Madame de Pompadour (32 page)

After so much gloom and bad news the Duc d’Aiguillon’s victory at St Cast was very welcome at Versailles. M. d’Aiguillon, a great friend and protégé of Madame de Pompadour, was the governor of Brittany; he had very much wanted to resign this post and go to the war and she had dissuaded him from doing so. In September 1758 he and his Breton volunteers, a sort of Home Guard he had created from such peasants, fishermen, squires and coast-guards as were not in the regular army, defeated a big English raid, a reconnaissance for invasion, at St Cast; three thousand Englishmen were killed and five hundred taken prisoner. D’Aiguillon’s enemies said that he was hiding in a mill during the engagement: ‘If our general did not cover himself with glory, at least he covered himself with flour.’ But d’Aiguillon was not a coward, whatever his other faults, and certainly the Marquise had no such suspicions.

‘We sang your Te Deum today,’ she wrote, ‘to my great satisfaction, always having predicted your success. Indeed how could it have been otherwise, with so much zeal, intelligence and so cool a head leading troops who only burned, like their commander, to avenge the King?’ ‘They say the mylords want to try again – I only hope it will be at the same cost to them.’ ‘I count on the good luck of Cavendish.’ Lord Frederick Cavendish, Colonel of the 34th Foot, was taken prisoner at St Cast. Madame de Pompadour always thereafter called d’Aiguillon ‘Cavendish’.

In 1758, too, Soubise took his revenge for Rosbach at the battles of Sandershausen and Lutzelberg, victories which, like that of
Hastenbeck,
were won by the unpromotable, because not noble, Chevert. In spite of these encouraging events Bernis went on bleating his despair. ‘I am on the rack.’ ‘My brain is full of blood which keeps rushing to my head.’ ‘If I were capable of dying, or going mad. I should have done both by now.’ ‘
Nous avons été trahis de partout
.’ The Marquise could hardly bear the sight of his depressing little face. She still believed in the Austrian alliance as much as ever and was determined to prosecute the war; in these circumstances it was no use keeping Bernis. Stainville, able, ambitious, young and energetic, a Lorrainer, heart and soul with the Empire by long family tradition, was the obvious man to step into his shoes. Stainville certainly thought so and did all he could to get into them; after a perusal of Bernis’ long-winded whines to the Vienna embassy, it is difficult to blame him. They must have been unbearably irritating, especially as Stainville knew quite well that the Empress was reading them too, and that her suspicions of her ally were mounting daily. ‘The French, it seems, are only invincible when they are fighting against me.’

It must be said that, if a politician who has once tasted power ever wishes to leave it, Bernis wished to. The whole thing had become too much for him. What he really wanted was to shelve the responsibility, which kept him awake at night, to surrender Foreign Affairs to somebody else, Stainville for choice, and to stay in the
Conseil
. At one moment it looked as if all this would be possible.

The King wrote: ‘I am very sorry, Monsieur l’Abbé-Comte, that my affairs have affected your health so that you can no longer bear the weight of the work. Nobody wants peace more than I do, but it must be a solid peace, not a dishonourable one. I would sacrifice my own interests for it, but not those of my friends.’ He went on to say that he would regretfully allow Bernis to hand over Foreign Affairs to Stainville and told him to advise Stainville and the Empress of this change. To sugar the pill of what was, in fact, his dismissal, a Cardinal’s hat was procured for Bernis by Stainville, who, although Benedict XIV was dead, still had many friends left in Rome. In 1758 Stainville received a dukedom, and he was known hence forward as the Duc de Choiseul. An announcement
appeared
in the
Gazette de France:
‘The health of Cardinal de Bernis, which has, for a long time now, been far from good, has made it impossible for him to continue in the heavy task of Foreign Minister. The King has accepted his resignation and has named the Duc de Choiseul as his successor. The King has kept a place for Cardinal de Bernis in his
Conseil
…’ Bernis received his biretta with great pomp and ceremony at the hands of the King, who was very nice to him and said he had never made a finer Cardinal. But both he and the Marquise were determined to get him out of the palace.

The new Cardinal paid visits of state to the Queen, the Dauphin and Dauphine, the Duc de Bourgogne, the Duc de Berry, the Comte de Provence and the Comte d’Artois, aged one; to Madame Infante and her daughter the Infanta Isabelle, to Mesdames Adélaïde, Sophie, Victoire and Louise. Then he left for his apartment in the Palais-Royal; it was six years before he saw Versailles again. The King wrote and told him to go and live in his château at Vic-sur-Aisne, near Soissons. No departing minister had ever been let down so lightly, but still there was no mistaking the fact that he had been dismissed and disgraced. Madame de Pompadour and Choiseul both felt rather guilty about him, and did what they could to lighten his exile, taking immediate steps to see that neither he nor his family should suffer financially. They wanted a bishopric for him, but this would have meant an interview with the King, who said it would embarrass him far too much and that he could not face it; but in 1764 they got his exile revoked, he came back to Versailles for a visit and was then made Archbishop of Albi. After the death of Madame de Pompadour, Choiseul sent him as Ambassador to Rome, where he died in the middle of the French Revolution.

Madame de Pompadour had been truly fond of the little Abbé and was very sorry for what had happened. She told Madame du Hausset that it was all the fault, in the first place, of the Bishop of Mirepoix who had stopped him from getting a pension. If he had had that, and the King had been quite prepared to give it to him, he would never have been made Ambassador but would have been master of the chapel at Versailles – far happier for him and she would not have had all these regrets. Now she was deprived of
the
pleasure, on which she had counted, of growing old in the company of this charming friend. She added that at the end of his first week in office, she had realized that he would not do.

The King was only too pleased to see the last of Bernis. He had never liked him and had been very much put off him by rumours, which had come to his ears, that the Abbé was having an affair with Madame Infante. Finally he had been unable to bear the sight of him since a certain incident at Versailles. Bernis, with an almost incredible lack of ordinary manners, took his gun, and went shooting in a little covert under the King’s very windows. The Comte de Noailles and Madame de Pompadour told him that he must never do such a thing again; too late, the King knew about it. For years afterwards when he walked in that place he used to say: ‘These are the pleasure grounds of Monsieur l’Abbé.’

THE DUC DE CHOISEUL WAS
a very different sort of man from the false and smiling Maurepas, the pompous d’Argenson and the Abbé, his dear little face puckered with worry. To begin with he was an aristocrat, with all the airs and manners of one, and the King felt more at his ease with him than with any other minister he had ever had. He would never have gone shooting under the King’s window. He was always in roistering spirits, had the capacity of explaining a complicated situation in a few pertinent words, did not go droning on about things, never hesitated nor havered and knew exactly what he thought should be done next. When the day’s work was over, he cast aside the cares of state and was ready to enjoy the pleasure of good company.

In looks Choiseul was very much like Sir Winston Churchill, with bright red hair, bright blue eyes, a turned-up nose and an expression of humorous pugnacity. A
dogue
(mastiff), said his contemporaries. His friends loved him and were to prove unusually faithful when, having governed France for twelve years, he was disgraced and exiled to Chanteloup, his country home. Women found him irresistible and to his wife he was as God.

The Duchesse de Choiseul was an heiress, grand-daughter of the enormously rich Crozat, nicknamed
le pauvre
to distinguish him from his even more enormously rich brother, Crozat-
le-riche
. Her elder sister, the Marquise de Gontaut, wife of Madame de Pompadour’s great friend, had been the mistress of Choiseul. She died giving birth to the future Duc de Lauzun who was very probably his son. When she knew that she was dying she made
her
twelve-year-old sister, Louise-Honorine, promise that she would marry Choiseul. Madame de Gontaut had seen that he was one of those people who need a great deal of money. Then she died, easy in her mind about her lover. By the time the marriage finally took place, however, the bride seemed to have become far less rich than she ought to have been, as the result of a law suit between the heirs of the brothers Crozat. Choiseul and Gontaut took the quarrel to the Court of Appeal. At this time Gontaut was in love with a certain Madame Rossignol, and he was for ever saying to Choiseul: ‘Do you think Madame Rossignol loves me?’ While the judge was reading the verdict, which would either make the brothers-in-law immensely rich, or leave them rather poor, Choiseul whispered to Gontaut: ‘Do you think Madame Rossignol loves you?’ and they then went off into such gales of giggles that they did not know which way the case had been decided. It was in their favour.

The Duchess, who is one of the amiable bores of history, fell madly in love with her husband and never looked at anybody else all her life. The only person who doubted the sincerity of her passion was Horace Walpole who said that she displayed it too much for him to believe in it. Choiseul himself was deeply devoted to her. ‘Her virtue,’ he wrote, ‘her charm, her feeling for me and mine for her have brought more happiness to our married life than any amount of money would have done.’ She had to put up with flagrant infidelity; at first it made her miserable, but in time she took the situation philosophically and made friends with her husband’s mistresses. M. de Choiseul had a sister whose lack of fortune had hitherto prevented her from marrying; at the ripe age of twenty-eight she was eating her heart out in the convent of Remiremont, a terrible fate for one who loved society above everything else. As soon as he was installed at Versailles he sent for this sister, and married her to the idiotic and vicious Duc de Gramont; they separated almost at once and the Duchess went to live with her brother – in every sense of the word according to the current gossip. Though not so pretty, and not nearly so nice as her sister-in-law she was more amusing and had more influence with Choiseul. The courtiers soon found this out, so that, while
Madame
de Choiseul was admired but neglected, Madame de Gramont was disliked but courted. Madame de Choiseul keenly resented the fact that even in her own house she was never now alone with her husband. Madame de Gramont made her feel a fool. One day Louise-Honorine was telling her guests at dinner that exile would hold no terrors for her, on the contrary, she would adore to live in some remote spot quite alone with Choiseul. ‘Yes, but what about him?’ said her horrid sister-in-law, from the other side of the table.

Madame de Pompadour loved the whole Choiseul family and could never have enough of them. She and the King supped with them three times a week; her own suppers altered very much in character, not more than eight guests of whom three were the Choiseuls. The Duchesse de Gramont amused the King and always sat next to him, Choiseul himself kept the whole table in a constant buzz of jollity and Madame de Choiseul was simply delicious.

The Marquise could feel at last that she and the King were being adequately supported in their work, and the comfort to her was all the greater because she was hardly ever well now; everything seemed to tire her. As the months went by she put more and more responsibility upon Choiseul. She kept the outward signs of power; the appointments, the rewards, the decorations and the commands were still distributed by her, the state papers still passed through her hands and the work was done in her room, but she ceased to be the moving spirit. Choiseul accumulated an unheard-of amount of ministries and honours; Foreign Affairs, War, the Navy, the Post Office, the governorship of Touraine, the Golden Fleece (he already had the Cordon Bleu) and Colonel-General of the Swiss Guard, a post always hitherto occupied by a Prince of the Blood: in four years all were his. He used to say he was like the coachman in
L’Avare
, putting his hand to every job and doing whatever was wanted.

If the war, conducted by him, did not go much better than before, at any rate it went no worse and the prophesied disasters and ruin did not occur. It was hardly his fault that he took over a state near to bankruptcy, the shadow of a navy and a demoralized army commanded by the most incompetent generals France has
ever
known. He made the necessary financial reforms in an incredibly short time and with a minimum of fuss. In 1758 the budget for Foreign Affairs was fifty-seven millions; out of this came the maintenance of the Bavarian, Wurtemburg and Palatinate armies, all paid by the King of France and very useless on the battlefield, and bribes, or what we should call
aid
to neutral countries. In 1759, the first year of Choiseul’s administration, the budget was twenty-four millions, by 1763 it was down to eleven millions. This diminution never lost the King a single ally. The Duke also introduced reforms at Versailles. All the hundreds of people who held sinecures at Court were obliged to render an account of how much they got, and for what reason. The King himself had already cut down his expenses in many ways; he now kept only 1,000 horses, had stopped all his private building, and had made economies even in his kitchen. The Marquise had sold most of her diamonds, which she always said was no sacrifice as she had never cared for jewels. They had both sent a huge quantity of silver to be melted down at the
Monnaie
and had induced the courtiers to do likewise. This served the double purpose of producing bullion and helping the factory at Sèvres, though it ruined the silversmiths. Every morning the King got a list of people who had done their duty by giving silver; they received one-quarter of the value in money and the rest in six per cent Government bonds. Louis XIV had done the same in order to pay for his wars and the sad result is that old French silver is rarer than that of any other country. The Marquise had sold Bellevue to the King and had furthermore given almost her whole capital so that Ecole Militaire could be finished. The days of extravagance were over.