fender recalled. But the comte stood firm. | or responsibilities than they had reckoned "Take care," he wrote to his minister, upon. Fortune so far favored him, that "that there is no yielding. These people he was enabled to acquire a great accesare cowards. When one shows one's teeth, they are all submission; when one deals gently with them, they believe it is from fear." The king, whose pride was wounded by the want of consideration shown to his representative, thought him right, and the minister did not venture beyond a slight reprimand. The manner in which the comte held his own against his official superior, as well as against the court of Saxony, inspired his Polish friends with a degree of confidence they had long ceased to put in any representative of France, and he left no stone unturned to improve his opportunities. "Tenez bonne table et soignez les femmes," was the sum of Napoleon's instructions to the Abbé de Pradt, when it was an object to conciliate the Poles. The comte took this maxim for his guide. His pleasant and popular manners, the inexhaustible gaiety of his conversation, and the loyalty of his character, daily added personal friends to his political supporters. He was very much liked, even by women, and these the youngest and handsomest, notwithstanding the strictness of his morals- -a subject on which he was frequently rallied. The charming Princess Lubomirska, Palatine of Lublin, and daughter of Count Brühl; and the Countess Minsech, who was married to one of the marshals of the palace, kept up a coquettish correspondence with him. "Missionaries of this kind," said he, "are very good hands at making proselytes." His relations extended even beyond Poland. Prince de Conti had put him in communication with the envoys of France at Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Constantinople, all, more or less, initiated into his views. The petty sovereigns of the riverine states on the Black Sea and the Danube, the khans of the Crimea and of Tartary, who were always looking to Warsaw for defence against the menacing ambition of Russia, addressed themselves to him as to their natural protector. His correspondence was so numerous and so active that four secretaries were constantly occupied in transcribing or deciphering his letters, and he frequently dic tated for sixteen or seventeen hours consecutively. In a word, he had rapidly become, what he had wished to be, the soul of a great party, capable of and impatient for action. All this time he was sorely perplexed by the reflection, that he had led the Polish patriots to expect far more than he was able to perform, and that he was liable to be thrown over at any moment by his employers if they found or thought themselves committed by him to greater risks sion of strength by the judicious outlay of a sum which did not exceed the limited resources at his command. A dispute, in which the court and all the great nobles were involved, had arisen touching the possession of the Ostrog estates, the ex tent and importance of which may be estimated from the fact that the holder was bound to entertain at his own cost six hundred cavaliers always ready to fight against the Turks. The family of Ostrog was extinct in the direct line, and the provisional administration of the estates had been granted to a family of collaterals (the Tangazkos) till a rightful claimant should appear ready to assume the burthen with the property. It remained so long in this family that the last of them was emboldened to treat it as his own and sold the reversion to the Czartoryskis for a large sum of ready money. The transaction was outrageous in its defiance of law and right. It was too much for even Polish opinion, which usually laid little stress on legal or constitutional observances. The enormous accession of wealth and influence to the Czartoryskis, already danger ously strong, was an obvious cause of alarm; and the patriots, headed by Count Branicki, resolved to prevent the transfer at all hazards, even by an appeal to force. They applied to the comte for pecuniary assistance, naming sixty thousand ducats, as well as the open support of France. Here was a dilemma. Where was he to get sixty thousand ducats? How was he to induce the king to throw off his reserve and declare openly for either party? In reply to his request for instructions, his minister told him that all his endeavors must be directed to throw oil on the troubled waters, and that he must on no account transgress the strictest limits of neutrality. The Prince de Conti wrote to appeal to arms, the king would be that, if the Czartoryskis should be the first disposed to aid the patriots with money. "These instructions," the prince added, are very prudent, and they put you more at ease than any you have yet received." He was by no means at his ease, when a gleam of light and hope broke upon him from an unexpected quarter. The public indignation excited by the sale was shared by King Augustus, who, besides regarding it as a palpable infringement of the rights of the crown, was not disposed to view the further aggrandizement of his haughtiest vassals with complacency. The displeasure of the king and his minis- | At the New Year's festivities at Dresden ter was indisputably genuine, and when they all the princesses contended for the honor reached Warsaw, and had evidence of the of dancing with the comte, and the electoral state of public opinion, which was adverse to princess, in particular, asked for an alle this transaction, they gave utterance to their mande, in addition to the_contredanse sentiments without reserve. Count Brühl said openly, in the presence of the grand-general, which was "of etiquette." The fame of that since the actual administrator of the Os- the triumph of France at Warsaw spread trog estate did not choose to keep the man- to foreign courts, and was loudly echoed agement of it, the king would do well to there. The events that are taking place resume his rights, and appoint new adminis- where you are," wrote the Marquis d'Autrators. This was repeated to Count de beterre, ambassador of France, from Broglie by Count Branicki, and they both re- Vienna, "attract the attention of everygarded it as a hint which ought not to be body. It is quite clear that the Russian allowed to pass unobserved. party is beaten in Poland." The king of Prussia also wrote to his ambassador at Paris to express his gratification at the turn affairs had taken: "It is in part to the firmness of the grand-general that this good fortune is due; but at bottom the wise and intelligent conduct of Count de Broglie has contributed most largely to it." Moreover, they both knew by what means the Saxon minister was to be confirmed in this mood of mind, and it was immediately arranged between them that ten thousand ducats should be offered him, on condition that the Czartoryski purchase was set aside. The bribe was accepted, Count Brühl declaring that his royal master's mind was already made up; and, five days after the payment of the money, it was announced that new administrators of the Ostrog estates had been chosen from amongst the patriots. This was a surprise to everybody; but to the Czartoryskis, and especially to the diplomatists of their party, it was a thunderbolt. Just an hour before the announcement was made, the English minister, suddenly apprised of the fact, had made a wager of one hundred ducats that the thing was impossible, that the king would never venture to do it. As for the Russian minister, he was literally stupefied. The Prince de Conti was far from shar ing in the general satisfaction. The conjunction of the patriots with the house of Saxony boded him no good, as the success of his future candidature mainly depended on the unpopularity and isolation of that house. The closer the friendship between the reigning family and France, the more difficult for France to set up or support a rival. The prince intimated his dissatisfation to the comte, who, instead of reassuring him, proceeded to unfold a grand scheme of policy which was to change the face of Europe, with the trifing drawback of treating his secret employer's pretensions as of no account. Saxony, sub Comte de Broglie came out of this redoubt-sidized by France, and co-operating with able pass without striking a blow, and nevertheless with all the honors of war; for the patriots, enchanted by their unexpected stroke of fortune, lavished gratitude for it upon him, and praised his cleverness up to the skies. The court of Saxony, embroiled all of a sudden with its habitual supporters, and obliged to change its front on the moment, had recourse to him for advice in the execution of this manœuvre, so as to incur as little unpleasantness and humiliation as possible. Thus he had become the arbiter of the situation, and fully master of that ground which had been so slippery on the eve. There was no cloud anywhere in his sky, neither at Dresden, where he might openly patronize his friends henceforth nor at Versailles, where the favor of the court of Saxony would speedily lull the suspicion of the dauphiness and the minister. ; It was formally notified to him from Versailles that "his Majesty's Council had passed a fitting eulogium upon the prudent course he had taken," and the rank of a general officer in the French service was conferred at his request on Mokranowski. Poland, was to present an insuperable barrier to Russia on one side, whilst Turkey and the Danubian states were to assail her on the other. Denmark was to join; and the national party in Poland was to lend effective aid in promoting the grand aim of the combination, which was "to thrust the successors of Peter the Great back into their deserts." Prussia was to be utilized in seizing Hanover and keeping England in check. France would then have only Austria on her hands, with whom she might make short work with the aid of the smaller states of south Germany, already enlisted in the cause. "Such," gravely and seriously remarks the duc, was the plan, as grandly as simply conceived, that a young soldier, shot into diplomacy at thirty-two, unaided, in the centre of a lost land, by the solitary labor of his vivacious intelligence had been able to form. In his hands a vulgar intrigue was metamorphosed into a genuine conception of high policy." The prince, it is 66 added, strongly objected to this scheme, but M. Martin gives him credit for one which in all essential features is the same. His personal qualities also are placed in a different light: The son of the despised Conti had passed through a youth more than stormy: traits of brutal and cruel debauchery had seemed to announce another Comte de Charolais; but age had operated an unhoped-for effect in him; an enlightened and honorable ambition had tempered this savage impetuosity, and he had conceived a system of foreign policy which adopted the sound national traditions, and which would have restored the French preponderance on the Continent. Preserve the spirit of the Treaty of Westphalia in Germany. unite by a perpetual treaty Turkey, Poland, Sweden, and Prussia, without the mediation but with the accession of France - separate thus, by a chain of hostile states, Austria and Russia, those dangerous allies, and place a barrier from the pole to the Archipelago between Europe and Russia, which would be thrown back upon her deserts this was certainly not the conception of a vulgar mind. Poland was the pivot of this system, which was opposed to that of the Marquis d'Argenson only on one point, namely, that Conti meant to take for himself in Poland the part which D'Argenson destined to the house of Saxony. The end was the same: the means differed.† One thing is clear. No one could infer from the prince's uniform language to the comte that he had anything in view besides his own personal interests. "The treaty," he writes, "of which you speak to me, would be expensive, useless, and injurious to the secret affair." It was regarded in a totally different light by the comte's open and official employers at Versailles, who eagerly caught at the opportunity of detaching Saxony from England, and he was instructed to take steps at once for ascertaining the feasibility of his scheme. Here, again, the difficulty of serving two masters pressed upon him more heavily than ever, and as the best way of escaping from the dilemma, at all events of gaining time, he requested leave of absence under the pretext of ill-health, alleging as his real reason to the prince the necessity of oral communication: "It may happen that when I shall have the honor of conversing Serene Highness on this subject you may change your opinion, or, if not you can place me in a position to evade with your It was the Comte de Charolais who shot a tiler on the roof of a house for the pleasure of seing him roll off. Louis XV. pardoned him, saying, "Understand me well. I will likewise pardon any one who shoots you." † Martin, Histoire de France, vol. xv., p. 449. the orders of the minister without risk." His diplomatic position was entirely owing to the prince, yet the duc indulges in a speculation on his motives and conduct on this occasion in apparent unconsciousness that his honor and loyalty are at stake. I am by no means sure that in thus deserting the negotiation midway, to go and breathe the air of France, it was the comte's intention to arrange with Prince de Conti in what manner he might disobey the orders which he had himself solicited from the minister. strongly tempted to believe that his design was quite an opposite one, and that he proposed to elicit from the minister an express and precise order by which he would be authorized to act against the prince. I am The comte on his return was in open, frequent, and familiar communication with the ministers, whilst he and the prince only met at rare intervals, and in the presence of others. "The consequence of this intimacy on the one side and restraint on the other was, that at the end of three months the comte set out again for Dresden as the bearer of the draft of a treaty to be proposed to the court of Saxony, with orders to urge its acceptance by every means; and that Prince de Conti, not apprised of the treaty until the last moment, could raise only timid and querulous objec tions to it." This draft is described as his political plan in its entirety. In consideration of an annual subsidy of two millions of francs, Augustus was to bind himself, as king of Poland and elector of Saxony, to act in complete concert, offensively and defensively, with France. What would have been the fate of this convention, which thus placed nearly half the northern continent at the discretion of France? Had not Count de Broglie presumed too far on his ascendency in promising to make so recent an ally accept such strict conditions? If he had succeeded, what would have become of the secret affair, and how could he have refused to such accommodating friends the promise of assuring the inheritance of their throne to their family? These are all questions which it is impossible to answer, for he had hardly had time to communicate his proposal to the court of Saxony, and the Council of State were still discussing its acceptance, when an unexpected event changed the face meditated one and was about to make more of Europe. Another treaty anticipated the noise in the world. The means by which this event was brought about must sound startling even to those who have duly reflected on Oxenstiern's world-wide maxim, or have even come to regard public morality as a myth. | the duc is not satisfied with the popular Under the Restoration Béranger was pros- explanation of the affair, and plausibly ecuted for his "Songs," and particular stress was laid by the advocate-general on one entitled "Le Bon Dieu," with the refrain or burthen, referring to the crowned heads of the epoch: Si c'est par moi qu'ils règnent de la sorte, contends that an undue share of the responsibility has been thrown upon Madame de Pompadour. Although he does not deny that she had a good deal to do with bringing about the alliance between France and Austria, he contends that Frederic's treaty with England was not provoked by the refusal, instigated by her, of any prior overtures from him to France: that, on the contrary, the overtures came from France, and were insultingly declined by Frederic. The Duc de Nivernais, who stood high in the good graces of the lady, was sent to Berlin in great pomp, with the ostensible mission of renewing the existing treaties, and securing the co-operation of Prussia in the war with England. He was defended by Dupin, who argued that, allowing for poetic license of expression, there was neither impiety nor irreverence in declaring that bad rulers, although parts of the inscrutable designs of Providence, were not special objects of divine sanction or support. Then, after an eloquent sketch (paraphrased from Milton) of the kingdoms of the world as shown by Satan from the high mountain, he wound up: "Assuredly, at seeing the world thus Frederic preferred to anticipate the arrival governed, our blessed Saviour, the harbin- of the ambassador, so that he should find the ger of peace ond good-will to men, might It is even said that he seasoned the communiEnglish treaty concluded, signed, and sealed. have exclaimed that it was not by him, cation with an epigrammatic hit in the worst nor by his heavenly Father, that nations possible taste. The Duke de Nivernais was were governed de la sorte." It would be not only a great noble; he was also a literary difficult to name a period at which this amateur, and the author of some writings of train of reflection would have been more such taste and merit that they had procured natural or more appropriate than the year him a seat in the French Academy. At his immediately preceding the Seven Years' first audience, Frederic made him recite some War, when the instruments of destiny of his verses, and then said, with a laugh, "I were a king, undeniably great, who will show you presently a piece of my composlaughed at principle, and three women famous treaty, which was thus rudely thrust ing." This " piece' was no other than the actuated by the essentially feminine mo- almost into the face of the envoy extraorditives of caprice, wounded vanity, vindic-nary, acknowledged by common consent to be tiveness, and spite. Elizabeth, the Mes- the most finished gentleman of his country salina of the north, was exasperated by and his time. Frederic's sarcasms at her irregularities. Maria Theresa was burning to recover Silesia, and revenge the manifold wrongs she had endured at his hands. Madame de Pompadour was also nettled to the quick by his openly expressed contempt and cynical jests; but what won her over to the league, and with her France, was the adroit flattery of the proud daughter of the Hapsburgs, who stooped so low as to address a lettter, beginning Ma cousine, to the low-born mistress, née Poisson. The new combination was pretty nearly the reverse of the one planned by the comte. Russia, instead of being thrust back into her deserts, had all central Europe laid open to her; and Prussia was ranged on the side of England, instead of Co-operating with France. It is admitted 1 on all hands that the turning-point was the treaty of January 18, 1756, between Prus sia and England. It was this which disconcerted all the comte's calculations, and exploded like a bombshell in the political circles of Dresden and Versailles. But The comte was at Dresden, about (as he fancied) to put the finishing stroke to his grand project, when, what he at once felt to be its death-blow, the treaty between Prussia and England, was made known. Although unprepared for the shock, he bore it with exemplary calmness. To the Duc de Nivernais, still at Berlin, he wrote (Feb. 4, 1756): “If I am the only person grieved by it, though I carefully conceal my feelings, I am not the only one who feels the importance of the event." The ambassador replied: "I see that your patriotism would have been as much astounded as my own if you had arrived here on the 12th of January, whilst the said convention was being signed in London on the 16th. I think the best plan is to say nothing, and that is the course I adopt. There are things which must be left to speak for themselves." These things speedily spoke for themselves in language that could be neither mistaken nor suppressed. Count Bra nicki, and all the other principal actors he had been training, threw up their parts, and he received orders from Paris to suspend all action, and resume the attitude of a mere looker-on. Thus, two representatives of the secret diplomacy were sent a thousand miles from France into neighboring and closely united countries, to work in directly opposite senses the one to excite anti-Russian passions, the other to propitiate the Russian sovereign; Thus vanished in a day the result of four the former to prepare the mine, the latter the years of toil. The count was furious, but not countermine, until the inevitable day should disheartened. On the contrary, plan after arrive when the two subterranean toilers must plan suggested itself to his eager intellect, and end by meeting face to face. We may conhe at length evolved a design, which he sub-ceive that Prince de Conti would be embar mitted to the king at the same time by the official and by the secret channel, and which he confided to M. de Rouillé (the minister) at the same time as to the Prince de Conti. rassed when that critical moment should have arrived, but the imagination loses itself in trying to picture what Louis Quinze could have proposed to himself by crossing the threads of his plots until the skein had become too tanHis new plan was an alliance with Aus-gled to be unravelled by any human hand. tria against Prussia, including a stipulation that, by way of conciliating the secondary The absurdity of this mode of conductStates, the spoils of Prussia (with the ex- ing affairs is made more glaring by the ception of Silesia) should be promised to nature of the coming contest and the charSaxony. The Prince de Conti declared at acter of the antagonist to be encountered. Unfortunately," ," remarks the duc, "there once that the plan was impracticable: M. de Rouillé made no answer at all, and the was then at Berlin a king who pursued one projector was kept in entire ignorance of policy only, who deceived his enemies, but what was going on or meditated at Ver- not his servants, and who lied without sailles until the 25th of May, when (still at scruple, but never without necessity." On Dresden) he was officially informed that a the 18th of July Frederic summoned treaty with Austria had been signed at Mitchell, the English minister, to an audiVersailles three weeks before. This ence, and told him that he was about to treaty was only in outward seeming an demand explanations from the Austrian adoption of his views, as it placed France empress of the recent movement of her in a subordinate position, and practically troops. Mitchell objected that, by assumbound her to take the offensive at the ing the offensive, he would provoke the shortest warning on the bidding of Aus- intervention of France. tria. His opinion was that, if Frederic's face," said the king, rising suddenly; defection was to be treated as a hostile act, be mocked with impunity? By God, no! "what do you see in it? Am I the man to the whole power of France should be put forth to crush this common enemy. What This lady wants war: she shall have it. added to his embarrassment and discon- It is only for me to be beforehand with my tent were the remonstrances of his Polish enemies. My troops are ready. I must friends, when they found Russia preparing for an advance across the frontier: Their fears were redoubled when they learned that Russia, after a brief hesitation between her two former allies, had taken part against England and for Austria; that the British minister to the court (our old acquaintance, Sir C. Hanbury Williams) was in full flight from St. Petersburg; and that France was sending a new minister thither, the Chevalier Douglas, an Englishman by birth, but a Catholic and a refugee, whose sole title to this high office was, that during a former sojourn he had won the good graces of the empress Elizabeth. The mission of the Chevalier Douglas was to establish a private correspondence between Louis XV. and the czarina. He was selected, like the Comte de Broglie, by the Prince de Conti acting by the king's order; but was kept, like the comte, in entire ignorance that there was any secret mission besides his own. "Look me in the put an end to the conspiracy before it grows too strong. I know the French ministers they are too weak and too stupid to get out of the clutches of Austria: Count Kaunitz will have led them into anything he chooses before they get their eyes open. My position is surrounded by dan gers, and I can only get out of them by a bold stroke." Receiving a haughty reply to his request for an explanation from the empress-queen, he put himself at the head of his troops, already massed on the frontier, and demanded a passage through Saxony to invade Bohemia. It speedily became manifest that this demand was a mere pretext. What he wanted was not merely a passage for his troops, nor even neutrality: it was the incorporation of the Saxon troops with This is a weak paraphrase by the translator of the king's words: “Regardez-moi en face: que voyez-vous sur mon visage? Ai-je un nez fait pour porter des nasardes? Par Dieu! je ne m'en laisserai pas mettre." |