X. 1772–1774. HIS EMINENCE CARDINAL, COMMENDATOR, GRAND ALMONER, PRINCE-BISHOP LOUIS-RENÉ-ÉDOUARD DE ROHAN.

Among the tribe of solicitors who put faith in the report of Madame de la Motte’s intimacy with Marie-Antoinette, and sought to turn it to their own advantage, certainly by far the most sanguine of them all, was her “friend” and benefactor, Louis-René-Édouard de Rohan, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, Bishop and Prince of Strasbourg, Prince of Hildesheim, Landgrave of Alsace, Grand Almoner of France, Commander of the Order of the Holy Ghost, Commendator of St. Waast d’Arras, Superior-general of the Royal Hospital of the Quinze-Vingts, Abbé of the Chaise-Dieu, Master of the Sorbonne, Member of the French Academy, &c., &c. The very man who had been wont to bestow alms upon a descendant of the house of Valois was now almost ready to cringe to the former recipient of his bounty for favour and support. This dissolute and intriguing prelate, who was destined to attain such unenviable notoriety through his connection with the Countess de la Motte, was born on the 27th of September, 1734, and at this period was consequently verging on his fiftieth year. He was, as we have already mentioned, a tall, stout, handsome-looking man, with a fresh-coloured complexion, bald forehead, and whitish grey hair. His manners were amiable; he was fluent in conversation, and though his talents, as the upshot proves, were of a very inferior order, still he was not deficient in that dexterity which goes a long way towards fitting a man for the conduct of public business—he having, with the help of his shrewd secretary, the Abbé Georgel, rather cleverly filled the post of Ambassador at the court of Vienna for between two and three years. He had been sent to that court in January, 1772, to supersede the Baron de Breteuil, thereby making a mortal enemy of that minister, now in high favour with the sovereign. But this was not all. He had also incurred the dislike, and even hatred, of the Queen of France, partly in consequence of having repeated to the Empress Maria Theresa certain scandals current at the French court respecting the unbecoming levity of her daughter, then dauphiness—who, by-the-way, by virtue of his office of coadjutor at Strasbourg, he had had to receive on the occasion of her first entry into France—and partly in consequence of a letter written by him in an unguarded moment, wherein he reflected strongly on the duplicity of the empress with respect to Poland. In this letter he remarked that “Maria Theresa stands, indeed, with a handkerchief in one hand, weeping for the woes of Poland, but with a sword in the other, ready to cut Poland into sections, and take her share,”⁠[74] an observation in which there was not only point, but far too much truth for it to pass unregarded. This letter was read and laughed over by Louis XV., and by him repeated to the Countess Dubarry at one of her petits soupers, and the countess, in her turn, gossiped about it, until at length the affair became a court joke and reached the ears of the dauphiness, who, whilst repressing her indignation at the time, did not fail to treasure up the circumstance in her memory.

In spite of the queen’s aversion, which, by-the-way, was fully shared by Louis XVI., the cardinal, whose ambition led him to covet the office of prime minister, fondly hoped, sooner or later, to recover his ground. When therefore he heard, as very good care was taken he very quickly should hear, that a lady who stood in certain tender relations towards himself, and was under certain pecuniary obligations to him, was in favour with the queen, the credulous dotard suspected neither deception nor exaggeration in the report; which perhaps was hardly surprising, for Nature, we are told, had given the soi-disant new favourite a frank and honest face in spite of her proficiency in the arts of deceit. “Without possessing the full splendour of beauty,” observes the Abbé Georgel, “the Countess de la Motte was gifted with all the graces of youth, her countenance was intelligent and attractive, and she expressed herself with fluency; moreover, the air of truth that pervaded her recitals invariably carried conviction along with it.” The cardinal, only too ready to be blinded and deluded, counselled his protégée how to proceed in order to retain and improve the position which he imagined she had already acquired, intending, without doubt, to avail himself of her interest to recover the good opinion of the queen, whose deep-rooted prejudice against him was the bane of his life.

Madame Campan speaks of the cardinal as a spendthrift, and a man of the most immoral character, whose mission to Vienna opened under the most unfavourable auspices, in consequence of the nature of the reputation which preceded his arrival at that court. “In want of money, and the house of Rohan being unable to make him any considerable advances, he obtained a patent which authorised him to borrow the sum of six hundred thousand livres (twenty-four thousand pounds) upon his benefices; nevertheless he ran into debt for upwards of another million, and thought to dazzle the city and court of Vienna by the most indecent, and, at the same time, the most ill-judged extravagance. He formed a suite of eight or ten gentlemen of names sufficiently high sounding, twelve pages equally well-born, a crowd of officers and servants, together with a company of chamber musicians, and various other retainers. But this idle pomp did not last; embarrassment and distress soon showed themselves; his people, no longer receiving pay, abused the ambassadorial privileges, and smuggled with so much effrontery that Maria Theresa, to put a stop to it without offending the court of France, was compelled to suppress the privileges in this respect of the entire diplomatic corps.”⁠[75]⁠

In those days an ambassador was not only required to be an adept in duplicity, but he was expected, by means of bribery, or other modes of corruption more or less dishonourable, to make himself master of all the secrets of the court to which he was accredited. The cardinal proved himself in this respect equal to the mission with which he was intrusted. At the commencement of the year 1774 he discovered that the Austrian minister, Prince von Kaunitz, had succeeded in purchasing keys of the ciphers in which the despatches that passed between the French king and himself and the ambassadors at Constantinople, Stockholm, Dantzic, and St. Petersburg were written. He also discovered that the court of Vienna had obtained copies of and had deciphered all the despatches sent by the Duke d’Aiguillon to the various representatives of the court of Versailles throughout Northern Europe. He learnt, too, that the main work of interception was done at Liege, Brussels, Frankfort, and Ratisbon. At these places copies of despatches were taken and forwarded to what was styled the “Cabinet of Decipherers,” a department of which Baron Peckler was the head.⁠[76]⁠

How it was that the cardinal came to make this important discovery and to profit largely by it, as he eventually managed to do, is quite a piece of romance. The Abbé Georgel, at that time secretary to the French embassy at Vienna, shall tell the story in his own words.

“Returning one evening to the hôtel, the porter gave me a note carefully sealed up, and addressed to me. I read in it as follows:—‘Be to-night, between eleven and twelve, at a particular place upon the ramparts, and you will be informed of matters of the very highest importance.’ An anonymous note of this tenor, sent so mysteriously, and the unseasonable hour appointed, might have appeared to some persons altogether dangerous and suspicious. But I was not aware that I had any enemies, and, desirous not to have to reproach myself with having missed an opportunity that might never occur again of promoting the king’s service, I determined to attend at the appointed place. But I took some prudential precautions, by placing within a certain distance, where they could not be seen, two persons on whom I could rely, to come to my assistance upon a signal agreed on. I found at the place of meeting a man wrapped in a cloak, and masked. He put some papers into my hands, and said in a feigned undertone: ‘You have my confidence; I will therefore contribute to the success of M. the Prince de Rohan’s embassy. These papers will inform you of the very essential services which it is in my power to render you. If you approve of them, come again to-morrow to’ another place which he mentioned, ‘and bring me a thousand ducats.’ On my return to the Hôtel de France, I hastened to examine the papers confided to me. Their contents gave me the most agreeable surprise. I saw that we had it in our power to procure twice a week copies of all the discoveries made by the secret cabinet of Vienna, which was the best served cabinet in Europe. This secret cabinet possessed in the highest degree the art of deciphering quickly the despatches of ambassadors and of the governments with whom they corresponded. I was convinced by the deciphering of our own despatches and the despatches of our court to us—even those written in the most complicated and the newest ciphers—that this cabinet had found means to intercept and obtain copies of the despatches of several European courts, through the treachery and audacity of the frontier directors and postmasters, bribed for that purpose.

“Furnished with these documents and armed with unquestionable proofs of their authenticity, I instantly went post haste to communicate them to the ambassador. I laid before him the samples of the political magazine, from which we might supply ourselves. The Prince de Rohan felt the value of it, especially to himself personally, inasmuch as this important discovery must necessarily efface the unpleasant impressions which the Duke d’Aiguillon had not failed to make upon the king’s mind, by representing to him that Prince Louis, too frivolous, and too much taken up with the pursuits of pleasure, was not so watchful at Vienna as the service of the state required.

“I met the masked man the following night, and gave him the thousand ducats: when he handed to me other papers of increasing interest, and during my whole stay at Vienna he faithfully performed his promise. Our meetings took place twice a week, and always about midnight. The ambassador wisely decided that the occupation arising from this discovery should be confined to him and to myself, with an old secretary whose discretion we knew would stand any trial. The secretary was employed in copying for our court the papers of the masked man, to whom we were obliged to return them.

“A courier extraordinary was at once despatched to Versailles with the first-fruits of our newly-discovered treasure. He was ordered not to go to bed on his way, and to carry about his person the special packet of secret despatches to the very end of his journey. A separate letter communicated the manner in which this disclosure had been made to us. Our courier returned promptly, the bearer of a despatch from the Duke d’Aiguillon, which contained this acknowledgment of the cardinal’s services: ‘I sincerely and feelingly share,’ said the minister, ‘both in the satisfaction with which the king acknowledges your services, and the credit which this discovery throws upon your mission.’ From the time of this discovery an extraordinary courier was sent off to Versailles every fortnight with new communications, and always with the same precautions as before.”⁠[77]⁠

Soulavie tells us it was through the Austrian ambassador at Versailles, who, like the rest of his fraternity, had a whole host of traitorous officials in his pay, that the court of Vienna got scent of what was going on. The Prince von Kaunitz, suspecting that the treachery was perpetrated in his office, had the locks of his cabinet changed, and made a point of intrusting all the most important despatches to no one except his private secretary. He even went the length of having one of his clerks, of whom he entertained some suspicion, drowned in the Danube; but all was of no avail; the masked man, according to the Abbé Georgel, redoubled his zeal at each succeeding interview.

Two months after the death of Louis XV. the cardinal was superseded in his post. He had hurried off to pay his court to the new king at Compiègne, where he was not long in becoming acquainted with the fact that the queen was his avowed enemy. He obtained an audience of Louis XVI., but it was brief, and by no means satisfactory. The king listened for a few minutes to the cardinal’s explanations, and then abruptly said, “I will let you know my pleasure.” As for Marie-Antoinette, she positively declined to receive him, although he had a letter from her mother the empress to deliver. The only notice she took of him was to desire that this letter might be sent to her. As a last resource he addressed a written communication to the king, which Louis XVI. did not condescend to answer. The cardinal had now no longer any doubt that his disgrace was determined upon.

Although his downfall was really to be ascribed to the joint animosity of Maria Theresa and her daughter, the grounds publicly put forward for it were these. “First, the public gallantries (at Vienna) of Prince Louis with women of the court and others of less distinction; secondly, his surliness and haughtiness towards other foreign ministers, which it was stated would have been attended with more serious consequences if the empress herself had not interfered; thirdly, his contempt for religion in a country where it was particularly necessary to show respect for it (he had been seen frequently to dress himself in clothes of different colours, assuming the hunting uniforms of various noblemen whom he visited, with so much publicity that one day in particular, during the Fête Dieu, he and all his legation, in green uniforms laced with gold, broke through a religious procession which impeded them, in order to make their way to a hunting party at the Prince von Paar’s); and fourthly, the immense debts contracted by him and his people, which were tardily and only in part discharged.”⁠[78]⁠

After the cardinal’s return to Paris from his Viennese mission, although his manners may have mended somewhat, his morals remained as loose as ever. He is reported to have kept up in different quarters of the city various small establishments to which, it is said, he was in the habit of retiring to emulate in secret the vices of the Roman emperors. His conduct in public appears to have been hardly more reputable, for one day the king when hunting with the Count d’Artois in the neighbourhood of Fontainebleau, came upon Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan with a handsome young abbé, his hair elegantly dressed and powdered, seated beside him in his carriage. The king remarked to his brother that the abbé only required a little rouge to pass for a woman, but the more quick-sighted Count d’Artois had already discovered that the pretended abbé was a woman in disguise—none other, in fact, than one of the cardinal’s mistresses—the notorious Marquise de Marigny.⁠[79]⁠