INTRIGUES AND WARS.
1690-1711
Exhaustion of the treasury.--The royal plate sacrificed.--Assumptions
of Louvois.--Disgrace, sickness, and death of Louvois.--Louis
suspicious of Madame de Maintenon.--Letters.--Court life.--The
dauphin.--His sons.--Graces of the Duchess of Burgoyne.--Misery of
the people.--Extravagance of the court.--Brilliant assembly.--Death
of Charles II.--The Duke of Anjou proclaimed King of Spain.--Anecdote
of the princes.--Preparations for the coronation.--Exultation of Louis
XIV.--Final meeting of the royal family.--Last interview between
Madame de Montespan and the king.--Penance of Madame de
Montespan.--Her death.--Heartless conduct of the king.--His health
failing.--Quarrel with Philip.--He is stricken with apoplexy.--Death
of the king's brother.--The king dispels his gloom.--The Princess des
Ursins.--Civil war.--Insurrection of the Protestants.--Enthusiasm of
the Camisards.--Cruelty of the persecutors.--Distress in France.--The
dauphin taken sick.--Death and burial of the dauphin.
The treasury of the king was empty. Extravagant building, a voluptuous
court, and all the enormous expenses of civil and foreign wars, had
quite exhausted the finances of the realm. It became necessary to call
upon the cities for contributions. New offices were invented, which
were imposed upon the wealthy citizens, and for which they were
compelled to pay large sums. Even the massive silver plate and
furniture, which had attracted the admiration of all visitors to
Versailles, were sent to the Mint and coined. Most of the value of
these articles of ornament consisted of the skill with which the
materials had been wrought into forms of beauty. In melting them down,
all this was sacrificed, and nothing remained but the mere value of
the metal. Large as were the sums attained by these means, they were
but trifling compared with the necessities of the state.
Louvois, the minister of Louis, had for a long time held the reins of
government. It was through his influence that the king had been
instigated to revoke the Edict of Nantes, to order the dragonnades,
and to authorize those atrocities of persecution which must ever
expose the name of Louis XIV. to the execrations of humanity. It was
Louvois who, from merely contemptible caprice, plunged France into war
with Germany. It was through his persuasions that the king was induced
to order the utter devastation of the Palatinate.
But the influence of Louvois was now on the wane. The jealous king
became weary of his increasingly haughty assumptions. The
conflagration of the Palatinate raised a cry of indignation which the
king could not but hear. The city of Treves had escaped the flames.
Louvois solicited an order to burn it. The king refused to give his
consent. Louvois insolently gave the order himself. He then informed
the king that he had done so that he might spare the conscience of the
king the pain of issuing such an edict.
[Illustration: LOUIS XIV. DIRECTING THE SIEGE.]
Louis was furious. In his rage he forgot all the restraints of
etiquette. He seized from the fireplace the tongs, and would have
broken the head of the minister had not Madame de Maintenon rushed
between them. The king ordered a messenger immediately to be
dispatched to countermand the order. He declared that if a single
house were burned, the head of the minister should be the forfeit.
The city was saved.
In 1691 the French army was besieging Mons. The king visited the
works. The haughty minister, unintimidated even by the menace of the
tongs, ventured to countermand an order which the king had issued. The
lowering brow of the monarch convinced him that his ministerial reign
was soon to close.
The health of the minister began rapidly to fail. He became emaciate,
languid, and deeply depressed. A few subsequent interviews with the
king satisfied him that his disgrace and ruin were decided upon.
Indeed, the king had already drawn up the _lettre de cachet_ which was
to consign him to the Bastile. About the middle of June, 1691, Louvois
met the king in his council chamber, and, though the monarch was
unusually complaisant, Louvois so thoroughly understood him that he
retired to his residence in utter despair. Scarcely had he entered his
apartment ere he dropped dead upon the floor. Whether his death were
caused by apoplexy, or by poison administered by his own hand or that
of others, can never be known. The king forbade all investigation of
the case.
Immediately after the death of Louvois, the king began to devote
himself to business with an energy which he had never before
manifested. Madame de Maintenon made some farther efforts to induce
him to proclaim their marriage, but she soon perceived that nothing
would induce him to change his resolution, and she accepted the
situation. Louis now yielded more than ever to her influence; but he
was always apprehensive that she might be engaged in some secret
intrigue, and kept a vigilant watch over her. In letters to a friend,
she gives some account of her splendid misery.
"The king is perpetually on guard over me. I see no one. He never
leaves my room. I am compelled to rise at five in the morning in order
to write to you. I experience more than ever that there is no
compensation for the loss of liberty."
Again she writes, in reference to the weary routine of court life:
"The princesses who have not attended the hunt will come in, followed
by their cabal, and wait the return of the king in my apartment in
order to go to dinner. The hunters will come in a crowd, and will
relate the whole history of their day's sport, without sparing us a
single detail. They will then go to dinner. Madame de Dangeau will
challenge me, with a yawn, to a game of backgammon. Such is the way in
which people live at court."
It will be remembered that the king and queen had an only son, the
dauphin. He was a man of ignoble character and of feeble mind. Still,
as heir to the throne, he was, next to the king, the most important
personage in the realm. The dauphin had three sons, who were in the
direct line of succession to the crown. These were Louis, duke of
Burgoyne, Philip, duke of Anjou, and Charles, duke of Berri.
The eldest, the Duke of Burgoyne, who, of course, next to the dauphin,
was heir to the throne, was thirteen years of age. The king selected
for his wife Adelaide, the daughter of the Duke of Savoy, a remarkably
graceful, beautiful, and intelligent child of eleven years. The pretty
little girl was brought to France to spend a few months in the court
previous to her marriage, which was to take place as soon as she
should attain her twelfth year. She came in great splendor, with her
retinue, her court, and her ladies of honor. Both the king and Madame
de Maintenon were charmed with the princess. Sumptuous apartments were
assigned her in the palace of Versailles. Madame de Maintenon wrote to
the Duchess of Savoy,
"The king is enchanted with her. He expatiates on her deportment, her
grace, her courtesy, her reserve, and her modesty. She has all the
graces of girlhood, with the perfections of a more mature age. Her
temper appears as perfect as her figure promises one day to become.
She only requires to speak to display the extent of her intellect. I
can not resist thanking your royal highness for giving us a child who,
according to all appearance, will be the delight of the court, and the
glory of the century."
The king resolved that the festivities at the marriage of these two
children should be the most splendid which France had ever witnessed.
He announced the intention of appearing himself, upon the occasion, in
the most sumptuous apparel which the taste and art of the times could
furnish. This intimation was sufficient for the courtiers.
Preparations were made for such a display of folly and extravagance
as even alarmed the king. All ordinary richness of dress, of satin,
and velvet, and embroidery of gold, was discarded for fabrics of
unprecedented costliness, for bouquets of diamonds, and wreaths of the
most precious gems.
"I can not understand," exclaimed the king, "how husbands are mad
enough to suffer themselves to be ruined by the folly of their wives."
The marriage took place between the bride of twelve years and the
bridegroom of fourteen at six o'clock in the evening of the 7th of
December, 1697. The ceremony was performed in the chapel of the palace
at Versailles. The ensuing festivals exceeded in magnificence all that
Versailles had previously witnessed. But there was no rejoicing among
the people. They listened, some silently, some sullenly, some
murmuringly, to the chiming bells and the booming cannon. The elements
of discontent and wrath were slowly beginning to collect for bursting
forth one hundred years later, in that most sublime of moral tempests,
the French Revolution.
The grand avenue to Versailles day after day was crowded with gorgeous
equipages. At night it blazed with illuminations. The highest
ingenuity was taxed to devise new scenes of splendor and amusement,
which followed each other in rapid succession. Three days after the
marriage, the king gave a special assembly which was to eclipse all
the rest. All the ladies were directed to appear in dresses of black
velvet, that the precious gems, which were almost literally to cover
those dresses, might sparkle more brilliantly. The great gallery of
Versailles was illuminated by four thousand wax-lights. The young
bride wore upon her apron alone jewels estimated at a sum equal to
fifty thousand dollars.
On the 1st of November, 1700, Charles II., the half crazed King of
Spain, died, leaving no heir. The pope, Innocent XII., bribed by Louis
XIV., sent a nuncio to the dying king, enjoining upon him to transmit
his crown to the children of the Dauphin of France, as the legitimate
heirs to the monarchy. As the Duke of Burgoyne was the direct heir to
the throne of France, the second son of the dauphin, the Duke of
Anjou, still a mere boy, was proclaimed King of Spain, with the title
of Philip V.
On the 14th of the month the Spanish embassador was summoned to an
audience with Louis XIV. at Versailles. The king presented his
grandson to the minister, saying, "This, sir, is the Duke of Anjou,
whom you may salute as your king."
A large crowd of courtiers was soon assembled. The Spanish minister
threw himself upon his knees before the boy with expressions of
profound homage. There was a scene of great excitement. The king,
embracing with his left arm the neck of the young prince, pointed to
him with his right hand, and said to those present,
"Gentlemen, this is the King of Spain. His birth calls him to the
crown.[X] The late king has recognized his right by his will. All the
nation desires his succession, and has entreated it at my hands. It is
the will of Heaven, to which I conform with satisfaction."
[Footnote X: The claim of the young prince was founded upon the fact
that his grandmother, Maria Theresa, was the eldest daughter of Philip
IV. of Spain. She had, however, upon her marriage, renounced all claim
to the succession. Her younger sister, Margarita, had married the
Emperor Leopold of Austria without this renunciation. The emperor
claimed the crown for her daughter, who had married the Elector of
Bavaria. Hence the war of _The Spanish Succession_.]
The Duke of Anjou was quite delighted in finding himself thus
liberated from all the restraints of tutors and governors, and of
being, in his boyhood, elevated to the dignity of a crowned king. As
soon as these stately forms of etiquette were concluded, and he was
alone with his brothers, he kicked up his heels and snapped his
fingers, exclaiming with delight,
"So I am King of Spain. You, Burgoyne, will be King of France. And
you, my poor Berri, are the only one who must live and die a subject."
The little prince replied, perhaps upon the principle that "the grapes
were sour," perhaps because he had observed how little real happiness
regal state had brought to his grandfather,
"That fact will not grieve me. I shall have less trouble and more
pleasure than either of you. I shall enjoy the right of hunting both
in France and Spain, and can follow a wolf from Paris to Madrid."
Preparations were immediately made for the departure of the boy-king
to take possession of his Spanish throne and crown. The pomp-loving
French king had decided to invest the occasion with great splendor. He
regarded it as a signal stroke of policy, and a great victory on his
part, that he had been enabled, notwithstanding the remonstrances of
other nations, to place a French Bourbon prince upon the throne of
Spain, thus virtually uniting the two nations. He thought he had thus
extended the domain of France to the Straits of Gibraltar.
"Henceforth," exclaimed Louis XIV., exultingly, "there are no more
Pyrenees."
To his grandson, the new king, he said, "Be a good Spaniard, but never
forget that you were born a Frenchman. Carefully maintain the union of
the two nations. Thus only can you render them both happy."
There was a final meeting of the royal family to take leave of the
young monarch as he was departing for his realm. All the young
nobility of France, with a numerous military escort, were to compose
his brilliant retinue. The Duchess du Maine, the legitimatized
daughter of Madame de Montespan, and thus the half brother of the
dauphin, persuaded the dauphin to invite her mother to the palace on
this occasion. Here occurred the last interview between the heartless
king and his discarded favorite.
As the king made the tour of the room, he found himself opposite
Madame de Montespan. She was greatly overcome by her emotions, and,
pale and trembling, was near fainting. The king coldly and
searchingly, for a moment, fixed his eye upon her, and then said,
calmly,
"Madame, I congratulate you. You are still as handsome and attractive
as ever. I hope that you are also happy."
The marchioness replied, "At this moment, sire, I am very happy, since
I have the honor of presenting my respectful homage to your majesty."
The king, with his studied grace of courtesy, kissed her hand, and
continued his progress around the circle. The monarch and his perhaps
equally guilty victim never met again. She lived twenty-two years
after her expulsion from the palace. They were twenty-two years of
joylessness. Her confessor, who seems to have been a man of sincere
piety, refused her absolution until she had written to her husband,
the Marquis de Montespan, whom she had abandoned for the guilty love
of the king, affirming her heartfelt repentance, imploring his
forgiveness, and entreating him either to receive her back, or to
order her to any place of residence which he should think proper. The
indignant marquis replied that he would neither admit her to his
house, nor prescribe for her any future rules of conduct, nor suffer
her name ever again to be mentioned in his presence.
The reverend father compelled her, in atonement for her sins, to sit
at a frugal table; to consecrate her vast wealth to objects of
benevolence; to wear haircloth next her skin, and around her waist a
girdle with sharp points, which lacerated her body at every movement.
She was also daily employed in making garments of the coarsest
materials with her own hands for the sick in the hospitals, and for
the poor in their squalid homes.
The guilty marchioness was dreadfully afraid of death. Every night a
careful guard of women watched her bedside. In a thunder-storm she
would take an infant in her lap, that the child's innocence might be
her protection. In the night of the 26th of May, 1707, she was
attacked in her bed by very distressing suffocation. One of her sons,
the Marquis of Antin, was immediately sent for. He found his mother
insensible. Seizing a casket which contained her jewels, he demanded
of an attendant the key. It was suspended around the neck of his dying
mother, where she ever wore it. The young man went to the bedside,
tore away the lace which veiled his mother's bosom, seized the key,
unlocked the casket, emptied its contents into his pockets, descended
to his carriage, and hurried away with the treasure, leaving his
mother to die without a relative to close her eyes. An hour after she
breathed her last.
The king was informed of the death of Madame de Montespan just as he
was setting out on a shooting excursion. "Ah! indeed," he said, "and
so the marchioness is dead. I should have thought that she would have
lasted longer. Are you ready, M. de la Rochefoucald? I have no doubt
that after this last shower the scent will lie well for the dogs.
Come, let us be off at once."
We have slightly anticipated the chronological sequence of events in
this narrative of the death of Madame de Montespan, which took place
in the year 1707. James II. of England died in exile at St. Germain in
September, 1701. The Prince of Orange then occupied the British throne
with the title of William III. He formed what was called the "Grand
Alliance" against the encroachments of France. For several years the
war of the "Spanish Succession" raged with almost unprecedented fury
throughout all Europe.
[Illustration: FRONT VIEW OF ST. GERMAIN.]
The king's health was now failing, and troubles in rapid succession
came crowding upon him. His armies encountered terrible defeats. The
king had thus far lived on friendly terms with his only brother
Philip, duke of Orleans, the playmate of his childhood, and the
submissive subject of maturer years. They were now both soured by
misfortune. In a chance meeting at Marly they fell into a violent
altercation respecting the conduct of one of the sons of the duke. It
was their first quarrel since childhood. The duke was so excited by
the event that he hastened to his palace at St. Cloud with flushed
cheeks and trembling nerves, where he was stricken down by apoplexy. A
courier was immediately dispatched to the king. He hastened to the
bedside of his brother, and found him insensible.
Philip was two years younger than Louis. To see him die was a louder
appeal to the conscience of the king than the view of St. Denis from
the terrace at St. Germain. Death was, to this monarch, truly the king
of terrors. He could not endure the spectacle of his brother's dying
convulsions. Burying his face in his hands, he wept and sobbed
bitterly. It was a midnight scene, or rather it was the sombre hour of
three o'clock in the morning.
At 8 o'clock in the morning the king took his carriage and returned to
Marly, and repaired immediately to the apartment of Madame de
Maintenon. At 11 o'clock his physician arrived with the intelligence
that the duke was dead. Again the king was overcome with emotion, and
wept almost convulsively; but, soon recovering himself, he apparently
resolved to make every effort to throw off these painful thoughts.
Notwithstanding the remonstrances of Madame de Maintenon, he persisted
in his determination to dine, as usual, with the ladies of the court.
Much to the astonishment of the ladies, he was heard, in his own room,
singing an air from a recent opera which was far from funereal in its
character.
In the month of May of this same year, 1701, the Duke of Anjou, the
young King of Spain, who was uneasily seated upon his beleaguered
throne, entered into a matrimonial alliance with Maria Louisa of
Savoy, younger sister of Adelaide, the duchess of Burgoyne. She was of
fairy-like stature, but singularly graceful and beautiful, with the
finest complexion, and eyes of dazzling brilliance. Her mental
endowments were also equal to her physical charms. Louis XIV., ever
anxious to retain the control over the court of Spain, appointed the
Princess des Ursins to be the companion and adviser of the young
queen. This lady was alike remarkable for her intelligence, her
sagacity, her tact, and her thorough acquaintance with high and
courtly breeding. The young King of Spain was perfectly enamored of
his lovely bride. She held the entire control over him. The
worldly-wise and experienced Princess des Ursins guided, in obedience
to the dictates of Louis XIV., almost every thought and volition of
the young queen. Thus the monarch at Marly ruled the court at Madrid.
While foreign war was introducing bankruptcy to the treasury of
France, civil war was also desolating the kingdom. The sufferings of
the Protestants equaled any thing which had been witnessed in the days
of pagan persecution. The most ferocious of all these men, who were
breathing out threatenings and slaughter, was the Abbe de Chayla. This
wretch had captured a party of Protestants, and, with them, two young
ladies from families of distinction. They were all brutally thrust
into a dungeon, and were fettered in a way which caused extreme
anguish, and crushed some of their bones. It was the 24th of July,
1702. At ten o'clock in the evening, a party of about fifty resolute
Protestants, thoroughly armed, and chanting a psalm, broke into the
palace of the infamous ecclesiastic, released the prisoners from the
dungeon vaults, seized the abbe, and, after compelling him to look
upon the mangled bodies and broken bones of his victims, put him to
death by a dagger-stroke from each one of his assailants. The torch
was then applied, and the palace laid in ashes.
Hence commenced the terrible civil war called _The War of the
Camisards_. The Protestants were poor, dispersed, without arms, and
without leaders. Despair nerved them. They fled to rocks, to the
swamps, the forests. In their unutterable anguish they were led to
frenzies of enthusiasm. They believed that God chose their leaders,
and inspired them to action. Thus roused and impelled, they set at
defiance an army of twenty thousand men sent against them.
The terrible war lasted two years. Fiends could not have perpetrated
greater cruelties than were perpetrated by the troops of the king. It
is one of the mysteries of divine providence that _one man_ should
have been permitted to create such wide-spread and unutterable woe.
Louis XIV. wished to exterminate Protestantism from his realms.
Millions were made wretched to an intensity which no pen can describe.
Louis XIV. wished to place his grandson, without any legal title, upon
the throne of Spain. In consequence, Europe was deluged in blood.
Cities were sacked and burned. Provinces were devastated. Hundreds of
thousands perished in the blood of the battle-field. The book of final
judgment alone can tell how many widows and orphans went weeping to
their graves.
The Pope Clement IX. fulminated a bull against the Camisards, and
promised the absolute remission of sins to those engaged in their
extermination. Protestant England and Holland sent words of cheer to
their fellow-religionists. We can not enter into the details of this
conflict. The result was that the king found it impossible to
exterminate the Protestants, or to blot out their faith. A policy of
semi-tolerance was gradually introduced, though in various parts of
the kingdom the persecuting spirit remained for several years
unbroken. The king, chagrined by the failure of his plans, would not
allow the word Protestant or Huguenot to be pronounced in his
presence.
The distress in France was dreadful. A winter of unprecedented
severity had even frozen the impetuous waters of the Rhone. Provisions
commanded famine prices. The fields were barren, the store-houses
exhausted, the merchant ships were captured by the enemy, and the
army, humiliated by frequent defeats, was perishing with hunger. The
people became desperate. The king was ignominiously lampooned and
placarded. He dared not appear in public, for starving crowds gathered
around his carriage clamoring for bread. Even the king and the
nobility sent their plate to the Mint. The exhaustion of the realm had
become so complete that the haggard features of want seemed to be
staring in even at the windows of the palace. Madame de Maintenon
practiced so much self-denial as to eat only oaten bread.
In April of 1711 the dauphin was taken sick with apparently an attack
of fever. It proved to be malignant smallpox. After a brief sickness,
which terrified and dispersed the court, he died, almost alone, in a
burning fever, with a frightfully swollen face, and in delirium. Even
the king could not visit the dying chamber of his son. He fainted upon
his sofa when he heard that the dauphin was in his last agonies.
The terror-stricken courtiers fled from the palace of Meudon, where
the loathsome remains of the heir to the throne of France awaited
burial. The corpse was hurried into a plain coffin, which was not even
covered by the royal pall. Not a single mourning coach followed the
only legitimate son of Louis XIV. to the grave. He had two sisters,
the Princess of Conti and the Duchess of Bourbon Conde. Neither of
them ventured to join the funeral procession of their only brother. He
had three sons, Louis, Philip, and Charles. Philip was king of Spain.
Louis and Charles were at home. But they kept at a safe distance, as
did the king his father, from the meagre funeral procession which
bore, with indecent haste, the remains of the prince to the vaults of
St. Denis.