John Stevens Cabot Abbott - The History of French Revolution

"Look there, my king," said Villeroi, his tutor; "all these people belong to you. All that you see is your property; you are lord and master of it."

Louis XV. carried these principles into vigorous practice during his long reign of fifty-nine years. When fifteen years of age he married Maria, daughter of Stanislaus, the exiled King of Poland. Maria was not beautiful, but through a life of neglect and anguish she developed a character of remarkable loveliness and of true piety. There is but little to record of France during these inglorious years which is worthy of the name of history. The pen can only narrate a shameful tale of puerility, sin, and oppression. Weary and languid with worn-out excitements, the king at one time took a sudden freak for worsted-work, and the whole court was thrown into commotion as imitative nobles and ecclesiastics were busy in the saloons of Versailles with wool, needles, and canvas.

The king at one of his private suppers noticed a lady, Madame de Mailly, whose vivacity attracted him. Simply to torture the queen he took her for his favorite, and received her into the apartment from which he excluded his meek and virtuous wife. Maria could only weep and look to God for solace. Madame de Mailly had a sister, a bold, spirited girl, Mademoiselle de Nesle. She came to visit the court, and after vigorous efforts succeeded in supplanting her sister, and took her degrading place. She was suddenly cut off in her sins by death; but there was another sister of the same notorious family, Madame Tournelle, who endeavored to solace the king by throwing herself into his arms. The king received her, and she became his acknowledged favorite, and for some time maintained the position of sultana of the royal harem. Wherever she went a suite of court-ladies followed in her train. All were compelled to pay homage to the reigning favorite of the day, for all power was in her hands, and she was the dispenser of rewards and punishments. The king conferred upon this guilty woman, who was as cruel as she was guilty, the title of Duchess of Chateauroux. Madame de Tencin, one of the ladies of the court, in a confidential letter to Richelieu, written at this time, says:

"What happens in his kingdom seems to be no business of the king's. It is even said that he avoids taking any cognizance of what occurs, averring that it is better to know nothing than to learn unpleasant tidings. Unless God visibly interferes, it is physically impossible that the state should not fall to pieces."

Even Madame Chateauroux, herself one of the most corrupt members of that court of unparalleled corruption, remarked to a friend,

"I could not have believed all that I now see. If no remedy is administered to this state of things, there will, sooner or later, be a great overthrow." 19

Though the Duchess of Chateauroux was the reigning favorite, she had another younger sister who was a member of the royal harem. The princess of the blood, Mademoiselle Valois, and the Princess of Conti were also in this infamous train. These revolting facts must be stated, for they are essential to the understanding of the French Revolution. Up to this time the king, of whom the people knew but little, was regarded with affection. They looked upon him as the only barrier to protect them from the nobles. Soon after this Madame Chateauroux was taken sick and died in remorse, crying bitterly for mercy, and promising, if her life could be spared, amendment and penance. She was so detested by the people that an armed escort conducted her remains to the grave to shield them from popular violence.

The king, for a time, was quite chagrined by the death of this woman, who had obtained a great control over him. While profligacy and boundless extravagance were thus rioting in the palace, bankruptcy was ruining merchants and artisans, and misery reigned in the huts of the peasants.

A citizen of Paris by the name of Poisson had a daughter of marvelous grace and beauty. Mademoiselle Poisson married a wealthy financier, M. Etoilles. She then, conscious of her beauty and of her unrivaled powers of fascination, formed the bold and guilty resolve to throw herself into the arms of the king. When the king was hunting in the forest of Senart she placed herself in his path, as if by accident, in an open barouche, dressed in a manner to shed the utmost possible lustre upon her charms. The voluptuous king fixed his eye upon her and soon sent for her to come to the palace of Versailles. The royal mandate was eagerly obeyed. She immediately engrossed the favor of the king, was established in the palace, and henceforth became the great power before which all France was constrained to bow. Her disconsolate husband, who had loved her passionately, entreated her to return to him, promising to forgive every thing. Scornfully she refused to turn her back upon the splendors of Versailles. Receiving from the king as the badge of her degradation the title of Marchioness of Pompadour, Jeannette Poisson was enthroned as the real monarch of France. She was a woman of vast versatility of talent, brilliant in conversation, and possessed unrivaled powers of fascination. For twenty years she held the king in perfect subjection to her sway. She never for one moment lost sight of her endeavor to please and to govern the monarch. "Sometimes she appeared before him clad as a peasant-girl, assuming all the simplicity and rustic grace of this character. She took with equal ease the appearance of a languishing Venus or the proud beauty of a Diana. To these disguises often succeeded the modest garb of a nun, when, with affected humility and downcast eyes, she came to meet the king."

Her power soon became unlimited and invincible, for her heart was of iron, and even her feminine hand could wield all the terrors of court banishment, confiscation, exile, and the Bastille. It is said that a witticism of Frederic II. of Prussia, at her expense, plunged France into all the horrors of the Seven Years' War. The most high-born ladies in the land were her waiting-women. Her steward was a knight of the order of St. Louis. When she rode out in her sedan-chair, the Chevalier d'Hénin, a member of one of the noblest families of the kingdom, walked respectfully by her side, with her cloak upon his arm, ready to spread it over her shoulder whenever she should alight.

She summoned embassadors before her, and addressed them with the regal we , assuming the style of royalty. She appointed bishops and generals, and filled all the important offices of Church and State with those who would do her homage. She dismissed ministers and created cardinals, declared war and made peace. Voltaire paid court to her, and devoted his muse to the celebration of her beauty and her talents. Montesquieu, Diderot, and Quesnay waited in her antechamber, imploring her patronage. Those authors who pleased her she pensioned and honored; those who did not were left in poverty and neglect. Even the imperial Maria Theresa, seeking the alliance of France, wrote to her with her own hand, addressing her as her "dear friend and cousin." "Not only," said Madame de Pompadour one day to the Abbé de Bernis, "not only have I all the nobility at my feet, but even my lap-dog is weary of their fawnings." Rousseau, strong in the idolatry of the nation, refused to join the worshipers at the shrine of Pompadour. She dared not send him to the Bastille, but vexatiously exclaimed "I will have nothing more to do with that owl ."

As Madame de Pompadour found her charms waning, she maintained her place by ministering to the king's appetites in the establishment of the most infamous institution ever tolerated in a civilized land. Lacretelle, in his History of France, thus describes this abomination:

"Louis XV., satiated with the conquests which the court offered him, was led by a depraved imagination to form an establishment for his pleasures of such an infamous description that, after having depicted the debaucheries of the regency, it is difficult to find terms appropriate to an excess of this kind. Several elegant houses, built in an inclosure called the Parc aux Cerfs , near Versailles, were used for the reception of beautiful female children, who there awaited the pleasure of their master. Hither were brought young girls, sold by their parents, and sometimes forced from them. It was skillfully and patiently fostered by those who ministered to the profligacy of Louis; whole years were occupied in the debauchery of girls not yet in a marriageable age, and in undermining the principles of modesty and fidelity in young women."