they were foreigners; France felt as if there were a little Holland in
her midst, rejoicing at the success of the greater one (with which it
was then waging ineffectual war). To reunite the Protestants with the
national church was a fixed idea with Louis XIV. This desire inspired
his policy, and was the chief goal of all his efforts; this was to be
“the noble work and special feature of his reign”; and he looked upon
the enterprise as a noble one, not only from a political but from a
religious point of view. He was beginning to get into a narrow devotional
groove, and allowed the Jesuits to exercise a powerful influence over
him. He wished to free himself from the reproach of heresy, which his
conduct towards the pope had drawn down upon him, and to atone for the
irregularities of his youth. He resolved to revoke the Edict of Nantes.
The assembly of the clergy, the parliament of Toulouse, the Catholics in
the south all advocated this measure so strongly that it appeared to be
the general desire of the nation; Louvois in his ambition, Le Tellier in
his fanatical piety, also did their best to urge the king on, and last,
but not least, Madame de Maintenon, whose influence during the rest of
his life was to be paramount, threw all the weight of her persuasions
into the scale in order to bring about the revocation of this edict.
Up to this time bribery had been the chief means employed in the
attempts to convert the Protestants. Richelieu had used this method with
great success. Louis XIV followed his example with favourable results;
flattery, favours, rewards of every kind were lavishly bestowed in the
attempt to gain over the Protestants. Pensions were given to the newly
converted, they were exempted from taxation, all sorts of offices were
given to them over the heads of staunch Catholics. A fund was formed for
making conversions, with Pellisson, a converted Protestant, as director.
France was flooded with missions, sermons, tracts, and books of dogma.
Calvinism suffered such severe losses that Madame de Maintenon said,
“Very soon it will be ridiculous to belong to that religion.” But these
methods of bribery and persuasion were not rapid enough, and harsher
methods began to be used: royal edicts, parliamentary decisions, and
orders issued by governors of provinces and cities rendered the preaching
of the reformed doctrines difficult, made the Protestant pastors very
uneasy, forbade their synods to assemble. Protestants were deprived of
their pensions and of their titles of nobility; the chief burden of the
taxes was laid on them; they were excluded from the king’s household,
from the university, from holding municipal offices. They were also
forbidden to practice as lawyers or doctors. They were expelled from
financial offices, the rights of free citizenship were refused to them,
they were not allowed to be members of corporations, their schools were
closed, any of their places of worship which had been built since 1598
were destroyed, and their children were taken from them to be educated
as Catholics. Then the Protestants began to fly from France (1682); but
emigration was forbidden under pain of being sent to the galleys.
The Calvinists in the south made one last appeal to the king in March,
1684, begging him to allow them to serve God according to the dictates
of their own conscience, or else to take refuge in some other country.
For answer, the king sent them a number of missionaries accompanied by
a detachment of dragoons, who were supposed to be the most cruel of all
the French soldiers. Every day conversions by the hundred were announced
to the king. On the 2nd of September all the Protestants of Montauban
changed their religion by a resolution passed at a meeting in the town
hall; on the 5th of October Montpellier, Castres, Lunel, etc., followed
suit; then the dioceses of Gap and Embrun, then the whole of Poitou.
The governor of Languedoc said that he had seen sixty thousand people
converted in three days. It was thought that nothing more remained to be
done, but to publicly announce the destruction of a sect which had only
a few adherents left in distant provinces, among the rude inhabitants of
the mountainous parts; it was necessary to strike only one more decisive
blow and so complete the work for which a long series of unjust acts and
the ingenious tyranny of the last fifty years had been the preparation.
Père Lachaise, the king’s confessor, and Louvois promised that not a
single drop of blood should be shed.
_Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685 A.D.)_
Accordingly on the 22nd of October, 1685, an edict appeared ordaining:
(1) The suppression of all the privileges which had been accorded to
the Protestants by Henry IV and Louis XIII; (2) the proscription of
Protestant worship throughout the kingdom (except Alsace and Strasburg);
(3) the expulsion of Protestant ministers, the closing of Protestant
schools, and the demolition of the churches, etc. Numerous rewards were
given to those who agreed to change their religion; Calvinists were
forbidden on pain of being sent to the galleys and the confiscation of
their property, to go out of France; permission was given them to remain
on their own property and engage in business without their worship being
interfered with so long as they did not hold public services.
This edict was received in France with the greatest enthusiasm: sermons,
poems, pictures, medals were produced with astounding rapidity to
celebrate this great act of unity! At last the whole country was to
be under one jurisdiction and under one king! Louis XIV was a second
Constantine, a modern Theodosius. Never had any king performed such a
wonderful achievement, nor was it likely that any parallel to it would be
seen in the future. The whole of Europe was amazed at the promptitude and
ease with which this great king had stamped out a heresy which had defied
the efforts of six of his predecessors.
The only complaints that arose were directed against the leniency of that
clause which allowed the Protestants to worship in their own fashion in
private. This clause was only a lure, and Louvois wrote to the governors
and those in authority: “His majesty desires that those who refuse to
embrace his religion should be treated with the utmost rigour, and those
who foolishly pride themselves on being the last to be converted are to
be driven to the extremity of their endurance.” Then began a series of
bloody atrocities which the king had never commanded, and which were not
at all in accordance with his character for moderation. A defenceless
population was delivered over to the cruel brutality of the soldiery,
men were put to the torture, women were subjected to a dishonour worse
than death, children were torn from their parents, houses and farms
were wrecked, converts who refused to take the sacraments were sent to
the galleys, as were those who harboured Protestant ministers or those
who attempted to leave the kingdom. Sentence of death was pronounced
against all who practised any other than the Catholic religion, against
all Protestant ministers, and all who formed themselves into gatherings
or held meetings. Those who were weak yielded; they were dragged to
the altar and, with the executioner standing over them, forced to
commit sacrilege. “Torture, abjuration, and forced communion,” says
Saint-Simon,[i] “often all took place within twenty-four hours,” and the
executioners were the guides and the sponsors of the convert. Almost all
the bishops took part in these hasty irreverent practices. Most of them
urged on the executioners and used every means to swell the number of
conversions, for they sent an account of their triumphs to the court,
and were anxious to gain as much glory and substantial recompense as
possible. The king received from all quarters news and details of these
persecutions; those who had abjured Protestantism and received the
communion were counted by the thousand. The king gloried in his power and
in his piety; the bishops sent him the most fulsome panegyrics on the
great work he was doing; pulpits rang with his praises.
The Protestants fled from the country. The police were unable to prevent
them. Certificates of confession were required from all travellers,
sentence of death was pronounced against anyone who countenanced or
assisted others in emigrating. The emigrants had been deprived of
seventeen millions of francs in house and land property, the frontier
was guarded by numerous troops; but all these measures were vain, and
in spite of them fifty thousand families left the kingdom, and took
refuge in Holland, England, Germany, and Switzerland. They consisted
of nobles, tradesmen, and manufacturers. This active, energetic, and
enlightened body of men, placed at the service of foreigners their
talents, their swords, the secrets of French manufactures, their wealth,
and a relentless hatred of the tyrant who had banished them. Their
emigration did an irreparable injury to France. They were received
everywhere with the greatest kindness; they were even invited to leave
their country, and good positions were promised them. One part of London
was peopled with silk-weavers and workers in crystal and steel; and
England became the leading manufacturing nation. Brandenburg rose from
its abasement; Berlin became a town; Prussia was opened up; the influence
of the refugees on Frederick William’s states was so marked that it is
from this time that their greatness and their subsequent weight among
European powers may be dated. Amsterdam built a thousand houses for them,
William gave them pensions, granted them privileges, and provided them
with places of worship; he formed them into a royal guard of six hundred
noblemen and two regiments. He made use of their ministers, embittered by
hatred, to flood Europe with pamphlets against Louis XIV. Henceforth on
every battle-field the French would meet these emigrants filled with a
fierce hatred of their country, and, for more than a century afterward,
French soldiers found that their bitterest enemies in Germany were the
descendants of these refugees.[j]
_The Jansenists_
[Sidenote: [1661-1715 A.D.]]
Nor did Louis protect the Jansenists who were, on certain points, in
disagreement with the church of Rome. The Jansenists owed their doctrine
to a bishop of Ypres, named Jansenius, who died in 1638, and to the
abbé of St. Cyran who had sustained some ancient opinions, which seemed
to be new, upon grace and predestination. Jansenism deserves at least
a passing word especially on account of the character of the men who
defended it. The most illustrious of them, the great Arnauld, Lemaistre
de Sacy, Nicole, and Lancelot, retired to the ancient Cistercian abbey
of Port-Royal des Champs, near Versailles, when Pascal also joined them
in 1654, and there, leading a solitary life, these Catholic puritans set
the world an example of assiduous works of the hands and the intellect,
of lively piety, and of austerity which went as far as asceticism. They
wrote, for the most part in common, some excellent works which are still
in use; they had some illustrious pupils, among others Racine; they won
over to a great part of their doctrine almost the entire magistracy.[c]
The Jesuits then monopolised the authority and influence of the church,
whose spirit and moral code they attempted to modify, and adapt to
the present courtly and despotic times. The studious, reasoning, and
ascetic brethren of Port-Royal saw the tendency of the Jesuit preaching,
the false and worldly basis of their creed. It was on the subject of
Jansenism that the Jesuits had declared themselves, and had come forth
in the arena of argument. The pious wits of Port-Royal seized the
opportunity, took up a cause sufficiently absurd in its fundamental
dogmas, but which they were enabled to support by battering the still
more absurd outworks of the Jesuits. The latter won the pope to their
side, and obtained from the head of the church a condemnation of
the tenets of Jansenius. The polemic writers of Port-Royal bowed to
his holiness, confessed that he was infallible as a high priest, in
condemning such and such belief, but most fallible as a critic, since
not one of these propositions, so lustily condemned, were to be found
in Jansenius. This ingenious effrontery succeeded; for, under colour of
disputing about such abstractions, Pascal and Arnauld attacked their
enemies in more vulnerable points--in their moral laxity, their sophistic
logic, their worldliness, courtliness, and servility. Louis XIV took the
Jesuit side. Many of the courtiers, who dared no longer draw the sword
in rebellion, ventured to move the tongue, and exercise thought at least
in independence. Amongst the most distinguished sectaries of Port-Royal
was the duchess de Longueville, sister of Condé, the famous partisan of
the Fronde, and mistress of La Rochefoucauld. Her hôtel, once the resort
of the coadjutor [de Retz] and his party, of the hot cavaliers that
drove the court from Paris, was now the lurking-place and concealment of
the Jansenists. She braved the royal authority at all times, whether in
the cause of the noblesse or of religion; gallant and dissolute in the
Fronde, in Jansenism rigid and devout. “She was Jansenist in truth and
heart,” says Brienne, “just as she had indulged her gallantries with the
same sincerity, and always drums beating” (the expression means openly
and boldly): “a princess of the blood need fear nothing; and Madame de
Longueville marched on her way with head erect.” Although the Jansenism
of Pascal and of Arnauld was the protestation of reason, common sense,
and deep religious feeling, against the corruptions of the Jesuits,
that of Madame de Longueville and her class must be considered as a
kind of covert opposition to the court, and to the despotic will of
the sovereign. The froward love of independence, that could no longer
exercise itself in political intrigue, found more harmless vent in
criticism and polemics.[k]
The outcome of the Jansenist disputes was that in 1709 the king caused
the buildings of Port-Royal des Champs to be levelled to the ground.[118]
The bodies of the inoffensive solitaires were disinterred, and dogs were
seen quarrelling over them.
[Illustration: CANNON USED IN THE TIME OF LOUIS XIV]
THE POLICE
The police was the creation of Louis XIV. In 1687 he appointed a
magistrate to oversee the Paris police, Nicholas de la Reynie, who was
succeeded in 1697 by the marquis d’Argenson--these were the first two
_lieutenants de police_. They established order, decency, and security in
the city. Now commenced the system of public lighting; from the 1st of
November to the 1st of March, lanterns, burning candles, were placed at
the ends and in the middle of every street. There were five thousand of
these lights in Paris. The watch was augmented and reorganised. Firemen
replaced the Capuchins in the fire Service. The narrow streets, often
cut up and always filthy, were cleaned, widened, and paved; coaches and
cabs for the public were introduced; Pascal even devised the omnibuses,
which did not succeed at that time. The custom of going about Paris on
horseback was no longer kept up except by a few obstinate representatives
of the olden times.
The police attended to other things; it censured all writings,[119] it
held up the post, and read in what was afterwards called the _cabinet
noir_, all suspected correspondence, and to relieve the government of too
slow methods of justice it multiplied the _lettres de cachet_[120] which
removed all guarantee of personal liberty to citizens. The new power
charged with the overseeing of persons and opinions, thus became like
an ever-open eye, always defiant of royalty. Thus were all the orders
of state, all the existing authorities, all the conditions--parliament,
nobility, bourgeois, clergy, and dissenters--reduced and dominated.
Vauban, Catinat, and Fénelon resisted the contagion. Condé himself, in
spite of his rank, his services, and his spirit, became a courtier.
Turenne alone managed to keep a position from which he could tell the
king many truths which others dared not repeat.[c]
THE COURT OF THE GRAND MONARCH
Louis XIV put so much brilliancy and magnificence into his court that the
smallest details of its life seem interesting to posterity, to such an
extent were they an object of curiosity to all the courts of Europe and
to all his contemporaries. The splendour of his government shone on his
pettiest actions.
That is why no historian has failed to write of the early affections of
Louis XIV for the baroness de Beauvais, for Mademoiselle d’Argencourt,
for the niece of Cardinal Mazarin, who was married to the count de
Soissons, the father of Prince Eugene, and above all for Marie Mancini,
her sister, who afterwards married the constable Colonna.
The court, after the triumphant return of Mazarin after the Peace of the
Pyrenees, busied itself with games, and the ballet, with comedy, which,
being only new born, had not yet become an art, and with tragedy, which
had become a sublime art in the hands of Pierre Corneille. A _curé_
of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, who inclined to the rigorous ideas of the
Jansenists, had often written to the queen against these spectacles, ever
since the first years of the regency. He claimed that a person would
be damned for being present at them. He even had this anathema signed
by seven doctors of the Sorbonne, but the abbé de Beaumont, the king’s
preceptor, provided himself with more approbations of doctors, than the
strict _curé_ had with condemnations. He thus quieted the scruples of the
queen, and, when he became archbishop of Paris, he gave his authority to
the opinion he had supported as abbé.
There had been one continual succession of fêtes, entertainments, and
gallantries since the marriage of the king. Interrupted by the death of
Mazarin, they were redoubled on the marriage of Monsieur, brother of the
king, with Henrietta of England, sister of Charles II [which took place
twenty days after Mazarin’s death]. After the cardinal’s death the court
became the centre of amusements and the model for other courts. The king
prided himself on giving fêtes which should cast those of Vaux into
oblivion.
[Illustration: ROCROY]
The good taste of society had not yet received its full perfection
at court. The queen-mother, Anne of Austria, began to be fond of
retirement.[121] The reigning queen could scarcely speak French and
her goodness was her only merit. The princess of England, the queen’s
sister-in-law, brought to court the attraction of a kindly and animated
style of conversation, which was soon seconded by her reading of good
works and her sure and fine taste. She perfected herself in the language,
which she still wrote poorly at the time of her marriage. She inspired a
fresh mental stimulus, and introduced graces and a politeness into court,
of which the rest of Europe had scarcely an idea. Madame had all the wit
of her brother Charles II, embellished by the charms of her sex, by the
talent and the desire to please. The court of Louis XIV breathed forth
a gallantry which a sense of propriety made more piquant. That which
reigned at the court of Charles II was bolder, and too much grossness
disfigured its amusements.
There was at first between Madame and the king a great deal of sprightly
coquetry and a secret understanding, which was shown in little attentions
often repeated.[122] The king sent her verses; she answered them. It
chanced that the same man was at once the confidant of the king and of
Madame in this ingenious intercourse. This was the marquis of Dangeau.
He conducted the correspondence for both king and princess; thus serving
both of them without letting one suspect what he was doing for the other.
_Mademoiselle de la Vallière_
These pastimes gave way to the more serious and more protracted passion
which the king had for Mademoiselle de la Vallière, maid of honour to
Madame. He experienced with her the rare pleasure of being loved solely
for himself. She was for two years the hidden object of all the gallant
amusements, all the entertainments which the king gave. A young _valet
de chambre_ of the king, named Belloc, composed several recitals which
were interspersed between dances, sometimes in the queen’s, sometimes in
Madame’s apartments, and these recitals expressed with an air of mystery
the secrets of their hearts, which soon ceased to be a secret.
All these public entertainments which the king gave were so many homages
to his mistress. In 1662, a tournament (_carrousel_) was held opposite
the Tuileries in a large enclosure which has retained its name from this
event, Place du Carrousel. There were five _quadrilles_. The king was at
the head of the Romans; his brother of the Persians, the prince of Condé
of the Turks, the duke d’Enghien, his son, of the Indians, the duke of
Guise of the Americans.
The queen-mother, the reigning queen, the queen of England, widow of
Charles I, forgetting for the moment her misfortunes, were under a
dais to see this spectacle. The count de Saulx, son of the duke de
Lesdiguières, took the prize and received it from the hand of the
queen-mother. These fêtes reanimated more than ever the taste for devices
and emblems, which tourneys had formerly made the fashion, and which had
lasted after them.
In 1662, an antiquarian called D’Ouvrier designed for Louis XIV the
emblem of a sun darting its rays on a globe, with the words: _Nec
pluribus impar_. The idea imitated somewhat a Spanish device made for
Philip II, and which was more appropriate for the Spanish king, who owned
the best part of the New World and so many states in the old, than for
a young king of France who as yet gave only hopes. This device had a
prodigious success. The _armoires_ of the king, the crown furniture, the
tapestries, the carvings, were decorated with it. The king never wore it
in his tournaments.
The fête of Versailles, in 1664, surpassed that of the carrousel by its
originality, by its magnificence, and by the pleasures of mind which,
being joined to the splendours of these diversions, added an attraction
and graces which no fête before had ever had. Versailles began to be a
charming place of abode.
The 5th of May the king came there with the court, composed of six
hundred persons, who, together with their suites, were entertained
at his expense, as well as all those who assisted in preparing the
entertainments. Nothing was ever lacking at these fêtes except buildings
especially constructed for giving them, such as were raised by the Greeks
and Romans. The quickness, however, with which theatres, amphitheatres,
and porticoes were erected, and ornamented with as much magnificence
as good taste, was a marvel which added to the illusion and which,
diversified since in a thousand different ways, increased the charm of
these exhibitions.
There was first a sort of tournament. Those who were to take part
appeared on the first day as in a review; they were preceded by heralds
at arms, by pages and equerries who carried their devices and their
shields. On the shields were written verses composed by Périgny and
Benserade. This latter especially had a singular talent for those gallant
verses in which he always made delicate and piquant allusions to the
character of the persons, to the personages of antiquity or of fable
which were represented, and to the passions which animated the court.
The king represented Roger; all the crown diamonds glittered on his coat
and on the horse he rode. The queens and three hundred ladies, under
triumphal arches, watched this entrance.
[Illustration: MADEMOISELLE DE LA VALLIÈRE
(1644-1710)]
The king with all eyes fastened upon him distinguished only those of La
Vallière. The fête was for her alone; she enjoyed it hidden in the crowd.
The cavalcade was followed by a gilded car, 18 feet high, 15 feet wide,
and 24 feet long, representing the chariot of the sun. The four ages, of
gold, silver, bronze, and iron, the signs of the zodiac, the seasons, the
hours, followed this car on foot. Everything was in character. Shepherds
carried pieces of the barrier which were adjusted to the sound of
trumpets, followed at intervals by bagpipes and violins. Certain persons
who followed Apollo’s car came first to the queens to recite verses
appropriate to the place and time, to the king and the ladies. When the
races were finished and night was come, four thousand great torches lit
up the space wherein fêtes were given. Tables were served by two hundred
persons, representing the seasons, fauns, sylvan creatures, dryads,
together with shepherds, vintagers, harvesters. Pan and Diana advanced
on a moving mountain from which they descended to place on tables the
most delicious products of field and forest. Behind these tables in the
half circle, a theatre filled with performers arose. The arcades which
surrounded the tables and theatre were ornamented with five hundred green
and silver chandeliers, holding candles; a gilded balustrade shut in
this vast enclosure. These fêtes, so far superior to those invented in
romances, lasted for seven days. The king carried off the prize of the
games four times, and then let other cavaliers contest for the prizes
he had gained, which he abandoned to them. The comedy of the _Princesse
d’Élide_, although not one of Molière’s best, was one of the most
agreeable attractions of these entertainments, on account of an infinity
of fine allegories on the customs of the times and by the apposite
observations which form an agreeable feature of such entertainments, but
which lose their point for posterity.
The chief glory of these entertainments, which in France perfected good
taste, good form, and talent, came from the fact that they detracted
nothing from the continual labours of the monarch. Without these labours
he would have been able only to hold a court, he would not have known how
to reign; and if the magnificent amusements of this court had increased
the misery of the people, they would have been only odious; but the
same man who had given these fêtes had also given the people bread
in the famine of 1662. He caused grain to be brought, which the rich
bought at a low price, and which he gave to poor families at the gate
of the Louvre. He had returned three millions of taxes to the people;
no part of the interior administration had been neglected.[b] Yet it
cannot be overlooked that bad economics underlay most of these financial
measures,--as, indeed, of all Colbert’s work.[a]
The legate Chigi, sent by Pope Alexander VII, arrived at Versailles in
the midst of all these enjoyments to render satisfaction to the king
for the assault of the papal guards.[b] This attack had taken place on
August 20th, 1662, at Rome. It precipitated a quarrel very similar to
that which had taken place in London the preceding year. The liveried
servants of the duke de Créqui, the ambassador, had a fight with the
Corsican guard; one of them was killed, the duke was insulted and his
coach fired upon. Louis XIV demanded reparation. The court of Rome
attempted, according to the custom of the times, to gain time; the king
insisted, sent the papal nuncio to the frontier under escort, occupied
the county of Venaissin, sent troops into the duchies of Parma and Modena
in Italy, and finally threatened war. Alexander VII, seeing that these
menaces were serious, gave in (1664). His own brother, the legate Fabio
Chigi, brought in person the desired satisfaction. Louis XIV then gave
back Avignon and Venaissin.[e] This visit of the papal delegate revealed
to the court a new spectacle. The grand ceremonies were fêtes for the
public. The honours paid him made the satisfaction more brilliant. Seated
under a dais, he received the greetings of the superior courts, of the
municipal courts, and of the clergy. He entered Paris to the sound of
cannon, having the great Condé at his right and the son of that prince
at his left; and in this manner he came to humiliate himself, Rome, and
the pope, before a king who had not yet drawn a sword. After the audience
he dined with Louis XIV, and the chief thought of all was to treat him
magnificently and give him pleasure.
[Sidenote: [1669-1679 A.D.]]
All this gave to the court of Louis XIV an air of grandeur which affected
all the other courts of Europe. The king wanted this _éclat_, which
was attached to his person, to reflect on all that surrounded him. To
distinguish his principal courtiers he invented blue cassocks embroidered
with gold and silver. The permission to wear them was a great favour
to men influenced chiefly by vanity. They were sought after almost like
the collars of the order. We may mention here, since we are speaking of
details, that it was the fashion then to wear cassocks over a doublet
ornamented with ribbons, and over this cassock passed a shoulder band to
which the sword was attached. A kind of lace band was worn around the
neck and on the head a hat decorated with two rows of feathers. This
fashion, which lasted until 1684, became that of all Europe with the
exception of Spain and Poland. Almost everywhere people prided themselves
on imitating the court of Louis XIV.
Louis established order in his household, regulated ranks and factions,
and created new offices in connection with his person, such as that of
the grand-master of his wardrobe. He re-established the tables instituted
by Francis I, and augmented them. There were twelve for the officers
of the king’s household, which were served with as much niceness and
profusion as those of many sovereigns. He wanted all strangers to be
invited to them, and this attention lasted during all his reign. There
was another attention which was even more select and polite. When he had
the pavilions of Marly built in 1679, all the ladies found a complete
toilet-set in their apartments; nothing which belonged to commodious
luxury was forgotten. Whoever was on a journey could give repasts in his
apartments, and was served there with the same delicacy as the master.
These little things acquire value only when they are sustained by greater
ones. In everything which the king did might be seen splendour and
generosity. He made a present of 200,000 francs to the daughters of his
ministers on their marriage.
One can easily imagine the effect which this magnificence had in Europe.
The French were not the only ones who praised him: twelve panegyrics were
pronounced on Louis XIV in different towns of Italy--an homage rendered
neither from fear nor hope of favour, which the marquis Zampieri sent to
the king.
He continued to extend his patronage to letters and to the arts. Proofs
of this are the particular gratuities of about 4,000 livres to Racine,
the fortune of Despréaux, that of Quinault, and above all that of Lully
and of all the artists who consecrated their work to him. The king danced
in ballets until the year 1670. He was then thirty-two years old. The
tragedy of _Britannicus_ was played before him at St. Germain; he was
struck by these verses:
_Pour mérite premier, pour vertu singulière,_
_Il excelle à traîner un char dans la carrière,_
_A disputer des prix indignes de ses mains,_
_A se donner lui-même en spectacle aux Romains._
After that he never again danced in public: the poet had reformed the
monarch. His union with La Vallière still continued in spite of his
frequent infidelities to her. These infidelities cost him little trouble.
He never found women who resisted him, and he always came back to the
one who, by the sweetness and goodness of her character, by her sincere
affection, and even by the chains of habit, had subjugated him without
the aid of art. But beginning with the year 1669, La Vallière perceived
that Madame de Montespan was gaining the ascendency; she fought against
it with her usual sweetness; she supported for a long time, and almost
without complaining, the pain of being the witness of her rival’s
triumph; she still thought herself happy in being even thought of by the
king, whom she continued to love, and in seeing him without being loved
by him.
Finally in 1675 she embraced the resource of tender souls, which need
deep and intense sentiments to subjugate them. She thought that God
alone could succeed her lover in her heart. Her conversion became just
as celebrated as her affection. She became a Carmelite at Paris and
persevered in her resolve. To wear haircloth, to walk with bare feet, to
fast rigorously, to sing at night in chorus in an unknown tongue--all
this did not repulse the delicacy of a woman accustomed to so much glory,
luxury, and pleasure. She lived this austere life from 1675 to 1710,
under the simple name of Louise de la Miséricorde.
It is known that when Sister Louise de la Miséricorde was told of the
death of the duke de Vermandois, whom she had borne to the king, she
said: “I ought to weep for his birth more than for his death.” One
daughter was left to her, who resembled the king the most of all his
children. She married the prince Armand de Conti, nephew of the Great
Condé.
_Madame de Montespan_
[Sidenote: [1670-1675 A.D.]]
In the meantime the marquise de Montespan was enjoying the king’s favour
with much _éclat_ and authority. Athénaïs de Mortemar, wife of the
marquis de Montespan, her elder sister the marquise de Thiange, and her
younger sister, for whom she obtained the abbey of Fontevrault, were
the most beautiful women of their day, and all three joined to this
distinction singular attractions of mind. The duke de Vivonne, their
brother, and marshal of France, was also one of the men at court who had
the most good taste and was best read. It was to him that the king said
one day: “But what is the good of reading?” The duke de Vivonne, who
was stout and red faced, answered: “Reading does for the mind what your
partridges do to my cheeks.”
These four persons were universally popular by a singular style of
conversation mingled with pleasantry, naïveté, and wit, which was known
as _l’esprit de Mortemar_. They all wrote with an ease and grace peculiar
to them.
[Illustration: MADAME DE MONTESPAN
(1641-1707)]
Madame de Montespan’s triumph burst forth during a journey which the
king made to Flanders in 1670. The ruin of the Dutch was prepared
on this journey in the midst of entertainments. It was a continual
fête, accompanied with great pomp. The king, who made all his war
expeditions on horseback, made this one for the first time in a closed
carriage. Postchaises had not yet been invented. The queen, Madame,
her sister-in-law, and the marquise de Montespan were in this superb
equipage, followed by many others, and when Madame de Montespan was alone
she had four bodyguards at the doors of her carriage. The dauphin came
next with his court. Mademoiselle with hers; it was before the fatal
event of her marriage; she took part in all these triumphs in peace and
saw with complaisance her lover, the king’s favourite, at the head of his
company of guards. The most beautiful crown furniture was carried to the
towns where they slept. In every city they found a masked or dress ball,
or fireworks. All his military retinue accompanied the king and all his
household retinue followed or preceded him. The tables were kept as at
St. Germain. In this pomp the court visited all the conquered cities. The
principal ladies of Brussels, of Ghent came to see this magnificence. The
king invited them to his table. He made them very handsome presents. All
the officers of the garrison troops received gratuities. His liberality
cost the king several times fifteen hundred gold louis a day.
All the honour, all the homage was for Madame de Montespan, except
what duty gave to the queen. Nevertheless this lady did not share the
secrets of state. The king knew how to distinguish affairs of state from
pleasure. The unfortunate experience of a maid of honour to the queen in
1673 gave rise to a new court order. The danger attached to the position
of a young girl in a gallant and voluptuous court caused twelve ladies
of the palace to be substituted for the twelve maids of honour, who
had graced the court and the queen’s presence. After that the queens’
households were composed in that manner. This arrangement made the court
larger and more magnificent, by establishing in it the husbands and
families of these ladies, which increased the society and spread greater
opulence.
_Poisoning: The Brinvilliers Case_
[Sidenote: [1670-1685 A.D.]]
About 1670 the crime of poisoning began to be prevalent in France. This
revenge of cowards had not been employed during the horrors of the civil
war, but, by a singular fatality, had infected France in the time of
glory and of the pleasures which softened manners, even as it found its
way into ancient Rome in the fairest days of the republic.
Two Italians, one of whom bore the name of Exili, worked for a long time
with a German apothecary called Glaser, in quest of the philosopher’s
stone. In this enterprise the two Italians lost the little they had and
endeavoured, by crime, to repair the harm done by their folly; they
secretly sold poisons. Confession, the greatest curb to human wickedness
but which is abused in the idea that one may perform the crimes one is
sure of expiating, was the means of informing the grand penitentiary
of Paris that certain persons had died of poison; he apprised the
government. The two Italians were suspected, and put in the Bastille; one
of the two died there; Exili remained there without being convicted; and
from the depths of his prison he spread through Paris those dark secrets
which cost the lives of the civil lieutenant D’Aubrai and his family, and
which finally led to the establishment of the Chamber of Poisons, called
the _Chambre Ardente_.
Love was the prime source of these horrible tragedies. The marquis of
Brinvilliers, son-in-law of the civil lieutenant D’Aubrai, had in his
house Sainte-Croix, the captain of his regiment, a man with too handsome
a face: his wife warned him of the consequences; the husband persisted
in letting the young man remain in the house with his wife, a young,
beautiful, and susceptible woman. What might have been expected happened:
they fell in love with each other. The civil lieutenant, father of the
marquise, was harsh and imprudent enough to solicit a _lettre de cachet_
and get the captain, who needed only to be returned to his regiment,
sent to the Bastille. Sainte-Croix was unfortunately put in a room with
Exili: this Italian taught him how to revenge himself; the results make
one shudder. The marquise did not attempt the life of her husband, who
had had some indulgence for a love of which he was himself the cause,
but the fury of her vengeance induced her to poison her father, her two
brothers, and her sister. Amidst so many crimes she was religious; she
often went to confession, and when she was arrested at Liège a general
confession was even found written in her handwriting, which served not as
a proof against her but as presumptive evidence. It is not true that she
tried her poisons in the hospitals as the people said, and as written in
the _Causes célèbres_, the work of a briefless barrister (François Gabot
de Pitaval) and made for the people; but it is true that she as well as
Sainte-Croix had secret connections with persons afterwards accused of
the same crimes. She was burned in 1676 after having had her head cut
off. But from 1670, when Exili had begun to make poisons, down to 1680
this crime infected Paris. It cannot be concealed that Penautier, the
receiver-general of the clergy and a friend of this woman, was accused
some time afterwards of having put his secrets in practice and that it
cost him half his wealth to suppress the indictment.
The Bavarian princess, wife of Monseigneur,[123] at first added
brilliancy and vivacity to this court. The marquise de Montespan still
attracted the principal attention but finally she ceased to please, and
the violent transports of her grief did not bring back a heart that was
forsaking her. However, she still kept her place at court, through her
high position, being superintendent of the queen’s household, and with
the king through habit and through her authority. The youth and beauty
of Mademoiselle de Fontanges, a son she had borne to the king in 1680,
the title of duchess she had received, kept Madame de Maintenon away from
the first place, to which she did not then dare to aspire but which she
afterwards obtained. The duchess de Fontanges, however, and her son died
in 1681.
The marquise de Montespan, although she no longer had an open rival, none
the less did not possess the heart tired of her and of her complaints.
When men are no longer in their youth they almost all have need of the
society of an agreeable woman. Above all the weight of affairs makes
this consolation necessary. The new favourite, Madame de Maintenon, who
felt the secret power she was gaining every day, bore herself with that
art so natural to women and which is never displeasing to men. She wrote
one day to Madame de Frontenac, her cousin, in whom she placed an entire
confidence: “I always send him away dissatisfied but never discouraged.”
During this time, when her favour was increasing and Madame de Montespan
was nearing her fall, these two rivals saw each other every day, now with
a secret bitterness, now with a passing confidence which the necessity
of speaking to each other and the weariness of constraint sometimes put
into their interviews. They agreed to write, each from her point of
view, memoirs of all that happened at court. The work never went very
far. Madame de Montespan took pleasure in reading selections from these
memoirs to her friends, in the last years of her life. The pious devotion
which was joined to all these secret intrigues further strengthened the
favour of Madame de Maintenon and weakened that of Madame de Montespan.
The king reproached himself for his attachment to a married woman and
felt this scruple still more since he had begun to feel no more love
for her. This embarrassing situation continued until 1685, a year made
memorable by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Very different scenes
were to be seen at that time--on one side the despair and flight of a
part of the nation, on the other new fêtes at Versailles; Trianon and
Marly built; nature in all these places forced with delights, and gardens
in which every art was exhausted. The marriage of the grandson of the
Great Condé with Mademoiselle de Nantes, daughter of the king and Madame
de Montespan, was the last triumph of this mistress who began to retire
from court.
_The Retirement of Montespan_
[Sidenote: [1685-1707 A.D.]]
The king afterwards gave in marriage two other children he had had by
her: Mademoiselle de Blois to the duke de Chartres, and the duke du Maine
to Louise Benédicte de Bourbon, granddaughter of the Great Condé and
sister of Monsieur le Duc,[124] a princess celebrated for her wit and
liking for the arts.
Before the celebration of the marriage of Monsieur le Duc with
Mademoiselle de Nantes, the marquis de Seignelay in honour of that event
gave the king a fête worthy of that monarch in the gardens of Sceaux,
which had been planted by Le Nôtre with as much taste as those of
Versailles. The idyll of Peace composed by Racine was performed on that
occasion. At Versailles there was a new tournament and after the marriage
the king displayed a singular magnificence, for which Cardinal Mazarin
had given the first idea in 1656.
Four booths were put up in the salon at Marly, filled with the richest
and most select products of the industry of Parisian workmen. These four
booths were at the same time so many splendid decorations representing
the four seasons of the year. Madame de Montespan presided over one with
Monseigneur. Her rival, Madame de Maintenon, was in another with the duke
du Maine. The newly married couple each had charge of one: Monsieur le
Duc with Madame de Thiange; and Madame la Duchesse, whom propriety did
not permit to have one with a man on account of her extreme youth, was
with the duchess de Chevreuse. The so-called gentlemen and ladies _du
voyage_ drew lots for the jewels with which the booths were decorated.
The king then made presents to the whole court in a manner worthy of a
king. Cardinal Mazarin’s lottery was less ingenious and less brilliant.
These lotteries had been formerly put into fashion by the Roman emperors,
but not one of them ever relieved its magnificence with so much gallantry.
After the marriage of her daughter Madame de Montespan did not again
appear at court. She lived a very dignified life at Paris. She had a
large income, but it was a life annuity, and the king always paid her
a pension of 1,000 gold louis a month. She went every year to take the
waters at Bourbon, and there married off the girls of the neighbourhood,
whom she endowed. She was no longer at the age when the imagination,
affected by lively impressions, sends one to the Carmelites. She died at
Bourbon in 1707.
One year after the marriage of Mademoiselle de Nantes with Monsieur le
Duc, the prince of Condé died at Fontainebleau, at the age of sixty-six,
of an illness which was hastened by his desire to go to see Madame la
Duchesse, who had smallpox.
_Madame de Maintenon_
Meanwhile, after the marriage of Madame la Duchesse, after the total
eclipse of the mother, the victorious Madame de Maintenon achieved such
an influence and inspired Louis XIV with so much tenderness and such
scruples, that the king, by the advice of Père Lachaise, married her
secretly in the month of January, 1686,[125] in the small chapel in the
apartments occupied afterwards by the duke of Burgundy. There was no
contract, no stipulation. The archbishop of Paris, Harlay de Chanvalon,
pronounced the benediction, the confessor assisting. Montchevreuil and
Bontemps, first valet de chambre, were the witnesses. Louis XIV was
at the time in his forty-eighth year and the woman he espoused in her
fifty-second. This sovereign, crowned with glory, desired to combine
with the fatigues of governing the innocent joys of private life; this
marriage bound him to nothing incompatible with his rank; it was always
a problem to the court. Since Madame de Maintenon was really married, it
respected her as the king’s choice, without treating her as queen.
[Illustration: MADAME DE MAINTENON
(1635-1719)]
She was of an old family, granddaughter of Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné,
gentleman of the chamber to Henry IV. His father, Constant d’Aubigné,
wishing to establish himself in business in the Carolinas, applied to
the English government, and was thrown into the prison of the château
Trompette, from which he escaped with the assistance of the daughter of
the governor of the prison, a gentleman from Bordeaux named Cadillac.
Constant d’Aubigné married his benefactress in 1627 and took her with
him to the Carolinas. Returning with her to France after several years,
both were imprisoned at Niort in Poitou, by order of the court. In this
prison was born, in 1635, Françoise d’Aubigné, destined to know all the
greatest hardships of life as well as the highest favours of fortune.
Taken at the age of three to America (Martinique), brought back an
orphan of twelve years, brought up with the greatest severity by Madame
de Neuillant, mother of the duchess de Navailles her relative, she was
only too glad to marry in 1651 Paul Scarron, who lived near her in the
rue d’Enfer. Scarron came of an old family of parliament, distinguished
by its important matrimonial alliances; but his profession of burlesque
poet lowered him while making him popular. It was nevertheless a stroke
of fortune for Mademoiselle d’Aubigné to marry this man, deformed in
mind and body, and with very modest means. She abjured Calvinism, her
own religion as well as that of her ancestors, before this marriage.
Her beauty and wit soon made her distinguished. She was eagerly sought
after by the best society of Paris, and this time of her youth was no
doubt the happiest period of her life. After the death of her husband,
in 1660, she was for a long time unable to obtain from the king a modest
pension of 1,500 livres which Scarron had enjoyed. Finally, after several
years, the king granted her one of two thousand, saying, “Madame, I
have made you wait a long time, but you have so many friends that my
only distinction could be in not being one of them.” Meanwhile it is
proved, by the letters of Madame de Maintenon, that she owed to Madame
de Montespan the slight assistance she received to relieve her poverty.
It was remembered several years later, when it became necessary to
bring up secretly the duke du Maine, son of the king by the marquise de
Montespan, born in 1672. The duke du Maine was born with a deformed foot.
The chief physician, D’Aquin, who was in the secret, decided that the
child should be taken to the baths at Barèges. It was necessary to find a
confidential person to be intrusted with this charge. The king suggested
Madame Scarron. Louvois went secretly to Paris to propose this journey to
her. From that time on she was in charge of the education of the duke du
Maine--chosen for this duty by the king and not by Madame de Montespan,
as has erroneously been said.
She wrote directly to the king; her letters pleased him greatly. This
was the origin of her good fortune--her shrewdness did the rest. The
king, who at first did not like her, passed from aversion to confidence
and from confidence to love. The letters which we have of hers are of
much greater importance than they would seem: they show that mixture of
religion and gallantry, of dignity and weakness, which are often found in
the human heart, and which certainly were in that of Louis XIV. Madame
de Maintenon seemed to be filled at the same time with an ambition and
a devoutness which never appeared to conflict. Her confessor, Gobelin,
approved equally of both: he was spiritual guide as well as courtier; his
penitent, having become ungrateful towards Madame de Montespan, always
dissembled this feeling. Her confessor encouraged her in her aspirations.
She called religion to the assistance of her waning charms to supplant
her benefactress, now become her rival.
This strange mixture of love and scruple on the part of the king, of
ambition and devoutness on the part of the new mistress, seemed to have
lasted from 1681 to 1686, the date of their marriage. Her elevation was
for her only a seclusion. Shut up in her apartments, which were on the
same floor as those of the king, she limited herself to the society
of two or three ladies, retiring like herself--she saw even them very
rarely. The king came to her apartments every day after supper, and
remained until midnight. There he worked with his ministers, while
Madame de Maintenon read, or occupied herself with needlework; she
never attempted to speak on affairs of state, seemed often to ignore
them, putting far from her any appearance of intrigue or plotting; much
more occupied in humouring him who governed than seeking to govern, in
managing her income, and expending it with the greatest cautiousness.
Louis XIV in marrying Madame de Maintenon gained only an agreeable and
submissive companion. The sole public distinction which testified to her
secret elevation was, that during mass she occupied one of those small
gilded stalls which were supposed to be only for the king and queen.
Beyond that, no display, no grandeur. The devoutness with which she had
inspired the king and which had led to her marriage, became gradually a
true and profound sentiment, which age and ennui served to strengthen.
She already posed at the court and before the king as a foundress by
gathering together at Noisy several young girls of the nobility; and the
king had already set apart the revenues of the abbey of St. Denis for
that budding community. St. Cyr was built at the foot of the park of
Versailles in 1686.
On the death of the king she retired for life to St. Cyr. What is
surprising, is that the king left her almost nothing. He simply
recommended her to the duke of Orleans. She asked for a pension of only
24,000 livres, which was scrupulously paid her, until her death on April
15th, 1719.[b]
Turning now from this survey of the court, let us examine the effect of
Louis XIV’s policy on the nation at large.
EFFECT OF LOUIS XIV’S POLICY ON THE NATION
[Sidenote: [1661-1715 A.D.]]
Louis XIV’s reign falls into two parts, easy to distinguish, the one
from the other; the first covers from 1661 to 1683, the second, and much
the longer, from 1683 to 1715. In the first period, Louis XIV found four
men of genius, who were also scrupulously honest men, to uphold and even
direct him in everything concerning the internal government, diplomacy,
warfare, and defence of the kingdom. In an equal degree Colbert, Lionne,
Turenne, and Vauban exercised a salutary and fruitful influence over
the king’s mind, never divorcing the welfare of the kingdom from that
of the king, and seeking before all else the greatness or the security
of the empire by adopting the best of the measures which had proved so
successful under Henry IV, Richelieu, and Mazarin. The profound reverence
which Colbert, more especially, had for the memory of Richelieu, whom he
wished the king to take as his model, provoked Louis’ jests. “When any
important matter was under discussion,” says a contemporary chronicle,
“the late king would often exclaim, ‘Colbert there will tell us: Sire,
the great Cardinal Richelieu.’ Which, however, did not prevent Colbert
from pursuing his object, and moulding the king in Richelieu’s likeness.”
In the second period, Louis, prematurely aged, disillusioned, and ill,
reduced to a stern performance of his duties as a man and a Christian
by the froward influence of an obstinate and ambitious woman, drew
inspiration from none but narrow ideals, applying the most fatal maxims
to home government and foreign policy. He yielded to the advice of
persons whom he had for long encouraged to flatter his prejudices, and
who urged him along a path of bloody repressions. Louvois, Madame de
Maintenon, Chamillard, and Villeroi were the real wielders of authority.
They sacrificed the well-being of the kingdom to their own interest,
which they sought to confound with the interests of the crown. They
prepared the way for the ruin of the state by the most disastrous home
measures, while they ruined the prestige of France abroad by changing the
character of her policy.[m]
The trouble was not only in the royal household; it also threatened to be
in the state; for Louis, violating all laws civil and religious, placed
the legitimated princes side by side with the princes of the blood.
He forced the court to pay equal respect to both; and public morality
received a blow from which it was slow to recover. The lessons in scandal
which came from the throne were not lost, and the corruption, which was
fermenting in spite of the apparent austerity of the last years, was to
break out under the new reign without restraint and without shame. Those
dukes of Orleans and Vendôme, given up to filthy debauches, that duke
d’Antin surprised in a flagrant act of theft, and so many others who
contrived at play to correct the chances of fortune; those princesses
of the blood who at Marly within two steps of the king and Madame de
Maintenon, send for such strange pastimes[126]--that court in fine which,
according to Saint-Simon,[i] “sweated hypocrisy,” all shows, under a
king who plays the devotee, when he is no longer able to do otherwise,
that human morality, conscience, and dignity can never be violated with
impunity. Already, even in the very heart of Versailles, a premonitory
cry is heard. In face of these gilded lives La Bruyère writes: “The great
have no soul; I would be of the people.” It was at Versailles that the
French nobility ruined themselves. There official ennui led to secret
debauches; the habit of receiving everything from the monarch led to the
belief that all was due not to services but to servility.
One irrefutable witness of the wretchedness of this period has been
left to us--the memorials which the king demanded of the intendants on
the condition of their provinces in order that his grandson the duke of
Burgundy might by studying them become acquainted with the affairs of
the administration. At every page these distressing words recur, “War,
mortality, the continual quartering and passage of the soldiers, the
militia, the great prerogatives, the withdrawal of the Huguenots have
ruined this country.” Bridges, roads were in a deplorable state and
commerce was annihilated. The frontier provinces were further crushed by
requisitions and the pillage of the soldiers who, receiving neither pay
nor food, helped themselves. In the generality of Rouen, out of 700,000
inhabitants 650,000 had a bundle of straw for their beds. In certain
provinces the peasant was returning to a state of savagery: living for
the most part on herbs and roots like the beasts; and, wild as they were,
he fled if one approached. “There is no nation more savage than these
people,” the intendant of Bourges says of those under his administration;
“sometimes troops of them are to be seen in the country, seated in a
circle in the middle of a field and always far from the roads; if one
approach the band immediately disperses.”[c]
We have seen Louis XIV at home; let us now turn to his relations with
other countries.[a]
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES
[111] Table of the direct ancestors of Louis XIV for four generations,
showing birthplace of each ancestor. It will be noted that Ferdinand I
and Anna of Hungary appear twice in the fourth generation column. The
actual number of persons, therefore, is twenty-eight instead of thirty.[a]
THIRD GENERATION FOURTH GENERATION
Anthony +-Charles, d. of Vendôme France
SECOND de Bourbon|
GENERATION +----------+
| France |
Henry IV| +-Françoise d’Alençon France
+--------+
FIRST | France | Jeanne +-Henry II, K. of Navarre France
GENERATION| | d’Albret |
| +----------+
Louis | France |
XIII | +-Marguerite d’Angoulême France
+-------+
|France | +-Cosmo I, G. D. of Tuscany Italy
| | Francesco |
| | I, Grand D.|
| | of Tuscany |
| | +----------+
| | Marie | Italy |
| |d’Medici| +-Leonora of Toledo Spain
| +--------+
| Italy | Joanna +-Emp. Ferdinand I Spain
| | Arch., D.|
| +----------+
| Austria |
Louis XIV| +-Anna of Hungary Hungary
France |
1688-1715| +-Charles V Spanish Netherlands
| Philip II |
| +----------+
| Philip | Spain |
| III | +-Isabella Portugal
| +--------+
| | Spain | Anne of +-Maximilian II Austria
| | | Austria |
| | +----------+
|Anne of| Austria |
|Austria| +-Maria (d. Emp. Ch. VI) Spain
+-------+
Spain | Charles, +-_Emp. Ferdinand I_ _Spain_
| D. Styria |
| +----------+
| | Austria |
|Margaret| +-_Anna of Hungary_ _Hungary_
+--------+
Austria | Maria of +-Albrecht V Bavaria
| Bavaria |
+----------+
Bavaria |
+-Anne (d. Emp. Ferdinand I) Austria
[112] There were in Louis XIV’s day three councils: (1) The supreme
council, to which the king summoned the secretaries of state and
sometimes the princes of the blood. It had the general direction of the
governmental policy and important affairs. It judged appeals from the
state council. (2) The state council, placed beneath the ministry but
above the higher courts. It was the great administrative body of the
realm, meeting four times a week, the chancellor presiding. On one day it
read and discussed the reports of the provincial governors; on another
it discussed financial questions; on another it listened to complaints
on taxation; on another it adjudged differences between the courts. The
state councillors were eighteen in number. (3) The grand council, which
occupied itself with cases covering the bishoprics and the benefices at
the king’s disposal. It judged the edicts of the sovereign courts and
the conflicts between the parliament and the lower courts. Its decisions
were executive throughout the whole kingdom, while the sentences of each
parliament applied only to its own territory.
[113] [Voltaire is wrong here, says Martin:[d] “Fouquet had spent about
nine millions” (almost eighteen nowadays and perhaps forty-five in
relative value).]
[114] [Louis XIV had little love for Paris and created Versailles, or
rather greatly enlarged the old château of Louis XIII, by making immense
additions, and by constructing the fine façade on the park side which,
with its extended wings, made it the most superb and vast abode in the
world.[e]]
[115] [The above mentioned _régime des classes_.]
[116] [If the words were not uttered the thought was certainly present.
Louis XIV is known to have written on one occasion, “The nation does not
constitute a body in France; it resides entirely in the person of the
king.”]
[117] [In 1680 the Paris _corps de ville_ solemnly conferred on the king
the title of Louis the Great, which, hitherto used sometimes on medals,
now became _de rigueur_ in official language.[d]]
[118] In 1669 the sister house of Port-Royal de Paris was placed under
Jesuit management. It was to this house that Clement XI ordered the
transference of the property of Port-Royal des Champs, the year before
the buildings were destroyed. The aged sisters were dispersed.
[119] In 1694 a printer and a publisher were hanged for libel, by
sentence of De la Reynie. Several persons were interrogated or died in
the Bastille for the same reason. The author of the pamphlet against the
archbishop of Rheims was imprisoned in an iron cage at Mont St. Michel.
[120] These were letters written by order of the king, countersigned
by a secretary of state, and sealed with the king’s seal, by virtue of
which the police arrested a citizen, and imprisoned him without trial, as
long as it pleased the government, without his being seen or allowed to
receive letters from anyone.
[121] [Anne of Austria died of cancer January 20th, 1666.]
[122] [Madame’s husband, Philip duke of Orleans, who had assumed that
title on the death of Gaston in 1660, was a man of licentious habits,
and although he distinguished himself in war, as we shall see, his
effeminacy was of a most marked type. There is no doubt that Monsieur
was most indifferent to his wife, and many historians, including
Michelet,[l] believe that Louis XIV was the father of her children. Of
these, two daughters arrived at maturity--Marie Louise, who married
Charles II of Spain, and Anne Marie, who married Victor Amadeus of Savoy,
afterwards king of Sardinia. Madame died 1670, under circumstances
which will be related in the next chapter, and which were open to the
suspicion of poison. The following year Monsieur married the princess
palatine--Charlotte Elizabeth. She was the mother of the duke of Orleans,
regent of the realm, and died in 1722.]
[123] [By this title was known the “grand dauphin” Louis, only child of
Louis XIV and his queen, born in 1661. The dauphin married in 1680 the
princess Marie Anne Christine Victoire of Bavaria.]
[124] [Louis de Bourbon-Condé, who was the father of Louis XV’s prime
minister.]
[125] [The queen Maria Theresa had died July 30th, 1683, quite suddenly.
She held so little place at court that the event was scarcely noticed.[e]]
[126] Monseigneur played late in the salon. On withdrawing to his own
apartments he went up to the princesses (the duchesses de Chartres and de
Bourbon) and found them smoking with pipes which they had sent for from
the Swiss guardhouse. Monseigneur made them stop this diversion, but the
smoke betrayed them. Next morning the king administered a rough rebuke.[i]
The duchess de la Ferté assembled her purveyors at her house and played a
kind of lansquenet with them. She whispered in my ear, “I cheat them but
they rob me.” _Mémoires_ of Madame de Staal.[o]
[Illustration]