CHAP. III. 1775. the diminution of the supernumerary officers attached to every corps; but at the very moment he was doing this, he perpetuated the abuse by creating "colonels en second,' a certain mode of lowering the principal rank, and authorised the sale of a hundred supernumerary captaincies. Various salutary regulations for the military schools, and the mode of raising troops for the army, were made. But the good effect of the whole was destroyed by the new and fatal changes which he introduced into the discipline of the private soldiers. Enamoured of the severity of German discipline, unacquainted, from long absence, with the peculiarity of the French character, and yet sensible that the lax state of the army required a severe remedy to be applied to restore its efficiency, he introduced the German mode of punishing by strokes with the cane; and when the universal resistance of the army obliged him to abrogate that mode of chastisement, he substituted blows with the flat part of the sabre. This system, which continued for a considerable time to be enforced, gave hardly less dissatisfaction. Mutinies broke out in several regiments: the soldiers burst into tears, or sank down in swoons, on seeing their comrades 1 Soul. iii. subjected to such an indignity numbers committed 60, 67; suicide to avoid it; and the celebrated saying of a grena-101. dier, "Je n'aime du sabre que le tranchant," repeated xxxix. 585, from one end of France to the other, worked the indigna- main.) tion up to a perfect paroxysm.1 * existed with regard to captains, lieutenants, and all inferior grades. What peculiarly aggravated these evils was, that titles of rank alone gave a right to advancement; and these invidious and burdensome commissions were often purchased for money, or acquired by family influence, without the holder having ever seen a shot fired in the field, or even a regiment drilled on parade! Such are the abuses resulting from unchecked aristocracy-from the selfishness of human nature, when acting in a dominant noblesse. This History will show whether lesser evils grow up when a republic is established, and the selfishness of human nature comes to act in an unrestrained democracy. * In the regiment of Laval, a private was ordered to be punished with strokes of the sabre; he declared himself a gentleman before the punishment began, and therefore exempt from that indignity; his protest was disregarded, and he underwent the sentence. After it was over, he proved his descent, withdrew from the service, as he was then entitled to do, challenged his colonel, and ran him through the body.-SOULAVIE, iii. 63. Droz, i. Biog. Univ. (Saint Ger CHAP. 1776. 38. the Hotel des Invalides. Great discontents this excited Another of his changes, little less grating to the feelings of the military, was the breaking up of the noble establishment of the Hôtel des Invalides of Louis XIV., and Breaks up distributing the veterans in their several parishes. This system might have answered well in England, where the soldier still retained his domestic attachments; but it was to the last degree distasteful to the French soldiers, in the army. who regarded themselves as banished when sent to the provinces with a pension; and shed tears on being conveyed in carts past the statue of Louis XIV., the founder of their establishment, in the Place Louis XV.; exclaiming, "We have no longer a father." An attempt next made to abolish the central military school at Paris, and establish six in the provinces in its stead, had no better success; the scholars revolted at the idea of being subjected to monks or provincial pedagogues, and after this system had continued for a year the old one was restored. The innovations of St Germain, from being ill-directed, and at variance with the spirit of the nation, injured the cause of reform, and contributed to augment the growing discontent at Turgot's and Malesherbes' administration. He survived their ministry, however, and was not dismissed till September 1777; but his influence had previously ceased, and all parties were so inveterate against him, that all alike rejoiced in his fall. It was hard to say whether the courtiers who sighed for the restoration of the corps of guards which he had dismissed, or the soldiers who were indignant at the German punishments he had introduced, were most hostile to his measures. To such a length had the general discontent reached, that it had gone far to destroy the ancient loyalty of the 65, 67, 172, French character; and an officer high in command ini. 196, 197. formed Louis XVI., that at the time of his dismissal Biog. Univ. xxxix. 555. there were not two regiments in the army which could be relied on.1* Sept. 3, 1777. 1 Soul. iii. 188. Droz, * St Germain's character was perfectly portrayed by one circumstance. After he was made minister, he bought a demesne near Rainey; and the moment he acquired it he set about the demolition of the old chateau, gardens III. 1776. 39. Six Edicts. Turgot's power was brought to a test by the publication CHAP. of his famous edicts, which at once raised up such a storm as ultimately occasioned his downfall. The two most important of these were, one for the suppression of the Turgot's burden of corvées, or personal service on the roads, over Feb. 1776. the whole kingdom, and the formation of a tax to supply its place, borne by all landholders alike; the other the general suppression of Jurandes et Maîtrises, (wardenships and incorporations.) The actual importance of these changes, though in themselves by no means inconsiderable, was the least cause of the interest which they excited it was the introduction of a principle which rendered them so vehement an object of contention. The first tended to throw a burden, hitherto borne by the peasantry in kind, on the shoulders of all landed proprietors indiscriminately; the second abolished at once the whole privileges of corporations and crafts, and rendered young workman in every department of industry, who had just begun his labours, the equal in every legal privilege of the old craftsman who had spent his life in his vocation. The tendency of these changes was manifest : it was to remove the burden of taxes from the peasantry of the country and fix them on the land, and, abolishing all distinctions of rank among the working-classes in towns, to prepare the way for universal equality of privilege and suffrage. This was rendered still more manifest by a work published by Boucerf, a friend of Turgot's, and high in the administration of the finances, against the feudal rights, and recommending the experiment of the walls, and orchards, which had cost 100,000 crowns (£20,000), to make way for new constructions. Not one stone was standing on another, nor one tree left in six months; and in six more he himself was dismissed from the ministry, and died of chagrin.-SOULAVIE, iii. 79. * Turgot's six edicts were as follows:-1. For the suppression of the Caisse de Poissy; 2. For the suppression of the duties on grain in the markets; 3. For the diminution of the duties on the markets; 4. For the suppression of all charges on the harbours; 5. For the suppression of statutes of apprenticeship and incorporations; 6. For the abolition of corvées, and the imposition of a general land-tax in their room.-SOULAVIE, iii. 65. VOL. I. T III. 1776. CHAP. their abolition on the domains of the crown,* which the parliament of Paris, on the motion of a young counsellor destined to future celebrity, d'Espréménil, ordered to be publicly burned. Such was their indignation against this work, that it was with the greatest difficulty that they could be prevented from ordering a prosecution against its author; and d'Espréménil's motion to serve an indictment against him was only got quit of by the side-wind of an adjournment; but it still hung over his head when the Revolution broke out in 1789.1 1 Droz, i. 200, 202. Soul. iii. 85, 87. 40. Universal combination got to resist the Six Edicts. It is surprising how quick-sighted men are, when their interests are, however remotely, concerned. It was hard against Tur- to say whether the noblesse and parliaments, who beheld, or supposed they beheld, their feudal rights vanishing into air under the magic wand of the comptroller-general, or the merchants and tradesmen, who were threatened with an equality of privileges being conferred on their workmen, were most indignant at the proposed changes. The noblesse exclaimed, that as they were now compelled to contribute to the roads, the next thing would be, that the King would force them to labour at them, like the peasants, with their own hands. The merchants and manufacturers loudly protested against their workmen being raised to a level with themselves, and their birthright, or the fruit of their toil, being torn from them by novices in the crafts in which they had grown gray. The clergy, albeit not yet threatened in their influence or possessions, took the alarm at the inroad attempted on the exclusive privileges of the noblesse, and, joining the * Soul. iii. general cry, declared that Turgot and Malesherbes had made a philosopher and an infidel of the King.2 The farmers of the revenue, the financiers, and the whole xxxix. 81, tribes of speculators who fattened on the public taxes, swelled the general discontent, and decried a system which they foresaw would ere long lay the axe to the root 84, 91. 82, (Tur got.) * Sur les Inconvenances des Droits Féodaux. Par BOUCERF, premier commis des finances. January 1776. Following the current of public CHAP. III. 1776. March 8, of their usurious gains.* opinion, which was entirely in unison with its own aristocratic predilections, the parliament of Paris registered the first edict, regarding the caisse of Paris, which was of no March 12. importance, and refused to ratify the others. Turgot, determined not to be defeated, caused the King to hold a lit de justice, and they were registered by force. 41. ance of the contest with the parlia ment, which occasions his fall. Thus was exhibited, for the first time in Europe, probably in the world, the extraordinary spectacle of the Continupowers of a despotic government being exerted to force democratic reforms, partly salutary, partly perilous, on an unwilling country. Subsequent times have afforded more than one example of a similar prodigy; but it may well be imagined what a sensation it excited when it first occurred. Well might the Philosophers exclaim, that they had turned despotism by its source, and got into the redoubt by its gorge: property beheld itself assailed in the quarter where no danger had hitherto been anticipated, and where it was without defence. The parliament and privileged bodies, however, were not discouraged. They prolonged their debates during several nights successively; thundered forth eloquent and energetic protests against the threatened invasion, without compensation, of private property; and ultimately succeeded in raising such a ferment * One of them said with curious naïveté, "Pourquoi changer? nous sommes si bien."-DRoz, i. 206. "One is tempted to believe," said they in their protest, "that there exists in the state a secret party, an unknown agent, who, by internal throes, seeks to overturn its foundations-like those volcanoes which, preceded by successive subterraneous sounds and earthquakes, subsequently cover all that surrounds them with a burning torrent of ruins, of cinders and lava, which is vomited forth from the entrails of the earth. Every people have their own manners, laws, customs, and usages. Institutions form the political system. To subvert that order is to shake the foundations of the government which all nations have adopted. Among every people laws are founded on their disposition, their character, their opinions. Every legislator should, in the first instance, consult the genius of the people whom he proposes to ameliorate. By what fatality has it happened that our writers and legislators at present make it their object to combat every thing to destroy, to overturn every thing? The edifice of our ordinances, based on the spirit of the nation, accommodated to it, the work of so many ages, the fruit of the prudence of sovereigns, of the wisdom of the most enlightened ministers, of the experience of the most |