with nameless outrages. Soldiers, sword in hand, headed by the priests, broke into the houses, overturned every thing in their search, committed brutal violence upon the parents, and, reckless of their lamentations and despair, seized the terrified children, especially the young girls, and forced them into the convents.
Fanaticism so cruel was revolting to the intelligence and to the general conscience of the age. Maddened priests could easily goad on a brutal and exasperated populace to any deeds of inhumanity, but intelligent men of all parties condemned such intolerance. It is, however, worthy of note that few of the philosophers of that day ventured to plead for religious toleration. They generally hated Christianity in all its forms, and were not at all disposed to shield one sect from the persecutions of another. Voltaire, however, was an exception. He had spent a year and a half in the Bastille on the charge of having written a libel against the government, which libel he did not write. When it was proved to the court that he did not write the libel he was liberated from prison and banished from France. Several years after this, Voltaire, having returned to France, offended a nobleman, the Chevalier de Rohan. The chevalier disdainfully sent his servant to chastise the poet. Voltaire, enraged by the degradation, sent a challenge to De Rohan. For the crime of challenging a noble he was again thrown into the Bastille. After six months he was released and again exiled. Soon after his Lettres Philosophiques were condemned by the Parliament to be burned, and an order was issued for his arrest. For many years he was compelled to live in concealment. He thus learned how to sympathize with the persecuted. In his masterly treatise upon toleration, and in his noble appeals for the family of the murdered Protestant, Jean Calas, he spoke in clarion tones which thrilled upon the ear of France. When Franklin in Paris called upon Voltaire, with his grandson, he said, "My son, fall upon your knees before this great man." The aged poet, then over eighty years of age, gave the boy his blessing, with the characteristic words, "God and freedom." The philosophy of Voltaire overturned the most despicable of despotisms. His want of religion established another despotism equally intolerable.
The miserable regent died in a fit in the apartment of his mistress in 1723. The young king was now fourteen years of age. He was a bashful boy, with no thought but for his own indulgence. When a child he was one day looking from the windows of the Tuileries into the garden, which was filled with a crowd.
"Look there, my king," said Villeroi, his tutor; "all these people belong to you. All that you see is your property; you are lord and master of it."
Louis XV. carried these principles into vigorous practice during his long reign of fifty-nine years. When fifteen years of age he married Maria, daughter of Stanislaus, the exiled King of Poland. Maria was not beautiful, but through a life of neglect and anguish she developed a character of remarkable loveliness and of true piety. There is but little to record of France during these inglorious years which is worthy of the name of history. The pen can only narrate a shameful tale of puerility, sin, and oppression. Weary and languid with worn-out excitements, the king at one time took a sudden freak for worsted-work, and the whole court was thrown into commotion as imitative nobles and ecclesiastics were busy in the saloons of Versailles with wool, needles, and canvas.
The king at one of his private suppers noticed a lady, Madame de Mailly, whose vivacity attracted him. Simply to torture the queen he took her for his favorite, and received her into the apartment from which he excluded his meek and virtuous wife. Maria could only weep and look to God for solace. Madame de Mailly had a sister, a bold, spirited girl, Mademoiselle de Nesle. She came to visit the court, and after vigorous efforts succeeded in supplanting her sister, and took her degrading place. She was suddenly cut off in her sins by death; but there was another sister of the same notorious family, Madame Tournelle, who endeavored to solace the king by throwing herself into his arms. The king received her, and she became his acknowledged favorite, and for some time maintained the position of sultana of the royal harem. Wherever she went a suite of court-ladies followed in her train. All were compelled to pay homage to the reigning favorite of the day, for all power was in her hands, and she was the dispenser of rewards and punishments. The king conferred upon this guilty woman, who was as cruel as she was guilty, the title of Duchess of Chateauroux. Madame de Tencin, one of the ladies of the court, in a confidential letter to Richelieu, written at this time, says:
"What happens in his kingdom seems to be no business of the king's. It is even said that he avoids taking any cognizance of what occurs, averring that it is better to know nothing than to learn unpleasant tidings. Unless God visibly interferes, it is physically impossible that the state should not fall to pieces."
Even Madame Chateauroux, herself one of the most corrupt members of that court of unparalleled corruption, remarked to a friend,
"I could not have believed all that I now see. If no remedy is administered to this state of things, there will, sooner or later, be a great overthrow."19
Though the Duchess of Chateauroux was the reigning favorite, she had another younger sister who was a member of the royal harem. The princess of the blood, Mademoiselle Valois, and the Princess of Conti were also in this infamous train. These revolting facts must be stated, for they are essential to the understanding of the French Revolution. Up to this time the king, of whom the people knew but little, was regarded with affection. They looked upon him as the only barrier to protect them from the nobles. Soon after this Madame Chateauroux was taken sick and died in remorse, crying bitterly for mercy, and promising, if her life could be spared, amendment and penance. She was so detested by the people that an armed escort conducted her remains to the grave to shield them from popular violence.
The king, for a time, was quite chagrined by the death of this woman, who had obtained a great control over him. While profligacy and boundless extravagance were thus rioting in the palace, bankruptcy was ruining merchants and artisans, and misery reigned in the huts of the peasants.
A citizen of Paris by the name of Poisson had a daughter of marvelous grace and beauty. Mademoiselle Poisson married a wealthy financier, M. Etoilles. She then, conscious of her beauty and of her unrivaled powers of fascination, formed the bold and guilty resolve to throw herself into the arms of the king. When the king was hunting in the forest of Senart she placed herself in his path, as if by accident, in an open barouche, dressed in a manner to shed the utmost possible lustre upon her charms. The voluptuous king fixed his eye upon her and soon sent for her to come to the palace of Versailles. The royal mandate was eagerly obeyed. She immediately engrossed the favor of the king, was established in the palace, and henceforth became the great power before which all France was constrained to bow. Her disconsolate husband, who had loved her passionately, entreated her to return to him, promising to forgive every thing. Scornfully she refused to turn her back upon the splendors of Versailles. Receiving from the king as the badge of her degradation the title of Marchioness of Pompadour, Jeannette Poisson was enthroned as the real monarch of France. She was a woman of vast versatility of talent, brilliant in conversation, and possessed unrivaled powers of fascination. For twenty years she held the king in perfect subjection to her sway. She never for one moment lost sight of her endeavor to please and to govern the monarch. "Sometimes she appeared before him clad as a peasant-girl, assuming all the simplicity and rustic grace of this character. She took with equal ease the appearance of a languishing Venus or the proud beauty of a Diana. To these disguises often succeeded the modest garb of a nun, when, with affected humility and downcast eyes, she came to meet the king."
Her power soon became unlimited and invincible, for her heart was of iron, and even her feminine hand could wield all the terrors of court banishment, confiscation, exile, and the Bastille. It is said that a witticism of Frederic II. of Prussia, at her expense, plunged France into all the horrors of the Seven Years' War. The most high-born ladies in the land were her waiting-women. Her steward was a knight of the order of St. Louis. When she rode out in her sedan-chair, the Chevalier d'Hénin, a member of one of the noblest families of the kingdom, walked respectfully by her side, with her cloak upon his arm, ready to spread it over her shoulder whenever she should alight.
She
