_The Grand Monarque--Versailles and Paris_
The century of Louis XIV., whose triumphs have been so extravagantly
celebrated by Voltaire, saw the culmination and declension of military
glory and literary splendour at Paris, and of regal magnificence at
Versailles. Gone were the times of cardinal dictators. When the
ministers came after Mazarin's death to ask the king whom they should
now address themselves to, the answer came like a thunderbolt: "To
me!"
What brilliant constellations of great men cast their influences over
the beginning of Louis XIV.'s reign! "Sire," said Mazarin, when dying,
"I owe you all, but I can partially acquit myself by leaving you
Colbert:"--austere Colbert, whose Atlantean shoulders bore the burden
of five modern ministries; whose vehement industry, admirable science
and sterling honesty created order out of financial chaos and found
the sinews of war for an army of 300,000 men before the Peace of
Ryswick and 450,000 for the war of the Spanish succession; who
initiated, nurtured and perfected French industries; who created a
navy that crushed the combined English and Dutch fleets off Beachy
Head, swept the Channel for weeks, burnt English ports, carried terror
into English homes, and for a time paralysed English commerce.
Louvois, his colleague, organised an army that made his master the
arbiter of Europe; Conde and Turenne were its victorious captains.
Vauban, greatest of military engineers, captured towns in war and made
them impregnable in peace, and shared with Louvois the invention of
the combined musket and bayonet, the deadliest weapon of war as yet
contrived. De Lionne, by masterly diplomacy, prepared and cemented the
conquests of victorious generals. Supreme in arts of peace were
Corneille, Moliere, Racine, La Fontaine, Lebrun, Claude Lorrain,
Puget, Mansard, and Perrault. We shall learn in the sequel what the
Grand Monarque did with this unparalleled inheritance.
None of the great ones of the earth is so intimately known to us as
the magnificent histrion, whose tinselled grandeur and pompous egoism
have been laid bare by the Duke of St. Simon, prince of memoirists.
Never has the frippery of a court been shrivelled by such fierce and
consuming light, glaring like a fiery sun on its meretricious
splendours. And what a court it is! What a gilded crowd of princes and
paramours, harlots and bastards, struts, fumes and intrigues through
these Memoirs! By a few strokes of his pen, in words that bite like
acid, he etches for us the fools and knaves, the wife-beaters and
adulterers, the cardsharpers and gamesters, the grovelling sycophants
with their petty struggles for precedence or favour, their slang,
their gluttony and drunkenness, their moral and physical corruption.
External grandeur and regal presence,[141] a profound belief in his
divinely-appointed despotism, and in earlier years a rare capacity for
work, the lord of France certainly possessed. "He had a grand mien,"
says St. Simon, "and looked a veritable king of the bees." Much has
been made of Louis' incomparable grace and respectful courtesy to
women; but the courtesy of a king who doffs his hat to every serving
wench yet contrives a staircase to facilitate the debauching of his
queen's maids-of-honour, and exacts of his mistresses and the ladies
of his court submission to his will and pleasure, even under the most
trying of physical disabilities, is at least wanting in consistency.
Louis' mental equipment was less than mediocre; he was ignorant of the
commonest facts of history, and fell into the grossest blunders in
public. Like all small-minded men, he was jealous of superior merit
and preferred mediocrity rather than genius in his ministers. Small
wonder that his reign ended in shame and disaster.
[Footnote 141: Louis used, however, to stilt his low stature by means
of thick pads in his boots.]
On the 6th of June 1662, the young Louis, notwithstanding much public
misery consequent on two years of bad harvests, organised a
magnificent carrousel (tilting) in the garden that fronted the
Tuileries. Five companies of nobles, each led by the king or one of
the princes, were apparelled in gorgeous costumes as Romans, Persians,
Turks, Armenians and Indians. Louis, who arrayed as emperor, led the
Romans, was followed by a superb train of many squires, twenty-four
pages, fifty horses each led by two grooms, and fifty footmen dressed
as lictors, carrying gilded fasces. The royal princes headed similar
processions. So great was the display of jewels that all the precious
stones in the world seemed brought together; so richly were the
costumes of the knights and the trappings of the horses embroidered
with gold and silver that the cloth beneath could barely be seen. An
immense amphitheatre afforded seats for a multitude of spectators, and
in a smaller pavilion, richly gilded, sat the two queens of France,
the queen of England, and the royal princesses. The first day was
spent in tilting at Medusa heads and heads of Moors: the second at
rings. The king is said to have greatly distinguished himself by his
skill. Maria Theresa, his young queen, distributed the prizes, and the
garden was afterwards named the Place du Carrousel.
Louis, however, hated Paris, for his forced exile and the humiliations
of the Fronde rankled in his memory. Nor were the associations of St.
Germain any more pleasant. A lover of the chase and all too prone to
fall into the snares of "fair, fallacious looks and venerial trains,"
the retirement of his father's hunting lodge at Versailles, away from
the prying eyes and mocking tongues of the Parisians, early attracted
him. There he was wont to meet his mistress, Madame de la Valliere,
and there he determined to erect a vast pleasure-palace and gardens.
The small chateau, built by Lemercier in the early half of the
seventeenth century, was handed over to Levau in 1668, who, carefully
respecting his predecessor's work in the Cour de Marbre, constructed
two immense wings, which were added to by J.H. Mansard, as the
requirements of the court grew. The palace stood in the midst of a
barren, sandy plain, but Louis' pride demanded that Nature herself
should bend to his will, and an army of artists, engineers and
gardeners was concentrated there, who at the sacrifice of incredible
wealth and energy, had so far advanced the work that the king was able
to come into residence in 1682.
In spite of seas of reservoirs fed by costly hydraulic machinery at
Marly, which lifted the waters of the Seine to an aqueduct that led to
Versailles, the supply was deemed inadequate, and orders were given to
divert the river Eure between Chartres and Maintenon to the gardens of
the palace. For years an army of thirty thousand men was employed in
this one task, at a cost of money and human life greater than that of
many a campaign. So heavy was the mortality in the camp that it was
forbidden to speak of the sick, and above all of the dead, who were
carried away in cartloads by night for burial. All that remains of
this cruel folly are a few ruins at Maintenon.
After the failure of this scheme, subterranean water-courses were
contrived. The _plaisir du roi_ must be sated at any cost, and at
length a magnificent garden was created, filled with a population of
statues and adorned with gigantic fountains. Soon however, the king
tired of the bustle and noise of Versailles, and a miserable and
swampy site at Marly, the haunt of toads and serpents and creeping
things, was transformed into a splendid hermitage. Hills were
levelled, great trees brought from Compiegne, most of which soon died
and were as quickly replaced; fish-ponds, adorned by exquisite
paintings, were made and unmade; woods were metamorphosed into lakes,
where the king and a select company of courtiers disported themselves
in gondolas and where cascades refreshed their ears in summer heat;
precious paintings, statues and costly furniture charmed the eye
inside the hermitage--and all to receive the king and his intimates
from Wednesday to Saturday on a few occasions in the year. St. Simon
with passionate exaggeration declares that Marly cost more than
Versailles.[142] Nothing remains to-day of all this splendour: it was
neglected by Louis' successors and sold in lots during the Revolution.
[Footnote 142: Taine, basing his calculation on a MS. bound with the
monogram of Mansard, estimated the cost of Versailles in modern
equivalent at about 750,000,000 francs (L30,000,000 sterling.)]
After a life of wanton licentiousness, Louis, at the age of forty, was
captivated by the mature charms of a widow of forty-three, a colonial
adventuress of noble descent, who after the death of her husband, the
crippled comic poet Scarron, became governess to the king's children
by Madame de Montespan. Soon after the death of Maria Theresa, the
widow Scarron, known to history as Madame de Maintenon, was secretly
married to her royal lover, who for the remainder of his life remained
her docile slave.
A narrow bigot in matters of religion and completely under the
influence of fanatics, Madame de Maintenon persuaded Louis that a
crusade against heresy would be a fitting atonement for his past sins.
By the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 22nd October 1685, the
charter of Protestant liberties was destroyed, and those who had given
five out of ten marshals to France, including the great Turenne, were
denied the right of civil existence. Whole cities were depopulated;
tens of thousands (for the Huguenots had long ceased to exist as a
political force) of law-abiding citizens expatriated themselves and
carried their industries to enrich foreign lands.[143] Many pastors
were martyred, and drummers stationed at the foot of the scaffold
drowned their exhortations. Let us not say persecution is ineffective;
the Huguenots who at one time threatened to turn the scale in favour
of the Protestant powers and to wreck the Catholic cause in Europe,
practically disappear from history. On the whole, the measure was
approved by Paris; Racine, La Fontaine, the great Jansenist Arnault,
as well as Bossuet and Massillon, applauded. Louis was hailed a second
Constantine, and believed he had revived the times of the apostles.
But the consequences were far-reaching and disastrous. In less than
two months the Catholic James II. of England was a discrowned
fugitive, and the Calvinist William of Orange, the inveterate enemy of
France, sat in his place; England's pensioned neutrality was turned to
bitter hostility, and every Protestant power in Europe stirred to
fierce resentment. Seven years of war ensued, which exhausted the
immense resources of France; seven years,[144] rich in glory perhaps,
but lean years indeed to the dumb millions who paid the cost in blood
and money.
[Footnote 143: The writer, whose youth was passed among the
descendants of the Huguenot silk-weavers of Spitalfields, has
indelible memories of their sterling character and admirable
industry.]
[Footnote 144: Marshal Luxembourg was dubbed the _Tapissier de Notre
Dame_ (the upholsterer of Notre Dame), from the number of captured
flags he sent to the cathedral.]
After three short years of peace and recuperation, the acceptance of
the crown of Spain by Louis' grandson, Philip of Anjou, in spite of
Maria Theresa's solemn renunciation for herself and her posterity of
all claim to the Spanish succession, roused all the old jealousy of
France and brought her secular enemy, the House of Austria, to a new
coalition against her.
Woe to the nation whose king is thrall to women. The manner in which
this momentous step was taken is characteristic of Louis. Two councils
were held in Madame de Maintenon's room at Versailles; her advice was
asked by the king, and apparently turned the scale in favour of
acceptance. "For a hundred years," says Taine, "from 1672 to 1774,
every time a king of France made war it was by pique or vanity, by
family or private interest, or by condescension to a woman." Still
more amazing is the fact that, for years, the court of Madrid was
ruled by a Frenchwoman, Madame des Ursins, the _camarera mayor_ of
Philip's queen, who made and unmade ministers, controlled all public
appointments, and even persuaded the French ambassador to submit all
despatches to her before sending them to France. Madame de Maintenon
was equally omnipotent at Versailles; she decided what letters should
or should not be shown to the king, kept back disagreeable news, and
held everybody in the hollow of her hand, from humblest subject to
most exalted minister. This was the atmosphere from which men were
sent to meet the new and more potent combination of States that
opposed the Spanish succession. Chamillart, a pitiful creature of
Madame de Maintenon's, sat in Colbert's place; gone were Turenne and
Conde and Luxembourg; the armies of the descendant of St. Louis were
led by the Duke of Vendome, a foul lecher, whose inhuman vices went
far to justify the gibe of Mephistopheles that men use their reason
"_um thierischer als jedes Thier zu sein_."
The victories of the Duke of Marlborough and of Prince Eugene spread
consternation at Versailles. When, in 1704, the news of Blenheim oozed
out, the king's grief was piteous to see. Scarce a noble family but
had one of its members killed, wounded, or a prisoner. Two years later
came the defeat of Ramillies, to be followed in three months by the
disaster at Turin. The balls and masquerades and play at Marly went
merrily on; but at news of the defeat of Oudenarde and the fall of
Lille, even the reckless courtiers were subdued, and for a month
gambling and even conversation ceased. At the sound of an approaching
horseman they ran hither and thither, with fear painted on their
cheeks. Wildest schemes for raising money were tried; taxes were
levied on baptisms and marriages; sums raised for the relief of the
poor and the maintenance of highways were expropriated, and the
wretched peasants were forced to repair the roads without payment,
some dying of starvation at their work. King and courtiers, with
ill-grace, sent their plate to the mint and a plan for the recapture
of Lille was mooted, in which Louis was to take part, but, for lack of
money, the king's ladies were not to accompany him to the seat of war
as they had hitherto done.[145] The expedition was to remain a
secret; but the infatuated Louis could withhold nothing from Madame de
Maintenon, who never rested until she had foiled the whole scheme and
disgraced Chamillart, for having concealed the preparations from her.
[Footnote 145: In a previous campaign the king had taken his queen and
two mistresses with him in one coach. The peasants used to amuse
themselves by coming to see the "three queens."]
Versailles had now grown so accustomed to defeats that Malplaquet was
hailed as half a victory; but, in 1710, so desperate was the condition
of the treasury, that a financial and social _debacle_ was imminent.
The Dauphin, on leaving the opera at Paris, had been assailed by
crowds of women shouting, "Bread! bread!" and only escaped by throwing
them money and promises. To appease the people, the poor were set to
level the boulevard near St. Denis, and were paid in doles of
bread--bad bread. Even this failed them one morning, and a woman who
made some disturbance was dragged to the pillory by the archers of the
watch. An angry mob released her, and proceeded to raid the bakers'
shops. The ugly situation was saved only by the firmness and sagacity
of the popular Marshal Boufflers. Another turn of the financial screw
was now meditated, and, as the taxes had already "drawn all the blood
from his subjects, and squeezed out their very marrow," the conscience
of the lord of France was troubled. His Jesuit confessor, Le Tellier,
promised to consult the Sorbonne, whose learned doctors decided that,
since all the wealth of his subjects rightly belonged to the king, he
only took what was his own.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the quarrel between
Jansenists and Jesuits concerning subtle doctrinal differences had
grown acute through the publication of Pascal's immortal _Lettres
Provinciales_, and by Quesnel's _Reflexions Morales_ which the Jesuits
had succeeded in subjecting to papal condemnation. In 1709, Le Tellier
induced his royal penitent to decree the destruction of one of the
two Jansenist establishments, and Port Royal des Champs, between
Versailles and Chevreuse, rendered famous by the piety and learning of
Arnault, Pascal and Nicolle, was doomed. On the night of 28th October
1709, the convent was surrounded by Gardes Francaises and Suisses, and
on the following morning the chief of the police, with a posse of
archers of the watch entered, produced a _lettre de cachet_, and gave
the nuns a quarter of an hour to prepare for deportation. The whole of
the sisters were then brutally expelled, "_comme on enleve les
creatures prostituees d'un lieu infame_," says St. Simon, and
scattered among other religious houses in all directions. The friends
of the buried were bidden to exhume their dead, and all unclaimed
bodies were flung into a neighbouring cemetery, where dogs fought for
them as for carrion. The church was profaned, all the conventual
buildings were razed and sold in lots, not one stone being left on
another; the very ground was ploughed up and sown, "not, it is true
with salt," adds St. Simon, and that was the only favour shown.
Two years after the scene at Port Royal, amid the heartless gaiety of
the court, the Angel of Death was busy in Louis' household. On 14th
April 1711, the old king's only lawful son, the Grand Dauphin,
expired; on 12th February 1712, the second Dauphiness, the sweet and
gentle Adelaide of Savoy, Louis' darling, died of a malignant fever;
six days later the Duke of Burgundy, her husband, was struck down; on
8th March, the Duke of Brittany, their eldest child, followed them.
Three Dauphins had gone to the vaults of St. Denis in less than a
year; mother, father, son, had died in twenty-four days--a sweep of
Death's scythe, enough to touch even the hearts of courtiers. In a few
days the king gave orders for the usual play to begin at Marly, and
the dice rattled while the bodies of the Dauphin and Dauphiness lay
yet unburied.
In May 1714, the Duke of Berri, son of the Grand Dauphin, died, and
the sole direct heir to the throne was now the king's great-grandson,
the Duke of Anjou, a sickly child of five years. On September 1715,
the Grand Monarque made a calm and an edifying end to his long reign
of seventy-two years, declaring that he owed no man restitution, and
trusted in God's mercy for what he owed to the realm. He called the
young child, who was soon to be Louis XV., to his bedside, and
apparently without any sense of irony, exhorted him to remember his
God, to cherish peace, to avoid extravagance, and study the welfare of
his people. After receiving the last sacraments he repeated the
prayers for the dying in a firm voice and, calling on God's aid,
passed peacefully away. None but his official attendants, his priest
and physicians, saw the end: two days before, Madame de Maintenon had
retired to St. Cyr.
The demolition of what remained of mediaeval Paris proceeded apace
during Louis XIV.'s lifetime, and, at his death, the architectural
features of its streets were substantially those of the older Paris of
to-day. Colbert had taken up the costly legacy of the unfinished
Louvre before the petrified banalities of Versailles and Marly had
engulfed their millions, and, in 1660, the Hotel de Bourbon was given
over to the housebreakers to make room for the new east wing of the
palace. So vigorously did they set to work that when Moliere, whose
company performed there three days a week in alternation with the
Italian opera, came for the usual rehearsal, he found the theatre half
demolished. He applied to the king, who granted him the temporary use
of Richelieu's theatre in the Palais Royal, and his first performance
there was given on 20th January 1661.
Levau was employed to carry on Lemercier's work on the Louvre, and had
succeeded in completing the north wing and the river front in harmony
with Lescot's design, when in 1664 Colbert stayed further progress and
ordered him to prepare a model in wood of his proposed east wing.
Levau was stupefied, for he had elaborated with infinite study a
design for this portion of the palace, which he regarded as of supreme
importance, and which he hoped would crown his work. He had already
laid the foundations and erected the scaffolding when the order came.
Levau made his model, and a number of architects were invited to
criticise it: they did, and unanimously condemned it. Competitive
designs were then exhibited with the model and submitted to Colbert,
who took advantage of Poussin's residence at Rome to send them to the
great Italian architects for their judgment. The Italians delivered a
sweeping and general condemnation, and Poussin advised that Bernini
should be employed to design a really noble edifice. Louis was
delighted by the suggestion, and the loan of the architect of the
great Colonnade of St. Peter's was entreated of the pope by the king's
own hand in a letter dated 11th April 1665.
Bernini, in spite of his sixty-eight years, came to Paris, accompanied
by his son, where he was treated like a prince, and drew up a scheme
of classic grandeur. Levau's work on the east front was destroyed, and
in October 1665, Bernini's foundations were begun. The majestic new
design, however, ignored the exigencies of existing work and of
internal convenience, and gave opportunities for criticisms and
intrigue, which Colbert and the French architects,[146] forgetting
for the moment all domestic rivalry, were not slow to make the most
of. The offended Italian, three days after the ceremony of laying the
foundation stone by the king on the 17th October 1665, left to winter
in Rome, promising to return with his wife in the following February.
He carried with him a munificent gift of 3000 gold louis and a pension
of 12,000 livres for himself and of 1,200 for his son. The pension was
paid regularly up to 1674, but the great Bernini was never seen in
Paris again.
[Footnote 146: Bernini, according to Charles Perrault, was short in
stature, good-humoured, and seasoned his conversation with parables,
good stories and _bons mots_; never tiring of talking of his own
country, of Michel Angelo and of himself. For a full history of these
intrigues, see Ch. Normand's _Paris_.]
Among the designs originally submitted to Colbert, and approved by him
and Lebrun, was one which had not been sent to Rome. It was the work
of an amateur, Claude Perrault, a physician, whose brother, Charles
Perrault, was chief clerk in the Office of Works. This was brought
forth early in 1667, and a commission, consisting of Levau, Lebrun,
Claude Perrault and others, appointed to report on its practicability.
Levau promptly produced his own discarded designs, and both were
submitted to the king for a final decision on 13th May. Louis was
fascinated by the stately classicism of Perrault's design, and this
was adopted. "Architecture must be in a bad state," said his rivals,
"since it is put in the hands of a physician." Colbert seems, however,
to have distrusted Claude's technical powers and on his brother
Charles' advice a council of specialists, consisting of Levau, Lebrun,
and Claude was appointed under the presidency of Colbert. Charles was
made secretary and many were the quarrels between the rival architects
over practical details. Perrault's new wing was found to be
seventy-two feet too long, but the sovereign fiat had gone forth, the
new east facade was raised and the whole of Levau's river front was
masked by a new facade, rendered necessary by the excessive length of
Perrault's design. The whole south wing[147] is in consequence much
wider than any of the others which enclose the great quadrangle. Poor
Levau's end was hastened by vexation and grief. Even to this day the
north-east wing of Perrault's facade projects unsymmetrically beyond
the line of the north front. The work has been much criticised and
much praised. It evoked Fergusson's ecstatic admiration, was extolled
by Reynolds and eulogised by another critic as one of the finest
pieces of architecture in any age. Strangely enough, neither of these
ever saw, nor has anyone yet seen, more than a partial and stunted
realisation of Perrault's design, for, as the accompanying
reproduction of a drawing by Blondel demonstrates, the famous east
front of the Louvre is like a giant buried up to the knees, and the
present first-floor windows were an afterthought, their places having
been designed as niches to hold statues. The exactitude of Blondel's
elevations was finally proved in 1903 by the admirable insight of the
present architect of the Louvre, Monsieur G. Redon, who was led to
undertake the excavations which brought to light a section of
Perrault's decorated basement, by noticing that the windows of the
ground floor evidently implied a lower order beneath. This basement,
seven and a half metres in depth, now buried, was in Perrault's scheme
designed to be exposed by a fosse of some fifteen to twenty metres in
width, and the whole elevation and symmetry of the wing would have
immensely gained by the carrying out of his plans.
[Footnote 147: Levau's south facade was not completely hidden by
Perrault's screen, for the roofs of the end and central pavilions
emerged from behind it until they were destroyed by Gabriel in 1755.]
[Illustration: PORTION OF THE EAST FACADE OF THE LOUVRE FROM BLONDEL'S
DRAWING, SHOWING PERRAULT'S BASE.]
The construction was, however, interrupted in 1676, owing to the
king's abandonment of Paris. Colbert strenuously protested against the
neglect of the Louvre, and warned his master not to squander his
millions away from Paris and suffer posterity to measure his grandeur
by the ell of Versailles. It availed nothing. In 1670, 1,627,293
livres were allotted to the Louvre; in 1672 the sum had fallen to
58,000 livres; in 1676 to 42,082; in 1680 the subsidies practically
ceased, and the great palace was utterly neglected until 1754 when
Perrault's work was feebly continued by Gabriel and Soufflot.
Two domed churches in the south of Paris--the Val de Grace and St.
Louis of the Invalides--were also erected during Louis XIV.'s
lifetime. Among the many vows made by Anne of Austria during her
twenty-two years' unfruitful marriage was one made in the sanctuary of
the nunnery of the Val de Grace, to build there a magnificent church
to God's glory if she were vouchsafed a Dauphin. At length, on 18th
April 1645, the proud queen was able to lead the future king, a boy of
seven years, to lay the first stone. The church was designed by F.
Mansard on the model of St. Peter's at Rome, and was finished by
Lemercier and others.
A refuge had been founded as early as Henry IV.'s reign in an old
abbey in the Faubourg St. Marcel, for old and disabled soldiers. Louis
XIV., the greatest creator of _invalides_ France had seen, determined
in 1670 to extend the foundation, and erect a vast hospital, capable
of accommodating his aged, crippled or infirm soldiers. Bruant and
J.H. Mansard[148] among other architects were employed to raise the
vast pile of buildings which, when completed, are said to have been
capable of housing 7,000 men. A church dedicated to St. Louis was
comprehended in the scheme, and, in 1680, a second Eglise Royale was
erected, whose gilded dome is so conspicuous an object in south Paris;
the Eglise Royale, which Mansard designed, was subsequently added to
the church of St. Louis, and became its choir. Louis XIV.,
anticipating Napoleon's maxim that war must support war, raised the
funds needed for the foundation by ingeniously requiring all ordinary
and extraordinary treasurers of war to retain two deniers[149] on
every livre that passed through their hands.
[Footnote 148: Jules Hardouin, the younger Mansard, was a nephew and
pupil of Francois Mansard, and assumed his uncle's name. The latter
was the inventor of the Mansard roof.]
[Footnote 149: The sixth part of a sou.]
The old city gates of the Tournelle, Poissonniere (or St. Anne), St.
Martin, St. Denis, the Temple, St. Jacques, St. Victor, were
demolished, and triumphal arches, which still remain, erected to mark
the sites of the Portes St. Denis and St. Martin. Another arch, of St.
Antoine, was designed to surpass all existing or ancient monuments of
the kind, and many volumes were written concerning the language in
which the inscription should be composed, but the devouring maw of
Versailles had to be filled, and the arch was never completed. The
king for whose glory the monument was to be raised, cared so little
for it, that he suffered it to be pulled down.
Many new streets[150] were made, and others widened, among them the
ill-omened Rue de la Ferronnerie. The northern ramparts were levelled
and planted with trees from the Porte St. Antoine in the east to the
Porte St. Honore in the west, and in 1704 it was decided to continue
the planting in the south round the Faubourg St. Germain. The Place
Louis le Grand (now Vendome), and the Place des Victoires were
created; the river embankments were renewed and extended, and a fine
stone Pont Royal by J.H. Mansard, the most beautiful of the existing
bridges of Paris, was built to replace the old wooden structure that
led from the St. Germain quarter to the Tuileries. This in its turn
had replaced a ferry (_bac_) established by the Guild of Ferrymen, to
transport the stone needed for the construction of the Tuileries, and
the street which leads to the bridge still bears the name of the Rue
du Bac. The Isle Louviers was acquired by the Ville, and the
evil-smelling tanneries and dye-houses that disfigured the banks of
the Seine between the Greve and the Chatelet were cleared away; many
new fountains embellished the city, and ten new pumps increased the
supply of water. The poorer quarters were, however, little changed
from their old insanitary condition. A few years later Rousseau, fresh
from Turin, was profoundly disappointed by the streets of Paris as he
entered the city by the Faubourg St. Marceau. "I had imagined," he
writes, "a city as fair as it was great, and of a most imposing
aspect, whose superb streets were lined with palaces of marble and of
gold. I beheld filthy, evil-smelling, mean streets, ugly houses black
with dirt, a general air of uncleanness and of poverty, beggars and
carters, old clothes shop and tisane sellers."
[Footnote 150: Twelve alone were added to the St. Honore quarter by
levelling the Hill of St. Roch and clearing away accumulated rubbish.]
[Illustration: RIVER AND PONT ROYAL.]
It is now time to ask what had been done with the magnificent
inheritance which the fourteenth Louis had entered upon at the opening
of his reign: he left to his successor, a France crushed by an
appalling debt of 2,400,000,000 livres; a noblesse and an army in
bondage to money-lenders; public officials and fund-holders unpaid,
trade paralysed, and the peasants in some provinces so poor that even
straw was lacking for them to lie upon, many crossing the frontiers
in search of a less miserable lot. Scarcity of bread made disease
rampant at Paris, and as many as 4,500 sick poor were counted at one
time in the Hotel Dieu alone. Louis left a court that "sweated
hypocrisy through every pore," and an example of licentious and
unclean living and cynical disregard of every moral obligation, which
ate like a cancer into the vitals of the aristocracy.