The Eve of the French Revolution | Page 7

the responsibility of
his great calling. He was not indolent, although heavy, and his courage,
which was sorely tested, was never broken. With these virtues he might

have made a good king, had he possessed firmness of will enough to
support a good minister, or to adhere to a good policy. But such
strength had not been given him. Totally incapable of standing by
himself, he leant successively, or simultaneously, on his aunt, his wife,
his ministers, his courtiers, as ready to change his policy as his adviser.
Yet it was part of his weakness to be unwilling to believe himself under
the guidance of any particular person; he set a high value on his own
authority, and was inordinately jealous of it. No one, therefore, could
acquire a permanent influence. Thus a well-meaning man became the
worst of sovereigns; for the first virtue of a master is consistency, and
no subordinate can follow out with intelligent zeal today a policy which
he knows may be subverted tomorrow.
The apologists of Louis XVI. are fond of speaking of him as "virtuous."
The adjective is singularly ill-chosen. His faults were of the will more
than of the understanding. To have a vague notion of what is right, to
desire it in a general way, and to lack the moral force to do it,--surely
this is the very opposite of virtue.
The French court, which was destined to have a very great influence on
the course of events in this reign and in the beginning of the French
Revolution, was composed of the people about the king's person. The
royal family and the members of the higher nobility were admitted into
the circle by right of birth, but a large place could be obtained only by
favor. It was the court that controlled most appointments, for no king
could know all applicants personally and intimately. The stream of
honor and emolument from the royal fountain-head was diverted, by
the ministers and courtiers, into their own channels. Louis XV had been
led by his mistresses; Louis XVI was turned about by the last person
who happened to speak to him. The courtiers, in their turn, were
swayed by their feelings, or their interests. They formed parties and
combinations, and intrigued for or against each other. They made
bargains, they gave and took bribes. In all these intrigues, bribes, and
bargains, the court ladies had a great share. They were as corrupt as the
men, and as frivolous. It is probable that in no government did women
ever exercise so great an influence.

The factions into which the court was divided tended to group
themselves round certain rich and influential families. Such were the
Noailles, an ambitious and powerful house, with which Lafayette was
connected by marriage; the Broglies, one of whom had held the thread
of the secret diplomacy which Louis XV. had carried on behind the
backs of his acknowledged ministers; the Polignacs, new people,
creatures of Queen Marie Antoinette; the Rohans, through the influence
of whose great name an unworthy member of the family was to rise to
high dignity in the church and the state, and then to cast a deep shadow
on the darkening popularity of that ill-starred princess. Such families as
these formed an upper class among nobles, and the members firmly
believed in their own prescriptive right to the best places. The poorer
nobility, on the other hand, saw with great jealousy the supremacy of
the court families. They insisted that there was and should be but one
order of nobility, all whose members were equal among
themselves.[Footnote: See among other places the Instructions of the
Nobility of Blois to the deputies, Archives parlementaires, ii. 385.]
The courtiers, on their side, thought themselves a different order of
beings from the rest of the nation. The ceremony of presentation was
the passport into their society, but by no means all who possessed this
formal title were held to belong to the inner circle. Women who came
to court but once a week, although of great family, were known as
"Sunday ladies." The true courtier lived always in the refulgent
presence of his sovereign.[Footnote: Campan, iii. 89.]
The court was considered a perfectly legitimate power, although much
hated at times, and bearing, very properly, a large share of the odium of
misgovernment. The idea of its legitimacy is impressed on the language
of diplomacy, and we still speak of the Court of St. James, the Court of
Vienna, as powers to be dealt with. Under a monarchy, people do not
always distinguish in their own minds between the good of the state
and the personal enjoyment of the monarch, nor is the doctrine that the
king exists for his people by any means fully recognized. When the
Count of Artois told