Montcalm and Wolfe | Page 7

England on the eve of one
of the most formidable wars in which she was ever engaged.
Her rival across the Channel was drifting slowly and unconsciously
towards the cataclysm of the Revolution; yet the old monarchy, full of
the germs of decay, was still imposing and formidable. The House of
Bourbon held the three thrones of France, Spain, and Naples; and their
threatened union in a family compact was the terror of European
diplomacy. At home France was the foremost of the Continental
nations; and she boasted herself second only to Spain as a colonial
power. She disputed with England the mastery of India, owned the
islands of Bourbon and Mauritius, held important possessions in the
West Indies, and claimed all North America except Mexico and a strip
of sea-coast. Her navy was powerful, her army numerous, and well
appointed; but she lacked the great commanders of the last reign.
Soubise, Maillebois, Contades, Broglie, and Clermont were but weak
successors of Condé, Turenne, Vendôme, and Villars. Marshal
Richelieu was supreme in the arts of gallantry, and more famous for
conquests of love than of war. The best generals of Louis XV. were
foreigners. Lowendal sprang from the royal house of Denmark; and
Saxe, the best of all, was one of the three hundred and fifty-four
bastards of Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland.
He was now, 1750, dying at Chambord, his iron constitution ruined by
debaucheries.
The triumph of the Bourbon monarchy was complete. The government
had become one great machine of centralized administration, with a
king for its head; though a king who neither could nor would direct it.
All strife was over between the Crown and the nobles; feudalism was
robbed of its vitality, and left the mere image of its former self, with
nothing alive but its abuses, its caste privileges, its exactions, its pride
and vanity, its power to vex and oppress. In England, the nobility were
a living part of the nation, and if they had privileges, they paid for them
by constant service to the state; in France, they had no political life, and
were separated from the people by sharp lines of demarcation. From
warrior chiefs, they had changed to courtiers. Those of them who could

afford it, and many who could not, left their estates to the mercy of
stewards, and gathered at Versailles to revolve about the throne as
glittering satellites, paid in pomp, empty distinctions, or rich sinecures,
for the power they had lost. They ruined their vassals to support the
extravagance by which they ruined themselves. Such as stayed at home
were objects of pity and scorn. "Out of your Majesty's presence," said
one of them, "we are not only wretched, but ridiculous."
Versailles was like a vast and gorgeous theatre, where all were actors
and spectators at once; and all played their parts to perfection. Here
swarmed by thousands this silken nobility, whose ancestors rode cased
in iron. Pageant followed pageant. A picture of the time preserves for
us an evening in the great hall of the Château, where the King, with
piles of louis d'or before him, sits at a large oval green table, throwing
the dice, among princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses,
ambassadors, marshals of France, and a vast throng of courtiers, like an
animated bed of tulips; for men and women alike wear bright and
varied colors. Above are the frescos of Le Brun; around are walls of
sculptured and inlaid marbles, with mirrors that reflect the restless
splendors of the scene and the blaze of chandeliers, sparkling with
crystal pendants. Pomp, magnificence, profusion, were a business and a
duty at the Court. Versailles was a gulf into which the labor of France
poured its earnings; and it was never full.
Here the graces and charms were a political power. Women had
prodigious influence, and the two sexes were never more alike. Men
not only dressed in colors, but they wore patches and carried muffs.
The robust qualities of the old nobility still lingered among the exiles of
the provinces, while at Court they had melted into refinements tainted
with corruption. Yet if the butterflies of Versailles had lost virility, they
had not lost courage. They fought as gayly as they danced. In the halls
which they haunted of yore, turned now into a historical picture-gallery,
one sees them still, on the canvas of Lenfant, Lepaon, or Vernet, facing
death with careless gallantry, in their small three-cornered hats,
powdered perukes, embroidered coats, and lace ruffles. Their valets
served them with ices in the trenches, under the cannon of besieged
towns. A troop of actors formed part of the army-train of Marshal Saxe.

At night there was a comedy, a ballet, or a ball, and in the morning a
battle. Saxe, however,