It is King Louis XIV.’s distinction and heavy, burden in the eyes of
history that it is, impossible to tell of anything in his reign without
constantly recurring to himself. He had two ministers of the higher
order, Colbert and Louvois; several of good capacity, such as Seignelay
and Torcy; others incompetent, like Chamillard; he remained as much
master of the administrators of the first rank as if they had been
insignificant clerks; the home government of France, from 1661 to 1715,
is summed up in the king’s relations with his ministers.
“I resolved from the first not to have any premier minister,” says Louis
XIV. in his Memoires, “and not to leave to another the functions of king
whilst I had nothing but the title. But, on the contrary, I made up my
mind to share the execution of my orders amongst several persons, in
order to concentrate their authority in my own alone. I might have cast
my eyes upon people of higher consideration than those I selected, but
they seemed to me competent to execute, under me, the matters with which
I purposed to intrust them. I did not think it was to my interest to
look for men of higher standing, because, as I wanted above all things to
establish my own reputation, it was important that the public should
know, from the rank of those of whom I made use, that I had no intention
of sharing my authority with them, and that they themselves, knowing what
they were, should not conceive higher hopes than I wished to give them.”
It has been said already that the court governed France in the reign of
Louis XIV.; and what was, in fact, the court? The men who lived about
the king, depending on, his favor, the source or arbiter of their
fortunes. The great lords served in the army, with lustre, when they
bore the name of Conde, Turenne, or Luxembourg; but they never had any
place amongst the king’s confidential servants. “Luck, in spite of us,
has as much to do as wisdom--and more--with the choice of our ministers,”
he says in his Memoires, “and, in respect of what wisdom may have to do
therewith, genius is far more effectual than counsel.” It was their
genius which made the fortunes and the power of Louis XIV.’s two great
ministers, Colbert and Louvois.
In advance, and on the faith of Cardinal Mazarin, the king knew the worth
of Colbert. “I had all possible confidence in him,” says he, “because I
knew that he had a great deal of application, intelligence, and probity.”
Rough, reserved, taciturn, indefatigable in work, passionately devoted to
the cause of order, public welfare, and the peaceable aggrandizement of
France, Colbert, on becoming the comptroller of finance in 1661, brought
to the service of the state superior views, consummate experience, and
indomitable perseverance. The position of affairs required no fewer
virtues. “Disorder reigned everywhere,” says the king; “on casting over
the various portions of my kingdom not eyes of indifference, but the eyes
of a master, I was sensibly affected not to see a single one which did
not deserve and did not press to be taken in hand. The destitution of
the lower orders was extreme, and the finances, which give movement and
activity to all this great framework of the monarchy, were entirely
exhausted and in such plight that there was scarcely any resource to be
seen; the affluent, to be seen only amongst official people, on the one
hand cloaked all their malversations by divers kinds of artifices, and
uncloaked them on the other by their insolent and audacious extravagance,
as if they were afraid to leave me in ignorance of them.”
The punishment of the tax-collectors (_traitants_), prosecuted at the
same time as superintendent Fouquet, the arbitrary redemption of rentes
(_annuities_) on the city of Paris or on certain branches of the taxes,
did not suffice to alleviate the extreme suffering of the people. The
talliages from which the nobility and the clergy were nearly everywhere
exempt pressed upon the people with the most cruel inequality. “The poor
are reduced to eating grass and roots in our meadows like cattle,” said a
letter from Blaisois those who can find dead carcasses devour them, and,
unless God have pity upon them, they will soon be eating one another.”
Normandy, generally so prosperous, was reduced to the uttermost distress.
“The great number of poor has exhausted charity and the power of those
who were accustomed to relieve them,” says a letter to Colbert from the
superintendent of Caen. “In 1662 the town was obliged to throw open the
doors of the great hospital, having no longer any means of furnishing
subsistence to those who were in it. I can assure you that there are
persons in this town who have gone for whole days without anything to
eat. The country, which ought to supply bread for the towns, is crying
for mercy’s sake to be supplied therewith itself.” The peasants, wasted
with hunger, could no longer till their fields; their cattle had been
seized for taxes. Colbert proposed to the king to remit the arrears of
talliages, and devoted all his efforts to reducing them, whilst
regulating their collection. His desire was to arrive at the
establishment everywhere of real talliages, on landed property, &c.,
instead of personal talliages, variable imposts, depending upon the
supposed means or social position of the inhabitants. He was only very
partially successful, without, however, allowing himself to be repelled
by the difficulties presented by differences of legislation and customs
in the provinces. “Perhaps,” he wrote to the superintendent of Aix, in
1681, “on getting to the bottom of the matter and considering it in
detail, you will not discover in it all the impossibilities you have
pictured to yourself.” Colbert died without having completed his work;
the talliages, however, had been reduced by eight millions of livres
within the first two years of his administration. “All the imposts of
the kingdom,” he writes, in 1662, to the superintendent of Tours, who is
complaining of the destitution of the people, “are, as regards the
talliages, but about thirty-seven millions, and, for forty or fifty years
past, they have always been between forty and fifty millions, except
after the peace, when his Majesty reduced them to thirty-two,
thirty-three, and thirty-four millions.”
Peace was of short duration in the reign of Louis XIV., and often so
precarious that it did not permit of disarmament. At the very period
when the able minister was trying to make the people feel the importance
of the diminution in the talliages, he wrote to the king, “I entreat your
Majesty to read these few lines attentively. I confess to your Majesty
that the last time you were graciously pleased to speak to me about the
state of the finances, my respect, the boundless desire I have always had
to please you and serve you to your satisfaction, without making any
difficulty or causing any hitch, and still more your natural eloquence
which succeeds in bringing conviction of whatever you please, deprived me
of courage to insist and dwell somewhat upon the condition of your
finances, for the which I see no other remedy but increase of receipts
and decrease of expenses; wherefore, though this is no concern at all of
mine, I merely entreat your Majesty to permit me to say that in war as
well as in peace you have never consulted your finances for the purpose
of determining your expenditure, which is a thing so extraordinary that
assuredly there is no example thereof. For the past twenty years during
which I have had the honor of serving your Majesty, though the receipts
have greatly increased, you would find that the expenses have much
exceeded the receipts, which might perhaps induce you to moderate and
retrench such as are excessive. I am aware, Sir, that the figure I
present herein is not an agreeable one; but in your Majesty’s service
there are different functions; some entail nothing but agreeables whereof
the expenses are the foundation; that with which your Majesty honors me
entails this misfortune, that it can with difficulty produce anything
agreeable, since the proposals for expenses have no limit; but one must
console one’s self by constantly laboring to do one’s best.”
Louis XIV. did not “moderate or retrench his expenses.”
Colbert labored to increase the receipts; the new imposts excited
insurrections in Angoumois, in Guyenne, in Brittany. Bordeaux rose in
1695 with shouts of “_Hurrah! for the king without gabel_.” Marshal
d’Albret ventured into the streets in the district of St. Michel; he was
accosted by one of the ringleaders. “Well, my friend,” said the marshal,
“with whom is thy business? Dost wish to speak to me?” “Yes,” replied
the townsman, “I am deputed by the people of St. Michel to tell you that
they are good servants of the king, but that they do not mean to have any
gabel, or marks on pewter or tobacco, or stamped papers, or _yreffe
d’arbitrage_ (arbitration-clerk’s fee).” It was not until a year
afterwards that the taxes could be established in Gascony; troops had to
be sent to Rennes to impose the stamp-tax upon the Bretons. “Soldiers
are more likely to be wanted in Lower Brittany than in any other spot,”
said a letter to Colbert from the lieutenant general, M. de Lavardin; “it
is a rough and wild country, which breeds inhabitants who resemble it.
They understand French but slightly, and reason not much better. The
Parliament is at the back of all this.” Riots were frequent, and were
put down with great severity. “The poor Low-Bretons collect by forty or
fifty in the fields,” writes Madame de Sevigne on the 24th of September,
1675: “as soon as they see soldiers, they throw themselves on their
knees, saying, Mea culpa! all the French they know.. . .”
“The severities are abating,” she adds on the 3d of November: “after the
hangings there will be no more hanging.” All these fresh imposts, which
had cost so much suffering and severity, brought in but two millions five
hundred thousand livres at Colbert’s death. The indirect taxes, which
were at that time called _fermes generales_ (farmings-general), amounted
to thirty-seven millions during the first two years of Colbert’s
administration, and rose to sixty-four millions at the time of his death.
“I should be apprehensive of going too far, and that the prodigious
augmentations of the _fermes_ (farmings) would be very burdensome to the
people,” wrote Louis XIV. in 1680. The expenses of recovering the taxes,
which had but lately led to great abuses, were diminished by half. “The
bailiffs generally, and especially those who are set over the recovery of
talliages, are such terrible brutes that, by way of exterminating a good
number of these, you could not do anything more worthy of you than
suppress those,” wrote Colbert to the criminal magistrate of Orleans.
“I am at this moment promoting two suits against the collectors of
talliages, in which I expect at present to get ten thousand crowns’
damages, without counting another against an assessor’s officer, who
wounded one Grimault, the which had one of his daughters killed before
his eyes, his wife, another of his daughters, and his female servant
wounded with swords and sticks, the writ of distrainment being executed
whilst the poor creature was being buried.” The bailiffs were
suppressed, and the king’s justice was let loose not only against the
fiscal officers who abused their power, but also against tyrannical
nobles. Masters of requests and members of the Parliament of Paris went
to Auvergne and Velay and held temporary courts of justice, which were
called _grands jours_. Several lords were found guilty; Sieur de la
Mothe actually died upon the scaffold for having unjustly despoiled and
maltreated the people on his estates. “He was not one of the worst,”
says Flechier, in his _Journal des Grands Jours d’Auvergne_. The Duke of
Bouillon, governor of the province, had too long favored the guilty.
“I resolved,” says the king in his _Memoires,_ “to prevent the people
from being subjected to thousands and thousands of tyrants, instead of
one lawful king, whose indulgence alone it is that causes all this
disorder.” The puissance of the provincial governors, already curtailed
by Richelieu, suffered from fresh attacks under Louis XIV. Everywhere
the power passed into the hands of the superintendents, themselves
subjected in their turn to inspection by the masters of requests.
“Acting on the information I had that in many provinces the people were
plagued by certain folks who abused their title of governors in order to
make unjust requisitions,” says the king in his _Memoires,_ “I posted men
in all quarters for the express purpose of keeping myself more surely
informed of such exactions, in order to punish them as they deserved.”
Order was restored in all parts of France. “The _Auvergnats,_” said a
letter to Colbert from President de Novion, “never knew so certainly that
they had a king as they do now.”
“A useless banquet at a cost of a thousand crowns causes me incredible
pain,” said Colbert to Louis XIV., and yet, when it is a question of
millions of gold for Poland, I would sell all my property, I would pawn
my wife and children, and I would go afoot all my life to provide for it
if necessary. Your Majesty, if it please you, will forgive me this
little transport. I begin to doubt whether the liberty I take is
agreeable to your Majesty; it has seemed to me that you were beginning to
prefer your pleasures and your diversions to everything else; at the very
time when your Majesty told me at St. Germain that the morsel must be
taken from one’s mouth to provide for the increment of the naval
armament, you spent two hundred thousand livres down for a trip to
Versailles, to wit, thirteen thousand pistoles for your gambling expenses
and the queen’s, and fifty thousand livres for extraordinary banquets;
you have likewise so intermingled our diversions, with the war on land
that it is difficult to separate the two, and, if your Majesty will be
graciously pleased to examine in detail the amount of useless expenditure
you have incurred, you will plainly see that, if it were all deducted,
you would not be reduced to your present necessity. The right thing to
do, sir, is to grudge five sous for unnecessary things, and to throw
millions about when it is for your glory.”
Colbert knew, in fact, how to “throw millions about” when it was for
endowing France with new manufactures and industries. “One of the most
important works of peace,” he used to say, “is the re-establishment of
every kind of trade in this kingdom, and to put it in a position to do
without having recourse to foreigners for the things necessary for the
use and comfort of the subjects.” “We have no need of anybody, and our
neighbors have need of us;” such was the maxim laid down in a document
of that date, which has often been attributed to Colbert, and which he
certainly put incessantly into practice. The cloth manufactures were
dying out, they received encouragement; a Protestant Hollander, Van
Robais, attracted over to Abbeville by Colbert, there introduced the
making of fine cloths; at Beauvais and in the Gobelins establishment at
Paris, under the direction of the great painter Lebrun, the French
tapestries soon threw into the shade the reputation of the tapestries of
Flanders; Venice had to yield up her secrets and her workmen for the
glass manufactories of St. Gobain and Tourlaville. The great lords and
ladies were obliged to give up the Venetian point with which their
dresses had been trimmed; the importation of it was forbidden, and lace
manufactories were everywhere established in France; there was even a
strike amongst the women at Alencon against the new lace which it was
desired to force them to make. “There are more than eighty thousand
persons working at lace in Alencon, Seez, Argentan, Falaise, and the
circumjacent parishes,” said a letter to Colbert from the superintendent
of Alencon, “and I can assure you, my lord, that it is manna and a
blessing from heaven over all this district, where even little children
of seven years of age find means of earning a livelihood; the little
shepherd-girls from the fields work, like the rest, at it; they say that
they will never be able to make such fine point as this, and that one
wants to take away their bread and their means of paying their talliage.”
Point d’Alencon won the battle, and the making of lace spread all over
Normandy. Manufactures of soap, tin, arms, silk, gave work to a
multitude of laborers; the home trade of France at the same time received
development; the bad state of the roads was “a dreadful hinderance to
traffic;” Colbert ordered them to be every where improved. “The
superintendents have done wonders, and we are never tired of singing
their praises,” writes, Madame de Sevigne to her daughter during one of
her trips; “it is quite extraordinary what beautiful roads there are;
there is not a single moment’s stoppage; there are malls and walks
everywhere.” The magnificent canal of Languedoc, due to the generous
initiative of Riquet, united the Ocean to the Mediterranean; the canal of
Orleans completed the canal of Briare, commenced by Henry IV. The inland
custom-houses which shackled the traffic between province and province
were suppressed at divers points; many provinces demurred to the
admission of this innovation, declaring that, to set their affairs right,
“there was need of nothing but order, order, order.” Colbert also wanted
order, but his views were higher and broader than those of Breton or
Gascon merchants; in spite of his desire to “put the kingdom in a
position to do without having recourse to foreigners for things necessary
for the use and comfort of the French,” he had too lofty and too
judicious a mind to neglect the extension of trade; like Richelieu, he
was for founding great trading companies; he had five, for the East and
West Indies, the Levant, the North, and Africa; just as with Richelieu,
they were with difficulty established, and lasted but a little while;
it was necessary to levy subscriptions on the members of the sovereign
corporations; “M. de Bercy put down his name for a thousand livres,” says
the journal of Oliver d’Ormesson. “M. de Colbert laughed at him, and
said that it could not be for his pocket’s sake; and the end of it was,
that he put down three thousand livres.” Colbert could not get over the
mortifying success of the company of the Dutch Indies. “I cannot believe
that they pay forty per cent.,” said he. It was with the Dutch that he
most frequently had commercial difficulties. The United Provinces
produced but little, and their merchant navy was exclusively engaged in
the business of transport; the charge of fifty sous per ton on
merchandise carried in foreign vessels caused so much ill humor amongst
the Hollanders that it was partly the origin of their rupture with France
and of the treaty of the Triple Alliance. Colbert made great efforts to
develop the French navy, both the fighting and the merchant. “The
sea-traffic of all the world,” he wrote in 1669 to M. de Pomponne, then
ambassador to Holland, “is done with twenty thousand vessels or
thereabouts. In the natural order of things, each nation should have its
own share thereof in proportion to its power, population, and seaboard.
The Hollanders have fifteen or sixteen thousand out of this number, and
the French perhaps four or five hundred at most. The king is employing
all sorts of means which he thinks useful in order to approach a little
more nearly to the number his subjects ought naturally to have.”
Colbert’s efforts were not useless; at his death, the maritime trade of
France had developed itself, and French merchants were effectually
protected at sea by ships of war. “It is necessary,” said Colbert in his
instructions to Seignelay, “that my son should be as keenly alive to all
the disorders that may occur in trade, and all the losses that may be
incurred by every trader, as if they were his own.” In 1692 the royal
navy numbered a hundred and eighty-six vessels; a hundred and sixty
thousand sailors were down on the books; the works at the ports of
Toulon, Brest, and Rochefort were in full activity; Louis XIV. was in a
position to refuse the salute of the flag which the English had up to
that time exacted in the Channel from all nations. “The king my brother
and those of whom he takes counsel do not quite know me yet,” wrote the
king to his ambassador in London, “when they adopt towards me a tone of
haughtiness and a certain sturdiness which has a savor of menace. I know
of no power under heaven that can make me move a step by that sort of
way; evil may come to me, of course, but no sensation of fear. The King
of England and his chancellor may, of course, see pretty well what my
strength is, but they do not see my heart; I, who feel and know full well
both one and the other, desire that, for sole reply to so haughty a
declaration, they learn from your mouth that I neither seek nor ask for
any accommodation in the matter of the flag, because I shall know quite
well how to maintain my right whatever may happen. I intend before long
to place my maritime forces on such a footing that the English shall
consider it a favor if it be my good pleasure then to listen to
modifications touching a right which is due to me more legitimately than
to them.” Duquesne and Tourville, Duguay-Trouin and John Bart, permitted
the king to make good on the seas such proud words. From 1685 to 1712
the French fleets could everywhere hold their own against the allied
squadrons of England and Holland.
So many and such sustained efforts in all directions, so many vast
projects and of so great promise, suited the mind of Louis XIV. as well
as that of his minister. “I tell you what I think,” wrote Louis XIV. to
Colbert in 1674; “but, after all, I end as I began, by placing myself
entirely in your hands, being certain that you will do what is most
advantageous for my service.” Colbert’s zeal for his master’s service
merited this confidence. “O,” he exclaimed one day, “that I could render
this country happy, and that, far from the court, without favor, without
influence, the grass might grow in my very courts!”
[Illustration: Marly----525]
Louis XIV. was the victim of three passions which hampered and in the
long-run destroyed the accord between king and minister: that for war,
whetted and indulged by Louvois; that for kingly and courtly
extravagance; and that for building and costly fancies. Colbert likewise
loved “buildments” (_les batiments_), as the phrase then was; he urged
the king to complete the Louvre, plans for which were requested of
Bernini, who went to Paris for the purpose; after two years’ infructuous
feelers and compliments, the Italian returned to Rome, and the work was
intrusted to Perrault, whose plan for the beautiful colonnade still
existing had always pleased Colbert. The completion of the castle of
St. Germain, the works at Fontainebleau and at Chambord, the triumphal
arches of St. Denis and St. Martin, the laying out of the Tuileries, the
construction of the Observatory, and even that of the Palais des
Invalides, which was Louvois’ idea, found the comptroller of the finances
well disposed, if not eager.
[Illustration: Colonnade of the Louvre 525a]
Versailles was a constant source of vexation to him. “Your Majesty is
coming back from Versailles,” he wrote to the king on the 28th of
September, 1685. “I entreat that you will permit me to say two words
about the reflections I often make upon this subject, and forgive me, if
it please you, for my zeal. That mansion appertains far more to your
Majesty’s pleasure and diversion than to your glory; if you would be
graciously pleased to search all over Versailles for the five hundred
thousand crowns spent within two years, you would assuredly have a
difficulty in finding them. If your Majesty thinks upon it, you will
reflect that it will appear forever in the accounts of the treasurers of
your buildments that, whilst you were expending such great sums on this
mansion, you neglected the Louvre, which is assuredly the most superb
palace in the world, and the most worthy of your Majesty’s grandeur. You
are aware that, in default of splendid deeds of arms, there is nothing
which denotes the grandeur and spirit of princes more plainly than
buildments do, and all posterity measures them by the ell
of those superb mansions which they have erected during their lives.
O, what pity it were that the greatest king and the most virtuous in that
true virtue which makes the greatest princes should be measured by the
ell of Versailles! And, nevertheless, there is room to fear this
misfortune. For my part, I confess to your Majesty that, notwithstanding
the repugnance you feel to increase the cash-orders [_comptants_], if I
could have foreseen that this expenditure would be so large, I should
have advised the employment of cash-orders, in order to hide the
knowledge thereof forever.” [The cash-orders (_ordonnances au comptant_)
did not indicate their object, and were not revised. The king merely
wrote, Pay cash; I know the object of this expenditure (_Bon au comptant:
je sais l’objet de cette depense_).]
[Illustration: Versailles---526]
Colbert was mistaken in his fears for Louis XIV.’s glory; if the expenses
of Versailles surpassed his most gloomy apprehensions, the palace which
rose upon the site of Louis XIV.’s former hunting-box was worthy of the
king who had made it in his own image, and who managed to retain all his
court around him there, by the mere fact of his will and of his royal
presence.
Colbert was dead before Versailles was completed; the bills amounted then
to one hundred and sixteen millions; the castle of Marly, now destroyed,
cost more than four millions; money was everywhere becoming scarce; the
temper of the comptroller of finances went on getting worse. “Whereas
formerly it had been noticed that he set to his work rubbing his hands
with joy,” says his secretary Perrault, brother of the celebrated
architect, “he no longer worked but with an air of vexation, and even
with sighs. From the good-natured and easy-going creature he had been,
he became difficult to deal with, and there was not so much business, by
a great deal, got through as in the early years of his administration.”
“I do not mean to build any more, Mansard; I meet with too many
mortifications,” the king would say to his favorite architect. He still
went on building, however; but he quarrelled with Colbert over the cost
of the great railings of Versailles. There’s swindling here,” said Louis
XIV. “Sir,” rejoined Colbert, “I flatter myself, at any rate, that that
word does not apply to me?” “No,” said the king; “but more attention
should have been shown. If you want to know what economy is, go to
Flanders; you will see how little those fortifications of the conquered
places cost.”
It was Vauban whose praise the king thus sang, and Vauban, devoted to
Louvois, had for a long time past been embroiled with Colbert. The
minister felt himself beaten in the contest he had so long maintained
against Michael Le Tellier and his son. In 1664, at the death of
Chancellor Seguier, Colbert had opposed the elevation of Le Tellier to
this office, “telling the king that, if he came in, he, Colbert, could
not serve his Majesty, as he would have him thwarting everything he
wanted to do.” On leaving the council, Le Tellier said to Brienne, “You
see what a tone M. Colbert takes up; he will have to be settled with.”
The antagonism had been perpetuated between Colbert and Louvois; their
rivalry in the state had been augmented by the contrary dispositions of
the two ministers. Both were passionately devoted to their work,
laborious, indefatigable, honest in money matters, and both of fierce
and domineering temper; but Louvois was more violent, more bold, less
scrupulous as to ways and means of attaining his end, cruel in the
exercise of his will and his wrath, less concerned about the sufferings
of the people, more exclusively absorbed by one fixed idea; both rendered
great service to the king, but Colbert performing for the prince and the
state only useful offices in the way of order, economy, wise and
far-sighted administration, courageous and steady opposition; Louvois
ever urging the king on according to his bent, as haughty and more
impassioned than he, entangling him and encouraging him in wars which
rendered his own services necessary, without pity for the woes he
entailed upon the nation. It was the misfortune and the great fault of
Louis XIV. that he preferred the counsels of Louvois to those of Colbert,
and that he allowed all the functions so faithfully exercised by the
dying minister to drop into the hands of his enemy and rival.
At sixty-four years of age Colbert succumbed to excess of labor and of
cares. That man, so cold and reserved, whom Madame de Sevigne called
North, and Guy-Patin the Man of Marble (_Vir marmoreus_), felt that
disgust for the things of life which appears so strikingly in the
seventeenth century amongst those who were most ardently engaged in the
affairs of the world. He was suffering from stone; the king sent to
inquire after him and wrote to him. The dying man had his eyes closed;
he did not open them. “I do not want to hear anything more about him,”
said he, when the king’s letter was brought to him; “now, at any rate,
let him leave me alone.” His thoughts were occupied with his soul’s
salvation. Madame de Maintenon used to accuse him of always thinking
about his finances, and very little about religion. He repeated
bitterly, as the dying Cardinal Wolsey had previously said in the case of
Henry, “If I had done for God what I have done for that man, I had been
saved twice over; and now I know not what will become of me.” He expired
on the 6th of September, 1683; and on the 10th, Madame de Maintenon wrote
to Madame de St. Geran, “The king is very well; he feels no more now than
a slight sorrow. The death of M. de Colbert afflicted him, and a great
many people rejoiced at that affliction. It is all stuff about the
pernicious designs he had; and the king very cordially forgave him for
having determined to die without reading his letter, in order to be
better able to give his thoughts to God. M. de Seignelay was anxious to
step into all his posts, and has not obtained a single one; he has plenty
of cleverness, but little moral conduct. His pleasures always have
precedence of his duties. He has so exaggerated his father’s talents and
services, that he has convinced everybody how unworthy and incapable he
is of succeeding him.” The influence of Louvois and the king’s ill humor
against the Colberts peep out in the injustice of Madame de Maintenon.
Seignelay had received from Louis XIV. the reversion of the navy; his
father had prepared him for it with anxious strictness, and he had
exercised the functions since 1676. Well informed, clever, magnificent,
Seignelay drove business and pleasure as a pair. In 1685 he gave the
king a splendid entertainment in his castle of Sceaux; in 1686 he set off
for Genoa, bombarded by Duquesne; in 1689 he, in person, organized the
fleet of Tourville at Brest. “He was general in everything,” says Madame
de la Fayette; “even when he did not give the word, he had the exterior
and air of it.” “He is devoured by ambition,” Madame de Maintenon had
lately said: in 1689 she writes, “_Anxious (L’Inquiet, i. e., Louvois_)
hangs but by a thread; he is very much shocked at having the direction of
the affairs of Ireland taken from him; he blames me for it. He counted
on making immense profits; M. de Seignelay counts on nothing but perils
and labors. He will succeed if he do not carry things with too high a
hand. The king would have no better servant, if he could rid himself a
little of his temperament. He admits as much himself; and yet he does
not mend.” Seignelay died on the 3d of November, 1690, at the age of
thirty-nine. “He had all the parts of a great minister of state,” says
St. Simon, “and he was the despair of M. de Louvois, whom he often placed
in the position of having not a word of reply to say in the king’s
presence. His defects corresponded with his great qualities. As a hater
and a friend he had no peer but Louvois.” “How young! how fortunate how
great a position!” wrote Madame de Sevigne, on hearing of the death of M.
de Seignelay, “it seems as if splendor itself were dead.”
Seignelay had spent freely, but he left at his death more than four
hundred thousand livres a year. Colbert’s fortune amounted to ten
millions, legitimate proceeds of his high offices and the king’s
liberalities. He was born of a family of merchants, at Rheims, ennobled
in the sixteenth century, but he was fond of connecting it with the
Colberts of Scotland. The great minister would often tell his children
to reflect “what their birth would have done for them if God had not
blessed his labors, and if those labors had not been extreme.” He had
married his daughters to the Dukes of Beauvilliers, Chevreuse, and
Mortemart; Seignelay had wedded Mdlle. de Matignon, whose grandmother was
an Orleans-Longueville. “Thus,” said Mdlle de Montpensier, “they have
the honor of being as closely related as M. le Prince to the king; Marie
de Bourbon was cousin-german to the king my grandfather. That lends a
grand air to M. de Seignelay, who had by nature sufficient vanity.”
Colbert had no need to seek out genealogies, and great alliances were
naturally attracted to his power and the favor he was in. He had in
himself that title which comes of superior merit, and which nothing can
make up for, nothing can equal. He might have said, as Marshal Lannes
said to the Marquis of Montesquieu, who was exhibiting a coat taken out
of his ancestors’ drawers, “I am an ancestor myself.”
Louvois remained henceforth alone, without rival and without check. The
work he had undertaken for the reorganization of the army was pretty
nearly completed; he had concentrated in his own hands the whole
direction of the military service, the burden and the honor of which were
both borne by him. He had subjected to the same rules and the same
discipline all corps and all grades; the general as well as the colonel
obeyed him blindly. M. de Turenne alone had managed to escape from the
administrative level. “I see quite clearly,” he wrote to Louvois on the
9th of September, 1673, “what are the king’s wishes, and I will do all I
can to conform to them but you will permit me to tell you that I do not
think that it would be to his Majesty’s service to give precise orders,
at such a distance, to the most incapable man in France.” Turenne had
not lost the habit of command; Louvois, who had for a long while been
under his orders, bowed to the will of the king, who required apparent
accord between the marshal and the minister, but he never forgave Turenne
for his cool and proud independence. The Prince of Conde more than once
turned to advantage this latent antagonism. After the death of Louvois
and of Turenne, after the retirement of Conde, when the central power
fell into the hands of Chamillard or of Voysin, the pretence of directing
war from the king’s closet at Versailles produced the most fatal effects.
“If M. de Chamillard thinks that I know nothing about war,” wrote Villars
to Madame de Maintenon, “he will oblige me by finding somebody else in
the kingdom who is better acquainted with it.” “If your Majesty,” he
said again, “orders me to shut myself up in Bavaria, and if you want to
see your army lost, I will get myself killed at the first opportunity
rather than live to see such a mishap.” The king’s orders, transmitted
through a docile minister, ignorant of war, had a great deal to do with
the military disasters of Louis XIV.’s later years.
Meanwhile order reigned in the army, and supplies were regular. Louvois
received the nickname of great Victualler (_Vivrier_). The wounded were
tended in hospitals devoted to their use. “When a soldier is once down,
he never gets up again,” had but lately been the saying. “Had I been at
my mother’s, in her own house, I could not have been better treated,”
wrote M. D’Alligny on the contrary, when he came out of one of the
hospitals created by Louvois. He conceived the grand idea of the Hotel
des Invalides. “It were very reasonable,” says the preamble of the
king’s edict which founded the establishment, “that they who have freely
exposed their lives and lavished their blood for the defence and
maintenance of this monarchy, who have so materially contributed to the
winning of the battles we have gained over our enemies, and who have
often reduced them to asking peace of us, should enjoy the repose they
have secured for our other subjects, and should pass the remainder of
their days in tranquillity.” Up to his death Louvois insisted upon
managing the Hotel des Invalides himself.
Never had the officers of the army been under such strict and minute
supervision; promotion went, by seniority, by “the order on the list,” as
the phrase then was, without any favor for rank or birth; commanders were
obliged to attend to their corps. “Sir,” said Louvois one day to M. de
Nogaret, “your company is in a very bad state.” “Sir,” answered Nogaret,
“I was not aware of it.” “You ought to be aware,” said M. de Louvois:
“have you inspected it?” “No, sir,” said Nogaret. “You ought to have
inspected it, sir.” “Sir, I will give orders about it.” “You ought to
have given them. A man ought to make up his mind, sir, either to openly
profess himself a courtier or to devote himself to his duty when he is an
officer.” Education in the schools for cadets, regularity in service,
obligation to keep the companies full instead of pocketing a portion of
the pay in the name of imaginary soldiers who appeared only on the
registers, and who were called dummies (_passe-volants_), the necessity
of wearing uniform, introduced into the army customs to which the French
nobility, as undisciplined as they were brave, had hitherto been utter
strangers.
Artillery and engineering were developed under the influence of Vauban,
“the first of his own time and one of the first of all times” in the
great art of besieging, fortifying, and defending places. Louvois had
singled out Vauban at the sieges of Lille, Tournay, and Douai, which he
had directed in chief under the king’s own eye. He ordered him to render
the places he had just taken impregnable. “This is no child’s play,”
said Vauban on setting about the fortifications of Dunkerque, “and I
would rather lose my life than hear said of me some day what I hear said
of the men who have preceded me.” Louvois’ admiration was unmixed when
he went to examine the works. “The achievements of the Romans which have
earned them so much fame show nothing comparable to what has been done
here,” he exclaimed; “they formerly levelled mountains in order to make
highroads, but here more than four hundred have been swept away; in the
place where all those sand-banks were there is now to be seen nothing but
one great meadow. The English and the Dutch often send people hither to
see if all they have been told is true; they all go back full of
admiration at the success of the work and the greatness of the master who
took it in hand.” It was this admiration and this dangerous greatness
which suggested to the English their demands touching Dunkerque during
the negotiations for the peace of Utrecht.
The honesty and moral worth of Vauban equalled his genius; he was as
high-minded as he was modest; evil reports had been spread about
concerning the contractors for the fortifications of Lille. Vauban
demanded an inquiry. “You are quite right in thinking, my lord,” he
wrote to Louvois, to whom he was united by a sincere and faithful
friendship, “that, if you do not examine into this affair, you cannot do
me justice, and, if you do it me not, that would be compelling me to seek
means of doing it myself, and of giving up forever fortification and all
its concomitants. Examine, then, boldly and severely; away with all
tender feeling, for I dare plainly tell you that in a question of
strictest honesty and sincere fidelity I fear neither the king, nor you,
nor all the human race together. Fortune had me born the poorest
gentleman in France, but in requital she honored me with an honest heart,
so free from all sorts of swindles that it cannot bear even the thought
of them without a shudder.” It was not until eight years after the death
of Louvois, in 1699, when Vauban had directed fifty-three sieges,
constructed the fortifications of thirty-three places, and repaired those
of three hundred towns, that he was made a marshal, an honor that no
engineer had yet obtained. “The king fancied he was giving himself the
baton,” it was said, “so often had he had Vauban under his orders in
besieging places.”
[Illustration: Vauban----534]
The leisure of peace was more propitious to Vauban’s fame than to his
favor. Generous and sincere as he was, a patriot more far-sighted than
his contemporaries, he had the courage to present to the king a memorial
advising the recall of the fugitive Huguenots, and the renewal, pure and
simple, of the edict of Nantes. He had just directed the siege of
Brisach and the defence of Dunkerque when he published a great economical
work entitled _la Dime royale,_ the fruit of the reflections of his whole
life, fully depicting the misery of the people and the system of imposts
he thought adapted to relieve it. The king was offended; he gave the
marshal a cold reception and had the work seized. Vauban received his
death-blow from this disgrace. The royal edict was dated March 19, 1707;
the great engineer died on the 30th; he was not quite seventy-four. The
king testified no regret for the loss of so illustrious a servant, with
whom he had lived on terms of close intimacy. Vauban had appeared to
impugn his supreme authority; this was one of the crimes that Louis XIV.
never forgave.
In 1683, at Colbert’s death, Vauban was enjoying the royal favor, which
he attributed entirely to Louvois. The latter reigned without any one to
contest his influence with the master. It had been found necessary to
bury Colbert by night to avoid the insults of the people, who imputed to
him the imposts which crushed them. What an unjust and odious mistake of
popular opinion which accused Colbert of the evils which he had fought
against and at the same time suffered under to the last day! All
Colbert’s offices, except the navy, fell to Louvois or his creatures.
Claude Lepelletier, a relative of Le Tellier, became comptroller of
finance; he entered the council; M. de Blainville, Colbert’s second son,
was obliged to resign in Louvois’ favor the superintendence of
buildments, of which the king had previously promised him the reversion.
All business passed into the hands of Louvois. Le Tellier had been
chancellor since 1677; peace still reigned; the all-powerful minister
occupied himself in building Trianon, bringing the River Eure to
Versailles, and establishing unity of religion in France. “The counsel
of constraining the Huguenots by violent means to become Catholics was
given and carried out by the Marquis of Louvois,” says an anonymous
letter of the time. “He thought he could manage consciences and control
religion by those harsh measures which, in spite of his wisdom, his
violent nature suggests to him almost in everything.” Louvois was the
inventor, of the dragonnades; it was his father, Michael le Tellier, who
put the seals to the revocation of the edict of Nantes; and, a few days
before he died, full of joy at his last work, he piously sang the
canticle of Simeon. Louis XIV. and his ministers believed in good faith
that Protestantism was stamped out. “The king,” wrote Madame de
Maintenon, “is very pleased to have put the last touch to the great work
of the reunion of the heretics with the church. Father la Chaise, the
king’s confessor, promised that it would not cost a drop of blood, and
M. de Louvois said the same thing.” Emigration in mass, the revolt of
the Camisards, and the long-continued punishments, were a painful
surprise for the courtiers accustomed to bend beneath the will of Louis
XIV.; they did not understand that “anybody should obstinately remain of
a religion which was displeasing to the king.” The Huguenots paid the
penalty for their obstinacy. The intelligent and acute biographer of
Louvois, M. Camille Rousset, could not defend him from the charge of
violence in their case. On the 10th of June, 1686, he wrote to the
superintendent of Languedoc, “On my representation to the king of the
little heed paid by the women of the district in which you are to the
penalties ordained against those who are found at assemblies, his Majesty
orders that those who are not demoiselles (that is, noble) shall be
sentenced by M. de Baville to be whipped, and branded with the
fleur-de-lis.” He adds, on the 22d of July, “The king having thought
proper to have a declaration sent out on the 15th of this month, whereby
his Majesty orders that all those who are henceforth found at such
assemblies shall be punished by death, M. de Baville will take no notice
of the decree I sent you relating to the women, as it becomes useless by
reason of this declaration.” The king’s declaration was carried out, as
the sentences of the victims prove:--Condemned to the galleys, or
condemned to death--for the crime of assemblies.” This was the language
of the Roman emperors. Seventeen centuries of Christianity had not
sufficed to make men comprehend the sacred rights of conscience. The
refined and moderate mind of Madame de Sevigne did not prevent her from
writing to M. de Bussy on the 28th of October, 1685, “You have, no
doubt, seen the edict by which the king revokes that of Nantes; nothing
can be more beautiful than its contents, and never did or will any king
do anything more memorable.” The noble libertine and freethinker
replied to her, “I admire the steps taken by the king to reunite the
Huguenots. The war made upon them in former times and the St.
Bartholomew gave vigor to this sect; his Majesty has sapped it little by
little, and the edict he has just issued, supported by dragoons and
Bourdaloues, has given it the finishing stroke.” It was the honorable
distinction of the French Protestants to proclaim during more than two
centuries, by their courageous resistance, the rights and duties which
were ignored all around them.
Whilst the reformers were undergoing conversion, exile, or death, war was
recommencing in Europe, with more determination than ever on the part of
the Protestant nations, indignant and disquieted as they were. Louvois
began to forget all about the obstinacy of the religionists, and prepared
for the siege of Philipsburg and the capture of Manheim and Coblentz.
“The king has seen with pleasure,” he wrote to Marshal Boufflers, “that,
after well burning Coblentz, and doing all the harm possible to the
elector’s palace, you were to march back to Mayence.” The haughtiness of
the king and the violence of the minister went on increasing with the
success of their arms; they treated the pope’s rights almost as lightly
as those of the Protestants. The pamphleteers of the day had reason to
write, “It is clearly seen that the religion of the court of France is a
pure matter of interest; the king does nothing but what is for that which
he calls his glory and grandeur; Catholics and heretics, Holy Pontiff,
church, and anything you please, are sacrificed to his great pride;
everything must be reduced to powder beneath his feet; we in France are
on the high road to putting the sacred rights of the Holy See on the same
footing as the privileges granted to Calvinists; all ecclesiastical
authority is annihilated. Nobody knows anything of canons, popes,
councils; everything is swallowed up in the authority of one man.” “The
king willeth it:” France had no other law any longer; and William III.
saved Europe from the same enslavement.
The Palatinate was in flames; Louvois was urging on the generals and
armies everywhere, sending despatch after despatch, orders upon orders.
“I am a thousand times more impatient to finish this business than you
can be,” was the spirited reply he received from M. de la Hoguette, who
commanded in Italy, in the environs of Cuneo; “besides the reasons of
duty which I have always before my eyes, I beg you to believe that the
last letters I received from you were quite strong enough to prevent
negligence of anything that must be done to prevent similar ones, and to
deserve a little more confidence; but the most willing man can do nothing
against roads encumbered with ice and snow.” Louvois did not admit this
excuse; he wanted soldiers to be able to cross the defiles of mountains
in the depths of winter just as he would have orange trees travel in the
month of February. “I received orders to send off to Versailles from La
Meilleraye the orange trees which the Duke of Mazarin gave the king,”
writes Superintendent Foucauld in his journal. “M. Louvois, in spite of
the representations I made him, would have them sent by carriage through
the snow and ice. They arrived leafless at Versailles, and several are
dead. I had sent him word that the king could take towns in winter, but
could not make orange trees bear removal from their hothouses.” The
nature and the consciences of the Protestants were all that withstood
Louis XIV. and Louvois. On the 16th of July, 1691, death suddenly
removed the minister, fallen in royal favor, detested and dreaded in
France, universally hated in Europe, leaving, however, the king, France,
and Europe with the feeling that a great power had fallen, a great deal
of merit disappeared. “I doubt not,” wrote Louis XIV. to Marshal
Boufflers, “that, as you are very zealous for my service, you will be
sorry for the death of a man who served me well.” “Louvois,” said the
Marquis of La Fare, “should never have been born, or should have lived
longer.” The public feeling was expressed in an anonymous epitaph:
“Here lieth he who to his will
Bent every one, knew everything
Louvois, beloved by no one,
still Leaves everybody sorrowing.”
The king felt his loss, but did not regret the minister whose tyranny and
violence were beginning to be oppressive to him. He felt himself to be
more than ever master in the presence of the young or inexperienced men
to whom he henceforth intrusted his affairs. Louvois’ son, Barbezieux,
had the reversion of the war department; Pontchartrain, who had been
comptroller of finance ever since the retirement of Lepelletier, had been
appointed to the navy in 1690, at the death of Seignelay. “M. de
Pontchartrain had begged the king not to give him the navy,” says Dangeau
ingenuously, “because he knew nothing at all about it; but the king’s
will was absolute that he should take it. He now has all that M. de
Colbert had, except the buildments.” What mattered the inexperience of
ministers? The king thought that he alone sufficed for all.
God had left it to time to undeceive the all-powerful monarch; he alone
held out amidst the ruins; after the fathers the sons were falling around
him; Seignelay had followed Colbert to the tomb; Louvois was dead after
Michael Le Tellier; Barbezieux died in his turn in 1701. “This secretary
of state had naturally good wits, lively and ready conception, and great
mastery of details in which his father had trained him early,” writes the
Marquis of Argenson. He had been spoiled in youth by everybody but his
father. He was obliged to put himself at the mercy of his officials, but
he always kept up his position over them, for the son of M. de Louvois,
their creator, so to speak, could not fail to inspire them with respect,
veneration, and even attachment. Louis XIV., who knew the defects of M.
de Barbezieux, complained to him, and sometimes rated him in private, but
he left him his place, because he felt the importance of preserving in
the administration of war the spirit and the principles of Louvois.
“Take him for all in all,” says St. Simon, “he had the making of a great
minister in him, but wonderfully dangerous; the best and most useful
friend in the world so long as he was one, and the most terrible, the
most inveterate, the most implacable and naturally ferocious enemy; he
was a man who would not brook opposition in anything, and whose audacity
was extreme.” A worthy son of Louvois, as devoted to pleasure as he
was zealous in business, he was carried off in five days, at the age of
thirty-three. The king, who had just put Chamillard into the place of
Pontchartrain, made chancellor at the death of Boucherat, gave him the
war department in succession to Barbezieux, “thus loading such weak
shoulders with two burdens of which either was sufficient to break down
the strongest.”
Louis XIV. had been faithfully and mightily served by Colbert and
Louvois; he had felt confidence in them, though he had never had any
liking for them personally; their striking merits, the independence of
their character, which peeped out in spite of affected expressions of
submission and deference, the spirited opposition of the one and the
passionate outbursts of the other, often hurt the master’s pride, and
always made him uncomfortable; Colbert had preceded him in the
government, and Louvois, whom he believed himself to have trained, had
surpassed him in knowledge of affairs as well as aptitude for work;
Chamillard was the first, the only one of his ministers whom the king had
ever loved. “His capacity was nil,” says St. Simon, who had very
friendly feelings towards Chamillard, “and he believed that he knew
everything and of every sort; this was the more pitiable in that it had
got into his head with his promotions, and was less presumption than
stupidity, and still less vanity, of which he had none. The joke is,
that the mainspring of the king’s great affection for him was this very
incapacity. He confessed it to the king at every step, and the king was
delighted to direct and instruct him; in such sort that he grew jealous
for his success as if it were his own, and made every excuse for him.”
The king loved Chamillard; the court bore with him because he was easy
and good-natured, but the affairs of the state were imperilled in his
hands; Pontchartrain had already had recourse to the most objectionable
proceedings in order to obtain money; the mental resources of Colbert
himself had failed in presence of financial embarrassments and increasing
estimates. It is said that, during the war with Holland, Louvois induced
the king to contract a loan; the premier-president, Lamoignon, supported
the measure. “You are triumphant,” said Colbert, who had vigorously
opposed it; “you think you have done the deed of a good man; what! did
not I know as well as you that the king could get money by borrowing?
But I was careful not to say so. And so the borrowing road is opened.
What means will remain henceforth of checking the king in his
expenditure? After the loans, taxes will be wanted to pay them; and, if
the loans have no limit, the taxes will have none either.” At the king’s
death the loans amounted to more than two milliards and a half, the
deficit was getting worse and worse every day, there was no more money to
be had, and the income from property went on diminishing. “I have only
some dirty acres which are turning to stones instead of being bread,”
wrote Madame de Sevigne. Trade was languishing, the manufactures founded
by Colbert were dropping away one after another; the revocation of the
edict of Nantes and the emigration of Protestants had drained France of
the most industrious and most skilful workmen; many of the Reformers had
carried away a great deal of capital; the roads, everywhere neglected,
were becoming impracticable. “The tradesmen are obliged to put four
horses instead of two to their wagons,” said a letter to Barbezieux from
the superintendent of Flanders, “which has completely ruined the
traffic.” The administration of the provinces was no longer under
supervision. “Formerly,” says Villars, “the inspectors would pass whole
winters on the frontiers; now they are good for nothing but to take the
height and measure of the men and send a fine list to the court.” The
soldiers were without victuals, the officers were not paid, the abuses
but lately put down by the strong hand of Colbert and Louvois were
cropping up again in all directions; the king at last determined to
listen to the general cry and dismiss Chamillard.
“The Dukes of Beauvilliers and Chevreuse were intrusted with this
unpleasant commission, as well as with the king’s assurance of his
affection and esteem for Chamillard, and with the announcement of the
marks thereof he intended to bestow upon him. They entered Chamillard’s
presence with such an air of consternation as may be easily imagined,
they having always been very great friends of his. By their manner the
unhappy minister saw at once that there was something extraordinary, and,
without giving them time to speak, ‘What is the matter, gentlemen?’ he
said with a calm and serene countenance. ‘If what you have to say
concerns me only, you can speak out; I have been prepared a long while
for anything.’ They could scarcely tell what brought them. Chamillard
heard them without changing a muscle, and with the same air and tone with
which he had put his first question, he answered, ‘The king is master.
I have done my best to serve him; I hope another may do it more to his
satisfaction and more successfully. It is much to be able to count upon
his kindness and to receive so many marks of it.’ Then he asked whether
he might write to him, and whether they would do him the favor of taking
charge of his letter. He wrote the king, with the same coolness, a page
and a half of thanks and regards, which he read out to them at once just
as he had at once written it in their presence. He handed it to the two
dukes, together with the memorandum which the king had asked him for in
the morning, and which he had just finished, sent word orally to his wife
to come after him to L’Etang, whither he was going, without telling her
why, sorted out his papers, and gave up his keys to be handed to his
successor. All this was done without the slightest excitement; without
a sigh, a regret, a reproach, a complaint escaping him, he went down his
staircase, got into his carriage, and started off to L’Etang, alone with
his son, just as if nothing had happened to him, without anybody’s
knowing anything about it at Versailles until long afterwards.”
[Memoires de St. Simon, t. iii. p. 233.]
Desmarets in the finance and Voysin in the war department, both
superintendents of finance, the former a nephew of Colbert’s and
initiated into business by his uncle, both of them capable and assiduous,
succumbed, like their predecessors, beneath the weight of the burdens
which were overwhelming and ruining France. “I know the state of my
finances,” Louis XIV. had said to Desmarets; “I do not ask you to do
impossibilities; if you succeed, you will render me a great service; if
you are not successful, I shall not hold you to blame for circumstances.”
Desmarets succeeded better than could have been expected without being
able to rehabilitate the finances of the state. Pontchartrain had
exhausted the resource of creating new offices. “Every time your Majesty
creates a new post, a fool is found to buy it,” he had said to the king.
Desmarets had recourse to the bankers; and the king seconded him by the
gracious favor with which he received at Versailles the greatest of the
collectors (_traitants_), Samuel Bernard. “By this means everything was
provided for up to the time of the general peace,” says M. d’Argenson.
France kept up the contest to the end. When the treaty of Utrecht was
signed, the fleet was ruined and destroyed, the trade diminished by two
thirds, the colonies lost or devastated by the war, the destitution in
the country so frightful that orders had to be given to sow seed in the
fields; the exportation of grain was forbidden on pain of death;
meanwhile the peasantry were reduced to browse upon the grass in the
roads and to tear the bark off the trees and eat it. Thirty years had
rolled by since the death of Colbert, twenty-two since that of Louvois;
everything was going to perdition simultaneously; reverses in war and
distress at home were uniting to overwhelm the aged king, alone
upstanding amidst so many dead and so much ruin.
[Illustration: Misery of the Peasantry----543]
“Fifty years’ sway and glory had inspired Louis XIV. with the
presumptuous belief that he could not only choose his ministers well, but
also instruct them and teach them their craft,” says M. d’Argenson. His
mistake was to think that the title of king supplied all the endowments
of nature or experience; he was no financier, no soldier, no
administrator, yet he would everywhere and always remain supreme master;
he had believed that it was he who governed with Colbert and Louvois;
those two great ministers had scarcely been equal to the task imposed
upon them by war and peace, by armies, buildments, and royal
extravagance; their successors gave way thereunder and illusions
vanished; the king’s hand was powerless to sustain the weight of affairs
becoming more and more disastrous; the gloom that pervaded the later
years of Louis XIV.’s reign veiled from his people’s eyes the splendor of
that reign which had so long been brilliant and prosperous, though always
lying heavy on the nation, even when they forgot their sufferings in the
intoxication of glory and success.
It is the misfortune of men, even of the greatest, to fall short of their
destiny. Louis XIV. had wanted to exceed his, and to bear a burden too
heavy for human shoulders. Arbiter, for a while, of the affairs of all
Europe, ever absolute master in his own dominions, he bent at last
beneath the load that was borne without flinching by princes less
powerful, less fortunate, less adored, but sustained by the strong
institutions of free countries. William III. had not to serve him a
Conde, a Turenne, a Colbert, a Louvois; he had governed from afar his own
country, and he had always remained a foreigner in the kingdom which had
called him to the throne; but, despite the dislikes, the bitternesses,
the fierce contests of parties, he had strengthened the foundations of
parliamentary government in England, and maintained freedom in Holland,
whilst the ancient monarchy of France, which reached under Louis XIV.
the pinnacle of glory and power, was slowly but surely going down to
perdition beneath the internal and secret malady of absolute power,
without limit and without restraint.