CHAP. LI.] UNIVERSAL PERSECUTION OF THE JESUITS. 265

in all the Spanish possessions throughout the world should be arrested on the same day and hour, carried to the nearest port, and shipped off to the Roman States, as being the subjects of the Pope rather than of the King. Clement XIII., at the instigation of Ricci, declared that he would not receive them The Spanish vessels which arrived at Cività Vecchia were fired upon; they were repulsed at all the ports on the Italian coast; and the miserable exiles with whom they were filled, after enduring terrible hardships, were at length indebted to Charles III. for procuring them an asylum in Corsica. The Court of Rome ultimately relaxed in its severity, and received the Jesuits despatched from the East Indies and America; to each of whom the King of Spain allowed a small pittance of two pauls, or about a shilling a day.1

The decree of Charles III. was followed by another blow against the Jesuits in France. The measures taken against them in that country had not been rigorously carried out. They had found support in the differences of opinion respecting them which prevailed in the various parliaments, as well as the quarrels of those bodies with the Court, and they had still retained influence enough to cause fear and embarrassment to their opponents. But when the news of the proceedings against them in Spain arrived in France, the Parliament of Paris was encouraged to declare them public enemies, to command them to quit the Kingdom in a fortnight, and to supplicate the King, in conjunction with all Catholic Princes, to obtain from the Pope the entire suppression of the Society (May 9th, 1767). Choiseul, in conjunction with Pombal, urged the King of Spain to support them in this undertaking; but though Charles had acted so rigorously against the Jesuits in his own dominions, he could not at first persuade himself to aid in their entire destruction. While he was thus hesitating, the Pontiff, by an imprudent provocation, determined him to assist the views of the French and Portuguese Ministers. The Bourbon Sovereigns in Italy, the King of Naples, and the Duke of Parma, had followed the example of Spain, and expelled the Jesuits. Clement XIII. was impolitic enough to show his displeasure by attacking the weakest of these Sovereigns. He excommunicated the Duke of Parma, and declared him deprived of his principality as a rebellious vassal of the Church (January 20th, 1768). To avenge this insult to the House of

1 Respecting the Spanish Jesuits, see Viardot, Les Jésuites jugés par les rois, les évéques, et le pape, 1857.

266

CLEMENT XIV. SUPPRESSES THE JESUITS. [CHAP. LI. Bourbon, Charles III. urged the Kings of France and Naples to take vigorous steps against the Pope. Louis XV. responded to his appeal by seizing Avignon and the Venaissin, whilst the Neapolitans invaded Benevento. The movement against the Jesuits spread throughout Catholic Europe. They were expelled from Venice, Modena, and even from Bavaria, the focus of German Jesuitism. The pious scruples of Maria Theresa deterred her at present from proceeding to such extremities; although her son Joseph II., and her Minister Kaunitz, disciples of the French philosophy, would willingly have seen them adopted; but the Jesuits were deposed from the chairs of theology and philosophy in the Austrian dominions. At length an alarming proof of the influence still retained by them in Spain induced Charles III. to co-operate vigorously for their suppression. On St. Charles's day, when he showed himself on his balcony, the people having raised a unanimous cry for their recall, the Spanish Ambassador at Rome was instructed, in conjunction with those of France and Naples, to require from the Pope the abolition of the Society (January, 1769). This demand proved a death-blow to the aged Clement XIII., who died on the very eve of the day when the question was to come before the Consistory (February 3rd). The Jesuits moved heaven and earth to procure the election of a Pope favourable to their cause; but they missed their aim by two votes. The choice of the conclave fell on Ganganelli, a minor conventual, whose opinion on the subject was unknown. Ganganelli, who assumed the title of Clement XIV., was of quite a different character from his mediocre, rigid, and obstinate predecessor. He possessed considerable abilities, was enlightened and tolerant, and bore some resemblance to Benedict XIV., but had less vivacity and gentler manners. The Jesuit question was a terrible embarrassment to him. On one side he found himself menaced by the Bourbon Sovereigns; on the other, the obscure threats of the Jesuits filled him with the apprehension of poison. To conciliate the former, he revoked the Brief against the Duke of Parma, suppressed the famous bull In Coena Domini, and even wrote to the King of Spain (April, 1770), promising to abolish the Jesuits. That Society struggled with all the tenacity of despair, and scrupled not to invoke the aid even of heretical Powers, as England, the Czarina, and Frederick II. The fall of Choiseul filled them with hope; but Charles III. was now become even more implacable than he, and appealed to the Family Compact to urge on the French King. The last support of the

CHAP. LI.]

WRETCHED STATE OF FRANCE.

267 Jesuits gave way when Maria Theresa, at the instance of her son Joseph, at last consented to their abolition. Clement XIV. now found himself compelled to defer to the wishes of the allied Courts. On July 21st, 1773, he issued the bull Dominus ac Redemptor noster, for the suppression of the Society, in which he acknowledged that they had disturbed the Christian Commonwealth, and proclaimed the necessity for their disappearance. The houses of the Society still remaining were now shut up, and their General Ricci was imprisoned in the Castle of St. Angelo, where he died two years after. It was in Protestant countries alone that the Jesuits found any sympathy and defence. Frederick the Great especially, who considered their system of education to be useful, forbade the bull against them to be published in his dominions. But the Jesuits were destined to revive. Clement XIV. was rewarded for his compliance by the restoration of Avignon and the Venaissin, which, however, the Revolution was soon to reunite to France. On the other hand, this measure is thought to have cost him his life. In the Holy Week of 1774 he was suddenly seized with symptoms which appeared to indicate poison; and though he survived till September 22nd, he was subject to constant torments. All Rome ascribed his death to the aqua tofana; and such also was the opinion of Cardinal Bernis, the French Ambassador at Rome, as well as of Pius VI., Clement's successor. The Spanish and Neapolitan Ministers, on the other hand, attributed his malady to fear. But to return to the affairs of France.

2

After the dismissal of Choiseul, the government of that country was conducted by a sort of triumvirate, composed of the Chancellor Maupeou, the Abbé Terrai, who administered the finances, and the Duke d'Aiguillon, who was appointed Secretary for Foreign Affairs in June, 1771; while over all the infamous Du Barri reigned supreme. Nothing of importance occurred in the external relations of France during the remainder of Louis XV.'s reign. The only event of European interest was the partition of Poland, which country, as we have seen, D'Aiguillon abandoned to its fate. Meanwhile domestic maladministration was producing those evils and exciting those class-hatreds, which, though kept down for a time, exploded so fearfully in the Revolution.

1 See Bernis's Despatches, September 28th and October 26th, 1774, and October 28th, 1777, ap. Martin, Hist. de France, t. xvi. p. 222 note.

On the fall of the Jesuits, see St.

Priest, Suppression de la Société de Jésus; Theiner, Geschichte des Pontificats Clemens XIV.; Abbé Georges, Mém. pour servir à l'Histoire des évènemens de la fin du xviiième siècle.

268

PECULATIONS OF LOUIS XV.

[CHAP. LI.

Terrai,

The finances were every day growing worse and worse. to avert a total bankruptcy, resorted to a partial one by cheating the public creditors, plundering annuitants, and arbitrarily reducing the interest on Government debts. These measures, indeed, touched only the richer classes of society, but the arbitrary taxes which he imposed were felt by the people at large. The wide-spread misery and discontent were aggravated by dearth. Several bad harvests had succeeded one another; the scarcity became intolerable, although the exportation of corn had been prohibited, and frequent riots took place in the provinces. In this state of things the public hatred found an object in the King himself. The Parliament of Rouen openly charged Louis XV. with being a forestaller, nor could he satisfactorily refute the imputation. About the year 1767 a company had been established under the control of Government called the Société Malisset, with the professed object of keeping the price of corn at a certain level, and insuring a supply for Paris by buying up and storing grain in plentiful years in order to resell it in times of scarcity. The design, perhaps, may have been good; but a measure so easy of abuse and so liable to suspicion, was in the highest degree dangerous. Profligate, expensive, and avaricious, Louis XV. scrupled not to avail himself of the advantages of his situation to fill his private treasury at the expense of his subjects. He was accustomed to speculate in all kinds of securities, and when an Edict was in preparation by the Council which might depreciate the value of any of these, he withheld his signature till he had realized! In like manner he converted the Société Malisset into an instrument of private gain. Through the agency of Terrai, who bought up corn at low prices in Languedoc, where exportation had been prohibited, large quantities were sent to Jersey, through the ports of Brittany, which had been opened, in order to be reimported into France after prices should have been raised to a maximum by artificial methods. The King's participation in these nefarious transactions was notorious. The prices of grain throughout the Kingdom lay constantly on his writing table; nay, among the officers of finance, the name of a "Treasurer of grain on account of His Majesty" was inadvertently suffered to appear in the Royal Almanack for 1774. The Court endeavoured to divert the popular odium by accusing the Parliaments of causing the scarcity; the Parliaments retorted the charge on the Ministers; the people regarded them all as equally guilty, and ended by considering the upper classes as so many vampires leagued to

CHAP. LI.]

ACCESSION OF LOUIS XVI.

269 suck their blood. The Société Malisset obtained the name of the Pacte de Famine, under which it was destined to appear at the breaking out of the Revolution.1

The notoriously depraved and licentious character of the King, combined with this baseness, caused him to be contemned as well as hated. Already in his lifetime the people bestowed on his heir the title of Louis le Désiré, so low had Louis, once the bien Aimé, fallen in the popular estimation. The universal wish for his death was gratified May 10th, 1774. It was caused by the small-pox, caught from a scarcely marriageable girl, one of the victims of his lust; which, falling on a man of sixty-four with a constitution already contaminated by vice, proved fatal. He had reigned fifty-nine years, during which he had contrived totally to destroy the prestige of Royalty, created by the brilliant reigns of Henry IV. and Louis XIV.

He was succeeded by his grandson, Louis XVI., whose father the Dauphin had died in 1765. The new Monarch, as we have said, had married, in May, 1770, the Austrian Archduchess, Marie Antoinette, daughter of Maria Theresa. He was now in his twentieth year, and his character was yet undeveloped. It seemed to promise both good sense and good principles, unrecommended, however, by grace and dignity of manner, and accompanied with a want of energy and resolution which ultimately proved the chief cause of his ruin. He was fond of books, and still more of the natural sciences and mechanical arts. His first act was to send Madame du Barri to a convent; but, with his usual indecision, this severity was not sustained, and she was permitted to retire to her estate near Marli. The fall of the mistress was soon followed by that of the Ministers who had supported her. Maupeou, D'Aiguillon, and Terrai were succeeded by Maurepas, Vergennes, and Turgot. The last, who had distinguished himself as a political economist, after filling the office of Minister of Marine, was placed at the head of the finances.

Soon after his accession, Louis XVI., by the advice of Maurepas, re-established the Parliaments-one of the greatest mistakes, perhaps, of his reign. Turgot had opposed this measure. Louis's address to the Parliament of Paris was, however, very despotic, and he made several alterations in its constitution, especially by the suppression of the two chambers of requests.

1 The Provost de Beaumont, who had denounced the Société Malisset to the Parliament of Rouen, suddenly disappeared. On the celebrated 14th of July,

1790, he was discovered in a dungeon. Martin, t. xvi. p. 293 sq.: Vie privée de Louis XV. t. iv. p. 152.