III. 1787. pute, the opposition to the King and Calonne daily CHAP. assumed a more determined character. Lomenie de Brienne, archbishop of Toulouse, took the lead as the head of the ecclesiastical body, and the Prince of Conti assumed the direction of the nobility who aimed at the overthrow of the finance minister. To such a length did the spirit of opposition to all his proposals proceed, that they contrived, indirectly, to defeat a proposal which he submitted to them for removing the whole interior custom-house duties on goods passing from province to province-a reform which had been advocated by Colbert and all the ablest ministers of France, and which went to abate a grievance which the Statesgeneral had formally complained of nearly two centuries before.* A proposal to abolish one of the most vexatious of the taxes, the gabelle, shared the same fate. Meanwhile the whole popular party, with Necker at their head, conceiving that the crisis would overthrow the finance minister, and lead to the convocation of the States-general, cordially joined the Notables, and a fierce war of pamphlets began against every project which Calonne introduced. At length the King, finding that the universal clamour against that minister rendered all attempts at an accommodation with the Notables hopeless, yielded to the storm and dismissed the April 7. minister. He took for his successor Lomenie de May 1. Brienne, who had been the leader of the coalition by which the former minister had been overthrown; imitating thus, already, the usages of a representative 1 Soul. vi. monarchy, where, on a change of ministry, the head 164, 168. of the new administration is taken from the leaders of 493, 566. the opposition.1+ * Calonne, in introducing this proposal to the Notables, said in a lofty spirit, alluding to this circumstance, "This, gentlemen, is our answer to the Statesgeneral of 1614."-DROZ, i. 494. The vehement controversy of Necker and Calonne, which followed the banishment of the one and the fall of the other, completed the public distrust in the solvency of the finances, and demonstrated the gross delusion practised Y VOL. I. Droz, i. CHAP. 1787. 80. Character bishop of Toulouse. It was not, however, without great reluctance, and from nothing but absolute inability to find another minister who could conduct the public affairs, that the King had recourse to the Archbishop of Toulouse. The immoraliof the Arch- ties and inconsistencies of that prelate's former life were well known to him, and Necker was suggested as the only man who was equal to the crisis. But Louis had been personally hurt by the retirement of the Swiss minister in 1781; his haughty self-sufficiency was disagreeable to him; and the Queen, urged by the Abbé Vermond, who, in this instance, for the first time departed from the cautious neutrality which he had hitherto observed, warmly supported the appointment of Brienne. Perhaps no person could have been found in the kingdom whose qualities were more dangerous to the monarch in this momentous crisis than those of the Archbishop of Toulouse.* His talents were great, especially in conversation with women -the quality of all others by which, in elevated and highly educated circles, distinction, often undeserved by solid abilities, is acquired. But inconsistency and want on the nation by the former's compte rendu. "Necker," said Calonne, "borrowed 440 millions during his ministry."-"He is wrong," rejoined Necker, "I borrowed 530 millions." This admission gave the coup-de-grace to the compte rendu; for who could credit that a minister who, according to that statement, had a surplus of 10,500,000 francs, would in five years have borrowed above 500 millions?-See DROZ, i. 506, and SOULAVIE, iv. 151. Etienne Charles Lomenie de Brienne was born at Paris in 1727; so that, when called to the office of prime minister, in 1787, he was already sixty years of age. Being destined to the ecclesiastical profession, he made himself remarkable, in 1750, at the age of twenty-four, by a thesis, containing unequivocal indications of talents, but, at the same time, many heretical and dangerous opinions. Having got over the scandal arising from this sally, he was admitted into priest's orders; but he soon became intimate with Condorcet, Dupont de Nemours, D'Alembert, the Abbé Morellet, and the rest of the freethinking philosophers, who had so prodigious an influence on public thought in the latter part of the reign of Louis XV. In 1760 he was appointed to a lucrative see, which, in February 1763, he exchanged for the archbishopric of Toulouse. There his administrative talents soon became manifest; he engaged actively in the temporal concerns of his diocese, and took a most beneficial interest in several projects relating to education, charity, and public utility. It was to him that Toulouse owed the Canal Caraman, and the cut which unites it to the Garonne. He was accused, however, of labouring underhand to subvert the monastic discipline in his diocese ; and the assemblies of the clergy, in 1772, 1775, and 1780, as well as the parliament of Paris, on 10th February III. 1787. of principle were his great defects. Ambitious, intriguing, CHAP. unscrupulous, he had at different periods of his life been intimately connected with classes of men the most opposite, but agreeing in the common selfishness by which they were actuated. In the assemblies of the clergy he had supported the most violent measures of persecution against the Protestants, and acquiesced in all the extreme views of the disciples of Loyola; in the fashionable coteries his irreligion had gone the length of atheism. Yet did he contrive, not only by his address, but by the peculiarity of his mind, to win the confidence of these very opposite classes of society. His character was a mixture of scepticism and jesuitry; without having lost any of the casuistry of the schools, he had, to the scandal of the church, thrown himself into the arms of the philosophers and infidels. His talents for administration, however, were considerable; he had taken an active part in many beneficial measures in the state of Languedoc, with which he was connected; his frequent correspondence with former ministers had gained for him the reputation of 1784, loudly denounced his innovations in this respect, which were deemed highly prejudicial to the church. In the midst of his innovations, however, he had a clear eye to his own interests; and while many abbeys were suppressed by his authority, he contrived to annex to his benefice and appropriate to himself some of not the least considerable of them. Meanwhile his reputation for talent in conversation rapidly extended; his elegant and easy manners, his generosity and beneficence, were largely extolled by a numerous body of friends who had shared in his munificence; and such was the celebrity he had acquired, that when the Notables were convoked he obtained a place in the bureau over which Monsieur, afterwards Louis XVIII., presided; and it was the lead which he took there, in combating the proposals of M. Calonne, which led to his elevation to the exalted situation of President of the Council, which was soon after followed by the appointment of his brother, the Count de Brienne, as minister at war. After his fall, in 1789, he was, by the influence of Louis XVI. and the Archbishop of Sens, made a cardinal. But his thirst for wealth pursued him even in that eminent station; he took the oaths to the Republic to preserve his archbishopric, and was obliged, in consequence, to resign his cardinal's hat. All these concessions, however, could not shield him from the persecution of the revolutionists, and he perished miserably and ignobly on the 16th of February 1794, in consequence of a fit of apoplexy, brought on by the blows of the soldiers who were quartered in his house to detain him prisoner, and the effects of a heavy supper which they forced him to eat with them in spite of his earnest remonstrances.-See Biographie Universelle, xxiv. 653, 658. III. 1787. CHAP. skill in business, and he had evinced great readiness in debate during the discussions wherein he bore a part in the Assembly of Notables. Yet was his administration to the last degree disastrous to France. Bold and fruitful in the conception of plans, he failed in steadiness and 123, Soul. resolution in their execution: he was easily diverted from De Stael, his purpose; and was more successful in bringing the Droz, i.511. crown into difficulties by his rashness than extricating it from them by his conduct.1 1 Lac. v. vi. 219, 236. i. 118, 122. 81. Brienne's dangerous speech on dismissing the Notables. May 25. He gave a decisive proof of these qualities in the very outset of his career. He was appointed president of the council on 1st May 1787. His first step was to submit to the Notables those states of the finances for which they had so strenuously contended; but, as might have been expected, this added to the confusion in which the public accounts were already involved; and, after much dispute whether the deficit was a hundred and thirty or a hundred and fifty millions, it was, by common consent, fixed at a hundred and forty millions, (£5,600,000,) as a sort of medium between the conflicting statements. The result was, that the public distrust in the stability of the finances was confirmed; and, as if to leave nothing undone to add to the agitation of the public mind, Brienne used these words, on closing the Assembly of the Notables, on the 25th May, in regard to the formation of the provincial assemblies "The Tiers Etat, assured that it alone shall possess as many voices as the clergy and noblesse together, will never fear that any separate interest should mislead the suffrages. It is just that that portion of his Majesty's subjects, so numerous, so interesting, so worthy of his protection, should receive, at least by the number of its voices, a compensation for the influence which riches, dignity, and birth, necessarily give to the other orders. Proceeding on these principles, his Majesty will direct that the suffrages shall be taken, not by order, but by head. The majority of orders does not always represent that real plurality of votes which constitutes the decisive test of : III. 1778. the opinions of every assembly." The president of the CHAP. parliament of Paris replied-" The Notables have beheld with horror the depth of the wound caused by a system of administration of which your parliament has long foreseen the consequences. The different plans proposed by your Majesty require the most mature consideration; respectful silence alone becomes us." Thus were the sittings of this famous assembly, which alone had the power to stop the progress of evil, closed, without the privileged orders having made one sacrifice of their unjust rights to the public good-with the disastrous state of the finances fully exposed to the public view—and with the principle of the Tiers Etat being entitled to an equal Weber, i. representation with the nobles and clergy in the provin- i. 518, 519. cial assemblies, and of the whole voting by head, openly 177. promulgated from the throne.1 Before the administration of Brienne, the immediate precursor of the Revolution, is more fully detailed, it is necessary to go back to a series of other causes, hardly less disastrous than the embarrassment of the finances, which at the same period assailed the government of Louis, and in their ultimate effects proved to the last degree ruinous to the monarchy. Lab. ii. 176, 82. Princess the Dau The skill of his physicians had at length overcome the physical obstacles which, in the earlier years of his Birth of the marriage, had deprived Louis XVI. of the prospect of Royal and issue; and, on the 19th December 1778, Marie Antoinette phin. Dec. gave birth to a daughter, named Marie Theresa Charlotte, 19, 1778. afterwards so famous in history as the Duchesse d'Angoulême. Such was the Queen's grief at the infant not proving a son, that it brought on a convulsive fit, which nearly proved fatal, and from which she was mainly saved by extraordinary coolness and presence of mind on the part of the King. On this occasion, as well as during her pregnancy, the Queen redoubled her usual munificent charities, all of which, so far from being imposed as a burden on the nation, were economised from her own |