The French Navy and the Seven Years' War

1757 To the Edge of Victory

BOB — University of Nebraska Press / Page 75 / / French Navy and the Seven YearS’ War / Jonathan R. Dull 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 [First Page] [75], (1) Lines: 0 to 20 ——— 2.71pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [75], (1) 4 1757 To the Edge of Victory the king sacrifices machault In spite of his successful direction of the French navy, by the beginning of 1757 Machault was the most unpopular member of the French government. As controller general before 1754 he had made himself the symbol of high taxes. He resurrected this association by his support in mid-1756 for imposing the second vingtième. The public suspected, moreover, that the government intended to make at least one vingtième permanent rather than using it just to pay war expenses. Finally Machault was blamed for the attempt to reorganize the Parlement of Paris and to limit its prior victory over the archbishop of Paris in the Jansenist dispute. The current fight with the Parlement had been occasioned by its refusal to register the new tax, but it had become intertwined with the other disputes, which involved the king’s authority over judicial and religious affairs. In the process Louis and Machault had made themselves appear much more extremist in political and religious matters than they really were. Unsurprisingly , the king did not like checks on his authority. But, conservative and traditionalist by nature, he did not want to overthrow the established political order. He merely wished to alter the balance of power within it. Even less was he a religious zealot likeArchbishop Beaumont. His chief desire was to end the feud between Parlement and the archbishop and restore religious peace to Paris.1 Machault was fiercely loyal to the king,but he too was a moderate in religious matters. In addition to his post as naval minister,he was keeper of the king’s seals of office,a position which involved regulation of judicial affairs. By attacking the Parlement he hoped to increase the king’s influence over parlementary decision making, to ensure the collection of taxes needed by the navy, and to solve the religious disputes of Paris. Pursuing such an ambitious agenda made him hated by taxpayers, by the supporters of Parlement, and by Jansenists and their BOB — University of Nebraska Press / Page 76 / / French Navy and the Seven YearS’ War / Jonathan R. Dull 76 To the Edge of Victory 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 [76], (2) Lines: 20 to 24 ——— 0.0pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [76], (2) sympathizers. Machault put himself in such a dangerous position partly in order not to antagonize his political patroness, Madame de Pompadour. Won over by the flattery of Maria Theresa, she recently had joined the “devout” party at court, which was loyal to Austria and the pope, while being opposed to both Protestant Prussia and supposedly crypto-Protestant Jansenism. Although unenthusiastic about the Austrian alliance, Machault apparently felt he had to follow her lead.2 With the resignation in December 1756 of most of the judges of the Parlement of Paris, Louis and Machault provoked a political crisis, which endangered public compliance with collection of the two vingtièmes. It did not endanger the monarchy itself. Louis no longer enjoyed the public adulation of the early part of his reign, which had led to his being called“Louis the Beloved”(le Bienaim é). But few people desired any fundamental changes in the basic political institutions of France. Although the public itself was as traditionalist as Louis, wanting him and the Parlements only to follow their customary roles, moments of public outrage carry the risk of individual acts of violence. No one seems to have expected one now, it having been almost 150 years since Henri IV was assassinated by a religious fanatic. The French generally regarded themselves as more civilized than the English, who in the interim had executed one king and driven another into exile. Even they were not immune from violence, however . On 5 January 1757 Robert-François Damiens, a mentally unstable supporter of...