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The History of French Revolution. John Stevens Cabot Abbott
Читать онлайн.Название The History of French Revolution
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isbn 4064066051594
Автор произведения John Stevens Cabot Abbott
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
It is an appalling and a revolting fact that for half a century before the revolution France was governed by prostitutes. The real sovereign was the shameless woman who, for the time being, kept control of the degraded and sensual king. "The individual," says De Tocqueville, "who would attempt to judge of the government by the men at the head of affairs and not by the women who swayed those men, would fall into the same error as he who judges of a machine by its outward action and not by its inward springs."
The king was now so execrated that he dared not pass through Paris in going from his palace at Versailles to Compiègne. Fearing insult and a revolt of the people if he were seen in the metropolis, he had a road constructed which would enable him to avoid Paris. As beautiful female children were often seized to replenish his seraglio at the Parc aux Cerfs, the people received the impression that he indulged in baths of children's blood, that he might rejuvenate his exhausted frame. The king had become an object of horror.21
Such was the state of affairs when the guilty king was attacked by the small-pox, and died at Versailles in 1774, in the sixty-fourth year of his age and the fifty-ninth of his reign. Such in brief was the career of Louis XV. His reign was the consummation of all iniquity, and rendered the Revolution inevitable. The story of his life, revolting as it is, must be told; for it is essential to the understanding of the results which ensued. The whirlwind which was reaped was but the legitimate harvest of the wind which was sown. Truly does De Tocqueville say, "The Revolution will ever remain in darkness to those who do not look beyond it. It can only be comprehended by the light of the ages which preceded it. Without a clear view of society in the olden time, of its laws, its faults, its prejudices, its sufferings, its greatness, it is impossible to understand the conduct of the French during the sixty years which have followed its fall."
FOOTNOTES:
16. Galignani's Paris Guide.
17. History of French Revolution, by E.E. Crowe, vol. ii., p. 150.—Enc. Am.
18. The Duke of St. Simon, who was one of the council of the regency, in his admirable memoirs, gives the following sketch of Dubois: "Dubois was a little, thin, meagre man, with a polecat visage. All the vices, falsehood, avarice, licentiousness, ambition, and the meanest flattery contended in him for the mastery. He lied to such a degree as to deny his own actions when taken in the fact. In spite of his debauchery he was very industrious. His wealth was immense, and his revenue amounted to millions."
19. Women of France, p. 91.
20. Women of France, p. 170.
21. Historical View of the French Revolution, by J. Michelet, vol. i., p. 46.
Chapter IV.
Despotism and Its Fruits
Assumptions of the Aristocracy.—Molière.—Decay of the Nobility.—Decline of the Feudal System.—Difference between France and the United States.—Mortification of Men of Letters.—Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau.—Corruption of the Church.—Diderot.—The Encyclopedists.—Testimony of De Tocqueville.—Frederic II. of Prussia.—Two Classes of Opponents of Christianity.—Enormity of Taxation.—Misery of the People.—"Good old Times of the Monarchy!"
Having given a brief sketch of the character of Louis XV., let us now contemplate the condition of France during his long reign. It has been estimated that the privileged class in both Church and State consisted of but one hundred and fifty thousand. It was their doctrine, enforced by the most rigorous practice, that the remaining twenty-five millions of France were created but to administer to their luxury; that this was the function which Providence intended them to perform. Every office which could confer honor and emolument in the Church, the army, the State, or the Court, was filled by the members of an aristocracy who looked with undisguised contempt upon all those who were not high-born, however opulent or however distinguished for talents and literary culture. Louis XV., surrounded by courtesans and debauched courtiers, deemed it presumption in Voltaire to think of sitting at the same table with the king. "I can give pensions to Voltaire, Montesquieu, Fontinelle, and Maupertius," said the king, "but I can not dine and sup with these people."22
The courtiers of Louis XIV. manifested in the most offensive manner the mortification which they felt in being obliged to receive Molière, the most distinguished comic dramatist of France, to their table. No degree of genius could efface the ignominy of not being nobly born.23 But, notwithstanding the arrogance of the nobles, they, as a class, had fallen into contempt. All who could support a metropolitan establishment had abandoned their chateaux and repaired to Paris. The rural castle was shut up, silence reigned in its halls, and grass waved in its court-yard. The bailiff only was left behind to wring the last farthing from the starving tenantry. Many of the noble families were in decay. Their poverty rendered their pride only the more contemptible. Several of the provinces contained large numbers of these impoverished aristocratic families, who had gradually parted with their lands, and who were living in a state of very shabby gentility. They were too proud to work and too poor to live without working. Turgot testifies that in the Province of Limousin there were several thousand noble families, not fifteen of whom had an income of four thousand dollars a year.24 One of the crown officers wrote in 1750:
"The nobility of this section are of very high rank, but very poor, and as proud as they are poor. The contrast between their former and their present condition is humiliating. It is a very good plan to keep them poor, in order that they shall need our aid and serve our purposes. They have formed a society into which no one can obtain admission unless he can prove four quarterings. It is not incorporated by letters patent, but it is tolerated, as it meets but once a year and in the presence of the intendant. These noblemen hear mass, after which they return home, some on their Rosinantes, some on foot. You will enjoy this comical assembly."
In days of feudal grandeur the noble was indeed the lord and master of the peasantry. He was their government and their sole protector from violence. There was then reason for feudal service. But now the noble was a drone. He received, and yet gave nothing, absolutely nothing, in return. The peasant despised as well as hated him, and derisively called him the vulture.
The feudal system is adapted only to a state of semi-barbarism. It can no more survive popular intelligence than darkness can exist after the rising of the sun. When, in the progress of society, nobles cease to be useful and become only drones; when rich men, vulgar in character, can purchase titles of nobility, so that the nobles cease to be regarded as a peculiar and heaven-appointed race; when men from the masses, unennobled, acquire opulence, education, and that polish of manners which place them on an equality with titled men; when men of genius and letters, introduced into the saloons of the nobles, discover their own vast superiority to their ignorant, frivolous, and yet haughty entertainers; and when institutions of literature, science, and art create an aristocracy of scholarship where opulence, refinement, and the highest mental culture combine their charms, then an hereditary aristocracy, which has no support but its hereditary renown, must die. Its hour is tolled.
Such was the