IN FRANCE ON THE OTHER HAND THE "DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS" CONTINUED WITH
GREATER POMP AND SPLENDOUR THAN EVER BEFORE AND THE AMBITION OF THE
RULER WAS ONLY TEMPERED BY THE NEWLY INVENTED LAW OF THE "BALANCE OF
POWER"
As a contrast to the previous chapter, let me tell you what happened in
France during the years when the English people were fighting for their
liberty. The happy combination of the right man in the right country at
the right moment is very rare in History. Louis XIV was a realisation of
this ideal, as far as France was concerned, but the rest of Europe would
have been happier without him.
The country over which the young king was called to rule was the most
populous and the most brilliant nation of that day. Louis came to the
throne when Mazarin and Richelieu, the two great Cardinals, had just
hammered the ancient French Kingdom into the most strongly centralised
state of the seventeenth century. He was himself a man of extraordinary
ability. We, the people of the twentieth century, are still surrounded
by the memories of the glorious age of the Sun King. Our social life
is based upon the perfection of manners and the elegance of expression
attained at the court of Louis. In international and diplomatic
relations, French is still the official language of diplomacy and
international gatherings because two centuries ago it reached a polished
elegance and a purity of expression which no other tongue had as yet
been able to equal. The theatre of King Louis still teaches us lessons
which we are only too slow in learning. During his reign the French
Academy (an invention of Richelieu) came to occupy a position in
the world of letters which other countries have flattered by their
imitation. We might continue this list for many pages. It is no matter
of mere chance that our modern bill-of-fare is printed in French. The
very difficult art of decent cooking, one of the highest expressions of
civilisation, was first practiced for the benefit of the great Monarch.
The age of Louis XIV was a time of splendour and grace which can still
teach us a lot.
Unfortunately this brilliant picture has another side which was far less
encouraging. Glory abroad too often means misery at home, and France
was no exception to this rule Louis XIV succeeded his father in the year
1643. He died in the year 1715. That means that the government of France
was in the hands of one single man for seventy-two years, almost two
whole generations.
It will be well to get a firm grasp of this idea, "one single man."
Louis was the first of a long list of monarchs who in many countries
established that particular form of highly efficient autocracy which we
call "enlightened despotism." He did not like kings who merely played
at being rulers and turned official affairs into a pleasant picnic. The
Kings of that enlightened age worked harder than any of their subjects.
They got up earlier and went to bed later than anybody else, and felt
their "divine responsibility" quite as strongly as their "divine right"
which allowed them to rule without consulting their subjects.
Of course, the king could not attend to everything in person. He was
obliged to surround himself with a few helpers and councillors. One
or two generals, some experts upon foreign politics, a few clever
financiers and economists would do for this purpose. But these
dignitaries could act only through their Sovereign. They had no
individual existence. To the mass of the people, the Sovereign actually
represented in his own sacred person the government of their country.
The glory of the common fatherland became the glory of a single dynasty.
It meant the exact opposite of our own American ideal. France was ruled
of and by and for the House of Bourbon.
The disadvantages of such a system are clear. The King grew to be
everything. Everybody else grew to be nothing at all. The old and
useful nobility was gradually forced to give up its former shares in
the government of the provinces. A little Royal bureaucrat, his fingers
splashed with ink, sitting behind the greenish windows of a government
building in faraway Paris, now performed the task which a hundred years
before had been the duty of the feudal Lord. The feudal Lord, deprived
of all work, moved to Paris to amuse himself as best he could at
the court. Soon his estates began to suffer from that very dangerous
economic sickness, known as "Absentee Landlordism." Within a single
generation, the industrious and useful feudal administrators had become
the well-mannered but quite useless loafers of the court of Versailles.
Louis was ten years old when the peace of Westphalia was concluded and
the House of Habsburg, as a result of the Thirty Years War, lost its
predominant position in Europe. It was inevitable that a man with his
ambition should use so favourable a moment to gain for his own dynasty
the honours which had formerly been held by the Habsburgs. In the year
1660 Louis had married Maria Theresa, daughter of the King of Spain.
Soon afterward, his father-in-law, Philip IV, one of the half-witted
Spanish Habsburgs, died. At once Louis claimed the Spanish Netherlands
(Belgium) as part of his wife's dowry. Such an acquisition would have
been disastrous to the peace of Europe, and would have threatened the
safety of the Protestant states. Under the leadership of Jan de Witt,
Raadpensionaris or Foreign Minister of the United Seven Netherlands,
the first great international alliance, the Triple Alliance of Sweden,
England and Holland, of the year 1661, was concluded. It did not last
long. With money and fair promises Louis bought up both King Charles and
the Swedish Estates. Holland was betrayed by her allies and was left
to her own fate. In the year 1672 the French invaded the low countries.
They marched to the heart of the country. For a second time the dikes
were opened and the Royal Sun of France set amidst the mud of the Dutch
marshes. The peace of Nimwegen which was concluded in 1678 settled
nothing but merely anticipated another war.
A second war of aggression from 1689 to 1697, ending with the Peace
of Ryswick, also failed to give Louis that position in the affairs
of Europe to which he aspired. His old enemy, Jan de Witt, had been
murdered by the Dutch rabble, but his successor, William III (whom you
met in the last chapter), had checkmated all efforts of Louis to make
France the ruler of Europe.
The great war for the Spanish succession, begun in the year 1701,
immediately after the death of Charles II, the last of the Spanish
Habsburgs, and ended in 1713 by the Peace of Utrecht, remained equally
undecided, but it had ruined the treasury of Louis. On land the French
king had been victorious, but the navies of England and Holland had
spoiled all hope for an ultimate French victory; besides the long
struggle had given birth to a new and fundamental principle of
international politics, which thereafter made it impossible for one
single nation to rule the whole of Europe or the whole of the world for
any length of time.
That was the so-called "balance of power." It was not a written law but
for three centuries it has been obeyed as closely as are the laws of
nature. The people who originated the idea maintained that Europe, in
its nationalistic stage of development, could only survive when there
should be an absolute balance of the many conflicting interests of the
entire continent. No single power or single dynasty must ever be allowed
to dominate the others. During the Thirty Years War, the Habsburgs had
been the victims of the application of this law. They, however, had been
unconscious victims. The issues during that struggle were so clouded in
a haze of religious strife that we do not get a very clear view of the
main tendencies of that great conflict. But from that time on, we begin
to see how cold, economic considerations and calculations prevail in all
matters of international importance. We discover the development of a
new type of statesman, the statesman with the personal feelings of the
slide-rule and the cash-register. Jan de Witt was the first successful
exponent of this new school of politics. William III was the first
great pupil. And Louis XIV with all his fame and glory, was the first
conscious victim. There have been many others since.