Campbell P. Power and Politics in Old Regime France, 1720-1745

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POWER AND POLITICS IN OLD REGIME FRANCE

invasion of Provence in 1707) he would have been in a position to make personal

contribution to the negotiations. During this ministry there is no precedent set for

the extensive correspondence which resulted from his personal conduct of relations

with the Elector of Bavaria from 1727 until 1742. Under Bourbon, two other men

had particular influence, but little is known about them. They were Antoine

Pecquet père, a first commissioner for foreign affairs, and the comte de La Marck, a

former ambassador to Sweden and the French expert on northern affairs, whom

Newcastle felt was ‘certainly a very able and cunning man’.

The affair of the marriage of Louis XV is often regarded as ‘the transcendent

blunder’, as Wilson put it, of the Bourbon administration, sufficient in itself to

demonstrate his unsuitability for high office. This too is an over-harsh judgement.

Whilst no one can deny that the international repercussions of sending the

Infanta back to Spain in 1725 were very serious, it is none the less difficult to see

how it could reasonably have been avoided. The decision is to be seen as the

response to an increasingly pressing French succession problem. This problem, it

will be remembered, had its origins in the renunciation of the French throne by

Philippe V of Spain, the grandson of Louis XIV; the renunciation, confirmed in

1713 and renewed on 22 June 1720, was regarded by many as being of

questionable legality as it promised to conflict with the laws of succession which

were considered fundamental or unalterable. Although aspirations to the throne

of France had not been the cause of the decision by Philippe in December 1723 to

abdicate from the Spanish throne, in favour of his own son, it was widely believed

that the now throneless King would not stand by his renunciation if Louis XV

should die without direct heirs. Such a death was known to be distinct possibility,

since the adolescent French monarch was still subject to periodic illnesses of great

violence which were the result of his extreme gluttony, and he had not yet

encountered that scourge of families, smallpox. If in such an event Philippe

should claim the French throne he would have to contend with the opposition of

the duc d’Orléans who, by virtue of Philippe’s renunciation of 1701 that had been

confirmed in 1713, was the heir presumptive and would surely argue that

Philippe could not go back on his word of 1701 since it had been formally ratified

by the Spanish Cortes before all Europe.

In December 1723 parties in France

already existed on this issue—a so-called Spanish party and, of course, the

Orleanists—and therein lay the makings of a civil war which would involve the

probable intervention of other powers according to their interests.

To this

frightful prospect for the due de Bourbon a personal consideration was added.

The bitter feud between himself and the duc d’Orléans made him all the more

reluctant to countenance an Orleanist succession.

Bourbon therefore considered the problem from the first days of the ministry,

although there is no evidence that at that point he reached any conclusions on a

course of action. It was the activities of the Orleanist faction which prompted him to

action. The marriage arranged in March 1724 between d’Orléans and the princess

of Baden had increased the tension, because it served a dual purpose for the

d’Orléans family. First, it was, as has been said, a bid for Austrian and British

THE MINISTRY OF THE DUC DE BOURBON, 1723–6

support in the event of a succession struggle; second, the production of a son from

this match would, if it came to a struggle, encourage waverers in France to join the

Orleanist ranks (because without an Orleanist heir it would be foolish to expect

anyone to fight for a d’Orléans if he were just as likely to die a king without heirs as

Louis himself). Bourbon was worried by this démarche, and had La Marck draw up

two memoirs on the possibility of breaking off the Spanish marriage in favour of a

different and more mature fiancée. The memoirs were dated 24 and 30 April 1724

and, while they advised great circumspection, they considered the possibility of

sending back the Infanta and suggested as a possible bride either a sister of Bourbon

or the princess of Lorraine.

Louis was then 14 and thought capable of producing

an heir. In June Antoine Pecquet père, premier commis in foreign affairs, submitted

a memoir which suggested that the Infanta be sent back only if the current project

for an alliance between Prussia, Russia and Britain were successfully completed.

Rumours of the discussion reached Spain, probably sent by the Orleanist faction,

and King Luis of Spain (whose wife was the sister of the duc d’Orléans) wrote

requesting that Louis XV and the Infanta be formally betrothed at the earliest legal

age, on her seventh birthday—that is 31 March 1725. Not having taken any decision

against the marriage, Bourbon found himself obliged to agree to this. In retrospect

it can be seen that this demand, repeated in February 1725, made it almost

impossible for Bourbon to reach a cordial agreement with Spain when he came to

decide upon a different wife for Louis XV.

The situation which confronted Bourbon was thus extremely difficult: it was an

impasse which in the normal course of events would have required great guile or

patience to escape from. For a variety of reasons he was unwilling to take the risk of

a war of succession, especially when the party of d’Orléans had so clearly begun

diplomatic preparations. That Bourbon decided to call off the marriage between

Louis and the Infanta is certainly not to be attributed solely to his personal rivalry

with d’Orléans. Indeed, accusations of having subordinated French policy to family

and personal considerations sit less well on Bourbon than they do on the Regent,

who had sown the seeds of the whole problem when in 1721 he had arranged the

marriage on the assumption that he alone would gain if Louis died. In 1724

Bourbon, like the Regent before him, found himself in what he thought was the

happy position of being able to combine his own interests with the interests of

France. To avert the risk of a civil war in the future, he would marry Louis off to

another bride who could be expected to bear a dauphin in due course and thus

avoid the monarchy having to traverse the risky eight to ten years before the Infanta

even reached child-bearing age.

On 29 October 1724, a special meeting of the council of state was held to

consider the problem of the Spanish marriage. Those present were Bourbon,

Morville, Villars, d’Huxelles, the comte de La Marck, Fleury and Pecquet. The

proposal was to break off the marriage project with Spain, and there was virtual

unanimity of decision. The only person to resist was, significantly enough,

Fleury; but it seems certain, writes the historian of the marriage, that after

having put forward some objections to the idea Fleury ended up in agreement.

POWER AND POLITICS IN OLD REGIME FRANCE

The same historian is of the opinion that he can hardly have looked forward to

advising Louis against the very marriage that he had suggested to him three

years before, and would have preferred not to be involved at all. The resistance

of Fleury left him sufficiently apart from the affair to be able to be believed by

the Spanish monarchs when he (hypocritically) described the decision in bitter

terms in 1726.

The council was therefore unanimous in its decision to cancel the projected

marriage.

If Bourbon had entertained serious hopes of a real coup by suggesting

his sister as the future queen, he was to be disappointed at the meeting a week later.

At this meeting on 6 November 1724 Fleury argued very vigorously against the

double offence to Spain if the Infanta were to be replaced by a Condé. Fleury was

right, for such a marriage would have been a gratuitous insult to Spain and would

have led everyone to believe that this had been the aim from the start, and that the

talk of an urgent need for an heir was a mere excuse. The council therefore

abandoned this project. For three months no further steps were taken and there is

no evidence of what the ministry proposed to do about its decision of 29 October. It

seems likely that action was postponed while negotiations for the Russian alliance

were continuing. The successful completion of this alliance would therefore have

been the prelude to the enactment of the October decision, as Pecquet had

suggested. Then, on 13 February 1725, before anything had been done, came the

Spanish demand for reassurance on the marriage, swiftly followed around the 18th

by a short but violent illness of Louis XV.

Until then, Bourbon had hoped to solve the problem in the fullness of time,

but this combination of events persuaded him to take the final step. Three other

factors may have led him to a decision at this juncture. News that the Tsar had

died at the end of January reached France in February, ending all hopes of that

alliance in the North which had been desired for extra security, and it had come to

light that Spain had for some months been secretly negotiating with the Emperor,

while no progress had been made at Cambrai for months. The congress was on

the rocks; there was to be no alliance and time was pressing. It has been argued by

some that overtures should have been made to Spain about the possible

withdrawal of the Infanta, and that failure to do so was a serious mistake in policy.

However, the evident Spanish insistence on the marriage surely implied that they

would refuse, and to repudiate the child willingly after such a refusal would

certainly provoke a very serious crisis.

Bourbon decided to act precipitately. On 8 March 1725 the Spanish sovereigns

were informed that the Infanta was to be returned to them and the marriage called

off. They were furious and such was their wrath that the French ambassador was

lucky to be able to escape from Spain. The diplomatic consequences of this were a

complete rupture between France and Spain, and the hasty signing, on 1 May 1725,

of an Austro-Spanish alliance on terms so unfavourable to Spain that it was

suspected by France and Britain of containing secret offensive clauses. Meanwhile,

the French court had arrived at a decision on the identity of the future queen of

France. As George I had diplomatically refused his granddaughter on the grounds

THE MINISTRY OF THE DUC DE BOURBON, 1723–6

of religion, it was decided that the daughter of the ex-king of Poland would be a

suitable queen: suitable partly because Maria-Leczinska could be expected to

support Bourbon, her benefactor, in court politics. Devout and not very pretty, she

was 22 in 1725 and a stranger to the French court.

The above account of the affair differs very considerably from any so far given in

that it is not markedly unfavourable to Bourbon and explains the decision in the

context of both European and court politics, emphasising their interplay rather than

the dominance of personal ambition. Traditional accounts have described the

situation as the blunderings of an incompetent whose anxiety not to allow himself

to be outdistanced by his rival d’Orléans was the cause of a serious crisis in

European diplomacy.

And it has often been assumed that Bourbon’s dismissal in

June 1726 was chiefly the result of the long-term consequences of rejecting the

Infanta. The truth is not so straightforward.

It is unfair to argue that Bourbon ought to have foreseen and avoided the

inevitable alienation of Spain, because the actual reaction of Elizabeth Farnese was

so unreasonable that no one could have predicted it—temporary alienation was

foreseeable, but not the prompt treaty with the Emperor. Neither the British nor the

French supposed for a moment that Spain and Austria would be able to reach a

satisfactory agreement on their differences. In spite of the alliance, events in 1726

and 1727 show that, although they had allied and there was a risk of a European

war, Austria had never had any real intention of satisfying the desires of her ally

Elizabeth Farnese on the problem of the installation of her sons in the Italian

duchies.

Since it was possible, at that time, to regard the consequences of a rupture with

passable equanimity, the argument on the merits or demerits of the French policy

therefore seems to turn on whether Bourbon was more justified in taking the risk

of a break with Spain or in making the decision to run the risk of the death of

Louis without heirs by betrothing him, on or around 31 March 1725, to the

Infanta. The marriage would strengthen Philippe’s position in France if Louis

were to die and fuel the ambitions of the ‘Spanish party’ and the Orleanists at the

French court. An heir really was necessary in France and to argue against this is to

argue upon a false premise, ignoring a good deal of contrary evidence. It is

therefore impossible to agree that ‘The god of misrule had certainly presided over

a policy as muddled as this’.

There is evidence that Fleury was deliberately dissociating himself from the

recent steps. In March he wrote to Saint-Simon, an Orleanist of course, who was

about to send letters to the Spanish sovereigns expressing his dismay at the fate of

the Infanta (because he had been the emissary of the Regent who had collected the

Princess in 1721); in his letter Fleury hints at a certain dissatisfaction with the

policy.

On 7 August 1725, he wrote a private letter to Philippe V in which, though

veiled, his sentiments are much more clearly expressed.

The letter is a masterpiece of duplicity and suggestion! Whilst making a genuine

appeal for moderation Fleury blames the premier ministre and holds out to Philippe

the carrot of having an agent in France (himself) who is the best-placed man to

POWER AND POLITICS IN OLD REGIME FRANCE

further his hopes of acceding to the French throne if Louis should die, suggesting

that Philippe’s ambitions in this area depend upon his avoiding an ‘open rupture’. In

many ways this, the overt message in the letter, is a laudable piece of diplomacy. Yet

there is another possible motive to consider. Taken in conjunction with his

relationship via Walpole with the British government, which became closer after

March, and with his correspondence and friendship with the ambassador recently

installed in the key position of European diplomacy—Richelieu at the court of

Vienna—the letter looks like the beginning of an attempt to ensure Spanish goodwill

should Fleury ever decide to take over the reins of government. When the letter was

written in August 1725, the unpopular effects of Bourbon’s financial and religious

policies were becoming clearer and this situation may have prompted Fleury to

reconsider his position. It is likely that Fleury was at this point considering the

matter, and probing to discover the Spanish attitude to Bourbon and himself.

Whether the result of foresight or of mere prudence, the effect of Fleury’s secret

activities in foreign relations was the same. From the time when he first cemented

friendly relations with Walpole until June 1726, Fleury succeeded in creating the

impression that he was not responsible for the more questionable aspects of French

foreign policy. At the same time he made it clear to the British and Spanish

governments that his views on foreign policy were such that they had nothing to

fear from him and, in the case of Spain, had much to gain, if he should be given

more power. Until the spring of 1726, this was without the knowledge of the

premier ministre.

THE RELIGIOUS ISSUE

For Fleury and Bourbon in 1725, the differences of approach to foreign policy were

mainly covert, but this was not the case over religious affairs. During 1725 they

came into open conflict on the issue of the policy to be adopted towards the Bull

Unigenitus. The conflict was not over the aims, for both agreed that the ultimate goal

was a stable peace between Jansenists and constitutionnaires in the French church;

rather, differences arose in the choice of methods.

During the ministry of Bourbon Fleury played an increasingly important part

in the direction of the struggle against the Jansenists inside France. With the other

members of the conseil de conscience, Gesvres (about whom very little is heard),

Rohan, Bissy and Tressan, he continued the policy that had been worked out by

Dubois after 1720. The Jansenists, being in a numerically small but vociferous

minority, were encouraged to keep silent by a policy which included subjecting

them to exile, enforced spells in seminaries and lack of preferral. One of their

most important polemicists, bishop Colbert of Montpellier, was deprived by the

government of his ecclesiastical revenue as a punishment for his intransigence.

Bissy in particular, and Rohan to a lesser extent, were more doctrinaire opponents

of the Jansenists than Fleury. Nevertheless, it was these tactics which gave rise to

bitter accusations, often repeated by historians, that Fleury was a religious bigot,

THE MINISTRY OF THE DUC DE BOURBON, 1723–6

giving too much priority to the acquisition of a cardinal’s hat. Fleury’s dealings

with the Pope in 1725 hardly bear out this accusation. His experiences in

combatting the ideas of Quesnel in Fréjus many years before had convinced him

that there were always endless opportunities for theological controversy, without

there being much hope of reaching a definite conclusion, and he had not changed

his opinions. His view was that the Jansenists were exaggerating the dangers of

Unigenitus because, as he said in a famous letter to the Pope, ‘in the shadow of this

promulgation no novelty contrary to the faith and to the holiness of the scriptures

has slipped in’.

Since ‘one cannot convert intrigues of the heart’, for Fleury the

most reasonable policy, given the risks involved in continued dissent, was to

repress the outspoken minority.

The question of how far Fleury rather than Bourbon determined the religious

policies followed by the conseil de conscience is a difficult one to answer. Certainly, if

there is any area in which Fleury did encroach upon Bourbon’s control of patronage

it was in church affairs. However, admitting the importance of church patronage in

the persecution of the Jansenists, it may still be wrong to infer that Fleury therefore

had complete control over religious policy. Voltaire and the abbé Dorsanne

probably exaggerated his influence in the distribution of church benefices. The

important commission of the feuille des bénéfices remained under the control of

Bourbon by means of his confessor who held it. In June 1726 Bissy thought the

feuille des bénéfices sufficiently important to urge Fleury to take it into his own hands

(which he did), although it is also clear from his letter that he was satisfied with their

degree of control over the conseil de conscience.

In the light of such inconclusive

evidence it will remain impossible to determine the degree of independence of the

council from the wishes of Bourbon or even whether Bourbon himself agreed or

disagreed with their policy of repression.

However, in an area where he had much more independence—because although

it was a religious issue it came under the heading of foreign affairs—Bourbon

decided to pursue a different policy from the one practised inside France. In 1724

the newly elected pope Benedict XIII was much more inclined than his

predecessors had been to reach a compromise on the doctrine of grace expounded

by the Jansenists. Seeing new hope for peace, Bourbon returned to the policy of

negotiating ‘explanations’ of the contested points in Unigenitus. This was the same

sort of policy that he been tried by the Regent and the cardinal de Noailles from

1715 to 1720, and it had failed. Undeterred by the precedent, the cardinal de

Noailles began in the autumn of 1724 negotiations which were to last until 1726, in

which he offered to withdraw his mandement of 1719 in return for papal explanations

of the Bull. Explanations were an attempt to cut the Gordian knot of the

controversy, by reaching an agreed compromise, and as a strategy obviously

threatened to undermine the policy of repression inside France by holding out hope

of a negotiated peace to the appellants.

The intermediary through whom passed all the correspondence between

Noailles and the Pope was the cardinal de Polignac, the French ambassador to

Rome. Bourbon and Morville gave the policy their full support, but in secret. The

POWER AND POLITICS IN OLD REGIME FRANCE

démarche was not to be made official until the negotiations appeared to promise a

successful conclusion. Morville emphasised the unofficial nature of the project in a

letter to Polignac: ‘His Majesty prescribes inaction as his minister, he does not

proscribe it as cardinal’.

None of the leading ecclesiastics involved in the

government was consulted or even informed for several months. The details of the

negotiations therefore remained unknown to them, although they soon realised that

efforts were being made to reach an agreement with the Pope.

Today the whole affair need hold few mysteries because the evidence is complete

enough to point to clear conclusions. A detailed and documented account was

published as a pamphlet by the Jansenists in 1727 and its reliability is

unquestionable, as far as it goes.

It needs to be complemented by the

correspondence preserved in the ministry of foreign affairs and by the little known

The Memoirs and Secret Instructions of the Cardinal de Noailles, Sent to Rome during the

Pontificate of Benoit XIII published much later by the abbé Dorsanne. Using these

documents, the development of a first crisis in relations between Fleury and

Bourbon can be traced in detail.

In November 1724 Noailles had dispatched to Rome a résumé of his faith known

as the Twelve Articles, which he wanted recognised by the Pope, in return for which

he would publish a mandement accepting Unigenitus, drawn up according to a papal

plan. By February 1725 a good deal of patience, effort and compromise on the part of

Noailles led to the situation where, to cite the Relation, ‘things were so far advanced

that the Pope required nothing more to engage him to confirm the XII Articles than a

Letter from his Eminence in the Form of a Petition; and assured him he need not in

the least distrust his Promises, which he would infallibly make good’.

In France the moment was considered propitious to bring the issue before the

council of state, where Fleury reacted strongly. A protest was drawn up and

addressed not to the Pope but to some members of the College of Cardinals. It set

off a storm of protest from the cardinals against Benedict’s policy, because the

revelation of the full project made them realise that the Pope had been negotiating

on his own account without regard to their opinions. ‘The chief causes of

opposition are that the Constitution is to be received in the Pope’s sense of it, and

Promise of Explications’, wrote Polignac.

The upshot of this agitation in March was that the whole issue seemed to be

shelved. In France it had obviously given rise to a considerable difference of opinion

between Bourbon and the prelates. A secret ministerial letter of 26 March 1725

attributed the motives for opposition to the project to a spirit of faction. It stated that

Rohan, Bissy, the archbishop of Embrun and the nuncio were ‘almost all in despair

that this great business is ending and that it has been brought to the point it is at

without their participation and without their having entered into the negotiation,

they cannot bear that the cardinal de Polignac should have all the honour of it’.

Rohan, the letter continued, was jealous because he had made two trips to Rome in

his time and had failed, while Embrun had been chargé d’affaires without being able

to improve matters. Bissy was accused of being a Jesuit sympathiser, who was

taking their side because the Pope had been trying to prevent their interference in

THE MINISTRY OF THE DUC DE BOURBON, 1723–6

the constitution. All of them were afraid of a solution that would result in the

disbanding of the conseil de conscience because they would no longer be able to give

benefices only to their friends.

If the negotiators really believed this, then such jibes, together with the frequent

descriptions of the opposing prelates in the missives as ‘enemies of peace’ or ‘those

who do not want peace’, reveal a profound misjudgement of the situation. The

opposition stemming from the members of the conseil de conscience was actually

founded upon a sounder appreciation of the consequences than had been made by

Bourbon or even Noailles. The latter was deluding himself if he thought that he had

a chance of bringing peace to the quarrel by the way of compromise. There is

considerable evidence that a compromise in the form of a modification of Unigenitus

would have alienated the extremists in both camps—Jansenists and

constitutionnaires alike—and have resulted in a denial of allegiance to Rome: in a

word, schism.

One letter describes the situation most convincingly. It is a letter from the

appellant bishop of Blois to Graveson, who was involved in the negotiations with

the Pope on behalf of Noailles. The Bishop explained that Noailles was not

regarded by the appellants as a leader authorised to convey their agreement in

negotiations with the Pope. Added to this problem with the appellant higher clergy

was the difficulty of persuading the Jansenist lower clergy to agree with the project.

In the name of God, Reverend Father, destroy as far as possible the belief that

M.the cardinal de Noailles can dispose the Appelants as he wishes; believe

that very few of them are disposed to follow him, however much he might be

given authority by our Holy Father; even believe that he lost much of his

crédit the day he accepted [the compromise declaration] in 1720, and much

more when a few months ago the so expressive terms that he employed with

the Holy Father to make his submission, became known; understand that he

is losing more with every post and every courier that arrives, without any

explanations [of the Bull] appearing.

The historian Durand, author of the best modern study of Colbert of Montpellier,

is also of the opinion that there was a real danger of schism in the French church in

1725. In support of his argument, Durand discusses a work that Colbert published

in the summer of 1725. Colbert had a particularly uncompromising character and

tended to follow his logic to the limits. His attitude is expressed as follows: ‘Is the

Constitution bad, or is it not? If it is bad, of all inconveniences I can see no greater

one than to accept it’.

He denied that he was provoking schism, but felt that it

would come from Rome if the Holy See refused to recognise its error on the

constitution.

The ‘constitutionnaires’ (as those who defended the Bull were then known) also

had their determined supporters. In October, just before the dénouement of the

renewed project, Polignac reported that ‘the bishops are pouring oil on the fire; they

say that they will receive nothing from the Pope alone, nor even with several

POWER AND POLITICS IN OLD REGIME FRANCE

cardinals; that otherwise they will send church and state up in flames’. Even making

allowances for the heated language of eighteenth-century theological debate, it is

impossible to avoid the conclusion that the explanations had very little chance of

success and risked making a solution even more difficult. Bourbon had made a

serious error of policy.

After May the attempt at an agreement with Rome appeared to have been

stopped. In June the conseil de conscience issued an arrêt suppressing all the copies of the

Twelve Articles which had been printed in France.

However, cardinal de Noailles

was an indefatigable negotiator and, undeterred by a first defeat, had continued to

press the Pope for a compromise, and Polignac was the negotiator. The continued

negotiations must have been carried on with the utmost stealth because on 15

August 1725 cardinal Gaulterio in Rome, in regular correspondence with Fleury,

and usually among the best informed, could affirm that there was no more talk of

an agreement there.

Yet only two weeks later a new set of proposals was sent from

Rome to Noailles. The mandement that Noailles sent to Rome in reply was a model of

moderation; it arrived there on 4 October. Polignac felt that the compromise view

could not have been better expressed and noted that several cardinals came round

to accepting it during the month.

The attempt failed because of the sudden intervention by some members of the

French episcopate. They took concerted action early in October and Morville

scarcely had time to warn Polignac of the approaching storm.

The cardinals de Rohan and Bissy the former bishop of Fréjus and several

prelates came as a body to ask Monseigneur le Duc for the King’s permission

to write a letter to the Pope in which they propose to urge His Holiness not to

act without counsel in the affair of the explanations and also to represent to

His Holiness that among the XII Articles there are some very dangerous

ones. What I could say to your excellency of the force of their instances

would only give a very imperfect idea of it. [They insisted that the Pope

should consult not necessarily all but at least some of his cardinals in a

committee.] They varied not in the assurances they have been giving for

some time that…what might appear to come from the Pope alone, and does

not contain certain proof of having been concerted and concluded with the

cardinals of the Holy Roman Church in sufficient number… would unite the

body of cardinals and the French bishops who would protest openly and

generally against these instances…Monseigneur le Duc’s resistance was

strong and lengthy, but he was at last obliged to concede the issue.

The letter in question was sent on 29 October. It was usually referred to by

contemporaries as ‘la lettre des trois puissances’ meaning Rohan, Bissy and Fleury,

and it was a cogent argument against explanations along the lines of their previous

representations. It argued that sentiment in the French church would not accept

them, that there was not even any hope of the publication of the Twelve Articles and

that the mandement of Noailles was unacceptable. The prelates were on firm ground

THE MINISTRY OF THE DUC DE BOURBON, 1723–6

here because only two days earlier the French Assembly of Clergy had been

curtailed by the ministry for its opposition to Bourbon’s policy. The assembly had

called for Unigenitus to be recognised as a law of state and had also asked for

provincial councils to discipline the Jansenist bishops of Montpellier and Bayeux;

and it had concluded by writing a strong letter of remonstrance to the King which

Bourbon had torn from the minutes of their proceedings. The trois puissances had

the support of the greater part of the French episcopate.

The letter to Rome provoked a storm of controversy there between the Pope and

some of his cardinals. There was a call for a congregation on French affairs which

the Pope was unable to refuse. Nevertheless, he was furious at what he interpreted

as an attack on his absolute authority.

There is ample evidence that Bourbon had

intended to give the anti-Jansenist bishops the least possible opportunity to organise

resistance by depriving them of full details until the last moment. It is clear that

before March 1725 Polignac had been censoring the information which was

contained in those of his dispatches to be read out in the council of state, and that he

had provided further details in letters which Morville had not brought to the

council. With a council of state not wholly to their liking Bourbon and Morville had

other letters sent. This explains why neither Fleury, who was a member of the conseil

d’état, nor his clerical allies were in a position to take effective action against the

project until it was too late to present counterarguments. Deprivation of

information backfired: when Noailles’ plan was brought before the council there

was therefore only a confrontation between the two very different points of view. In

these circumstances Fleury had the choice of either consenting to the policy, or

taking precipitate action to ensure the defeat of the scheme.

The policy to bring peace to the French church by reaching an agreement with

Rome was clearly on the verge of failure by December 1725. Bourbon, with an

enthusiasm for the well-being of the state which was unhappily manifested in his

desire for quick solutions and possibly hoping for a coup to brighten his fading

éclat, had failed in his aim. He had done worse than that, for he had to face the

hostility of the church in France which he had united against him by his religious

policy of explanations and greatly exacerbated by his financial policy.

FINANCIAL POLICY

If the conduct of religious policy was unlikely to arouse enthusiasm, the financial

and economic record of the ministry was bound to provoke considerable

unpopularity. The fiscal and monetary policies were to provide an ideal focal point

for the mounting opposition because the clamours of the populace added weight to

the dissatisfaction of the politically aware.

During the ministry economic questions were decided by the group of

financiers which had once been ousted by Law but had finally returned to favour

in 1721. There was in this field as in others an entire continuity of personnel from

the Regency to the ministry of Bourbon. The four Pâris brothers, with Samuel