The Memoirs Of The Duke Of Saint Simon I

Introduction

The Memoirs of the Duke of Saiut-Simoii, an abridgment of which is here presented to the public, occupy now by common consent a very high position in French literature. No work of a similar kind has ever probably been so popular; and in many respects it deserves its reputation. It forms a perfect pano¬ ramic picture, highly finished in all its details, of the Court of Louis XIV. during the last twenty years of his reign; and of the period of the Regency. Saint-Simon was, to a certain ex¬ tent, an actor in the intrigues he describes—at any rate, always sufficiently near to see their development and be acquainted with their promoters. Keen criticism, stimulated by the family pride of persons of whom he has spoken ill, has detected in him a few errors—inevitable in so vast an undertaking ; but none that are wilful, or calculated to disturb him from his place as an authority.

Saint-Simon was the son of a Duke and Peer of France; and early became a duke and peer himself. He says scarcely any¬ thing about his childhood, and we never seem to feel the omis¬ sion. He gives us the idea of never having been young. There is a gravity and earnestness even in his most tiivial recitals—• except when he allows his strong natural humour to break forth—that appear to belong to a character ripe and mature from the very first. He does indeed talk of having played with the Due de Chartres; but if the young prince played, wp

VI

INTEODXJCTIOK may be sure tbe future memoir-writer even then noted his movements and counted his steps.

The army was the first scene of Saint-Simon’s worldty ex¬ perience. When very young he entered the King’s Musketeers; and in time rose to the command of a regiment. He served in more than one campaign, and appears to have discharged his duties conscientiously and' well. While still in the camp he began to note down in a journal the events that were occurring around him, incited to do so by the pleasure he had received in reading the Memoirs of the Marechal de Bassompierre. Even at this early time it is evident that he was endowed with a rare power of observation, and good natural sagacity; and with a certain rigidity of opinion which prevented him from much sharing the vices with which he came in contact.

Saint-Simon’s military career did not last long. He had served no more than five years when the peace of Ryswick was signed • and the field never saw him again. The great war of the Spanish Succession began in 1702, and nearly all Europe was involved in it, until the treaty of Utrecht decided the question at issue; but Saint-Simon, being deprived of the pro¬ motion he thought himself entitled to^ resigned his rank. In this, doubtless, he acted wisely. He seems to have had no special predilection for a military life—never speaks of his in¬ terrupted career with soldierly regret—does not even imply that he had talent in that direction. The Court, not the camp, claimed him. He was formed to move, not amidst helmets and plumes, but amidst powdered wigs and gold-headed canes —to wander observant amidst fans and hoops, not tents and trenches. In that sphere, looking on at the intrigues and schemes that thickened or dispersed around him, joining in them him¬ self when a friend was to be served—for Saint-Simon was evi¬ dently capable of friendship—or an enemy to be thwarted,— he was equally capable of enmity;—^maintaining himself in in¬ timacy with most of the courtiers whose views were in har-

INTRODUCTION.

vii monj ■witb. his own, and with many whose views were very different; fighting for the rights and dignity of his order with the tenacity of a man who regards them almost as passports to eternal salvation, and who sees that in the confusion of new grades and unusual privileges arising, he and his fellows are counting for less and less every day; criticising the plans of government in operation, and drawing up new plans of his own; noting with a sort of prophetic cunning all political and diplomatic changes threatened, the struggles to gain power and the struggles to preserve it; and all the while keeping his ear open to reports of all domestic occurrences at the Court—the love-affairs, the scandals, the marriages, the tragedies in this direction, the comedies in that;—such being his position and occupation, we need not be surprised at the vast extent and varied nature of his Memoirs. A more active and public mode of life, in which he would have been forced to find work for the critics rather than play the critic himself, would not have suited him so well; and would have injured the interests of posterity. We see this plainly in the review of his career.

During the lifetime of Louis XIV., Saint-Simon enjoyed much indirect favour from his popularity with the leading per¬ sonages of the Court and the Government; but the King, dis¬ pleased with him in the first instance for his retirement from the army, and afterwards for his determined stand in support of the most petty privileges of the order to which he belonged —to say nothing of his pedantic and meddling disposition— never bestowed much notice upon him, and sometimes evinced marked coldness. It was not until the government fell into the hands of the Due d’Orleans, the Due de Chartres of Saint- Simon's childhood, that his position changed. With the Due d^Orleans he had always been on good terms. Ho had stood by him in fair weather and in foul; and now, to a certain ex¬ tent, reaped the reward of his devotion. He became a member of the Council of State; and had nominally a voice in deciding

INTRODUCTION.

viii

the affairs of the nation. But he was not meant by nature to be a statesman any more than he was meant to be a soldier. Abler and more unscrupulous intriguers got hold of the helm; and Saint-Simon, despite his intimacy with the Eegent, never had any sensible influence on great affairs, and continued to jot down notes of what he knew of the manners and character of the Court.

The Memoirs of the Due de Saint-Simon extend over a period corresponding to his Court life, which ended about 1723. Every circumstance, however important or however trivial, that occurred at the French Court during this period, seems to be set down in them. They give us the most varied and the most curious information respecting the members of that Court; and are especially successful in introducing Louis XIV. to us in undress, without his crown, even without his wig, the plain unsophisticated thing, the lean and slippered pantaloon, who by the huge efforts of flatteiry has been intro¬ duced to posterity with the title of Great. The most criminal act that literature has committed has been to affect gratitude for this pitiful old gentleman; and it is agreeable to find one literary man, though a noble, painting him in his true colours. We seem to be present at the melancholy death of Hawthorne's Feathertop; or, after having watched the brilliant course of a rocket through the air, to be picking up the miserable stick round which the splendour clung.

It is true that these Memoirs refer chiefly to the latter days of Louis XIV., when he had become tied to the apron-strings of that stately intriguer, so pious and yet so bitter, Madame de Maintenon; but I do not think this is the reason he appears so mean. He was always mean; and never meaner than in his young days, when he had beautiful mistresses, some of whom were not so contemptible as others. We know the promises he made that he did not perform; and the offensive word that exists to describe such conduct. But this is not the place to

INTBODUCTION'.

IX discuss the general character of this smirking, grimacing old dancing-master, who has given his name (among the French) to a literary and artistic age—^because he patronised Lebrun^ could not understand Lesueur, Claude Lorrain, and Poussin —because he gave Moli^re the smallest pension accorded to any poet of his day, wasted the genius of Bacine in composing his panegyric, and corrupted the taste and morality of France, by forcing its writers, even the best, to indulge in the most ignoble and loathsome laudations of the most ignoble and loathsome of persons. The reader is requested to compare the character of Monseigneur as described with unerring accuracy in these Memoirs with the following disgusting paragraph printed in small capitals in the midst of one of the master-pieces of French literature : La Bruyere’s “ Characters

If we compare this bombastical unmeasured style with the way in which chosen men used to speak, say even of Henri IV.,. we shall be able to estimate the degree to which taste suf¬ fered under Louis XIV. Language may have become purer and more correct: it would have gone on improving, perhaps entered on a better path, under any other governor or form of government ; but style is not diction and requires to be assisted towards perfection by moral qualities which could not develop in the pestilential atmosphere of Versailles. That was, at any / rate, an age of phrases, not an age ot ideas; and, with the ex-

/ ception of Moliere and Pascal, produced few men whose repu¬

tation is not in some manner conventional.

Although Saint-Simon reveals all the pitifulness of the Court, because it was pitiful, we must not suppose that he does

X

INTRODUCTION.

SO with any ulterior views. He was no revolutionist, no re¬ former. No man could have a more genuine belief in kingly power than he. Instead of seeing that England owes its rank among nations to the execution of Charles the First, he says that execution will be its eternal shame.’' William of Orange is always a usurper” in his eyes. He would probably have parted with his life to uphold the throne of France, whilst painting the members of the royal family as stained with every vice which our vocabulary can name, or refuses to name.

There is no reason to doubt that Saint-Simon’s portrait of Louis XIV. is true in all essential particulars. And what a portrait it is ! How finished by a succession of touches, put on when the artist was in his best mood, that gradually give life to the eye, and colour to the cheek ! There is a victory, for example, to be gained. The French troops, Louis XIV. at their head, are encamped at Gembloux. The Prince of Orange is close at hand. The position of the French is such that they can count upon a victory. The position of the enemy is such that they can count upon nothing but defeat. The French are more numerous than the allies; all promises a great triumph. But time flies, and nothing is done; on the contrary, an order for retreat is given. The King, worked upon by Madame de Maintenon, is tired of being a hero, and impatient for the com¬ forts of Versailles. Amidst the laughter of the army, of France, and of Europe, he joins “ the ladies,” and returns to luxorious ease. At another time, Lille being taken by the ■enemy, a minister proposes an excellent plan for its recovery, but, as the plan includes leaving the ladies behind, requests that it shall not be communicated to Madame de Maintenon. The King promises, breaks Lis promise, and suffers himself once more to be cajoled. The unchaste widow of a paralytic poet, the sneaking governess who was the humble friend of the King’s mistresses and of the courtesan Ninon, puts a night¬ cap over the crown of France. Every idea of honour and hu-

INTRODUCTION.

XI manity is made to give way to the King’s personal enjoyment. He thanks God that the Duchesse de Bourgogne, his grand¬ daughter, meets with an accident that injures her and deprives her of an heir, because her state interferes with his prome¬ nades. The importance he assigns to etiq[uette — perhaps nothing else appeared important in his eyes—is most amusing. When one of the Court ladies seats herself at table a place or two higher than she had any right to do, his dignity is so wounded that he can eat no dinner, and bursts out constantly into spontaneous rages for several days. Yet he so far forgets what is due to this dignity on another occasion that he plays the sneaking courtier to a common financier whose money he wishes to borrow, which Saint-Simon calls a pleasant case of cut-purse. The murder of Fargues shows that his pettiness could be sanguinary when it chose. But the Memoirs are full of such traits. And of what revelations of the state of the Court! See the character of the King’s only legitimate son, of his illegitimate sons and daughters, his favourites and coun¬ cillors. Strongly as they are painted in these pages, I have yet been obliged to decline following Saint-Simon in all his details and revelations.

The memoir-writer addressed not his own day, but posterity. The anecdotes he set down in his journal would have cost him his life or his liberty if he had ventured to publish them. Had Louis XTV. known what kept the busy-body Duke so often in his study, there would have been alettre-de-cachet out at once, we may be sure, and a new lodger at the Bastille or Vincennes. Indeed, it is only in^our own day, so to speak, tha,t the Memoirs have been allowed to appear. When Saint-Simon retired from the Court for good and all, he went down to his government of Blaye, and turning aside from all new opinions and doctrines, employed the leisure of many years in revising and arranging his notes. Shortly after his death his manuscripts were seized by the government. It was known that they contained many

XU

INTEOBUCTION.

revelations of the Court of Louis XIV. Their publication was dreaded. For years the Memoirs remained locked up in the hands of the government. From time to time a select few were allowed to look at them. Duclos, Marmontel, Madame du Deffand had access to these valuable documents. Voltaire too appears to have seen them, but after the production of his Si^cle de Louis XIV.for he conceived, we are told, the project of refuting the information they contain. To the pub¬ lic at large, however, they remained utterly unknown.

A little while before the French Eevolution, extracts from the Memoirs began to appear; but always very imperfect and without authorization. After the French Eevolution other versions were published; but so altered, mutilated, and re¬ arranged, that Saint-Simon would have had trouble indeed torecognise his own work. It was not until 1829 that anything like a complete edition of the Memoirs was given to the pub¬ lic. The work at once made a great sensation, and the caution that had directed its long suppression was to a certain extent justified. Never did the Eourbon family receive such a blow. At a glance the public had presented to them that court which had hitherto been regarded as the most brilliant ever seen in France—its tinsel and gilding stripped from it, its tatters and rags displayed in all their wretchedness. The success of the work was immense. Since the publication of Scott’s novels,, says M. Sainte-Beuve, no book had been more widely wel¬ comed.

This success has gone on increasing with years. Every French literary man, I had almost said every French student,, reads Saint-Simon. The press abounds with allusions to this inexhaustible story-teller, from whom, too, the stage takes its plots, and the novelist his characters. In one year no fewer than six different editions of his work were brought out in Paris. Though the price in some cases was high,—a

INTEODTTCTIOJr.

XIU hundred and twenty francs being the cost of one edition, pur¬ chasers did not fail.

I have not attempted a translation of the great work of Saint-Simon. It would form about twenty volumes such as the present; and I feel persuaded would find few Enghsh readers. There can he no question that Saint-Simon knew when to write; but it is equally evident that he did not know when to leave off. His descriptions and his details extend to lengths that tire even the most persevering attention. When once he has entered upon a subject, you may be quite sure that he will exhaust every portion of it. If he has to speak of a grand marriage, not merely the bride and bridegroom are described with elaborate minuteness, but some account is given of their fathers and their mothers, their grandfathers and their grandmothers, and their most remote descendants ; and when you think that at last all is over, ten to one there foUow some particulars respecting the cousins-german, or the relatives by the main gauche of the happy pair. And then for fear we should not be satisfied, we are treated to infinite communica¬ tions on their attendants and their tire-women. But the por¬ tions of the work in which the strongest inroads are made upon the patience of the reader are the dissertations upon rank and precedence, with which so many hundred pages are filled. In the very first volume no fewer than seventy-three solid pages are fiUed with an account of the trial for precedence against M. de Luxembourg, for which I have thought a dozen pages ample. In many other volumes these details are even more intolerable.

Saint-Simon, as a Duke and Peer of France, may very na¬ turally be supposed to have felt considerable interest in aU that pertains to his order. It was to him a matter of some importance that M. de Luxembourg or the President Novion should not walk five steps in advance of him in a procession or sit five seats before him at a state ceremony. But to us these

XIV

INTKODUCTION.

things are of little moment. Our sympathy for Saint-Simon^ at all events, cannot follow him through the many, many chapters in which he makes appeal to it.

In selecting facts, I have endeavoured to allow no prejudice to sway my mind. As Goldsmith said of his ‘‘History of England,” my main object has been to make an interesting, work. The labour, I am not ashamed to say it, has been any¬ thing but slight. Even Saint-Simon’s language, when one comes to grapple with it, and try to express all his meaning,, forms no slight difficulty. He wrote after Corneille, Eacine, and Moli^re, and when the French academy had been formed for years. But the excessive length of his sentences, in which subject after subject becomes involved, and pronoun after pro¬ noun appears unbefriended and unconnected, or apparently so; this, and the strange and oftentimes daring use he makes of f amiliar words and phrases, render him more than ordinarily difficult among French authors. Many French readers, literary themselves, are oftentimes borne down by his unusual flux of words, and find themselves at sea as to his meaning. Indeed,, to speak the truth, the style of the writer, though full of mani¬ fest and lurking beauties in its astonishing variety, is on the whole cumbrous and wearisome, entangled and beset with those stumbling-blocks with which amateur writers, when they wish to be copious, almost invariably fill their pages.

In introducing Saint-Simon into English society, I have en¬ deavoured to let him retain as much as possible some of his. French garments with all his French ways and peculiarities. Whenever practicable, I have exactly translated his expres¬ sions ; when they were untranslatable, I have rendered them into the language that seemed best to express his meaning— without being troubled with the desire of elegance. Always, too, I have adhered rigorously to my text.- Not a thought, not a reflection, not a phrase, have I willingly given that- Saint-Simon’s words do not justify. I feel bound to make this

INTRODUCTION.

XV statement to remove entirely the idea that my own personality has obtruded itself into these p ages. Except in the notes, it is Saint-Simon who speaks throughout; Saint-Simon, a little less garrulous than when in French guise; but, if I have succeeded, the same Duke and Peer of France whose vast communicative¬ ness has furnished matter for so much of the table-talk of Paris.

Whether Saint-Simon is well known in England I am un¬ able to judge. I read him with a motive some thirty years ago, and fancied that everybody was acquainted at any rate with his name and character; but a friend talking to a literary man on the subject the other day was informed that Saint- Simon was “ a great republican, a friend of Robespierre, who left very voluminous memoirsand a person of cultivated mind and wide reading, on being informed of this undertaking, asked: “ Why did they make him a Saint ?” An amusing article was once written in France called “The Two Saint- Simons,” in which a disciple of the new religion and an ad¬ mirer of the memoir-writer are made to talk for hours in rap¬ turous tones of their idols without ever discovering their mis¬ take, so that when we hear Saint-Simon famiharly alluded to we cannot be sure of the presence of knowledge.

In giving the spirit rather than the substance of the Memoirs, I have oftentimes travelled far in advance of Saint- Simon, and collected his scattered facts together so as to form one continuous narrative. By these means, as I hope, the pre¬ sent volumes have been made more interesting to the general reader than a full translation of the original work would prove. But I feel that many little errors may have escaped me in the re-arrangement of so much detail as I had to do with.

In order to preserve Saint-Simon’s tone as much as possible, and for the sake of uniformity, I have used the French titles of the personages he speaks o£ It might have been indifferent to say “the Duke df Chartres,” or “The Due de Chartres;”

XVI

INTEODTJCTION.

l)iit it would Itav© bocn diflSlciilt to translato Monsiour^ Mouseigneur, M. le Prince, and so forth.

There are a few titles of constant recurrence in the Memoirs, the meaning of which I have myself found it difficult to re¬ member, and a list of which I have given in order that the xeader^ who may happen to be in the same predicament, may turn back to it for information:—

Monsieur

Madame Due de Chartres

Duchesse de Chartres

Monseigneur

The Due de Bourgogne

The Due d’Anjou

The Due de Berry M. le Prince

Madame la Princesse M. le Due

Madame la Duchesse

M. le Due du Maine M. le Comte de Toulouse M. le Grand

Philippe, Due d’Orkans, son of Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria, and brother of Louis XIV.

Wife of Monsieur.

Son of Monsieur, afterwards Due d’Orkans and Eegent of Prance.

His wife, previously Mademoiselle de Blois, daughter of the King and Madame de Montespan ; afterwards became Duchesse dDrkans.

Louis, son of Louis XIY. and Marie Th6- rese. According to established custom the heir to the Crown was called the Dauphin, but an innovation was made in this particular instance by Louis XIV.

Eldest son of Monseigneur, and father of Louis XV.

Second son of Monseigneur, afterwards Philip V. of Spain.

Third son of Monseigneur.

Henri Jules de Bourbon, Prince de Cond6, and son of the great Cond4.

His wife, Anne of Bavaria.

Son of M. le Prince.

Louise-Prangoise de Bourbon, wife of M. le Due, previously called Mademoiselle de Nantes ; daughter of the King and Madame de Montespan.

Son of the King by Madame de Montespan.

Son of the King by Madame de Montespan.

This was the title given to the Grand Ecuyers. The M. le Grand spoken of in the Memoirs, was Louis de Lorraine, Comte d’Armagnac.

INTEODTJCTION-.

XVll

With this assistance I believe Saint-Simon's meaning will always be found perfectly clear. I shall only add, therefore, that I have not undertaken to discuss historical points with him, or to interfere with his appreciations of persons. His mistakes, his prejudices, his incompleteness, his wrong estimation of passing events—all which give the Memoirs something of a newspaper character—form in themselves, as it were, elements in the picture he paints.

EAYLE ST. JOHK t-

VOL. I.

h

CONTENTS OF VOL. I

CHAPTEE I.

My Family—Early Life—Desire to join the Aimy—Enter

the Musketeers—The Campaign commences—Camp of Gevries— Si^eof ISTamur—Dreadful Weather—Gentlemen carrying Corn— Sufferings during the Siege-The Monks of Marlaigne—Eival Couriers ^Xsaval Battle—Playing with Fire-arms—Prediction verified - - - . . t

CHAPTEE IL

The King^s natural Children—Proposed Maixiage of the Due de Char- ^ tres—Influence of Dubois—The Due and the King—An Apart-^ ment—Announcement of the Marriage—^Anger of Madame— Household of the Duchesse—Villars and Eochefort—Friend of Kings Mistresses—The Marriage Ceremony—Toilette of the Montbron—Marriage of M. du Maine—Duchess 01 Hanover—Due de Choiseul—La Grande Mademoiselle - 11

CHAPTEE HI.

Death of my Eather—Anecdotes of Louis XIII.—The Cardinal de it Bellegarde—Madame de Hautefort—My

fathers Enemy—His Services and Eeward—A Duel against Law V answer to a Libel—M. de la Eochefoucauld—My Father’s

Gratitude to Louis XIII. - - - - - - 24

CHAPTEE IV.

Position of the Pmee of Orange—Strange Conduct of the King—Surpri^ aiM Indignation—Battle of Neerwinden—MyEetumto Paris —Death of La Vauguyon—Symptoms of Madness—Vauguyon at the Bastille—Projects of Marriage—M. de Beauvilliers—A nego¬ tiation for a Wife—My failure—Visit to La Trappe - - 31

CHAPTEE V.

M. de Luxemhom'g’s Claim of Precedence-Origin of the Claim—Due de Pmey—Character of Harlay — Progress of the Trial—Luxem-

XX

Contents

boiirg and Eichelieu—Double-dealing of Harlay—The Due de Gesvres—Eeturn to the Seat of War—Divers Operations—Origin of these Memoirs

CHAPTEE VI.

Quarrels of the Princesses—Mademoiselle Choin—A Disgraceful Affair —M. de JNoyon—Comic Scene at the Acad6mie—^Anger and .For¬ giveness of M. de ISToyon—M, de Noailles in Disgrace—How he gets into Favour again—M. de Vendome in Command—Character of M. de Luxembourg—The Trial for Precedence again—An Inso¬ lent Lawyer—Extraordinary Decree - - -