to Louis XV., nor yet the young king’s marriage to Maria Leszczynska (1725)—a marriage negotiated by the marquise de Prie in order to bar the throne from the Orleans family—could alienate the sovereign from his old master. The irritation kept up by the agents of Philip V., incensed by this affront, and the discontent aroused by the institutions of the cinquantième and the militia, by the re-establishment of the feudal tax on Louis XV.’s joyful accession, and by the resumption of a persecution of the Protestants and the Jansenists which had apparently died out, were cleverly exploited by Fleury; and a last ill-timed attempt by the queen to separate the king from him brought about the fall of the duc de Bourbon, very opportunely for France, in June 1726.
From the hands of his unthinking pupil Fleury eventually received the supreme direction of affairs, which he retained for seventeen years. He was aged seventy-two when he thus obtained the power which had been his unmeasured though not ill-calculated ambition. Soft-spoken Cardinal Fleury, 1726–1743. and polite, crafty and suspicious, he was pacific by temperament and therefore allowed politics to slumber. His turn for economics made Orry,[1] the controller-general of finance, for long his essential partner. The latter laboured at re-establishing order in fiscal affairs; and various measures like the impost of the dixième upon all property save that of the clergy, together with the end of the corn famine, sufficed to restore a certain amount of well-being. Religious peace was more difficult to secure; in fact politico-religious quarrels dominated all the internal policy of the kingdom during forty years, and gradually compromised the royal authority. The Jesuits, returned to power in 1723 with the duc de Bourbon and in 1726 with Fleury, rekindled the old strife regarding the bull Unigenitus in opposition to the Gallicans and the Jansenists. The retractation imposed upon Cardinal de Noailles, and his replacement in the archbishopric of Paris by Vintimille, an unequivocal Molinist, excited among the populace a very violent agitation against the court of Rome and the Jesuits, the prelude to a united Fronde of the Sorbonne and the parlement. Fleury found no other remedy for this agitation—in which appeal was made even to miracles—than lits de justice and lettres de cachet; Jansenism remained a potent source of trouble within the heart of Catholicism.
This worn-out septuagenarian, who prized rest above everything, imported into foreign policy the same mania for economy and the same sloth in action. He naturally adopted the idea of reconciling Louis XIV.’s descendants, who had all been embroiled ever since the Polish Fleury’s foreign policy. marriage. He succeeded in this by playing very adroitly on the ambition of Elizabeth Farnese and her husband Philip V., who was to reign in France notwithstanding any renunciation that might have taken place. Despite the birth of a dauphin (September 1729), which cut short the Spanish intrigues, the reconciliation was a lasting one (treaty of Seville); it led to common action in Italy, and to the installation of Spanish royalties at Parma, Piacenza, and soon after at Naples. Fleury, supported by the English Hanoverian alliance, to which he sacrificed the French navy, obliged the emperor Charles VI. to sacrifice the trade of the Austrian Netherlands to the maritime powers and Central Italy to the Bourbons, in order to gain recognition for his Pragmatic Sanction. The question of the succession in France lay dormant until the end of the century, and Fleury thought he had definitely obtained peace in the treaty of Vienna (1731).
The war of the Polish succession proved him to have been
deceived. On the death of Augustus II. of Saxony, king of
Poland, Louis XV.’s father-in-law had been proclaimed king by
the Polish diet. This was an ephemeral success, ill-prepared
and obtained by taking a sudden advantage of national sentiment;
War of the Polish Succession
(1733–1738).
it was soon followed by a check, owing to a Russian and
German coalition and the baseness of Cardinal Fleury, who, in
order to avoid intervening, pretended to tremble before an
imaginary threat of reprisals on the part of England.
But Chauvelin, the keeper of the seals, supported by
public opinion, avenged on the Rhine and the Po the
unlucky heroism of the comte de Plélo at Dànzig,[2] the
vanished dream of the queen, the broken word of Louis
XV., and the treacherous abandonment of Poland. Fleury never
forgave him for this: Chauvelin had checkmated him with war;
he checkmated Chauvelin with peace, and hastened to replace
Marshals Berwick and Villars by diplomatists. The third
treaty of Vienna (1738), the reward of so much effort, would only
have claimed for France the little duchy of Bar, had not Chauvelin
forced Louis XV. to obtain Lorraine for his father-in-law—still
hoping for the reversion of the crown; but Fleury thus rendered
impossible any influence of the queen, and held Stanislaus at
his mercy. In order to avenge himself upon Chauvelin he
sacrificed him to the cabinets of Vienna and London, alarmed
at seeing him revive the national tradition in Italy.
Fleury hardly had time to breathe before a new conflagration broke out in the east. The Russian empress Anne and the emperor Charles VI. had planned to begin dismembering the Turkish empire. More fortunate than Plélo, Villeneuve, the French ambassador at Constantinople, The Eastern question. endeavoured to postpone this event, and was well supported; he revived the courage of the Turks and provided them with arms, thanks to the comte de Bonneval (q.v.), one of those adventurers of high renown whose influence in Europe during the first half of the eighteenth century is one of the most piquant features of that period. The peace of Belgrade (September 1739) was, by its renewal of the capitulations, a great material success for France, and a great moral victory by the rebuff to Austria and Russia.
France had become once more the arbiter of Europe, when the death of the emperor Charles VI. in 1740 opened up a new period of wars and misfortunes for Europe and for the pacific Fleury. Everyone had signed Charles VI.’s Pragmatic Sanction, proclaiming the succession-rights War of the Austrian Succession. of his daughter, the archduchess Maria Theresa; but on his death there was a general renunciation of signatures and an attempt to divide the heritage. The safety of the house of Austria depended on the attitude of France; for Austria could no longer harm her. Fleury’s inclination was not to misuse France’s traditional policy by exaggerating it, but to respect his sworn word; he dared not press his opinion, however, and yielded to the fiery impatience of young hot-heads like the two Belle-Isles, and of all those who, infatuated by Frederick II., felt sick of doing nothing at Versailles and were backed up by Louis XV.’s bellicose mistresses. He had to experience the repeated defections of Frederick II. in his own interests, and the precipitate retreat from Bohemia. He had to humble himself before Austria and the whole of Europe; and it was high time for Fleury, now fallen into second childhood, to vanish from the scene (January 1743).
Louis XV. was at last to become his own prime minister and to reign alone; but in reality he was more embarrassed than pleased by the responsibility incumbent upon him. He therefore retained the persons who had composed Fleury’s staff; though instead of being led by a single Personal rule of Louis XV. one of them, he fell into the hands of several, who disputed among themselves for the ascendancy: Maurepas, incomparable in little things, but neglectful of political affairs; D’Argenson, bold, and strongly attached to his work as minister
- ↑ Jean Orry Louis Orry de Fulvy (1703–1751), counsel to the parlement in 1723, intendant of finances in 1737, founded at Vincennes the manufactory of porcelain which was bought in 1750 by the farmers general and transferred to Sèvres.
- ↑ Louis Robert Hippolyte de Bréhan, comte de Plélo (1699–1734),
a Breton by birth, originally a soldier, was at the time of the siege
of Danzig French ambassador to Denmark. Enraged at the return
to Copenhagen, without having done anything, of the French force
sent to help Stanislaus, he himself led it back to Danzig and fell in an
attack on the Russians on the 27th of May 1734. Plélo was a poet
of considerable charm, and well-read both in science and literature.
See Marquis de Bréhan, Le Comte de Plélo (Nantes, 1874); R. Rathery, Le Comte de Plélo (Paris, 1876); and P. Boyé, Stanislaus Leszczynski et le troisième traité de Vienne (Paris, 1898).
