THE nature of the monarchy and power of Louis XIV have been set forth in the preceding chapter. It remains to be told what use this king made of an opportunity hitherto unparalleled in French annals. It was not merely that Louis's own power was great. The old rivals of his dynasty were falling away. Spain was sinking into hopeless lethargy caused by disastrous wars, an utterly unenlightened government, and the intellectual numbness inflicted by the Inquisition. The Thirty Years' War had left Germany rent into some hundreds of weak, povertystricken principalities, with their nominal leader, Austria, shaken and discredited. Italy was, of course, as divided and as helpless as ever. In England the mighty Cromwell was dead, and in his place was coming the profligate Charles II, a prince so absolutely without royal self-respect that he was presently willing to become his cousin Louis's actual pensioner. Holland seemed strong upon the seas, but the Dutch Republic, as events were to show, lacked the population and physical resources to make successful head by land against the first monarch of his age. The remoter Powers, such as Sweden and Poland, hardly counted, although the matchless French diplomatic service often arrayed them upon its master's side. As for Turkey, still a pretentious empire of belligerent infidels, her Padishah was very willing to strike hands with "The Very Christian King" so long as the object was alike a war against Austria, their common enemy. The whole situation in Europe was thus most favorable to grandiose schemes on the part of France.
Louis, nevertheless, did not engage in warfare for quite a few years after he assumed the personal government. This was the happy time when Colbert was allowed to give his reforming genius full scope, and when the treasury figures steadily reflected the growing prosperity of the kingdom. Louis gave speedy evidence, however, that he intended to claim the leadership among all monarchs. In 1661 the Spanish Ambassador in England, in an evil moment, ventured to claim precedence at a court function over his French colleague. A curious armed brawl took place in London between the Spaniards and French there resident, as to the rights of their respective envoys to precedence in Charles II's court processions, with the English watching the fray with grinning neutrality. The Spanish party won and killed the horses to the French Envoy's coach, while the Spanish Envoy's coach drove away triumphantly after the coach of King Charles. The news of this insult had no sooner flown to Paris than Louis thundered for revenge and made ready for war. Conscious of its weakness, the Spanish court made abject apologies, disgraced its over-zealous London Envoy, and formally ordered its ministers in all the courts of Europe never to claim precedence over the representatives of France. Such a diplomatic triumph over what had been hitherto the proudest monarchy in the world was a proclamation to the four winds of the prestige of the "Sun King."
In 1662 Pope Alexander VII was also to feel the breath of his anger. The then Pope had been on bad personal terms with Mazarin. When, in an affray, the Papal Corsican Guard fired into the palace of the French Ambassador to the Vatican, and killed several of the suite, no serious punishment was inflicted on the rioters. Louis was a sincere Catholic, but he never hesitated to bully the Holy Father in any matter of secular interest. Now he hastily ordered an army of 24,000 men to enter the Papal States, while the University of Paris learnedly condemned the doctrine of Papal authority over kings. Alexander vainly looked for help to Austria and Spain, and a few days before the French army penetrated to Rome he had to present profound apologies and indemnity, and to send his own nephew Cardinal Chigi to Paris as special envoy to convey the profound regrets of His Holiness. Louis could, therefore, boast of having humbled the Pope, no less than the heir of the terrible Philip II. A great awe of the King of France and of those whom he protected fell on all the potentates and peoples of Europe.
In 1662 Louis also added a fair city to his dominions. Dunkirk, on the edge of Flanders, had been wrested from the Spaniards by Cromwell; but Charles II now needed money and had no pride in keeping a second Calais for England. He promptly sold this important place to France for 5,000,000 livres. Louis thus at a relatively trifling expense obtained a city which might have been a perfect thorn in the side of his realm if held by a more aggressive English Government.
In this manner, down to 1668, the King continued to increase the prestige of his monarchy without any serious fighting. Colbert was winning bloodless economic victories every day. The old nobility had ceased intriguing and conspiring – it was becoming content with its position as gorgeous butterflies in the splendid court. The industrial and commercial genius of the French middle and lower classes was receiving unhindered encouragement. The Huguenot minority was living at peace with the Catholic majority. If the King was an autocrat, in these years autocracy was showing its fairest and most efficient side. Never for a very long period, earlier or later, was France to seem more prosperous, tranquil, and happy than in this golden epoch of 1661 to 1668.
Not unnaturally this orderly government and wide material prosperity were accompanied by a literary and intellectual movement worthy of a truly "great" age. Corneille, the founder of modern French tragedy, did not die till 1684, although perhaps his greatest works had been produced before Louis XIV began his direct reign; but to the Sun King's own brilliant day belonged Racine (1639-99) whose tragedies deserve almost equal fame with Corneille's, and above all Molière (1622-73), that prince of comedians, the Gallican Aristophanes, whose characters have become immortal literary types, and whose genius would possibly be reckoned equal to that of Shakespeare if only he could have added the tragic to his comic muse. These are only three names out of very many contemporaries enrolled among the Olympians, such as La Fontaine, whose fables became a classic; Bossuet, the eloquent court preacher whose sermons and discourses expressed all that was best in Catholic Christianity; Fénelon, that other literary ecclesiastic of hardly lesser renown; Pascal, the mathematician and philosopher; and, to select a quite different type of genius, Madame de Sévigné, whose "Letters" give us an inimitable picture of the life and intellectual horizon of the court and noblesse of the age.
The literary life was not unnaturally accompanied by a development of the fine arts, architecture, painting, sculpture, especially such as was calculated to minister to the magnificence of costly palaces and noble "hôtels." The art was formal, heavy, over-elaborate: but none might deny its elegance or the genius that often breathed through the florid façades, or the ingeniously wrought battle-pieces and galleries of portraits. Had he determined to pose as a purely pacific king, Louis could have justly argued that the rapid development of his people in every kind of peaceful endeavor and conquest would speedily give to France the cultural mastery of the world without the need of firing one cannon shot. Considering, however, the nature of his education, his own inherent bents and talents, and the temptation set for him by the distracted state of Europe, such renunciation of martial schemes lay in the land of the impossible. Louis XIV was to make his attempt to become military master of Europe.
Four times since the end of the Middle Ages has a great military power made a distinct and formidable bid for something that may be feirly called "world-empire," and until that soaring project has been firmly thwarted, there has been no peace for the world. The first attempt thus to imitate ancient Rome was made by Philip II of Spain, and was defeated by the combined valor and skill of Elizabeth of England, William of Orange, and Henry IV of France. The second attempt was made by Louis XIV in the name of Bourbon France. The third attempt was by Napoleon, also (albeit under very different auspices) in the name of France. The fourth was to be made by Germany in 1914 when the hosts of William of Hohenzollern marched forth to "world-power or downfall."
Louis XIV did not, of course, consciously announce, perhaps even to himself, an intention of conquering the entire world. He simply started his monarchy along lines of least resistance which, since one conquest invariably leads to another, would have brought about such a colossal expansion of France that the planet could hardly have contained another power which might be treated as a free equal. The King's more obvious and avowed ambition was to execute a formula attributed to Richelieu: "Extend France to every place where once was Gaul." Such a project, of course, implied immediately very considerable territorial expansion; the conquest of all the Low Countries, at least as far as the Rhine, and perhaps beyond it; the annexation of all the small German States west of the Rhine; and finally the absorption of those relics of the "debatable lands" east of France, such as Lorraine and the "Free County of Burgundy." This last was a part of the old dominions of Charles the Bold, not permanently annexed by France when that potentate came to griet, and which had been long held in a very uncertain grasp by Spain.
By 1668 Louis had thoroughly imposed himself upon the imaginations of all Europe. "Each morning the princes of the [German] Empire, the grandees of Spain, the merchants of Holland, and the cardinals of Rome asked eagerly for the latest news of the King of France. The dangers to be feared from his ambition, and the magnificence which characterized his life were discussed in every council chamber, in every coffee-house, in every barber-shop in Europe." In 1668, Louis, hitherto (his position considered) a remarkably pacific prince, began a series of four wars which at first added immeasurably to his "glory," but ended by leaving that glory tarnished and the prosperity of his kingdom absolutely destroyed. These wars ran until 1714, one year before the King's death. Between them there were conditions of truce and of uneasy quiet rather than of genuine peace. They were nearly always waged against the same set of inveterate antagonists, and upon nearly the same fields for campaigning. All civilized Europe participated in them or preserved at best a very uneasy neutrality. These contests, therefore, constitute a long and important period in general world-history.
These wars, however, are extremely uninteresting. Down to the last and decisive struggle they are marked (as has been already indicated) by few great pitched battles, by very few in fact which decided the fate of a campaign. In almost every case they consist of advances by one side or the other against the enemy's fortresses, the siege of the same, and the efforts of the defending side to raise the investment. In the earlier wars the French are nearly always on the offensive. They are the besiegers; their foes are happy if by delaying tactics they can prevent too many fortresses from being taken. In the later struggles the fates begin to turn, and finally we see France defending her national boundaries with the courage of despair. This monotony and lack of exciting incidents in Louis's wars make it needless to do more than state in a few words their main events and decisions, and to explain a little of the diplomatic setting which led to each renewal of the protracted struggle. In this attempt to secure dominion over Europe there was not a Salamis nor a Waterloo nor a Marne.
In 1667 Louis laid claim to a considerable part of the Spanish Low Countries (Belgium) on the strength of certain terms (defensible only by very special pleading) in the Flemish law. The King alleged that his wife, a Spanish princess, was entitled to inherit these lands rather than her half-brother, the feeble-minded Charles II of Spain. Turenne easily overran a great fraction of Flanders and Hainault. It was clear enough that left to herself Spain could only take the decision from her great northern neighbor. However, this threat to the territories that had been a barrier betwixt themselves and France smote fear into the then rich and influential Hollanders. The Dutch made hasty alliance with England and Sweden to halt the French advance by their united threats and pressure. Such was the power of Louis that he might have rushed ahead, defying the whole alliance, but prudent counsels for once prevailed, and he signed the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668), whereby Spain was let off by the cession of certain Flemish towns, especially Lille and Tournay. The great King was merely biding his time.
When next Louis struck it was not directly at Spain. The territories of that vast ramshackle empire would be his far more promptly when once he had disposed of certain less pretentious but more solid opponents who had vexed him sorely. France and Holland had long been friends and allies, but Louis hated the Dutch, not merely because they had checked his schemes for the conquest of Belgium, but because they were Republicans, whose system of government ran counter to his whole idea of lawful authority; because they were Protestants; and finally because in commercial relations they had proved themselves very shrewd dealers with France. He took first of all the precaution to make close friendship with Charles II of England, that base monarch who welcomed a foreign pension to render himself free from dependency upon the money grants of his Parliament. In 1670, this heir of Edward III and Henry V deliberately sold himself by the formal though secret Treaty of Dover to the heir of Philip of Valois. English foreign policy was to be subservient to that of France and in return the "Merry Monarch" was to receive £200,000 per year while the projected war lasted and 6000 French troops to repress any insurrection in England when Charles declared himself a Catholic – as he solemnly agreed now to do. " Charles told the French Minister that he wished to treat with Louis 'as one gentleman with another,' and on this basis of easy courtesy he proceeded to sell himself and his people." Louis was now confident of the help and not the hindrance of English sea power and he could deal roundly with Holland, having already secured (as he thought) the neutrality of the various German States by wholesale money gifts to their several princes. Louis had no genuine grievances against Holland, but, as he wrote in 1674, "the origin of present war may be charged to the ingratitude and the unsupportable vanity of the Dutch!" As he also more candidly wrote of himself at another time, "When a man can do what he wishes, it is hard for him to wish only what is right." He therefore attacked the Dutch in 1672, with all his incomparable forces.
Holland then possessed what was possibly the first navy in Europe, but her land defenses had fallen sadly into decay, and her chief statesmen, the brothers De Witt, up to almost the last were fatuously unconvinced of the evil designs of the King. Turenne easily conducted his sovereign and 100,000 men across the Rhine, took the few Dutch fortresses that attempted resistance, and seemed on the point of seizing Amsterdam. The terrified Hollanders in vain offered large concessions for peace. Carried away by a belief in his omnipotence, Louis demanded such terms as would have stripped the Dutch of a large fraction of their lands and left the remainder in abject vassalage to France. He forgot he was dealing with the descendants of men who had proved too much for Philip II of Spain. A great popular revolution at Amsterdam swept the Francophile De Witts from power. The young Prince William of Orange, a direct descendant of the famous William the Silent, was proclaimed Stadholder (captain-general). The Dutch armies rallied with the courage of despair, and while Louis waited in his camp for the trembling delegation to come to announce submission to his terms, he was informed that the defiant Republicans had cut the dikes, letting the sea flow in as an impenetrable rampart before Amsterdam. There was nothing for it but for the Sun King to retrace his march rather ingloriously, and settle down to a long, grueling war with the various powers that were now hastening to the aid of the Dutch.
The conquest of Holland would have been a direct preliminary to the conquest of Belgium from Spain and to unlimited aggressions in Germany. Now that the first rush of attack was past, Austria, Spain, and various German princes, especially the powerful Elector of Prussia-Brandenburg, intervened actively in the war. Seemingly France was fighting nearly all Europe, save only England, which, despite Charles II's promises, proved only a very halting ally. But so great were Louis's resources, so excellent the war-machine which Louvois had built for him, that he not merely held his own, but made steady gains at the expense of his enemies – mainly at the cost of Spain. The coalition against him had, indeed, no general who seemed a fair match for Turenne, or even for Luxembourg, after Turenne was killed in 1675. William of Orange, for all this, proved himself a resourceful and indefatigable leader. It was, indeed, spitefully alleged by the French that "no other 'great captain' had lost so many battles, or been forced to raise so many sieges as he"; but though William was often defeated, he was never disastrously defeated; he never lost courage when the situation was dark, and what is more, he never let his associates and followers lose courage for themselves. His distrust and detestation of Louis were extreme. He consecrated all his matchless talents as a diplomatist to building up against France one great coalition after another; and in the end this cold, unsympathetic, iron-tempered man was to go far in pulling down the whole power of his mighty rival.
In 1678, however, both sides had wearied of the war. France had made great gains, but had not "knocked out' the hostile coalition. The coalition had been utterly unable to disable France. The Treaty of Nimwegen (near The Hague) restored to Holland her territories intact; Spain, however, had been forced to cede still another slice of Flanders including Valenciennes and Cambrai, also the whole of Franche-Comté, and various small concessions were made by Austria along the Rhine. Louis had not ruined Holland as he had designed in 1672, but his acquisitions from this war had been large enough to send the court poets and historians into ecstasies. He had fought almost all Europe and come away the gainer. There were already signs, however, that his wars were undermining grievously the general prosperity of France.
Between 1678 and 1688, the formal beginning of the next great war, Louis was to see his position seriously compromised. Colbert died in 1683. The finances of France were already in disorder. The great minister had preached economies, and had been nearly repudiated and disgraced by his master as a consequence. After his death, however, Louis had good reason to regret him. Never again was the King to see the civil administration entrusted to ministers of more than very mediocre capacity. The fine company of able civil servants which Mazarin had bequeathed to the Government was running out.
It is doubtful if Colbert could have dissuaded the King from what a liberal Catholic (Duruy) has called "the greatest mistake in his reign" – the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Since 1630 the Protestants had ceased to be the slightest menace to the peace of the State. They had been loyally quiet during all the turbulent years of the Fronde. Very many of the great noble houses which had once supported the Huguenot cause, the Condés, Colignys, and the like, had drifted back to Catholicism now that early reforming fervor had cooled, and court favor had been clearly for the friends of the old religion. But the bourgeois and peasant elements of the Protestants had stood fast – thrifty trades-people and artisans for the most part, respected for their industry, sobriety, and honesty. Colbert had found them very useful in his schemes and employed them frequently in his new factories or commercial ventures. Duquesne, one of the greatest seamen of France, and Van Robais, the chief manufacturer of Abbéville, had been Protestants.
These harmless, self-respecting, and highly valuable people were now decidedly less than ten per cent of the whole population. Worldly-wise Catholics decidedly favored letting them alone. "This little flock feeds on poisonous herbs," said Mazarin the Cardinal, "but it does not wander from the fold." When Louis XIV took over the government he distinctly declared that while he would show the Protestants no favor, he would respect the rights the laws secured to them. He was himself a bigoted Catholic who had little room for liberal theological opinions, but it was not until after 1678, when peace existed and the King felt his hands free, that serious moves were attempted against the Huguenots. Louis was probably sincere in his detestation of heresy, but he had at least two extra-religious motives. In the first place, he was on chronically bad terms with the Papacy over questions of secular interest, and was anxious to prove to the world that he was still "The Eldest Son of the Church" even if he wrangled with the Pope over the right of his embassy at Rome to give asylum to outlawed cut-throats, or over the question of the election of a pro-French candidate as Prince-Bishop of Cologne. Secondly, it probably irked him sore that in a realm where he claimed plenary authority, and considered his own autocratic decrees as the law for all his subjects, a considerable body of Frenchmen should declare that in one very important matter their ways were not the ways of the King.
At Louis's elbow were many powerful elements which urged him to play the persecutor. Great courtiers, ladies of irregular morals but unblemished orthodoxy, and eloquent and eager bishops and leaders of the Church, brought constant pressure upon Louis to undertake the conversion of his dissenting subjects. The first step was to cut off all privileges from the Protestants not carefully secured to them by the existing law; they were excluded from the teaching and medical professions and from all public offices. The next step was to send preachers into Huguenot communities to attempt by eloquence, cajoleries, and threats to sow the good seed. The next, and far more sinister, was to enact that at the age of seven a child could select its own religion. If a boy or girl could be tricked into making some statement indicating that he or she wished to be a Catholic, the child could be taken from its unbelieving parents and placed in some kind of non-heretical custody, although the parents had still to pay a pension for its upkeep. The next stage – beginning especially in 1681 – was the deliberate process of "dragooning"; billeting soldiers in the houses of peaceful Protestants who did not encourage "instruction," and allowing or even inciting barrack topers to insult the women and to carouse all night like beasts. "They entered an orderly and religious household, and existence there became like life in a brothel or dramshop."
Under these circumstances tens of thousand of Protestants professed themselves convinced of the tenets of Catholicism. The Archbishop of Aix "confessed that the fear of the dragoons persuaded many more than either his money or his eloquence," but although it was admitted that many "conversions" were rotten or debatable, it was also boasted that at least the children would be brought up in the true faith. The court was delighted at exaggerated tidings of the numbers of the converts. "Every bulletin," writes Madame de Maintenon, "tells the King of thousands of conversions"; while Te Deums were sung, guns fired, and the palace grounds illuminated at each victory of true religion.
In 1685 Louis was honestly convinced that practically all the French Protestants were converted, and that the Edict of Nantes could be repealed, as having become needless for the present, and merely a blot upon the statutes of "The Very Christian King." The Royal Council voted unanimously for revocation. On the 18th of October, 1685, the King signed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and ordered all Protestant forms of worship forthwith to cease and all Protestant chapels and "temples" to be immediately destroyed.
The Catholic population of France received the mandate with unconcealed joy. The aged Chancellor Le Tellier exclaimed, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace!" as he put the great seal on the document abolishing heresy. Bossuet, the enlightened and humane court preacher, was delighted. "The work is worthy of your reign and of yourself," he told the King: "heresy is no more. May the King of Heaven preserve the King of earth," while Madame de Sévigné, a mild and estimable noblewoman, wrote ecstatically in a letter, "Nothing could be finer: no king ever did, or ever will do, anything so memorable."
Hardly were the rejoicings over before it became clear that a great mischief had been wrought to France. Thousands of Protestants had turned under coercion, but thousands more had kept their faith. There seemed no alternative to the most brutal type of persecution.
Under the terms of the new law all the Huguenot pastors were to be banished from France, but none of their laity were to be permitted to quit the realm under extraordinarily heavy penalties. Protestants who refused promptly to conform were subject to more brutal dragooning than ever. "His Majesty decrees," wrote Louvois, who highly approved of the persecution, "that every means shall be used to make it clear that no rest or mercy is to be expected by those who persist in a religion which displeases the King." The prisons and galleys were soon full of Protestants convicted of various offenses against the new edict, or of trying to save themselves by sham conversions and then of lapsing from the Catholic faith. But despite threats, brutal soldiery, bonds, and gibbet the consequences of the persecution were almost instantly disastrous for Louis. By tens of thousands the Protestants smuggled themselves across the frontiers. They filled England, Holland, and Lutheran Germany with their outcries. Themselves among the best artisans and merchants of France, they transferred their commercial abilities and industries to her most bitter national rivals. In all, over two hundred thousand Huguenots seem to have emigrated, giving thus of the very life of France to England, Holland, and Brandenburg, and also to the English and Dutch colonies, notably to South Carolina and to the Cape of Good Hope.
The persecution had thus been one of the most suicidal acts by any French king. Not merely had Louis's enemies been strengthened economically, but the revocation, coming just at the moment when the great war costs of the Government were already undermining the wealth of France, produced an economic crisis by ruining a great fraction of the thriftiest citizens. Some years later, Vauban, who was a careful student of public problems as well as a great military engineer, formally charged that the emigrants carried an enormous amount of wealth out of the country; that many arts and manufactures were utterly destroyed; that French commerce was prostrated; that eight to nine thousand of the King's best sailors had gone over to the enemy, and with them some twelve thousand soldiers and over five hundred admirable officers. Certain it is that in the next war one of William of Orange's ablest generals, Schomberg, was a Huguenot exile, and several of his doughtiest regiments were made up of these outcast Frenchmen, who had forsaken native land, though only at the call of conscience.
Even the persecution within France did not succeed. The Huguenots lost over half of their numbers, but in the South Country a sturdy remnant held out and maintained their worship "in the desert," in the open air among the hills, with scouts watching to give warning of a raid by the soldiery. In 1703 in the Cévennes district there was the serious armed insurrection of the Camisards. A royal army had to be sent against the rebels at a time when all the regular troops were sorely needed elsewhere. Even then the Government had to make terms with the malcontents and offer pardon to those who submitted. After that all men realized that the Huguenots of France could not be exterminated. They continued despised, maltreated, under heavy legal handicaps and without formal toleration for their religion until shortly before 1789, but their mere existence was a proclamation that here was a task too hard for "Louis the Great." Then with the Revolution came full religious toleration and the Church of the Huguenots remains a potent factor in French life unto this day.
While Louis was thus committing a blunder which tarnished his splendor and cost France dear, he was also drifting into lines of extravagance which added grievously to the economic burdens of the kingdom. What he did not spend on wars and upon a super-magnificent court he spent on colossal building projects. The King disliked Paris. It had memories of the disloyal Fronde of his boyhood. Its palaces also reminded men of earlier princes before his own blaze of glory. The Tuileries were, indeed, enlarged, and more structures piled upon the already colossal Louvre, but the King was deliberately resolved to build a residence city. Unconsciously he was perhaps determined to imitate other mighty despots, as the rulers of old Egypt and Assyria, or Alexander the Macedonian who scattered his new "Alexandrias" over a conquered world. As early as 1664 Louis authorized the architect Mansard to undertake a royal settlement at Versailles, then an insignificant hunting château of Louis XIII, some ten miles southwest of Paris. Here the Sun King created an enormous palace and all the lesser buildings, parks, recreation grounds, and other necessary impedimenta for the most pretentious court in Europe. Thirty thousand soldiers were needed to work upon the aqueducts and other channels which brought the water from a great distance to this low, flat, sandy locality. The building of the palace and residence city went on steadily despite the groans and protests of Colbert. "Who cares to gain a just conception of what manner of man Louis XIV was, cannot do better than to stroll through the vast and tasteless gardens of Versailles, where even Nature ceases to be beautiful, and look upon the great row of monstrous buildings which close the view. The palace resembles its master. It is grandiose, commonplace, and dull. It was the place which, of all the world, Louis XIV most loved."
On this great mass of structures and gardens was expended the sum of about $20,000,000, or the equivalent of twice that sum to-day. Colbert so long as he lived saw that the work was at least done honestly, and that contractors were not allowed to batten on the treasury; but the Sun King, who wished to build a Versailles, could not afford the second luxury of preventable wars. This was precisely what Louis XIV refused to avoid.
Of course no worldly-wise man in the seventeenth century asked Louis to set an example of morality as well as of economy. The King treated his Queen, a Spanish princess, "with friendship if not with affection," but he openly flaunted his connections with other women. Great prelates who incited the Christian King to stamp out heresy dared breathe not a word against this same pious monarch's adulteries. Louise de la Vallière was the first to obtain the proud honor of being the acknowledged mistress of the "first gentleman of Europe." She was presently replaced by the haughty Madame de Montespan, a coarse and self-seeking woman who had nothing but her physical lures to commend her. Then she in turn was supplanted by a far superior rival – the famous Madame de Maintenon, a clever widow, who presently exercised an extraordinary ascendancy over the King, affected to be virtuous, urged him to acts of piety, and in 1684 (after the Queen was dead) was actually married to Louis privately. She was henceforth the most powerful woman in France, although she never was openly put forward as the royal consort, and exercised her great influence very discreetly behind the scenes. Thanks to her tactful efforts there is little doubt that Louis became less luxurious and immoral, and that an atmosphere of religion, if not of genuine decency, overspread the court in the last two decades of the reign. There were other reasons, however, for this quieting change. France had been plunged into two very unhappy wars.
After the peace of Nimwegen, Louis had gone to no pains to conciliate his rivals. In 1681, in a time of international quiet, he had seized the "free-city" of Strasbourg, to the no great anguish of the inhabitants, it is true, but to the enraging of its nominal overlord, the Emperor of Austria. In 1688 he quarreled so bitterly with Pope Innocent XI over various issues, but especially over the Pope's right to "invest" the Prince-Bishop of Cologne, that the Holy Father was willing to wish fair fortune to William of Orange, the champion of Protestantism, when that potentate went from Holland to England, overthrew the Catholic James II (Louis's ally and co-worker for tyranny), and became William III of England. In this year another great war blazed up. Louis's ambitions seemed to know no bounds. He had enraged every Protestant Power by his treatment of the Huguenots. He had almost equally offended the Catholic States by his bullying treatment of Innocent XI. Austria, with most of the lesser German States, Holland, Spain, England (now under William), and Savoy (Northwestern Italy), all joined in a mighty coalition against the common danger.
This war, waged against Louis by the "League of Augsburg," was even less interesting than the one that preceded it. England was now definitely against France. Her navy, plus that of Holland, gave the coalition the control of the seas, but Louis tried to strike back at his rivals by giving his unwilling guest, the exiled James II, an armament and an army, with which to reduce Ireland as a preliminary to recovering England. James landed in Ireland and seized the greater part of that oftafflicted island, but in 1690 all his hopes were blasted by a crushing defeat at the hands of William in the battle of the Boyne. Soon James was back in France, thrusting himself again upon the hospitality of Louis.
On the Continent the war was bloody and indecisive. Most of the fighting was in luckless Belgium, for all the centuries the battle-ground of Frenchman and German. Louis's general, Luxembourg, as a rule proved more than a match for William who led the armies of the coalition, and in 1693 the French King himself joined his own host and confronted his great rival close to Louvain. William had barely fifty thousand men and the French nearly one hundred thousand. It was in their power to force a decisive battle. Luxembourg is said to have gone down on his knees while begging the King to strike a great blow, but Louis declared himself contented with the results of the campaign and returned to Versailles. Various reasons could be given for his decision, but the real fact seems to have been that the Grand Monarch feared, despite the apparent odds in his favor, that something might slip and his splendor be compromised by a defeat. He seems never to have played the general again, but a similar opportunity for a great victory was never given to his various lieutenants.
Peace came in 1697. Louis had had the advantage in perhaps a majority of the sieges and battles on the Continent, although he had been defeated in Ireland and on the sea. French military prestige had not been shaken, although it was now evident that the King could not carry off so many successes as in the days of Turenne. But two factors disposed Louis strongly to peace. His ministers could not conceal from him that France was now suffering terribly from taxation and commercial prostration and must not fight on indefinitely. Also every day increased the likelihood of the wretched Charles II of Spain dying without direct heirs. It was very needful for Louis to clear up all his former disputes in order that he might be free to protect what he considered the interests of his dynasty, in case the huge, lumbering Spanish Empire were suddenly dissolved. The war was therefore wound up by the Treaty of Ryswick. Louis XIV was very conciliatory. He recognized William III as King of England, thus leaving the exiled James II in the cold. He restored nearly all the Belgian and German cities he had seized since 1678, although retaining Strasbourg. He made various concessions to Holland. It was, in short, by no means the kind of a treaty the Great Monarch might have been expected to make, but the facts were that he was intensely interested in the fate of the Spanish Empire, and expected to win for his family at least several rich provinces if not the throne of Philip II itself.
Peace thus came in 1697. France sorely needed a long rest, with an economical government by a Sully or a Colbert. She was to have fitful quiet for four years, and then twelve years of a new grueling, exhausting, and utterly disastrous war.
Few matters are less easy to explain briefly and clearly than how Louis XIV had a discussable claim for his sons to the throne of that selfsame Spanish kingdom with which he had spent so much of his reign in hostilities. It is one of the miseries of monarchy, that under the principles of hereditary succession empires can be handed about or split up and parceled out, like an estate of farms or dwellings among a number of distant and quarreling heirs. In all the bloody debate which was to rack Europe the obvious question, "Which ruler was capable of doing the most good to the Spanish people?" seems never to have been discussed. The Spaniards themselves appear to have been so despot-ridden that at first they hardly expressed a wish in the matter; their only national desire apparently was to have the great dominions of Charles V and Philip II kept intact and undivided. What manner of man might be their personal master hardly troubled the most intelligent grandee. Out of the great snarl of diplomacy preceding this execrable "War of the Spanish Succession," the following bare facts emerge:1. Charles II of Spain, a prince feeble alike in body and intellect, was without children, and his nearest direct heirs were the sons of Castilian princesses, especially Louis XIV and the Emperor Leopold of Austria, each of whom in their turn had married a Spanish infanta. Each of these ambitious rival potentates had thus a good chance of doubling his realm, if only the other Powers would stand aloof.2. For either France or Austria to get such a vast increase of power as would be implied by taking over all the Spanish dominions was sure to be resisted to the death by all the rest of Europe. Schemes were therefore entertained for a parceling-out of Charles's dominions; for example, another less formidable claimant, a Prince of Bavaria, was to have Spain, but the Milanese province in Italy was to go to Austria, and Naples and Sicily to the Dauphin, the son of Louis XIV, etc. This was (according to the notions of the day) a fair division of the inheritance. Unfortunately in 1699 the Bavarian Prince died, and all the ambassadors at the rival courts had to resume their long interviews and hurried correspondence.3. Louis still hesitated to claim all of Spain's dominions for his sons (pressing for their mother's alleged rights). He had the good sense to realize that France could ill afford a great war to the death, and he therefore negotiated with his old rival William III of England. It was agreed that Spain itself was to go to an Austrian archduke, but that other territories, somewhat larger than previously agreed upon, especially including Lorraine, were to be assigned to the Dauphin of France.4. Charles was terribly angered, fool and weakling that he was, to hear that his dominions were being thus portioned out while he was still living. His Spanish pride demanded that his vast territories should still be kept intact. Acting as if the empire that embraced Spain, Belgium, much of Italy, the Philippine Islands, and most of South America, could be treated like a private country-seat, he determined to make a will. There was a great contest and infinite intriguing between the Austrian and French Ambassadors at Madrid. The French Envoy was far more clever. He won over the dying king's confessor and other powerful ecclesiastics, who worked on their superstitious master. In 1700, Charles II made a will giving his entire dominions to Philip, Duke of Anjou, Louis's second grandson. In less than a month this utterly incompetent king was dead, leaving a heritage of disasters for all Europe.5. Louis was faced with an overwhelming temptation. He had feared that if Charles made a will, it would be in favor of Austria, hence his willingness to compromise. Lo! the whole Spanish Empire was proffered to his own grandson. The King called a solemn privy council at Versailles. Should the treaty just made with the other Powers be kept? There were various considerations, of course, suggested to palliate the charge of bad faith against France. On November 16, 1700, a great levee was held at Versailles. The courtiers gathered eagerly when the great doors of the King's chambers were thrown open, and the now aged monarch emerged leaning on Philip, his second grandson: "Gentlemen," spoke Louis, "behold the King of Spain!"
Philip was promptly received by his new Spanish subjects who were glad to have the young monarch's mighty grandsire guarantee to him the integrity of his dominions. There was, of course, one cry of rage from Austria, from Holland, and presently from England. It was firmly believed, erroneously as it turned out, that Spain was about to become hopelessly subject to France, thanks now to the kinship of the neighboring monarchs. A great war was from the outset inevitable. Louis may have consulted his own greatness when he thus treated a solemn treaty as a "scrap of paper." He certainly ignored with studied deliberation the happiness of France. The French nation had not the slightest interest as to who might reign at Madrid, provided Spain continued a weak, unaggressive power – as under any ruler she was very sure to do. For the glory of Louis's family and the interest of one of his grandsons, Frenchmen were called upon to engage in an utterly exhausting general war. The Spaniards were now, indeed, their nominal allies, but were allies who demanded much and who gave little. The main burden fell on France alone.
In 1701 began the war of the "Grand Alliance" (England, Holland, Austria, the German States, and Portugal) against France and Spain. The Elector of Bavaria was on Louis's side, his only important ally, indeed, except his own grandson. William III, the King's old and implacable foe, died in 1702, but Queen Anne, his sister-in-law, continued the war for England. And now it was that the numbing effects of the Grand Monarch's despotism began to be painfully evident. The finances, already in a slough of despond, were abandoned to very incompetent ministers. The army absolutely lacked firstclass generals. Turenne had left no real successor. On the other hand, the enemies of France for the first time found two really great leaders, the Duke of Marlborough, a man of despicable personality, but possibly the ablest Briton who ever commanded an army, and Prince Eugène, the highly capable chieftain of the hosts of Austria. Marlborough and Eugène, unlike many "allied" generals, usually worked together in confidence and harmony. Before their united attack France was destined to go down to humiliation.
The annals of this long War of the Spanish Succession (1701- 13) are needless to trace. There was fighting in Italy and much fighting in Spain, but once more the main collisions were in Germany and Belgium. In 1704 Marlborough and Eugène, having skillfully united their forces, gave battle to the French and Bavarians under Marshal Tallard and the Bavarian Elector at Blenheim in South Germany near Augsburg. The French fought bravely, but Marlborough's cavalry broke their line, and presently all was lost. Tallard himself was taken prisoner, and all Germany east of the Rhine was lost to Louis. There had not been such an utter disaster to France since the battle of Pavia.
Campaigning was still very deliberate, even when it was not unmercifully slow. The next decisive stroke came in 1706. Marlborough here forced a pitched battle on Marshal Villeroi at Ramillies, near Namur, in Belgium. The French were not merely beaten, but routed. They were then cleared out of nearly all of Belgium, and only great exertions saved French soil itself from invasion. The humiliation of Louis was extreme. So far from winning the war, he was now hopelessly on the defensive.
The King, however, held his ground manfully even when every day brought new tidings of ill. He had no word of reproach for brave if unsuccessful generals. "Monsieur le maréchal," said he to the elderly Villeroi, when the latter appeared at court after Ramillies, "at our age one is no longer fortunate!" In 1708 the French lost another great battle at Oudenarde; the kingdom itself was invaded. Louis doffed his pride, and for the sake of his people, of whose miseries he was at length becoming conscious, he asked for peace. Had his foes been reasonable the war would have ended speedily, but although Louis was willing to leave Philip in Spain to fight for himself, he refused to send a French army to drive him from a throne where the Spaniards were anxious to keep him. "Since I must make war," declared Louis, "I would rather fight my enemies than my children."
For the first time in his reign Louis condescended to make a public appeal to rally to save sovereign and native land from humiliation and invasion. The appeal was not in vain. Volunteers streamed into the army. In 1709, at Malplaquet, although the allies won a technical victory, the battle was practically a draw. There was no longer danger of a general collapse of the French armies; and in the meantime events were working somewhat in Louis's favor. It was becoming very evident that the Spaniards would never endure the Austrian Archduke whom the allies were trying to thrust upon them. In England also Queen Anne was falling out with the Whig (pro-war) faction which had been Marlborough's mainstay, and was going over to his pacifistic Tory enemies. Englishmen also realized that if Philip remained in Spain, he was not likely to be subservient to France, and they were not anxious to continue fighting merely to aggrandize Austria.
Negotiations began in 1711, but the main treaty was not signed at Utrecht until 1713, and that with Austria at Rastadt until 1714. Considering his great defeats Louis did not lose as much as might have been expected. He retained Strasbourg, which earlier in the war he had seemed likely to lose, although he had to cede Newfoundland and Acadia (Nova Scotia) in America to England, and to grant the English also a favorable commercial treaty. What the war really effected was the breakup of the European dominions of Spain. Belgium, Milan, and Naples all passed for the moment to Austria, and Sicily to the Prince of Savoy; while Gibraltar, seized in this war by the English, was duly retained by them. So ended a struggle that by a little good faith and tactful policy on the part of Louis could have been readily avoided. The finances of France were in utter confusion. In 1683 her indirect taxes had brought in 118,000,000 livres: in 1714 they had fallen to 46,000,000. All this told a story of commercial and industrial prostration, and of widespread hardship and famine for the lower classes. The glory of the Grand Monarch had been sadly dimmed by these long sufferings inflicted upon his people. Louis XIV, it must be said, bore his disasters more nobly than he had his prosperity. He met ill-fortune with dignity and without complaining. His last years were personally very sad. All the great administrators who had contributed to the splendors of his early reign were dead. His grandeur had left him without true friends. In 1711 the Dauphin died; then one member after another of the royal family was stricken as if by some relentless curse upon the dynasty. In 1715 the. King found himself nearing his end with his nearest heir his great-grandson, the Duke of Anjou, a child of only five years. The unavoidable regency would have to go to the King's nephew, the Duke of Orléans, a man for whom Louis had profound personal dislike.
On September 1, 1715, the Sun King, no longer dazzling Europe as of old, departed forever. In his last moments he seems to have realized many of his errors, and his dying words were not without grandeur. "Why weep?" he said to his domestics in tears; "do you think me immortal?" And then he commanded that his little great-grandson, the boy about to become Louis XV, should be brought to the bedside. "You are soon to be King of a great realm," spoke the dying monarch. "What I commend most earnestly to you is never to forget the obligations you owe to God. Remember that to Him you owe all that you are. Try to keep peace with your neighbors. I have been too fond of war: do not imitate me in that, or in my too great expenditure."
Louis XIV died at the age of seventy-seven, having reigned seventy-two years. There were in France many white-haired men who had never known any other king. His passing seemed to be the withdrawal of one of the hitherto immutable things in the Universe. "God alone is great, my brothers," Massillon, the famous court preacher, had need to say at the beginning of his funeral oration. Louis had raised his realm at one time to a pinnacle of glory, but all he had in the end added to France, in return for the treasure and blood poured out in his behalf, were a part of Flanders, Franche-Comté, Strasbourg, and a few lesser cities. His death marked the close of a distinct epoch in European history.
"In spite of his faults," wrote Guizot a century and a half later, "and his numerous and culpable errors, Louis XIV had lived and died like a king. The slow and grievous agony of olden France was about to begin."