Concerning Louis the Fourteenth himself, the world seems at last to have
formed a correct judgment. He was not a great general; he was not a
great statesman; but he was, in one sense of the words, a great king.
Never was there so consummate a master of what our James the First would
have called king-craft,--of all those arts which most advantageously
display the merits of a prince, and most completely hide his defects.
Though his internal administration was bad,--though the military
triumphs which gave splendour to the early part of his reign were not
achieved by himself,--though his later years were crowded with defeats
and humiliations,--though he was so ignorant that he scarcely understood
the Latin of his mass-book,--though he fell under the control of a
cunning Jesuit and of a more cunning old woman,--he succeeded in passing
himself off on his people as a being above humanity. And this is the
more extraordinary, because he did not seclude himself from the public
gaze like those Oriental despots whose faces are never seen, and whose
very names it is a crime to pronounce lightly. It has been said that no
man is a hero to his valet;--and all the world saw as much of Louis the
Fourteenth as his valet could see. Five hundred people assembled to see
him shave and put on his breeches in the morning. He then kneeled down
at the side of his bed, and said his prayer, while the whole assembly
awaited the end in solemn silence,--the ecclesiastics on their knees,
and the laymen with their hats before their faces. He walked about his
gardens with a train of two hundred courtiers at his heels. All
Versailles came to see him dine and sup. He was put to bed at night in
the midst of a crowd as great as that which had met to see him rise in
the morning. He took his very emetics in state, and vomited majestically
in the presence of all the _grandes_ and _petites entrees_. Yet though
he constantly exposed himself to the public gaze in situations in which
it is scarcely possible for any man to preserve much personal dignity,
he to the last impressed those who surrounded him with the deepest awe
and reverence. The illusion which he produced on his worshippers can be
compared only to those illusions to which lovers are proverbially
subject during the season of courtship. It was an illusion which
affected even the senses. The contemporaries of Louis thought him tall.
Voltaire, who might have seen him, and who had lived with some of the
most distinguished members of his court, speaks repeatedly of his
majestic stature. Yet it is as certain as any fact can be, that he was
rather below than above the middle size. He had, it seems, a way of
holding himself, a way of walking, a way of swelling his chest and
rearing his head, which deceived the eyes of the multitude. Eighty years
after his death, the royal cemetery was violated by the revolutionists;
his coffin was opened; his body was dragged out; and it appeared that
the prince, whose majestic figure had been so long and loudly extolled,
was in truth a little man.
His person and his government have had the same fate. He had the art of
making both appear grand and august, in spite of the clearest evidence
that both were below the ordinary standard. Death and time have exposed
both the deceptions. The body of the great King has been measured more
justly than it was measured by the courtiers who were afraid to look
above his shoe-tie. His public character has been scrutinized by men
free from the hopes and fears of Boileau and Molière. In the grave, the
most majestic of princes is only five feet eight. In history, the hero
and the politician dwindles into a vain and feeble tyrant.--the slave of
priests and women,--little in war, little in government,--little in
every thing but the art of simulating greatness.
He left to his infant successor a famished and miserable people, a
beaten and humbled army, provinces turned into deserts by misgovernment
and persecution, factions dividing the court, a schism raging in the
church, an immense debt, an empty treasury, immeasurable palaces, an
innumerable household, inestimable jewels and furniture. All the sap and
nutriment of the state seemed to have been drawn to feed one bloated and
unwholesome excrescence. The nation was withered. The court was morbidly
flourishing. Yet it does not appear that the associations which attached
the people to the monarchy, had lost strength during his reign. He had
neglected or sacrificed their dearest interests; but he had struck their
imaginations. The very things which ought to have made him most
unpopular,--the prodigies of luxury and magnificence with which his
person was surrounded, while, beyond the enclosure of his parks, nothing
was to be seen but starvation and despair,--seemed to increase the
respectful attachment which his subjects felt for him.--_Edinburgh Rev._
(_just published_.)
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