A Short History of France eBook

Mary Platt Parmele
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 173 pages of information about A Short History of France.

A Short History of France eBook

Mary Platt Parmele
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 173 pages of information about A Short History of France.

As for the nobility, their degradation may be imagined when it is said there was as bitter rivalry between titled and illustrious fathers to secure for their daughters the coveted position held by Madame de Pompadour, as for the highest offices of State.

Could the upper ranks fall lower than this?  Had not the kingdom reached its lowest depths, where its foreign policy was determined by the amount of consideration shown to Madame de Pompadour?  But this woman, whose friendship was artfully sought by the great Empress Maria Theresa, was superseded, and the fresher charms of Madame du Barry enslaved the king.  The deposed favorite could not survive her fall, and died of a broken heart.  It is said that as Louis, looking from an upper window of his palace, saw the coffin borne out in a drenching rain, he smiled, and said, “Ah, the marquise has a bad day for her journey.”  It may be imagined that the man who could be so pitiless to the woman he had loved would feel little pity for the people whom he had not loved, but whom he knew only as a remote, obscure something, which held up the weight of his glory.

But this “obscure something” was undergoing strange transformation.  The greater light at the surface had sent some glimmering rays down into the mass below, which began to awaken and to think.  Misery, hopeless and abject, was changing into rage and thirst for vengeance.

A new class had come into existence which was not noble, but with highly trained intelligence it looked with contempt and loathing upon the frivolous, half-educated nobles, Scorn was added to the ferment of human passions beneath the surface, and when Voltaire had spoken, and the restraints of religion were loosened, no living hand, not that of a Richelieu nor a Louis XIV., could have averted the coming doom.  But no one seems to have suspected what was approaching.

A wonderful literature had come into existence, not stately and classic as in the age preceding, but instinct with a new sort of life.  The profoundest themes which can occupy the mind of man were handled with marvellous lightness of touch and clothed with prismatic brilliancy of speech; but all was negation.  None tried to build; all to demolish.  The black-winged angel of Destruction was hovering over the land.

Then Rousseau tossed his dreamy abstractions into the quivering air, and the formula, “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,” was caught up by the titled aristocracy as a charming idyllic toy, while princes, dukes, and marquises amused themselves with a dream of Arcadian simplicity, to be attained in some indefinite way, in some remote and equally indefinite future.  It was all a masquerade.  No reality, no sincerity, no convictions, good or evil.  The only thing that was real was that an over-taxed, impoverished people was exasperated and—­hungry.

Did the king need new supplies for his unimaginable luxuries, they were taxed.  Was it necessary to have new accessions to French “glory,” in order to allay popular clamor or discontent, they must supply the men to fight the glorious battles, and the means with which to pay them.  Every burden fell at last upon this lowest stratum of the State; the nobility and clergy, while owning two-thirds of the land, being nearly exempt from taxation.

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Project Gutenberg
A Short History of France from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.