WE come now to the most important reign in French annals save possibly that of Philip Augustus. Louis XIV was a very imperfect ruler, but no one can deny that in a limited but genuine sense of the word he was "great" – that is, he exercised a profound influence over the lives, actions, and imaginations not merely of all Frenchmen, but of all Europeans. For at least four decades in his reign it seemed possible that France might become not merely the most powerful, but the overwhelmingly dominant power of Europe, ambitious to make Paris another Imperial Rome. To understand the circumstances which enabled this king to occupy the very center of the world's thoughts it is needful to study his personality, the principles of his government, the achievements of his ministers, the discipline of his armies, the ceremonial of his court. Only then can we see how he was able to make France the cynosure of Europe.
On the day after the death of Mazarin, Louis XIV, as narrated in the last chapter, assembled his Secretaries of State. "Hitherto," he announced, "I have let others transact my business. For the future I will be my own First Minister. I will be glad of your advice when I request it. I request you to seal nothing without my orders and to sign nothing without my consent." The Monarch thus indicated his will to be really king. He was then twenty-two years old. He died at the age of seventy-seven. In this period of fifty-five years (1661 to 1715) the wish which he had manifested on the first day of his actual government never left him for an instant. He never had a First Minister. He was constantly the King.
Louis XIV was of moderate height, but he imposed himself on all beholders, thanks to an air of nobility and of majesty without arrogance, which expressed itself in his least gestures, and which, as said his contemporary, the Duke of Saint-Simon, "in his dressing-gown even as at the fêtes," at the billiard table even as at the head of his troops, caused him to appear "the master of the world." He had only moderate intellectual acuteness; but he had much good sense, and he seldom decided a matter until he had been well informed by those supposed to know. He was naturally inclined to the right. "He loved truth, equity, order, and reason." He had also much moral courage and a firmness of character which appeared especially in his disastrous later years, when he saw his armies beaten, his country invaded, and nearly all his family carried away by death.
This King had few personal ideas. He had one, however, that from his youth had become embedded in his intellect and which dominated his whole life. From infancy he had been told that he was a "visible divinity," a "Vice-God." The first copy-book set for him to learn writing read, "Homage is due to kings. They do that which they please." He was penetrated with this dogma – that he was a being set apart, holding his crown by the divine will, King by the grace of God, His lieutenant upon the earth. To God, but to God alone, he must some day render account for his deeds.
Practically all the French world then admitted the validity of this idea. One of his subjects, La Bruyère, wrote bluntly: "He who considers that the face of the monarch causes the felicity of the courtier, whose life is occupied with the desire of seeing him and being seen by him, may understand how the sight of God suffices for the glory and the bliss of the saints." For Louis XIV such views had two very important consequences. In the first place, as lieutenant of God he had to be the absolute master – free to dispose of the goods, liberties, and even the lives of his subjects, who owed him implicit obedience, "without discernment." In the second place, he had the obligation upon his conscience to discharge, to use his own expression, "his profession as king." He ought to "do everything for the weal of the State" and only to employ his power "to labor more efficaciously for the prosperity of his subjects."
Louis XIV did not always provide this prosperity, but at least he was a faithful worker. "It is only by labor that one may reign," he wrote for his son; "and it is ingratitude and defiance toward God and injustice and tyranny toward man to wish for the one thing without the other." As a consequence a certain proportion of every morning and afternoon was devoted by the King to public business, either working alone or with his Secretaries of State. Every day and hour was arranged according to a rigid schedule, so that, as Saint-Simon writes, "with an almanack and a watch, though you were three hundred leagues away, you could tell exactly what the King was doing."
The idea that he was the lieutenant of God had filled Louis XIV with indescribable pride. He rejoiced in the name the "Sun King." He almost allowed his obsequious courtiers to "adore" him after the manner of a saint or a demi-god. His dependents, if traversing his empty chamber, when they came before the royal bed or the chest in which was kept the royal napkins, made a profound reverence as they might before the high-altar in a church. They organized "the cult of the royal majesty," and each of the King's ordinary acts of daily life, arising, dining, taking a walk, hunting, having supper, going to bed, became a public ceremony with minutely regulated details – all known as the "royal etiquette." The "Sun King" rose at eight. The courtiers were introduced into the bedchamber by groups, known as entrées. For the lever there were six entrées, and after the last of these some hundred persons at length found themselves in the royal presence. The most favored were those admitted at the moment when His Majesty arose from bed and assumed the royal dressing-gown. The least fortunate were those who entered only when he wiped his hands with a napkin moistened in alcohol and finished putting on his garments. The "etiquette" indicated what persons should present each separate garment: for example, the "day-shirt" wrapped in an envelope of white silk had to be presented by a son of the King, a Prince of the Blood, or, failing them, by the Grand Chamberlain. The right glove had to be presented by the First Valet of the Chamber; the left glove by the First Valet of the Wardrobe. The Master of the Wardrobe passed the lieutenant of God his breeches and assisted him to button fast the same.
Having thus been clothed, the King entered his cabinet, gave his orders for the day, and then went to mass. Quitting the chapel he held council with his ministers until one o'clock. At that time he dined, alone, in his chamber. The "etiquette" then was no less minute than for the lever. Each plate was borne in by a gentleman, preceded by an usher and by a maître d'hôtel and escorted by three life-guardsmen, musket on shoulder. Five gentlemen stood regularly behind the King. If he wished to drink, it required three gentlemen to provide him with a glass of water or wine. This was the "etiquette" for ordinary days. On gala days, and days of the grand couvert, usually Sundays, the King, although still alone at table, had around him some thirty persons, about half of them armed guardsmen. On those days the public was permitted to come in and contemplate the grand monarque eating.
After dinner the King would go outdoors; either for a walk or more often for a trot on horseback, and frequently for a hunt. A regular multitude would follow him. On return he changed his dress with all the morning ceremonial; then shut himself again in his cabinet to read the reports of the State Secretaries or to write his own letters. Thus he would work one or two hours. At ten o'clock he supped with his family, again with great ceremony. After supper came a game of cards; then finally came the solemn coucher – going to bed, a process as public and complicated as the lever.
The French court had become elaborate and brilliant in the days of Francis I. During the "Wars of Religion" it had been entirely disorganized. Under Henry IV it had become extremely simple and even severely military. Now, under his far from simple grandson, it received an astonishing extension. It consisted of the military household, some ten thousand men in magnificent uniforms, a guard corps worthy of the most formidable monarch in Christendom; and of a civil household, containing at least four thousand. The service of the "Kitchen of the King" (la bouche du roi) – that is, the group of individuals employed for the royal table and the royal table alone, – contained 498 persons. But besides the King's household there were those of the Queen, Dauphin, Dauphiness, and those of their children. A daughter of the Dauphin, when aged two years, had for herself a "household" (maison) of 22 persons, including three governesses and eight waiting maids.
The chiefs of these "services" were drawn from the highest nobility. The "Grand Master of France," chief of the service of the royal table, was none other than the first Prince of the Blood, the Prince of Condé himself, who might also be the selfsame terrible general whose victories smote fear into all Europe. Usually these functions were actually discharged in person, and were not handed over to deputies. It was a coveted honor to pass the King his shirt or to hand him a dish. There were plenty of inferior noblemen who merely waited around in the royal presence, hoping that after the evening game of cards the King might make them happy above their fellows by asking them to carry a candle to light him to bed. The King thus had the once arrogant and self-sufficient nobility of France completely tamed. He wished to see the noblesse always dancing attendance upon him in the huge royal residence at Paris, or, after he built it, at the still vaster Versailles. Daily he passed in review his courtiers as he went along his galleries, or the alleys of his great parks. Whoever did not come to court could hope nothing from the royal favor. "He is a man I have not seen," the King would say, when asked a boon for some one absent. "I do not know him" – which was the most terrible possible criticism.
All the nobility of France, therefore, which could find the means drifted to the royal court. The country châteaux were deserted by all save the poverty-stricken, the disgraced, or the scandalously unambitious. The nobility, to live in state, built their own elegant "hôtels" around the royal residence, and consequently, when Louis XIV moved to Versailles, they aided to create a regular city.
Although the nobility thus became really his nobility, Louis XIV only gave to it very meager opportunities for a career. A nobleman could serve in the King's army or navy; he could enter the "civil household" to pass a napkin or to uncover a dish; he could hang around the palace as an obsequious courtier without definite functions. But the King almost never employed the nobles in the ordinary civil government and administration. "It is not in my interest," he once wrote, "to choose men of the highest eminence. It is important that the public should know, by the rank of those who serve me, that I will never share my authority consciously with them."
The regular agents of the Central Government were the Chancellor, the Controller-General of the Finances, four "Secretaries of State," various "Ministers of State," and also "Councillors of State." These functionaries for the most part had existed in earlier reigns. The Chancellor, the Controller- General, and the Secretaries formed what would be called to-day in France the "Council of the Ministers." The Chancellor was the head of the administration of justice; he was likewise president of all the royal councils in the absence of the King. The Controller, of course, had charge of the treasury and all its problems. The four Secretaries were those of the "Royal Household," of "Foreign Affairs," of "War," and of the "Marine," but each of them, in addition to these designated functions, was entrusted (following a rather old usage) with the charge of the general civil administration of an assigned portion of the country. Theoretically these secretaries were mere recording agents for the pleasure of the King, to whom they were bound to report everything, and then to execute his commands "without rejoinder." In fact, of course, they had large powers and much personal leeway.
Under these high officials were four great councils made up of "ministers" (who were really only high councilors), and ordinary "councilors." The King himself, if he wished, presided over these councils. They were the "High Council" for many major affairs, but especially for war and diplomacy; another of "Finance"; another of "Dispatches" (that is, from local officials, to handle interior administration); and finally that of "Parties" which conducted all important legal business in which the Government was interested.
This was a decidedly simple machinery for governing a great autocratic state, where all kinds of public business was being concentrated ever more firmly at the King's court. Obviously everything depended on the abilities of the Sovereign, the Chancellor, the Controller, and the four State Secretaries. Their grasp upon the realm was maintained by the all-important intendants. There were still, indeed provincial "governors," each set over an old province, – for example, Toulouse, Normandy, – and appointed from the highest noblesse. But the once viceregal governor had had his powers so sadly curtailed that his was now little more than a pretentious honor. Usually in any case his royal lord kept him in residence at court far from his "government." The actual working administrator was the non- noble intendant, set over a généralité (a district often considerably smaller than an average province). Unless the King's ministers stopped him there seemed little an active intendant might not do. If he wished he could sit as presiding judge in the courts. He supervised and controlled the local finances, the administration of the cities, and all the public works. He levied and led the militia of the district if there were disturbances and handled any military situation which did not demand a regular royal general and elaborate warfare. In short, as was then said of him, "The intendant is the King present in the province." Thus he remained until the Revolution of 1789.
For the first and by far the most prosperous portion of the reign of Louis XIV, the most important Royal Minister was Jean Baptiste Colbert. Sumultaneously he was Controller- General, Secretary of the Marine, and Secretary of the Royal Household. He was the most powerful of all the King's subjects, and without him his master could hardly have risen to the wealth and power which made him overshadow Europe.
Colbert (1619-83) was the son of a dry-goods dealer ("draper") of Reims. In his youth he went to Paris, and became the manager of the private estate of Mazarin. That clutching ecclestiastic was quick to recognize the financial talent which conserved and increased his property. At his death he formally commended Colbert to Louis in his will as being "very faithful." At this time the future Controller was fortytwo years old.
When Mazarin died the finances had been in the hands of a certain Fouquet, a man of great abilities and ambitions, who seemed so intrenched in his position that he could enrich himself with impunity and use his vast wealth as a basis for schemes to win permanent political power. One of Louis's first acts of personal authority was to depose this overweening minister, strip him of his dubiously acquired wealth, and condemn him to perpetual imprisonment (1661). In his place was set Colbert, a man whom the King discovered would never abuse his authority.
Colbert had a genuine mania for work. He was heard to declare that "he could not live six years if condemned to idleness." At half-past five in the morning he would enter his cabinet, and if he saw there his desk loaded with dispatches he would rub his hands as a gourmand before a feast. His regular working hours were sixteen per day. To disturb him at his labor was an unpardonable offense, and his icy habits gained him the epithet "The North." The tale runs that once a lady fell on her knees before him while soliciting a favor. Colbert promptly fell also on his own knees facing her, saying, "I beseech you to let me alone!"
The activities of Colbert can best be understood by stating that for twenty-two years he united in his person official positions that are to-day shared in France by no less than nine cabinet ministers. He has been styled the "work ox" of Louis XIV. He toiled, however, not merely out of personal inclination, but because of genuine patriotism. His devotion to his King and to France was unlimited, and he labored for them because he wished them to be the first king and the first kingdom in the world. To them he dedicated all his unbounded talents.
Colbert's leading idea was very simply to make France rich. For this end he used every possible means to attract money to the kingdom, and also to reduce the wealth of rival states; and very specifically he strove to reorganize the public finances, to develop industry, and to promote commerce.
In handling the finances he first of all dealt rigorously with all who, under Mazarin's lax régime, had plundered the treasury. Some hundreds of wealthy magnates were prosecuted and compelled to disgorge the equivalent of over $85,000,000. At the same time the general disorders of the finances were abated. The exchequer management was always the weakest point in the French royal régime down to the great crash in 1789, but things went better under Colbert than ever before or after. He enforced a rare thing then in Government financial circles – a strict accounting for every sou; and also a genuine attempt to keep expenditures inside of receipts. He had, indeed, something like a very elementary budget. From 1661 to 1672 it may be said that France was kept away from the threat of a deficit. Then, following 1672, the incessant wars and the endless expenses of building the royal château at Versailles brought back the evil days. Colbert lived to see the public finances sinking again into deplorable disorder.
His real achievement was in developing the manufactures of France in a way which made her a great industrial power – a position from which she has never permanently declined. He took up the lines of development dropped too long since the days of Henry IV. Thus he put the energies of the Government behind the older industries which already existed – cloths, tapestries, and silks; and then went on to introduce and promote industries hitherto almost unknown in France, such as glass, porcelain, laces, and iron-work. It is from his day that dates, for example, the steady output of admirable silks from Lyons, porcelain from Sèvres, lace from Chantilly, etc. – articles or objects of elegance which made the name of France honorably famous wherever there were persons of taste. Colbert secured this progress partly by means of large money prizes to successful artisans, partly by granting privileges to foreign craftsmen who would settle in France, but especially by advancing funds for the purchase of raw material and for the erection of factories of a size remarkable for that age. In place of the "family work-room" where a master-craftsman and a few apprentices labored on a very small scale, there were developed really large manufacturing plants such as are familiar to the present age. Thus certain of Colbert's industrial foundations employed hundreds of workers each, and at least one – a cloth-works at Abbéville, in Picardy – employed sixty-five hundred "hands" – a number not unworthy to be ranked with the largest type of factories of the present day. Colbert was, therefore, not remotely, one of the fathers of the modern factory system.
The great Minister's ambitions, however, went beyond merely making France economically independent. He intended to have foreign lands economically dependent upon France. For that end he desired that French products should be the most reliable, durable, and elegant of their kind in the world. Accordingly all the processes of manufacture were carefully prescribed by law. There were no less than thirty-two sets of regulations and one hundred and fifty edicts issued on the subject. For example, the length and width of pieces of cloth were carefully regulated and the number of threads in the warp and woof. Every craftsman had to put his distinguishing mark upon his products. These were carefully inspected, and in case of defective workmanship the offending articles were seized, exposed publicly upon a post with the name of their manufacturer, and then deliberately torn to pieces and burned. If the offense was repeated, the manufacturer himself was exposed upon the post for two hours along with his dishonest wares. Colbert defended these severities by saying pithily, "I have always found manufacturers very obstinate in sticking to their errors!"
Colbert achieved his end by these measures. French-made articles speedily gained a reputation of being the very best in the entire market. "Such is the vogue of these products that orders flow in for them from every quarter," wrote a Venetian ambassador. It is thus to Colbert that French industry owed its reputation for the high quality of its articles – a reputation which has remained one of its best assets even to this day. To promote the sale of these products Colbert made a corresponding effort to promote French commerce in general. His attempts to improve the conditions of interiortrade were, indeed, not entirely fortunate, but he certainly gave the foreign trade of France a marked impetus.
Within the kingdom each French province was almost an independent state economically. It had its own customs, barriers, and special weights and measures. A merchant of Auvergne paid a tax for the privilege of introducing his goods into Languedoc, those of Champagne to enter Burgundy. This, of course, was one of the evil remnants of feudalism. The roads were also few and very bad.
Colbert could not sweep away many evil conditions which were to defy reform until 1789; but he greatly improved and multiplied the roads, and particularly he developed the river and canal system already exploited by Henry IV. From his day onward the inland waterway system became a decisive fact in the economic life of the country and even a passing substitute for railroads. In foreign commerce the great Minister could accomplish more. This had the greater importance in his eyes, for it enabled France to extend her power among the nations. To grasp at the valuable "spice" trade with the Orient, which had brought such wealth first to Venice and later to Holland, he created several elaborate "Companies for Ocean Commerce" whereof the most important was naturally the "East India Company" – a formidable rival to similar English and Dutch corporations. As an inevitable part of this undertaking he devoted himself to fostering an efficient French merchant marine. The existing taxes levied on foreign ships (especially Dutch) that entered French harbors were carefully maintained, and simultaneously a system of bonuses for the building and maintenance of merchantmen was introduced. As a consequence French cargo-carriers began to compete with the Dutch and the English on all the oceans of the world.
Behind a great merchant fleet, however, Colbert realized there must be a great war navy. Richelieu had undertaken to make his king formidable upon the seas, but Mazarin had less advisedly allowed the royal navy to dwindle. In 1660, Louis XIV was master of only 18 very inferior men-of-war. In 1683, when Colbert died, the King had 276 vessels of greatly improved types – galleys, useful indeed only on the Mediterranean, ships-of-the-line carrying up to 120 guns, and frigates for scouting and cruising. Instead of using the outrageous "press gang" in the port towns, a barbarous method which kidnaped French seamen at haphazard intervals into a regular slavery, Colbert substituted a regular method of naval recruiting among the seafaring population. Qualified persons were obliged to serve one year in four in the royal navy between the ages of twenty to sixty. In recompense they were assured a pension in their old age. The King thus disposed of 60,000 reliable seamen. Thanks to Colbert's efforts Louis XIV, during the first twenty-five years of his reign, was almost as powerful on the ocean as he was upon land.
Colbert thus put his quickening hand on French finance, industry, commerce, merchant marine, and navy. In him we see the solid, constructive qualities of the great bourgeois class given a real opportunity to show what they could accomplish for the nation. Far more than any other minister he was the builder of the glories of his King. Yet before he died he saw much of his work in ruins. The King's head had been turned by pride, victories, and "glory." The treasury was again showing a deficit. Louis was no longer trusting a minister who forever preached peace, economy, and the promotion of very prosaic and workaday industrial projects. Colbert died in 1683 with France already embarked on a series of disastrous wars which were to blast her prosperity.
The aggressive military policy of Louis XIV brought about a complete transformation of the military system of France; earlier, in fact, than in the other great states, and this in large measure accounts for the success of French arms up to 1700. Richelieu had, indeed, paved the way by his energetic innovations, but the war machine of the Bourbon Monarchy did not see perfection until the next generation. The fundamental alteration was, of course, the substitution of a regular standing army for armies improvised from war to war. The leader in all the innovations was Louvois.
Without the genius of Colbert, France could not have been rich enough to sustain the grandiose projects of Louis XIV; without the genius of Louvois, it would have been impossible, in a military sense, to have attempted them.
Louvois was the son of one of Mazarin's Secretaries of State. In 1666 he succeeded his father in the great position of Chancellor. He was much younger than Colbert, but had a large share of that great man's unemotional character, zeal for hard work, and love of order. Unlike Colbert he never risked his royal master's favor by contending against the extravagances of the court, and especially against the waste of public money in building Versailles. On the contrary, he was a systematic flatterer and presently he gained much greater influence over Louis than was possessed by the Finance Minister. We find him brutal, violent, and harsh, and to him are attributed the idea of the dragonnades of the Protestants, and of the devastation of the Palatinate – two of the foulest blots on the history of the Sun King. No one can deny, however, Louvois's ability as a secretary of war. Hitherto it had been usual, even in a great monarchy like France, to disband the bulk of the armies the moment peace was declared. When a new war began, its first stages were consumed, not in fighting, but in painfully mustering troops, hunting out competent officers, and improvising a new organization, etc. In case of a sudden attack by a better prepared fee, the situation was soon desperate. Also since Gustavus Adolphus the Swede had demonstrated in his German campaigns that the art of war could be put on practically a scientific basis, the time required to train competent officers and men had been greatly increased. The inevitable consequences were: (1) the preparations for war had to be made in times of peace, and (2) the royal army had to become a strictly permanent force.
Louis XIV had already in 1661 a body of regular troops which other kings duly envied: especially the Household Troops (maison du roi), an excellent guard-corps; and twelve standing regiments of infantry. Around this basis Louvois built a great military organization. In 1670 there were some sixty infantry regiments; about 1690, ninety-eight; and, when the War of the Spanish Succession broke out (1701) Louis had the then almost incredible number of two hundred, although some of these, indeed, were certainly created for the emergency. But even in peace times the "Grand Monarch" issued his daily orders to 47,000 cavalry and 127,000 foot; all properly barracked and armed, and supplied on a well-matured system. No other king in Europe had anything equal to this peace establishment.
Unlike other armies of the day this French army had also a uniform dress, discipline, and system of tactics, in great contrast to the previous age when every regiment had been a distinct law unto itself. It was, for example, a great gain when all the ordinary field guns in the army could use the same cannon balls interchangeably. The troops were recruited by private enlistment, for conscription in our sense of the term was unknown, though the plausible recruiting sergeants made a practice of visiting famine-stricken or otherwise unhappy districts and inducing the despairing peasants to enlist by lying tales of the luxury, fine quarters, and lax discipline of the King's service, when actually on reaching the barracks the recruit found that "one bed for three men, some bad bread, and five sous per day for sustenance" was the real life before him.
Discipline in seventeenth-century armies had been often so slack as to compromise decisive battles. Louvois's forces were held down by martinets. Floggings were the lot of disobedient privates; but the War Minister insisted upon equal obedience from officers also. No longer could irresponsible young noblemen lead a gay life around the camps. Breach of orders brought them quickly to the guard-room. Vainly the high-born lords protested that Louvois was insisting on their "learning to obey before they could command" – which was precisely what he had intended.
The changes introduced in arms and tactics were not radical, but it is worth noticing that with this age armor practically disappears from the soldiery, except in certain élite corps of cavalry, where it remained more for splendor than for defense, and with the armor went also the pike, practically the last surviving form of the venerable spear of antiquity. Hitherto it had been absolutely needful to keep a certain number of pikemen in every regiment to avoid its being ridden down by a bold charge of cavalry against its files of slow-firing musketeers. But well before 1700 there appeared the now familiar bayonet, which transformed every musket into a pike in an emergency, and made special pikemen unnecessary. The first bayonets had, indeed, the great drawback that when fixed they covered the muzzle of the musket so that it could not be fired, but about 1701 means were found to attach them so the firearm could still remain in full play. This invention, therefore, not merely retired the old spear to practical oblivion, but went far to give the infantryman a great advantage in resisting the charges of cavalry. He could shoot down the onrushing horsemen, even while maintaining a hedge of steel points against the charge.
This army would, of course, have been worthless had there not been ability and often even genius in the higher command. In Condé and Turenne, Louis XIV inherited from Mazarin's régime probably the two best generals in Europe. Condé, indeed, was more a dashing tactician than a great strategist; Turenne was certainly the best soldier seen in Europe between the days of Gustavus Adolphus and Frederick the Great, and possibly was the peer of either. In 1660, Louis had made this modest, well-poised man "Marshal General of the Camps and Armies of France." He possibly lacked Napoleonic inspiration, but he could execute with magnificent audacity the schemes which he had previously worked out with scientific precision. His movements were of lightning rapidity compared to the average general of the day, whose maneuvers would be so slow that whole campaigning seasons would be wasted while working up to a single siege or unimportant battle. "Our father" his devoted men nevertheless called him on account of his long calculations to avoid needless sacrifices. When Turenne died in 1675, Louis XIV had no captain really equal to taking his place. He had still two more than ordinarily competent generals, however, the Duke of Vendâme and Marshal Villars. But in the King's later days he seems to have run through his first-class leaders, and he was unable to find successors to any but their high titles. French generalship experienced a great decline after 1700, and king and kingdom alike suffered.
Turenne also surpassed most of his contemporary generals in his willingness to force and to accept battles. Considering the amount of campaigning in the period, this time, like the height of the feudal era, saw comparatively few great pitched engagements. The ideal campaign was one in which an invader outmaneuvered the defending army and forced it to watch helplessly while one fortress after another was besieged and taken. It was almost reckoned as something wrong in a general that he should get caught in a situation which made a regular battle unavoidable. He might win the battle and yet fall slightly short of playing the best military game. Louis XIV in his wars took peculiar delight in sieges. Repeatedly he would let his generals arrange for the investment of a Flemish or German city, and then appear in person at camp to watch at safe range the advance of the trenches, and finally to receive the sword of the commandant on surrender.
The "Grand Monarch" took just pride in "his" sieges, for the art of attacking and defending towns had been brought to an even higher perfection by his Commissioner-General of Fortifications, Vauban, than had ordinary strategy and tactics by Turenne. Vauban in fact was possibly a greater military asset to Louis than even his more famous contemporary. Considering the short-range artillery of the day, his schemes of attack by parallels, "ricochet" fire, "batteries of approach," etc., seem marvels of ingenuity. When once a town was taken, Vauban would devote all his superb genius to remodeling its defenses so as to render them impregnable. It was boasted that "no city which Vauban fairly attacked was ever saved: no city he had once fortified was ever taken." In a word, to this officer, whom Louvois and Louis discovered as a simple captain and honored as a Marshal of France, is due the system of siege warfare and fortification which lasted clear up to the present age, when changes were forced by the coming of long-range artillery and extra high explosives.
Thanks to the genius, therefore, of Colbert, of Louvois, of Turenne, of Vauban, and last but not least of Lionne, a remarkably adroit and effective Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Louis XIV not merely possessed a great realm, but one in which the full economic and military resources lay completely under the King's hand, and with highly capable public servants and generals ready to do their master's bidding. Considering the education, ideas, and ambitions of Louis, there is therefore no difficulty in seeing how he was able soon to spread his name to every corner of Europe.