it was no concern of Philippe d'Orléans. When the Government at last interfered (by declaration of October 7, 1717),[78] it was to proscribe the publications of both parties. It is very clear, and it is worth remarking, that d'Argenson was in entire accord with the policy of the Regent. His father, still in command of the police, was constantly behind the scenes, and was under no illusion as to the character of the actors.[79] He used to tell Marais that "if the Jansenists were rogues, the Jesuits were as bad, and that he held the proofs with regard to both of them."[80] The attitude of the son may readily be guessed. His one desire was for peace. In a letter to the Marquise (April 2, 1717) he describes a political brochure by one of her friends as "too bad to read, and not silly enough to laugh at. The Abbé de Guitaut had no reason to write that he detested the Constitution, and he had every reason to refrain from publishing his letter."[81] In short, he viewed the controversy with much concern, and the "Constitution" with none whatever.

Another question was coming to the front, which touched him more nearly as parliamentary councillor (Conseiller au Parlement). The Bank was flourishing, and in August, 1717, the Mississippi Company was successfully floated.[82] On the 2nd of September d'Argenson writes a letter:—

"Our Court of Parlement has received a scurvy compliment." It was a question of money, and they "desired explanations." The Regent replied "that it would be a strange thing if the factious opposition of the Parlement were to arrest the course of those advantageous measures which he wished to secure for the public; that we had no right to meddle with matters of finance; and that he would not suffer the royal authority to be made light of so long as it were entrusted to his care."[83]

He appears to be recording the first brush between the forces of the Parlement and of the Crown, and the opening of the hot battle which ended, exactly three years later (August 28, 1720), at Pontoise.[84] The young councillor was soon to be even more deeply interested in the progress of events. Five months afterwards (January 28, 1718) his father became Warden of the Seals, and President of the Council of Finance; and it was soon plain, from the threatening attitude of the Parlement, that their redoubtable enemy had not entered the ministry one moment too soon. For the present, indeed, the Government was content to hold its hand; for Dubois, the demon of the play, had not yet returned from London, where he was sedulously wooing the Hanoverian interest.[85] As for d'Argenson, his heart wavered 'twixt love for his father and loyalty to his brethren of the long robe. He had recourse to argument—for the Marquis was by this time impressed with his son's substantial worth.[86] "A tout ce que je lui exposai" the black-bearded minister had but one reply: "My good fellow! that Parlement of yours, has it any troops? For our part, we have 150,000 men! That's what it all comes to." "Et voilà parler en grand homme!" exclaims his son,[87]with an admiration which is the more natural for its inconsistency. But the "grand homme" was preparing to act. On August 16th Dubois arrived in Paris bearing a treaty of alliance with England; and the great coup d'état which crushed the pretensions of the Parlement and silenced the opposition to Law, followed upon the 26th.[88]

In December d'Argenson married,[89] and cast about for the means to feather his nest. Retiring discomfited from the Palais de Justice, he took refuge, like many an irate but thrifty parliamentarian, in the Rue Quincampoix. In November, 1719, when the tide of elation was in full flood and trembling on the ebb, we hear that d'Argenson "is in for (y est pour) 500,000 livres."[90] Three weeks afterwards, by decree of the 1st of December, the Bank and the Treasury refuse to receive cash. Before the end of the year the shares are falling.[91] On the 3rd of January M. d'Argenson withdraws from the control of the finances; on the 5th, Law takes the helm as Controller-General, and proceeds with the series of desperate decrees designed to save the credit of the Bank.[92] Upon one of the commissions which followed in quick succession d'Argenson was appointed[93] to serve as Master of Requests.[94] He could do so with a light heart. Warned in time, he had managed to extricate himself; and in a letter of the 22nd of February, 1720, we read: "Talking of shares, no one is coming off more prettily than M. d'Argenson l'aîné; he has just completed the purchase of an estate on the Réveillon road; it is his principal acquisition."[95]

Meanwhile he had obtained a provision of another kind. The Warden of the Seals, on withdrawing in January from the control of the finances, had managed, with his usual dexterity, to cover his retreat. Directly afterwards, to the no small scandal of St. Simon,[96] the young Chevalier was entrusted with the Lieutenancy of Police, while the elder brother, Count d'Argenson, received a seat at the Council of State, with an immediate promise of the Intendancy of Maubeuge. Thus it was that about the middle of March,[97] 1720, d'Argenson set out for his seat of government at Valenciennes, leaving Paris to face the appalling ruin created by the crash of the great "System." Though removed from the centre of the drama, a place was reserved for him in the final act. On the 21st of May appeared the suicidal decree which shattered what vestige of credit remained. It was inspired by d'Argenson's father,[98] and cost him the seals. He fell in the beginning of June. In July Law's carriage was wrecked under the very windows of the Regent in the court of the Palais Royal. In December the great adventurer took to flight; and Count d'Argenson had the supreme satisfaction of arresting him at Valenciennes, and, by an order from Paris, detaining his jewel case, the last resource of the broken man.[99] Personally the young Intendant has not much reason to complain. The "System" had left him with the valuable property of Réveillon; he was already a Councillor of State; and at the age of twenty-six he was comfortably established at Valenciennes as the chief magistrate of the important frontier province of Hainaut.

"I am sure I shall entreat you so much that you will come here; my house is not at all bad; it is scarcely in order, but you will find it even better than they usually are. An opera is coming to Valenciennes; we have very pretty lansquenet, ombre, picquet—you get plenty of that in the country[100]—quadrille and even brélan; a carriage; this summer your choice of drives, if you wish to see a country quite new to you, the towns in the environs. In a word, what shall I tell you? You will see people who love you very much, though I am speaking of one who does not know you yet, but for whom I bespeak your friendship."

In this letter, a few weeks after his arrival, when the house-warming is complete, d'Argenson commends himself, his establishment and his young wife, to his trusted and right loyal friend, Madame de Balleroy. We may glance for an instant at this remarkable lady. At the age of nineteen, by a marriage with a country nobleman, she was widowed of the bright buoyancy of life at Paris; and amid the flat fields and uneventful hedgerows of Normandy[101], her heart yearned for the patter of the distant pavement. Her forlorn beauty, her wasted wit, drew round her a little army of friends, held faithful by the affectionate discipline of pity; and in the goodly company of correspondents who reflect for her the gaieties of the Regency,[102] not the least honourable place is held by her nephew d'Argenson.

Certain features which his letters disclose must be brought for a moment into relief. In the first place, he shows himself a devoted friend and a dutiful correspondent; in the latter regard he is a shining example to his brilliant young brother.[103]

Moreover, we occasionally come across a story, which, if we forget the manners of the time, it seems as strange that a gentleman should have been able to write as that a lady should been willing to read. Yet it is comforting to find, in reading such passages, that if there is an utter absence of delicacy or reserve, there is an equal freedom from mere smirking prurience; the man's breath is tainted by the fashion of the time, but at least his heart is whole.

Sometimes again d'Argenson's feeling for the ideal, which explains so many of amiable vagaries, is seen taking wing and soaring away to the sound of his own laughter.

"I mean my bust (February 18, 1718[104]) to be in the library of Balleroy, with that of Pico de la Mirandola, and some great personage or other who, after all, could do no more than read. The proposal, perhaps, is not very reasonable as yet;[105] of the two, I am more like the latter."

In one letter we get a glimpse of d'Argenson's most cherished interior, and so of the man who loved it.

"I assure you, Rouillon (Réveillon) is becoming a fine house. In a gallery on the wing will be my library, with a little reading-room at one end, plenty of desks, sofas, cushions, upholstery in morocco—all the novelties of Holland; and from the windows a vista of avenues, kitchen gardens, woods, meadows, sheep. Won't you be charmed with it when you are at Paris this summer?" (August 8, 1722).[106]

His occasional reference to "le cadet" is interesting, in the light of their subsequent relations. With a touch of good-natured envy he remarks, "My brother is surpassing himself as Chief of Police. He is a perfect courtier; in that regard he has nothing to learn" (August 8, 1722).[107]Perhaps indeed the most precious thing about these letters is the light they throw upon the real character of the younger brother, and on d'Argenson's subsequent portrait of him. A comparison of the young "Chevalier" who writes over his own signature, with the eternal "Mon Frère" of d'Argenson's Journal, enables us to estimate the personal equation in d'Argenson's political criticism. It tends to suggest that the impression of high colouring, exaggeration, unfairness, which is left by the perusal of many of his more trenchant pages, is due, not to the intrinsic falsity of his judgments, but to the violence and heat with which they are pronounced. We see that to many of his indictments the question, "Well! what of it? how could he help it?" would have been at least a valid reply; and we suspect that had d'Argenson judged his own contemporaries with that same deep-sounding charity which, after a century and a half, one can claim no credit for applying to himself, we should have been spared much of that bitterness which he expends so lavishly upon the men of his time, and above all upon his brother, Count d'Argenson. So far as one can see, the truth was this. Marc Pierre was his mother's son, the blood of the Caumartins in every vein.[108] In him the rough-hewn strength of the d'Argenson character was fashioned to a form of lightness and grace; and losing in massiveness, it gained in charm. He had his father's strength without his seriousness; his power of work without his love of it. He impressed his contemporaries[109] by his singular union of facile effectiveness with absolute unconcern. Such a passage as this, which appears in a letter of 1715,[110] needed no signature for identification.

"At last, my dear aunt, the taxes are achieving what all the preachers in the world have never dared to undertake. Luxury is no more. The balls of the Opera and Comedy are as deserted as the ante-chamber of M. Desmarets or M. de Pontchartrain.[111] The churches are rather more patronised than they were; there, for example, you see men of business who have not yet been taxed, praying, at the foot of the altar, for a lot more pleasant than has fallen to their companions; you see poor Molinists beside themselves at the triumph of their adversaries, and sighing for the re-establishment of Jesuit influence. There you see many a young girl in tears, sorrowing for the purse of the financier who used to keep her in such gay profusion, and crying out upon the harshness of the powers that be at present, who work to construct their own fortunes before taking thought for that of their mistresses. Even me you see there now and again, vastly puzzled as to where I shall dine or sup, and turned pious for want of something better to do."

After reading such a passage as this, a new light breaks upon one of the first notices of Count d'Argenson that appear in the Journal, and upon a thousand more that follow at intervals for nearly thirty years.

"It is certainly true that my brother has not the secret of attaching to himself the men whom he serves. His lack of interest is the principal cause; it lays him open to the charge of insincerity in friendship."[112]

It is here, in this "distraction," implicit in every line of that youthful letter, that we touch the real foundation for those continual charges of cold cleverness, absence of principle, paltriness of aim, pettiness of means, with which Count d'Argenson is pursued. It was this that divided the brothers with a severance of interest that nothing could bridge. At the outset of life their roads diverged. The one led to greatness through labyrinths of littleness; the other was the way of honest, impotent, disdainful obscurity. The simple truth was that the younger brother, keen, accomplished, utterly careless, was free to choose the pleasanter of the two; for the elder, it was barred from the beginning. His estrangement from the world had wholly unfitted him for the arts of complaisance and intrigue; and there was something within him which protested that they were as far beneath him as they were beyond his reach. D'Argenson went his own way; he found that it led nowhither. He was to learn that without those arts which he coveted and despised, devotion, disinterestedness, were no passport to power; yet, it is good to reflect, he would never consent to lose his devotion in the ignobler interests of a private life. When the last word is said, it may be found that of the two brothers it was he who had chosen the better part; and that if, in spite of him, knowledge and justice require us to count small blame to the one, we may ascribe with equal heartiness all honour to the other.

This in anticipation; for d'Argenson is still at Valenciennes, without a thought that the unlikeness of character revealed in these letters to Madame de Balleroy will ever lead to open estrangement.

It was about the middle of March, 1720, that d'Argenson took over his province. He left behind him at Paris at least one person who would watch his career with lively interest. In 1718, in the salon of Madame de Lambert, he had been introduced to a man, whose recent expulsion from the French Academy for some shrewd criticisms of the late reign had given him credit among the younger spirits—the Abbé de St. Pierre.[113] We can easily imagine how d'Argenson must have been attracted to a man, who had his own breadth and generosity of mind, and who was crippled like himself by the lack of those social arts which would have secured for his opinions a perilous respect. The regard appears to have been mutual; and when d'Argenson made his first venture in public life, it was under the auspices of the utopian abbé. A letter which survives, addressed by him to the Intendant of Valenciennes,[114] is alone sufficient to suggest the influence which inspired d'Argenson with his political philosophy.

St. Pierre encourages him to attempt a reform in the distribution of the taille; and incidentally he remarks:

"Those states are the best governed where justice between individuals is most exactly observed; there the people are more prosperous than elsewhere. It were to be desired that there were never favours to hope for from a minister, but only justice for which to apply to him; for it is seldom that favour to one is not injustice to another."

He concludes his letter with the words:

"I have a great desire to be able to watch your new government, and I expect your success will soon persuade plenty of people besides myself that you are worthy of high office."

That d'Argenson, from the point of view of the Government at least, was successful, there is little reason to doubt. The chief features of his administration may be lightly reviewed. In addition to his work of routine as superintendent "de justice, police, et finance," he kept an intelligent watch for the appearance of abuses, and also for possibilities of reform. His province, on the frontier of Flanders, involved him in duties of a "military even more than of a judicial or financial character."[115] The condition of the troops engaged his attention; he early discovered that "the army contractors are great rascals," and that the men were being defrauded of a part of their rations; he introduced a reform which was afterwards adopted throughout the French army, and for which he is careful to claim the credit.[116] In another direction he showed the liberal tendencies which afterwards distinguished him. In time of abundance, he permitted the exportation of corn, and derived a useful revenue from the sale of the license.[117] In the same connection too, he succeeded with much address in averting one of the periodical bread panics which were caused by the restrictions on the interchange of corn.[118] With a pitiful regard for the soldiers and the common people, he had a formidable hatred of knaves in authority. Having disposed of the "fraudulent contractors," he turned his attention to "quelques coquins de bourgeois," who availed themselves of the custom of extending the term of municipal tenure upon great occasions, to enjoy their offices at the expense of their fellow citizens. He took the opportunity of the consecration of Louis XV. at Rheims—at which, by the way, d'Argenson himself was present[119]—to post a proclamation "at all the cross-roads of my towns," requiring the elections to proceed as usual.[120] In short, he went to work in such a way as to open the eyes of his oldest friends to the real ability concealed behind his unpromising exterior.[121] But with all his success, he had good reason to be dissatisfied with his position. He had escaped with great luck at the beginning of the Mississippi crash,[122] but before it was over he was badly hit. His father-in-law, M. Méliand, Intendant of Lille, "had been kind enough" to remit his wife's dowry in Bank notes at a time when the notes were only useful as waste paper.[123] There were other disappointments in store for him. In May, 1721, his father died. The old man, regarding the Chevalier, now to be the Count, as the real hope of his family, had bequeathed to him the whole of his personal property, leaving the Marquis d'Argenson burdened with the family estates.[124] Moreover, M. Méliand showed no disposition to retire in his favour from the rich Intendancy at Lille, for which d'Argenson had naturally hoped;[125] and meanwhile, his own establishment at Valenciennes was involving him in expenses which he was ill prepared to meet. In the midst of these embarrassments an event occurred which seemed to open a prospect of escape. To explain it, a slight retrospect will be necessary.

Shortly after his marriage, and about a year before leaving Paris, he had formed an intimacy with a Madame de G——,[126] whom we recognise from his description of her as "sincere, affectionate, faithful, reasonable, and generous," as a type of those virtues which d'Argenson especially loved, and of which he was inclined to suspect the absence in women generally, and in his own wife in particular. Madame de G—— had a cousin, the wife of the Ambassador to Sardinia. In the winter of 1719, this lady returned from Turin, without visible means of subsistence. But there was always a royal road to affluence open to bankrupt ladies-of-fortune, and with no unnecessary delay Madame de Prie was "administered"[127] to that libidinous dyspeptic, the Duc de Bourbon. Shortly afterwards, "we"—that is, M. le Duc, Mesdames de Prie et de G——, and young d'Argenson were "en partie carrée"; at last the dream of his youthful years was realised, and d'Argenson was able to make a fine figure as an intimate of "the first prince of the blood."[128] The "Partie" was broken up by d'Argenson's departure for Valenciennes, and it lingered in his mind merely as a pleasant memory. He was soon to recall it with more lively concern. At the end of November, 1723, business called him to Paris. On the day of his return, he had an interview with the Regent, and remarked how ill he looked.[129] On the following evening, at Valenciennes, he was standing by the chimney corner talking to a friend when a courier was announced. It was the 3rd of December: d'Orléans was dead. We can well imagine with what feelings d'Argenson must have heard that his illustrious patron of the "Partie carrée" had become the ruler of France, and that a lady who had already offered him "les dernières faveurs,"[130] had succeeded to the footstool of Madame de Parabère. Evidently it was not at Valenciennes that the golden eggs were going to be laid. Moreover, his brother was for the second time chief of the Parisian police;[131] he had lately been appointed Chancellor of the Orléans household; in a word, he could be of infinite service. If any doubts remained as to the wisdom of his course, they were dispelled by a letter[132] from his uncle, the Marquis de Balleroy, advising him to use no delay in taking his place at the Council of State. His mind was made up; and on the 28th of December, 1723, he wrote to M. le Duc, resigning the Intendancy of Hainaut.

Eight days afterwards (January 4, 1724), he writes to Madame de Balleroy:

"I have said goodbye to the provincial dignity. Thank heaven! Thank heaven!"

But d'Argenson had not more reason to thank heaven than usual. He soon discovered that, with all his masterly calculation, it was the worst thing he could have done. His brother had not found favour in the eyes of Madame de Prie;[133] and as chancellor of the House of Orléans, he was not acceptable to M. le Duc.[134] The latter, so far from welcoming d'Argenson to the Council of State, was simply incensed at his untimely resignation;[135] it may even have been this that decided him to dismiss Count d'Argenson from the Lieutenancy of Police immediately afterwards. In fact, we have here a first glimpse of one side of d'Argenson's nature, which we shall meet continually in more august, if not to him more important, affairs. He was endowed with a conceptive faculty of the first order; it is the breadth, the intimate grasp of his conceptions, with the complex character behind them, that constitute his enduring claim to remembrance. But he had the attendant weakness of the man of many devices, an eager, unquestioning faith in the efficacy of his own plans; and upon that rock his fortunes were continually splitting. His power of combination and his belief in his own strategy were constantly leading him into precipitate action, and involving him in difficulties against which a man of more sluggish imagination and narrower mind would never have had even to guard. It was not that his strategy was weak; it was generally powerful, and often profound; but the moment it left his study, it became stiff, useless, and often ridiculous, for want of those small political and social arts which his brother possessed to perfection. We can easily imagine the course which that brother would have taken had he been in d'Argenson's place. He would have addressed to M. le Duc a delightful letter of congratulation, reminding him playfully of the old days of the "Part Carrée," and closing with protestations of renewed zeal for his service. He would then have spent the next six months in finding or contriving, honestly or otherwise, a pretext for at once returning to Paris and gratifying his powerful patron. Unhappily such a course was too slow and small and politic for d'Argenson's temperament; his resignation was disastrous; and as chance would have it, it was nearly twenty years before the brothers recovered the ground they now lost. Certainly, in d'Argenson's case at least, it was not for want of effort. After a few months at the Council, he discovered that there were "too few opportunities of serving the public in this business of judge, where one has scarcely a vote for the thirtieth part of a decree."[136] The Intendancy of Paris became vacant; he tried to obtain it; but Madame de Prie was inexorable, and the appointment was refused.

"As for me, I was good for nothing. I was merely an old friend, who had been good enough to be unwilling to take advantage of her kindness."[137]

We shall meet again with this amiable weakness for explaining his failures by reasons which are less correct than they are complimentary to himself. Even yet he did not give up hope. His marriage with Mademoiselle Méliand had given him a right to expect the reversion of the Intendancy of Lille.[138] He now tried to arrange for its transference to him; but M. Méliand drove a hard bargain and the negotiation fell through.

We now reach one of the turning-points in d'Argenson's life. Never was a man more commendably eager to distinguish himself, to play his part in the world, and to preserve an honourable name in honour by contributing his share towards the "Bien Public." He now saw himself, chiefly through his own lack of patient adroitness, banished to the obscurity of private life. He found misfortune a stern mistress, but her lessons were as worth learning as they were hard to learn. It was indeed at this time of disappointment that his mind became imbued with what is rarest and greatest in his political thought. While his brother, in the Orléans household, strove, by all the arts of which he was a master, to win his way back to power, d'Argenson withdrew entirely from the scene. He called to mind the words of his father, that "a lofty and ambitious man will have all or nothing;" and, in M. Aubertin's phrase, he became content with nothing that he might have all. For some years we hear nothing of him; it is only in 1731 that he again appears upon the scene under the protection of the minister Chauvelin.

His life in the interval must be reserved for another chapter. In the present, but one word remains to be said; it is perhaps the most important of all.

We are already in a position to appreciate d'Argenson as of a peculiarly complex nature; and its complexity is the more puzzling from the fact that the sterling ore of character is combined with traits, not of wickedness, but of weakness. He possesses in abundance those qualities which men love and admire; and yet we scarcely become intimately acquainted with him upon any single occasion without being tempted to laughter. The reason is only too clear. His real loftiness of spirit is yoked with a kind of halting timidity, with which the unhappy experience of his earlier years had afflicted him; and for such a man, to be sublime was too often to appear ridiculous. Occasionally amusement deepens to an even less pleasant feeling; for he held, and he had a right to hold, strong opinions upon men and things; and he sometimes records them in terms so unmeasured as to awaken sympathy with his unheard opponents and to arouse suspicion as regards himself. Moreover, he is himself so simply ingenuous as not to understand the necessity of discreet suppression; and he pursues, with painful circumstance, those moods of irritation, disappointment, disillusion, those momentary vices of temper, which all men perhaps are small enough to feel, but few are great enough to be able to record. Such failings might be taken for what they are worth—which is very little—were it not that, magnified out of all proportion by some of d'Argenson's most influential critics, they have been made the basis for conceptions of his character which are too ungenerous to be critically just. Faults they are, undoubtedly; but in reading, day after day, the revelations of his Journal, one feels that in this man, with all his failings, there is something verily great; and that morally, he towers above the ready cox-combs who laughed at him while he lived, or who have sneered at his memory when it alone remained.

It is, then, with keen curiosity that one seeks for something which will explain this persistent faith in d'Argenson, nor is the quest in vain. Here and there among the pages of his Journal, buried amid much that is ephemeral and often worthless, one comes across passages which are perfect gems of feeling and expression. They show us d'Argenson at his best, and enable us to divine what is best in him. Among the first hundred pages there are at least three such episodes standing out in fine relief. One is the tale of the parrot that troubled the repose of the Intendant of Hainaut.[139] Another, even more charming and suggestive, is the story of Kakouin, the pet boar which was given him by St. Contest, his friend of the Entresol, and which came to such an untimely end.[140] Read in the light of many that follow, these pages reveal such a perfect beauty of heart, such a faultlessness of emotional touch, as is as rare as it is lovely; they spring, pure and clear, from the depths of the man's soul, wholly undarkened by that turgidity of feeling to which the enthusiasm of humanity afterwards gave birth.

It was not alone to the pets of his own household that d'Argenson's heart was given. There was room in it left for the "brutes" of La Bruyère, "whose faces, when they rose upon their feet, were as the faces of men." One day, in the year 1725, he travelled four leagues to the village of Sezanne, through which the young Queen, Maria Leczinska, was to pass on her entry into France. His account of what he saw there forms the third of those pictures of this date which enable us to penetrate to the heart of the man, and to follow him afterwards with an unfailing respect. In the course of the narrative he says:

"The harvest and the crops of all sorts were in danger of perishing; they could not be gathered for the continual rains; the poor labourer was looking out for a moment of dry weather in order to get them in. Yet for all that this whole district was beaten with several scourges. The peasants had been carried off to put the roads by which the Queen was to pass into fit condition; and they were only the worse, so much so that Her Majesty often thought she would drown; they had to drag her from her carriage by main force as they could. In several places she and her suite were swimming in the water, which lay over the whole country, and that in spite of the infinite pains expended by a tyrannical ministry."[141]

And further on he says:

"In the evening, after supper, I went for a stroll round the market-place of Sezanne. For a moment the rain had ceased. I spoke to some poor peasants, who had their horses with them, attached to the tail of a cart, and standing in the night without provender. Some of them told me that their horses had had nothing to eat for three days. They were harnessing ten in the place of four; judge how much of them remained!"[142]

One can scarcely pretend, by fragments of translation, to convey even a shade of the impression produced by these whole passages, and by many that deserve to stand beside them. After reading them, and allowing them to leaven and lighten one's whole conception of d'Argenson's character, it is with keen pleasure we meet with a luminous remark in the pages of one of his most accomplished critics:

"C'est par le cœur, en effet, que son esprit est grand," says M. Aubertin;[143] and it is the happiest word that has been devoted to d'Argenson.

We have but to accept it, and we are enabled to remit to their due place those small distempers, those accidents of the inauspicious moment, which have often hardened the regard of criticism; we see how very little they appear by the side of what was greatest and best in d'Argenson. Qualities are virtuous in proportion as they are necessary; and events have thrown a suggestive light upon the relative value of the various virtues in the France of the Eighteenth Century. We see that there was something more real and rare than those elegant adornments, those small dexterities, which were then so dearly prized: that they afford but thin subsistence for a society bereft of honesty, devotion, depth of vision, and soundness of heart. Those qualities d'Argenson possessed, and the children of this world laughed at him. Their generation does not last for ever; and we, who are on the hither side of 1793, may be excused for thinking that, with all the failings that whetted their wit, there were very few among them who could be mentioned in a breath with the man they honoured by their laughter.

D'Argenson could feel, but he was no sentimentalist. The years which he now passed in obscurity were among the happiest and most fruitful of his life.

[III.]
1724-1744.
The Entresol—Political struggles—Relations with Cardinal Fleury—D'Argenson and Voltaire.

Among the influences which connected d'Argenson with the tradition of the late reign were his relations with that curious and not very admirable person,[144] the Abbé de Choisy. It would appear that during the closing years of his life the harlequin abbé was on terms of some intimacy with his young relative;[145] and shortly before his death in 1724, he placed in d'Argenson's hands a collection of manuscripts,[146] from which the published remains of de Choisy are principally derived.[147] Among them was a record which d'Argenson might recall with a certain melancholy interest.[148] It seems that in 1692, de Choisy's rooms at the Luxembourg became the headquarters of a little company of thirteen men, among whom were Fontenelle and Perrault, and others distinguished in literature and society.[149] They met for discussions upon politics, theology, and moral science, and in fact all those questions of more pressing and immediate concern which the constitution of the three existing Academies ignored. It may well be imagined that such an organisation could scarcely commend itself to the favour of the Monarch who, a few years afterwards, was to break the heart of Vauban; and before a year had passed, the Academy of the Luxembourg came to an untimely end. The collapse was natural enough, for these were the palmy days of the older régime; its vices were still to be revealed, and as yet the discussion of political subjects by unauthorised persons might well have seemed an impertinence. Thirty years after, the matter had assumed a different aspect. Disasters abroad and miseries at home, which had stirred the patriotism of Vauban, the ferment created by the advent of the Regency, the widespread concern for questions of administration aroused by the rise and fall of the great "System," and, lastly, the object lesson in political fatuity afforded by the ministry of the Duc de Bourbon, all contributed to raise matters of government to a place of primary interest; and it is not surprising that about a year after the publication of the "Lettres Persanes," a serious and successful attempt should have been made to organise and define political thought. In 1722 the Abbé Alary invited a number of gentlemen connected with the administrative and diplomatic services to meet in his rooms in an entresol in the Place Vendôme, which became for about eight years the home of the memorable "Club de l'Entresol." The idea of this, the first of French political societies, was probably suggested by Bolingbroke, an intimate friend of Alary, who may have hoped to find, in a little cabinet of embryo statesmen, some mild consolation for his banishment from Whitehall. Certain it is that the English politician did much to give it a successful start; and a year afterwards (July, 1723) we find him writing to the perpetual president, Alary:[150]

"You will give my kind regards to our little Academy. If I were not sure of seeing them again next month, I should be quite miserable. They have confirmed my taste for philosophy; they have revived my old love for literature; how grateful I am to them!"

In 1725, upwards of a year after his return from Valenciennes, d'Argenson became a member of the Entresol;[151] and some time afterwards he had the honour of introducing a man whose whole life was devoted to insisting upon the paramount importance of political concerns—his friend and master, the Abbé de St. Pierre.[152]

It is a curious fact that the man who received the record of the ill-starred society of the Luxembourg should have become the historian of its successor; for it is from d'Argenson that our knowledge of the Entresol is mainly derived. Several years after its suppression, he sat down to record his reminiscences of "a little organisation, whose history, at present unknown to many people, will soon be forgotten by all the world."[153] Events are grouped very differently by the redressing hand of time, and, apart from the interest attaching to it in connection with the life of d'Argenson, the Entresol is in no danger of being forgotten.

Its meetings[154] were held on Saturday evenings, and lasted from five o'clock till eight. The time was spent in the recital of political news, conversation on passing events, the reading of papers, and open discussion. The procedure, though carefully ordered, was sufficiently elastic, and on extraordinary occasions—as when His Excellency Horace Walpole appeared to advocate the maintenance of the understanding with England[155]—might be entirely suspended. Not the least useful member of the Entresol was d'Argenson himself; he joined in its labours with his usual industry and zeal. He made it his business to extract the political intelligence from the leading newspapers—those of Holland[156]—at the same time maintaining a correspondence with Florence[157] and Brussels. In addition to this, he undertook the department of canon law, with which his position on the ecclesiastical committee of the Council of State peculiarly fitted him to deal.[158] In connection with this subject, he read to the society a series of papers in which he argued strongly for the independence and the pre-eminence of the civil power. His conclusions might have been less absolute had he known that they were one day to rise up in judgment against him in the shape of two formidable quarto volumes.[159] In the general debates he took an active part, and his discussions with St. Pierre upon the innumerable projects which the latter presented to the society were recalled by him with lively pleasure.

Though devoted to political research, "the good Entresolists" were careful to exclude even the suggestion of pedantry. They formed a sort of "club" on the English model. "We had all sorts of pleasant things, comfortable seats, a good fire in winter, and in summer windows opened upon a pretty garden. There was no dinner or supper, but tea was to be had in winter, and in summer lemonade and cooling drinks. The gazettes of France, Holland, and even the English papers, were always to be found there." In a word, it was "un café d'honnêtes gens."[160] On the summer evenings, when the meeting was over, they used to go for a stroll round the terrace of the Tuileries, discussing the questions that had arisen in the debate. In the winter they "went straight home, and always with a fresh regard for the Entresol."[161]

It may well be imagined that a society of this kind must have inspired a very warm feeling among those who were privileged to take part in it; and d'Argenson is affectionately anxious to make it clear that its ultimate dissolution was in no way due to failure of interest. We might well believe it from the letters of one of its most distinguished members, the hero of Dantzig, Count de Plélo, whose appointment to Copenhagen in 1728 was largely due to the prestige he acquired as a member of the Entresol.[162] From the cold solitudes of the Baltic he writes to the President: "O! this accursed climate! Am I never again to breathe the air of the Entresol?"[163] and again, "A person accustomed to read the Gazette at the Entresol finds it very dry reading all alone at Copenhagen."[164] And then, when the crisis came and the society was no more, he writes:

"I can imagine how keenly you feel the unhappy fate which has befallen the Entresol. Would you ever have believed that anything so innocent could fall under suspicion? Surely something out of the common must have happened since my departure, or else the great ones of the earth have very little to do."[165]

The attitude of the "great ones" is not without interest. Even Cardinal Fleury had been compelled to breathe the air of the Regency; and upon succeeding to the authority of the Duc de Bourbon, he was inclined to look graciously upon the nascent society.[166] Nor was his protection hastily withdrawn, for in the winter of 1730 he appointed its president Curator of the King's Library, and thither the meetings of the Entresol were transferred.[167] In the following summer it received a further earnest of ministerial approval in the preferment of Alary to the tutorship of the Children of France.[168] In the elation produced by these marks of favour the members threw off their accustomed reserve, and the proceedings of the Entresol acquired a notoriety which was little to the mind of its more cautious spirits.

"I tired myself to death in recommending moderation and discretion, even in regard to the name of the Entresol; for I kept saying to them: 'You will see that one fine morning the Government will ask us what we are about.'"[169]

But d'Argenson's efforts were powerless to withstand the vain temerity of some of the members; the fatal day arrived at last; and at one of the meetings in the autumn of 1731, Alary appeared with the announcement that he had a poniard in his heart, and that the days of the Entresol were numbered.[170] There was no gainsaying the will of the Cardinal, and the dissolution was effected in decent silence. But it was not accepted without an effort. A little conspiracy was formed among the more earnest members, with d'Argenson for one of the ringleaders; the day of meeting was changed to Wednesday; the black sheep were excluded; and it was hoped that by absolute silence and a careful avoidance of ministers, they would be able to hold on until the storm had blown over. Yet scarcely three meetings had been held when d'Argenson fell into the hands of Chauvelin, who extracted from him a promise that no further effort would be made to revive the beloved society.[171] There was no more to be said.

D'Argenson's personal disappointment was keen enough, nor was he slow to appreciate the public loss. He writes reproachfully:

"It is surprising that so many sciences are cultivated in Europe, whilst there is not a single school of public law. Why should not theoretic knowledge be as useful to society in general as to societies in particular? You aspire to employment in the public service, and you cannot qualify yourself by preliminary practice; for this is the fashion which has been introduced into France in our day: people say, 'When I am appointed ambassador, when I am raised to the Ministry, I will learn the duties of my post.'"[172]

It was not upon d'Argenson that the loss fell; his political apprenticeship was already complete. On those Saturday evenings in the Place Vendôme, he had learnt to think clearly and boldly upon public questions; and the doors of the Entresol were scarcely closed when he resolved to turn his acquirements to account.

He was now in his thirty-seventh year. His affairs, which had often given rise to embarrassment, had been arranged by the recent sale of Réveillon (December, 1730);[173] there appeared to be no further obstacle in the way of a successful career. He was not slow in adopting the only means by which a political aspirant could bring himself under the notice of the governing powers—the presentation of gratuitous advice; and it was at this time that he began that series of memoirs which was continued until after his accession to the ministry, and which would have been such an invaluable treasury of contemporary history and thought.[174] Unhappily they all perished in the burning of the library of the Louvre in 1871,[175] and our only knowledge of them is derived from fragmentary notices published before that date. The series appears to have begun in December, 1731; and it is pleasant to find that here again that amiable influence which had appeared so early in d'Argenson's career was present to lend him a guiding hand. A memoir which d'Argenson proposed to present against the arbitrary distribution of the taille (December, 1731), was scored with annotations by St. Pierre, who advised that it should be cut down, that certain vague views about things in general should be excised, and that the author should confine himself to a single point. "He must not give occasion to say, 'He is a fine talker, he is an eloquent speaker, qui bat la campagne.'"[176] St. Pierre was himself too melancholy a proof of the wisdom of his own advice for d'Argenson to reject it lightly; and in May, 1732, we find him writing:

"I was several months without meddling with affairs of state; I did not wish to give myself out for a maker of memoirs."[177]

This wholesome caution was not long sustained, nor indeed was it really necessary. The time was one of keen political excitement. It was in this very summer of 1732 that the great conflict of old French privilege and tradition against the arrogant zeal of the Ultramontane party reached its acutest stage; and it happened that that was the question of all others with which d'Argenson was competent to deal. He had been for some years a member of the ecclesiastical committee of the Council, and at the Entresol, as we have seen, he had been charged with the department of canon law.[178] Upon the questions at issue he entertained ideas at once liberal and politic. He admitted in principle the plea of ecclesiastical authority; but as a politician he deprecated any encouragement of its supporters in their factious proceedings against the Jansenists; the attitude of the Government in regard to heterodoxy should be simply one of passive disapproval. But it was no longer time to think of principles and policies; the matter had now resolved itself into a fierce conflict of privilege between the Crown and the Parlement of Paris. On the 13th of June the Parlement accepted an appeal in the teeth of direct orders from the King. The reception was quashed by a decree of Council, and four magistrates were sent to join Pucelle in exile. The Chambers of Inquests and Requests immediately resigned.[179] D'Argenson's views upon the crisis were strong and clear. They were laid before the Ministry; and the author received a letter from Chauvelin, the Warden of the Seals, to the effect that two hours' conversation with him would be of material service to the Government. He set out at once for Compiègne, halted a moment for breath, scribbled out a "policy complete," and presented it to Chauvelin in a secret interview which lasted from five o'clock in the morning until nine.[180]In the whole of the discussions he appears to have taken a prominent part; he was kept informed, by secret channels, of the deliberations of the Cabinet;[181] and he seems to have been treated throughout as an active and esteemed adviser.

The nature of his advice we are at no loss to determine. Among the documents destroyed at the Louvre was one written by d'Argenson when the struggle was at its height. It is in the form of a letter from an Englishman to a Frenchman.[182] In the course of it he says:

"Wherever the sovereignty may reside, it is necessary that authority should be entire, without partition, and should bow to the judgments of God alone." He proceeds to urge the necessity of doing away with the superior courts, or of placing them absolutely at the disposal of the Crown. In replying to the objection that that would establish "a veritable Turkish government," he reveals the secret of his peculiar attitude with regard to royalty in France. "What of it?" he rejoins. "You live in France under a despotic authority. The die is cast, so to speak. You must either obey it or destroy it entirely." Its only restraint must be that imposed by "opinion, reason, delicacy, public spirit. Is it not the case that for two centuries the progress of authority in France has been that of peace, art, and morality, and is it not increasingly active in suppressing violence, whether public or private?"

How far d'Argenson is to be credited with the policy adopted is a secret which is buried with Chauvelin and Fleury. Had he been the moving spirit in the government, its measures could not have been in stricter conformity with his advice. By a declaration of the 18th of August, appeals were withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the Parlement, and the chambers of Inquests and Bequests were suspended. A "Lit de Justice" followed on the 2nd of September, and upon the 7th the chambers of Inquests and Requests were scattered to the four winds.[183]

This policy, which d'Argenson had perhaps inspired, was not consistently pursued. It was not for the last time that Chauvelin had betrayed the Cardinal into bold and decisive action, nor the last time that Fleury regretted it. His will was absolute, and before three months had elapsed the declaration and the lettres de cachet were withdrawn, and the Parlement returned in triumph.

In dealing with d'Argenson's action as Minister, it has been usual to attribute its strange inconsequence to his own weakness and oscillation of mind. The indictment is a hazardous one to prefer against the son of Marc René d'Argenson; and here it is only necessary to say that in nothing that he ever wrote or did has there appeared to be sufficient ground for it. There seem to have been few men who have formed their ideas with a more quick decision, or have clung to them with a more sane tenacity. His mind cut into the interests which engaged it sharp and clear as a diamond; the very fault of it was that it was incapable of those politic shifts, those timely irresolutions, which have often been the making of smaller men. Indeed, there is even ground for suggesting that if, in judging the events of d'Argenson's ministry, his own real share in them be scrupulously weighed, there may remain no reason to reject the opinion formed of him, in the beginning of their relations, by one of the ablest men of his own day, the Warden of the Seals himself. It is worth remarking that at this very time Chauvelin was so impressed with his intrepidity of mind that he thought of him as a possible premier president of the Vacation Chamber, designed to supersede the Parlement;[184] in other words, as the foremost instrument of the stringent measures contemplated by the Crown and the most conspicuous target of a virulent Opposition.

Nor is this the only reply to an imputation which the mere turning of d'Argenson's pages might almost suffice to dissipate.

Why, it may be asked, was this offer not accepted? D'Argenson himself shall furnish the answer, surely as pathetic as it is fatally true. He shrank at Chauvelin's suggestion, protesting that

"at bottom he must be aware of my defects, and that, besides several others, I had that of being what is called shy and timid; I had been badly brought up; my father, when I was young, had given all the preference to my brother;[185] he had only known me during the last two years of his life when I was in the public service."

Upon a word of deprecation, he repeated

"it had not been the case in the latter time, and when he once knew me, the matter changed completely."[186]

Indeed his new patron could not help regarding him with interest, and at the same time with embarrassment. He never tired of urging him to conquer the weakness which dogged his life. He invited him to his house, "where all France crowded," and asked him to regard it as his own;[187] he exhorted him to lose no opportunity of making himself at home with the world and the Court. He said "that before all things it was necessary to rescue me from the position in which I was, from a sort of obscurity."[188] His counsels were as assiduous as they were disinterested;[189] and they were at last heard with impatience by the man who felt that the power to follow them had passed for ever beyond his reach.

"But," he represented at last, "provided that I am known to you, and to the King and the Cardinal, as I see I am known to his Eminence, and as you have told me I am to his Majesty, what does it matter whether I am known to the rest?"[190]

Indeed he felt such dependence to be his one resource. Some years afterwards he was called to what was, in the circumstances of the moment, the most important post in the French Government, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He brought to the proof a devotion to the King which had been the growth of generations; he placed at his service a ripe wisdom, a capacity for firm, constructive statesmanship, such as few of the ministers of the reign possessed. All he asked was a free hand, and firm and kingly support; for he knew that he could not have maintained himself for an hour amid the clang of policies and the machinations of intrigue. He threw himself proudly and confidently upon the loyalty of the King. He only learnt that the staff on which he leaned was a bruised reed when it went into his hand and pierced it.

It was to no mistiness of mind or constitutional indecision that the vagaries of his ministry were due; but simply to the fact that his voice was drowned by the clamour of the Council, and his position sacrificed by the desertion of the King.

D'Argenson could not fail to attract remark, but he was not strong enough to make himself necessary. Chauvelin had received him with curiosity and unfeigned regard; but after a time he lost the freshness of originality, and his shrinking eccentricity alone remained. The Minister treated him not unkindly. He put him off with promises, and was lavish of countenance and encouragement; and d'Argenson passed a couple of years in continual expectation of preferment, and in constant labour in the directions suggested by his patron. It was at this time that he began those researches upon foreign politics which were afterwards to prove so fruitful; and his Journal is henceforth enriched with discussions of the interests of France abroad, interesting in themselves, and often admirable for breadth and originality of view. They suggest that though d'Argenson may have been a student and a recluse, a pedant he certainly was not. One of them, presented to Chauvelin in 1734 in the form of a memoir, enables us to bring into just focus the relations between d'Argenson and his political mentor. It was criticised with his usual directness and vigour by St. Pierre, who, after pointing out its faults and admonishing the author, exhorts him not to be discouraged. "At your age," he says,[191] "I was very far from thinking so profoundly upon public affairs," and he predicts a brilliant future as the reward of his perseverance. It is in mentioning this same memoir that d'Argenson sums his opinion, repeatedly expressed, of the man who had been so long his friend. "No one knows this admirable citizen, and he does not even know himself. He has given to the public a number of his political works; he has his eyes fixed upon a goal too far removed from us; and so it happens that he repeats himself, is always harping upon the same themes, and is not appreciated. For all that, he is deeply versed in modern history, present and past; he is an able man; and he has given himself up to a branch of philosophy, profound and abandoned by all the world, namely, the true method of political action most conducive to human happiness."[192]

It was no such fate that d'Argenson designed for himself; and with keen anxiety did he watch for an opening which would enable him to reap the fruit of his researches. For a long time he had been secure in the friendship of the minister; but that resource appeared to be failing him; nor was he reassured by his keen-witted brother, who warned him that Chauvelin spent his days in a continual course of duplicity. D'Argenson's apprehensions were soon confirmed. In July, 1734, upon rumours of a congress to arrange the preliminaries of peace, he offered to act as one of the plenipotentiaries.[193] His services were declined. The same fate awaited a request preferred by him shortly afterwards in favour of a relative.

"I was mortified, and I see that I was only agreeable and accredited at the Court, in so far as I was useful; c'est un commerce!"

he exclaims, flinging down his pen in disgust.[194] He took it up again to write to Chauvelin, informing him that there were some estates for sale in Touraine, of which the minister might be glad to have the refusal. He received in reply a letter[195] which, considering their former friendship, seems cruelly cold. It is barbed with that icy politeness with which one declines an intimacy no longer desired. In November the refusal of some vacant places which he had a right to expect, and which had been directly promised,[196] sufficed to complete his discomfiture; he could see but the wreck of those ambitions which had charged his Journal with energy and fire; and throughout the year 1735, the silence of disillusion is scarcely broken.

Not the least of d'Argenson's embarrassments[197] had come from a quarter where a happier man would have found but help and encouragement. It was in the course of the year 1733 that the relations between d'Argenson and his wife ended, by mutual consent, in a judicial separation.[198] As the conduct of the husband has given rise to animadversions which are often more true than charitable, it may be worth while to dwell upon it for a moment. D'Argenson had been married in the winter of 1718[199] to Mademoiselle Méliand, daughter of the Intendant of Lille. The passive form is used advisedly, for the transaction was arranged between the two families like the transfer of land;[200] and d'Argenson was only introduced to his betrothed a few days before the ceremony took place. The lady who became his wife "would be fifteen next January";[201] and d'Argenson, as we learn from some amusing letters to Madame de Balleroy, was not a little embarrassed by his new rôle of "elderly husband."[202] Notwithstanding, he accepted it with dutiful complaisance; and for some years his attitude towards his young wife was one of affectionate loyalty, not ungraced by a certain kindly amusement. About the time of their return from Valenciennes, the relations between them changed for the worse. Madame d'Argenson was a woman in fact as in name; her character had developed, and she proved to be a person of average brain and strong nerve, the very antithesis of her husband. Circumstances were not wanting to sharpen these radical differences of character, and to provide occasions of offence. Her husband's affairs were in disorder,[203] and his political success was long in coming; while the philosophy which was to him excuse and consolation kindled in his wife but impatient scorn. She took upon herself the cares of the household, regarding herself, and possibly not without reason, as its sole support; while her husband chafed against a solicitude which he looked upon as mere vexatious interference.[204] A conservative in these matters as in so many more, he probably told her that a wife who was worth anything would know her place, and she may have replied that she had indeed good reason to know it only too well. She held ideas upon it which raise one's opinion of her, and which were very unusual in her day.

"It is this too," says her husband, "which has led her to affect an air of absolute independence. She has formed a narrow-minded conception of all that concerns the proper submission of a wife, and she is up in arms against everything which detracts from the position of women in the world. She has far too exalted an idea of the dignity of the mistress of a house, and thinks very little of that of the master,"[205] etc.

The position at last became unbearable; and Madame d'Argenson resolved to defy that sacred tradition which guarded legal relationship in old French families, and to look forward to "a position of scandal as one would long for Paradise." Her will was inflexible; the separation took place, and one at least of the parties profited by it to return to a better mind. D'Argenson, looking back upon his married life, writes of it as reasonably and contritely as a man can do when he regrets the past and is sorry for his own share in it. In speaking of the separation, he says that

"the world has done me the justice to believe that I had not deserved it, that I did everything I could to avoid it, and that I acted in the matter with a good feeling and generosity seldom met with."[206]

For the truth of that statement we have the written testimony of Madame d'Argenson's own counsel;[207] and it is surely her husband's only reparation, as it is his best excuse, that for three and twenty years he loyally fulfilled the burdensome obligations which his own past misdoing may have contributed to entail.

By the beginning of 1736, d'Argenson appears to have taken fresh heart; for his Journal is resumed, and with it the interest of the ministry in him. He is spoken of now as a possible Minister of War, again as a Premier President of the Parlement of Paris, and then as the representative of France in Portugal. One report is of curious interest. It mentioned him as the first minister of Stanislas in Lorraine. The "république de Platon," for which d'Argenson was destined by Voltaire, would have been unwontedly near the earth had his friend become "Secretary of State" to the first of the bourgeois kings.[208] Upon this occasion at least, rumour was not without foundation; the intention to appoint him to Lisbon was tacitly acknowledged;[209] and in November, he was roundly taken to task by Chauvelin for having been indiscreet enough to mention it to his brother.[210]

The appointment had not yet been ratified when an event occurred which had a lasting influence upon d'Argenson's life. On the 20th of February, 1737, after a month of ominous rumours, Chauvelin was disgraced.[211] The cause of his fall, ostensibly some obscure intrigue with the King of Sardinia, was really the discovery of an attempt to secure himself at Court independently of the Cardinal.[212] Some remarks which d'Argenson devoted to the incident, reflect in brief the tone of his Journal, and exhibit the writer in his most characteristic mood. After speaking of Chauvelin as "the scape-goat" of the ministry, and attributing his fall to an exaggeration of finesse, he goes on to observe,

"With regard to that, there is no denying that his ideas are too great and lofty for the State." ... "I am not very sorry that he is no longer our Minister; for I only care for a bourgeois policy, by which one lives on good terms with one's neighbours and is content to arbitrate between them; and so may have a long time to work consistently for the prosperity of the interior and the happiness of every Frenchman."[213]

His satisfaction was not wholly unalloyed.

"I cannot help regretting the loss of such a fine opportunity of expelling for ever from Italy the Emperors of Germany. There can be no doubt that it was possible; and we should have had all Europe behind us if, acting with frank good faith, we had strengthened the lesser powers with the spoils of the House of Austria in Italy, without attempting in any way to secure them for the House of Bourbon. We had only to make this resolution understood at Madrid by some one who knew his own mind, and who would say to them once for all, 'Will you have all or nothing?' in order to give to Spain the Two Sicilies, which has been done by arrangement; or, if the worst came to the worst, to form a general league to act against Spain and the Emperor combined. For what better view could there be than that of giving prosperity to Italy, and banishing war for ever from the peninsula."[214]

D'Argenson's regret is almost passionate.

"I will say more. His Eminence will be ever answerable before God for having lost this opportunity, only obtained at the cost of so much blood. The effort, fruitless though it has been, has perhaps quenched our star."[215]

Together with the seals, Chauvelin had held the portfolio of Foreign Affairs; and with regard to it d'Argenson writes:—

"The Foreign Ministry is still a-begging. I did not ask for it, but it has been done on my behalf. At first my principal care was to avoid the self-reproach of doing anything which should savour of satisfaction at my friend's disgrace. For this I have not only the testimony of my conscience, but also of M. Chauvelin. The poor man writes to tell me he has one consolation in that I am now known for what I am worth.

"I am worth little, but I burn with love for the happiness of my fellow-citizens; and if that were known, I should certainly be desired in office."[216]

About the same time he speaks of Count d'Argenson, who, with very little regard for the happiness of his fellow-citizens, was very much more successful. "Le cadet" had just been appointed Director of the Press,[217] and d'Argenson writes:—

"Here is my brother, who has thrown himself for all he is worth into the party of the Molinists. What a pity it is that a brother of mine should think only of himself, should desire nothing but for himself, should be in everything the centre of his circle! Such a passion excludes public spirit. It leaves no room for that love of the common good, which one should long for after one's simple happiness, and far before one's own aggrandisement; for what folly is grandeur, and the thirst for power!... For the remarkable thing is that my brother cares more for a place which comes to him through an underground channel, through a party and through an intrigue, than by the way, simple and noble though it be, of capacity recognised and employed."[218]

Which was all very true, and at all of which that amiable sceptic would have laughed good-naturedly.

If the strait and narrow way was a little arduous, it was none the less resolutely pursued; and in April, 1737, d'Argenson was able to write:

"To-day has been a great day for me. The King has appointed me his ambassador in Portugal."[219] The charge, in the circumstances of the moment, might well have been an important one; and it was gratefully undertaken as a step to higher things.

"My whole design, in accepting the post which the King has just conferred upon me, has been to fit myself and to render myself eligible for office in the Ministry."[220]

In the elation of the moment, he reviews his chances of succeeding to the Chancellorship, which promised to become vacant by the withdrawal of D'Aguesseau.

"Now, at the King's age and in the circumstances of the reign, the man who becomes Chancellor with the cognisance of affairs of state, might well become first minister, by reason of the priority of rank which his office bestows. Et voilà comme on se laisse aller à des pensées ambitieuses!"

the philosopher concludes,[221] with that characteristic laugh at his own weaknesses.

D'Argenson's intimacy with the fallen minister had awakened some misgivings in the mind of the Cardinal; and the new ambassador takes occasion to remark:

"With regard to all that, my course is very easy; simplicity and straightforwardness will always be my warrant against the suspicion of such connections, with which my name has never been mixed up."[222]

It is curious that the man who wrote these words should have been on the threshold of a period when his prime interest and most active concern was centred in a labyrinth of Court intrigue. For about six years he was absorbed and immersed in the designs directed by a party at Court against the influence of Cardinal Fleury. Of all the pages of his Journal, the volume and a half in which this period is embraced is the least admirable and the least attractive; for the man is keenly interested in the issue of the struggle; not an incident or a detour escapes him; and we have an almost daily record of hopes and plans and futile ambitions, sometimes outbreaks of revolting spleen, set down in pages which are as difficult to read in cold blood as they were easy to write in heat. There is no question that the tone of hard hostility which criticism of d'Argenson has so often assumed, is explained, if it is not warranted, by the revelations of this period. Even the appreciation of St. Beuve was almost quenched by their perusal when the volumes of Rathery came into his hands; and in the last of his "Causeries" devoted to d'Argenson, the luminous enthusiasm of his earlier essays is exchanged for a tone of coldness and disillusion.[223] Had the prince of critics held the strife of politics in less abhorrence, he might have seen less reason to abandon the attitude which invested his earlier essays, not only with justice, but with charm.

Appreciation of d'Argenson may be sufficiently great to justify an attempt to present these years in a light more attractive and perhaps more true than that in which they have frequently appeared. The inquiry is no unimportant one. D'Argenson has been charged, not with mere personal ambition, but with rancour awakened by personal pique. The issue will decide whether he was indeed the man that he himself imagined, or whether, with all his fine philosophy, he was really no larger than any of the men against whose littleness he inveighed.

No sooner was Chauvelin dismissed (February, 1737) than d'Argenson takes occasion to review the consequences. The Ministry is reduced to a satrapy of six, all absolutely equal, and none distinguished by remarkable ability. In a few words he sums the situation:

"If a monarch prefers work to amusement, the system is good; but if he does not, one may judge of the consequences."[224]

At this time he was on the best of terms with Fleury; and in April, after receiving an immediate promise of the Portuguese embassy, he quits him with the significant remark:

"We should be happy if his knowledge of men were as great as his knowledge of affairs."[225]

In April, his appointment was ratified; he had already acquired an extended knowledge of Portuguese affairs; and he was not without hope of counteracting the commanding influence in Portugal secured to England by the Methuen Treaty.[226] Before long, however, difficulties arose about his emoluments; and on mentioning the matter to Maurepas in July, he was not reassured by "the lively and malicious pleasure" with which his complaints were received.[227] We know that d'Argenson was in no position to maintain an Embassy at his own expense,[228] as Amelot, a year afterwards, had the indecency to suggest; and we know also, from the character of Fleury, that he was little inclined to deal handsomely by the men who had nothing but their ability to devote to his service. It has been far too readily assumed that the rupture of the project was due to d'Argenson's intriguing ambition, and that his protestations in regard to the Cardinal were only a blind. As we learn from a comparison of the dates, they were nothing of the sort; and true as it may be that sometime afterwards, his eagerness to set out was qualified by hopes in another direction, it is certain that in the summer of 1737, when he was solely dependent on the Cardinal and not yet in alliance with the opposition at Court, the only circumstance that retarded his departure was his difficulty in obtaining a sufficient emolument to support the dignity of an ambassador.

At this time and for long afterwards, there was no quarrel between d'Argenson and Fleury; they were, outwardly at least, upon the best of terms. But in August, 1737, a new feature begins to display itself. D'Argenson records the existence of a party at Court, whose principal instrument was the king's valet Bachelier, and whose principal object was to rouse the King to an active interest in affairs, and to strengthen the ministry by the inclusion of Belleisle, and possibly by the appointment of d'Argenson as Controller-General.[229] With his usual confidence and zeal, d'Argenson threw himself into line with this party. In January, 1738, he writes for the first time:

"It is believed that Cardinal Fleury is nearing his end, and that he is falling into a state of lethargy; he abstains from work almost entirely;"[230]

and in March, in the first of his oft-repeated speculations upon the character of the King, he writes:

"In all this, there is promise of a happy reign; God send it may be! It will be this soul that we must endeavour to please, and not worthless subjects who have become kings, and who have passions of envy, pride, and mischievousness;"[231]

a reference to the unhappy administration. In April, a new light breaks upon him, and he conjectures, very truly it appeared, that the moving spirit of the Court opposition was M. Chauvelin himself; his triumph is necessitated by "the horrible weakness of our present ministers."[232] All this time, d'Argenson was assured of a prominent place in the ministerial reconstruction which appeared to be imminent; and he is never tired of enlarging upon the incompetence of the men who were left to bear the weight of the Cardinal's government.

With the Cardinal himself, it is important to remember, he had at this time but one quarrel; and so late as November, 1738, he continues to write as follows:[233]

"Never has any of our kings or ministers had so little knowledge of men as Cardinal Fleury. It has been the greatest misfortune which the nation has suffered under his ministry; for had it not been for this capital defect in any man who governs, we should have gone very far under an administrator so virtuous and so disinterested."[234]

So far from an open rupture having taken place, he received from the Cardinal in January, 1739, a promise of the embassy at Naples;[235] and two months afterwards he was nominated by him to report upon a quarrel which had arisen in connection with the University.[236] At this time his alliance with the forward party at Court had lasted nearly two years; and the ground of his adhesion was not personal disappointment or private pique, but a feeling of the public necessity of strengthening the ministry by pressure brought to bear upon the Cardinal.

Six months afterwards his attitude had changed. The manifest determination of Fleury to repress every influence but his own, combined with a sudden crisis in public affairs to destroy the tone of tolerance or esteem with which d'Argenson had continued to regard him. In July, 1739, he writes:

"The rumours are growing that the tyranny of the Cardinal is nearing its close. I say tyranny; for when all is said, nothing is more hateful than the government of an old tutor, without birth and without ability, eighty-six years of age, choked with self-love and with a mania for ruling, leaning on subordinates worse than himself, whom he maintains without question, and ousting his king from the government at his own will and pleasure."[237]

In a letter to Chauvelin (April 24th) he had expressed the tone which is henceforth assumed.

"Our affairs abroad continue to move only by the impetus which you have given them. As to the rest, it is left to chance, and to a star which may pale. The unity of policy is lost; general plans are treated as chimerical systems, or as 'great questions,' which certainly do create genuine terror among the smallest heads which our nation has ever seen at its own."[238]

So runs the tale for many years. General declamation against the incompetence of the ministers is exchanged for a scathing relentless impeachment of every branch of the administration. The Journal of 1739 contains some of the most terrible pictures ever drawn of the internal condition of France; and the government of the interior is arraigned with all the triumphant detail of an unanswerable indictment. When the extreme of misery had passed, there remained the vicissitudes of foreign policy to sharpen the bitterness of d'Argenson's pen. The war of the Indies, the crisis in the Empire, gave occasion for many a philippic against the senile absurdity of the Cardinal's statecraft.[239] Nor was this all; for his hand is continually upon the Cardinal's pulse; his eyes are perpetually bent upon the King; his own prospects are weighed in an ever-changing balance; and d'Argenson, King and Cardinal are canvassed until the reader is sick and weary of them all. Occasionally the narrative is divested alike of dignity and of reason; and we sometimes meet with a rude savagery of feeling and expression which suggest that beneath d'Argenson's usual beauty of heart there lurked unsightly possibilities.

Such are the facts, unpleasing enough; it remains to determine their critical value.

A first impression that the brain of the writer is haunted by some grotesque chimera, and that his political prospects are the pure creation of his own vanity and ambition, proves upon investigation to be false. There existed at Court during this period an active and formidable party, bent upon overthrowing the Cardinal; and for six years there was not a single month when Fleury's position might not have been imperilled by a moment of manliness on the part of the King. That moment—it was an amiable fondness—was constantly expected;[240] and had it followed upon any of the passages of d'Argenson's Journal, what appears as mere fatuous aspiration might be read as the words of truth and soberness. It is, moreover, reasonable to suggest that had the writer been more intimately conversant with the world and its ways, he would never have written one-tenth of what he felt; and that, had he not been the author of some of the loftiest and profoundest truths which political morality has ever uttered, his violences and excitements would have remained in the obscurity in which such accidents should be privileged to rest.

But there is another question involved, the question whether his criticism is the mere outcome of factious opposition, or is the wise and just conviction of a patriot and an honest man. A brief examination will suffice.

He pronounced against the men in power, and history has endorsed his verdict. Among the six ministers who carried the train of Cardinal Fleury, there was not one whose name has not to be sought for in his despatches, or who was qualified to be his own head clerk. The only man who, by the duration and the vicissitudes of his career, has secured a precarious place in history, is M. de Maurepas. So much for the men; we have yet to see whether d'Argenson's estimate of the general administration could equally boast the warrant of fact.

There are two sides to the questions suggested by the government of Fleury. There is no denying that his negative policy conferred great benefits on France; there is equally little question that it sowed the seed of many a disaster. If he did nothing to dissipate the resources of the country, he did equally little to increase them. He neglected commerce, and through the accident of the time it flourished. He neglected finance and the interior, and the ruin of the provinces proceeded unchecked. During these six years he did nothing for the policy of France abroad, and it drifted into the state in which we are soon to see it. In a word, he raised political nihilism to the dignity of a faith, and the deluge of circumstance had to be faced by his successors. His policy brought its peculiar consequences. The most striking was the decadence of the French marine. But it produced an effect which was far less obvious, and far more insidiously fatal. With M. Chauvelin, he had banished from his ministry its only element of constructive strength. D'Argenson had been glad that the man whose "ideas were too great and lofty," was in power no longer, and only too ready to take shelter beneath the bourgeois policy of Fleury.[241] He was not long in discovering his error. The world is not a bourgeois creation, nor can it be governed upon bourgeois principles; and if genius in power is often destructive, it is none the less often necessary. It was by the consistent ostracism of genius that Fleury, in a profoundly critical period, maintained himself in power; and when his will at last succumbed to circumstance, he left his country to drift before the winds bereft of policy or guiding hand. We have soon to examine one department of the government, and that in connection with d'Argenson himself. There may be reason to suggest that if his criticism of Fleury has been violent and harsh, the conduct of French foreign policy during the years 1745 and 1746 is one long commentary upon its substantial justice. D'Argenson was a man of strange political sympathy and insight. Barbier and the element he represented, might look on with applause, and commend the Cardinal's moderation and prudence. To a patriot who had the sagacity to foresee what his so-called moderation might mean, the spectacle must have been full of provocation; and it is sufficient to conclude that if d'Argenson's narrative is deformed by the violence of exasperation, its motives were as pure as the feeling was keen.

It is with the pleasure of relief that we turn to another interest of d'Argenson's life, as sweet and engaging as the former is sometimes repellent. It presents him, not as the violent, eager partisan, but in the light of a loyal and warm-hearted friendship. It is in the spring of 1739 that we mark the beginning of his intimacy with Voltaire.

D'Argenson and he had been at school together; but since they had parted in the Rue St. Jacques[242] their ways in life had lain far apart. Arouet had been absorbed by that brilliant coterie whose host was Vendôme and whose laureate was Chaulieu;[243] while d'Argenson pursued the path of the robe, which led far away from the dazzling dissoluteness of the Temple. Nor were they thrown together more closely in maturer life; for while d'Argenson, with some chosen spirits, was developing the purely French tradition of political thought, his friend, a guest at Twickenham and Battersea, was accustoming his eyes to that foreign light which he was afterwards to diffuse so fatefully around him. About the time at which d'Argenson joined the Entresol, Voltaire set out for England.[244] Separated as they were, they retained that easy good-feeling which only school companionship can inspire. Upon Voltaire's return they met more frequently, and in their letters their old discussions upon art and politics at the house of a popular society lady,[245] are often the theme of pleasant recollection.

It was not, however, until the opening of the correspondence whose occasion and character we have now to record, that their casual acquaintance ripened into intimacy. Many of Voltaire's letters have never been recovered; and d'Argenson's, with scarcely an exception, have perished entirely. Still, there remain enough to form an intelligible series, and to throw a very attractive light upon the character of the men concerned.

It was in the beginning of 1739 that Voltaire, incensed by a more than usually scurrilous libel, appealed to his friend for protection in an attempt to force the author[246] to a disavowal of his work. With the ready loyalty characteristic of him, d'Argenson accepted the trust;[247] and until the close of the quarrel he became the poet's "chargé d'affaires accredited to the literary police." Such of his letters as are preserved are truly charming, and they read strangely beside many a page of his Journal written at the same date. They are graced throughout by that open-hearted confidence which d'Argenson was always so ready to accord; and nothing can be sweeter than the self-congratulation with which he tells Voltaire of his success.[248] He was in constant communication with Madame du Châtelet; and d'Argenson joined Madame in a conspiracy of kindness to restrain the vivacities of their outraged friend.

Voltaire was not the man to undervalue such services. His letters are full of expressions of gratitude, as delicate as they are sincere; he cast about for a means of displaying it more amply; and with many another earnest of confidence and regard, d'Argenson received the opening chapters of the "Histoire du Siècle de Louis XIV.," and with it the assurance, "I wish to please you so much; and you will see that if I do not succeed, it is not for want of working upon subjects which are dear to you."[249] D'Argenson must have been emboldened by the confidence of his friend, for soon after, Voltaire received a letter, and with it an extract of a certain manuscript from d'Argenson's own pen.

The keen surprise and pleasure which attended its perusal are written in every line of Voltaire's reply:—

"My dear Sir, Providence has kept me here a day longer than we intended in order that I might receive the most pleasing letter that I have had since Madame du Châtelet has ceased to write. I have just been reading to her the extract you have been good enough to make for us from a work of which it may be said, more justly than of 'Télémaque,' that if any book could confer happiness upon mankind, it would be this.... We have not here the mere dreams of a good-hearted man, like the good Abbé de St. Pierre and M. de Fénélon; there is here something more real, and something which experience proves in the most striking manner.... Madame du Châtelet is enchanted with your plan. By this post I have received a letter from a prince, whose first minister you would be, if you had been born in his country."[250]

Upon earnest representations that they are "the most honest people in the world," and that they would return the book "without copying a word," the entire manuscript was forwarded to Brussels. It is acknowledged in a letter of the 21st of June:

"My dear Sir, I have just finished reading a work which consoles me for the flood of bad books wherewith we are inundated.... How have you had the courage, you, whose house is as old as M. de Boulainvilliers', to declare so generously against him and his fiefs? That is the thing I cannot get over; you have divested yourself in favour of the public of the dearest prejudice to which men can cling.... Good-bye. Go and make the French loved in Portugal, and leave me the hope that I shall see again a man who does so much honour to France. An Englishman had put upon his tomb: 'Here lies the friend of Philip Sidney;' allow me to write my own epitaph: 'Here lies the friend of the Marquis d'Argenson.'"[251]

"There is a place that one does not procure for cash down, and that I merit by the most respectful attachment and the most high esteem."

The last word is significant; Voltaire was attached to his friends; his esteem was reserved for his equals.

The book was kept for six weeks, when Voltaire returned by Moussinot

"the best and most instructive work that I have read for twenty years.[252]... I am assured that the author of this unique work is not going to Lisbon[253]to bury his talents for guiding men and making them happy. May he remain at Paris, and may I find him again in one of those posts where, up to the present, so much harm has been done and so little good. If I had myself to choose, I swear that I would not set foot again in Paris until I saw M. d'Argenson in the place of his father, and at the head of letters.... Madame du Châtelet is as charmed as I, and will praise you to much better purpose."

Never did Voltaire speak with more enthusiasm, and never was the feeling more generous and sincere. He had suddenly discovered among a crowd of other noble protectors a man of rare and unexpected power; and for some time the letters to d'Argenson are sufficient to show that he had sensibly risen in Voltaire's esteem. The praises he received were accompanied by a full and careful criticism, the hasty reading of which may have given rise to a gratuitous impeachment of the writer's sincerity. The suggestion will be presently considered;[254] here it is enough to say that it was no ordinary political work which, in 1739, could arouse the enthusiasm of Voltaire.

A third episode in the correspondence is of some importance. It was through Voltaire that d'Argenson acquired his first knowledge of a man to whom he was afterwards introduced more intimately by events, the young Prince Royal of Prussia. Among other marks of regard, Voltaire sent him some of the prince's letters, and asked him to share his admiration. It may be imagined that d'Argenson, in whom devotion to royalty was hereditary, and whose regard for merit was always so keen, was not slow to echo the enthusiasm of his friend.[255] From this time forward he watched with lively and appreciative interest the development of Frederick's career, and upon the frequent letters which found their way into his hands he formed a conception of the Prince's character which was not without its influence upon future events. Its essence is contained in some words he wrote on hearing of Frederick's accession (June, 1740):—

"Il fera ce qu'il faudra faire."[256]

His pleasure at the event is only qualified by the pitiful contrast presented by the King upon whom his hopes had so long been built.

Such are the principal features of this delightful correspondence. It was continued with more or less intermission until the end of 1744, when d'Argenson found occasion to exercise his friend's pen in matters of more than epistolary weight. Throughout the difficulties of an arduous ministry, his task was lightened and his efforts cheered by the encouragement and co-operation of Voltaire.

[IV.]
NOVEMBER, 1744—JANUARY, 1747.
Foreign Politics—D'Argenson's Ministry—1745: The Convention of
Augsburg—The Convention of Hanover—The Imperial Election—The
Treaty of Dresden—1746: The Negotiation of Turin—The Saxon
Marriage—Review.

At the end of 1740, d'Argenson had succeeded his brother as chancellor of the Orleans household;[257] in November 1744, he was invited to accept a place in the Government as Minister of Foreign Affairs.[258] His brother, Count d'Argenson, was already Minister of War, and since the dismissal of Amelot in April, had been signing the despatches of the Foreign Office.

The appointment of a man without any diplomatic experience or high official knowledge to what was, in the circumstances of the moment, the most important position in the Ministry, might well, at any other period, have given occasion for remark. At this time, however, the Government was peculiarly constituted; its policy was dictated by Marshal de Noailles, who had no official position; and all that was required of the new Minister was not plans or policies of action, but the dutiful deference and docility of his predecessor. The eyes of Noailles would have opened widely could he have read some of the pages which the new Secretary had already devoted to the principles and conduct of French foreign policy.

D'Argenson's ministry lasted rather more than two years, and came to a close in January 1747. The period was an eventful one; and our knowledge of it is derived from diplomatic correspondence in every capital in Europe. The evidence has been digested in several important works, notably the elaborate study in four volumes by the Duc de Broglie,[259] and the comprehensive monograph by M. Edgar Zevort.

These works are valuable and authoritative, but their conclusiveness may be disputed. There are many suggestions with which any one who has made a close personal study of d'Argenson may find it difficult to agree; while the divergencies of detail, and sometimes of conclusion, between the two writers, the admirably chosen series of documents given by M. Zevort, and, above all, a careful acquaintance with d'Argenson's own Journal for ten years before, suggest the necessity and afford ample scope for some independent criticism. It would seem, indeed, that these works have been undertaken primarily with a view to the general history of France; and that no adequate effort has been made to determine d'Argenson's real share in the events for which he bears the official responsibility. There is only too good reason to know that in many critical conjunctures, the foreign policy of France was only pursued because the Foreign Minister was powerless to avert it. Indeed there is reasonable ground for suspecting that no pains have been spared in comprehending everything but the Marquis d'Argenson himself; and that, if the perusal of his official despatches had been illumined by the study of his unofficial memoirs, the character of his action might have been explained more naturally than by the suggestion of stupidity or confusion of mind.

It is true that M. Zevort endeavours to illustrate d'Argenson's political principles from his own "Essai de l'exercice du tribunal européen par la France seule;" but it may very well be doubted whether this piece possesses the importance which has been attached to it. It was written shortly after, or possibly before, the fall of Chauvelin, and at least seven years before d'Argenson's accession to the Ministry. In November 1737, when it appeared in manuscript, France was at peace, Fleury was still Minister, the war between Spain and England had not broken out, the old House of Austria was not yet extinct, and Frederick was still Prince Royal of Prussia. In the interval the face of Europe had wholly changed. Moreover the "Essai" consists of no more than half-a-dozen widely printed pages, placed at the end of the 1764 edition of the "Considérations,"[260] and omitted altogether from that of 1784. It contains a few loose remarks about Russia and the northern powers, with some views upon Spain and Austria which are the commonplaces of d'Argenson's Journal. Almost the only remarkable feature are some significant words upon the position of England, which show that the shadow of 1763 was already falling across the path of France.[261] Indeed the piece appears to be really nothing more than a brief academic essay, written, as we learn from the title-page of the manuscripts in the Library of the Arsenal, as a note upon St. Pierre's "Projet de la Paix Perpétuelle."[262] That the author regarded it as of small importance is clear from his failure to exhibit in his Journal any further affection for its leading idea, the exercise of international arbitration by France alone; his subsequent criticism of Fleury is little more than a consistent denial of it; and we can point to at least one passage where its central principle is categorically rejected.[263] It is true that the conception of a benevolent arbitration exercised by France remained as a shadowy and distant ideal before d'Argenson's mind; but that it had ever any serious influence upon his practical ideas of policy there is no evidence to suggest. Even if it be admitted, with M. Zevort, that these were "the ideas, some ingenious, others chimerical, almost all beyond realisation, which d'Argenson nourished in 1737," it may be denied, with some distinctness, that "he brought them to the ministry in 1744."[264]

It is not here, but in the pages of his Journal for ten years before, that we must search for the secret of d'Argenson's thought. It is true that the running commentary upon foreign politics which is here continued from time to time[265] is, upon a first or a casual reading, as bewildering as many have found it; but it will appear upon study and reflection, that the writer's views, many-sided as they are, revolve about half-a-dozen leading principles, which perpetually recur, are immediately recognised, and from which the author never materially swerves. These principles are based upon profound thought and mature research; and the divergence of view which is superficially apparent is due to their constant adaptation to the circumstances of the moment as affected by fortune or failure, success or reverse. There is no man to whom inconsequence of mind has been more speciously imputed than to d'Argenson, and surely none who has deserved it less.

The ideas which d'Argenson did bring to the Ministry must be set forth as briefly as clearness will allow.

He held that in the dealings of a great nation, the profoundest principle of policy was simple straightforwardness, and that France was in a condition which enabled her to apply that principle with effect.

Her legitimate expansion was already complete; she had nothing further to gain by aggression; and her statesmen should be henceforth as careful for the extension of her prosperity as they had hitherto been for the extension of her borders.

It was necessary to allay the inveterate distrust awakened in Europe by the designs of Louis XIV., and by the junction of the Bourbon houses. The alliance with Spain was of doubtful advantage; and it was the interest of France, while remaining on the most friendly terms with that power, to discountenance, and if necessary to repress, the Spanish ambitions in Italy. At the same time, every support should be given to Spain in her resistance to the commercial aggrandisement of England.

While abstaining from aggression, France, in accordance with her traditional policy, should lose no opportunity of destroying the power of the House of Austria in Germany; the death of the Emperor Charles VI. should be made the occasion for a partition of the Austrian dominions;[266] and the influence, and if need be, the arms of France, should be used in favour of the various pretenders.

Every effort should be made to strengthen the position of the smaller powers, le tiers parti, as a counterpoise to the influence of Hapsburgs and Bourbons alike; the movements of Sardinia, Bavaria, Saxony, Poland and Prussia in the direction of independence, should receive the encouragement of France.

The designs of Russia should be held in check by an defensive alliance with Sweden and Denmark.

As regards England, France should make no attempt to force the Pretender upon an unwilling people; but she should resolutely resist the efforts of England to establish a commercial monopoly, and declare war rather than allow the seizure of the Spanish colonies in America. The means were to be found in the withdrawal of Holland from English influence, support of the colonial policy of Spain, and above all, the restoration of the French marine in view of a great maritime war.

Not the least admirable object which a statesman could embrace would be the expulsion of the Austrians from Italy, and the surrender of the whole peninsula to an Italian confederation. The project in truth was an ideal one; but it was commended by its apparent ease of execution—already proved by M. Chauvelin[267]—and by the severity of the blow it would inflict upon Austria.

Behind all was the fact that the French provinces were in a critical condition; and every livre spent in war, and every man lost in battle, were spent and lost at the expense of the provinces. The paramount need of France was ten years of peace, retrenchment, and reform.

Such are the main principles of d'Argenson's political theory. In his Journal for ten years past it is possible to watch them, not in a very meagre reduction to their lowest terms, but as in process of growth, and of adaptation to an ever-changing variety of mood and circumstance. This variety of view, at first the source of continual embarrassment, becomes at last our surest guide; for it reveals the most intimate turn of d'Argenson's thought; and it enables us to divine the aspect from which a particular question is likely to be regarded, his probable choice between alternative courses, and the principles upon which the difficulties of the moment are likely to be resolved. One further reflection the Journal suggests. The tenacity with which these leading principles are maintained is only equalled by their rapidity of adaptation and clearness of grasp; nor can we avoid the suspicion that if the action of the French Foreign Minister should appear to be characterised by a strange inconsequence, the cause is to be sought elsewhere than simply in his own bewilderment and confusion.

Before proceeding to consider that question, a word remains to be said about a few of the men with whom d'Argenson was soon to be engaged. He was already well known in the diplomatic circle at Paris, and with two, at least, of its leading members he was upon intimate terms. One of them was the Marquis de Valori, the French envoy at Berlin, whom d'Argenson had introduced to Voltaire as early as 1739;[268] the other was the ambassador of Holland, M. van Hoey. Van Hoey was a man after d'Argenson's own heart. He sought, in sympathy with his friend, to raise the tone of politics, its huckstering pettiness of means and motives, by a certain philosophy of his own, a philosophy which is not more visionary than most things good, nor more ridiculous than most things noble, but with which the man of the world will refuse to meddle, and at which "le peuple petit-maître," in d'Argenson's words,[269] will go on laughing to the end of time. Before the minister had attained his present position, Van Hoey had esteemed his person and valued his advice; and in the previous year (1743) he had even transmitted to the Hague a long account of a conversation with "un seigneur," whom no one who has read a hundred pages of d'Argenson's writing will have any difficulty in identifying.[270]

There was another personage in the forefront of politics, whose career d'Argenson had not watched in vain. The Prince Royal of Prussia had gone far since the spring of 1739, when the friend of Voltaire was privileged to receive his letters. Time had made little impression upon d'Argenson's first estimate of him. He admired his devotion and his strength of character; and he had even some kindness for that 'splendid mendacity' to which Anti-Machiavel had been converted by events. It was to no childish sentiment of hero-worship that his regard was due; but to a firm and surely reasonable conviction that Frederick was strong enough to afford to be honest, that such a man did not make engagements which he would be glad to repudiate, or break his word when he could possibly help it. He felt that now, as at Frederick's accession,[271] his interests were coincident with those of France; and that the King of Prussia had only to be treated with honesty and supported well, to prove the soundest ally in Europe.

On the 15th of November, 1744, a proclamation was issued[272] directing a general thanksgiving for the capture of Fribourg, the recovery of the King, and the successes of the late campaign. Three days afterwards d'Argenson became Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The fall of Fribourg closed the events of the year in Alsace. Thither in August the King had hurried from Flanders upon hearing that as Frederick had predicted, the Austrians, under Prince Charles of Lorraine, had crossed the Rhine and were ravaging French territory. Louis had no sooner arrived than he was stricken down with fever at Metz; while, through the culpable negligence of his generals Noailles and Coigny, the Prince of Lorraine had been allowed to escape and to join the resistance to Frederick, who had again drawn the sword against Maria Theresa, and had fulfilled his promise of the Treaty of Frankfort (1st June, 1744) by a dashing descent upon Bohemia. His communications were threatened by the return of Prince Charles; Prague was evacuated by the Prussians, and Frederick withdrew with all his forces into Silesia. He was weary of the war, which had long been utterly objectless; he saw clearly enough that its further prolongation could only postpone what it could not prevent, the eventual triumph of Maria Theresa; he would have been glad to escape upon any terms which would leave him in possession of his hard won conquest. On the 26th of November he wrote to Louis XV., suggesting that negotiations for peace should be set on foot, demanding nothing for himself, and proposing as a basis the cession of Upper Austria, and the recognition of the Emperor by Maria Theresa.[273]

To this overture d'Argenson drafted a reply (December 17th). France, rivalling Frederick in disinterestedness, would be content to provide equitably for her allies, would renounce her own conquests in Flanders, and accept the mediation of Saxony. Over this draft was written, "N' a point servi." D'Argenson, taken aback, and feeling it necessary to make sure of his ground, requested the King to inform him definitely of his attitude on the question of peace. In reply he received (December 23rd), a memorandum,[274] in which the King expressed his desire for peace, deprecated any positive negotiation, and declared that the most direct way of realising his desire would be by "the most vigorous war." On the same day Louis wrote to Frederick,[275] discussing the proposals of the latter, and marking not the least eagerness to second his pacific designs.

D'Argenson was by no means blind to the meaning of the King's memorandum. "If the King was animated by the desire for peace, he was still more so by the love of glory;"[276] he had just made his first campaign under the auspices of Madame de Châteauroux; and he looked forward to recovering in Flanders the easy laurels which had been snatched from him in the previous year.[277] D'Argenson feared for the result. His view of the interest of France was wise and clear. The attempt to humble the House of Austria had failed;[278] "peace, no matter how it came, was now the principal object;"[279] the best means of securing it was "to stand upon the defensive in every quarter with foresight and success."[280] In this way the Queen of Hungary would be convinced of the hopelessness of her plans of vengeance, and the opinion of the peace party in the several courts would have time to make itself felt.[281]

Accordingly, "a few days after" receiving the King's memorandum, d'Argenson presented to him a memoir, his reference to which is of the first importance. He proposed that France should confine herself to "a simple defensive in Flanders, not only for fear of raising a dangerous storm in that quarter, but in order to throw more weight upon the two other theatres of war, Germany and Italy. It was in these directions that the chief objects lay; and so far from being able to carry all before us, we were not even sure of holding our ground. It was in Germany that the Queen of Hungary was concentrating her principal forces, while she left to the maritime powers the task of defending the Low Countries. In Italy we required to be superior to the Spaniards, in order to direct them well."[282] So far as d'Argenson personally is concerned, the above appears to be the most valuable record to be found in his ministerial memoirs.

On the 26th of December and the 4th and 8th of January, three letters were written by Frederick,[283] which show that events are moving rapidly. He declares that if negotiations are to be undertaken, it must be done at once;[284] that he has himself to deal with twenty thousand Hungarians in Upper Silesia;[285] that a strong detachment of Prince Charles's army is on the confines of Bavaria;[286] and that events of gravity are only to be averted by the reinforcement of the army of the Lower Rhine, and the despatch of immediate and effective succour to the Emperor and the Bavarian army. "At the present moment, these two positions appear to me of capital importance. They are no slight reverses of which we are running the risk, but the frustration of all our present measures, and even of those for the coming campaign." (January 8, 1745).[287]

The reception which awaited these representations is significant. In the first days of January, an Austrian force, after repulsing a weak French detachment, established itself upon Bavarian territory.[288] At that very moment the Emperor, in reply to his prayers and entreaties, received a letter[289](January 2nd), in which the French King, with manifest impatience, declared himself unable to satisfy his demands. Upon the 9th Louis, in a reply to Frederick, asserted that there was no reason to believe that an Austrian advance was imminent,[290] and declined to pursue further the steps taken in the direction of peace. The letter is described as "très froide et très maladroite" (Zevort).[291]

The inference implied throughout the preceding appears explicitly in a letter to Frederick of the 19th of January. Drafted by d'Argenson, it was revised and signed by Louis XV. The two hands and the two policies are apparent in every line. "Our union, our strength and our efforts," d'Argenson wrote, "give us promise of victory and peace." Under the hand of the King it became "must give us victory." As to Bavaria and the Lower Rhine, "I am thinking of these two objects;" Louis appended, "without forgetting Flanders." To the last line this odd dualism is continued.[292]

This letter was written on the 19th of January. On the following day a new chapter was opened with the death of the Emperor Charles VII., after an illness of twenty-four hours.[293] So far, two months of d'Argenson's ministry have elapsed. Their history has revealed one fact with impressive clearness. Upon the question of peace and the question of war, there is a radical divergence of principle and policy between the French Government and the French Minister. The King will listen to no overtures which may thwart his desire of overrunning Flanders. D'Argenson is earnestly desirous of peace, to be secured by a strong defensive campaign in Germany. Which was the wiser will soon appear.

The death of the Emperor (January 20, 1745) was perhaps one of the most terrible blows which French policy has ever sustained. It came at a moment when fortune had turned to the side of the Austrians, and when every step lost by France was a tenfold gain to Maria Theresa.

Louis XV. had been disposed for war; he found that he had no longer the power to choose. It is true that for the French ministry there were two conceivable courses; but only one was practically open. It was conceivably possible to make terms with Maria Theresa, and to use the death of the Emperor as an excuse for withdrawing from the war. Such doubtless was the view of the trampled German populations and of the tax-burdened householder of the faubourgs; but it could only be maintained by sacrificing every principle of honour and policy, and by ignoring the only considerations which would weigh for a moment either with Louis XV. or Maria Theresa.

For the French King the course was marked out with terrible clearness. He had combined with other powers to rend the inheritance of a defenceless woman; and now, when that woman had faced him, uncrowned but veritably imperial, to beg forgiveness on his knees—the very thought was impossible. Nor could the King of France yet bow before his former vassal of Lorraine. Even if his enemy deigned to listen to him, he would have to take or leave humiliating terms; and it would be a cold return for that generous jubilation with which his people had greeted him a year before. But not only were his own honour and popularity concerned; there was another motive, to which he perhaps may have been less sensible. To accept a peace upon any such terms as Maria Theresa would be willing to grant would have been to inflict a blow upon the future of French foreign policy, from which it might not recover for half a century or more. The last would have been seen of French influence in Central Europe: the upstart of Brandenburg would be swept into the sea: two centuries of effort might be totally erased: and Maria Theresa would resume the throne from which Charles V. had descended. If not to the King, to d'Argenson at least, such a prospect was at once conclusive.[294]

And when looked at from Vienna, peace was equally distant. As well seek to recall a falcon striking its prey as to breathe of peace to Maria Theresa. A statesman to her finger-tips, she saw at once that the two objectives of the next campaign were Frankfort and Breslau. Her armies were already on the plains of Breslau: her armies were within striking distance of Frankfort: if but for a few months the breeze would hold, the Flemish towns might fall to whom they pleased. And the path of victory was the path of vengeance. She regarded the man who had failed to wrong her, not, as is said, with the spleen of a woman, but with the proud wrath of a queen; she had not forgotten that he had driven her from her capital, and forced her to throw herself on the generosity of the men her own fathers had oppressed; nor would she have been slow to tender him the bitter cup from which she had drunk.

She might indeed have listened to him upon one condition—the abandonment of Frederick to her vengeance. In June last she had sworn that she would never lower her sword against the man who had torn up the Treaty of Breslau, until her generals could dictate terms to him from Breslau. Proposals on behalf of Frederick—she would have trampled upon them, as she trampled upon the Treaty of Hanover in August, when presented to her by her ally of England. In a word, the French King had to choose between indelible dishonour and the disdainful rejection of his terms.

If these reasons were decisive to the King, they were not less so to d'Argenson himself.[295] No man longed so much as he for peace; but he was not prepared to purchase it with the humiliation of his country, and with the undreamed aggrandisement of that hated House against which, all his life, he had consistently inveighed. The provinces were henceforth to be beaten with scorpions; for the efforts of France had been as nothing to that which the new enterprise would involve. Yet cost what it might, the effort must be made; and d'Argenson was at one with the Council[296] in the hope that by a single brilliant and advantageous campaign, France and Frederick might establish a position from which an honourable peace could be obtained.

The first necessity was to restore to their cause the moral basis which had been struck from beneath it by the death of the Emperor. Henceforth the pretext—for it proved to be little more—was to vindicate the liberty of election, and to support a candidate acceptable to the Electors. For the candidature of the Empire, the choice fell upon Augustus III., Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, who at this very time (January, 1745) was negotiating a secret treaty with Maria Theresa.

At this juncture, whatever may be said of it afterwards, the Government acted with promptitude and determination. Before ten days had elapsed, the position which seemed to Frederick "une crise terrible" had been faced, the débris of a great policy had been swept to one side, and before a courier could go and come between Paris and Berlin, the new measures contemplated by the French Government were announced to Frederick.

In a letter of the 31st of January—if not before it—d'Argenson declared that "at the present moment the very idea of peace must be forgotten," and the most strenuous steps must be taken to secure the alliance of the King of Poland.[297] This policy was reiterated in letters of the 1st and 4th of February;[298] and from now until the eve of the election at Frankfort, a desperate effort was maintained to induce Augustus to abandon Austria, and to declare himself a candidate for the Empire.

The conduct of the negotiations fell into the hands of d'Argenson. His own share in the policy is difficult to determine. He knew there was really no choice; but he could not help seeing that on every side it was beset with difficulties. It was true that the King of Poland could scarcely resist the magnificent prize held out to him; and it was not to be supposed that mere personal animosities could obliterate every consideration of interest and honour. In that view the Minister concurred with the Council; and he was supported by Valori,[299] the French envoy at Berlin, who was deputed to approach the Court of Dresden. To French statesmen the opinion was just and natural enough.

Yet d'Argenson at least, though he viewed them undaunted, was by no means blind to the difficulties in the way. The jealousy of Russia in regard to Poland, the formidable rage of the Queen of Hungary, and above all, his hatred and jealousy of the King of Prussia, would all combine to deter Augustus from committing himself in the interest of France. Indeed so small was d'Argenson's confidence of success, that he was unwilling to follow the Council in their resolution to subsidise the King of Poland, and to guarantee to him by treaty an accession of territory to be obtained at the cost of Maria Theresa.[300] However unpromising, the negotiation had to be begun; there was no alternative; and if it came to nothing more, it would at least give time for the development of a campaign, and for the armies of France and Prussia to achieve a position which would serve as the basis of an honourable peace.[301]

If at Paris the plan seemed practicable enough, at Berlin it was regarded from a very different standpoint. French statesmen could consider nothing but the strength of their four armies, the excellence of their intentions, and the splendour of the position to which Augustus would be raised by the arms of France and Prussia. To Frederick the matter presented itself in a less encouraging light. He knew his neighbour of Saxony; he knew that Augustus had no resources of his own; that his ministers were in sympathy with Austria and in the pay of England; and that what might leave Paris as the offer of an empire would reach Dresden as nothing more than an invitation to Augustus to throw over a sound alliance, to place himself at the mercy and become the tool of a covert enemy and a doubtful friend, and in a word, to resume the position from which Charles VII. had been happily liberated by death. Frederick saw at once that the French policy was foredoomed, and he did his best to impress upon the cabinet the fruitlessness of its task.[302] Finding his representations received as merely the suggestions of prejudice and jealousy, he had no alternative but to give way; and on the 13th of February[303] he announces that he has "buried his resentment," and sanctioned the departure of Valori for Dresden. Frederick was perfectly confident that Valori could only fail;[304] and he felt that any apparent success which he might gain, would be by no means useless in another direction in which his own efforts were actively engaged.[305]

If the hopes of France were illusory and her policy unsound, they were certainly not more so than the course which Frederick had himself adopted. On the 26th of January, before any definite communication had reached him from the French Government, he had instructed his representatives to sound the ministers at London and the Hague;[306] for a consideration received he offered to withdraw from the war, and to co-operate in the election of the Grand Duke. His agents were instructed to press these proposals.

That Frederick could have had any real confidence in these measures, it is difficult to believe. It is true that in England the Hanoverian party was no longer in power; but George II. was bent upon the war, and Carteret's influence was still supreme; moreover, popular feeling, while demanding a change in the direction of the war, was by no means in favour of its abandonment. Whatever the dispositions of the English ministry, from Maria Theresa there was nothing to hope. Indeed the whole plan was a counsel of despair. Frederick had everything to gain and absolutely nothing to offer; he had incensed the whole of the Austrian party; and if there were no motives of interest to aid him, he could scarcely trust to motives of charity. Indeed the whole situation is summed up in some words of Chesterfield to the Prussian minister at the Hague: "I understand," he said, "the truth is you ask everything and you offer nothing, for Silesia is no longer yours, since you have yourselves torn up the treaty which gave it you."[307]

It is easy to see the very natural motives which actuated Frederick in the adoption of his policy.[308] On the 31st of January, before the measures contemplated by the French Government had yet been communicated to him, he wrote to Louis XV. describing the position of their cause in Germany in terms of very real concern. He spoke of the utter dejection into which their allies had been plunged by the death of the Emperor, and of the favourable positions secured by the Austrian party; and he declared that only by the immediate reinforcement of the French army in Bavaria could the young Elector be prevented from "throwing himself into the arms of the Queen of Hungary."

It was probably with some surprise and not a little relief that he received the news of the French determination to continue the war.[309] He was already, as we have seen, in communication with London and the Hague; but he could not help feeling how slender was his hope in the intervention of the maritime powers; and he was wise enough to know that peace, when it came, would be the less precarious for being secured by a successful campaign.

That this was his feeling in the matter is clear from the attitude he maintained towards France during the next two months. While hoping desperately for the intervention of England, he neglected no opportunity of concerting measures for the future of the war. Until the re-opening of the campaign in Flanders, Louis XV. was besieged with letters, memoirs, requisitions of all sorts, demonstrating with unfaltering precision the critical positions which had to be maintained, and insisting upon the only measures by which the French policy could be carried to success, and the French allies preserved from ruin. He made it clear[310] that a majority in the Electoral Diet could only be secured, and the influence of the Austrian party destroyed, by the most vigorous action on the part of the two French armies in Bavaria and on the Main.

It had not remained for the King of Prussia to indicate the only means by which the French policy could be executed or excused. Even before the death of the Emperor, as we have seen, d'Argenson had been convinced that the readiest way of obtaining peace was not by a brilliant invasion of Flanders, but by a strong defensive campaign in Germany.[311] He now saw that every consideration in favour of his policy had gained tenfold in weight; and about the middle of February, probably upon hearing of Valori's difficulties at Dresden, he presented to the king a certain memoir setting forth a plan for the future campaign.

This memoir is of the last importance.[312] It strikes the key-note of d'Argenson's conduct during the year 1745; it illustrates, as nothing else can do, his real position in the Ministry; and it alone can explain his subsequent attitude with regard to Frederick and Prussia. As this document is very rare, and as it only exists by a fortunate accident, it will be advisable to reproduce it entirely as it stands; its meaning is too precious to be even prejudiced by an attempt at translation. No apology will be found necessary for its inclusion here. It runs:

"SIRE,—Depuis deux mois[313] je suis assez au fait de la combinaison de nos forces sur les quatre théâtres de guerre où V.M. a des armées présentement prêtes à entrer en campagne, pour critiquer les positions relativement à la politique et pour vous donner mon avis.

"Les Pays-Bas, où V.M. va commander son armée, ne sont pas l'objet principal de cette guerre; je crains que les flatteurs et les gens intéressés à faire paraître des opérations militaires plus brillantes que solides, n'ayent conseillé à préférer ce côté-là à d'autres. Vous y occuperez, il est vrai, les forces des puissances maritimes, et quelques-unes de l'Autriche; mais ce n'est qu'une diversion; et l'on ne recourt aux diversions que quand on ne peut aller directement à l'objet principal.

"Si V.M. y a des grands succès, je veux qu'elle puisse pénétrer sous peu en Hollande, et qu'elle châtie par là les Hollandais de leur ingrate témérité; mais cela ne nous donnera pas la paix; et pour comparer le présent au passé, c'est convertir la belle position que nous donna la paix de Nimègue en la vaine entreprise du feu roi en 1672 quand il pénétra en Hollande.

"L'année dernière, Votre Majesté ayant débuté par des conquêtes en Flandre, il fallut retourner en Allemagne. Alors c'était le passage du Rhin par le prince Charles qui y obligeait; cette année-ci ce sera l'élévation du grand-duc comme empereur qui y forcera.

"L'objet principal est l'Allemagne; tout en dépend, même l'établissement de l'infant don Philippe en Italie. Pour parvenir à la paix, Votre Majesté a trois objets à soutenir: (1) de maintenir le roi de Prusse en Silésie; (2) d'empêcher l'élection du grand-duc, et de procurer l'élection de la couronne impériale au roi de Pologne avec une grande facilité; sans quoi, il n'en acceptera même l'idée; (3) un établissement pour don Philippe, quel qu'il puisse être. Pour cet effet, il faut que nous nous soutenions puissants en Allemagne, et que nous tâchions d'y donner la main au roi de Prusse.

"Les quatre théâtres de guerre, où opèrent nos quatre armées, sont celle de Flandre, celle de Mein, celle de Souabe, et celle d'Italie.

"Je serais d'avis que V.M. ne fît qu'une défensive en Flandre, sous les ordres du comte de Saxe, qui s'y entend si bien, ainsi qu'il a paru à la fin de la dernière campagne.

"En Italie encore une défensive, malgré ce qu'en pourront dire les Espagnols, pour bien assurer les Gênois, les mettre à l'abri de toute attaque, défendre par là le roi de Naples, et tenir en échec le roi de Sardaigne, qui même ne pourra se soutenir à la longue, s'il n'est point soutenu des Autrichiens; et si l'on trouve jour à entamer le Piémont, qu'on y avance autant qu'on pourra; qu'on avance dans le Milanais et le Plaisantin, si l'on peut; mais qu'en Allemagne nous faisions nos plus grands efforts.

"Que Votre Majesté se porte incessamment à Strasbourg avec son équipage de guerre, pour aller ensuite commander celle des deux armées, qui promettra d'avoir le plus de succès et de sécurité pour la personne sacrée de Votre Majesté.

"Celle du Mein, sous les ordres du Maréchal de Maillebois, a commencé à pousser l'ennemi. Je serais d'avis qu'on lui continuerât ce généralât. Elle pourra aller jusqu'en Westphalie et à Hanovre. Celle de Bavière doit être rassemblée incessamment, avec des magasins à vos dépens, puisque l'électorât de Bavière n'en peut fournir. Il faut la mettre en état de faire le siège d'Ingolstadt, resserrer nos quartiers, et allant du Leck à Passau elle pénétrera en Autriche et donnera la main au roi de Prusse.

"Comptez, Sire,[314] que ce puissant allié sortira de sa défensive; qu'il ira en Bohême, en Moravie, et même en Autriche, s'il se peut, quand nous lui montrerons si bonne exemple. Avec cela Votre Majesté soutiendra ses alliances et même les augmentera. Le Palatin, la Hesse, la Bavière nous seconderont; et la Saxe même, assurée de nos succès, n'hésitera plus d'accepter la couronne impériale. Au moins retarderons-nous cette élection, et elle sera le scéau de la paix. Si au contraire, nous n'envisageons que la Flandre comme objet principal, et que nous négligeons l'Allemagne, nous perdrons tous nos alliés, les unes après les autres, et notre ennemi sera élu empereur sous nos yeux."[315]

There are many striking suggestions to be found in this memoir; but it may be scrutinised in vain for any evidence of that doubt, hesitation, looseness of grasp, by which d'Argenson's conduct is too readily explained; while, on the contrary, we have only to read it in the light of the measures actually taken by the French Government to detect the real foundation for those charges: and to know how much weight it is necessary to attach to them in so far as they concern the Marquis d'Argenson.

We have only to read the above memoir with any of those prepared by Frederick, and to sketch the chain of circumstances which took Louis to Fontenoy, to be in possession of all the threads of the long complication of 1745.

In a memoir of the 6th of March,[316] Frederick represents that if the election of the Grand Duke is to be prevented, a majority in the Electoral College must be regained; if that is to be done, the communications between Hanover and the three ecclesiastical Electorates must be severed by the vigour of the army of Maillebois; and the decisive movement must come from the army of Bavaria, which, under vigorous command, must capture Passau, march upon Vienna, and by drawing off the Austrian troops, throw open Moravia to the Prussian army. He does not mince the meaning of his proposals.

"If another course is taken in this war, the King of France will reduce his allies to the necessity of withdrawing from it as best they can; for there must be a prompt end to this, and the matter must be decided one way or the other before the imperial election."[317]

Frederick's communications with the French Court are one long reiteration of this demand. Never did a man plead more eloquently the cause of reason and manliness; and never was eloquence more desperately sincere.

The action, not of the French Minister, but of the French Government, is almost incredible. They had deliberately embarked upon a great policy, and they deliberately refused to take a single step by which it could be realised. All that depended on d'Argenson indeed, was done as strenuously as man could do it. He exhausted himself in efforts to win over the King of Poland, trampling down or shutting his eyes to the obstacles which faced him; and he never relaxed in his entreaties to Frederick to second his efforts at Dresden.

"Will your Majesty consider that by this alliance, if it should ever take place, we should become absolute masters of the situation."[318]

... "If your Majesty cannot lay aside the feelings which alienate him from the King of Poland, I see only the prospect[319] of a long war, the Grand Duke Emperor, and the Empire turned against us, whatever efforts we may make."[320]

D'Argenson might beg and entreat, and write despatches: but he was powerless to enforce his words with the weight of his little finger.[321] On the 10th of March he drafted a reply to Frederick, in which he undertook that the army of Bavaria should be reinforced and should push the war with vigour. The reply never went to Berlin; it remains marked with the words "n'a pas servi."[322] Indeed the French policy was already decided. For no political reason whatever, the King had set his heart upon a campaign in Flanders; and to that desire his own interest, the interest of his allies, and every statesmanlike consideration must of necessity yield. He was not likely to meet with resistance from Noailles, still less from Count d'Argenson or Maurepas; and the Foreign Minister stood alone in fruitless opposition to this brilliant piece of political fatuity.

The effects of it were apparent already. The arms of France were paralysed in Germany in order that troops might be concentrated in Flanders; the army of Bavaria could not be reinforced; little could be done for the army of the Main; and d'Argenson, while persistently demanding ready co-operation in his overtures at Dresden, was obliged to evade and trifle with the equally persistent demands of Frederick. His position was a very thankless one; and it would have been as ridiculous as it at first would seem, had it been of his own choosing. That it was not, there is ample evidence to prove.

From this anomalous disposition of the French Government the four decisive events of the year 1745 descend in lineal succession. Each was a political disaster of the first magnitude; every one of them was richly deserved, and not one was really attributable to the Minister who has ordinarily borne the burden and the blame. Those events are—first, the loss of Bavaria; second, the Convention of Hanover; third, the election of Francis I.; and fourth, the Treaty of Dresden.

It was on the 21st of January that the young prince Maximilian succeeded to the Electorate of Bavaria; on the 19th of April he signed a convention with Maria Theresa.[323]

The Emperor on his death-bed had adjured his son to rely on the support of France;[324] and Chavigny, the French minister at Munich, was ready to assure him that he would never do so in vain.[325] The Austrian troops were already in Bavaria; repeated warnings were given both by Frederick and Chavigny of the critical position of the young Elector; and every means of persuasion was exhausted by Chavigny in order to secure the reinforcement of the Bavarian army. The French Government were deaf to his representations; the Council rejected d'Argenson's despatches;[326] d'Argenson himself was at last irritated at the reiteration of demands with which he had no power to comply.[327] Chavigny had to pacify the Elector with promises and assurances, in default of troops.

In the meanwhile no effort was spared by Maria Theresa to detach the Elector from the League of Frankfort.[328] Her diplomatic agents were Colloredo and Count Batthiany. Colloredo negotiated at Munich with humiliating terms of peace; Batthiany advanced upon Munich with an army eleven thousand strong, before which Ségur, with a small French force, had withdrawn to the Bavarian frontier. Accordingly, Chavigny and the Elector fled to Augsburg, where, on the 19th of April, a treaty of peace, dictated by the Austrian envoy, was signed by Maximilian.

The event of the 19th of April was the signal for what M. de Broglie himself calls "the breakup and rout of all that in a greater or less degree was still holding to France."[329] The Prince of Hesse, the Elector Palatine, the Duke of Wurtemburg, and the Electors of Trèves and Mayence were at no pains to conceal their view that the French cause in Germany was lost; while the Elector of Saxony, Augustus himself, the very man upon whom for three months the efforts of French diplomacy had been centred, made haste to summon the troops of France to withdraw from the soil of the Empire, where there remained no excuse for their continued presence.[330]

Such was the disaster d'Argenson had foreseen and endeavoured vainly to avert. He is said[331] to have cherished with blind fatuity an unfounded faith in the fidelity of Bavaria. That faith was more than justified, if we are to believe Chavigny, who said that up to the very day when the unhappy Elector was forced to abandon his capital to the Austrians, he remained firmly attached to the French alliance.[332] The truth is this: that not only at Munich, but at Dresden and Frankfort, d'Argenson's action must appear ridiculous; because, while prosecuting his negotiations with energy and enthusiasm, he was unable, through no fault of his own, to give them the weight of a single cannon-shot. In a word, the bold policy of the 31st of January, while actively prosecuted by the French Minister, was tacitly abandoned by the French Government.