The princes of the blood, too, the Prince de Conde and the Duke de Bourbon, invited Paul and his archduchess to an entertainment at Chantilly, which far surpassed in splendor the display at Trianon. But the queen was willing, on such an occasion, to be eclipsed by her subjects. "The princes," she said, "might well give festivities of vast cost, because they defrayed the charges out of their private revenues; but the expenses of entertainments given by the king or by herself fell on the national treasury, of which they were bound to be the guardians in the interest of the poor tax-payers."
Not that, in all probability, Paul and his archduchess noticed the inferiority. Court festivities at St. Petersburg were as yet neither numerous nor magnificent, and they soon showed themselves so wearied with the round of gayety which had been forced upon them, that some of the diversions which had been projected at other royal palaces besides Versailles were given up to avoid distressing them.[11] The sight which pleased them most was the play, to which, at their own special request, the queen accompanied them, and where they were greatly struck by the magnificence of the theatre and every thing connected with the performance, as well as with the reception which the audience gave the queen. Much as they had admired what they had seen, it was her grace and kind solicitude for their gratification which made the greatest impression on them; and the archduchess kept up a correspondence with her during the rest of their travels, especially dwelling on the scenes which pleased her most in Germany, and on the persons she met who were known to and regarded by the queen.
Political affairs were at this time causing Marie Antoinette great anxiety. One of her most frequently expressed wishes had been that the French fleet should have an opportunity of engaging that of England in a pitched battle, when the judicious care which M. de Sartines had bestowed on the marine would be seen to bear its fruit. But when the battle did take place, the result was such as to confound instead of justifying her patriotic expectations. In April, the English Admiral Rodney inflicted on the Count de Grasse a crushing defeat off the coast of Jamaica. In September, the combined forces of France and Spain were beaten off with still heavier loss from the impregnable fortress of Gibraltar; and the only region in which a French admiral escaped disaster was the Indian Sea, where the Bailli de Suffrein, an officer of rare energy and ability, encountered the British admiral, Sir Edward Hughes, in a series of severe actions, and, except on one occasion in which he lost a few transports, never permitted his antagonist to claim any advantage over him; the single loss which he sustained in his first combat being more than counterbalanced by his success on land, where, by the aid of Hyder Ali's son, the celebrated Tippoo, be made himself master of Cuddalore; and then, dropping down to the Cingalese coast, recaptured Trincomalee, the conquest of which had been one of Hughes's most recent achievements.[12] The queen felt the reverses keenly. She even curtailed some of her own expenses in order to contribute to the building of new ships to replace those which had been lost; and she received M. de Suffrein, on his return from India at the conclusion of the war, with the most sincere and marked congratulations. She invited him to the palace, and, when he arrived, she caused Madame de Polignac to bring both her children into the room. "My children," said she, "and especially you, my son, know that this M. de Suffrein. We are all under the greatest obligations to him. Look well at him, and ever remember his name. It is one of the first that all my children must learn to pronounce, and one which they must never forgot.[13]"
She was acting up to her mother's example, than whom no sovereign had better known how to give their due honor to bravery and loyalty. Such a queen deserved to have faithful friends; and Suffrein was a man who, had his life been spared, might, like the Marquis de Bouille, have shown that even in France the feelings of chivalry and devotion to kings and ladies were not yet extinguished. But he died before either his country or his queen had again need of his services, or before he had any opportunity of proving by fresh achievements his gratitude to a sovereign who knew so well how to appreciate and to honor merit.
CHAPTER XVIII. Peace is re-established.-Embarrassments of the Ministry.-Distress of the Kingdom.-M. de Calonne becomes Finance Minister.-The Winter of 1783-'84 is very Severe.-The Queen devotes Large Sums to Charity.-Her Political Influence increases-Correspondence between the Emperor and her on European Politics.-The State of France.-The Baron de Breteuil.-Her Description of the Character of the King.
The conclusion of peace between France and England was one of the earliest events of the year 1783, but it brought no strength to the ministry; or, rather, it placed its weakness in a more conspicuous light. Maurepas had died at the end of 1781, and, since his death, the Count de Vergennes had been the chief adviser of the king; but his attention was almost exclusively directed to the conduct of the diplomacy of the kingdom, and to its foreign affairs, and he made no pretensions to financial knowledge. Unluckily the professed ministers of finance, Joly de Fleury and his successor, D'Ormesson, were as ignorant of that great subject as himself, and, within two years after Necker's retirement, their mismanagement had brought the kingdom to the very verge of bankruptcy. D'Ormesson was dismissed, and for many days it was anxiously deliberated in the palace by whom he should be replaced. Some proposed that Necker should he recalled, but the king had felt himself personally offended by some circumstances which had attended the resignation of that minister two years before. The queen inclined to favor the pretensions of Lomenie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse; not because he had any official experience, but because fifteen years before he had recommended the Abbe de Vermond to Maria Teresa; and the abbe, seeing in the present embarrassment an opportunity of repaying the obligation, now spoke highly to her of the archbishop's talents. But Madame de Polignac and her party persuaded her majesty to acquiesce in the appointment of M. de Calonne, a man who, like Turgot, had already distinguished himself as intendant of a province, though he had not inspired those who watched his career with as high an opinion of his uprightness as of his talents. He had also secured the support of the Count d'Artois by promising to pay his debts; and Louis himself was won to think well of him by the confidence which he expressed in his own capacity to grapple with the existing, or even with still greater difficulties.
Nor, indeed, had he been possessed of steadiness, prudence, and principle, was he very unfit for such a post at such a time. For he was very fertile in resources, and well-endowed with both physical and moral courage; but these faculties were combined with, were indeed the parents of, a mischievous defect. He had such reliance on his own ingenuity and ability to deal with each difficulty or danger as it should arise, that he was indifferent to precautions which might prevent it from arising. The spirit in which he took office was exemplified in one of his first speeches to the queen. Knowing that he was not the minister whom she would have preferred, he made it his especial business to win her confidence; and he had not been long installed in office when she expressed to him her wish that he would find means of accomplishing some object which she desired to promote. "Madame," was his courtly reply, "if it is possible, it is done already. If it is impossible, I will take care and manage it." But being very unscrupulous himself, he overshot his mark when he sought to propitiate her further by offering to represent as hers acts of charity which she had not performed. The winter of 1783 was one of unusual severity. The thermometer at Paris was, for some weeks, scarcely above zero; scarcity, with its inevitable companion, clearness of price, reduced the poor of the northern provinces, and especially of the capital and its neighborhood, to the verge of starvation. The king, queen, and princesses gave large sums from their privy purses for their relief; but as such supplies were manifestly inadequate, Louis ordered the minister to draw three millions of francs from the treasury, and to apply them for the alleviation of the universal distress. Calonne cheerfully received and executed the beneficent command. He was perhaps not sorry, at his first entrance on his duties, to show how easy it was for him to meet even an unforeseen demand of so heavy an amount; and he fancied he saw in it a means of ingratiating himself with Marie Antoinette. He proposed to her that he should pay one of the millions to her treasurer, that that officer might distribute it, in her name, as a gift from her own allowance; but Marie Antoinette disdained such unworthy artifice. She would have felt ashamed to receive praise or gratitude to which she was not entitled. She rejected the proposal, insisting that the king's gift should be attributed to himself alone, and expressing her intention to add to it by curtailing her personal expenditure, by abridging her entertainments so long as the distress should last, and by dedicating the sums usually appropriated to pleasure and festivity to the relief of those whose very existence seemed to depend on the aid which it was her duty and that of the king to furnish. For there was this especial characteristic in Marie Antoinette's charity, that it did not proceed solely from kindness of heart and tenderness of disposition, though these were never wanting, but also from a settled principle of duty, which, in her opinion, imposed upon sovereigns, as a primary obligation, the task of watching over the welfare of their subjects as persons intrusted by Providence to their care; and such a feeling was obviously more to be depended upon as a constant motive for action than the most vivid emotion of the moment, which, if easily excited, is not unfrequently as easily overpowered by some fresh object.