France in eighteen hundred and two

The second son of Henri, Duc de Bouillon, and Elizabeth, daughter of William the Silent, Prince of Orange, and granddaughter of Admiral Coligny. He was educated in his mother’s religion, Calvinism. At the age of fifteen (1626), he went to study military science and the art of war under his uncles, the Princes Maurice and Henry of Nassau. In 1630 he arrived in France, and Richelieu gave him the colonelcy of a regiment. For the next eight years he was incessantly engaged in active service, and distinguished himself as a commander, both on the Rhine and in Flanders. Richelieu, who had the highest opinion of his military capacity, wished to attach him to his interests, and offered him the hand of one of his nieces who had a large dowry. Turenne took advantage of the difference of religion as a pretext for refusing this alliance.

In 1639 Turenne served in Italy, and saved the army of the Prince de Carignan by the celebrated battle of the “Route de Quiers.” His courage and tenacity of purpose brought about the capture of Turin. The Duke de Bouillon, his elder brother, was implicated in the plot of Cinq Mars and arrested. Turenne used his influence over the Cardinal to obtain his brother’s release. The Duke left France, abjured Calvinism, and became commander-in-chief of the Papal army. At the commencement of the Regency of Anne of Austria, Turenne was commanding the French army in Italy; but Richelieu, fearing that he and his elder brother might become allies against him, despatched Turenne to Germany, with orders to collect and reform the dispersed and broken mercenary Westphalian troops, then in the pay of France. In this he was successful. From 1644 to 1648 he continued the German campaign, until the conclusion of the Treaty of Westphalia (October 24, 1648), which terminated the Thirty Years War. At this time the troubles of the Fronde, which had been long simmering, blazed out. The Duke de Bouillon, Turenne’s brother, was one of the principal leaders of the movement. The Queen, Condé, and the Cardinal used every effort to prevent Turenne following his brother’s example. Mazarin offered him one of his nieces in marriage and the Governorship of Alsace. Turenne brought his troops back to France, and then attempted to lead them against the Minister; but the men, having been bribed by Cardinal Mazarin, refused to obey their general, who was compelled to take refuge in Holland. A month later he returned to Paris. When the Princes were arrested (January 18, 1650), Mazarin again offered him his protection, and the command of the army in Flanders. By this time the seductive graces of the Duchess de Longueville had completely captivated Turenne, and he left Paris for Stenay, a fortified town near Sedan, in the principality of the Duke de Bouillon. Here he was joined by the Duchess. Under her influence he signed a treaty with the Spaniards, by which he agreed to fight with them against France until the imprisoned Princes should be released. He joined the Archduke Leopold, marched through Picardy, took several towns, and pushed on until he and his army were within a few hours of Vincennes, where the Princes had been confined; but hearing they had been transferred to the Castle of Marcoussis, near Rambouillet, he recrossed the River Aisne and directed his march in that direction; he encountered the whole Royal army, 19,000 strong, and though enormously outnumbered, was forced to fight in a valley near Sompuis. He was totally defeated. He then retired from the civil war, and returned to the Archduke the 100,000 crowns which the latter had given him to continue the campaign. The Princes were shortly afterwards released, Mazarin exiled, and the Duc de Bouillon’s just claims, which he had been making unavailingly for eight years, fully satisfied. Turenne then returned to France, and married, in 1651, Charlotte de Caumont, daughter of the Maréchal Armand de la Force. The bridegroom was forty and the bride thirty, but their attachment had lasted many years, and it was for her sake Turenne had already refused many brilliant alliances.

Turenne was greatly opposed to the second rebellion of Condé, who up to that time had been his intimate friend. He conducted the campaign against the army of the Fronde during the critical year of 1652, defeated the rebellious Princes, and was able to bring back the King to Paris on October 21. Condé and his allies, the Spaniards, were eventually absolutely vanquished and driven from France, but the war lasted for nearly seven years, and it was not until November 1659, that a peace, glorious for France, was concluded by the Treaty of the Pyrenees.

From this time forth Turenne was one of those few men in whom Louis XIV. had absolute confidence, and he consulted him on all matters of foreign policy. Turenne took a very considerable part in the restoration of Charles II. In 1667 a fresh war with Spain was imminent, the King of France informed Turenne that it was his intention to march at the head of the army, and learn from his commander-in-chief the art of war.

At this time Turenne abjured Calvinism and joined the Catholic Church. There is every reason to believe his change of religion was sincere and not dictated by political motives. He had for two years been anxious to become a Catholic, and made a serious study of religious questions under the guidance of Bossuet; and in 1668 he was privately re-baptised by the Archbishop of Paris.

Turenne in 1672 took supreme command on the occasion of the war with Holland; the King acting as a figure-head. The campaign was long, arduous and only partially successful.

The year 1674 was the apogee of the military career of Turenne. At a moment when several armies were gathered together ready to invade France, he determined, notwithstanding the inferiority of his forces, to divide his enemies and attack them separately. He marched down the left bank of the Rhine, and, meeting the Imperialists, defeated them at Sinzheim upon June 16. He then passed the river, and defeated another body of the enemy’s troops at Ladenburg. The allies, having reorganised their army, invaded Alsace and established there their winter quarters. Turenne brought his troops by the Vosges mountains, entered Alsace, and attacking the Imperialists (who were taken entirely by surprise, not expecting an army would venture to move in the winter), defeated them first at Mulhouse (December 29) and at Turckheim on January 5. Alsace was thus entirely reconquered. Turenne made a triumphant return to Versailles, where Louis XIV. publicly embraced him.

In the following year, 1675, Turenne found himself the adversary of Montecuccoli, the greatest living tactician in Europe. For six weeks the two generals manœuvred and out-manœuvred each other in their respective efforts to cross the Rhine. At length Turenne found a favourable opportunity. The two armies were face to face near the village of Salzbach (July 27), and Turenne was riding round the advance posts, when his lieutenant-general, St. Hilaric, rode up to inform him a column of the enemy was approaching. At this moment a shell struck the party, St. Hilaric lost his left arm, and Turenne was wounded in the side. The marshal never spoke again, but fell dead from his horse.

His death caused universal mourning all over France. General Montecuccoli, on hearing of the death of his rival, said: “A man has died to-day who was an honour to humanity.” Turenne is buried under the same dome as Napoleon—at the Invalides.

VAUBAN, Sebastian le Prestre, Seigneur de.

Military engineer and Marshal of France. Born, May 1, 1633; died, March 30, 1707. His father, the cadet of an ancient family, was styled by himself “the poorest gentleman in France.”

Young Vauban, left a penniless orphan at the age of ten, was adopted and educated by the village priest. At seventeen he enlisted in Condé’s rebel army, being taken prisoner a year later, and brought before Mazarin, who, discovering his natural genius, gave him a commission of lieutenant and put him under the orders of the Chevalier de Clermont, the greatest military engineer of the day.

In 1655 Vauban obtained the brevet of engineer. His reputation grew rapidly. Acting under the orders of Turenne he was of the greatest service at the sieges of Stenay, Clermont, Landrecies, Condé, Valenciennes, and Montmedz, and this notwithstanding the fact that he was several times severely wounded.

In 1658 he directed on his own responsibility the sieges and attacks upon Mardyk, Gravelines, Oudenarde and Ypres. After the Peace of the Pyrenees he employed the succeeding next years of profound peace in constructing new fortresses and modernising old ones. When, in 1667, war broke out again he at once reassumed his old post. In the presence of Louis XIV. he conducted the sieges of Tournai and Douai, and took Lille after only eighteen days’ investiture.

The following year he captured Dôle, and was then desired by Loubois, who was his principal protector, to construct new fortifications at all the recently conquered Flemish towns. He carried out these orders so completely that when the Dutch war occurred five years later the northern frontier of France was defended by a chain of almost impregnable forts. The siege of Maestricht, which fell after an attack lasting only thirteen days, raised his credit to an enormous height.

In 1674 he was created Brigadier of the Royal army, and in 1675 Maréchal de camp. Two years later he succeeded the Chevalier M. Clermont as Commissary-General of the fortifications of France. During the next ten years he surrounded France from north to south with admirably planned and almost impregnable fortresses. He also constructed the aqueduct of Maintenon and the canal of Riquet. Another war taking place in 1688, Vauban conducted the sieges of Phillipsburg, and, after saving Dunkirk and other French towns from the enemy, conquered Mons and Namur in the King’s presence. In 1697 the Peace of Ryswick put an end to his military career, during which he had built or repaired 333 fortresses, conducted 53 sieges, and been present at 140 battles and skirmishes.

After the Peace of Ryswick, Vauban devoted the remaining ten years of his life to the study of political economy; and the result of his labours was the composition of a book, famous in its day and still remembered by economists, called Dîme Royale. This book described the system of political economy Vauban wished to introduce, which was to substitute for all taxes and levies of money from the people a contribution of the tenth part (or less) of the annual value of all lands and money in the hands of private individuals; in fact, a graduated income tax.

He wished to abolish all taxes and Governmental duties on articles of food and upon salt; but he desired to retain duties upon articles of luxury and certain merchandise, such as spirits, tea, coffee and tobacco. This book, which also included a graphic description of the misery and want which the lower classes in France were suffering at the time, appeared in 1707.

St. Simon gives a vivid description of the King’s fury, when he received a copy from Maréchal Vauban. His Majesty had already obtained a pretty good idea of the scope and matter it contained.

A few weeks later the book was seized and confiscated by an Act of Parliament, and its publication stopped. Vauban did not long survive the blow; he died in Paris three weeks after this decree was promulgated. To quote St. Simon:

The writings of Vauban upon fortifications and military matters are well-known to all experts, and are still the best works that have been written on these subjects.

VISCONTI, Ennio Quirino.

He was an extraordinarily precocious child, and at the age of thirteen had translated “Hecuba” of Euripides and the “Olympics” of Pindar. He obtained the degree of doctor of law and literature in 1771 (aged twenty), and was then appointed camararis to the Pope and sub-librarian to the Vatican. He steadily refused to take holy orders, notwithstanding personal pressure from the Pope. When he married in 1785, he was dismissed from the Vatican, although he had compiled the whole of the catalogues of the Museo Clementius. Prince Chigi then took him into his service as librarian. During the next ten years he arranged and classified the collections the two Englishmen, Jenkins and Wortley, had made from excavations at Athens and other parts of Greece. He also organised the Borghese Museum.

When the French entered Rome in January 1798, Visconti was appointed by General Berthier Minister of the Interior, and, later, one of the five Consuls who were to govern the Roman Republic; he had only occupied this post seven months, when the intrigues of his enemies compelled his flight to Perugia, his honesty and moderation having excited the hatred of his four fellow Consuls.

The Neapolitans retook Rome in 1799, and Visconti, separated from his wife and family, was exiled, and departed for France. Here he was immediately employed in organising and arranging the Museum of the Louvre, then just founded. He was appointed Professor of Archæology and Member of the Institute. In 1801 appeared his celebrated Livret du Musée. He also made a complete catalogue containing elaborate descriptions of the works of art in the Louvre. By Napoleon’s orders he commenced the des dessins antiques, which was to contain illustrations drawn and engraved by him, comprising portraits of all the illustrious heroes of antiquity. The Academies of Europe vied with one another in asking his advice and judgment upon matters of art. In 1814 he was summoned to London to give his opinion upon the merits or possible demerits of the Elgin marbles, the English Government not being willing to give Lord Elgin the price demanded. Visconti valued them at 800,000 francs (£32,000) and decided that they were all the work of Phidias and his pupils. This sum was paid.

Soon after his return to Paris he was attacked by a painful internal malady, and died, aged sixty-six.

LA VALLÉE, Marquis Joseph de Bois, Robert de.

He was captain in a regiment of Champagne before the Revolution. He became an enthusiastic democrat; later, a devoted adherent of Napoleon. During the Empire he was head of the Chancellerie of the Legion of Honour. He lost this appointment, however, under the Restoration, and retired to London, where he died. La Vallée was a voluminous writer, a great linguist, and had a knowledge of ancient art and literature.

VOLTAIRE, François Marie, de.

He was the son of Maître François Arouet, a lawyer who held a position in the Cour des Comptes in Paris. The birth of Voltaire took place under peculiar circumstances. His mother, who was not immediately expecting her confinement, joined a party one afternoon for a long walk in the environs of Paris. Before she could get home, she was taken suddenly in labour, and her child was prematurely born in a stranger’s house. The infant was so weak, small, and feeble that it could not be taken to church for baptism until nine months after its birth. Young Arouet lost his mother a few years later. His relations with his father were not happy, and his only brother, ten years his senior, was a bigoted Jansenist.

When only ten years of age, François Arouet was placed at the College of Louis le Grand, directed by the Jesuit Fathers. Here he remained for seven years, the favourite of his teachers, who considered him their most brilliant scholar, his amusing sallies and lively wit gained him popularity with his fellow students. At college, Voltaire (who through life assiduously cultivated intimacy with exalted personages) contracted friendships with the sons of noblemen, ministers and magistrates. When he was eleven years of age his godfather, the Abbé Châteauneuf, presented him to Ninon de l’Enclos, then nearly ninety years old, but still mentally and physically attractive. The clever and witty child delighted the aged courtesan, who in her will left him 2000 francs (£80) to buy books. He also met Jean Jacques Rousseau a few years later: the latter embraced him, and predicted a glorious future for the youthful genius.

After he left college, Arouet soon profited by the friendships he had made among his superiors in rank and position, and succeeded in obtaining a footing which he maintained till 1726 in the most exclusive and fashionable society in Paris. He had many adventures, notably a romantic affair when attached to the Legation in Holland. Accused of writing a series of satirical poems against the Government of the Regency, he was sent to the Bastille; but this only increased his fame and added to his notoriety. Released a year later, the Regent granted him a private and friendly interview, settling upon him a pension of 1000 livres (£120) a year. Ever afterwards he wrote in most eulogistic terms of the Regent, and dedicated his Tragedy of Œdipus to the Duchess of Orleans. He continued to write successful plays and to publish books of poetry and prose as well as to move in the highest society until 1726, when a catastrophe occurred which changed the bent of his whole life.

Arouet, who had now assumed the name and style of de Voltaire, was on December 10 of this year dining with one of his chief patrons, the Duke de Sully. Among the guests was a dissolute middle aged man, the Chevalier de Rohan (younger son of the Duke de Rohan). The Chevalier inquired in a loud voice—“Who was the young man who talked so much and gave his unasked-for opinion so freely?” Voltaire answered, “He is a man who cannot boast of an exalted name, but who understands how to keep up the honour of the humble name he does bear.” This sally almost convulsed de Rohan with fury, being a direct allusion to his notoriously evil reputation. Three days later Voltaire was seized on the very steps of the Hôtel du Sully and soundly flogged there and then in the open street by three of the chevalier’s lackeys, De Rohan enjoying the spectacle seated in a coach drawn up hard by. The chevalier’s victim could obtain no redress, his adversary refused to fight him, and when Arouet made further efforts to obtain satisfaction, he was again confined in the Bastille. Upon his release he immediately started for England, his pride forbade his reappearance among his old companions. His host in London was Bolingbroke, who had only just returned to Great Britain after a long exile. Arouet remained three years in England, making an earnest and thorough study of English literature, and becoming intimate with Pope, Addison, and Swift.

In 1729 he went back to Paris and recommenced his literary career. The bold unconventionality of his writings and the freedom of his opinions in religion and politics made the author an object of suspicion to the French Government. His “Letters from England” were suppressed, his Lettres Philosophiques publicly burnt by the common hangman, and their publisher incarcerated in the Bastille; to avoid sharing his fate, Voltaire again fled from France.

His liaison with the beautiful and cultivated Madame du Châtelet commenced about this time. She was about twenty-eight years of age. The Marquis and Marchioness du Châtelet inhabited a château in Lorraine, and there Voltaire principally lived until the death of the Marquis in 1749. He was occasionally absent for considerable periods—at Brussels in 1739, in Paris, 1740.

He had several interviews with Frederick the Great when the latter was Prince of Prussia.

After the Battle of Fontenoy in 1744, an ode he composed upon that victory brought him once more into favour at Versailles, and for two years he enjoyed the immediate patronage of Madame de Pompadour. He could not, however, control his powers of satire, and in 1746 fell into disgrace at Court, from which he never successfully emerged. He then, in company with Madame du Châtelet, joined the literary coterie of the Duchess de Maine at Sçeaux, and afterwards, still accompanied by his fair friend, paid a visit to the Court of the ex-King Stanislaus, father of the Queen of France, at Luneville. Here Madame du Châtelet fell desperately in love with a handsome young officer, thirteen years her junior, the Marquis de St. Lombert. Voltaire accepted the situation with philosophic calm, saying he wished to change his position as lover for that of a sincere and devoted friend. A year later the Marquise died in child-bed, and a grotesque as well as melancholy scene took place; the three men, her husband, the Marquis du Châtelet, Voltaire, and St. Lombert, all weeping in each other’s arms over her body!

Voltaire established himself in Paris: a widowed niece, Mdme. Denis, whom he adopted as his daughter, kept house for him, and remained his companion for the rest of his life. In 1750 Frederick the Great invited the distinguished author to settle at Potsdam as his permanent guest. Voltaire accepted the offer, reaching Berlin in July of the same year. He was received with almost regal honours: a pension of 20,000 livres, the golden key of Great Chamberlain, and the Cross of the Order of Prussia bestowed upon him. All his plays were performed in succession at the theatre of Potsdam. At the King’s private suppers the French poet was privileged to make any remarks he pleased, and not bound to observe any form of Court etiquette. This (to Voltaire) ideal existence lasted two years and six months, during which time he wrote and published at Berlin the Siècle de Louis XIV. Voltaire began to take too great an advantage of the licence accorded to him by the Prussian monarch; he presumed to correct Frederick’s French prose, and to make light of his verses. He quarrelled with the Court banker, Hirsch (the direct ancestor of the late great financier Baron Hirsch), about a doubtful monetary speculation, and a lawsuit took place between them. It seems probable that this affair, which has never been satisfactorily cleared up, contributed far more than a literary dispute to the final rupture between King Frederick and his pet philosopher. Voltaire had always shown great financial ability, and had amassed a large fortune, which he continued to increase during the remainder of his career.

In the early spring of 1753, Voltaire and Frederick parted never to meet again, mutually disgusted with one another. The poet departed with his niece to Weime, on a visit to the Grand Duke and Duchess. Frederick, discovering soon after that Voltaire had taken with him a volume of very obscene, scurrilous, and questionable verse, which the King had had printed for private circulation only, a commission, led by a stupid and hotheaded officer named Freytag, was despatched in pursuit, with orders to take it by force if necessary from the former favourite, together with his golden key, and the Cross of Prussia. Voltaire and Mdme. Denis were accordingly arrested at Frankfort and kept in durance for thirty-six days, during which time they were subjected to every possible form of arrogant insult.

Although Voltaire desired to conciliate the religious party in France, even going so far as to confess and communicate at Easter in Lyons, he could not persuade them to overlook his anti-Christian publications. The appearance in print of the Siècle de Louis XIV., and an abominable skit upon Joan of Arc, called La Pucelle, destroyed the last chance of his ever again being received at Court. He therefore purchased an estate in Switzerland, where he built a charming villa called Les Délices; in 1760 he bought the estate of Ferney, near the Swiss and French frontier, but in French territory. For the next eighteen years he resided there in great state, and was visited by innumerable famous and distinguished personages, from kings and princes to authors and actors. One of his visitors has thus described life at Ferney:

His writings continued to make more and more stir in the world of letters, and he was to a great extent the arbiter of intellectual thought all over Europe during the last twenty years of his life. He hailed the advent of Louis XVI. to the throne of France with joy, believing a new and enlightened régime was about to begin.

Pressure was put upon him on all sides to return to Paris, Queen Marie Antoinette herself interceded with the King to give the required permission for the exile’s reception at Court, and in February 1778, Voltaire quitted Ferney and arrived in Paris on the evening of the 10th of that month. He had been an exile for twenty-nine years. From this time until his death his existence was one perpetual ovation. The excitement of this round of entertainments and receptions—which culminated, when after a performance of his new tragedy Irene, his bust was crowned upon the stage of the Théâtre Français—was too much for his aged feeble frame to support, and taken suddenly ill he expired on May 30, 1778, aged eighty-four and three months. He desired to receive the last Sacraments, but when the priest arrived the patient was already unconscious. He had, however, confessed himself to the Abbé Gauthier, an ex-Jesuit, and received the Communion on the previous March 2, when he signed a retractation of his deistic and infidel opinions. He added—“I shall die adoring God, loving my friends, and detesting superstition of every kind.”

Voltaire was buried in the Abbey of Scellières, where his body lay until it was removed to the Panthéon by the order of the Convention.

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FOOTNOTES

Transcriber’s Notes:

1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected silently.

2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the original.

3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have been retained as in the original.