Louis XIV of France

“ Their scandal filled all Europe; stupefied France, shook the state, and without doubt drew upon the King those maledictions under the weight of which he was pushed so near the very edge of the precipice, and had the misfortune of seeing his legitimate posterity within an ace of extinction in France. These are evils which became veritable catastrophes and which will be long felt.
Louis XIV., in his youth more made for love than any of his subjects— being tired of gathering passing sweets, fixed himself at last upon La Valliere. The progress and the result of his love are well known. ”

“ When Louis XIV. laid down, one September day in the year 1715, the crown which he had worn with such splendour for more than seventy years, his sceptre fell into the hands of his nephew Philippe, Duc d'Orléans, who for eight years ruled France as Regent, and as guardian of the child-King, the fifteenth Louis.
Seldom in the world's history has a reign, so splendid as that of the Sun-King, closed in such darkness and tragedy. The disastrous war of the Spanish Succession had drained France of her strength and her gold. ”

“ The happy combination of the right man in the right country at the right moment is very rare in History. Louis XIV was a realisation of this ideal, as far as France was concerned, but the rest of Europe would have been happier without him.
The country over which the young king was called to rule was the most populous and the most brilliant nation of that day. Louis came to the throne when Mazarin and Richelieu, the two great Cardinals, had just hammered the ancient French Kingdom into the most strongly centralised state of the seventeenth century. He was himself a man of extraordinary ability. ”

“ Louis XIV had just suffered a cruel blow, not only in his deepest affections, but in his dignity as sovereign, by the declarations of obscure and infamous criminals made before the Chambre Ardente. The very throne of France was befouled by them. Colbert and Louvois were for a moment in dire alarm. The all-powerful monarch, aided by his two great ministers, believed that he had buried in unfathomable darkness the terrible story of his shame and grief. ”

“ The glories of the age of Louis XIV were the climax of a set of ideas that instantly afterward lost alike their grace, their usefulness, and the firmness of their hold on the intelligence of men. A dignified and venerable hierarchy, an august and powerful monarch, a court of gay and luxurious nobles, all lost their grace because the eyes of men were suddenly caught and appalled by the awful phantom, which was yet so real, of a perishing nation. Turn from Bossuet's orations to Boisguillebert's Détail de la France ”

“ A weak, hypochondriac prince, putting his kingdom under the protection of the Virgin, after assassinating the favorites of his mother, he possessed no other merit than that of allowing himself to be governed by Richelieu. Louis XIV., with a proud genius and true kingly qualities, united gallantry to bigotry, and we shall have occasion to see that in his strange compromises with his conscience, the more scandal he occasioned to his court by his licentiousness, the more he made it a point to edify it by his severity against the Reformed. ”

“ Louis XIV. did not, as is sometimes supposed, adopt as his principles the propagation of absolutism; his aim was the strength and greatness of France, and to this end he fought and planned--just as William of Orange fought and planned, not against despotism, but against France. France presented herself at that age as the most redoubtable, skilful, and imposing Power in Europe.
Yet, after the death of Louis XIV., the government immediately degenerated. This was inevitable. No system of government can be maintained without institutions, and a despot dislikes institutions. ”

“ God was to grant Louis XIV. more time and power than he asked for, but it was Henry IV.‘s good fortune to maintain his greatness at the sword’s point, without ever having leisure to become intoxicated with it. Absolute power is in its nature so unwholesome and dangerous that the strongest mind cannot always withstand it. It was Louis XIV.‘s misfortune to be king for seventy-two years, and to reign fifty-six as sovereign master. ”

“ When Louis XIV took charge of the government, forty-seven years had passed without a meeting of the Estates General, and a century and a quarter was still to elapse before another call to the representatives of the nation was issued in 1789. Moreover, the French people placed far more reliance upon a powerful king than the English, perhaps because they were not protected by the sea from their neighbors, as England was. On every side France had enemies ready to take advantage of any weakness or hesitation which might arise from dissension between a parliament and the king. ”

“ He is supposed by many to have been a son of Anne of Austria and the Duke of Buckingham, and consequently a half-brother of Louis XIV., and a co-heir to the throne of France. If so, it would appear, that, while Louis XIV. was luxuriating amid the splendors of the palace of Versailles, his brother was suffering the miseries of exile, or languishing in a dungeon, shut out not only from the outward world, but from all intercourse with mankind. But other writers think him to have been some less remarkable person. ”

“ It is King Louis XIV.‘s distinction and heavy, burden in the eyes of history that it is, impossible to tell of anything in his reign without constantly recurring to himself. He had two ministers of the higher order, Colbert and Louvois; several of good capacity, such as Seignelay and Torcy; others incompetent, like Chamillard; he remained as much master of the administrators of the first rank as if they had been insignificant clerks; the home government of France, from 1661 to 1715, is summed up in the king’s relations with his ministers. ”

“ It is the misfortune of men, even of the greatest, to fall short of their destiny. Louis XIV. had wanted to exceed his, and to bear a burden too heavy for human shoulders. Arbiter, for a while, of the affairs of all Europe, ever absolute master in his own dominions, he bent at last beneath the load that was borne without flinching by princes less powerful, less fortunate, less adored, but sustained by the strong institutions of free countries. William III. had not to serve him a Conde, a Turenne, a Colbert, a Louvois ”

“ As Louis XIV. made war continually the result was the same as in Spain under Philip II.: depopulation and bankruptcy within the kingdom and the coalitions of Europe without.
In 1660 France was predominant in Europe; but she aroused no jealousy except in the house of Habsburg, enfeebled and divided against itself. It was sufficient to remain faithful to the practical policy of Henry IV., of Richelieu and of Mazarin: that of moderation in Foreign policy
of Louis XIV. strength. This Louis XIV. very soon altered, while yet claiming to continue it ”

“ His worship of the king extended to all that concerned and surrounded him, to all that he loved and honoured. The greatness of Louis XIV is easily explained, in spite of his personal mediocrity, when we see with what passion and by what men he was served. The revelations about Madame de Montespan, the mother of the king’s children, the woman who had almost won a seat on the throne of France, were anguish to La Reynie. It is touching to see his grief becoming more keen, more poignant, as evidence accumulated and conviction forced itself upon his mind. ”

“ THE WARS OF LOUIS XIV AMBITIOUS DESIGNS OF LOUIS XIV How unwise it may be to concentrate all authority in the hands of one man is shown by the melancholy record of the wars of Louis XIV. To aggrandize France and gain fame for himself, Louis plunged his country into a series of struggles from which it emerged completely exhausted. ”

“ Louis XIV. considered the “office of king” grand, noble, delightful, “for he felt himself worthy of acquitting himself well in all matters in which he engaged.” “The ardor we feel for glory,” he used to say, “is not one of those feeble passions which grow dull by possession; its favors, which are never to be obtained without effort, never, on the other hand, cause disgust, and whoever can do without longing for fresh ones is unworthy of all he has received.” ”

“ All greatness is the product of its opportunities, and the elder Boulle was made by the happy circumstances of his time. He was born into a France which was just entering upon the most brilliant period of sumptuary magnificence which any nation has known in modern times. Louis XIV., so avid of the delights of the eye, by the reckless extravagance of his example turned the thoughts of his courtiers to domestic splendours which had hitherto been rare. ”

“ Quentin, and there massing all the troops I had, making a last effort with you, and falling together or saving the kingdom; I will never consent to let the enemy approach my capital. [Memoires de Villars, t. ii. p. 362.] ”
God was to spare Louis XIV. that crowning disaster reserved for other times; in spite of all his defaults and the culpable errors of his life and reign, Providence had given this old man, overwhelmed by so many reverses and sorrows, a truly royal soul, and that regard for his own greatness which set him higher as a king than he would have been as a man. ”

“ LATER EFFORTS OF LOUIS XIV The earlier career of Louis XIV seems to have been mainly influenced by his passion for personal renown; but he had always been a serious Catholic, and in his later life his interest in religion became a most important factor in his world. The Protestants of France had for wellnigh a century held their faith unmolested, safeguarded by that Edict of Nantes, which had been granted by Henry IV, a Catholic at least in name, and confirmed by Cardinal Richelieu, a Catholic by profession. ”

“ He first applied to the military art the resources of prudent foresight, deep thought, and profound combination; and the results of his successes completely justified the discernment which had prompted Louis XIV. to place him at the head of his armies. His methodical and far-seeing campaigns in Flanders, Franche Comté, Alsace, and Lorraine, in the early part of the reign of that monarch, added these valuable provinces to France, which have never since been lost. They have proved more durable than the conquests of Napoleon, which all perished in the lifetime of their author. ”

“ Lebrun, Rigaud, Mignard, painted for the king; Perrault and Mansard constructed the Louvre and Versailles; the learned of all countries considered it an honor to correspond with the new academies founded in France. Louis XIV. was even less a man of letters or an artist than an administrator or a soldier; but literature and art, as well as the superintendents and the generals, found in him the King. The puissant unity of the reign is everywhere the same. The king and the nation are in harmony. ”

“ During the long reign of this monarch, for Louis XIV. sat upon the throne for seventy-two years, if we consider his reign to have commenced when he was proclaimed king upon the death of his father, France made vast strides in power, wealth, and splendor. Palaces arose almost outvying the dreams of an Oriental imagination. The saloons of Marly, the Tuileries, the Louvre, and Versailles, were brilliant with a splendor, and polluted with debaucheries, which Babylon, in its most festering corruption, could not have rivaled. ”

“ The face of things is changed to-day. In violation of his oath of renunciation, taken at the time of his marriage with the Infanta of Spain, Louis XIV has invaded Flanders without cause, broken the alliance by declaring war upon us without the shadow of even a pretext, and suborned England to his aid. The Republic finds itself now legitimately entitled to take up arms, and it thereby does an act that is at once generous and politic, by affording help to the oppressed people of France. ”

“ The mundane chronicles [145] falling into line, Louis XIV. saw his "glory" as a great worker ascending into the clouds, together with his "glory" as a man of war, and in one word as "universal hero." He could not even exercise his musketeers without the Gazette's issuing an extra leaf upon the "admiration of all spectators." [146]
All France struck the same note. ”

“ But it was not to see the palace of Louis XIV. that I had most interest in revisiting Versailles, but to see the National Assembly sitting in it, which is at present the ruling power in France. If Louis XIV. ever revisits the scene of his former magnificence, he must shake his kingly head at the strange events which it has witnessed. How he must have shuddered to see his royal house invaded by a mob, as it was in the time of the first Revolution; to see the faithful Swiss guards butchered in his very palace, and the Queen, Marie Antoinette, escaping with her life ”

“ The most valuable chapters in the volume are perhaps those which relate to the character and government of Louis XIV. The absolute monarchy established by him is thoroughly analyzed. Among many curious illustrations of that tyranny and perfidy which this great master of king-craft systematized into a science, Stephen translates from his “Memoires Historiques” a series of maxims, addressed to the Dauphin, for his guidance whenever he should be called upon to wear the crown of France. ”

“ The Earl of Oxford, a clever minister, and Lord Bolingbroke, one of the greatest geniuses and most eloquent men of his century, were in the ascendant against the famous Duke of Marlborough, and persuaded Queen Anne to [Pg 285] make peace with Louis XIV. France having made peace with England, soon forced the other Powers to terms. Philip IV, grandson of Louis XIV, was beginning a peaceful rule over the ruins of the Spanish monarchy. The Emperor, master of Naples and Flanders, was firmly settled in his vast dominions. The only thing that Louis asked was to finish his long career in peace. ”