4. Marchiali, whoever he was, had never acted any distinguished part on the public theatre of the world. The sudden absence of such a person, in any part of Europe, would infallibly have occasioned much wonder and enquiry, some traces of which must have reached our knowledge. But in this instance, using the amplest latitude of time, we cannot even discover any one important death, that leaves the minutest opening for our most licentious suspicions. 5. An illustrious birth was therefore the only advantage by which the prisoner could be distinguished; and his birth must indeed have been illustrious, since, when Monsieur de Louvois made him a visit, he spoke to him standing, and avec une considération qui tenait du respect. We must ascend very high ere we attain a rank which that proud and powerful minister of the French monarchy could think it his duty to respect.

6. The most extraordinary precautions were employed, not only to secure, but conceal, this mysterious captive; and his guards were ordered to kill him, if he made the least attempt to discover himself. That order, as well as the silver plate which he threw out of the prison window, after writing something upon it, and which fell into the hands of an illiterate fisherman, sufficiently prove that he was acquainted with his own name and condition. The mask, which he never was permitted to lay aside, shows the apprehension of the discovery of some very striking resemblance.

7. Prisoners of such alarming importance are seldom suffered to live. Of all precautions, the dagger and the bowl are undoubtedly the surest. Nothing but the most powerful motives, or, indeed, the tenderest ties, could have stopped the monarch's hand, and induced him rather to risk a discovery, than to spill the blood of this unfortunate man. He was lodged in the best apartment of the Bastile, his table was served in the most delicate manner, he was allowed to play on the guitar, and supplied with the finest laces and linen, of which he was passionately fond. Every kind attention was studiously practised, that could in any wise alleviate the irksomeness of his perpetual imprisonment.

8. When Monsieur de Chamillard, in the year 1721, was on his death-bed, his son-in-law, the Maréchal de la Feuillade, begged on his knees, that he would disclose to him that mysterious transac tion. The dying minister refused to gratify this unreasonable curiosity. "It was the secret of the state, (he said,) and he had taken an oath never to divulge it." The prisoner had then been dead eighteen years, and Louis XIV. almost six. It must have been a secret of no common magnitude that could still affect the peace and welfare of future generations.

Before we proceed to a probable solution of these strange circumstances, let us try to connect them with some facts of a more public and general nature.

1. The doubtful birth of Louis XIV. often occurs, in conversation, as the subject of historical scepticism. The first grounds of the suspicion are obvious. He was born after a sterile union of twenty-three years between Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria. But as such an

event, however unfrequent, is neither destitute of possibility, nor even of example, the scandalous rumour would long since have died away in oblivion, had it not derived additional strength from the character and situation of the royal pair.

2. Though Louis XIII. wanted not either parts or courage, his character was degraded by a coldness and debility, both of mind and body, which had little affinity with his heroic father. Had his indifference towards the sex been confined to the queen, it might have been considered as the mere effect of personal dislike; but his chaste amours with his female favourites betrayed to the laughing court, that the king was less than a man.

3. Without reviving all the obsolete scandal of the Fronde, we may respectfully insinuate that Anne of Austria's reputation of chastity was never so firmly established as that of her husband.

To the coquetry of France, the queen united the warm passions of a Spaniard. Her friends acknowledge that she was gay, indiscreet, vain of her charms, and strongly addicted at least to romantic gallantry. It is well known that she permitted some distinguished favourites to entertain her with soft tales of her beauty and their love; and thus removed the distant ceremony, which is perhaps the surest defence of royal virtue. Anne of Austria passed twenty-eight years with a husband, alike incapable of gratifying her tender or her sensual inclinations. At the age of forty-three, she was left an independent widow, mistress of herself, and of the kingdom.

4. The civil wars which raged during the minority of Louis XIV. arose from the blind and unaccountable attachment of the queen to Cardinal Mazarin, whom she obstinately supported against the universal clamour of the French nation. The Austrian pride, perhaps, and the useful merit of the minister, might determine the queen to brave an insolent opposition; but a connexion, formed by policy, might very easily terminate in love. The necessity of business would engage that princess in many a secret and midnight conference with an Italian of an agreeable person, vigorous constitution, loose morals, and artful address. The amazing anecdote hinted at in the honest memoirs of La Porte, sufficiently proves that Mazarin was capable of employing every expedient to insinuate himself into every part of the royal family.

5. If Anne of Austria yielded to such opportunities, and to so artful a lover, if she became a mother after her husband's death, her weakness, and the consequences of it, would have been carefully screened from the eye of curious malignity. When Louis XIV. succeeded to the possession of the kingdom, and of the fatal secret, . he was deeply interested in the guard of his own, and of his mother's honour. Had her frailty been revealed to the world, the living proof would have awakened and confirmed all the latent suspicions, diffused a spirit of distrust and division among the people, and shaken the hereditary claim of the monarch. If the strong grasp of Louis XIV. retained the French sceptre, the doubt and the danger were entailed on future ages. In some feeble, or infant reign, an ambitious Condé might embrace the fair pretence to assert the right to

his genuine branch, and to exclude from the succession the spurious posterity of Louis XIII.

In a word, the child of Anne of Austria and of Cardinal Mazarin would have been at once the brother and the most dangerous enemy of his sovereign. The humanity of Louis XIV. might have declined a brother's murder; but pride, policy, and even patriotism, must have compelled that prince to hide his face and his existence with an iron mask and the walls of the Bastile.

It is scarcely necessary to add, that I suppose the unfortunate Marchiali to have been that child. If the several facts which I have drawn together, blend themselves, without constraint, into a consistent and natural system, it is surely no weak argument in favour of the truth, or at least of the probability, of my opinion.

May 27th, 1774.

JUSTIFICATORY MEMOIR,

INTENDED AS AN ANSWER TO THE "DECLARATION OF THE MOTIVES FOR THE CONDUCT OF THE KING OF FRANCE WITH REGARD TO ENGLAND.

THE ambition of a power which has always been hostile to the public peace, has at last obliged the king of Great Britain to employ in a just and necessary war, the means entrusted to him by God and by his people. In vain does France endeavour to justify, or rather to disguise her policy from the eyes of Europe by her last manifesto, which seems to have been dictated by pride and artifice, but which cannot be reconciled with correct facts and the rights of nations. Equity, moderation, and the love of peace, which have always influenced the king's proceedings, now induce him to submit his own conduct and that of his enemies to the judgment of that independent and respectable tribunal, which will, fearlessly and without flattery, pronounce the sentence passed upon it by Europe, by the present age, and by posterity. That tribunal is composed of intelligent and disinterested men of every nation, and never stops short at mere professions; for the motives of princes' proceedings and the feelings of their hearts are to be judged of by the nature of their actions.

When the king ascended the throne, his arms were crowned with success in all the four quarters of the globe. His moderation reestablished public tranquillity, while at the same time he firmly upheld the dignity of his crown, and procured for his subjects the most solid advantages. Experience had taught him how mournful and bitter are the consequences even of victory itself, and how greatly wars, whether successful or not, exhaust the means of the people, without aggrandising the power of the prince. His actions proved to the whole world that he felt all the value of peace, and it

might at least be presumed that the same reason which had convinced him of the unavoidable calamities of war, and the perilous vanity of conquests, had inspired him with a firm and sincere resolution of maintaining that general tranquillity, of which he was himself the author and guarantee. These principles have invariably guided his Majesty's conduct during the fifteen years that followed the peace concluded at Paris in 1763; a happy epoch of repose and felicity, which will be long remembered, and perhaps long regretted, by the nations of Europe.

The instructions given by the king to all his ministers, bore the same impress of his character and principles. He recommended to them, as their most important duty, to listen with scrupulous attention to the complaints and representations of other powers, whether allies or neighbours; to stifle in their birth all subjects of contention, which might produce any bitterness or alienation of feeling; to keep off the scourge of war by every expedient compatible with the dignity of the sovereign of a great people; and to inspire all nations with a just confidence in the political system of a government which detested war without fearing it, which employed no means but those of reason and good faith, and which had no object but the general tranquillity. Amid this repose, the first sparks of discord were kindled in America. The intrigues of a few audacious and rebellious ringleaders, who imposed on the credulous simplicity of their fellow-countrymen, imperceptibly seduced the greater part of the English colonies to raise the standard of revolt against the mother country, to which they were indebted for their existence and welfare. The court of Versailles found no difficulty in forgetting the stipulations of treaties, the duties of allies, and the rights of sovereigns, in the attempt to profit by circumstances which seemed favourable to its ambitious designs. It was not ashamed of degrading its dignity by clandestine connexions with rebellious subjects; and after having exhausted all the disgraceful resources of perfidy and dissimulation, it dared to avow in the face of Europe, indignant at its conduct, the solemn treaty signed by the ministers of the most Christian King, in conjunction with the obscure agents of the English colonies; who founded their pretended independence only on the impudence of their revolt. The offensive declaration which the Marquis de Noailles was commissioned to make to the court of London, on the 13th of March in the past year, justified his Majesty in repelling by force of arms, the unheard of insult thus offered to the honour of his crown; and on that important occasion the king was not unmindful of his duty to his subjects and to himself. The same spirit of deceit and ambition still reigned in the councils of France. Spain, which has more than once had cause to repent of having neglected her own real interests, and of having blindly followed the destructive projects of the elder branch of the house of Bourbon, was prevailed upon to change the character of a mediator for that of an enemy to Great Britain. The calamities of the war have been numerous; but, up to the present time, the court of Versailles has had no reason to boast of

the success of her military operations; and Europe knows how to appreciate naval victories, that have no existence except in the gazettes and manifestoes of the soi-disant conquerors.

Since war and peace impose upon nations duties entirely different and even opposite, it is indispensably necessary to distinguish between these two states in theory as well as in practice; but, in the last manifesto, just published by the government of France, they are continually confounded with each other. They pretend to justify their conduct by appealing alternately, and almost at the same instant, to those rights which only an enemy can be permitted to claim, and to those maxims which regulate the obligations and proceedings of national friendship. The dexterity of the court of Versailles in thus incessantly intermingling two suppositions which have nothing common between them, is the natural consequence of a deceitful and insidious system of policy, which will not bear the searching light of day. The king's sentiments and proceedings having no cause to dread the most rigorous examination, induce him, on the contrary, clearly to distinguish what his enemies have so artfully confounded. It is peculiar to justice alone, fearlessly to speak the language of reason and truth.

The full justification of his Majesty and the indelible infamy of France, then, are easily proved by two simple and almost self-evident propositions. First, that a profound and permanent, but, on the part of England, a real and sincere peace still subsisted between the two nations, when France formed connexions, at first secret, but afterwards publicly avowed, with the revolted colonies of America; and, secondly, that according to the most commonly received maxims as to international rights, and even according to the tenor of the treaties actually subsisting between the two crowns, those connexions might be looked upon as a violation of the peace, and the public avowal of those connexions was equivalent to a declaration of war on the part of the most Christian King. This is, perhaps, the first time that a great nation has had any occasion to prove two such incontestible truths, and the justice of the king's cause is already acknowledged by all those who judge without interested or prejudiced

views.

"When the king was called by Providence to the throne, France enjoyed the most profound peace." These are the expressions of the last manifesto of the cabinet of Versailles, which thus recognises, without hesitation, the solemn assurances of sincere friendship and pacific dispositions, which it received on that occasion from his Britannic Majesty, and which were subsequently renewed by the interchange of ambassadors between the two courts, during a period of four years, and up to the moment of the fatal and decisive declaration of the Marquis de Noailles. It is, therefore, necessary to prove, that during that happy period of universal tranquillity, England was concealing a secret war beneath the external appearances of peace, and that its unjust and arbitrary proceedings were carried to such a length, as to justify France in taking those extreme measures which could only be allowed of towards a declared enemy.