France was an aggregate
of disjointed parts, held together by a meshwork of arbitrary power,
itself touched with decay. A disastrous blow was struck at the national
welfare when the Government of Louis XV. revived the odious persecution
of the Huguenots. The attempt to scour heresy out of France cost her the
most industrious and virtuous part of her population, and robbed her of
those most fit to resist the mocking scepticism and turbid passions that
burst out like a deluge with the Revolution.
Her manifold ills were summed up in the King. Since the Valois, she had
had no monarch so worthless. He did not want understanding, still less
the graces of person. In his youth the people called him the
"Well-beloved;" but by the middle of the century they so detested him
that he dared not pass through Paris, lest the mob should execrate him.
He had not the vigor of the true tyrant; but his langour, his hatred of
all effort, his profound selfishness, his listless disregard of public
duty, and his effeminate libertinism, mixed with superstitious devotion,
made him no less a national curse. Louis XIII. was equally unfit to
govern; but he gave the reins to the Great Cardinal. Louis XV. abandoned
them to a frivolous mistress, content that she should rule on condition
of amusing him. It was a hard task; yet Madame de Pompadour accomplished
it by methods infamous to him and to her. She gained and long kept the
power that she coveted: filled the Bastille with her enemies; made and
unmade ministers; appointed and removed generals.
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