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                                MEMOIRS

                                OF THE

                       Marchioness of Pompadour.

                          WRITTEN BY HERSELF.

                         Wherein are Displayed

     The Motives of the Wars, Treaties of Peace, Embassies, and
     Negotiations, in the several Courts of Europe:

     The Cabals and Intrigues of Courtiers; the Characters of Generals,
     and Ministers of State, with the Causes of their Rise and Fall;
     and, in general, the most remarkable Occurrences at the Court of
     France, during the last twenty Years of the Reign of Lewis XV.

                      Translated from the French.

                            IN TWO VOLUMES.

                                VOL. I.

                                LONDON:

              Printed for P. VAILLANT, in the Strand; and
                    W. JOHNSTON, in Ludgate-Street.

                               MDCCLXVI.




THE

EDITOR’S PREFACE.


The following work must be acknowledged highly interesting to these
times; and to posterity will be still more so. These are not the memoirs
of a mere woman of pleasure, who has spent her life in a voluptuous
court, but the history of a reign remarkable for revolutions, wars,
intrigues, alliances, negotiations; the very blunders of which are not
beneath the regard of politicians, as having greatly contributed to give
a new turn to the affairs of Europe.

The Lady who drew the picture was known to be an admirable colourist.

They who were personally acquainted with Mademoiselle Poisson, before
and since her marriage with M. le Normand, know her to have been
possessed of a great deal of that wit, which, with proper culture,
improves into genius.

The King called her to court at a tempestuous season of life, when the
passions reign uncontrouled, and by corrupting the heart, enlarge the
understanding.

They who are near the persons of Kings, for the most part, surpass the
common run of mankind, both in natural and acquired talents; for
ambition is ever attended with a sort of capacity to compass its ends;
and all courtiers are ambitious.

No sooner does the Sovereign take a mistress, than the courtiers flock
about her. Their first concern is to give her her cue; for as they
intend to avail themselves of her interest with the King, she must be
made acquainted with a multitude of things: she may be said to receive
her intelligence from the first hand, and to draw her knowledge at the
fountain head.

Lewis XV. intrusted the Marchioness de Pompadour with the greatest
concerns of the nation; so that if she had been without those abilities
which distinguished her at Paris, she must still have improved in the
school of Versailles.

Her talents did not clear her in the public eye; never was a favourite
more outrageously pelted with pamphlets, or exposed to more clamorous
invectives. Of this her Memoirs are a full demonstration; her enemies
charged her with many very odious vices, without so much as allowing her
one good quality. The grand subject of murmur was the bad state of the
finances, which they attributed to her amours with the King.

They who brand the Marchioness with having run Lewis XV. into vast
expences, seem to have forgot those which his predecessor’s mistresses
had brought on the state.

Madame de la Valiere, even before she was declared mistress to Lewis
XIV. induced him to give entertainments, which cost the nation more than
ever Madame de Pompadour’s fortune amounted to.

Madame de Montespan put the same Prince to very enormous expences; she
appeared always with the pomp and parade of a Queen, even to the having
guards to attend her.

Scarron’s widow carried her pride and ostentation still further: she
drew the King in to marry her, and this mistress came to be queen, an
elevation which will be an eternal blot on the Prince’s memory.

This clandestine commerce gave rise to an infamous practice at court,
with which Madame de Pompadour cannot be charged. All these concubines
having children, to gratify their vanity, they must be legitimated; and,
afterwards, they found means to marry these sons, or daughters, of
prostitution, to the branches of the royal blood; a flagrant debasement
of the house which were in kin to the crown: for though a Sovereign can
legitimate a bastard, to efface the stain of bastardy is beyond his
power. The consequence was, that the descendants of that clandestine
issue aspired to the throne; and, through the King’s scandalous amours,
that lustre which is due only to virtue, fell to the portion of vice.

It was given out in France, and over all Europe, that Madame de
Pompadour was immensely rich: but nothing of this appeared at her death,
except her magnificent moveables, and these were rather the
consequences of her rank at court, than the effects of her vanity. This
splendor his Majesty partook of, as visiting her every day.

The public is generally an unfair judge of those who hold a considerable
station at court, deciding from vague reports, which are often the
forgeries of ill-grounded prejudice. Madame de Pompadour has been
charged with insatiable avarice. Had this been the case, she might have
indulged herself at will: she was at the spring-head of opulence; the
King never refused her any thing; so that she might have amassed any
money; which she did not. There are now existing, in France, fifty
wretches of financiers, each of a fortune far exceeding her’s.

It was also said, that the best thing which could happen to France, was
to be rid of this rapacious favourite. Well; she is no more; and what is
France the better for it? Has her death been followed by one of those
sudden revolutions in the government, which usher in a better form of
administration? Have they who looked on this Lady as an unsurmountable
obstacle to France’s greatness, proposed any better means for raising it
from its present low state? Is there more order in the government? are
the finances improved? is there more method and oeconomy? No, affairs
are still in the same bad ways the lethargy continues as profound as
ever. The ministry, which before Madame de Pompadour’s death was fast
asleep, is not yet awake. Every thing remains in _statu quo_. Some
European governments have no regular motion; they advance either too
fast, or too slow; their steps are either precipitate, or sluggish.

In this favourite’s time, there was too much shifting and changing in
the ministry; now she is gone, there is none at all, &c. &c.

I am very far from intending a panegyric on Madame de Pompadour. Faults
she had, which posterity will never forgive. All the calamities of
France were imputed to her, and she should have resigned in compliance
to the public: a nation is to be respected even in its prejudices. With
any tolerable share of patriotism, Madame de Pompadour would have
quitted the court, and thus approved herself deserving of the favour for
which she was execrated; but her soul was not capable of such an act of
magnanimity: she knew nothing of that philosophy which, inspiring a
contempt of external grandeur, endears the subject to the Prince, and
exalts him above the throne.

There is great appearance that this Lady intended to revise both her
Memoirs and her will, and that death prevented her: she used to write,
by starts, detached essays, without any coherence; and these on separate
bits of paper. These were very numerous and diffuse, as generally are
the materials intended to form a book, if she really had any such
design.

We were obliged to throw by on all sides, and clear our way through an
ocean of writings, a long and tiresome business.

It is far from being improbable, that Madame de Pompadour got some
statesman, well versed in such matters, to assist her in compiling this
book: however that be, we give it as it stands in her original
manuscript.

[Illustration: text decoration]




MEMOIRS

OF THE

Marchioness of Pompadour.


The following narrative is not confined to the particular history of my
life. My design is more extensive: I shall endeavour to give a true
representation of the court of France under the reign of Lewis XV. The
private memoirs of a King’s mistress are in themselves of small import;
but to know the character of the Prince who raises her to favour; to be
let into the intrigues of his reign, the genius of the courtiers, the
practices of the ministers, the views of the great, the projects of the
ambitious; in a word, into the secret springs of politics, is not a
matter of indifference.

It is very seldom that the public judges rightly of what passes in the
cabinet: they