LOUIS XIV.
[Sidenote: Louis XIV.]
We turn now from English affairs to contemplate the reign of
Louis XIV.--a man who filled a very large space in the history of
Europe during the seventeenth century. Indeed, his reign forms an
epoch of itself, not so much from any impulse he gave to liberty or
civilization, but because, for more than half a century, he was the
central mover of European politics. His reign commemorates the triumph
in France, of despotic principles, the complete suppression of popular
interests, and almost the absorption of national interests in his own
personal aggrandizement. It commemorates the ascendency of fashion,
and the great refinement of material life. The camp and the court of
Louis XIV. ingulphed all that is interesting in the history of France
during the greater part of the seventeenth century. He reigned
seventy-two years, and, in his various wars, a million of men are
supposed to have fallen victims to his vain-glorious ambition. His
palaces consumed the treasures which his wars spared. He was viewed as
a sun of glory and power, in the light of which all other lights were
dim. Philosophers, poets, prelates, generals, and statesmen, during
his reign, were regarded only as his satellites. He was the central
orb around which every other light revolved, and to contribute to his
glory all were supposed to be born. He was, most emphatically, the
state. He was France. A man, therefore, who, in the eye of
contemporaries, was so grand, so rich, so powerful, and so absolute,
claims a special notice. It is the province of history to record great
influences, whether they come from the people, from great popular
ideas, from literature and science, or from a single man. The lives of
individuals are comparatively insignificant in the history of the
United States; but the lives of such men as Cæsar, Cromwell, and
Napoleon, furnish very great subjects for the pen of the philosophical
historian, since great controlling influences emanated from them,
rather than from the people whom they ruled.
[Sidenote: His Power and Resources.]
Louis XIV. was not a great general, like Henry IV., nor a great
statesman, like William III., nor a philosopher, like Frederic the
Great, nor a universal genius, like Napoleon; but his reign filled the
eyes of contemporaries, and circumstances combined to make him the
absolute master of a great empire. Moreover, he had sufficient talent
and ambition to make use of fortunate opportunities, and of the
resources of his kingdom, for his own aggrandizement. But France,
nevertheless, was sacrificed. The French Revolution was as much the
effect of his vanity and egotism, as his own power was the fruit of
the policy of Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin. By their labors in the
cause of absolutism, he came in possession of armies and treasures.
But armies and treasures were expended in objects of vain ambition,
for the gratification of selfish pleasures, for expensive pageants,
and for gorgeous palaces. These finally embarrassed the nation, and
ground it down to the earth by the load of taxation, and maddened it
by the prospect of ruin, by the poverty and degradation of the people,
and, at the same time, by the extravagance and insolence of an
overbearing aristocracy. The aristocracy formed the glory and pride of
the throne and both nobles and the throne fell, and great was the fall
thereof.
Our notice of Louis XIV. begins, not with his birth, but at the time
when he resolved to be his own prime minister, on the death of
Cardinal Mazarin, (1661.)
Louis XIV. was then twenty-three years of age--frank, beautiful,
imperious, and ambitious. His education had been neglected, but his
pride and selfishness had been stimulated. During his minority, he had
been straitened for money by the avaricious cardinal; but avaricious
for his youthful master, since, at his death, besides his private
fortune, which amounted to two hundred millions of livres, he left
fifteen millions of livres, not specified in his will, which, of
course, the king seized, and thus became the richest monarch of
Europe. He was married, shortly before the death of Mazarin, to the
Infanta Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV., King of Spain. But,
long before his marriage, he had become attached to Mary de Mancini,
niece of Mazarin, who returned his love with passionate ardor. She
afterwards married Prince Colonna, a Roman noble, and lived a most
abandoned life.
The enormous wealth left by Cardinal Mazarin was, doubtless, one
motive which induced Louis XIV., though only a young man of
twenty-three, to be his own prime minister. Henceforth, to his death,
all his ministers made their regular reports to him, and none were
permitted to go beyond the limits which he prescribed to them.
He accepted, at first, the ministers whom the dying cardinal had
recommended. The most prominent of these were Le Tellier, De Lionne,
and Fouquet. The last was intrusted with the public chest, who found
the means to supply the dissipated young monarch with all the money he
desired for the indulgence of his expensive tastes and ruinous
pleasures.
[Sidenote: Habits and Pleasures of Louis.]
The thoughts and time of the king, from the death of Mazarin, for six
or seven years, were chiefly occupied with his pleasures. It was then
that the court of France was so debauched, splendid, and far-famed. It
was during this time that the king was ruled by La Vallière, one of
the most noted of all his favorites, a woman of considerable beauty
and taste, and not so unprincipled as royal favorites generally have
been. She was created a duchess, and her children were legitimatized,
and also became dukes and princes. Of these the king was very fond,
and his love for them survived the love for their unfortunate mother,
who, though beautiful and affectionate, was not sufficiently
intellectual to retain the affections with which she inspired the most
selfish monarch of his age. She was supplanted in the king's
affections by Madame de Montespan, an imperious beauty, whose
extravagances and follies shocked and astonished even the most
licentious court in Europe; and La Vallière, broken-hearted,
disconsolate, and mortified, sought the shelter of a Carmelite
convent, in which she dragged out thirty-six melancholy and dreary
years, amid the most rigorous severities of self-inflicted penance, in
the anxious hope of that heavenly mansion where her sins would be no
longer remembered, and where the weary would be at rest.
It was during these years of extravagance and pleasure that Versailles
attracted the admiring gaze of Christendom, the most gorgeous palace
which the world has seen since the fall of Babylon. Amid its gardens
and groves, its parks and marble halls, did the modern Nebuchadnezzar
revel in a pomp and grandeur unparalleled in the history of Europe,
surrounded by eminent prelates, poets, philosophers, and statesmen,
and all that rank and beauty had ennobled throughout his vast
dominions. Intoxicated by their united flatteries, by all the incense
which sycophancy, carried to a science, could burn before him, he
almost fancied himself a deity, and gave no bounds to his
self-indulgence, his vanity, and his pride. Every thing was
subordinate to his pleasure and his egotism--an egotism alike
regardless of the tears of discarded favorites, and the groans of his
overburdened subjects.
[Sidenote: His Military Ambition.]
But Louis, at last, palled with pleasure, was aroused from the
festivities of Versailles by dreams of military ambition. He knew
nothing of war, of its dangers, its reverses, or of its ruinous
expenses; but he fancied it would be a beautiful sport for a wealthy
and absolute monarch to engage in the costly game. He cast his eyes on
Holland, a state extremely weak in land forces, and resolved to add it
to the great kingdom over which he ruled.
The only power capable of rendering effectual assistance to Holland,
when menaced by Louis XIV., was England; but England was ruled by
Charles II., and all he cared for were his pleasures and independence
from parliamentary control. The French king easily induced him to
break his alliance with the Dutch by a timely bribe, while, at the
same time, he insured the neutrality of Spain, by inflaming the
hereditary prejudices of the Spanish court against the Low Countries.
War, therefore, without even a decent pretence, and without
provocation, was declared against Holland, with a view of annexing the
Low Countries to France.
Before the Dutch were able to prepare for resistance, Louis XIV.
appeared on the banks of the Rhine with an army of one hundred and
twenty thousand, marshalled by such able generals as Luxembourg,
Condé, and Turenne. The king commanded in person, and with all the
pomp of an ancient Persian monarch, surrounded with women and nobles.
Without any adequate force to resist him, his march could not but be
triumphant. He crossed the Rhine,--an exploit much celebrated, by his
flatterers, though nothing at all extraordinary,--and, in the course
of a few weeks, nearly all the United Provinces had surrendered to the
royal victor. The reduction of Holland and Zealand alone was necessary
to crown his enterprise with complete success. But he wasted time in
vain parade at Utrecht, where he held his court, and where his
splendid army revelled in pleasure and pomp. Amsterdam alone, amid the
general despondency and consternation which the French inundation
produced, was true to herself, and to the liberties of Holland; and
this was chiefly by means of the gallant efforts of the Prince of
Orange.
[Sidenote: William, Prince of Orange.]
At this time, (1672,) he was twenty-two years of age, and had received
an excellent education, and shown considerable military abilities. In
consequence of his precocity of talent, his unquestioned patriotism,
and the great services which his family had rendered to the state, he
was appointed commander-in-chief of the forces of the republic, and
was encouraged to aspire to the office of stadtholder, the highest in
the commonwealth. And his power was much increased after the massacre
of the De Witts--the innocent victims of popular jealousy, who, though
patriotic and illustrious, inclined to a different policy than what
the Orange party advocated. William advised the States to reject with
scorn the humiliating terms of peace which Louis XIV. offered, and to
make any sacrifice in defence of their very last ditch. The heroic
spirit which animated his bosom he communicated to his countrymen, on
the borders of despair, and in the prospect of national ruin; and so
great was the popular enthusiasm, that preparations were made for
fifty thousand families to fly to the Dutch possessions in the East
Indies, and establish there a new empire, in case they were
overwhelmed by their triumphant enemy.
Never, in the history of war, were such energies put forth as by the
Hollanders in the hour of their extremity. They opened their dikes,
and overflowed their villages and their farms. They rallied around the
standard of their heroic leader, who, with twenty-two thousand men,
kept the vast armies of Condé and Turenne at bay. Providence, too,
assisted men who were willing to help themselves. The fleets of their
enemies were dispersed by storms, and their armies were driven back by
the timely inundation.
The heroism of William called forth universal admiration. Louis
attempted to bribe him, and offered him the sovereignty of Holland,
which offer he unhesitatingly rejected. He had seen the lowest point
in the depression of his country, and was confident of ultimate
success.
The resistance of Holland was unexpected, and Louis, wearied with the
campaign, retired to Versailles, to be fed with the incense of his
flatterers, and to publish the manifestoes of his glory and success.
The states of Europe, jealous of the encroachments of Louis, at last
resolved to come to the assistance of the struggling republic of
Holland. Charles II. ingloriously sided with the great despot of
Europe; but the Emperor of Germany, the Elector of Brandenburg, and
the King of Spain declared war against France. Moreover, the Dutch
gained some signal naval battles. The celebrated admirals De Ruyter
and Van Tromp redeemed the ancient glories of the Dutch flag. The
French were nearly driven out of Holland; and Charles II., in spite of
his secret treaties with Louis, was compelled to make peace with the
little state which had hitherto defied him in the plenitude of his
power.
[Sidenote: Second Invasion of Holland.]
But the ambitious King of France was determined not to be baffled in
his scheme, since he had all the mighty resources of his kingdom at
his entire disposal, and was burning with the passion of military
aggrandizement. So he recommenced preparations for the conquest of
Holland on a greater scale than ever, and assembled four immense
armies. Condé led one against Flanders, and fought a bloody but
indecisive battle with the Prince of Orange, in which twelve thousand
men were killed on each side. Turenne commanded another on the side of
Germany, and possessed himself of the Palatinate, gained several
brilliant successes, but disgraced them by needless cruelties.
Manheim, and numerous towns and villages, were burnt, and the country
laid waste and desolate. The elector was so overcome with indignation,
that he challenged the French general to single combat, which the
great marshal declined.
Louis himself headed a third army, and invaded Franche Comté, which he
subdued in six weeks. The fourth army was sent to the frontiers of
Roussillon, but effected nothing of importance.
[Sidenote: Dutch War.]
This great war was prosecuted for four years longer, in which the
contending parties obtained various success. The only decisive effect
of the contest was to reduce the strength of all the contending
powers. Some great battles were fought, but Holland still held out
with inferior forces. Louis lost the great Turenne, who was killed on
the eve of a battle with the celebrated Montecuculi, who commanded the
German armies; but, in a succeeding campaign, this loss was
compensated by the surrender of Valenciennes, by the victories of
Luxembourg over the Prince of Orange, and by another treaty of peace
with Charles II.
At last, all the contending parties were exhausted, and Louis was
willing to make terms of peace. He had not reduced Holland, but, on
account of his vast resources, he had obtained considerable
advantages. The treaty of Nimeguen, in 1678, secured to him Franche
Comté, which he had twice conquered, and several important cities and
fortresses in Flanders. He considerably extended his dominions, in
spite of a powerful confederacy, and only retreated from the field of
triumph to meditate more gigantic enterprises.
For nine years, Europe enjoyed a respite from the horrors of war,
during which Louis XIV. acted like a universal monarch. During these
nine years, he indulged in his passion of palace building, and
surrounded himself with every pleasure which could intoxicate a mind
on which, already, had been exhausted all the arts of flattery, and
all the resources of wealth.
The man to whom Louis was most indebted for the means to prosecute his
victories and build his palaces, was Colbert, minister of finance, who
succeeded Fouquet. France was indebted to this able and patriotic
minister for her richest manufactures of silks, laces, tapestries, and
carpets, and for various internal improvements. He founded the Gobelin
tapestries; erected the Royal Library, the colonnade of the Louvre,
the Royal Observatory, the Hotel of the Invalids, and the palaces of
the Tuileries, Vincennes, Meudon, and Versailles. He encouraged all
forms of industry, and protected the Huguenots. But his great services
were not fully appreciated by the king, and he was obnoxious to the
nobility, who envied his eminence, and to the people, because he
desired the prosperity of France more than the gratification of their
pleasures. He was succeeded by Louvois, who long retained a great
ascendency by obsequious attention to all the king's wishes.
[Sidenote: Madame Montespan.]
At this period, the reigning favorite at court was Madame de
Montespan--the most infamous and unprincipled, but most witty and
brilliant of all the king's mistresses, and the haughtiest woman of
her age. Her tastes were expensive, and her habits extravagant and
luxurious. On her the sovereign showered diamonds and rubies. He could
refuse her nothing. She received so much from him, that she could
afford to endow a convent--the mere building of which cost one million
eight hundred thousand livres. Her children were legitimatized, and
declared princes of the blood. Through her the royal favors flowed.
Ambassadors, ministers, and even prelates, paid their court to her. On
her the reproofs of Bossuet fell without effect. Secure in her
ascendency over the mind of Louis, she triumphed over his court, and
insulted the nation. But, at last, he grew weary of her, although she
remained at court eighteen years, and she was dismissed from
Versailles, on a pension of a sum equal to six hundred thousand
dollars a year. She lived twenty-two years after her exile from court,
and in great splendor, sometimes hoping to regain the ascendency she
had once enjoyed, and at others in those rigorous penances which her
church inflicts as the expiation for sin. To the last, however, she
was haughty and imperious, and kept up the vain etiquette of a court.
Her husband, whom she had abandoned, and to whom, after her disgrace,
she sought to be reconciled, never would hear her name mentioned; and
the king, whom, for nearly twenty years, she had enthralled, heard of
her death with indifference, as he was starting for a hunting
excursion. "Ah, indeed," said Louis XIV., "so the marchioness is dead!
I should have thought that she would have lasted longer. Are you
ready, M. de la Rochefoucauld? I have no doubt that, after this last
shower, the scent will lie well for the dogs. Let us be off at once."
[Sidenote: Madame de Maintenon.]
As the Marchioness de Montespan lost her power over the royal egotist,
Madame de Maintenon gained hers. She was the wife of the poet Scarron,
and was first known to the king as the governess of the children of
Montespan. She was an estimable woman on the whole, very intellectual,
very proper, very artful, and very ambitious. No person ever had so
great an influence over Louis XIV. as she; and hers was the ascendency
of a strong mind over a weak one. She endeavored to make peace at
court, and to dissuade the king from those vices to which he had so
long been addicted. And she partially reclaimed him, although, while
her counsels were still regarded, Louis was enslaved by Madame de
Fontanges--a luxurious beauty, whom he made a duchess, and on whom he
squandered the revenues of a province. But her reign was short. Mere
physical charms must soon yield to the superior power of intellect and
wit, and, after her death, the reign of Madame de Maintenon was
complete. As the king could not live without her, and as she refused
to follow the footsteps of her predecessors, the king made her his
wife. And she was worthy of his choice; and her influence was, on the
whole, good, although she befriended the Jesuits, and prompted the
king to many acts of religious intolerance. It was chiefly through her
influence, added to that of the Jesuits, that the king revoked the
edict of Nantes, and its revocation was attended by great sufferings
and privations among the persecuted Huguenots. He had, on ascending
the throne, in 1643, confirmed the privileges of the Protestants; but,
gradually, he worried them by exactions and restraints, and, finally,
in 1685, by the revocation of the edict which Henry IV. had passed, he
withdrew his protection, and subjected them to a more bitter
persecution than at any preceding period. All the Protestant ministers
were banished, or sent to the galleys, and the children of Protestants
were taken from their parents, and committed to the care of their
nearest Catholic relations, or such persons as judges appointed. All
the terrors of military execution, all the artifices of priestcraft,
were put forth to make converts and such as relapsed were subjected to
cruel torments. A twentieth part of them were executed, and the
remainder hunted from place to place. By these cruelties, France was
deprived of nearly six hundred thousand of the best people in the
land--a great misfortune, since they contributed, in their dispersion
and exile, to enrich, by their agriculture and manufactures, the
countries to which they fled.
From this period of his reign to his death, Louis XIV. was a religious
bigot, and the interests of the Roman Church, next to the triumph of
absolutism, became the great desire of his life. He was punctual and
rigid in the outward ceremonials of his religion, and professed to
regret the follies and vices of his early life. Through the influence
of his confessor, the Jesuit La Chaise, and his wife, Madame de
Maintenon, he sent away Montespan from his court, and discouraged
those gayeties for which it had once been distinguished. But he was
always fond of ceremony of all kinds, and the etiquette of his court
was most irksome and oppressive, and wearied Madame de Maintenon
herself, and caused her to exclaim, in a letter to her brother, "Save
those who fill the highest stations, I know of none more unfortunate
than those who envy them."
The favorite minister of the king at this time was Louvois, a very
able but extremely prodigal man, who plunged Louis XIV. into
innumerable expenses, and encouraged his taste both for palaces and
war. It was probably through his intrigues, in order to make himself
necessary to the king, that a general war again broke out in Europe.
[Sidenote: League of Augsburg.]
In 1687 was formed the famous League of Augsburg, by which the leading
princes of Europe united in a great confederacy to suppress the power
and encroachments of the French king. Louvois intrigued to secure the
election of the Cardinal de Furstemberg to the archbishopric of
Cologne, in opposition to the interests of Bavaria, the natural ally
of France, conscious that, by so doing, he must provoke hostilities.
But this act was only the occasion, not the cause, of war. Louis had
enraged the Protestant world by his persecution of the Huguenots. He
had insulted even the pope himself by sending an ambassador to Rome,
with guards and armed attendants equal to an army, in order to enforce
some privileges which it was not for the interest or the dignity of
the pope to grant; he had encouraged the invasion of Germany by the
Turks; he had seized Strasburg, the capital of Alsace; he bombarded
Genoa, because they sold powder to the Algerines, and compelled the
doge to visit him as a suppliant; he laid siege to some cities which
belonged to Spain; and he prepared to annex the Low Countries to his
dominions. Indeed, he treated all other powers as if he were the
absolute monarch of Europe, and fear and jealousy united them against
them. Germany, Spain, and Holland, and afterwards England, Denmark,
Sweden, and Savoy, coöperated together to crush the common enemy of
European liberties.
Louis made enormous exertions to resist this powerful confederacy.
Four hundred thousand men were sent into the field, divided into four
armies. Two of these were sent into Flanders, one into Catalonia, and
one into Germany, which laid waste the Palatinate with fire and sword.
Louvois gave the order, and Louis sanctioned it, which was executed
with such unsparing cruelty that all Europe was filled with
indignation and defiance.
[Sidenote: Opposing Armies and Generals.]
The forces of Louis were immense, but those of the allies were
greater. The Spaniards, Dutch, and English, had an army of fifty
thousand men in Flanders, eleven thousand of whom were commanded by
the Earl of Marlborough. The Germans sent three more armies into the
field; one commanded by the Elector of Bavaria, on the Upper Rhine;
another by the Duke of Lorraine, on the Middle Rhine; and a third by
the Elector of Brandenburg, on the Lower Rhine; and these, in the
first campaign, obtained signal successes. The next year, the Duke of
Savoy joined the allies, whose army was commanded by Victor Amadeus;
but he was beaten by Marshal Catinat, one of the most distinguished of
the French generals. Luxembourg also was successful in Flanders, and
gained the great battle of Charleroi over the Germans and Dutch: The
combined fleet of the English and Dutch was also defeated by the
French at the battle of Beachy Head. In the next campaign, Prince
Eugene and the Duke of Schomberg distinguished themselves in checking
the victorious career of Catinat; but nothing of importance was
effected. The following spring, William III. and Louis XIV., the two
great heads of the contending parties, took the field themselves; and
Louis, with the aid of Luxembourg, took Namur, in spite of the efforts
of William to succor it. Some other successes were gained by the
French, and Louis retired to Versailles to celebrate the victories of
his generals. The next campaign witnessed another splendid victory
over William and the allies, by Luxembourg, at Neerwinden, when twelve
thousand men were killed; and also another, by Catinat, at Marsaglia,
in Italy, over the Duke of Savoy. The military glory of Louis was now
at its height; but, in the campaign of 1694-95, he met with great
reverses. Luxembourg, the greatest of his generals, died. The allies
retook Huy and Namur, and the French king, exhausted by the long war,
was forced to make peace. The treaty of Ryswick, in 1697, secured the
tranquillity of Europe for four years--long enough only for the
contending parties to recover their energies, and prepare for a more
desperate contest. Louis XIV., however, now acted on the defensive.
The allied powers were resolved on his complete humiliation.
[Sidenote: War of the Spanish Succession.]
War broke out again in 1701, and in consequence of the accession of
Philip V., grandson of Louis XIV., to the throne of Spain. This great
war of the Spanish Succession, during which Marlborough so greatly
distinguished himself, claims a few explanatory remarks.
Charles II., King of Spain, and the last of the line of the Austrian
princes, being without an heir, and about to die, selected as his
successor Leopold of Bavaria, a boy five years of age, whose
grandmother was Maria Theresa. But there were also two other
claimants--the Duke of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV., whose claim
rested in being the grandson of Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV.,
and sister of Charles II., and the Emperor of Germany, whose mother
was the daughter of Philip III. The various European states looked
with extreme jealousy on the claims of the Emperor of Germany and the
Duke of Anjou, because they feared that the balance of power would be
seriously disturbed if either an Austrian or a Bourbon prince became
King of Spain. They, therefore, generally supported the claims of the
Bavarian prince, especially England and Holland.
But the Prince of Bavaria suddenly died, as it was supposed by poison,
and Louis XIV. so successfully intrigued, that his grandson was
nominated by the Spanish monarch as heir to his throne. This incensed
Leopold II. of Germany, and especially William III., who was resolved
that the house of Bourbon should be no further aggrandized.
On the accession of the Duke of Anjou to the Spanish throne, in 1701,
a grand alliance was formed, headed by the Emperor of Germany and the
King of England, to dethrone him. Louis XIV. long hesitated between
his ambition and the interests of his kingdom; but ambition triumphed.
He well knew that he could only secure a crown to his grandson by a
desperate contest with indignant Europe. Austria, Holland, Savoy, and
England were arrayed against France. And this war of the Spanish
Succession was the longest, the bloodiest, and the most disastrous war
in which Louis was ever engaged. It commenced the last year of the
reign of William III., and lasted thirteen years.
[Sidenote: Duke of Marlborough.]
The great hero of this war was doubtless the Duke of Marlborough,
although Prince Eugene gained with him as imperishable glories as war
can bestow. John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, cannot be said to be
one of those geniuses who have impressed their minds on nations and
centuries; but he was a man who gave great lustre to the British name,
and who attained to a higher pitch of military fame than any general
whom England has produced since Oliver Cromwell, with the exception of
Wellington.
He was born in 1650, of respectable parents, and was page of honor to
the Duke of York, afterwards James II. While a mere boy, his bent of
mind was discernible, and he solicited and obtained from the duke an
ensign's commission, and rapidly passed through the military grades of
lieutenant, captain, major, and colonel. During the infamous alliance
between Louis XIV. and Charles II., he served under Marshal Turenne,
and learned from him the art of war. But he also distinguished himself
as a diplomatic agent of Charles II., in his intrigues with Holland
and France. Before the accession of James II., he was created a
Scottish peer, by the title of Baron Churchill. He followed his royal
patron in his various peregrinations, and, when he succeeded to the
English throne, he was raised to an English peerage. But Marlborough
deserted his patron on the landing of William III., and was made a
member of his Privy Council, and lord of the bed-chamber. Two days
before the coronation of William, he was made Earl of Marlborough; but
was not intrusted with as high military command as his genius and
services merited, William being apparently jealous of his fame. On the
accession of Anne, he was sent to the Continent with the supreme
command of the English armies in the war with Louis about the Spanish
Succession. His services in the campaign of 1702 secured a dukedom,
and deservedly, for he contended against great obstacles--against the
obstinacy and stupidity of the Dutch deputies; against the timidity of
the English government at home; and against the veteran armies of
Louis, led on by the celebrated Villars. But neither the campaigns of
1702 or 1703 were marked by any decisive battles. In 1704 was fought
the celebrated battle of Blenheim, by which the French power was
crippled, and the hopes of Louis prostrated.
The campaign of 1703 closed disastrously for the allies. Europe was
never in greater peril. Bavaria united with France and Spain to crush
Austria. The Austrians had only twenty thousand men, while the
Bavarians had forty-five thousand men in the centre of Germany, and
Marshal Tallard was posted, with forty-five thousand men, on the Upper
Rhine. Marshal Villeroy opposed Marlborough in the Netherlands.
[Sidenote: Battle of Blenheim.]
But Marlborough conceived the bold project of marching his troops to
the banks of the Danube, and there uniting with the Imperialists under
Prince Eugene, to cut off the forces of the enemy before they could
unite. So he left the Dutch to defend themselves against Villeroy,
rapidly ascended the Rhine, before any of the enemy dreamed of his
designs. From Mentz, he proceeded with forty thousand men to
Heidelberg, and from Heidelberg to Donauworth, on the Danube, where
his troops, which had effected a junction with the Austrians and
Prussians, successfully engaged the Bavarians. But the Bavarians and
the French also succeeded in uniting their forces; and both parties
prepared for a desperate conflict. There were about eighty thousand
men on each side. The French and Bavarians were strongly intrenched at
the village of Blenheim; and Marlborough, against the advice of most
of his generals, resolved to attack their fortified camp before it was
reënforced by a large detachment of troops which Villeroy had sent. "I
know the danger," said Marlborough; "but a battle is absolutely
necessary." He was victorious. Forty thousand of the enemy were killed
or taken prisoners; Tallard himself was taken, and every trophy was
secured which marks a decisive victory. By his great victory, the
Emperor of Austria was relieved from his fears, the Hungarians were
overawed, Bavaria fell under the sway of the emperor, and the armies
of Louis were dejected and discouraged. Marlborough marched back again
to Holland without interruption, was made a prince of the empire, and
received pensions and lands from the English government, which made
him one of the richest and greatest of the English nobility. The
palace of Blenheim was built, and he received the praises and plaudits
of the civilized world.
The French were hardly able to cope with Marlborough during the next
campaign, but rallied in 1706, during which year the great battle of
Ramillies was fought, and won by Marlborough. The conquest of Brabant,
and the greater part of Spanish Flanders, resulted from this victory;
and Louis, crippled and humiliated, made overtures of peace. Though
equitable, they were rejected; the allies having resolved that no
peace should be made with the house of Bourbon while a prince of that
house continued to sit upon the throne of Spain. Louis appealed now,
in his distress, to the national honor, sent his plate to the mint,
and resolved, in his turn, to contend, to the last extremity, with his
enemies, whom success had intoxicated.
The English, not content with opposing Louis in the Netherlands and in
Germany, sent their armies into Spain, also, who, united with the
Austrians, overran the country, and nearly completed its conquest. One
of the most gallant and memorable exploits of the war was the siege
and capture of Barcelona by the Earl of Peterborough, the city having
made one of the noblest and most desperate defences since the siege of
Numantia.
[Sidenote: Exertions and Necessities of Louis.]
The exertions of Louis were equal to his necessities; and, in 1707, he
was able to send large armies into the field. None of his generals
were able to resist the Duke of Marlborough, who gained new victories,
and took important cities; but, in Spain, the English met with
reverses. In 1708, Louis again offered terms of peace, which were
again rejected. His country was impoverished, his resources were
exhausted, and a famine carried away his subjects. He agreed to yield
the whole Spanish monarchy to the house of Austria, without any
equivalent; to cede to the emperor his conquests on the Rhine, and to
the Dutch the great cities which Marlborough had taken; to acknowledge
the Elector of Brandenburg as King of Prussia, and Anne as Queen of
England; to remove the Pretender from his dominions; to acknowledge
the succession of the house of Hanover; to restore every thing
required by the Duke of Savoy; and agree to the cessions made to the
King of Portugal.
And yet these conditions, so honorable and advantageous to the allies,
were rejected, chiefly through the influence of Marlborough, Eugene,
and the pensionary Heinsius, who acted from entirely selfish motives.
Louis was not permitted to cherish the most remote hope of peace
without surrendering the strongest cities of his dominions as pledges
for the entire evacuation of the Spanish monarchy by his grandson.
This he would not agree to. He threw himself, in his distress, upon
the loyalty of his people. Their pride and honor were excited; and, in
spite of all their misfortunes, they prepared to make new efforts.
Again were the French defeated at the great battle of Malplaquet, when
ninety thousand men contended on each side; and again did Louis sue
for peace. Again were his overtures rejected, and again did he rally
his exhausted nation. Some victories in Spain were obtained over the
confederates; but the allies gradually were hemming him around, and
the king-hunt was nearly up, when unexpected dissensions among the
allies relieved him of his enemies.
[Sidenote: Treaty of Utrecht.]
These dissensions were the struggles between the Whigs and Tories in
England; the former maintaining that no peace should be made; the
latter, that the war had been carried far enough, and was prolonged
only to gratify the ambition of Marlborough. The great general, in
consequence, lost popularity; and the Tories succeeded in securing a
peace, just as Louis was on the verge of ruin. Another campaign, had
the allies been united, would probably have enabled Marlborough to
penetrate to Paris. That was his aim; that was the aim of his party.
But the nation was weary of war, and at last made peace with Louis. By
the treaty of Utrecht, (1713,) Philip V. resumed the throne of Spain,
but was compelled to yield his rights to the crown of France in case
of the death of a sickly infant, the great-grandson of Louis XIV., who
was heir apparent to the throne; but, in other respects, the terms
were not more favorable than what Louis had offered in 1706, and very
inadequate to the expenses of the war. The allies should have yielded
to the overtures of Louis before, or should have persevered. But party
spirit, and division in the English cabinet and parliament, prevented
the consummation which the Whigs desired, and Louis was saved from
further humiliation and losses.
[Sidenote: Last Days of Louis.]
But his power was broken. He was no longer the autocrat of Europe, but
a miserable old man, who had lived to see irreparable calamities
indicted on his nation, and calamities in consequence of his ambition.
His latter years were melancholy. He survived his son and his
grandson. He saw himself an object of reproach, of ridicule, and of
compassion. He sought the religious consolation of his church, but was
the victim of miserable superstition, and a tool of the Jesuits. He
was ruled by his wife, the widow of the poet Scarron, whom his
children refused to honor. His last days were imbittered by
disappointments and mortifications, disasters in war, and domestic
afflictions. No man ever, for a while, enjoyed a prouder preëminence.
No man ever drank deeper of the bitter cup of disappointed ambition
and alienated affections. No man ever more fully realized the vanity
of this world. None of the courtiers, by whom he was surrounded, he
could trust, and all his experiences led to a disbelief in human
virtue. He saw, with shame, that his palaces, his wars, and his
pleasures, had consumed the resources of the nation, and had sowed the
seeds of a fearful revolution. He lost his spirits; his temper became
soured; mistrust and suspicion preyed upon his mind. His love of pomp
survived all his other weaknesses, and his court, to the last, was
most rigid in its wearisome formalities. But the pageantry of
Versailles was a poor antidote to the sorrows which bowed his head to
the ground, except on those great public occasions when his pride
triumphed over his grief. Every day, in his last years, something
occurred to wound his vanity, and alienate him from all the world but
Madame de Maintenon, the only being whom he fully trusted, and who did
not deceive him. Indeed, the humiliated monarch was an object of pity
as well as of reproach, and his death was a relief to himself, as well
as to his family. He died in 1715, two years after the peace of
Utrecht, not much regretted by the nation.
[Sidenote: His Character.]
Louis XIV. cannot be numbered among the monsters of the human race who
have worn the purple of royalty. His chief and worst vice was egotism,
which was born with him, which was cultivated by all the influences of
his education, and by all the circumstances of his position. This
absorbing egotism made him insensible to the miseries he inflicted,
and cherished in his soul the notion that France was created for him
alone. His mistresses, his friends, his wives, his children, his
court, and the whole nation, were viewed only as the instruments of
his pride and pleasure. All his crimes and blunders proceeded from his
extraordinary selfishness. If we could look on him without this moral
taint, which corrupted and disgraced him, we should see an indulgent
father and a generous friend. He attended zealously to the duties of
his station, and sought not to shake off his responsibilities. He
loved pleasure, but, in its pursuit, he did not forget the affairs of
the realm. He rewarded literature, and appreciated merit. He honored
the institutions of religion, and, in his latter days, was devoted to
its duties, so far as he understood them. He has been foolishly
panegyrized, and as foolishly censured. Still his reign was baneful,
on the whole, especially to the interests of enlightened Christianity
and to popular liberty. He was a bigoted Catholic, and sought to
erect, on the ruins of states and empires, an absolute and universal
throne. He failed; and instead of bequeathing to his successors the
power which he enjoyed, he left them vast debts, a distracted empire,
and a discontented people. He bequeathed to France the revolution
which hurled her monarch from his throne, but which was overruled for
her ultimate good.
* * * * *
REFERENCES.--Louis XIV. et son Siècle. Voltaire's and Miss
Pardoe's Histories of the Reign of Louis XIV. James's Life
of Louis XIV. Mémoires du Duc de St. Simon. The Abbé
Millot's History. D'Anquetil's Louis XIV., sa Cour, et le
Régent. Sismondi's History of France. Crowe's and Rankin's
Histories of France. Lord Mahon's War of the Spanish
Succession. Temple's Memoirs. Coxe's Life of Marlborough.
Memoirs of Madame de Maintenon. Madame de Sévigné's Letters.
Russell's Modern Europe. The late history by Miss Pardoe is
one of the most interesting ever written. It may have too
much gossip for what is called the "dignity of history;" but
that fault, if fault it be, has been made by Macaulay also,
and has been condemned, not unfrequently, by those most
incapable of appreciating philosophical history.